Spoils of war

That women can be regarded as spoils of war is not a new thing. When I came across the concept in my early teens I could not understand why, after the victory at Troy, Agamemnon brought Cassandra, quite openly, to his Royal palace in Argos. According to my understanding at the time, men were supposed to keep their wives and mistresses apart. Then it was explained to me that Agamemnon got Priam’s daughter as part of the post-war settlement and Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, should have accepted that. Well, she did not and that led to all kind of deceit and murder and eventually to her own demise.

The above reference to a Greek tragedy intends only to show that the idea of women as spoils of war is not a 20th-century invention. History is full of them, although very few of these women left written testimonies. I know something of the subject because I was in Budapest in January 1945 when the Soviet Army occupied the city. They were supposedly liberating the country. In fact, there was widespread plunder, looting and rape. They did not do it in an organised manner, in contrast to Berlin where rape was institutionalised. In Budapest it was a random, but not infrequent, event, left to the initiative or conscience of the individual soldier.

And there was looting, of course. The Hungarian language was enriched by new words, e.g. zabralni which came from zabirovatj, the Russian word meaning to rob with violence. The combat troops coming first concentrated on watches. The second and third waves were less discriminatory: they took everything: shoes, dresses, coats.

How many women were raped in Budapest nobody knows. Neither the victims nor the perpetrators left detailed accounts. My personal experience was very limited. I witnessed only two unsuccessful attempts. Both took place in a big cellar where we stayed day and night. The first one happened late in the evening of the fourth day of occupation. A Soviet soldier came in and tried to take away a young girl. Another Soviet soldier intervened and promised the girl that he would look after her. The first Soviet soldier left looking for other victims. The second one was still there next morning protecting the girl.

The second attempt I saw took place the following night. My mother and I slept further away in the cellar. I was waken up by a Soviet soldier gesticulating that I should get up and leave. His trousers were halfway down. My mother screamed. I got out of the bed and stood between the soldier and my mother. I just stood there. I was 15 years old. The soldier took his revolver out of the case wanting to show that he could go beyond the stage of peaceful persuasion. The revolver was not pointed at me. I did not think he would shoot me. I did not look in his eyes. We just froze there. Nobody made a move. Then after a couple of minutes the soldier took a step backwards, pulled up his trousers and left. I don’t remember what he did with his revolver.

Raping women was the normal state of affairs when the Soviet Army reached East Prussia in the Second World War. What follows is based on the accounts in Sir Antony Beevor’s book Berlin The Downfall: 1945 . He defines four phases of rape in Germany. In the first phase, when East Prussia was occupied, rape was violent and sadistic, i.e. as if the rapists were there to avenge on women what the SS and the Wehrmacht had done in Russia. The second phase was rape without violence, provided the woman did not resist.

The third phase was more of a bargain than a rape. Starving women were willing to prostitute themselves in exchange for food. The fourth phase was when Soviet officers set up households with “occupation wives”. That provided protection for women against rapists outside. In general, the ordinary Soviet conscripts did not care where the women came from. They were happy to rape wives of Communists, who had been Party members for decades, concentration camp survivors or Soviet girls who had been brought to Germany as slave labourers and liberated by the Red Army. One of the worst cases Beevor quotes is what happened in Haus Dahlem, a maternity clinic and orphanage: “Nuns, young girls, old women, pregnant women and mothers who had just given birth were all raped without pity.”

To rape and loot, is that the normal practice of Russian armies? It was certainly so in the Second World War. But what did they do before? What happened in previous armed conflicts? I read one account relating the events in Paris in 1814 under Russian occupation. Did they rape and loot to their hearts’ delight? Paris, perhaps the richest city in the world at the time, would have provided plenty of opportunity. No, they behaved in an exemplary fashion, due to a large extent to their commander, Tsar Alexander I, who issued strict orders against rape or pillage and even against requisitioning supplies without paying for them. Apparently, the only permanent mark the occupying Russians left upon the city of Paris had been the bistros (bistro means quick in Russian). They must have demanded prompt service.

So if the Second World War is the worst example of the indiscipline of the Soviet Army, we may ask the question whether it was condoned higher up. On this point we can find relevant information in Milovan Djilas’ s book, Conversations with Stalin . It is a brilliant account of the views of the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Army, gained from first-hand experience by Djilas, who at the time was one of the leaders of the Serbian Communist Party. As such he was invited to the Kremlin a number of times.

On one occasion he complained to Stalin that Soviet soldiers, although crossing only a small part of Serbia, treated the local population as enemies — or worse. Stalin was enraged at this slander of the heroic Red Army. According to Djilas, Stalin’s reply was: “Can’t you understand that a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death might want to have fun with a woman or take some trifle.” 

Estimates vary as to the total number of women raped by Soviet soldiers in Germany towards the end of the Second World War and after. The figure more or less agreed upon is 100,000 rapes in Berlin and about 1.4 million in Germany altogether.

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