(5) Soviet soldiers did not regard their victims as human beings: the psychology of wartime soldiers and the tragedy of sexual violence.

Read Katherine Meridale, Ivan's War: A Record of a Red Army Soldier, 1939-45⑸.

Again, this time written by Catherine Meridale and translated by Yoshihiko Matsushima.Ivan's War: A Record of a Red Army Soldier, 1939-45."We will read the

The book reveals what each soldier went through and why he continued to fight.

Each one of them is an ordinary human being just like us.

However, the environment in which they were raised, the Soviet propaganda, the Nazi invasion, the scenes of extreme violence, and the extreme conditions of a war in which if they did not do something, they would be killed, motivated them.

A person has the potential to be anything. Depending on the circumstances, people can commit atrocities with impunity. Even if you think you are a good person, you never know what you might do. That is what this book makes you think.

So let's get started.

The soldiers did not consider their victims human.

Until then, the Soviet Union had suffered extraordinary casualties under the onslaught of German forces, but from the Battle of Stalingrad, the situation was reversed and the Soviet Union launched a reversal offensive.

Their goal was Berlin, Hitler's stronghold. Wherever they went, the Soviet soldiers committed acts of tyranny.

The atrocities committed by the invading Nazis were indeed appalling. In response, the Soviet soldiers, eager to be an eye for an eye, repeatedly looted, murdered, and raped their way into the invasion.

The Red Army's cruel retaliation was collective. What made sense here was not the relationship between Red Army soldiers and German victims, but the friendship between comrades-in-arms, soldiers who shared the memory of horror and faced it.

The soldiers did not see their victims as human beings. In February 1945, a soldier wrote to a friend. They don't speak a word of Russian. They don't speak a word of Russian, but that makes things easier for us. There is no need to say anything. We just stick Nagan in their faces and tell them to get down. Then we get the job done and say goodbye.

War has damaged human beings to such an extent that they have turned to violence. What actually happened went far beyond vengeance. The actions of the soldiers in Prussia were not only an outpouring of hatred, but also of hope and passion. The emotions born of the invaluable bond with their comrades-in-arms, the sadness that all the lives lost and all the chances they had been given could never be regained, drove them to do what they did.

Drowning in a sea of wine and schnapps did not heal them. It was the German ladies and daughters who became the objects of hatred. It did not take long for their bodies to litter the roads leading westward.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Katherine Meridale, translated by Yoshihiko Matsushima, Ivan's War: A Record of Red Army Soldiers 1939-45, P352

Sexual Violence of Soviet Soldiers

Among the Soviet troops who caught up with the refugees overflowing from Innsterburg and Gordap was a young officer named Leonid Rabichev. Decades later, he inspired courage and wrote about the catastrophe he had witnessed.

'Women, mothers and their children, lay to the right and left of the road. In front of each stood a noisy crowd of soldiers with their trousers down".

Among the howling crowd were young men for whom this gruesome ritual may have been the first sexual experience of their lives. They gathered all the bleeding, unconscious women together in one place. Then our soldiers shot the women who were trying to protect their children. Meanwhile, the officers, "with thin smiles on their faces," stood by. One of them "was directing - or rather coordinating - everything. He was making sure that every single soldier was involved.

That night, Rabichev and his men were assigned to quarters in a relief shelter abandoned by the Germans. Every room was filled with corpses. There were dead children, old men, and a woman who had apparently been gang-raped. Rabichev's testimony continues.

We were quite tired, so we slept among the corpses on the floor. We were already accustomed to dead bodies. In another building we came across the bodies of several women who had been mutilated after rape. A bottle of wine had been inserted into the genitals of each of them, and as expected, Rabichev's men were a little surprised.

The problem was the active denial of sympathy for women on the part of the enemy. Group pressure also bound individuals and encouraged crime. On one occasion, Rabichev was called and told to choose one of several German daughters. The captive daughters were terrified. He first feared that if he refused, his men would think him a coward. Worse, he would be seen as a cripple.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Katherine Meridale, translated by Yoshihiko Matsushima, Ivan's War: A Record of Red Army Soldiers 1939-45, P352-353

I even wondered if I should blog about this content. The same is true of what I will be describing from here on. The book reveals facts that make you want to turn away.

However, I want to caution you against thinking that these acts are only about Soviet soldiers and have nothing to do with us. If we look at it as "the Soviet soldiers are just crazy," then the book has a completely different meaning. We must not forget that in the extreme conditions of war, we all can become like this.

The Psychology of Soldiers and the Tragedy of Sexual Violence

The Nazis thoroughly overran the Soviet Union. The country was turned into scorched earth and an unbelievable number of people were killed. (Though the mass casualties in the early days of the Russo-German war were largely due to misjudgment by Stalin.)

The Soviet soldiers harbored an unquenchable anger and hatred toward their foreign enemies, the Nazis.

However, the complex emotions they had to deal with were not simply "Nazi hatred.

In the Soviet Union, most of the people remained poor, as they had been until the outbreak of the Russo-German War. Moreover, when war broke out, they were forced to fight and were separated from their daily lives. They could not see their loved ones. Even men without partners were forced to fight for several years and spend their days in extreme conditions. Sexual problems are inevitable.

In the German territory they marched into, there was a scene they could not believe.

German towns and villages were more luxurious than they, as Soviets, had ever seen them.

But when I say luxury, it is "from the point of view of Soviet soldiers.

Rooms full of clean furniture and stuff, comfortable houses.

Soviet soldiers, through propaganda education, knew nothing about anything but the Soviet Union. They assumed that the Soviet Union was the most prosperous in the world and that other countries were inferior.

But when they actually arrived, they found a standard of living they could not have imagined, even in an ordinary house in a rural village.

The Soviet soldiers are astonished. What was the Soviet Union that they had believed in? What was the poverty they had endured until now? They wondered why the Nazis had gone to the trouble of invading the Soviet Union when they were living in such great affluence.

They had previously been educated that Nazis were the worst of the worst who should be exterminated.

The Soviet soldiers can no longer contain themselves.

The desire to fulfill retribution with destruction, smash German luxury goods, and devour fascist wealth drove the soldiers. Rape satisfied all of these at the same time. It punished women and restored the confidence of wounded men.

It also strengthened the emotional bonds between accomplices. Acting as a herd rather than as individuals, they were empowered by the group mentality and did not have to stick out as a single person. Rape became a festive ritual as the men confirmed their great triumph among themselves.

It was not only women who were struck down by tyranny. German men were also victims. It was no accident that many women were raped in front of their husbands and fathers. They had no choice but to watch the situation as helpless beings. They had to endure a spectacle that could not possibly be more humiliating for a man and a woman. In this sense, men were also victims of rape.

One woman tells the story of a lawyer. He defended his Jewish wife under Nazi rule. He refused to divorce her at his peril. When the Russians arrived, he again tried to protect his wife. A Russian automatic pistol opened fire and shot him in the hip. He sank into a pool of blood and drew his last breath as he watched three men rape his wife.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Katherine Meridale, translated by Yoshihiko Matsushima, Ivan's War: A Record of Red Army Soldiers 1939-45, P363

This part was also a surprise.

Women were not the only victims of tyranny. German men were also victims. It was no accident that many women were raped in front of their husbands and fathers. They had no choice but to watch the situation as helpless beings. They had to endure a spectacle that could not possibly be more humiliating for a man and a woman. In this sense, men were also victims of rape. I was particularly shocked here.

It's so tragic, I don't know what to say ...

Ivan's legend continues after the war

If Hitler had occupied Moscow in 1941, Stalingrad had fallen, and the wartime Soviet government had collapsed, Russia - and much of the Soviet Union - would undoubtedly have been doomed.

All of Europe, and even the United States, must have faced unimaginable challenges. Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin were irreplaceable victories, not only for the Soviet Union but also for the Allies.

But it was the people under the Stalinist regime who gave their lives to fight. Whether or not the soldiers fought of their own volition, all but a few believed that they were fighting a war for truth and justice. The soldiers were diverse. Each one was a different Ivan. But there was one wish. They did not want to end up fighting to overthrow a dictatorship only to be left with a dictatorship that superseded it.

Those who had no choice but to accept the rise of Stalinism, fought themselves to defend the regime, and went through the bitter experience, tolerated the reign of tyranny after the war. It is unfortunate. The fatherland was spared servitude, but it enslaved itself.

The legend of Ivan was born in the middle of a war. Sometimes they were fictions of Soviet intelligence, sometimes they were battlefield songs, poems, or popular anecdotes. Sometimes even the soldiers themselves compared themselves to hot-blooded volunteers and heroes fighting for their country.

Real combat was very different from the ideal. But the wooden carved images of soldiers created by propagandists were a useful model to envision before going into battle and for survivors to overcome fatigue and turmoil.

The idealized image of the naive hero or the skilled and daredevil officer gave soldiers a sense of purpose and helped to glorify brutal killing. They also provided a cover to exonerate them from crimes that no one wanted to admit to.

Soldiers were cynical, and the many legendary idealistic figures became the butt of vulgar and self-deprecating jokes. Ivan and his men were not always skilled with weapons, and they were not always comfortable with their bodies.

The latest party directives were nothing to them. Soldiers mocked the suffocating rules and rituals. But there was a part of propaganda during the war that meshed with fundamental human needs. It took on a vital meaning after the gunfire had ceased.

When soldiers who were called up were demobilized and returned to civilian life, they were respected because of the preconceived notion that soldiers were brave and naive. Regardless of the many events that could not be told to others, they had developed a respectable face to present to society.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Katherine Meridale, translated by Yoshihiko Matsushima, Ivan's War: A Record of Red Army Soldiers 1939-45, P423-425

Soviet propaganda images of soldiers also provided cover for exonerating their own atrocities.

And it continued to persist even after the war ended and people were demobilized.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has now brought these tragic facts to light, but if it had not, they might not be known even today.

be unbroken

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