Posted on 01/18/2018 1:30:31 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour.
Beria and Stalin, back in Moscow, knew perfectly well what was going on from a number of detailed reports. One stated that "many Germans declare that all German women in East Prussia who stayed behind were raped by Red Army soldiers". Numerous examples of gang rape were given - "girls under 18 and old women included".
Calls to avenge the Motherland, violated by the Wehrmacht's invasion, had given the idea that almost any cruelty would be allowed.
A number of other forces or influences were at work. Sexual freedom had been a subject for lively debate within Communist party circles during the 1920s, but during the following decade, Stalin ensured that Soviet society depicted itself as virtually asexual. This had nothing to do with genuine puritanism: it was because love and sex did not fit in with dogma designed to "deindividualise" the individual. Human urges and emotions had to be suppressed...
Most ill-educated Red Army soldiers suffered from sexual ignorance and utterly unenlightened attitudes towards women. So the Soviet state's attempts to suppress the libido of its people created what one Russian writer described as a sort of "barracks eroticism" which was far more primitive and violent than "the most sordid foreign pornography".
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
*ping*
You might not be aware, but there has been this big investigation trying to prove that in the last year. So far no proof has been found beyond the claims of you and Hillary.
Um...It’s Hillary that’s done the colluding with Russia via Uranium 1. Dear Rhino.
There is Russian collusion, just not with Trump.
Sorry noob. I didn’t. I said and still say no GI’s should die to protect Berlin from what the Nazis did in spades to Russia.
And a sane general wouldn’t and DIDN’T do it. Not in America’s national interest, especially when considering the invasion of Japan loomed on the horizon.
Take your uber white knight act elsewhere. GIs... dying for nazi Berlin. LOL
Her Uranium one deal was personal graft in 2010. That is not Russian interference in the 2016 election as you claimed.
Try again.
The cost would be considerably higher than 20 men. Then you have to give it back to the Russians based on the Yalta agreement. The welfare of the women in Berlin was not our concern at the time.
Careful... she’ll claim you’re having a rape fantasy.
When I read the headline I thought it was about the muzzies in Germany today.
“I was responding to the dude with the rape fantasy———”
—
I just read through this entire thread and did not see any poster that had a “rape fantasy”———not one.
.
Yep! As soon as we could assemble 5-or-6 more we should have nuked the Soviet off line.
Just as MacArthur was right 6-years later...We should have taken China out...
The total casualties the world has endured continues today unabated and far exceeds what they would have been then.
Sort of like the Redskins and Kirk Cousins. The horror (albeit financial) felt by the owner at giving him a long-term contract in 2015 is inconsequential compared to the current & future horror of giving him a contract these days.
This will be my last response to you on the matter, dear Rhino:
I said the Russians try to stir chaos and undermine Western institutions.
I NEVER said they colluded with Trump.
I NEVER said they flipped the key swing states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania on Election Day 2016. The voters in those states won the election for Trump. Not Russian cyber-trolls.
This does not change the fact though, that Russian and Chinese elites see it in their interest to infiltrate various institutions in our country by way of money, bribes, and other tools of influence.
Russia’s campaign to create a counter-information bubble to Western media, does not mean its because they care about truth. Sure some facts we wouldn’t otherwise know slip in through sources like RT, Sputnik, New Eastern Outlook and others. But in the end, they just want to replace the fake news already here with their version of equally fake news.
Or distorted history.
By sowing doubt into our political system, or distoring narratives about things like our history — then “disenchanted-by-BushObama” Americans such as yourselves take the bait and become sympathetic to Putin’s agenda and the Soviet/Empire-friendly version of events he uses to justify and ground his platform.
When in actuality, everything Kremlin-friendly media spotlights in the U.S. or Europe from 1) inviting mass migration of Muslims 2) to nation-building projects above to 3) to being in bed with globalist bankers - the Russian elite is guilty of also...perhaps even to a worse and far greater extent!
See by only focusing on America’s weaknesses and flaws as their frames of reference: the Putin generation has replicated those flaws/weaknesses for themselves — rather than building a country grounded on the best of both Russian and Western traditions that have been lost.
Sure, they talk up a storm about “Christian” values and things, but the reality is: the Kremlin’s very un-Christian, Soviet-style modus operandi of corruption swallows up whatever progress has been made within the society at large. And this hurts Russia’s future more than anything. Not ours.
Despite what CNN says, Trump’s victory is very proof that all is not lost in America.
(And all is not lost in Russia either, but Putin needs to go.)
The Russian troops in the field at the time did NOT KNOW this!!
Didn’t say they deserved it.
Yes it’s not well known that the allies committed war crimes in WW2. The scale of the German’s war of annihilation in Eastern Europe and Russia and the war against the Jews in all of Europe was of such a scale that most people didn’t care what happened to them. To the victor goes the spoils.
Most Europeans who survived the war have a favorable impression of the contribution made by Brit/American/Canadian troops et al.
But countries who fell under the spellcof both Nazism AND Sovoet communism remain resentful of Russia.
European civilians I mean*
” The guy clearly loathes the German people.”
—
It was the beginning of the end of a BRUTAL war. Many felt that way.
We all cheered when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima———and it wasn’t a hatred of the Japanese people that caused it,it was the end of a war.
War is hell.
.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.