My point is that Soviet War crimes, instead of being accepted like the Axis war crimes, or just sidelined like Allied war crimes, are instead repeatedly exagerrated (2 million rapes is an exagerration. Maybe 100,000, even 200,000, but not two million.) and used as an anti-Soviet political beatstick by various factions. It's like if people went around shoving the 9/11 in their political opponents' faces as a proof that their point of view is wrong.
Sock, if you want to discuss this issue, I am always willing to argue with you via PM.
No need to PM, I think I already said most of what I wanted to.
Though numbers are not all that important, 2 million is a widely accepted estimate for all German territories occupied by the Red Army, 100,000 is for Berlin alone. These are estimates on the higher end, historians emphasize that these are only estimates, but these are the numbers they come up with. Lower estimates are still in the several hundred thousand range.
As a man from a country that has been known to create incredble "estimates" and even "facts" purely for political reasons, I question the validity of any jumber a historian "just comes up with". Shortly after the war, for example, Soviet authorities reported that in the battle of Berlin the Red Army on just one direction destroyed "approximately" three times more tanks than the enemy had in total.
The true numbers we will never know, as most victims are dead now, and many never talked about it. Also consider that of the 12-14 mio German refugees in the East, more than 2 mio died in the process, many of which were victims of mass rape.
The number of rape victims, as you agree, is unknown (despite nobody bothering to conduct a questioning of the population to see how many of them knew of/experienced rape when these facts first came to light). I would like to emphasize that this issue is
extremely politicized, with no middle ground at all, which cannot help but imply that those authors who do mention the Soviet War crimes at all are most often also interested in exagerrating them, if only because of the pervasive myth about the "eastern barbarism" that so thoroughly penetrates the western minds after decaded of cold war (not that we, Russians, are any better in this regard). The documentary, "Liberators and liberated", from which the figure of 2 million (in the film, 1.9 million) rapes stems, is clearly a politically charged work, born out of historical revisionism that portrays the atrocities inflicted on the Germans by the Soviets distinctly out of context and attempts to victimize the German nation and portray them as fellow sufferers under Hitler's rule that are in no way complicit with the Nazi rule and, therefore, not guilty by association of its crimes. Considering that the authors of the film had a clear political agenda in mind that would clearly be served by exagerrating the number of Soviet atrocities and that they "extrapolated" the number of rapes committed by the Soviets by looking at birth, pregnancy and abortion statistics (which are, as I said above, quite unreliable) in just one place - postwar Berlin - and then applying it to the whole territory of Germany, I am disinclined to trust their figures. Anthony Beevor, whose book "the Downfall" is chiefly responsible for shaping the public perception of Soviet war crimes, said it himself that he simply took the numbers out of "Liberators and Liberated". I suppose you would agree with me that taking unverifiable, but shocking numbers from questionable sources in order to ensure better public reception of your work is a something, unfortunately, very common among historians. If you are interested in a Russian who does that, look up Victor Suvorov AKA Rezun.
I agree that it is sometimes used as a political beatstick (as opposed to say the destruction of German cities by the British Air Force), but then the acusation usually is that the Soviet authorities encouraged such behaviour or at least let it happen, which seems to have been the case.
Here I am going to disagree with you completely. Some Soviet battlefield commanders, seeing as how many of them were affected by the war and wanted revenge, certainly did encourage or ignored the atrocities against the German civilians byt heir troops. The higher-ups, Stavka, however, took measures to prevent these behaviors. They issued both orders to the political officers to conduct meetings with the purpose of "explaining to the troops that the German civilians are innocent and that a Soviet soldier always should conduct himself with dignity" and orders to the commanders to harshly punish any rape or marauding, both of which were executed. Documents supporting everything I just said definitely exist, including even a directive by Stalin himself, and are well-known, but as far as I know no English-speaking historian has been interested in defending the Red Army and that's why they haven't been mentioned in any western history book so far. As far as propaganda goes, people often cite Erenburg and his "kill the German" article, but they forget to mention that the article was published in 1942, when the Red Army was nowhere near the German civilians, and that he was commonly regarded as rabidly fanatical and hateful even by his contemporaries. If anything, there was even an article published in "Pravda", the main Soviet newspaper, specifically aimed at refuting Erenburg's claimes that all Germans are equally guilty: "Товарищ Эренбург упрощает" - "Comrade Erenburg oversimplifies". And even if we assume that Erenburg's propaganda was indeed what drove the troops to violence against civilians, he never says anything about rape.
I disagree that Axis crimes are sidelined, the Nazis are still the go-to-metaphor for evil people and in Germany itself a lot of effort is put into remembering Nazi war crimes, as opposed to the former Soviet states, where Soviet war crimes are still not talked about a lot.
Shoving 9/11 into someones face seemed like an accurate description of US politics for a time. 
I never said that Axis crimes are sidelined - only that Allied crimes are. And you'd be surprised at how much effort is put into remembering and talking about Soviet war crimes as well, particularly the Katyn and the atrocious treatment of POWs and alleged "Nazi collaborators" by Stalin. In fact, the current opinion about the war in Russia is that we "buried the enemy in corpses", that is, couldn't fight for shit and just threw conscripts at the enemy until the "human wave" reached them, which is absolutely historically wrong, but still. Ever since Beevor's book has been published in Russian, the rapes have been the centrepoint of the Russian WW2 discussion as well.
Anyway, sorry for the textwalls. My debater's instincts, honed in countless pointless discussions with my dad acted up.
In conclusion, I'd like to mention once more that Soviet war crimes absolutely certainly did happen and that they happened to a much greater extent than on the Western front, but rather than a case of planned genocide, they were an example of brutal mob violence and vengeance in its worst sense.
Author
Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9748993 times)