Word: russians
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Manstein admitted that he condoned executions of the wives of Russian partisan fighters as reprisals for attacks on German soldiers. But, he argued, the Russians themselves never adhered to any rules of war. "The shooting of women is not very nice," said Manstein. "But sometimes the partisan war did not make anything else possible . . . The [Russian] civilians used every form of illegal warfare possible-shooting in the back, wearing German uniforms, employing women and children as spies and poisoning the water supply...
...Saxony, in Germany's Russian zone, the Communist government banned all Christmas carols that mentioned angels or the Christ Child. At a fair in Berlin's Soviet sector, swings, merry-go-rounds and roller coasters whirled in a raucous counterfeit of yuletide gaiety, but there was little or nothing for shoppers to buy. At grey-market shops, a pound of chocolates cost a laborer's full week's wage. Berliners stared at the meager, overpriced goods in frustrated despair; women wept. "Dear God," muttered one Hausfrau who had been searching in vain for some coffee cups...
Limited Extent. Gist of the 77,000-word, 17-point indictment was that Erich von Manstein had permitted atrocities in areas under his command; had condoned the shooting, gassing and drowning of Jews, gypsies and other minorities, the execution of Russian soldiers, political commissars and civilians, and the deportation of Russians to Germany for slave labor. The defense tried to show that there was little to connect their client personally with any of these deeds. The slaughter of Jews, contended his British and German lawyers, was carried out by an SS unit attached to Manstein's command only...
This week in a hushed courtroom packed with German spectators, many of them with the stiff, erect bearing of former Wehrmacht officers, Manstein heard the verdict. He was found guilty on nine counts concerning execution and maltreatment of Russian soldiers and civilians; he was cleared of eight other counts, notably concerning the extermination of Jews. Then the court pronounced sentence: 18 years in prison. For 62-year-old Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Manstein, it was probably a life term...
...alleged message from the gallows, until just before the start of their national elections last Sunday. The news apparently put the voters into the proper frame of mind. For the Red Fatherland Front slate (there was no other slate), 4,500,000, or almost 100%, voted a Russian...