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The issue is that Russia's liberation of Eastern Europe was incredibly traumatizing to the domestic populations. You had systematic mass rapes on a bewildering
by rsj_hn 6y ago
The issue is that Russia's liberation of Eastern Europe was incredibly traumatizing to the domestic populations.
You had systematic mass rapes on a bewildering scale. As in, every single female from city X was raped. See this article: "They raped very german woman from age 8 to 80" (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/01/news.features11 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/01/news.features1...).
And it was not just German women. Similar things happened in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania (http://www.globeatwar.com/article/red-armys-rape-europe http://www.globeatwar.com/article/red-armys-rape-europe) These reports would filter into diplomats in the West and they were so shocking no one believed it at first, and it was downplayed in the West but citizens from these countries remember. In addition to the scale ("almost no woman in Hungary was spared") is the blindness of the attacks. Everyone was a target. Especially shocking were the rapes of emaciated concentration camp survivors -- who had just been liberated by the Red Army! Often after the rape the women were shot and many committed suicides. Russian prisoners freed from German PoW camps were raped by Red Army units they encountered as they made their way back to Russia.
There was also extensive looting -- organized, systematic looting of people's household treasures, watches, clothes, shoes, etc. Soldiers breaking into homes, raping the women, stealing any currency or valuables. Then moving onto the next home. Block by block, city by city, across all europe. The native population quickly learned it was not safe to leave your home wearing a watch.
And of course that was followed by systematic political oppression, arrest of political enemies or those who were "tainted" by the West, including ordinary soldiers or aviators who committed the crime of flying with the RAF or with free French forces (https://www.wingsinexile.co.uk/clanky/return-communist-persecution-and-exile-28.html https://www.wingsinexile.co.uk/clanky/return-communist-perse...) -- these were all jailed, de-personed, and hounded by authorities for the rest of their lives as being politically tainted. Remember some of these were national heroes. And that was followed by a series of coups in which the communist parties assassinated their opponents and seized power.
Bottom line, Eastern Europe has very mixed feelings about being "liberated" by the USSR, whereas Western Europe has much more positive memories of being liberated by the West, and so it's more a matter of one side celebrating while the other would prefer to not remember those events at all.
- Isinlor 6y agoThis is exact story of my grandmother and her sister when Soviets were going trough my home city in northern Poland. They were not as afraid of Germans as they were of Soviets. Soviets were animals raping, stealing and beating everything they encountered.
- rsj_hn 6y agoMy grandmother also. It's amazing how many in the US not only don't know about this, but become angry when you tell them. Yet for the generation that lived through WW2, you can talk to anyone who was on the wrong side of the iron curtain and they will tell you what it was like. The BBC documentary World At War (1973) covers this in episode 21. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3oeao1 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3oeao1 This is also covered on Wikipedia now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_... "Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000.[2][17] Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.[18]" In Hungary: "According to Skrabski, it’s possible that as many as 800,000 Hungarian women were raped, and the violence included gang rape and sexual torture. Pregnancy resulting from rape was so widespread that the government suspended its ban on abortions for several months during 1945, offering abortion and STD treatment services free of charge." https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/11/24/silenced-shame-hungarian-women-remember-wartime-rapes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/... There are many well documented stories of these atrocities in all the areas occupied by the Red Army, most too gruesome to include here. Anyone can do their own research, the information is out there, even if many don't want to hear it. When you want to understand why Eastern Europe is falling over itself (foolishly, IMO) to join NATO and integrate into the West, these types of things need to be understood as being in the background.
- twelve40 6y agoThe Germans killed 5,000,000 people in Poland, but you are saying now the people at the time were not as afraid of them as the Soviets. Makes sense.