Posted on 10/25/2008 7:57:11 AM PDT by PotatoHeadMick
Relations between Russia and Germany have not been good since Vladimir Putin's nationalist sabre-rattling this summer, but they are about to get a whole lot worse.
A new film about to be released in Germany will force both countries to re-examine part of their recent history that each would much prefer to forget. Yet it is right that the ghastly truth should finally be acknowledged.
The movie, A Woman In Berlin, is based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers and depicts the horror of the Red Army's capture of the capital of the Third Reich in April and May 1945.
Marta was one of two million German women who were raped by soldiers of the Red Army - in her case, as in so many others, several times over.
It was a feature of Russia's 'liberation' and occupation of eastern Germany at the end of World War II that is familiar enough to historians, but which neither country cares to acknowledge took place on anything like the scale it did.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
A close friend was born in Germany and, as a child, lived through WWII there.
At the end of that war, his father, a doctor, gave each family member a pill and told them to TAKE THE PILL if the Russians broke through first. If the Allies got to them first, throw the pill away.
I’ll let you guess what the pill contained.
A new film about to be released in Germany will force both countries to re-examine part of their recent history that each would much prefer to forget.
It is certainly not right. But the term ‘payback is a bitch’ applies here. Only it is always the innocent who seem to pay.
A friend/former co-worker’s German aunt was fathered by a Soviet rapist soldier during the war.
Just as an aside I saw “Downfall” a few years ago Germany's first movie on the last days of Hitler. It shows how insane things were in Berlin, like a sci-fi movie.
I read a book about this, I think the author’s name was Hildagard Kneff or Neff. She was an actress.
Sorry, but there’s no moral equivalence here. Take the fall of Budapest, for instance. The majority of Soviet troops who finally took the city were Romanians; there was little or no nazi activity in Romania and, for that matter, Hungary was largely uncooperative with the Nazi pogroms until Hitler replaced the government toward the end of the war. The Soviets (again, mostly Romanians) raped at least 200,000 women in Budapest alone and probably another 50,000 in the rest of Hungary. Many were tortured and killed. This had nothing to do with anything the Germans did in Romania or Russia (or Ukraine which, incidentally, saw the Germans as liberators).
There is little or no evidence of systematic rape on the part of the Wermacht or the Waffen SS at any time during the war. To be sure, there were atrocities and roundups of civilians to the camps. And total war is a brutal thing by itself. But the use of mass rape as a war strategy is and has been a consistently “eastern” phenomenon that probably I believe was adopted by the Russians and other slavs during the Mongol invasions. Even today, you only hear of such things occurring in places like former Yugoslavia and Georgia.
Of course the Japanese also committed the horrific “Rape of Nanking” during which time anywhere from 300,000 to 600,000 Chinese women were raped, tortured, then killed and dumped in mass graves. That was a somewhat unique historical episode that to-date, no one has sufficiently explained.
is it just me who doesn´t think this way? how can the writer of this report assume that a film about 1945 can have an affect on current russian german relations?
“At the end of that war, his father, a doctor, gave each family member a pill and told them to TAKE THE PILL if the Russians broke through first. If the Allies got to them first, throw the pill away.”
Good point.
I think it was in Stephen Ambrose’s book “Citizen Soldiers” that he mentioned the fact that the US Army is the only army in the world that people run to, not away, from.
Downfall is in the top ten of all time great movies, period.
Don’t underestimate the power of little things to change relations between states, I’m not saying this movie will cause some sort of international incident, it probably won’t, but given the somewhat paranoid state of official Russian policy making these days it’s not inconceivable that it could have a political effect.
The Latvians recently moved one memorial tablet to the Red Army to a different area of their capital city (remember for the Latvians the Red Army was a invading army of conquest and occupation) and this almost sent the Russians into a state of apoplexy.
I don’t think of the Japanese as being an unusually violent people. However, I’ve read that the Japanese army had training programs which encouraged cruelty and atrocities by their troops. I also suspect that alcohol was a factor in atrocities by the Japanese and Russians, just as drugs are used by African warlord to encourage frenzies of cruelty by their forces.
A friend of my mother’s was a young girl in Berlin when the Russians arrived. She was raped. I also heard that the Russians were so backwards that they did not know what a flush toilet was used for. They would wash potatoes in them.
i watched it 10 times. Usually I hate subtitles, too much work, but that movie was fantastic. As a kid my Dad took me to see Alex Guinness as H in “Hitler the Last 10 Days” a cheap but entertaining movie so I read about 5 books on subject before Downfall and you really feel like you are there.
i agree that “little” things can change relations between states. but i guess most of this depends on when this things happen (and of course the general status of the relation between this countries.) i don´t think that germans citizens who watch this movie will blame current russian regime for this because it happend in 1945. they may blame russia for other things that happened in the recent past. btw you should not forget that germany and austria allways blames people who actually critizise “us” for events that happened in this past (because “we” tend to get angry about this). so i don´t think that germans are willing to blame russians for events in 1945.
Rape of the losers is part of the concept that the strong prevail over the weak. That is, the fittest survive Russian genes have entered and perhaps tempered the present German population.
The aversion to rape by conquerors is a post WWII concept. It has been a part of war from the beginning. It is always part of tribal war in Africa
It is evolution in action
“in places like former Yugoslavia and Georgia.”
ack! I wish they’d change the name of that place. (Georgia)
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