In the winter and spring of 1945, the troops of the Red Army advancing deep into the Third Reich committed mass rapes on German women. The victims were both 12-year-olds and 70-year-old women. It is estimated that over 2 million women were raped across Germany at that time.
The Red Army soldiers entering the territories of Prussia and Silesia were dominated by the desire to take revenge on the Germans. This feeling was skillfully fueled by Soviet propagandists, which was especially excelled by the writer Ilya Erenburg. There were slogans on posters or in front newspapers, the meaning of which was reduced to one: destroy, burn, take revenge . The First Red Army took revenge, and the main impetus of this hatred was taken by German women.
Raped Prussia
Descriptions of mass rapes in Prussia are shocking with their cruelty. The young officer Leonid Riabiczew recalled the events from the vicinity of Gołdap:
Women, mothers, and their daughters lie left and right along the road, each facing a rowdy crowd of men with their pants down. Women who were bleeding or losing consciousness were dragged aside, and the soldiers fired on those who tried to save their children.
All this was supervised by officers who made sure that each village leader had a share in the crime. After all, the victims were often brutally mutilated and murdered . The same Ryabichev further recalled how his unit stumbled upon the bodies of raped women, each of whom had a bottle of wine in a vagina.
During the occupation of the USSR, the Germans committed countless crimes. In 1945, the Red Army soldiers intended to retaliate. Women and children were the most vulnerable to their anger.
Another Soviet officer, Lew Kopielew, found a murdered old woman in the burnt Nidzica: she had a torn dress and a telephone receiver between her bony thighs. Apparently they were trying to force her into her vagina.
Entire families committed mass suicide. or tried to do so to protect themselves from the cruelty of the Red Army. In the book "Berlin 1945. The Fall" Antony Beevor quotes the testimony of one of the women interviewed by NKVD officers:
They pointed with their weapons at me and two other women and told me to go outside. There I was raped by twelve soldiers. Others raped the women who left the basement with me.
The next night, six soldiers entered the basement again and raped us in front of our children. On February 5, three more appeared, on February 6, another eight, completely drunk, who not only raped us, but also severely beat us.
The women tried to break their ordeal and cut the lives of themselves and their children, but managed to save them.
Captive Silesia
On the night of January 23-24, 1945, the Red Army seized, practically without much resistance, the first large city of Upper Silesia, Gliwice. Looting and mass rapes began immediately. There was no room for pity for children and the elderly here too .
After the capture of Gliwice in January 1945, the Red Army soldiers began mass looting and rapes.
Soldiers set fire to houses and public buildings in an act of mindless barbarism. Between 1,500 and 3,000 people died, including French prisoners of war. A resident of Gliwice, Wolfgang Bittner described the Red Army soldiers as follows:
They had an Asian look, submachine guns with round drums and strangely broken barrels. One of the soldiers had a mink coat on his uniform, another had clocks all over his arm, a watch next to his watch - I found it ridiculous. (...) . They raged terribly, constantly persecuted women, took care of their needs in pots, washed their hair in the toilet bowl.
Hunt for women in Berlin
In Berlin, Soviet soldiers made a real selection and chose the prettier victims. From then on, German women were no longer the target of mindless revenge. They have now become a trophy of war, a prey.
The evenings were the worst. Red Army soldiers, usually drunk, searched apartments and cellars in groups. The German women hid in attics and balconies. Some changed their figure, tearing their hair, smearing their face with charcoal or ash.
No German woman could feel safe with the Red Army soldiers nearby.
The Berliners noticed that plump women were more "successful". It gave them some kind of satisfaction, as they were mostly wives of Nazi officials.
Atrocities were also taking place in Berlin. Antony Beevor describes an incident in Berlin's Dahlem district:
In Dahlem, some officers from Rybałka visited Sister Kunegunda, mother head of the Haus Dahlem maternity hospital and orphanage. (...) The Soviet officers and their men behaved flawlessly. They even warned Sister Kunegunda against second-line units.
Their predictions have come true to the letter. Those who came after them raped all the women. Nuns, girls and older women, women in advanced pregnancy and mothers who have just given birth to children. They were merciless .
Another resident of Berlin was dragged by Soviet soldiers from the coal cellar where she was hiding: twenty-three soldiers, one by one. I had to be sewn up at the hospital.
Many raped women were later murdered by Red Army soldiers.
The conquerors did not forgive even the wives and daughters of the German communists . When the Berlin comrades came out of hiding, they suggested that their relatives should do the washing and cooking for Soviet officers. A French prisoner of war later stated that they were all raped the same night .
Kara
Red Army soldiers were usually not punished for rape. The NKVD intervened only when one of the soldiers contracted a venereal disease. Interestingly, the NKVD reports claimed that German intelligence had deliberately left a lot of venereal women in Berlin that they would infect Soviet officers. In fact, these diseases were the result of previous rapes.
Over time, the commanders realized that this course of action would not bring glory to the Red Army, and that it could even encourage local resistance. Soldiers were punished for rape. One of the commanders of an infantry division shot an officer lining up people in a line in front of a German woman lying on the ground.
German propaganda portrayed the Red Army as rapists and murderers. And the reality has largely confirmed the propaganda slogans. The illustration shows a fragment of a poster by Willibald Kraina, which was supposed to encourage Poles to fight the Red Army.
Forty soldiers and officers were shot in Silesia for the rapes and robberies. It happened in the presence of their fellow troops, as a warning. This outraged the Red Army: These commanders! They will shoot their own men for some German whore.
The penalties, as a rule, were not high. Usually, five years' imprisonment was made, which was reduced to two on appeal. The punishment was actually suspended until the end of the fighting. Later, such a criminal either died at the front or redeemed his guilt with his wounds.
Did they regret it?
Not all Red Army soldiers were rapists. Some helped women. This is evidenced by, inter alia, incident at Haus Dahlem. The previously quoted major Lew Kopielew spent over 10 years in labor camps for his attempts to oppose the crimes against German civilians.
Two German women from Metgethen (now a district of Kaliningrad) raped by the Red Army and then murdered with their children.
In turn, captain Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was arrested in February 1945 in Elbląg and sentenced to 8 years in labor camps. The reason was the criticism of the manner in which the USSR and Stalin waged war. He described the rape and bestialities of the Red Army soldiers he had witnessed in the moving poem "Pruskie Nights".
In the post-war accounts of Soviet soldiers written by Catherine Merridale, veterans rather avoided the subject of rapes on German women. Yes, they admitted that they happened somewhere, heard something about them, but saw nothing. Some felt that this was a topic not worth attention.
To those old guys it was just baby, which is something between a whore and an old bag. They didn't even have the concept of sexual violence, they called it matter-of-factly "fucking." Anyway, as one of the Red Army soldiers said: they all picked up their skirts and went to bed when they saw us .
It is estimated that up to 130,000 women were raped by Red Army soldiers in Berlin alone. And in the territories they occupied, it could have been about two million German women.
Tragic balance
According to German estimates, 95–130 thousand people were raped in Berlin alone. women. About 10,000 of them died, mostly suicide . In total, around 2 million German women were raped, a considerable number repeatedly.
German women gave birth to 150-200 thousand. "Strangers", some of whom were a consequence of rape. It is impossible to determine the number of abortions performed. In some regions, up to 60% of women infected with venereal diseases. The psychological consequences of rape have not been estimated by anyone.
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You can read about other crimes of the Red Army in the book by Dariusz Kaliński entitled "Red Plague".
You can read about the Soviet rape of Polish women in the book "Red plague. What was the liberation of Poland really like? ”: