ZGram - 4/29/2002 - "Soviet rape orgies"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

April 29, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

A timely book review today of mainstream revisionism:

[START]

Red Army rapists exposed


By Chris Summers
BBC News Online

Red Army soldiers raped two million German women, and thousands of 
Soviet women in occupied Eastern Europe, says a book published on 
Monday. (...)

The author of Berlin: The Downfall 1945, the acclaimed military 
historian Antony Beevor, also suggests that after brutalisation in 
extreme war situations almost all men are tempted to become rapists.

But the book has been condemned as an "act of blasphemy" by the 
Russian ambassador to the UK and its conclusions have also been 
rejected by a prominent Russian military historian.

Mr Beevor, whose previous book Stalingrad became a best-seller, says 
in Berlin alone it was estimated up to 130,000 women were raped, of 
whom up to 10,000 committed suicide.

Altogether two million German women are believed to have been raped 
and almost half of those suffered gang rape.

One woman was raped by 23 soldiers.

Mr Beevor said he was shocked by what he found during his research of 
German and Soviet archives.

He said the widespread rape suggested "there is a dark area of male 
sexuality which can emerge all too easily, especially in war, when 
there are no social and disciplinary restraints."

He said the Soviet hierarchy turned a blind eye, and even condoned 
the rape as a form of revenge for what the German Army - the 
Wehrmacht - had done during Operation Barbarossa.

One district commander told a group of German women who were seeking 
his protection: "That? Well, it certainly hasn't done you any harm. 
Our men are all healthy."

'Bonding process'

Mr Beevor said: "As the Red Army example shows, the practice of 
collective rape can even become a form of bonding process."

The book has naturally aroused controversy with the Russian 
Ambassador to Britain, Grigory Karasin, describing it as "lies and 
insinuations".

He wrote to the Daily Telegraph: "It is a disgrace to have anything 
to do with this clear case of slander against the people who saved 
the world from Nazism."

But Mr Beevor said the book's claims, while uncomfortable, were 
backed up by documents which he had found in the Russian state 
archives.

"The rape of German women was previously known from German archives 
but I believe this is the first time the fact that Soviet citizens 
were raped has been published in the West," he told BBC News Online.

He said many people in Russia were still struggling to come to terms 
with what the Red Army did during the war.

Mr Beevor said: "I was shaken to the core when I discovered that 
soldiers raped female prisoners of war.

"That completely undermined the notion that they were only using rape 
as a form of revenge against the Germans.

He said women became "carnal booty" during the war.

The Wehrmacht had abducted many Russian and Ukrainian girls and set 
them up in "military brothels".

The Red Army, for its part, had engaged in an "alcohol-induced frenzy 
of sadism and humiliation".

'Out of control'

He told BBC News Online: "One has this image of the Soviet state and 
the Red Army as being extremely disciplined but in the first four 
months of 1945 their soldiers were completely out of control."

Professor Oleg Rzheshevsky, head of war history at the Russian 
Academy of Sciences in Moscow, told BBC News Online these were grave 
accusations which were not supported by documentary evidence.

Professor Rzheshevsky, who admitted he had only read excerpts and had 
not seen the book's source notes, said: "Information on the number of 
raped and killed women is based on victims' and witnesses' accounts, 
some excerpts from interviews and other such sources."

He said Mr Beevor's use of phrases such as "Berliners remember" and 
"the experiences of the raped German women" were more suitable for 
pulp fiction, than scientific research.

Professor Rzheshevsky said considering what the German Army had done 
in the Soviet Union the Germans could have expected an "avalanche of 
revenge".

'Humane soldiers'

But he said that did not happen and added: "The majority of soldiers 
and officers of the Soviet Army and the allied armies treated the 
local population humanely."

The professor said 4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were 
"punished" for committing atrocities.

Professor Evan Mawdsley, a historian from Glasgow University, said it 
was not the first time women had become "carnal booty" in time of war.

Professor Richard Overy, a historian from King's College London, said 
the Russians had never faced up to the atrocities committed by the 
Red Army.

He said: "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."

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Antony Beevor is featured in a documentary, The Battle For Berlin: 
Timewatch, which will be shown on 10 May at 2100 BST on BBC Two.

[END]