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Relations between German women and Soviet soldiers. Women captured by the Germans

The Red Army soldiers, for the most part poorly educated, were characterized by complete ignorance in matters of sex and a rude attitude towards women.

"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."

long columns Soviet troops, who entered East Prussia in January 1945, were an unusual mixture of modernity and the Middle Ages: tankers in black leather helmets, Cossacks on shaggy horses with loot tied to their saddles, Dodges and Studebakers received under Lend-Lease, followed by a second echelon 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, Beria and Stalin were well aware of what was happening from detailed reports, one of which stated: "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.

Marshall Rokossovsky issued Order #006 in order to direct "the feeling of hatred towards the enemy on 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 attacked by the Wehrmacht, 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, close friend 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, the Red Army men 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 full right behave as they please.

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 Berlin 3 months later, the soldiers were already viewing the German women through the prism of the usual "right of winners." 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 Soviet society became virtually asexual. It had nothing to do with puritanical views. Soviet people- the fact is that love and sex did not fit into the concept of "deindividualization" of the personality. 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 poorly educated, were characterized by complete ignorance in matters of sex and a rude attitude towards women. Thus, attempts Soviet state suppressing the libido of its citizens led to what one Russian writer called "barrack erotica," which was considerably 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 Goebbels' propaganda, many women were simply not prepared 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 consider 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. per.).

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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Special archive of InoSMI.Ru

("The Daily Telegraph", UK)

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.

Image copyright BBC World Service

A remarkable book goes on sale in Russia - the diary of an officer of the Soviet Army Vladimir Gelfand, in which, without embellishment and cuts, the bloody everyday life of the Great Patriotic War.

Some believe that a critical approach to the past is unethical or simply unacceptable, given the heroic sacrifices and deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens.

Others believe that future generations should know the true horrors of war and deserve to see the unvarnished picture.

BBC correspondent Lucy Ash tried to understand some little-known pages of the history of the last world war.

Some of the facts and circumstances outlined in her article may not be appropriate for children.

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Twilight is gathering in Treptow Park on the outskirts of Berlin. I look at the monument to the warrior-liberator towering above me against the backdrop of the sunset sky.

A 12-meter-high soldier standing on the ruins of a swastika holds a sword in one hand, and a little German girl sits on his other hand.

Five thousand of the 80 thousand Soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin from April 16 to May 2, 1945 are buried here.

The colossal proportions of this monument reflect the scale of the victims. At the top of the pedestal, where a long staircase leads, you can see the entrance to the memorial hall, lit up like a religious shrine.

My attention was drawn to the inscription reminding that the Soviet people saved European civilization from fascism.

But for some in Germany, this memorial is an occasion for different 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.

Diary of Vladimir Gelfand

Many Russian media regularly dismiss the rape stories as a myth concocted in the West, but one of the many sources that told us what happened is the diary of a Soviet officer.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Vladimir Gelfand wrote his diary with amazing sincerity at a time when it was deadly

Lieutenant Volodymyr Gelfand, a young Jew originally from Ukraine, from 1941 until the end of the war kept his notes with unusual sincerity, despite the then-existing ban on keeping diaries in the Soviet army.

His son Vitaly, who allowed me to read the manuscript, found the diary while sorting through his father's papers after his death. The diary was available online, but is now being published in Russia for the first time in book form. Two abridged editions of the diary were published in Germany and Sweden.

The diary tells of 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.

In February 1945, Gelfand's military unit was based near the Oder River, preparing for an attack on Berlin. He recalls how his comrades surrounded and captured a German women's battalion.

“The day before yesterday, a women’s battalion was operating on the left flank. It was utterly defeated, and the captured German cats declared themselves avengers for their husbands who died at the front. I don’t know what they did to them, but it would be necessary to execute the scoundrels mercilessly,” Vladimir Gelfand wrote.

One of Helphand's most revealing stories relates to April 25, when he was already in Berlin. There Gelfand rode a bicycle for the first time in his life. Driving along the banks of the Spree, he saw a group of women dragging their suitcases and bundles somewhere.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption In February 1945, the military unit of Gelfand was based near the Oder River, preparing for an attack on Berlin.

"I asked the German women where they live, in broken German, and wondered why they left their home, and they spoke with horror about the grief that the front line workers had caused them on the first night of the Red Army's arrival here," writes the author of the diary. .

“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. I was poked by everyone. There were at least twenty of them, yes, yes, and 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.

"The hour of revenge has struck!"

German soldiers by that time had stained themselves on Soviet territory with the heinous crimes they committed for almost four years.

Vladimir Gelfand came across evidence of these crimes as his unit fought its way towards Germany.

“When every day they are killed, every day they are injured, when they pass through the villages destroyed by the Nazis ... Dad has a lot of descriptions where villages were destroyed, up to children, small children were destroyed Jewish nationality... Even one-year-olds, two-year-olds... And it's not for some time, it's years. People walked and saw it. And they went with one goal - to take revenge and kill, "says the son of Vladimir Gelfand Vitaly.

Vitaly Gelfand discovered this diary after his father's death.

The Wehrmacht, as the ideologists of Nazism assumed, was a well-organized force of the Aryans, who would not stoop to sexual contact with "untermenschs" ("subhumans").

But this ban was ignored, says Oleg Budnitsky, a historian at the Higher School of Economics.

The German command was so concerned about the spread of venereal diseases among the troops that they organized a network of army brothels in the occupied territories.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Vitaly Gelfand hopes to publish his father's diary in Russia

It is difficult to find direct evidence of how German soldiers treated Russian women. Many of the victims simply did not survive.

But at the German-Russian Museum in Berlin, its director Jörg Morre showed me a photograph taken in the Crimea from a German soldier's personal album.

The photo shows the body of a woman, sprawled on the ground.

"It looks like she was killed during or after being raped. Her skirt is pulled up and her hands are covering her face," says the director of the museum.

“This is a shocking photo. We had a debate in the museum about whether such photographs should be exhibited. This is war, this is sexual violence in the Soviet Union under the Germans. We show the war. We don’t talk about the war, we show it,” says Jörg Morre .

When the Red Army entered the "lair of the fascist beast," as the Soviet press called Berlin at the time, the posters encouraged the fury of the soldiers: "Soldier, you are on German soil. The hour of revenge has struck!"

The political department of the 19th Army, advancing on Berlin along the coast of the Baltic Sea, announced that a real Soviet soldier is so full of hatred that the thought of sexual contact with German women would be disgusting to him. But this time, too, the soldiers proved that their ideologists were wrong.

Historian Anthony Beevor, doing research for his book "Berlin: The Fall", published in 2002, found reports in the Russian state archive about 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 given to Stalin," says Beevor. "You can see from 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."

"Inhabitants of the Dungeon"

Another wartime diary kept by the bride of a German soldier tells how some women adapted to this horrific situation in an attempt to survive.

Since April 20, 1945, the woman, whose name has not been named, has left on paper observations that are ruthless in their honesty, insightful and sometimes flavored with the humor of the gallows.

Among her neighbors are "a young man in gray trousers and thick-rimmed glasses, who on closer inspection turns out to be a woman," as well as three elderly sisters, she writes, "all three dressmakers huddled together in one big black pudding."

Image copyright BBC World Service

While waiting for the approaching units of the Red Army, the women joked: “Better a Russian on me than a Yankee on me,” meaning that it is better to be raped than to die in a carpet bombing by American aircraft.

But when the soldiers entered their basement and tried to drag the women out, they begged the diary's author to use her knowledge of the Russian language to complain to the Soviet command.

On the ruined streets, she manages to find a Soviet officer. He shrugs. Despite Stalin's decree banning violence against civilians, he says, "it still happens."

Nevertheless, the officer goes down with her to the basement and chastises the soldiers. But one of them is beside himself with anger. “What are you talking about? Look what the Germans did to our women!” he shouts. “They took my sister and…” The officer calms him down and leads the soldiers out into the street.

But when the diarist goes out into the corridor to check whether they have left or not, she is seized by waiting soldiers and brutally raped, almost strangling her. Horrified neighbors, or "dungeon dwellers" as she calls them, hide in the basement, locking the door behind them.

“Finally, two iron bolts opened. Everyone stared at me,” she writes. “My stockings are down, my hands are holding the remnants of the belt. I start screaming:“ You pigs! I've been raped here twice in a row, and you leave me lying here like a piece of dirt!"

She finds an officer from Leningrad with whom she shares a bed. Gradually, the relationship between the aggressor and the victim becomes less violent, more mutual and ambiguous. The German woman and the Soviet officer even discuss literature and the meaning of life.

“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? 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.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Some German women have found a way to adapt to this terrible situation.

When the diary was published in Germany in 1959 under the title "Woman in Berlin", this candid account caused a wave of accusations that he had tarnished the honor of German women. Not surprisingly, the author, anticipating this, demanded that the diary not be published again until her death.

Eisenhower: shoot on the spot

Rape was not only a problem for the Red Army.

Bob Lilly, a historian at Northern Kentucky University, was able to access the archives of US military courts.

His book (Taken by Force) caused so much controversy that at first no American publisher dared to publish it, and the first edition appeared in France.

According to Lilly's rough estimate, about 14,000 rapes were committed by American soldiers in England, France and Germany from 1942 to 1945.

"There were very few cases of rape in England, but as soon as the American soldiers crossed the English Channel, their number increased dramatically," says Lilly.

According to him, rape has become a problem not only of the image, but also of army discipline. "Eisenhower said to shoot soldiers at the scene of the crime and report executions in military newspapers like the Stars and Stripes. Germany was at its peak," he says.

Were soldiers executed for rape?

But not in Germany?

No. Not a single soldier was executed for raping or killing German citizens, Lilly admits.

Today, historians continue to investigate the facts of sexual crimes committed by the Allied forces in Germany.

For many years, the topic of sexual violence by allied forces - American, British, French and Soviet soldiers - in Germany was officially hushed up. Few reported it, and even fewer were willing to listen to it all.

Silence

It is not easy to talk about such things in society in general. In addition, in East Germany it was considered almost blasphemy to criticize Soviet heroes who defeated fascism.

And in West Germany, the guilt felt by the Germans for the crimes of Nazism overshadowed the subject of the suffering of this people.

But in 2008, in Germany, based on the diary of a Berliner, the film "Nameless - One Woman in Berlin" was released with actress Nina Hoss in the title role.

This film was a revelation for the Germans and prompted many women to talk about what happened to them. Among these women is Ingeborg Bullert.

Now 90-year-old Ingeborg lives in Hamburg in an apartment full of photos of cats and books about the theater. In 1945, she was 20. She dreamed of becoming an actress and lived with her mother on a rather fashionable street in Berlin's Charlottenburg district.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption "I thought they were going to kill me," says Ingeborg Bullurt

When the Soviet offensive began on the city, she hid in the basement of her house, as did the author of the diary "Woman in Berlin".

“Unexpectedly, tanks appeared on our street, bodies of Russians and German soldiers she recalls. “I remember the terrifying lingering sound 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.”

Then Ingeborg did not tell about what happened to her. She kept quiet about it for decades because it would be too hard to talk about it. "My mother used to brag about the fact that her daughter had not been touched," she recalls.

Wave of abortions

But many women in Berlin were raped. Ingeborg recalls that immediately after the war, women between the ages of 15 and 55 were ordered to be tested for venereal diseases.

"To get food cards, you needed a medical certificate, and I remember that all the doctors who issued them had waiting rooms full of women," she recalls.

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, were extrapolated from the meager medical records that have survived to this day.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption These medical documents from 1945 miraculously survived Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption In just one district of Berlin, 995 abortion requests were approved in six months.

At the former military factory, where the state archive is now kept, his employee Martin Luchterhand shows me a stack of blue cardboard folders.

In Germany at the time, abortion was banned under article 218 of the penal code. But Luchterhand says there was a short period of time after the war when women were allowed to terminate their pregnancies. A special situation was connected with the mass rapes in 1945.

Between June 1945 and 1946, 995 abortion requests were approved in this area of Berlin alone. The folders contain over a thousand pages of different colors and sizes. One of the girls writes in round, childish handwriting that she was raped at home, in the living room, in front of her parents.

Bread instead of revenge

For some soldiers, as soon as they got drunk, women became the same trophies as watches or bicycles. But others behaved quite differently. In Moscow, I met 92-year-old veteran Yuri Lyashenko, who remembers how, instead of taking revenge, the soldiers handed out bread to the Germans.

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Yuri Lyashenko says Soviet soldiers behaved differently in Berlin

“Of course, we couldn’t feed everyone, right? And what we had, we shared with the children. Small children are so intimidated, their eyes are so scary ... I feel sorry for the children," he recalls.

In a jacket hung with orders and medals, Yuri Lyashenko invites me to his small apartment on the top floor high-rise building and treats with cognac and boiled eggs.

He tells me that he wanted to become an engineer, but was drafted into the army and, like Vladimir Gelfand, went through the entire war to Berlin.

Pouring cognac into glasses, he proposes a toast to the world. Toasts to the world often sound learned, but here one feels that the words come from the heart.

We are talking about the beginning of the war, when he almost had his leg amputated, and how he felt when he saw the red flag over the Reichstag. After a while, I decide to ask him about the rapes.

“I don’t know, our unit didn’t have that… Of course, obviously, such cases depended on the person himself, on the people,” the war veteran says. it is not written, you do not know it."

Look back to the past

We will probably never know the true extent of rape. The materials of the Soviet military tribunals and many other documents remain classified. The State Duma recently approved a law "on encroachment on historical memory", according to which anyone who belittles the contribution of the USSR to the victory over fascism can earn a fine and up to five years in prison.

Vera Dubina, a young historian at the Humanitarian University in Moscow, says she didn't know anything about the rapes until she received a scholarship to study in Berlin. After studying in Germany, she wrote a paper on the subject, but was unable to publish it.

"The Russian media reacted very aggressively," she says. "People only want to know about our glorious victory in the Great Patriotic War, and now it's getting harder and harder to do serious research."

Image copyright BBC World Service Image caption Soviet field kitchens distributed food to the inhabitants of Berlin

History is often rewritten to suit the conjuncture. That is why eyewitness accounts are so important. The testimonies of those who dared to speak on this topic now, in old age, and the stories of the then young people who wrote down their testimonies about what was happening during the war years.

“If people don’t want to know the truth, they want to be mistaken and want to talk about how beautiful and noble everything was, this is stupid, this is self-deception,” he recalls. “The whole world understands this, and Russia understands this. And even those who stand behind these laws of distorting the past, they also understand. We cannot move into the future until we deal with the past."

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Note.On September 25 and 28, 2015, this material was modified. We removed the captions for two of the photos, as well as the Twitter posts based on them. They do not meet BBC editorial standards and we understand that many have found them offensive. We offer our sincere apologies.

During the occupation in Germany, Soviet troops committed mass rape of local residents.

“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.

Senyavskaya Elena Spartakovna

The last months of the war were tragic for Germany. The story of the last defenders of the Reich, killed by Russian avengers, is very sad, but the fate of German women who fell into the hands of victorious Russian soldiers is even sadder. The mass rapes were methodical... with hatred and cruelty. This topic is rarely talked about, because it is a stain on heroic image heroes of the supporters of the Second World War.

Catherine Merridal

And here is what the famous Soviet playwright Zakhar Agranenko, who at that time served as a marine officer in East Prussia, writes in his diary:

“I don’t believe in individual intimate relationships between soldiers and German women ... Nine, ten ... twelve people at the same time, it had the character of gang rapes ...”

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."

When the raped women of Koenigsberg begged their tormentors to kill them, the Red Army men 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.

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 being persecuted, they received in response: "Frau ist Frau" (A woman is a woman - approx. per.).

On January 3, my son came on vacation from the front. He served in parts of the SS. My son told me several times that the SS units in Russia did incredible things. If the Russians come here, they won't pour rose oil on you. It turned out differently.. When the Russians came, I decided to open the veins of my children and commit suicide. But I felt sorry for the children, I hid in the basement, where we sat hungry for several days. Unexpectedly, four Red Army soldiers entered. They did not touch us, and they even gave little Werner a piece of bread and a pack of cookies. I didn't believe my eyes. After that we decided to go outside. No one touched us with the children ...

Elizabeth Schmeer

Well, at least they didn't touch anyone.

Of course, there were no millions of victims, I personally don’t believe in it .. But when we first went to visit home .. one of my veteran grandfathers was still alive .. and to my question: did they rape German women in the 45th? answered: Well, no women at all .. while declaring that there were enough of their beautiful nurses .. Considering that in the 45th he was 23 years old and with a height of 185, broad shoulders .. he was also handsome .. I believe that the nurses did not refuse. But someone was denied .. and someone just took revenge ... everything is possible. But MASS..it's too much.

Do you even believe what this person is saying? Somehow I have big doubts.

Let's talk about the trophies of the Red Army, which the Soviet victors were taking home from defeated Germany. Let's talk calmly, without emotions - only photos and facts. Then we will touch on the delicate issue of the rape of German women and go through the facts from the life of occupied Germany.

A Soviet soldier takes away a bicycle from a German woman (according to Russophobes), or a Soviet soldier helps a German woman straighten the steering wheel (according to Russophiles). Berlin, August 1945. (as it was in fact, in the investigation below)

But the truth, as always, is in the middle, and it lies in the fact that in abandoned German houses and shops, Soviet soldiers took everything they liked, but the Germans had quite a bit of brazen robbery. Looting, of course, happened, but for him, it happened, and they were judged by the show trial of the tribunal. And none of the soldiers wanted to go through the war alive, and because of some junk and another round of the struggle for friendship with the local population, go not home as a winner, but to Siberia as a convict.

Soviet soldiers buy up on the "black market" in the Tiergarten garden. Berlin, summer 1945.

Although junk was appreciated. After the Red Army entered the territory of Germany, by order of the NPO of the USSR No. 0409 dated 12/26/1944. all servicemen of the active fronts were allowed to send one personal parcel to the Soviet rear once a month.
The most severe punishment was the deprivation of the right to this parcel, the weight of which was established: for privates and sergeants - 5 kg, for officers - 10 kg and for generals - 16 kg. The size of the parcel could not exceed 70 cm in each of the three dimensions, but they managed to send large equipment, carpets, furniture, and even pianos home in various ways.
During demobilization, officers and soldiers were allowed to take away everything that they could take with them on the road in their personal luggage. At the same time, oversized things were often taken home, fastened to the roofs of the wagons, and the Poles left the craft to pull them along the train with ropes with hooks (grandfather told me).
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Three Soviet women deported to Germany carry wine from an abandoned liquor store. Lippstadt, April 1945.

During the war and the first months after it ended, the soldiers mainly sent non-perishable provisions to their home fronts (American dry rations, consisting of canned food, biscuits, egg powder, jam, and even instant coffee, were considered the most valuable). Allied medicines - streptomycin and penicillin - were also highly valued.
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American soldiers and young German women combine trading and flirting on the "black market" in the Tiergarten garden.
The Soviet military in the background in the market is not stupid. Berlin, May 1945.

And it was possible to get it only on the "black market", which instantly arose in every German city. You could buy everything at flea markets: from a car to women, and tobacco and food were the most common currency.
The Germans needed food, while the Americans, the British and the French were only interested in money - Germany then circulated Nazi Reichsmarks, the occupation stamps of the winners, and the foreign currencies of the allied countries, on whose courses a lot of money was made.
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An American soldier is trading with a Soviet junior lieutenant. LIFE photo from September 10, 1945.

And the Soviet soldiers had funds. According to the Americans, they were the best buyers - gullible, badly traded and very rich. Indeed, since December 1944, Soviet military personnel in Germany began to receive double salaries in rubles and in marks at the rate (this system of double payment will be canceled much later).
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Photos of Soviet soldiers trading at a flea market. LIFE photo from September 10, 1945.

The salary of Soviet military personnel depended on the rank and position held. Thus, a major, deputy military commandant, in 1945 received 1,500 rubles. per month and for the same amount in occupation marks at the exchange rate. In addition, officers from the position of company commander and above were paid money to hire German servants.
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For pricing information. Certificate of purchase by a Soviet colonel from a German car for 2,500 marks (750 Soviet rubles)

The Soviet military received a lot of money - on the "black market" an officer could buy anything his heart desires for one month's salary. In addition, the servicemen were paid debts for monetary allowances for the past, and they had plenty of money even if they sent home a ruble certificate.
Therefore, it was simply stupid and unnecessary to risk “falling under distribution” and be punished for looting. While there were certainly plenty of greedy marauding fools, they were the exception rather than the rule.
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Soviet soldier with an SS dagger attached to his belt. Pardubice, Czechoslovakia, May 1945.

The soldiers were different, and their tastes were also different. Some, for example, really appreciated such German SS (or naval, flying) daggers, although there was no practical use for them. As a child, I held one such SS dagger in my hands (a friend of my grandfather brought from the war) - its black and silver beauty and sinister story fascinated.
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Veteran of the Great Patriotic War Petr Patsienko with a captured Admiral Solo accordion. Grodno, Belarus, May 2013

But the majority of Soviet soldiers valued ordinary clothes, accordions, watches, cameras, radios, crystal, porcelain, which for many years after the war were littered with the shelves of Soviet commission stores.
Many of those things have survived to this day, and do not rush to accuse their old owners of looting - no one will know the true circumstances of their acquisition, but most likely they were simply and corny bought from the Germans by the winners.

To the question of one historical falsification, or about the picture "Soviet soldier takes away a bicycle."

This well-known photograph is traditionally used to illustrate articles about Soviet atrocities in Berlin. This topic is raised with surprising constancy from year to year on Victory Day.
The picture itself is published, as a rule, with a caption "Soviet soldier takes away a bicycle from a resident of Berlin". There are also signatures from the cycle "Looting flourished in Berlin on the 45th" etc.

On the issue of the photograph itself and what is captured on it, there are heated debates. The arguments of the opponents of the version of "looting and violence", which I had to meet on the net, unfortunately, sound unconvincing. Of these, one can single out, firstly, calls not to make judgments on the basis of one photograph. Secondly, an indication of the poses of a German woman, a soldier and other persons caught in the frame. In particular, from the calmness of the characters of the second plan, it follows that we are talking not about violence, but about trying to straighten some bicycle part.
Finally, doubts are raised that it is a Soviet soldier that is depicted in the photograph: a roll over the right shoulder, the roll itself is of a very strange shape, the cap on the head is too large, etc. In addition, in the background, immediately behind the soldier, if you look closely, you can see a military man in a clearly non-Soviet uniform.

But, I emphasize once again, all these versions do not seem convincing enough to me.

In general, I decided to understand this story. The picture, I reasoned, must clearly have an author, there must be a primary source, the first publication, and - most likely - the original signature. Which can shed light on what is shown in the photo.

If you take the literature, as far as I remember, this picture came across to me in the catalog of the Documentary Exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union. The exposition itself was opened in 1991 in Berlin in the "Topography of Terror" hall, then, as far as I know, it was exhibited in St. Petersburg. Her catalog in Russian "Germany's War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945" was published in 1994.

I do not have this catalog, but fortunately my colleague found it. Indeed, the desired photo is published on page 257. Traditional signature: "Soviet soldier takes away a bicycle from a resident of Berlin, 1945"

Apparently, this catalog published in 1994 became the Russian primary source of the photo we needed. At least on a number of old resources dating back to the beginning of the 2000s, I came across this picture with a reference to "Germany's war against the Soviet Union .." and with a familiar signature. It looks like the photo is from there and roams the net.

Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz - Photo Archive of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is listed as the source of the image in the catalog. The archive has a website, but no matter how much I tried, I could not find the right picture on it.

But in the process of searching, I came across the same picture in the archive of Life magazine. In Life's version it is called "Bike Fight".
Please note that here the photo is not cropped at the edges, as in the exposition catalog. New interesting details, for example, on the left behind you can see an officer, and, as it were, not a German officer:

But the main thing is the signature!
A Russian soldier involved in a misunderstanding with a German woman in Berlin, over a bicycle he wished to buy from her.

"There was a misunderstanding between a Russian soldier and a German woman in Berlin because of a bicycle he wanted to buy from her."

In general, I will not bore the reader with the nuances of a further search on keywords"misunderstanding", "German woman", "Berlin", "Soviet soldier", "Russian soldier", etc. I found the original photo and the original caption under it. The picture belongs to the American company Corbis. Here he is:

As you can see, here is a complete picture, on the right and left there are details cut off in the "Russian version" and even in the Life version. These details are very important, as they give the picture a completely different mood.

And finally, the original signature:

Russian Soldier Tries to Buy Bicycle from Woman in Berlin, 1945
A misunderstanding ensues after a Russian soldier tries to buy a bucycle from a German woman in Berlin. After giving her money for the bike, the soldier assumes the deal has been struck. However, the woman doesn't seem convinced.

A Russian soldier tries to buy a bicycle from a woman in Berlin, 1945
The misunderstanding happened after a Russian soldier tried to buy a bicycle from a German woman in Berlin. After giving her the money for the bike, he believes the deal went through. However, the woman thinks differently.

That's how things are, dear friends.
Around, wherever you dig, lies, lies, lies ...

So who raped all the German women?

From an article by Sergei Manukov.

Forensic science professor Robert Lilly of the United States checked American military records and concluded that by November 1945, the tribunals had dealt with 11,040 cases of serious sexual offenses committed by American military personnel in Germany. Other historians from Great Britain, France and America agree that the Western allies also "dissolved their hands".
For a long time Western historians are trying to pin the blame on Soviet soldiers with evidence that no court will accept.
The most vivid idea of them is given by one of the main arguments of the British historian and writer Anthony Beevor, one of the most famous experts in the West on the history of the Second World War.
He believed that Western soldiers, especially the American military, did not need to rape German women, because they had in abundance the most salable commodity with which it was possible to obtain the consent of the fraulein for sex: canned food, coffee, cigarettes, nylon stockings, etc. .
Western historians believe that the vast majority of sexual contacts between the winners and the Germans were voluntary, that is, that it was the most common prostitution.
It is no coincidence that a joke was popular in those days: "It took the Americans six years to cope with the German armies, but a day and a bar of chocolate were enough to conquer German women."
However, the picture was far from being as rosy as Anthony Beevor and his supporters are trying to present. Post-war society was unable to differentiate between consensual and forced sexual encounters between women who gave themselves because they were dying of hunger and those who were raped at gunpoint or at gunpoint.

Miriam Gebhardt, professor of history at the University of Konstanz in southwestern Germany, loudly declared that this is an overly idealized picture.
Of course, when writing a new book, she was least of all guided by the desire to protect and whitewash Soviet soldiers. The main motive is the establishment of truth and historical justice.
Miriam Gebhardt tracked down several victims of the "exploits" of American, British and French soldiers and interviewed them.
Here is the story of one of the women who suffered from the Americans:

Six American soldiers arrived at the village when it was already getting dark and entered the house where Katerina V. lived with her 18-year-old daughter Charlotte. The women managed to escape just before the appearance of the uninvited guests, but they did not even think of giving up. Obviously, this is not the first time they have done this.
The Americans began to search all the houses one by one, and in the end, almost at midnight, they found the fugitives in the closet of a neighbor. They dragged them out, threw them on the bed and raped them. Instead of chocolates and nylon stockings, the uniformed rapists took out pistols and machine guns.
This gang rape took place in March 1945, a month and a half before the end of the war. Charlotte, horrified, called her mother for help, but Katerina could do nothing to help her.
There are many such cases in the book. All of them took place in the south of Germany, in the zone of occupation by American troops, whose number was 1.6 million people.

In the spring of 1945, the Archbishop of Munich and Freising ordered his subordinate priests to document all events related to the occupation of Bavaria. A few years ago, part of the 1945 archives was published.
Priest Michael Merksmüller from the village of Ramsau, which is located near Berchtesgaden, wrote on July 20, 1945: "Eight girls and women were raped. Some of them right in front of their parents."
Father Andreas Weingand of Haag an der Amper, a tiny village located on the site of what is now Munich Airport, wrote on 25 July 1945:
"The saddest event during the offensive of the American army was three rapes. Drunken soldiers raped one married woman, one unmarried woman and a girl 16 and a half years old.
“By order of the military authorities,” the priest Alois Shiml from Moosburg wrote on August 1, 1945, “a list of all residents with an indication of their age should hang on the door of each house. 17 raped girls and women ended up in the hospital. Among them there are those whom American soldiers raped many times."
From the reports of the priests it followed: the youngest victim of the Yankees was 7 years old, and the oldest - 69.
The book "When the Soldiers Came" appeared on the shelves of bookstores in early March and immediately caused heated debate. There is nothing surprising in this, because Frau Gebhardt dared to take a swing, and during a strong aggravation of relations between the West and Russia, on attempts to equalize those who unleashed the war and those who suffered the most from it.
Despite the fact that the main attention in Gebhardt's book is given to the exploits of the Yankees, the rest of the Western allies, of course, also performed "exploits". Although in comparison with the Americans, they have done much less trouble.

Americans raped 190,000 German women.

Best of all, according to the author of the book in 1945, British soldiers behaved in Germany, but not because of some innate nobility or, say, a gentleman's code of conduct.
British officers turned out to be more decent than their colleagues from other armies, who not only strictly forbade their subordinates to pester the Germans, but also watched them very carefully.
As for the French, they, just like in the case of our soldiers, have a slightly different situation. France was occupied by the Germans, although, of course, the occupation of France and Russia, as they say, are two big differences.
In addition, most of the rapists in the French army were Africans, that is, people from the French colonies on the Black Continent. By and large, they didn’t care who to take revenge on - the main thing was that the women were white.
Especially the French "distinguished themselves" in Stuttgart. They rounded up the women of Stuttgart on the subway and staged a three-day orgy of violence. According to various sources, from 2 to 4 thousand German women were raped during this time.

Just like the allies from the east they met on the Elbe, the American soldiers were horrified by the crimes committed by the Germans and embittered by their stubbornness and desire to defend their homeland to the end.
Played a role and American propaganda, inspired them that the Germans are crazy about the liberators from across the ocean. This even more inflamed the erotic fantasies of the warriors deprived of female affection.
Miriam Gebhardt's seeds fell into the prepared soil. After the crimes committed by US military personnel several years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in particular in the notorious Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib, many Western historians have become more critical of the behavior of the Yankees before and after the end of the war.
Researchers are increasingly finding documents in the archives, for example, about the looting of churches in Italy by the Americans, the murders civilians and German prisoners, as well as the rape of Italian women.
However, the attitude towards the US military is changing very slowly. The Germans continue to treat them as disciplined and decent (especially compared to the Allies) soldiers who gave gum to children and stockings to women.

Of course, the evidence cited by Miriam Gebhardt in When the Military Came did not convince everyone. It is not surprising, given that no one kept any statistics and all calculations and figures are approximate and speculative.
Anthony Beevor and his supporters ridiculed Professor Gebhardt's calculations: "It is practically impossible to get accurate and reliable figures, but I think that hundreds of thousands are a clear exaggeration.
Even if we take the number of children born to German women from Americans as the basis for calculations, then here it should be remembered that many of them were conceived as a result of voluntary sex, and not rape. Do not forget that at the gates of American military camps and bases in those years, German women crowded from morning to night.
Miriam Gebhardt's conclusions, and especially her figures, of course, can be doubted, but hardly even the most zealous defenders of American soldiers will argue with the assertion that they were not as "fluffy" and kind as most Western historians try to present them.
If only because they left a "sexual" mark not only in hostile Germany, but also in allied France. American soldiers raped thousands of French women whom they freed from the Germans.

If in the book "When the Soldiers Came" the professor of history from Germany accuses the Yankees, then in the book "What the Soldiers Did" this is done by the American Mary Roberts, professor of history from the University of Wisconsin.
"My book debunks the old myth about American soldiers who by all accounts always behaved well," she says. "Americans had sex everywhere and with everyone who wore a skirt."
It is more difficult to argue with Professor Roberts than with Gebhardt, because she did not present conclusions and calculations, but only facts. Chief among them are archival documents, according to which 152 American servicemen were convicted of rape in France, and 29 of them were hanged.
The numbers are, of course, meager compared to neighboring Germany, even if you consider what lies behind each case. human destiny, but keep in mind that these are only official statistics and that they represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Without much risk of being mistaken, it can be assumed that only a few victims turned to the police with complaints about the liberators. Shame most often prevented them from going to the police, because in those days rape was a stigma for a woman.

In France, the rapists from across the ocean had other motives. To many of them, the rape of French women seemed like some kind of amorous adventure.
The fathers of many American soldiers fought in France in the First world war. Their stories must have set a lot of soldiers from General Eisenhower's army on romantic adventures with attractive French women. Many Americans considered France to be something like a huge brothel.
Military magazines such as "Stars and Stripes" also contributed. They printed photographs of laughing French women kissing their liberators. They also typed phrases in French that may be needed when communicating with French women: "I am not married", "You have beautiful eyes", "You are very beautiful", etc.
Journalists almost directly advised the soldiers to take what they liked. Not surprisingly, after the Allied landings in Normandy in the summer of 1944, northern France was swept by a "tsunami of male lust and lust."
The liberators from across the ocean in Le Havre especially distinguished themselves. The city archives preserved letters from residents of Gavra to the mayor with complaints about "a wide variety of crimes that are committed day and night."
Most often, the inhabitants of Le Havre complained of rape, and often in front of others, although there were, of course, robberies with thefts.
The Americans behaved in France as in a conquered country. It is clear that the attitude of the French towards them was corresponding. Many people in France considered the liberation a "second occupation." And often more cruel than the first, German.

They say that French prostitutes often remembered German clients with a kind word, because Americans were often interested in more than just sex. With the Yankees, the girls also had to keep an eye on their wallets. The liberators did not shun banal theft and robbery.
Meetings with the Americans were life-threatening. 29 American soldiers were sentenced to death for killing French prostitutes.
In order to cool the heated soldiers, the command distributed among the personnel leaflets condemning rape. The military prosecutor's office was not particularly strict. Only those who could not be judged were judged. The racist sentiments that prevailed at that time in America are also clearly visible: out of 152 soldiers and officers who fell under the tribunal, 139 were blacks.

How was life in occupied Germany

After World War II, Germany was divided into occupation zones. About how they lived, today you can read and hear different opinions. Often the exact opposite.

Denazification and re-education

The first task that the Allies set themselves after the defeat of Germany was the denazification of the German population. The entire adult population of the country passed a questionnaire prepared by the Control Council for Germany. The Erhebungsformular MG/PS/G/9a had 131 questions. The survey was voluntary-compulsory.

Refuseniks were deprived of food cards.

Based on the survey, all Germans are divided into "not involved", "acquitted", "fellow travelers", "guilty" and "guilty of the highest degree". Citizens from the last three groups appeared before the court, which determined the measure of guilt and punishment. "Guilty" and "guilty in the highest degree" were sent to internment camps, "fellow travelers" could atone for their guilt with a fine or property.

It is clear that this method was not perfect. Mutual responsibility, corruption and insincerity of the respondents made denazification ineffective. Hundreds of thousands of Nazis managed to avoid trial and forged documents on the so-called "rat trails".

The Allies also conducted a large-scale campaign in Germany to re-educate the Germans. Movies about Nazi atrocities were constantly shown in cinemas. Residents of Germany also had to go to the sessions without fail. Otherwise, they could lose all the same food cards. Also, the Germans were taken on excursions to the former concentration camps and involved in the work carried out there. For the majority of the civilian population, the information received was shocking. Goebbels propaganda during the war years told them about a completely different Nazism.

Demilitarization

By decision of the Potsdam Conference, Germany was to undergo demilitarization, which included the dismantling of military factories.
The Western allies accepted the principles of demilitarization in their own way: not only were they in no hurry to dismantle factories in their zones of occupation, but they were actively restoring them, while trying to increase the quota of metal smelting and wanting to preserve the military potential of Western Germany.

By 1947 in the English and American zones only more than 450 military factories were hidden from accounting.

The Soviet Union was more honest in this regard. According to the historian Mikhail Semiryaga, in one year after March 1945, the highest authorities of the Soviet Union made about a thousand decisions related to the dismantling of 4389 enterprises from Germany, Austria, Hungary and other European countries. However, even this number cannot be compared with the number of capacities destroyed by the war in the USSR.
The number of German enterprises dismantled by the USSR was less than 14% of the pre-war number of factories. According to Nikolai Voznesensky, then chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, only 0.6% of the direct damage to the USSR was covered by the supply of captured equipment from Germany.

Marauding

The topic of looting and violence against the civilian population in post-war Germany is still debatable.
A lot of documents have been preserved, indicating that the Western allies took property out of defeated Germany literally by ships.

"Distinguished" in the collection of trophies and Marshal Zhukov.

When in 1948 he fell out of favor, the investigators began to "dispossess" him. The result of the confiscation was 194 pieces of furniture, 44 carpets and tapestries, 7 boxes of crystal, 55 museum paintings and much more. All this was taken out of Germany.

As for the soldiers and officers of the Red Army, there were not so many cases of looting according to the available documents. The victorious Soviet soldiers were more likely to be engaged in applied "junk work", that is, they were engaged in collecting ownerless property. When the Soviet command allowed sending parcels home, boxes with sewing needles, fabric trimmings, and working tools went to the Union. At the same time, our soldiers had a rather squeamish attitude to all these things. In letters to their relatives, they justified themselves for all this “junk”.

strange counts

The most problematic topic is the topic of violence against civilians, especially against German women. Up until the time of perestroika, the number of German women subjected to violence was small: from 20,000 to 150,000 throughout Germany.

In 1992, a book by two feminists, Helke Zander and Barbara Yohr, Liberators and Liberated, was published in Germany, where another figure appeared: 2 million.

These figures were "drawn" and were based on the statistics of only one German clinic, multiplied by a hypothetical number of women. In 2002, Anthony Beevor's book "The Fall of Berlin" was published, where this figure also appeared. In 2004, this book was published in Russia, giving rise to the myth of the brutality of Soviet soldiers in occupied Germany.

In fact, according to the documents, such facts were considered "extraordinary incidents and immoral phenomena." Violence against the civilian population of Germany was fought at all levels, and marauders and rapists fell under the tribunal. There are still no exact figures on this issue, not all documents have yet been declassified, but in 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, there are such figures: for seven armies front on 908.5 thousand people 124 crimes were recorded, of which 72 were rapes. 72 cases per 908.5 thousand. What two million can we talk about?

There was also looting and violence against the civilian population in the western occupation zones. Mortar gunner Naum Orlov wrote in his memoirs: “The British guarding us rolled chewing gum between their teeth - which was new for us - and boasted to each other about their trophies, throwing up their hands high, humiliated by wristwatches ... ".

Osmar Whyat, an Australian war correspondent who can hardly be suspected of partiality to Soviet soldiers, wrote in 1945: “Severe discipline reigns 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 under the influence of nervousness caused by the immoderation of Russian soldiers' manners and their love of vodka. One woman who told me most of the hair-raising tales of Russian brutality was eventually forced to admit that the only evidence she had seen with her own eyes was drunken Russian officers firing their pistols into the air and at bottles..."

The Red Army soldiers, for the most part poorly educated, were characterized by complete ignorance in matters of sex and a rude attitude towards women.

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, Cossacks on shaggy horses with loot tied to their saddles, dodges and Studebakers received under Lend-Lease, followed by a second echelon 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.

Calls to avenge the Fatherland, which was attacked by the Wehrmacht, 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."

The ability of Soviet officers to convince themselves that most of the victims were either pleased or agreed 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."

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 poorly educated, were characterized by complete ignorance in matters of sex and a rude attitude towards women. Thus, the attempts of the Soviet state to suppress the libido of its citizens led to what one Russian writer called "barrack erotica" that was considerably 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 labor 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."

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.

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 being persecuted, they received in response: "Frau ist Frau" (A woman is a woman - approx. per.).

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 us that male sexuality has a dark side, the existence of which we prefer not to remember.

("The Daily Telegraph", UK)

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.

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