Well, there’s been an interview with her, and there’s been mention of it in the Making of and I believe she also talks about it in her Biography, if I’m not mistaken (Haven’t read it).
Firstly, I’m not saying she was nor wasn’t. I think it is entirely plausible that she got out.
Have you read Beevor’s “Stalingrad?” I haven’t even gotten to “Berlin” yet, but I think we can summarize that rape, along with coerced relationships, was far from uncommon. We can argue that some have exaggerated it to some extent, but I think saying that few German women were raped, at least in the earlier stages, during the occupation would be revisionist.
And I’m not saying that this was inherently confined to the Red Army and I am quite aware of the “stupid peasant drinking-from-the-toilet” motif forwarded by German propagandists that began with Goebbels far too simplistic and convenient. But I think it is well documented that rapes occured…
No, she (Gerda Christian, actually Hitler’s “fave”) was lucky. She joined the group around Otto Günsche (Hitler’s personal Adjutant) and made it through the russian lines.
She was later arrested by US MP forces in Bavaria.
Something to take into consideration about the Red Army is that Russia needed so much manpower that prisonners were released from jail to fill up ranks augmenting the risks of rape,killings,loot etc…
I am quite sure that theorically any soldiers caught in these acts would be shot on the spot by Russian officers.
If they were walking away from the battle while doing so, for sure. 
But with Traudl Junge, she actually became somewhat of a ‘sex slave’ for a russian officer, at least for a short time, IIRC. I’ll start looking for the source as soon as i come home.
Well after all the talk about this film i had to watch it… Just finished and i have to say it was very captivating. You really want to not like some of these people but just imagine what stress they were under when Hitler went off on one of his dellusional rantings and were ordering them to move divisions that no longer existed.
Der Untergang (2004) from the IMDB [link](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/) Traudl Junge (Lara), the final secretary for Adolf Hitler (Ganz), tells of the Nazi dictator’s final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII contains movie trailer as well. I don’t remember it. but it is available at family videos. 2 copies one released in 2005 and 2006. I can’t get blockbuster their down. ill try an get a copy. thanks for positing !!!
It’s definitely worth the effort, namvet. Just make sure you don’t have a problem with reading subtitles, there’s no version with English dubs, only subtitles.
If you get really desperate, PM me, I’ll send you a link from where you can get it;)
Schuultz: for some reson im banned from replying to your post. I have NO idea why.
anyway thanks for the offer. i may take you up on it. family videos show 2 different movies here listed under downfall. one is called Death in the Bunker Release Date: 8/8/2006. perhaps this is the english version??? strange. its not listed on IMDB. but I found it on amazon. do you know anything about this one??? [amazon link](amazon link) I always go after rental so I can burn a copy of it. but it may be one I have to buy.
Well, even law abiding Russian (and other Soviet) men were also to bear witness to the horrifying spectacle of recently liberated Russian areas and the millions of murdered civilians. In that context, I could understand their rage and I don’t think the rapes were simply a throwback to the primal raping and pillaging of yesteryear by conquering soldiers and what Beevor referred to parenthetically as “the darker aspect of male sexuality.” I think it was an unofficial weapon of revenge to shame the German soldiers, as well as the manifestation of an empowerment to a solder that knew little if any power in a totalitarian army. Beevor states in “Stalingrad” that there was a measure of freedoms given to Red Army soldiers during the “Great Patriotic War,” and they could largely denounce what they saw as incompetence by commanders, etc., without fear of reprisals as long as they weren’t being defeatist or sympathizing with their enemies.
When it became clear that they were going to win, this measure of freedom of speech and action was gradually stripped from soldiers and the state began to re-enforce the stringent thought control via a reinvigorated political officer cadre that had been marginalized as Zhukov and the competent Red Army generals gained strength in the increasing desperation resulting in defeat after defeat. Then, I think they felt a bit diminished and perhaps needed an outburst that could not be easily curtailed by the state and perhaps they found it in the control of women, objects, and women as objects in a defeated society? I dunno, that’s just my personal belief. But the rape and breakdown of the Soviet Red Army as they approached Berlin I think is a complex phenomena that cannot be summed up with simplistic “Red Army soldiers are animals and simpleton peasants” pronouncements of Goebbels.
I should add that French troops, of a more cultured and Westernized educated society also went on an orgy of violence in their sectors to a lessor extent. And their were incidents within virtually all armies where discipline broke-down. US soldiers in North Africa went on a similar rape’athon in Algeria I believe, that was only stopped by the incessant reporting of French Gendarmes. The women they targeted were initially the Berber women, then French colonials and Jews. Many of the Berber women no doubt would have male relatives fighting with the French on the Allied side (who themselves went on an appalling rampage in Italy - to the extent that they were almost fired on by US and British troops to stop their wholesale raping and destruction in the Italian countryside under French officers that could care less). This is an interesting and very uncomfortable phenomena; that is what people can do in the break down of good order --simply because they can! But I think it quite clearly involves more than soldiers who are simpleton peasants getting horny and having their way as rape cannot be very much fun sexually unless there’s a lot going on that involves little regarding sex; I think it has a whole series of factors that involve a lot of anger, and internal sense of emasculation, and neurosis.
Allow me to jump in. This “Death in the Bunker” DVD should be a documentary.
“Downfall” respectively “Der Untergang” in german is the movie we’re talking about. There are two different versions available: the regular one (150 mins) and the extended version (177mins plus loads of “special features”).
Original german language with english subtitles would be as good as it gets.
yes I just found out about it being a documentary. thanks for the info flamethrowerguy
I guess you have to look for the German title on IMDB…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/
I didn’t find it under the English title, either.