How Soviet soldiers treated German women. Trophies from Germany - what it was and how. Who raped German women and how life was in occupied Germany
In the European information space, the topic of the “outrages” of the Red Army on the territory of the Third Reich occupied by it in 1945 is constantly raised. How does this relate to reality – past and present? From historical memory about the Second World War, the main thing is being superseded - that the USSR and the Soviet people saved Europe from the destruction of entire states and peoples, and even democracy itself, and at the cost of colossal losses and victims, unprecedented suffering and destruction on Soviet soil and incredible exertion of forces. Moreover, in the western zones of occupation of Germany, as the documents show, there was by no means that idyll, the image of which is inspired today in the public consciousness. Eisenhower's radio message "We come victorious!" meant both "the right of the conquerors" and "woe to the vanquished." The "paradise life" in the western sectors sometimes turned out to be such that even frightened by propaganda about "Russian atrocities", the refugees returned to the areas occupied by Soviet troops.
In January-February 1945, Soviet troops entered German soil. The day you've been waiting for so long has arrived.
Long before the army approached the enemy border, passing through their native land tormented by the invaders, seeing tortured women and children, burned and destroyed cities and villages, Soviet soldiers swore to take revenge on the invaders a hundredfold and thought about the time when they would enter enemy territory. And when this happened, there were - couldn't be - psychological breakdowns, especially among those who lost their loved ones and their homes.
Acts of revenge were inevitable. And it was necessary to make special efforts to prevent their wide distribution.
On January 19, 1945, Stalin signed a special order "On Conduct on German Territory", which read: “Officers and Red Army soldiers! We are going to the country of the enemy. Everyone must maintain self-control, everyone must be brave ... The remaining population in the conquered areas, whether German, Czech, Pole, should not be subjected to violence. The guilty will be punished according to the laws of war. In the conquered territory, sexual intercourse with the female sex is not allowed. Those responsible for violence and rape will be shot.”
These were the installations of the victorious army, but here is how Germany planned its actions in the occupied territories in 1941.
According to the prescriptions of Dr. Goebbels
One of the most widespread anti-Russian myths in the West today is the topic of mass rapes allegedly committed by the Red Army in 1945 in Europe. It originates from the end of the war - from Goebbels' propaganda, and then from the publications of the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, who soon turned into opponents of the USSR in the Cold War.
Evacuated Leningraders and the corpses of those who died of starvation in the port of Kobon (village of Sukhovsky rural settlement Kirovsky district of the Leningrad region. It is located on the shore of Lake Ladoga at the mouth of the Kobona (Kobonka) River, at the point of its intersection with the Ladoga Canal). April 12, 1942
On March 2, 1945, the Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich, J. Goebbels, wrote in his diary: “... in fact, in the person of Soviet soldiers, we are dealing with steppe scum. This is confirmed by the reports of atrocities that have come to us from the eastern regions. They are truly terrifying. They cannot even be played separately. First of all, mention should be made of the terrible documents that came from Upper Silesia. In some villages and cities, all women from ten to 70 years old were subjected to countless rapes. It seems that this is done by order from above, since one can see an obvious system in the behavior of the Soviet soldiery. Against this we will now launch a broad campaign at home and abroad. On March 13, a new entry appears: “The war in the east will now be guided by only one feeling - the feeling of revenge. Now all compatriots believe that the Bolsheviks are committing atrocities. There is no longer a person who would ignore our warnings” 1 . March 25: "Published reports of Soviet atrocities have aroused anger and a desire for revenge everywhere" 1 .
Later, the assistant to the Reichskommissar Goebbels, Dr. Werner Naumann, admits: “Our propaganda about the Russians and what the population should expect from them in Berlin was so successful that we brought the Berliners to a state of extreme horror,” but “we overdid it - our propaganda rebounded on us ourselves" 2 . The German population had long ago been psychologically prepared for the image of a brutally cruel "subhuman" and was ready to believe in any crimes of the Red Army 3 .
“In an atmosphere of horror, on the verge of panic, fueled by the stories of refugees, reality was distorted, and rumors defeated facts and common sense. Crawled through the city creepy stories about the worst atrocities. Russians were described as narrow-eyed Mongols, ruthlessly and without hesitation killing women and children. It was said that priests were burned alive with flamethrowers, nuns were raped and then driven naked through the streets. It was feared that women were being turned into prostitutes who followed military units, and men are sent to hard labor in Siberia. They even said on the radio that the Russians were nailing the tongues of the victims to the tables” 2 .
Soviet citizens hanged by the Germans in the first days of the occupation of Kharkov on Sumskaya Street. October 25, 1941
According to Australian war correspondent Osmar White, "Goebbels' propaganda<...>drove into the heads of the Germans a paranoid fear of the "hordes from the East." When the Red Army approached the outskirts of Berlin, a wave of suicides swept the city. According to some estimates, between 30,000 and 40,000 Berliners voluntarily died in May-June 1945. In his diaries, he wrote that “there was nothing new in Russophobia. The troops faced this all the way from the Rhine as they met thousands of people fleeing to the West and panic-stricken people. Russians are coming! Whatever it was, but you need to run away from them! When it was possible to question any of them, it almost always turned out that they knew nothing about the Russians. They were told so. They heard it from a friend, brother or relative who served on the Eastern Front. Well, of course, Hitler lied to them! His theories about a superior race were absurd, his claims that the British were decadent and that the Jews were subhuman, feeding on decayed brains, were lies. But speaking of the Bolsheviks, the Fuhrer was right!” 4
At the same time, the allied media took up the initiative in promoting anti-Soviet horrors. Moreover, “the anti-Russian hysteria was so strong, there were so many stories about Russian atrocities that the chief of the Anglo-American Bureau of Public Relations (PR) found it necessary to gather correspondents in order to give “explanations”: “Remember,” he said, “that there is a strong and organized movement among the Germans aimed at sowing the seeds of mistrust among the Allies. The Germans are convinced that they will benefit from a split between us. I want to warn you not to believe German stories about the atrocities of the Russians without a thorough check of their authenticity” 4 . But the Cold War was brewing. And already in 1946, Austin Epp's pamphlet "The Rape of the Women of Conquered Europe" was published in the USA.
The corpses of Leningraders in a wasteland near the Volkov cemetery. Barrage balloons are visible in the background, lowered to the ground. Spring 1942
In 1947, Ralph Killing published in Chicago the book Terrible Harvest. An Expensive Attempt to Exterminate the People of Germany”, which was based on press reports about “outrages in the Soviet zone of occupation” and materials from hearings in the American Parliament on the actions of the Red Army in post-war Germany.
The rhetoric of the latter is especially indicative: “Bolshevized Mongol and Slavic hordes came from the East, immediately raping women and girls, infecting them with venereal diseases, impregnating them with the future race of Russian-German half-breeds...” 5 .
The next notable publications on this topic are the books of the German Erich Kube "Russians in Berlin, 1945" and the American Cornelius Ryan "The Last Battle: Storming Berlin through the eyes of eyewitnesses"; both come out in the mid 60s. Here the age range of the victims increases even in comparison with the statements of Goebbels: in the offensive zone of the Red Army, "every woman from eight to eighty years is threatened with rape" 2 . Subsequently, it is this figure that will regularly “emerge” in the publications of the Western media already at the beginning of the 21st century. However, wondering "how many women have been raped" and admitting that "no one knows," Ryan says that "doctors give numbers between 20,000 and 100,000" 2 . Compared to the numbers that his followers will claim, these will seem incredibly modest ...
A new surge of interest in "raped Germany" occurs in the early 90s after the collapse of the USSR.
So, “in united Germany, they hastily began to print books and make films stigmatizing the Red Army and the Communists for the “crimes of 1945.”
Removal of corpses from the wasteland of the Volkov cemetery in besieged Leningrad. Spring 1942
For example, the famous documentary Liberators and the Liberated. War, Violence, Children (1992), filmed by Helke Zander and Barbara Yor, where a video sequence from military chronicle, records of memories in combination with musical accompaniment produce the strongest emotional impact on the viewer” 5 .
In the same year, a book of the same name was published in Munich, to which Anthony Beevor would later actively refer. Among the most famous are the work of Alfred de Zayas published in New York in 1994 "Terrible Revenge: Ethnic Cleansing of East European Germans, 1944-1950" and in 1995 in Harvard - Norman M. Neimark "Russians in Germany. History of the Soviet zone of occupation. 1945-1949".
In our country this topic has been slightly touched upon since perestroika and glasnost in connection with references to it in the works of eminent dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev. But the real information boom began in the mid-2000s, when “the wave of anti-Russian books quickly spread to newspapers of the corresponding orientation, which happily began to reproduce descriptions of the horrors of “raped Germany” for various military anniversaries” 5 . The topic became especially fashionable after the publication in 2002 of the book “The Fall of Berlin. 1945" by the English historian Anthony Beevor 6 , who called "absolutely fantastic data on the number of women who became victims of Soviet soldiers" 5 . After the publication of the book in Russian, the myth of mass rape began to be actively exaggerated in the Russian liberal press and on the Russian-language Internet.
Very soon it became clear that the accusations of the Red Army in crimes against the civilian population of Germany and calls for modern Russia to "realize and repent" mark a new stage in the struggle for the history of the Second World War and a revision of the role in it Soviet Union.
The corpses of Leningraders who tried to walk across Lake Ladoga. April 12, 1942
The peak of massive attacks on the role of the USSR in World War II came in 2005, the year of the 60th anniversary of the Victory. Western media reacted especially actively to this information occasion. mass media. So, Konstantin Eggert from the BBC lamented that "the war remains the only bright spot of the Soviet period of history for the majority of the population of Russia, and therefore is declared outside the zone of critical study and discussion." And, calling on Russia to “rethink the past,” he quite frankly hinted that “only a deep national crisis today can bring Russians back to the situation of the late eighties, when the discussion interrupted in the nineties was in full swing about Soviet history» 7 .
AT special review"RIA Novosti", prepared on the basis of monitoring the television and radio broadcast of 86 foreign radio stations and television companies on April 19, 2005, stated: "Information fuss about the historical interpretation of the Great Patriotic Wars You can't do without an arsenal of horror propaganda. The reliance of journalists on subjective memoirs, the personal experience of former participants in the battles and frank conjectures of Goebbels propaganda leads to the fact that images associated with revenge, hatred and violence, which do little to consolidate, come to the fore. public opinion and resurrecting former foreign policy attitudes. The presence of the “dark side” of the liberation feat of the Red Army is postulated, which is allegedly hushed up in modern Russia” 8 .
"Scientific" methods of Mr. E. Beevor and Co.
In this context, the mythology regarding the mass rape of German women by Soviet soldiers, allegedly in the absence of such facts in the offensive zone of the Western Allies, took a special place and was actively discussed by the Western media. In particular, the mentioned book by Anthony Beevor "The Fall of Berlin, 1945" in 2002 caused a whole series of scandalous publications.Thus, in The Daily Telegraph newspaper, in an article under the eloquent title “Red Army troops raped even Russian women whom they released from the camps,” it said: “Soviet soldiers considered rape, often carried out in front of a woman’s husband and family members, as an appropriate way to humiliate the German nation, which considered the Slavs an inferior race, with which sexual contacts were not encouraged. Russian patriarchal society and the habit of wild revelry also played a role, but more important was the indignation at the relatively high welfare of the Germans” 9 .
Red Army prisoners who died of hunger and cold. The POW camp was located in the village of Bolshaya Rossoshka near Stalingrad. The photo was taken during the survey of the camp by the Soviet military after the defeat of the German troops (camera footage of the camp, including those with these dead prisoners, is included in the documentary film "The Battle of Stalingrad" (from the 57th minute). The author's title of the photo is "Faces of War January 1943
The article called angry letter to the editorial board of the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Great Britain Grigory Karasin dated January 25, 2002. 10
The "scientific conscientiousness" of the English author can be judged by a specific example. The following text caused the greatest excitement in the Western media: “The most shocking, from the Russian point of view, are the facts of violence committed by Soviet soldiers and officers against Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian women and girls released from German work camps” with reference to my book “Psychology wars in the 20th century. The historical experience of Russia” 11 .
In the monograph of the author of the article we read something that can be indirectly attributed to the issue raised by Mr. Beevor: “Worldview attitudes and the moral and socio-psychological qualities resulting from them were also manifested in relation to the enemy. Already in the spring of 1942, in one of the divisional newspapers of the Karelian Front, there was an essay by a Red Army soldier under the eloquent heading "We have learned to hate." And this just hatred was one of the dominant feelings in the active Soviet Army throughout the war.
However, depending on its specific stage and the conditions associated with it, the attitude towards the enemy acquired various shades. So, a new, more complex range of feelings began to manifest itself in Soviet soldiers and officers in connection with the transfer of hostilities outside our country, to foreign, including enemy, territory. Many servicemen believed that as winners they could afford everything, including arbitrariness against the civilian population.
Patients of the Leningrad hospital who died as a result of the German artillery raid. December 28, 1943
Negative phenomena in the liberating army caused tangible damage to the prestige of the Soviet Union and its armed forces, could adversely affect future relations with the countries through which our troops passed. The Soviet command had to pay attention again and again to the state of discipline in the troops, conduct explanatory conversations with personnel, adopt special directives and issue harsh orders. The Soviet Union had to show the peoples of Europe that it was not the "horde of Asians" that had entered their land, but the army of a civilized state. Therefore, purely criminal offenses in the eyes of the leadership of the USSR acquired a political coloring. In this regard, on the personal instructions of Stalin, several show trials were held with death sentences for the guilty, and the NKVD authorities regularly informed the military command about their measures to combat the facts of robbery against the civilian population.
Well, where are the "facts of violence committed by Soviet soldiers and officers against Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian women and girls released from German work camps"?
Maybe Mr. Beevor had in mind that this is said in the work of M.I. Semiryaga, to which I refer? But there is nothing of the kind there: neither on pages 314-315, nor on any others!
However, in the West, Mr. Beevor's statements are regarded as absolutely reliable.
So, K. Eggert in the article “Memory and Truth”, written in 2005 for the BBC project on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, wrote: “When Anthony Beevor’s book “The Fall of Berlin” (now translated in Russia by the AST publishing house), the Russian ambassador to the UK, Grigory Karasin, wrote an angry letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The diplomat accused the well-known military historian of slandering the glorious feat of Soviet soldiers. Cause? Beevor, based on documents from the main military archive in Podolsk, spoke, among other things, about the atrocities that Soviet soldiers committed in liberated Poland, East Prussia and in Berlin itself. Historians from the Russian Academy of Sciences condemned the book "The Fall of Berlin" almost before the ambassador. Meanwhile, the reference apparatus of Beevor's book is in perfect order: incoming and outgoing numbers of reports, a folder, a shelf, and so on. That is, you cannot accuse a writer of lying” 7 .
But if such an obvious fraud is allowed in this particular example, where is the guarantee that the other so-called facts given in Mr. Beevor's book are not fabricated according to the same "method"? Many falsifications are built on this simple calculation: the reference apparatus looks solid and convincing, especially for an inexperienced reader, and it is unlikely that anyone will check each of the 1007 author's footnotes in the archive and library ...
However, some check - and find a lot of interesting things. It was with the light hand of Beevor that the “accurate statistics” were launched and subsequently replicated in thousands of publications - two million German women were raped, of which one hundred thousand were in Berlin.
body Soviet citizens hanged by the Germans during the occupation of Volokolamsk. Moscow region, winter 1941
In his book, he writes: “Berliners remember the piercing screams at night that were heard in houses with broken windows. According to the estimates of the two main Berlin hospitals, the number of victims raped by Soviet soldiers ranges from ninety-five to one hundred and thirty thousand people. One doctor concluded that approximately one hundred thousand women had been raped in Berlin alone. And about ten thousand of them died mainly as a result of suicide.
The number of deaths throughout East Germany must be much higher if one takes into account the 1400,000 rapes in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. It appears that a total of about two million German women were raped, many of whom (if not most) suffered this humiliation several times” 6 .
In doing so, he refers to the book "Liberators and the Liberated" by Helke Sander and Barbara Yohr, 12 where the calculations are made on the basis of data not from "the two main Berlin hospitals", but from one children's clinic 5, 13, i.e. "to add solidity" makes a completely conscious distortion. Not to mention the fact that these data are very doubtful, since the system of calculations by Barbara Yor, based on an arbitrary extrapolation of the number of children whose fathers are named Russians, born in 1945 and 1946. and examined in one Berlin clinic, on total of the female population of East Germany between the ages of "8 and 80" does not stand up to scrutiny 41 . The result of such a "generalization" of individual cases implies that "every 6th East German woman, regardless of age, was raped by the Red Army at least once" 13 .
But even where E. Beevor refers to real archival documents, this does not prove anything. The Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation does indeed store materials from political departments with reports that contain the minutes of Red Army, Komsomol and party meetings describing cases of deviant behavior of servicemen. These are chubby folders, the contents of which are solid rubbish.
But they were completed precisely “thematically”, as evidenced by their very names: “Emergency incidents and immoral phenomena” for such and such a period in such and such a military unit. By the way, these names already show that such phenomena were considered by the army leadership not as a behavioral norm, but as an emergency event requiring decisive action.
There are also materials of military tribunals in the archive - investigation cases, sentences, etc., where you can find many negative examples, because it is there that such information is concentrated. But the fact is that the perpetrators of these crimes amounted to no more than 2% of the total number of servicemen. And authors like Mr. Beevor extend their accusations to the entire Soviet Army as a whole. Unfortunately, not only foreign 14 . It is noteworthy that Beevor's book was translated into Russian and published in Russia in 2004, just on the eve of the anniversary of the Victory.
In 2005, another "revealing sensation" from the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition followed: "... in the West, a new book by the British military historian Max Hastings "Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945", dedicated to the crimes of the Soviet Army against peaceful population of Germany and German prisoners of war. The historian draws literally the ritual retribution inflicted by the Soviet Army on the Germans who were losing the war, and even calls it "primitive" rape "of an entire nation" 15 .
Soviet women are pushing a cart with the bodies of men shot by the Germans. The author's title of the photo: "Shot by the Nazis." 1942
In 2006, a book by the German author Joachim Hoffmann “Stalin's War of Extermination (1941-1945)” was published in Russian. Planning, Implementation, Documents” 16, which has been widely distributed abroad since the mid-1990s and has gone through four editions only in Germany. At the same time, the preface to the Russian edition states that this work “is one of the best historical research"dark spots" of the Soviet-German war", and its author - "one of the most prominent representatives of the direction of West German historical science, which defended the postulate that in 1941-1945 the war was fought between two criminal regimes: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR".
Naturally, several chapters are devoted recent months wars from a very specific angle, as evidenced by their names: ""No mercy, no condescension." The atrocities of the Red Army during the advance on German soil”, “Woe to you, Germany!” Atrocities find their continuation. A list of literature of this kind, reviving the spirit and letter of Goebbels propaganda in new historical conditions, you can go on for quite some time.
Information warfare in electronic media
A real information war has unfolded in the vastness of the Russian-language Internet.So, in May 2005, a certain Yu. Nesterenko wrote an article “Day of National Shame”, initiating the indefinite action “Anti-Victory”, within which “numerous testimonies about the monstrous crimes of the Soviet“ “warriors-liberators” (often surpassing the worst deeds in cruelty Nazis)": "... Instead of inflating another propaganda hysteria and demanding gratitude from the raped for the pleasure, we must put an end to the practice of many years of hypocritical lies and double standards, stop honoring the servants of the criminal regime and repent before all those who innocently suffered from the actions of "soldiers -liberators»» 17 - this is the main message of the organizer of the action.
In May 2009, also on the eve of Victory Day, a provocative post by A. Shiropaev “The Grave of the Unknown Rapist” 18 appeared, exposing our veterans as pedophile rapists, which received a huge number of comments and hung in the top of Yandex for a long time 19 .
On Wikipedia, many pages are directly or indirectly devoted to the topic of rape at the end of the war: “Violence against the civilian population of Germany (1945)”, “Deportation of Germans after World War II”, “German population in East Prussia after World War II” , "Murder in Nemmersdorf", "The Fall of Berlin. 1945" and others.
And the radio station "Echo of Moscow" (2009) in the program "The Price of Victory" twice broadcast on "painful topics" - "The Wehrmacht and the Red Army against the civilian population" (February 16) and "The Red Army on German territory" (October 26) 20, inviting G. Bordyugov and the infamous M. Solonin to the studio.
Finally, in 2010, the year of the 65th anniversary of the Victory, another anti-Russian wave arose that swept across Europe and was especially noticeable in Germany.
“Sometimes a pitiful thought slips through the Russian Internet that the Germans are so poor, they are tired of repenting,” writes A. Tyurin on Pravaya.ru. “There is no need to worry, even under the anti-fascist Chancellor Willy Brandt, Germany did not apologize for its crimes committed in Russia.”
And he shares his observations with readers: “While the German chancellor was looking at the Victory Parade, a Russophobic orgy was raging in Germany. The Russians who defeated Hitler were shown as a horde of subhumans - quite according to Goebbels' patterns. Three days in a row I watched programs on German state and commercial information channels dedicated to the end of World War II in Europe and the first post-war weeks. There are a lot of programs, both documentary and artistic. The general theme is this. Americans are humanists, breadwinners... Russians are robbers and rapists. The theme of the crimes of the Wehrmacht against the civilian population of the USSR is absent. The number of dead Soviet people in the zone of German-Romanian-Finnish occupation is not given.
Soviet child crying over the body of his dead mother. Frame from Soviet film during the war, which showed the crimes of the Nazis. 1942
Having taken Berlin, the Russians feed the poor Berliners badly, bring them to dystrophy, but they drag everything in a row and rape them.
And here the artistic television series “One Woman in Berlin” (central channel ZDF) is typical. The Russians are shown not as an army, but as a horde. Against the background of thin, pale, spiritualized German faces, those terrible Russian muzzles, gaping mouths, thick cheeks, greasy eyes, nasty smiles. The horde is precisely Russian, there are no nationalists, except for one Asian soldier, whom the Russians call "hey, Mongol" 21 .
Such propaganda clichés, splashed into art, emotionally affect the audience, are firmly fixed in the mass consciousness, form not only a distorted “retrospective” view of the events of the Second World War, but also the image of modern Russia and Russians.
At the same time, as a result of a powerful information war, the term “liberation mission” itself is subjected to the most violent attacks by anti-Russian forces both in the West and within the country. The desire to rewrite the history of the Second World War comes from the states of the former socialist bloc, which today turned out to be members of NATO, and from the former Soviet republics of the USSR, gravitating towards the West, and from the countries that were former opponents of the USSR in World War II, and from the countries that were former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition.
The general leitmotif of these attacks is an attempt to replace "liberation" with "occupation", the desire to present the liberation mission of the USSR in Europe as a "new enslavement" of countries that have fallen into the sphere of Soviet influence, accusations not only against the USSR and the Soviet Army, but also against Russia as the legal successor of the Soviet Union in the imposition of totalitarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, in crimes against the civilian population, demands for her to "repent" and "repair the damage."
Limits of hate, limits of revenge
However, the morality of war is completely different from the morality of peacetime. And it is possible to evaluate those events only in a general historical context, without dividing, and even more so without substituting cause and effect. It is impossible to put an equal sign between the victim of aggression and the aggressor, especially one whose goal was the destruction of entire nations. Fascist Germany itself placed itself outside morality and outside the law. Should we be surprised at the acts of spontaneous revenge on the part of those whose loved ones she cold-bloodedly and methodically destroyed for several years in the most sophisticated and savage ways?During the Great Patriotic War, the theme of retribution was one of the central ones in agitation and propaganda, as well as in the thoughts and feelings of the Soviet people. Long before the army approached the enemy border, passing through their native land tormented by the invaders, seeing tortured women and children, burned and destroyed cities and villages, Soviet soldiers vowed to take revenge on the invaders a hundredfold and often thought about the time when they would enter enemy territory. And when it happened, they were - they couldn't help but be! - psychological breakdowns, especially among those who have lost their families.
In January-February 1945, Soviet troops launched the Vistula-Oder and East Prussian offensive operations and entered German soil. “Here it is, damn Germany!” - wrote on one of the makeshift billboards near the burnt house a Russian soldier who was the first to cross the border 22 . The day you've been waiting for so long has arrived. And at every step, Soviet soldiers came across things with our factory marks, stolen by the Nazis; compatriots released from captivity spoke about the horrors and abuse they experienced in German slavery. The German inhabitants, who supported Hitler and welcomed the war, shamelessly used the fruits of the robbery of other peoples, did not expect that the war would return to where it started - to the territory of Germany. And now these "civilian" Germans, frightened and fawning, with white bandages on their sleeves, were afraid to look into the eyes, expecting retribution for everything that their army had done in a foreign land.
Punishers shoot Jewish women and children near the village of Mizoch, Rivne region. Those who show signs of life are killed in cold blood. Before being executed, the victims were ordered to remove all clothing. USSR, Ukraine, Rivne region, October 14, 1942
The thirst for revenge on the enemy "in his own lair" was one of the dominant moods in the troops, especially since it was fueled for a long time and purposefully by official propaganda.
On the eve of the offensive, rallies and meetings were held in combat units on the topic “How will I take revenge on the German invaders”, “My personal account of revenge on the enemy”, where the principle of “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!” was proclaimed the pinnacle of justice.
However, after the release of our army beyond the state border of the USSR, Soviet government considerations of a different kind appeared, dictated by plans for a post-war structure in Europe.
The political assessment "Hitlers come and go, but the German people, but the German state remains" (Order No. 55 of the People's Commissar of Defense of February 23, 1942) was actively adopted by propaganda and was of considerable importance for the formation of a new (and, in fact, reanimated old , pre-war) psychological attitude of the Soviet people towards the enemy 23 .
But it is one thing to understand this obvious truth with the mind, and quite another to rise above one's grief and hatred, not to give free rein to the blind thirst for revenge. The clarifications of the political departments that followed at the beginning of 1945 about “how one should behave” on German territory came as a surprise to many and were often rejected.
Here is how the front-line writer D. Samoilov recalled this: “The slogan “Kill the German!” solved an old question by the method of King Herod. And all the years of the war was not in doubt. “Clarification” on April 17 (an article by Aleksandrov, the then head of our propaganda, where the position of Ilya Ehrenburg was criticized - “Kill the German!” - and the question of the responsibility of the German nation for the war was interpreted in a new way) and especially Stalin’s words about Hitler and the people were, as it were, canceled previous look. The army, however, understood the political implications of these statements. Her emotional state and moral concepts could not accept pardon and amnesty for the people who brought so many misfortunes to Russia.
The pattern of hatred towards Germany on the part of the Soviet troops entering its territory was understood at that time by the Germans themselves.
Here is what the 16-year-old Dieter Borkowski wrote in his diary on April 15, 1945, about the mood of the Berlin population: There were many women on the train with us - refugees from the Russian-occupied eastern districts of Berlin. They dragged with them all their belongings: a stuffed backpack. Nothing else. Horror froze on their faces, anger and despair filled people! I've never heard such swearing before...
Then someone yelled, blocking the noise: “Quiet!” We saw a nondescript, dirty soldier wearing two iron crosses and a gold German cross. On his sleeve he had a patch with four small metal tanks, which meant that he had knocked out 4 tanks in close combat.
“I want to tell you something,” he shouted, and there was silence in the train car. “Even if you don't want to listen! Stop whining! We must win this war, we must not lose courage. If others win - Russians, Poles, French, Czechs - and even one percent do to our people what we did to them for six years in a row, then in a few weeks not a single German will be left alive. This is what the one who himself was in the occupied countries for six years is telling you!”. It became so quiet in the train that one could hear the fall of a hairpin.
The bodies of two German women and three children allegedly killed by Soviet soldiers in the town of Metgeten in East Prussia in January-February 1945. Propaganda german photo
This soldier knew what he was talking about.
Acts of revenge were inevitable.
The leadership of the Soviet Army took severe measures against violence and atrocities against the German population, declaring such actions criminal and unacceptable, and bringing those responsible to trial by a military tribunal up to and including execution.
On January 19, 1945, Stalin signed a special order "On Conduct on German Territory" 26 .
The order was communicated to every soldier. In addition to its development, the command and political agencies of the fronts, formations and formations drew up relevant documents.
So, having entered the lands of East Prussia, on January 21, 1945, the commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky, issued order No. looting, senseless arson and destruction. The danger of such phenomena for the morale and combat effectiveness of the army was noted.
On January 29, the order of Marshal G.K. was read out in all battalions of the 1st Belorussian Front. Zhukov, who forbade the Red Army soldiers "to oppress the German population, rob apartments and burn houses."
On April 20, 1945, a special directive from the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on the conduct of Soviet troops in Germany was adopted. And although “it was not possible to completely prevent cases of violence, they managed to contain it, and then reduce it to a minimum” 28 .
Political workers themselves paid attention to the contradictions of political attitudes before and after entering enemy territory.
This is evidenced by the speech on February 6, 1945 by the head of the Political Directorate of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Lieutenant General A.D. Okorokova at a meeting of employees of the agitation and propaganda department of the front and the Glavpur of the Red Army on the moral and political state of the Soviet troops on enemy territory: “... The question of hatred for the enemy. The mood of people now boils down to what they said, they say, one thing, but now it turns out another. When our political workers began to explain order No. 006, there were exclamations: is this not a provocation? In the division of General Kustov, during the interviews, there were such responses: “These are political workers! They told us one thing, and now another!”
Moreover, it must be said frankly that stupid political workers began to consider Order No. 006 as a turn in politics, as a refusal to take revenge on the enemy. We must wage a resolute struggle against this, explaining that the feeling of hatred is our sacred feeling, that we have never given up revenge, that it is not a question of turning around, but of clarifying the issue correctly.
Of course, the influx of feelings of revenge among our people is enormous, and this influx of feelings has led our fighters to the lair of the fascist beast and will lead further to Germany. But you can not equate revenge with drunkenness, arson. I burned down the house, and there is nowhere to put the wounded. Is this revenge? I wantonly destroy property. This is not an expression of revenge. We must explain that all property, livestock was won with the blood of our people, that we must take all this to ourselves and, through this, to some extent strengthen the economy of our state in order to become even stronger than the Germans.
The soldier should simply be explained, simply told to him that we have conquered this and must treat the conquered in a businesslike manner. Explain that if you kill some old German woman in the rear, then the death of Germany will not accelerate from this. Here is a German soldier - destroy him, and take the surrendering prisoner to the rear. Direct the feeling of hatred of people to exterminate the enemy on the battlefield. And our people understand this. One said that I was ashamed of the fact that I used to think that I would burn the house and that I would take revenge.
Our Soviet people are organized and they will understand the essence of the matter. Now there is a decree of the GKO that all able-bodied German men from 17 to 55 years old be mobilized into work battalions and sent with our officer cadres to Ukraine and Belarus for restoration work. When we truly instill in a fighter a feeling of hatred for the Germans, then the fighter will not climb a German woman, because he will be disgusted. Here we will need to correct the shortcomings, direct the feeling of hatred towards the enemy along the right channel.
The funeral of the Young Guard Sergei Tyulenin. In the background are the surviving Young Guard Georgy Arutyunyants (the tallest) and Valeria Borts (a girl in a beret). In the second row is the father of Sergei Tyulenin (?). Sergei Gavrilovich Tyulenin (1925-1943) - one of the organizers and active participants in the underground Komsomol organization "Young Guard" in the occupied city of Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad (now Luhansk) region of the Ukrainian SSR. On January 27, 1943, he was arrested by the Germans and executed on January 31, 1943. After the liberation of Krasnodon, he was buried on March 1, 1943 in the mass grave of the Young Guard heroes on the central square of the city of Krasnodon. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 13, 1943, S.G. Tyulenin and 4 other Young Guardsmen were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. USSR, Ukraine, Krasnodon, Voroshilovgrad region, March 01, 1943
And indeed, a lot of work had to be done to change the attitude of the army to the revenge of Germany, formed by the course of the war itself and the previous political work. I had to again breed the concepts of "fascist" and "German" in the minds of people.
"The political departments are great job among the troops, they explain how to behave with the population, distinguishing incorrigible enemies from honest people with whom we probably still have a lot to work with. Who knows, maybe they will still have to help restore everything that was destroyed by the war, - wrote in the spring of 1945 an employee of the headquarters of the 1st Guards tank army E.S.Katukova. - To tell the truth, many of our fighters hardly accept this line of tactful treatment of the population, especially those whose families suffered from the Nazis during the occupation.
But our discipline is strict. Probably years will pass, and much will change. We will, perhaps, even visit the Germans to look at the current battlefields. But much before that must burn out and boil over in the soul, everything that we experienced from the Nazis, all these horrors, is still too close.
Various kinds of "emergency events and immoral phenomena" in the units of the advancing Red Army were carefully recorded by special departments, military prosecutors, political workers, were suppressed if possible and severely punished. However, it was mainly the rear and wagonmen who were outraged. The combat units were simply not up to it - they fought. Their hatred spilled out on the enemy armed and resisting. And those who tried to stay away from the front line “fought” with women and old people.
Recalling the battles in East Prussia, Lev Kopelev, a former political worker, later a writer and dissident, said: “I don’t know the statistics: how many villains, marauders, rapists there were among our soldiers, I don’t know. I'm sure they were a tiny minority. However, it was they who made, so to speak, an indelible impression.
It should be noted that many soldiers and officers themselves resolutely fought against robberies and violence. The harsh sentences of the military tribunals also contributed to their suppression. According to the military prosecutor's office, “in the first months of 1945, 4,148 officers and a large number of privates were convicted by military tribunals for committed atrocities against the local population. Several show trials of military personnel resulted in the death sentences for those guilty” 32 .
At the same time, if we turn to the documents of the German side, we will see that even before the start of the war against the USSR, it was announced in advance that “in the fight against Bolshevism, it is impossible to build relations with the enemy on the principles of humanism and international law 33 , thereby initially allowing any violations of international law in the future relations of the German troops to the civilian population and Soviet prisoners of war.
As one of the numerous examples of policy statements by the German leadership, let us quote the Decree of Hitler as the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht of May 13, 1941 on military justice in the war with the Soviet Union: “For actions against enemy civilians committed by Wehrmacht military personnel and civilians, there will be no mandatory prosecution, even if the act is a war crime or a misdemeanor... The judge orders the prosecution of acts against local residents in a military court only when it comes to non-compliance with military discipline or a threat to the security of the troops” 33 .
Or let us recall the famous “Memo of a German soldier” (which became one of the prosecution documents at the Nuremberg trials), where such “humane” calls were made: “Remember and fulfill: 1) ... No nerves, heart, pity - you are made of German iron ... 2) ... Destroy pity and compassion in yourself, kill every Russian, do not stop if you have an old man or a woman, a girl or a boy in front of you ... 3) ... We will bring the whole world to its knees ... The German is the absolute master of the world. You will decide the fate of England, Russia, America… destroy every living thing that resists on your way… Tomorrow the whole world will kneel before you” 34 .
This was the policy of the fascist leadership of Germany in relation to the "racially inferior peoples", among which it included the Slavs.
With regard to the German population or prisoners of war, the Soviet leadership never set such tasks for its army. Consequently, we can speak about individual (especially in comparison with the actions of the German side) violations of international law in the conduct of war. Moreover, all these phenomena were spontaneous, not organized, and were suppressed with all severity by the Soviet army command. And yet, as the German historian Reinhard Rurup noted, in defeating Germany, “fear and horror in relation to the Soviet troops were widespread in more than for the British or Americans. Indeed, in the early days of the arrival of the Red Army, its fighters committed significant excesses, robberies, and violence.
The publicist E. Kubi was not mistaken when, looking back, he stated that the Soviet soldiers could behave like a "punishing heavenly army", guided only by hatred for the German population.
Many Germans more or less definitely knew what exactly happened in the Soviet Union, and therefore feared revenge or retribution in the same coin. The German people can actually consider themselves happy - justice has not befallen them” 35 .
Speaking about the scale of rape in the zone of responsibility of the Soviet troops, one should cite an excerpt from the report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front on the implementation of the directive of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command No. 11072 and the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 00384 on the change in attitude towards the German population as of May 5 1945: “Fulfilling the instructions of the Military Council of the Front, the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Front systematically monitors the implementation of the directives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the Military Council of the Front on changing attitudes towards the German population. We have to admit that the facts of robberies, violence and other illegal actions by our servicemen against the local German population not only did not stop, but even in the period from April 22 to May 5 continued to be quite widespread.
I give figures characterizing this situation in 7 armies of our front: the total number of atrocities by military personnel against the local population recorded in these 7 armies is 124, of which: rape of German women - 72, robberies - 38, murders - 3, others illegal actions - 11” 36 .
We emphasize that these are data on 7 armies of the front storming Berlin, in the midst of urban battles, that is, 908.5 thousand people. personnel at the beginning of the Berlin operation, of which 37.6 thousand were irretrievable and 141.9 thousand were sanitary losses 37 - and only 72 cases of rape in two weeks! Considering that in the future the number of rapes and "other outrages", according to the materials of the military prosecutor's office and the tribunals, began to decrease, the figure of 100 thousand Berliners who were subjected to "abuse by Soviet barbarians", to put it mildly, does not dance. Not to mention two million.
At the same time, according to Osmar White, the actions of the Soviet administration to improve the life of the German civilian population (immediately after the end of the fighting!) were much more effective than those of its Western counterparts. “At the end of the first day of my stay in Berlin,” he wrote in his diary, “I was sure that the city was dead. Human beings could not live in this horrendous pile of rubbish.
By the end of the first week, my perceptions began to change.
Society began to revive among the ruins. Berliners began to receive food and water in quantities sufficient to survive. More and more more people were engaged in public works carried out under the direction of the Russians.
Thanks to the Russians, who have extensive experience in dealing with such problems in their own devastated cities, the spread of epidemics was brought under control.
I am convinced that the Soviets in those days did more to keep Berlin alive than the Anglo-Americans could have done in their place.
Russian methods of maintaining order and achieving results in the most essential did not have such a deterrent as good-heartedness. They understood the psychology of the masses and knew that the sooner Berliners were inspired to help themselves, the better it would be for everyone. A few days after the surrender, they supported the idea of publishing newspapers. Then they restored radio broadcasting, allowed the organization of entertainment events and announced that they would approve the creation of trade unions and democratic political parties..." 4 .
The family of a Soviet collective farmer, killed on the day of the retreat of German troops
He writes further, focusing on the reactions of the Germans themselves: “Radio, newspapers, politics, concerts… The Russians wisely fueled the rebirth in the desert of despair. They showed generosity to the followers of the monster, who lay in his lair under the mountains of rubble. But the Berliners did not look at the world the way the Russians would have liked. Whispering was heard everywhere: “Thank God that you - the British and Americans - have come here. The Russians are animals, they have taken everything I had… they rape, steal and shoot…” 4 .
In this regard, it is worth citing the story of one veteran, mortar N.A. Orlov, shocked by the behavior of the Germans (and German women) in 1945: “No one in the minbat killed civilian Germans. Our special officer was a "Germanophile". If this happened, then the reaction of the punitive authorities to such an excess would be quick. About violence against German women. It seems to me that some, when talking about such a phenomenon, “exaggerate” a little. I have a different kind of example.
We went to some german city settled in houses. A frau, about 45 years old, appears and asks for "herr commandant." They brought her to Marchenko. She declares that she is responsible for the quarter, and has gathered 20 German women for sexual (!!!) service to Russian soldiers. Marchenko understood the German language, and to the political officer Dolgoborodov, who was standing next to me, I translated the meaning of what the German woman said. The reaction of our officers was angry and obscene. The German woman was driven away, along with her "detachment" ready for service.
In general, German obedience stunned us. They expected guerrilla warfare and sabotage from the Germans. But for this nation, order - "Ordnung" - is above all. If you are a winner, then they are “on their hind legs”, moreover, consciously and not under duress. That's the kind of psychology.
Once again I say, I do not remember that someone from my company raped a German woman. There are few people in the minrote, such “deeds” would sooner or later become known to their comrades. My tongue is my enemy, one of my friends would have blurted out something, the main thing is not to the special officer ... ”38.
Continuing the theme of "German obedience", a few more documents should be cited.
The report of the Deputy Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Shikin to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to G.F. Aleksandrov dated April 30, 1945 on the attitude of the civilian population of Berlin to the personnel of the Red Army troops said: “As soon as our units occupy one or another area of the city , residents are gradually starting to take to the streets, almost all of them have white armbands on their sleeves. When meeting with our servicemen, many women raise their hands up, cry and tremble with fear, but as soon as they are convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all the same as they were painted by their fascist propaganda, this fear quickly passes, more and more population takes to the streets and offers their services, trying in every possible way to emphasize their loyal attitude to the Red Army” 39 .
Practical Germans were most worried about the issue of food supply, for the sake of it they were ready for literally anything.
One official, in a conversation with another, said: “The Russians did not start very well, they took off my watch, but if they give me the norms, then we will live without a watch” 39 .
Finally, we should note the interesting reaction of the population of one of the districts of Berlin in connection with the spread of rumors about the cessation of the distribution of food.
On June 4, 1945, I. Serov reported to L. Beria: “On May 28, in the Prenzlaunsberg area, a shot was fired at a Red Army commandant on duty from one house. Some of the inhabitants of this house were thrown into the place by an outfit, and a rumor was spread that the Red Army would stop issuing food to the population. After that, several delegations from the district came to the commandant's office with a request to publicly shoot 30-40 hostages on the square, but not to stop the distribution of food. The population of this area was asked to find the culprit and bring him to the commandant’s office” 40 .
Allied Behavior: "Women as Prey"
In the West, the thesis about the "outrages" of the Red Army in the territory of Germany occupied by it is constantly exaggerated. Meanwhile, the documents show that in the western zones of occupation there was by no means that idyll, the image of which is inspired today in the German, and indeed in the entire Western consciousness. Eisenhower's radio message "We come victorious!" quite clearly meant both "the right of the victors" and "woe to the vanquished."The report of the 7th branch of the Political Department of the 61st Army of the 1st Belorussian Front dated May 11, 1945 “On the work of the American army and military authorities among the German population” reported: “American soldiers and officers are forbidden to communicate with the local population. This prohibition, however, is violated. Behind recent times there were up to 100 cases of rape, although for rape you get execution” 42 .
The Negro units were especially distinguished.
Blacks also served in the Wehrmacht
At the end of April 1945, the German communist Hans Yendretsky, released from prison by the Western Allies, reported on the situation in the zone of Germany occupied by American troops: “Most of the occupying troops in the Erlangen region up to Bamberg and in Bamberg itself were Negro units. These negro units were located mainly in those places where there was a lot of resistance. I was told about such atrocities of these Negroes as robbing apartments, taking away objects of decoration, ruining residential premises and attacks on children.
In Bamberg, in front of the school building where these Negroes were stationed, lay three executed Negroes who had been shot by a military police patrol a few years ago for attacking children. But also white regular American troops carried out similar outrages...” 42 . O.A. Rzheshevsky cites data according to which in the US Army, where the number of rapes increased sharply after entering Germany, 69 people were executed for this crime and for murders. 43
Interesting evidence was left by the Australian war correspondent Osmar White, who in 1944-1945. was in Europe in the ranks of the 3rd American Army under the command of George Paton. His diaries and newspaper articles formed the basis of the book Conquerors' Road: An Eyewitness Account of Germany 1945, which contains many unflattering descriptions of the behavior of American soldiers in defeated Germany. The book was written back in 1945 BC, but then the publishers refused to publish it because of its criticism of the occupation policy of the Allies.It was published only at the end of the 20th century.
In it, O. White, in particular, wrote: “After the hostilities moved to German soil, a lot of rapes were committed by the soldiers of the front-line units and those who followed directly behind them. Their number depended on the attitude of senior officers to this. In some cases, the perpetrators were identified, prosecuted and punished. Lawyers were secretive, but admitted that for cruel and perverted sexual acts with German women, some soldiers were shot (especially in cases where they were Negroes). However, I knew that many women were also raped by white Americans. No action was taken against the criminals” 44 .
“On one sector of the front, one rather well-deserved commander wittily remarked: “Copulation without conversation is not fraternization!” Another officer once dryly remarked about the order against "fraternization": "Definitely, this is the first time in history that a serious effort is being made to deprive soldiers of the right to women in a defeated country."
Part I
More and more often in recent years, accusations against the Red Army have been heard from various sides that it behaved in 1944-1945 on German territory "inappropriately." 1 She raped (and the number of victims of sexual violence is sometimes estimated at a million people), killed, robbed, mocked civilians - in general, she carried out a consistent genocide of the German people. These accusations, most often coming from the West, are gladly supported by some of our fellow citizens, who, well, really want to put the Soviet Union in an unfavorable light. At the same time, of course, all methods are good - even dipping their faces in the mud of those people who gave their lives, freeing our country from the German invaders. Distinctive feature all these libels against the Soviet soldiers is their complete scientific inconsistency. Let us take, for example, the article by Beevor 2 , whose primary source we can find in the remarkable book of this excellent historian, The Battle of Berlin. 3 How does its author argue for the barbaric behavior of the Bolshevik hordes on the territory of the Third Reich. Let me give you a few quotes: « The commander of a tank unit recalled: "They all lifted their skirts and lay down on the bed"; Soviet the major told an English journalist at the time: "Our comrades were so hungry for female affection that they often raped sixty, seventy, and even eighty-year-olds to their frank surprise, if not pleasure"; "According to two city hospitals, 95,000-130,000 women became victims of rape”; « One doctor calculated that out of 100,000 raped, about 10,000 later died, mostly by suicide. So, the commander recalled, the major said, and the doctor counted. No names, no dates, nothing. The passage with the hospitals is generally magnificent. To draw conclusions about the number of raped, not even indicating the names of hospitals, not to mention what data the author relies on, is something incredible. And in this way, in general, all articles of such a plan were written - no documents, only speculation and, as a maximum, references to “eyewitness memories” (and where these memories came from is also unknown). This style of writing works can tell us only one thing: in history, the authors are clearly not strong. But there is a lot of desire to denigrate the Red Army in them. Moreover, such a desire brings them to open lies. For example, such historians are very fond of claiming that «
historical mission" of the Soviet army, - as the editorial of March 3, 1945, concocted by the main Stalinist propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg, "consists in the modest and honorable task of reducing the population of Germany"
. 4 In reality, Ehrenburg did not write anything of the kind, and his phrase reads as follows: “In autumn, in East Prussia, as in all of Germany, a “Volkssturm” was created ... Volkssturmists were armed with anything; they fight badly - not because they are smarter than soldiers, but because they are older and weaker. This is cannon fodder, and, apparently, the historical role of the Volkssturm will be reduced to one simple, but, in my opinion, worthy cause: to reduce the population of Germany.. 5 Feel the difference? And even though Ehrenburg never made statements like those that are attributed to him, his excessive harshness towards the Germans drew criticism from officials. 6
By the way, lovers of military chernukha and our allies in the anti-Hitler coalition do not ignore. 7 Those, too, as if by choice, turn out to be rapists and perverts.
However, of course, it must be recognized that rape, as well as all other crimes, was committed by the Red Army in excess. Moreover, in order to prove this, there is no need to resort to lies or use the mythical "data of two hospitals." It is enough just to read the Soviet documents (I will give them below). Why was the situation the way it was? Alas, this is the norm for war. And the larger the army, the more terrible will be its crimes in the occupied territory. Remember what the spacecraft was like in 1945. 11 million people who needed to meet only three requirements to enter the army: to be male, belong to a certain age group and be able to hold a weapon in their hands. As a result, what kind of rabble did not end up in the Soviet troops. Everyone went to defend their homeland, including even criminals. If small professional army is able to control almost every member of it, even on enemy territory, then a massive army of such size and composition is simply not able to do this. And everyone faced such problems: the British, the Americans, the Finns. Alas, the Red Army was no exception.
From the report of a member of the military council of the 1st Ukrainian Front to the head of the chief political management The Red Army on the political situation in the occupied territory of Germany in the zone of the front troops of April 4, 1945 8:
... Separate cases of arbitrariness, especially the facts of rape of women, keep the Germans in constant fear and tension.
From the report of the head of the political department of the 8th Guards Army to the head of the political department of the 1st Belorussian Front on the attitude of Soviet military personnel towards the German population dated April 25, 1945 9:
Military commandants note that in recent days the number of cases of hoarding, rape of women and other immoral phenomena on the part of military personnel has sharply decreased. 2-3 cases are registered in each locality, while earlier the number of cases of immoral phenomena was much greater.
From the report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front to the Military Council of the Front on the implementation of the directives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the Military Council of the Front on changing attitudes towards the German population dated May 2, 1945 10:
In the attitude towards the German population on the part of our servicemen, a significant change has undoubtedly been achieved. Facts of aimless and (unfounded) executions of Germans, looting and rape of German women significantly reduced, nevertheless, even after the publication of the directives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the Military Council of the front a number of such cases have been recorded.
If executions of Germans are almost not observed at present, and cases of robbery are isolated, then violence against women still occurs; baroholstvo has not stopped yet, which consists in our servicemen walking around junk apartments, picking up all sorts of things and objects, etc.
Special message L.P. Berii I.V. Stalin and V.M. Molotov about the unworthy behavior of the Red Army soldiers dated March 17, 1945 11:
In the process of filtering the civilian population by the operational-military group of the NKVD of the 43rd Army, among the German women, M. Spaleitten Tsepantsik Gertruda, born in 1912, Zimantsik Gelgrady, born in 1913, and Korn Emma, born in 1908, and all of them have 12 children aged 3 to 6 years were found to have cut the wrist joints of their right hands. When questioned about the reasons for self-inflicted self-injuries, Emma Korn testified: “Before the retreat, the command of the German army suggested that we evacuate to the city of Koenigsberg, stating that the “Red Asians” were committing unheard-of atrocities against the German population. On the advice of the German soldiers, we did not evacuate and stayed in the Spaleitten town. February 3 this year advanced units of the Red Army entered our town, the soldiers broke into our basement and, pointing weapons at me and two other women, ordered me to go out into the yard. In the yard, 12 soldiers raped me in turn, the rest of the soldiers did the same with my neighbors. On the night of the same date, 6 drunken soldiers broke into our basement and also raped us in the presence of children. On February 5, 3 soldiers entered our basement, and on February 6, 8 drunken soldiers, with whom we were also raped and beaten ... We decided to commit suicide, for which on February 8 we cut the wrist joints and veins of our right hands to ourselves and our children.
So, we see that there were cases of rape and other crimes, and, alas, they were not uncommon. Of course, we do not have the opportunity to talk about any at least approximate figures of the victims, due to fragmentary information, but we can draw up a rough picture of what was happening. So what then, in fact, is the difference between the KA and the Wehrmacht, if the crimes were committed by both? And the difference is only in the attitude towards these crimes of the command and leadership of the country. It's no secret that Hitler and his comrades initially set themselves the task of destroying the Russian people. This task was carried out according to plan. Picturesque evidence of this is simply a mind-boggling number of casualties among the civilian population. The Germans, on the orders of the command, exterminated entire villages, destroyed thousands of people in concentration camps. During the occupation, German soldiers tried so many different tortures and executions on Soviet citizens that medieval craftsmen never dreamed of such a thing. And after all, not a single German was punished for his cruelty to the civilian population of the occupied regions. No one. Now let's see how they treated to the German people and to their own criminals in the Red Army. Again based on the docs...
May 6th, 2002
(Antony Beevor) " " , United Kingdom.
"Red Army soldiers don't believe in 'individual connections' with German women," the playwright Zakhar Agranenko wrote in his diary, which he kept during the war in East Prussia. "Nine, ten, twelve at once - they rape them collectively."
The long columns of Soviet troops that entered East Prussia in January 1945 were an unusual mixture of modernity and the Middle Ages: tankers in black leather helmets, on shaggy horses with loot tied to their saddles, dodges and Studebakers received under Lend-Lease for which followed the second echelon, consisting of carts. The variety of weapons was fully consistent with the variety of characters of the soldiers themselves, among whom were both outright bandits, drunkards and rapists, as well as idealist communists and intellectuals who were shocked by the behavior of their comrades.
In Moscow, they knew very well what was happening from detailed reports, one of which reported: "many Germans believe that all German women who remained in East Prussia were raped by soldiers of the Red Army."
Numerous examples of gang rape "both minors and old women" were cited.
Issued Order No. 006 in order to send "feeling to the battlefield." It didn't lead to anything. There were several arbitrary attempts to restore order. The commander of one of the rifle regiments allegedly "personally shot a lieutenant who lined up his soldiers in front of a German woman who had been knocked to the ground." But in most cases, either the officers themselves participated in the atrocities, or the lack of discipline among drunken soldiers armed with machine guns made it impossible to restore order.
Calls to avenge the Fatherland, which was subjected to, were understood as permission to show cruelty. Even young women, soldiers and paramedics, did not oppose. A 21-year-old girl from the reconnaissance detachment Agranenko said: "Our soldiers behave with the Germans, especially with German women, absolutely correctly." Some people found it interesting. So, some Germans remember that Soviet women watched how they were raped and laughed. But some were deeply shocked by what they saw in Germany. Natalia Hesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, was a war correspondent. She later recalled: "Russian soldiers raped all German women between the ages of 8 and 80. It was an army of rapists."
Drinking, including dangerous chemicals stolen from laboratories, played a significant role in this violence. It seems that the Soviet soldiers could only attack the woman after getting drunk for courage. But at the same time, they too often got drunk to such a state that they could not complete sexual intercourse and used bottles - some of the victims were disfigured in this way.
The topic of the mass atrocities of the Red Army in Germany has been banned in Russia for so long that even now veterans deny that they took place. Only a few spoke about it openly, but without any regrets. The commander of a tank unit recalled: "They all lifted their skirts and lay down on the bed." He even boasted that "two million of our children were born in Germany."
Ability Soviet officers to convince oneself that most of the victims were either pleased or agree that this was a fair retribution for the actions of the Germans in Russia is amazing. A Soviet major told an English journalist at the time: "Our comrades were so hungry for female affection that they often raped sixty, seventy, and even eighty-year-olds to their frank surprise, if not pleasure."
One can only outline the psychological contradictions. When the raped women of Koenigsberg begged their tormentors to kill them, they considered themselves offended. They answered: "Russian soldiers don't shoot women. Only the Germans do that." The Red Army convinced itself that, since it had assumed the role of liberating Europe from fascism, its soldiers had every right to behave as they pleased.
A sense of superiority and humiliation characterized the behavior of most of the soldiers towards the women of East Prussia. The victims not only paid for the crimes of the Wehrmacht, but also symbolized an atavistic object of aggression - as old as the war itself. As historian and feminist Susan Brownmiller has observed, rape, as a conqueror's right, is directed "against the women of the enemy" to emphasize victory. True, after the initial frenzy of January 1945, sadism manifested itself less and less. When the Red Army reached 3 months later, the soldiers were already considering the Germans through the prism of the usual "victors' rights". The feeling of superiority certainly remained, but it was perhaps an indirect consequence of the humiliation that the soldiers themselves suffered from their commanders and the Soviet leadership as a whole.
Several other factors also played a role. Sexual freedom was widely discussed in the 1920s within the Communist Party, but in the next decade, Stalin did everything to make Soviet society virtually asexual. This had nothing to do with the puritanical views of the Soviet people - the fact is that love and sex did not fit into the concept of "deindividualization" of the individual. Natural desires had to be suppressed. Freud was banned, divorce and adultery were not approved by the Communist Party. Homosexuality became a criminal offence. The new doctrine completely forbade sex education. In art, the image of a female breast, even covered with clothes, was considered the height of eroticism: it had to be covered by work overalls. The regime demanded that any expression of passion be sublimated into love for the party and for Comrade Stalin personally.
The Red Army soldiers, for the most part, were characterized by complete ignorance in matters of sex and a rude attitude towards women. Thus, the Soviet state's attempts to suppress the libido of its citizens led to what one Russian writer called "barrack erotica" that was far more primitive and brutal than any of the hardest pornography. All this was mixed with the influence of modern propaganda, which deprives a person of his essence, and atavistic primitive impulses, marked by fear and suffering.
The writer Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent for the advancing Red Army, soon discovered that Germans were not the only victims of rape. Among them were Poles, as well as young Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians who ended up in Germany as a displaced work force. He noted: "The liberated Soviet women often complain that our soldiers rape them. One girl told me in tears: "He was an old man, older than my father."
The rapes of Soviet women nullify attempts to explain the behavior of the Red Army as revenge for German atrocities on the territory of the Soviet Union. On March 29, 1945, the Komsomol Central Committee notified Malenkov about the report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. General Tsygankov reported: "On the night of February 24, a group of 35 soldiers and their battalion commander entered the women's hostel in the village of Grutenberg and raped everyone."
In Berlin, despite, many women were simply not ready for the horrors of Russian revenge. Many have tried to convince themselves that while the danger must be great in the countryside, mass rape cannot take place in the city in front of everyone.
In Dahlem, Soviet officers visited Sister Kunigunda, the abbess of a convent that housed an orphanage and a maternity hospital. The officers and soldiers behaved impeccably. They even warned that reinforcements were following them. Their prediction came true: nuns, girls, old women, pregnant women and those who had just given birth were all raped without mercy.
Within a few days, the custom arose among the soldiers to choose their victims by shining torches in their faces. The very process of choice, instead of violence indiscriminately, indicates a certain change. By this time, Soviet soldiers began to view German women not as responsible for the crimes of the Wehrmacht, but as spoils of war.
Rape is often defined as violence that has little to do with actual sexual attraction. But this definition is from the point of view of the victims. To understand the crime, you need to see it from the point of view of the aggressor, especially in the later stages, when "mere" rape has replaced the rampage of January and February.
Many women were forced to "surrender" to one soldier in the hope that he would protect them from others. Magda Wieland, a 24-year-old actress, tried to hide in a closet, but was pulled out by a young soldier from Central Asia. He was so turned on by the opportunity to make love to a beautiful young blonde that he came prematurely. Magda tried to explain to him that she agreed to become his girlfriend if he would protect her from other Russian soldiers, but he told his comrades about her, and one soldier raped her. Ellen Goetz, Magda's Jewish friend, was also raped. When the Germans tried to explain to the Russians that she was Jewish and that she was persecuted, they received in response: "Frau ist Frau" ( A woman is a woman - approx. lane.).
Soon the women learned to hide during the evening "hunting hours". Young daughters were hidden in attics for several days. Mothers went out for water only in the early morning, so as not to fall under the arm of Soviet soldiers sleeping off after drinking. Sometimes the greatest danger came from neighbors who gave away the places where the girls were hiding in an attempt to save their own daughters. Old Berliners still remember the screams at night. It was impossible not to hear them, as all the windows were broken.
According to two city hospitals, 95,000-130,000 women were victims of rape. One doctor estimated that out of 100,000 raped, about 10,000 later died, mostly by suicide. Mortality among the 1.4 million raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia was even higher. Although at least 2 million German women were raped, a significant proportion, if not the majority, were victims of gang rape.
If someone tried to protect a woman from a Soviet rapist, it was either a father trying to protect his daughter, or a son trying to protect his mother. “13-year-old Dieter Sahl,” wrote neighbors in a letter shortly after the event, “rushed with his fists at a Russian who raped his mother right in front of him. He only achieved that he was shot.”
After the second stage, when women offered themselves to one soldier to protect themselves from the rest, the next stage came - the post-war famine - as Susan Brownmiller noted, "the thin line separating military rape from military prostitution." Ursula von Kardorf notes that shortly after the surrender of Berlin, the city was filled with women trading themselves for food or an alternative currency - cigarettes. Helke Sander, a German filmmaker who has studied this issue thoroughly, writes of "a mixture of direct violence, blackmail, calculation and real affection."
The fourth stage was a strange form of cohabitation of Red Army officers with German "occupation wives". Soviet officials went berserk when several Soviet officers deserted from the army when it was time to return home to stay with their German mistresses.
Even if the feminist definition of rape as purely an act of violence seems simplistic, there is no justification for male complacency. The events of 1945 clearly show us how subtle a veneer of civility can be if there is no fear of retaliation. They also remind that male sexuality has dark side, the existence of which we prefer not to recall.
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("Daily Mail", UK)
("Pravda", USSR)
("The New York Times", USA)
("The Guardian", UK)
("The New York Times", USA)
("The New York Times", USA)
("The Sunday Times", UK)
("The Daily Telegraph", UK)
("The Times", UK)
Posts from This Journal by “fascist atrocities” Tag
The monstrous order of the Nazi command"Pravda" No. 15, January 15, 1942 Blood and unheard of suffering of the Soviet people, destruction and desecration of our historical ...
- In the footsteps of the retreating enemy
A.Leontiev || "Pravda" No. 27, January 27, 1942 The Heroic Red Army broke the enemy onslaught on Moscow, drove back the Nazis ...
- A formidable indictment
"Pravda" No. 8, January 8, 1942 Brutal bands of German invaders are robbing the civilian population of the Soviet villages and cities they have captured, torturing ...
- Death to the German monsters!
"Pravda" No. 312, December 20, 1943 TODAY IN THE ISSUE: On the visit of the President of the Czechoslovak Republic, Mr. Ed. Benes, to Moscow (1 page). From…
- Alexey Tolstoy. Retribution
A. Tolstoy || "Pravda" No. 312, December 20, 1943 TODAY IN THE ISSUE: To the stay of the President of the Czechoslovak Republic, Mr. Ed. Beneš in Moscow…
Below are excerpts from various books (I don’t remember the names, alas)
1. Our past neighbors - grandparents - got married in the war. She was a nurse, she slept, and he raped her sleeping. In the process, I realized that she was a virgin, was afraid of arrest and offered to marry: “anyway, no one will marry you anymore.” She was scared and agreed. So he later reminded her all his life: “Now, if I hadn’t taken pity on you, no one would have taken you.”
2. Then there was Allenstein and there was more fire and more death. Near the post office, he (Kopelev) met a woman with a bandaged head, who tightly held the hand of a young girl with blond pigtails, she was crying, the child's legs were stained with blood ... "The soldiers kicked us out of the house," she said to the Russian officer, " they beat and raped us, my daughter was only 13, she was raped by two, and everyone else raped me" She asked him to help her find her little son. Another woman asked him to shoot her.
3. "I remember what happened the first three days after the capture of Stettin, all the roads were covered with feathers from featherbeds, posters were placed on the approaches to the city - "Blood for blood!", And the corpses of civilians here and there did not cause anyone surprise . As if Mongol horde passed. And when it became clear to the command that the time had come to urgently curb the vengeful impulse of the advanced units, then the order of Marshal Zhukov appeared - “For violence and looting - to be court-martialed and shot” ... Then Aleksandrov’s article “Comrade Ehrenburg simplifies” appeared, and the commanders, together with political workers and tribunals were able to restore discipline in the army units."
4. “They poked here,” the beautiful German woman explained, lifting up her skirt, “all night, and there were so many of them. I was a girl,” she sighed and cried. “They ruined my youth. they climbed on me, they all poked at me. There were at least twenty of them, yes, yes, - and she burst into tears.
“They raped my daughter in my presence,” the poor mother put in, “they can still come and rape my girl again.” From this again everyone was horrified, and bitter sobbing swept from corner to corner of the basement where the owners had brought me. here, - the girl suddenly rushed to me, - you will sleep with me. You can do whatever you want with me, but you are the only one!" writes Gelfand in his diary.
5. “There is no way to say that the major is raping me,” she writes. “Why am I doing this? For bacon, sugar, candles, canned meat? I like the Major, and the less he wants from me as a man, the more I like him as a person."
Many of her neighbors made similar deals with the winners of defeated Berlin.
6. “Suddenly, tanks appeared on our street, bodies of Russian and German soldiers lay everywhere,” she recalls. “I remember the terrifying twang of falling Russian bombs. We called them Stalinorgels (“Stalin’s organs”).”
One day, between bombings, Ingeborg climbed out of the basement and ran upstairs for a rope, which she adapted for a lamp wick.
“Suddenly, I saw two Russians pointing guns at me,” she says. “One of them forced me to undress and raped me. Then they switched places and another raped me. I thought I was going to die, that they would kill me.”
The black myth about hundreds of thousands and millions of German women raped in 1945 by Soviet soldiers (and representatives of other nations) has recently become part of an anti-Russian and anti-Soviet information campaign. This and other myths contribute to the transformation of the Germans from aggressors into victims, the equalization of the USSR and Nazi Germany, and ultimately to the revision of the results of the Second World War with all the ensuing historical geopolitical consequences.
On September 24, the liberal press again recalled this myth. On the website of the Russian service of the BBC, a large material was published: "The rape of Berlin: an unknown history of the war." The article reports that a book is going on sale in Russia - the diary of an officer of the Soviet Army Vladimir Gelfand, in which "the bloody everyday life of the Great Patriotic War is described without embellishment and cuts."
The article begins with a reference to the Soviet monument. This is a monument to the Soldier-Liberator in Berlin's Treptow Park. If for us this is a symbol of the salvation of European civilization from Nazism, then “for some in Germany, this memorial is an occasion for other memories. Soviet soldiers raped countless women on their way to Berlin, but this was rarely talked about after the war, either in East or West Germany. And in Russia today, few people talk about it.”
Vladimir Gelfand's diary tells about the lack of order and discipline in the regular troops: meager rations, lice, routine anti-Semitism and endless theft. As he says, the soldiers even stole the boots of their comrades.” And also reports on the rape of German women, and not as isolated cases, but to the system.
One can only wonder how the Red Army, in which there was no “order and discipline”, “routine anti-Semitism and endless theft” reigned, where the soldiers were criminals, stealing things from their comrades and raping girls in droves, was able to defeat the “superior race” and the disciplined Wehrmacht . Apparently, they “filled up with corpses”, like us long time liberal historians argued.
Article author Lucy Ash urges to cast aside prejudice and learn true story World War II with all its ugly sides: "...future generations should know the true horrors of war and deserve to see the unvarnished picture." However, instead, it only repeats black myths that have already been refuted more than once. “What was the real scale of the rapes? The most commonly quoted figures are 100,000 women in Berlin and two million throughout Germany. These figures, hotly disputed, have been extrapolated from the meager medical records that have survived to this day."
The myth of hundreds of thousands and millions of German women raped in 1945 by Soviet soldiers has been regularly raised over the past 25 years, although it was not raised either in the USSR or by the Germans themselves before perestroika. In 1992, a book by two feminists, Helke Sander and Barbara Yohr, Liberators and Liberated, was published in Germany, where this shocking number appeared: two million.
In 2002, Anthony Beevor's book "The Fall of Berlin" was published, in which the author cited this figure without paying attention to its criticism. According to Beevor, he found in the Russian state archive reports "on the epidemic of sexual violence in Germany." These reports at the end of 1944 were sent by the NKVD officers to Lavrenty Beria. “They were passed on to Stalin,” Beevor says. - You can see by the marks whether they were read or not. They report mass rapes in East Prussia and how German women tried to kill themselves and their children to avoid this fate.”
Beevor's work cites the following data: “According to the estimates of the two main Berlin hospitals, the number of victims raped by Soviet soldiers ranges from ninety-five to one hundred and thirty thousand people. One doctor concluded that approximately one hundred thousand women had been raped in Berlin alone. And about ten thousand of them died mainly as a result of suicide. The number of deaths throughout East Germany must be much higher if one takes into account the 1400,000 rapes in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. It appears that in total about two million German women were raped, many of whom (if not most) suffered this humiliation several times.
That is, we see the opinion of "one doctor"; the sources were described by the phrases "apparently", "if" and "it seems". In 2004, Anthony Beevor's book "The Fall of Berlin" was published in Russia and became a "source" for numerous anti-Soviet people who picked up and spread the myth of "Soviet rapist soldiers". Now another similar "work" will appear - Gelfand's diary.
In fact, such facts, and they are inevitable in war, because even in peacetime violence is one of the most common crimes, they were an exceptional phenomenon, and severely punished for crimes. Stalin's order of January 19, 1945 read: “Officers and Red Army men! We are going to the country of the enemy. Everyone must keep his composure, everyone must be brave ... The remaining population in the conquered areas, whether German, Czech or Pole, should not be subjected to violence. The guilty will be punished according to the laws of war. In the conquered territory, sexual intercourse with the female sex is not allowed. Those responsible for violence and rape will be shot.”
Marauders and rapists were fought hard. Criminals fell under military tribunals. For looting, rape and other crimes, the punishments were severe: 15 years in camps, a penal battalion, execution. The report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front on illegal actions against the civilian population for the period from April 22 to May 5, 1945 contains the following figures: 124 crimes were recorded in seven front armies for 908.5 thousand people, of which 72 were rapes. 72 cases per 908.5 thousand. Where are the hundreds of thousands of raped German women?
Tough measures quickly extinguished the wave of revenge. It is worth remembering that not all crimes were committed by Soviet soldiers. It was noted that the Poles especially took revenge on the Germans for the years of humiliation. Former forced laborers and prisoners of concentration camps were freed; some of them took revenge. Australian war correspondent Osmar White was in Europe in the ranks of the 3rd American Army and noted: “... when former forced laborers and prisoners of concentration camps filled the roads and began to rob one town after another, the situation got out of hand ... Some of the survivors of the camps gathered in gangs in order to settle accounts with the Germans.
On May 2, 1945, the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front, Yachenin, reported: “Violence, and especially robbery and hoarding, is widely practiced by the repatriated, following the points of repatriation, and especially the Italians, the Dutch and even the Germans. At the same time, all these outrages are being blamed on our military personnel ... ”Stalin and Beria reported about this:“ In Berlin, there are a large number of Italians, French, Poles, Americans and British prisoners of war released from camps, who take personal belongings and property from the local population, load on wagons and heading west. Measures are being taken to seize their looted property.”
Osmar White also noted the high discipline in the Soviet troops: “There was no terror in Prague or other part of Bohemia by the Russians. Russians are harsh realists in relation to collaborators and fascists, but a person with a clear conscience has nothing to fear. Severe discipline prevails in the Red Army. There are no more robberies, rapes and bullying here than in any other zone of occupation. Wild stories of atrocities emerge from exaggerations and distortions of individual cases, influenced by Czech nervousness caused by the immoderation of the manners of Russian soldiers and their love of vodka. One woman who told me most hair-raising tales of Russian cruelty, was finally forced to admit that the only evidence she saw with her own eyes was how drunk Russian officers fired pistols into the air or at bottles ... ".
Many veterans and contemporaries of World War II noted that strict discipline prevailed in the Red Army. Do not forget that in the Stalinist USSR they created a society of service and creation. They brought up heroes, creators and producers, not punks and rapists. Soviet troops entered Europe as liberators, not conquerors, and Soviet soldiers and commanders behaved accordingly.
It is worth recalling that the Nazis, representatives of European civilization, behaved like animals on Soviet soil. The Nazis slaughtered people like cattle, raped, wiped entire settlements from the face of the earth. For example, what was an ordinary soldier of the Wehrmacht, it was told at the Nuremberg trials. A typical corporal of the 355th security battalion, Müller, killed 96 Soviet citizens during the occupation, including the elderly, women and infants. He also raped thirty-two Soviet women, and six of them were killed. It is clear that when it became clear that the war was lost, many were seized with horror. The Germans were afraid that the Russians would take revenge on them. And the just punishment was deserved.
In fact, the first to launch the myth of "red rapists" and "hordes from the East" were the ideologists of the Third Reich. The current "researchers" and liberal publicists only repeat the rumors and gossip that were invented in Hitler's Germany in order to intimidate the population and maintain its obedience. So that the Germans fought until the very last moment. So that death in battle seemed to them an easy fate compared to captivity and occupation.
The Reich Minister of Public Education and Propaganda of Germany, Joseph Goebbels, wrote in March 1945: “... in fact, in the person of Soviet soldiers, we are dealing with steppe scum. This is confirmed by the reports of atrocities that have come to us from the eastern regions. They really cause horror ... In some villages and cities, all women from ten to seventy years old were subjected to countless rapes. It seems that this is done by order from above, since one can see an obvious system in the behavior of the Soviet soldiery.
This myth was immediately replicated. Hitler himself addressed the population: “Soldiers on the Eastern Front! For the last time, the mortal enemy in the person of the Bolsheviks and the Jews goes on the offensive. He is trying to defeat Germany and destroy our people. You, soldiers on the Eastern Front, for the most part already know for yourself what fate is prepared for, first of all, German women, girls and children. While old people and children will be killed, women and girls will be reduced to barracks prostitutes. The rest will go to Siberia.” On the Western front German propaganda to intimidate the local population instead of Russians used the image of a Negro raping blond German women.
Thus, the leaders of the Reich tried to force people to fight to the end. At the same time, people were driven to panic, mortal horror. A significant part of the population of East Prussia fled to western areas. A series of suicides took place in Berlin itself. Entire families passed away.
After the war, this myth was supported by Anglo-Saxon publications. The Cold War was in full swing, and the United States and Britain waged an active information war against Soviet civilization. Many myths that were actively used in the Third Reich were adopted by the Anglo-Saxons and their accomplices in Western Europe. In 1954, The Woman in Berlin was published in the United States. Its author is the journalist Martha Hiller. In West Germany, the diary was published in 1960. In 2003, The Woman in Berlin was reprinted in many countries, and the Western media eagerly picked up the theme of "Germany raped." A few years later, the film "Nameless" was made based on this book. After that, the work of E. Beevor "The Fall of Berlin" was accepted by liberal publications with a bang. The ground has already been prepared.
At the same time, the West turns a blind eye to the fact that American, French and British troops are responsible for mass crimes in Germany, including rape. For example, the German historian M. Gebhardt believes that the Americans alone raped at least 190 thousand German women, and this process continued until 1955. Soldiers from the colonial units - Arabs and Negroes - were especially atrocious. But in the West they try not to remember this.
Also, the West does not want to remember that a strong German socialist state of the GDR was created on the German territory controlled by the USSR (the 6th economy in Europe in 1980). And "raped Germany" was the most faithful and self-sufficient ally of the USSR in Europe. If all the crimes that the followers of Goebbels and Hitler write about were real, then it would hardly be possible in principle to have good neighborly and allied relations that lasted more than four decades.
Thus, there really were rapes of German women by Soviet soldiers, there are documents and statistics on the number of convicts. But, these crimes were of an exceptional nature, they were not of a massive and systematic nature. If we correlate total number convicted for these crimes to the entire number of Soviet troops in the occupied territories, then the percentage will turn out to be quite insignificant. At the same time, crimes were committed not only by Soviet troops, but also by Poles, French, Americans, British (including representatives of the colonial troops), prisoners of war released from camps, etc.
The black myth about "Soviet rapist soldiers" was created in the Third Reich to scare the population, to force them to fight to the end. Then this myth was restored by the Anglo-Saxons, who waged an information war against the USSR. This war continues at the present time, with the aim of turning the USSR into an aggressor, Soviet soldiers into invaders and rapists, in order to equalize the USSR and Nazi Germany. Ultimately, our "partners" are striving to revise the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War, with all the ensuing historical and geopolitical consequences.
Samsonov Alexander