Another example of Erenburg's excessively violent propagandising, written on 12 October 1941. This is from his book "Russia at War", p.220f, as quoted in the book by Dr Joachim Hoffmann.
They are perverts, sodomites, addicted to all forms of bestiality.......They grab Russian girls and drag them into brothels.......They hang priests....They wear belts with the motto 'God With Us', but beat dying prisoners in the face with their belts........Culture to them means fountain pens and safety razors. They use the fountain pens to jot down how many girls they have raped; they shave with safety razors, then use straight razors to cut off the noses, ears and breasts of their victims.
The above shows a high degree of "lurid embellishment". There were many atrocities comitted in occupied Soviet territory by German forces that Erenburg could draw on as a basis for his propaganda.
But he is using the propagandist's devices of generalisation from a number of true incidents and exaggeration.
He is also inserting a sexual element when he accuses German soldiers of being "perverts" and "sodomites". That may be a personal projection of his own psychological make-up, or it could be an element prescribed to him by his employers.
It should be noted that when the feared head of the NKVD, Ezhov, was purged at the end of 1938, one of the accusations that was made against him was that of "sodomy", ie homosexual practices. Given the sexually repressive nature of Soviet society, it is no wonder that such accusations were used against Stalin's enemies, whether internal such as the victims of purges or external, such as the German invaders.
Erenburg's accusation that the German soldiers were rapists mirrors the same accusation later flung at Soviet soldiers. Erenburg was certainly the equal of Goebbels when it came to atrocity propaganda.
Another example from his diatribe "Wolves They Were, Wolves They Remain", published in Soviet news Weekly, 15 March 1945, giving his account of a two-week visit he made to occupied east Prussia.
The [German] girls gaze at the passing Red Army men ingratiatingly, lecherously, as if they were cabaret waitresses instead of burghers' daughters.
Here Erenburg is implying that German women are whores, ready to jump into bed with lusty Red Army men. The clear message is that Red Army men are not raping innocent German women, they are just giving the randy German bitches what they want.
The likelihood is that Erenburg was distorting reality at this point. We can be reasonably confident that most German women left in East Prussia early in 1945 were hiding themselves away, trying to avoid being noticed. It is also possible that Erenburg is projecting his own sexual fantasies.
Another excerpt from Soviet War News of 19 October 1944, as quoted by Hoffmann.
They [released foreign workers] are not concerned with what happens to the Germans, whether we should teach morals to what remains of them or feed them oatmeal broth. No. This young Europe has long known that the best Germans are the dead Germans......The problem that the Russians and Poles are presumably attempting to solve is whther it is better to kill the Germans with axes or clubs. They are not interested in reforming the inhabitants......They are only interested in reducing their numbers.
Erenburg added: "And it is my modest opinion that the Russians and Poles.....are right".
An excerpt about Erenburg from Dr Hoffmann's book:
Pages 159-60:
It is not true that Ehrenburg's articles, some of which were translated into the English language, were received with approval everywhere in great Britain and the USA. in 1945, for example, a well-known New York magazine called for a protest against the "cruelty of Soviet writers such as Alexei Tolstoy and Ilya Ehrenburg". On October 26 and November 23, 1944, Ehrenburg was publicly compelled to reply to a lady Gibb, who had written to him as follows:
You call forth a very, very old evil in the hearts of the Russian people, ie the desire for revenge after victory has been won. This old, old evil......brings the victor no blessings.......We are very anxious to see you place your great talents in the service of Russia on behalf of a just and lasting peace, which can never be based on self-righteousness and the lust for revenge.
Soviet propaganda, which at this time was already quite busy defending enormous Soviet territorial acquisitions, began to put massive pressure upon Lady Gibb in an attempt to nip any impulse of jutice nad humanity in the bud. Ehrenburg answered in the hate-filled tones of an "un-human", quoting from the alleged letter of a lieutenant Zinchenko, who was said to have written in shock: "My mother is religious too, and in the name of religion she asks 'kill the Germans with my blessings' ". "One must not pity a wild beast", said Ehrenburg, "rather, one must destroy it........that is the opinion of our people, dear Lady"
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Just a comment on the use of the term "un-human" applied to Ehrenburg in the above excerpt. The book by Hoffmann that I am quoting from is a translation from the original German, and contains a number of clumsy renderings, such as this one.
I assume that the original German word being translated here is "Unmensch", which does not denote someone who is literally not human, but someone who is cruel and inhumane, who does not live up to the standards of humanity.
