During the war members of the Red Army had been encouraged constantly to focus their ‘hatred on the German-fascist conquerors’; Soviet Army front newspapers had printed numerous accounts of atrocities committed by German forces on Soviet territory; and before the first Russian incursion into East Prussia in October 1944 the soldiers of the 11th Guard Army had been reminded by their commander, General Kusma Galickjj, of their ‘holy oath to avenge themselves against the enemy for all the atrocities committed on Soviet soil’.
When they arrived in the Reich, Soviet troops were admonished not to forget what had been done to their homeland and their families; soldiers’ newspapers urged their readers to think of the harm that had been done to them, and to keep a ‘book of revenge’ that would remind them of the need to ‘repay the Germans for their evil’.
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “Revenge.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 149-50. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Naimark, The Russians in Germany, p. 72.
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