Atrocities of the Red Army in World War II

Overview of Key Themes

• A Jewish lieutenant’s diary reveals the truth about the victimization of German women.
  
  
• The author of the diary A Woman in Berlin was condemned by German women.
  
  
• The film A Woman in Berlin encourages female victims to speak about their experiences.
  
  
• Soviet soldiers watch the hanging of a German prisoner of war in 1943.
  
  

1. Alliance with Germany and the Partition of Poland (Katyn Massacre)

• Invasion of Poland: Following Germany's invasion on September 1, 1939, Soviet forces crossed Poland’s eastern frontier on September 17 [cite: On 1 September 1939 German troops crossed the border and declared war on Poland. ... on 17 September the Soviet Union moved across Poland’s eastern frontier, and on 27 September Warsaw fell.]. By September 29, Poland was divided between Germany and the USSR.
  
  
• The Katyn Massacre: To eliminate potential future uprisings, Soviet forces acting on Stalin's orders secretly executed approximately 20,000 Polish army officers and prisoners of war in the Katyn Forest [cite: In less than a month, one of Europe’s largest countries disappeared completely from the map. The Soviet Union played the role of an outright aggressor in this war. Twenty thousand Polish prisoners of war were secretly shot in order, the article claims, to blacken Germany’s name. ... in order to eliminate any possible future Polish uprising, the Soviet Red Army, acting on Stalin’s orders, shot all 20,000 commanders of the Polish army in the Katyn Forest—described here as a great crime, a shameless act of state violence and genocide.].
  
  
• Suppression & Disclosure: For decades, the Soviet Union blamed Nazi Germany for the crime. On April 13, 1990, TASS acknowledged Katyn as a "grave crime of Stalinism", and top-secret archives were officially handed over to Poland on October 14, 1992 [cite: Only on 14 October 1992 was a copy of the top-secret archive on the Katyn case handed over to the Poles. Thus, according to the article, the truth about the Katyn tragedy was finally disclosed.].
  
  

2. Mass Sexual Violence Against German Women

• Scale of Atrocities: The total number of German women raped by Red Army soldiers is estimated to exceed 2 million, with over 130,000 women in Berlin alone subjected to rape or killed [cite: It is estimated in the article that the total number of German women raped by the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War exceeded two million, with 130,000 women raped or killed in Berlin alone.].
  
  
• Consequences: Tragedies included mass suicides by traumatized victims and schoolgirls, as well as family honor killings resulting from pregnancies caused by rape [cite: Among them, it says, were women who committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Red Army, women killed by their own parents because the family felt humiliated by a pregnancy resulting from rape, and schoolgirls who committed mass suicide.].
  
  
• Breakdown of Taboo: These acts remained taboo until publication of British historian Antony Beevor’s book Berlin: The Downfall 1945 in 2002 [cite: Because the Soviet Red Army was then regarded as heroic liberators who had freed Germany from the Nazis, the crimes attributed to it were treated as taboo and no one dared mention them again. Only in 2002, when British military historian Antony Beevor published Berlin: The Downfall 1945, based on a number of previously unpublished military archives and victims’ recollections, did these little-known historical facts become widely publicized.].
  
  

3. Expansionism and Forced Annexations in Eastern Europe

• Finland: During the Winter War (October 1939 – March 1940), the USSR seized Finnish territory and leased the Hanko Peninsula.
  
  
• Baltic States: In June 1940, Soviet troops occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, forcing government reorganizations and officially annexing them in August 1940 [cite: In October 1939 Soviet forces entered the three Baltic states. In June 1940 the Soviet Union sent in additional troops and ordered the three states to reorganize their governments. In August of the same year, under Soviet political and military pressure, the governments of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia announced that they would be reorganized as Soviet republics and at the same time became part of the USSR.].
  
  
• Territorial Gain: The USSR forcibly annexed over 460,000 square kilometers and 22 million people, shifting its border 300–400 km westward [cite: Creation of the eastern defensive line enabled the USSR to increase its territory by more than 460,000 square kilometres, with a population of more than 22 million people, and to move its western frontier approximately 300–400 kilometres farther west.].
  
  

4. Plundering and Excesses in Northeast China (1945)

• Asset Stripping: Treating Manchuria's industrial base as Japanese colonial property / war reparations, Soviet forces removed industrial equipment, weapons arsenals, and property valued at approximately $25 billion at the time [cite: The Soviet government, the article states, regarded the Northeast as belonging to the puppet state of Manchukuo and therefore as part of Japan’s colonial possessions, and treated the property as compensation. According to incomplete statistics quoted by the article, in only several months of 1945 Soviet troop columns removed wealth from Northeast China worth the equivalent of 25 billion dollars—an astronomical figure at the time, when the dollar was worth far more than today. Various goods, industrial facilities and even the largest arms arsenal in Asia in Northeast China were said to have been taken by the Soviet Red Army.].
  
  
• Official Protest: The Chinese government lodged formal protests against these actions.
  
  

5. Historical Repressions and Characterization

• Vladivostok Repressions (1938): The article claims that in 1938, approximately 300,000 Chinese nationals died or were killed during purges in Vladivostok.
  
  
• General Anti-Russian Rhetoric: The text concludes with harsh general characterizations of Russian military behavior, describing them with derogatory generalizations [cite: The article attributes to Russians traits of “thieves” and “bandits.” It says their “thieving” nature makes them greedy and cowardly: when they are strong and have an opportunity, they steal, but after stealing they fear being forced to return what was taken. ... Summarizing this characterization with the sayings that Russians have “three parts banditry and seven parts boorishness” and “need only a pretext, not a reason.”].