Mass rape of German women by Soviet Red Army
Encyclopedia
As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II
, mass rapes took place, both in connection to combat operations and during the subsequent occupation that was to last many years. Most published and most numerous are the rapes committed by Soviet
servicemen, for which estimates range from tens of thousands to two million.
, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. 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.
A book by Svetlana Aleksievich provides memories by Soviet military personnel about their experience in Germany. According to an officer,
A female telephone operator from the Soviet Army recalled that
Natalya Gesse claimed that Russian soldiers raped German females from eight to eighty years old. Russian women were not spared either. In contrast, Russian war veteran Vsevolod Olimpiev recalled, "The Soviet soldiers' relations with the German population where it had stayed may be called indifferent and neutral. Nobody, at least from our Regiment, harassed or touched them. Moreover, when we came across an obviously starving German family with kids we would share our food with them with no unnecessary words."
After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution. The rapes continued, however, until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps,“ completely separating them from the residential population in the Soviet zone of Germany.
According to Alexander Statiev, while Soviet soldiers respected their own citizens and those of friendly countries, they perceived themselves to be conquerors rather than liberators in hostile regions. They viewed violence against civilians as a privilege of victors. Statiev cites the attitude of a Soviet soldier as exemplifying this phenomenon: "Avenge! You are a soldier-avenger! … Kill the German, and then jump the German woman! This is how a soldier celebrates victory!"
There is dispute in Russia concerning these claims. They have encountered vast criticism from historians in Russia and the Russian government. Critics argue that the numbers are based on faulty methodology and questionable sources. It is argued that although there were cases of excesses and heavy-handed command, the Red Army as a whole treated the population of the former Reich with respect. In his review of Berlin: The Downfall 1945
, O.A. Rzheshevsky, a professor and President of the Russian Association of World War II Historians, has charged that Beevor is merely resurrecting the discredited and racist views of Neo-Nazi historians, who depicted Soviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes." In an interview with BBC News Online
, Rzheshevsky admitted that he had only read excerpts and had not seen the book's source notes. He claimed that Beevor's use of phrases such as "Berliners remember" and "the experiences of the raped German women" were better suited "for pulp fiction, than scientific research." Rzheshevsky also defended Soviet reprisals against Germans, stating that the Germans could have expected an "avalanche of revenge".
Rzheshevsky states that acts such as robbery and sexual assault are inevitable parts of war, and some men of Soviet and other Allied armies committed them. But in general, the Soviet soldiers treated peaceful Germans with humanity.
Colonel Ivan Busik, Director of Russia's Institute of Military History, wrote what Hero of the Soviet Union, Army General Ivan Tretiak said to him that there was not a single case of violence committed by men in his regiment. Tretiak said that although he wanted revenge, Stalin's orders on treating the population humanely were implemented, and discipline in the army strengthened. Tretiak said that in such a huge military group as that in Germany, there was bound to be cases of sexual misconduct, as men had not seen women in years. However, he explains that sexual relations were not always violent, but often involved mutual consent. The work of Beevor and others alleging mass rape is characterized by Tretiak as "filthy cynicism, because the vast majority of those who have been slandered cannot reply to these liars."
With respect to the number of abortions reported in Berlin, and the estimates of number of rapes based on the abortions statistics, there are some alternative explanations, that don't necessarily involve rapes by Soviet soldiers. Atina Grossman in her article in "October" describes how until early 1945 the abortions in Germany were illegal (except for medical and eugenic reasons), and so when doctors opened up and started performing abortions to rape victims (for which only an affidavit was requested from a woman), many women would claim they were raped but their accounts were surprisingly uniform (describing rapists as having "mongoloid or asiatic type"). It was also typical that women specified their reasons for abortions being mostly socio-economic (inability to raise another child) rather than moral or ethical.
Richard Overy
, a historian from King's College London
, has criticized the viewpoint held by some Russians, asserting that they refuse to acknowledge Soviet war crimes committed during the war, "Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history."
In Russia, there is much dispute about the allegations of mass rape committed against Germans. Makhmud Gareyev, President of the Academy of Military Sciences, who participated in the East Prussia campaign, said that he had not heard about sexual violence. He said that after what the Nazis did to Russia, excesses were likely to take place, but that such cases were strongly suppressed and punished, and were not widespread. He notes that the Soviet military leadership on 19 January 1945 signed an executive order calling on the avoidance of a rough relationship with the local population. Gareyev said that Beevor copied Goebbel's propaganda about the "aggressive sexuality of our soldiers." According to Russia historian A. Dyukov's book asserted that "...The Germans did not experience a fraction of the horror that their soldiers staged in the East. Despite some excesses, which were firmly suppressed by the Command, the Red Army as a whole behaved toward the people of the Reich with humanity". The Russian soldiers are credited with feeding the German population, rescuing children, and helping to restore normal life in the country.
In his analysis of the motives behind the extensive Soviet rapes Norman Naimark singles out "hate propaganda, personal experiences of suffering at home, and a fully demeaning picture of German women in the press, not to mention among the soldiers themselves" as a part reason for the widespread rapes. Naimark also noted the effect that the Russian tendency to binge-drink alcohol (of which much was available in Germany) had on the propensity of Russian soldiers to commit rape, especially rape-murder. Naimark also notes the patriarchal nature of Russian culture, and of the Asian societies comprising the Soviet Union, where dishonor was in the past repaid by raping the women of the enemy. The fact that the Germans had a much higher standard of living (with things such as indoor toilets), visible even when in ruins "may well have contributed to a national inferiority complex among Russians". Combining Russian feelings of inferiority and the resulting need to restore his honor and their desire for revenge may be the reason many women were raped in public as well as in front of husbands before both were killed.
According to Anthony Beevor revenge played very little role in the frequent rapes; according to him the main reason for the rapes was the Soviet troops' feeling of entitlement to all types of booty, including women. Beevor exemplifies this with his discovery that Soviet troops also raped Russian and Polish girls and women that were liberated from Nazi concentration camps.
The way the rapes have been discussed by Sander and Johr in their "BeFreier und Befreite" has been criticized by several scholars. According to Grossmann, the problem is that this is not a "universal" story of women being raped by men, but of German women being abused and violated by an army that fought Nazi Germany and liberated death camps. Such attempts to de-emphasize the historical context of the rape of German women is a serious omission, according to Stuart Liebman and Annette Michelson, and, according to Pascale Bos, is an example of ahistorical, feminist and sexist approach to the wartime rape issue.
According to Pascale Bos the feminist attempt to universalize the story of the rapes of German women came into a contradiction with Sander's and Johr's own description of the rapes as a form of genocidal rape: the rape of racially superior German women by racially inferior Russian soldiers, implying that such a rape was especially harmful for the victims. By contrast, the issue of the rapes of Soviet woman by Wehrmacht soldiers, that, according to some estimation amounted hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cases is not treated by the authors as something deserving serious mention.
According to Norman Naimark we may never know how many German women and girls were raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation, their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as 2 million. As to the social effects of this sexual violence Naimark notes:
Women of the (East) German wartime generation refer to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park
, Berlin
, as the "tomb of the unknown rapist" in response to the mass rapes by Red Army soldiers in the years following 1945.
took part in the invasion of Germany, and wrote a poem about it: Prussian Nights
; "Twenty-two Hoeringstrasse. It's not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning by the walls, half muffled: the mother's wounded, half alive. The little daughter's on the mattress, dead. How many have been on it? A platoon, a company perhaps? A girl's been turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse. . . . The mother begs, "Soldier, kill me!"
had alluded to mass rape by the Red Army but stop shy of mentioning it. As time has progressed more works have been produced that have directly addressed the issue like the book The 158-Pound Marriage
or the 2006 film The Good German
and the topic has the subject of much feminist discourse. The first autobiographical work depicting the events was the groundbreaking 1954 book A Woman in Berlin
which was made into a 2008 feature film. It was widely rejected in Germany after its initial publication but has seen a new acceptance and many women have found inspiration to come forward with their own stories.
J Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.
area; 600 in Bruchsal
; and 500 in Freudenstadt
."
According to Norman Naimark
French Moroccan troops matched the behavior of Soviet troops when it came to rape, in particular in the early occupation of Baden and Württemberg.
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, mass rapes took place, both in connection to combat operations and during the subsequent occupation that was to last many years. Most published and most numerous are the rapes committed by Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
servicemen, for which estimates range from tens of thousands to two million.
Soviet Army
A wave of rapes and sexual violence occurred in Central Europe in 1944–45, as the Western Allies and the Red Army battered their way into the Third Reich. The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers range from the tens of thousands to 2 million. In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. Antony Beevor
Antony Beevor
Antony James Beevor, FRSL is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission...
describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.
A book by Svetlana Aleksievich provides memories by Soviet military personnel about their experience in Germany. According to an officer,
A female telephone operator from the Soviet Army recalled that
Natalya Gesse claimed that Russian soldiers raped German females from eight to eighty years old. Russian women were not spared either. In contrast, Russian war veteran Vsevolod Olimpiev recalled, "The Soviet soldiers' relations with the German population where it had stayed may be called indifferent and neutral. Nobody, at least from our Regiment, harassed or touched them. Moreover, when we came across an obviously starving German family with kids we would share our food with them with no unnecessary words."
After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution. The rapes continued, however, until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps,“ completely separating them from the residential population in the Soviet zone of Germany.
According to Alexander Statiev, while Soviet soldiers respected their own citizens and those of friendly countries, they perceived themselves to be conquerors rather than liberators in hostile regions. They viewed violence against civilians as a privilege of victors. Statiev cites the attitude of a Soviet soldier as exemplifying this phenomenon: "Avenge! You are a soldier-avenger! … Kill the German, and then jump the German woman! This is how a soldier celebrates victory!"
Controversy
Berlin: The Downfall 1945
Berlin: The Downfall 1945 is a narrative history by Antony Beevor of the Battle of Berlin during World War II. It was published by Viking Press in 2002, then later by Penguin Books in 2003...
, O.A. Rzheshevsky, a professor and President of the Russian Association of World War II Historians, has charged that Beevor is merely resurrecting the discredited and racist views of Neo-Nazi historians, who depicted Soviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes." In an interview with BBC News Online
BBC News Online
BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. The website is the most popular news website in the United Kingdom and forms a major part of BBC Online ....
, Rzheshevsky admitted that he had only read excerpts and had not seen the book's source notes. He claimed that Beevor's use of phrases such as "Berliners remember" and "the experiences of the raped German women" were better suited "for pulp fiction, than scientific research." Rzheshevsky also defended Soviet reprisals against Germans, stating that the Germans could have expected an "avalanche of revenge".
Rzheshevsky states that acts such as robbery and sexual assault are inevitable parts of war, and some men of Soviet and other Allied armies committed them. But in general, the Soviet soldiers treated peaceful Germans with humanity.
Colonel Ivan Busik, Director of Russia's Institute of Military History, wrote what Hero of the Soviet Union, Army General Ivan Tretiak said to him that there was not a single case of violence committed by men in his regiment. Tretiak said that although he wanted revenge, Stalin's orders on treating the population humanely were implemented, and discipline in the army strengthened. Tretiak said that in such a huge military group as that in Germany, there was bound to be cases of sexual misconduct, as men had not seen women in years. However, he explains that sexual relations were not always violent, but often involved mutual consent. The work of Beevor and others alleging mass rape is characterized by Tretiak as "filthy cynicism, because the vast majority of those who have been slandered cannot reply to these liars."
With respect to the number of abortions reported in Berlin, and the estimates of number of rapes based on the abortions statistics, there are some alternative explanations, that don't necessarily involve rapes by Soviet soldiers. Atina Grossman in her article in "October" describes how until early 1945 the abortions in Germany were illegal (except for medical and eugenic reasons), and so when doctors opened up and started performing abortions to rape victims (for which only an affidavit was requested from a woman), many women would claim they were raped but their accounts were surprisingly uniform (describing rapists as having "mongoloid or asiatic type"). It was also typical that women specified their reasons for abortions being mostly socio-economic (inability to raise another child) rather than moral or ethical.
Richard Overy
Richard Overy
Richard Overy is a British historian who has published extensively on the history of World War II and the Third Reich. In 2007 as The Times editor of Complete History of the World he chose the 50 key dates of world history....
, a historian from King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
, has criticized the viewpoint held by some Russians, asserting that they refuse to acknowledge Soviet war crimes committed during the war, "Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history."
Analysis
Stalin is alleged to have said that people should ' understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle'. On another occasion, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually maltreated German refugees, he said: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.'In Russia, there is much dispute about the allegations of mass rape committed against Germans. Makhmud Gareyev, President of the Academy of Military Sciences, who participated in the East Prussia campaign, said that he had not heard about sexual violence. He said that after what the Nazis did to Russia, excesses were likely to take place, but that such cases were strongly suppressed and punished, and were not widespread. He notes that the Soviet military leadership on 19 January 1945 signed an executive order calling on the avoidance of a rough relationship with the local population. Gareyev said that Beevor copied Goebbel's propaganda about the "aggressive sexuality of our soldiers." According to Russia historian A. Dyukov's book asserted that "...The Germans did not experience a fraction of the horror that their soldiers staged in the East. Despite some excesses, which were firmly suppressed by the Command, the Red Army as a whole behaved toward the people of the Reich with humanity". The Russian soldiers are credited with feeding the German population, rescuing children, and helping to restore normal life in the country.
In his analysis of the motives behind the extensive Soviet rapes Norman Naimark singles out "hate propaganda, personal experiences of suffering at home, and a fully demeaning picture of German women in the press, not to mention among the soldiers themselves" as a part reason for the widespread rapes. Naimark also noted the effect that the Russian tendency to binge-drink alcohol (of which much was available in Germany) had on the propensity of Russian soldiers to commit rape, especially rape-murder. Naimark also notes the patriarchal nature of Russian culture, and of the Asian societies comprising the Soviet Union, where dishonor was in the past repaid by raping the women of the enemy. The fact that the Germans had a much higher standard of living (with things such as indoor toilets), visible even when in ruins "may well have contributed to a national inferiority complex among Russians". Combining Russian feelings of inferiority and the resulting need to restore his honor and their desire for revenge may be the reason many women were raped in public as well as in front of husbands before both were killed.
According to Anthony Beevor revenge played very little role in the frequent rapes; according to him the main reason for the rapes was the Soviet troops' feeling of entitlement to all types of booty, including women. Beevor exemplifies this with his discovery that Soviet troops also raped Russian and Polish girls and women that were liberated from Nazi concentration camps.
Discourse
In postwar Germany, especially in West Germany, the war time rape stories became an essential part of political discourse. The rape of German women (along with the expulsion of Germans from the East and Allied occupation) had been universalized in an attempt to situate the German population on the whole as victims. This discourse became wholly discredited by the late 1960s; since 1970s on German leftists conducted politics focused on critical investigation of the Nazi past, the older generations’ unwillingness to face that past, and their tendency to portray themselves as victims rather than as perpetrators, particularly of the Holocaust. Therefore, the frequently reiterated claim that the war time rapes had been surrounded by decades of silence is probably not correct.The way the rapes have been discussed by Sander and Johr in their "BeFreier und Befreite" has been criticized by several scholars. According to Grossmann, the problem is that this is not a "universal" story of women being raped by men, but of German women being abused and violated by an army that fought Nazi Germany and liberated death camps. Such attempts to de-emphasize the historical context of the rape of German women is a serious omission, according to Stuart Liebman and Annette Michelson, and, according to Pascale Bos, is an example of ahistorical, feminist and sexist approach to the wartime rape issue.
According to Pascale Bos the feminist attempt to universalize the story of the rapes of German women came into a contradiction with Sander's and Johr's own description of the rapes as a form of genocidal rape: the rape of racially superior German women by racially inferior Russian soldiers, implying that such a rape was especially harmful for the victims. By contrast, the issue of the rapes of Soviet woman by Wehrmacht soldiers, that, according to some estimation amounted hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cases is not treated by the authors as something deserving serious mention.
Social effects
A number of "Russian babies" were born during the occupation, many of them as the result of rape.http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,500251,00.htmlAccording to Norman Naimark we may never know how many German women and girls were raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation, their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as 2 million. As to the social effects of this sexual violence Naimark notes:
Women of the (East) German wartime generation refer to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park
Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park)
The Soviet War Memorial, is a vast war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin's Treptower Park. It was built to the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945...
, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, as the "tomb of the unknown rapist" in response to the mass rapes by Red Army soldiers in the years following 1945.
Soviet Literature
The Soviet Dissident Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
took part in the invasion of Germany, and wrote a poem about it: Prussian Nights
Prussian Nights
Prussian Nights is a long poem by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a captain in the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War. Prussian Nights describes the Red Army's march across East Prussia, and focuses on the traumatic acts of rape and murder that Solzhenitsyn witnessed as a participant in that...
; "Twenty-two Hoeringstrasse. It's not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning by the walls, half muffled: the mother's wounded, half alive. The little daughter's on the mattress, dead. How many have been on it? A platoon, a company perhaps? A girl's been turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse. . . . The mother begs, "Soldier, kill me!"
In popular culture
As most women recoiled from their experiences and had no desire to recount them most biographies and depictions of the period like the German film DownfallDownfall (film)
Downfall is a 2004 German/Italian/Austrian epic war film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, depicting the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's life in his Berlin bunker and Nazi Germany in 1945....
had alluded to mass rape by the Red Army but stop shy of mentioning it. As time has progressed more works have been produced that have directly addressed the issue like the book The 158-Pound Marriage
The 158-Pound Marriage
John Irving's third and perhaps darkest novel, The 158-Pound Marriage examines the sexual revolution-era trend of 'swinging' via a glimpse into the lives of two couples in a small New England college town who enter casually into such an affair, with disastrous consequences.-Plot summary:The...
or the 2006 film The Good German
The Good German
The Good German is a 2006 feature film adaptation of the novel by Joseph Kanon. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh, and stars George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire...
and the topic has the subject of much feminist discourse. The first autobiographical work depicting the events was the groundbreaking 1954 book A Woman in Berlin
A Woman in Berlin
A Woman in Berlin is an account of the period from 20 April to 22 June 1945 in Berlin . At the author's request, the work was published anonymously for her protection. The book purports to detail the writer's experiences as a rape victim during the Red Army occupation of the city...
which was made into a 2008 feature film. It was widely rejected in Germany after its initial publication but has seen a new acceptance and many women have found inspiration to come forward with their own stories.
US
In Taken by ForceTaken by Force (book)
Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe in World War II is a book by Northern Kentucky University sociology and criminology professor J. Robert Lilly that examines the issue of rape by U.S...
J Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.
France
French troops took part in the invasion of Germany, and France was assigned an occupation zone in Germany. According to Perry Biddiscombe the French for instance committed "385 rapes in the ConstanceConstance
Constance is a female given name that derives from Latin and means "constant." Variations of the name include Connie, Constancia, Constanze, Constanza, Stanzy, and Konstanze.Constance may refer to:-People:*Constance Bennett , American actress...
area; 600 in Bruchsal
Bruchsal
Bruchsal is a city at the western edge of the Kraichgau, approximately 20 km northeast of Karlsruhe in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany...
; and 500 in Freudenstadt
Freudenstadt
Freudenstadt is a town in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It is capital of the district Freudenstadt. The closest population centres are Offenburg to the west and Tübingen to the east ....
."
According to Norman Naimark
Norman Naimark
Norman M. Naimark is an American historian, and author who specializes in modern Eastern European history, and genocide and ethnic cleansing in the region....
French Moroccan troops matched the behavior of Soviet troops when it came to rape, in particular in the early occupation of Baden and Württemberg.
See also
- War rapeWar rapeWar rapes are rapes committed by soldiers, other combatants or civilians during armed conflict or war, or during military occupation, distinguished from sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service...
- Rape during the occupation of JapanRape during the occupation of JapanThere were a high number of alleged rapes of Japanese civilians committed by Allied soldiers during the last months of the Pacific War and the subsequent Occupation of Japan. Schrijvers states regarding rapes on Okinawa. The estimate of one historian for the entire three-month period of the...
- Rape during the liberation of PolandRape during the liberation of PolandThe subject of rape during the liberation of Poland was practically absent from the Polish historiography until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, although the documents of the era show that the problem was serious both during and after the advance of Soviet forces across Poland against Nazi...
- MarocchinateMarocchinateMarocchinate is a term applied to the mass rape and killings committed during World War II after the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy by Goumiers, Moroccan colonial troops of the French Expeditionary Corps ), commanded by General Alphonse Juin.- Background :Goumiers were colonial irregular...
rape after the Battle of Monte CassinoBattle of Monte CassinoThe Battle of Monte Cassino was a costly series of four battles during World War II, fought by the Allies against Germans and Italians with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome.In the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was being anchored by Germans... - Soviet war crimes
- War crimes of the Wehrmacht: Mass rapes
- German camp brothels in World War IIGerman camp brothels in World War IIIn World War II Nazi Germany established brothels in the concentration camps to create an incentive for prisoners to collaborate, although these institutions were used mostly by Kapos, "prisoner functionaries" and criminal element, because real inmates, penniless and emaciated, were usually too...