Peaceful Germans about the soldiers of the Red Army in 1945

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It was no less difficult for ordinary German citizens to see people in Soviet soldiers than it was for those to renounce hatred. For four years the German Reich waged a war with disgusting subhumans led by the blood-drunk Bolsheviks; the image of the enemy was too familiar to immediately abandon it.

Victims of propaganda

"It's already been half a day since the Russians arrived, and I'm still alive." This phrase, uttered with undisguised amazement by an old German woman, was the quintessence of German fears. Dr. Goebbels' propagandists have achieved serious success: the population of Russia feared the arrival of the Russians even more than death.

The Wehrmacht and police officers, who knew enough about the crimes committed by the Nazis in the East, shot themselves and killed their families. In the memoirs of Soviet soldiers, there is a mass of evidence of such tragedies.

“We ran into the house. It turned out to be the post office. There is an elderly man of more than 60 years, in the form of a postman. "What is it here?" While we were talking, I heard shots in the house, inside in the far corner … It turns out that a German, a police officer, settled in the post office with his family. We go there with machine guns. The door was opened, they burst in, we looked, a German was sitting in an armchair, his arms outstretched, blood from his temple. And there was a woman and two children on the bed, he shot them, he sat down in a chair and shot himself, then we descended. The pistol is lying nearby."

In war, people quickly got used to death; however, one cannot get used to the death of innocent children. And Soviet soldiers did everything possible to prevent such tragedies.

Shock

The terrible Russian soldiers smiled exactly like real people; they even knew German composers - who would have thought such a thing was possible! The story, as if descended from a propaganda poster, but completely genuine: in the newly liberated Vienna, Soviet soldiers who had stopped for a halt saw a piano in one of the houses. “Not indifferent to music, I invited my sergeant, Anatoly Shatz, a pianist by profession, to test on the instrument if he had forgotten how to play,” recalled Boris Gavrilov. - Gently fingering the keys, he suddenly began to play at a strong pace without warm-up. The soldiers fell silent. It was a long-forgotten time of peace, which only occasionally reminded of itself in dreams. Local residents began to approach from the surrounding houses. Waltz after waltz - it was Strauss! - attracted people, opening their souls to smiles, to life. Soldiers smiled, crowns smiled ….

Reality quickly destroyed the stereotypes created by Nazi propaganda - and as soon as the inhabitants of the Reich began to realize that their lives were not in danger, they returned to their homes. When the Red Army men occupied the village of Ilnau on the morning of January 2, they found there only two old men and an old woman; the next day, by evening, there were already more than 200 people in the village. In the town of Klesterfeld, 10 people remained before the arrival of Soviet troops; by evening, 2,638 people had returned from the forest. The next day, a peaceful life began to improve in the city. Local residents were surprised to say to each other: "The Russians not only do us no harm, but also take care that we do not starve."

When in 1941 German soldiers entered Soviet cities, famine soon began in them: food was used for the needs of the Wehrmacht and taken to the Reich, and the townspeople switched to pasture. In 1945, everything was exactly the opposite: as soon as the occupation administration began to function in the occupied Soviet cities, local residents began to receive food rations - and even more than they had given before.

The amazement experienced by the Germans who realized this fact is clearly expressed in the words of a resident of Berlin, Elisabeth Schmeer: “The Nazis told us that if the Russians came here, they would not“pour rose oil”on us. It turned out completely differently: the defeated people, whose army has caused so much misfortune to Russia, the winners give more food than the previous government gave us. It's hard for us to understand. Apparently, only Russians are capable of such humanism."

The actions of the Soviet occupation authorities, of course, were conditioned not only by humanism, but also by pragmatic considerations. However, the fact that the Red Army men voluntarily shared food with local residents cannot be explained by any pragmatism; it was a movement of the soul.

Two million raped German women

Immediately after the end of the war, the myth began to spread actively that Soviet soldiers allegedly raped 2 million German women. This figure was first cited by the British historian Anthony Beevor in his book The Fall of Berlin.

Cases of rape of German women by Soviet soldiers did take place, and purely statistically, their occurrence was inevitable, because the multimillion-dollar Soviet army came to Germany, and it would be strange to expect the highest moral standard from every soldier, without exception. Rape and other crimes against the local population were recorded by the Soviet military prosecutor's office and were severely punished.

The lie about 2 million raped German women is a huge exaggeration of the scale of the rape. This figure is essentially invented, or rather obtained indirectly on the basis of numerous distortions, exaggerations and assumptions:

1. Beevor found a document from a clinic in Berlin, according to which the fathers of 12 out of 237 children born in 1945 and 20 out of 567 children born in 1946 were Russian.

Let's remember this figure - 32 babies.

2. Calculated that 12-5% of 237, and 20 is 3.5% of 567.

3. Takes 5% of all those born in 1945-1946 and believes that all 5% of children in Berlin were born as a result of rape. In total, 23124 people were born during this time, 5% of this figure - 1156.

4. Then he multiplies this figure by 10, making the assumption that 90% of German women had an abortion and multiplies by 5, making another assumption that 20% became pregnant as a result of rape.

Receives 57 810 people, this is approximately 10% of 600 thousand women of childbearing age who were in Berlin.

5. Further, Beevor takes a slightly modernized formula of old man Goebbels "all women from 8 to 80 years old were subjected to numerous rapes." There were about 800,000 women outside of childbearing age in Berlin, 10% of this figure - 80,000.

6. Adding 57 810 and 80 000 he gets 137 810 and rounds up to 135 000, then he does the same with 3.5% and gets 95 000.

7. Then he extrapolates this to all of East Germany and gets 2 million raped German women.

Dashingly counted? Transformed 32 babies into 2 million raped German women. Only, here's the bad luck: even according to his document "Russian / rape" is written only in 5 cases out of 12 and in 4 cases out of 20, respectively.

Thus, only 9 German women became the basis of the myth about 2 million raped German women, the fact of rape of which is indicated in the data of the Berlin clinic.

Russian soldiers and Berlin bicycles

There is a widespread photograph in which an alleged Russian soldier allegedly takes a bicycle from a German woman. In fact, the photographer captured the misunderstanding. In the original publication of Life magazine, the caption under the photo reads: "There was a misunderstanding between a Russian soldier and a German woman in Berlin over a bicycle he wanted to buy from her."

In addition, experts believe that the photo is not a Russian soldier. The pilot on it is Yugoslavian, the roll-up is not worn as was customary in the Soviet army, the roll-up material is also not Soviet. Soviet rolls were made of first-class felt and did not wrinkle as seen in the photograph.

An even more careful analysis leads to the conclusion that this photo is a staged fake.

The location has been established - the shooting is being carried out on the border of the Soviet and British zones of occupation, near Tiergarten Park, directly at the Brandenburg Gate, where at that time there was a control post of the Red Army. Upon careful examination of the photo, only five out of twenty people are defined as “witnesses to the conflict”, the rest show complete indifference or behave absolutely inadequately in relation to this situation - from complete ignorance to smiles and laughter. In addition, there is a US Army soldier in the background, also behaving indifferently. The photograph itself raises a lot of questions.

The soldier is alone and unarmed (this is a "marauder" in an occupied city!), Dressed not in size, with a clear violation of the uniform and the use of elements of someone else's uniform. Looting openly, in the center of the city, next to the post, and even on the border with a foreign occupation sector, that is, in a place that initially enjoys increased attention. Absolutely does not react to others (an American, a photographer), although according to all the rules of the genre, he should have already given a fight. Instead, he continues to pull on the wheel, and does so for so long that they manage to photograph him, the quality of the photo is almost studio quality.

The conclusion is simple: in order to discredit the former allies, it was decided to produce a "photographic fact" confirming the "crimes of the Red Army" in the occupied territory. Only two people passing in the background are most likely outsiders. The rest are actors and extras.

The actor, depicting a Russian soldier, was dressed up in elements of various military uniforms, trying to get as close as possible to the image of a "Soviet warrior". In order to avoid conflict with Soviet servicemen, the original elements of the uniform, such as shoulder straps, emblems and insignia, are not used. For the same purpose, they abandoned the use of weapons. The result was an unarmed "soldier" in the cap of the "Balkan" army, with an incomprehensible cloak or a piece of tarpaulin instead of a roll and in German boots. When creating the composition, the actor was deployed so as to hide from the camera the absence of a cockade, awards, badges and stripes; the absence of shoulder straps was hidden by an imitation of a roll, which they had to wear in violation of the charter, which they probably did not even know about.

As it was in reality

The debunking of these myths by the forces of the German citizens themselves speaks for itself! The inhabitants of Germany, for the most part, never perceived Soviet soldiers as something terrible, threatening their lives, something that came to their land from hell itself!

The famous German writer Hans Werner Richter wrote: “Human relations are always not easy, especially in times of war. And today's generation of Russians can look without a twinge of conscience in the eyes of the Germans, recalling the events of those terrible war years. Soviet soldiers did not shed a single drop of vain, civilian German blood on German soil. They were saviors, they were real winners."