Another question for the crowd

[desantnik]

There are a number of building in the city of Gdansk that were spared. Even the house that I purchased 10 years ago had the original windows attested to by the panes in the windows and the photos of the house before the war.

So my question is more of "to what extreme" were these "exploitation" units removing things?

Windows, doors, door casings, window panes?

If the Soviet evacuation of its barracks on the territory of the former DDR and other locales such as Hungary is an indication - yes - doors, wiring, kitchen sink. I saw such stripped barracks just outside of Berlin a mere month or two after their return home.

In a similar vein modern antique stores in places as far as Uzbekistan are stocked with looted turn of the 19-20 century and up to the 1930s furniture with German-language and period identification tags. I can't remember the source, but it mentioned Soviet soldiers taking light bulbs and telephones home to their native villages not understanding that there needed to be an existing infrastructure for these devices to work.