The Rape of Stuttgart

From Nov. 1944 through April 1946 my father served with the 100th. Infantry Division. In one of the more than 300 letters he wrote home during his service in WWII he refers to the shameful rape of more than 1800 women in Stuttgart by Algerian troops. With all the carnage and rape done by the Soviets in Berlin it seem that this episode got overlooked. If anyone has any information about this shameful event I would like to hear from you.

My father's letters can be read on my blog at www.taylorletters.blogspot.com

Regards,
Greg Taylor
Los Angeles, CA.

 

Hello Greg, this is most interesting and the first time I hear about this. I know about the Goumiers in Italy but the Stuttgart episode is new to me. I will have a look on your blog, thanks for sharing this information.
Btw: If you are interested in stuttgart I strongly suggest you buy a second hand copy of HANNES KILIAN's Die Zerstörung . Killian took pictures of Stuttgart between 1944 and 1946 and published them in this book.

 

The exact figure ( U.S sources) is 1198

 

disgusting. in the USA we'd have slaughtered all those Algerian swine in a hot minute. But the Germans were all disarmed then (probably still are now).

 

I Read few accounts many Moons ago it was around 500 some said 700+. I really don't know the actual count but It wasn't only Algerians Muslim involved in Rapping Women after WWII!

in the USA we'd have slaughtered all those Algerian swine in a hot minute.

That means you would need to do this to many US Troops, Russians+++also who participated in this disgusting act.

But the Germans were all disarmed then (probably still are now) Germans are disarmed, Well News Flash, has had an Army for Many Moons.

 

Despicable reflection on the Allied powers and on the male mentality in general.

I might add a reference to attitudes of Moslem men toward women, but I'll leave that for other forums to thrash out.

 

Greg

A little off-topic side trip. Just got done looking over your blog. That is amazing, I commend you for taking the time and initiative to document your Dad's letters. It's those 1st hand accounts that bring history to life !!

Andrew

 

They did. Gaffey's memoir about being Patton's Chief of Staff stated in the Third Army rapists and deserters were executed, off the books. And the Russians also shot rapists when it became clear that the situation was spiraling out of control.

Too much adrenaline, too much hate, against an enemy national you have learned to dehumanize.

 

It's true soldiers of many armies engaged in rape of enemies and former enemy civilians. Men act savagely in war and always will - but only in the Soviet army were they officially urged to do it (by Russian radio propagandists).

Regarding Russian rapes, of which there were thousands during the war, in the book "The Blond Knight of Germany", Erich Hartman, the Me-109 ace with over 350 kills, recounts how he surrendered himself, his unit JG-52, and several thousand civilians to the Americans at the end of the war (but not before he burned up the units' 25 remaining me-109's). But unbeknownst to the Germans, the allies had decided that any German who fought the Russians would be turned over to them at war's end. So Hartman's ragged group was promptly given up to the Red Army.

The Russian soldiers disarmed the men and then proceeded on a hideous orgy of rape of the women and girls, in front of the anguished eyes of their male relatives, who were helpless to stop it. This horror went on for a day and a night, then a Red army general showed up and ordered his men to stop. 3 of his men ignored the order and were promptly hanged by their fellows, on the General's orders.

 

Total fabrication and Nazi propoganda.

I see no problems with having to face those you had formerly been keen enough to fight.

 

Very similar to what was seen in Yugoslavia. Mass rape as weapon. The same shame in Russian civil war... oh it was just propaganda... sure?

 

Soviet propaganda indoctrinated the Red Army to treat the Germans or anyone else they conquered as non-human beings unworthy of life. Ilya Ehrenberg's propaganda was exceptionally inflammatory and though it didn't specifically state to rape German women from 8-80 as soon as the Red Army gets to Germany, it might as well have.

"Germans are not human beings. Henceforth the word German means to us the most terrible curse. From now on the word German will trigger your rifle. We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day. If you think that that instead of you, the man next to you will kill him, you have not understood the threat. If you do not kill the German, he will kill you. If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German before combat. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, kill another - there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill."

Much of Soviet propaganda was about revenge and also making sure that the Red Army's resolve was strengthened by the propaganda (and truth) about what the Nazis would do if they got their hands on their families. Its not too difficult to put two and two together.

 

Is it possible you could give us the date of this text?

It still confirms the rape claim is a Nazi propoganda invention.

 

"Kill" published in 1942 — when German troops were deeply within Soviet territory — became a widely publicized example of this (state propaganda)campaign, along with the poem "Kill him!" by Simonov"

I don't know what "rape claim" your referring to, could you elaborate?

It would appear to me that Soviet propagandists were given a wide degree of latitude to inspire the people to resist, the result of such a campaign was a hatred with such momentum and inertia that what the Red Army did when it entered foreign territory (or even recaptured their own) was a logical byproduct.

 

Beevor went through it all back in 2002.

'They raped every German female from eight to 80' | Books | The Guardian

And not just German...

"The novelist Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent attached to the invading Red Army, soon discovered that rape victims were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for slave labour. "Liberated Soviet girls quite often complain that our soldiers rape them," he noted. "One girl said to me in tears: 'He was an old man, older than my father'."

 

Lest we forget the Pacific theater, the Japanese were notorious for this crime. This has been a weapon of war since time began I believe. We like to hope that we (modern men) would have put such inhumane and terrible crimes behind us in our modern age of waging clean wars, but if you look at the wars in the former Yugoslav areas it continued to be used as a terror weapon.
I'm sure there were actions like this in every army involved in WWII, that it happened en masse is really horrifying. Many of those individuals who took part in this sort of crime really did have a lot of cultural or propoganda indoctrination of "others are less human than ourselves".
When you look at those who devalue human life and rate any race in catagories on a level of, or just above other animals, bad things happen and are committed with little after thought or conviction of conscience.

 

This isn’t Nazi propaganda;

Already, the civilian population was bearing the brunt of the Red Army's revenge. Though the first wave of Soviet troops was generally considered to be disciplined, it was the second that indulged in orgies of rape and violence, fueled by large stocks of alcohol found in the city.

Based on contemporary hospital reports and on surging abortion rates in the following months, it is estimated that up to two million German women were raped during the last six months of World War Two, around 100,000 of them in Berlin. One woman remembered hiding in the loft of her apartment block, ready to jump out of the window if she was detected, whilst her best friend was being gang raped by Soviet soldiers in the apartment below.

The authorities in Moscow traditionally deny German allegations of mass rape at the end of the war. But during his research, Beevor discovered internal Red Army documents that prove that the Soviet High Command was well aware that some of their soldiers were running out of control. Even more shocking is Beevor's discovery in the Red Army files that Red Army troops also raped Russian women after their release from Nazi slave labour camps in Germany.

Goto:

BBC - History - World Wars: The Battle for Berlin in World War Two

But some Soviet soldiers saw it as time to pay back what the Germans had done to Soviet citizens with destruction, looting and rape. Historians estimate that at least 2 million German women were raped at the end of World War II. That figure is based on German hospital and abortion clinic records.

Many women, like Schumacher, were raped multiple times. Courts-martial and other records show that there were several hundred documented rapes by U.S. and French soldiers in 1945, but the vast majority of the rapes were carried out by Soviet soldiers in the eastern part of Germany.

Dr. Phillip Kuwert, a senior physician at the University of Greifswald's department of psychotherapy and psychiatry, estimates that about 200,000 children were conceived by native German women raped by Russian soldiers.

Goto:

Silence Broken On Red Army Rapes In Germany : NPR

Apparently those 200,000 females were constrained by either religion or shame from seeking abortions.

 

Beevor ESTIMATED it at 2 million. This is the full quote:

Based on contemporary hospital reports and on surging abortion rates in the following months, it is estimated that up to two million German women were raped during the last six months of World War Two, around 100,000 of them in Berlin



What is more as he does not read Russian I would be interested in any 'documents' he says he found. Where can we see a link or archive reference?

To recap the claim that Russian Journalists encouraged their soldiers to rape in Germany is bogus becuase the actual article was written when the German were deep inside Russia and thus IT HAD NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH BERLIN.

 

His Russian researcher does-
http://www.antonybeevor.com/biography/biography.htm
Russian researchttp://www.antonybeevor.com/biography/biography.htmh assistanHis Russian research assistant, Dr Lyuba Vinogradova, and he have edited and translated the war time papers of the novelist Vasily Grossman, published in September 2005 as A Writer at War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945. t, Dr Lyuba Vinogradova, and he have edited and translated the war time papers of the novelist Vasily Grossman, published in September 2005 as A Writer at War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945.