Evacuation of East Prussia

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The evacuation of East Prussia refers to the evacuation of the German population from that area as well as from other Prussian lands in 1944 and 1945.

The evacuation started under the threat of Soviet offensive. It was completed according to the decision of the Potsdam conference about the expulsion of Germans from territories outside post-war Germany.

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[edit] German propaganda

The Soviet army initiated an offensive into East Prussia on October 1944, but after two weeks it was temporarily driven back. After that, the German Ministry of Propaganda reported that war crimes had taken place in East Prussian villages, in particular in Nemmersdorf (now Mayakovskoye in Kaliningrad Oblast) and Gołdap. According to Nazi propaganda, all the inhabitants of the villages were killed. While this was not completely true, as some did escape death, Soviet soldiers did brutally kill 23 inhabitants in at least the village of Nemmersdorf. Since the Nazi war effort had largely stripped the population of able-bodied men for service in the military, the victims of the atrocity were primarily old men, women, and children. Upon the Soviet withdrawal from the area, German authorities sent in film crews to document what had happened, and invited allegedly neutral observers as further witnesses. A documentary film from the footage obtained during this effort was put together and shown in cinemas in East Prussia, with the intention of hardening civilian and military resolve in resisting the Soviets.

The propaganda about the Nemmersdorf atrocities had two main effects, neither of which were intended. According to Marion, Countess of Doenhoff, many East Prussians had already acquired a deep distrust of Nazi propaganda, and simply believed the images in the film were staged, and the portrayed events had never happened. And for those who believed the film, it had the effect of engendering a sense of panic.

In January 1945, fleeing from the advancing Soviet forces, the German refugees trudged in columns through snow at −25°C, while Soviet aircraft strafed them. Possibly, more than 2 million people[citation needed] in the eastern provinces of Germany (East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania) died, many of frost and starvation, but many were murdered by Soviet forces.

[edit] Soviet propaganda and retribution

Since the times of Imperial Russia, the word "Prussia" was associated with militarism. In the Soviet Union "Prussian militarism and reaction" was presented as the cause of the First World War. Allegedly, Soviet propaganda put the blame for the Second World War on "Prussian militarism" as well.

Since many Soviet soldiers had lost family and friends at the hands of the Germans (circa 17 million Soviet civilians died in World War II, more than in any other country), they often felt a desire to take vengeance. Murders of prisoners of war and German civilians are known even from cases at Soviet military tribunals (who were not known for prosecuting such matters). Also, when Soviet troops moved into Prussia, a significant number of enslaved Ostarbeiter ("Eastern workers") were freed, and knowledge of those workers' suffering further worsened the attitude of Soviet soldiers towards Prussians.

The name of Nemmersdorf is presented as a symbol of the war crimes of the Red Army in Germany during the WWII. Others consider it a symbol of propaganda aimed at shifting the attention away from Nazi crimes, equalizing the Wehrmacht and the Red Army in terms of war crimes.

Some Soviet writers disapproved of the vengeance of Soviet soldiers against Germans. Lev Kopelev, who took part in the invasion of East Prussia, sharply criticized the atrocities against the German civilian population and was arrested in 1945, then sentenced to a ten-year term in the Gulag for "fostering bourgeois humanism" and for "compassion towards the enemy". Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also served in East Prussia in 1945 and was arrested for criticising Joseph Stalin in private correspondence with a friend. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to an eight-year term in a labour camp.

[edit] Fate of the feral children

When the Red Army conquered East Prussia, thousands of German children were left unattended or with their parents killed during a harsh winter without any food. Children formed gangs, who tried to flee from East Prussia. Many fled into Lithuania and were adopted by the local population where they often worked on the farms. They were called "Wolfskinder" (German for "wolf children") because of their wolf-like wandering through the forests. This had to be hidden from the Soviet authorities. Many Germans had to hide their identity and could only reveal it in the 1990s.

[edit] Evacuation

Military historian Antony Beevor in Berlin the Downfall wrote that:

Martin Bormann, the Reichsleiter of the National Socialist Party, whose Gauleiters had in most cases stopped the evacuation of women and children until it was too late, never mentions in his diary those fleeing in panic from the eastern regions. The incompetence with which they handled the refugee crisis is chilling, yet in the case of the Nazi hierarchy it is often hard to tell where irresponsibility ended and inhumanity began.[1]

The Soviet army initiated an offensive into East Prussia on October 1944, but after two weeks it was temporarily driven back. The Soviets attacked East Prussia again on January 13, 1945 with the forces led by Ivan Chernyakhovsky. This Soviet attack was eventually successful. [2]

[edit] Königsberg

See also Battle of Königsberg

By late January 1945 the 3rd Belorussian Front had surrounded Königsberg on the landward side, severing road down the Samland Peninsular to the port of Pillau, and trapping the German Third Panzer Army and around 200,000 civilians in the city. The civilian provisions were so meagre that civilians were faced with three bleak alternatives. Stay in the city and starve, rations were cut during the siege to 180 grams of bread a day, cross the front lines and throw themselves on the mercies of the Soviets, or cross the ice of the Frisches Haff to Pillau and hope that they could find a place on an evacuation ship. Hundreds chose to cross the font line, but about 2,000 women and children a day chose to cross the ice on foot to Pillau. Erich Koch the Gauleiter of Königsberg on his return from a visit to Berlin chose to stay in the relative safety of Pillau to organise the evacuation rather than return to Königsberg. The first evacuation steamer from Pillau carrying 1,800 civilians and 1,200 wounded reached safety on the 29 January. On the 19 February the Third Panzer Army, and the Fourth Army attacking from the direction of Pillau, managed to force open a corridor from Königsberg to Pillau. The efforts to evacuate civilians and the wounded was redoubled. But after the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff many civilians were leery of taking a boat. This had been reinforced when on the hospital ship General von Steuben was torpedoed and sunk on the 12 February after leaving Pillau with 2,680 wounded nearly all of whom drowned. Koch had abandoned the city and by 7 February was back in Berlin and discussing matters with Hitler. The final Soviet assault on Königsberg started on 2 April. The bombardment was very heavy and delivered by air as well as artillery. The land route to Pillau was once again severed and those civilians who were still in the city died in their thousands. On the 9 April the garrison surrendered and as Beevor wrote, "the rape of women and girls went unchecked in the ruined city"[3]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Beevor page 75
  2. ^ Duffy, Christopher Red storm on the Reich: The Soviet March on Germany, 1945 Routledge 1991 ISBN 0-415-22829-8
  3. ^ Beevor pages 50,75,88,93, mass rape 118
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