Talk:Evacuation of East Prussia

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See previous contibutions to this section under Archive 1: template:unreferenced

[edit] Reliable and reputable sources

Apart from the lack of citing references, I am not altogether sure if all the sources given meet the criteria of reliable and reputable sources. For example the extract by William I. Hitchcock:

  • It has at least one distortion and one factual error of admission in it regarding Dresden. "Dresden. This ancient capital of Saxony, once called the Florence of the Elbe for its magnificent baroque architecture, possessed little heavy industry. Following an assault by some eight hundred RAF bombers and 311 American B-17s, the city was swallowed by fire, and over 50,000 people were incinerated". No it did not possess heavy industry but it did possess light industry which in 1944, the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops which supplied the army with materiel (Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945. By Frederick Taylor, page 169). The number killed is at the high end of the range given by other respectable historians, who have specialised in the attack. If this was a reliable and reputable source one would expect him to note the Allied bombing assessments and to list the range of figures on the death toll which other respectable historians who have specialised in the raids have come up with.
  • "Russian soldiers were urged on by their commanders to behave as brutally as possible." If they had there would not have been a German alive east of the Elbe. The Zhukov quote which follows his assertion does not say what he says it says. As Beevor points out in Berlin the downfall on Page 409 "in Berlin the feelings of the civilian population were very mixed. While embittered by the looting and rape, they were also astonished and grateful for the Red Army's major efforts to feed them".
  • "Some women's bodies were found raped, mutilated, and nailed to barn doors." It may have happened, but this sounds like the crucified Canadian soldier story of World War I. (The crucified Canadian has been studied by several historians and the general conclusion is that it can not be positively verified to credible first hand reports (This is not to say that it did not happen, just that the rumours that it did conveniently dovetailed into Allied propaganda whether the incident was true or not). Niall Ferguson: Pity of War James Hayward:Myths and Legends of the First World War). In the same way if one looks at the Nemmersdorf article it is possible that reports of the atrocity was tainted by Nazi propaganda. Any reputable historian ought to mention this while laying out the known facts [1]

Of the author himself, his biography is available with a review of the book "The Struggle for Europe" from the publisher (Random House) along with some glowing review quotes.[2]. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:47, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

when I first heard this I found it similar to the case of the Canadian soldier in WWI, but this has been actually documents to a much greater extent. I think this has often been unfairly called a hoax because it resembles the WWI case so much.

  • As for Russians being urged on by their commanders,it was not necessarily their commanders that urged them on, but the Russian national radio had a very anti-German announcer (i forget his name now) who very much urged them to rape, pillage and murder Germans. It was most oftenly the commanders who stopped the atrocities after a period of time, but they hardly urged them on.

to quote you: "If they had there would not have been a German alive east of the Elbe." That is an exaggeration, that would of been nigh impossible, the Nazis couldnt kill all the Jews and the plan they had was state controlled, how could the Russkies do any better to a larger population in less time? while the Red army's atrocities where not organized until after the war was over and the remaining Germans in the areas were forced accross the Oder-Neisse line.

  • in his book on Dresden, the number given in that book is "in the high-range" as you say, but still in the commonly accepted range from historians, it is not hundreds of thousands and millions like the Nazis had said.

--Jadger 16:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

William I. Hitchcock is surely a "reliable and reputable" source. He is a well-respected historian, with a PhD from Yale and is a full professor at Temple University. He's also a historian of France, which makes particular pro-German bias not incredibly likely. That doesn't mean he doesn't make mistakes, but he's certainly a valid source to use. john k 02:24, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rape and stuff

See previous contibutions to this section under Archive 1: Rape and stuff

The Vanished Kingdom is a good book, the only person I have heard criticize it is Space Cadet, who can hardly be said to have a clear head on such topics. The Author's POV does not matter, because we are talking about cold, hard facts here, and the numbers presented in his book are commonly accepted and used by other historians on the subject.

I will see about getting a copy of the biography of Erich Hartmann, Blonde Knight of Germany so that I can quote the section that describes the atrocities committed by the Soviets.

--Jadger 20:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Blonde Knight of Germany ? Excuse me, but is this serious ? There really is a book titled like that ?

--Molobo 18:04, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


My original point was question whether Russians and Soviets published anything that denied the scale of the accusations. Of course, it is easy to kick a dead horse now (I mean the collapsed USSR), but the NPOV dictates to search for the opposite position as well. Especially in this case there are evident reasons to believe that for qiute some time these was a good desire to overblow Soviet atrocities.

I was also saying that if Russians don't want to make an effort in this direction, I will not lose my sleep. But as a wikipedian I have to point out an obvious disbalance in the coverage of the issue. That's all. `'mikka (t) 21:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

well no one wonders why there is a disbalance in the coverage, do you really think that Russians or Communists would bring their atrocities to public light willingly?. They use the common political tactic of not commenting and hoping it will go away, and so far it has been fairly effective, as hardly anyone outside of historians or Germans who have encountered the expellees knows about the atrocities.

Your logic is flawed Mikkalai, this can easily be compared to the Katyn massacre, the Russians didnt admit that they had committed the mass murder until 1990, 50 years after the atrocity took place. Most the information on that is still classified, do you really think that Katyn is the only case of secret WWII atrocities not yet officially revealed by the Russian Government?

--Jadger 00:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

You forget that times changed. Russians uncovered so many atrocities in their country about Communist times. They publish books about German women in Gulag, they publish various martyrology lists. For example Memorial Society does this. I agree with the point that since Russians do not rush to disprove this it is an indirect indication of the guilt. BTW if I am not mistaken, Solzhenitsyn did speak something about rapes; he did serve in East Prussia. `'mikka (t) 06:19, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

NPOV doesn't dictate that we "search for the opposite position." It dictates that we represent fairly all positions which actually exist, and give them weight based on how prominent they are, and how accepted by scholars. john k 03:52, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

How we can "represent fairly", if we don't search? I am repeating again: for a long time it has been fashionable to bash Soviet Union and pile dirt onto it (myself including, here, in wikipedia). But the rape thing it is not about the Soviet state. It is a portrayal of Russians as dirty pigs. I don't believe Russians were dirtier pigs than germans. I do believe there were rapes. I don't believe there were "millions" of raped women. I don't believe "the rape of women and girls went unchecked in the ruined city" is the fair and balanced description of what was there. I am aware of court-martials for rape and plundering. I am also aware that marshals and generals, including beloved Russian hero Georgy Zhukov, stole full freight cars of goodies from Germany. But I am repeating, Russians are not in a hurry to write what in their opinion was happening in Konigsberg besides Russian Ivans running around with bare dicks aloft. `'mikka (t) 06:19, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
The rape stuff is pretty well-documented, and is found in general English language textbooks on the subject. The fact that you don't believe that it was as widespread as that is all very well. But you have to cite actual sources that say this. At the moment, you seem to be suggesting that there isn't much work disputing this. Therefore, we can't really include the contrary opinion, as it seems to be an insignificant one. In terms of "searching for the opposite position," perhaps I misunderstood your point. If the opposite position is actually to be found in the scholarship (presumably it would largely be in the Russian-language scholarship), then of course it belongs in the article. But if it doesn't exist, we shouldn't be "searching" for it in dubious places. Or making it up on our own, which would be OR. john k 07:30, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I am speaking about scholarship. Were I of different approach I'd be headlong in revert wars here long time ago. `'mikka (t) 16:31, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

The rape stories are overblown in some part. We have to remember the fact that many of those women simply prostituted themselfs to Soviet soldiers, and in fact I have seen a document by Soviet commander complaining that his soldiers can't performed their duties right in occupied territories, because everywhere they go hordes of German "fraeuleins" harras his soldiers with all kinds of propositions. I shall try to find the quote with reference after the weekend. This will give a broader image of relationship between German women and Soviet soldiers. --Molobo 16:39, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I believe the stance of some editors, intoxicated with Cold War propaganda, borders on Holocaust Denial. There is no lack of revisionists who claim that the Yankees won that war. Leaving the above discussion aside: is there an article in Wikipedia which describes how the "good" Anglo-American guys drove all the female population of Munich into the subway for a night of debauchery, which resulted in an unprecedented baby boom? And remember that neither the Britons nor the Americans didn't have to go through all that the Soviet soldiers had to. And the Germans did not exterminate their wives and children methodically as they did in Russia. They did not burn hundreds of English or U.S. villages with all their inhabitants alive. --Ghirla -трёп- 17:19, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I want to clarify the position of angry Ghirla. He is not going to run and write an article about Yankee rapists. Neither he is going to edit each and every European Russian town/village article to add a phrase "when Germans entered the town the first day they fucked all women, the next day they fucked all 6-year olf boy". In fact and don't remember a single article in wikipedia with such remarks. Whatever the Cold War taught the West, Russians don't have malicious memory. `'mikka (t) 18:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Well correct me if I am wrong, I know Germans mass murdered and exterminated villagers but I don't think they raped usually(portayed quite clearly in the excellent Soviet movie "Come and see" btw), as it was a crime to engage in sex with those German state considered "sub human". --Molobo 18:06, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, it was not crime. Whole bordellos were set of "sub human" slavs. See also The House of Dolls & German Soldier's House. `'mikka (t) 22:04, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I have not read any reports that Soviet soldiers molested 6 year old boys, (Don't know about Germans in Russia). On the contrary many reports tend to stress that the Soviets were often unnecessarily kind to children, while the same reports mention that Soviet solders, usually second and third echelon troops, (the first echelon were too busy winning the war) raped many women many times. The first time I came across this was in a book which was available in English, when for many years it was no longer available in German: Marta Hillers, "A Woman in Berlin: Six Weeks in the Conquered City" Translated by Anthes Bell, ISBN 0805075402. More recently Beevor has researched the phenomenon, and writes about it in "Berlin the downfall 1945". He also published an article in The Guardian on May 1, 2002: 'They raped every German female from eight to 80'. However every major book I have read on the Battle for Berlin mentions the rapes, but usually in passing. For example Earl Ziemke mentions it passing on page 149 of "Battle of Berlin end of the Third Reich": "[By the time the Americans arrived] looting and plundering had subsided to sporadic acts by undisciplined and usually drunken individuals, and rape had become unnecessarily strenuous way of attaining something that in a war torn, almost starving city hundreds of women were willing to provide on professional or semi-professional terms."

Look, let's provide some citations that say that the standard claims of enormous numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers are overstated. Until then, this is all just sounding off. john k 00:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Molobo and Mikka, you have taken this off-topic and are being completely brash and domineering of this topic. This is not about German atrocities in the east, those are well documented and have their own articles. we are talking here about the Soviet atrocities in Prussia, if you want to say that it was retribution for what the Germans did, then say it, it only took me one sentence to say what you said in multiple paragraphs.

What is being attempted by Mikka and Molobo is to divert attention from what the article is about, the rape and murder of the German women and children in German lands taken by Russia. To excuse this event because the Nazis had committed atrocities in Russia is absurd, the German women and children did not deserve what happened to them. it shouldnt be said "well their army did the same in Russia, so its not nearly as important or is somehow excusable". have you ever heard the saying two wrongs don't make a right

so lets get back on topic and talk about the rape and murder of Germans in Prussia. --Jadger 01:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Jadger, you army "did not do the same" in Russia, they did much nastier things, see Khatyn massacre for example. And it was not Russia who opened that can of worms. Please don't expect that Russophobic speculations may whitewash the unspeakable German crimes in Eastern Europe. Take care, Ghirla -трёп- 07:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Jadger, no one here argues that atrocities of the Red Army are inappropriate topic to cover in WP. The issue here is that they have to be covered properly and encyclopedically. That is, sources should be examined and if they talk a complete nonsense, such as 2 mln German women were raped (obviously impossible) or that Gemran women were crucified by the Soviets (literal Crucifixions committed by the Soviets simply makes no sense, yes they could kill, plunder and rape, but, remember, they were atheists), we should be careful to include such info, sourced or not.
There was a tradition of the anti-Soviet bias in the Western literature since the times of the Cold War and we should keep this in mind. Beevor is a serious scholar, but when he writes, he is influenced by what others wrote as well. I must admit, I haven't read his book, but I read several of its reviews and my observation is that the more respectable magazine (where the review is published), the less it discusses the rape part. From this I conclude that his book is much broader than this detail. OTOH, on WP this book is only referred to in connection with the rapes while he probably provides the context of the events and analyses the accounts as "according to....", etc.
Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying that the rapes didn't happen or that they were justified or they were no big deal to whine, etc. Every rape is a crime. All I am saying is that everything should be covered properly, and especially in case of such a delicate subject of the Great Patriotic War, which for the USSR was a catastrophe of the scale you can't even imagine. --Irpen 02:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey everyone! Remember sources? Find some sources that say the commonly cited statistics about the number of rapes is wrong, or else we have nothing to talk about. john k 02:21, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

wait a sec, lets look at ur logic: because they were atheist, they couldn't crucify people. now of course the nation was officially atheist, but people often practised religion in secret, are you telling me not a single Russian soldier said "yes there is a God"? and not only that, the Germans were christians, so being crucified could easily of been thought by an atheist to be an ironic way to die.

and you say:"OTOH, on WP this book is only referred to in connection with the rapes while he probably provides the context of the events and analyses the accounts as "according to....", etc. (I, jagder, added the bold)

dont start puting words in the mouth of an author and start conjecturing on the context.

As for more "respectable" sources, I expect you mean more widely distributed and popular. And as such it is less likely to ruffle feathers by talking about rapes (and lose subscribers and money), then a magazine that has a following of knowledgeable and scholarly people.

Don't get me wrong either, I am not saying the events in Russia should be ignored, I am only saying keep the discussion related to them on their pages, and dont let it spill over to here.

and I would love to here how 2 million women being raped is "impossible" as you claim. Indeed a mathematical equation could easily be created to refute your claim. as all we need is for the female population of the land to be more then 2 million, and it can be done. rape does not only refer to non-consentual sexual intercourse, but many other things. lets assume that it takes on average 30 mins to commit one of these rapes, so in total it would take 100,000 hours to rape all the women. of course it was not a single soldier committing all these rapes, according to Vistula-Oder Offensive, there was 2,203,000 Russian infantry soldiers, not including other types. so if each soldier were to be equal, they each would spend 2.7 minutes raping a woman, and they controlled the area for many months before the end of the war, not that the atrocities ended with Doenitz signing a piece of paper. Of course not every soldier committed a rape, and many soldiers committed more then one rape. As you can see, it was entirely possible.

--Jadger 03:07, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Colleague, buy yourself a calculator. `'mikka (t) 22:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I dont need to buy a calculator, there is one on my computer, where is the error in my calculations? I gave you the numbers to work with, why dont you compute your own figures then

--Jadger 01:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More Rapes...and Stuff

My how I love the double standard in scholarship. Suddenly its the German women flung themselves at the Russian soldiers and on and on. "Hey, its not rape, she asked for it!" That's kind of a joke in the US, but this is just silly. It is a kick in the face to any german who has suffered through the ordeal to see this technically/theoretically, well-if-you-close-your-eyes-and-look-at-it-this-way eye for an eye nonsense filling up Wikipedia. And it is axiomatic that the discussion will always go back to what the SS or Wehrmacht did in Poland or Russia. Why is it that we accept the Germans acting horribly but outright deny or try to pardon the actions of other forces of war? So as to not go on a rant, let me do what I came here to do 1) Good points, Jadger. 2)I certainly could use your help over on the German 4th Panzer Division page in clearing up some issues. Apparently it is not of poor taste to write a narrative about German war crimes in an area less relevant than War Crimes of the Wehrmacht although in a page such as Prussian "Evacuation" (relating directly to Soviet war crimes), it is still politically incorrect for the German civilian to have his turn to speak. --Hohns3 21:46, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Please think about the difference. How "German 4th Panzer Division" is written: (summary) "a german officer shot 6 polish POWs". How it is written about Russians: "they raped two million german frau", "the rape of women and girls went unchecked in the ruined city", and so on. If you don't see the difference, you will have big troubles contributing to wikipedia. `'mikka (t) 22:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
That is a strange assessment for you to make. It appears your concern is numbers. However, I do not understand your logic at all. When you compare a day or two's treatment of POW's by an army division to the consequences of a general campaign of a nation, you are introducing apples against oranges. Actually your summary is just the beginning of what is actually written and it is in the language of a case by case testimonial which has no place on a German 4th Panzer Division wiki. If you would like to discuss that article, we can do so on its respective page. If you are concerned about the "subjective language" in this article, the quote is identified and at the same time he is an expert and legitimate scholar. Compare that to the declarations off of pro-Polish websites completely in Polish. I have no trouble seeing the difference. --Hohns3 23:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

just because a reference/source is POV (which you have not provided any evidence to prove it is) does not qualify it for deletion, look up the wikipedia policy mikka. I'm actually surprised that mikka hasnt tried to use something like the following to discredit a source: "Hitler....was....Jesus....reincarnate"(Page#)

--Jadger 02:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving

Why is material from two days ago archived? john k 02:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I guess it has no issues that require resolving. `'mikka (t) 02:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Huh? How do you know that? john k 04:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I made the archive because "This page is 61 kilobytes long. This may be longer than is preferable; see article size". Rather than copy back text, I chose to put in links to the three sections which had recent edits in them, but if you think that any of these edits should be on this page as well, then you are free to copy them back onto this page. --Philip Baird Shearer 06:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] It was completed according to the decision of the Potsdam conference about the expulsion of Germans from territories outside post-war Germany.

Só the Germans run away because they knew the Potsdam decsions long before the meeting? Xx236 13:20, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

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