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 ...
Re: “They did in the Gulag before and after.”
Not sure I understand.
Russian women were mass raped in the Gulags?
Summary executions in the Gulags?
Former soldiers were sent to the Gulags for raping German women?
A lot of irony there.
Part of Patton’s running out of fuel was to support Monty and his Market Garden fiasco. Patton very possibly could have shortened the war by 5 or 6 months if supported and the idiotic Market Garden was skipped.
Then the Brits wanted that big northern sweep for Monty because the V-2 sites were there. Nevermind the best way to stop V-2s was to end Nazi Germany.
Um, not your last sentence. But everything else yes.
There are all these photos of German women looking at Hitler acting like a crowd of girls trying to see Justin Bieber after the concert.
After the war, my immigrant German grandparents, living in a Chicago suburb since the early 1900's and owning a prosperous bakery, sponsored her, and she came to live in their suburb for about a year.
She opened a beauty shop on borrowed money which catered to rich people, her clients including the women members of the mobster Tony Accardo and the mobster Sam Giancanna families who lived in her Chicago suburban area. She made a lot of money, often traveling to Italy with the mafia wives to take care of their hair and beauty needs while visiting abroad.
She retired to Tucson AZ where she invested in another beauty salon, again prospering.
Now deceased, she never married.
The scars remained
Leni
>The Russians were the biggest victims of Stalin JohnyBoy, not the Germans.
The Russian’s don’t see it that way any more than Americans see Lincoln as a great butcher for killing 800,000 Americans over slavery with about another million former slaves who starved to death after the war. Slavery is an issue that was regularly delt with by paying the slave owners off for their slaves in other nations. But Lincoln had to have his war.
History is a funny thing, Rosy girl. People lionize the butchers because they won. Only in defeat do people dwell on the crimes committed. Getting upset when people don’t want to focus on the crimes that came with the victory is just plain stupid.
“The Russians were the biggest victims of Stalin JohnyBoy, not the Germans.”
You see that photo the other day of the Alligator and the python fighting in Florida? It’s like that. Neither one deserves any sympathy or “we were better than the other” status. And they more they hurt each other, the better for us.
I absolutely agree with everything you said.
And Russia was NEVER great (although they did appear — and maybe were — powerful, thanks to the treason of the Rosenbergs).
I was being facetious. I should have put a /s at the end of my post.
And we know what Bandera and his UPA boys did to Poles in Volhynia.
The Guardian is covering this?
(Checking sky to see pigs flying.)
They were equal opportunity child rapers.
Poles, too. Even before Operation Barbarossa, the Russians in their occupied part of Poland were even worse to the Poles than the Nazis were.
This is barely scratching the surface.
During Perestroika and Glasnost, these stories were so accessible because of RUSSIAN people wanting to figure out the fates of relatives who were arrested, imprisoned, killed, etc...
But the trauma of the realizations proved just as big a burden as the desire to know the truth...and Putin put a halt to much of the archive digging, etc...So as Gulag historian Anne Applebaum says “like a pandora’s box, the past lies in wait for the next generation.”
But here’s a summary-type introduction. Also good to read authors the likes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and Svetlana Alexievich.
“Prisoners faced the constant threat of rape, both homosexual and heterosexual.
“[A]n excited group of prisoners gathered around a bench next to the wall,” recalled Janusz Bardach. “Those in the back row were jumping up, trying to see over the heads and shoulders of those in front, who were shouting obscenities and holding their penises….A young man lay on his stomach [in the baths], and another man lay on top of him, embracing him around the chest and moving his hips back and forth. His back was tattooed with shackles, chains, and the popular Soviet slogan ‘Work is an act of honor, courage, and heroism.’ On both sides were trumpeting angels. He breathed heavily, while the young man underneath moaned and cried out. The spectators shouted. I caught sight of the young man’s grimacing face.”
http://gulaghistory.org/exhibits/days-and-lives/conflict/4
“yes but the Nazi atrocities are well-documented and acknowledged. Largely due to the efforts of German people”
Yeah, the efforts of the German people -with- our boot on their throat. The ODESSA, the Gehlen organization, everyone hiding what Grandpa really did, sweeping it all under the rug, and claiming to be our new best friends to avoid the noose was much more indicative of the German mentality back then.
Yes you take my quote of context of course. You don’t mention Nuremberg trials, the American assistance in rebuilding with the Marshall Plan.
Among some of the reasons why despite losing the WAR, Germans live better today than Russians do.
The Russians "colluded" or, haven't you heard?
That is one serious screw loose to ask US soldiers in May of 1945 to get ready for Barbarossa II, along with rearmed nazis. There was already a lot of bitterness at the idea of them being sent to the Pacific to invade Japan.
That would have been fun to sell to the American public who all saw the easter front meatgrinder since 1941. And for what? To keep Germany safe?
Utterly insane. Patton was a good general, but like most good Generals, he also had a serious personal screw loose and should never SET national policy.
Plus all the propaganda had convinced people that the Reds were “good guys.”
They redeem themselves by spotlighting some great history authors.
Ironically this very author has a book about Stalingrad that Ukraine just banned this week.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/168024
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.