An Anonymous Woman Diarist in Berlin

Paraphrased from The Ruins of the Reich,

by Douglas Botting, Crown Publishers, Inc., pp. 71-72.

An anonymous young German woman was being raped but eventually found Red Army major who protected her from his men. She expected no protection from Germany's men. The majority of them were cringing, afraid to show themselves in the streets, knowing that if they tried to prevent Russian soldiers from raping their wives and daughters they would be shot. Instead, they hid themselves and did nothing. It was the women of Berlin who were the heroes. They braved the artillery fire to forage for food and water in the streets. It was they who fed the family, cleaned what mess they could, looked after the sick, hid their young girls and took the brunt of Russian brutality. Some women in Berlin were now looking down on their men as the weaker sex and felt disappointed in them and even sorry for them, and the anonymous diarist was among them. She wrote of the "man-dominated Nazi world" having glorified the strong man, of men boasting of their "privilege of killing and being killed for the Fatherland." For German women, she wrote, the myth of man is over. "Today we women have a share in it." This, she wrote, "changes us" and "makes us rebellious."

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