Atrocities Committed Against Germans - Report Example

Atrocities committed against Germans Introduction A lot is documented regarding horrific unlawful acts perpetrated by Germans during 1930s and World War II, yet we hear almost none about crimes or atrocities committed against Germans (Giles, 78). Germans were actually subjected to many atrocities during the same period. For instance, their defeat in May 1945 as well as the end of World War II in Europe, failed to bring an end to suffering and death over the vanquished German individuals. Rather the successful Allies introduced a terrible new time of demolition, plundering, starvation, assault, "ethnic purifying," and mass killing (Apel, 110). Such war crimes were perpetrated by various armed forces who were ones mistreated by Germany. Such Armed forces include armed forces of Soviet Union and the Soviet Russia. The acts were committed by the Red Army, NKVD’s Internal Troops and the Polish army who sought revenge. In some instances, the crimes were ordered by Joseph Stalin as well as the early Soviet Red Terror government policy (Alfred-Maurice, 120). In other cases, the crimes were committed without express orders of regular army troops as payback against military personnel or civilians of countries that Germany had already invaded. They were as revenge for Nazi war crimes or during partisan warfare (Berger, 67). A good number of the incidents happened in Eastern and Northern Europe before and during World War II. They involved summary executions as well as mistreatment of civilians and mass murder or killing of prisoners of war. The paper discusses the atrocities that were committed against Germans in the 1930’s and after World War II. Atrocities Murders of civilians On many incidents before and after World War II, several buildings, parts of cities or villages were set on fire by German enemies. For instance, Soviet soldiers used implacable force against locals who attempted to put the fires. Many atrocities that were committed by Red Army only took place in hostile territories. Red Army soldiers and members of the NKVD repeatedly looted German transport trains in the years 1944 and 1945 in Poland. According to reports from relatives and friends, the Red Army attacked noncombatants who were helpless and could not defend themselves (Berger, 67). For instance, the Nemmersdorf massacre created panic, and most German civilians began fleeing westwards on their own initiative to rescue themselves from the Red Army atrocities. While fleeing from such atrocities many inhabitants of the German provinces such as Silesia, East Prussia and Pomerania died during such evacuations. Some died from starvation and cold, and others during combat operations (Apel, 110). A considerable percentage of the death toll occurred when the evacuation calumet came face to face with the units of the Red Army because they were hot, run over by tanks, or otherwise murdered (Giles, 78). According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Prussian Nights, many women and young ladies were raped and abandoned to die. In addition, Soviet air force’s fighter-bombers penetrated far after the front lines and frequently attacked the columns of evacuating civilians. The Soviet order, January 1945, clearly points out that (Alfred-Maurice, 120): "Some servicemen have caused enormous material damage by their behavior, because they destroy valuable property in the cities and villages of East Prussia, burning down buildings and whole villages which belong to the Soviet state now.(..) Furthermore, cases were determined where army members used weapons against the German civilian population, particularly against women and the elderly. Numerous cases were determined where prisoners of war were shot under circumstances in which shooting was not necessary but came only from bad will." The violence of the Red Army against the local German population leads to conquering of cities in the Eastern Germany by the Soviets in the spring of 1945. Even though the civilians surrendered, many were forced to commit suicide; this was stimulated by instances of rape, pillaging and executions. On 1 May 1945, 88 males’ inhabitants of Treuenbrietzen were rounded and shot. In 1989, German government published a study that approximated the death toll of German civilians at 635,000 in Eastern Europe. Of which 270,000 died as a result of Soviet war crimes, 205,000 deaths resulted from forced labour of Germans within the Soviet Union and 160,000 deaths occurred at the hands of other several nationalities particularly during the expulsion of Germans after the Second World War. Such figures ignore over 125,000 civilian deaths that occurred in the battle of Berlin (Berger, 77). Mass deportations The brutal, authoritative and dictatorial rule by Adolf Hitler made nearly all European countries to hate the Germans. This necessitated hostile and violent treatment of Germans across the globe. Many countries were forced to arrest and deport German residents. Tens of thousands of the German citizens underwent deportations in the 1930’s and during Second World War, particularly during the Soviet occupation (Apel, 111). Deportations were conducted by mainly Soviets and Polish predominantly to Siberia and Kazakhstan without prior announcement through the means of railroad cattle cars. The deported were given just few night hours to assemble and pack their belongings. They were separated from their families because some were sent to the east. Mass rapes After the Red Army had captured Berlin in 1945, the German women and young girls as young as eight years were raped by the Soviet troops (Giles, 79). The western estimates the overall number of rape victims to be between tens of thousands and two million. During the last periods of the war, the antiquated German city of Königsberg in East Prussia which was a strongly defended urban fortress had to surrender in April 1945 due to rehashed assault and siege by the Red Army. Soviet troops then violated and ravished the civilian citizens. The individuals were beaten, victimized, executed and, if female, assaulted or raped (Alfred-Maurice, 80). Included in the rape victims were also nuns. Young and good looking blond nurse from Stettin said narrated her ordeal; she said that her father was stabbed by Russian soldiers who then raped her mother and sister. She continues to say that “On the train to Berlin I was pillaged once by Russian troops and twice by Poles. Women who resisted were shot dead, and on one occasion I saw a guard takes an infant by the legs and crush its skull against a post because the child cried while the guard was raping its mother” (Berger, 77). Soviet soldiers were ordered not to continue with the merciless act. Those who were caught raping civilians were punished by being arrested or executed. However, Naimark maintains that the rape of civilians continued from the summer of 1945 until the winter of 1947–48. It needed during that time because Soviet occupation authorities lastly confined troops to stringently guard posts and camps (Giles, 78). The rape victims had to carry the trauma for the remaining days of their lives. In conclusion Naimark maintains that "The social psychology of women and men in the Soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until, one could argue, the present." Summary executions and mistreatment In his letter that was published in October 1945 in a London newspaper, Bertrand Russell, Nobel Prize recipient and the noted philosopher wrote that “In eastern Europe now mass deportations are being carried out by our allies on an unprecedented scale, and an apparently deliberate attempt is being made to exterminate many millions of Germans, not by gas, but by depriving them of their homes and of food, leaving them to die by slow and agonizing starvation. This is not done as an act of war, but as a part of a deliberate policy of peace’.” (Apel, 110). Many of the German civilians or citizens were mistreated, For instance, In Today Czech republic, ethnic Germans were assaulted by hysterical mobs even though they had lived there with them for centuries. In addition, German soldiers were gathered together, disarmed, tied to stakes, soaked with gas, and set ablaze as living lights. Discrimination Further, in some cities and towns in Czech Republic, every German citizen present there was forced to wear on their clothing that letter N sewn on their left breast. In Czech, letter N is the first letter for the word German (Alfred-Maurice, 120). On the other hand, Germans were prohibited from using all parks, public transportation and public places of entertainment. They were also not permitted to leave their homes and houses after eight in the evening. After some time, any person with German origin was expelled from the country and over one-Quarter of ethnic German population was killed in the process (Berger, 69). Treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) German soldiers, who were not able to escape and were caught, were subjected to torture, murder, and mutilation (Bischoff and Ambrose, 165). Approximately 10,000 German soldiers were caught by the Red Army, who was then subjected to harsh treatments. Injured German soldiers were clubbed or shot to death instead of being treated as required by the Hague convention (Apel, 110). Most of the captured German soldiers were not released after the end of the war but instead were kept in captivity till 1956. They were subjected to terrible conditions. The actual estimate of prisoners of war who died was one million. Conclusion The brutal and greedy nature of Adolf Hitler of wanting to control the whole world led to harsh treatments of the German by many countries. The Germans were subjected to many atrocities that claimed the lives of many. Such atrocities include mass rapes, discrimination, Summary executions and mistreatment, murders of civilians and mass deportations. Finally, prisoners of war were tortured and mutilated. Work cited Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace (New York: St. Martins Press, 2008.  Apel, Dora. War Culture and the Contest of Images. , 2012. Print. 110 Berger, Thomas U. War, Guilt, and World Politics After World War Ii. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print. 67 Bischoff and S. Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German POWs, 2007, pp. 165, 169, 170 Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York: Basic Books, 2007.  Read More