Aftermath

William T Sherman, one of the great Civil War generals, noted that "war is hell."  It is so not only to the families who lost a loved one, to those who came back maimed, or to  those who lost property, but also to those who were in the path of war.  But, there was also the aftermath of war, and one would not wanted to have been a female civilian in Berlin in May 1945.    April and early May saw Soviet forces move from the east to surround Berlin, home of Adolph Hitler.  If the Soviet Union had been on the losing side of the war, it is no doubt that many commanders and soldiers would have been tried for war crimes, and crimes against humanity.  Instead to victors go the spoils, and the writing of history.  For any one not in the Fuhrer bunker, life in Berlin at that time was just plain hell.  Bombs were dropped day and night.  Potable water was scare, but not as scarce as food.  Medical care was primitive. Transit would shut down.  Persons would cluster in bomb shelters not knowing if it was day or night.  With many German men off to fight (or prisoners, injured, or dead) much of the activities of daily life fell to German women.  It was in this dire situation, that the Soviets made life even more miserable for the civilian population. This occurred not only in the closing days of the war, but also after occupation.  If war was hell to the civilians, the indignity they would know upon occupation Soviet forces was personal.  The actions of the Soviet army to the German civilian population have started to become known as documents from over seventy years ago are now being released.  Russia still plays innocent to many of the deeds committed.

Civilians in Berlin at end of war

East Prussia saw the first wave of atrocities committed by Soviet soldiers. In some cases the advance Soviet troops would tell villagers to expect the worst from the back units.  Rape, pillage, and death. I have a co-worker whose family hails from Prussia, and one of his relatives was shot dead cold blank by a Soviet soldier. By late April 1945, as one historian has noted, Soviet soldiers looked upon German women as spoils of war, rather than as an act of revenge against the German Wehrmacht.  Initial atrocities were rationalized as revenge, but by now it was different, humans looked upon as spoils of war.  Antony Beevor, in his book, The Fall of Berlin 1945, recounts a few of the many acts against the civilian population of Germany. Some Germans attempted to make their way west to the Allied lines.  A few made it, many did not.  The Soviet Union was surrounding Berlin and had made it to the Elbe by April 25.  Red army commanders would tell the females of Germany that the Russian men healthy (i.e. now STD's) and not to worry.  That would not be the case.  Just like in Africa today where women are raped by Boko Harem members or other Islamic fundamentalists and are ostracized from their families for having been raped, the German women similarly felt shamed and wondered what the future would hold for them if their husband or boyfriend would make it back from the war. They raped young girls, to old women. The stashes of liquor left behind by the Germans would play a large roll in the actions of the Red army soldiers against the German women. The Soviets apparently did not hold their liquor well. One German woman would write in her diary that "all in all we are slowly beginning to look upon the whole business of rape with a certain humour, albeit of the grimmer kind."  It was not only rape, but German citizens were taken to work camps in Russia.  There is a reason why penicillin was in short supply at the end of the war--it was needed to treat the sexually transmitted diseases.  Graham Greene's "The Third Man" is a portrayal of life in post war Vienna, and the level to which men devolved.  To this, one wonders if the United States bears some complicity.

The victors raise the flag

As pointed out in a blog post last year, the US Ninth Army had made it to and crossed the Elbe, before being ordered to stop the advance into Berlin.  Eisenhower did not wish to risk American lives in the capture of Berlin it is said, but an argument could be advanced that he did not wish to move east of the Elbe, as he knew the decision makers at the top had already divided Germany.  The area east of the Elbe where the US Ninth Army was now located was to be Soviet territory in the occupation. My father, Roy Hovel, was a Counter Intelligence Corps officer attached to the 83rd Infantry Division.  Also known as the Thunderbolt Division, it was this division who had crossed the Elbe and had units advance to within 90 km of Berlin before being told to draw back to the Elbe. In a letter dated April 30, 1945 to his sister my father plainly says that "we have been 'sitting' in the same place now for some time..."   I suspect by this point American intelligence knew that Germans would rather surrender to the western allies than to the Soviet Union, yet, the US Army held their place.  This is not to say they could have entered Berlin easily, but yet, the atrocities to be committed against the civilian population never entered into the equation or if it was,they dismissed the eventuality as the due course of war and desired to look the other way.

Berlin 1945, what a pretty sight

In the meantime, Stalin was ordering his army and secret intelligence units to capture German laboratories, workshops, factories, and scientific research units.  They wanted to make good use not only of German advances in weaponry, but also the scientists who were developing such means of war.  The United States may have gotten Werner Von Braun, but the Russians were able to capture and send to Russia a whole host of scientists.  In that respect, if you were a German nuclear scientist, physicist, or chemist (and immediate family), chances are you were treated quite well by the Soviet Union.  Their female cousin, or niece would not have been so lucky.  The Soviet Union, who had benefited from American know how, and materials over the course of the war, so knew of the large and growing gap between Soviet and American knowledge and armaments, and were depending upon German ingenuity to close the gap.  However, Beevor says that many of the captured items were of little use back in Moscow, as "they required an environment suitable for precision engineering and the purest raw materials."  He notes one Soviet scientist as saying that "Socialism cannot benefit itself even when it takes the whole of another country's technological infrastructure".  Stalin was after infrastructure, and not all was technological.  He wanted land, and was looking to move beyond the agreed upon borders to take other parts of the Europe east of the line to which he had been granted.  Credit goes to the Brits, who recognized this activity and made moves to counter the Soviet land grab.

Russian soldier walking by dead SS officer

As my father wrote that April 30 letter to his only sibling so many years ago he did not know that Adolph Hitler had killed himself that day, but he did expect the way to soon end.  In that April 30 letter to his sister, he writes: "tomorrow is the beginning of another month, one of the nicest of the year, and this year an especially memorable one for you because of your graduation.  May most likely will see the end of the European war and I anxiously hope, the Pacific one too due to the psychological effect of German surrender."

Russian photo of bombers over Reichstag

As for Adolph Hitler, the Soviets would recover his burnt body and keep it secret for many years.  Stalin even kept it secret from one of the lead Soviet Generals who had been charged with locating the body, in order to continually humiliate the general--even long after the war.  Of course, there are many to this day who feel Adolph made his way to South America to live in the Andes mountains.  Some even say the US was involved in arranging his passage.   Even though the Germans started the war, retribution took hold, and after revenge, the Soviets thought the spoils of war, or the aftermath of the war, allowed them to take liberty with the civilian population, particularly the female inhabitants.  The Soviets were not gracious victors.  To this day Russia continues to write their own history of their acts in 1945 Berlin. Berlin was not the place to be in the spring of 1945.