The Knowledge Network: 'Berlin'

Berlin-Google Images

The Knowledge Network: 'Berlin' 

Over the last week or so, between work I have watched significant parts of 'Berlin' on the Knowledge Network, which is owned and operated by the British Columbia government. I cannot state that I philosophically favour government owning media outlets, as I prefer a non-governing source, but will also admit philosophically that the network does provide some fine European/British based and orientated documentaries and dramas.

Another example of shades of gray/grey in philosophy, that is in the negatives and positives of government ownership of a television network.

The Network states that it survives through viewers.

I prefer the Knowledge Network to PBS, which I also do watch, even with the Knowledge Network seemingly often presenting left-wing orientated programming, which I do not relate to and would not watch very much at all, because the network is significantly European focused, as well as being British Columbian and Canadian focused, in comparison to the quite American orientated PBS.

I do realize that there some exceptions in regard to PBS, and that there is some British and European programming.

Here in Canada we tend to receive much American media information and a European perspective is appreciated.

Knowledge Network: Berlin full episodes

Early this morning I watched 'Berlin' followed by another documentary...

Knowledge Network: Last Days of the USSR

A good programming decision as far as one program leading into another.

'Berlin' is a BBC production from 2009.

Contrary to what some persons may assume, I am not a frequent documentary viewer, but when I am working outside of the home I tend to view more television and spend less time on the computer and exercising formally. When one walks for hours in Corporate security, this is understandable.

What moved me to write a short post was in episode three of 'Berlin' where it was stated historically that the Soviet Union troops raped an estimated 100, 000 German women in Berlin at the end of World War II.

'Ich Bin Ein Berliner A look at how the spirit of Berlin's people has been defined by their struggle for freedom. (3 of 3)'

At Columbia Bible College which is Mennonite Brethren and non-resistant and in some cases pacifistic, I am neither, I was taught some of the tragedies of warfare and took a history class which covered World War I and World War II.

In another class, a late Mennonite professor stated that his Father had been forced to serve in the Luftwaffe and was away from home when Soviet troops arrived at their home.

The troops let him as a child hold one of their rifles, as they gang-raped his Mother in another room.

Although, still holding to philosophically, minimally a maintenance of law and order through the Biblical mandate for governments to do so (Romans 13, I Peter 2), and this implies the possible use of internal and external force, I further realized while at Columbia Bible College that World War II was not a clearly defined battle between good and evil.

Romans 1-6 would confirm that all of humanity is this realm is fallen and corrupt, therefore all States are as well.

All States are evil in comparison to God and his future culminated Kingdom.

Yes, I reason that Nazi Germany needed to be opposed, and for the Allies, the Soviet Union was a convenient ally, and pragmatically better to have than an enemy.

But in reality comparing the evils of the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany, would be the subject for much historical and philosophical discussion and debate.

I am not dogmatic on the issue but am opposed to all human dictatorship in this sinful realm, communist, fascist and other.

The Kingdom of God shall be ruled by a sinless God and God-man in a different realm minus the problem of evil. I also reason that God shall allow his regenerated, resurrected citizens a significant level of self-governance. Not far-fetched for those to whom shall judge angels (I Corinthians 6).

The Guardian: November 2009

Cited:

'Such a matter-of-fact exchange summed up how much it came to be taken for granted that German women suffered at the hands of Russian soldiers who captured Berlin. An estimated 2 million German women fell victim to the troops, 100,000 of them in Berlin. An estimated 10% of rape victims died, mostly from suicide. Many had abortions and those who did give birth often gave their babies up for adoption. In 1946 almost 4% of Berlin-born children were estimated to have Russian fathers.'

Daily Mail: October 2008

Cited:

'Stalin's army of rapists: The brutal war crime that Russia and Germany tried to ignore'

'Marta was one of two million German women who were raped by soldiers of the Red Army - in her case, as in so many others, several times over. It was a feature of Russia's 'liberation' and occupation of eastern Germany at the end of World War II that is familiar enough to historians, but which neither country cares to acknowledge took place on anything like the scale it did.'

Cited:

'As so often in war, it was to be defenceless women, girls and even elderly ladies who were to pay in pain and outrage for the crimes of their male compatriots. Many had abortions or were treated for the syphilis they caught. And as for the so-called Russenbabies - the children born out of rape - many were abandoned. 

In his fine new book, World War Two: Behind Closed Doors, the historian Laurence Rees points out that although rape was officially a crime in the Red Army, in fact, Stalin explicitly condoned it as a method of rewarding the soldiers and terrorising German civilians.

Stalin said people should 'understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle'. On another occasion, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually maltreated German refugees, he said: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.' While Stalin condoned rape as an instrument of state military policy, his police chief Lavrenti Beria was a serial rapist.'

Cited:

'Hitler's Vernichtungskampf (war of annihilation) against the Slavs merged into his Rassenkampf (war of racial extermination) against the Jews and Communists to create a Continent-wide slaughter. Behind the advancing Wehrmacht, which won victory after victory in the first six months, were a series of Einsatzgruppen (action squads), whose 'special task' it was to liquidate Jews, Communists, partisans, PoWs, the disabled and anyone else thought to be 'enemies of the Reich'. In forests across eastern and southern Russia, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, the populations of villages and towns were escorted to places of execution, ordered to dig their own shallow graves and then shot.'

The Telegraph: January 2002

Cited:

'To understand why the rape of Germany was so uniquely terrible, the context is essential. Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941, began the most genocidal conflict in history. Perhaps 30 million inhabitants of the Soviet Union are now thought to have died during the war, including more than three million who were deliberately starved in German PoW camps. The Germans, having shown no quarter, could expect none in return. Their casualties were also on a vast scale. In the Battle of Berlin alone more than a million German soldiers were killed or died later in captivity, plus at least 100,000 civilians. The Soviet Union lost more than 300,000 men.

Against this horrific background, Stalin and his commanders condoned or even justified rape, not only against Germans but also their allies in Hungary, Romania and Croatia. When the Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas protested to Stalin, the dictator exploded: "Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?" And when German Communists warned him that the rapes were turning the population against them, Stalin fumed: "I will not allow anyone to drag the reputation of the Red Army in the mud." The rapes had begun as soon as the Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia in 1944.

In many towns and villages every female, aged from 10 to 80, was raped. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate who was then a young officer, described the horror in his narrative poem Prussian Nights: "The little daughter's on the mattress,/Dead. How many have been on it/A platoon, a company perhaps?"' 

Cited:

'How many German women were raped? One can only guess, but a high proportion of at least 15 million women who either lived in the Soviet Union zone or were expelled from the eastern provinces. The scale of rape is suggested by the fact that about two million women had illegal abortions every year between 1945 and 1948.'

Cited:

'Soviet soldiers saw rape, often carried out in front of a woman's husband and family, as an appropriate way of humiliating the Germans, who had treated Slavs as an inferior race with whom sexual relations were discouraged. Russia's patriarchal society and the habit of binge-drinking were also factors, but more important was resentment at the discovery of Germany's comparative wealth.'

Cited:

'The rape of Germany left a bitter legacy. It contributed to the unpopularity of the East German communist regime and its consequent reliance on the Stasi secret police. The victims themselves were permanently traumatised: women of the wartime generation still refer to the Red Army war memorial in Berlin as "the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist".'

MARSHALL, ALFRED (1975)(1996) The Interlinear KJV-NIV, Grand Rapids, Zondervan.