Red Army atrocities (WWII)

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Red Army atrocities (WWII) describes criminal offences or offences against the international law which were committed by the Red Army's (1918-1946), later Soviet Army leadership and an unknown number of single members of the Soviet armed forces during World War II (1939-45).

Contents 1 Background 2 Civilian casualties 2.1 1939–1942 2.2 1943–1944 2.3 Germany 1945 2.4 Rapes 3 Soviet unrestricted submarine warfare 4 Destruction of cities and lootings 5 Treatment of prisoners of war 6 Criminal proceedings by military jurisdiction 7 See also 8 External links 9 References 10 Further reading

[edit] Background

On part of the Axis powers a racist ideology played the main role in starting WWII and led to many war crimes from which particular the Soviet civil population had to suffer from. An estimated 11 million civilians in the Soviet Union lost their lives during the war, resulting directly or indirectly out of combat operations but also due to systematical annihilation (see also: War crimes of the Wehrmacht, Einsatzgruppen)

Not as much as its most prominent enemy the Wehrmacht, successor of the Reichswehr and built up on centuries of military traditions, but rather like the the Nazi's Waffen SS, the Red Army was in total ideologically orientated and indoctrinated. Moreover, it had been created in 1918 by a per se criminal government of the communist Soviet Union to fight an inhumane civil war, namely the Russian Civil War, in an inhumane way. Just this fact made the Red Army, from its very beginning on, an army, carrying out morally devastating orders. As a result war crimes, lootings, rapes, abductions and murders of civilians were common for the Red Army. With the German attack on the Soviet Union repulsed and Soviet troops entering Germany and Hungary in 1944, especially the number of rapes reached a level of until then unknown proportions.

For decades, the regularly accepted notion by Western scholars was that these atrocities in Germany and Hungary had just been a revenge for German atrocities in the territory of the Soviet Union and for mass killing of Soviet POWs (3,6 million dead of total a 5,2 million POWs). This explanation is disputed by military historians, like Antony Beevor, especially with regards to the mass rapes. Beevor claims in his findings that Red Army soldiers also raped Russian and Polish women liberated from concentration camps, and contends that this undermines the revenge explanation.^[1]

From 1941 on, Stalin was willing to strike back against the invading Axis forces at all costs and led the war with extreme brutality - also against his own soldiers.

As a matter of fact the Red Army had to take much more casualties than any other military force during World War II. Next to sometimes badly equipped infantry units, barely capable of standing up against machine guns, tanks and artillery, the tactics of Soviet commanders were often based on attacks en masse, inflicting heavy losses among their own troops.^[2] In accordance to orders of Soviet High Command retreating soldiers or just those who hesitated to advance must fear to be shot by following NKVD units:

Stalin’s order No 270 of August 16, 1941 states, that in case of a retreat or surrendering, all officers involved are to be shot on the spot and all enlisted men were threatened with total annihilation and reprisals against their families.^[3]

In Soviet and present Russian history books on the "Great Patriotic War" this order and other Russian atrocities in WWII are hardly mentioned.^[4][5] With rare exceptions (notably Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev) the evidence is mostly dug up by Western historians when some Soviet archives had been opened to the public after the Cold War.

Crimes committed by the Red Army in occupied territories between 1939 and 1941 and those atrocities of 1944-1945, indeed, in Poland, in the Baltic states, in Rumania, in the Czech Republic and in Slovenia have always been present in the historical consciousness of those countries. Nevertheless, a systematic, publicly controlled discussion could begin only after the decay of the Soviet Union. The same goes for those territories occupied by Soviet forces in Manchuria and the Kuril Islands in 1945.

[edit] Civilian casualties

[edit] 1939–1942

The Red Army, in accordance to the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and 16 days after the German attack on Poland, invaded and occupied the eastern part of the polish state and, as negotiated and settled with the Nazi regime, later also the Baltic States and parts of the Ukraine and Bessarabia.

The Soviet policy in all newly controlled areas was ruthless, with elements of ethnic cleansing. NKVD task forces, which being subordinate directly to the Red Army followed the army to clean the area of "Soviet-hostile elements". The Polish historian Tomasz Strzembosz recognized parallels to the German Einsatzgruppen in these units.^[6] Many tried to escape from the access of the Soviet NKVD, but nevertheless, were arrested mostly by the Soviet military and afterwards deported to Siberia and/or vanished in the "Gulag".^[7]

During 1939-1941 for example nearly 1.5 million inhabitants of Soviet controlled areas of former Poland were deported, of whom 63.1% were Poles and of other nationalities, and 7.4% Jews.^[8]

Deportations, executions, tortures as well as numerous crimes against the population (murders, hostage taking, burning down of villages) increased at the same moment as the Red Army had to retreat from the advancing Wehrmacht in 1941. Especially most of the by the Soviets on political reasons imprisoned were massacred to avoid them be liberated by the Germans. Also in the Baltic States, in Byelorussia, in the Ukraine and Bessarabia imprisoned opponents were executed by the Red Army rather than just left behind. On side of at least a number of those country’s populations this resulted in an increased hatred of those who had supported the Soviets, or were suspected of being allies of them, in particular the Jews. As a result, in these countries the Einsatzgruppen could heavily relay on volunteers, willing to participate in their brutal operations, and tip-offs, especially in the Baltic States.^[9][10]

[edit] 1943–1944

From the turning point of the war on, since the Red Army did not gave up territories to the Wehrmacht, but mainly gained grounds on the Eastern Front, atrocities of revenge against all those, who were rightfully or less rightfully accused of being collaborators during German and thereby Nazi legislation, took place, as it has occurred elsewhere, for example in France after D-Day. Whilst in France this part of her own history is documented, debated and subject of many scientific reviews, very little is known today about what happened in the path of the Red Army, re-conquering former Soviet territory as the Ukraine or the Baltic States.

In Poland Nazi atrocities perforce ended in late 1944. Soviet oppression continued, however. Soldiers of Poland's Home Army (Armia Krajowa) were persecuted, sometimes imprisoned and often executed following staged trials (as in the case of Witold Pilecki, the organizer of Auschwitz resistance).

[edit] Germany 1945

In furtherance to enhance moral of the fighting troops, defending for the first time the "fatherland", and even with the Red Army obviously entering German territory in the last months of 1944, any organized evacuation of civilians was by law forbidden by the Nazi government. On the other hand, German people, due to reports of their own husbands and sons, serving as soldiers and on vacation from the eastern front, were well aware of the way the Red Army was conducting war against civilians.

Whenever possible, mainly when Nazi officials had already left, civilians began to go on escape at the last moment and on own initiative. Fleeing from the advancing Red Army, more than two million people in the eastern provinces of Germany (East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania) died, some of cold and starvation or killed while getting into combat operations. The main death toll whatever occurred when refugee's trails were caught up by units of the Red Army. They were overrun by tanks, looted, shot, murdered and women and girls were raped and afterwards left to die.^[11][12] In addition, fighter bombers of the Soviet air force penetrated many kilometers behind front lines, bombarded and took under fire especially the refugee's trails of children, women and older people.^[11]

Those, who did not flee, suffered by taking the burden of Red Army's occupying rules: Murder, rape, robbery, and expulsion. For example, in the East Prussian city of Königsberg in August, 1945 due to a counting approx. 100,000 German civilians were still living there, after the Red Army had conquered the city. When in 1948 the Germans from Königsberg were expelled finally, from these 100,000 people only about 20,000 were still alive (see also: expulsion of Germans after World War II).

The rampage of the Red Army in Germany went on during the occupation of the rest of eastern Germany and often led to occurrences like that in the small city of Demmin, conquered by Soviet forces in spring 1945: Despite the unconditional and complete surrender of Demmin to the Red Army, nearly 900 people committed mass suicides after the city, during three days, had been declared open by Soviet commanders for looting and pillaging.

According to the historian Norman Naimark, the propaganda of Soviet troop newspapers were jointly responsible for excesses of members of the Red Army. The general tenor in the writings was that the Red Army had come to Germany as an avenger and judge to punish the Germans. ^[13] The Russian author Ilya Ehrenburg wrote on January 31, 1945: The Germans have been punished in Oppeln, in Königsberg and in Wroclaw. They have been punished, but yet not enough. Some have been punished, but yet not all of them ... ^[14]

Calls of Soviet generals spurred on the soldiers, in addition. On January 12, 1945 army General Cherniakhovsky turned to his troops with the words: There shall be no mercy - for nobody, as there had also been no mercy for us... The land of the fascists must become a desert …

[edit] Rapes

Germany

Sources listed below estimate that at the end of World War II, Red Army soldiers raped more than 2,000,000 German women, an estimated 200,000 of whom later died from injuries sustained, committed suicide, or were murdered outright.^[15][16][17] After June 1945 the Soviet high command imposed punishments for rape ranging from arrest to execution. In 1947 Soviet troops were completely separated from the residential population of eastern Germany.

Estimates of the total number of rape victims during 1944 and 1945 are as follows: Eastern Provinces: 1,400,000; zone of Soviet occupation excluding Berlin: 500,000; Berlin: 100,000.^[18][19][20] The 2,000,000 rape victims estimate is also supported by the research of historian Norman Naimark.^[21] In addition, many of these victims were raped repeatedly, some as many as 60 to 70 times.^[22]

After the summer of 1945 Soviet soldiers caught raping were usually punished to various degrees.^[23] The rapes continued however until the winter of 1947-48, when the problem was finally solved by the Russian occupation authorities by confining the Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps.“^[24]

Consequences

Norman Naimark writes in "The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949." that not only had each victim to carry the trauma with her for the rest of her days, it inflicted a massive collective trauma on the East German nation (the German Democratic Republic). Naimark concludes "The social psychology of women and men in the Soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until - one could argue - the present."^[25]

Hungary

Just during the occupation of Budapest (Hungary) it is estimated that 50,000 women were raped in this city only.^[26][27]

Hungarian girls were taken to the Soviet quarters where they were incarcerated, raped, and sometimes also murdered.^[28] The nationality of the rape victims meant nothing to the soldiers, who even attacked the Swedish legation.^[29]

Yugoslavia

Although the Red Army only crossed a a very small part of Yugoslavia in 1944, the northeastern corner, its activities there caused great concern for the communist partisans that feared that the resulting rape and plunder by their communist allies would weaken their standing with the population.^[30] 121 cases of rape were documented later, 111 of which also involved murder.^[31] In addition 1,204 cases of looting with assault were documented.^[32] Stalin responded to the Yugoslav partisan leaders complaints at the Red Armys behaviour with "Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?".^[33]

Slovakia

The Czech communist leader Vlados Klementis complained to Marshal I. S. Konev about the behaviors of Soviet troops in Slovakia.^[34] The response was to blame the activities mainly on Red Army deserters.^[35]

Romania

Bulgaria

Thanks to the better discipline in Marshal Tolbukhin's army, the relative similarity in cultures, a century of friendly relations, and an open welcome of the Soviet troops, there was a relative absence of rapes in Bulgaria, especially when compared with the situation during the occupation of Romania and Hungary.^[36]

[edit] Soviet unrestricted submarine warfare

With East Prussia cut off from the rest of Germany in early 1945, at the Naval High Command in Berlin an evacuation plan for this part of Germany was derived, which was to ensure the transfer of the majority of the population to ports in western Germany. This massive evacuation procedure involved all remaining vessels of the German Kriegsmarine as well as the merchant Navy in the Baltic Sea.

Pointing at German offences against international law the Soviet military forces did not recognise hospital ships, wounded transporters as well as refugee's ships but regarded them as military targets only. More than 200 were sunk by approx. 800-1.000 ships, more than 40,000 civilians and wounded soldiers died. .^{[11][37] [38]}.

The greatest single disaster in naval history took place during these operations in the night of Jan 30/31 January 1945 when the 25,484-ton passenger liner Wilhelm Gustloff, carrying a crew 173 (naval armed forces auxiliaries), 918 officers NCOs and men of the 2nd Submarine Training Division (2.Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision), 373 female naval auxiliary helpers, 162 badly wounded soldiers and 8,956 refugees, mostly women, children and the elderly, for a total of 10,582 passengers and crew, was sunk by a Soviet submarine under the command of Captain A.I. Marinesko. Well over 9,500 Germans lost their lives during that night. ^{[39][40] [41]} Marinesko then attacked a German torpedo boat (T-36) trying to rescue civilians out of the icy waters. With 400 rescued T-36 could escape the torpedoes.^[11]

A few days later, on February 10, Marinesko struck again and sank the German passenger ship Dampfschiff General von Steuben carrying 3,500 wounded soldiers and another 1,000 refugees. Only 650 people survived. Marinesko was later awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his record in sinking the most tonnage in a single cruise.^[42]

On May 6, 1945, the German freighter Goya, also part of the rescue fleet, was torpedoed by another Soviet submarine, and more than 6,000 refugees fleeing from East Prussia also died. ^[43]

Nevertheless, on this occasion, it is to be marked that the sinking of those three ships has not been a war crime in legal matters, because these ships did neither fulfil all criteria of a civil ship nor a hospital ship since also some operational troops were on board as well. But it is highly disputed amongst historians, weather troops and civilians would have been shipped together by the Germans if the Soviets had accepted refugee ships in the first place. However, Soviet High Command was well aware of the German mass evacuation of civilians across the Baltic Sea in 1945.^[11][44]

[edit] Destruction of cities and lootings

[edit] Treatment of prisoners of war

[edit] Criminal proceedings by military jurisdiction

[edit] See also

• List of Soviet Union perpetrated war crimes
• Nemmersdorf massacre
• Demmin
• Evacuation of East Prussia
• A Terrible Revenge

[edit] External links

• Swiss legation report of the Russian invasion of Hungary in the spring of 1945
• German rape victims find a voice at last, Kate Connolly, The Observer, June 23, 2002
• "They raped every German female from eight to 80", Anthony Beevor, The Guardian, May 1, 2002
• Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945, James Mark, Past & Present (2005) (The crimes during the Battle of Budapest)
• Excerpt, Chapter one The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945-2002 - William I. Hitchcock - 2003 - ISBN 0-385-49798-9 ( The occupation of East Prussia)
• Description of the atrocities of the Red Army in East Prussia, quotations from Ilya Ehrenburg, poems by anti-cruelty Red Army officers and details of suicides and rapings of German women and children in East Prussia.
• Book Review: The Siege of Budapest: 100 Days in World War II
• HNet review of The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949.
• Mark Ealey: As World War II entered its final stages the belligerent powers committed one heinous act after another History News Network (Focus on the Asian front)

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Marta Hillers, A Woman in Berlin: Six Weeks in the Conquered City Translated by Anthes Bell, ISBN 0-8050-7540-2
• Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002, ISBN 0-670-88695-5
• Max Hastings "Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945, Chapter 10: Blood and Ice: East Prussia" ISBN 0-375-41433-9
• John Toland "The Last 100 Days, Chapter Two: Five Minutes before Midnight" ISBN 0-8129-6859-X
• Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7