Soviet servicemen harassing a woman in Leipzig, 1945.
Liberate, loot and r*pe. Pictured, Soviet servicemen harassing a woman in Leipzig, 1945. "Can't you understand if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?" said Joseph Stalin when Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas complained about the rapes the Red Army committed in his country. The Red Army, from 1943 slowly pushing the Wehrmacht back west, was not the same force that two years before had been quickly retreating east. Only a fraction of the original servicemen were still in the ranks; at least a million had perished on the battlefield, three had been or would be starved in German POW camps, more got wounded. The Soviet command had learned to use some tactics but still operated on the 1941 principle of throwing masses of grunts at the enemy. Yet, these masses were hard to control and these grunts wanted revenge. And spoils of war. To millions of Red Army servicemen such spoils of war were...