Which were the Soviet savage troops that were involved in Battle of Berlin?

Question

I appreciated all the 6 answers thus far and I do apologize to all who are offended when I used the term savage. My apology. but brainstorm got it right as I did wonder if some of the troops were of Mongol descents apart from the Russians. Peace to all :)

Answer 1

Lancelot has given the units involved and an account of the battle, but somehow overlooks the atrocities committed by the soviet forces.

While Corneilius Ryan's book seems well researched for its time, he did not have access to the soviet records that Anthony Beevor used for his 2002 work on the battle. He leaves no doubt that many of the Soviet troops were extremely savage and brutal.

However you must realise that these were essentially feudal peasants - most of whom had been fighting a particularly nasty, brutal war for several years. They were also confronted by the first women they'd seen for a long time, and signs of wealth beyond their imagination - many had never seen a flush toilet or even a tap - a civilian motor vehicle was unthinkable.

Answer 2

This depends on what you mean by savage. Many of the Russian Army soldiers were brave and fearless. If you mean which were the worst about assulting civilians, that is a different story. In his excellent book The Last Battle, by Cornelius Ryan, he specifically reviews this subject. The book is about the battle of Berlin. By the way, Ryan also wrote the Book The Longest Day, on which the movie of the same name was based. Cornelius Ryan is an excellent historian and his books are very thorough. Essentially his conclusions are that the first Russians that came into the city, were the first line troops. They were looking for, and fighting, German soldiers. It was the Russians that came after the first wave that savaged the civilians. This is probably true of many armies over the ages. It was the troops that "hung back" or whatever phrase you wish to use, that attacked civilians or looted and robbed from POW's.

Answer 3

I'm going to assume you're referring to the Battle of Berlin of 1945 as there was no other battle near Berlin in the history that involved Russian or Soviet troops.

The 1st Bielorussian front under Zhukov was attacking directly from the east and eventually captured the Berlin. Also, there was the 2nd Ukrainian front approaching from south which also participated in fightings in Berlin suburbs. Of course most of the decisive fighting fell to 1st Bielorussian as they crushed the last Nazi defensive attempt that proved to be fanatical.

Why you choose to refer to the troops as "savage" is what I dont and probably will not understand as there is no reason from the history of the battle to use that description.

It's true, Soviets often had to destroy buildings in order to progress through Berlin because many buildings were used by snipers. Faced with this problem, destroying buildings was the only viable solution. Hitleryugend childred fed with fashist idiology had been sent to the battle, a futile attempt to change a battle that had been long determined.

If you want to ask about atricities comitted by Soviet troops in occupied Germany we need to ask a different question, as that is not directly related to the Battle of Berlin.

Answer 4

Workers' and Peasants' Red Army) were the armed forces first organized by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War in 1918 and that, in 1922, became the army of the Soviet Union. The Red Army eventually grew to form the largest army in history from the 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, although China's People's Liberation Army may have exceeded the Red Army in size during some periods. "Red" refers to the blood shed by the working class in its struggle against capitalism. From 1946, the Red Army was officially renamed the Soviet Army, though people in the West commonly used the term Red Army to refer also to the entire Soviet military after that date.

Answer 5

They weren't savages. They were soldiers whose country and families had been raped, pillaged, destroyed, and killed by the Germans; they had fought across a thousand miles and they were getting their own back.

Based upon documentaries that I have seen all of them felt pretty much the same and acted pretty much the same. They sure scared the c r a p out of the Germans who were trampling over each other in a rush to surrender to the Americans and British. Fortunately, a lot of them didn't make it.

Answer 6

I think you must be referring to the Mongols who were most feared by the Germans.
But their behaviour was no worse than the Germans when they were winning.