The first thing the Red Army soldiers thought worth mentioning on their advance into eastern Prussia was the quality of the streets. They noticed that even unimportant roads linking small villages were in excellent condition. The sewerage system in rural areas caught their attention too. Descriptions of these aspects were generally given without particular evaluation, in the midst of accounts of their march. Agriculture was usually next on the list, many noticing the wealth of livestock and the good equipment. The farms seemed to be profitable and the buildings were numerous, big and solid. Some letter-writers saw all the villages and areas as equally ‘rich’, and did not notice any really poor homesteads. An explanation for this could be the overwhelming impression given by the whole region, or by the writers’ superficial observations.
This initial view of the agricultural conditions alarmed the Red Army’s political leaders. They decided early, in February 1945, to offer explanations to stop false conclusions being drawn about social conditions in Germany. ‘Perhaps a private farm on a manor estate in eastern Prussia is indeed richer than a kolkhos. And a backward person may well draw the conclusion that he supports private agriculture and is opposed to the socialist form of economic relations,’ said the head of the Political Administration of the Second Belorussian Front, Lieutenant General A. D. Okorokov, raising the subject of potential dangers ahead. He called for energetic measures against such voices and recommended that the Soviet press portray eastern Prussia as ‘a reactionary nest’.6
But the soldiers were not swamped with ‘political economics’. Instead, a press campaign was started, whose basic message was that German riches and prosperity were the direct result of the fascist raid through Europe. In the letters, possessions signalizing wealth were said to have a foreign country of origin. Many products even apparently had the official marks of Soviet factories. This interpretation also began to be part of the descriptions of German homes. It was mentioned in so many of the letters that a certain amount of consensus must be deduced. The soldiers discovered ‘Yugoslavian carpets, French curtains, furniture from the Crimea, Russian silk’ and other ‘stolen goods’. ‘What they took from us, they have simply left here with their own things,’ was one soldier’s comment on the large number of livestock. In the houses, they found Soviet-made ‘chairs, beds, soap, cologne, matches, textiles and much more’. Another wrote: ‘If you look closely at the furnishings in the rooms of any German, you’ll find many of our Russian goods. Chairs, spoons, tablecloths, and many other household goods. They stole all this from the territory they had occupied in our country and brought it home. And now they don’t know what to do with it.’ A young artilleryman wrote home at the end of March 1945: ‘It’s probably interesting for you to discover what kinds of farmhouses they have here. I have to tell you, they lived well here, with quality livestock, quality furniture. The houses are of brick. But the Fritzes got it all for free. If you go in the house, you see that everything is looted and stolen.’ This view of things was corroborated by the rules for dividing the booty found ‘on Poland’s freed territory’ between Soviet and Polish institutions. Consumer goods and works of art in German homes were confiscated by the RKKA ‘only if they were looted from the territory of the USSR or her allies [. . .] or if they were brought in from Germany. All other goods lie within the jurisdiction of the Polish administration.’7 What could be more convenient than finding stolen goods everywhere?
Although there can be no doubt about the character of the German policy of conquest and occupation as an economic pillage, there is a question mark above the actual impact this had on private households in eastern Prussia and Silesia. Some foreign products were without doubt purchased through normal market relations before the War. But the result of the successful official interpretation of observers, which would admittedly have been unacceptable without vivid recollections of German pillaging raids throughout the Soviet Union, was that Red Army soldiers saw it all as scandalous proof of German greed.
Soon the soldiers began to come across their fellow Russians who had been transported to Germany to work. Their fates were also offered in the letters as terrible proof of German exploitation and cruelty. ‘Everywhere there are Russians and Poles who are returning from slavery. They tell terrible stories,’ wrote one young captain to his girlfriend in February 1945. In one or two cases, this can be seen as a concession to the censors, but we know from later memoirs that such descriptions were often used as an illustration of the view of German affluence as exploiters’ or racist affluence. That the former foreign workers were now ‘the bosses’ was reported home with relish.
Particularly worthy of mention for the letter-writers were the ‘grand palaces’ - perfect examples of the looting and exploitation. They were magnificent buildings, ‘where the walls shine like marble, where silk net curtains have gold edging, and when you lie down to sleep, you sink into the bed, like into the sea. Now I am also sitting in the estate of a rich German,’ wrote a twenty year old to his parents at the end of January 1945. ‘There are divans, sofas, silk everywhere, and the floor shines like a mirror.’ Such affluence was despised not only because it was looted wealth; it was also the nobility’s wealth. This could well have been the first time most of these soldiers and officers came into contact with the ‘class society’.
None of the letter-writers suggested that they were thinking of cultural values when they entered this elegant world. Most would have felt like the twenty year old mentioned above: ‘Just imagine a soldier who has never seen anything like this now feels like he’s in charge of it all. It isn’t surprising, because he has a hard journey to get there, and with his hard work he earned the right to be lord of all these treasures.’ Only later, almost at the end of the War, did some of the more educated letter-writers recall information from school about cultural/art history, and begin to compare.
The first phase of this acquaintance with German prosperity paid - in the letters at least - little attention to economic efficiency, because businesses were shut down and many destroyed. The theory that Red Army combatants in Germany were immediately impressed by the efficient infrastructure and the exemplary business organization is certainly questionable. Even if the sources of these testimonies are open to criticism, the letters are, nevertheless, the more authentic documents. The hatred of the Fritzes and the flush of victory in the spring of 1945 allowed a certain amount of respect in only one regard: the Germans’ furious, never-ending defensive fight. Only the continuous perceptions of German behaviour, living and working conditions once the fighting ended enabled members of the Red Army to move away from a militant view of the enemy. But in early 1945, German prosperity merely prompted Red Army soldiers’ hatred, disgust and destructiveness. The assertion that ‘both officers and regular soldiers were anxious to explore the strange and delicious world of bourgeois decadence’ and ignored the warning ‘not to be diverted by the seeming riches of the west’, must be severely qualified for the period before May 1945.8
These letters show that the soldiers’ initial reaction to the affluence of Germany was considerably influenced by the timing: these first contacts occurred at exactly the same time as the first insights into the worst aspects of Nazi rule - prisoners of war and extermination camps. Political propaganda seized upon this, of course, but an organized multiplication of those experiences was hardly necessary. Reports from Majdanek and other camps were already known in east Poland in the summer of 1944. New horror stories from Auschwitz or Warsaw spread like wildfire and gave a whole new tenor to the perception of Germany’s prosperity. The wealth per se was still desirable, but after the shocking awareness of these German crimes it was considered in unanimously negative terms. It was rejected as wealth acquired like that. At the same time, soldiers’ letters seem very believable when they say that they would be fine without all this prosperity, if only they could get home quickly. ‘Mum, when you go into any house, everything you could want to eat is there - but it’s all so strange and you just don’t want any of it. I would live from potatoes alone if I could just come home,’ said one young medical orderly, who had been a farmer on a kolkhoz before the War.
It was not to be expected that the letters would describe organized looting and pillaging as it is generally against one’s unconscious ethical barriers to commit such a thing to paper. The peaceful ‘normal world’ should find out as little as possible about this sort of violence in the soldiers’ daily life at the front, even if this normal world explicitly supports a craving for revenge. Even so, Red Army letters did include hints of ill-gotten gains. German civilians’ sudden flight offered the conquerors relatively easy access to all the private possessions of eastern Prussia: in empty flats, in train stations, on the streets. What was not immediately consumed, made to disappear into the unit’s soup kitchen - for many soldiers this was the start of a period of feasting - or taken by the commanders, was simply too tempting to be left as unclaimed property, and was picked up and hauled along for the journey. Particularly attractive were small valuables such as watches, jewellery and souvenirs, and often items with a high practical value, such as warm clothing and sturdy shoes.
On the one hand, the letters indicate that there were soldiers who had scruples; others found enemy belongings simply repulsive. But in many cases, it was real necessity which drove the soldiers to ‘ragcollecting’ and looting. The Soviet Union was in desperate need of supplies, and many soldiers immediately thought of sending packages home. By 1945 these, in addition to the soldiers’ meagre incomes, would become one of the most important sources of new products for families.9 Most desirable were durable, pretty textiles and luxury foodstuffs which had become rare. The kolkhozes had barely even seen black tea during the war; coffee and chocolate were unattainable.
The Red Army soldiers’ voracity for representative booty, and also for rare products and simple items for daily use is therefore explicable. More difficult to explain is the almost reckless way they helped themselves. As they continued their advance through Germany, the soldiers made an increasing number of comparisons. They came to urban, and therefore wealthier, regions - which had, admittedly, suffered much greater damage - but at the same time, they met large numbers of German refugees. Here they also discovered poverty, for example by looking at the others’ footwear. One captain and party organizer wrote to his wife at the end of March 1945: ‘The whole of Germany is walking on wooden soles. This footwear with wooden soles is not even only for indoors, they are also shoes for going out. And if it isn’t wooden soles, then some sort of substitute. You meet this substitute at every turn.’ And he notices that: ‘The majority of Germans are starving, in the true sense of the word. They are living from paltry rations and have absolutely no way of getting anything else.’ But this sort of message was an exception in the letters. And such observations apparently rarely led to feelings of sympathy among the soldiers in early 1945.
Some questions about the perceptions of German wealth remain unanswered. The analysis of individual views does, however, move the focus towards contexts which have thus far been neglected. It suggests that certain attitudes were set in place by the almost unimpeded access to strangers’ personal effects in the first days of the conquest of German territory, which had dramatic effects on the numerous subsequent encounters with the German population. At this later stage, not only unclaimed possessions were taken, but goods were forcibly stolen and people were coerced into handing them over. The characters with this predisposition - irrespective of rank and education - seem to have been fully intoxicated by the situation, and this fostered the criminal quality of their attitudes.
The military leadership of the Red Army spoke, in this context, of barakhol’stvo, a word for which there is no adequate English counterpart. The root is barakhlo (junk, plunder, unnecessary stuff) and stands for ‘collecting junk’, which on the one hand refers to senseless impediments to their march, but on the other hand alludes to the unfavourable impression made by the troops. Both of which should, in the eyes of the troops’ leaders, be stopped. Whether the military leaders found additional reasons to curb the troops’ raids is unknown.
According to official Soviet reports from the Berlin area, soldiers in the thrall of their victory also bought goods at extortionate prices. At first they indulged in treats such as beer. Some quality possessions were also bought for booty at prices way over the market value. This behaviour shows the degree to which not only rare products, but also the ‘honest purchase’ of such products were lacking after many years of abnormality. And it apparently befitted their victorious mood to be able to throw money around without reserve. In letters home, where every kopek was necessary, this was understandably not mentioned.
World History
