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Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

Because of the propaganda generated during the Cold War and the difficulty in getting at Soviet records, I suspect that there has been a lot of exaggeration on just how widespread the raping and looting was. Some of this exaggeration was deliberate (because it fed on the West's negative stereotypes with respect to the Slavs and the Soviets). And some of it was hysterical attribution. (Five reports become 20, then 20 becomes 200, then it is tens of thousands. In the absence of contrary evidence (due to Soviet secretiveness), who can effectively dispute such allegations?)

As your grandfather noted, this is not to say that individual incidents didn't happen. They did. But they were just that; individual acts of criminality. It must be remembered that the Soviet Army numbered well over 300 divisions at the end of WWII and most of those divisions (along with their corps, army, and front support units) were involved in the fighting in Russia and Eastern Europe. Even if only a small fraction of soldiers raped or looted, the sheer number of men under arms that were moving among a vulnerable enemy population meant that there were going to be a lot of incidents. (BTW, this also applies to Allied armies on the western fronts as well.)

Acknowledging that fact doesn't make it policy. In fact, the order your grandfather helped distribute and the harsh punishment of it's violators recognizes an age-old truth with respect to this behavior; an army that has gone over the extensive raping and looting has become a rabble that cannot be relied upon to carry out its combat tasks. It is also extremely vulnerable to counterattack in such a state of indiscipline. (Not to mention the hostility the abused population would have for the occupying forces in the subsequent period of occupation.) In the face of a still dangerous and undefeated enemy, this could not be permitted to happen to Soviet formations, regardless of the extremely justified anger nearly every Russian felt toward Germany and its people.

Thank you very much.

It is most unfortunate, that such exaggerated stories still circulate on both sides of the Pacific. We were allies. My granddad still has warm memories of Americans he met at the shores of Elba river. Such things should not be forgotten. Pity, that there are a lot of such "fairy tales" on both sides. Like not so long ago, on a Russian boards I had to fight myths that were in the Cold War times perpetrated about American troops, which are still alive today - the "mass rapes" by US troops of Okinava civilians, which "were never punished", of course, and that the Himeyuri Corps girls were deliberately murdered and raped by marines, and another particularly funny one, about Omaha landing never in fact occuring - some people there stated that there were never any German resistance on Omaha, and that the landing battle was a myth. I hope I've managed to displel those quite effectively, at least among the communities of these boards. It was not easy though.
US is also producing some serious BS sometimes, like a year and a half ago I had to send an angry email to "US Naval Institute Proceedings" magazine, that published an article stating that Yuri Gagarin was not the first man in space. It was corrected, of course. Or this "Berlin mass rapes" tale. But I wonder, whether such incidents on both sides will ever end. Pity.