A chance reading on war crimes introduced me to the memoir A Woman in Berlin. It tells a true story of a single woman in Eastern Berlin near the end of World War II.
Just like The Diary of a Young Girl, this memoir offers a first-hand recount of the events of WWII from the viewpoint of a civilian, a victim.
Our narrator, a woman thirty-four-years of age and worldly, wrote with a dispassionate, analyzing tone that managed to capture the dismal conditions of civilian life as Nazis lost the War, the widespread wartime rape in a city so civilized and modern as Berlin, and human nature, at its basest. She offers an unique view into the life of a civilian inside a country that was winning, then losing a war.
In the weeks before German’s surrender, most nonessential businesses in Berlin had closed their doors. Civilians employed by those businesses were no longer under employment. The Berlin population, consisting mostly of women, was sent home to live on their reserves and food tickets. Half-starvation was the theme.
The week before Hitler’s birthday, Western Berlin had fallen to Allied hands, and Eastern Berlin was receiving regular bombardment from Soviet troops. Germany’s Eastern line of defense was pushed further and further westward.
Then, one quiet morning, the Soviets were there.
These proud conquerors had come a long way from their homeland. In the months prior, they’d marched, with speed, hundreds of miles west to reclaim their lost territories and to capture Nazi territories as compensation for their lives lost. Despite their haste, however, tales of their deeds proceeded them.
Refugees from East Prussia who fled to Berlin told horror stories of rape. Historians would later conclude that the invading army in East Prussia raped ‘every German female from eight to eighty.’
In Berlin, the heart of the Third Reich, their crimes went unchecked. A few days into the occupation, the women in Berlin quickly learned to select a strong ‘wolf’ that can ‘keep away the pack’ and provide food. The Soviets adjusted their approach accordingly.
Indiscriminative grabbing in the dark progressed into a bargain of food for sex. But transaction doesn’t make a sex act consensual if one party can’t realistically refuse.
And the conquerors were difficult to refuse indeed.
An Analysis of Soviet Men
The Red Army division the diarist encountered (a logistic unit), perhaps somewhat satiated of their thirst for revenge and urge for brutality, perhaps distracted by the oddities and industrialization of modern life in Berlin (which, by all accounts, was much more advanced than their own), was not so eager to rape in broad daylight. They milled about, tending their horses and minding their own businesses.
After dusk, however, was a different story. The Soviet soldiers, emboldened by drinks and darkness, began to look for victims. And they were indiscriminating. Young, old; large, thin. As long as the German was female, she had a high chance of being grabbed and molested in the dark.
The exalted Soviet leaders far from the battlefield were not unaware of the crimes their soldiers commit. But up until mid-to-late 1945, raping civilians was not considered a crime by the Red Army.
This wasn’t an oversight caused by ignorance. The issue of wartime rape was willfully overlooked — if not encouraged — by those in power. It was a prime outlet for the indignities Soviet soldiers suffered during German’s Eastern campaign. It was ‘payback’ for the atrocities Wehrmacht inflicted on the Soviet people. After all, wartime rape was the ultimate attack on the masculinity of the vanquished men. What’s more humiliating to the traditional patriarch than the violation of his woman?
While rape was common among Soviet soldiers, it should be noted, however, that the stereotype of a people doesn’t always apply to each of its individuals.
Low-ranked soldiers of the Communist Party were much quicker to rape than higher-ranked officers with proper educations. The soldiers, conscripted from all corners of the Soviet Union, were mostly inexperienced, uneducated farmers. Their actions were greatly influenced by propaganda and personal vendetta instead of morality and discipline.
Of German Women
The diarist, for all her bravery and resourcefulness, was not exempt from the invaders’ brutality. Multiple instances of rape were written, especially in the first few days of occupation. Dissociating from the physical aspects of the assaults, only her actions and rarely her thoughts were recorded.
As rape became a widespread normalcy, German women grew more accustomed to expressing it. The diary itself shows an increasing acceptance to the word ‘rape’, which used to sound like ‘the absolute worst, the end of everything.’ Women, literal strangers, would gather to talk about what they’d never speak of under normal circumstances. Even greetings between women adopted to the new situation at hand. ‘How many times were you…’ was the new norm. When hundreds of thousands of women were all experiencing the same fate, ‘rape’ lost its age-old stigma that the victim must have ‘done something to encourage or deserve it.’
And German Men
But it was shameful for German men. From the diarist’s observation of German husbands, to her interactions with her conscripted-then-snuck-off fiancé, to the reaction of the German public when the memoir was first published, German men could not accept the consequence of their defeat that German women learned to survive.
Upon hearing the women of the diarist’s building joking about their own rapes, Gerd — the diarist’s then fiancé — declared that they’d all become ‘shameless bitches.’
The disgust German men had shown was the product of a resounding clash between the urge toward self-preservation and the old ideals of pure women.
Husbands knew that defending their wives would not be in their self-interest. So they hid while the Soviet soldiers raped. Men would rather lock their doors in the faces of women seeking help than ‘bring trouble’ to themselves. But men — these same men — were also taught from birth to be the protector and master of the female sex.
Their lives were threatened, their masculinity made a mockery of. In their humiliation, they turned their spears toward the victim.
And a Short Comment on Soviet Women
The Soviet Union enlisted women into its military ranks much earlier and in much more substantial numbers than its European counterparts. They fought on battlefields alongside the men.
The military unit the diarist encountered consisted of many female soldiers. Some were even present during the German women’s rapes.
Their reaction toward the actions of their male counterparts was terrible to read. Soviet female soldiers laughed at the rapes, then walked away with their male counterparts. While not actively participating in rape, they took no action to stop them.
Morality succumbed to the same fate for women as it did for men.
They, their family, their country had suffered. Now it’s the Germans’ turn. The Soviet women justified. And in their victors’ confidence and self-righteous rage, they failed to realize the double standard both in their male counterparts’ treatment of women and in their own attitude toward wartime rape itself.
In its dispassionate tone, A Woman in Berlin captures the human individual, its fragilities and resilience, and the human society under the pressure of war. All in all, it’s a book that could bear the scrutiny of rereads.
