The Yes, yes,

or ras, if yes shawras.

We're you, Welcome to the Russian rulers history podcast.

Episode 85, the end of one war, the beginning of another.

Last episode, we recounted the time before the end of World War II

and how Stalin was planning a whole new set of purges to extinguish the flames of nationalism.

The vice on Nazi Germany is now tightening as the year of 1944 winds down. Hitler is

hunkering down in Berlin and the Wehrmacht is falling apart. The SS though is

still dangerous and they were given orders from Hitler himself to shoot

or hang any German soldier who tries to retreat or surrender to the enemy, whether they be American, British, or a

ghast Russian.

The Soviet Red Army was by now pushing into Poland and Czechoslovakia getting closer and

closer to Germany and their main target Berlin. Many of the soldiers were

acting like mad dogs, raping women and girls, shooting men, soldiers

and civilians alike.

In 1945, while fleeing the Russians, my own mother was grabbed by a Red Army soldier and was

about to be assaulted when an American GI, an African American, put a gun to the Soviet

soldier's head and told him to let my mother go.

She was so grateful to the man she vowed one day to immigrate to the United States.

She did with my father and brother eight years later.

The Red Army superiors knew about the brutal assaults, but did nothing to stop it, retribution for atrocities committed by the Germans

when they were on Russian stoil. Stalin even laughed about the reports, telling his subordinates that the soldiers were just letting

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