Chapter 33 03. Humiliation and Glory

The photo of the Soviet Red Flag on the Reichstag is of great historical value.But the fly in the ointment is that the officer holding the flag-raising soldier with both hands in the photo actually wears a watch on both hands.Wearing a watch on one hand is to tell the time; wearing a watch on both hands, what does it mean?It shows that the Soviet army was looting everywhere after entering Germany.The favorite of Soviet officers and soldiers is watches, and this Soviet officer became his "cousin" in the 1940s. Soon, Khaltey, who took the photo, was ordered to modify the photo so that only a watch remained.In fact, the Soviets did this to cover up.

More serious, of course, is the rape of a woman than the robbery of a watch.After the Battle of Berlin, Berlin women were raped by Soviet soldiers from time to time.A German mother recalled that she was forced by a gun to let the Soviet army vent, and the Soviet soldier emptied herself like emptying a jar. In contrast, Soviet Marshal Chuikov recorded such a story in his "War Memoirs": In the final battle to capture Berlin, before the attack began, Massarov, a soldier of the Eighth Guards Army, suddenly heard a child crying from a building in the enemy-controlled area. A word that any nation can understand: mother.At this time, the artillery fire of the Soviet army was ready. In order to prevent the child from being buried in the flames, under the cover of the concentrated firepower of the company's machine guns, Masarov rushed into the German position alone and rescued the child.Just when he had just brought back the three-year-old German girl, thousands of cannons from the Soviet army started a devastating bombardment of the German positions...

Cuikov's records are not made up, they are true.This happened more than once, and some Soviet soldiers even gave their lives to save German children.Protecting children is certainly respectable, but if the soldier encounters the little girl's mother after the flames die out, he is likely to rape the child's mother again.Protecting children and raping mothers, this is the weirdness of human nature. The Soviet Red Army came to Germany as avengers and intended to punish the Germans.Because that's what the Germans did in the Soviet-occupied areas before.Wherever the German army went, they not only raped many local women, but also set up a large number of public and private brothels, forcing these women to "comfort" German officers and soldiers.Therefore, Stalin said at the beginning of the counter-offensive: Blood debts must be paid with blood.

The Soviet writer Ehrenburg wrote in January 1945: "The Germans have been punished in Opelen, Königsberg and Breslau, but not enough, some have been punished, but not all..." In addition, the remarks of some Soviet generals also encouraged the soldiers. General Cherniakhovsky told his troops in January 1945: "There should be no mercy for anyone, because we have no mercy... The land of fascism must become a desert..." On the German side, any act of organizing the evacuation of citizens was banned by the Nazi government in order to improve the morale of the troops.However, German citizens are very aware of the way the Soviet army fought against civilians, and they are very afraid of the Soviet army.In addition, the Nazi government also used propaganda to describe the atrocities committed by the Soviet army, causing panic among the people.As a result, civilians began to flee westward spontaneously to avoid the approaching Soviet troops.According to statistics, more than 2 million residents of eastern Germany died due to cold and hunger, post-war ethnic cleansing or being involved in the battlefield.A large proportion of these deaths were due to the fact that refugee teams were overtaken by Soviet troops, refugees were looted, shot, murdered, and women and girls were raped and left to fend for themselves.Fighter-bombers of the Soviet Air Force also attacked refugee groups.

Those Germans who did not flee had to bear the burdens of Soviet rule: murder, rape, looting and deportation.For example, Konigsberg (Kaliningrad), the capital of East Prussia, was home to about 100,000 German citizens when the Soviets occupied the city. When the Germans were expelled from Konigsberg in 1948, only about 20,000 remained. People are alive. On May 1, 1945, at least 88 male citizens were assembled and shot in Troenbridge, an atrocity that followed victory celebrations by Soviet soldiers.During the celebration, so many women were raped that a Soviet lieutenant colonel was shot.The Soviets went on a killing spree in retaliation.

According to statistics by some scholars, at the end of World War II, a total of more than 2 million German women were raped by the Soviet army, of which more than 100,000 were in Berlin. In 1946, 3.7% of babies born in Berlin were the result of Soviet rape.200,000 of these victimized German women would later die from injuries, suicide or murder.Many victims were raped multiple times or gang-raped. The Soviet writer Ehrenburg once said: "Violence must be used to break the racial pride of German women. Women must be treated as legal prey." The wife of former German Prime Minister Kohl also suffered this fate.In the book "Looking for the German Soldiers of World War II" written by Mr. Zhu Weiyi, he interviewed the German women who were victims and described the atrocities committed by the Soviet Army in detail.

Beginning in the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping were routinely subjected to varying degrees of punishment, ranging from detention to death.However, rapists continued to emerge in endlessly, and it was not until the winter of 1947 that Soviet soldiers were confined to closely guarded garrisons and barracks, completely separating them from East German residents, and the problem was solved. The American historian Norman Naymark wrote in the book: "Not only did each victim bear trauma for the rest of her life, but the entire East Germany also suffered a huge collective trauma... Rape crime was the first crime of the Soviet occupation. The sky was engraved on the social psychology of the people in the occupied areas until the establishment of East Germany in the autumn of 1949, and even today.”

In the Soviet-occupied zone, members of the SED once reported to Stalin that the looting and rape of Soviet soldiers might lead to German hatred of the Soviet Union and harm the future of socialism in East Germany as a whole.Stalin replied: "I will not allow anyone to sully the honor of the Red Army." As a result, all evidence related to the looting and rape by the Soviet army in the German-occupied area, such as reports, photos and other documents in the archives, were all erased.However, in people's memory, in private diaries and photo albums, Soviet atrocities were recorded.

The victory of the Battle of Berlin ended, marking the complete demise of Nazi Germany. On May 7 and 9, 1945, entrusted by Marshal Doenitz, who had just taken over as the German president, the German representative signed an unconditional surrender document to the Soviet Union and its allies twice. Nazi Germany was defeated and surrendered, but the German soldiers who persisted to the end were not in Berlin, but in Courland on the Baltic coast.This small place once witnessed the last struggle of the Nazi German army. In 1944, except for more than 30 besieged German divisions in the Courland region on the western coast of Latvia, all other German troops were expelled by the Soviet Red Army.The German army standing in Courland withstood 6 attacks under the powerful artillery fire of the Soviet army and resisted tenaciously for 8 months. This was the only German territory that was not conquered by the Soviet Union before the end of the Soviet-German War.

The coastline of the Courland peninsula, which extends southward to East Prussia and northward to Leningrad, is of great strategic value.Therefore, the German army attached great importance to the Courland area, which was an important channel for the German army to retreat.The port on the Courland Peninsula is a lifeline of the German army and has always been firmly in the hands of the German army.Millions of Soviet troops attacked six times, but still failed to separate the defenders of Courland and failed to take Courland. The Battle of Courland lasted for 8 months from October 1944 to May 8, 1945.The Courland defenders covered a total of 1 million German troops withdrawing into the mainland, and nearly 3 million refugees fled here.Every German refugee who fled here is full of tears, grateful to these soldiers who swore to defend the motherland.The German soldiers guarding Courland have completed the role change from invaders to defenders. Once their mission is no longer to invade other countries, but to defend their own homeland, their fighting power will awe their opponents.

Every soldier standing in Courland, regardless of rank or type of arms, fought side by side in the trenches, so there was an extremely rare scene in the history of warfare where infantry, sailors, air force, officers, and generals fought together.When a person fell down, his comrades immediately rushed forward to continue fighting.When the Soviets persuaded them to surrender, the defenders of Courland replied: Never surrender! After 8 months of tenacious resistance, even the enemy was moved.The Soviets had never seen an army so tenacious. On May 8, 1945, Germany had announced its surrender, and the last 180,000 German soldiers standing in Courland sang military songs and walked out of their positions to surrender to the Soviet army.At this time, many Soviet soldiers automatically saluted them with reverence. Unexpectedly, the Soviet government released the 180,000 soldiers.This is also a prisoner of war specially released by the Soviet government in 1945. The other 3 million German prisoners of war were sent to Siberia to work as laborers. In the end, many of them died of exhaustion, starvation, and torture. The duty of a soldier is to defend the motherland, defend the integrity of the territory, and protect the people from foreign aggression. Only such soldiers can make opponents respect them. After returning home, the 180,000 soldiers who stood firm in Courland were treated like heroes regardless of whether they lived in East Germany or West Germany.