Posted on 04/20/2005 10:58:08 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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.
Former Soviet war correspondent Natalya Gesse recalled: "The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to 80... It was an army of rapists."
Ah yes, the Great Patriotic War indeed.
Boy, Russia has just so much to be proud of.
I'm sure there were plenty of similar stories on the Russian side as well.
Considering the relative lack of resistance the Western Allies faced in Germany, how many Soviets needlessly lost their lives in the Battle of Berlin, because they left the Germans no option but to fight?
Except these rapes happened AFTER the war was over...
"Hitler's war had cost 22 million Russian civilians their lives, often in barbarous circumstances."
So instead of taking their revenge on German men of military age, they attacked weaker women. Savages.
And the Soviet Union continued to rape East Germany and East Berlin for another 45 years.
Both sides on the Eastern Front committed more atrocities than anyone except God knows about.
Many German women killed themselves even before the Soviets arrived in Berlin because they had heard about the rapes.
Along with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary...
Germans complaining about atrocities committed during WW 2 is kind of ironic, don't ya think?
"Both sides on the Eastern Front committed more atrocities than anyone except God knows about."
Exactly.
I didn't help that Stalin encouraged Zhukov and Koniev race each other to Berlin.
The Soviets were not alone in committing atrocities. The French declared a three day plundering right in their sector after the war and raped, pillaged, plundered, and murdered at will. The French in Mannheim attempted to march on Heidelberg to pillage the town and discovered Patton in their way.
Stuff happens in war and while the individual women certainly have my sympathies, the lesson here is that countries should not get into wars unless they are prepared to pay the piper should they lose.
I wonder what our reaction here would be to Japanese female citizens of Nagasaki and Hiroshima bitching about the US dropping the bomb on them.
War = mass rape.
Since Sargon I invaded Sumer, it has been so.
(1) No one deserves to be raped.
(2) I doubt these women had any knowledge of atrocities being committed on the Eastern Front.
I doubt too many German soldiers wrote letters to their wives saying: "Hey, honey! We rounded up some Jews today and packed them off in cattlecars, and then we raped and killed some Russian peasant girls! Seen any good movies lately?"
What are you implying about our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq?
That having been said, I'm glad our soldiers for the most part did not behave like the Soviets did. The Soviets raped their part of Germany. We gave our part the Marshall Plan, and sacrificed our own men to defend the freedom of West Berlin. History clearly showed we were in the right.
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