[metesky]

For that fighting spirit of the Germans had another side to it. Hitler ruled by glamour and terror; his soldiers were driven by fear as well as zeal. In a war during which no British soldier, and only one GI, was shot for cowardice, at least 15,000 German servicemen were executed for dereliction of duty.

We now know that in the first winter of the war on the Eastern Front in 1941-42, more than 8,000 Russian soldiers died not in action but shot by their own army for cowardice or desertion. During the battle of Stalingrad alone, another 12,000 men of the Red Army were put to death pour encourager les autres. This was a regime fighting a desperate war that could nevertheless put to death well over a full infantry division of its own men. On the other hand, the Russians relaxed at the end of the war, with Stalin’s encouragement, by indulging in the greatest act of gang rape in history against millions of women in Hungary, Austria, and eastern Germany.

On one hand these numbers speak for themselves, on the other hand, given the conditions and the numbers involved on the Eastern Front, I'm a little bit surprised that the numbers aren't higher.

I know nothing factual about the rapes (or not) in Eastern Europe.

[AppyPappy]

They are higher. Soviet troops who retreated were machine-gunned by Commissars who stayed behind them. It was go forward or die.

On the Soviet side, there were probably more machine guns pointed at Russians than Germans.