[redgolum]

You are right, in that I doubt the Soviet high command authorized the gang rape of civilians. There is a lot of evidence such things did happen however.

Most of the Soviet soldiers had lost family members, friends, and at times whole towns, to the Nazis. I doubt they felt very charitable when the situation was reversed.

As for looting, heck show me an army that doesn't grab what ever they can. The US and British troops had strict rules about "war prizes" and tried to limit it to captured weapons and military items (for many years they was a flood of old German Mauser rifles in the US markets). However, there were numerous stories of individual troops grabbing jewels, paintings, and in one case a whole art museum, and those are just the ones that got caught!

[DYR]

Well, looting, especially small scale looting, was admittedly less strictly prohibited. There were a lot of cases when soldiers would go foodhunting or grabbing something small for souvenirs. Some larger items were exceedingly popular, like cars - grandfather said, that cars were looted in such numbers, that there was special car yards established for keeping the cars taken from soldiers. Again that was not too heavily enforced, mostly because the higher ranking officers too could seldom resist a nice Opel. Also true, that most got away with it. However, the rapes, murders and outright robbery were most strictly prohibited, and were met with capital punishment on the spot. There were no mercy given over such crimes, and they were few in between.