Although the fighting still raged in the immediate vicinity of the bunker, for much of the population of Berlin the postwar era had already begun.
This did not mean that peace and security had arrived. For many Berliners the postwar era began with rape. The end of April brought not only energetic Soviet attempts to get the city’s services up and running; it also saw an explosion of sexual violence by Soviet soldiers. Women were raped in cellars, in their flats, in front of children and German men; women were gang-raped and groups of women were divided up to be raped by soldiers. No woman was safe from sexual humiliation – old women as well as young girls were raped. The great wave of rape began when the Red Army captured substantial portions of the city and continued until the battle of Berlin came to an end i.e. during the last week of April and the first week of May.
Although Marshal Zhukov had ordered his troops repeatedly to make no contact with the civilian population at their own initiative, in face they were allowed quite free reign during this period. On 22 April the German propaganda sheet Pänzerbär, ein Kampfblatt für die Verteidiger Großberlins had informed its readers: ‘This Soldateska roams from house-to-house and steals watches and jewellery, demands schnapps and cigarettes at gun-point. In the evening the Asiatic lechers scour flats for young German women and girls, [and] violate them in the most brutal violent manner.’
For many Germans the behaviour of Soviet troops confirmed the images long purveyed in bloodcurdling Nazi propaganda.
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “The Last Days of the Reich.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 116. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
See Erich Kuby, Die Russen in Berlin 1945 (Munich, 1965).
Erika M. Hoerning, ‘Frauen als Kriegsbeute. Der Zwei-Fronten-Krieg. Beispieleaus Berlin’, in Lutz Niethammer and Alexander von Platow (eds.), ’Wir kriegen jetzt andere Zeiten’. Auf der Suche nach der Erfahrung des Volkes in nachfaschistischen Ländern (Bonn, 1985), pp. 327-344.
Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany. A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1995), pp. 68-140, esp. 78-83.
Ingrid Schmidt-Harzbach, ‘Eine Woche in April. Berlin 1945’, in Helke Sander and Barbara Johr (eds.), BeFrier und Befreite. Krieg, Vergewaltigung, Kinder (Frankfurt am Main, 2005), pp. 21-26.
Quoted in Schmidt-Harzback, ‘Eine Woche im April’, p. 23.
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