Over and above the impact of Soviet propaganda or political indoctrination that encouraged them to view all Germans, whether men, women, or children, as “Fascists,” many of the Russian soldiers were motivated, as a veteran of Rokossovsky’s armies put it, by “blind feelings of revenge.” And who could wonder at this? Tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers were from areas devastated by German occupation, had lost relatives or loved ones to the invaders, or had themselves been wounded by an enemy invader. In addition, the ferocity of the fighting had hardly abated, and, even at this late stage of the war, the Soviets were suffering very high casualties. The anger and rage of average soldiers, their desire to wreak vengeance on the people held responsible, were visible for all to see. “We are taking revenge on the Germans for all the disgraceful things they did to us,” wrote one Ivan in a feeling that was representative of his fellows, who believed that they were simply executing a just punishment on the German population, which was now experiencing firsthand the gruesome reality of war. Many Russians indeed regarded their actions as part of the struggle for “people’s justice.” “You said we should do the same things in Germany as the Germans did to us,” wrote a son to his father. “The court has begun already.” “Our fellows have not acted any worse in East Prussia than the Germans did in the Smolensk region,” a Red soldier noted in his diary in late January 1945. “We hate Germany and the Germans very much. In a house our boys saw a murdered woman and two children. You often see civilians lying dead in the streets too. But the Germans deserve these atrocities that they unleashed…. One need only think of Majdanek and the theory of supermen [Übermenschen] to understand why our soldiers are happily doing this.” As Soviet soldiers, in their push westward, liberated hundreds of extermination and labor camps and witnessed firsthand the gas chambers, charred corpses, piles of bodies, and pitiful survivors left to die, the deep impression of these atrocities mingled with memories of their own ruined farms and towns to create a powerful anger and thirst for revenge. “Germany must now experience the taste of tears,” wrote one observer after witnessing a destroyed village. “Frightful horrors have been committed on this earth. And Hitler is the one who gave rise to them. And the Germans celebrated these horrors. A gruesome punishment for Germany is only just.”18
Adding to the powerful rage and lust for destruction was the disconcerting realization of most Red soldiers that the standard of living in Germany was immeasurably higher than their own. “The people here live very well,” admitted one at the beginning of February, “better than us…. So many fine things!” “There is everything,” exulted another, then added tellingly, “even things that we have never seen.” “We are eating very well, ten times better than the Germans lived in the Ukraine,” claimed one Ivan, while a comrade marveled, “I am swimming in riches.” The shrill contrast between the unexpectedly high German living standards and their own miserable conditions at home, however, inevitably produced confusion, then anger. If conditions were so good in Germany, wondered many, why had they attacked Russia? And, asked others, why don’t we live as well as the enemy? To deflect the latter question, Soviet propagandists quickly adopted an explanation reflected in many of the soldiers’ letters and diaries: the Germans lived well at the expense of others, for their riches were plundered from occupied Europe. Although effective as an explanation, this propaganda line also served to intensify the anger and rage of average soldiers, who set about plundering Germany like a horde of locusts. Not only were vast quantities of industrial machinery, railroad equipment, raw materials, and even people (for forced labor) carried off to the Soviet Union at the behest of state authorities, but ordinary soldiers also looted with a disconcerting frenzy as the orgy of revenge assumed a material as well as a personal dimension. The alcohol that seemed so abundant and freely available in Germany served to escalate the murderous rage of the Russians. Food, drink, watches, household items—anything and everything was taken and much sent home, hopelessly clogging the Red Army postal service. What could not be consumed or dispatched was often simply burned.19
This lust for destruction also manifested itself in a systematic and persistent campaign of rape and sexual violence, as noted above. Although not the only violent crime committed by Red Army troops as they swept westward, rape was certainly the most prevalent. In some cases, instances of it had sexual overtones, especially in a restrictive, puritanical, male-dominated society many of whose members were troubled by the sight of German women in provocative Western-style dresses, wearing makeup and in high-heeled shoes. German women, in short, seemed to some both decadent and wickedly seductive and were regarded by many as the spoils of war just as much as food and alcohol. The men’s actions, after all, had been encouraged, if not explicitly ordered, by Moscow, whether to destroy the German will to resist or to engage in what would today be regarded as ethnic cleansing, since the stories of Soviet atrocities spurred Germans to flee from precisely those areas to be given to Poland after the war. For most, however, rape had little to do with sex. Rather, it neatly meshed desires for revenge and hatred of the enemy’s wealth, reinforced the fragile masculinity of men under enormous strain, and cemented their victory over the German antagonist. It was, as Catherine Merridale has noted, no accident that many German women were gang-raped or raped in the presence of husbands or fathers. In this sense, rape represented the ultimate collective triumph of the group, and, although women were the immediate victims, the larger point was intended for German men: they were now the ones without power who could not intervene to alter the fate of their women or, by extension, their nation. Revealingly, German women often recalled later that, when they protested, Russian soldiers invoked the image not of German soldiers raping their wives but of the invaders killing innocent women and children. They had laid waste to Russia and caused an unimaginable degree of death and destruction; now they would be taught a lesson.20
The fear of the Red Army was by no means limited to the civilian population. By this point in the war, most Landsers understood the fundamentally criminal nature of the war in the east and feared that they might be held accountable by the Russians. Reports now indicated a growing problem with morale and discipline, especially among rear support units and outfits hastily cobbled together from the remnants of units shattered by enemy action, in which the men had no sense of primary group loyalty. Among these men, there was a reluctance to fight and a quickness to take flight; fear of Russian revenge predominated, a mood that easily dissolved into panic. Cases of desertions and plundering soared, retreats often turned into routs; soldiers (and local party officials) not infrequently commandeered places on the trains meant to carry civilian refugees westward from the threatened eastern provinces. Soldiers displayed signs of resigned indifference, lack of empathy, a loss of any sense of the future, and a preoccupation with the fates of their families. Increasingly, too, Goebbels’s propaganda stressing enemy atrocities and raising fears of Asiatic-Bolshevik hordes descending on Germany backfired. For many, it simply reinforced their will to flee, while others regarded it as profoundly hypocritical since, as one man put it, “Weren’t our SS men even more cruel…? We have shown the others how to deal with political enemies.” Nor did exhortations on ideological lines have much impact. Holding on seemed foolish to many since it promised only death and destruction, especially as Allied planes now rained down bombs on virtually all areas of Germany unimpeded. Hitler’s boast in the 1930s, “Give me ten years and you will have airy and sunny homes, you will not recognize your cities,” was now invoked with bitterness and derision. Local party efforts to stir up enthusiasm were often greeted with indifference; where Sieg Heil or Heil Hitler once predominated, there was now only a conspicuous silence.21