* The Vistula offensive brought the war home to German citizens in full force. Masses of civilians had fled west from East Prussia and Pomerania to get away from the Red Army. Erich Koch, who retained his authority over East Prussia after the Reich had lost the Ukraine, had refused to authorize any evacuation of civilians -- but he and his cronies sensibly decided to run away themselves, giving the green light for everyone else to do the same, though since the rules technically still applied, citizens were liable to be shot for defeatism. Fear of what Red Army troops would do to Germans made that risk worth taking.
The fears had plenty of basis in fact, since Soviet propaganda and political commissars at the rank- and-file level were hammering it into the troops that the time for revenge was near. Propagandist Ilya Ehrenberg led the charge with bloodthirsty editorials in the Red Army's newspaper, KRASNAYA ZVEZDA (RED STAR). They didn't need much encouragement, since the troops were all aware of what the Germans had done in the USSR, and many of the soldiers had personal scores to settle. When the Red Army came upon German villages, the soldiers had a drunken party of looting, vandalism, rape, and murder. Rape was the preferred instrument of vengeance, partly because the proportion of German menfolk around was low, most of them being in the ranks. The failure of the Germans to dump their liquor before the enemy arrived did much to aggravate the situation, since even good-natured Soviet soldiers tended to become animals when they were good and drunk. Old women and young girls were gang-raped, sometimes until they died, and anybody who showed the slightest inclination to object was casually shot. Women were found stripped naked, crucified with nails to barn doors. Tanks rolled over and crushed columns of refugees.
What really infuriated many Soviet troops was the relative prosperity of even the humblest German farmer, compared to the widespread poverty of the USSR. Most German farmhouses had electric lighting and radio receivers, unthinkable luxuries for the average Soviet peasant. These folk had invaded the Soviet Union to plunder the people when the Germans were so much better off? The worst that could be done wasn't half enough.
Not all of the soldiers were so cruel, of course, some trying to be kindly to destitute civilians -- particularly children -- but there was little official attempt to restrain the troops, and in fact on occasions soldiers simply shot officers who tried to do so. Red Army troops were often very undisciplined and insubordinate, surprising given the Soviet state's inclination to the most drastic punishments for downright imaginary infractions. They were not the obedient little Red robots that state propaganda made them out to be.
Although newsreels might have reported how troops would charge shouting: "For Stalin! For the Motherland!" -- later a veteran would comment: "I'm sure we shouted something ... but I don't think it was that polite." One story related how a truck was blocking a vital road, badly snarling traffic. A woman soldier named Lydia who was trying to direct the traffic lit into the driver, who simply poured back abuse in her face -- until he noticed the door of a staff car open, to see an angry Marshal
Rokossovsky get out with a pistol in his hand. The driver froze with terror. An officer who was in the cab of the truck with him got out and ran away into the bushes.
Those officers who tried to go up the chain of command about the rapes and atrocities were told to shut up; if they didn't, they stood a good chance of being arrested. The official line was that things like that didn't happen. Of course they did. If young men, of any nationality or race, are given weapons and allowed to do as they please, more than a few are likely to take full advantage of the situation without any apparent pains of conscience.
* Besides, it wasn't like they were doing things that those at the top didn't do as well. After the informal looting and vandalism of frontline troops had moved on, specialist NKVD units came in to inventory the catch and grab everything they could, as per Stalin's plan to squeeze the Germans for everything he could get out of them.
The NKVD would obtain very valuable German technologies and technical expertise for the Soviet Union, though most of the top German scientists and researchers would flee West and surrender to the British and Americans. The Soviets would also obtain quantities of raw materials and numbers of Germans for forced labor, though Soviet citizens would continue to be the backbone of Stalin's work camps. As far as the seizure of factory machinery went, however, it would prove to be about as wasteful an exercise as the mindless looting of the troops. Industrial machinery is normally specified to meet the requirements of a specific task. Trying to take some machine and shoehorn it into a process it wasn't specifically designed for is troublesome, in fact likely to be more troublesome than it's worth. Such machinery also requires regular maintenance and people who are trained in its operation, as well as a logistical system to obtain parts and support to keep it running. Without such things, it's generally no more than so much cumbersome junk.
It was another sign of Stalin's crude thinking that he saw machinery as something like so many bales of hay or trainloads of coal, to be tallied up on a list of valuables; and results were the Stalinist system at its worst. The machinery looted from factories and the like would mostly end up as rusty scrap -- which was just as well because often it had been damaged beyond reasonable repair in its removal and transport anyway. Of course, the effort did help weaken the hated Germans, but if that had been the objective, it would have been much less effort to have simply dynamited the lot of it. Such
considerations were beyond the scope of the orders given the NKVD teams, and they were very earnest in making sure nothing of importance was overlooked.
* Harshness might have been satisfying, but it had a serious drawbacks. It made the Germans more willing to fight, and Goebbels' propaganda machine played up Soviet atrocities for all they were worth. Goebbels accused "the Jew Ilya Ehrenberg, Stalin's favorite rabble-rouser", of inciting the rapes. Ehrenberg protested, truthfully, that he had actually never said any such specific thing, for all the difference it made.
The revenge also distracted Soviet troops from the business of fighting. It was more fun to grab loot and women than it was to confront an enemy that, however badly bruised, was still able to fight back. Rokossovsky understood this and issued orders to discourage such misconduct, but his orders were poorly enforced. Having acquired bad habits, Soviet troops would also often become indiscriminate in their application, engaging in rape and looting against supposedly "friendly" populations elsewhere and leading local Communist leaders to complain to Stalin. Koba was furious when he was told British troops were much better-behaved than his own.
Many Germans managed to stay out of the rough hands of the Red Army. In the first few weeks of 1945, an estimated 8.5 million fled west. It was a brutal journey, undertaken in very cold weather without food or shelter, with Poles robbing and beating them when the opportunity arose. Even when the refugees made it to the strictly relative safety of Berlin and other place in the west, they were not treated very well by Nazi authorities and things would remain harsh. Running away was still better than the alternative.
* Hitler continued his own preparations for a last stand. A few months earlier he had established a home defense force, the "Volkssturm", its ranks to be staffed by old men and teenage boys. Of course Hitler thought the Volkssturm would be able to work miracles, and he was also careful to make sure that the Volkssturm remained under direct Nazi Party control and not handed over to the
untrustworthy German Army. He was oblivious to the unsuitability of the Volkssturm's personnel for combat, not merely because of the ages involved but because of the general lack of training and equipment.
That unsuitability was obvious to others. German troops in the front lines were demoralized to find out that their young brothers, young sons, fathers, and even grandfathers were being stockpiled as cannon fodder. The fact that the only significant military effect the Volkssturm soldiers were likely to have was to make the Soviets expend more ammunition to slaughter them only added to the distress. Many German civilians were also deeply skeptical of the idea, though there were others who believed Nazi propaganda that the Volkssturm would help turn the tide of the war. For many people, it was easier to cling to transparent fantasies instead of accept the humiliating truth that they had been deluded.