German civilian population and military personnel were evacuated from East Prussia between 20 January and March 1945. The evacuation was initially organized and carried out by state authorities but quickly turned into a chaotic flight from the Red Army.
A part of the evacuation of German civilians towards the end of World War II, these events are not to be confused with the expulsion from East Prussia that followed after the war had ended. The area that was evacuated was not the Gau East Prussia, but the inter-war East Prussia where most people already held German citizenship. German citizens in Memel and other regions with proximity to East Prussia also took part in the evacuation, wishing to escape by sea, even though in their regions there was no official evacuation announced.
The evacuation, which had been delayed for months, was initiated due to fear of the Red Army advances during the East Prussian Offensive. Some parts of the evacuation were planned as a military necessity, Operation Hannibal being the most important military operation involved in the evacuation. However, many refugees took to the roads on their own initiative because of reported Soviet atrocities against Germans in the areas under Soviet control. Both spurious and factual accounts of Soviet atrocities were disseminated through the official news and propaganda outlets of Nazi Germany and by rumors that swept through the military and civilian populations.
Despite having detailed evacuation plans for some areas, the German authorities, including the Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch, delayed action until 20 January, when it was too late for an orderly evacuation, and the civil services and Nazi Party were eventually overwhelmed by the numbers of those wishing to evacuate. Coupled with the panic caused by the speed of the Soviet advance, civilians caught in the middle of combat, and the bitter winter weather, many thousands of refugees died during the evacuation period. The Soviet forces took control of East Prussia only in May 1945. According to the West German Schieder commission, the civilian population of East Prussia at the beginning of 1944 was 2,653,000 people. This accounting, which was based on ration cards, included air raid evacuees from western Germany and foreign workers. Before the end of the war an estimated 2 million people were evacuated, including 500,000 in late 1944 and 1,500,000 after January 1945. An estimated 600,000 remained behind in Soviet-controlled East Prussia in April–May 1945. Schieder presented a different set of figures for the territory of East Prussia and Memel that excluded 310,000 persons in the western regions that were included with the population of the province Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. Total population beginning of 1944: 2,350,000. Evacuated-In the fall of 1944: 500,000; after January 1945: 1,350,000. The balance of 500,000 were captured by the Soviet forces.
The West German search service reported that 31,940 civilians from East Prussia, which also included Memel, were confirmed as killed during the evacuation.Gesamterhebung zur Klärung des Schicksals der deutschen Bevölkerung in den Vertreibungsgebieten. München : Zentralstelle des Kirchl. Suchdienstes. See Separate table "Heimatortskartei für Ostpreussen"
Propaganda
German
The Red Army initiated an offensive into East Prussia in October 1944, but it was temporarily driven back two weeks later. After that, the German Ministry of Propaganda reported that war crimes had taken place in East Prussian villages, in particular in Nemmersdorf, where inhabitants had been raped and killed by the advancing Soviets.. Since the Nazi war effort had largely stripped the civil 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 foreign 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 bolstering civilian and military resolve in resisting the Soviets.. A Nazi information campaign about the atrocities at Nemmersdorf, as well as other crimes committed in East Prussia, convinced the remaining civilians that they must not get caught by the advancing enemy..
Soviet Murders of Axis prisoners of war and German civilians are known from cases at Soviet military tribunals. Also, when Soviet troops moved into East Prussia, large numbers of enslaved Ostarbeiter ("Eastern workers") were freed, and knowledge of the suffering and deaths of many of these workers hardened the attitude of many Soviet soldiers towards East Prussians..
Lev Kopelev, who took part in the invasion of East Prussia, sharply criticized atrocities against the German civilian population. For this he was arrested in 1945 and sentenced to a ten-year term in the Gulag for "bourgeois humanism" and for "pity for the enemy".. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also served in East Prussia in 1945 and was arrested for criticizing Joseph Stalin and Soviet crimes in private correspondence with a friend. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to an eight-year term in a labor camp.. Of the atrocities, Solzhenitsyn wrote: "You know very well that we've come to Germany to take our revenge" for German atrocities committed in the Soviet Union.
Evacuation
The evacuation plans for parts of East Prussia were ready in the second half of 1944. They consisted of both general plans and specific instructions for many towns. The plans encompassed not only civilians, but also industry and livestock.Nitschke, p. 43
Initially, Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, forbade evacuation of civilians (until 20 January 1945), and ordered that civilians trying to flee the region without permission should be instantly shot. Any kind of preparations made by civilians were treated as defeatism and "Wehrkraftzersetzung" (undermining of military morale). Koch and many other Nazi functionaries were among the first to flee during the Soviet advance. Between 12 January and mid-February 1945, almost 8.5 million Germans fled the Eastern provinces of the Reich..Overy notes the total pre-war German population of East Prussia as about 2.9 million , so the rest of those making up Beevor's 8.5 million must be from other places, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia (with a combined pre-war ethnic German population of just over 8 million). Most of the refugees were women and children forced to use improvised means of transport such as wooden farm wagons and carts, as all the motorized vehicles and fuel had been confiscated by the Wehrmacht at the beginning of the war. Travel was difficult as military transports and convoys clogged roads and bridges.
After the Red Army reached the coast of the Vistula Lagoon near Elbing on 23 January 1945, cutting off the overland route between East Prussia and the western territories, the only way to leave was to cross the frozen Vistula Lagoon to reach the harbours of Danzig or Gotenhafen to be evacuated by ships taking part in Operation Hannibal. Mingled with retreating Wehrmacht units, and without any camouflage or shelter, the refugees were attacked by Soviet bombers and fighter aircraft. Many wagons broke through the bomb-riddled ice covering the brackish water. Prize horses and caretakers from the Trakehner stud farms were evacuated with the wagon trains, and a considerable number were lost.Patricia Clough The Flight Across The Ice: The Escape of the East Prussian Horses (2009), Daphne Machin Goodall The Flight of the East Prussian Horses (1973)
Any remaining men aged 16–60 were immediately incorporated into the Volkssturm, but such units were poorly supervised and prone to desertion as members realized the futility of fighting Soviet troops without adequate training or weapons.. Refugee trains leaving East Prussia were also extremely crowded, and due to the very low temperatures, children often froze to death during the journey. The last refugee train left Königsberg on 22 January 1945.
Berlin military writer Antony Beevor wrote, in Berlin: The Downfall (2002), that:.
Operation Hannibal
Operation Hannibal was a military operation that started on 21 January 1945, on the orders of Admiral Karl Dönitz, withdrawing German troops and civilians from Courland, East Prussia, and the Polish Corridor. The flood of refugees turned the operation into one of the largest emergency evacuations by sea in history – over a period of 15 weeks, somewhere between 494 and 1,080 merchant vessels of all types and numerous naval craft, including Germany's largest remaining naval units, transported about 800,000–900,000 refugees and 350,000 soldiers across the Baltic Sea to Germany and occupied Denmark.figure of 494 merchant vessels ; figure of 790 vessels of all types ; figure of 1,080 merchant vessels . This evacuation was one of the Kriegsmarine's most significant activities during the war.
The greatest recorded loss of life from a ship sinking occurred during this operation, when the transport ship Wilhelm Gustloff was hit by three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea on the night of 30 January 1945. She sank in under 45 minutes; figures for the number of deaths vary from 5,348,Irwin J. Kappes states 5,348. He does not cite his sources but recommends: A. V. Sellwood, The Damned Don't Drown: The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff (a fiction title about the tragedy); and Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans 1944–1950.Jason Pipes, citing Heinz Schon (no page number) claims the loss of life was 9,343 to 7,000. or 9,400."Wilhelm Gustloff: World's Deadliest Sea Disasters". Unsolved History, The Discovery Channel. Season 1, Episode 14. (Original air date: 26 March 2003) The 949 survivors were rescued by Kriegsmarine vessels led by the cruiser Admiral Hipper, although it is claimed that "the big warship could not risk heaving to, with a submarine close by". Also, on 10 February, the SS General von Steuben left Pillau with 2,680 refugees on board; it was hit by torpedoes just after departure, killing almost all aboard..
Königsberg
On 24 January 1945, the 3rd Belorussian Front, led by General Chernyakhovsky, surrounded the capital city of East Prussia, Königsberg. The 3rd Panzer Army and around 200,000 civilians were trapped inside the city.. In response to this, General Georg-Hans Reinhardt, commander of the Army Group Center, warned Hitler of the imminent Soviet threat, but the Führer refused to act. Due to the rapid approach of the 2nd Belorussian Front led by General Rokossovsky, Nazi authorities in Königsberg decided to send trains full of refugees to Allenstein, without knowing that the town had already been captured by the Soviet 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps.
During the Soviet assault, the Frische Nehrung spit became the last means of escape to the west. However, civilians who tried to escape along the spit were often intercepted and killed by Soviet tanks and patrols.. Two thousand civilians left Königsberg every day and tried to reach the already crowded town of Pillau. The final Soviet assault on Königsberg started on 2 April with a heavy bombardment of the city. The land route to Pillau was once again severed and those civilians who were still in the city died by the thousands. Eventually, the German garrison surrendered on 9 April, and as Beevor wrote, "the rape of women and girls went unchecked in the ruined city"..
Crimes