Regarding Hitler’s rise to power and popularity in pre-WWII Germany, you may want to read up on the conditions in Europe and Germany when he came to power and perhaps understand how the WWI War Reparations act as set out under the Treaty of Versailles had a created a political and social-economic climate in Germany that was ripe for someone like Hitler to take advantage of for his own evil visions. Together with his incredibly effective propaganda machine under the directions of the sinister Josef Goebbels he found a willing and eager people that could just about be manipulated in any given direction so long as it provided a way out of the sewer hole that the rest of Europe had condemned them to, and that featured such things as hyper-inflation at the rate of 4 trillion German marks to 1 US dollar. None of this justifies the ensuing conquest of Europe and the persecution of the Jews of course, but it goes a long way towards an explanation of how a nation can be dragged down by a malevolent leadership into a realm which leads straight to hell.

The German people paid heavily for WWII, in particular those in Eastern Germany and Prussia. Before they fell prey to the ethnic cleansing policies of Joe Stalin – an even bigger mass-murderer than AH – around 5 million people were forced to flee almost immediately when the Soviet red army advanced into East Prussia in October 1944. This occurred in the manner of a viscous barbaric horde bent on revenging the millions of Russians casualties of WWII, including the nearly two million dead from the battle of Stalingrad. And this was also a particularly good time if you were a sex-starved soldier-slave of a brutal communist regime. Rape, in particular, was the highlight on the pillager’s menu. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, then a young captain in the Red Army, described the entry of his regiment into East Prussia in January 1945 as follows: “For three weeks the war had been going on inside Germany, and all of us knew very well that if the girls were German they could be raped and then shot. This was almost a combat distinction.”

As well, at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 Truman and Churchill allowed Stalin to keep that part of Poland that he had stolen earlier via the secret “non-aggression” Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler and that divided Poland between them. To compensate Poland for this loss – a criminal act by any other name – the German provinces of Silesia and Pomerania and the southern part of East Prussia were incorporated into Poland. These lands were to be cleansed of Germans, with the result that around 13 million Germans were expelled from their former homelands between 1945 and 1949, including three million Germans from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. In addition, Stalin was allowed to expel around two million Poles from their homelands after the Soviets took formal possession of them behind the so-called Curzon line. And so the West stood by and facilitated the ethnic cleansing of 13 million Germans from their homes and lands that they had inhabited for centuries. While an agreement had been reached to allow for an “orderly and humane repatriation” of Germans from their former homelands, this didn’t quite work out that way! Roughly 1.2 million did not survive the forced but unassisted trek west across their now former homelands and through Polish territory to the relative safety of Allied-occupied German territory on the other side of the Neisse river. The survivors – typically not the very old or the very young – and mostly ordinary farm folk who had done nothing more than toil ceaselessly for a living from dusk to dawn their entire lives – told of months and weeks of incredible suffering along the way during which time they were habitually beaten, robbed of the few possessions they had, the women raped repeatedly. Thousands of expellees committed suicide, not able to take any more of it.

And so there are some who will say that Germany and its people got its just rewards – the destruction of Konigsberg and its citizenry being one example – in return for the incredible evil inflicted by its Nazi leadership for causing the death of countless millions of innocent people across the European continent. But, surely, it has and will always be wrong to kill or otherwise destroy the livelihood and homes of innocent people simple because of where they live or who they are governed by. The great 20th century humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, in his speech accepting the Noble Peace Prize in Oslo in 1954, said:

”The most grievous violation of the right based on historical evolution and of any human right in general is to deprive populations of the right to occupy the country where they live by compelling them to settle elsewhere. The fact that the victorious powers decided at the end of WWII to impose this fate on hundreds of thousands of human beings and, what is more, in a most cruel manner, show how little they were aware of the challenge facing them, namely, to re-establish prosperity and, as far as possible, the rule of law”.

I suggest a little different “fallacy”:
Hitler was evil.
Hitler was an admired hero, a leader and an idol for the great majority of Germans for 12 years till his death.
The first and only significant attempt to overthrow Hitler by his countryman was made only after the beginning of Germany’s decline and by no means because the perpetrators lost their faith in Nazi ideology or became suddenly humanity lovers.
German’s remorse on German’s deeds in WW2 began only after Germany’s defeat, not a moment earlier.
Therefore most of the Germans were evil, or collaborated happily with evil.
Does the above still look as a fallacy?

Your description of Hitler as a psychopath suggest that millions Germans and other Europeans accidentally and suddenly began to murder Jews and plunder their property with fanatic zeal just because some psychopath told them to so. Well, it doesn’t sound convincing. More convincing is the explanation that Hitler only released the suppressed demons that were integral part of Europe’s history for very long centuries. Those demons never really disappear, including today. They only wait till their next occasion.

As to the cultural legacy you mention – what is it worth if so many individuals, who were the main bearers of the same cultural legacy, were neither human nor brave enough to even try to oppose those scums you mention and preferred to cheer them?
It reminds me an argument in a defense of Poles of a Polish friend of mine, after he recognized the persecution of Jewish survivors in Poland after the Holocaust (which prevented any chance of reviving a Jewish life there): “One event cannot wipe out centuries of common blooming history of Poles and Jews in Poland”.
To me it sound like a of a man who killed his wife and children, who’s defense claim is: “One incident cannot hide all those our happy years of marriage…” Well, actually and unfortunately, it can.

Then, a question to anyone who fled this city as civilian and went to Berlin in the late days of the German Reich. Because I’m working on a manuscript, and I’m in the beginning phase of putting a work plan schedule on the concept of bringing the civil history of Prussian people who fled East Prussia in the last days and months of the WWII.

I hope I won’t be misunderstood. My grandfather on my mothers side, faced almost 3 years in German prison camps due to his resistance of the occupant Germany in Norway, and was a survivor until he passed away in 1972 of a heartattack. So I have been brought up on mainly stories of the “triumphanting and glorius victory” of the Allied forces of WWII.He was a barber in Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Nazwieler, and I’m also told he saved several people from execution by hiding them under the floors of the barrack where he was forced to work.

My main aim is to try to show that there were also great suffering and losses on BOTH sides of the war and when we attack or condemn war as an evil, we have to know that the ones who really suffers in war are almost always those who didn’t wanted it, and often women and children. And if the mindset and hearts, and the human condition has changed since 1946, I would like to find that out on my own through my work on a doc. to show the other side of the so-called victory of the sheeple mankind. Maybe this is only a small contribution to a near future to end all wars. Perhaps a naive thought, but as long as I live I like to give it a try, my way.

So the message has been sent

Because a major factor today is the way we communicate (internet), whatever faith, belief-system, nation or political view we stick to. My suggestion is that internet might be a future peace-keeper and cultural tool for building frindship cross borders of the other acpects of life.

Thank you for listening in, and once again thanks for the this website.
(edited for brevity, relevance, and to take out some language possibly produced by translating software – Admin)

So who are we to blame for this: all the Germans who were alive at the time, or mainly the NAZI scum who orchestrated this dark and ugly period in German history. I continue to believe that it is unfair to paint everyone with the same brush. A logical falacy lies at the bottom this, and it goes as follows:

Hitler is evil
Hitler is a German
Therefore, all Germans are evil.

Also, the significance of Konigsberg should not be reduced to period that the psychopat Hitler was in charge of Germany – its considerable history and cultural contributions deserve much better than that, and so do the people that lived and worked there over the centuries. It is their legacy and rightful place in European history that this site is all about.

I cannot claim ownership to any of the Konigsberg photographs used on this site – I have collected them over a few years by searching for them on the internet. And in regards to my use of them on this site, I’m of two minds of this being right or wrong. I believe these photos belong to everyone who once called Konigsberg home, and to those who it was taken from in terms of cultural heritage, and – last but not least – to those who have taken an interest in preserving the memory of a once beautiful and thriving city in eastern Europe and the tragic tale of its eventual destruction at the end of WWII. There is no profit motive involved here – this site is actually costing me money.

If it is important to anyone to be given credit for these photograps, I will do so. Simply submit your details to me via this site and how you acquired the copyright to any of the photographs above, and I will add that information to the site.

beste Gruesse,
Max Popov

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ESCAPE FROM HELLFIRE TO FREEDOM

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