How to create a black myth about "raped Germany"
The black myth of the hundreds of thousands and millions of Germans raped in 1945 by Soviet soldiers (and representatives of other nations) has recently become part of the anti-Russian and anti-Soviet information campaign. This and other myths contribute to the transformation of Germans from aggressors into victims, the equalization of the USSR and Nazi Germany, and ultimately to the revision of the results of World War II with all the consequences historical geopolitical consequences.
September 24 liberal press again reminded of this myth. On the website of the Russian service "BBC" a large material: "The rape of Berlin: an unknown history of the war." The article reports that a diary book of the Soviet Army officer Vladimir Gelfand is going on sale in Russia, in which "the bloody everyday life of the Great Patriotic War is described without embellishment and notes."
The article begins with an indication of the Soviet monument. This is a monument to the Liberator Soldier in Treptow Park in Berlin. If for us this symbol of the salvation of European civilization from Nazism, then “for some in Germany this memorial is a reason for other memories. Soviet soldiers raped countless women on their way to Berlin, but this was rarely said after the war, both in East and in West Germany. And in Russia today, very few people talk about this. ”
The diary of Vladimir Gelfand tells “about the absence of order and discipline in the regular troops: poor rations, lice, routine anti-Semitism and endless theft. As he says, the soldiers even stole the boots of their comrades. ” It also reports on the rape of German women, and not as isolated cases, but on the system.
One can only wonder how the Red Army, in which there was no “order and discipline,” reigned “routine anti-Semitism and endless theft”, where soldiers were criminals, stealing things from comrades and a crowd of raping girls, was able to defeat the “superior race” and disciplined Wehrmacht . Apparently, “they were inundated with corpses,” as liberal historians have been urging us for a long time.
The author of the article, Lucy Ash, calls for rejecting prejudices and finding out the true history of the Second World War with all its unsightly sides: “... future generations should know the true horrors of war and deserve to see the unadorned picture”. However, instead, it only repeats the black myths that have already been refuted many times. “What was the real scale of rape?” The most commonly cited numbers in 100 are thousands of women in Berlin and two million throughout Germany. These figures, hotly contested, were extrapolated from the meager medical records that have survived to this day. ”
The myth of hundreds of thousands and millions of German soldiers raped in 1945 by Soviet soldiers has been rising regularly for the last 25 years, although it was not raised in the USSR nor by the Germans themselves before perestroika. In 1992, a book of two feminists was published in Germany, Helke Zander and Barbara Yor, “The Liberators and the Liberated,” where this shocking average number appeared: two million.
In 2002, Anthony Beevor’s book “The Fall of Berlin” was published, in which the author cited this figure without paying attention to its criticism. According to Beevor, he found in the Russian state archive reports "about the epidemic of sexual violence in Germany." At the end of 1944, these reports were sent by NKVD officers Lavrenty Beria. “They were transferred to Stalin,” says Beevor. - You can see the marks, they read or not. They report mass rapes in East Prussia and how German women tried to kill themselves and their children in order to avoid this fate. ”
The work of Beevor cites the following data: “According to the estimates of the two main Berlin hospitals, the number of victims raped by Soviet soldiers ranges from ninety-five to one hundred and thirty thousand people. One doctor concluded that approximately one hundred thousand women were raped in Berlin alone. And about ten thousand of them died mainly as a result of suicide. The number of deaths throughout East Germany is apparently much higher, if we take into account the million four hundred thousand raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. It seems that about two million German women were raped in total, many of whom (if not most) suffered this humiliation several times. ”
That is, we see the opinion of "one doctor"; the sources were described by the phrases “apparently,” “if,” and “represented.” In 2004, the book “The Fall of Berlin” by Anthony Beevor was published in Russia and became a “source” for numerous anti-Soviets, who picked up and spread the myth of “Soviet soldiers-rapists”. Now another similar “work” will appear - Gelfand's diary.
In fact, such facts, and they are inevitable in war, because even in peacetime, violence is one of the most common crimes, were exceptional, and they were severely punished for crimes. The order of Stalin from 19 January 1945 read: “Officers and Red Army! We are going to the country of the enemy. Everyone should keep his composure, everyone should be brave ... The remaining population in the conquered areas, regardless of whether the German, the Czech, or the Pole, should not be subjected to violence. The guilty will be punished according to the laws of wartime. In the conquered territory, sexual relations with the female sex are not allowed. Perpetrators of violence and rape will be shot. ”
With marauders and rapists fought hard. The criminals fell under military tribunals. For looting, rape and other crimes, punishment was severe: 15 years of camps, penalty battalion, execution. The report of the military prosecutor of the 1 of the Belarusian Front on illegal actions against the civilian population for the period from April 22 to May 5 of the year 1945 contains the following figures: for seven armies of the front 908,5 were recorded crimes, of which 124 was rape. 72 cases on 72 thousands. Where are the hundreds of thousands of German women raped?
With harsh measures, the wave of revenge was quickly put out. It should be remembered that not all crimes were committed by Soviet soldiers. It was noted that the Poles particularly avenged the Germans during the years of humiliation. Former forced laborers and prisoners of concentration camps received freedom; some of them began to revenge. Australian war correspondent Osmar White was in Europe in the ranks of the 3 American Army and noted: “... when former forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners filled the roads and started looting one town after another, the situation got out of control ... gathered in gangs in order to settle with the Germans. "
2 May 1945, the military prosecutor of 1 of the Belorussian Front, Yachenin reported: “The repatriated people, especially the Italians, the Dutch, and even the Germans, are widely involved in assaults, especially robbery and bureaucracy. At the same time, all these disgraces are blamed on our servicemen ... "This was also reported to Stalin and Beria:" In Berlin there are a large number of Italians, French, Polish, Americans and British prisoners of war freed from the camps who take personal belongings and property from the local population. on carts and heading west. Measures are being taken to seize their stolen property. "
Osmar White also noted high discipline in the Soviet troops: “There was no terror in Prague or another part of Bohemia by the Russians. Russians are harsh realists in relation to collaborators and fascists, but a person with a clear conscience has nothing to fear. In the Red Army dominated by severe discipline. There is no more robbery, rape and bullying than any other zone of occupation. Wild stories of atrocities emerge due to exaggerations and distortions of individual cases under the influence of Czech nervousness caused by the immoderate manner of Russian soldiers and their love of vodka. One woman who told me most of the tales about the cruelties of Russians, from which her hair stood on end, was eventually forced to admit that the only evidence she saw with her own eyes was how drunk Russian officers fired pistols into the air or at bottles ... "
Many veterans and contemporaries of the Second World War noted that severe discipline prevailed in the Red Army. Do not forget that in the Stalinist USSR created a society of service and creation. They brought up heroes, creators and producers, and not punks and rapists. Soviet troops entered Europe as liberators, not conquerors, respectively, Soviet soldiers and commanders behaved.
It is worth recalling that the Nazis, representatives of European civilization, behaved like beasts on Soviet soil. The Nazis slaughtered people like cattle, raped, wiped out entire settlements from the face of the earth. For example, what was an ordinary Wehrmacht soldier was told at the Nuremberg trials. The typical corporal of the 355 security battalion, Muller, killed Soviet citizens, including old men, women and babies, during the occupation of 96. They also raped thirty-two Soviet women, six of whom were killed. It is clear that when it became clear that the war was lost, many were seized with horror. The Germans were afraid that the Russians would avenge them. And the fair punishment was deserved.
In fact, the first to launch the myth of the “red rapists” and “hordes from the East” were the ideologists of the Third Reich. The current "researchers" and liberal publicists only repeat the rumors and gossip that came up in Hitler's Germany to intimidate the population, to preserve its submission. To the Germans fought until the very last moment. That death in battle seemed to them an easy fate compared with captivity and occupation.
The Reich Minister of Education and the Propaganda of Germany Joseph Goebbels wrote in March 1945: “... in fact, we are dealing with steppe scum in the person of Soviet soldiers. This is confirmed by information about atrocities that came to us from the eastern regions. They really cause horror ... In some villages and cities, all women between ten and seventy years old were subjected to countless rape. It seems that this is done by order from above, since one can see an obvious system in the behavior of Soviet soldiers. ”
This myth is immediately replicated. Hitler himself appealed to the population: “Soldiers on the Eastern Front! The last time a mortal enemy in the face of the Bolsheviks and the Jews goes on the offensive. He is trying to defeat Germany and destroy our people. You soldiers on the Eastern Front, for the most part, already know yourself what destiny is destined above all to German women, girls and children. While old people and children will be killed, women and girls will be relegated to barracks prostitutes. The rest will go to Siberia. ” On the Western Front, German propaganda used the image of a Negro raping blond German women instead of Russians to intimidate the local population.
Thus, the leaders of the Reich tried to make people fight to the end. At the same time, people were brought to panic, deadly horror. A significant part of the population of East Prussia fled to the western regions. In Berlin itself, a series of suicides. Gone from the whole family.
After the war, this myth was supported by the Anglo-Saxon publications. The Cold War was in full swing and the United States and Britain were waging an active information war with the Soviet civilization. Many myths that are actively used in the Third Reich, adopted by the Anglo-Saxons and their singers in Western Europe. In 1954, the book “Woman in Berlin” was published in the USA. Its author is a journalist Martha Hiller. In West Germany, the diary was published in 1960. In 2003, the Woman in Berlin was republished in many countries, and the Western media eagerly picked up the theme of “raped Germany”. A few years later, the film “Nameless” was shot using this book. After this, the work of E. Beevor “The Fall of Berlin” was accepted by the liberal editions “with a bang.” The soil has already been prepared.
At the same time in the West, they turn a blind eye to the fact that American, French and British troops are responsible for mass crimes in Germany, including rape. For example, the German historian M. Gebhardt believes that only Americans raped at least 190 thousands of German women, and this process continued until the 1955 year. Especially the atrocities of the soldiers from the colonial parts - Arabs and negros. But this in the West, try not to remember.
Also in the West, they don’t want to recall that a strong German socialist state of the GDR was created on the German territory controlled by the USSR (6 economy in Europe in 1980). And "raped Germany" was the most loyal and self-sufficient ally of the USSR in Europe. If all the crimes about which the followers of Goebbels and Hitler write, would in fact be, then in principle there would probably be good neighborly and allied relations that lasted more than four decades.
Thus, the rape of German women by Soviet soldiers really were, there are documents and statistics on the number of convicts. But these crimes were exceptional, they were not massive and systematic. If we compare the total number of convicts for these crimes to the entire number of Soviet troops in the occupied territories, the percentage will be quite insignificant. At the same time, crimes were committed not only by Soviet troops, but also by Poles, French, Americans, British (including representatives of colonial troops), prisoners of war freed from camps, etc.
The black myth of the "Soviet soldiers-rapists" was created in the Third Reich, to frighten the population, to force him to fight to the end. Then this myth was restored by the Anglo-Saxons, who fought the information war against the USSR. This war continues at the present time, with the aim of turning the USSR into an aggressor, Soviet soldiers into invaders and rapists, in order to level the USSR and Nazi Germany. In the end, our "partners" strive to revise the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War, with all the ensuing historical and geopolitical consequences.
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