Sometimes we forget the cost of war for women……
Soviet soldiers openly sexually harass a passing German woman near the West Hall section of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof central railway terminus. As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of the war, mass rapes took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation. Most historians agree, although the issue is contentious, that the majority of the sexual assaults on German female civilians were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million. In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with sexual assaults in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. War historians have described it as the “greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history”, and have concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. Estimates of the the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany are upwards of 11,040. Many of the sexual assaults committed by the Americans in Germany in 1945 were gang rapes by armed soldiers at gunpoint. Leipzig, Saxony, Germany. August 1945.
