"Father, shoot me"

[Davey Boy]

Damn, those Czechs went a little berserk as well. I never knew that.

[Ovidius]

Damn, those Czechs went a little berserk as well. I never knew that.

Not having previously performed a Warsaw Uprising to spend their surplus energy, it was expectable

~Ovidius

[observer]

Here's part of an eyewitness account from a lady who lived through the battle of Berlin:

They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics.

The account can be found under

http://www.ibiscom.com/berlin.htm

1. Let´s not wildly mix the situation in Berlin in April 1945 with that of the refugee treks from East Prussia and Pommerania a couple of months earlier.

2. Let us keep in mind the proportions (i.e. No. of cases where this happened: a couple of hundreds max?)

BTW, at Berlin, the major problem was this one (nothing new, I know)

As could be expected, that night a horde of Soviet soldiers returned and stormed into their apartment house. Then we heard what sounded like a terrible orgy with women screaming for help, many shrieking at the same time.

3. Most Germans hung by SS at that time were enlisted Wehrmacht personnel trying to privately end their part of the war (desertion). I am not saying it was OK to hang them, I am saying, we should not talk about old men or young boys - let alone women - on their way from Vistula to Elbe in this context.

4. The danger for refugees in getting in the vicinity of (Waffen)-SS should primarily be seen as the danger of becoming embroiled in front line fights.

[Roberto]

Here's part of an eyewitness account from a lady who lived through the battle of Berlin:

They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics.

The account can be found under

http://www.ibiscom.com/berlin.htm

1. Let´s not wildly mix the situation in Berlin in April 1945 with that of the refugee treks from East Prussia and Pommerania a couple of months earlier.

2. Let us keep in mind the proportions (i.e. No. of cases where this happened: a couple of hundreds max?)

BTW, at Berlin, the major problem was this one (nothing new, I know)

As could be expected, that night a horde of Soviet soldiers returned and stormed into their apartment house. Then we heard what sounded like a terrible orgy with women screaming for help, many shrieking at the same time.

3. Most Germans hung by SS at that time were enlisted Wehrmacht personnel trying to privately end their part of the war (desertion). I am not saying it was OK to hang them, I am saying, we should not talk about old men or young boys - let alone women - on their way from Vistula to Elbe in this context.

4. The danger for refugees in getting in the vicinity of (Waffen)-SS should primarily be seen as the danger of becoming embroiled in front line fights.

Of course.

I was just pointing out that, as the authors of the article may have tried to express, the SS was also a concern for German refugees and soldiers - although a comparatively minor one.

[Roberto]

Damn, those Czechs went a little berserk as well. I never knew that.

Not having previously performed a Warsaw Uprising to spend their surplus energy, it was expectable

~Ovidius

See Ovi, that's the kind of off-topic nonsense a thread can do without.

I might now point out that lots of atrocities were committed by the SS against the Polish civilian population during the Warsaw Uprising, whereas no massacres of German prisoners by the insurgents are known to have occurred.

But as that has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of this thread, I won't do so.

[Ljunggren]

Talking about rapes -were the Germans invaders sinless ?.

Two wrongs does not make one right, does it?

[atkif]

Talking about rapes -were the Germans invaders sinless ?.

Two wrongs does not make one right, does it?

Not at all.
But there is one important thing to keep in mind. While the German atrocities were absolutely gratuitous when they invaded Russia,the
Russian brutalities were the aftermath of the German's.
Of course one might expect the Russians to be generous or to" turn the other cheek ." I believe that to judge the Russians from some moralist'
point of view one first has to be in the shoes of the Russian whose
country was devastated and loved ones murdered .
Besides the scope of the German and Russian brutalities seems to be
uncomparable..

If somebody punched you I doubt you would not retaliate.

[Roland]

Hallo, Atkif!

Unfortunately Russian brutalities was not always aftermath. Latvia did not attack Russia in 1940. And Russian brutalities in Latvia in that time is well known. However I do understand how you feel. In my opinion meny innocent people (Latvian, Russian, German etc.) got cot in betveen the two evil regimes (Hitler and Stalin) trying to get a bigger peace of world for themselves...

Best regards, Roland.

[observer]

Talking about rapes -were the Germans invaders sinless ?.

Two wrongs does not make one right, does it?

Hi Mr Junggren,

I think there was another twist to atkif´s remark which I would like to discuss: the question whether the Wehrmacht raped ´just as much´.

This discussion should remain focused: germans killed more - that we all know - and Roberto has pointed towards "Kriegsgerichtsbarkeitserlaß" - the legal stipulation that granted sort of impunity for any crimes against civilians.

While "Kriegsgerichtsbarkeitserlaß" explains that often suspects were shot rather abundantly (cause soldiers or other organisations "couldn´t go wrong" in a formal legalisitc sense), I very much doubt that we can derive from it that Wehrmacht raped to the excessive degree it is documented with the Red Army (as far as I have read, not just in Berlin, not just in the Eastern territories of Germany, as for that).

Like with all crimes, the Germans also organized this type of (war) crime in a more orderly fashion (not unlike the Japanese with the Korean women): they pressed young women (this could be Gypsies who were selected not to get gassed at Auschwitz) into military brothels. What happened to them is just as bad, but different in nature to the event of uncontrolled ´gang rape´, if I may say so.

There are examples to be found in Wehrmacht litigation cases where people were death-sentenced who violently chased after women of the local population (careful: I am not saying this always happened! ). Of course, in all occupied countries Wehrmacht personnel also had non-violent tete-a tetes with local women (not necessarily for money, take Norway or France), probably more so in the west than in the east, however. As for that, Berlin Fräuleins in May and June 1945 often followed the strategy to look for Soviet officers who would act as their "protectors", because it is better to get sc**ed only occasionally by a single "officer and a gentleman" than getting b**ged and clubbed to death by a whole hoard, isn´t it?

The context here is another one: Wehrmacht was very eager to preserve discipline and they would not accept in large scale acts that would deprave troup morale as the Russian mass rapes in Berlin or elsewhere must have. So while according to Kriegsgerichtsbarkeitserlaß there was no handle to punish soldiers on the basis of the penal code, there very well was on the basis of the military disciplinary code - up to court-martial with death-sentences.

While rape always accompanies armies, the relevant question seems to be, if there was a distinct difference in scale. AFAIK, mass killing was a specialty of a lot of Germans, mass raping however not.

Anybody to disagree?

[atkif]

Calculating the number of murdered and identifying the corpses
(Germans tended to undress their victims probaly with the goal in mind to get away with the crimes -the logic behind - if there is no identifyable victim there is no vicim at all.) is not easy but more plausible compare to the calculation of the number of the raped.
The German occupation was so brutal that the rapes might have been considered some minor events in the occupied territories.
Besides where would the raped woman go to complain ? To Germans ?
To auxillary police ?
Many women might have remained silent just because of the stigma attached - in Russia or Ukrane of those years such a woman would be
ridiculed and despised.
Observer wrote "...raped to the excessive degree it is documented with the Red Army " (about the Russian army rapes of the German women.)
But the "excessive degree" seems to be rather emotional term - the same could be said by the Russian victims about the German rapes.
"It is documented" .Where ? How ? It seems to me the documentation
of the rapes refers only to the eyewitness accounts. Are there numbers of the raped victims say in Berlin ?How to verify these numbers? This is all very relative as opposite to the number of killed.
The eyewitness account is always dubious .I understand that this is one of the major arguments of the Holocaust deniers.It should always be backed up by some objective evidence to be credible.
By the end of the war the German civilian population was horrified by the perspective to fall prey to Russian "barbarians''( Goebbels propaganda
did work after all ).Fear leads to panic .Panic leads to the blown up stories of the imminent horrors .Once told the stories become "reality".
No I don't deny the fact that there were rapes of the German women by the Russian soldiers.The question is wheather the scope of the rapes was something out of ordinary compare to the other conquests in history.
Regards

[atkif]

Hi Roland.
The Soviet invasion of the Baltic states and the subsequent mass arrests and shootings are outrageous crimes and should be judged as such.
I was refering to the German - Soviet conflict when mentioning the word
"gratuitous"talking about the German crimes.
Regards

[Ovidius]

Besides where would the raped woman go to complain ? To Germans ?To auxillary police ?

To the Feldgendarmerie, maybe?

"It is documented" .Where ? How ? It seems to me the documentation of the rapes refers only to the eyewitness accounts. Are there numbers of the raped victims say in Berlin ?How to verify these numbers?

Number of complaints recorded(which is just the tip of the iceberg, a woman could be raped plenty of times by plenty of Russians, and complain just once, or not complain at all)

By the end of the war the German civilian population was horrified by the perspective to fall prey to Russian "barbarians''( Goebbels propaganda did work after all ).

Which horror was justified by what followed, showing that Dr. Goebbels had underestimated the Soviets

Fear leads to panic .Panic leads to the blown up stories of the imminent horrors .Once told the stories become "reality".

Denial of Holocaust is punishable by prison terms. Denial of Soviet crimes is a honorable deed, after all they were those who liberated Europe from "the perspective to fall prey to Nazi barbarians"

"No I don't deny the fact that there were rapes of the German women by the Russian soldiers.

Yes, you do.

Just like a man who says "Diesel engines do not produce lethal gases" denies the Shoah(Jewish term used to designate the Holocaust)

"The question is wheather the scope of the rapes was something out of ordinary compare to the other conquests in history

It was, since rapes, indiscriminate killings and mutilations by Soviet people in other Axis countries than Germany happened only on a very small scale, and were oftenly punished by commanders, which was not the case in Germany.

~Ovidius

[atkif]

Ovidius.
Again I don't deny the fact of the Red Army rapes of the German women.
The brought up example of the Holocaust denial is very far fetched and not legitimate at all .
The point is that the fact of the massive rapes by the Russian
soldiers could not be objectively backed up and therefore there is a possibility of the gross exaggerations.
Could you bring up such objective evidences to prove otherwise?
Maybe any records of post-rape medical examinations conducted in
the devastated Berlin ?
I doubt.

[observer]

Could you bring up such objective evidences to prove otherwise?

Atkif,

1. I know you are no denier

2. You are right, there is no "Jäger-report" type of evidence. As for that analogy: there is reliable evidence that for large numbers of Jews gassed or killed at Belzec also no accounts were kept. Your argument that the medical records in June 45 are most probably not there is only cynical in this respect.

3. Historians estimate, that in all of East Germany at least 1 mio women fell prey to this type of "miss"-behaviour. If I say estimate, these are supposedly educated estimates. In other threads sources are discussed, read Ryan or Beevor, if you are really interested. Ignore it, if you want to believe, there were just a couple of dozen incidents, I don´t care. My point is not to cross-claim numbers here.

4. I would like to learn more about what you know about rape as an allegedly systematic mistreatment of female partisan-suspects by the Wehrmacht. (The undressing of females in the extermination camps should not be sarcastically produced by you as an ´example´of rape). Maybe I am just ill-informed. Please give some indications that support the view this happened on large scale (as I said - I did not contest rapes by the Wehrmacht happened) - any Russian literature on this?

5. Let us keep the discussion focused, please. Cut out arguments like: Rape is not so bad as being killed (I know that too) or: those who did it had previously experienced hell (I know that too). The issue discussed here, is whether Wehrmacht raped large scale in the Soviet Union (If you can´t stand the Red Army being mentioned in that context, just forget about it, ok!)

6. "Normal" that was maybe for tartarian conquests in the middle ages, not at all "normal" it was however in the German western zones of occupation. Let us not compare apples and oranges, please.

observer

[atkif]

Could you bring up such objective evidences to prove otherwise?

Atkif,



2. You are right, there is no type of "Jäger-report" type of evidence. As for that analogy: there is reliable evidence that for large numbers of Jews gassed or killed at Belzec also no accounts were kept. Your argument that the medical records in June 45 are most probably not there is only cynical in this respect.

3. Historians estimate, that in all of East Germany at least 1 mio women fell prey to this type of behaviour. If I say estimate, these are supposedly educated estimates. In other threads sources are discussed, read Ryan or Beevor, if you are really interested. Ignore it, if you want to believe, there were just a couple of dozen incidents, I don´t care. My point is not to cross-claim numbers here.

4. I would like to learn more about what you know about rape as a systematic mistreatment of female partisan-suspects by the Wehrmacht. Maybe I am just ill-informed. Please give some indications that support the view this happened large scale (as I said - I did not contest rapes by the Wehrmacht happened) - any Russian literature on this?

.I don't have very extensive knowledge about the Holocaust,but my understanding is that the fact it happened (massive atrocities against Jewish civilians) was backed up not only by the eyewitnesses but by the objective information (such as photographs ,exhumations etc ) which is not the case with the alleged huge scale rapings by the Russians in Germany.
I don't deny this - I simply don't know .It is quite reasonable to doubt
the eyewitness accounts.I was not being cynical when mentioning the lack
of the medical examinations evidences -my point was that this kind of evidence was not to be expected in the devastated Germany.
I am ready to agree with you that the large scale rapes did take place if I see anyobjective proof.
What are these historical estimates ? I don't have any preconcieved ideas about this subject - it doesn't mean that I am ready to accept any not backed up claim.
As for your request to find out about the German mistretments of the
Russian partisan women I turn out to be in your shoes because there are no objective evidences available.