The British, Canadians, French, and Americans did not have state sanctioned abilities to rape and pillage; the Soviets did! Stalin, and the media gave the Soviets carte blanche rights towards taking retribution against German civilians. East Prussia bore the brunt of the Soviet scorn. Soviet soldiers raped millions of German women, it is one of the worst mass rapes in all of history. While there were some bad apples in the allied armies, they certainly did not treat the German populous as cruelly as the Soviets. The raping was so bad that shortly before the Soviets reached Berlin, Stalin ordered his Front commanders to start exerting pressure on their soldiers to curtail their barbaric behavior. Stalin even threatened Ilya Ehrenburg (the famous Soviet journalist / author was was famous for rousing the troops against the Nazis) to cease and assist his writings egging on Soviet Soldiers to seek revenge; because, Stalin was preparing for post-war East Germany. However, very few Soviet soldiers, especially the second line and the rear echelon types, stopped raping and pillaging until well after the war. While the western Allies believed in non fraternization, and there were some rapes and a bit of war loot pillaged, the western Allies did not participate in the same sort of savagery as the Soviets.
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