Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (69 page)

The abolition of the Kingdom of Prussia in November 1918 is often mistaken for the end of the Prussian story. In reality, it marked the end of Hohenzollern rule, but not of the Prussian state. Yet another variant on Prussian statehood, a
Freistaat Preussen
or ‘Free State of Prussia’ lived on, first as a self-governing component of the post-war ‘Weimar Republic’ and then, from 1933, of the Third Reich – though by then the self-government was only nominal.

Nonetheless, the outcome of the First World War left little more than an uneasy truce in many parts of Europe. The settlement of Versailles, bypassing the Bolsheviks, failed to address the problems of the East. The reborn Polish Republic, invaded by the Red Army in 1920, was forced to defend its independence unaided, interrupting Lenin’s revolutionary march on Berlin in the process.
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Both the Weimar Republic and Soviet Russia were treated as pariahs by the Western Powers. Millions of Europeans were left either fearful or resentful, and the possibility of a renewed conflagration was always present. Even though the Central Powers had won a comprehensive victory on the Eastern Front, the people of Prussia suffered the heaviest territorial losses and bore a disproportionate share of the opprobrium. It was no accident that the myth of the ‘stab in the back’
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was launched by Hindenburg and General Ludendorff.

After the abolition of the Prusso-German monarchy, the
Freistaat Preussen
, though substantially reduced by cessions to Poland, remained the largest territory in Germany. Its government was dominated by Social Democrats. A single SPD politician, Otto Braun, served as Prussian prime minister from 1920 to 1932.
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Prussia’s brief era of democracy was overthrown by the arbitrary actions of Germany’s central government. In 1932 the German chancellor, von Papen, suspended Braun’s administration in the so-called
Preussenschlag
or ‘Prussian coup’, citing ‘electoral turbulence’. His dubious decision facilitated the introduction of one-party rule by the Nazis, who appointed Hermann Göring as the Prussian premier only one year later. Göring gloated over ‘the marriage of old Prussia with young Germany’.

Traditional Prussian society, still led by the landed Junker class, did not provide a natural hunting-ground for the Nazis. Prussia’s cities, including Berlin, leaned decidedly to the Left. Very few Nazi leaders were born in East Prussia. Even so, some Nazi ideas did resonate strongly. Protests against the ‘
Diktat
of Versailles’, for example, made more sense in Danzig or in Königsberg than in Hamburg or Munich. Claims about the German master race could also appeal to people who had long cultivated the ethos of hardy pioneers, and the concept of
Lebensraum
was associated exclusively with the East. The idea that Germany’s natural ‘living space’ was there for the taking did not seem particularly outlandish after the German army’s recent victory in those parts. In East Prussia, above all, still shaken by the Russian invasion of 1914, proposals for the eastward extension of German settlement could be seen as a necessary defensive measure.

Voting trends in Weimar Prussia followed no simple pattern. While the provincial
Landtag
had a socialist majority, the city of Königsberg itself was run by a right-wing nationalist, Carl Goerdeler (1884–1945),
Bürgermeister
from 1920 to 1930. In the two elections of 1932, the Nazis made significant advances, but failed to win an outright victory. In the last democratic contest in Königsberg, the Nazis received 62,888 votes from 173,154 cast (36.3 per cent); the left-wing vote of 75,564 was divided almost equally between socialists and Communists.
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Inter-war Prussia did not share a frontier with the Soviet Union, but many of Prussia’s discontents were shared by the Bolsheviks. Both sides hated the Versailles settlement, and despised the new, Western-backed national states. The Bolsheviks were free of Nazi-style racism, but they shared an appetite for mass killing by category and assumed that ideological conflict would lead to military conflict. They knew that their attempt in 1920 to export Communist Revolution with bayonets had failed miserably.
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So when Stalin launched his Five Year Plans, he famously predicted that, if the breakneck programme did not succeed within a decade, ‘we will be annihilated’. He was counting on war.
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The Second World War in Europe, therefore, must be conceived above all as a fight to the death between two totalitarian monsters. The Greater Reich and the Soviet Union were the largest combatant powers by far. Both aimed to recoup losses incurred since 1914. And their titanic, savage struggle on the Eastern Front accounted for perhaps three-quarters of the fighting and casualties.
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The future of East Prussia hung in the balance throughout. Each stage of the war, therefore, has to be defined by the changing relations between Germany and the Soviet Union. During the currency of the Nazi–Soviet Pact in 1939–41 East Prussia was protected by its location in the German sphere of influence. After the start of ‘Operation Barbarossa’ on 22 June 1941, when Hitler assaulted his erstwhile partner, it was left far behind the area of operations. Within a couple of years, when the tide changed, its prospects quickly grew precarious.

The outcome of the war was decided by the unexpected survival of the Red Army, and by the series of colossal, almost unimaginably expensive victories that began with Stalingrad and Kursk. From mid-1943 onwards, Stalin’s triumphant forces smashed their way westwards, until they won the shattering Battle for Berlin in April 1945 without even calling on Western assistance. The final layout of Europe on VE Day saw perhaps one-quarter of the Continent neutral, one-quarter under Western control, and one-half under Soviet control. Though the Third Reich was totally destroyed, the principal victor was not ‘Freedom, Justice and Democracy’. It was a second totalitarian regime, which had killed millions, which ran the world’s largest network of concentration camps, and which had triumphed by exacting unparalleled human sacrifices. This second evil monster would keep the free world busy for the next forty-five years. The Prussia of the Teutonic Knights, of Duke Albrecht and of Immanuel Kant, lay entirely at its mercy.

The sentence hanging over Prussia could not be executed by one blow. The first phase began in the late summer of 1944. When Soviet troops approached, the decisive move appeared imminent. A Red Army sortie into the frontier village of Nemmersdorf left a trail of atrocities behind it. But Stalin had given priority to the conquest of the Balkans, and his northern armies halted on the Nieman and the middle Vistula.

Adolf Hitler’s main military command post was located at the Wolfsschanze or ‘Wolf’s Lair’ near Rastenburg in East Prussia from June 1941 to November 1944. The unsuccessful bomb plot against him took place there on 20 July 1944, yet the headquarters was not relocated for a further four months. In that time, the central Soviet spearhead forces stayed encamped before Warsaw; three Soviet ‘fronts’ in Lithuania surrounded East Prussia’s northern border, while the Red Army’s attack columns were surging through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. The Western Allies were still crawling up Italy, and pushing stolidly on through France. Their one contribution to the reduction of East Prussia occurred when the RAF twice raided Königsberg.

In the records of RAF Bomber Command, the Königsberg operation is justified by the target being ‘an important supply port for the Eastern Front’ and is described as ‘one of the most successful of the war’. For ‘successful’ read ‘devastating’. Two consecutive raids were necessary before the desired effect was achieved. On the night of 26/7 August, 74 Avro Lancasters of 5 Group flew in: 4 were lost, and little damage was inflicted. So on the night of 29/30 August, 189 Lancasters were sent, dropping 480 tons of incendiaries, and losing 15 of their number. Their controllers noted ‘significant fighter activity’. The fires burned for three days. The inner suburbs of Altstadt, Löbenicht and Kneiphof, which had no port facilities, were obliterated.
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In the local record, 25,000 people were killed.

The firestorm of August 1944 figures prominently in explanations of the disappearance of the famous Prussian treasure, the
Bernsteinzimmer
or ‘Amber Room’ presented to Peter the Great during the Great Northern War. Fifty-five amber panels decorated with gold leaf and crystal mirrors and weighing six tons adorned the Imperial Palace at Tsarskoye Selo near St Petersburg from 1716 to 1941. During the Siege of Leningrad, they were ‘reclaimed’ by German troops, reassembled in Königsberg, and put on public display in the Royal Castle. Since 1944, their whereabouts have been unknown.
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By January 1945 the Soviet conquest of East Prussia had been awaited for many months, and the Red Army rapidly overran the whole province except for Königsberg. The purpose of the operation, which began on 13 January, was to engage the large German Army Group Centre and to prevent it from assisting other German defence lines. Marshal Zhukov’s principal offensive, which set off from the vicinity of Warsaw, was pointed directly at Berlin; and Marshal Rokossovsky was tasked with ensuring that no German units from East Prussia could interfere. This objective was achieved, though progress was slow, and heroic efforts by German defenders managed to reopen the supply road from Königsberg to Pillau.

The most obvious, immediate consequence, however, was to sow panic among East Prussia’s civilian population, and to trigger the terrible
Flucht aus dem Osten
or ‘Flight from the East’.
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The winter was unusually harsh. Deep snow covered the ground. All the rivers and canals were frozen hard, and the
Frisches Haff
, the ‘Freshwater Lagoon’, had turned into a vast slab of solid ice. The Gauleiter of the province, Erich Koch, resisted the orderly evacuation of the population until it was too late, condemning disobedient civilians to be shot. So when he finally relented on 20 January, he started a stampede. Germans living north of Königsberg had no chance of escape. Those living further south had ten days before the roads to Elbing and Danzig were cut. Tens of thousands of people set off in carts, on bicycles, horse or foot, hoping to reach safety.

To begin with, the Königsbergers were only half-trapped. Once the railway to Allenstein was cut, the best way out was to cross the ice to Pillau. Hundreds and thousands attempted the crossing every day for several weeks. Many dropped from cold and exhaustion. Many were strafed by Soviet fighters, or fell into holes in the ice. But many struggled on to Pillau to wait for help.

Fortunately for them, the
Kriegsmarine
had prepared plans for a large-scale humanitarian rescue. Admiral Dönitz gave orders on 21 January for ‘Operation Hannibal’ to begin. A thousand merchant ships and naval vessels operated a non-stop service between Pillau, Danzig and Stettin, running the gauntlet of Soviet bombers and submarines. They suffered horrendous losses, including the sinking of the
Wilhelm Gustloff
, the greatest maritime disaster in world history, when 10,000 may have died.
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But they also saved very many lives.

The final battle for Königsberg – what the Russians now call the
Shturm Kenigsberga
, the ‘Storming of Königsberg’ – was mounted in the first week of April under General Chernyakovsky. The attackers faced four concentric defensive lines, twenty modernized forts, and five full divisions of the 3rd Panzer Army. Calls for surrender were ignored. Chernyakovsky moved to the assault, deploying four armies, massed artillery at a density of 250 guns per half-mile, and a fleet of warplanes. Shelling pulverized the outermost defences. Day 1 of the ground assault brought the attackers to the second line in the south. Day 2 was marked by fierce resistance and by Hitler’s repeated refusal of permission to capitulate. On Day 3, in better weather, the Soviet air force wreaked havoc in the city centre. Day 4 dawned with the defences hopelessly fragmented, and finished with the forbidden capitulation.
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An estimated 80 per cent of Prussia’s one-time capital lay in ruins. The surviving defenders were marched off, and the remaining civilians subjected to a reign of murder, rape and pillage. ‘The robbers’ lair of German imperialism’,
Pravda
announced in Moscow, ‘has been liquidated.’

A German, who had been working during the siege as a doctor, took a walk to see for himself: