One anonymous Russian soldier announced this sentiment with chilling directness when he wrote these words in a 1945 letter home: “We are taking revenge for everything, and our revenge is just. In a rampaging spree of looting, rape, and murder that went far beyond simple collateral damage, Stalin’s legions did what they did in retribution for the vicious war that had been waged against the Soviet Union starting in 1941. As a part of the ceaseless campaigning and unrelenting combat against the forces of fascism, Soviet soldiers explored the abyss of humanity’s darker side in countless destructive and violent acts against Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, and (of course) German victims.

In reality, the victorious Red Army committed a staggering number of unspeakable criminal acts during and after World War II. Fire For Fire, Blood For Blood, Death For Death With their men either dead, captured, or gone, German women were vulnerable to the rampaging Soviets. A Berlin defender lies dead as Soviet soldiers rush into the heart of the city, May 1945. The truth behind that image is much more complicated and, in certain respects, much less attractive. To the casual visitor, though, the statue of the triumphant Soviet soldier protecting an innocent child would leave the impression that the Red Army fought World War II as a benevolent force of compassion and justice. His right hand clutches a sword, and in his left he holds a child.ĭedicated on May 8, 1949, the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park is a perfect example of the kind of monumental state architecture the Soviet Union produced to memorialize its role in World War II.

Rising 36 feet, this statue depicts a Soviet soldier standing on a shattered swastika-a symbol of the complete destruction of National Socialist Germany. On this level, an immaculately manicured garden is flanked by 16 granite sarcophagi representing the 16 Soviet Republics-each of which presents heavily idealized scenes from the Great Patriotic War in half relief.Īt the end of this promenade, the memorial’s final feature is a 30-foot-tall mound on the top of which sits a pedestal and one final triumphal statue. There, a pair of giant statues depicting highly decorated Red Army soldiers on bended knee bow their heads reverently at the top of a set of stairs leading down to the main memorial promenade. These direct visitors along paths leading to a statue representing Mother Russia and then on to a pair of massive eaves made of red Carrara marble recovered from the ruins of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery. With a monumental architectural style typical among Soviet memorials, the park is enclosed by imposing stone entrance portals ornamented with the hammer and sickle. The vast Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park commemorates 5,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in battle in the city in April and May 1945.

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