In August, 1944, news got out that in the East Prussian villages of Nemmersdorf and Goldap, the

Red Army had raped, tortured and murdered all of the inhabitants down to the last baby. In

Nemmersdorf, reporters from Switzerland and Sweden were present when the grisly atrocities were

uncovered. In barns, houses and sheds where the Red Army had discovered civilians hiding, they had

not only machine gunned them but had thrown hand grenades into the groups. 95 German civilians

were murdered in this bestial fashion in the Nemmersdorf area of Schulzenwalde, above. Below:

Swiss journalists photographed bodies of two raped and murdered German women and three children

also murdered by the Red Army in Metgethen, East Prussia, another plaec of slaughter.



This scene soon played out in West Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, the Sudetenland and other areas of

eastern Europe. The Red Army was cajoled to behave in Germany "as Mongolian hordes of old" by

Stalin's propagandists, among whom was the grand master of hate, Ilya Ehrenburg, who encouraged

troops to injure, torture, rape and kill all German civilians. As the violence spread, the only option for

the endangered East Prussians was to flee, and they would face uncounted scenes of terror.



In an article of March, 3,1945 Ehrenburg emphasized that the "historical mission of the Soviet army

consists in a modest and honorable task of reduction of the population of Germany." Ehrenburg

whipped the Red Army into such a pathological fury of hatred that by the time they arrived in East

Prussia it was easy to rape and kill the mostly female population. There were reports of young

women in East Prussia having been crucified on barn doors, tied up by their legs and torn in two by

cars, or groups of naked girls being tied to a rope like fish on a line and dragged behind wagons, or of

small groups of children being found with their tongues nailed to tables and lifeless babies discovered

with their skulls broken and bodies punctured by bayonets. It is said that every captured woman

between eight and eighty was violently raped, most multiple times and many were killed after.



"The Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German is for us the worst imaginable

curse and strikes us to the quick. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least

one German a day,you have wasted that day....for us there is nothing more joyful than a heap of

German corpses." IIya Ehrenburg.



In the winter of 1945, East Prussia was cut off from the west, the only escape route for many being

from the small port of Pillau and over the Baltic Sea toward the west. Throngs of desperate

Königsberg civilians had only one way out, a frigid walk over half frozen lagoons to Frische Nehrung,

a narrow slice of land, from where they hoped to reach Danzig. Almost a million people are said to

have tried this perilous crossing. Survivors later recounted the hopelessness and horror of making this

deadly trek in the dark as whole families pulling carts and sleds filled with children and the elderly slid

into holes in the ice and plunged into the unforgiving sea.



In daylight, Soviet planes circled overhead and intentionally cut off large ice floes with artillery fire,

sending them hopelessly adrift. Those who escaped on land joined an endless parade of stunned,

bereaved people on overflowing roadways. They witnessed whole cartloads of people crushed and

mowed over by advancing Russian tanks, with wailing children and frantic mothers stretched for mile

after mile of human misery. Unprepared for the 60 degree below zero wind chill and deep snow,

some turned back home in despair. Blazing farms lit up the horizon, burned by the Red Army or set

on fire by hopeless owners who then committed suicide.



This was the "orderly and humane expulsion" of Germans that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin shook

hands to. More than 1.9 million of nearly 2.4 million East Prussians joined by Germans from central

Poland fled westward under horrible conditions. 173,000 people could not or would not leave. Later,

researchers of the Federal Archives counted 3,300 locations just in areas they had access to where at

least 120,000 German civilians were either shot or beaten to death by the Red Army.



"The German 'good fellows', those who at home give way to sentimentalities, piggy-backs to their

kiddies and feed the German cats with morsels of their rationed hamburgers, murder Russian children

with the same pedantry as do the bad Germans. They murder because they have come to believe

that only people with German blood are worthy of living on this earth of ours." Ehrenburg



The Germans initiated "Operation Hannibal" to withdraw German civilians and troops from East

Prussia. Beginning on January 21, 1945, it ended up being one of the largest emergency evacuations

by sea in history and one of the German Navy's most significant achievements. In a period of about

15 weeks, between 500 and 1,080 merchant vessels of all types and numerous naval craft, including

Germany's largest remaining naval units, transported about 900,000 refugees and 350,000 soldiers

across the Baltic Sea to Germany and occupied Denmark. But not all rescues were successful.



The Wilhelm Gustloff was a 25,000-ton passenger liner. On January 30, 1945, when it steamed out

of Gotenhafen, it carried a crew of 1,100 officers and men, 73 critically wounded soldiers, 373

young women of the Women's Naval Auxiliary and more than 6,000 desperate refugees, most of

them women and children who had reached the safety of the ship after grueling personal ordeals.



The Gustloff was 13 miles off the coast of Pomerania when 3 torpedoes from a Soviet sub under the

command of Captain A.I. Marinesko, struck the ship. 90 minutes later it sank under the icy waves of

the Baltic. Barely 1,100 survived. At least 7,000 Germans died. A few days later, on February 10,

Marinesko struck again and sank the German hospital ship the General von Steuben carrying 3,500

wounded soldiers and another 1,000 refugees.



Only 650 people survived. Hailed as a hero despite a record of drunkenness and desertion,

Marinesko was later awarded the Combat Order of the Red Banner for his record in sinking the most

tonnage in a single cruise. He would later be demoted for other offenses and he died in prison. On

May 6,1945 the German freighter Goya, also part of the rescue fleet, was torpedoed by another

Soviet submarine, and more than 6,000 non-combatant refugees fleeing from East Prussia also died.

Below: Wm.Gustloff; Marinesko (click). There is a monument glorifying him in 'Kalingrad'.

