Imagine, if you will, Berlin in 1945. The Nazi regime has fallen, but for countless German women, the nightmare was just beginning. What followed was what historians have called “the greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history.”
Now, let’s pause for a moment and consider the scale of this atrocity. We’re talking about estimates of around 2 million women raped in Germany, with 100,000 in Berlin alone. In East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia, at least 1.4 million women suffered this fate. These aren’t just numbers, folks. Each one represents a human life shattered.
But here’s where it gets even more chilling. There are reports that Stalin himself gave tacit approval to this barbarity. He allegedly said people should “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.” On another occasion, when informed of these atrocities, he reportedly quipped, “We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.”
Can you imagine? The leader of a nation, essentially giving the green light to such inhumanity?
The accounts from this period are harrowing. One former Russian army officer later reflected:
“We were young, strong, and four years without women. So we tried to catch German women and … Ten men raped one girl. There were not enough women; the entire population run from the Soviet Army. So we had to take young, twelve or thirteen year-old. If she cried, we put something into her mouth. We thought it was fun. Now I can not understand how I did it. A boy from a good family… But that was me.”
It’s the kind of testimony that makes your blood run cold, isn’t it?
But it wasn’t just the soldiers. Listen to this account from a woman telephone operator in the Russian Army:
“When we occupied every town, we had first three days for looting and … [rapes]. That was unofficial of course. But after three days one could be court-martialed for doing this. … I remember one raped German woman laying naked, with hand grenade between her legs. Now I feel shame, but I did not feel shame back then… Do you think it was easy to forgive [the Germans]? We hated to see their clean undamaged white houses. With roses. I wanted them to suffer. I wanted to see their tears. … Decades had to pass until I started feeling pity for them.”
The aftermath was catastrophic. Women resorted to dangerous abortions. Many died from injuries, untreated diseases, or by suicide. The infant mortality rate in Berlin reportedly reached a staggering 90 percent.
And here’s another twist to this already complex narrative: some historians, like Miriam Gebhardt, argue that members of the US military may have been responsible for up to 190,000 rapes in Germany by 1955. It’s a claim that forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth that such atrocities weren’t limited to one side.
As we grapple with these horrific events, we’re faced with questions that cut to the core of human nature. How do ordinary people become capable of such cruelty? What does it say about the nature of war and its impact on both victors and vanquished?
This, folks, is the kind of history that keeps you up at night. It’s a stark reminder of the depths to which humanity can sink, and the long, dark shadow that war casts long after the last shot is fired.