Violence Against Women in the Second World War

One of the most tragic and most suppressed pages of the Second World War is the mass violence against civilian women, which began the moment Soviet troops entered German territory in the final months of the war.

Scale and circumstances

When the Red Army entered the territory of the Third Reich, mass violence against civilian women began — from teenagers to elderly women. This phenomenon was systematic in nature, even though it formally contradicted the orders of the command.

There existed a special directive obliging commanders to treat the civilian population, and women in particular, with due care and respect. But this directive did not in fact work. The scale of the violence was so great that no orders could stop it.

Attempts at countering it

The Soviet command did nonetheless make attempts to reduce the scale of the crimes. There were executions and court proceedings against servicemen found guilty of violence. However, these were attempts to reduce the phenomenon, not to eradicate it. The system had an interest in maintaining the image of a “liberator nation,” so incidents were not so much punished as concealed.

Suppression and the opening of the subject

For decades the subject was completely taboo in Soviet and post-Soviet historiography. The first impetus toward addressing it was the publication in the 1980s of the memoirs of a German woman who described her experience. These recollections drew the attention of journalists and researchers.

The real breakthrough came during the so-called Soviet archival revolution — when previously classified documents that confirmed the systematic nature of the violence became available.

Estimates of scale

The British military historian Antony Beevor, author of the books “The Fall of Berlin” and “The Second World War,” cites an estimate of approximately 3.5 million German women who suffered violence at the hands of Soviet servicemen. This figure is debated — some researchers consider it overstated, while others point to the difficulty of an exact count owing to the systematic destruction of documents and the reluctance of victims to testify. But even the most conservative estimates point to a tragedy of vast scale.

This subject remains painful and politically sensitive. Acknowledging the scale of the violence does not diminish the feat of millions of Soviet soldiers, but it does demand an honest look at all sides of the war.