review of THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945

[Doug Millison]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30283-2002May16.html

[...] To a degree that more than a few readers will find exceedingly
difficult to stomach, The Fall of Berlin 1945 is about sexual violence.
[...]  "One doctor deduced that out of approximately 100,000 women raped in
Berlin," Beevor writes, "some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide.
The death rate was thought to be much higher among the 1.4 million who had
suffered in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. Altogether at least 2
million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial
minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape." Not
merely did the soldiers of the Red Army rape German women; they "also raped
Ukrainian, Russian and Belorussian women and girls just released from slave
labour in Germany," which "completely undermines any attempts at justifying
Red Army behaviour on the grounds of revenge for German brutality in the
Soviet Union." [...]  "The worst mistake of German military authorities had
been their refusal to destroy alcohol stocks in the path of the Red Army's
advance. This decision was based on the idea that a drunken enemy could not
fight. Tragically for the female population, however, it was exactly what
Red Army soldiers seemed to need to give them courage to rape as well as to
celebrate the end of such a terrible war." [...] Not even familiarity with
the human degradation described by Jerzy Kosinski in The Painted Bird or in
innumerable Holocaust memoirs and histories can fully prepare one for the
picture painted by Beevor. It is Bruegel multiplied by Munch, with
background music by Shostakovich at his most agonized, rape and carnality
compounded many times over by utter indifference to human life [...] The
city had more than a million homeless. "Smoke from cooking fires emerged
from what looked like piles of rubble, as women tried to re-create
something like a home-life for their children amid the ruins." [...]