April 20, 2005
FDR SENT US, WE'RE HERE TO HELP:
Germans relive Soviet mass rapes (Allan Hall, April 21, 2005, The Age)
German women who endured mass rape by Soviet soldiers at the end of World War II are breaking the silence of six decades to speak of the horror of their experiences.As the liberation of cities and concentration and POW camps are commemorated on the 60th anniversary of Germany's surrender, the raped women of Berlin say it is essential their fate is not forgotten.
In newspapers, on TV and radio, they recount the price they paid for being female and German at the hands of the Red Army soldiers who captured Berlin.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin authorised his army to look on women as spoils of war. Hitler's war had cost 22 million Russian civilians their lives, often in barbarous circumstances. But few could have foreseen the extent of the revenge.
At least 2 million German women are thought to have been raped.
One doctor deduced that of about 100,000 women raped in Berlin, 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide. An estimated 10 per cent gave birth. The death rate was thought to have been much higher among the 1.4 million victims in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia.
AdvertisementAdvertisementFormer Soviet war correspondent Natalya Gesse recalled: "The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to 80... It was an army of rapists."
But they were our rapists. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 20, 2005 2:31 PM
Unconditional surrender.
Posted by: Luciferous at April 20, 2005 3:07 PMHave you ever read Comes the comrade!, by Alexandra Orme? It's an amazing book from 1950 or so about a woman in Hungary and her family's travails as the Eastern Front moves back and forth through their area. Either she sugar coats things or she was very lucky to mostly run into Russian soldiers who are petty crooks rather than psychotic (some drunken gropes are as far as anyone goes...). Even the NKVD have more bark than bite, though the fact that the book was published at all must mean she made it to the West before the Soviets could consolidate power.
The Germans reaped what they sowed on the Eastern Front.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at April 20, 2005 7:33 PMNo comment yet about the rapine prowess of the Red Army?
Posted by: jim hamlen at April 20, 2005 9:22 PMI am playing the worlds smallest violin for the German people's suffering in WWII.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at April 20, 2005 11:39 PMDitto, Robert.
Posted by: oswald booth czolgosz at April 21, 2005 1:08 AMDitto Chris, Robert and Oswald.
Given that the German war aim on the eastern front was the extermination and enslavement of Russians, Poles and other Slavs; I'd say the German people were treated rather well by comparison. Nothing the Red Army did in Germany compared with the horrors inflicted on Russian civilians and POWs by the Germans.
They deserved what they got for their enthusiastic support of their beloved Fuhrer, and should have gotten more. If God can use the brutal Assyrians as his instrument for chastizing Israel for the worship of false gods, He can also use the Red Army to punish the German people for their sins.
Gee guys, couldn't you fined a broader brush to paint with? Children deserved to be raped as expiation for the sins of the German people? Absolute bull[wash].
Posted by: jefferson park at April 21, 2005 1:08 PMUmm, make that "find" rather than "fined" ... and I can't even say anything cute like "Preview is my friend" because I did preview the darn thing.
Posted by: jefferson park at April 21, 2005 1:14 PMJefferson, according to Christianity, yes, children deserve to be punished for the sins of their parents.
It's that Original Sin stuff Orrin is always going on about.
I have read German accounts of the retreat of the rural population of East Prussia from the Red Army. Horrible stuff. The behavior of the Germans toward each other was no better than the bahavior of the Russians to the Germans.
By that stage of the war, Stalin was using a lot of what are called 'Siberian' troops, so many of the European ones already having been killed.
That means Turkmen, mostly Moslems. Mass rape was part of their warfare long before Bolshevism came along.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 21, 2005 4:46 PMHarry;
It's fine for you to justify murder and rape, just don't act offended that others did it or pretend it was better when Communists did it than Nazis.
Posted by: oj at April 21, 2005 5:01 PMHarry, the Original Sin stuff doesn't stretch that far but nice try. BTW, I'm not taking up for the Germans. That's one of the reasons I so enjoy studying about Eastern Front in WWII -- Nazis get killed, Soviets get killed, its all good.
Of course mass rape has been a part of warfare since the beginning and yes Germans did treat their own people savagely, and not just during the retreat westward. Interesting but not relevent. I was responding to posts about the Soviet's conduct and whether the victims, specifically the victims at the lower end of the 8 to 80 range, "deserved" that treatment.
Nonsense.
Posted by: jefferson park at April 21, 2005 5:23 PM
That's an interesting pro-Stalin/anti-Islam line you're walking, Harry. The more typical explanation is that when Germany began to collapse, Stalin purposely withdrew "European" troops in favor of Asian troops because they will ill-trained, ill-disciplined and instructed to rape and pillage.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 21, 2005 6:23 PM