1098 Ch. 26 • World War IIsoldiers in the Red Army enacted terrible revenge against the Germans,
encouraged by Soviet propaganda that emphasized the necessity of humili
ating the defeated German population, as well as by the impersonal nature
of the war. Soviet soldiers, some of whom had come upon the ghastly death
camps in Poland, gunned down German soldiers who had surrendered, and
pillaged villages. Soviet soldiers sometimes systematically raped all German
females who were more than about twelve years old. Hungarian and
Romanian women also were attacked—in Hungary, Soviet soldiers entered
a mental hospital, where they raped and killed. Soviet officers tried to bring
the situation under control but incidents of rape occurred for several years
in Germany after the Nazi defeat. For some Soviets the occupation seemed
to represent a continuation of the war and the exacting of revenge.
Soviet military might in Eastern and Central Europe hung over Yalta,
where the Allies considered the post-war fate of Germany. Churchill agreed
to the post-war division of Germany into British, American, French, and
Soviet zones of military occupation. The Soviet zone would be eastern Ger
many. In Eastern Europe, Communist Party members were working fever
ishly to expand Soviet influence. Stalin feared that his wartime allies might
lead a post-war campaign against communism, which had been the case
after World War I. He secretly agreed to Roosevelt’s demand that the Soviet
Union declare war on Japan three months after Germany’s defeat, which
the U.S. president believed would expedite Japan’s defeat in Asia. But, in
exchange, Stalin asked for and received Allied promises that the Soviet
Union would control Outer Mongolia, the Kurile Islands, the southern half
of Sakhalin Island, and its former naval base at Port Arthur.
Outlines of the Cold War began to take shape at Yalta. Stalin insisted that
the new government of Poland be based on the provisional Polish Commu
nist government (to which would be added representatives from the non
Communist Polish government, which had been functioning in London