At the end of World War II, the Soviet Red Army killed all the way to Berlin, so that the Germans also felt the feeling of national destruction and family destruction, and the complete destruction of East Prussia completely destroyed the spiritual pillar of the Germans. When the huge ship full of civilians sank in the Baltic Sea, Königsberg, the pearl of prussia's crown, became a ruin, and even the name Prussia became a sin. This series of events is enough for the Germans to reflect, but also to be a wake-up call to other war maniacs in the world.
After the unification of Germany in 1871, the Kingdom of Prussia occupied most of its territory
At the heart of Germany was Prussia– Winston Churchill
After World War II, some historians believe that "Nazism was a sudden outbreak of chronic disease in Prussia." "Prussia imposed its own unique political culture on Germany, and its authoritarianism led to the decay of democracy in Germany and provided a hotbed for dictatorship." East Prussia and its capital, Königsberg, in particular, best represent the Prussian spirit. Guderian once said that "East Prussia is our homeland and the birthplace of traditional civilization", for the German army in World War II, East Prussia was the cradle of militarism, and the "King's Mountain" Königsberg was an "unbreakable spiritual fortress".
King's Hill Castle at the end of the 19th century
The Treaty of Versailles after World War I separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany, making it a German enclave. In the eyes of the East Prussians, they were the most affected by the Treaty of Versailles, the Economy of East Prussia was already sluggish, mainly agricultural, and the existence of the Polish Corridor made it difficult for East Prussian agricultural products to be transported to Germany, which aggravated the economic contradictions in East Prussia, which in turn led to more serious social contradictions. The financial crisis of 1929 made The German economy worse, and the Nazi Party took the opportunity to win the support of many Germans. This was particularly pronounced in East Prussia, where low prices and poor marketing of agricultural products, the massive loss of peasants to germany's own industrial cities, the extremely conservative Junker nobles, who controlled most of the land, were very dissatisfied, the political tendencies began to lean to the right, and bankrupt peasants and unemployed workers began to rush to the hospital. In 1928 the Nazi Party won only 0.8 percent of the vote in East Prussia, and in 1930 it reached 19 percent.
In Post-World War I Germany, the red part was cut off territory
In the 1933 elections, the Nazi Party received 44 percent of the vote in Germany and 56.5 percent in East Prussia, the highest in Germany. After Hitler came to power, he introduced a series of policies to support agriculture, although the effect was not significant, but it was enough to give hope to the vast number of poor people. Praise for Hitler began to be broadcast on the Königsberg radio, and more and more people raised their hands in schools and on the streets. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Polish corridor ceased to exist, and the peasants who had been forced to leave East Prussia returned home, and East Prussia tasted the sweetness of war. Since Germany itself was not affected by the war at the beginning of the war, the vast majority of Germans lived as usual. Food and beer are plentiful, the zoo is still open, and schools are open as normal.
War befell East Prussia
By the time of the German victory, Königsberg already felt some ominous foreboding. The official newspapers gradually stopped being impassioned and used all kinds of euphemisms to cover up the hard battles of the German army on the Eastern Front, and the German army in movies and newsreels was no longer singing triumphant songs all the way, but struggling in mud and ice. The words victory diminished, and the slogan "Destroy the Bolsheviks" gradually paled in strength. The wounded soldiers who returned home brought negative news, but the few voices on the radio cheering victory were in English or Russian, and the governor of East Prussia, Koch, had to forbid the people from listening to the enemy station.
If these were more of a blow to the East Prussians' confidence in victory, then the bombing of Königsberg undoubtedly made East Prussia deeply feel the cruelty of the war. On 26 and 29 August 1944, the RAF bombed Königsberg twice. The RAF dropped 500 tons of bombs on the 26th, mainly bombing the outskirts of Königsberg. On the 29th, 279 Lancaster bombers flew over Königsberg again with incendiary bombs, this bombing destroying more than half of the city center, reducing Königsbergstraße to ashes and Königsberg Cathedral into ruins. The fire engulfed everything around it, and the flame storm formed by the flames sucked in those around them, and more died of suffocation. A conservative estimate of 4,000 people died in the bombing and at least 200,000 were left homeless.
Königsberg after the RAF bombing
Compared with the Allied bombardment, the Soviet Red Army on the Eastern Front was the gravedigger of East Prussia. At the end of 1944, the German Army Group Center, which was defending East Prussia, had three armies, from north to south, the 3rd Army, the 4th Army and the 2nd Army, with a total number of 550,000 people, 700 tank assault guns, more than 6,000 artillery pieces, and 200 fighters of the 4th Air Force in the air. However, the numbers of the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts opposite them were 1.15 million men, 3,600 vehicles, 39,800 guns, and 2,400 warplanes, respectively.
Soviet plan for the East Prussian offensive
On 13 January 1945, the 3rd Belorussian Front launched an onslaught against the German 3rd Army, and the next day the 2nd Belorussian Front launched an offensive against the German 4th Army. Despite the disparity in strength, the Germans' dying struggle cost the Soviets enormous casualties. It was only the weak strength of the German army that could not stop the wave after wave of Soviet attacks, the defensive line was constantly broken, and the Soviet soldiers set foot on German territory for the first time. Due to Hitler's stubborn refusal to evacuate civilians early, only a small proportion of the residents of eastern East Prussia were allowed to evacuate, and it was too late for most civilians to evacuate. The evacuation was unplanned, the weather was so bad that some felt it was safer to stay home than to escape.
In 1944, east Prussians built trenches
However, the opposite happened, and those who witnessed the Soviet occupation of the town recalled that all the doors and windows of the houses were broken, many buildings were razed to the ground, and some houses were still burning. A corpse hung upside down on the door of a garage, and a row of civilians fell under the wall, all shot in the back of the head. The bodies of the women, mostly naked, were apparently raped and killed, including fifteen or sixteen-year-old girls and many elderly women. The fate of the evacuated civilians was not much better, the narrow roads were crowded with people and ox carts, soviet planes came to bomb from time to time, and a Soviet tank drove straight to the bridge full of refugees, and the result was naturally unbearable. The Germans who evacuated with the refugees also threatened the lives of the refugees, their tanks and vehicles did not care whether there were people ahead or not, and anyone who stood in the way would be crushed into meat sauce. A train transporting refugees was intercepted by Soviet tanks straddling the rails, the passengers on board were driven off the train and subsequently massacred, all the women were raped and only a very small number escaped, one of whom ended her life with a grenade to avoid humiliation.
Refugees use a variety of means of transport to escape
Some Germans also fantasized that Soviet soldiers would spare them, preferring to serve the Soviets if so. In the East Prussian town of Silkingen, when the first Soviet troops entered the town, most of the locals took the initiative to raise their hands to signal that they would no longer resist, and after the Soviets confirmed that there were no soldiers in the town, they simply asked for some food and water and prepared to leave, warning the Germans that "worse is still behind" before leaving. He was referring to the occupying forces in the back, which were undisciplined and brutal compared to the front-line troops. The occupying forces beat civilians at will, raped women, looted property and burned down the homes of German families. As the Soviets continued to penetrate deeper into East Prussia, such tragedies increased, and some people, after learning of the atrocities committed by the Soviets, preferred to kill their own families before committing suicide. Many women met and committed suicide en masse as soon as the Soviets approached.
Refugees who died on the ice
This kind of behavior is certainly very cruel, but you must know that the vast majority of Soviet soldiers have a blood feud with the Germans, watching their families being killed, and the Soviet soldiers whose villages have been razed to the ground are full of anger, when they see the Germans living in exquisite houses, eating bread and drinking coffee, even the stables are better than the houses they live in, and many Soviet soldiers from the village have never seen electric lights, flush toilets, and exquisite floors and comfortable sofas in their lives. Thinking back to their razed huts and starving families, Soviet soldiers had a hard time understanding why these superior Germans had come to destroy their lives.
Civilians who suffered retaliation from the Soviets
A tragedy on the ice sea
The Germans had great affection for East Prussia, and knowing that it was impossible to hold East Prussia, they wanted to move as many civilians as possible. Dönitz organized the evacuation of thousands of ships and evacuated more than 2.5 million civilians from January to April. But not all civilians on board the ship were able to evacuate safely, and on January 30, a huge shipwreck occurred. As a hub for wounded soldiers and civilians, Gdonia has countless people waiting to be evacuated every day. On the 30th, the Gustloff had been waiting there for nearly 10 days, and the ship was full of civilians, but after a wounded train arrived, hundreds of wounded soldiers were crammed onto the ship. Several thousand civilians also took the opportunity to board the ship, which carried nearly 9,000 people, four times the number of people on board.
Because Gustrov had not been out of the sea for a long time, resulting in a large number of shells gathering at the bottom of the ship, coupled with overloading, the captain could only advance at a speed of 15 knots, and in order to avoid overturning, the captain did not take the "zigzag", but drove straight forward, this route is conducive to avoiding mines, but it is easier to be found by more dangerous submarines. At 21:10 p.m., the Soviet submarine S-13 spotted the slow-moving steamship and fired three torpedoes, all of which hit. Within 50 minutes, the heavily overloaded ship sank. In January, the sea was freezing cold, the lifeboats on board sank to the bottom of the sea because of the ice, and the nearby German torpedo boats risked being hit to save about 500 people, most of whom were buried in the ice sea. According to statistics, nearly 966 of the 9,000 passengers on board survived.
Passengers who survived
The tragedy of the Gustloff is only a microcosm of the plight of the East Prussians, but as one survivor put it, "the great goal of the Gustloff warns those of us who are alive that the wars created by the world leaders and which have brought countless disasters to humanity cannot be repeated." The East Prussians who died at gunpoint and in the sea of ice by the Soviets may have been the same people who shouted Nazi slogans in the streets. When they support the country in waging war, they should think that there will be such a day. People always have to pay for their fanaticism and short-sightedness.
Koch, the governor of East Prussia, became a war criminal after the war but escaped the death penalty
But even if the common people are despicable and stupid, it is the rich nobles who fall into mistakes first. The real dominance of the country's fate was dominated by the Junker aristocracy, as well as Nazis such as Hitler, who blindly waged war and eventually made the whole of Germany pay the price, but after the war they tried to evade sanctions. Only this time the defeat was devastating for Germany, especially Prussia, and the Soviet army occupying East Prussia had bulldozed the ancient manors in the territory, destroyed the graves of the Junker nobles, and dug up bismarck's ancestral graves. Königsberg was also assigned to the Soviet Union, renamed Kaliningrad, and in the 1960s the castle of "King's Hill" was blown up, and today the German population here accounts for only 0.4% of the total population, and there are few Buildings left in the Prussian era. On 25 February 1947, the Allied forces in Berlin signed the law "The Prussian State, the Central Government and all its affiliates shall be abolished with immediate effect", and Prussia has ceased to exist. It is no wonder that Germany's reflection on the war after World War II was so profound.