War's Unwomanly Face

[ICELIKEABOSS]

Thanks for the English translation, Maru-chan.

 

[PlanOfInaction]

Reminds me of the movie "Enemy at Gates". The Communists really didn't/don't care about the poor people doing the fighting and just dump bodies in Pyrrhic warfare. I guess that's one way to take care of the poverty problem...

 

[kazaddum]

@PlanOfInaction: Enemy at the Gates is complete horseshit tho. They precisely did not "just dump bodies". That's what war between somewhat evenly matched armies is like. You mistake the massive US-Army beating up small, underequipped, third rate armies for war.

A good chunk of the soviet casualties came from the early war, when they were crushed and bombed on retreat. Or captured and then executed or sent to camps to starve to death. Of course this ignores the ethnic cleansing the Axis forces did. Belarus for example lost half of its population. And certainly not because of the soviet government "dumping" bodies into the war.

Anti-communists really are dumber than anything one can find in a zoo.

 

[aixt]

hmmm these kinds of publications really makes me wanna see isekai ussr just like that other manga japan summons...

at least getting there little by little.

 

[Gunlord500]

This is a wonderful manga, even though the content is heartbreaking. Thank you so much for picking it up again, @maru-chan , I at least really appreciate it. The world needs more of this kind of work, it's very respectful to the source material (Ms. Alexievich's book) and a loyal adaptation of it.

 

[KochengOren]

@kazaddum Anti-communists are dumber than animals? Really? So offensive with words.
Welcome to the Gulag Archipelago!

Oh yeah, by the way, please feel free to ask Ukrainian people about Soviet Union.

 

[Lenarozali]

I read the book some years ago, and it is a heartbreaking work but probably one of the greatest works about how war affected people, women in particular, since they are rarely the focus of such stories (especially in old Soviet works about WWII). Bonus for the book being documentary, so the raw story, no fictional glamorizing of this tragedy.
So I'm exited about this manga. A bit thank you to the translators for picking it up.

 

[nightwatch25]

As I read this manga, I can't help but feel respect and sympathy for these women and what they had to endure while fighting alongside their male compatriots.

 

[Yeh]

This is a really interesting manga. I don't know how much of it is true though.

 

[Yeh]

@kazaddum you're guilty of Ad Hominem. This is often a sign of childish attitude and/or being a troll. You're someone I'd rather not associate with.

 

[miyako19]

@PlanOfInaction It is just a movie that isn't telling the real truth about wars and history. All the armies and governments have done terrible things to people and veterans, not only Communist. In fact, in the US, there are plenty of veterans live on the street, homeless with mental disease and PTSD and the government doesn't do anything to help them.

You guys really need to stop seeing Communism as bad since it is pure propaganda. Communism and Capitalism are just social systems with their own good and bad points. The important thing that decides the fate of a country is the government. It is the reason why even though all of them are Communist, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. are all different from each other similar to how different the US is from UK, Japan and other countries even though all of them are Capitalism.

 

[ikstarven]

Well, anyone knows that "history is written by the winners"(doesn't mean you should straight up believe "losers"). There is no pure truth in anything. It's not possible to know what really happened in the past

P.S. russian translators do not translate it anymore and its description is just google translate lmao

 

[gouder]

What the fuck, *that* Koume Keito???
He went from drawing wacky erodoujin of girls performing the wildest of sex scenarios out there, to making a serious manga adaptation of a Nobel Prize-winning book on the struggles of Soviet women during World War II.
What the fuck is this timeline? My head's fuckin spinnin

 

[anoman]

Cancerous comment section.

 

[codydub03]

Man or woman. I'm glad I wasn't born in that generation.

 

[YaBoiAstros]

I mean this is obviously soviet propaganda (adapted from a book with the same name). Here we see soviet troops feeding german and moving through german teritorry like they are just passing through. Knowing soviet, which suffered alot during german occupation, these things were very uncommon. But still an interesting manga nontheless.

 

[OmegaKaiser]

A great thought-provoking reading and the way Keito Koume draws the young Svetlana Alexievich makes her worth fighting for Mother Russia.

 

[Oeni]

This is great

 

[Ulfhednar]

@YaBoiAstros

Knowing soviet, which suffered alot during german occupation, these things were very uncommon.

You'd be surprised. Half of my (German) family was in the area the soviets took back then. From what I heard, they were the most civilized allied army. Or to be more precise, the only remotely civilized allied army.
As I realize I've typed a wall of text, the rest is in spoiler brackets. No actual spoilers in there though.

Spoiler

Literally the worst thing I've heard about the Russians was that the east soviet soldiers my grandmother's family had to house were to stupid to get the stove going and instead built an open fire, ruining the kitchen's floor.
Meanwhile, the Americans were busy massacring kindergarteners for being "suspected of being Werwolf" (they'd offer them chocolate for putting on their Hitlerjugend uniforms and singing the NSDAP's hymn, gather a group, then shoot them all according to one of my teachers in school, who claimed to have survived such a massacre by being a few minutes late. I heard comparable stories, though with less detail, from other people all over Germany).
I could go on and on, as I've heard hundreds of tales of such atrocities over the years. Yet somehow, when it comes to the Russians, I've yet to find somebody who witnessed anything (or personally knew somebody who did) rather than learning of it from west-German newspapers after the war.

From what I understand, most of the warcrimes associated with the soviets were committed by the allied partisans (Poles and Czechs, mostly) rather than the regular army, and as they took punitive measurements immediately, these forces were under control by the time they reached Germany. Which would explain why these crimes almost all took place in the eastern colonies (what's Poland and Belarus now).
Also, remember that the soviets were the only allied power that had no interest in destroying Germany, and intended to build Germany into an independent ally (proven, among other things, by their 1951 reunification offer, or the fact that they immediately rearmed the German militias). If they'd really acted like barbarians in Germany, they wouldn't have dared to give Germany any level of power back - like the other allies didn't.

TL;DR: Russian soldiers behaving like humans in Germany isn't as far-fetched as western Cold-War propaganda would have you believe.

 

[Dom1anon]

Completely unrealistic as the female soldiers were constantly sexually abused by their superior officers.