Women captured by the Germans. How the Nazis mocked captured Soviet women. Fanatics of the Soviet army - About the atrocities of the Soviet "liberators" in Europe

The black myth about hundreds of thousands and millions of German women raped in 1945 by Soviet soldiers (and representatives of other nations) has recently become part of an anti-Russian and anti-Soviet information campaign. This and other myths contribute to the transformation of the Germans from aggressors into victims, the equalization of the USSR and Nazi Germany, and ultimately to the revision of the results of the Second World War with all the ensuing historical geopolitical consequences.

On September 24, the liberal press again recalled this myth. On the website of the Russian service of the BBC, a large material was published: "The rape of Berlin: an unknown history of the war." The article reports that a book is going on sale in Russia - the diary of an officer of the Soviet Army Vladimir Gelfand, in which "the bloody everyday life of the Great Patriotic War is described without embellishment and cuts."

The article begins with a reference to the Soviet monument. This is a monument to the Soldier-Liberator in Berlin's Treptow Park. If for us this is a symbol of the salvation of European civilization from Nazism, then “for some in Germany, this memorial is an occasion for other memories. Soviet soldiers raped countless women on their way to Berlin, but this was rarely talked about after the war, either in East or West Germany. And in Russia today, few people talk about it.”

Vladimir Gelfand's diary tells about the lack of order and discipline in the regular troops: meager rations, lice, routine anti-Semitism and endless theft. As he says, the soldiers even stole the boots of their comrades.” And also reports on the rape of German women, and not as isolated cases, but to the system.

One can only wonder how the Red Army, in which there was no “order and discipline”, “routine anti-Semitism and endless theft” reigned, where the soldiers were criminals, stealing things from their comrades and raping girls in droves, was able to defeat the “superior race” and the disciplined Wehrmacht . Apparently, they were “filled up with corpses,” as liberal historians have been convincing us for a long time.

The author of the article, Lucy Ash, calls to cast aside prejudice and learn the true history of the Second World War with all its unsightly sides: "... future generations should know the true horrors of war and deserve to see the unvarnished picture." However, instead, it only repeats black myths that have already been refuted more than once. “What was the real scale of the rapes? The most commonly quoted figures are 100,000 women in Berlin and two million throughout Germany. These figures, hotly disputed, have been extrapolated from the meager medical records that have survived to this day."

The myth of hundreds of thousands and millions of German women raped in 1945 by Soviet soldiers has been regularly raised over the past 25 years, although it was not raised either in the USSR or by the Germans themselves before perestroika. In 1992, a book by two feminists, Helke Sander and Barbara Yohr, Liberators and Liberated, was published in Germany, where this shocking number appeared: two million.

In 2002, Anthony Beevor's book "The Fall of Berlin" was published, in which the author cited this figure without paying attention to its criticism. According to Beevor, he found in the Russian state archive reports "on the epidemic of sexual violence in Germany." These reports at the end of 1944 were sent by the NKVD officers to Lavrenty Beria. “They were passed on to Stalin,” Beevor says. - You can see by the marks whether they were read or not. They report mass rapes in East Prussia and how German women tried to kill themselves and their children to avoid this fate.”

Beevor's work cites the following data: “According to the estimates of the two main Berlin hospitals, the number of victims raped by Soviet soldiers ranges from ninety-five to one hundred and thirty thousand people. One doctor concluded that approximately one hundred thousand women had been raped in Berlin alone. And about ten thousand of them died mainly as a result of suicide. The number of deaths throughout East Germany must be much higher if one takes into account the 1400,000 rapes in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. It appears that in total about two million German women were raped, many of whom (if not most) suffered this humiliation several times.

That is, we see the opinion of "one doctor"; the sources were described by the phrases "apparently", "if" and "it seems". In 2004, Anthony Beevor's book "The Fall of Berlin" was published in Russia and became a "source" for numerous anti-Soviet people who picked up and spread the myth of "Soviet rapist soldiers". Now another similar "work" will appear - Gelfand's diary.

In fact, such facts, and they are inevitable in war, because even in peacetime violence is one of the most common crimes, they were an exceptional phenomenon, and severely punished for crimes. Stalin's order of January 19, 1945 read: “Officers and Red Army men! We are going to the country of the enemy. Everyone must keep his composure, everyone must be brave ... The remaining population in the conquered areas, whether German, Czech or Pole, should not be subjected to violence. The guilty will be punished according to the laws of war. In the conquered territory, sexual intercourse with the female sex is not allowed. Those responsible for violence and rape will be shot.”

Marauders and rapists were fought hard. Criminals fell under military tribunals. For looting, rape and other crimes, the punishments were severe: 15 years in camps, a penal battalion, execution. The report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front on illegal actions against the civilian population for the period from April 22 to May 5, 1945 contains the following figures: 124 crimes were recorded in seven armies of the front for 908.5 thousand people, of which 72 were rapes. 72 cases per 908.5 thousand. Where are the hundreds of thousands of raped German women?

Tough measures quickly extinguished the wave of revenge. It is worth remembering that not all crimes were committed by Soviet soldiers. It was noted that the Poles especially took revenge on the Germans for the years of humiliation. Former forced laborers and prisoners of concentration camps were freed; some of them took revenge. Australian war correspondent Osmar White was in Europe in the ranks of the 3rd American Army and noted: “... when former forced laborers and prisoners of concentration camps filled the roads and began to rob one town after another, the situation got out of hand ... Some of the survivors of the camps gathered in gangs in order to settle accounts with the Germans.

On May 2, 1945, the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front, Yachenin, reported: “Violence, and especially robbery and hoarding, is widely practiced by repatriated people who go to repatriation points, and especially Italians, Dutch and even Germans. At the same time, all these outrages are being blamed on our military personnel ... ”Stalin and Beria reported the same thing:“ In Berlin there are a large number of Italians, French, Poles, Americans and British prisoners of war released from camps, who take personal belongings and property from the local population, load on wagons and heading west. Measures are being taken to seize their looted property.”

Osmar White also noted the high discipline in the Soviet troops: “There was no terror in Prague or other part of Bohemia by the Russians. Russians are harsh realists in relation to collaborators and fascists, but a person with a clear conscience has nothing to fear. Severe discipline prevails in the Red Army. There are no more robberies, rapes and bullying here than in any other zone of occupation. Wild stories of atrocities emerge from exaggerations and distortions of individual cases, influenced by Czech nervousness caused by the immoderation of the manners of Russian soldiers and their love of vodka. One woman who told me most of the hair-raising tales of Russian brutality was eventually forced to admit that the only evidence she saw with her own eyes was drunken Russian officers firing their pistols into the air or at bottles..."

Many veterans and contemporaries of World War II noted that strict discipline prevailed in the Red Army. Do not forget that in the Stalinist USSR they created a society of service and creation. They brought up heroes, creators and producers, not punks and rapists. Soviet troops entered Europe as liberators, not conquerors, and Soviet soldiers and commanders behaved accordingly.

It is worth recalling that the Nazis, representatives of European civilization, behaved like animals on Soviet soil. The Nazis slaughtered people like cattle, raped, wiped entire settlements from the face of the earth. For example, what was an ordinary soldier of the Wehrmacht, it was told at the Nuremberg trials. A typical corporal of the 355th security battalion, Müller, killed 96 Soviet citizens during the occupation, including the elderly, women and infants. He also raped thirty-two Soviet women, and six of them were killed. It is clear that when it became clear that the war was lost, many were seized with horror. The Germans were afraid that the Russians would take revenge on them. And the just punishment was deserved.

In fact, the first to launch the myth of "red rapists" and "hordes from the East" were the ideologists of the Third Reich. The current "researchers" and liberal publicists only repeat the rumors and gossip that were invented in Hitler's Germany in order to intimidate the population and maintain its obedience. So that the Germans fought until the very last moment. So that death in battle seemed to them an easy fate compared to captivity and occupation.

The Reich Minister of Public Education and Propaganda of Germany, Joseph Goebbels, wrote in March 1945: “... in fact, in the person of Soviet soldiers, we are dealing with steppe scum. This is confirmed by the reports of atrocities that have come to us from the eastern regions. They really cause horror ... In some villages and cities, all women from ten to seventy years old were subjected to countless rapes. It seems that this is done by order from above, since one can see an obvious system in the behavior of the Soviet soldiery.

This myth was immediately replicated. Hitler himself addressed the population: “Soldiers on the Eastern Front! For the last time, the mortal enemy in the person of the Bolsheviks and the Jews goes on the offensive. He is trying to defeat Germany and destroy our people. You, soldiers on the Eastern Front, for the most part already know for yourself what fate is prepared for, first of all, German women, girls and children. While old people and children will be killed, women and girls will be reduced to barracks prostitutes. The rest will go to Siberia.” On the Western Front, German propaganda instead of Russians used the image of a Negro raping blond German women to intimidate the local population.

Thus, the leaders of the Reich tried to force people to fight to the end. At the same time, people were driven to panic, mortal horror. A significant part of the population of East Prussia fled to the western regions. A series of suicides took place in Berlin itself. Entire families passed away.

After the war, this myth was supported by Anglo-Saxon publications. The Cold War was in full swing, and the United States and Britain waged an active information war against Soviet civilization. Many myths that were actively used in the Third Reich were adopted by the Anglo-Saxons and their accomplices in Western Europe. In 1954, The Woman in Berlin was published in the United States. Its author is the journalist Martha Hiller. In West Germany, the diary was published in 1960. In 2003, The Woman in Berlin was reprinted in many countries, and the Western media eagerly picked up the theme of “Germany raped”. A few years later, the film "Nameless" was made based on this book. After that, the work of E. Beevor "The Fall of Berlin" was accepted by liberal publications with a bang. The ground has already been prepared.

At the same time, the West turns a blind eye to the fact that American, French and British troops are responsible for mass crimes in Germany, including rape. For example, the German historian M. Gebhardt believes that the Americans alone raped at least 190 thousand German women, and this process continued until 1955. Soldiers from the colonial units - Arabs and Negroes - were especially atrocious. But in the West they try not to remember this.

Also, the West does not want to remember that a strong German socialist state of the GDR was created on the German territory controlled by the USSR (the 6th economy in Europe in 1980). And "raped Germany" was the most faithful and self-sufficient ally of the USSR in Europe. If all the crimes that the followers of Goebbels and Hitler write about were real, then it would hardly be possible in principle to have good neighborly and allied relations that lasted more than four decades.

Thus, there really were rapes of German women by Soviet soldiers, there are documents and statistics on the number of convicts. But, these crimes were of an exceptional nature, they were not of a massive and systematic nature. If we correlate the total number of those convicted for these crimes to the entire number of Soviet troops in the occupied territories, then the percentage will turn out to be quite insignificant. At the same time, crimes were committed not only by Soviet troops, but also by Poles, French, Americans, British (including representatives of the colonial troops), prisoners of war released from camps, etc.

The black myth about "Soviet rapist soldiers" was created in the Third Reich to scare the population, to force them to fight to the end. Then this myth was restored by the Anglo-Saxons, who waged an information war against the USSR. This war continues at the present time, with the aim of turning the USSR into an aggressor, Soviet soldiers into invaders and rapists, in order to equalize the USSR and Nazi Germany. Ultimately, our "partners" are striving to revise the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War, with all the ensuing historical and geopolitical consequences.

Samsonov Alexander

Look at the maps of military operations, at the fat arrows of military operations, at the blots of areas where units and subunits are deployed, at the combs of positions and flags of headquarters. Look at the thousands of names of settlements. Big and small. In the steppes, mountains, forests, on the shores of lakes and seas. Strain your inner vision, and you will see how locusts in uniforms fill cities, settle in villages and villages, reach the most remote farms and everywhere leave behind them the tormented bodies and devastated souls of raped women.

Neither army brothels, nor local prostitutes, nor front-line girlfriends are able to replace the ritual of violence for a soldier. He does not feel a need for physical love, but a thirst for destruction and unlimited power.

“There are a lot of prostitutes in the fascist convoys serving German officers. In the evenings, Nazi officers drive up to the carts from the front, and drunken orgies begin. Often, Hitler's thugs bring local women here and rape them ... "

It is difficult to say what goes on in the mind of a soldier when he turns into a rapist. In the mind, inexplicable, satanic, terrible things happen.

Only WAR can know about this.

A dark and incomprehensible story is associated with the name of the Commander of the Order of Courage, Colonel Yu.D. Budanov, who, fighting in Chechnya, arrested an 18-year-old girl in the village of Tangi-Chu and allegedly raped and strangled her during interrogation. At least they remained alone for more than an hour, after which the Chechen woman was found naked and dead.

The scandal shook the country for almost a year and did not leave the pages of newspapers and television screens.

“Budanov claimed during the investigation: he had evidence that the mother of a young Chechen woman was a sniper, and he wanted to find out where she was hiding. The girl in response threatened him, began to scream, bite, reached for his gun. In the struggle, he tore off her jacket and bra. Then he grabbed her by the throat. The colonel was drunk and admitted that he committed the murder in a state of passion. He denied the fact of rape.

As the examination showed, the stress disorder was indeed the result of three concussions. Hence the inadequacy of behavior, the twilight state and the inability to control oneself. Therefore, at the time of the crime, the colonel was in a state of passion.

Budanov was carefully examined. In such cases, a person undergoes special testing.

So-called clinical conversations are held with the subject about his past, about past illnesses. Do aggressiveness tests. The patient is shown about 20 pictures of ambiguous content (two are kissing, one is peeping ...). For diagnostics, special devices are also used. For example, nuclear magnetic resonance, which reveals the affected brain cells.

The rape charge was eventually dropped.

The responses of the population in the press were very diverse, ranging from the paradoxical proposal to erect a monument to the colonel and confer the title of Hero of Russia to the bloodthirsty verdict: "He deserves the highest measure!"

But the closest to the truth was, in my opinion, a resident of the Sverdlovsk region, Lydia K.: “My son was killed in Chechnya by a sniper. I don't want revenge. But I consider it a mockery to try a man who was sent to war, but is judged by the standards of peaceful conditions.

“Yes, Dmitritch’s“ tower ”turned off,” Budanov’s subordinates said gloomily. “Sit here without getting out for half a year, look at the heads shot by the same snipers - you’ll climb a cow!”

Throughout human history, women have been subjected to violence in combat. “The history of mass rape is at the same time the history of massacres and pogroms. They raped at all times and in all wars. Always men have quenched their hatred on the weakest members of human society in order to enjoy the easily accessible triumph of a sense of superiority.

From ancient times to modern times, victorious soldiers have regarded rape as their birthright, a kind of reward.

The words of the call to the assault that have become winged: “There is wine and women in the fortress!” best characterize the attitude towards women in the war.

Alas, it was these words (or the incentive that they embodied) that often forced the discouraged soldiers to perform miracles of courage and heroism. "The body of a dishonored woman became a ceremonial battlefield, a parade ground for the victorious parade."

Women were simply raped, and raped to death. They raped and then killed. Or first killed, and then raped. Sometimes raped during the death agony of the victim.

Soldiers with the Order of the Legion of Honor and St. George's bows, with Iron Crosses and medals "For Courage" were raped.

Already in the Bible (in the Book of Judges) it is told about the kidnapping of women, which meant mass rape.

During the next civil war between the Israelis and the Benjamites, the Israelis, as usual, struck everyone “with the sword, and the people in the city, and the cattle, and everything that was encountered, and all the cities that were on the way were burned with fire.” And having killed all the women of the Benjamites, the Israelis in return decided to give the defeated compatriots trophy virgins and, especially for this, sent an entire expedition to Jabez Gilead. “And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men, strong men, and gave them orders, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh of Gilead with the sword, both women and children. And here's what you do: every man and every woman who knows the man's bed, put the curse. And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh of Gilead four hundred virgins who did not know the bed of a man, and they brought them to the camp in Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. And the whole congregation sent to speak with the sons of Benjamin, who was in the rock of Rimmon, and declared peace to them. Then the sons of Benjamin returned and gave them wives, whom they kept alive from the women of Jabesh Gilead; but it turned out that this was not enough.

Then the Israelites recommended to their former adversaries on the feast of the Lord to raid Shiloh, “which is north of Bethel and east of the road leading from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Levona. And they commanded the sons of Benjamin and said, Go and sit in the vineyards. And look, when the maidens of Shiloh come out to dance in round dances, then go out of the vineyards, and every one of you seize a wife from the maidens of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. And when their fathers or their brothers come with a complaint to us, we will say to them: “Forgive us for them; for we did not take a wife for each of them in the war, and you did not give them; Now they are to blame." The sons of Benjamin did so, and took wives according to their number from those who were in the round dance, whom they kidnapped, and went and returned to their inheritance, and built cities, and began to live in them.

The oldest literary evidence in Europe about rape in war is in Homer's Iliad. The Greek commander Agamemnon, who led the siege of Troy, tried to convince his hero Achilles to continue the fight with the promise that after the victory he would send all the women of the island of Lesbos and the city of Troy to the harem of Achilles, who would be "the most beautiful after Helen."

When the Vandals broke into Rome in 455, for fourteen days they not only robbed, set fire to and killed the inhabitants, but also staged the first mass hunt for women in history with the aim of raping them. Then this practice began to be repeated more and more often. Before the Vandals, "civilized" peoples tried to save the most attractive captives and virgins in order to sell them to slave traders as profitably as possible.

“There is also a scary find in Kyiv. Part of the layer of the death of the city is a potter's semi-dugout, in one half of which there was a workshop, in the other, separated by a stove, - a residential part.

Two people are lying at the entrance to the dugout: a man of average height with a slight Mongoloid appearance, in a helmet typical of the steppes, with a curved saber. And tall, without a shell, with an ax. On the floor of the workshop is the skeleton of a young woman, in a crucified position; two daggers are driven into the hands of the skeleton, the blades of which go deep into the earthen floor. And on the stove, in another “room”, there are skeletons of children of four and five years old ... Until ... the Mongols killed their father and raped their mother, the children climbed onto the stove ... "

In 1097, a detachment of Byzantine troops joined the crusader army of the First Crusade. Pretty specific squad. The fact is that the Byzantine emperor Alexei I Komnenos, having received a letter from Pope Urban III, began to call on volunteers to stand under the banner of the liberators of the Holy Sepulcher, luring them with the opportunity to rape conquered women with impunity during the campaign. And the Byzantines willingly went to war.

However, a woman as prey at all times attracted to the war all kinds of adventurers, pirates, conquistadors, vagrants and outcasts who were ready to risk their lives, and in return, in addition to enrichment as a result of robberies, they used the women of the vanquished.

For such, rape became something like a drug, a manic addiction.

The horror after the storming of Constantinople on April 12, 1204 during the Fourth Crusade was indescribable. "The sacking of the city is without parallel in history," writes English historian Stephen Rankman. He reports how the crusaders rampaged in the city for three days: "The French and Flemings were seized by a wild impulse of destruction and broke away from their occupation only to rape and kill."

However, when the Turks captured the city in 1453, the picture repeated itself. Rankman describes how attractive young girls and handsome boys who tried to find protection in St. Sophia Cathedral were sent by the Turks to their military camp.

During the Third Period of the Italian Wars 1521–1559. “The army slowly advanced through Namburg, Coburg, Bamberg, Nuremberg to Augsburg. At the same time, the Spaniards "badly managed." Along the entire path along which the emperor (Charles V, who was both the German Kaiser and the Spanish king) passed, there were many dead bodies. The Spaniards treated women and girls just as badly, sparing none of them. From Bamberg, they took 400 women with them to Nuremberg and, having dishonored them, drove them away. At present, it is hardly possible to convey all the horrifying details of their atrocities. But Bartholomew Zastrow, envoy of the Pomeranian dukes under Charles V, tells about them with great composure. “Isn’t this a playful nation? ..“.

Of course - playful, if the women were just driven away after being raped, and not chopped into pieces and hung on the branches of roadside trees. So, nevertheless, women and girls were not treated as badly as those whose bodies were seen by the emperor passing by.

And if the details of the atrocities have come down to our time in a very meager presentation, then let's pay attention to another aspect. Why was it necessary to dishonor someone if whole herds of “corrupt women” followed the army, easily serving the soldiers literally for pennies (and the soldiers had money)?

A terrible fate befell women in the Thirty Years' War. In 1631, the troops of the Bavarian field marshal and generalissimo Count Johann Tilly and the cavalry of the imperial general G.G. Pappenheim captured the Saxon capital of Magdeburg and staged a terrible massacre there. Of the thirty thousand inhabitants of the city, only about ten thousand people survived, mostly women. Most of them were driven by Catholic troops to their military camp for mass rape.

This is a manifestation of the thirst for violence, which has nothing to do with the satisfaction of sexual needs.

In the "Charter of the Sea" of Peter the Great, in chapter 16 of book five, the death penalty or exile to galleys is provided for those who "rape the female sex." But this applied to peacetime conditions. Try to keep the soldiers in the war!

And did Peter's grenadiers and dragoons really stand on ceremony in Noteburg and Narva?

There are descriptions of how, during the storming of Warsaw in 1794, Russian soldiers raped and killed Polish Catholic nuns.

Documents from 1812 tell how "girls of ten years old are raped in the streets." Fleeing from the French, young women smeared their faces with soot, dressed in rags, trying to look as less attractive as possible and thereby escape dishonor. But, as you know, "you can't hide a woman's nature." There are cases when Muscovites threw themselves from bridges to avoid rape.

Arnold Toynbee, later the world famous English historian, published in 1927 two books about the atrocities of German soldiers in Belgium and France at the beginning of the First World War: apparently with the approval of their officers, although without their orders, German soldiers were raped and placed in front-line or stage brothels a huge number of girls and women.

In the 1930s, the Japanese were atrocious in China. An example is the unprecedented rape of women in the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1936.

Here is the testimony of a Chinese woman, Wong Peng Jie, who was fifteen years old when the Japanese occupied the city:

“Father, sister and I have already been moved to a house in the refugee zone, where there were more than 500 people. I have often seen the Japanese come and look for women. Once a woman was raped right in the yard. It was at night, and we all heard her screaming heart-rendingly. But when the Japanese left, we never found her, apparently they took her with them. None of those they took away in trucks returned. Only one managed to get home after she was raped by the Japanese. The girl told me that the Japanese rape everyone many times. Once it happened: a woman was raped, and then a Japanese man began to poke cane stalks into her vagina, and she died from this. I hid every time a Japanese approached the house - that's the only reason they didn't catch me."

Only during the first month of the occupation of Nanjing, Japanese troops brutally raped 20,000 women, and in total, more than 200,000 women were raped here until 1945.

The accounts of women who were brought forward by prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials document numerous rapes in occupied areas during World War II. There is evidence of the use of sexual violence against Jewish women by security personnel in concentration camps.

However, the allies managed to "revenge".

So, in early 1945, French soldiers raped thousands of German women when they entered the territory of Baden-Württemberg.

The US Army recorded 971 convictions for rape during World War II. "There is no doubt that many rapes have gone unreported, since no official investigation into the misconduct of the Allied armies has been carried out."

I think that two more zeros can be safely attributed to the number 971.

Although the U.S. military penal code threatens harsh penalties, rape has mostly been met with tolerant command. In Vietnam, the American command also turned a blind eye to "incidents with Viet Cong women."

One of the US Marines explained the motives for rape during the Vietnam War: “When we searched people, the women had to take off all their clothes, and under the pretext of making sure they didn’t hide anything else where, the men used their penises. It was rape."

Do not rush to be indignant at this "naive" explanation of the Marine: "... you need to make sure ... the men used ..." Listen to the recollections of one of our "Afghans" instead.

“When leaving Jalalabad, in the town of Samarkhel, a truck was fired from the window of a small shop. With machine guns at the ready, they jumped into this lousy shop and in the back room, behind the counter, found an Afghan girl and a door to the courtyard. In the yard were a kebab seller and a Hazara water carrier. The dead paid off in full. It turns out that twenty-two kebabs can fit into a person, but the last one must be pushed with a skewer, and only then the person with the kebab in his throat dies. But the water carrier was lucky, he was immediately killed by automatic fire. But the girl was shooting, she was a pistol, such a beautiful one, she hid it in her shorts, a bitch ... "

It is not difficult to imagine the fate of this Afghan woman, if the search was carried out in her shorts. Perhaps there was no sexual intercourse as such at that moment. Rage and without it gave an excess of adrenaline. But after all, kebabs can be hammered into a person with a ramrod not only in the throat ...

At the same time, I involuntarily recall one document from the time of the Great Patriotic War. His friend Ebalt writes to the German lieutenant:

“It was much easier in Paris. Do you remember those honeymoon days? Russians turned out to be devils. Have to link. At first I liked this fuss, but now that I'm all bitten and scratched, I do it easier - a gun at my temple, it cools my ardor. Recently, a Russian girl blew herself up and Lieutenant Gross with a grenade. We now strip them naked, search them, and then ... After all, they disappear without a trace.

The fact that “the Russians turned out to be devils” was immediately noticed by the invaders.

“Among the reasons for the defeat of the Nazi troops on the territory of our country (along with severe frosts), German historians seriously call the virginity of Soviet girls. The invaders were amazed that almost all of them turned out to be innocent. For the Nazis, this was an indicator of the high moral principles of society.

The Germans have already traveled all over Europe (where many pliable women easily satisfied the sexual desire of the invaders) and realized that it would not be so easy to subdue people with a core, morally strong.

I do not know in what ways the German command received statistics on the presence of virginity among the victims. Either it obliged the soldiers to report, or it was the censorship of the military field mail, which “woolled” the soldiers’ letters, after which, with German accuracy, it compiled a classification of the raped for the higher bodies of the Imperial Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg. Perhaps these were special teams engaged in the study of the virginity and temperament of the future slaves of the Reich (which is quite possible after the creation by the Nazis of the Thule magical society and the whole system of Ananerbe research institutes, which breed a special breed of Aryan bees that send expeditions around the world to search for amulets and pagan artifacts, etc.).

In any case, it's disgusting.

But the history of mass rape in war did not end with World War II. Where the next armed conflict flared up, whether in Korea, in Vietnam, in Cuba, in Angola, in Afghanistan, in Yugoslavia, military violence gave rise to violence against women.

In 1971, the most infamous was the widespread rape that took place during the Pakistani invasion of Bangladesh. During this armed conflict, Punjabis raped between 200,000 and 300,000 women!

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a civil war broke out in Sudan. The black population of the Nubians was attacked by the Muslim Arabs of General Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The Sudanese government called it counter-insurgency.

African Rights co-chairman Alex de Waal issued a statement in those years: “What the Nubians endure is remarkably similar to the brutal treatment of black slaves in 19th century America: forced labor, broken families, sexual coercion.”

Most likely, Mr. de Waal put it rather mildly and diplomatically. Such "sexual coercion" can be seen in the example of his victim, Abuk Maru Kir, a resident of the village of Nyamlell in South Sudan. “Leaving behind 80 corpses, the soldiers drove the surviving residents into a column. Abuk then heard with horror the screams of her sister and other women being dragged into the bushes. Soon they took her. After she was raped by a third person, Abuk lost consciousness.”

Black women and girls were turned into concubines by government soldiers. Any child born from such a "marriage" was considered an Arab. One 17-year-old Nubian girl who escaped from slavery told an African Rights investigator that she had been raped for a hundred nights (!) in a row.

Women in Kuwait were treated ruthlessly by Iraqis during the Gulf War in 1990. It is estimated that more than five thousand women were raped here. Most of the victims were then driven out of their home by their husbands.

It is documented that mercenaries from the Middle East and Afghanistan raped women in Chechnya, as the local population was a stranger to them.

Soldiers raped not only spontaneously, satisfying their ferocity. In the 20th century, rape began to be resorted to as a means of terrorizing the civilian population.

A terrible trace was left behind by the troops of General Chiang Kai-shek in 1927 in Shanghai. They were ordered not only to deal with the fighters of the communist army, but also to rape and kill their women.

The French prosecutor presented materials at Nuremberg about mass rapes, which were used as retribution for the operations of the French Resistance. This proves that in some cases rape was used to achieve military-political goals.

And on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, "German troops systematically carried out mass executions of civilians, women were raped, and their naked, mutilated bodies were put on display by the surviving citizens." For intimidation.

When approaching Stalingrad, German planes, along with bombs, bombarded the city with leaflets: “Stalingrad ladies, prepare your dimples!”

At the end of the war, Soviet troops were given the opportunity to unleash their hatred on Germany.

As Viktor Suvorov wrote in his sensational "Icebreaker":

“The battalion drinks bitter vodka before entering the battle. Good news: they were allowed to take trophies, they were allowed to rob. The commissioner screams. Hoarseness. Ilya Ehrenburg quotes: let's break the pride of the haughty German people!

Black jackets are laughing: how are we going to break pride, by mass rape?

All this was not? (…)

No, it was! True, not in the forty-first year - in the forty-fifth. Then the Soviet soldier was allowed to rob, calling it the term “taking trophies”. And they ordered to “break German pride” ... "

I know that many refer to the books of V. Suvorov with a fair amount of skepticism, and therefore I do not abuse his quoting. But there are numerous testimonies of attacks by Soviet soldiers in 1945 on women in areas of East Germany, and above all in Berlin, which became the "city of women."

Fascists can not be trusted. But eyewitnesses from among the liberators are hard not to believe.

“... The headquarters has its own concerns, the battle continues. But the city is corrupting the soldiers: trophies, women, drinking parties.

We are told that the commander of the division, Colonel Smirnov, personally shot one lieutenant, who formed a line of his soldiers towards one German woman who was lying in the gateway ... ”(Description of the situation in Allenstein (East Prussia) after the entry of the Soviet Army at the end of January 1945, made by Leo Kopelev.)

Whatever they say, the female part of fascist Germany fully tried on the fate of the conquered nation.

Another veteran, who went through the war from the Kursk Bulge to Berlin, admits: “... Under fire, in attacks, I had no idea about it. (...) And in Germany, our brother did not stand on ceremony. By the way, the Germans didn’t resist at all.”

Cherepovets historian Valery Veprinsky noted:

“When our troops entered the territory of Germany, at first the command secretly allowed the soldiers to “quench their sexual hunger” - the winners are not judged. One acquaintance confessed to me that he and a friend passed through an empty German village, went into the house to take something valuable from things and, finding an old woman there, raped her. But soon a looting order came out. "The civilian German population is not our enemy," the command conducted explanatory work. And a certain citizen of Cherepov, the liberator of Europe from the brown plague, thundered in “Magadan, the second Sochi” after the German frau reported violence to the commandant’s office ... "

After the order for looting, the emboldened German women began to come with allegations of rape. There were many of these statements.

This led to new tragedies. Even in peacetime, the fact of rape is not easy to prove: polls, examinations, testimonies. And what can you talk about during the war!

Perhaps many of the vengeances slandered our soldiers.

But for me personally, the diaries of German girls, tormented by fear and already far from any ideology and propaganda, look most truthful.

Diary entries of 17-year-old resident of Berlin Lily G. about the capture of Berlin from 15.04. to 05/10/1945

“28.04. The fourth shell hit our house.

29.04. There have been about 20 hits in our house already. Cooking is very difficult due to the constant danger to life if you leave the basement.

30.04. When the bomb hit, I was with Frau Berendt upstairs on the stairs in the basement. The Russians are already here. They are completely drunk. They rape at night. I am not, my mother is. Some 5-20 times.

1.05. Russians come and go. All watches are gone. Horses lie in the yard on our beds. The basement collapsed. We are hiding at Stubenrauchstraße 33.

2.05. The first night is quiet. After hell, we ended up in heaven. They cried when they found a blooming lilac in the yard. All radios are subject to surrender.

03.05. Still on the Stubenrauchstraße. I can't go up to the windows so that the Russians don't see me! Around, they say, rape.

4.05. No word from father on Derfflingerstrasse.

5.05. Back at the Kaiserallee. Mess!

6.05. Our house has 21 hits. We spent the whole day cleaning up and packing. Storm at night. Out of fear that the Russians would come, I crawled under the bed. But the house was shaking so much from the holes.

But the worst thing is the fate of women in civil wars. In the fight against an external enemy, at least some clarity is observed: there - strangers, it is better not to fall into their hands, here - our own, who will protect, will not offend. In a civil war, a woman, as a rule, becomes the prey of both sides.

In 1917, the Bolsheviks, intoxicated with freedom, having misinterpreted it, clearly went too far with their projects for the nationalization (or "socialization") of women.

Here is a document drawn up on June 25, 1919 in the city of Ekaterinodar, after the entry of the White Guard units into it.

“In the city of Yekaterinodar, in the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks issued a decree, printed in Izvestia Sovet and pasted on poles, according to which girls aged 16 to 25 were subject to “socialization”, and those who wished to use this decree had to apply to the proper revolutionary institutions. The initiator of this "socialization" was the Commissar for Internal Affairs - Bronstein. He also issued "mandates" for this "socialization". The same mandates were issued by the head of the Bolshevik cavalry detachment subordinate to him, Kobzyrev, commander-in-chief Ivashchev, as well as other Soviet authorities, and the mandates were stamped by the headquarters of the “revolutionary troops of the North Caucasian Soviet Republic”. Mandates were issued both in the name of the Red Army soldiers and in the name of Soviet commanding persons - for example, in the name of Karaseev, the commandant of the palace in which Bronstein lived: this mandate granted the right to "socialize" 10 girls. Mandate template:

Mandate. The bearer of this comrade Karaseev is granted the right to socialize in the city of Ekaterinodar 10 souls of girls aged 16 to 20 years, whom comrade Karaseev points out.
(Commander Ivashchev.)

On the basis of such mandates, the Red Army captured more than 60 girls - young and beautiful, mainly from the bourgeoisie and students of local educational institutions. Some of them were captured during a raid organized by the Red Army in the City Garden, and four of them were raped there, in one of the houses. Others, including about 25 souls, were taken to the palace of the Army Ataman to Bronstein, and the rest to the "Starokommercheskaya" hotel to Kobzyrev and to the "Bristol" hotel to the sailors, where they were raped. Some of those arrested were then released - this is how the girl who was raped by the head of the Bolshevik criminal-investigative police, Prokofiev, was released, while others were taken away by the departing detachments of the Red Army, and their fate remained unclear. Finally, some, after various cruel tortures, were killed and thrown into the Kuban and Karasun rivers. So, for example, a 5th grade student of one of the Yekaterinodar gymnasiums was raped for twelve days by a whole group of Red Army soldiers, then the Bolsheviks tied her to a tree and burned her with fire, and finally shot her.

This material was obtained by the Special Commission in compliance with the requirements of the Charter of Criminal Procedure.”

However, the "White Guard" did not lag behind the Bolsheviks in this regard.

To paraphrase a well-known saying, one could say: "the reds will come - they rape, the whites will come - they also rape." (For example, young girls from cities and nearby villages were usually brought to the train of the ataman-general Annenkov, who was already mentioned by me, who was standing at the railway station, raped, and then immediately shot.)

Another form of rape in war was the sexual exploitation of women for the needs of the army or in the sex industry.

Roy Escapa, author of The Shadow Sides of Sex, wrote about how in 1971 Pakistani soldiers kidnapped and brought to army headquarters Bengali girls of school age, they were stripped naked so that they could not run away. They were also used for filming pornographic films.

“During the hostilities in Kosovo (1999), women were caught and forcibly kept in clandestine dens. They were used by American soldiers and former militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and then the concubines were killed and allowed “for organs”. They killed carefully so that these very organs were not damaged. And “they didn’t put me on a needle, and they didn’t give much alcohol so as not to spoil the liver and other organs,” says Vera K, a girl who miraculously escaped. During police raids, such slave brothels were covered. In the beams of police lamps, a terrible picture appears: in completely inhuman conditions - two by two on narrow beds and on stale linen, or even simply on shifted chairs, in tiny shabby rooms behind curtains - “girls” are being kept, they have long been different from girls. Drunk, smoky, exhausted, unwashed, with empty eyes, afraid of everything - they are no longer even fit for organs. They do their job and disappear without a trace. Finally realizing that now they can go free, one of them says: “Why? Where do I go now? It will only get worse… It’s better to die here.” The voice in which she says this is already dead.

During the Second World War, the forced sending of women to brothels was in the order of things. "War feeds war." In this case, she fed herself on women's bodies.

“In Vitebsk, for example, a field commandant ordered girls aged 14 to 25 to come to the commandant's office, ostensibly to be assigned to work. In fact, the youngest and most attractive of them were sent to brothels by force of arms.

“In the city of Smolensk, the German command opened a brothel for officers in one of the hotels, into which hundreds of girls and women were driven; they were dragged by the hands, by the hair, ruthlessly dragged along the pavement.

Rozhdestveno village teacher Trofimova says: “All our women were herded to school and set up a brothel there. Officers came there and, under pain of arms, raped women and girls. 5 officers collectively raped collective farmer T. in the presence of her two daughters.”

A resident of Brest G.Ya. Pestruzhitskaya spoke about the events at the Spartak stadium, where the local population was herded: “Every night, drunken fascists burst into the stadium and forcibly took young women away. For two nights, German soldiers took away more than 70 women, who then disappeared without a trace ... "

“In the Ukrainian village of Borodaevka, Dnepropetrovsk region, the Nazis raped all women and girls without exception. In the village of Berezovka, Smolensk region, drunken German soldiers raped and took away with them all women and girls aged 16 to 30.

“A 15-year-old girl, Maria Shch., the daughter of a collective farmer from the village of Bely Rast, was stripped naked by the Nazis and led down the street, going into all the houses where German soldiers were.”

Brothels for guard soldiers existed at concentration camps. Women were recruited only from among the prisoners.

And although the conditions of detention there were somewhat better, in reality it was just a continuation of the torture. Distraught from the daily executions, the soldiers took out their mental deviations on the silent, foreign-speaking prisoners. And there were no bouncers and “mothers” usual for such establishments who were ready to stand up for a tortured woman. Such brothels turned into testing grounds for all kinds of vices, perversions and manifestations of complexes.

They did not use contraceptive methods, as in brothels with German service personnel. Prisoners were cheap material. "When pregnancy was discovered, the women were immediately exterminated." They were replaced with new ones.

One of the worst brothels was at the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. The average "service life" was three weeks. It was believed that during this time a woman would neither get sick nor get pregnant. And then the gas chamber. During the four years of Ravensbrück's existence, more than 4,000 women were killed in this way.

I would like to end this chapter with a quote from E. Remarque's book The Spark of Life.

"We can't think about the past, Ruth," he said with a hint of impatience in his voice. “Otherwise, how can we live at all then?”

I don't think about the past.

Why are you crying then?

Ruth Holland wiped tears from her eyes with her fists.

Do you want to know why they didn't send me to the gas chamber? she suddenly asked.

Bucher vaguely felt that now something would be revealed about which it would be better for him not to know at all.

You don't have to tell me about this," he said hastily. But you can say if you want. It still doesn't change anything.

This changes something. I was seventeen. I wasn't as scary back then as I am now. That is why they let me live.

Yes, - said Bucher, still not understanding anything.

He looked at her. For the first time, he suddenly noticed that her eyes were gray and somehow very clear, transparent. He had never seen her look like that before.

Don't you understand what that means? she asked.

They let me live because they needed women. Young women for soldiers. And for the Ukrainians, too, who fought alongside the Germans. Now understand?

Bucher sat as if stunned. Ruth never took her eyes off him.

And they did this to you? he finally asked. He didn't look at her.

Yes. They did it to me. She didn't cry anymore.

It is not true.

This is true.

I'm not talking about that. I mean you didn't want it.

A bitter laugh escaped her throat.

There is no difference.

Bucher now looked up at her. It seemed that every expression on her face went out, but that is why it turned into such a mask of pain that he suddenly felt and understood what he had only heard before: she had told the truth. And he felt that this truth was tearing at his insides with its claws, but he didn’t want to admit it yet, in that first second he wanted only one thing: that there was no such torment in this face.

It's not true, he said. - You didn't want that. You weren't there. You didn't do it.

Her gaze returned from the void.

This is true. And this cannot be forgotten.

None of us can know what can and cannot be forgotten. We have to forget a lot. And many…”

In my opinion, this is the best answer to the question of whether a monument to raped women is needed.

Women captured by the Germans. How the Nazis mocked captured Soviet women

The Second World War went like a skating rink through humanity. Millions of dead and many more crippled lives and destinies. All the belligerents did truly monstrous things, justifying everything with war.

Carefully! The material presented in the collection may seem unpleasant or intimidating.

Of course, in this regard, the Nazis were especially distinguished, and this is not even taking into account the Holocaust. There are many both documented and frankly fictional stories about what the German soldiers did.

One of the high-ranking German officers recalled the briefings they went through. Interestingly, there was only one order regarding female soldiers: “Shoot.”

Most did so, but among the dead, the bodies of women in the form of the Red Army are often found - soldiers, nurses or nurses, on whose bodies there were traces of cruel torture.

Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when they had Nazis, they found a seriously wounded girl. And in spite of everything they dragged her onto the road, stripped her and shot her.

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But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her entire body was turned into a continuous bloody mess. The Nazis did the same with female partisans. Before being executed, they could be stripped naked and kept in the cold for a long time.

Women soldiers of the Red Army in captivity and the Germans 1 part

Of course, the captives were constantly raped.

Women soldiers of the Red Army captured by the Finns and Germans part 2. Jews

And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to have an intimate relationship with the captives, then ordinary privates had more freedom in this matter.

And if the girl did not die after a whole company used her, then she was simply shot.

The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and one of the higher ranks of the camp took her to him as a servant. Although it did not save much from rape.

In this regard, camp No. 337 was the most cruel place. There, the prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, hundreds of people were settled in the barracks at once, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were destroyed daily in the Stalag.

Women were subjected to the same torture as men, and even much worse. In terms of torture, the Nazis could be envied by the Spanish Inquisition.

Soviet soldiers knew exactly what was happening in the concentration camps and what the threat of captivity was. Therefore, no one wanted to give up and was not going to. They fought to the end, until death, she was the only winner in those terrible years.

Blessed memory of all those who died in the war ...

In 1944, the Soviet army crossed the border with Germany, how did the fighters communicate with German women? Let's hear from the veterans. Starting with who could write a book about that war. And then we move on to those who have not written books.

...Now the war turned to me with another unexpected side. Everything seemed to be tested: death, hunger, shelling, overwork, cold. So no! There was something else very terrible, almost crushing me. On the eve of the transition to the territory of the Reich, agitators arrived in the troops. Some are in high ranks.

- Death for death! Blood for blood!!! Let's not forget!!! We won't forgive!!! Let's take revenge!!! - and so on...

Prior to this, Ehrenburg had thoroughly tried, whose crackling, biting articles everyone read: “Dad, kill the German!” And it turned out Nazism on the contrary. True, they behaved outrageously according to plan: a network of ghettos, a network of camps. Accounting and compilation of lists of loot. A register of punishments, planned executions, etc. With us, everything went spontaneously, in the Slavic way. Bay, guys, burn, wilderness! Spoil their women!

Moreover, before the offensive, the troops were abundantly supplied with vodka. And it's gone, and it's gone! As always, the innocent suffered. The bosses, as always, fled ... Indiscriminately burned houses, killed some random old women, aimlessly shot herds of cows. A joke invented by someone was very popular: “Ivan is sitting near a burning house. "What are you doing?" they ask him. "Yes, the footcloths had to be dried, the fire was lit" "...

Corpses, corpses, corpses. The Germans, of course, are scum, but why be like them? The army has humiliated itself. The nation has humiliated itself. It was the worst thing in the war. Corpses, corpses... Several echelons with German refugees arrived at the railway station in the city of Allenstein, which the valiant cavalry of General Oslikovsky captured unexpectedly for the enemy. They thought they were going to their rear, but they got there ... I saw the results of the reception that they received. The station platforms were covered with heaps of gutted suitcases, bundles, trunks. Everywhere clothes, children's things, ripped pillows. All this in pools of blood...

After all, it is obvious that this is simply written the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, maybe a little smoothed out, but it's the truth.

And here is another snippet across the page that shows how non-trivial it was. How mass or not mass rape - judge for yourself:

East Prussia struck, on the contrary, with prosperity, contentment and order, well-maintained farms with agricultural machines, everything was electrified, rich houses of the Bauers, where there were always a piano and good furniture, and next to it was a shed with cells and bunks for eastern workers. The pigsties and barns are full of well-fed cattle. Yes, they lived here, did not grieve ... And the cities are rich, clean, soundly built. In Allenstein, we found a lot of junk and food taken out of the USSR, placed in warehouses in reserve. In another warehouse were canned goods from Holland, Belgium and France. True, they were a little burned in the fire, but it was possible to eat. The soldiers got into the habit of drinking alcohol, washed down with condensed cream... I remember that in one empty house, on the windowsill, there were a dozen and a half gold coins of the Kaiser's coinage. For a long time no one took them; the soldiers did not expect to live to see the end of the war and did not want to burden themselves with an extra load.

In many houses we found all sorts of military regalia: orders, uniforms, SS daggers with the inscription: "blood and honor", shoulder straps, aiguillettes and other tinsel. Indeed, East Prussia was a nest of militarism. But the military, fascist activists and other authorities managed to escape.

Mostly the townsfolk remained - women, the elderly, children. They had to deal with the consequences of defeat. Soon they began to line up in columns and send them to the railway station - as they said, to Siberia.

In our house, at the very top, in the attic, lived a woman of about thirty-five with two children. Her husband disappeared at the front, it was difficult for her to escape - you can’t run far with a baby, and she stayed. The soldiers found out that she was a good dressmaker, dragged the material and forced her to sew riding breeches. Many wanted to be fashionable, and they thoroughly dressed themselves over the winter. From morning until evening, a German woman wrote on a typewriter. For this she was given meals, bread, sometimes sugar. At night, many soldiers went up to the attic to make love. And the German woman was afraid to refuse this, she worked until dawn, not closing her eyes ... Where can you go? There was always a queue at the door to the attic, which there was no way to disperse.

Later in Berlin:

These days, here in Berlin, I did an act that I am still proud of, but I am surprised at my own adventurism ... On a rainy evening, they sent me somewhere. I took shelter from the rain with a rubberized and shiny trophy officer's cape. She covered her head with a hood, and the whole body - to the toes; the soldier looked like a general in it. I grabbed my machine gun and set off. Near the neighboring house, I was stopped by desperate female cries: some senior lieutenant, judging by the color of the epaulettes - a quartermaster, dragged a young pretty German woman to the entrance. He pulled off her blouse, tore the underwear. I immediately ran closer, clanged the shutter of my machine gun and barked loudly in a commander’s voice (where did it come from): “Smir-r-r-na!!! - and introduced himself. - The commander of the SMERSH unit, number 12-13, Major Potapov !!! I order you to immediately report to the headquarters and report to your superiors about your ugly behavior! .. I will check!
Oh, this fatal word is SMERSH. It worked flawlessly. We all froze in fear when we heard it.
The quartermaster fled, dousing me with the disgusting stench of wine fumes ...

But there were also errors:

"Have fun and more culturally. Performances began in the theatre. I was at Madama Butterfly, but the performance and scenery turned out to be provincially ordinary. The crawl space was filled with our soldiers. They neighed in the most inappropriate places. The tragic scene of the heroine's suicide for some reason passed to the sound of laughter... After the performance, walking along the stalls, I noticed that the Germans were diligently bypassing one place, averting their eyes to the side. There sat a dead drunk major with his head resting on the back of the front seat. A huge puddle of vomit spread under his feet.

Military girls pounced on foreign junk. I'm tired of wearing a uniform, but there are such beautiful things around! But it was not always safe to dress up. One day, the signalmen put on bright dresses, high-heeled shoes and happy, shining ones walked down the street. Towards a group of drunken soldiers:
— Aha! Frews!! Com! - and dragged the girls into the doorway.
- Yes, we are Russians, our own, ah! Ay!
- And we don't give a damn! freaks!!!
The soldiers did not understand who they were dealing with, and the girls drank the cup that fell to many German women. "

Semyon Isakovich Simkin:

Civilian Germans were killed extremely rarely, although if you remember, I saw a terrible picture a couple of times ... After the infantry, you go, and there the Germans, killed by whole families, lie, the woman’s hem is bare and the pitchfork is stuck in there. Even among us artillerymen, there was a case when several civilians were killed, without any reason or proceedings. (...)

And if one of the front-line soldiers who served on the front lines in the infantry or in tank units says that there were no cases of violence and looting in his unit, in Germany, he simply either does not finish speaking, or hides the truth. Though "on trifles", or "on a large scale", - all this happened. I will say one thing, this whole mess stopped in May forty-five. Another sore subject is violence against women... Both young girls and aunts of fifty were raped. All our animal instincts in Germany got out. And it's not even in our low culture. The psychology of a victorious soldier, plus a fierce hatred of the Germans. It was then that we became generous and condescending ...

I spoke German, so I was the "delegate" from the platoon for peace negotiations with the German girls. You go up to a German woman, you say - “Come spaciren”, and she already knows what it is about. Some of them came to the soldiers themselves! But I was also a witness to wild gang rapes. I disdained to stand tenth in line, but I saw everything. No one betrayed anyone, there was a group bail. The commanders could not do anything with us, and they themselves “had” German women without a twinge of conscience. What was, was.

Rape in Germany and Poland led to an epidemic of venereal diseases, which could only be overcome by the end of the 40s. From Nikulin's book:

Faced with an epidemic of venereal diseases, doctors were at first confused. There are few medicines, and even fewer specialists. Tripper was treated in a barbaric way: several cubes of milk were injected into the buttock of the patient, an abscess formed, the temperature rose above forty degrees. Bacillus, as you know, cannot stand such heat. Then the abscess was treated. Sometimes it helped. It was worse with syphilitics. I was told that they were gathered in the city of Neyrupin in a special camp and for some time they were kept behind barbed wire, waiting for medicines, which were not yet available.

Looking ahead, it should be said that in two or three years our medicine brilliantly coped with this unexpected and difficult task. By the end of the forties, venereal diseases practically disappeared, crippling, of course, the body and soul of those who went through them, and often their families ... I saw a peculiar beginning of the struggle of doctors against this scourge in Germany.

One day at dawn in the vicinity of Schwerin, I met a huge column of young women. Crying and wailing were in the air. There was despair on the faces of the Germans. The words were:

- Nah Zebir! Nah Zebir!

The indifferent soldiers urged on the lagging behind.
- What is it? I asked the old escort in horror. Where are they, poor thing?
- Why yell in vain, fools, it's good for them! By order of the commandant, we are taking them for a preventive examination! ..
I was delighted with our humanism! The soldiers sang:

Varum you didn't come, der abend was
And a small vasser drizzled from the sky ...

Romanov Efim Mikhailovich:

G.K. - Relations with the local population in Eastern Europe were not always good?
E.R. - Serious problems with the local population were only in Hungary.
The Magyars hated us, and, to be honest, sometimes it was for good reason.

And ours, by the way, “reciprocated” them. I myself heard a couple of times from the foot soldiers, "stories" of how our soldiers rape the Magyars. For example, they said this. They will put up “on atas”, so to speak, “combat guard”, and forward with the whole platoon, and a single officer with a drunken crowd will not get involved and will not climb with a pistol in his hand to “protect the local population”, as he will easily be shot in the back by his own same.

Fedotov Nikolay Stepanovich:

- You met with veterans of the Wehrmacht. Can you tell us how the communication went?
- The first major meeting with the Germans took place in 1993, they came to Volgograd about a hundred people. (...)
And at the meeting, the Germans said that our soldiers raped their women, their wives. I answered them, and not only me, those who were in Germany also said: “Take our soldier, who had his whole family hanged, burned, how should he treat you?” I said that I knew such guys, they did not take prisoners, they did not spare civilians, the only thing was that a hand was not raised against children. “And why should we protect the honor of your women or what?” I say to the German: “Put yourself in his place, what would you do?” - "Yavol, Fershtein." Here are some examples.
(…) I was at a conference in Moscow, and there a German said that 100,000 German women were raped in Germany. Has anyone else counted that number? This, of course, was something to be honest, and if we talk, then this figure may be underestimated.

We had a case during the fighting in Berlin. The high-rise building has a basement below, and everyone hid there. We never shot civilians, except for those who took revenge, there was a hospital in that basement. We broke in there and fired a burst from a machine gun at the ceiling, wounded, some raised their arms, some raised their legs. Following us ran from the infantry, and there was a nurse, a German, in a white coat and cap, with a red cross. An infantryman by her hand, in the other hand, a machine gun, dragged her somewhere into a corner and raped her, right there.
Halfway to Berlin, they began to read orders, for looting, for rape - a tribunal. They began to shoot, demote, removed orders, even Golden Stars. But you still can't follow everyone.

Barakov Vasily Alexandrovich:

- What was the hooliganism?
- (laughs) German women were raped. Of course. We were warned not to do so. How will you keep the soldiers? But everyone is running. In passing. They are clean. After all, our "peat". In sweatshirts, scarves, etc. And the German ladies. Neat. And after all there as was. Not one by one.

XIII. About the pistol grip.
We broke into the South Station. And from the city, past the station, the population fled into the gap between us and the Germans. And here we are wandering around the station. Someone found a beer in the basement. There was a restaurant there. The lockers are broken. All sorts of junk is lying around. Suitcases turned inside out. Soldiers walk, they are thrown up, thrown. And then a couple comes running. Germans. Man and woman. And then there is intelligence and all sorts of other things. Everyone is roaming. Yes, drunk. At first everything was frozen. Come to your senses, grab for this German woman. The husband stood up: "Mein frau, mein frau." One officer stabbed him in the forehead. Bach. Blood flowed. They tore her away from him, dragged her into the room. Closed. The rest of the brethren are standing in line. The people ran. Well. War! Some party organizer rolled up. How he started to joke. Everyone fled. The partner left. Everyone got back in line. Like rats from holes. The German is crying.

Once, after the war, my daughter read an article by a German officer in a magazine. He described how the soldiers committed atrocities during the assault on Koenigsberg. There was no such thing in the press then. She asked, "Dad, is it true?" - Truth.

But after all, when they came to us, they also did this. Well. And even worse. There were atrocities, what to say. During the assault, we run past the store with the division chief of staff. The windows are broken, the door is broken. Someone is screaming from there. We're right inside. There, the soldiers took the German woman. Clothes are torn. She is wearing glasses. Such a high one. She goggled her eyes. Evil. We approached. She saw the chief of staff and yelled: “Schweine. Russian shweine. (Pigs. Russian pigs. - German. Approx. S.S.). He pulled out a gun and fired. These all jumped. A person in war becomes callous, cruel, ruthless.

Or Pillau was stormed. They caught a German woman in the basement. She wriggles, screeches something. I say: "Ask at least what she squeals." He asked. "Ten people have already passed. How many can you?" Released.

Polubanov Gennady Borisovich

G.K. - Did the local German civilian population also get it?
G.P. - Only at first ... When the city of Gleiwitz was captured, we were given a rest for three days, in other words - do what you want. And in the city, every street is full of shops not destroyed by war, filled with food and alcohol.
So those who did not have any "moral brakes" began to rob and rape German women. We had such a senior sergeant, the commander of the communications department Bogachev, so he raped women in every city we captured. The political officer, in front of whom the sergeant was raping another German woman, decided to intervene and told Bogachev: “Stop!”, but the division commander Khlopov stopped the political officer: “You, captain, mind your own business. This is his well-deserved trophy!” ...

Koryakin Yury Ivanovich

Before crossing the border with Germany in the region of Bromberg (Bydgoszcz), the political instructor of the company came to the meeting and said the following: “We are entering the territory of Germany. We know that the Germans brought innumerable troubles to our land, so we are entering their territory in order to punish the Germans "I ask you not to make contact with the local population, so that you don't get in trouble and don't walk alone. Well, as for the women's issue, you can deal with the Germans quite freely, but no matter how organized it looks. 1-2 people went, did what was necessary (he said so: "What is necessary."), returned and that's it. Any causeless damage to the Germans and German women is unacceptable and will be punished. " From this conversation, we felt that he himself did not know exactly what standards of behavior should be followed.

Of course, we were all under the influence of propaganda, which at that time did not distinguish between Germans and Nazis .. The attitude towards German women (we almost never saw German men) was free, even rather vengeful. I know a lot of cases when German women were raped, but not killed. In our regiment, the foreman of the household led almost a whole harem. He had food opportunities. So the Germans lived with him, whom he used, well, he treated others. A couple of times, going into houses, I saw dead old people. Once, when we entered the house, we saw on the bed that someone was lying under the covers. Throwing back the blanket, I saw a German woman with a bayonet in her chest.

Leonid Nikolaevich Rabichev From the book "War will write everything off. Memoirs of a signal officer of the 31st army. 1941-1945"

I was dreaming, and suddenly two sixteen-year-old German girls enter the open gate. There is no fear in the eyes, but a terrible anxiety. They saw me, ran up and, interrupting each other, they were trying to explain something to me in German. Although I don’t know the language, I hear the words “muter”, “vater”, “bruder” ....

Major A. is standing on the steps of the house, and two sergeants twisted their arms, bent those same two girls into three deaths, and on the contrary - all the staff servants - drivers, orderlies, clerks, messengers.
- Nikolaev, Sidorov, Kharitonov, Pimenov ... - Major A. commands. - Take the girls by the arms and legs, skirts and blouses off! Stand in two lines! Unfasten your belts, lower your pants and underpants! Right and left, one at a time, start!

A. is in command, and my signalmen, my platoon, run up the stairs from the house and line up. And the two girls “rescued” by me are lying on ancient stone slabs, their hands are in a vice, their mouths are stuffed with scarves, their legs are spread apart - they no longer try to escape from the hands of four sergeants, and the fifth rips off and tears apart their blouses, bras, skirts, panties. My telephone operators ran out of the house - laughter and obscenity.

But the ranks do not decrease, some rise, others descend, and around the martyrs there are already pools of blood, and there is no end to the ranks, cackle and obscenities. The girls are already unconscious, and the orgy continues.

Proudly akimbo, Major A is in command. But then the last one rises, and executioner sergeants attack two half-corpses.
Major A. pulls out a revolver from a holster and shoots at the bloody mouths of the martyrs, and the sergeants drag their mutilated bodies into the pigsty, and hungry pigs begin to tear off their ears, noses, chests, and after a few minutes only two skulls, bones, vertebrae remain from them . I'm scared, disgusting.

And here are the results of German investigations:

The Soviet 91st Guards Rifle Division, which broke through the Tyrenberg to the Krattlau-Germau region, was surrounded on February 7, 1945 and partially defeated in heavy fighting. Gross violations of international law were established in the settlements it captured. In Tirenberg, 21 German soldiers were killed, driven there from a shelter for military invalids near Sorgenau.

Elisabeth Homfeld was raped and, along with her son-in-law, shot in the head, just like Minna Kottke, who tried to resist the rape, and the son of the tenant of the priest's estate, Ernst Trunz. A grenade thrown into the shed killed three women and a man locked there, and several people were seriously injured.

At the same time, Soviet officers and soldiers later admitted in captivity that they continuously and “brutally” raped women and even underage girls. In Krattlau, soldiers of the 275th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 91st Guards Rifle Division killed 6 men and two German soldiers with bayonet strikes or shots to the head. All women and girls, including 13-year-olds, were continuously raped, some women were "sexually abused by 6-8 soldiers 5-8 times a day." The 3-4 youngest women were left to the officers, who, after the completion of the criminal violence, handed them over to their subordinates. In Annenthal, the German liberators found the bodies of two women, who were desecrated (one on a dunghill) and then strangled.

Detailed investigations were carried out in Germau, where, after all, the headquarters of the 91st Guards Rifle Division and the headquarters with units of the 275th Guards Rifle Regiment were located. In Germau, the bodies of 21 murdered men, women and children were found. 11 people could not stand the monstrous torture and committed suicide themselves. 15 German wounded were killed by breaking their heads, and one of them was forcibly stuffed into his mouth with a harmonica. According to the conclusion of the captain of the medical service, Dr. Tolzien, one female body had the following wounds: a through shot in the head, crushing of the left shin, a wide open cut wound on the inside of the left shin, a large open wound on the outside of the left thigh, inflicted with a knife. The other woman, like the naked young girl, had the back of her head crushed. The murdered couple were the Retkowski couple, the Sprengel couple with 3 children, a young woman with 2 children, and an unknown Pole. In a common grave lay the bodies of an unknown refugee, Rosa Thiel, née Witte, and a 21-year-old Polish girl - all three were brutally murdered after being raped, then the bodies of two local handicraftsmen, one of whom, the miller Magun, was shot dead because he tried to protect from raping his young daughter.

Near the Germau-Palmnikken [now Yantarny, Russia] road, near a 5-kilometer signpost, two girls were found. Both were shot in the head at close range, one had its eyes gouged out. The female population of Germau, about 400 women and girls, on the orders of the commander of the 91st Guards Rifle Division, Colonel Koshanov, was locked in the church, allegedly (as, in any case, the prisoner of war Major Kostikov claimed) to protect them from excesses. However, Soviet officers and soldiers broke into the church and carried out "mass rapes" in the choir stalls. And in the surrounding houses in the following days, women were continuously raped, mostly by officers, young girls - up to 22 times a night; an officer and several Red Army soldiers raped 13-year-old Eva Link 8 times in the church bell tower in front of a desperate mother, who then suffered the same fate.

* * * *

*Memories of Veterans from here

Let's talk about the trophies of the Red Army, which the Soviet victors were taking home from defeated Germany. Let's talk calmly, without emotions - only photos and facts. Then we will touch on the delicate issue of the rape of German women and go through the facts from the life of occupied Germany.

A Soviet soldier takes away a bicycle from a German woman (according to Russophobes), or a Soviet soldier helps a German woman straighten the steering wheel (according to Russophiles). Berlin, August 1945. (as it was in fact, in the investigation below)

But the truth, as always, is in the middle, and it lies in the fact that in abandoned German houses and shops, Soviet soldiers took everything they liked, but the Germans had quite a bit of brazen robbery. Looting, of course, happened, but for him, it happened, and they were judged by the show trial of the tribunal. And none of the soldiers wanted to go through the war alive, and because of some junk and another round of the struggle for friendship with the local population, go not home as a winner, but to Siberia as a convict.

Soviet soldiers buy up on the "black market" in the Tiergarten garden. Berlin, summer 1945.

Although junk was appreciated. After the Red Army entered the territory of Germany, by order of the NPO of the USSR No. 0409 dated 12/26/1944. all servicemen of the active fronts were allowed to send one personal parcel to the Soviet rear once a month.
The most severe punishment was the deprivation of the right to this parcel, the weight of which was established: for privates and sergeants - 5 kg, for officers - 10 kg and for generals - 16 kg. The size of the parcel could not exceed 70 cm in each of the three dimensions, but they managed to send large equipment, carpets, furniture, and even pianos home in various ways.
During demobilization, officers and soldiers were allowed to take away everything that they could take with them on the road in their personal luggage. At the same time, oversized things were often taken home, fastened to the roofs of the wagons, and the Poles left the craft to pull them along the train with ropes with hooks (grandfather told me).
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Three Soviet women deported to Germany carry wine from an abandoned liquor store. Lippstadt, April 1945.

During the war and the first months after it ended, soldiers mainly sent non-perishable provisions to their home fronts (American dry rations, consisting of canned food, biscuits, egg powder, jam, and even instant coffee, were considered the most valuable). Allied medicines - streptomycin and penicillin - were also highly valued.
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American soldiers and young German women combine trading and flirting on the "black market" in the Tiergarten garden.
The Soviet military in the background in the market is not stupid. Berlin, May 1945.

And it was possible to get it only on the "black market", which instantly arose in every German city. You could buy everything at flea markets: from a car to women, and tobacco and food were the most common currency.
The Germans needed food, while the Americans, the British and the French were only interested in money - Germany then circulated Nazi Reichsmarks, the occupation stamps of the winners, and the foreign currencies of the allied countries, on whose courses a lot of money was made.
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An American soldier is trading with a Soviet junior lieutenant. LIFE photo from September 10, 1945.

And the Soviet soldiers had funds. According to the Americans, they were the best buyers - gullible, badly traded and very rich. Indeed, since December 1944, Soviet military personnel in Germany began to receive double salaries in rubles and in marks at the rate (this system of double payment will be canceled much later).
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Photos of Soviet soldiers trading at a flea market. LIFE photo from September 10, 1945.

The salary of Soviet military personnel depended on the rank and position held. Thus, a major, deputy military commandant, in 1945 received 1,500 rubles. per month and for the same amount in occupation marks at the exchange rate. In addition, officers from the position of company commander and above were paid money to hire German servants.
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For pricing information. Certificate of purchase by a Soviet colonel from a German car for 2,500 marks (750 Soviet rubles)

The Soviet military received a lot of money - on the "black market" an officer could buy anything his heart desires for one month's salary. In addition, the servicemen were paid debts for monetary allowances for the past, and they had plenty of money even if they sent home a ruble certificate.
Therefore, it was simply stupid and unnecessary to risk “falling under distribution” and be punished for looting. While there were certainly plenty of greedy marauding fools, they were the exception rather than the rule.
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Soviet soldier with an SS dagger attached to his belt. Pardubice, Czechoslovakia, May 1945.

The soldiers were different, and their tastes were also different. Some, for example, really appreciated such German SS (or naval, flying) daggers, although there was no practical use for them. As a child, I held one such SS dagger in my hands (a friend of my grandfather brought from the war) - its black and silver beauty and sinister story fascinated.
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Veteran of the Great Patriotic War Petr Patsienko with a captured Admiral Solo accordion. Grodno, Belarus, May 2013

But the majority of Soviet soldiers valued ordinary clothes, accordions, watches, cameras, radios, crystal, porcelain, which for many years after the war were littered with the shelves of Soviet commission stores.
Many of those things have survived to this day, and do not rush to accuse their old owners of looting - no one will know the true circumstances of their acquisition, but most likely they were simply and tritely bought from the Germans by the winners.

To the question of one historical falsification, or about the picture "Soviet soldier takes away a bicycle."

This well-known photograph is traditionally used to illustrate articles about Soviet atrocities in Berlin. This topic is raised with surprising constancy from year to year on Victory Day.
The picture itself is published, as a rule, with a caption "Soviet soldier takes away a bicycle from a resident of Berlin". There are also signatures from the cycle "Looting flourished in Berlin on the 45th" etc.

On the issue of the photograph itself and what is captured on it, there are heated debates. The arguments of the opponents of the version of "looting and violence", which I had to meet on the net, unfortunately, sound unconvincing. Of these, one can single out, firstly, calls not to make judgments on the basis of one photograph. Secondly, an indication of the poses of a German woman, a soldier and other persons caught in the frame. In particular, from the calmness of the characters of the second plan, the conclusion follows that this is not about violence, but about an attempt to straighten some kind of bicycle part.
Finally, doubts are raised that it is a Soviet soldier that is depicted in the photograph: a roll over the right shoulder, the roll itself is of a very strange shape, the cap on the head is too large, etc. In addition, in the background, immediately behind the soldier, if you look closely, you can see a military man in a clearly non-Soviet uniform.

But, I emphasize once again, all these versions do not seem convincing enough to me.

In general, I decided to understand this story. The picture, I reasoned, must clearly have an author, there must be a primary source, the first publication, and - most likely - the original signature. Which can shed light on what is shown in the photo.

If you take the literature, as far as I remember, this picture came across to me in the catalog of the Documentary Exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union. The exposition itself was opened in 1991 in Berlin in the "Topography of Terror" hall, then, as far as I know, it was exhibited in St. Petersburg. Her catalog in Russian "Germany's War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945" was published in 1994.

I do not have this catalog, but fortunately my colleague found it. Indeed, the desired photo is published on page 257. Traditional signature: "Soviet soldier takes away a bicycle from a resident of Berlin, 1945"

Apparently, this catalog published in 1994 became the Russian primary source of the photo we needed. At least on a number of old resources dating back to the beginning of the 2000s, I came across this picture with a reference to "Germany's war against the Soviet Union .." and with a familiar signature. It looks like the photo is from there and roams the net.

Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz - Photo Archive of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is listed as the source of the image in the catalog. The archive has a website, but no matter how much I tried, I could not find the right picture on it.

But in the process of searching, I came across the same picture in the archive of Life magazine. In Life's version it is called "Bike Fight".
Please note that here the photo is not cropped at the edges, as in the exposition catalog. New interesting details appear, for example, on the left behind you can see an officer, and, as it were, not a German officer:

But the main thing is the signature!
A Russian soldier involved in a misunderstanding with a German woman in Berlin, over a bicycle he wished to buy from her.

"There was a misunderstanding between a Russian soldier and a German woman in Berlin because of a bicycle he wanted to buy from her."

In general, I will not bore the reader with the nuances of further searching for the keywords "misunderstanding", "German woman", "Berlin", "Soviet soldier", "Russian soldier", etc. I found the original photo and the original caption under it. The picture belongs to the American company Corbis. Here he is:

As you can see, here is a complete picture, on the right and left there are details cut off in the "Russian version" and even in the Life version. These details are very important, as they give the picture a completely different mood.

And finally, the original signature:

Russian Soldier Tries to Buy Bicycle from Woman in Berlin, 1945
A misunderstanding ensues after a Russian soldier tries to buy a bucycle from a German woman in Berlin. After giving her money for the bike, the soldier assumes the deal has been struck. However, the woman doesn't seem convinced.

A Russian soldier tries to buy a bicycle from a woman in Berlin, 1945
The misunderstanding happened after a Russian soldier tried to buy a bicycle from a German woman in Berlin. After giving her the money for the bike, he believes the deal went through. However, the woman thinks otherwise.

That's how things are, dear friends.
Around, wherever you dig, lies, lies, lies ...

So who raped all the German women?

From an article by Sergei Manukov.

Forensic science professor Robert Lilly of the United States checked American military records and concluded that by November 1945, the tribunals had dealt with 11,040 cases of serious sexual offenses committed by American military personnel in Germany. Other historians from Great Britain, France and America agree that the Western allies also "dissolved their hands".
For a long time, Western historians have tried to pin the blame on Soviet soldiers with evidence that no court will accept.
The most vivid idea of ​​them is given by one of the main arguments of the British historian and writer Anthony Beevor, one of the most famous experts in the West on the history of the Second World War.
He believed that Western soldiers, especially the American military, did not need to rape German women, because they had in abundance the most salable commodity with which it was possible to obtain the consent of the fraulein for sex: canned food, coffee, cigarettes, nylon stockings, etc. .
Western historians believe that the vast majority of sexual contacts between the winners and the Germans were voluntary, that is, that it was the most common prostitution.
It is no coincidence that a joke was popular in those days: "It took the Americans six years to cope with the German armies, but a day and a bar of chocolate were enough to conquer German women."
However, the picture was far from being as rosy as Anthony Beevor and his supporters are trying to present. Postwar society was unable to differentiate between consensual and forced sexual encounters between women who gave themselves because they were starving and those who were raped at gunpoint or machine gunpoint.

Miriam Gebhardt, professor of history at the University of Konstanz in southwestern Germany, loudly declared that this is an overly idealized picture.
Of course, when writing a new book, she was least of all guided by the desire to protect and whitewash Soviet soldiers. The main motive is the establishment of truth and historical justice.
Miriam Gebhardt tracked down several victims of the "exploits" of American, British and French soldiers and interviewed them.
Here is the story of one of the women who suffered from the Americans:

Six American soldiers arrived at the village when it was already getting dark and entered the house where Katerina V. lived with her 18-year-old daughter Charlotte. The women managed to escape just before the appearance of the uninvited guests, but they did not even think of giving up. Obviously, this is not the first time they have done this.
The Americans began to search all the houses one by one, and in the end, almost at midnight, they found the fugitives in the closet of a neighbor. They dragged them out, threw them on the bed and raped them. Instead of chocolates and nylon stockings, the uniformed rapists took out pistols and machine guns.
This gang rape took place in March 1945, a month and a half before the end of the war. Charlotte, horrified, called her mother for help, but Katerina could do nothing to help her.
There are many such cases in the book. All of them took place in the south of Germany, in the zone of occupation by American troops, whose number was 1.6 million people.

In the spring of 1945, the Archbishop of Munich and Freising ordered his subordinate priests to document all events related to the occupation of Bavaria. A few years ago, part of the 1945 archives was published.
Priest Michael Merksmüller from the village of Ramsau, which is located near Berchtesgaden, wrote on July 20, 1945: "Eight girls and women were raped. Some of them right in front of their parents."
Father Andreas Weingand of Haag an der Amper, a tiny village located on the site of what is now Munich Airport, wrote on 25 July 1945:
“The saddest event during the offensive of the American army was three rapes. Drunken soldiers raped one married woman, one unmarried woman and a girl of 16 and a half years old.
“By order of the military authorities,” priest Alois Shiml from Mosburg wrote on August 1, 1945, “a list of all residents with an indication of their age should hang on the door of each house. 17 raped girls and women ended up in the hospital. Among them there are those whom American soldiers raped many times."
From the reports of the priests it followed: the youngest victim of the Yankees was 7 years old, and the oldest - 69.
The book "When the Soldiers Came" appeared on the shelves of bookstores in early March and immediately caused heated debate. There is nothing surprising in this, because Frau Gebhardt dared to take a swing, moreover, during a strong aggravation of relations between the West and Russia, on attempts to equalize those who unleashed the war and those who suffered the most from it.
Despite the fact that the main attention in Gebhardt's book is given to the exploits of the Yankees, the rest of the Western allies, of course, also performed "exploits". Although in comparison with the Americans, they have done much less trouble.

Americans raped 190,000 German women.

Best of all, according to the author of the book in 1945, British soldiers behaved in Germany, but not because of some innate nobility or, say, a gentleman's code of conduct.
British officers turned out to be more decent than their colleagues from other armies, who not only strictly forbade their subordinates to pester the Germans, but also watched them very carefully.
As for the French, they, just like in the case of our soldiers, have a slightly different situation. France was occupied by the Germans, although, of course, the occupation of France and Russia, as they say, are two big differences.
In addition, most of the rapists in the French army were Africans, that is, people from the French colonies on the Black Continent. By and large, they didn’t care who to take revenge on - the main thing was that the women were white.
Especially the French "distinguished themselves" in Stuttgart. They rounded up the women of Stuttgart on the subway and staged a three-day orgy of violence. According to various sources, from 2 to 4 thousand German women were raped during this time.

Just like the allies from the east they met on the Elbe, the American soldiers were horrified by the crimes committed by the Germans and embittered by their stubbornness and desire to defend their homeland to the end.
Played a role and American propaganda, inspired them that the Germans are crazy about the liberators from across the ocean. This even more inflamed the erotic fantasies of the warriors deprived of female affection.
Miriam Gebhardt's seeds fell into the prepared soil. After the crimes committed by US military personnel several years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in particular in the notorious Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib, many Western historians have become more critical of the behavior of the Yankees before and after the end of the war.
Researchers are increasingly finding documents in the archives, for example, about the looting of churches in Italy by the Americans, the killings of civilians and German prisoners, as well as the rape of Italian women.
However, the attitude towards the US military is changing extremely slowly. The Germans continue to treat them as disciplined and decent (especially compared to the Allies) soldiers who gave gum to children and stockings to women.

Of course, the evidence cited by Miriam Gebhardt in When the Military Came did not convince everyone. It is not surprising, given that no one kept any statistics and all calculations and figures are approximate and speculative.
Anthony Beevor and his supporters ridiculed Professor Gebhardt's calculations: "It is practically impossible to get accurate and reliable figures, but I think that hundreds of thousands are a clear exaggeration.
Even if we take the number of children born to German women from Americans as the basis for calculations, then here it should be remembered that many of them were conceived as a result of voluntary sex, and not rape. Do not forget that at the gates of American military camps and bases in those years, German women crowded from morning to night.
Miriam Gebhardt's conclusions, and especially her figures, of course, can be doubted, but hardly even the most zealous defenders of American soldiers will argue with the assertion that they were not as "fluffy" and kind as most Western historians try to present them.
If only because they left a "sexual" mark not only in hostile Germany, but also in allied France. American soldiers raped thousands of French women whom they freed from the Germans.

If in the book "When the Soldiers Came" the professor of history from Germany blames the Yankees, then in the book "What the Soldiers Did" this is done by the American Mary Roberts, a professor of history from the University of Wisconsin.
"My book debunks the old myth about American soldiers who by all accounts always behaved well," she says. "Americans had sex everywhere and with everyone who wore a skirt."
It is more difficult to argue with Professor Roberts than with Gebhardt, because she did not present conclusions and calculations, but only facts. Chief among them are archival documents, according to which 152 American soldiers were convicted of rape in France, and 29 of them were hanged.
The numbers are, of course, meager compared to neighboring Germany, even if one considers that every case hides a human destiny, but it should be remembered that these are only official statistics and that they represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Without much risk of being mistaken, it can be assumed that only a few victims turned to the police with complaints about the liberators. Shame most often prevented them from going to the police, because in those days rape was a stigma for a woman.

In France, the rapists from across the ocean had other motives. To many of them, the rape of French women seemed like some kind of amorous adventure.
The fathers of many American soldiers fought in France in World War I. Their stories must have set a lot of soldiers from General Eisenhower's army on romantic adventures with attractive French women. Many Americans considered France to be something like a huge brothel.
Military magazines such as "Stars and Stripes" also contributed. They printed photographs of laughing French women kissing their liberators. They also typed phrases in French that may be needed when communicating with French women: "I am not married", "You have beautiful eyes", "You are very beautiful", etc.
Journalists almost directly advised the soldiers to take what they liked. Not surprisingly, after the Allied landings in Normandy in the summer of 1944, northern France was swept by a "tsunami of male lust and lust."
The liberators from across the ocean in Le Havre especially distinguished themselves. The city archives preserved letters from residents of Gavra to the mayor with complaints about "a wide variety of crimes that are committed day and night."
Most often, the inhabitants of Le Havre complained of rape, and often in front of others, although there were, of course, robberies with thefts.
The Americans behaved in France as in a conquered country. It is clear that the attitude of the French towards them was corresponding. Many people in France considered the liberation a "second occupation." And often more cruel than the first, German.

They say that French prostitutes often remembered German clients with a kind word, because Americans were often interested in more than just sex. With the Yankees, the girls also had to keep an eye on their wallets. The liberators did not shun banal theft and robbery.
Meetings with the Americans were life-threatening. 29 American soldiers were sentenced to death for killing French prostitutes.
In order to cool the heated soldiers, the command distributed among the personnel leaflets condemning rape. The military prosecutor's office was not particularly strict. Only those who could not be judged were judged. The racist sentiments that prevailed at that time in America are also clearly visible: out of 152 soldiers and officers who fell under the tribunal, 139 were blacks.

How was life in occupied Germany

After World War II, Germany was divided into occupation zones. About how they lived, today you can read and hear different opinions. Often the exact opposite.

Denazification and re-education

The first task that the Allies set themselves after the defeat of Germany was the denazification of the German population. The entire adult population of the country passed a questionnaire prepared by the Control Council for Germany. The Erhebungsformular MG/PS/G/9a had 131 questions. The survey was voluntary-compulsory.

Refuseniks were deprived of food cards.

Based on the survey, all Germans are divided into "not involved", "acquitted", "fellow travelers", "guilty" and "guilty in the highest degree." Citizens from the last three groups appeared before the court, which determined the measure of guilt and punishment. "Guilty" and "guilty in the highest degree" were sent to internment camps, "fellow travelers" could atone for their guilt with a fine or property.

It is clear that this method was not perfect. Mutual responsibility, corruption and insincerity of the respondents made denazification ineffective. Hundreds of thousands of Nazis managed to avoid trial and forged documents on the so-called "rat trails".

The Allies also conducted a large-scale campaign in Germany to re-educate the Germans. Movies about Nazi atrocities were constantly shown in cinemas. Residents of Germany also had to go to the sessions without fail. Otherwise, they could lose all the same food cards. Also, the Germans were taken on excursions to the former concentration camps and involved in the work carried out there. For the majority of the civilian population, the information received was shocking. Goebbels propaganda during the war years told them about a completely different Nazism.

Demilitarization

By decision of the Potsdam Conference, Germany was to undergo demilitarization, which included the dismantling of military factories.
The Western Allies accepted the principles of demilitarization in their own way: not only were they in no hurry to dismantle factories in their zones of occupation, but they were actively restoring them, while trying to increase the quota of metal smelting and wanting to preserve the military potential of Western Germany.

By 1947, more than 450 military factories were hidden from accounting in the British and American zones.

The Soviet Union was more honest in this respect. According to the historian Mikhail Semiryaga, in one year after March 1945, the highest authorities of the Soviet Union made about a thousand decisions related to the dismantling of 4389 enterprises from Germany, Austria, Hungary and other European countries. However, even this number cannot be compared with the number of capacities destroyed by the war in the USSR.
The number of German enterprises dismantled by the USSR was less than 14% of the pre-war number of factories. According to Nikolai Voznesensky, then chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, only 0.6% of the direct damage to the USSR was covered by the supply of captured equipment from Germany.

Marauding

The topic of looting and violence against the civilian population in post-war Germany is still debatable.
A lot of documents have been preserved, indicating that the Western allies took property out of defeated Germany literally by ships.

"Distinguished" in the collection of trophies and Marshal Zhukov.

When in 1948 he fell out of favor, the investigators began to "dispossess" him. The result of the confiscation was 194 pieces of furniture, 44 carpets and tapestries, 7 boxes of crystal, 55 museum paintings and much more. All this was taken out of Germany.

As for the soldiers and officers of the Red Army, there were not so many cases of looting according to the available documents. The victorious Soviet soldiers were more likely to be engaged in applied "junk work", that is, they were engaged in collecting ownerless property. When the Soviet command allowed sending parcels home, boxes with sewing needles, fabric trimmings, and working tools went to the Union. At the same time, our soldiers had a rather squeamish attitude to all these things. In letters to their relatives, they justified themselves for all this “junk”.

strange counts

The most problematic topic is the topic of violence against civilians, especially against German women. Until the time of perestroika, the number of German women subjected to violence was small: from 20 to 150 thousand throughout Germany.

In 1992, a book by two feminists, Helke Zander and Barbara Yohr, Liberators and Liberated, was published in Germany, where another figure appeared: 2 million.

These figures were "drawn" and were based on the statistics of only one German clinic, multiplied by a hypothetical number of women. In 2002, Anthony Beevor's book "The Fall of Berlin" was published, where this figure also appeared. In 2004, this book was published in Russia, giving rise to the myth of the brutality of Soviet soldiers in occupied Germany.

In fact, according to the documents, such facts were considered "extraordinary incidents and immoral phenomena." Violence against the civilian population of Germany was fought at all levels, and marauders and rapists fell under the tribunal. There are still no exact figures on this issue, not all documents have yet been declassified, but in the report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front on illegal actions against the civilian population for the period from April 22 to May 5, 1945, there are such figures: for seven armies front on 908.5 thousand people 124 crimes were recorded, of which 72 were rapes. 72 cases per 908.5 thousand. What two million can we talk about?

There was also looting and violence against the civilian population in the western occupation zones. Mortar gunner Naum Orlov wrote in his memoirs: “The British guarding us rolled chewing gum between their teeth - which was new for us - and boasted to each other about their trophies, throwing up their hands high, humiliated by wristwatches ... ".

Osmar Whyat, an Australian war correspondent who can hardly be suspected of partiality to Soviet soldiers, wrote in 1945: “Severe discipline reigns in the Red Army. There are no more robberies, rapes and bullying here than in any other zone of occupation. Wild stories of atrocities emerge from exaggerations and distortions of individual cases under the influence of nervousness caused by the immoderation of Russian soldiers' manners and their love of vodka. One woman who told me most of the hair-raising tales of Russian brutality was eventually forced to admit that the only evidence she had seen with her own eyes was drunken Russian officers firing their pistols into the air and at bottles..."