This is a bit of a facile analysis. The germans killed out of a desire to kill -- e.g. to exterminate undesireable elements, primarily jews, gypsies, gays, jeho

This is a bit of a facile analysis. The germans killed out of a desire to kill -- e.g. to exterminate undesireable elements, primarily jews, gypsies, gays, jehovah's witnesses, and mentally ill, plus of course political resisters. The Russians killed in order to terrorize the domestic populations. They terrorized everyone. When you see public displays like the husband of a farm impaled on his front porch and all the women raped and murdered inside, that is a very public act of terrorism meant to frighten the general population and let them know that their lives had zero value to the new occupying forces. When you see that happen in every single village, in every neighborhood, it spreads terror across the entire nation. It was not violence focused at undesirable groups, it was violence focused at anyone, arbitrarily, and very publicly. E.g. 20% of Hungary's female population was raped, and many were murdered afterwards. That touches basically everyone in society, to let them know that no one is safe, and that anyone can be gotten at any time and for arbitrary reasons, and if you had 5 women in your extended family, odds are the Russians raped one of them. That is something that terrorizes the entire nation. Things like the repeated public gangrape of nuns in Poland, a very catholic country, that terrorizes a large proportion of the population, as does the execution of random ordinary villagers in gruesome spectacles. Is it so surprising that a policy of terrorism succeeds in terrorizing the population? Do you really think it's just about numbers?