Hello, currently considering two options for my undergrad thesis in one of either of these two topics. It does require us to use primary sources, and I was just looking for the direction to go to finding those sources. The rules didn't say anything about asking questions for sources, and I'm not asking for any interpretations, just the primary source material itself. I only know English and enough French to get by, and have no knowledge of how to read German or Russian, so was hoping maybe somebody in the sub may know of some English translated sources that I could go about either one of these topics.
What I have found for primary sources so far:
For the rape of women by the Red Army, I do know of A Woman in Berlin by Marta Hillers and I found an English account of 800 Days on the Eastern Front by Red Army soldier Nikolai Litvin in the library today.
For German counterinsurgency tactics I found some primary sources in the back of Matthew Cooper's The Phantom War.
Anyways, I'm just looking for more primary sources as finding secondary ones for both of these has been easy, but English translations of the primary sources not so much. Any help is appreciated, thanks.
For the rape of women by the Red Army, I do know of A Woman in Berlin by Marta Hillers
Marta Hillers worked for Goebbels. She never mentions "sex for food", which was widespread in Berlin - this makes it suspicious as a source. Primary sources are little thin on the subject - you would quickly discover they all circle back to same hearsay or extrapolations.
800 Days on the Eastern Front
While at a glance book seems legit, it was never published in russian. Weird - there are several ongoing attempts to translate it back to russian :-).
Litvin is alive and well in Krasnodar. I think contacting him via his western publisher might help you.
some English translated sources
Tough luck - there's a huge number of soldier memoirs in Russian and not many of them translated into English. So, either pair up with some russian historian on this subject or learn russian :-).
Check out "I Remember" project by Artyom Drabkin. They have some memoirs translated into English. Feel free to contact him or let me know if you need an introduction.
Speaking of your research topic - not many mentions of rape (although I think I could recall about a dozen of episodes and I've read a lot of soldier memoirs, like really a lot - hundreds).
There are several russian historians who are researching this topic - most notable is Elena Sinyavskaya, who doesn't confirm so far "millions of raped women" thesis. Contacting her and getting details might be helpful too.
One intersting thing I've noticed - soviet memoirs very frequently mentioned "sex for food" encounters. That's really missing part in western narrative about Red Army relations with occupied populace. I wonder why it is missing and not reported - and how those encounters were factored in extrapolations of western historians.
For German counterinsurgency tactics
Did you check the Online book - The soviet partisan movement 1941-1944 by Edgar M. Howell, Dept of Army, 1956 It has a chapter 4 about german counterinsurgency tactics.
Have you read about Battalion Nachtigall and Battalion Roland? They were actively employed by germans to hunt pro-Soviet guerillas in Ukraine and Byelorussia. One of the tactics was to pretend to be either a regular Red Army unit or guerilla unit...
Have you read about LwFDs (Luftwaffe field divisions) involvement? For example, after Kugeblitz operation II.LwFK (which consisted of 2,3,4 and 6 LwFD) has claimed that it killed ~3700 partisans in Vitebsk-Nevel region.
This book might be helpful - Hitler's White Russians: Collaboration, Extermination and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Byelorussia, 1941-1944