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RussianRussky Vestnik
“Distorting History: ‘Raped Germany’”
29 November 2016
Recently, in connection with well-known events in the world, foreign historians and scholars have been trying to present a dark myth as truth. What is the essence of this myth? It claims that Soviet soldiers, after victory in the most terrible war in human history, raped German women and women of other nationalities. According to the author, this is being done in order to blacken Russia and fuel a campaign against the Russian people. Such a position, he argues, also leads toward a revision of the outcome of the bloodshed of 1941–45, turning fascists into victims. The author calls this absurd.
A dreadful article of lies
The BBC published a text entitled “The Rape of Berlin: The Unknown History of War.” The article calls it a deceitful document and says it relies on supposedly false arguments connected with Vladimir Gelfand, while also noting that this Soviet Army officer wrote without censorship. It says the BBC piece refers to the monument to the Liberator Soldier in Berlin’s Treptow Park and, in the author’s view, vulgarises and distorts the familiar meaning of that memorial. According to this criticism, the article presents the Liberator Soldier to Germans as a symbol of fear and pain because Soviet troops allegedly committed abuses and raped women.
The author is particularly outraged by descriptions of poor discipline in Soviet units, lice, unsanitary conditions and other abuses supposedly widespread in the Soviet Army. He responds with the question: if there was no order or organisation, how could Soviet soldiers have defeated the supposedly “superior race”? In his view, this question exposes the weakness of such accounts.
The horrors of the alleged lies continue
Lucy Ash, the article says, urges readers to face the truth. But what, the author asks, is this “truth”? It is the claim that roughly two million women throughout Germany were raped by Russian and Soviet servicemen. He argues that huge figures are being built from a small number of poorly preserved medical records. He also finds it striking that for twenty-five years after victory neither Germans nor Soviet people raised the issue, and says the controversy began in 1992 after the collapse of the USSR.
Books full of absurd ideas
In that year, the author says, two feminists published a book titled Liberators and Liberated, giving a figure of two million raped women. In 2002 Anthony Beevor published Berlin: The Downfall, which the article likewise dismisses. It says Beevor cites questionable material, including a report by Lavrentiy Beria to Stalin, and gives a figure of up to 135,000 women in Berlin who were sexually assaulted. The text then objects to still larger estimates—1.4 million rapes in East Prussia—and says the scale of what it regards as slander is astonishing. It adds that many Russian anti-Soviet commentators adopted the same argument.
Refutation
The author says that although it is strange to have to refute a lie, the truth must nevertheless be advanced. His principal counterargument is an order issued by Stalin on 19 January 1945, requiring Soviet soldiers to behave with dignity and, according to the article, threatening severe punishment for those who assaulted women in defeated territory. The author then gives a statistic of seventy-two serious cases among 908,500 soldiers and officers and asks how this can be reconciled with claims involving millions. He says offenders were punished harshly, with sentences of fifteen years in camps or execution, and argues that the inclination to loot or rape therefore existed only among a tiny minority.
The article cites Osmar White as observing that former camp prisoners, mainly Poles, formed gangs and took revenge. It also refers to a report by prosecutor Yachenin dated 2 May 1945, saying that Dutch, French, British, American and German people themselves were looting local residents and taking property and money; measures were taken to confiscate those goods.
German propaganda
The Nazis, the author says, frightened German women with stories that they would be raped by Black soldiers. The text then refers to A Woman in Berlin, attributed here to Marta Hillers, and says the book was actively used by the Anglo-Saxon powers in the information war against the USSR. It adds that people forget that the GDR, with what the author describes as a well-developed economy, was established with Soviet support.
Conclusions
The author concludes that rapes did occur but claims their number was negligible compared with crimes committed by the Anglo-Saxon powers. In his view, an approach that revises the results of the war benefits Western countries seeking to discredit Russia and its allies.
Author: Anatoly Pechenoga
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