cb1111
Newbie
- Location
- Virginia, USA
What the hell, here is some more
Russia: Protests against Putin's mobilization | Watch (msn.com)
Putin’s Claims to Donetsk Are News To Some Residents of Newly-Liberated Lyman (msn.com)
Pentagon chief warns ‘no checks on Mr. Putin’ amid nuclear threats (msn.com)
Ukrainian Forces Are Advancing In Southern Ukraine (msn.com)
Elon Musk Says Russia and Ukraine Must Do One Thing for Peace (msn.com)
Russian Army at 'Breaking Point' After Putin's Lyman Defeat: Lt. General (msn.com)
Zelenskiy says Ukraine forces liberated Arkhanhelske, Myrolyubivka in Kherson region (msn.com)
U.S. and Turkish officials discuss Ukraine and NATO in unannounced meeting (msn.com)
US meets with skeptical Turkey over Finland, Sweden NATO accession (msn.com)
Another Defeat in Ukraine Undermines Putin’s ‘Forever’ Goals (msn.com)
Chief Putin Critic Clinches Key Election Victory in Latvia (msn.com)
Putin bound to ‘escalate’ war as Russia continues to lose, prominent Kremlin critic says (msn.com)
EU countries summon Russian ambassadors in a coordinated manner (msn.com)
Two months ago, I had my 98th birthday. I was 14 when Hitler annexed Austria and 20 when Soviet troops entered Vienna. I had been an “afterthought” and my parents were elderly, though that didn’t save my father from being drafted and, no longer fit for combat, being posted as a guard on munitions trains.
The conflict in Ukraine and the stories of torture, mass graves, looting and wanton brutality perpetrated by Russian soldiers, bring back dark memories. My mother and I spent the war years in Vienna and witnessed the entry of Russian troops and their vicious conduct. In Ukraine, I see that nothing has changed. Human Rights Watch has documented rape, including of children.
In post-war Vienna, we breathed a huge sigh of relief when the real liberators – the Americans, British and French troops – finally arrived, to rule and administer the city jointly. The soldiers of those three nations behaved with discipline and even with some kindness towards the exhausted, half-starved civilian population that – with the men either dead or in prisoner of war camps or still making their way slowly back from distant front lines - consisted almost exclusively of old people, women and children.
The agreement among the Allies had been that they would enter and occupy Vienna together. Whichever army got there first, was to wait at the outskirts. But the Russians broke that agreement and unleashed a reign of terror. The German soldiers had fled their barracks and abandoned Vienna, and there was no resistance to the incoming troops. Later, when the British and French and especially, the Americans arrived, they divided the city’s districts among themselves and began to create an orderly system of distributing food to the half-starved populace. But until those three armies brought order and civilization, we were at the mercy of barbarism. The Russian soldiers were savages, and most seemed to come from backward rural areas and have little education. For example, they thought the brass doorknobs standard in Viennese homes at the time, were solid gold, and gleefully ripped them off the doors, believing themselves to be amassing spectacular treasure. Any unfortunate person who encountered them on the street had to hand over their watch and wedding ring. If the ring couldn’t easily be removed, they cut it off along with the finger. They were fascinated by pianos, which they would haul out of peoples’ homes, without giving any thought to how they would transport them home to their distant village. You could see piles of pianos abandoned on street corners for weeks, until the elements gradually destroyed them.
But worst was their propensity for rape. They would enter apartment buildings and go door to door in search of young women, dragging them away and forcing them into trucks to be gang-raped by them and their friends. Every night, from the streets below we heard their latest captives, screaming vainly for someone to rescue them; no one could. If you even just looked out the window, the soldiers would shoot at you.
We owned a particular kind of sofa bed where the mattress could be raised to reveal a narrow storage compartment below it, for blankets and such. I spent many hours in that compartment. The concierge of our apartment building was from Eastern Europe and spoke Russian. Whenever soldiers came into the building, she would “converse” with them in her loudest voice, to warn us. My mother would hastily stash me away in the storage drawer, then seat herself on it looking as elderly and feeble as she could manage. Another trick that sometimes worked was to place statues of saints in very prominent positions in your foyer. Some Viennese reported that the soldiers were apparently religious, or maybe just superstitious, and would cross themselves and turn back if they saw a holy statue “watching” them.
The horrendous brutality of the Russian soldiers was not much discussed in the years following. The post-war conditions were so dire and the work of rebuilding so massive, that most of us - including the victims, if they survived – were focused on recovering and rebuilding. Later, historians would estimate the number of German women raped by Russian soldiers as “likely in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million.” [1] They found that the vast majority of rapes went to the account of the Russian soldiers, which certainly matches my recollections. When I hear Putin talk about how the Europeans experienced the Russians as “brotherly liberators”, I can only shake my head. That was a sentiment we felt towards the British, French and American soldiers, who were indeed welcomed, and who behaved with discipline and generosity towards exhausted, war-weary and half-starved civilians.
But why were, and are, Russians so prone to steal, murder, pillage and rape? I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the answer lies with their leadership and their culture. War is a time of chaos. Soldiers must be trained and ordered to transgress the bounds of normal behavior and be willing to kill. Without proper leadership and firm boundaries, other moral barriers can fall as well. In the armies of the other Allied nations, pillage and rape were not permitted and certainly were not condoned. A soldier who crossed that line could find himself before a court martial. There were even a few death sentences handed down, a deterrent to others who may have contemplated a similar transgression. Nor did the prevailing group culture support barbaric conduct. My husband, a GI I met when we broke the lesser rule against “fraternizing with the enemy” – told me that in the final days of the war, his unit regularly encountered lone young German soldiers who surrendered to them. They caught one of their fellow soldiers marching a young prisoner into the forest with the intention of shooting him, stopped him by force, and after that kept a close watch on him. You didn’t shoot someone who had laid down his arms. But in the Soviet army, it was – and clearly still is – a different story. Their officers evidently turn a blind eye, or even encourage, the terrorizing of civilians. And among the soldiers, looting and rape, abuse and murder are group sports, not the rare outlier by individual sociopaths.
[1] Norman M., Naimark, Norman M. (1995). The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Cambridge: Belknap Press. p. 70.
Russia: Protests against Putin's mobilization | Watch (msn.com)
Putin’s Claims to Donetsk Are News To Some Residents of Newly-Liberated Lyman (msn.com)
Pentagon chief warns ‘no checks on Mr. Putin’ amid nuclear threats (msn.com)
Ukrainian Forces Are Advancing In Southern Ukraine (msn.com)
Elon Musk Says Russia and Ukraine Must Do One Thing for Peace (msn.com)
Russian Army at 'Breaking Point' After Putin's Lyman Defeat: Lt. General (msn.com)
Zelenskiy says Ukraine forces liberated Arkhanhelske, Myrolyubivka in Kherson region (msn.com)
U.S. and Turkish officials discuss Ukraine and NATO in unannounced meeting (msn.com)
US meets with skeptical Turkey over Finland, Sweden NATO accession (msn.com)
Another Defeat in Ukraine Undermines Putin’s ‘Forever’ Goals (msn.com)
Chief Putin Critic Clinches Key Election Victory in Latvia (msn.com)
Putin bound to ‘escalate’ war as Russia continues to lose, prominent Kremlin critic says (msn.com)
EU countries summon Russian ambassadors in a coordinated manner (msn.com)
Funny you say that. My mom just wrote an op-ed this weekend. Here's the draft:Yeah I was thinking about what they did to the German civilians at the end of ww2. Some things never change. Fucking war.
Two months ago, I had my 98th birthday. I was 14 when Hitler annexed Austria and 20 when Soviet troops entered Vienna. I had been an “afterthought” and my parents were elderly, though that didn’t save my father from being drafted and, no longer fit for combat, being posted as a guard on munitions trains.
The conflict in Ukraine and the stories of torture, mass graves, looting and wanton brutality perpetrated by Russian soldiers, bring back dark memories. My mother and I spent the war years in Vienna and witnessed the entry of Russian troops and their vicious conduct. In Ukraine, I see that nothing has changed. Human Rights Watch has documented rape, including of children.
In post-war Vienna, we breathed a huge sigh of relief when the real liberators – the Americans, British and French troops – finally arrived, to rule and administer the city jointly. The soldiers of those three nations behaved with discipline and even with some kindness towards the exhausted, half-starved civilian population that – with the men either dead or in prisoner of war camps or still making their way slowly back from distant front lines - consisted almost exclusively of old people, women and children.
The agreement among the Allies had been that they would enter and occupy Vienna together. Whichever army got there first, was to wait at the outskirts. But the Russians broke that agreement and unleashed a reign of terror. The German soldiers had fled their barracks and abandoned Vienna, and there was no resistance to the incoming troops. Later, when the British and French and especially, the Americans arrived, they divided the city’s districts among themselves and began to create an orderly system of distributing food to the half-starved populace. But until those three armies brought order and civilization, we were at the mercy of barbarism. The Russian soldiers were savages, and most seemed to come from backward rural areas and have little education. For example, they thought the brass doorknobs standard in Viennese homes at the time, were solid gold, and gleefully ripped them off the doors, believing themselves to be amassing spectacular treasure. Any unfortunate person who encountered them on the street had to hand over their watch and wedding ring. If the ring couldn’t easily be removed, they cut it off along with the finger. They were fascinated by pianos, which they would haul out of peoples’ homes, without giving any thought to how they would transport them home to their distant village. You could see piles of pianos abandoned on street corners for weeks, until the elements gradually destroyed them.
But worst was their propensity for rape. They would enter apartment buildings and go door to door in search of young women, dragging them away and forcing them into trucks to be gang-raped by them and their friends. Every night, from the streets below we heard their latest captives, screaming vainly for someone to rescue them; no one could. If you even just looked out the window, the soldiers would shoot at you.
We owned a particular kind of sofa bed where the mattress could be raised to reveal a narrow storage compartment below it, for blankets and such. I spent many hours in that compartment. The concierge of our apartment building was from Eastern Europe and spoke Russian. Whenever soldiers came into the building, she would “converse” with them in her loudest voice, to warn us. My mother would hastily stash me away in the storage drawer, then seat herself on it looking as elderly and feeble as she could manage. Another trick that sometimes worked was to place statues of saints in very prominent positions in your foyer. Some Viennese reported that the soldiers were apparently religious, or maybe just superstitious, and would cross themselves and turn back if they saw a holy statue “watching” them.
The horrendous brutality of the Russian soldiers was not much discussed in the years following. The post-war conditions were so dire and the work of rebuilding so massive, that most of us - including the victims, if they survived – were focused on recovering and rebuilding. Later, historians would estimate the number of German women raped by Russian soldiers as “likely in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million.” [1] They found that the vast majority of rapes went to the account of the Russian soldiers, which certainly matches my recollections. When I hear Putin talk about how the Europeans experienced the Russians as “brotherly liberators”, I can only shake my head. That was a sentiment we felt towards the British, French and American soldiers, who were indeed welcomed, and who behaved with discipline and generosity towards exhausted, war-weary and half-starved civilians.
But why were, and are, Russians so prone to steal, murder, pillage and rape? I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the answer lies with their leadership and their culture. War is a time of chaos. Soldiers must be trained and ordered to transgress the bounds of normal behavior and be willing to kill. Without proper leadership and firm boundaries, other moral barriers can fall as well. In the armies of the other Allied nations, pillage and rape were not permitted and certainly were not condoned. A soldier who crossed that line could find himself before a court martial. There were even a few death sentences handed down, a deterrent to others who may have contemplated a similar transgression. Nor did the prevailing group culture support barbaric conduct. My husband, a GI I met when we broke the lesser rule against “fraternizing with the enemy” – told me that in the final days of the war, his unit regularly encountered lone young German soldiers who surrendered to them. They caught one of their fellow soldiers marching a young prisoner into the forest with the intention of shooting him, stopped him by force, and after that kept a close watch on him. You didn’t shoot someone who had laid down his arms. But in the Soviet army, it was – and clearly still is – a different story. Their officers evidently turn a blind eye, or even encourage, the terrorizing of civilians. And among the soldiers, looting and rape, abuse and murder are group sports, not the rare outlier by individual sociopaths.
[1] Norman M., Naimark, Norman M. (1995). The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Cambridge: Belknap Press. p. 70.