ill bet she was raped
I’m not trying to steal your thunder, but I think I posted a link to the first and possibly the second video a while back. Can’t recall the thread, but possibly one about Soviet misconduct in Germany? And I can’t find it because the site search function is largely kaput, and has been for a while.
I also found the first one in particular quite disturbing.
There’s a lot more conveyed in what we can see and what we read into it than in any words that could accompany it.
Then again, we don’t have the context. I suppose it would be less disturbing if she was someone like the Bitch of Belsen and more disturbing if she was the virginal daughter of a vicar. That’s probably not a morally satisfactory way to view someone who seems to be the victim of a violent rape or rapes, which is always an equally bad act regardless of who the victim is. But just vengeance can change things.
Our interpretation raises some other interesting questions. How do we react if we learn that she was raped by (a) Soviet troops (b) German troops (c) American troops (d) British troops?
I could have expected that this remarkable one was discovered before.
Our interpretation raises some other interesting questions. How do we react if we learn that she was raped by (a) Soviet troops (b) German troops (c) American troops (d) British troops?
To me it would make no difference from an ethical point of view.
I agree, but I was wondering not about ethics but about the effects of selective anti-Soviet / pro-Allied presentations of history since WWII and the unconscious prejudices and preferences it generated which might influence people’s perceptions and judgements of such behaviour.
Do people automatically assume that she has been the victim of Soviet troops rather than American / British, or even German, troops? I have to confess that that was my unthinking initial response, and that that response provoked me to question the reasons for it.
The Soviets have consistently been presented as a primitive, brutal, raping horde while the English-speaking Allies are presented as noble and chaste liberators as each group moved into and occupied Germany. There is evidence to contradict both presentations, but none of it has been prominent in the West so far as the Soviets are concerned since the Cold War rendered them as the anti-Christ in dominant conservative Western discourse.
If she had been beaten and raped by American troops, would that be more surprising than if she had been raped by Soviet troops? Would that attract greater or lesser condemnation and outrage? Would anyone believe it?
The general theme that I have gathered throughout reading is that this perception may have originated, and is simply echoed from WWII era German conventional wisdom. From the “news” of both the Hitler regime, and the short lived one that followed: that as many Germans as possible should flee to the American and British sectors. Not because Americans or Brits are any better that the Soviet soldier. But because the perception was that they hadn’t occupied the United States nor any significant portions of the UK, and that they would be treated much better overall than they would by the hordes of the Red Army, or the French --who were also accused of atrocities. The Germans were aware that their “chickens would come home to roost.”
I don’t think it matters who was responsible for such a thing. It is still a crime.
It is a fact that that Western propaganda and press have often pictured Americans and British soldiers to be the “good guys” that would have never done such a thing. It is also true that as a result of Cold War propaganda, the Soviets have been portrayed as “bad guys”. However, I don’t think that enough has ever been said about Soviet crimes and abuses, mostly because our alliance with them during that war makes us somewhat culpable. The evidence seems to point out at abuses and rapes being committed by all armies. The question is one of severity and number. I think that the crimes that the Allies in the West committed against the German people are mostly of another type.
The fact that POWs were allowed to starve and die of exposure…the fact that civilians weren’t allowed to feed them…the fact that so many civilians died because of starvation of exposure as a direct result of actions by the victors…a process of “denazification” that they had no business doing…show trials were hardly fair…the movement of German refugees causing so many deaths, etc. In that sense, crimes committed in the West were more insidious, less obvious because they were crimes that were committed over a period of time.
The Russians were far more direct in their punishment of their German adversaries and the German people. While they also participated in crimes against refugees, they went on a rampage. There are enough accounts out there to get a good idea of what German women went through. I know of one such personal account. When I heard this account from the mouth of the person who went through it (this was several years ago) I had trouble sleeping for several days.
There has always been an attitude that the Germans did this and they did that and they had it coming or that the wish for vengeance was too great. In my book, there is no excuse to treat anyone like that. When we commit crimes like this because we think that we deserve to have some sort of “retribution” we become just like the enemy that we judge.