Soviet atrocities on german civilains were preplanned

[wildboar]

Now that Beevor's book about mass-rapes commited by soviet forces in germany has created stir i have no doubt it vindicate's my stand that all soviet atrocities on german civilian's wereit pre-planned by beria led nvkd,all proof regarding it was destroyed by successive communist governments of ussr & ddr.
it is impossible to belive that there was lack of disipline in red army on massive scale ,which had defeated heers ,and that its command structure failed to control its men infact it proves my point that its command structure overlooked and allowed nvkd to carry out its genocidal plan against german civilian's===It is well known fact that soviet troops commited massive atrocities on civilian german population.

it is also well known fact that atrocities commited on german civilian population was preplanned and not sponteneous.

They were planned by NVKD and its hideous monsterous head Beria, to teach germans a lesson-

the following points should be considered -

1-there is no record of soviet soldiers commiting atrocities in poland ,czechoslovakia,and other places where soviet army fought war expect germany.

2-all the extreme right wingers are just making Ilja Ehrenburg responsible for atrocities while it is the fact that it was Beria who was responsible for all atrocities not Ilja Ehrenburg.
Ilja Ehrenburg was a puppet in hands of beria and all atrocties were preplanned and masterminded by nvkd led by beria

3-at that time there was no disipline in red army thanks to purges of officer cadre by stalin the disipline in red army was maintained by nvkd operatives controlled by beria.

4-soviet soldiers were not forbidden to commit atrocities on german civilains the officer core of red army was averse to it but it was was nvkd which encouraged soviet soldier to do so.

5-no soviet soldiers who were invloved in atrocites were never punished ,repeated request by officer core of red army to prosecute them was denied by stalin.

6-the wealth looted by soviet soldiers from german civilians was consficated by nvkd and every soldier was encouraged to loot civilian german property

7- at the first stage mass rape was encouraged by nvkd but at latter stage the nvkd discouraged rapes and encouraged looting of property as it was greatly benifiting from it

8-Stalin was never in dark about atrocites (as claimed by apologist for stalin )commited by soviet soldiers he knew it and actively encouraged it.

9-all those officers who opposed it as policy were tranfered to gulag by nvkd.

in fact i regard beria and stalin as monsters who commited crimes against humanity

[Roberto]

Now that Beevor's book about mass-rapes commited by soviet forces in germany has created stir i have no doubt it vindicate's my stand that all soviet atrocities on german civilian's wereit pre-planned by beria led nvkd,all proof regarding it was destroyed by successive communist governments of ussr & ddr.
it is impossible to belive that there was lack of disipline in red army on massive scale ,which had defeated heers ,and that its command structure failed to control its men infact it proves my point that its command structure overlooked and allowed nvkd to carry out its genocidal plan against german civilian's===It is well known fact that soviet troops commited massive atrocities on civilian german population.

it is also well known fact that atrocities commited on german civilian population was preplanned and not sponteneous.

Well known in your own fantasy, perhaps. Where's the evidence to such "pre-planning" (rather than mere indifference on the part of Soviet authorities to reports of atrocities committed by Soviet soldiers?)

They were planned by NVKD and its hideous monsterous head Beria, to teach germans a lesson-

Not that I consider Beria a nice guy, but where's the evidence that he had anything to do with the atrocities against German civilians?

the following points should be considered -

1-there is no record of soviet soldiers commiting atrocities in poland ,czechoslovakia,and other places where soviet army fought war expect germany.

Why, better don't tell that to our friend Ovidius, who is likely to give you a speech about Soviet atrocities in Romania if he reads the above. Milovan Djilas would also have disapproved:

When the Yugoslav Communist, Milovan Djilas, complained to Stalin's face that the Red Army was raping Yugoslav women he received a lecture on the Russian attitude to war:

You have, of course, read Dostoevsky? Do you see what a complicated thing is a man's soul, man's psyche? Well then, imagine a man who has fought from Stalingrad to Belgrade - over thousands of kilometers of his own devastated land, across the dead bodies of his comrades and dearest one? How can such a man react normally? And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors? You have imagined the Red Army to be ideal. And it is not ideal, nor can it be ... The important thing is that it fights Germans ...

Source of quote: Richard Overy, Russia's War, pages 261/262. Emphasis is mine.

2-all the extreme right wingers are just making Ilja Ehrenburg responsible for atrocities while it is the fact that it was Beria who was responsible for all atrocities not Ilja Ehrenburg.
Ilja Ehrenburg was a puppet in hands of beria and all atrocties were preplanned and masterminded by nvkd led by beria

Again, there's no evidence that Ehrenburg, a rabid propagandist tolerated for some time in order to bolster troop morale, was working for Beria or anyone in the Soviet high command. When the violence and disorder of Soviet troops on rampage in East Germany started to threaten military discipline and became an embarrassment to the Soviet government in April 1945, one of the measures taken to put an end to it was actually a series of anti-Ehrenburg articles in Pravda, the text of which I can provide if there is interest.

3-at that time there was no disipline in red army thanks to purges of officer cadre by stalin the disipline in red army was maintained by nvkd operatives controlled by beria.

Sure you're not mixing up 1945 with 1941, my friend?

4-soviet soldiers were not forbidden to commit atrocities on german civilains the officer core of red army was averse to it but it was was nvkd which encouraged soviet soldier to do so.

The officers were actually afraid of their own soldiers in many cases and thus refrained from stepping in. Is there any evidence of NKVD encouragement of atrocities you can show us, or is that just another hollow guess?

5-no soviet soldiers who were invloved in atrocites were never punished ,repeated request by officer core of red army to prosecute them was denied by stalin.

Again, examples and evidence are called for. Contrary to what you believe, Overy tells us on page 260 of his above mentioned book that

In Silesia and on the banks of the Oder the orgy of violence threatened the discipline of the troops at what was a critical point of the campaign, and commanders took harsh steps to rein in the wave of atrocities and the widespread looting.

Emphasis is mine.

I have also read a quote from A.J.P. Taylor (don't know the source, unfortunately) in the direction that the Red Army advanced into Germany in three echelons: first came highly disciplined elite shock troops, then an undisciplined rabble of second line troops who ran wild, after that the military police which restored order and shot the worst offenders out of hand. I know of a case in Leipzig where, shortly after the war, a Soviet soldier was court-martialled and shot for having taken away a bycicle from a little girl.

6-the wealth looted by soviet soldiers from german civilians was consficated by nvkd and every soldier was encouraged to loot civilian german property

The encouragement to looting is the only point in which your assertions coincide with the writings of Soviet dissident Lev Kopelev, who points out that the permission granted to soldiers to send packages home was an indirect encouragement to looting, given that the soldiers themselves possessed nothing which they could have sent to their families. On the other hand, Kopelev's description of this encouragement belies the notion that the looted goods were confiscated by the NKVD.

7- at the first stage mass rape was encouraged by nvkd but at latter stage the nvkd discouraged rapes and encouraged looting of property as it was greatly benifiting from it

Again, I would like to see some evidence to NKVD encouragement of rape and murder. Also some documentation on systematic confiscation and collection of looted goods by NKVD units.

8-Stalin was never in dark about atrocites (as claimed by apologist for stalin )commited by soviet soldiers he knew it and actively encouraged it.

I wouldn't say he actively encouraged it, because that is not what becomes apparent from statements of his like the above quoted speech he gave to Djilas. What is borne out by the evidence is that he tolerated it until he realized that it affected the fighting performance of the troops and saw it as disadvantageous not only in his relation with the Western Allies but also for his plans to create a Communist satelite on German territory.

9-all those officers who opposed it as policy were tranfered to gulag by nvkd.

"All" is a lot of people, and I strongly doubt that there is evidence to even a handful of such cases. The only documented case I know of is that of Lev Kopelev, who ended up in the Gulag due to the calumny of an envious comrade of his who alleged that he had derided Stalin's policy and the utterances of Comrade Ehrenburg (held in high esteem at the time, but not for much longer) "in terms not to be reproduced".

in fact i regard beria and stalin as monsters who commited crimes against humanity

So do I. But the blame for the Red Army's atrocities on German soil resides in their having taken no or belated steps to put an end to them rather than in their having "pre-planned" them.

[Ovidius]

the following points should be considered -

1-there is no record of soviet soldiers commiting atrocities in poland ,czechoslovakia,and other places where soviet army fought war expect germany.

Why, better don't tell that to our friend Ovidius, who is likely to give you a speech about Soviet atrocities in Romania if he reads the above.

The Soviet troops in Romania during 1944 and 1945 had committed some things that could be considered crimes(rape/theft/looting and even some shootings), but whatever they did was nothing compared to what they did to the Germans. Not only to the Germans in Germany proper, but to Germans everywhere.

Whatever the Soviets did in Romania, their real atrocities did not happen through their own hands, and definitely not in 1944-1945. The "obsessive decade" was the 1948-1958 one, and the guilty ones were neither the frontline troops, nor the Soviet "counselors to aid the Romanian government"(euphemism), but a third category, whose deeds are not spoken, usually, in Romania, although the perpetrators are dead for decades. And only a small fraction of historians dare to say certain things about them, which usually are only part believed by the public and quickly forgotten. 8)

Why does this thing happen, can be easily guessed, but for my personal safety I won't say it here. Nor that I would fear anything, but just a small fraction of the Westerners would be able to "Believe" it, and I would be quickly banned from the forum.

I have also read a quote from A.J.P. Taylor (don't know the source, unfortunately) in the direction that the Red Army advanced into Germany in three echelons: first came highly disciplined elite shock troops, then an undisciplined rabble of second line troops who ran wild, after that the military police which restored order and shot the worst offenders out of hand. I know of a case in Leipzig where, shortly after the war, a Soviet soldier was court-martialled and shot for having taken away a bycicle from a little girl.

While the idea of deploying the Soviet troops into three echelons with bandits in the second is based on what actually was observed, any other things written by AJP Taylor have to be taken with a grain of salt. A big rock of salt, actually.

~Best regards,

Ovidius

[Roberto]

In my last post on this thread I wrote:

When the violence and disorder of Soviet troops on rampage in East Germany started to threaten military discipline and became an embarrassment to the Soviet government in April 1945, one of the measures taken to put an end to it was actually a series of anti-Ehrenburg articles in Pravda, the text of which I can provide if there is interest.

I was wrong. It was not a series of articles in Pravda, but one article that put an end to Ehrenburg’s hate speech. Here’s the story:

By the middle of April, with the Russians deep inside Austria and Czechoslovakia and the Western Allies sweeping across Western and Southern Germany, and Zhukov, Konev and Rokossovsky holding the Oder Line, the time was ripe for the final attack on Berlin.
A short digression is called for, however, on the tricky subject of Russian policy towards Germany when the Red Army began to occupy German territory. After all that the Germans had done - and horrors like the destruction of Warsaw and the extermination camps at Maidanek and Auschwitz were still fresh in every soldier’s memory - there was no sympathy at all for the German people. No doubt, there was much respect for the German soldier, but that was different. Having fought the Germans for nearly four years on Russian soil, and having seen thousands of Russian towns and villages in ruins, the Russian troops could not resist their thirst for revenge when they finally broke into Germany.
Ever since Russian troops had been on German soil, some rough things had been going on. In the first flush of the invasion of Germany, Russian soldiers burned down numerous houses, and sometimes whole towns - merely because they were German! (I was to see this later, for instance in a large East Prussian town like Allenstein. The Poles who had taken over the city - now re-christened Olsztyn - were furious at all the repairing and rebuilding they had to do in a town which had originally fallen almost intact into Russian hands). There was also a great deal of looting, robbery and rape. The rape no doubt included many genuine atrocities, but as a Russian major later told me, many German women somehow assumed that “it was now the Russians’ turn”, and that it was no good resisting. “The approach,”, he said, “was usually very simple. Any of our chaps simply had to say: ´Frau, komm,´ and she knew what was expected of her ... Let’s face it. For nearly four years, the Red Army had been sex-starved. It was all right for officers, especially staff officers, so many of whom had a ´field–wife´ handy - a secretary, or typist, or a nurse, or a canteen waitress; but the ordinary Vanka had very few opportunities in that line. In our liberated towns, some of our fellows were lucky, but most of them weren’t. The question of more or less ‘raping’ any Russian woman just didn’t arise. In Poland a few regrettable things happened from time to time, but, on the whole, a fairly strict discipline was maintained as regards ‘rape’. The most common offense in Poland was ‘daí chasy’ - ‘give me your wrist-watch.’ There was an awful lot of petty thieving and robbery. Our fellows were just crazy about wrist-watches - there’s no getting away from it. But the looting and raping in a big way did not start until our soldiers got to Germany. Our fellows were so sex-starved that they often raped old women of sixty, seventy or even eighty - much to these grandmothers’ surprise, if not downright delight. But I must admit it was a nasty business and the record of the Kazakhs and other Asiatic troops was particularly bad.”
The posters put up in Germany, during the first weeks of the invasion, such as: “Red Army Soldier: You are now on German soil; the hour of revenge has struck!” did not make things any easier. Moreover, the press propaganda of Ehrenburg and others continued to be very ferocious indeed.
Here are some samples from Ehrenburg’s articles during the invasion of Germany:

Germany is a witch... We are in Germany. German towns are burning. I am happy.
The Germans have no souls... An English statesman said that the Germans were our brethren. No! it is blasphemy to include the child-murderers among the family of nations...
Not only divisions and armies are advancing on Berlin. All the trenches, graves and ravines filled with the corpses of the innocents are advancing on Berlin, all the cabbages of Maidanek and all the trees of Vitebsk on which the Germans hanged so many unhappy people. The boots and shoes and the babies’ slippers of those murdered and gassed at Maidanek are marching to Berlin. The dead are knocking on the doors of the Joachimsthaler Strasse, of the Kaiserallee, of Unter den Linden and all the other cursed streets of that cursed city...
We shall put up gallows in Berlin... An icy wind is sweeping along the streets of Berlin. But it is not the icy wind that is driving the Germans and their females to the west... 800 years ago the Poles and Lithuanians used to say: “We shall torment them in heaven as they tormented us on earth”... Now our patrols stand outside the castles of the Teutonic Knights at Allenstein, Osterode, Marienburg...
We shall forget nothing. As we advance through Pomerania, we have before our eyes the devastated, blood-drenched countryside of Belorussia ...
Some say the Germans from the Rhine are different from the Germans on the Oder. I don’t know that we should worry about such fine points. A German is a German everywhere. The Germans have been punished, but not enough. They are still in Berlin. The Führer is still standing, and not hanging. The Fritzes are still running, but not lying dead. Who can stop us now? General Model? The Oder? The Volkssturm? No, it’s too late. Germany, you can now whirl around in circles, and burn, and howl in your deathly agony; the hour of revenge has struck!...

And, after visiting East Prussia, Ehrenburg wrote: “The Niezschean supermen are whining. They are a cross between a jackal and a sheep. They have no dignity ... A Scottish army chaplain, a liberated prisoner of war, said to me: '‘ know how the Germans treated their Russian prisoners in 1941 and 1942. I can only bow to your generosity now.’”

It did not take very long for both the Party and the Command of the Red Army to realize that all this was going too far. The troops were getting out of hand, and, moreover, it was clear that, before long, the Russians would be faced with a variety of political and administrative problems in Germany which could simply not be handled on the “anti-Marxist” basis that “all Germans are evil”. The alarm, not so much over “atrocities” as over the totally unnecessary destruction caused by the Red Army in the occupied parts of Germany, was first reflected in the Red Star editorial of February 9, 1945:

”An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is an old saying. But it must not be taken literally. If the Germans marauded, and publicly raped our women, it does not mean that we must do the same. This has never been and never shall be. Our soldiers will not allow anything like that to happen - not because of pity for the enemy, but out of a sense of their own personal dignity ... They understand that every breach of military discipline only weakens the victorious Red Army ... Our revenge is not blind. Our anger is not irrational. In an access of blind rage one is apt to destroy a factory in conquered enemy territory - a factory that would be of value to us. Such an attitude can only play into the enemy’s hands.

Here was a clear admission that factories - and much else - had been burned down by Russian troops - simply because they were “German property”.
On April 14, Ehrenburg’s hate propaganda was stopped by a strong attack on him in Pravda by G.F. Alexandrov, the principal ideologist of the Central Committee. According to Ehrenburg’s postwar Memoirs this attack was launched on direct instructions from Stalin. Alexandrov’s article, “Comrade Ehrenburg os Over-simplifying”, took him up on two points: first of all, it was both un-Marxist and inexpedient to treat all Germans as sub-human; “Hitlers come and go, but the German people go on forever”, Stalin himself had said in a recent speech; and Russia would have to live with the German people. To suggest that every German democrat or Communist was necessarily a Nazi in disguise was absolutely wrong. The article clearly suggested that there were now certain Germans with whom it would be necessary for the Russian authorities to co-operate. Secondly, Alexandrov objected to Ehrenburg’s Red Star article two days before, called “That’s Enough!” in which he had raged against the ease with which the Allies were advancing in the west and the desperate resistance the Germans were continuing to offer the Russians in the east. Ehrenburg had said that this was so because, having murdered millions of civilians, in the east, the Germans were therefore scared of the Russians, but not of the Western Allies, who were being deplorably “soft”. They had, he claimed, even ordered Russian and Ukrainian slaves to go on working on German estates during the spring sowing.
While agreeing with some of this, Alexandrov still said that Ehrenburg was “oversimplifying” the issue:

At the present stage the Nazis are following their old mischievous policy of sowing distrust among the Allies...They are trying, by means of this political military trick, to achieve what they could not achieve by purely military means. If the Germans, as Ehrenburg says, were only scared of the Russians, they would not, to this day, go on sinking Allied ships, murdering British prisoners, or sending flying bombs over London. “We did not capture Königsberg by telephone,” Ehrenburg said. That is quite true; but the explanation he offers for the simple way in which the Allies occupy towns in Western Germany is not the correct one.

This sop to the Allies was no doubt still intended to be in the good Yalta tradition, but it was perhaps not meant to be overwhelmingly convincing. For, although there was to be genuine rejoicing, especially among soldiers and officers on both sides, when, on April 27, the Russian and American forces met at Torgau on the Elbe, and cut the German forces in two, and although there were friendly demonstrations outside the American Embassy on VE-Day in Moscow on May 9, there continued to be considerable distrust of the Western Allies. True, the Allies did not fall for Himmler’s (or any other) “separate peace” offer, but no sooner had the Germans capitulated than the Russian press was already full of angry screams about “Churchill’s Flensburg Government” - a government which, they later asserted, was not liquidated until the Russians themselves had taken a very strong line about this “outrageous business.”
But that is a different story. The most significant part of Alexandrov’s attack on Ehrenburg concerned the new official line on “the German people”. Very suddenly the hate propaganda against “the Germans” was stopped. Ehrenburg was no longer allowed to write - at least not on Germany. His hate propaganda had served its purpose in the past, but now it had become inexpedient.

Source of quote:

Alexander Werth, Russia at War 1941-1945, 2000 Second Edition Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, pages 963 to 968

[wildboar]

Roberto,

quote

Well known in your own fantasy, perhaps. Where's the evidence to such "pre-planning" (rather than mere indifference on the part of Soviet authorities to reports of atrocities committed by Soviet soldiers?)

the million dollar question is why did soviet authorities(specially stalin) turned a blind eye to reports of atrocities commited by soviet soldier?
the reason is that stalin had no alternative but to turn a blind eye to it since it was organised by mr beria and nvkd which were pillars of power .
how can stalin afford to antagonise beria and nvkd on whom his power rested?

quote

Not that I consider Beria a nice guy, but where's the evidence that he had anything to do with the atrocities against German civilians?

infact all evidence regarding involvement of beria and nvkd in atrocities on german civilians was destroyed by communist governemt of GDR and by successive soviet governments for there own political ends.

quote

Sure you're not mixing up 1945 with 1941, my friend?

no i am not mixing up 1945 with 1941. in fact according to dissident indian communist intlectual the effect of stalins purges of red armies officer core was much greater than we think.
infact from start of german invasion to battle of berlin disipline in soviet army was maintained by nvkd blocking detachments,moreover many top officers of redarmy themselves were member of nvkd . infact withouth nvkd and beria's hencemen redarmy would had not been able fight german army.

quote

Again, there's no evidence that Ehrenburg, a rabid propagandist tolerated for some time in order to bolster troop morale, was working for Beria or anyone in the Soviet high command. When the violence and disorder of Soviet troops on rampage in East Germany started to threaten military discipline and became an embarrassment to the Soviet government in April 1945, one of the measures taken to put an end to it was actually a series of anti-Ehrenburg articles in Pravda, the text of which I can provide if there is interest.

infact Ehrenburg was himself a member of NVKD and he did wrote about his propoganda on behalf and instigation of beria.in fact he was puppet of beria.anti ehrenburg article's appeared in pravda since a group of communist party officials were jealous of closeness to beria and had nothing to do with embarrassment of soviet government

[Roberto]

the million dollar question is why did soviet authorities(specially stalin) turned a blind eye to reports of atrocities commited by soviet soldier?

The two million dollar question is why this indifference would indicate the presence of any “pre-planning”.

the reason is that stalin had no alternative but to turn a blind eye to it since it was organised by mr beria and nvkd which were pillars of power .

That’s how wildboar would like to see it, but in the absence of evidence it’s but one of many possible explanations, there being others far closer to the mind and policies of Stalin, who according to his own statements had a benevolent attitude towards revenge for what the Germans had done to the Soviet people on the one hand and on the other hand held the views of the old-fashioned oriental potentate for whom there was nothing wrong with a soldier’s “having fun with a woman, after such horrors”, as he told Milovan Djilas.

how can stalin afford to antagonise beria and nvkd on whom his power rested?

You don’t know old Joe, my friend. Beria’s power depended solely on Stalin, I would say, and could be taken away from him at Stalin’s whim at any time if he displeased the Great Father. Look what happened to Beria’s predecessors Jagoda and Yezhov.

infact all evidence regarding involvement of beria and nvkd in atrocities on german civilians was destroyed by communist governemt of GDR and by successive soviet governments for there own political ends.

A rather feeble explanation for the absence of documentary evidence, especially as it was not the practice of Soviet authorities to destroy anything. On the contrary, they kept it locked in their archives “for all times”, which is why so much documentation on their dirty doings is coming to light these days after Russia has provided access to the secret KGB files of the former Soviet Union.

no i am not mixing up 1945 with 1941. in fact according to dissident indian communist intlectual the effect of stalins purges of red armies officer core was much greater than we think.

What do “we” think, other than Stalin having wiped out his whole officer corps in the purges of the late 1930's, 40,000 people or so if I’m not mistaken? And what does that nameless “dissident Indian communist intellectual” say that would go even further?

infact from start of german invasion to battle of berlin disipline in soviet army was maintained by nvkd blocking detachments,moreover many top officers of redarmy themselves were member of nvkd . infact withouth nvkd and beria's hencemen redarmy would had not been able fight german army.

Blocking detachments there were, in fact, and they stiffened the backbone of the Red Army in some critical situations. But to say that the Red Army soldier in 1941 and 1942 fought only because he knew blocking detachments behind him is a gross exaggeration. Why, according to German accounts Soviet troops very often fought on after they had been encircled by German forces, in many cases until all of them were dead. And from mid-1943 onwards at the latest, there was no longer any need for blocking detachments to prevent the troops from retreating. At that time they were on the offensive, after all.

infact Ehrenburg was himself a member of NVKD and he did wrote about his propoganda on behalf and instigation of beria. in fact he was puppet of beria.

Source, please. Did Ehrenburg write that in his Memoirs, or where did you get it from?

anti ehrenburg article's appeared in pravda since a group of communist party officials were jealous of closeness to beria and had nothing to do with embarrassment of soviet government

Well, Ehrenburg himself seems to have written that Alexandrov’s attack on him in Pravda was ordered by Stalin himself (see quote from Alexander Werth’s Russia at War 1941-1945 in my last post. If you think that Ehrenburg and/or Werth were wrong in this respect, let us have a comprehensive quote from the source that gave you this idea. And it better be something more concrete than your anonymous “dissident Indian communist intellectual”.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

To date the study of the purge of the Red Army officer corps from
1937-9 has focused exclusively on the terror of the Ezhovshchina,
that is, the arrest and execution of officers by the secret police of
the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) headed by
Nikolai Ezhov for whom the period is named. Several articles and
documents on the Red Army purge published in Voenno-istoricheskii
zhurnal and Izvestiia TsK KPSS in 1989 and 1990 have revealed that
the terror was only one of two extraordinary processes that
eliminated officers from the army in those years. The other,
heretofore unrecognized, was expelling officers from the army and
discharging them from the Communist party for associations with
enemies of the people and, in 1938, for associations with foreigners,
which did not necessarily result in death or imprisonment. Thousands
of officers were expelled from the party as the result of independent
actions by primary party organizations, and subsequently discharged
from the army in an orgy of denunciations at the local level out of
Moscow's control. As these two processes became interrelated,
confusion added to fear and magnified the effect of the terror.
Simultaneously, thousands of officers were reinstated and tens of
thousands new officers commissioned, more than making up for the
purged officers numerically, but not in experience, and making it
extremely difficult to assess the impact of the Ezhovshchina on
military cadres. This new information suggests a need to reexamine
our understanding of the purge of the Red Army, because before the
publishing of the aforementioned materials and documents, it was
assumed that all officers removed from the armed forces in the years
1937≈9 had been arrested and either executed or imprisoned by the
NKVD. Table 9.1 from a report by E. A. Shchadenko, Chief of the
Commanding Personnel section of the People's Commissariat of Defense,
however, shows that a minority of army officers and political leaders
were removed from the army by arrest, and the majority were
discharged from the army through expulsion from the party.

All told, 34,301 army, air force, and Political Administration of the
Red Army (PUR) leaders were discharged from the army either through
arrest or expulsion from the party during the Ezhovshchina. Of these,
11,596 were reinstated by May 1940. This leaves the fate of 22,705
men unknown. These men could have faced a variety of ends after their
discharge. Those discharged because of arrest could have remained in
the Gulag under arrest, or later been freed but not reinstated to the
army, or even been shot; those expelled and not rehabilitated may
later have been arrested and sent to the Gulag or possibly executed.
The most extreme possibilities would be for all to have been shot or
for all to have been set free to go home. Neither extreme is likely.
If the NKVD was out to arrest someone, it does not seem plausible
that just because people had been discharged from the army and party
they would not be arrested; quite the opposite would seem to apply.
We know those discharged were not all killed because officers
continued to be released and rehabilitated after May 1940.
The numbers also show a more limited impact on the military than
previously thought. Before the publication of the figures in Table
9.1, it had been variously estimated that between 25% and 50% of the
Red Army officer corps was repressed in the Ezhovshchina,
Conveniently, Shchadenko's office gave the percentage of the
leadership permanently discharged in the purge, which allows a
calculation of the total strength of the nachal'sostav in the purge
years. In 1937, the nachal'sostav numbered 144,300, of whom 11,034
discharged for political reasons remained discharged as of May 1940,
equaling 7.7% of the nachal'sostav. In 1938 there were 179,000
leaders, of whom 6,742 political dischargees were still discharged in
May 1940, which equalled 3.7% of the nachal'sostav; and in 1939 the
army had 282,300 leaders, 205 or 0.08% of whom were dis charged for
political reasons and remained discharged in May 1940. Because the
army stepped up officer procurement during the Ezhovshchina, and at a
rate that outpaced discharges, it is extremely difficult to invent a
statistic to describe the cumulative impact of the purge on the
military, and Shchadenko's annual figures are probably the most
definitive we will ever have.
The reason for the earlier high estimates of the percentage of
repressed officers and PUR men by Western historians was not so much
the erroneous estimates of the number of repressed officers, but
tremendously low estimates of the size of the nachal'sostav. John
Erickson and Robert Conquest estimated the officer corps to number
80,000 and 70,000 respectively, so whereas Erickson's estimates of
between 20,000 and 30,000 men discharged is very near the mark, his
estimate of the impact is very far off, as is Conquest's estimate of
35,000 arrested officers out of a corps of 70,000. His estimate of a
minimum of 20,000 arrested PUR men is 300% off.2 Both of these
historians considered the majority of victims of the Ezhovshchina to
have been arrested, not expelled and discharged, and did not realize
how quickly and in what large numbers men were rehabilitated.
Chistki should not be viewed as antimilitary actions on the part of
the party, or as attempts to subvert the leadership of the army; in
fact, they reflected a genuine concern for the moral health of the
Red Army just as civilian chistki were to strengthen, not punish,
those party organs. In the military chistki men were expelled not
only for political reasons; failure in one's military duties could
also result in being booted out of the party. In the 1933 chistka,
for example, the particular stress was on discipline. Those who did
not maintain it in their units, or were personally undisciplined,
were subject to expulsion from the party

"Stalinist terror - New Perspective". Book is
published by Cambridge University Press in 1993 and edited by J. Arch
Getty and Roberta T.Manning . Chapter 9 is written by Roger R. Reese
and it is called "The Red Army and the Great Purge"

[jacques]

Hi
reports exists on these atrocities in East germany (konigsberg, nemmersdorf, etc..) but are they prooved by pics?