This is a pretty confronting book. It mainly concentrates on eye witness accounts of what happened in one particular town at the end of the Second World War in Germany. In Demmin a population of aprox 15,000 people had the numbers swelled by refugees. The retreating German army blew up the three bridges surrounding the town as the Red Army advanced. Mass panic arose, and hundreds of people killed themselves and or their families rather than be trapped, raped or killed. The book is pretty graphic in its descriptions, and it is a part of history that I was unaware of, and it seemed that had been hidden until relatively recently. The numbers vary in different reports from the one town from several hundred to thousands. 4/5
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Yes, the Red Army was pitiless to German civilians, and many chose to die rather than be abused or murdered by them. Yet more tragedies of war.
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