Europe in the Second World War: What Happened to German Women After Defeat?

21 February 2017
Lin

On 2 May 1945, the Red Army captured Berlin. German historians estimated that approximately 100,000 women in Berlin were raped by Soviet soldiers. On 2 May, the BBC broadcast a documentary entitled The Rape of Berlin, drawing attention to a humanitarian disaster that had long been downplayed or discussed only ambiguously.

After the Soviet Army captured Berlin, German prisoners of war were marched through the streets.

For many women in Berlin, the arrival of the Red Army marked the beginning of a nightmare.

Seventy years after the Second World War ended amid the ruins, the collective and individual crimes committed by the Axis powers had been investigated and punished, justice had been sought, and victims' suffering had been acknowledged. Yet large-scale harm inflicted on civilians by the Allies, whether deliberately or otherwise, had long been obscured. Examples included the bombing of Dresden, the bombing of Tokyo, and the mass sexual violence committed by Allied troops, especially Soviet soldiers, after entering Germany.

On 2 May 1945, the Nazi forces defending Berlin surrendered. The war was ending, but for Berlin's civilians—especially its women—the nightmare was only beginning. Researchers at the University of Göttingen reported that as many as one third of Berlin's women were raped. Sander and Johr arrived at a more cautious estimate: approximately 100,000 women in Berlin were raped by Soviet soldiers, 40 percent of them repeatedly. In Russia, however, even raising the subject of wartime rape is often regarded as an insult.

The Soviet memorial in Treptower Park

On the outskirts of Berlin stands the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park. It commemorates the Soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin; about 5,000 are buried there. Opened in 1949, it is one of the city’s three major Soviet memorials.

The central figure is a twelve-meter Soviet soldier standing over a broken swastika, holding a German child in his left arm and a sword in his right hand. According to the story associated with the monument, a Soviet soldier risked his life under fire to rescue a three-year-old German girl. The monument therefore presents the Soviet victory as the rescue of European civilization from fascism.

Yet some have remarked bitterly that an unknown rapist might also lie buried beneath the memorial. During the Red Army's advance into the Third Reich, countless women became victims of sexual violence.

According to accounts cited by scholar Zhu Weiyi, eyewitnesses estimated that as many as one third of Berlin's women were raped between 24 April and 5 May 1945. American historian William Hitchcock wrote that some women were raped sixty or seventy times. The sharp rise in abortions in the following months and contemporary hospital reports have also been cited in estimates that nearly 10,000 women died as a result of rape.

Soviet soldiers were not the only wartime perpetrators of sexual violence, and the events in Berlin cannot be understood without considering the earlier Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler’s “war of annihilation,” and the enormous destruction and civilian suffering in the East.

Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand

One source offering a personal perspective on these events is the diary of Vladimir Gelfand, a Jewish lieutenant from Ukraine. After his death, his son Vitaly discovered the diary among his papers.

As the Red Army entered what propaganda called the “lair of the fascist beast,” slogans encouraged revenge: “Soldiers! You are on German soil. The time for revenge has come!”

Gelfand recorded a frightening encounter with German women fleeing the outskirts of Berlin. He described their fear and quoted a young woman who said that more than twenty soldiers had raped her. She wept and begged him to stay with her: “You may do anything you want to me — but only you.”

A Woman in Berlin

Gelfand’s testimony is placed alongside the diary later published as A Woman in Berlin, written by a German woman journalist whose identity remained unknown for many years. She began writing on 20 April 1945 while sheltering in a cellar during the final fighting.

She and her neighbors joked bitterly that being “under the Russians” might be better than having American bombs overhead. When Soviet soldiers entered the basement, she tried to speak to them in Russian but was soon raped.

She eventually concluded that in order to survive she needed a single protector. She entered a relationship with a senior officer from Leningrad and spoke with him about literature and the meaning of life. In the diary she reflected on the complicated mixture of coercion, survival and personal feeling involved in this arrangement.

The diary was first published in 1959 and provoked criticism. Some readers accused the author of disgracing herself. Decades later it came to be regarded as an important historical document.

Further studies of sexual violence by Allied troops—including American, British and French forces, but above all Soviet soldiers—have continued to appear. Yet this humanitarian catastrophe long remained a taboo subject. In East Germany, criticizing Soviet soldiers who had defeated Nazism was treated as sacrilege. In West Germany, guilt over Nazi crimes made public criticism of Allied abuses difficult.

The film A Woman in Berlin and survivor testimony

The 2008 film adaptation of A Woman in Berlin encouraged some survivors to speak publicly. One of them was Ingeborg Bullert, then ninety years old. She recalled hiding in a cellar during the Soviet entry into Berlin. When she went upstairs to find rope for a lamp wick, two soldiers threatened her with weapons and raped her.

Bullert remembered that enormous numbers of women were assaulted and that women from about fifteen to fifty-five years of age were ordered to undergo examinations for sexually transmitted diseases. A medical certificate was required to obtain food ration cards, and examination rooms were crowded.

The true scale of the sexual violence may never be known. Records of Soviet military tribunals and other sources remain restricted. Russia's State Duma recently passed a law under which anyone deemed to have discredited Russia's record in the Second World War could face a fine or up to five years in prison.

Vitaly Gelfand has said that acknowledging crimes by individual Soviet soldiers does not mean denying the heroism and sacrifice of millions who fought Nazism. He hoped that publication of his father’s diary would give the public a more complete picture of the past.

“If people do not want to know the truth, they are simply deceiving themselves. The whole world understands it. Russia understands it. Even those who pass such laws understand that we must examine the past if we want to look toward the future.”

This article was distributed through Tencent News media and does not represent an official Tencent editorial position.

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