“Мы из Берлина!” – “We are from Berlin!”
This is a photograph of Soviet soldiers in Belarus in 1945 on their trip home from Germany. It being 1945, the year World War II ended, it at first seems unsuspicious that Soviet soldiers would be on their way back to the Soviet Union. However, as professor of 20th century Russian and Soviet history Robert Dale explains in his article Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad, 1945-50, most Soviet soldiers did not get to return home immediately after the war was won, even if their expectations were to the contrary.
From the Soviet Union to the United States and beyond, the experiences of veterans returning home after the war were characterized by a duality of perceptions. One of the perceptions was that held by the soldiers themselves, and the second was that which their home country’s media, science, government, and society promoted, sometimes in a genuine effort to ease the return of soldiers back into civilian life, but often to exact political gain from the situation or seek a simple remedy that would make the problem go away. In the United States, this consisted of postwar media and advice publications which made conflicting suggestions about how returning veterans should be treated for PTSD and how civilians should view them. In the Soviet Union, the propaganda of the state painted the picture that veterans were welcomed home to cheering crowds and could rest easy knowing the state would provide for them new employment opportunities and financial aid. As Dale points out, “In reality, few veterans received the heroes’ welcome described in the press. Many were disappointed by the reception they received” (Dale 2010, 114).
In the photograph above’s foreground, the men pictured held the ranks of private, sergeant, major, sergeant, and sergeant from left to right. This is significant because it explains why these men were demobilized and sent home in 1945. The majority of Red Army soldiers who got sent home right at the end of the war were selected based on age and seniority in the Soviet military. Some soldiers were not demobilized for months or years following victory, with there being extreme instances of soldiers being kept in Germany as late as 1950 (Dale 2010, 123). With western Soviet cities such as Leningrad and Kiev literally decimated in their ability to support a population, even the long-awaited return home did not give way to a life of comfort or even guaranteed survival.
In the United States, returning soldiers were widely shown appreciation and support, but society did not know quite how to reincorporate veterans who suffered from PTSD. Then termed “combat exhaustion” or “battle fatigue,” PTSD was understood as a phenomenon, but not as an illness. As Christina Jarvis, professor at the State University of New York, explains in her article “If He Comes Home Nervous”: U.S. World War II Neuropsychiatric Casualties and Postwar Masculinities, “It is impossible to separate the physical and emotional costs of war; many physically wounded veterans also developed psychological scars while numerous psychiatric casualties suffered real somatic symptoms or were haunted by memories of dead and maimed bodies” (Jarvis 2009, 98). In Jarvis’ article, she makes the point that physical wounds were met with immediate recognition and sympathy by the postwar American public, while mental wounds were still popularly considered simple weaknesses even after the growing understanding of them following the first World War.
An unfortunate reality of the Allied victory in WWII is that the suffering did not end with the war, and that was often the case even for the men who fought and achieved victory for their countries.
Bibliography:
Dale, Robert. Rats and Resentment – The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad, 1945-50, Journal of Contemporary History 45.1, 2010.
Jarvis, Christina. ‘If He Comes Home Nervous -‘ US World War II Neuropsychiatric Casualties and Postwar Masculinities, Journal of Men’s Studies 17.2, 2009.
Tass. “Пора Домой! 10 Июля 1945 г. Началась Демобилизация Бойцов Красной Армии.” (“Time to go Home! On July 10th, 1945, the Demobilization of the Red Army Began”). ТАСС, July 10, 2015. https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/2107644.
It is an interesting argument to delineate the experiences of the Soviets versus the Americans by intent of their receptors. The Soviets were hardly welcomed home at all, despite the fact that the government tried to present it in this way. The US, on the other hand, did welcome their men home, even if they struggled knowing what exactly they ought to do to support those men. Of course, the US officials began to lose this concern when they became more concerned with appearance rather than treatment for the psychological disorders that came out of war.