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The Rape of Stuttgart

Discussion in 'Post War 1945-1955' started by Greg Taylor, Apr 1, 2010.

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  1. Duckbill

    Duckbill Dishonorably Discharged

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    OK, lets take a look at the information you have provided……

    Ilya Ehrenburg's own mesmerizing calls for revenge on Germany in his articles in the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) had created a huge following among the frontoviki, or frontline troops.

    Here from your own post is proof of two things.

    The first is obvious. The content of the Red Army newspaper was tightly controlled by the state. Therefore, Ehrenburg’s articles in which he call for extracting revenge on Germany were approved by the state, and as a result, are official policy.

    The second is that his “official” calls for revenge were heeded by large numbers of front line troops within the Red Army who were evidently free to extract this revenge once they reached German soil.

    Here is another bit of information provided to us for examination.

    Goebbels responded with loathing against 'the Jew Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalin's favourite rabble-rouser'. The propaganda ministry accused Ehr¬enburg of inciting the rape of German women. Yet while Ehrenburg never shrank from the most bloodthirsty harangues, the most notorious statement, which is still attributed to him by western historians, was a Nazi invention. He is accused of having urged Red Army soldiers to take German women as their 'lawful booty' and to 'break their racial pride'. 'There was a time,' Ehrenburg retorted in Krasnaya Zvezda, `when Germans used to fake important documents of state. Now they have fallen so low as to fake my articles.'

    What else would a Soviet propagandist say? Would any rationally minded person actually expect Ehrenburg to give credence to Nazi propaganda, or as a Soviet propagandist, would he deny anything and everything that came out of Goebbels’ ministry? Of course not.

    No serious historian would give credence to Ehrenburg’s denial without considerable corroboration.

    Finally, would the provider of this information give us a proper citation?

    Duckbill
     
  2. m kenny

    m kenny Member

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    One thing stands out.
    Despite all the bluster not one single Soviet Order, Document or article has been found that shows there was any encouragement for Soviet soldiers to rape.
    Not a single scrap of evidence.
    Nothing.
    Zero.
     
  3. Duckbill

    Duckbill Dishonorably Discharged

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    And yet we have an officially sanctioned Soviet propagandist writing in an official Soviet publication encouraging front line troops of the Red Army to take their revenge on the German populace.

    Official Soviet Propagandist + Official Soviet Publication = Official Soviet Policy

    Res ipsa loquitur

    Duckbill
     
  4. m kenny

    m kenny Member

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    Which just reinforces my previous statement.
    Not one single Soviet Order, Document or article has been found that shows there was any encouragement for Soviet soldiers to rape.
    Not a single scrap of evidence.
    Nothing.
    Zero.
     
  5. Duckbill

    Duckbill Dishonorably Discharged

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    There are many types of deniers in the world, and WWII has spawned not a few. Many have an ulterior motive, and all practice some form of propaganda -- even if they do not realize it.

    A special few just refuse to admit they were mistaken in the first place, and will hold steadfast to any reed, however thin, that might allow them to save face.

    Official Soviet Propagandist + Official Soviet Publication = Official Soviet Policy

    Res ipsa loquitur

    Duckbill
     
  6. m kenny

    m kenny Member

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    I know what you are saying.
    Many years back I was confronted by someone claiming his buddy had cralwed forward through some fog during the Bulge fighting and bumped his head on a Tiger tank. He claims this 'buddy' promptly despatched the crew who were having breakfast in the tank. Absurd claim.

    However in this case it is claimed that in 1945 The Soviets officialy sanctioned their troops to rape.
    The evidence to support this was provided by the Nazi propaganda machine which doctored a 1942 tract from Stalingrad and then said it was from 1945.
    A tract which did not even mention rape in the first place!

    Sadly there are those who continue to believe to this Nazi invention.
    I presume it is their equivalent of the 'buddy and the Tiger tank' tale.

    It seems we are at an impasse.
    My point is made.
    I withdraw and leave the field to you.
    Make of that what you will.
     
  7. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    Just about time , this is the third time I mention this thread is OFF TOPPIC. m Kenny the next time you fail to follow my instructions, you're in the cooler. I can't be any clearer than that. This is my last warning.
     
  8. Volga Boatman

    Volga Boatman Dishonorably Discharged

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    Maybe this policy of the Red Army was an 'understanding' rather than an order that had been put into writing. What administrator in his right mind would ever commit his name to such an order? All the world could see the culpability in black and white!

    To give a small example of this policy being Army wide as an 'understanding', (not committed to paper) rather than an official written order, you only have to go to page 21 of Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipeligo",...(and I quote....)

    "However, my cellmates- tankmen in soft black helmets- hid nothing. They were three honest, openhearted soldiers- people of a kind I had become attached to during the war years because I myself was more complex and worse. All three had been officers. Their shoulder boards also had been viciously torn off, and in some places the cotton batting stuck out. On their stained field shirts light patches indicated where decorations had been removed, and there were dark and red scars on their faces and arms, the results of wounds and burns. Thier tank unit had, unfortunately, arrived for repairs in a village where the SMERSH counterintelligence headquarters of the Forty-Eighth Army was located. Still damp from the battle the day before, yesterday they had gotten drunk, and on the outskirts of the village broke into a bath where they had noticed two raunchy broads going to bathe. The girls, half-dressed, managed to to get away all right from the soldiers staggering, drunken legs. But one of them, it turned out, was the property of the army Chief of Counterintelligence, no less.
    Yes! For three weeks the war had been going on inside Germany, and all of us knew very well that if the girls were Germans they could be raped and then shot. This was almost a combat distinction. Had they been Polish girls or our own displaced Russian girls, they could have been chased naked around the garden and slapped on the behind- an amusement, no more. But just because this one was the "campaign wife' of the Chief of Counterintelligence, right off some deep-in-the-rear sergeant had visciously torn from three front-line officers the shoulder boards awarded them by front headquarters and had taken the decorations conferred upon them by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. And now these warriors, who had gone through the whole war and who had no doubt crushed more than one line of enemy trenches, were waiting for a court-martial, whose members, had it not been for their tank, could have come nowhere near the village...(end of extract)

    Notice how the author dismisses the rape of German women as the "right" of the frontline soldier, referring not to an order from on high, but something of a compensation for their situation, a spoil of war if you will. He also alludes to the fact that with many, MANY others, those three tankmen would have gotten away with their actions....but the "Campaign wife" of a SMERSH Head? Not a chance in hell. There is an undercurrent to this passage that speaks volumes of how the Red Army REALLY operated in relation to this topic. Anyone foolish enough to ORDER the wholesale rape of German women civilians was in for a torrid time. But turning a blind eye to such practices was THE NORM, even EXPECTED as 'booty' for hardworking frontoviks that wanted to relax.

    So, I don't find the lack of paper orders sanctioning this sort of behaviour surprising at all. A lack of paper orders does not mean that these' behaviours' of the Red Army as a whole were not officially approved either. Blind eyes were turned to this ancient and brutal practice.
     
  9. LRusso216

    LRusso216 Graybeard Staff Member

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    OK, here is the original post (bold is mine). It concerns the alleged rape of German women by Algerian troops. Nowhere does it mention Russians, Germans, Americans, or any other troops. Since it seems that no one has added any further information concerning the OP's question, I will save Skipper the trouble and close this thread.
     
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