Soviet war crimes (WWII)

Red Army atrocities (WWII) gives a short overview about serious crimes, which probably offend against international law, 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). Neither by any international military jurisdiction the Red Army’s leadership or any of its members have ever been charged with, nor has anyone of those ever been convicted of war crimes by a court of law.

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 (1941-45). An estimated 20 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, War crimes and atrocities of the Waffen-SS)

The Red Army was largely ideologically orientated and indoctrinated from its first day on. Moreover, it had been created in 1918 by the government of the communist Soviet Union to fight in the bloody Russian Civil War. Leon Trotsky, founding father of the Red Army, used terror ruthlessly to win this war. Due to intentional famine, terror, mass executions, deportations or other reprisals the Russian Civil War caused multiple casualties within the civil population compared to those combatants involved had to suffer from. Some sources state, the number of civilians dead in this conflict outnumbered up to 9 times the losses fighting troops had to take. Just this fact made the Red Army, from its very beginning, an army, carrying out morally devastating orders. Moreover, the Soviet Union did not recognise the entry of the tsarist Russia to the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) as binding for itself and refused to sign it until 1955.

With the German attack on the Soviet Union repulsed and Soviet troops entering Germany and Hungary in 1944, in particular 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.

However, 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.

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Joseph Stalin.

As a matter of fact the Red Army had to take much more casualties than any other military force during World War II, in part because of high manpower attrition and inadequate time for training. 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. Also minefields, for instance, were ‘attacked’ by waves of infantry soldiers in order to clear them . 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. .

In Soviet and present Russian history books on the "Great Patriotic War" this order and other Russian atrocities in WWII are hardly mentioned. 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 Romania, in Hungary, 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, with the Soviet Union breaching its neutrality pact with Japan in 1945.

Civilian casualties

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Soviet anti polish propaganda.

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. Many tried to escape from the access of the Soviet NKVD, but nevertheless, were arrested mostly by the Red Army and afterwards deported to Siberia and/or vanished in the "Gulag".

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. Only a fraction of the deportees survived the war.

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 NKVD and attached units of 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 another 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. (see also: NKVD prisoner massacres)

1943–1945

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. But factually countless men of these countries voluntarily joined the Waffen-SS to defend their homelands against the Soviets, whenever the Red Army was approaching.

In Poland Nazi atrocities perforce ended in late 1944. Soviet oppression continued, however. The role of the Red Army during the Warsaw Uprising remains controversial and is still disputed by some historians. 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). (see also: Lack of outside support in the Warsaw Uprising)

Germany 1945

According to the historian Norman Naimark, the propaganda of Soviet troop newspapers and the orders of Soviet high command 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. 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 ...

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 …

On the German side and in furtherance to boost 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, sons and brothers, serving as soldiers and on vacation from the eastern front, were well aware of the way the Red Army was conducting war against civilians and feared the Soviet army. Also Nazi propaganda, originally meant to stiffen civil resistance, fired back. Especially to the description of the event in Nemmersdorf of late 1944, in gruesome and graphic detail, the larger part of the civilians responded with panic (see main article: Nemmersdorf massacre).

As a result and whenever possible, mainly when Nazi officials had already left, civilians began to go on escape at the last moment and on own initiative.

Refugee's trail, eastern Germany 1945.

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. 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.

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 without any prior fighting in or around the city, nearly 900 people committed suicide after Demmin, during three days, had been declared open by Soviet commanders for looting and pillaging.

Although mass executions of civilians by the Red Army are not reported on a regular base, there is a known incident in the City of Treuenbrietzen, where at least 88 male civilian inhabitants were rounded up and shot on May 1, 1945. This atrocity took place, after at a victory celebration of Soviet soldiers, at which numerous girls from Treuenbrietzen were raped, and a lieutenant-colonel of the Red Army was shot by an unknown person. Some sources quotes even up to 1,000 were executed in this event.

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 and girls, an estimated 200,000 of whom later died from injuries sustained, committed suicide, or were murdered outright. 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. The 2,000,000 rape victims estimate is also supported by the research of historian Norman Naimark. In addition, many of these victims were raped repeatedly, some as many as 60 to 70 times.

After the summer of 1945 Soviet soldiers caught raping were usually punished to various degrees. 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.“

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."

Hungary

Just during the occupation of Budapest (Hungary) it is estimated that 50,000 women and girls were raped in this city only.

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

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. 121 cases of rape were documented later, 111 of which also involved murder. In addition 1,204 cases of looting with assault were documented. 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?".

Slovakia

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

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.

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. . .

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. 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.

A few days later, on February 10, Marinesko struck again and sank the German passenger ship 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.

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. For the sinking of the Goya, Captain Konovalov was later even awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

On this occasion, it is to be marked that possibly the sinking of those three ships can not be considered a war crime in the literal sense, because these ships did neither fulfil all criteria of a civil ship nor a hospital ship since for example also some operational troops were on board as well. Nevertheless, Soviet High Command was well aware of the German mass evacuation of civilians across the Baltic Sea in 1945 and knew perfectly, as the submarine commanders, about the "main cargo" shipped by German vessels at that time in that area.

On August 22, (Japan had capitulated on August 15, when the Emperor made the surrender broadcast accepting the terms of the Potsdam Proclamation), the soviet submarines SHCH126, L12, L19 attacked the Japanese refugee transport ships Dai-Ni Shinko-Maru, Ogasawara-Maru and Taito-Maru. The latter two sank with a loss of 1,708 lives. Soviet fighter planes strafed the survivors of Ogasawara-Maru as they lay floating in the water.

Destruction of cities and lootings

In general, Red Army officers declared all cities, villages and farms open to pillaging and looting in Romania, Hungry and Germany. A written order though does not exist. But there are several documents in which the way the Red Army’s behaviour pattern is described. One of them is a report of the Swiss legation in Budapest, describing the events when the Red Army entered the city in 1945. It states for example: During the siege of Budapest and also during the following fateful weeks, Russian (Soviet) troops looted the city freely. They entered practically every habitation, the very poorest as well as the richest. They took away everything they wanted, especially food, clothing and valuables. … Every apartment, shop, bank, etc. was looted several times. Furniture and larger objects of art, etc. that could not be taken away were frequently simply destroyed. In many cases, after looting, the homes were also put on fire, causing a vast total loss. … Bank safes were emptied without exception -even the British and American safes- and whatever was found was taken.

Walter Kilian, the first mayor of the district Charlottenburg in Berlin after the war and brought into office by the Soviets, reported, that it has come to extensive lootings by Red Army’s soldiers in the area: Individuals, department stores, shops, apartments ... all were robbed blind.

In the Soviet occupied zone party members of the SED reported to Stalin lootings and rapes by Soviet soldiers could possibly result in a negative reaction of the German population for the respect of the Soviet Union and for the future socialism in East Germany in general. Stalin reacted to the worries of his German comrades with the words: I shall not tolerate anybody dragging the honour of the Red Army through the mud.

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The City of Demmin flattened by Soviet troops without prior fighting in 1945 (private photograph).

Any evidence, as reports, pictures and other documents of lootings, rapes, burning down of farms and villages etc. by the Red Army, therefore was deleted from all archives in the Soviet occupied zone in Germany, which later was to become the GDR. In private memories, diaries and photo albums, however, the events of 1945 had been kept as far as possible or thought to be worth it.

On many occasions Soviet soldiers laid fire to buildings, villages and parts of cities, shooting anybody trying to extinguish the flames. Even if Red Army soldiers only were sure to be already in “hostile” territory, atrocities took place (see also: Przyszowice massacre). Nevertheless, in Poland soldiers of the Red Army together with members of the NKVD looted transport trains in 1944 and 1945, frequently.

As an example of burning down of cities, Demmin can be called again. On the May 1, 1945 Soviet soldiers laid fire in the city centre and forbade extinguishing the fire. From all the buildings around the marketplace only the steeple got over the inferno.

Treatment of prisoners of war

Polish volunteers to the Anders Army, released from Soviet POW camp.

The Soviet Union did not recognise the entry of the tsarist Russia to the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) as binding for itself and refused to sign it until 1955. This had already led to barbaric treatment of POWs on both, Polish and Soviet, side during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-21. Moreover, the Soviet Union had not signed the Genevan prisoner's of war convention of 1929 until 1955. Accordingly, the Red Army treated at first the Polish and later the Axis’ and Japanese prisoners of war in a cruel way from the first days of WWII on.

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External links

• 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)
• 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)
• The forgotten victims of WWII: Masculinities and rape in Berlin, 1945, James W. Messerschmidt, University of Southern Maine
• 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.
• Book Review: A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, ISBN 0-8050-7540-2
• 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)

Further reading

• Marta Hillers, A Woman in Berlin: Six Weeks in the Conquered City Translated by Anthes Bell, ISBN 0-8050-7540-2
• Antony Beevor, 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
• Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War, the Red Army 1939-1945, London: Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-5712-1808-3
• Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945. Preface by Professor Howard Levie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8032-9908-7. New revised edition with Picton Press, Rockland, Maine, ISBN 0-89725-421-X
• Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge. The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 , St. Martin's Press, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-3121-2159-8