The rapists were mainly Red Army soldiers, some of them were from the
Far East and
Central Asian Republics, others were non-soviets European and American soldiers.
[43][44][45][46] However stereotype of the "hordes of Mongolian savages," eager to murder, pillage, destroy and rape, had been propagandated by the
Nazi authorities to mobilize people for the fight against the Soviet offensive.
[45] Even the young German-Jewish fugitive Inge Deutschkron, described her first "Russian" as small, with crooked legs and "a typical mongolian face with almond eyes and high cheekbones". Accounts of rape of German women by the Mongolians were also recorded in the letter. For example, a letter from July 24, 1945 by a German female victim stated was raped by two Mongol soldiers and another women from letter in August 20, 1945 also accused Mongol soldier of rape against German women.
For example, a letter from July 24, 1945 by a German female victim stated:
I hereby certify that at the end of April this year during the Russian march into Berlin I was raped in a loathsome way by two Red Army soldiers of Mongol/Asiatic type.
[47]
A letter from another German female victim in August 20, 1945:
On the way to work on second Easter holiday I was raped by a Mongol..."
Eyewitness testimony from females in the
Battle of Berlin also described Soviet soldiers of Mongolian type:
The next morning, we women proceeded to make ourselves look as unattractive as possible to the Soviets by smearing our faces with coal dust and covering our heads with old rags, our make-up for the Ivan. We huddled together in the central part of the basement, shaking with fear, while some peeked through the low basement windows to see what was happening on the Soviet-controlled street. We felt paralyzed by the sight of these husky Mongolians, looking wild and frightening.....
[48]
For more than a decade the Germans Nazi's anti-Soviet propaganda had created irrational fears and racial stereotypes of Soviet invaders as " Asiatic Russians" not just a fear of
Uzbeks,
Kalmyks, Tadzhiks but of Russians as a mixed of Asian and European stock.
[49] This is despite the Mongols Kalmyks collaborated with the German occupation authorities, though vast majority of Kalmyk male population fought heroically in the ranks of the Soviet Red Army.
[50]
Atina Grossman in her article in "October"
[51]describes how until early 1945, the
abortions in Germany were illegal except for medical and eugenic reasons and so doctors opened up and started performing abortions to rape victims for which only an affidavit was requested from a woman. It was also typical that women specified their reasons for abortions as being mostly socio-economic (inability to raise another child), rather than moral or ethical. Many women stated they were raped but their accounts described the rapist as looking Asian or Mongolian. German women uniformly described the rapists as "of Mongolian or Asiatic type".
[52][45][53]
Despite Nazi propaganda there is some evidence of recorded rapes by Soviet troops of Asian origin. The first Soviet troops to fight in Berlin consisted mostly of Mongolians.
[54] In April 1945, Magda Wieland took shelter in the cellar of her apartment house. She described that the first Soviet soldier to find her was a young 16 year-old Central Asian male, who raped her.
[55] It was reported that a Soviet commander was greatly embarrassed by wholesale rape of German women by ethnic Kazakh soldiers who were by far the worse offenders and were described as being Mongol Hordes.
[56][57] Another recorded case involves German director Schmidt, who burst into Villa Franka, and yelled at Russian commander Isayev "Your soldiers are raping German women!". The raped German victim pointed at a Kazakh soldier being the perpetrator, and was arrested at the spot. The Kazakh soldier in return claimed he wanted revenge against the Germans who killed his two brothers in battle.
[58]
