tigmeister - seems a post from long ago caught up with me: I was a child during the occupation times but was witness to the retreat of the captured German soldiers, usually ushered, supervised, etc. by the Red Army, nightly shots, columns of dejected looking men supervised by bossy men on horseback, a dead horse in a field around which the entire village lined up to cut bits of meat off the carcass - one person in charge. I remember some horrific rape stories committed in the woods, but stuff I shouldn't have been hearing. My mother speaks a Slav language, I should say 'spoke' she has passed on, and was able to prevent a fate 'worse than death for herself and her young sister-in-law by communicating one night with a troupe of 5 Russians who demanded entry by bashing on the wooden door with their guns, were welcomed, given cups of coffee, were asked to show photos of child and wife etc. and left and went to the next house to do what they had intended to do at ours; - but I was told by a 'kind' aunt many years later, that my mother had a brief affair with a Russian officer, which meant we could eat and had some protection; I am sure many women did this to survive. If you read the history books, Stalin did encourage his soldiers to rape German women - it was the just deserts, which the Germans had dished out in the first place, men die in wars, women at times also die a horrible death but bear the scars of rape, misuse, humiliation, a destroyed womb, veneral disease etc. for a long time.
But Stalin's directive to the Red Army did not mean that every Russian soldier was uncivilised, many behaved decently, most likely most of them - I mean if you have a few bad apples, the threat of that is enough to cow the civil population?? I also heard stories of Russian soldiers who were shot on the spot, or hanged when stories of rape were brought to the attention of the officer in charge.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085140500112095?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=reso20Older friends from the old country, who coincidentally became our neighbours here in Australia had some stories to tell, including that the 'normal' Russians warned them about the next lot of soldiers who were from the Mongolian steppes and who raped and pillaged. But the Germans behaved equally badly - seems civilisation is only a thin veneer and needs to be broken at times, rape was used as a tactic by both armies - but it wasn't just the Germans or Russians who suffered, many nationalities in between, especially Polish women suffered from rape most likely from both armies and thereafter, if they survived, venereal disease.
Not a nice topic! So sorry - on this fine day!
Taurisk
