Page 462 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1102 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

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Union because of crimes against humanity - surprisingly at a time when the German
authorities and popular opinion voted for drawing a line under National Socialist crimes.
But however, the intended trial was never set up, but the testimonies containing detailed
reports on atrocities by Soviet soldiers were finally published in a multi-volumed edition.
Through that they were highly influential and are therefor widely used until today.
While proceeding that way the initiators drew (maybe willy-nilly) on traditions of
dealing with the Eastern forces as national-socialist institutions had done already during
the war: Soon after the beginning of “Operation Barbarossa” – as the German war of
annihilation was called in military speak - German military institutions begun to collect
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material that should proof the Soviet Union’s violation of international law. In the be-
ginning mostly reports on tortured and murdered German soldiers were initiated and col-
lected. Its focus changed in the last months of the war. Now, atrocities against German
civilians were of interest, and reports especially on rape were made public by spreading
them through leaflets, newspapers and radio-broadcasts. While the reports collected by
the authorities drew a very differentiated picture of the Red Army’s behavior, the medial
message was clear-cut and constantly in behalf of the “Slavic sub-humans” approaching
and devastating the country, especially its female population. Cynically, its aim was
19
not to warn the German civilians and to initiate their flight: Oftentimes it was only the
German Wehrmacht which was allowed to abandon the Eastern territories and the ordi-
20
nary population had to stay behind.
As already emphasized, German women’s memories adjusted to the discursive ex-
pectations that were given by official institutions to the public and private speaking of
rape: While in the prompt diary notes sexual violence is ‘just’ mentioned as something
that has happened or is just hinted at, women who experienced sexual violence and
testify on that years, sometimes decades after the war, are very precisely. They don’t
spare ugly details and speak frankly of pain, body parts, sometimes even of liquids. The
testimonies seem to be voluntary, given without being asked and told by a first-person-
narrator, who presents oneself as a part of a larger group. Sometimes the women talk
about their feeling of shame that was connected to the experience of sexual violence, but
the voluntary and explicit descriptions contradict these statements. To sum it up, they
present oneselves as helpless victims in midst an inferno.
Nevertheless, the following questions remains How does such adjusting of one’s own
private and individual memories to collective expectations work? How are memories
produced and shaped while telling them?

17 For the use of questionnaires and working groups see the introduction in: Spieler, Vertreibung.
18 See for this the fonds RW 2 – 149 of the Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv in Freiburg/Breisgau.
19 See for such collections of material the fonds RH 2 - 2681, 2682, 2683, 2687 of the Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv
in Freiburg/Breisgau. For immense circulation of these ‘news’ see Anonyma’s diary. Anonyma, Eine Frau in
Berlin. Tagebuchaufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22.Juni 1945 [A woman in Berlin. Diary notes from 20
th
of April till 22 of June 1945], Frankfurt am Main, 2008, 12.
nd
20 Heinrich Schwendemann: Strategie der Selbstvernichtung. Die Wehrmachtsführung im „Endkampf“ um das
„Dritte Reich“ [Strategies of self-destruction. Wehrmacht leadership in „the final battle“ of the „Third Reich“],
in: Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hans-Erich Volkmann (Ed.), Die Wehrmacht. Mythos und Realität [Wehrmacht. Myth
and reality], München 1999, S. 224-244.