Our tank crews, infantrymen, artillerists, and members of the Signal Corps caught up to them and, to clear the way, threw them into the ditches on the sides… They pushed aside old people and children and, forgetting about honor and dignity and the retreating German troops, assaulted women and girls by the thousands.
Women, mothers and their daughters, lay to the right and left of the highway, and a crowd of laughing men with half-lowered pants stood in front of each of them.
Those who were already bleeding and fainting were pulled aside, and the children who rushed to their aid were shot on the spot. Loud laughter, roars, cries, and moaning were heard. Commanders, majors, and colonels, stood along the highway laughing or directing… each of their soldiers to participate [in the rapes]. This was not revenge on the damned invaders, but hellish deadly gang rape, an opportunity to do anything without punishment or personal responsibility…
The colonel, who at first was just directing, joined the line himself, as the major shot witnesses, children, and old people who were hysterical.11
This was a common attitude toward the Germans. The head of a political department of the NKVD border guard corps reported to his superiors: ‘The medical doctor of the 1st Rifle Battalion reported that… the servicemen… told her, “It is a pleasure to see a pretty German girl crying in your arms.”’12 Neither Vasilevsky nor Abakumov stopped the atrocities.
Apparently, Stalin did not care what was going on in East Prussia because it was a territory targeted to become part of Russia after being cleansed of the German population. On April 20, 1945, after the troops of the 1st Belorussian (Zhukov, commander in chief) and the 1st Ukrainian (Konev, commander in chief) fronts entered the territory that would become East Germany, Stalin signed a directive to the military councils of these fronts:
The Stavka of the Supreme Command orders:
1. Try to change the attitude [of troops] toward the Germans—toward POWs, as well as civilians. The Germans must be treated better. The cruel treatment of the Germans forces them to fear [the troops], and creates obstinate resistance and a refusal to be taken prisoner. The civilian population is organizing gangs because it fears [Soviet] revenge. This situation is not in our favor. A more humane attitude toward the Germans will facilitate our military actions in their territory and, undoubtedly, will diminish the persistence of the German defense.
[…]
No such order was issued to the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts that fought in East Prussia and Pomerania—another region of Germany later cleansed of the German population.
To implement the transition of East Prussia into a Russian territory, a special post of NKVD Plenipotentiary for the Zemland Operational Group (former 1st Baltic Front, disbanded on February 24, 1945 and turned into this group, which was now subordinated to the 3rd Belorussian Front) was created (Table 22-1). After February 1945, the title became NKVD Plenipotentiary for East Prussia, and Abakumov was acting Plenipotentiary in addition to his other duties. The HQ of this Plenipotentiary, called apparat, consisted of 40 Chekists and included six departments (operational, investigation, archival, administrative, transportation, and supplies departments, secretariat, commandant, and translators). Also, there were 17 regional and eight city groups of 8 to 14 men each, which conducted operational work, and four prisons located in old German prisons.
In East Prussia, SMERSH continued to routinely arrest Soviet field officers. On February 9, 1945, Captain Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—commander of a battery and later author of The Gulag Archipelago—was arrested.14 The NKGB seized Solzhenitsyn’s letters to his friend, Nikolai Vitkevich, along with Vitkevich’s replies to Solzhenitsyn. Both officers criticized Stalin and discussed the possibility of creating an organization after the war that would restore ‘authentic’ Leninism.
Since the case involved a serviceman, the NKGB transferred the documents to the GUKR SMERSH, and on February 2, Abakumov’s deputy Babich ordered Solzhenitsyn’s immediate arrest. Solzhenitsyn remembered that ‘the SMERSH officers at the brigade command point tore off… shoulder boards, and took my belt away and shoved me along to their automobile.’15 This was the beginning of a long trip to Moscow along with other prisoners. After a four-month investigation by the 2nd NKGB Directorate (counterintelligence) in Moscow, the OSO sentenced Solzhenitsyn to eight years of imprisonment in the labor camps.
Among other responsibilities, NKVD plenipotentiaries supervised the so-called mobilization—that is, the arrest and deportation—of the civilian population of Soviet-occupied German territory.16 In 1943–44, the academician Ivan Maisky, Soviet Ambassador to England and Molotov’s deputy, developed the concept of forced work of the mobilized population as war reparation, and it was widely implemented.17 On February 3, 1945, the GKO ordered the total mobilization of ‘all male Germans from 17 to 50 years old capable of working and serving in the army’ on the territories occupied by the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Belorussian fronts and the 1st Ukrainian Front. The order stated: ‘The Germans who had served in the German army or in the “Volkssturm” troops, should be considered prisoners of war and sent to the NKVD camps for POWs. All of the other Germans should be organized into work battalions of 750–1,200 individuals to be used for work in the Soviet Union, primarily in the Ukrainian and Belorussian SSR.’18
From February 10, 1945 onwards, plenipotentiaries were obliged to report daily to Moscow on mobilization progress.19 The results of arrests and mobilization of Germans, especially in East Prussia, were impressive. In March, after taking over Koenigsberg and an additional SMERSH/NKVD operation for mopping up German agents and soldiers in the ruined city on April 11–19, Abakumov reported to Beria:
The operational groups have arrested 22,534 spies, saboteurs, terrorists, and other hostile elements at the territory occupied by the 3rd Belorussian Front [in East Prussia].
All arrestees were sent by 11 special trains to the Kalinin and Chelyabinsk NKVD camps.
113 active German terrorists and saboteurs, who tried to kill Red Army commanders and servicemen, were shot on the spot.
After the arrests and operative checking… 35,150 persons were left [in 1939, the East Prussian population was 2.49 million inhabitants], mostly old men and women, children, invalids, and sick people. All of these Germans now live in special settlements, where they are under the surveillance of local [Soviet] military commandants.
1,500 Germans were mobilized in two battalions and all were sent by special trains to the station Yenakkievo [in the Donbass region in Russia] to be used by Narkomchermet [the Commissariat for Iron Production] and Narkomstroi [the Commissariat for Construction].
The cleansing of the rear from spies, saboteurs, terrorists, and other hostile elements at the territory of the 3rd Belorussian Front has been mainly fulfilled. Arrests have declined sharply because no German population remains within which we can conduct operational work [i.e., make arrests]…
I ask for your permission to return [to Moscow], and to make Comrade Zelenin, head of the Directorate ‘SMERSH’ of the 3rd Belorussian Front, or Comrade BABICH, my deputy in the Main Directorate ‘SMERSH,’ responsible for the current operational work…