cerberus
05-18-2006, 06:16 PM
I wanted to place this on Phora somewhere "safe" , safe from the one liner reply posters.
This subject has been covered in discussions before but hopefully this might add something postive.
Source "Berlin" by Antony Beevor. (Viking) 2002. ISBN 0-670-88695-5.
Pages 409-414.
The worst mistake of the German military authorities had been their refusal to destroy alcohol stocks in the path of the Red Army's advance.This decision was based on the idea that a drunken enemy could not fight.Tragically for the female population , however it was exactly what Read Army soldiers seemed to need to give them courage t rape as well as to celebrate the end of such a terrible war.
The round of victory celebrations did not signify an end to fear in Berlin.Many German women were raped as a part of the extended celebrations. A young Soviet scientest heard from an eighteen-year-old Germany girl with whom he had fallen in love on that night of 1st May a Red Army officer forced the muzzle of his pistol into her mouth and had kept it there throughout his attack to ensure her compliance.
Women soon learned to disappear during "hunting hours" of the evening. Young daughters were hidden in storage lofts for days on end.Mothers emerged into the street to fetch water only in the early morning,when Soviet soldiers were sleeping off the alcohol rom the night before.Sometimes the greatest danger came from one mother giving away the hiding place of other girls in a desperate bid to save her own daughters.
Berliners remember that, beacuse all the windows had been blown in, you could hear5 the screams every night. Estimates from two main Berlin hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000 rape vistims. One doctor deduced that out od approximately 100,000 women raped in Berlin, some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide.The death rate was thought to be much higher among the 1.4 million who had suffered in East Prussia , Pomerania , and Silesia. Altogether at least 2 million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substabtial minority , if not a vast majority apper to have suffered multiple rape. A friend of Ursula von Kardorff and the Soviet spy Schulze-Boysen was raped by " twenty-three soldiers one fater the other". She had to be stitched up hospital afterwards.
The reaction of German women to the experience of rape varied greatly.For many vistims, especially protected young girls who had little idea of what was being done to them the psychological effects could be devasrtating. relationships with men beacme extremely difficult, often for the rest of their lives. Mothers were in general far more concerned about their children, and this priority made them surmount what they had endured.Other women, both young and adult, simply tried to blank out the experience." I must repres a lot in order , to someextent, to be able to live", one woman acknowledged, when refusing to talk about the subject.Those who did not resist and managed to detatch themselves from what was happening appear to have sufferred much less. Some described it in terms of an "out of body experience"."That feeling" wrote one"hads kept the experience from dominating the rest of my life".
A robust cynicism of the Berlin varity also seemed to help."Allin all", wrote the anonymous diarist on 4th May, "we are slowly beginning to look upon the whole buisness of rape with a certain humour, albeit of the grimmer kind". They noted that the Ivanms went for fatter women first of all, which provided a certain "schadenfreude". Those who had not lost weight were usually the wives of Nazi party funtionaries and others who had profited from privileged psoitions.
Rape had become a collective experience - the diarist noted - and therefore it should be collectively overcome by talking among themselves. yet men, when they returned, tried to forbid any mention of the subject, even out of their presence.Women discovered that while they had to come to terms with what had happened to them, the men in their lives often made things far worse.Those who had been present at the time were shamed at their inability to protect them. Hanna gerlitz gave in to two drunk Soviet officers to save both her husband and hersself. "Afterwards" she wrote"I had to consle my husband ad help rstore his courage. he cried like a baby."
Men who returned home, having evaded capture or been released early from prison camps, seem to have frozen emotionally on hearing that their wife or fiancee had been raped in their absence. (Manyprisoners who had been in Soviet camps for longer periods also sufferred from " desexualization" as a result of starvation).They found the idea of the violation of their women very hard to accept.Ursula von Kardorff heard of a young aristocrat who immdeiately broke off his engagement when he learned that his fiancee had ben raped by three Russian soldiers.The anonymous diarist recounted to her former lover, who turned up unexpectedly, the experiences which the inhabitants of the building had survived."You've turned into shameless bitches" he burst out. "Every one of you !" She then gave him her diary to read, and when he found what she had written about being raped, he stared at her as if she had gone out of her mind.He left a couple of days later , saying that he was off to search for food and she never saw him again.
A daughter, mother and grandmother who were all raped together just outside berlin cponsoled themselves with the idea that the man of the house had died during the war. he would have been killed trying to prevent it, they told themselves.yet in reality few German men appear to have demonstrated what would admittedly have been a futiel copurage. One well known actor Harry Liebke, was killed by a bottle smashed over his head as he tried to save a young woman sheltering at his apartment , but he appears to have been fairly exceptional.The anonymous diarist even heard from one woman in the water pump queue that when Red Army soldiers were dragging her from the cellar , a man wholived in the same block said to her " Go along, for God's sake! You're getting us all into trouble".
If anyone attempted to defend a woman againtst a Soviet attacker it was either a father or a youny son trying to protect his mother."The thirteen year old Dieter Sahl , neighbours wrote in a letter shortly after the event "threw himself with fists flailing at a Russian who was raping his mother in front of him.He did not succeed in anything except getting himself shot.
Perhaps the most grotesque myth of Soviet propaganda was the notion "that german intelligence left a great number of women in Berlin infected with veneral diseases with the purpose of infecting Red Army officers. Another NKVD report specifically ascribed it to Werwolf activity."Some members of the underground organisation, Werwolf , mostly girls, recieved from their leaders the task to harm Soviet commanders and render them unfit for duty". Even just before the attack from the Oder, Soviet military authorities explained the increase in VD rates on the grounds that "the enemy is prepared to use any methods to weaken us and to put our soldiers and officers out of action."
Large numbers of women soon found that they had to queue at medical centres. It was small consulation to find so many in the same condition.One owman doctor set up a veneral diseases clinic in an air-raid shelter, with the sign "Typhoid" written in Cyrillic outside t keep Russian soldiers away. As the film "The Third man" illustrated , penicillen was soon the most sought after item on the black market. The abortion rate also soared.It has been estimated thataround 90% of victims obrtained abortions, although this figure appears extremely high. many of the women who did give birth abandoned the child in thee hospital, usually because they knew that their husband or fiance would never accept its presence at home.
At times it is hard to know whether young Soviet officers sufferred from cynicism or a complete blind idealism. "The Red Army is the most moral army in the world" a senior lieutenant declared to a sapper officer. "Our soldiers attack only an armed enemy. No matterwhere weare, we always set an example of humanity towrds the local population and any displays of violence and looting are totally foreign to us".
Most front line rifle divisions demonstrated better discipline than say tank brigades and rear units.And a wide range of anecdotal evidence indicates that Red Army officerswho were jewish went out of their way to protect German women and girls. Yet it would appear that the majority of officers and soldiers turned a blind eye to Stalin's order of 20th April issued through Stavka ordering all troops " to change their attitudes towards germans....and treat them better"
This subject has been covered in discussions before but hopefully this might add something postive.
Source "Berlin" by Antony Beevor. (Viking) 2002. ISBN 0-670-88695-5.
Pages 409-414.
The worst mistake of the German military authorities had been their refusal to destroy alcohol stocks in the path of the Red Army's advance.This decision was based on the idea that a drunken enemy could not fight.Tragically for the female population , however it was exactly what Read Army soldiers seemed to need to give them courage t rape as well as to celebrate the end of such a terrible war.
The round of victory celebrations did not signify an end to fear in Berlin.Many German women were raped as a part of the extended celebrations. A young Soviet scientest heard from an eighteen-year-old Germany girl with whom he had fallen in love on that night of 1st May a Red Army officer forced the muzzle of his pistol into her mouth and had kept it there throughout his attack to ensure her compliance.
Women soon learned to disappear during "hunting hours" of the evening. Young daughters were hidden in storage lofts for days on end.Mothers emerged into the street to fetch water only in the early morning,when Soviet soldiers were sleeping off the alcohol rom the night before.Sometimes the greatest danger came from one mother giving away the hiding place of other girls in a desperate bid to save her own daughters.
Berliners remember that, beacuse all the windows had been blown in, you could hear5 the screams every night. Estimates from two main Berlin hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000 rape vistims. One doctor deduced that out od approximately 100,000 women raped in Berlin, some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide.The death rate was thought to be much higher among the 1.4 million who had suffered in East Prussia , Pomerania , and Silesia. Altogether at least 2 million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substabtial minority , if not a vast majority apper to have suffered multiple rape. A friend of Ursula von Kardorff and the Soviet spy Schulze-Boysen was raped by " twenty-three soldiers one fater the other". She had to be stitched up hospital afterwards.
The reaction of German women to the experience of rape varied greatly.For many vistims, especially protected young girls who had little idea of what was being done to them the psychological effects could be devasrtating. relationships with men beacme extremely difficult, often for the rest of their lives. Mothers were in general far more concerned about their children, and this priority made them surmount what they had endured.Other women, both young and adult, simply tried to blank out the experience." I must repres a lot in order , to someextent, to be able to live", one woman acknowledged, when refusing to talk about the subject.Those who did not resist and managed to detatch themselves from what was happening appear to have sufferred much less. Some described it in terms of an "out of body experience"."That feeling" wrote one"hads kept the experience from dominating the rest of my life".
A robust cynicism of the Berlin varity also seemed to help."Allin all", wrote the anonymous diarist on 4th May, "we are slowly beginning to look upon the whole buisness of rape with a certain humour, albeit of the grimmer kind". They noted that the Ivanms went for fatter women first of all, which provided a certain "schadenfreude". Those who had not lost weight were usually the wives of Nazi party funtionaries and others who had profited from privileged psoitions.
Rape had become a collective experience - the diarist noted - and therefore it should be collectively overcome by talking among themselves. yet men, when they returned, tried to forbid any mention of the subject, even out of their presence.Women discovered that while they had to come to terms with what had happened to them, the men in their lives often made things far worse.Those who had been present at the time were shamed at their inability to protect them. Hanna gerlitz gave in to two drunk Soviet officers to save both her husband and hersself. "Afterwards" she wrote"I had to consle my husband ad help rstore his courage. he cried like a baby."
Men who returned home, having evaded capture or been released early from prison camps, seem to have frozen emotionally on hearing that their wife or fiancee had been raped in their absence. (Manyprisoners who had been in Soviet camps for longer periods also sufferred from " desexualization" as a result of starvation).They found the idea of the violation of their women very hard to accept.Ursula von Kardorff heard of a young aristocrat who immdeiately broke off his engagement when he learned that his fiancee had ben raped by three Russian soldiers.The anonymous diarist recounted to her former lover, who turned up unexpectedly, the experiences which the inhabitants of the building had survived."You've turned into shameless bitches" he burst out. "Every one of you !" She then gave him her diary to read, and when he found what she had written about being raped, he stared at her as if she had gone out of her mind.He left a couple of days later , saying that he was off to search for food and she never saw him again.
A daughter, mother and grandmother who were all raped together just outside berlin cponsoled themselves with the idea that the man of the house had died during the war. he would have been killed trying to prevent it, they told themselves.yet in reality few German men appear to have demonstrated what would admittedly have been a futiel copurage. One well known actor Harry Liebke, was killed by a bottle smashed over his head as he tried to save a young woman sheltering at his apartment , but he appears to have been fairly exceptional.The anonymous diarist even heard from one woman in the water pump queue that when Red Army soldiers were dragging her from the cellar , a man wholived in the same block said to her " Go along, for God's sake! You're getting us all into trouble".
If anyone attempted to defend a woman againtst a Soviet attacker it was either a father or a youny son trying to protect his mother."The thirteen year old Dieter Sahl , neighbours wrote in a letter shortly after the event "threw himself with fists flailing at a Russian who was raping his mother in front of him.He did not succeed in anything except getting himself shot.
Perhaps the most grotesque myth of Soviet propaganda was the notion "that german intelligence left a great number of women in Berlin infected with veneral diseases with the purpose of infecting Red Army officers. Another NKVD report specifically ascribed it to Werwolf activity."Some members of the underground organisation, Werwolf , mostly girls, recieved from their leaders the task to harm Soviet commanders and render them unfit for duty". Even just before the attack from the Oder, Soviet military authorities explained the increase in VD rates on the grounds that "the enemy is prepared to use any methods to weaken us and to put our soldiers and officers out of action."
Large numbers of women soon found that they had to queue at medical centres. It was small consulation to find so many in the same condition.One owman doctor set up a veneral diseases clinic in an air-raid shelter, with the sign "Typhoid" written in Cyrillic outside t keep Russian soldiers away. As the film "The Third man" illustrated , penicillen was soon the most sought after item on the black market. The abortion rate also soared.It has been estimated thataround 90% of victims obrtained abortions, although this figure appears extremely high. many of the women who did give birth abandoned the child in thee hospital, usually because they knew that their husband or fiance would never accept its presence at home.
At times it is hard to know whether young Soviet officers sufferred from cynicism or a complete blind idealism. "The Red Army is the most moral army in the world" a senior lieutenant declared to a sapper officer. "Our soldiers attack only an armed enemy. No matterwhere weare, we always set an example of humanity towrds the local population and any displays of violence and looting are totally foreign to us".
Most front line rifle divisions demonstrated better discipline than say tank brigades and rear units.And a wide range of anecdotal evidence indicates that Red Army officerswho were jewish went out of their way to protect German women and girls. Yet it would appear that the majority of officers and soldiers turned a blind eye to Stalin's order of 20th April issued through Stavka ordering all troops " to change their attitudes towards germans....and treat them better"