War crimes against Germans on the Eastern Front

During the end of World War II, many Germans were subject to brutality at the hands of the peoples who they had brutally occupied. There was frequent looting and violence against Germans, including thousands of German men killed and hundreds of thousands of German women were subjected to sporadic and in some cases mass rape by the conquering Red Army and by local populations. Rapes, in addition to other forms of violence, took place in Eastern Germany, Berlin, and German populated areas of Czechoslovakia. A maximum estimate of approximately 1.5 million German women are believed to have been raped, with around 1,000,000 women raped in Berlin and 10.4 million in eastern Germany. A total of 500,000 Germans died as the result of conditions or atrocities at the end of the war.

Eastern Germany
Mass rapes were especially common and brutal in eastern Germany, east Prussia, and the regions of Poland that were annexed by the Germans were especially brutal. This was the location where the Red Army first made contact with the Germans on their own territory, and where they initially began their revenge. There were hundreds of thousands of Germans raped in this region as the Red Army made its advance. There was little that could be done to avoid rape in the these areas, and attempts by Germans to avoid it were ineffective. The town of Nemmersdorf was the first German town to be taken by the Red Army, and was arguably the site of the worst brutality of the Soviet invasion of Germany. The events at Nemmersdorf were also greatly exaggerated beyond any factual evidence by the Nazis, who turned it into a propaganda tool. By some accounts, there were far fewer rapes and murders in the town then is often believed, which is in contrast to the claims by the Nazis of women raped, disemboweled, and nailed to doors.

Berlin
The Soviet occupation of Berlin was far less brutal then the occupation of the eastern territories earlier in the war. This was partially due to Soviet efforts to prevent violence against Germans. The Soviet occupiers also dedicated themselves to feeding the population of Berlin, rather than starving them as the Germans had done in Leningrad, and which Nazi propaganda had convinced them would happen. It was also common for German women to form relationships with Red Army soldiers and officers, some of which resulted in the officers deserting after the occupation rather than leave their "occupation wives" to return to the Soviet Union.

Sudetenland and regions turned over to Poland
In eastern Germany, western Poland, and Czechoslovakia, Germans were deported into the post World War II borders of Germany by the orders of the Allies. The deportations were understandably brutal as the result of war crimes committed under the German occupation. Germans were not the only people who were settled. Many Poles were also resettled from the east into the west, to replace the Germans who had been resettled. The purpose of this forced resettlement of Germans was to prevent future development of German nationalism, Manifest Destiny mentality to conquer eastern Europe and Asia, and attempts to conquer territories east of Germany in order to unite Germans living outside of Germany. The goal of uniting all Germans outside of Germany had been a major reason why the Nazis had invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia. It was also the reason why the Nazis forcibly resettled Poles and Czechs and gave their land to German settlers from within Germany. The goal of this resettlement was therefore an attempt by the Allies to prevent the Holocaust and the brutality and crimes of the Nazi regime from happening again.

Assistance by the Nazis to the mass murder and rape of Germans
The Nazis, in a final act of betrayal, were responsible for intentionally contributing to the suffering of Germans and the extent of mass murder and rape. The most significant contributions by the Nazis to German suffering were the failure to evacuate German civilians and forcing male civilians into the Volksturm to uselessly fight the Red Army. The Nazi leaders were also extremely uncaring of the fact that men were killed and German women were raped. Nazi leaders viewed mass rape and murder as punishment for losing the war. They also considered issuing evacuation orders or any attempt to evacuate to be "defeatist" and therefore bad for moral because they were still under the delusion that they could win, or at least wanted the civilians to think that so that they would go more willingly into Hitler's ordered death of Germany. Another reason why the Nazis contributed the German suffering at the hands of the Red Army, which had suffered severely at the hands of Germans, was because they took full advantage of the propaganda value that mass rapes of German women by Soviet soldiers had on the civilian population, in order to convince them to continue fighting the Red Army. To the Nazis, the suffering of German civilians was not a concern, and maintaining discipline and the illusion that they could still win the war was far more important. Any mass murders, looting, or rape was beneficial to the Nazis for its propaganda value. Nazi leaders often failed to issue evacuation orders while there was still time to avoid being overrun by the Red Army, if they issued orders at all. In one example, Gauleiter Erich Koch of East Prussia issued strict orders to against allowing evacuation, with the support of Adolf Hitler, because any attempt at evacuation would send "defeatist" signals to the rest of the Reich. While Gauleiter Koch refused to allow evacuation and encouraged all Germans to fight to the death, he secretly began evacuating westward with his Mercedes and his family. German civilians who evacuated were also vulnerable to Nazi reprisals for their "defeatist" actions, particularly men, who could be viewed as deserters. The Nazi Feldgendarmerie often raided refugee columns looking for men to force into the Volksturm.

Nazi exaggeration and exploitation during the war
After the Soviet invasion of Nemmersdorf, the Nazi propaganda ministry began an intense propaganda campaign to greatly exaggerate the extent of and frequency of Soviet atrocities in order to convince Germans to continue fighting. One such tactic involved fabricating a Soviet newspaper article and attributing it to Ilya Ehrenburg. The article encouraged Red Army soldiers to "break the arrogent racial pride of these German women" and to "take them as their lawful booty." The passage is still occasionally misattributed to him by mainstream historians and constantly by pro Nazi pseudohistorians.

Suicide
There were many Germans, both men and women, who committed suicide and murdered their children in advance of the Red Army occupation and after being overrun.

Post war
One of the consequences of the mass rapes committed during Soviet occupation of Germany and the flight from Poland and Czechoslovakia was a strong unwillingness of Germans to see themselves as perpetrators and willing participants of genocide, and attempts to portray themselves as "innocent victims" rather than as participants in a murderous regime.

Revisionism
Many Neo Nazi and other revisionist historians use the rape of Germans by Soviet soldiers and Eastern Europeans for a variety of claims that are central to their revisionism. They attempt to portray the Germans as victims of World War II, and in some cases attempt to make moral equivalency arguments that try to equate the rape of hundreds of thousands of German women with the murder over 12 million Jews, homosexuals, and Slavs. In either case, the pro Nazi revisionists attempt to draw attention away from the suffering of Holocaust victims toward German suffering. Nazi revisionist claims often exaggerate the number of victims, and give only one sided accounts by cherry picking incidents of rape by Red Army soldiers, and ignoring incidents where soldiers of the Red Army behaved properly and even in some cases viewed as liberators.

Many pro Nazi extremists attempt to claim that Germans were unique victims at the end of the war. In reality, many other groups, including Poles, were subject to mass deportations and other war crimes by the Allies.