What Did Red Army Soldiers Do to Captured German Girls? The Whole Truth About the “Millions of German Victims”

One of the most persistent myths of the Second World War is the story of “millions of German women raped by the Red Army.” In the West, it has been used for decades as evidence of the “atrocities of Soviet soldiers”; in the post-Soviet world, as an instrument of anti-Soviet propaganda. But what actually happened?

In this video we will examine where the myth of “millions of victims” came from; how the diary of Soviet officer Vladimir Gelfand became a basis for sensational claims; what actual documents and military-tribunal statistics say; why the myth took root so easily in the public mind; and how this history is used in politics and the media today. The truth often turns out to be much more complicated than sensational headlines.

19 August 2025

This is one of the most frightening and stubbornly persistent legends of the Second World War: millions of German women raped by the Red Army. A figure that sounds like a verdict on an entire people. But is it true? Where did this horrifying story come from, why was it so readily adopted in the West, and why does it continue to be repeated today? Behind the loud words lies a very different picture, far more complicated than sensational headlines suggest.

For Germany, the Second World War ended not only in military defeat and territorial losses, but also in a profound crisis of national identity. A country that had regarded itself as the center of European civilization suddenly found itself in ruins, under the authority of the victors. Amid this catastrophe, a need arose to explain what had happened not only through defeat on the battlefields, but also through the personal tragedies of millions of German women and men. It was here that one of the most enduring postwar myths took shape: the idea that the Red Army had supposedly engaged almost universally in violence against German women.

This myth has survived for decades. In the Western press, it regularly resurfaces as evidence of the barbarity of the Soviet regime. In post-Soviet journalism, it is used to discredit Stalin and the entire Soviet project, while some contemporary researchers even invoke astronomical figures: two million victims, and sometimes tens of millions. Yet the evidence cited is often not archival documents, but recollections, rumors or works of fiction.

One of the most important sources used by supporters of this version of events became the diary of Soviet officer Vladimir Natanovich Gelfand. It seems a paradox: an officer who was a convinced Stalinist and fought through the war from beginning to end suddenly became someone whose notes were used to justify anti-Soviet arguments.

Who was Vladimir Gelfand? A native of Dnipropetrovsk and Jewish by nationality, he joined the Red Army in 1942 with the rank of sergeant. At first he commanded a mortar squad; later he became deputy platoon commander for political affairs. He fought around Stalingrad, survived encirclement and heavy combat, joined the Party and remained loyal to Stalin throughout the war.

Gelfand kept a detailed frontline diary, recording his impressions without censorship. These notes have survived and were published in Russia, Germany and Sweden. Their frankness made the diary a valuable source for historians. It contains sketches of everyday military life, descriptions of combat and emotional reactions to events. Yet this very lack of filtering had a double effect.

Gelfand's notes contain references to violence against German women. He often retells other people's accounts without having witnessed the events himself, but records what he heard with interest and sometimes even justifies it. For example, he wrote down Sergeant Andreyev's story about a women's battalion supposedly taken prisoner and about captured girls being divided among beds. These episodes were a gift to those seeking to prove the thesis of mass violence: a Soviet officer was recording such events on paper. What remains out of the picture, however, is that he was not an eyewitness to most of the episodes described, but merely recorded stories he heard—the kind of tales that circulated by the dozen in both the Soviet and German armies.

To understand why Gelfand's notes became so important to mythmaking, we need to understand how rumors arise in wartime. Under frontline conditions, when soldiers experience enormous stress, distinctive forms of folklore develop. One such theme consisted of stories about women's battalions, the Amazons of the Third Reich, or, conversely, about German women supposedly raped without exception. Such stories served several purposes. They helped justify the hardships of war, lent drama to events, and sometimes explained the undisciplined behavior of individual soldiers. Frontline rumors consequently accumulated details and, once written into diaries or memoirs, began to be perceived as documentary testimony.

That is precisely what happened with Gelfand's notes. His diary is not an official record, but a personal perception of war. Yet many researchers, especially in Germany, treated it as direct evidence of mass violence, although the episodes themselves resemble retellings of frontline folklore more than a strict chronicle.

Why did the myth prove so durable? Several factors must be distinguished. Germany's psychological trauma: the country had suffered military defeat, the destruction of cities and millions of deaths. In such circumstances, it was more convenient to see oneself not only as an aggressor, but also as a victim. The political context of the Cold War: amid confrontation between the USSR and the West, the subject of “Red Army atrocities” became a convenient propaganda instrument. The lack of broad access to Soviet archives: until the end of the twentieth century, precise information on Red Army disciplinary practices and punishments for crimes was virtually unknown. This allowed almost any figures to be used. The use of private testimony: diaries, memoirs and oral accounts were readily quoted as documentary evidence, although historical source criticism was scarcely applied.

Gelfand's notes fitted this pattern perfectly. On the one hand, they are authentic; on the other, they contain emotional and unverified episodes. Thus we see a paradoxical picture. A Soviet officer who repeatedly expressed sincere love for Stalin and loyalty to the Party in his diary became an involuntary witness for the prosecution against the very army of which he was proud. His notes were taken out of context and quoted in the Western press as evidence of atrocities, although the author himself could hardly have intended that use.

Nevertheless, it is with Gelfand's diary that the modern version of the myth of “millions of raped German women” begins. In the next chapter, we will look closely at the diary episodes that became a basis for mythmaking, and try to separate facts from rumors and retellings.

Among Vladimir Gelfand's entries, researchers paid particular attention to episodes mentioning clashes between Soviet units and so-called women's battalions of the Wehrmacht. These stories occupy a noticeable place in his diary and became the basis for a whole series of publications claiming that the Red Army actually captured hundreds of German women who were then treated as trophies. But a close analysis of these episodes makes it clear that they are more likely frontline rumors than real events.

In February 1945, Gelfand recorded that a women's battalion had operated on the left flank of his unit. According to Soviet soldiers, the captured women called themselves “avengers of their fallen husbands.” However, there is no reliable evidence of combat women's battalions in the Wehrmacht. Germany did have so-called Wehrmacht auxiliaries, but they served as signalers, radio operators, telephone operators and clerks. Their weapons were limited to personal pistols for self-defense. An exception was air-defense units, where women could serve anti-aircraft guns. But there could be no question of full-scale death battalions advancing with submachine guns at the ready.

Thus even Gelfand's first story raises doubts. He himself frankly admits: “I do not know what they did with them.” In other words, the officer did not even see the prisoners with his own eyes. He merely recorded someone else's account, adding an emotional comment that the women ought to have been executed without mercy.

The second story, dated March 1945, is much more colorful and frequently quoted. Here Gelfand gives the account of Sergeant Andreyev, who claimed to have fought near Bernlicht. According to him, Soviet airborne troops dug in and waited for an attack. To their surprise, lines of German women armed with submachine guns appeared before them, followed by ranks of men. The women supposedly advanced boldly and even opened fire on Soviet positions. At some point an order was given, and the Red Army soldiers shot down the attackers. The women faltered and fled, but were captured. They were divided into groups. Russian girls were shot, officers' wives were punished, and young unmarried women were taken to beds for several days. According to Gelfand, Andreyev even chose a girl for himself and “persuaded” her by pointing a pistol at her.

Why is the story doubtful? A lack of sources: neither Soviet nor German documents record the existence of women's battalions operating on the front line. Military illogicality: it is extremely difficult to imagine German commanders in 1945, when few combat-capable units remained, sending untrained women into an assault. Even the Volkssturm was formed from boys and elderly men, not women armed with submachine guns. A psychological contrast: memoirs of German girls who were sometimes actually called into service convey something quite different—fear, reluctance to kill and a complete lack of combat enthusiasm. Elisabeth Zimmerer, for example, admitted: “I had the enemy in my sights, but I could not pull the trigger.” This sharply contradicts Andreyev's description of courageous Amazons. The nature of frontline tales: the story is too picturesque—heroic German women attack, then are captured, followed by scenes of violence. It resembles a mixture of a soldier's tale and male fantasy more than a reliable report.

Why did such stories arise at all? This narrative had a function to perform. For Soviet soldiers, tales of “women warriors” emphasized the enemy's perversity: the Germans had reached the point of sending women into battle. For Germans after the war, they served as an excuse: “We lost because even women and children were fighting.” For Western journalists later, this became an argument in anti-Soviet rhetoric: look, the Red Army abused captured women. Thus the same myth could be interpreted differently depending on the political context.

It is important to note that Gelfand himself did not take part in these episodes. He explicitly writes that he heard the story from Andreyev; elsewhere he limits himself to “I do not know what they did with them.” What we have, therefore, is not eyewitness testimony, but a diary record of conversations he heard. Nevertheless, when the diary was published decades later, these stories began to be treated as documentary confirmation. Few people paid attention to the author's qualifications.

The situation with women's battalions in Gelfand resembles stories recorded by war correspondent Osmar White. He wrote that a woman told him horrifying stories of Russian atrocities, but eventually admitted that the only thing she had personally seen was drunken officers shooting at bottles. Rumors and fantasies thus multiplied and turned into evidence eagerly taken up by journalists and researchers alike.

Thus neither episode—the “Avengers” nor the battle near Bernlicht—can be accepted as a reliable fact. Rather, they illustrate how wartime rumors entered personal records and later became arguments in ideological disputes.

After the vivid stories about women's battalions, most likely belonging to frontline myths, Gelfand's diary contains other entries concerning Soviet soldiers' behavior in Germany. These passages are much more important for analysis because they relate to reality. Violence did occur, and it is documented not only in private recollections but also in official Soviet military records.

In February and April 1945, Gelfand mentions several encounters with German women who complained of abuse by soldiers. In Berlin, he records a conversation with a group of women who said they had been victims of mass violence. It is important to emphasize that Gelfand does not describe events he personally witnessed, but records other people's words. Unlike the women's battalion stories, however, these entries contain no obvious fantasy. Women did complain, and soldiers did commit crimes.

These diary lines became one basis for Western researchers advancing the thesis of the “mass character of the violence.” But context must be considered. Gelfand provides no figures, no specifics and no attempt to verify what he heard. For him, this is a sketch from life, an emotional impression rather than statistics.

Opponents of the Red Army often omit the fact that violence against civilians was explicitly prohibited by Soviet commanders. The famous Order No. 229, signed by Stalin, stated: “The population remaining in conquered areas, whether German, Czech or Polish, must not be subjected to violence. The guilty will be punished under wartime law; those guilty of violence and rape will be shot.”

This order was not merely a declaration; it was actively enforced. The archives preserve military-tribunal verdicts sentencing soldiers and officers, including to execution, for robbery and rape. Thus the myth that Soviet commanders turned a blind eye does not withstand scrutiny against the facts.

In May 1945, the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front, Major General of Justice Lev Yachenin, submitted a report on crimes against civilians. It shows that over two weeks, from 22 April to 5 May, 124 crimes against Germans were recorded in territory controlled by seven Soviet armies: 72 rapes, 38 robberies, three murders and eleven other violations. Violence did occur during the reporting period, but we are speaking of dozens of cases, not hundreds of thousands.

Historians later calculated that military tribunals convicted approximately 4,148 officers and a large number of enlisted men for various forms of violence and robbery. These figures are proportionate to the size of an army numbering millions, but clearly do not support the myth of two million victims.

One of the most frequently cited pieces of evidence of mass violence was the calculation by German researcher Barbara Johr. She arrived at a figure of two million raped women. How did she do this? The method was as follows. The number of children born to Soviet fathers in Berlin and other regions in the first postwar years was counted. All their mothers were automatically classified as victims of violence. Then a multiplier was added, since not every rape resulted in pregnancy. The resulting figure was multiplied and extrapolated across Germany. The result was sensational but wholly unreliable statistics.

The fact is that many German women voluntarily entered relationships with Soviet soldiers. Amid destruction and hunger, this sometimes became a means of survival. There were also genuine romances. Cases are known of women marrying Red Army soldiers, moving with them to the USSR and starting families. Classifying all such cases as violence is historically incorrect.

Of course, the facts of violence cannot be denied. It occurred, sometimes in the most brutal forms. But its real scale differs substantially from the propaganda figures. Adding together military-tribunal data and prosecutors' reports, we can speak of several thousand cases for which specific perpetrators were punished. Compare this with Western researchers who sometimes cite two, ten or even twenty million victims. The gap between what is documented and the myth is enormous.

Why did the myth take hold? Because statistics hold little interest for the public mind. Dozens or hundreds of cases of violence sound horrifying, but do not create an image of universal terror. Millions, however, capture the imagination. Thus individual diary entries by Gelfand, German women's complaints and prosecutors' reports of dozens of cases were transformed in the press into evidence of a national catastrophe.

Violence occurred under conditions of war and occupation. But Soviet commanders fought it, perpetrators were severely punished, and the scale of the crimes did not exceed several thousand cases. Turning these tragedies into a myth of “millions of victims” resulted from a combination of frontline tales, emotional recollections and political manipulation.

The story of “millions of raped German women” is not simply a distorted perception of individual cases, but a fully developed myth sustained for decades by the press, politicians and parts of academia. To understand its durability, we need to trace the stages of its evolution.

In 1945 and 1946, Germany was experiencing catastrophe: millions of refugees, hunger, ruined cities and a demoralized society. In these circumstances, a new national narrative emerged: Germans began to see themselves not only as the instigators of war, but also as victims. Stories of violence became one convenient element of this self-identification. Women did suffer, and many experienced horrifying episodes, but in everyday discussion any cohabitation with a Soviet soldier was often interpreted as violence, even if voluntary. Such rhetoric helped soften guilt: “We too are victims of the war.”

From the late 1940s, the subject of “Red Army atrocities” became part of Western propaganda. Books and articles published in the United States and Britain claimed that Soviet troops supposedly raped every woman indiscriminately. Cinema and fiction entrenched the image of the Russian barbarian breaking into a German home. German émigrés actively spread stories of “millions of rape victims” to emphasize Soviet barbarism and justify collaboration with the Nazis: an alliance with Hitler was supposedly “protection against the Bolshevik threat.” Thus individual women's tragedies became a mass narrative needed to mobilize public opinion against the USSR.

In the 1970s, German researcher Barbara Johr arrived at a figure of two million victims based on highly questionable calculations of children born to Soviet soldiers. In the 1980s, some feminist organizations began speaking of ten to fifteen million women. Still more fantastic figures appeared in the press—up to twenty million. The problem is that none of these figures has a documentary foundation. Soviet military archives were closed at the time, making verification impossible, while Western audiences readily believed in millions because this fitted their image of the enemy.

After the collapse of the USSR, new sources began to be published extensively in Russia and the West. One of the most prominent was Vladimir Gelfand's diary. In Germany, it was published as testimony “from inside” by a Soviet officer. Journalists and historians began quoting episodes about “women's battalions” and “trophies,” often without noting that Gelfand himself had not witnessed the events. As a result, the diary came to be perceived as “proof of mass violence,” although it contains no statistics and most stories retell other people's words. This showed once again how easily private notes become an instrument of ideological struggle.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Russia and Ukraine themselves began reassessing the Soviet past. Some commentators and new historians used the subject of violence as an argument against “Stalinism.” The media produced sensational headlines: “Millions of German women—victims of the Red Army.” References pointed either to Gelfand's diary or to Western studies with questionable statistics. This created an ambivalent picture in the public mind: the memory of heroic sacrifice on one side, guilt for atrocities on the other.

Today, the myth survives for several reasons. Political demand: amid information warfare, any arguments against Russia find a market. Feminist discourse: international organizations often use figures of “millions of victims” to demonstrate the scale of wartime violence generally, without examining the sources in detail. The persistence of sensationalism: a newspaper headline saying “Two million raped” works far more powerfully than dull archival reports from a prosecutor recording seventy cases over two weeks.

The result is a curious paradox. Archival documents show hundreds and thousands of cases for which people were tried. Diaries record individual complaints and rumors. The press and political journalism turn these into millions of victims. The path from fact to myth thus passes through distortions and exaggerations fueled by political interests. The myth of “millions of raped German women” was therefore a product of several factors: German society's trauma, Cold War propaganda, sensational journalism and diary entries taken out of context.

When violence against civilians during the Second World War is discussed, attention most often focuses on the Red Army. The Western press and parts of historiography almost ignore the fact that every army committed similar crimes, without exception. Yet the historical picture becomes understandable only through comparison.

Let us begin with the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. In the USSR, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece and other occupied countries, violence was widespread and systematic. Women were raped not only by individual soldiers, but by entire units. This was often part of a policy of intimidating the population. Punitive detachments and SS men were particularly brutal. There are dozens of documented cases in which women were raped before civilians were executed. Historians note that the Germans set the pattern for militarizing sexual violence. It was regarded as an instrument of repression and genocide. Thus when German society began speaking after the war of “Red Army victims,” it was largely repressing the memory of its own crimes.

The Americans and British—liberators with double standards, the Allies in the West—also failed to escape this problem. American archives preserve documents on thousands of rapes committed by US Army soldiers in France, Italy and Germany. Particularly numerous complaints came from France in 1944, as General Patton's troops moved through Normandy. Local residents complained of looting, robbery and violence. The British Army faced fewer such accusations, but hundreds of crimes were recorded there too.

Importantly, American tribunals often sentenced perpetrators to death, especially when Black soldiers were involved. Race played a significant role: white Americans were more often acquitted or received light sentences, while African Americans were shot. Allied disciplinary practices therefore had their own distortions.

A particularly tragic reputation was acquired by the so-called Moroccan goumiers, soldiers of French colonial divisions fighting in Italy. In the spring of 1944, after breaking through the Gustav Line, colonial units carried out a series of mass rapes of the local population. According to Italian testimony, thousands of women, men and even adolescents became victims. These events went down in history as the “Marocchinate”—the “Moroccan affair.” France subsequently kept this episode quiet, but in Italy the memory of these atrocities remains alive.

Against these examples, the situation in the Red Army appeared ambivalent. Yes, violence occurred. Amid war and the devastation of Germany, some soldiers committed crimes. Diaries, local residents' complaints and Soviet prosecutors' documents all attest to this. But it was not policy. Unlike the Wehrmacht, where violence was part of strategy, in the Red Army it was categorically prohibited by Stalin's orders and punished by tribunals. According to archival data, there were thousands of cases. By comparison, in the American army alone, rapes in France and Germany numbered in the tens of thousands.

Why did accusations focus on the USSR? There are several reasons. The political situation: in the Cold War, it was useful to portray the USSR as a barbaric force. It was not in American or British interests to highlight their own crimes. German trauma: it was easier to speak of suffering at the hands of the Red Army than of their own atrocities in the USSR and the Balkans. Publications and diaries: recollections such as Gelfand's diary or German women's memoirs were widely published in the West, while Soviet archives remained closed. The resulting picture pushed Allied violence and Wehrmacht horrors into the background, while the Red Army became the principal accused.

Sexual violence during the Second World War was a universal problem. Germans, Americans, French, British and Soviet soldiers committed it. The difference was that for the Third Reich it was part of policy, for the Allies a consequence of disciplinary failures, and for the Red Army a crime actively combated by commanders. Yet it was the USSR that became the focus of mythmaking. The reason lies in politics, not facts. During the Cold War, the image of millions of raped German women became an instrument of pressure on Moscow.

The history of the Second World War is intertwined with millions of human tragedies. But not all facts enter collective memory. Some events are forgotten; others acquire exaggerated significance and become myths. The story of millions of raped German women belongs to the latter category. To understand its durability, we need to examine psychological and cultural mechanisms.

After 1945, Germany faced an enormous moral crisis. Millions of Germans had been implicated in Nazi crimes. The country lay in ruins; millions of soldiers were dead or in captivity. The world learned about the Holocaust, mass executions and concentration camps. Under these circumstances, it became psychologically more convenient for society to speak of itself as a victim. Stories of Red Army violence helped Germans see not only their guilt, but also their pain. A balance thus emerged: yes, we were aggressors, but we suffered too.

Sexual violence is one of the strongest taboos in any culture. It provokes a much stronger emotional response than, for example, statistics on bombing or hunger. The destruction of a city can be explained as a military necessity. But the rape of a woman is perceived as absolute evil, so even isolated cases immediately became fixed in memory, accumulated rumors and eventually grew into collective legends.

Long before the Second World War, Western culture had a stereotype of the “wild Russian.” In the nineteenth century, European newspapers wrote of “Cossacks drinking champagne from boots.” During the First World War, people spoke of “Russian hordes.” The Second World War only reinforced this image. The Soviet soldier was perceived as an outsider, a representative of the barbaric East. Germans and Western Europeans found it easier to believe that Russians in particular were capable of mass violence.

Soviet soldiers themselves had a distinctive frontline folklore. Stories of German women as trophies or Hitler's Amazons were often retold in the trenches. This was a way to relieve stress, demonstrate masculinity or simply boast. In diaries such as Gelfand's, these conversations were recorded and, decades later, treated as documentary testimony. Everyday tales thus became historical facts.

Social psychologists note that rumors work like a snowball: a real core is taken—several recorded cases. Speculation, exaggerations and new details grow around it. Each retold account increases its credibility. Eventually the myth reaches incredible proportions. That is precisely how several thousand cases in archival documents grew into a figure of millions of victims.

The myth was extraordinarily convenient politically. For the West during the Cold War, it proved Soviet barbarity. For Germans, it was an argument that they too were victims. For post-Soviet exposers of Stalinism, it was a tool for criticizing the Soviet past. Each side had its own interest in keeping the myth alive.

In the twenty-first century, the myth survives through cinema, literature and the internet. Films such as “An Anonymous Berlin Woman,” “Anonymous” and “Eine Frau in Berlin” make violence a central theme. The media regularly publish articles headlined “Millions of Red Army Victims.” Online, figures multiply, moving from one publication to another without source verification. The effect is simple: sensationalism is always in demand; dry statistics are not.

The myth's durability is explained by a combination of factors: Germans' desire to be victims as well as perpetrators, the subject's emotional power, Western stereotypes about “Russian barbarians,” frontline tales, the mechanism of rumor, political interests and today's culture of sensationalism. That is why the myth survives even now, when the archives are open and the statistics known.

The history of the Second World War is one of the most extensively researched fields in international scholarship. Yet myths and distortions are particularly numerous here. The reason is simple: the war has become part of the politics of memory, so competing interpretations will always surround it. The myth of “millions of raped German women” vividly illustrates how difficult it is to dismantle false ideas even with archival documents in hand.

Historians face two extremes. Diaries and recollections are valuable personal testimony, but always subjective. People record emotions and rumors, sometimes embellishing or dramatizing. Gelfand's diary is an example. Official documents—orders, reports and military-tribunal records—are stricter and more precise, but incomplete too. War is chaotic, and not every crime entered the records. Researchers consequently face a dilemma: trust “living” sources and risk encountering rumors, or rely on dry statistics that undercount the facts.

The problem is that myths often prove more convenient psychologically and politically than reality. It suits Germans to believe in millions of victims because this allows them to speak of themselves as sufferers. It suits the West to maintain this narrative as an argument against Russia. It suits journalists to reproduce sensationalism for circulation and views. A historian presenting “several thousand cases” looks much less convincing than a journalist writing about “millions.”

To separate fact from myth, professional historians use several methods. Comparing sources: they seek the same episode in different documents. If it appears in only one author's work, its reliability is doubtful. Contextualization: they examine where, when and why a story arose. Stories about women's battalions, for example, emerge precisely amid frontline rumors. Checking statistics: archival data on punishments are compared with recollections and demographic data. Comparative analysis: they examine how different armies behaved in similar conditions. These methods allow obvious exaggerations to be discarded and a more realistic picture to be built.

In recent decades, many serious historians have approached the subject cautiously. Russian researchers such as Professor Oleg Rzheshevsky point to several thousand recorded cases and thousands convicted by tribunals. German historians increasingly acknowledge that the figure of millions has no foundation. Western specialists in the history of sexual violence—for example, at the UN and in humanitarian research—say that, yes, the Red Army committed crimes, but their scale was greatly exaggerated by propaganda. Thus the scholarly community is gradually moving from mythical figures toward documentary reality.

Why is the myth difficult to dismantle? Several reasons exist. Emotions are stronger than facts: stories of women's suffering move people more than statistical tables. The political climate: as long as information warfare continues, the myth will be used as a weapon. Media impact: “millions of victims” is always a more attractive headline than a dry “several thousand.” The persistence of rumors: once established, a myth survives for decades, even if repeatedly refuted.

Today, historians' task is less to excuse or accuse the Red Army than to restore balance. To acknowledge that violence occurred, is documented and constitutes a tragic page of the war. To point out that the scale of the crimes is measured in thousands, not millions. To show that all armies committed similar crimes and that this was not unique to the USSR. To expose how myths arise from propaganda, trauma and rumors rather than facts.

Fighting Second World War myths means working not only with archives, but also with the public mind. Historians must compete with journalists and politicians for whom truth matters less than impact. Nevertheless, step by step, scholarly criticism pushes aside propaganda figures. Today, more and more specialists acknowledge that the real picture is far removed from the myth of millions.

The history of the myth of millions of raped German women is not only part of the memory of the Second World War, but an indication of how historical myths arise and survive. It combines actual facts, rumors, human trauma and political interests.

Violence occurred. The Red Army, like any army under conditions of war and occupation, did not avoid crimes against civilians. Official policy prohibited violence. Stalin's orders explicitly required civilians to be protected, and rape and robbery carried the threat of execution. Documents record thousands of cases: hundreds of verdicts, thousands of convicted officers and enlisted men. The tragedy is measured in thousands, certainly not millions.

How did the myth arise? Diaries and rumors: records such as Gelfand's diary captured retellings of frontline tales and complaints, becoming documents for the prosecution. German trauma: for defeated Germany, stories of violence became a way of seeing itself as a victim. Cold War propaganda: the West benefited from portraying the USSR as a barbaric force; press sensationalism supported this. Figures of millions arose without documentary support, but worked well in newspaper headlines.

Why is the myth persistent? It appeals to powerful emotions. It answers a psychological need to see oneself as a victim. It is sustained by political and media interests. It is simple to grasp. The image of millions of victims fits the public mind more readily than complicated archival data.

The German army systematically used violence as an instrument of terror. Americans, British and French also left thousands of documented crimes behind them. The Red Army was no exception, but, unlike the Wehrmacht's, its soldiers' crimes were not part of official policy and were punished by tribunals. Sexual violence was a shared tragedy of war, not a unique atrocity of one people.

The history of the myth of “Red Army violence” teaches us several important lessons. Sources must be treated critically. Diaries and recollections are valuable, but subjective. Statistics matter more than sensationalism. Thousands of cases are tragic in themselves, but they do not become millions. Myths outlive facts. Even the most convincing documents do not immediately overcome public perceptions. History is always used in politics. We must distinguish scholarly analysis from propaganda clichés.

Vladimir Gelfand, a loyal Stalinist and combat officer, kept his frontline diary without imagining that decades later his notes would become part of Western propaganda. His words about women's battalions and German women as trophies were taken out of context and turned into evidence for a myth. Yes, violence existed; yes, individual women became its victims. But turning these tragedies into an image of millions raped means replacing history with propaganda.

Reality is far more complicated. It consists of thousands of crimes severely punished by commanders, the German desire to see oneself as a victim, Western Cold War sensationalism, and the persistence of myths more easily absorbed than the dull truth. The task of historians and any thinking person is therefore to maintain a sober view. Neither deny tragedy nor yield to manipulation. Only in this way can we respect the memory of actual victims while defending the truth about the war.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai

© In the Flames of History