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This[1] site claims:

It's not that the idea of rape as a weapon of war is implausible. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian, Polish and most of all German women were raped by Red Army soldiers as they advanced through eastern Europe in 1944/45. The Japanese army raped its way across Korea. The Americans, in their turn, raped a multitude of women after taking Japan.

Were many Ukrainian and Polish women raped by Soviet soldiers during the WWII?

The same article was reblogged in this[2] and this[3] site.

  1. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamonn-mccann/why-women-and-truth-are-the-first-casualties-of-war-28626821.html

  2. http://z15.invisionfree.com/Augusta_Alternative/index.php?showtopic=145&st=855

  3. https://socialistworker.org/2011/07/08/first-casualties-of-war

Sakib Arifin
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    The claim is that hundreds of thousands of mostly German, but also Polish and Ukrainian, women were raped. It isn't claiming hundreds of thousands of just Polish and Ukrainian women. – DavePhD Nov 29 '16 at 18:05
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_liberation_of_Poland ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany – DavePhD Nov 29 '16 at 18:07
  • @DavePhD My head's telling me my understanding is right. I will ask it on English.SE. – Sakib Arifin Nov 29 '16 at 18:09
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    closely related: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/31571/did-soviet-soldiers-commit-two-million-rapes-of-german-women-in-1945?rq=1 – DavePhD Nov 29 '16 at 18:21
  • @DavePhD Asked it on English.SE: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/360966/what-does-most-of-all-mean-in-this-context – Sakib Arifin Nov 29 '16 at 18:27
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    I upvoted your question there and refrained form answering, but I agree with Hellion's comment – DavePhD Nov 29 '16 at 18:29
  • Keep in mind that more than 3 million Soviet soldiers passed through Poland and Germany. These were men who spent long months, maybe years, away from families, who were facing death each day, with more stress than we may imagine. And they didn't recruit saints alone. If only one man in a hundred would occasionally commit rape, that would easily bring total count to hundreds of thousands. – IMil Nov 29 '16 at 23:29
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    @IMil: While a good *explanation* of what happened, this comes awfully close to sounding like an *excuse* for rape. – DevSolar Nov 30 '16 at 15:06
  • @DevSolar I don't excuse rapists, I am just saying that the numbers alone can't prove theories of "rape as a weapon of war". – IMil Dec 01 '16 at 16:05
  • @IMil: "...as a weapon of war" was not part of the claim? – DevSolar Dec 01 '16 at 16:07
  • @DevSolar yes, indeed. I was rather commenting on the quote, not replying to the actual question. – IMil Dec 04 '16 at 14:53

1 Answers1

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Yes, Wikipedia has an article Rape during the liberation of Poland:

"With nearly two million Russian deserters and former POWs at large in Soviet-occupied Europe, it is no wonder that banditry on their part became a serious problem for the occupation," wrote Naimark. The number of Polish victims of rape in 1944–1947 would be hard to estimate accurately. The biggest difficulty in estimating their number comes from the fact that the ethnic makeup of the victims was not always stated in Polish official reports. Generally speaking, the attitude of Soviet servicemen toward women of Slavic background was better than toward those who spoke German. According to Ostrowska & Zaremba, whether the number of purely Polish victims could have reached or even exceeded 100,000 remains a matter of guesswork.

It's difficult to separate Polish and Ukrainian from each other. Galicia was part of Poland prior to the war. There was no country of Ukraine.

Another Wikipedia article similarly says:

The attitude of Soviet servicemen towards ethnic Poles was better than towards the Germans, but not entirely. The scale of rape of Polish women in 1945 led to a pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases. Although the total number of victims remains a matter of guessing, the Polish state archives and statistics of the Ministry of Health indicate that it might have exceeded 100,000.[67] In Kraków, the Soviet entry into the city was accompanied by mass rapes of Polish women and girls, as well as the plunder of private property by Red Army soldiers.[68] This behavior reached such a scale that even Polish Communists installed by the Soviet Union composed a letter of protest to Joseph Stalin himself, while church Masses were held in expectation of a Soviet withdrawal.[68]

gerrit
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DavePhD
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    I've reviewed refs at wiki and pretty much every one of them leads to a piece composed by some single author without a mention of any officially available archives or something else to cross-reference. Surely, such amount of "rapes" would have some trail on paper? Additionally I can't google any "ww2 polish communist letter to Stalin" either. Also EVERY reffed book is published after 2000 - when red scare became popular again, following brief period of Peredestroyka. All this makes me doubt the value of those quotes very much. – Oleg V. Volkov Sep 27 '18 at 17:57
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    Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rape_during_the_Soviet_occupation_of_Poland. Wiki editors doubt neutrality and verifiablity of those "facts" as well, note that they suddenly sprung out of nowhere half a century after WW2 too and mention that institution that publishes many of them is very nationally biased. – Oleg V. Volkov Sep 27 '18 at 18:06
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    Without references beyond Wikipedia, this is a poor quality answer within the context of this site. It would be great if it could be expanded, or a better-cited answer posted. – IMSoP Feb 17 '19 at 09:54
  • @IMSoP I’ll ask moderators to delete my answer if a better answer is posted. Software doesn’t allow person who answered to delete accepted answer. – DavePhD Feb 17 '19 at 17:07