IDS 142 OL: Global Conflicts & Human Behavior--Fall 2012: Mass Suicides in Demmin Germany

Mass suicide under fear of power or authoritative figure is what I look to examine within these events. The event I'm about to speak of took place in

Germany

, and is known as the Demmin Mass Suicides. “The people of Demmin knew that the Red Army would get to their village very soon in the spring of 1945. The city was handed over to the Red Army without a fight.” ( Roadtickle). The basic reasons for a number of these suicides are out of fear of an authoritative power and what people could imagine what their future would be with such murderous and cold powers descended upon them. In this case people of in Demmin were put into a panic by the Soviet Russian Red Army. The Soviet Army was known to be brutal often torturing, raping, looting and burning as they went through towns. “The Soviet soldiers in turn were allowed to loot the town for a period of three days. They committed mass rapes of local women,regardless of age" (Wikipedia). People feared their fates with the Red Army's arrival; so much the city began committing mass suicides. Whole families and individuals killed themselves in a variety of ways from hanging, to drowning, to poison. The Red Army did advance into the city where they did rape and execute a number of trapped citizens. “This mass suicide is the greatest mass suicide to be acknowledged and recorded in Germany.” (Wikipedia)

Where we see situation such as this events, we have a city that is under this news and pressure that this murderous force is about to sweep through their city, so those who flee do so, and some lose hope and begin to think and behave in a given up, hopeless manner. With cult suicides, the followers commit the suicides because of what they believe, what their dictating powers are coercing them to believe and participate in, but in this case, people, took their lives out of pure fear of horrible acts, painful death, and a fear of an ever powerful and murderous foreign authority. While the citizens of Demmin did not commit suicide at exactly the same time, the closeness of the suicide acts and the fact they killed themselves for the same reasons.” (Roadtickle) So, unlike cult suicides, these people did not die all in the same minutes, but all committing the same act with the same terrifying thoughts inn mind. “People killed them selves with razor blades, poisons, hanging, gun and drowning. If they had families they killed children and wives first, or all together, for example walking into the river all tied together. Afterward bodies were buried in mass gravesites, and some who survived just buried their families.

Event: The Demmin Mass Suicides

Place: Demmin, Germany

Death tolls: 1,200 to 2,500 people, 1200 suicides

How Deaths Committed: drowning, guns, poison, hanging, blades

Authoritative Power: Fear of Soviet Russian Red Army

Soviet Red Army Cockade Symbol