HISTORY The Red Army in Berlin, 1945: Greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history

[Awdalite]

IN PICTURES: How German women suffered largest mass rape in history by Soviets​

Recent historical research has revealed German women and girls were also targets, subjected en masse to a wide range of sexual violence allegedly committed by American, Canadian, British, French and Soviet soldiers.

Between the months of January and August of 1945, Germany saw the largest incident of mass rape known in history, where an estimated two million German women were raped by the Soviet Red Army soldiers, as written by Walter Zapotoczny Jr. in his book, ‘Beyond Duty: The Reason Some Soldiers Commit Atrocities’.

Between the months of April and May, the German capital Berlin saw more than 100,000 rape cases according to hospital reports, while East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia saw more than 1.4 million rape cases.

Hospital reports also stated that abortion operations were being carried out daily across all German hospitals.

Natalya Gesse, who was a Soviet war correspondent at the time, said that the Soviets didn’t care about the ages of their victims. “The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty. It was an army of rapists,” she said.

This caused the deaths of no less than 200,000 girls and women due to the spread of diseases, especially that many eyewitnesses recounted victims being raped as much as 70 times in that period.

Red Army soldiers would mass rape German women as a kind of revenge against their enemy: The German army. They felt that it was their earned right to do so as the German army had ‘violated’ their motherland by invading it. In addition to not being in contact with women for long periods causing their animal instinct to be heightened.

“Our fellows were so sex-starved,” a Soviet major told a British journalist at the time, “that they often raped old women of sixty, seventy or even eighty - much to these grandmothers’ surprise, if not downright delight.”

In his book, Zapotoczny said that even female Russian soldiers did not disapprove of the rapes, some finding it amusing.

In 1948, rape cases decreased vastly after Soviet troops were ordered back to their camps in Russia and left residential areas in Germany.

 

[Awdalite]

Calls to avenge the Motherland, violated by the Wehrmacht's invasion, had given the idea that almost any cruelty would be allowed. Even many young women soldiers and medical staff in the Red Army did not appear to disapprove. "Our soldiers' behaviour towards Germans, particularly German women, is absolutely correct!" said a 21-year-old from Agranenko's reconnaissance detachment. A number seemed to find it amusing. Several German women recorded how Soviet servicewomen watched and laughed when they were raped. But some women were deeply shaken by what they witnessed in Germany. Natalya Gesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, had observed the Red Army in action in 1945 as a Soviet war correspondent. "The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty," she recounted later. "It was an army of rapists."
Drink of every variety, including dangerous chemicals seized from laboratories and workshops, was a major factor in the violence. It seems as if Soviet soldiers needed alcoholic courage to attack a woman. But then, all too often, they drank too much and, unable to complete the act, used the bottle instead with appalling effect. A number of victims were mutilated obscenely.
The subject of the Red Army's mass rapes in Germany has been so repressed in Russia that even today veterans refuse to acknowledge what really happened. The handful prepared to speak openly, however, are totally unrepentant. "They all lifted their skirts for us and lay on the bed," said the leader of one tank company. He even went on to boast that "two million of our children were born" in Germany.

Domination and humiliation permeated most soldiers' treatment of women in East Prussia. The victims not only bore the brunt of revenge for Wehrmacht crimes, they also represented an atavistic target as old as war itself. Rape is the act of a conqueror, the feminist historian Susan Brownmiller observed, aimed at the "bodies of the defeated enemy's women" to emphasise his victory. Yet after the initial fury of January 1945 dissipated, the sadism became less marked. By the time the Red Army reached Berlin three months later, its soldiers tended to regard German women more as a casual right of conquest. The sense of domination certainly continued, but this was perhaps partly an indirect product of the humiliations which they themselves had suffered at the hands of their commanders and the Soviet authorities as a whole.

 

[anon2]

Wallahi, Germany and Germans was scotched to hell. Both soviets and the allies were bombing civilians indiscriminately, even after they had basically won, and German minority who lived outside of Germany for hundreds of years were forcibly killed or deported away off their ancestral lands in places like Eastern Poland-Prussia, Czechoslovakia, North Italy etc and sent to Germany.

Their women raped, their children killed, their land taken, their country occupied. It was a total defeat in every way. I have no idea how Germans were able to mentally recoup and eventually rebuild their country

 

[Somali Saayid]

Some of these people had never seen a city as big as Berlin before they came from places like Mongolia and the lower stans.

 

[Smokybob03]

Sadly rape is an instrument of war in every time in history. In ASOIAF book series, Jorah Mormont famously said “ there is a beast in every man and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand”. This was referencing the sacking of a City where the civilians had been pillaged and raped by the invading force

 

[Yusuf Abdi Ali Rashid]

Sadly rape is an instrument of war in every time in history. In ASOIAF book series, Jorah Mormont famously said “ there is a beast in every man and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand”. This was referencing the sacking of a City where the civilians had been pillaged and raped by the invading force

f*ck Jorah, Turned to slavery cause he was a simp.

 

[Lone Wanderer]

The disregard in humanity seems so normal. Absolute monsters.

 

[Arma]

Something that is often not pointed out is that most of the rapes and war crimes done by the Red Army, were perpetrated by reserve forces. Front line troops were very gracious and magnanimous in their relations with Germans.

 

[Danakiil]

Revenge is one hell of a drug. 9 million Russian men died on the frontlines defending their country from Nazis, 17 million civilians massacred.

the inbuilt rage for their comrades must've been insane