Crimes Committed by Soviet Soldiers Against German Civilians, 1944-1945: A Historiographical Analysis
Authors
Mikkel Dack
Abstract
During the closing months of the Second World War, as the Red Army advanced on Berlin, a series of violent crimes swept across the Eastern Front. Soviet soldiers brutalized the German civilians they encountered, conducting a vengeful campaign of torture, rape, and murder. Despite the severity of these crimes, the attention that this topic has drawn from the academic community has been minimal. Due to political and social attitudes, including the widely accepted belief that the Germans were the sole perpetrators of war crimes, this imperative topic was relegated to a footnote of scholarly and public interest. The end of the Cold War ushered in a new era of historical analysis, as Soviet and East German archives were opened and scholarly research encouraged. In light of this amendment in attitude, recent historians have undertaken valuable reassessments, developed constructive arguments, and formulated insightful questions, questions which have since dominated this area of study and have initiated further analysis. Such questions include: Why did these crimes occur and why were they of such a brutal nature? How are “Nazi victims” to be perceived? And, how should blame and responsibility for such atrocities be dealt with? Although these questions have helped to advance the study of this once neglected topic there is still much room for scholarly expansion.
Author Biography
Mikkel Dack
W. Mikkel Dack is a graduate student of History at the University of Waterloo. He recently returned to Canada after living abroad in Europe where he attended the Freie Universität Berlin. Mikkel’s research interests lie within the area of modern Europe with a specific focus on the cultural history of the Nazi Germany. He is currently writing his MA thesis on the 1936 Olympic Games, concentrating on the American and Canadian boycott movements and the resulting shift in the western perception of Germany. Mikkel’s further interests include the rise of popular anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, the forced expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe following and Second World War, and Canadian foreign policy during the 1930s. Mikkel has presented his work at various conferences and has been published by the Canadian Battlefields Foundation. He intends to commence his doctoral work in the fall of 2009 and to pursue an academic career as a university professor.
