Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought-provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

WW2 category: Red Army  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Battle of Moscow', 'Latvia Divided', 'Battle of Stalingrad', 'Kursk: Biggest Tank Battle', 'WW2 Tanks'.

Exhibition about the American who fought for Soviet Red Army in World War II     rian.ru :: 2009-11-13
An exhibition about the only man known to have fought for both the U.S. and Soviet armies during World War II will open on Feb 18 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Joe Beyrle was captured by Nazi forces after parachuting into Normandy in June 1944. He attempted to escape two times, but only his third effort was a success and he made contact with a Russian tank division. In spite of only knowing only two words of Russian ("Amerikanskii tovarishch" -"American comrade"), he became a member of the unit, participating in a number of battles. After being wounded in a battle, he met Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who gave him a letter of transit to the American embassy in Moscow.    

70th anniversary of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, which made Georgy Zhukov famous, remembered     russiatoday.com :: 2009-08-26
Russia and Mongolia are marking the 70th anniversary of the battle of Khalkhin-Gol, when the Soviet Union and Mongolia defeated Japanese forces, preventing Japan from possible invasion of Russia's Far East. The battle took place on the Mongolian border in 1939, just weeks before Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht overran Poland. Because of the Khalkhin-Gol battle, World War II began 2 years earlier for some Red Army soldiers. "It was a horrible battle on such a small plot of land... It was impossible to see the ground because of the smoke and explosions," recalled Red Army veteran Nikolay Ganin. Marshal Georgy Zhukov became a famous military leader because of the battle.    

Metal detectors and shovels - Russia still searching for World War II dead     afp :: 2009-05-08
Every spring searchers fan out across Russia's swamps and forests armed with metal detectors and shovels, searching for bones. Most are are just teenagers, their nails caked in the dirt of this valley near Moscow, where the Red Army's 32nd Rifle Division held Adolf Hitler's Nazi troops for 15 days in 1941. Their friends prepare to celebrate the May 9 Victory Day holiday by watching the military parade on Red Square, but the volunteers say the memory of the war is stronger here. 5 hours of seeking with metal detectors revealed an exploded helmet, a gas mask, bullets, leg bones, shrapnel, a pair of boots riddled with more bones and one mossy shoe.    

Soviet sources: The Red Army raped every German female from 8 to 80     guardian.co.uk :: 2009-01-31
"Red Army soldiers don't believe in 'individual liaisons' with German women. 9, 10, 12 men at a time - they rape them on a collective basis," wrote Zakhar Agranenko, an officer of marine infantry, in his journal in East Prussia. The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in 1945 were a mix of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges next to horse-drawn carts. Soviet war correspondent Natalya Gesse saw the Red Army in action in 1945: "The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from 8 to 80. It was an army of rapists."    

Germany looks to Russia for clues on WWII massacre in Treuenbrietzen by Red Army     afp :: 2008-12-26
For decades the inhabitants of Treuenbrietzen kept quiet about a WW2 massacre. And many still have no wish to face the past. The raping and killing of 1,000 German civilians took place after Soviet Red Army soldiers occupied the town, 40km from Berlin, in April 1945, in the last days of the war. Under East German communist rule, it would not have been wise to refer to the matter. A request for information was sent on to Russian authorities. "It's our last chance to find those responsible. We've already gone through all the relevant German documents. Maybe something can be found in Russian military archives... orders, or reports, or photos," said Christoph Lange.    

Stalin's army of rapists: The brutal Red Army war crime that everybody wanted to forget     dailymail.co.uk :: 2008-10-27
In "World War Two: Behind Closed Doors" Laurence Rees remarks that although rape was officially a crime in the Red Army, Stalin excused it as a reward: "people should understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through... death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle". It was not helping that Lavrenti Beria - chief of NKVD, which handled reports of Red Army soldiers raping women - was a serial rapist who abused hundreds of school-aged girls in his dacha. In one case, a Berlin lawyer, who had protected his Jewish wife during the Nazi-era, was shot trying to protect her from rape by the Red Army. As he lay dying, he saw his wife being gang-raped.    

A Woman in Berlin: WWII movie opens old wounds over Red Army rapes     timesonline.co.uk :: 2008-10-21
The phrase "Komm Frau!" sends chills down the spines of elderly Germans. It was the command of Russian soldiers as they pillaged German cities, searching for women to rape. The postwar horror is about to be let out in a new film, A Woman in Berlin, likely to stir bitterness against the Russians. The film is based on a diary of Marta Hillers, who began to write it in a cellar on April 20, 1945. Within days of the Soviet occupation she had been raped several times by Red Army soldiers. When the German soldiers returned from the lost war, they did not want to know about the raping of their wives, daughters and mothers - or about the Russenbabies.     [Nazi Movies & Nazi Videos]

Russians in South Florida recall the cost of World War II victory     sun-sentinel :: 2008-05-12
Yevgenia Ryabaya did hundreds of amputations under heavy fire and bombardment-operations that still give her nightmares. Lt. Alexander Groch was shot 6 times in his head, chest and legs but never left the front to go home. And infantryman Mikhail Fishman, still alive with his dead comrades all around him, attempted to kill himself before being taken POW by the Germans. "But the gun was wet - I was all night under rain in a pile of bodies - so I was sent off to a labor camp." These were just some of the World War II stories told by the dozens of surviving veterans now living in South Florida.     [Red Army]

Red Army Master Sergeant Peter Gitelman took part in the Battle of Stalingrad     montrealgazette :: 2008-03-30
Peter Gitelman was a Red Army Master Sergeant who participated in the Battle of Stalingrad and who was decorated for bravery following the bloody Russian offensive against the Germans that took over one million lives during the winter of 1942-1943. He came to Canada as a refugee in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. When Stalingrad was attacked, Gitelman was sent to work in military field hospital #833. "He would always say that Stalingrad was a good experience for him because it was there where he met his wife, Elena Gritsenko, who was a nurse working in the same field hospital."     [Battle of Stalingrad 1942, 1943]

Mikhail Minin, who raised the USSR flag over Reichstag in 1945, died     pravda :: 2008-01-12
World War II veteran Mikhail Minin, a Hero of the Soviet Union, who set up the USSR flag, the banner of Victory, over Nazi Germany's Reichstag in May of 1945, died. He took part in battles to free Leningrad from blockade and made his way across the fronts to Berlin. When the Soviet army was assaulting Reichstag on April 30, 1945 Minin broke into the building and became the first man to raise the Red Banner on its tower. However, the famous picture does not show Minin but a Georgian soldier, because it was not taken at the actual event. Minin was recognized for his effort, but not rewarded, as there were no photos taken when the flag was put on the roof on 10 p.m.     [Red Army]

Lost Red Army Children - "being made pregnant by force"     spiegel :: 2007-08-17
More than 60 years after the end of World War II, the children of Red Army soldiers, "Russian children," born in eastern Germany during the Soviet occupation are now searching for their fathers. 61yo Jan Gregor can still remember "every word my mother said on the day she decided to tell me the truth." He knew what she meant when she talked about "being made pregnant by force" - raped by 4 Red Army soldiers during the final days of WWII. For decades this was a taboo subject in eastern Germany; initially the Soviet Occupation Zone. For 40 years in the GDR posters sang the praises of the "Soviet-German Friendship" and rape did not fit the image of the heroic Soviet army.    

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War     timesonline :: 2007-07-22
Between late 1941 and 1944 D-Day, the British saw how little their own armies were doing to defeat Nazism. They admired Russian heroism. But British might have been less impressed had they known that Stalin's forces were impelled not only by love for Mother Russia, but also by the knowledge that if they flinched they would be shot by their own leaders, as were at least 200,000 Red Army soldiers. Westerners have wasted lot of sympathy on the fate of the Cossacks whom Britain shipped back to their deaths at Stalin's hands in 1945, after they had fought for Adolf Hitler. What about all the Russian POWs who had fought for the allied cause - also sent home to die?     [Operation Barbarossa - WWII Eastern Front]

800 Days on the Eastern Front - A Red Army Memoir of World War II     wsj :: 2007-06-30
It is June 1944, and the Red Army is pressing its offensive against the Wehrmacht in Belarus. In the late afternoon of June 29, a Russian assault battalion reaches the outskirts of Bobruisk, where thousands of German defenders have been caught in a Red Army noose. The only escape route for the Germans is across a large field of rye overlooked by Soviet machine-gun emplacements. One such emplacement is manned by Nikolai Litvin, a Russian soldier who recounts the experience in "800 Days on the Eastern Front." His memoir is a vivid reminder, for those transfixed by D-Day, of the brutal fighting that was taking place on the other side of Europe.    

Suppressed Red Army soldiers are now telling their WW2 stories     guardonline :: 2007-05-09
Russian soldiers whose voices were suppressed for half a century are now telling their stories, with the help of Stuart Britton, who is translating their wartime memoirs. "...to bring to light the voices of the average Russian soldier, the private in the trenches. For decades German sources dominated our view of the Eastern Front." "800 Days on the Eastern Front: A Russian Soldier Remembers World War II" tells of war as Nikolai Litvin saw it on the front lines in the tank battles at Kursk. His roles, ranging from antitank gunner at Kursk to heavy machine gunner in a penal battalion to staff driver for the 352nd Rifle Division, offer unique perspectives on the Red Army.     [Red Army]

Russia's conquest overshadows heroic sacrifices of the Soviet Army     speroforum :: 2007-05-09
Russia marks Victory Day on May 9, the day Russians remember as the end of WWII and victory over Third Reich. Boris Ochkin fingers his long line of medals and remembers the day when the Soviet Army claimed victory in Berlin. "We celebrated with gun shots and with anything else we could lay our hands on. With submachine guns, with everything we could find. And of course we drank to victory." He remembers how the Soviet troops fought against German battle tanks with only small arms and grenades. Mikhail Borisov says about Estonia: "How were we occupiers when we were met with flowers? I was on horseback and an old man came up to me and kissed my boots."    

Red Army lost almost nine million in World War II     interfax :: 2007-05-05
The Soviet Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945, lost a total of 8.6 million servicemen "irretrievably," said Major General Alexander Kirilin, head of the Military and Memorial Center of the Russian Armed Forces. "This is official data obtained by employees of a specially established group. The group has been active for 15 years." Losses, including wounded soldiers dismissed from the army, stood at some 11 million, disabled veterans are not categorized as "irretrievable" losses for the country.    

Gabriel Temkin was a Red Army Soldier in World War II     heraldtribune :: 2006-07-19
Gabriel Temkin wrote a book, "My Just War: The Memoir of a Jewish Red Army Soldier in World War II", about his experiences helping the Soviet Army defeat Adolf Hitler. He fled behind Soviet lines in 1939 following Hitler's invasion of Poland. In 1941, he was called into military service and spent a year in a labor battalion digging combat trenches and anti-tank ditches before being captured. He later escaped during a march. With the help of a Soviet soldier, he took on a new identity and name Ivan Denin. After a second capture and escape he was assigned to a rifle regiment and helped Soviet troops force the Nazis to retreat. Temkin received three medals of valor.    

WW2 Red Army: Female T-34 tank driver in the battle     mosnews :: 2006-06-17
When the war began Alexandra Rashchupkina volunteered, but she was rejected. She had her hair cropped, put on man's uniform and applied again - passing. After driving course she was moved to Stalingrad where she learned to drive a tank. She survived her first air raid: "Instead of being happy to be alive I was worrying about my new uniform, all turned to rags," she smiles. No one in her regiment ever suspected a thing: "You don't get undressed often on the frontline." In Feb 1945 her secret was revealed. The Soviet tanks were ambushed by Nazi troops. Her tank caught fire, she wounded and a serviceman saved her from the burning machine.     [Panzers & Armored Divisions & Tank War]

Horrors of Russian Front - World War II as Red Army soldiers     startribune :: 2006-05-29
Memorial Day is a somber time for a group of Minnesotans who saw WWII as Red Army soldiers. They can't help but think about Red Army soldiers who weren't lucky enough to avoid the staggering death tolls of the Eastern Front. Now US citizens, Geykhman and Grichener don't diminish the sacrifices of the 300,000 American troops killed. But for every US soldier killed more than 30 Russians died. Grichener was forced into the Red army as a teenager. "Those giving the orders said it wasn't our job to help, go ahead and fight. An infantry soldier was worth nothing, not a penny. Stalin treated us like slabs of meat and pushed us in front of the enemy until they ran out of lead."     [Red Army]

A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945     b-s :: 2006-05-27
Grossman chronicled the War in a set of Notebooks, which have now been translated. It is a collection of accounts of soldiers' lives, written by a man who witnessed at first hand the panic retreat in 1941, the defence of Moscow, the battle of Stalingrad and Kursk, and finally the Russian advance into Third Reich. The Notes are antidote to the censured histories and the decades of propaganda that the Red army was prepared for the nazi invasion. "2 May 1945: The day of Berlin's capitulation. A monstrous concentration of impressions. Fires, smoke... Corpses squashed by tanks. Almost all of them are clutching grenades and sub-machine guns in their hands..."     [Reporters and Photographers]

Myths and Realities of the Great Patriotic War and Red Army     sptimes :: 2006-05-12
Before rallying to defeat Hitler's Wehrmacht in Berlin, Red Army suffered numerous devastating setbacks. It nearly collapsed within first weeks of the June 1941 invasion. By October, Red Army defeats caused Third Reich to control more than 90 million soviet citizens. Even during the victorious battle at Kursk, "defections increased from 2,555 in June to 6,574 in July." Tank fright and self-inflicted wounds were two forms of cowardice. Ivan loved to drink samogon (moonshine), which also served as currency. Rape was one form of "People's justice" that his political officers exhorted Ivan to exact as he advanced into Germany.     [Red Army]

Red Army Veteran Recalls Agony and Ecstasy of War     sptimes :: 2006-05-12
On July 1, 13 days after war had begun, came Altshuller's first battle. The regiment was located south of Leningrad near Pskov and the men were begging to be sent to a frontline. "Suddenly a shout rang out. Tanks, German! On the left! Confusion set in. The enemy onslaught was so strong that our regiment was falling back. It was impossible to hold out." That evening he arrived at Luga: it was chaos, crying, and terror. In 1943 Volkhov front offensive began, his regiment had to cross Lake Ilmen. They used horse-drawn vehicles pulled by small Mongolian horses. The Germans fired at us and we had losses, but many of our soldiers managed to get by.    

Rokossovski's hedgehogs: Stopping advancing German panzers     guardian :: 2006-04-29
Moscow 1941: The Russian capital in its darkest hour. At the roadside from the airport is a unique set of metal "hedgehogs", towering obstructions embedded in the ground in summer 1941. Their purpose was to stop the advancing German tanks. Operation Barbarossa had been launched on June 22. Moscow quickly came within the Wehrmacht's artillery range. The inhabitants trembled with fear, and hundreds of thousands tried to flee. They had been told that if any state invaded the USSR the Red Army would counterattack and take the conflict back on to enemy soil. Instead the Third Reich won a crushing series of victories. The overthrow of Stalin seemed imminent.     [Battle of Moscow 1941]

Chechen Heroes of the Great Patriotic War     chechensociety :: 2006-04-15
Almost 400 Chechens and Ingush took part in the heroic defence of the Brest Fortress. Machine -gunner Khanpasha Huradilov was posthumously awarded the "Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union" having personally destroyed 920 fascists. Khakim Ismailov hoisted the banner above the Reichstag in Berlin. Cavalryman Movlid Visaitov was the first Soviet soldier to meet the American allies on the Elbe. There were around 20,000 - 40,000 Chechen front-line soldiers. However, today almost any Russian resident will tell you that the Chechens were traitors, that they waited for the arrival of the Wehrmacht and even got a white horse ready to present to Hitler.     [Red Army]

61st anniversary of Soviet storm of Konigsberg being marked     itar-tass :: 2006-04-10
Article no longer available from the original source.
Kaliningrad is marking the 61st anniversary of the Soviet storm of Konigsberg. The third Belarussian front led by Soviet Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky defeated a 130,000 fascist force and seized the presumably invincible German fortress Konigsberg on April 9, 1945. Thousands of servicemen, who stormed Konigsberg, settled down in that city, which was transformed into Russia's Kaliningrad.    

Red Army phrasebook hints at plans to fight Hitler on British front     freerepublic :: 2006-03-26
A newly discovered relic of the WWII shows how the Red Army was expected to take a no-nonsense attitude if they ever encountered English speakers. The Russian-English military phrasebook told officers how to interrogate English-speaking soldiers and civilians. But the date of the phrasebook's publication, summer 1940 - a year before the Soviets published their German phrasebook - is seen as highly significant. Some historians believe it adds weight to a controversial theory that Stalin would have sent troops to Britain if the Nazis invaded in order to open up a "Second Front" against Hitler.     [Documents, letters, diaries of World War II]

Stalin's shame wiped WWII's greatest battle from history     theaustralian :: 2006-03-13
Few Westerners have heard of the greatest battle of WWII, fought on a scale never matched in western Europe. The Russians wrote the battle of Moscow out of their history books after their suicidal bravery smashed the myth of German invincibility. More than 7 million combatants took part, compared with the 4 million at Stalingrad and the 2 million at Kursk. The Soviet Union lost 926,000 soldiers killed, more than the British lost in all of WWI. Initially, the blitzkrieg attack left the Russians in disarray. The Red air force lost 1200 aircraft on the first morning. Stalin retreated to his country house for 36 hours until his commanders demanded his return.     [Battle of Moscow 1941]

Ivan's War - Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945     timesdispatch :: 2006-02-27
The observations, words, thoughts and feelings of Russian soldiers were lost amid the patriotic zeal of the Cold War. The cause of the Russian soldier was never popular in the West. Turns out, it wasn't popular in Russia, either. Joseph Stalin's idea of the perfect war hero was Joseph Stalin. In the recently unsealed documents, Catherine Merridale found a tale of absurdity. In interviews with veterans, she found a reluctance, even today, to speak against the state. It's not an American-style history. There is no Band of Brothers, no Private Ryan worth saving. The romance of the battlefield didn't exist in Russia.     [Red Army]

What Russia's soldiers suffered     csmonitor :: 2006-02-15
Fresh research shapes a fascinating yet also devastating portrait of Russian infantrymen in World War II. Josef Stalin and his successors made sure the story of Soviet history in the war was crafted and protected in a way that served their political purposes. Great monuments were built, but documents were sealed. Pensioned soldiers and their families were honored as "heroes," but they were kept from telling of experiences that might have deviated from the official line - especially anything traumatic. Historians, Russian and foreign, were prevented from working independently.    

Woman who executed 1,500 people in WWII     pravda :: 2005-12-12
Many years after WWII, the Soviet Interior Ministry and the KGB were still disclosing war crimes and exposed those who assisted the Fascist army. In 1978, the KGB found traces of a Soviet woman who executed partisans and their families by shooting by order of Fascist commanders. Within 1941-1943, Antonina Makarova worked as a machine gunner on the occupied Soviet territory. At that time she was just 20, too young and wishing to stay alive, so she chose to work for Nazis and carried out death sentences, instead of dying when defending the motherland from enemies.    

The Red Army routed the million-strong Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army     RIA Novosti :: 2005-07-27
The Red Army routed the million-strong Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army, the biggest enemy group in Asia and the Pacific, which had 1,155 tanks, 5,360 artillery weapons and 1,800 war planes. The Japanese had set up long-term, multi-level concrete fortifications linked by underground tunnels. The Manchurian strategic offensive conducted by the Soviet troops in the Far East has gone down as one of the brightest pages of WWII war history. The Red Army killed about 84,000 officers and men, took prisoner about 700,000, and lost less than 1% of its troops involved. Neither the Wehrmacht, nor the Anglo-American allies scored such a success in any operation during WWII.    

Fuel of Great Patriotic War - Oil: Blood of War     neftevedomosti :: 2005-05-09
WWII was also known for acute shortage of energy carriers. While Wehrmacht suffered from deficit of fuel, the Red Army had problems with petroleum, oil and lubricants' (POL) transportation, storage and shipment security. After the Great Patriotic War had begun, it became obvious as far back as summer 1941 that despite huge fuel reserves, the problem to bring them to the battlefield them persisted. CSS units were outfitted poorly, having few storage facilities, filling transports and pumps.     [WWII Economy, finance & production]

When Troops Were Advancing To The Elbe     RIA Novosti :: 2005-04-27
In 1945, Albert Kotzebue was a lieutenant with the 273rd regiment of the 69th infantry division of the 1st US Army. The American and Russian armies met just 75 miles south of Berlin, dividing Germany into two parts and closing the final gap between the Eastern and Western fronts. Kotzebue shared the overwhelming joy. He, then a lieutenant, was in command of the U.S. patrolmen who were the first to shake Russian soldiers' hands on the Elbe. Were his patrolmen really the first to meet with Russians on the Elbe? We cannot be certain, just as we do not know who was the first to hoist the Russian flag on the Reichstag.     [Red Army]

Joseph Beyrle: The Only U.S. Soldier To Fight For Soviets     RIA Novosti :: 2005-03-23
Joseph Beyrle is believed to be the only soldier to have fought for both the United States and the former Soviet Union during WWII. Mr. Beyrle was among the first paratroopers to land in Normandy, as part of the 101st Airborne Division's 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The Germans captured him shortly after he landed. He escaped from a POW camp in Poland and joined a Soviet tank unit headed for Berlin. He fought alongside the Soviets for three weeks or so, and they called him "Joe." He got wounded in the leg along the way, and had to be hospitalized. While he was staying in the hospital, Marshal Georgy Zhukov came over for a visit.    

Saving Private Ivan - Red army's decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany     guardian :: 2004-06-12
Operation Bagration began when a Soviet guerrilla army emerged from the forests of Belorussia to launch a surprise attack on the Wehrmacht's rear. The partisan brigades planted 40,000 demolition charges, which devastated the rail lines. 3 days later, on June 22 1944, Marshal Zhukov started the main assault on German front lines. The screams of the Katyusha rockets were followed by the roar of 4,000 tanks and 1.6 million Soviet soldiers. This "great military earthquake" stopped near Warsaw as Hitler rushed elite reserves from western Europe to stem the Red Army. As a result, US and UK troops fighting in Normandy would not have to face the best Panzer divisions.    

Soviet Soldier Of German Refugee Family Recollects WWII     RIA Novosti :: 2004-04-18
Ethnic Germans in Russia could not do much to fight nazism as the Soviet regime was persecuting them, cruelly and unjustly. German colonists' autonomous republic on the Volga was eliminated and 440,000 were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. All 33,500 ethnic German soldiers were demobilized from the Soviet Army. A mere hundred-refugees from nazi Germany-were allowed to serve in the Soviet Army. Stefan Doernberg was one of them. Stefan volunteered for the front in June 1941, within days after nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. He was with General Chuikov's valiant army, which was defending Stalingrad.    

From the jaws of defeat - Russia's War     haaretzdaily :: 2004-02-28
The war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the early 1940s was larger in scale and costlier than any other war in human history. Out of nearly 35 million men and women who served in the Red Army, 84% were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. All in all some 25 million Soviet soldiers were killed (as against 388,000 British soldiers and civilians and half-a-million American soldiers). Other figures that he presents - for example, the loss of 70,000 villages, 1,700 cities, 23,000 factories and one-third of the Soviet Union's wealth, and the total of 25 million persons left homeless - reflect the overall suffering that was Russia's lot during the war.     [Strategy & Tactics - WW2 warfare]

The man who really beat Hitler - Marshal Georgi Zhukov     bbc :: 2003-05-09
Marshal Georgi Zhukov was the commander of the Red Army which came back from near defeat at Stalingrad and pushed the Wehrmacht back to Berlin, where the Nazi regime collapsed. He became a hero in the Soviet Union but Stalin, and later Khrushchev, were so jealous of his stature they forced him into taking a series of dead-end jobs and tried to airbrush him out of the history books. By the time of his death in 1974 Marshal Zhukov had been rehabilitated by the Soviets. His leadership during the "Great Patriotic War" is still studied at West Point and Sandhurst, as well as the great Russian military academies.     [Generals of World War Two Commanders]

Red Army troops raped even Russian women as they freed them from camps     telegraph.co.uk :: 2002-01-24
The Red Army's orgy of rape in the dying days of Nazi Germany was conducted on a much greater scale than previously suspected, according to the military historian Anthony Beevor. Beevor, the author of the best-selling Stalingrad, says advancing Soviet troops raped large numbers of Russian and Polish women held in concentration camps, as well as millions of Germans. The extent of the Red Army's indiscipline and depravity emerged as the author studied Soviet archives. Beevor - who served in the 11th Hussars elite cavalry regiment - says details of the Soviet soldiers' behaviour have forced him to revise his view of human nature.     [Allied atrocities]

See also:
'Battle of Moscow'
'Latvia Divided'
'Battle of Stalingrad'
'Kursk: Biggest Tank Battle'
'WW2 Tanks'.

Although the articles linked from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-1945 and World War II in the News are reviewed and specially selected, they do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, who is not responsible for the content of any external sites. This service is © Joni Nuutinen 2005-2009. All rights reserved.