If only ......

[michaelmaltby]

"Estimates of rape victims from the city's two main hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000. One doctor deduced that out of approximately 100,000 women raped in the city, some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide. The death rate was thought to have been much higher among the 1.4 million estimated victims in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. Altogether at least two million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape. ."

[the Guardian, Wikipedia]

 

[mikewint]

Propaganda songs were always such and were very popular at the time. The enemy is never human. It is important to note that US and British troops did not "take" Berlin. That was all Zukhov's troops
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Ga., on April 12.
On that day or the next Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had ordered the armies under his command to stand on the Elbe River. They were forbidden to push on to Berlin.
Gen. Omar Bradley had told Ike that to take Berlin would cost 100,000 casualties. Gen. George Patton said, ''We had better take Berlin, and quick.'' Lt. Gen. William Simpson, in command of the US Ninth Army, had reached the Elbe at Magdeburg on April 11 and secured two bridgeheads. On April 14 he asked General Bradley for permission to go on to Berlin. Ike once again refused.
It was probably Ike's most controversial decision of the war. He gave two reasons:
1. US forces were already beyond the occupation lines that had been agreed upon with the Russians. In Ike's view, why take US casualties over land that would simply be handed over to the Russians.
2. Berlin was, in Ike's view a political objective not a military one.

Winston Churchill was furious. He wanted every effort made to reach Berlin before the Soviets. And he protested to Roosevelt that Ike had informed Stalin of this decision without consulting Churchill or Roosevelt. Churchill felt that Eisenhower had seriously overstepped his authority by making the decision on his own and was even more at fault for communicating it to Stalin directly without clearing it with his political principals.
Ike did allow British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery to push along the Oste to Lubeck, Wismar, and Rostock. The purpose was to block off the Jutland Peninsula to keep the Soviets out of Denmark.

From April 11 until the armistice on May 7, the Allied armies of the West stood along the Elbe as the Russians hammered through Berlin and across the 60 miles of open country to the Elbe. One Russian unit reached the Elbe at Torgau on April 25.

 

[michaelmaltby]

It is the juxtaposition of 'propaganda' with the actual outcome of events that creates what I call the obscenity of reality.

I do not believe for a moment that if Americans, Britsh and others had decided to 'go for Berlin' - despite the Russian outrage over broken bargains, etc. - had Patton been permitted to drive a perimeter to the East while Eisenhower demanded that Berlin be surrendered - the German defense of Berlin would have been very, very different - of course the Soviets could not have been denied access to Berlin, however their conduct would have been under the relentless gaze of the west.
In May, 1945, Soviet war production was at its peak, I believe, but Stalin had finally begun to exhaust his endless supply of reserves, Soviet losses never let up - even when victorious - and I do not believe that Stalin would have taken on the west in May, 1945.

 

[GrauGeist]

Based on the German's performance the last weeks of the war, had the Allies (Americans in particular) reached the outskirts of Berlin, the defense of Berlin may not have been so savage, either.

The Germans may have created a delaying action to the east as their elements evacuated to the west and into American lines for protection.

Historically, the Germans knew they were totally screwed if they were taken by the Russians and the only option was literally a fight to the death.

 

[mikewint]

While Simpson's Ninth Army had taken two bridgeheads the Germans had responded by sending out 3 divisions from Berlin resulting in the recapture of one of those bridgeheads. So perhaps Ike was right in not risking any more American lives over those 60 miles of German held territory.
I also suspect a strong feeling that after German conduct on the Eastern front, they (Germans), "deserved" whatever the Russians did to them. As always (in general anyway) those who paid the price were innocent and were guilty only of being German.

 

[GrauGeist]

The German policy towards the Russians was exceptionally savage, so it's not surprising that the Russians gave back in kind.

However, if we look back to the early days of the war, when German forces first entered Russia, they were welcomed as liberators by the Russian citizens and a large number of Russian soldiers tried to defect to the German's side - this was a HUGE opportunity missed by the High Command.
Had the Germans treated the Russians benevolently, this would have undermined the hold that Stalin and his regime had over the people and would have most likely expedited the German's advances into Russia.

 

[michaelmaltby]

all true but the myth that the rape of German women was payback isn't supported by the behavior of Soviet troops in Manchuria in 1945 .... they raped whenever and wherever they could ... and Manchuria had not been at war with Russia.
Rape, it seems, is simply part of the cultural expectation, as is the practice of physically assaulting troops.

 

[mikewint]

The extent of physical and moral devastation in 1945 was unprecedented. For years the Western Allies had pursued an escalating strategy of carpet bombing that reached far beyond many definitions of military or industrial targeting. This air war left approximately six hundred thousand civilians dead, and wounded as many as nine hundred thousand more; more than 7 million Germans were left homeless at the end of the war (around 10 million people had been evacuated from the cities to avoid the bombings). Population transfers" from eastern Europe and the eastern parts of the Reich numbered as many as 12 million, and at least a half million ethnic Germans died or were killed in the process. More than 5 million German soldiers were killed in the war, leaving more than a million widows; the gender disparity after the war—more than two "marriageable" women for every man—was among the most significant demographic consequences of the war, which is to say nothing of the large number of fatherless or entirely orphaned children. Just one consequence of the mass rapes of German women toward and after the end of the war and of the rampant prostitution and semi prostitution born of extreme necessity, moreover, was an astoundingly high venereal disease rate among German women.

Physically to speak of Germany as a ruin in 1945 is to romanticize it. Germany was a wreck not a ruin, a rock covered landscape of disaster in which the homeless lived like mole people. Any type of housing was more than devastated. Then add in the fact that approximately 12 million ethnic Germans that had been expelled from the East with more than a million dying in the process (the flight from the East had begun well before the end of the war, as early as 1943 in many cases).

The conditions for German soldiers in Allied captivity were horrific, with severe food shortages (a Red Cross train load of food for the German POWs…whoops…Disarmed Enemy Forces had been stopped and turned around) and often inadequate or nonexistent shelter (The worst US temporary enclosures were the 16 "Rheinwiesenlager" ("Rhine meadow camps"). These were simply barb-wire enclosures out in the open, with no shelter apart from what the DEFs might dig in the ground, and nothing to sit or lie on (above the mud and puddles) apart from their own helmets and greatcoats for those who had them. This was during the spring and summer, when there was no danger of freezing; nevertheless, given Germany's cooler, wetter climate, these open barbed-wire "cages" were much more of a hardship than similar temporary expedients in North Africa and Italy. 557,000 DEFs were held from April to July 1945 in the six worst of these: Bad Kreuznach-Bretzenheim, Remagen-Sinzig, Rheinberg, Heidesheim, Wickrathberg, and Büderich . The Maschke Commission would later tabulate 4,537 parish-registered deaths in these 6 worst RWLs, 774 from the others. They thought the actual death toll might be twice this, but were skeptical of an eyewitness claim of 32,000 deaths. Of the 3 million or so German soldiers taken by the Russians at least a million died there and tens of thousands were not released until well into the 1950s. And that does not address the millions of German civilians taken as the Russians over-ran Eastern Germany.

The Allied powers had decided at the highest level (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) to repudiate the Geneva Conventions, especially after the extinction of a German government able to negotiate with the Red Cross. (The Soviet Union, of course, had never signed the Geneva Conventions in the first place.)

Under the Geneva Conventions, POWs are to be sent home within months of the end of the war. The Allies instead decided to hold prisoner many POWs. To side-step the Geneva Convention the POWs had been redesignated as "disarmed enemy forces" and were used as slave laborers, providing "labor reparations" to rebuild the damage inflicted by Nazi aggression in the west. In the spring of 1945, the US held 3.4 million German POWs and Britain held 2,150,000 . According to the International Red Cross these men were divided up amongst the various allied nations to provide these "reparations". The demands of France for "labor reparations" were considered especially compelling. After screening the POWs, releasing the old men and boys of the "Volkssturm," and detaining Nazis for prosecution, the USA transferred 740,000 of the remainder (including some of those shipped back to Europe from the USA) to France. By August of 1946 the United States held 140,000 (US Occupation Zone) 680,000 were still held in France, 30,000 in Italy, 14,000 in Belgium, Yugoslavia 80,000, Belgium 48,000, Czechoslovakia 45,000, Luxembourg 4,000, Holland 1,300 and Great Britain held 460,000 German slaves. The Soviet Union had captured 4,000,000 - 5,000,000 German soldiers and civilians who disappeared into the USSR.

An outraged International Red Cross organization stated: "The United States, Britain and France, nearly a year after peace are violating International Red Cross agreements they solemnly signed in 1929. Thousands of former German soldiers are being used in the hazardous work of clearing minefields, sweeping sea mines and razing shattered buildings in spite of the fact that the Geneva Convention expressly forbids employing prisoners 'in any dangerous labor or in the transport of any material used in warfare.'

The Western nations sent their last German POWs home in 1948 (often under US pressure), while the Soviets kept theirs as late as 1956.

 

[Shinpachi]

No surprise.
Japanese women experienced same in the postwar.
Hundreds of thousand in Manchuria, thousands in Okinawa and more than ten thousands in homeland.
Press code solved all.

 

[michael rauls]

The extent of physical and moral devastation in 1945 was unprecedented. For years the Western Allies had pursued an escalating strategy of carpet bombing that reached far beyond many definitions of military or industrial targeting. This air war left approximately six hundred thousand civilians dead, and wounded as many as nine hundred thousand more; more than 7 million Germans were left homeless at the end of the war (around 10 million people had been evacuated from the cities to avoid the bombings). Population transfers" from eastern Europe and the eastern parts of the Reich numbered as many as 12 million, and at least a half million ethnic Germans died or were killed in the process. More than 5 million German soldiers were killed in the war, leaving more than a million widows; the gender disparity after the war—more than two "marriageable" women for every man—was among the most significant demographic consequences of the war, which is to say nothing of the large number of fatherless or entirely orphaned children. Just one consequence of the mass rapes of German women toward and after the end of the war and of the rampant prostitution and semi prostitution born of extreme necessity, moreover, was an astoundingly high venereal disease rate among German women.

Physically to speak of Germany as a ruin in 1945 is to romanticize it. Germany was a wreck not a ruin, a rock covered landscape of disaster in which the homeless lived like mole people. Any type of housing was more than devastated. Then add in the fact that approximately 12 million ethnic Germans that had been expelled from the East with more than a million dying in the process (the flight from the East had begun well before the end of the war, as early as 1943 in many cases).

The conditions for German soldiers in Allied captivity were horrific, with severe food shortages (a Red Cross train load of food for the German POWs…whoops…Disarmed Enemy Forces had been stopped and turned around) and often inadequate or nonexistent shelter (The worst US temporary enclosures were the 16 "Rheinwiesenlager" ("Rhine meadow camps"). These were simply barb-wire enclosures out in the open, with no shelter apart from what the DEFs might dig in the ground, and nothing to sit or lie on (above the mud and puddles) apart from their own helmets and greatcoats for those who had them. This was during the spring and summer, when there was no danger of freezing; nevertheless, given Germany's cooler, wetter climate, these open barbed-wire "cages" were much more of a hardship than similar temporary expedients in North Africa and Italy. 557,000 DEFs were held from April to July 1945 in the six worst of these: Bad Kreuznach-Bretzenheim, Remagen-Sinzig, Rheinberg, Heidesheim, Wickrathberg, and Büderich . The Maschke Commission would later tabulate 4,537 parish-registered deaths in these 6 worst RWLs, 774 from the others. They thought the actual death toll might be twice this, but were skeptical of an eyewitness claim of 32,000 deaths. Of the 3 million or so German soldiers taken by the Russians at least a million died there and tens of thousands were not released until well into the 1950s. And that does not address the millions of German civilians taken as the Russians over-ran Eastern Germany.

The Allied powers had decided at the highest level (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) to repudiate the Geneva Conventions, especially after the extinction of a German government able to negotiate with the Red Cross. (The Soviet Union, of course, had never signed the Geneva Conventions in the first place.)

Under the Geneva Conventions, POWs are to be sent home within months of the end of the war. The Allies instead decided to hold prisoner many POWs. To side-step the Geneva Convention the POWs had been redesignated as "disarmed enemy forces" and were used as slave laborers, providing "labor reparations" to rebuild the damage inflicted by Nazi aggression in the west. In the spring of 1945, the US held 3.4 million German POWs and Britain held 2,150,000 . According to the International Red Cross these men were divided up amongst the various allied nations to provide these "reparations". The demands of France for "labor reparations" were considered especially compelling. After screening the POWs, releasing the old men and boys of the "Volkssturm," and detaining Nazis for prosecution, the USA transferred 740,000 of the remainder (including some of those shipped back to Europe from the USA) to France. By August of 1946 the United States held 140,000 (US Occupation Zone) 680,000 were still held in France, 30,000 in Italy, 14,000 in Belgium, Yugoslavia 80,000, Belgium 48,000, Czechoslovakia 45,000, Luxembourg 4,000, Holland 1,300 and Great Britain held 460,000 German slaves. The Soviet Union had captured 4,000,000 - 5,000,000 German soldiers and civilians who disappeared into the USSR.

An outraged International Red Cross organization stated: "The United States, Britain and France, nearly a year after peace are violating International Red Cross agreements they solemnly signed in 1929. Thousands of former German soldiers are being used in the hazardous work of clearing minefields, sweeping sea mines and razing shattered buildings in spite of the fact that the Geneva Convention expressly forbids employing prisoners 'in any dangerous labor or in the transport of any material used in warfare.'

The Western nations sent their last German POWs home in 1948 (often under US pressure), while the Soviets kept theirs as late as 1956.

I think this points to one of the more disturbing consequences of war beyond the death and destruction( which are of course the worst things) and that is the dehumanization of the adversary. I suppose it is to some degree a nescesary psychological state that can overcome a person allowing them to effectively prosecute the nescesary mission but unfortunate non the less.
When I was young I saw things in verry black and white terms in relationship th ww2 i.e. " Germans bad guys" but while in a macro sense and in the case of units like the SS and obviously Hitler this is very true it seems from much of what I have read( letters home from German soldiers for example) and things like the fact that even Erwin Rhomel had a tangential involvement in Operation Valkrie( one of the many plots to assassinate Hitler) that many of, if not a majority of the average German soldier, while feeling compelled to serve his country, wanted nothing more than for the war to be over and to go home to there family.
This is not to say that fighting Nazi German to the point of unconditional surrender was not the right thing to do, it was the only possible course of action in my view. It does however point out when it comes to war what is nescesary and moraly right on a macro level is simultaneously such a tragedy on the individual level.

 

[mikewint]

dehumanization of the adversary. I suppose it is to some degree a nescesary psychological state

Most definitely!! To the Germans the people of eastern Russia were Schlamm Menschen. Not even semi-human needing to be eradicated so that German settlers could move in.
Mostly forgotten today is a severe anti-German sentiment that was rife in American and even promoted by the government.

 

[michael rauls]

Most definitely!! To the Germans the people of eastern Russia were Schlamm Menschen. Not even semi-human needing to be eradicated so that German settlers could move in.
Mostly forgotten today is a severe anti-German sentiment that was rife in American and even promoted by the government.

I took a listen and it was a bit disturbing.
When you say to the Germans the people of Russia were not even sub-human I wonder what percentage of the average German or even average German soldier really bought into that. I know it wasn't all of them but have no idea what the percentages might be. There certainly were Germans who risked there lives to hide Jews from the SS and to try and assassinate Hitler for example. I certainly want to believe that at the verry least there was a sizable minority of people who didn't loose there humanity to the propaganda in Nazi Germany but really don't know the numbers.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Great find, mikewint. The history lesson for the troops was certainly true ... no question.

michael rauls, believe what you choose by all means but the fact that a political party espousing the beliefs and strategies of the Nazis gained power and was able to harness and direct the absolute power of the German state .... that is the the alarm and the message. The obscenity of reality.

Hiroshima was known to be Christian city in Japan but that didn't change anything, did it?

 

[michael rauls]

Great find, mikewint. The history lesson for the troops was certainly true ... no question.

michael rauls, believe what you choose by all means but the fact that a political party espousing the beliefs and strategies of the Nazis gained power and was able to harness and direct the absolute power of the German state .... that is the the alarm and the message. The obscenity of reality.

Hiroshima was known to be Christian city in Japan but that didn't change anything, did it?

I couldn't agree more about the Horrors of the Nazi party gaining control of the German state. Good god, please don't miss understand me. My point was that even under such a dystopian brutal regime there was at least a small percentage of the population (I hope it was more than a small percentage but well never really know)that didn't buy into it and that even some higher up in the military were disturbed by what was going on. Hence the dozens of attempts on Hitlers life.
Erwin Romel, before his taking part in one of these attempts wrote a letter to his son in which he made clear how much he thought the treatment of Jews was wrong so it would appear that this played a pivotal roll in his decision to be involved, although only tangentially so, in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. He paid for that with his life by the way.
My point was the tragedy of dehumanization of oponents in war. Although this may be physiologically nescesary to a degree to carry out even a just war as fighting Nazi Germany surely was but that this makes war all the more tragic when one sees that even in a state as evil as Nazi Germany there were people that didn't buy into it and tried to do the right thing.
In other words no matter how just the cause and nescesary a war might be to fight even in a horrific regime such as Nazi Germany there are still people that are just regular people. Just like you and me. Some of them even willing to risk there lives to stand up against it and that makes the war, although just and nescesary to fight all the more tragic when you see it on an individual level.

 

[michael rauls]

As far as Hiroshima, alot more people, including alot more Japanese, would have died if we had invaded the mainland instead so while horrible as all war is it was probably the best course of action available.
That seems to be the consensus of the historians I have read anyway.

 

[GrauGeist]

In regards to Hiroshima (and Nagasaki), more people died, were wounded and displaced in the firebombing of Tokyo than the two nuked cities combined.
It's the fear of the atom bomb that puts it at the top of the public's mind.

However, striking a military target with either an atomic bomb or conventional bombs is a result of warfare. Dehumanizing a group (or groups) in order to justify a political (and thus a military) agenda is another - the NSDAP rose to power in a time when Germans were in a depresssed and desperate state...they were on the verge of civil war, Socialist groups were wreacking havoc (Antifaschist Akton being the most active) and the NSDAP offered hope and stability. By blaming Jews and Communists for their troubles, it steered the public towards a "common enemy" and galvanized them.

The Germans weren't the first to fall for targeting a select group of people, but it worked remarkably well in that case.

 

[michael rauls]

Dehumanization, at least at first is done on a group level. Alot harder to dehumanize an individual. This( the dehumanization) is the very thing that makes war possible in the first place and can also be an unfortunate product of it.
Thus the tragedy of it.

 

[michael rauls]

In regards to Hiroshima (and Nagasaki), more people died, were wounded and displaced in the firebombing of Tokyo than the two nuked cities combined.
It's the fear of the atom bomb that puts it at the top of the public's mind.

However, striking a military target with either an atomic bomb or conventional bombs is a result of warfare. Dehumanizing a group (or groups) in order to justify a political (and thus a military) agenda is another - the NSDAP rose to power in a time when Germans were in a depresssed and desperate state...they were on the verge of civil war, Socialist groups were wreacking havoc (Antifaschist Akton being the most active) and the NSDAP offered hope and stability. By blaming Jews and Communists for their troubles, it steered the public towards a "common enemy" and galvanized them.

The Germans weren't the first to fall for targeting a select group of people, but it worked remarkably well in that case.

The thing that made the atomic bomb such a shock to the Japanese leadership even though the firebombings were more destructive in terms of loss of life was not just the destructive qualities of the two bombs it was also that President Truman had sent a message( can't remember if ir was just before or just after the two bombings) that claimed we possessed many such bombs and failing an unconditional surrender would" begin to rain them down upon Japan in a wave of dustruction the world has never seen" (I may not have that quote perfect but its at worst pretty close).

 

[GrauGeist]

It was after Hiroshima, plus Nagasaki was an alternate target, Kokura was the primary.
Smoke and clouds obscured Kokura, so Nagasaki was bombed instead.

 

[michael rauls]

It was after Hiroshima, plus Nagasaki was an alternate target, Kokura was the primary.
Smoke and clouds obscured Kokura, so Nagasaki was bombed instead.

Thanks. I thought it was after but wasn't 100% sure.

.