Third Reich downfall..Suicides of NSDAP members,military personnel and their ilk

Discussion in 'The Third Reich' started by Harry Ree, Jul 15, 2019.

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  1. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

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  2. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    I don't really mean I like your post Harry, (sorry!) but it reminds me of something related by younger sister's German penfriend.
    The family lived in Berlin, and when my sister went to visit, ?1960s?, penfriend's mother told her that HER mother (penfriend's grandmother) had been raped by Russians.
    The full horror of the consequences of the war came out slowly.
    There's another thread somewhere about the Russians taking revenge for the terrible things the nazis did in Russia.
     
  3. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Tricia.........Yes, your post reflects the horror that fortunately we did not have to contend with.It would have been a different matter had we been overrun by the Nazi regime.

    Both world wars have shown where civilians were caught up by the means of waging war and the ideology of the victor against civilian populations.Sexual violence against women is one such dimension among many.

    During the Second World War,there is ample evidence of the sexual excesses carried out by German forces in the invasion of Poland and by both the Russians, on crossing the German/Polish border, and from the start of Barbarossa,by the Germans,each against their ideological foes.There was little discipline if any to control German forces on the Eastern Front in this matter,after all the Slavs were declared to be the untermenchen with no future in the realm of the Greater German Reich....they were treated accordingly.Little wonder that the motivation against Germans was revenge as soon as the Russians crossed into German territory

    While the nightmare for the German women was short lived and occurred during the overrunning of eastern Germany,the nightmare for Russian women continued until the Germans were pushed out of Russian territory after over three years.

    The German occupation forces were no better in western Europe,such as France where sexual excesses were mostly conducted by their opportunist mercenaries,the bulk drawn from ex POWs across the range of Russian republics.Again no discipline imposed by their German commanders.Revenge against the perpetrators was swift on the liberation of France in areas where until French administration was re established,Maquis groups held the upper hand.

    Probably the best source on sexual violence against women by an occupier in the Second World War is given by Sonke Neitzel's and Harald Welzer's "Soldaten On Fighting.Killing and Dying" which reveals the recorded tapes of German POW discussions among themselves.It is a research document which has been taken mostly from British and American Intelligence files in addition to German files that were accessed.It dispels the myth that the Wehrmacht fought a war within the conflict international conventions and is laid out against the background of genocide and excesses in the East.

    In the publication,there are many German POW conversational statements picked up by the secret recordings which document the sexual violence against women by these individuals,usually followed by murder.As one of the authors commented to the effect.....little did they know that their criminal acts,so overtly boasted about would be the subject of sourced information.
     
  4. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    Thanks Harry - and wars still continue.
     

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