Ehrenburg

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
Post Reply
User avatar
bf109 emil
Member
Posts: 3627
Joined: 25 Mar 2008, 22:20
Location: Youngstown Alberta Canada

Re: Ehrenburg

#76

Post by bf109 emil » 22 Aug 2009, 06:09

Oleg has offered his speculative explanation, and I have offered mine. At present, we have no way of determining which is more correct.
seems right but we do know Ehrenburg did not issue an order to rape regardless of his personal feelings or what he painted German women out to be.

User avatar
Oleg Grigoryev
Member
Posts: 5051
Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:06
Location: Russia

Re: Ehrenburg

#77

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 22 Aug 2009, 11:51

Does Beevor give any clue as to exactly what it was that Abakumov objected to, what he considered Erenburg's "incorrect opinions"? Does he say exactly which views of Erenburg Stalin considered "politically harmful"?
According to Abakumov, Eerenburg was slandering the Red Army, by throwing accusation that second echelons were raping and abusing civilians.
Does he say why Erenburg criticised looting and destruction in East Prussia? I would guess that Erenburg was not motivated by any concern for the German civilian population; most probably he was concerned about wanton destruction of valuable property that could be used by the Soviet State, or even used to compensate Jewish survivors.

I have in mind here the proposal by Peretz Markish, one of Erenburg's fellow members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, that the lands vacated by thedeported Volga germans could be used for settling Jewish survivors. Erenburg may well have had a similar concept, of using German property to compensate Jewish survivors; that might explain why he did not want it destroyed by rampaging Slavic hoodlums at a "lower cultural level". It is noteworthy that Jewish survivors returning to Poland were initially housed in areas from which the germans had been expelled, eg in Lodz or in Szczecin.
Sounds fascinating. Maybe you can work on this concept and turn it into the movie. Lord knows - they don’t really care for the historical accuracy in Hollywood – maybe you can make a quick buck. Oh sorry I forgot Hollywood is dominated by Jews. I guess you are out of luck.
Also, I think it hardly likely that Abakumov was concerned about the German civilian population; he was an extremely vicious political policeman.
He was a head of SMERSH at the time – that is military counterintelligence that was also responsible for the security in the Army rear areas. If civilians were turning into partisans - it was certainly his concern. That being said that was not why he wrote to Stalin.
As for the question of rape, it appears Erenburg had a quite cynical attitude, essentially justifying it, in line with his publicly expressed view that German women were whores who were "asking for it".
Right… when did he say it again?
From the letter from Erenburg to Shkilevskiy April 7th 1945 :
«...Я не писал о милосердии к немцам <...> Я писал о том, что мы не можем убивать детей и старух. Это правда. Я писал, что мы не должны насиловать немок. Это я писал. В марте 1945 года я писал то же, что в марте 1942, но тогда перед нами были только немцы-солдаты, а теперь пред нами и немецкие дети. Мы должны и в победе остаться советскими людьми. Вы можете возмущаться моими статьями, это Ваше право, но не упрекайте меня в том, что я изменился — я писал и в 1942 году “мы жаждем не мести, а справедливости”. Всё. И. Эренбург» (из письма Шкилевскому, 7 апреля 1945 года. Т. 2, с. 336).
«... I did not write about mercy for the Germans <...>True - I wrote that we cannot kill children and old women. I wrote that we should not rape German women. In March, 1945 I was writing the same thing that I was in March 1942, but then before us there were only Germans -soldiers, and now before us and German children. We should remain Soviet people even in a victory. You can be indignant with my articles, this is your right, but do not reproach me that I have changed — I wrote and in 1942“we thirst not for revenges, and justice ”.
My translation.
So, those kids would have been born in 1927. If they came of peasant stock, their childhood would have been dominated by the experience of collectivisation, in many cases of famine and deportation.
Well actually those who got deported usually escaped German occupation – my grandma (born 1924 - died May 27th of this year ) was shipped off to Murmansk region from Pskov region – but they all survived -unlike those who remained “back home” . She had no love for Stalin - that is true but she seemed to be mostly pissed at her neighbors, who denounced her family as being kulaks. Well (neighbors) they got killed by Germans.
For the first 14 years of their lives, they had been struggling to survive under Soviet rule, hardly an environment that fosters a humanitarian attitude.
True. But it is all matter of reference point .
One wonders why, when given guns, they did not use them to get back at the people who had mistreated them for the first 14 years of their lives.
Well there was plenty of that during first years of war – and then the whole reference point kicked in. I mean how many villages in Belorussia were burned to the ground with all their population alive during collectivization? You are not going to deny existence of massive partisan movement in German occupied Belorussia –are you mr. Mills.
Perhaps it was the NKVD troops behind them, ready to gun them down if they hesitated.
Blocking detachments were disbanded in 1944, mr Mills -just before "Bagration".
And on the positive side, a chance to loot and rape. Perhaps all their rage at their Soviet oppressors, which could not be expressed, was externalised against a helpless German civilian population.
That would make nice addition to the movie scenario.


michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Ehrenburg

#78

Post by michael mills » 16 Sep 2009, 03:43

In his posts on this thread, Oleg Grigoryev has a number of times quoted the book "The Fall of Berlin" by Antony Beevor,.

I have consulted the book, and have found, as I expected, that Oleg has been rather selective in the material he quotes from that book regarding Erenburg. To set the recrod straight, I will now progressively post all the passages in the book in which Erenburg is mentioned.

First passage, p. 25:
Ilya Ehrenburg's own mesmerizing calls for revenge on Germany in his articles in the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) had created a huge following among the frontoviki, or frontline troops. Goebbels responded with loathing against 'the Jew Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalin's favourite rabble-rouser'. The propaganda ministry accused Ehrenburg of inciting the rape of German women. Yet while Ehrenburg never shrank from the most bloodthirsty harangues, the most notorious statement, which is still attributed to him by western historians, was a Nazi invention. He is accused of having urged Red Army soldiers to take German women as their 'lawful booty' and to 'break their racial pride'. 'There was a time', Ehrenburg retorted in Krasnaya Zvezda, 'when Germans used to fake important documents of state. Now they have fallen so low as to fake my articles'. But Ehrenburg's assertion that the soldiers of the Red Army were 'not interested in Gretchens, but in those Fritzes who had insulted our women' proved to be wide of the mark, as the savage behaviour of the Red Army soon showed. And his frequent references to Germany as 'the Blonde Witch' certainly did not encourage a humane treatment of German and even Polish women.
I note that Oleg Grigoryev omitted the last sentence of the above passage, which supports my argument that Ehrenburg's propaganda did incite the sexual mistreatment of German women, even if only indirectly.

As for Beevor's claim that one of Ehrenburg's "notorious statements" was a "Nazi invention", he does not provide any source for it in his endnotes, which are very skimpy indeed. Perhaps he simply accepted at face value Ehrenburg's own denial of authorship, published in Krasnaya Zvezda, 25 November 1944. However, regarding that denial, the Soviet Government has a track record of denying various of its statements or actions that caused it embarrassment in the West, the prime example being its denial of responsibility for the deaths of thousands of POlish POWs in its hands. So unless proof positive of a forgery by the German Government of a statement attributed to Ehrenburg can be adduced, ie a confession by the forger or German documentary evidence, Beevor's claim cannot be accepted as definitive.

In regard to Goebbels' description of Erenburg, it was objectively true; Erenburg was of Jewish origin, which obviously was a matter of importance for him, given his keen interest in the fate of his ethnic brethren, and he was certainly Stalin's main hate-propagandist.

More to follow.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Ehrenburg

#79

Post by michael mills » 16 Sep 2009, 07:54

Second passage, page 28:
The writer Lev Kopelev, then a political officer, was arrested by SMERSH counter-intelligence for having 'engaged in the propaganda of bourgeois humanism, of pity for the enemy'. Kopelev had also dared to criticize the ferocity of Ilya Ehrenburg's articles.
That is a further indication that Erenburg was one of the main instigators of the violence against German civilians that had appalled peole like Kopelev. It was not simply a matter of Erenburg reflecting the general mood of the Soviet soldier, since members of the Red Army such as Kopelev disagreed with his propaganda of revenge.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Ehrenburg

#80

Post by michael mills » 16 Sep 2009, 08:04

Third passage, pp. 35-36:
A small group pf pro-Soviet German officers was taken to visit East Prussia. They were appalled by what they saw. One of them, Count von Einsiedel, vice-president of the NKVD-controlled National Committee for a Free Germany, told fellow members on his return, 'Russians are absolutely crazy about vodka and all alcoholic drinks. They rape women, drink themselves into unconsciousness and set houses on fire'. This was rapidly reported to Beria. Ilya Ehrenburg, the fieriest of all propagandists, was also deeply shaken on a visit, but it did not make him moderate his ferocity in print.
The above shows that Erenburg was well aware of the atrocities being committed by the Soviet soldiery, but he obviously did not object, and had no qualms about continuing his incitement. Presumably those atrocities, rape, burning houses town, met with his approval and satisfied his lust for vengeance, even though the actual sight offended his squeamish sensibilities, much as Himmler was deeply shocked when he witnessed an actual mass execution.

User avatar
Oleg Grigoryev
Member
Posts: 5051
Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:06
Location: Russia

Re: Ehrenburg

#81

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 16 Sep 2009, 08:08

michael mills wrote:In his posts on this thread, Oleg Grigoryev has a number of times quoted the book "The Fall of Berlin" by Antony Beevor,.

I have consulted the book, and have found, as I expected, that Oleg has been rather selective in the material he quotes from that book regarding Erenburg. To set the recrod straight, I will now progressively post all the passages in the book in which Erenburg is mentioned.

First passage, p. 25:
Ilya Ehrenburg's own mesmerizing calls for revenge on Germany in his articles in the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) had created a huge following among the frontoviki, or frontline troops. Goebbels responded with loathing against 'the Jew Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalin's favourite rabble-rouser'. The propaganda ministry accused Ehrenburg of inciting the rape of German women. Yet while Ehrenburg never shrank from the most bloodthirsty harangues, the most notorious statement, which is still attributed to him by western historians, was a Nazi invention. He is accused of having urged Red Army soldiers to take German women as their 'lawful booty' and to 'break their racial pride'. 'There was a time', Ehrenburg retorted in Krasnaya Zvezda, 'when Germans used to fake important documents of state. Now they have fallen so low as to fake my articles'. But Ehrenburg's assertion that the soldiers of the Red Army were 'not interested in Gretchens, but in those Fritzes who had insulted our women' proved to be wide of the mark, as the savage behaviour of the Red Army soon showed. And his frequent references to Germany as 'the Blonde Witch' certainly did not encourage a humane treatment of German and even Polish women.
I note that Oleg Grigoryev omitted the last sentence of the above passage, which supports my argument that Ehrenburg's propaganda did incite the sexual mistreatment of German women, even if only indirectly.

As for Beevor's claim that one of Ehrenburg's "notorious statements" was a "Nazi invention", he does not provide any source for it in his endnotes, which are very skimpy indeed. Perhaps he simply accepted at face value Ehrenburg's own denial of authorship, published in Krasnaya Zvezda, 25 November 1944. However, regarding that denial, the Soviet Government has a track record of denying various of its statements or actions that caused it embarrassment in the West, the prime example being its denial of responsibility for the deaths of thousands of POlish POWs in its hands. So unless proof positive of a forgery by the German Government of a statement attributed to Ehrenburg can be adduced, ie a confession by the forger or German documentary evidence, Beevor's claim cannot be accepted as definitive.

In regard to Goebbels' description of Erenburg, it was objectively true; Erenburg was of Jewish origin, which obviously was a matter of importance for him, given his keen interest in the fate of his ethnic brethren, and he was certainly Stalin's main hate-propagandist.

More to follow.
I note that Oleg Grigoryev omitted the last sentence of the above passage, which supports my argument that Ehrenburg's propaganda did incite the sexual mistreatment of German women, even if only indirectly.
Gosh mr. Mills - I guess Ereneburg truly holds some special place in your hart. Lets analyze this. The last sentence :
And his frequent references to Germany as 'the Blonde Witch' certainly did not encourage a humane treatment of German and even Polish women.

a) “did not encourage a humane treatment “ is hardly “did incite the sexual mistreatment of German women” .
b) We devoted enough space in this thread to quote what Ereneburg actually wrote on the subject of how Red Army personnel should deal with German women namely :
"the Soviet soldier will not molest a German woman....It is not for booty, not for loot, not for women that he has come to Germany.
– page 5 of this thread. It may not sound very nice but it is a very opposite of call to incitement of
sexual mistreatment of German women

c) Beevor also writes of Polish women in the same sentence as the Blonde Witch'. How is the Blonde Witch' or Ereneburg responsible for mistreatment of Polish women ? Did you find anything that suggested that Erenburg also called to rape them?
d) In the light of the above, do you really think that omission of the last sentence changed anything?
As for Beevor's claim that one of Ehrenburg's "notorious statements" was a "Nazi invention", he does not provide any source for it in his endnotes, which are very skimpy indeed. Perhaps he simply accepted at face value Ehrenburg's own denial of authorship, published in Krasnaya Zvezda, 25 November 1944. However, regarding that denial, the Soviet Government has a track record of denying various of its statements or actions that caused it embarrassment in the West, the prime example being its denial of responsibility for the deaths of thousands of POlish POWs in its hands. So unless proof positive of a forgery by the German Government of a statement attributed to Ehrenburg can be adduced, ie a confession by the forger or German documentary evidence, Beevor's claim cannot be accepted as definitive.
mr. Mills this was addressed at length before. Where is the single full article by Ereneburg with call to rape? Where? And how do you reconcile it with his segments (that are ready and available) that are not calls to rape? (as in quote above)

User avatar
Oleg Grigoryev
Member
Posts: 5051
Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:06
Location: Russia

Re: Ehrenburg

#82

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 16 Sep 2009, 08:12

michael mills wrote:Third passage, pp. 35-36:
A small group pf pro-Soviet German officers was taken to visit East Prussia. They were appalled by what they saw. One of them, Count von Einsiedel, vice-president of the NKVD-controlled National Committee for a Free Germany, told fellow members on his return, 'Russians are absolutely crazy about vodka and all alcoholic drinks. They rape women, drink themselves into unconsciousness and set houses on fire'. This was rapidly reported to Beria. Ilya Ehrenburg, the fieriest of all propagandists, was also deeply shaken on a visit, but it did not make him moderate his ferocity in print.
The above shows that Erenburg was well aware of the atrocities being committed by the Soviet soldiery, but he obviously did not object, and had no qualms about continuing his incitement. Presumably those atrocities, rape, burning houses town, met with his approval and satisfied his lust for vengeance, even though the actual sight offended his squeamish sensibilities, much as Himmler was deeply shocked when he witnessed an actual mass execution.
Beevor timing is wrong Kopleve was accused of that in 1947. From my old post
Kopelev was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda and dereliction of duty in the spring of 1945. He was released in 1946 and acquitted due to the fact that key witnesses against him made a mockery of themselves to the degree where the court arrested them for bearing false testimony. He was rearrested in 1947 for "sympathy for the enemy" and “Capitalist humanism” (approximate translation). I have no idea what exact statements or acts were incriminated to him in either case. Whatever they were, his actions in 1945 seemingly were not sufficient enough to convict him so if he indeed spoke on behalf of German civilians it either was not all that outrageous or all that loud.

One again which actual proved statements of Ereneburg directly incite violence against civilians and call to rape and plunder?

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Ehrenburg

#83

Post by michael mills » 16 Sep 2009, 08:21

Fourth passage, page 169:
The programme of hatred of the enemy had started in the late summer of 1942, at the time of the withdrawal to Stalingrad and Stalin's 'Not one step back' order. It has also been the time of Anna Akhmatova's poem 'The Hour of Courage has Struck'. But in February 1945, the Soviet authorities ada[ted her words:' Red Army soldier: You are now on German soil. The hour of revenge has struck!' It was, in fact, Ilya Ehrenburg who first changed her words, he who had written in 1942, 'Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill'.
The above shows that it was Ehrenburg who, as the Red Army invaded Germany, initiated the incitement of the Soviet soldiery to commit atrocities, by such means as changing the message of resistance preached by Akhmatova to one of revenge.

Erenburg's words "Red Army soldier!.........The hour of revenge has struck!" are taken by Beevor from Alexander Werth's book ,"Russia at War", pages 964-965.

Fifth passage, page 170:
'There was a big slogan painted up in our canteen', a cypherene with the headquarters of the 1st Belorussian Front remembered. ' "Have you killed a German yet? Then kill him!" We were very strongly influenced by Ehrenburg's appeals and we had a lot to take revenge for'. Her own parents had been killed in Sevastopol. 'The hatred was so great that it was difficult to control the soldiers'.

User avatar
Oleg Grigoryev
Member
Posts: 5051
Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:06
Location: Russia

Re: Ehrenburg

#84

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 16 Sep 2009, 08:36

Yes "kill written in 1942 and reprinteted in 1945" called on Soviet soldiers to kill German soldiers. Now mr. Mills any actual statement by Ereneburg where he called on commit atrocities against civilians? Please.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Ehrenburg

#85

Post by michael mills » 17 Sep 2009, 00:59

Sixth passage, pp. 193-194:
Stalin, never one to seek natural explanations, found it hard to swallow the fact that the Germans were bound to prefer to surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviet Union, which promised and practised revenge on a huge scale.

'American tankists are enjoying excursions in the picturesque Harz mountains', Ilya Ehrenburg wrote in Krasnaya Zvezda. The Germans were surrendering, he joked bitterly, 'with fanatical persistence'. They were behaving towards Americans, he claimed, as if they belonged to 'some neutral state'. The phrase which incensed Averell Harriman the most was his comment that the Americans were 'conquering with cameras'.

User avatar
Oleg Grigoryev
Member
Posts: 5051
Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:06
Location: Russia

Re: Ehrenburg

#86

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 17 Sep 2009, 01:17

Do you have any intention to answer my questions?

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Ehrenburg

#87

Post by michael mills » 17 Sep 2009, 01:57

Seventh passage, pp.196-199:
Ehrenburg, on that day [11 April 1945], published his last and most controversial article of the was in Krasnaya Zvezda. It was entitled ‘Khvatit’ or ‘Enough’. ‘Germany is dying miserably, without pathos or dignity’, he wrote. ‘Let us remember the pompous parades, the Sportpalast in Berlin, where Hitler used to roar that he was going to conquer the world. Where is he now? In what hole? He has led Germany to a precipice, and now he prefers not to show himself’. As far as Ehrenburg was concerned, ‘Germany does not exist; there is only a colossal gang’.

This was the same article in which Ehrenburg bitterly compared German resistance in the east and the surrenders in the west. He evoked ‘the terrible wounds of Russia’ which the Western Allies did not want to know about. He then mentioned the handful of German atrocities in France, such as the massacre of Oradour. ‘There are four such villages in France. And how many are there in Belorussia? Let me remind you about villages in the region of Leningrad……’

Ehrenburg’s inflammatory rhetoric often did not accord with his own views. In his article he implicitly condoned looting – ‘Well, German women are losing fur coats and spoons that had been stolen’ – when in Red Army parlance looting often implicitly included rape. Yet he had recently lectured officers at the Frunze military academy, criticizing Red Army looting and destruction in East Prussia and blaming it on the troops’ ‘extremely low’ level of culture. His only reference to rape, however, was to say that Soviet soldiers ‘were not refusing “the compliments” of German women’. Abakumov, the head of SMERSH, reported Ehrenburg’s ‘incorrect opinions’ to Stalin, who regarded them as ‘politically harmful’. This, combined with the similar report on East Prussia by Count von Einsiedel of the NKVD-controlled National Committee for a Free Germany, set in motion a train of events and discussions which triggered a major reappraisal of Soviet policy.

The tone and content of Ehrenburg’s article on 12 April were no more bloodthirsty than previous diatribes, but to the writer’s shock it was attacked from on high to signal a change in the Party line. An embittered Ehrenburg later recognized that his role as the scourge of the Germans made him the obvious symbolic sacrifice in the circumstances. The Soviet leadership, rather late in the day, had finally realized that the horror inspired by the Red Army’s onslaught on the civilian population was increasing enemy resistance and would complicate the post-war Soviet occupation of Germany. In Ehrenburg’s words, they wanted to undermine the enemy’s will to fight on ‘by promising immunity to the rank and file of those who had carried out Hitler’s orders’.

On 14 April, Georgy Alexandrov, the main ideologist on the central committee and the chief of Soviet propaganda, replied in Pravda with an article entiled ‘Comrade Ehrenburg Oversimplifies’. In a conspicuously important piece, which had no doubt been checked by Stalin if not virtually dictated by him, Alexandrov rejected Ehrenburg’s explanation of rapid surrender in the west and his depiction of Germany as ‘only a colossal gang’. While some German officers ‘fight for the cannibal regime, others throw bombs at Hitler and his clique [the July plotters] or persuade Germans to put down their weapons [General von Seydlitz and the League of German Officers]. The Gestapo hunt for opponents of the regime, and the appeals to Germans to denounce them proved that not all Germans were the same. It was the Nazi government which was desperate to call upon the idea of national unity. The very intensity of the appeals for national unity in fact proved how little unity there was’. Alexandrov also quoted Stalin’s remark, ‘Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain’ – a slogan first coined as early as 23 February 1942 but only really used in 1945.

Moscow radio broadcast Alexandrov’s article and Krasnaya Zvezda reprinted it. A devastated Ehrenburg found himself in a political limbo. His letter to Stalin appealing against the injustice was never answered. But Ehrenburg probably did not realize that he had been denounced for other criticisms of the Red Army and the inability of officers to control their men. He had reported how when a Soviet general reproved a soldier for cutting a patch of leather from a sofa, saying that it could be used by some family in the Soviet Union, the soldier had retorted, ‘Your wife may get it, but definitely not mine’, and carried on attacking the sofa. Abakumov’s most serious charge, however, was that Ehrenburg had also said to the officers at the Frunze academy, ‘Russians returning from “slavery” look well. Girls are well fed and dressed. Our articles papers on the enslavement of persons who had been taken to Germany are not convincing’. If Ehrenburg had not enjoyed such a passionate following in the Red Army, he might easily have disappeared into a Gulag camp.

At the front, meanwhile, political departments were clearly uneasy about the situation. They reported how some officers supported Ehrenburg and still believed ‘that we should be ruthless with the Germans and those Western Allies who start flirting with the Germans’. The Party line was, however, clear. ‘We are no longer chasing Germans from our country, a situation in which the slogan, “Kill a German whenever you see one”, seemed entirely fair. Instead, the time has now come to punish the enemy correctly for all his evil deeds’. Yet even though the political officers quoted Stalin’s dictum that ‘Hitlers come and go….’, this did not seem to carry much weight with the soldiers. ‘Many soldiers asked me’, one political officer reported, ‘if Ehrenburg still continued to write and they told me that they are looking for his articles in every newspaper that they see’.
Beevor’s main source for the above material about Ehrenburg appears to be the article by Leonid Reshin, “Tovarishch Erenburg Uproshchaet”. Published in “Novoe Vremia” no. 8, 1994.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Ehrenburg

#88

Post by michael mills » 17 Sep 2009, 02:20

Here is another interesting passage from the book by Beevor.

Pages 31.32:
Domination and humiliation permeated most soldiers' treatment of women in east Prussia. The victims bore the brunt of revenge for the Wehrmacht's crimes during the invasion of the Soviet Union. After the initial fury dissipated, this characteristic of sadistic humiliation became noticeably 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 than a target of hate. 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 [my emphasis]. 'The extreme violence of totalitarian systems', wrote Vasily grossman in his great novel Life and Fate, 'proved able to paralyse the human spirit throughout whole continents'.
In an earlier post, I had written that the savagery of the Soviet soldiery toward the German civilian population might be explained in part as a displacement of the hatred they felt toward the Soviet tyranny which had oppressed them all their lives, but which they felt powerless to resist, onto the helpless Germans who were at their mercy. It seems that Beevor has a similar view.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Ehrenburg

#89

Post by michael mills » 17 Sep 2009, 02:36

Another highly significant passage from the book by Beevor.

Page 122:
The Soviet commander of Lauenburg complained to Captain Agranenko that it was 'absolutely impossible to stop the violence'. Agranenko found that red Army soldiers did not bother with official euphemisms for rape, such as 'violence against the civil population' or 'immorality'. They simply used the phrase 'to fuck'. A Cossack officer told him that German women were 'too proud'. You had to 'get atride them' [my emphasis]. Others complained that German women looked 'like draught-horses'. In Glowitz, he noted that women were 'using children like a screen'. Soviet soldiers once again demonstrated an utterly bewildering mixture of irrational violence, drunken lust and spontaneous kindness to children.
Note the justification for rape used by the Cossack officer; that German women were "too proud". Obviously that officer saw "getting astride" German women as a way of breaking their "pride".

The parallel between the words used by the Cossack officer and the call to "break the racial pride of German women", often attributed to Erenburg, is too close to be ignored. It strongly suggests that a call to 'break the pride of German women" was indeed issued to Soviet soldiers, and that such a call was not a n invention of German propaganda.

Whether such a call was composed by Erenburg himself remains unknown; it may have been part of propaganda not written by Erenburg, but wrongly attributed to him, because of his well-known incitement to hatred and revenge.

It is also unknown whether, if a call to 'break the racial pride of German women" was indeed issued, it explicitly suggested "getting astride" them, ie humiliating them sexually, was an appropriate way to do it. But it clear that Soviet soldiers such as the Cossack captain envisaged "breaking pride" in sexual terms.

kon
Banned
Posts: 281
Joined: 23 Jul 2007, 16:55
Location: Belarus

Re: Ehrenburg

#90

Post by kon » 18 Sep 2009, 13:30

There were many cases when German women offered themselves to soldiers because of fear for the life. Pictures from Nemmersdorf showed at cinemas, published in newspapers and it has made strong psychological impact on Germans. And they offered the body that the soldier has taken pleasure and has kept a life.

When soldiers came into houses, German women lifted skirts and laid down on a bed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/ma ... features11
"They all lifted their skirts for us and lay on the bed," said the leader of one tank company.

Post Reply

Return to “Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes”