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 ...
War is hell!! Especially because of what the Nazi’s did to humans.
It will happen again if they keep importing Muslims.
Patton was right all along.
More Russians died at the hands of the Soviet State than the Nazis.
The Red’s army mass rape policies were ordered from the higher-up. Nor can it be blamed on Russians being Russian, since there were only 3 recorded rapes by the Russian army in WW1. The allied media is also complicit in covering it up. Despite it being common knowledge among allied troops about Red army’s behavior the western press didn’t report the story stateside.
Suicide in Berlin at the end was an epidemic.
There was a reason why any surviving members of the Nazi command structure fled WEST.
I don’t know about that.
We were in a Cold War for 40 years.
I think it’s commonly claimed that that was “payback” for what German troops did in Eastern Europe.But my gut tells me that the Soviet troops would have done this because they,basically,were savages.
Modern Russia’s desperate attempts to recapture lost glory after the fall of the USSR have forged them on the path to dominating the global historical memory of World War II. Especially under Putin. Hence the revived appreciation for Josef Stalin, the locking of Gulag archives, etc..
Americans on the other hand, don’t seem to want to take credit for anything. Even though by and large, the collective memory of Europeans who survived the war view our contributions favorably and NOT the USSR. (Many Europeans and to deal with the occupations and conquests of BOTH Soviet and Nazi troops.)
I read The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan as a teen. (I read all three of his WWII books then).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Battle_(Ryan)
I always remember the story of the anti-Naxi a German a Communist woman who couldn’t wait for the Red Army to arrive. When they finally did, she joyously came out if hiding to rush out to meet them and be part of the celebration, join them as comrade.
They immediately gang raped her.
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. Freud's work was banned, divorce and adultery were matters for strong party disapproval. Criminal sanctions against homosexuality were reintroduced. The new doctrine extended even to the complete suppression of sex education. In graphic art, the clothed outline of a woman's breasts was regarded as dangerously erotic. They had to be disguised under boiler suits. The regime clearly wanted any form of desire to be converted into love for the party and above all for Comrade Stalin.
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". All this was combined with the dehumanising influence of modern propaganda and the atavistic, warring impulses of men marked by fear and suffering.
The novelist Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent attached to the invading Red Army, soon discovered that rape victims were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for slave labour. "Liberated Soviet girls quite often complain that our soldiers rape them," he noted. "One girl said to me in tears: 'He was an old man, older than my father'."
Stories like these are never told in the classroom or on television.
—
Back a long time ago it was on TV in numerous documentaries and, I think, in the papers back in the late 50s.
Yes, because the Wehrmacht and Einsatzgruppen were such perfect Gentlemen in Russia. /s
Some think its why he died in that ‘car accident’.
The Germans respected the heck out of him. He had Bavaria clean and lit, with water running and food flowing inside of a month.
He had German officers training German troops in camps to resume law and order.
They idolized him. Ike fired him for it.
No of course not. I don’t think that’s the writer’s point do you? He’s not defending the Nazis at all!
Who did they think they were? Harvey Weinstein? Al Franken? Bill Cosby? Bill Clinton?
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