One young officer coming upon a unit that had overtaken a column of German refugees fleeing westward later recalled: ‘Women, mothers and their children lie to the right and left along the route, and in front of each of them stands a raucous armada of men with their trousers down. The women who are bleeding or losing consciousness get shoved to one side, and our men shoot the ones who try to save their children.’ A group of ‘grinning’ officers was standing near by, making sure ‘that every soldier without exception would take part’.
Women and girls were subjected to serial rape wherever they were encountered. Rape was often accompanied by torture and mutilation and frequently ended in the victim being shot or bludgeoned to death. The raging violence was undiscriminating. Often, especially in Berlin, women were deliberately raped in the presence of their menfolk, to underline the humiliation.The men were usually killed if they tried to intervene. In East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia it is thought that around 1,400,000 women were raped, a good number of them several times. Gang-rapes were the norm rather than the exception. The two largest Berlin hospitals estimated that at least 100,000 women had been raped in the German capital. Many caught a sexually transmitted disease, and not a few fell pregnant; the vast majority of the latter obtained an abortion, or, if they did give birth, abandoned their baby in hospital. The sexual violence went on for many weeks, even after the war formally came to an end. German women learned to hide, especially after dark; or, if they were young, to take a Soviet soldier, preferably an officer, as a lover and protector. On 4 May 1945 an anonymous Berlin woman wrote in her diary: ‘Slowly but surely we’re starting to view all the raping with a sense of humour -gallows humour.’
She noted with a certain satisfaction that the Russian soldiers tended to prefer plump and well-fed women as their victims after the initial fury was over, and that these, unsurprisingly, were usually the wives of Nazi Party functionaries.
From The Third Reich At War by RICHARD J. EVANS
A picture in Stalinskoe znamia, the Stalingrad Front newspaper, on 8 September showed a frightened girl with herlimbs bound. 'What if your beloved girl is tied up like this by fascists?' said the caption. 'First they'll rape her insolently, then throw her under a tank. Advance warrior. Shoot the enemy. Your duty is to prevent the violator from raping your girl.' Such propaganda- almost a repeat of the theme in Konstantin Simonov's poem 'Kill Him!' - was undoubtedly crude, yet its symbolism closely reflected the mood of the time. AlexeySurkov's poem 'I Hate' was equally ferocious. The German violation of the Motherland could only be wiped out with bloody revenge.
Source: Daily Mail
By Andrew Roberts
The movie, A Woman In Berlin, is based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers
A German girl walks past Soviet troops in a scene from A Woman In Berlin
Marta was one of two million German women who were raped by soldiers of the Red Army - in her case, as in so many others, several times over.
It was a feature of Russia's 'liberation' and occupation of eastern Germany at the end of World War II that is familiar enough to historians, but which neither country cares to acknowledge took place on anything like the scale it did.
For Russia, the episode besmirches the fine name of the Red Army that had fought so hard and suffered so much in its four-year campaign against the Wehrmacht.
The courage and resilience of the ordinary Russian in what they called the Great Patriotic War is incontestable, and for every five German soldiers killed in action in the whole of World War II, four died on the Eastern Front.
Yet the knowledge that the victorious Red Army committed mass rape across Prussia and eastern Germany as they closed in on Berlin degrades its reputation, which is unacceptable to many Russians today.
*******************************
Similarly, living Germans do not want the events that humiliated and violated them, their mothers and grandmothers to be held up to public examination, as this movie promises to do.
For many German women, the memory was something they sublimated and never spoke about to their husbands returning from the front.
It was the great unmentionable fact of 1945, which is coming out not just in history books, but in front of a mass, international audience. Painful memories of gross sexual abuse are being dragged out and held up to the pitiless witness of the silver screen.
Furthermore for the Germans, there is also the added sense that had it not been for Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the USSR, these crimes would never have been committed against German womanhood in the first place.
Three million German troops crossed the Soviet border in June 1941 in an attempt to extirpate the Russian state, and the Nazi commitment to
Total War produced atrocities so terrible that they were bound to be avenged once the Red Army reached German soil.
As so often in war, it was to be defenceless women, girls and even elderly ladies who were to pay in pain and outrage for the crimes of their male compatriots.
Many had abortions or were treated for the syphilis they caught. And as for the so-called Russenbabies - the children born out of rape - many were abandoned.
In his fine new book, World War Two: Behind Closed Doors, the historian Laurence Rees points out that although rape was officially a crime in the Red Army, in fact, Stalin explicitly condoned it as a method of rewarding the soldiers and terrorising German civilians.
Stalin said people should ' understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle'.
On another occasion, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually maltreated German refugees, he said: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.'
With all the young men killed German women were easy pickings for revenging Russians
While Stalin condoned rape as an instrument of state military policy, his police chief Lavrenti Beria was a serial rapist.
An American diplomat, Beria's bodyguard and the Russian actress Tatiana Okunevskaya all bore witness of his methods of grabbing women off the street and shoving them into his limousine and then his bed.
'You are a long way from anywhere, so whether you scream or not does not matter,' Beria would tell the women when he got them back to his dacha. 'You are in my power now. So think about that and behave accordingly.'
More than 100 school-aged girls and young women were drugged and raped by the man who ran the
NKVD, the feared forerunner to the KGB.
'All of which means, of course, that if reports of Red Army soldiers raping women in eastern Europe were sent to the NKVD in Moscow, they finally reached the desk of a rapist himself,' says Rees.
The rape of Berlin's female population - anyone between the ages of 13 and 70 was in danger - was cruelly vicious.
In one heart-breaking incident, a Berlin lawyer, who had somehow protected his Jewish wife from persecution throughout the Nazi period, was shot trying to protect her from rape by Red Army soldiers. As he lay dying of his wounds, he saw his wife being gang-raped.
'They do not speak a word of Russian, but that makes it easier,' one Red Army soldier wrote in a letter home in February 1945. 'You don't have to persuade them. You just point a revolver and tell them to lie down. Then you do your stuff and go away.'
It was unusual for Red Army soldiers to admit to rape in letters home, which is why this new German film is likely to shock Russian patriotic sensibilities.
Nor did the Germany's surrender calm the Russians' behaviour, at least in the short term.
'Weeks before you entered this house, its tenants were living in constant fright and fear,' the rich German publisher Hans-Dietrich Muller Grote wrote to President Truman about the place he stayed in during the Potsdam conference of July 1945.
'By day and by night, plundering Russian soldiers went in and out, raping my sisters before their own parents and children, beating up my old parents. All furniture, wardrobes and trunks were smashed with bayonets and rifle butts, their contents soiled and destroyed in an indescribable manner.'
Red Army troops in procession in Berlin, Germany. Their atrocities against the women were carried out in a sickeningly systematic manner
The Red Army's atrocities against women in Dresden in the spring of 1945, a city that had already suffered heavily from Allied bombing, were carried out in a sickeningly systematic manner.
'In the house next to ours, Soviet troops went in and pulled the women on to the street, had their mattresses pulled out and raped the women,' recalled one inhabitant, John Noble.
'The men had to watch, and then the men were shot. Right at the end of the street, a woman was tied to a wagon wheel and terribly misused.
'Of course, you had the feeling that you wanted to stop it, but there was no possibility to do that.' Women going to and from work past Red Army pickets were routinely raped.
The historian Chris Bellamy believes that although there are no surviving written records to prove it, 'the hideous spectre of multiple rape was not only condoned, but, we can be pretty sure, legally sanctioned by the political officers speaking for the Soviet government'.
Nor is it true that rape was mainly carried out by reserve units following behind the front-line troops.
The Russian war correspondent Vassily Grossman was embedded with the elite front-line Eighth Guards Army which committed rape, as did at least one of his own war correspondent colleagues.
As well as the estimated two million rapes in Germany, there were between 70,000 and 100,000 in Vienna and anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 in Hungary, as well as thousands in Romania and Bulgaria, which had been pro-Nazi, but also in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, which had not been.
Indeed, as Beevor points out, the Red Army even raped Russian women who had been liberated from concentration camps, emaciated and wearing their prison uniform.
Overall, however, Russian soldiers tended to prefer plumper and better-fed women, and one diarist recorded the satisfaction felt by some Berlin women that these tended to be the wives of Nazi Party functionaries.
Vodka played a role, of course, but the worst of the behaviour was fuelled by sheer hatred and aggression, as well as a cold-hearted sense of deterrence for the future.
'It's absolutely clear that if we don't really scare them now, there will be no way of avoiding another war in future,' one Red Army soldier wrote at the time.
In a recently published book by the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, Richard Evans, a young Russian officer is quoted recalling how when his unit overtook a column of fleeing German refugees: 'Women, mothers and their children lie to the right and left along the route, and in front of each of them stands a raucous armada of men with their trousers down.
The women, who are bleeding or losing consciousness, get shoved to one side, and our men shoot the ones who try to save their children.'
A group of 'grinning' officers ensured that 'every soldier without exception would take part'.
Evans records: 'Rape was often accompanied by torture and mutilation and frequently ends in the victim being shot or bludgeoned to death. The raging violence was undiscriminating.'
The insistence on the men watching the rapes was deliberate policy, intended 'to underline the humiliation'.
Underlying all this foul inhumanity was the way the German Army and its allies had behaved during its invasion of Russia.
That was clearly not the only explanation - it doesn't explain why the Red Army raped Poles, Czechs and Yugoslavs and even Russian women, for example - for that one has to delve deep into the darkest recesses of the male psyche.
Yet the four years of life-and-death conflict did brutalise the Soviet peasant-soldier and taught him to behave like a beast against the women of his enemies once he was given the chance. The Soviet-German war lasted 1,418 days without respite, and for sheer horror there is nothing to equal it in the long and monstrous annals of human warfare.
'It eliminated pity, abandoned any constraint, mocked even a semblance of legality,' wrote its foremost historian Professor John Erickson. The Germans drew up plans to exterminate or deport no fewer than 50 million Slav untermensch (subhumans) and as soon as they had attacked they instituted procedures for achieving this. In the end, no fewer than 27 million citizens lost their lives.
The Geneva Conventions were ripped up, as it was stated that no German soldier would be prosecuted for any 'ideologically motivated' murder of civilians.
Hitler's Vernichtungskampf (war of annihilation) against the Slavs merged into his Rassenkampf (war of racial extermination) against the Jews and Communists to create a Continent-wide slaughter.
Behind the advancing Wehrmacht, which won victory after victory in the first six months, were a series of Einsatzgruppen (action squads), whose 'special task' it was to liquidate Jews, Communists, partisans, PoWs, the disabled and anyone else thought to be 'enemies of the Reich'.
In forests across eastern and southern Russia, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, the populations of villages and towns were escorted to places of execution, ordered to dig their own shallow graves and then shot.
An estimated 1.5million innocent human beings are believed to have perished in this way. Yet, as Erickson puts it: 'Machine-guns and rudimentary gas vans could not cope with the demands imposed by mass extermination, prompting the search for a capacious gas chamber the like of Auschwitz.'
The 'scorched earth' policy adopted by the Wehrmacht led to millions more dying, and during the 900-day siege of Leningrad human flesh was semi-openly sold in the street. Small wonder that when 'Ivan' had his chance for revenge, he was going to take it in as gross and bestial a manner as possible.
The fact that the women of Germany were largely innocents, swept up in the horror rather than being responsible for it, meant nothing to an army that had lost 13.5 million casualties at the Germans' hands.
And what of the Allied advance in the West across Germany? It was not unknown for cases of rape to be reported, but they were considered a serious offence and punished accordingly.
The fact that today Germany is a peaceful democracy, indeed, in many ways a model country, can in large part be put down to the Red Army's monstrous invasion, but also to the ruthless bombing of its cities and towns by the British and U.S. air forces from 1941 to 1945.
The aggressive soul of Germany that had launched no fewer than five wars in the 75 years after 1864 was cut out by the experiences of World War II, and was thankfully not to reappear.
If made sensitively, this new film might be able to reconcile the two countries as they come to terms with the crimes committed in the first half of the Forties.
Equally, the capacity for reciprocated resentment is ever present. A Woman In Berlin is thus cinematic gunpowder. Yet neither side should hide from the harsh historical truths it tells, however unpalatable they may seem.
(Reuters) - A new book about the fall of Berlin is angering Russians, who feel widespread pride in their victory, by describing the Red Army's brutal conduct during the final days of World War Two, including gang rapes.
In an interview, Antony Beevor, British author of the best-selling "Berlin: The Downfall, 1945", said the controversy stems in part from Russia's failure to come to terms with its Soviet totalitarian past. Germany, the war's loser, has long dealt with its Nazi crimes. "Germany really started to face up to the horrors of its past after it had an economic miracle," he said. "Russia hasn't had an economic miracle yet and it will take quite a long time even after it does before it starts to see things less in terms of the heroism of the Great Patriotic War. "When you're economically humiliated you hang on to that moment of great pride even more so and refuse to contemplate any dark side to it."
Alongside the rape of an estimated two million German women, more than half of them gang-raped, by Soviet soldiers, Beevor's research shows thousands of Ukrainian and Polish women were raped as the Red Army advanced westwards to end Hitler's reign. "By the time the Red Army reached Berlin, rape had evolved into treating women as carnal booty," Beevor said.
"For me, the most striking or horrific discovery from a Russian point of view was that Soviet troops raped young Russian and Ukrainian women, because that undermines any justification of Red Army behaviour on the grounds of revenge," he added.
Josef Stalin deployed 2.5 million troops, 7,500 aircraft, 6,250 tanks and 41,600 guns in the Battle of Berlin. The war victory - at a staggering cost of 27 million dead - is perhaps the only part of Soviet history that all Russians see with pride. Their May 9 Victory Day anniversary of the end of the war remains a major national holiday.
Moscow's ambassador in London, Grigory Karasin, described the book, which has yet to be translated into Russian, as "an act of blasphemy" and "a case of slander".
Beevor said: "What the Russians had not realised was the bulk of the material came from Russian archives. It's hard to say it's slander or to say it was all taken out of context." Beevor is a former army officer who has written a number of history books and works of fiction. His breakthrough work was "Stalingrad", a harrowing description of the one of the most brutal battles in history.
An incident in 1943, when a Red Army soldier taunted German prisoners in the ruins of Stalingrad with the words "This is how Berlin is going to look", inspired "Berlin: The Downfall, 1945".
Beevor received many letters from German rape victims saying they were glad their story was being told at last. "All of them say in relief: 'None of us dared tell our story because we didn't think anyone would believe us. You've now told the story.' That was extremely encouraging," he said.
He said it was German men who had suppressed the subject. "For them the worst humiliation was that their wives had been raped and they simply could not talk about it, they forbade their wives from talking about it and it became a taboo." Beevor says the story of the rapes, while important, has attracted more attention than he would have hoped.
Nearly 80,000 Russian soldiers died and more than a quarter of a million were wounded in the fight for Berlin. He said it was vital to understand the suffering of Russian soldiers at the hands of both the Germans and their own commanders. "The last chapters are among the saddest - that those people who survived the war thinking they were going to go back and be treated as heroes then found life was very hard to fit into."
COLD MOTHER......
When Köpp finally found her mother in Hamburg, after being a refugee for 15 months, she wanted to show her the letter. But the mother, who had not expected to see her daughter again, greeted her coldly, holding out her cheek to be kissed.
Mass Rape of German Women When The Country Lost WW2
Brutal Mass Rape of German Women
Rape of Japanese Women By American Soldiers During WW2
Rape By German And Waffen SS Soldiers During WW2
Suggested Reading
The protagonist is nameless. Until recently, she was known only as "Anonyma", the name under which she published her memoirs in Germany in 1959. They were not well-received. The author was accused of shaming German women with her descriptions of prostitution for protection. The memoirs were not published again until 2003, when "A Woman in Berlin" became a bestseller in Germany, and its author's identity was revealed as Marta Hillers. Hillers was a journalist and minor Nazi propagandist who spoke German, Russian, and French. There is reportedly some material in the book that was not in her diaries from 1945, so it may have been embellished for publication, though the circumstances are similar to many other accounts of civilian experiences in parts of the city controlled by the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin.
There are nasty scenes of battle, as remnants of the German Army try to defend the city against an angry and marauding Red Army, with civilians caught in the crossfire. The Battle of Berlin created one of the most hellish environments in modern times. It has been the setting of a couple of very good films in recent years, perhaps because the devastation was rendered so visually. It is almost as if nothing need be said, making it ideal for the medium of film. "A Woman in Berlin" doesn't actually have a lot of dialogue. It's quiet. The expressions on people's faces match the city in ruins around them. It is unsentimental. Anonyma and Andrei are not heroic, perhaps not even respectable. They are just people trying to make the best of horrible circumstances. In German and Russian with English subtitles that cannot be turned off.
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Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights
By
ELIZABETH HEINEMAN
"[Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones] makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the relationship between sexual violence and periods of conflict."
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Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century
By
DAGMAR HERZOG
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54 Comments:
The German soldiers burned Russian women and children alive, hanged them, and also took pictures with them after killing and stuffing their bodies with straw. Considering that forced intercourse is wrong, would you think that that if Russian soldiers just returned the favor and had done to German women what Germans done on Russian soil, the public outcry would be virtually nonexistent? We don’t hear anybody in Europe expressing any outrage of the inhuman German soldiers.
Gee whiz, prospicit, I note that you are from Haifa. So, you know, at least you could read the above article properly before the usual knee-jerk response. I compliment you on your restraint in not claiming the article was anti-semitic, tho'. FACT: the reviewer said that author found the Russian army raped Ukrainians and Poles on the way to Germany, and even raped Russian women too, so the excuse of revenge does not wash.
FACT: Actually, the Ukrainians did and still do complain about Russian treatment of them. Stalin killed more people (yes, people)than the NAZIs, and many deaths occurred during the famine which he enforced on Ukraine for their reticence to get with the Bolshevik program. FACT: Nestor Makhno led the Makhnovite Rebellion which created an anarchist state in Eastern Ukraine and held the Russians at bay by copying them - using their own brutal methods against them. FACT: It is a quirk of history or maybe even just a glib re-writing of it, that the role of the anarchists in the Russian Revolution has been expunged from the books. FACT: The failed revolution in 1905 led to much Jewish emigration to USA. (Many came back to help after 1917). The February 1917 revolution was mostly anarchist. The October 1917 revolution was Bolshevik - including many leaders who were ethnic Germans and many of Jewish descent - including Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev - and they annihilated the anarchists. (Although in turn Stalin killed most of them in anti-Jewish purges of the leadership in 1936-40). Makhno's struggle against the Bolsheviks and their terror police the Cheka in the Ukraine must be seen against the background of these events. So, yes, prospicit, folks did 'rage' against the Russians - by taking up arms against them.
" ...U.S. soldiers from their truck looked on at all this with
eyes wide open..."
Antony Beevor, Laurence Rees, Chris Bellamy, Richard Evans, John Erickson, Allan Hall... ! Where are this authors from?.. it looks like a typical british/american propoganda!
Damn beasts
Where photographs of victims? Why are only some pictures, reminiscent of Nazi propaganda?
Beaver interviewed victims of rape? No? From then data about 1.5 million? Why not 3 million, or 1.280 thousand?
Where did Beevor statistics? Or is this not a story but a continuation of propaganda?
Where evidence not 2-3 women, but at least 150-200 thousand documented evidence of the raped women of these millions?
No surprise that half the respondents doubt this atrocious moment in history ever took place. Their rape apologist attitude makes them just as bad as any Nazi and I hope they realise this and hang their heads in shame.
This site is clearly trying to be as pro-nazi as it can get away with. Rape is the norm, not the exception, of every warzone. Maybe the Russians encouraged it and maybe they did it on a larger scale, but the Rape of Nanking by the japanese is well documented and equally if not more horrific. This article completely ignores German atrocities, the nazis literally thoguht of the russians as sub-human, so its no wonder that this nazi site is attempting to validate that. If Germany had taken control of Russia it owuld have been another holocaust, but for slavs. Rape is horrible and shouldn't be hidden, but the fact is the nazis would have gladly killed all the russians and tried to. Rape is bad, genocidal murder is far worse.
Yes. the rape apologist attitude makes them as bad as any Nazi. It also shows that they "think", for want of a better word, like rapists and paedohphiles who try to rationalise their behaviour. There is a certain irony to these people trying to act so moral because they at least have the sense to see the horror of Nazism when they fail to see the horror of sexual violence for what it is.
how can people dismiss this as propoganda. atrocities were carried out throughout the second world war and many wars after. i fear another conflict, possibly a third world war where even worse acts would be inflicted on innocent civilians. the russins raped freed russian women prisoners of war so i think they were out of control barbaric soldiers.
>>July 8, 2011 6:43 AM
> Where evidence not 2-3 women, but at least 150-200 thousand documented evidence of the raped women of these millions?
Where the evidence that it did NOT happen? lol
>Where the evidence that it did NOT happen?
Where is the evidence that Americans are being raped five million German women? French - 7 million? A British - 4 million German men?
Where is the evidence that you are not a Martian?
>ennie said
the russins raped freed russian women prisoners of war so...
On what specifically you are referring to archival materials? Where exactly?
Which camp?
Ok I have definitely seen what Prospicit said in a MOVIE! Other than that I am calling bull, That has got to be what of thee dumbest things I have heard EVER about the Wehrmacht. "Today the German army took their time away from fighting the communists to burn people and then take their insides out and stuff them with straw and then after that they continued to Stalingrad." What a stupid comment, and yes people do complain about what the soviets did, just type soviet war crimes into Google! Not all Germans were Nazi's and not all Nazi's were bad, they were not the most evil people in the world, they didn't create evil! For the love of all that is true and makes sense please think!! What soviets did before, during and after the war was worse than the Nazis! What Pol Pot did to thousands if not millions was worse than the Nazis! What Mao did to his own people was worse than the Nazis. In the war the Germans military was one of the nations with the least amount of rape and theft, says a lot about some of the others. The Japanese and Russians were some of the worst powers in the world at that time and in the war. Furthermore this site is not pro-Nazi, just because you refuse to believe something because every other line doesn't say "German women was raped, she killed innocent people. This young German girl who was about 10 was gang raped, she was also a helper in the murder of people" doesn't make it not true nor does it make this site pro-Nazi. Some of thee most arrogant comments I have ever heard.
In the end the soviets had no excuse to rape their own, rape those they did in Poland, Ukraine, and other eastern European countries and Germany. The brutal killings they did even after the war no excuse covered and you know that.
My Father has been keeping a war crime secret his whole life. He and another soldier came upon a group of Russians brutally raping a couple of teenage German girls. The Russians laughed and offered the two young Americans "seconds". At that moment my Dad and his peer killed the Russians with his M-1 and a 45. He is now 86 years old and in poor health, yet still afraid of being charged with a war crime.
Boo effing hoo. Germans did much worse than that everywhere they went and they started the war in the first place. Every one of their women deserved to be raped and murdered just like the Germans did. Lesson for crybaby Germas: Next time you animals start a war for a pack of mad dog psychopaths, be prepared to accept the consequqnces. P.s.: LOL at your precious "racial purity" when your pantywaist armies were too weak to defend your women from the REAL master races. Nazis are the stupidest filth that ever existed. If I were a Russian I would have raped and killed every last one of you animals.
Red Army was an army of animals, how do you justify the raping and plunder from the other countries, it happen in Ukraine,Romania,Poland everywhere the army of animals crossed and that army made more victims then then German one. I'm not German but i know from my grandmother what the great Red Army did, you Russians should shut up and stop being so proud of the massacre you did during WW2. Animals
Russian animals and beasts are todays treat to the world. You will do it to americans, chinese or anyone else. You are beasts with no emotions. Well, try to come to my country
Letter to the City Council of Atlanta (12 September 1864)
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.
William Tecumseh Sherman
Damn Ruskies!! May their grandchildren suffer a similar fate.
There were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. It is all propaganda propagated by the likes of Steven Speilberg. Jews just want the millions of dollars in aid from Deutschland! They are good in making even from their dead ancestors. Filth!
To Boo effing hoo from 10/9/2011 at 06:04 am .
You are just as pathetic as the Nazis. In fact, you meet basically every criterion that would have been required of a "good Nazi".
1.) You appear to have no compassion for non-combatants. In fact, you feel that you have license to classify anyone as a combatant purely based on their nationality. Even children are apparently fair game in your eyes.
2.) You dehumanize all Germans by referring to them as "animals" and use that along with distributed guilt as justification for committing atrocities against them. The Nazis also dehumanized and ascribed distributed guilt to all Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and others and then used that as license to do the same as you advocate doing to all Germans.
3.) You would have raped and killed every last one? Genocide is acceptable to you, eh?
I've heard that those that most vehemently and virulently oppose some group or issue are typically those that have the most in common with that group or issue. The vitriol is a self-defense mechanism triggered by the internal struggle between your conscience (which you seem to lack) and your true feelings on the subject.
BTW, if you had been a Russian and entered the American zone to perpetrate your little genocide game, you would have been shot down just like all the other racist scum that tried to fulfill their ethnic cleansing agenda in our zone.
I agree, there are no nationalities in a moral right or wrong action..right is right and wrong is wrong, anybody justifying their actions by nationalistic standards are exactly the same as their supposed proponents
I'm a German and was born in Berlin after WW2.
All my Aunts, my Mother, my Grandmother, the Mother of my Sister were raped.
The Mother of my sister has died after several gang-rapes.
My most liked aunt had several gang-rapes, and for that lost her sexuality. The result was, that she later hanged herself to death (1953)
This story is not new, it was known even in the autuum of 1945 in Denmark.
What seems to be missing here are several points. The russians used to some extend peasant soldiers from asian provinces for the final fightings. They wanted to spare "proper" russians, and at the same time diminish russian minorities. Some of these units were encouraged to rape german women, as their rewards after the fighting. That is not news either.
But in the context: Rape is better than death. We all have a hard time today understanding what things were like at the time. Rape is illegal and unpleasant. But to survive is more important.
Now someone might look into accusations of rapes committed by US soldiers. Or atrocities.
Any army will hold its fair share of psychopaths. And there was no publicity, when US personnel digressed.
They were solemly sent back to the states, and the cases buried in the archives.
When you encourage young men to go out and kill other young men, and to be killed in turn, it is no wonder that at the end terrible acts are going to occur. It is not a matter of whether they were Russian, or German or American, or any other nation for that matter. War creates monsters, and monsters commit atrocities. The solution is to stop warring! Realize that this is not a race issue or a nation issue. This is a HUMAN issue. Decent men do not advocate killing others for revenge and especially not the offspring or kin or countrymen of those that offended them! Decent men act decently in all circumstances and do not stoop to revenge. Vengeful men create wars, and wars create atrocities, which in turn create more vengeful men and more wars, and the cycle is perpetuated! The solution: Stop seeking revenge and seek understanding instead!
As long as money rules the world, we'll have wars. You can cry for peace and civility but you're wasting your breath.
Just a question? Who has started the war, killed millions of russian women, children, men....and destroyed nearly whole Russia? Who has killed millions of german, austrian, polish, czechoslowakian, french, danish, jugoslavian citizens, who has brought to the superiority "camps of dead" in Treblinka, Matthausen...etc. ? I see it just simple: german women (please note they are still alive able to speak about this ......thousands of russian women have had never the possibility to speak, because they have just been shoot...) had to pay the price for guilty of german men and german nation. I am also part Russian and I want to write: If it was me, who had lost the entire family....I would like to burn whole Germany into ground and no more German would exist more in accordance to their actions during WW2. Of course, these ladies were victims and russian boys were pigs time to time......but it was war. War started by Germans.....
One beast has beaten another. Good for me....I Germans won, I would be never born.
In a war, any war, the assemblance of anything you were before the war is gone. You are no longer a banker or a shop keeper, you are a killer. This is now your job and duty. Ugly as it is. I see very little difference in the German Socialist army (NAZI) and the Russian Socialist army (Red) They both inflicted terrible atrocities on other human beings (non combatants) because the were unarmed, out numbered and vulnerable. Armed soldiers (combatants) were shot to death or in some cases hung. But in both cases, the Soviet army and the German armies gave up any right to call themselves 'soldiers' once these mass atrocities began and perpetuated. As long as there is recorded history, I believe that that both Red army and Nazi army will be remembered as ruthless thugs whom did not have enough honor or dignity to even wear a uniform. Now there is some good news for any of you Russians or Germans who are reading this post. There is the possibility that another Ice Age will come to the earth, and this, and only this will wipe away the history of what your fathers and grandfathers did to women and children for the glory of your Fatherland and Motherland. In contrast, my father was in the 89th infantry under George Patton's command, and they drove Hitler so far back, that he killed himself. All of his immediate staff, his girlfriend. They died by their own hands. I'm very proud of my father, he was a soldier that showed honor, courage and compassion when faced with what you did to each other. Shame on you both, forevermore.
To the moron above, it was the Russians that defeated the Reich at a high price, not idiotic Americans whose only real battle ever against an equal opponent was the "Battle of the Bulge" LOL (if you can call it that, given the Heer and Waffen-SS were exhausted by 5 years of war). This is why this one battle gained a mythical status among afficionados of the US army. But there were thousands of engagement slike that on the Eastern Front.
Granted, you morons didn't have Burger King in your army camps yet
at the time. Must have been hard, eh?
Everything else the US army did since 1944 was just a cakewalk, supported by maximal bombardment of civilians (Germany, Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc etc). These days you're so piss-poor at everything you can't even beat half-naked mudslims in their desert. What a joke.
Plus, half of the US soldiers in WWII were direct descendants of Germans immigrants so they fought against their country and their race (just because the average White guy loves nothing better tha blindly following orders and fighting for banking interests, instead of standing for his own). If I was one of those losers or their descendants, I would just shut up and make myself very small...
I think too many of us choose to blame single countries and nationalites with a general responsibility for the atrocities in war. As if proving that one country behaved shamefully should somehow overshadow and dismiss the awful behavior of another. The truth is, no-body on this forum was around to see the horror of WW2, yet they are able to form these convictions as if they have experienced the violence firsthand. I think we need to look at history as a complete picture, with consideration for ALL of the atrocity, and tack it on not as another condemnation of one single country and its people, rather as a blemish of mankind itself and the horrible things we are capable of. This is unfortunately why wars begin. Because everyone needs to be separate and clearly defined as something they can hold onto. Because without being White, Black, Asian, Latino, Middle-Eastern, a soldier, a banker, a nurse, a cop, a salesman, Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, Republican, Democrat, poor, rich, a son, a father, a mother, a daughter, a lover, what the hell are you? Ask yourself that.
I do not know if this is true, I was not there, I cannot comment. No doubt it would have happened somewhere as that is the nature of uncivilised people, unfortunately there are way too many uncivilised people worldwide for my liking. War is a terrible thing and as I have said many a time, the world was doomed from the point the idea of the weapon was conceived. The difference between man and animal is morality and the strength and conviction of those morals. Anyone who breaks any of the 10 sins is a criminal and is not civilised, regardless of what they have been through or where they are from, there is no excuse. I am not religious, but I do believe in the basis of most religions, treat others how you wish to be treated. If everyone did this, the world would would be a wonderful place to live.
I'm surprised soldiers would rape any women in contemporary warzones given the plethora of whorehouses made available to soldiers in need of busting a nut. Seriously.
What comes around goes around. Nazi Germany raped, killed and plundered first. Of course they get payment back with the same currency. Complaining about the "poor german women" beeing raped is simply moral lazyness.
If no mutual agreement exist (THAT WORKS IN PRACTICE AS WELL), the only justice is "An eye for an eye.."
A flawed justice is better than no justice. It might be tragic to say but the comcept of fairness and justice weights heavier than life, death and the right to your own body.
It is very amazing to see how humans who were bakers, farmers, bankers, school teachers and plumbers who were married, had kids, went to church on Sunday, were part of a small community where very small crimes were punished severely ...... can descend into that dark place where they can kill, rape, and torture without shame or remorse. Humans are amazing creatures.
It's true that war brings out the savagery of base primal behavior, where humans do what they did as uncivilized animals. It is ugly, and mean, and the rules of "civilization" don't apply. What would a pack of dogs do? They would rape and kill. They would eat each other if they were desperately hungry. Raping is part of almost any war. Sometimes it is dressed up to look like prostitution, but it's still basic raping.
PREVIOUS QUOTE (by anonymous coward) May 13, 2011 3:18 PM Anonymous said...
Where photographs of victims? Why are only some pictures, reminiscent of Nazi propaganda?
Beaver interviewed victims of rape? No? From then data about 1.5 million? Why not 3 million, or 1.280 thousand?
Where did Beevor statistics? Or is this not a story but a continuation of propaganda?
Where evidence not 2-3 women, but at least 150-200 thousand documented evidence of the raped women of these millions?
#1 WHY NO PICTURES? Are you insane? Who would take those pictures? Are you retarded?
Secondly, let's flip it around. Everything you said, but in regards to the jews, not german rape victims. I've heard exactly the same arguments, and quite frankly, the 'lie of 6 million' backs evidence that the number is grossly exaggerated looks solid. You're just a pathetic rape apologist.
BunBun4life Face the facts the Russian men for the most part (not all but most) are drunken idiots even today and that's why Russian women try to marry western men, just look on the internet. In ww2 I'm sure they were worse living in as backward country as the USSR was at that time, 2 to 3 million sounds way more accurate than 150k.
Anyone who is spewing hate towards any nationality or country is no different from people who start wars which are usually based on the idea that some nations are better then others.
I don't think one can find a war in the history of wars where rape did not happen.
The only way to stop history from repeating itself is to stop the hateful ideas that some nationalities and countries are better then others.
Blame some people over others is what leads to future wars.
The lesson that can be learned here is war brings out the worst in people.
You can only judge others if you have been in their shoes. Read individual accounts by German and Russian soldiers and you will learn that most of them were fighting for the countries and families and were manipulated by their leaders, and deserve credit for their bravery.
i am from greece and i am an christian orthodox these crimes are the actions of hell on earth the only thing that i can say is that things like that are happening today take a look at night when boys and girls sale their bodies for a few euros in order to buy drugs and get raped by our fellow people every night again and again war is not the reason of those rape the only reason is that they had the freedom to do it
Says the guys that lost the first war in Afghanistan against the same people. And was that why your God/Comrade Stalin begged repeatedly for the Allies to open a Western Front, and ordered US forces to halt short of Berlin and let the Russians take it?
I am not German nor Russian, but ww2 is most interesting subject to me.
I have watched many ww2 movies also read many books.
In my opinion the rape on German women after war is outcome of 6 years of ww2 in Europe, Hitlers aggression , propaganda by Nazi,blind faith of Germans on Hitler and his Nazi party.
what is happened is very cruel and unforgiven. we all should learn lesson from this and never to repeat this history . be a good civilized human being ,god bless us all
there are comments here who stick disgust. the rape of women and children is a heinous crime, but there are people here who defendim it just because they were German. There are people who are authentic monsters.
This issue will be debated for any decades to come. Some comments are rather simplistic and lack any form of intellectual thought or historical accuracy. It is truly amazing how many posters base their "historic" views based on conjecture, emotion and ignorance. Some people are just not comfortable with the actual facts that are based on scientific research methods, and are irrefutable. We can all agree that during armed conflict, atrocities occur indiscriminately, regardless of origin. It is true that during desperate times, people behave differently, for the most part, than they would in a society governed by codes of conduct, including, but not limited to religion, criminal/civil law, community standards to list but a few of mechanisms of a civilized society that demands self-control and regulation. It's important to remember to not paint every person with the same brush. We are each individuals with the capacity to think and form our own opinions separate from the State or Church, and any other firmly entrenched institution. We have the choice to listen to inner voice (conscience mind), or ignore our "moral compass", and follow the herd of sheep. More often than not, the human species is often it's own worst enemy. You don't need to point out the cruelty of the Second World War to make your point. Most people get it. Better yet, look around you TODAY!!! The entire planet is in a frantic race to the bottom. As the old saying goes, "Those that do not learn from history are bound to repeat it". Humans have a very short attention span, and lack the capacity to think in a linear pattern. We are conditioned to look for the "quick fix", rather than long term and sustainable solutions, especially on a global scale. What we will witness is the de-evolution of the human race in the decades to come. Unfortunately, humankind will not take the appropriate action before we implode as a "civilized" population. There is a slow and systemic erosion of human rights across the planet, even in so-called democratic states. It is so subtle that most "sheep" don't even notice the change. I'm not paranoid, just a realist who has been paying attention. I don't want to "excite" the dooms day prepers, they are already converted to the notion of an "any-day-now" apocalypse. Well, enough of the daily rant. I will leave you all with this famous quote: " Absolute power corrupts absolutely". Remember that on voting day! And for sake of your future, get out and vote!!!!
The whole subject is blown out of proportion considering true facts of WWII--most of the so called rape of German women by Soviet soldiers is simple propaganda and had nothing to do with reality. It seems that downplaying Soviet people's role as WWII victors has become a very important agenda for some western circles. Clearly, some people are very interested in demonizing Soviet soldiers with every possible mean available to them--it is heavily sponsored area and most of it is horrifying lye. Anyone who pays close attention to their arguments can identify that there is NO solid evidence what so ever to support their claims. Just saying that "something" happened does not mean that it actually happened, yet the intentional smearing is going on and on. How much credibility is there in all of this "made by order" propaganda? Knowing where "the legs" are growing from -- I would have to say NONE.
Speaking of the TRUTH...Are any of you aware that in 1964 there was an announced search for the German girl who was saved by Russian soldier Nikolay Masalov in Berlin (he is the prototype of the soldier from Treptower park monument). The "look for the girl" was announced in German newspaper "Junge Welt", and 198 German women came forward claiming that they were "the girl" who was saved by a Russian soldier in Berlin. However, even though they were all saved by various Russian soldiers (some of whom died while saving those children), none of those ladies happened to be "the real girl". Please feel free to verify the facts-- it is all credible. Why am I typing this? Simply to illustrate reality of who were the monsters and who were the heroes. Considering that Fascists are responsible for deaths of 50 millions Soviet people (dead and unborn)...and, yet, Russian soldiers were saving German children....So, who are the real monsters??? Ask yourself what is the truth before getting all emotional about false claims.
On the other hand, are you aware, that both, American and French soldiers raped German women? I bet not. And why no one talks about that? Ask yourself WHY? "Recorded" rapes by American soldiers went unpunished if they were white, but...that being said, black American soldiers were executed for the rape of German women (do not be surprised...it was still time of segregation in USA). As to lovely French army, well, they have had "Moroccan grenadiers" (African troopers), and there is a horrific record of them mass raping over 300 German women in underground metro station, and that was going on for days. So, why NO ONE talks about that?
So, lets not kid ourselves with fiction predatory accusations toward Soviet Army. One thing is real, if there is a massive propaganda of such type -- there is an "interested side" who manipulates...
None of us know what we would have done, on any side. We weren't there. Both the Nazis and the Russians did horrible things, and atrocities were committed against innocents on all sides. It was the worst war in history. I see little point in debating who was the darker culprit, under these circumstances... and I would offer sympathies to any human being who was apart of it.
Animals...
Bullshit. Germans were under orders not to rape. If they were caught raping a woman, they were shot, Nationalist had strict codes of honor as where the jew lead allied communist were encouraged to mass rape.
My grandmother's village was under both Nazi and Soviet control. She was almost shot by Russians in her native Romanian village, she escaped by running in the garden. The Russians were starved and left on their own devices by their army which made them wild and savage. They were being encouraged to pillage from civilians in order to survive, and when they killed civilians at random while being drunk (which they often did), they were never punished. Those who didnt want to fight anymore were being shot by their own NKVD agents.
When you're being treated like this by your own, how can you have any humanity left for strangers?
By the end of the war the Germans were also drained and exhausted. Food and army supplies didnt get to them anymore and they were totally overwhelmed with the much bigger Soviet army. Our peasants used to give them food and boots because many of the German boys were barefoot and their feet were frozen. Most of the German soldiers left were just boys...
When the Soviets came, all the captured Germans were executed (my grandmother witnessed it) and the Romanian soldiers were deported to Siberia. They stole everything and imposed severe food rations and a big famine began all over the country. This went on for over a decade until the Soviet troops finally left.
Romanians resent Hitler for signing the pact with Stalin behind their back, but the Nazi soldiers as a whole - no one complained about them. Our elderly always say the Germans were polite and disciplined - and most importantly they respected the Geneva convention! The same cannot be said about the Soviets, or about the Anglo-Saxons who cowardly attacked civilian targets in our country - always from the air, like the cowards that they were.
Well, how many Sovjet woman was raped by the German`s ? According to German historian`s , the German`s raped around 10 000 000 Sovjet woman with one million born children as result...I wonder why this is not mentioned ?
Pathetic ... rape against rape can't be simple "eye for an eye" ... seriously think the role of women and girls in a war ??? feeling depressed and sorry for every women
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Souvik Das : its very pathetic to not mention all raped women, so, why did you not mention the Sovjet women who was raped ? Are German women more worth than Sovjet women ?
Stepford-On-Hudson : well, The Germans were under orders to not rape in WEST..in east it was VERY different. So, you are just telling bullshit and I am sure the German researchers KNOWS more than you about these things
What a load of crap! Beaver or whatever his name was, had it for the Russians for the personal reasons and went apeshit every time the Russians were mentioned. I suspect it was something personal along the Lenin-Trotsky-Stalin line. The evidence presented are anecdotal at best and the main source for all this nonsense comes from a single source by one girl 10(Ten) years of age at the time) and amplified unreasonably over the years. The Cold War were coming, you see and one must be prepared on all fronds. So chill on all fronts. Jeep yourselves sane
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