If you are interested in Dr. Bastiaan Willems book, check it out here, these are non-affiliate links: United States: www.amazon.com/Violence-Defeat-Wehrmacht-1944-1945-Cambridge/dp/1108479723 Germany: www.amazon.de/Violence-Defeat-Wehrmacht-1944-1945-Cambridge/dp/1108479723/ United Kingdom: www.amazon.co.uk/Violence-Defeat-Wehrmacht-1944-1945-Cambridge/dp/1108479723/
Read the memoir of Hans von Lehndorff for a civilian perspective of the war in the city. His cold and dissasociated style lends a lot of objectivity to his description of life on the frontlines, the harsh realities of life under the late nazi regime, the red army brutality and the uneasy transitional period when polish administration was setting up in the southern part of east prussia.
@@bastiaanwillems2252 I'd very much like to add my thanks as well. I learned a lot from it. I appreciated you explaining the exploitation of the child soldiers and how concern for the civilian population was a last thought. It's very sad of course but better to know the truth than not, eh?
Dad was captured somewhere in the larger area and spent his first time as a Soviet POW repairing the underground fuel storage tanks in Pillau, before ending a few thousand kilometres east. To bad I don´t know more, but he didn´t talk about all that too much.
At 13:32 into the video, the subject of evacuation of civilians comes up. The professor discounts this saying there's no evidence in the official documents of citizen evacuation being listed as a reason. HOWEVER, given Nazi's express forbidding of citizen evacuations (enthusiastically enforced by Gauleiter Erich Koch, the self-serving coward who ruthlessly blocked citizen evacuations other than for himself and friends and who had great influence in Koenigsberg), isn't it plausible that no mention of citizen evacuations being a command concern was made on any documents specifically because if they were mentioned, the operation might have been forbidden? Citizen evacuations were usually officially forbidden until too late in these East German cities, with the result that many more citizens were trapped, subject to Soviet occupation, pillage and rape. This may be a case where the absence of documentation, when taken in proper context, is not lack of support for what happened in fact.
It is known who was on the ships and they evacuated mostly soldiers and supplies. Evacuation was only officially ordered on the 21st of January and even then civilians were on the bottom of the list.
Even if it’s forbidden to say, evacuate civilians, fact is that you can’t really do it completely under the table. You can chose not to report it to Nazi party officials, but the army divisions involved in holding the cities would have to communicate it among each other to practically coordinate it. It is the documents of the latter type that he says don’t concern themselves with the evacuation of civilians.
These sort of videos need to spend most of their time with annotated maps as the main video object (the people can be kept in small windows in the corners.)
@@KI.765 To be fair, most of the thin old guys were gone by 1945 because they got called up much earlier in the war. Still boggles my mind how many of the NCOs who marched in Russia in 1941 were Great-War veterans, men in their early 40s.
@@NaturalLanguageLearning way to not be able to take a mainly tongue in cheek comment. Yes, I'm well aware our fat guys are much fatter than their fat guys were, that's self-evident by looking at period pictures; and in those you'd see some heavier set volkssturm men. Don't worry though, I was impressed with your comment and also think you're very highly intelligent.
At 17:00 I disagree with the assessment that Koenigsburg was not viewed as important to defend by the high command. Replacing the high quality divisions with volksgrenadier divisions was a smart move because of the effectiveness of each division in the defence of the city vs open terrain operations. The volksgrenadiers were of limited use outside of the city but their effectiveness would be greatly increased in the fortress. 5th panzer and 1st infantry were more effective in the defence than the volksgrenadiers of the city but they were many times more effective outside of it.
Yes, we'll touch on that exact issue in a future episode. A very good observation! I don't think we're disagreeing on that point - the different commands used the "best" units for the job. It makes a lot of sense to move tanks out of the city, and replace a tank division with a Volksgrenadier division.
Please about breakout from Stalingrad kottel. I heard about major Jonas Semaska which 600 lithuanians, who escape from stalingrad, after that he fight in courland cottel..
I visited Kaliningrad as it's now known during the world cup a few years back . So much I learned whilst there but of course all from a Soviet point of view at places like the Bunker museum all while my mates were drinking in the bars I was drinking in the history . We also played in Volgograd so it was a historical trip for me just as much as a football trip , in fact the history was more interesting than the football which was dire but that's an altogether different subject .
The biggest mystery was that the Soviets, despite having a manpower shortage, wasted so much effort on capturing Königsberg. When they could just as easily have besieged it with minimal effort and sent the bulk of their forces westward. Even more so when Zhukov was stuck at the Oder river waiting for 2nd Belorussian Front to finish mopping up German resistance in the Danzig and Pommerania area. A task in which 3rd Belorussian Front attacking Königsberg could have assisted, thus allowing Rokossovsky to send his Front to the Oder much sooner. All these cities would have fallen into Soviet hands anyway come the end of the Third Reich. Bottle up these fortresses, keep the troops in there in there and finish off the Reich a little earlier would have made more sense. Or was Stalin having his grubby little way again?
You do realize that every city represents a network of roads and railways. Without capturing these network of transportation, how would the Red Army guarantee their supply line? The nazis surrounded Leningrad for 2 years without major attempt to capture it, the city endured while tying down Army Group North for 2 years.
Konigsberg wasn't besieged by large forces, most of the front units went towards Vistula estuary and Elbing and Danzig- Sopot-Gdynia and Hel Peninsula. Konigsberg was also a large railroad and automotive hub, garrison and industrial objects, it was defended by Fuhrersbefehl as a Fortress-City
@@demonprinces17 The Allies did just that. And if you watch Mark Felton's channel you would have seen the Germans launch raid's into the Allied rear from the Channel Island and Dunkirk until april 1945. In the end it took less troops, or allowed them to use lesser tier troops to just bottle up the Germans and suck in the occasional raid then it cost them to assault well fortified cities.
I kind of get the impression, and I might be wrong here, that the whole fortress strategy was Hitler desperately trying to emulate what the Soviets achieved at Stalingrad but just getting obliterated in the process.
Kind of true for the rest of the world too at that point. Total war and all. The Western Allies also didn't care too much either. It would be nice to avoid civilian casualties, but collateral was to be expected. The amount of civilian lives lost during the strategic bombing campaigns is evidence of their priorities.
Terror bombing or euphemistically called by the brits "dehousing" was done by the western allies aswell. Its true that on the ground the western allies were much more humane than the Soviets but up in the air where you cant see the person you are dropping your bombs on the dinner table didnt make much difference.
@@looinrims Third Reich used German minorities in neighboring countries to justify its aggression against those countries. Also, strategic bombing campaigns explicitly did target civilian population among other objectives.
yes and no, remember the Germans were rather close to Moscow as well. Additionally, nearly all countries in 1945 or even before ran into manpower problems. I think I cover some other aspects in this video as well: th-cam.com/video/XHkBXuJUujI/w-d-xo.html
Volkssturm is basically militia, armed civilians. Often not even in uniform, just an armband. Volksgranadier divisions were, if I remember correctly, lower quality infantry divisions formed in the final stages of the war, often with the remnants of infantry divisions that had been mauled at the front.
@@NaturalLanguageLearning not necessarily lower quality, it was a new organization for infantry divisions, it took into account lower manpower (haveing only 6 line battalions instead of 9, which many divisions had been reduced to anyway), but compensated for this by haveing more machine-pistols, assault rifles and light machine guns (at least on paper) compared to earlier infantry units. many were outfitted with lower quality personal, but many were full of high-quality veterans. so they had a rather inconsistent performance.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 yeah, good point. I had heard about some of them performing surprisingly well in some engagements, because of whole squads being armed with Sturmgewehrs, which would have been a huge upgrade in firepower compared to bolt action rifles. But when in came to troop quality the overall quality must have been much lower than the veteran divisions destroyed in the Eastern Front, North Africa and Normandy. Older men (+35, +40), or very young ones with zero experience, rushed training... The best recruits and decorated veterans would mostly be concentrated in the "elite" units, like the panzer divisions, Fallschirmjäger, Gebirgsjäger, Waffen-SS...Same goes for heavy weapons. And I think the 6 battalions instead of 9 was already a thing by the time of the battle of Kursk due to manpower shortages.
I read somewhere that the population of Königsberg were very late in realizing that the front was about to reach them and attempting to leave. Perhaps they didn‘t really believe the enemy could reach Germany or the propaganda convinced them so. For the use of civilians during battle, it would certainly have been advantageous to have more people in the city still, at least if the siege didn‘t last too long.
I’ve read The Forgotten soldier too, an amazing read, but I’m not sure of its veracity as a true first hand account either, there seem to be no records of a Guy Sajer in the surviving Grossdeutschland Divison records.
@@ericdickison7995 I think it's true - his buddy 'Hals' immigrated to Connecticut....his account of the fighting in the Pilau region is harrowing. It was the 'Veteran' who bailed them out there...
@@ericdickison7995 I read it in passing some years back (Hals) but don't recall the source... i always thought the contentions against Sajer weren't very impressive. Sajer must be around 95 now - if he's still alive. He states (Sajer) that his account was the emotional impressions of a terrified teenager swept along in an historic avalanche and not some military representation with pins on a map. I can see that!
A 'successful' operation involving sacrificing the nation's children for a dying regime rather than surrendering. One thing often missed is that by this point in the war though German civilians and German soldiers rightly feared and dreaded the Red Army they were actually willing to surrender to the Soviets because they knew the war was lost. However the Nazis were able to successfully use fear of what was coming and ever mounting terror to keep people fighting even when they would have preferred to surrender. Charite at War actually captures this tension very well. Dread at the Soviets coming, fearing their depredations, but above all just wanting the Nazis to be gone, and hoping that the Soviets will kill them all because with everything in ruins, most people have had it with the Nazis and want to see them dead for all the trouble they've caused.
Is there any legal (and peaceful) way that Germany asks for these territories? Ok, they lost the war, but so many of their cities are under foreign control, seems a bit unfair to say the least
The Germans didn’t want them in 1991, and to be frank, why would they? As history matters put it: “Kaliningrad is as Russian as any other part of it so why let it go?” Ignore the military and economic significance of Kaliningrad and then realize the whole ethnic cleansing that happened as the red army moved west, and yeah there’s not really a point
Rather fascinating topic, thank you for the video. This'd deserve by the way a wikipedia page of its own... 13:56 Isn't your argument a bit biased? I mean, to convince their superiors of the needs for the operation, officers would of course list reasons that make sense militarily, instead of other reasons like civilians. Of course evacuating civilians wouldn't have been the main goal anyway, but when you are stating more or less "it was not in the documents anywhere SO it proves they actually didn't care", it's maybe a bit too much of an extrapolation: it's just that it wasn't the purpose of these documents to mention civilian-related considerations, I'd believe. I may be wrong, of course.... but I may be partially right also, maybe?
Thanks for your question! The main issue with civilians is the great discrepancy between what commanders claimed after the war, and what they said during the war. Even in the Soviet Union, civilians would be mentioned every now and so often, so it's not uncommon to find civilians in reports. So, if German civilians were as important as was claimed, we should find them high on a list of priorities, but the opposite is true. Whenever they are mentioned, it is at the very end of a list, below all else. They're not fully absent from sources - in fact, the sources just make it clear that they waged a war without care for the population. Clearest examples of this are the matters of rationing and shipping space, where we know how much was allocated to civilians and how much was allocated to the war effort. If evacuating civilians was a concern, we would see that ships would be packed with them. This was not the case. Of course, my short answer here does not do the situation justice at all. If you really want to learn more about it, go to Amazon or Cambridge University Press and get a copy of "Violence in Defeat" (pretty affordable!) All the best, Dr. Bastiaan Willems
Listening to these guys is, of course, interesting... I have not looked it up, but MHNV-Bernhard is obviously Austrian and from the name alone and his accent Dr. Willems seems pretty Dutch to me...no Germans involved... ;) P.S.: great channel, good work, Mr. MHNV!
@@bastiaanwillems2252 Thanks for clearing this up! I had my suspicions, but was too lazy to look it up...that`s why we have the experts... ;) Good that my accent-detector still works. :D Keep up the interresting research!
An honest mistake. Austria's very succesful in trading. Germany: -Now, we haff zizz compozer Beethoven to you transfered - böt you haff us somezing in retörn giving! Austria: We'll, we haff ziz painter...
Can you post some documents that provide the sacrifice the young Position? Because i dont believe that. My grandfather was there and most of the young where kept away Form hard fighting by their officers. To not let Thema die so close to the end. This sound a bit like Bad Propaganda to me.
I discuss it in depth in my book, 'Violence in Defeat". This goes into depth on this issue and also includes a large number of references. It's a hard pill to swallow, for sure, and the sad part is that it goes even further than what I discuss here.
@@bastiaanwillems2252 well since you made a career of making germans look Bad no matter the facts. I dont trust your acessement. Going to research that myself.
How did the breakout happen? Because it was completely irrelevant. Just like Army Group North isolated in Kurland, Koenigsberg made no difference whatsoever by late February, 1945. Little boys taking out Soviet tanks with Panzerfausts might have inflicted some damage on the Red Army, but it was never going to be enough to mean anything at all. Yet another meaningless discussion about yet another meaningless struggle.
I think the fact that the Nazi's send young boys to a meaningless death is worth recording! Never again. Shows the lies told and believed by the Wehraboo"s.
If you are interested in Dr. Bastiaan Willems book, check it out here, these are non-affiliate links:
United States: www.amazon.com/Violence-Defeat-Wehrmacht-1944-1945-Cambridge/dp/1108479723
Germany: www.amazon.de/Violence-Defeat-Wehrmacht-1944-1945-Cambridge/dp/1108479723/
United Kingdom: www.amazon.co.uk/Violence-Defeat-Wehrmacht-1944-1945-Cambridge/dp/1108479723/
Just the mere mention of Königsberg makes me sad :(
"The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison"
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Very wise words!
Exquisite!
It's great to see you guys collaborating again, nice work!
Thanks man!
Read the memoir of Hans von Lehndorff for a civilian perspective of the war in the city. His cold and dissasociated style lends a lot of objectivity to his description of life on the frontlines, the harsh realities of life under the late nazi regime, the red army brutality and the uneasy transitional period when polish administration was setting up in the southern part of east prussia.
what is the title?
@@yousuck785why East Prussian Diary
Thanks, Dr. Bastian, a good presentation, and thanks to MHnV for producing this!
You're very welcome!
@@bastiaanwillems2252 I'd very much like to add my thanks as well. I learned a lot from it. I appreciated you explaining the exploitation of the child soldiers and how concern for the civilian population was a last thought. It's very sad of course but better to know the truth than not, eh?
My Grandfather managed to get out of Königsberg with the last ship that left the harbour.
God bless you both!
Dad was captured somewhere in the larger area and spent his first time as a Soviet POW repairing the underground fuel storage tanks in Pillau, before ending a few thousand kilometres east.
To bad I don´t know more, but he didn´t talk about all that too much.
Pilau, Piława. February 1945 Danzig was still intact. So it allowed some Konigsberg operations
Pillau is today Baltiysk, not Piława.
Great channel , just found it and I must say it's like a gold mine of information - many thanks .
Great insights on fascinating, often overlooked, aspect of the war. Thanks!
Thanks!
Nice thumbnail Bernhard! Also nice graphics & collaboration. All in all, nice steps. See you on Patreon. Cheers, B
Great interview, thanks for you effort.
Thanks!
Really interesting. Thanks guys.
At 13:32 into the video, the subject of evacuation of civilians comes up. The professor discounts this saying there's no evidence in the official documents of citizen evacuation being listed as a reason. HOWEVER, given Nazi's express forbidding of citizen evacuations (enthusiastically enforced by Gauleiter Erich Koch, the self-serving coward who ruthlessly blocked citizen evacuations other than for himself and friends and who had great influence in Koenigsberg), isn't it plausible that no mention of citizen evacuations being a command concern was made on any documents specifically because if they were mentioned, the operation might have been forbidden? Citizen evacuations were usually officially forbidden until too late in these East German cities, with the result that many more citizens were trapped, subject to Soviet occupation, pillage and rape. This may be a case where the absence of documentation, when taken in proper context, is not lack of support for what happened in fact.
It is known who was on the ships and they evacuated mostly soldiers and supplies. Evacuation was only officially ordered on the 21st of January and even then civilians were on the bottom of the list.
Evacuate where? Argentina?
Evacuate to the Western Front.
Even if it’s forbidden to say, evacuate civilians, fact is that you can’t really do it completely under the table. You can chose not to report it to Nazi party officials, but the army divisions involved in holding the cities would have to communicate it among each other to practically coordinate it.
It is the documents of the latter type that he says don’t concern themselves with the evacuation of civilians.
@@jussim.konttinen4981 The rest of Germany. My Grandmother walked on foot from East Prussia to a place not far away from the Dutch border.
These sort of videos need to spend most of their time with annotated maps as the main video object (the people can be kept in small windows in the corners.)
I like how the thumbnail resembles modern WWII re-enactors.
Something reenactors and the volkssturm have in common: a lot of old fat guys.
@@KI.765 To be fair, most of the thin old guys were gone by 1945 because they got called up much earlier in the war. Still boggles my mind how many of the NCOs who marched in Russia in 1941 were Great-War veterans, men in their early 40s.
@@KI.765 probably not that fat in 1945, after years of food shortages. And even old fat people back then usually weren't 2021 level of fat.
@@NaturalLanguageLearning way to not be able to take a mainly tongue in cheek comment.
Yes, I'm well aware our fat guys are much fatter than their fat guys were, that's self-evident by looking at period pictures; and in those you'd see some heavier set volkssturm men.
Don't worry though, I was impressed with your comment and also think you're very highly intelligent.
@@KI.765 wtf man, I only said people were less fat in 1945. a little bit sensitive aren't we? lol
I am buying this guys book this whole festungs dienst thing is new to me and v interesting
At 17:00 I disagree with the assessment that Koenigsburg was not viewed as important to defend by the high command. Replacing the high quality divisions with volksgrenadier divisions was a smart move because of the effectiveness of each division in the defence of the city vs open terrain operations. The volksgrenadiers were of limited use outside of the city but their effectiveness would be greatly increased in the fortress. 5th panzer and 1st infantry were more effective in the defence than the volksgrenadiers of the city but they were many times more effective outside of it.
Yes, we'll touch on that exact issue in a future episode. A very good observation! I don't think we're disagreeing on that point - the different commands used the "best" units for the job. It makes a lot of sense to move tanks out of the city, and replace a tank division with a Volksgrenadier division.
Thanks for the reply! I look forward to the next video.
Impressive testimony, specially the sacrifice of those brave little boys. Terrible...
cannon fodder..... for what??? Clueless kids USED--- gross
@@dleechristy True. Very true.
Please about breakout from Stalingrad kottel. I heard about major Jonas Semaska which 600 lithuanians, who escape from stalingrad, after that he fight in courland cottel..
@tokul76 Pocket ! Thank you.
I visited Kaliningrad as it's now known during the world cup a few years back . So much I learned whilst there but of course all from a Soviet point of view at places like the Bunker museum all while my mates were drinking in the bars I was drinking in the history . We also played in Volgograd so it was a historical trip for me just as much as a football trip , in fact the history was more interesting than the football which was dire but that's an altogether different subject .
The biggest mystery was that the Soviets, despite having a manpower shortage, wasted so much effort on capturing Königsberg. When they could just as easily have besieged it with minimal effort and sent the bulk of their forces westward. Even more so when Zhukov was stuck at the Oder river waiting for 2nd Belorussian Front to finish mopping up German resistance in the Danzig and Pommerania area. A task in which 3rd Belorussian Front attacking Königsberg could have assisted, thus allowing Rokossovsky to send his Front to the Oder much sooner. All these cities would have fallen into Soviet hands anyway come the end of the Third Reich. Bottle up these fortresses, keep the troops in there in there and finish off the Reich a little earlier would have made more sense. Or was Stalin having his grubby little way again?
I think soviet wanna take this city cause it was consider a german soil. They wanna take all german land despite the cost.
You do realize that every city represents a network of roads and railways. Without capturing these network of transportation, how would the Red Army guarantee their supply line? The nazis surrounded Leningrad for 2 years without major attempt to capture it, the city endured while tying down Army Group North for 2 years.
Konigsberg wasn't besieged by large forces, most of the front units went towards Vistula estuary and Elbing and Danzig- Sopot-Gdynia and Hel Peninsula. Konigsberg was also a large railroad and automotive hub, garrison and industrial objects, it was defended by Fuhrersbefehl as a Fortress-City
Takes a lot of troops to do that and they may not have that many.
Also leaves an enemy in your rear that could conduct raids
@@demonprinces17 The Allies did just that. And if you watch Mark Felton's channel you would have seen the Germans launch raid's into the Allied rear from the Channel Island and Dunkirk until april 1945. In the end it took less troops, or allowed them to use lesser tier troops to just bottle up the Germans and suck in the occasional raid then it cost them to assault well fortified cities.
The last known location of the Amber Room.
"Vengeance for Nemmersdorff" - Graffiti on a Berlin wall in November 1944.
Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think.
- Robert Greene
I kind of get the impression, and I might be wrong here, that the whole fortress strategy was Hitler desperately trying to emulate what the Soviets achieved at Stalingrad but just getting obliterated in the process.
"Civilians were not a major concern"
Sadly that sums up both the Russians and the Germans at this point.
Kind of true for the rest of the world too at that point. Total war and all. The Western Allies also didn't care too much either. It would be nice to avoid civilian casualties, but collateral was to be expected. The amount of civilian lives lost during the strategic bombing campaigns is evidence of their priorities.
@@neurofiedyamato8763 yeah but the people on the other side of the Elbe decided that ethnic cleansing was the way to go
Cuz reasons I suppose
Terror bombing or euphemistically called by the brits "dehousing" was done by the western allies aswell. Its true that on the ground the western allies were much more humane than the Soviets but up in the air where you cant see the person you are dropping your bombs on the dinner table didnt make much difference.
@@Keckegenkai the difference was the west didn’t target civilians explicitly
The Soviets? Did
@@looinrims Third Reich used German minorities in neighboring countries to justify its aggression against those countries. Also, strategic bombing campaigns explicitly did target civilian population among other objectives.
This guest is very good. I saw him before and he was good then too.
Thanks!
100% Profesional
Ah, but fortress Cholm held for months and was relieved.
Man, you should get some sun..
lol
He's becoming incandescent.
Who needs the sun when you can live off of the satisfaction of finding gems in the archives?
He doesn't need sun because he glows like the moon
The Fortress Strategy: seems seriously cynical: merely prolong the war simply to prolong the war with no larger operational or strategic goal in mind.
yes and no, remember the Germans were rather close to Moscow as well. Additionally, nearly all countries in 1945 or even before ran into manpower problems. I think I cover some other aspects in this video as well: th-cam.com/video/XHkBXuJUujI/w-d-xo.html
What is the difference between the Volksturm and Volksgrenadeers?
Volkssturm is basically militia, armed civilians. Often not even in uniform, just an armband.
Volksgranadier divisions were, if I remember correctly, lower quality infantry divisions formed in the final stages of the war, often with the remnants of infantry divisions that had been mauled at the front.
@@NaturalLanguageLearning Ok, thanx for that.
@@NaturalLanguageLearning not necessarily lower quality, it was a new organization for infantry divisions, it took into account lower manpower (haveing only 6 line battalions instead of 9, which many divisions had been reduced to anyway), but compensated for this by haveing more machine-pistols, assault rifles and light machine guns (at least on paper) compared to earlier infantry units.
many were outfitted with lower quality personal, but many were full of high-quality veterans. so they had a rather inconsistent performance.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 yeah, good point. I had heard about some of them performing surprisingly well in some engagements, because of whole squads being armed with Sturmgewehrs, which would have been a huge upgrade in firepower compared to bolt action rifles.
But when in came to troop quality the overall quality must have been much lower than the veteran divisions destroyed in the Eastern Front, North Africa and Normandy. Older men (+35, +40), or very young ones with zero experience, rushed training... The best recruits and decorated veterans would mostly be concentrated in the "elite" units, like the panzer divisions, Fallschirmjäger, Gebirgsjäger, Waffen-SS...Same goes for heavy weapons.
And I think the 6 battalions instead of 9 was already a thing by the time of the battle of Kursk due to manpower shortages.
I read somewhere that the population of Königsberg were very late in realizing that the front was about to reach them and attempting to leave.
Perhaps they didn‘t really believe the enemy could reach Germany or the propaganda convinced them so. For the use of civilians during battle, it would certainly have been advantageous to have more people in the city still, at least if the siege didn‘t last too long.
Crazy story
Koningsberg was a capital of Prussia! Only when Prussia became a Kingdom in 1701, Berlin became a capital of united Kingdom Prussia&Brandenburg
Why does this guy look like the Zemo from winter soldier
Guy Sajer perhaps in this battle ? Tho some consider his writing 'controversial'...
I’ve read The Forgotten soldier too, an amazing read, but I’m not sure of its veracity as a true first hand account either, there seem to be no records of a Guy Sajer in the surviving Grossdeutschland Divison records.
@@ericdickison7995 I think it's true - his buddy 'Hals' immigrated to Connecticut....his account of the fighting in the Pilau region is harrowing. It was the 'Veteran' who bailed them out there...
@@aldosigmann419 Hals has been identified???
I had no idea, that truly blows my mind, has he confirmed the story in the book?
@@ericdickison7995 I read it in passing some years back (Hals) but don't recall the source...
i always thought the contentions against Sajer weren't very impressive. Sajer must be around 95 now - if he's still alive. He states (Sajer) that his account was the emotional impressions of a terrified teenager swept along in an historic avalanche and not some military representation with pins on a map. I can see that!
He was at Pillau. His division did not fight in this specific battle, but a lot in and around Königsberg!
A 'successful' operation involving sacrificing the nation's children for a dying regime rather than surrendering. One thing often missed is that by this point in the war though German civilians and German soldiers rightly feared and dreaded the Red Army they were actually willing to surrender to the Soviets because they knew the war was lost. However the Nazis were able to successfully use fear of what was coming and ever mounting terror to keep people fighting even when they would have preferred to surrender. Charite at War actually captures this tension very well. Dread at the Soviets coming, fearing their depredations, but above all just wanting the Nazis to be gone, and hoping that the Soviets will kill them all because with everything in ruins, most people have had it with the Nazis and want to see them dead for all the trouble they've caused.
AN excellent point. We'll touch on that in two of the upcoming interviews!
The truely important question, is Benhard a vampire?
PS: is "Konigberg" a typo or a German spelling of "KonigSberg"?
That was probably already corrected, but the German spelling is "Königsberg". Literally translated Kings Mountain.
Are you feeling ok Bernhard? You look really pale!!! Eat some liver! You da best!!!!
I think it's the lighting as even his beard looks washed out.
@Neil of Longbeck You’re probably right but for a minute there I thought he had become one of the undead! The Nosferatu!!!
Is there any legal (and peaceful) way that Germany asks for these territories? Ok, they lost the war, but so many of their cities are under foreign control, seems a bit unfair to say the least
No
The Germans didn’t want them in 1991, and to be frank, why would they? As history matters put it: “Kaliningrad is as Russian as any other part of it so why let it go?”
Ignore the military and economic significance of Kaliningrad and then realize the whole ethnic cleansing that happened as the red army moved west, and yeah there’s not really a point
no. thats the course of history.
There is no way the Russians are going to give up a year round ice free port in the Baltic.
I think NATO should take Transnistria as compensation for Crimea
A brief reprieve for the Nazis. Next stop, getting ground to bits by the Soviet onslaught.
Can you make at least English subtitles in order to enable automatic translation for other languages?
I have subtitles for all my regular videos.
"At least" it would take several hours to transcribe this talk.
Rather fascinating topic, thank you for the video.
This'd deserve by the way a wikipedia page of its own...
13:56 Isn't your argument a bit biased? I mean, to convince their superiors of the needs for the operation, officers would of course list reasons that make sense militarily, instead of other reasons like civilians. Of course evacuating civilians wouldn't have been the main goal anyway, but when you are stating more or less "it was not in the documents anywhere SO it proves they actually didn't care", it's maybe a bit too much of an extrapolation: it's just that it wasn't the purpose of these documents to mention civilian-related considerations, I'd believe. I may be wrong, of course.... but I may be partially right also, maybe?
Thanks for your question! The main issue with civilians is the great discrepancy between what commanders claimed after the war, and what they said during the war. Even in the Soviet Union, civilians would be mentioned every now and so often, so it's not uncommon to find civilians in reports.
So, if German civilians were as important as was claimed, we should find them high on a list of priorities, but the opposite is true. Whenever they are mentioned, it is at the very end of a list, below all else. They're not fully absent from sources - in fact, the sources just make it clear that they waged a war without care for the population. Clearest examples of this are the matters of rationing and shipping space, where we know how much was allocated to civilians and how much was allocated to the war effort. If evacuating civilians was a concern, we would see that ships would be packed with them. This was not the case.
Of course, my short answer here does not do the situation justice at all. If you really want to learn more about it, go to Amazon or Cambridge University Press and get a copy of "Violence in Defeat" (pretty affordable!)
All the best,
Dr. Bastiaan Willems
@@bastiaanwillems2252 Vielen Dank for this detailed answer, for which I am very grateful :)
I love listening to 2 German guys talk about breaking out of a red army encirclement.
Listening to these guys is, of course, interesting... I have not looked it up, but MHNV-Bernhard is obviously Austrian and from the name alone and his accent Dr. Willems seems pretty Dutch to me...no Germans involved... ;) P.S.: great channel, good work, Mr. MHNV!
Neither Bernhard nor me is German. He's Austrian, and I'm Dutch. But I still appreciate your comment!
@@bastiaanwillems2252 Thanks for clearing this up! I had my suspicions, but was too lazy to look it up...that`s why we have the experts... ;) Good that my accent-detector still works. :D Keep up the interresting research!
An honest mistake. Austria's very succesful in trading.
Germany: -Now, we haff zizz compozer Beethoven to you transfered - böt you haff us somezing in retörn giving!
Austria: We'll, we haff ziz painter...
Can you post some documents that provide the sacrifice the young Position? Because i dont believe that. My grandfather was there and most of the young where kept away Form hard fighting by their officers. To not let Thema die so close to the end. This sound a bit like Bad Propaganda to me.
I discuss it in depth in my book, 'Violence in Defeat". This goes into depth on this issue and also includes a large number of references. It's a hard pill to swallow, for sure, and the sad part is that it goes even further than what I discuss here.
@@bastiaanwillems2252 well since you made a career of making germans look Bad no matter the facts. I dont trust your acessement. Going to research that myself.
Checking this out from Cleveland. I’m obsessed lately. So sad to think what could of been. Fuck communists just sayin
Amazing bravery; WW2 was such a tragedy as so many bright young people from the Great Generation died on both sides!
A lot of German resources where tided down in East, that may have delayed the colaps
So in 1945 Germans fought like Soviets in 1941.
How did the breakout happen? Because it was completely irrelevant. Just like Army Group North isolated in Kurland, Koenigsberg made no difference whatsoever by late February, 1945. Little boys taking out Soviet tanks with Panzerfausts might have inflicted some damage on the Red Army, but it was never going to be enough to mean anything at all. Yet another meaningless discussion about yet another meaningless struggle.
Might as well not talk about anything besides Stalingrad then. Everything except that is irrelevant. /s
So why comment then? Surely that makes your comment meaningless?
Soviet troops got encircled in Kiev during Operation Barbarossa.
Would it also be meaningless to discuss it since the Soviets at the time were losing?
I think the fact that the Nazi's send young boys to a meaningless death is worth recording! Never again. Shows the lies told and believed by the Wehraboo"s.