Miriam Gebhardt - Crimes Unspoken - The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War

Nevertheless, it is clear that Soviet war propaganda influenced the attitude of the Red Army to German soldiers and civilians. Soviet intellectuals had an important function in this regard. There is a famous poem by Konstantin Simonov from 1942 in which he calls on Soviet soldiers to show no mercy with the German enemy: ‘Kill him! If your home means anything to you, know that if you don’t kill him, no one will, so kill at least one! And kill more quickly! As often as you see one, kill him!’ [75] Aleksandr V. Perepelicyn and Natalya P. Timofeeva, Das Deutschen-Bild in der sowjetischen Militärpropaganda während des Grossen Vaterländischen Krieges (Munich, 2004), pp. 267–86. Soviet propaganda portrayed the Germans as thieves, murderers, rapists, bloodsuckers and people with the morality of animals.

One of the propagandists working for the Soviets became particularly well known in Germany. Ilya Grigorievich Ehrenburg, born in 1891 in Kiev, had lived as a Bohemian in Berlin and Paris during the 1920s and fought with the anti-fascists in Spain in the 1930s. From 1940 he worked as a war reporter in Moscow. He was by no means Stalin’s only propagandist, but he was the most well known. The Deutsche Soldatenzeitung described him as a ‘blood-drenched monster in human guise’ and attributed words to him that he had never published, in particular the invocation to rape German women. The originator of this invocation cannot be determined as it was contained in an anonymous flyer distributed towards the end of the war.

The lines published under Ehrenburg’s name are by no means as unequivocal as Western propaganda claims. One of his most popular pamphlets was entitled ‘About Hate’ and contains the following: ‘For us, the German soldier with a weapon in his hand is not a person but a fascist. We hate him… If the German soldier releases his weapon and allows himself to be captured, we will not touch a hair on his head – he will live.’

Elsewhere, Ehrenburg writes about the approach by the Soviet Army to German perpetrators: ‘The men of the Red Army have not sought and will not seek revenge. They want to kill the child murderers, not their children.’ And ‘The Soviet soldier will not molest a German woman. The Soviet soldier will not abuse a German woman, nor will he have any intimate relationship with her. He is superior to her. He despises her for being the wife of a slaughterer and for having scheming friends. The Soviet soldier will pass by German women in silence.’ And once again unambiguously: ‘We are not after Gretchen, but the Fritzes who have given our women diseases, and we can say forthrightly that these Germans can expect no mercy. As for German women, they only disgust us. We despise German women for what they are – mothers, wives and sisters of executioners.’ [76] Carola Tischler, ‘Die Vereinfachungen des Genossen Ehrenburg: Eine Endkriegs- und eine Nachkriegskontroverse’, in: Scherstjanoi, Rotarmisten schreiben aus Deutschland , pp. 326–39, here pp. 330–3.

There was plenty of hate propaganda by the Soviets, but no open invocation to rape German women – rather the opposite, with attempts to limit it. In February 1945, with an eye to the post-war European order, Stalin attempted to counter the hate speech by pointing to the difference between the Nazi regime and the population: ‘Hitlers come and go, but the German people and the German state remain.’

The military leadership in particular had quickly realized that the vengeful mood of the soldiers had got out of control, endangering the progress of the Soviet Army. On 6 February 1945, Lieutenant-General Okorov, head of the Political Department of the 2nd Byelorussian Front, convened a meeting of the members of the Agitation and Propaganda Section. He warned them that the drinking, looting, arson and rape by the soldiers would damage the ‘reputation of the Red Army as combatants’. It would be dangerous if they were now to become undisciplined and were merely to seek instant gratification: ‘First they rape a German woman and then a Pole. The officer orders them to stop, and a soldier pulls out his gun and shoots the officer. Can a soldier like that fight selflessly? No.’ All of the clobber, tulle and silk carried by the soldiers slowed the advance, and it is no coincidence that the Germans left all the breweries and distilleries undamaged but rather a tactic, speculated Okorov: ‘They know that a drunken combatant can’t fight.’ He therefore demanded: ‘Of course our people feel a huge need for revenge, and it is these feelings that have carried our combatants into the lair of the fascist beast and pushed them on to Germany. But revenge is not the same as boozing and burning.’ It was time to explain to the troops ‘that you will not be speeding up the defeat of Germany by beating to death some old German woman in the hinterland’. [77] Scherstjanoi, pp. 60–1.

From February 1945, more and more directives were issued by the Soviet high command urging the troops to treat the Germans better. At stake was the reputation of the Red Army combatants as liberators and avengers, which should not be discredited through drunkenness, vandalism and intimate relations with Polish and German women. [78] Ibid., p. 114. In April, the commanders of the 1st and 2nd Byelorussian and the 1st Ukrainian Front were instructed about the need for a humane attitude to the German people and prisoners of war. A severe attitude invoked fear and just made the Germans more fanatical in their defence. The civilian population feared revenge and were organizing themselves into bands: ‘This is not in our best interests. A more humane relationship with the Germans will make it easier for us to wage war on their territory and probably weaken the tenacity of the German defence.’ [79] Ibid., p. 145. Two days later, the next directive was issued, forbidding looting and eviction without providing alternative housing.

Responsibility for the attacks was often shifted to other units. It was said that the infantry and advance units in particular gave free rein to their feelings. Further work was needed there, wrote the architect Boris Sergeevic in April 1945 to an acquaintance, so that people would understand that they were not fighting with women and for material objects but with ‘Hitler’s people’. He admitted, however: ‘It is difficult to achieve in everyday life and we therefore often find ourselves following in the messy footsteps of our advance units.’ [80] Ibid., p. 132.

By the end of April, the Soviets had advanced as far as Berlin. The initial impression of the Berliners was positive. Most of the population were loyal and interested in good relations with the occupiers. Many, particularly Communists, attempted to welcome the soldiers and officers and offered their services. ‘The Berliners are strongly impressed by the contrast between what German propaganda said about the Red Army and its equipment and the reality’, wrote the head of the 7th Section of the Political Administration of the 1st Byelorussian Front on 29 April 1945: ‘The people are hoping for the establishment of military command posts so that a certain amount of order can be obtained and that an end can be put to the isolated incidents that still occur.’ [81] Ibid., p. 151. Apart from that, the number of rapes and other immoral behaviour had decreased considerably in recent times, he claimed.

A letter of the following day shows how misguided this optimism was in reality. On 30 April 1945, a representative of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR wrote to the Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs: ‘In spite of the order by the war council to change the attitude to the German people, there are still many cases of rape…. The measures taken to date have not been sufficiently energetic.’ He cites the example of a group of rapists who killed a Soviet interpreter and a sergeant from the Soviet command headquarters because they had attempted to prevent the crimes. The commanding officer himself was beaten up. [82] Ibid., p. 160.