Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80242 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Synopsis
In 1945, two and a half million people were forced out of Germany's most easterly province, East Prussia, and in particular its capital, Konigsberg. Their flight was a direct result of Hitler's ill-fated decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941. The horrors of Leningrad and Stalingrad were to be avenged by an army determined not only to invade Germany but to take over its eastern-frontier territories. The Russians launched Operation Bagration in June 1944, to coincide with the D-Day landings. As US and British forces pushed west the Russians liberated Eastern Europe and made their first attacks in the autumn of 1944. Konigsberg itself was badly damaged by two British air raids at the end of August 1944, and the main offensive against the city by the Red Army began in January 1945. The depleted and poorly armed German army could do little to hold it back, and by the end of January East Prussia was cut off. The Russians exacted a terrible revenge on the civilian population, who were forced to flee across the freezing Baltic coast in an attempt to escape. On 9 April, the city surrendered to the Russians after a four-day onslaught.

Through first-hand accounts as well as archival material, "Konigsberg 1945: The Annihilation of Hitler's Fortress City" tells the dramatic story of a place and its people that bore the brunt of Russia's vengeance against the Nazi regime. It is Isabel Denny's first book.

Customer Reviews

Left wanting more
I found the book ultimately unsatisfactory, in that the historical background of Konigsberg and East Prussia occupies 85% of the book; the crucial part of the book(the reason why most people would buy it) dealing with the Russian onslaught on East Prussia and Konigsberg in particular is not covered in any great depth.The author does not identify military units in any detail, so as a piece of military history, it fails. The civilian experience is also not dealt with in any great detail, the actions of the Kriegesmarine are sketchily detailed. Even the Russian side is barely explained. It leaves one with a desire to seek out other histories about
this relatively little(for us in the West) known period.

The obliteration of a fortress and its people
Isabel Denny has written an immensely readable account of the fall of the prosperous and cultured city of Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad), in 1944, towards the end of the Second World War. Her book covers all aspects of the terrible events, beginning with a history of the city, separated from the rest of Germany by the Polish Corridor, set up after the First World War to give Poland a route to the sea and the port of Danzig (Gdansk).

She goes on to describe the wider context and includes an excellent short description of Operation Barbarossa (the German attack on Russia, leading to the terrible events of Leningrad and Stalingrad). She describes the appalling treatment the German army meted out to the Russian villagers they encountered on the way, and the horror of the siege of Stalingrad. This enables her to go some way to explaining the savagery of the Russian advance through Germany, and the devastation of Koenigsberg as Germany finally lost the war.

The German regional leader, Erich Koch, made the downfall even worse by refusing to accept the overwhelming force of the Russian army, and he compelled every citizen to prepare tank-traps and other fortifications against the Russians. Anyone who expressed any doubt about the German cause could be shot as a traitor, and Koch exercised a total news blackout so that the citizens of Koenigsberg had little idea of the fate that awaited them.

The author makes her account very readable by including many anecdotes and personal accounts from residents of the city. I found myself that with such total destruction anyone survived to tell their tale, but large numbers managed to escape across the ice to local ports where German ships waited to carry them away - but not necessarily to safety - Denny describes the fate of the ex Nazi cruise ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff which was sunk by a Russian submarine with 9000 passengers and crew lost at sea - a bigger disaster by far than the Titanic.

Denny refers several times in quotations and by direct references, that the fall of Koenigsberg and East Prussia can be seen as the retribution of destiny for German treatment of the Russians. While it is understandable that her sources felt this way, they grate a little, when so often tyrants and oppressors *do* get away with their crimes.

The book ends with a description of present day Kaliningrad, and Denny quotes a German visitor, "one cannot escape an uncanny feeling of the old Koenigsberg, like the negative of a damaged photograph, lying ten to twenty feet underneath the city's surface". As I look back on this book I feel that Isabel Denny has revealed this ancient city again for the the 21st century reader so that we have another Pompeii which only survives through excavation and long-buried eye-witness accounts of its rich cosmopolitan culture. An excellent book for the general reader as well as the historian.

Hitler's Fortress City - Konigsberg
This book is a must for anyone who wants not just an insight into a relatively unknown part of the second world war, but also an understanding of how a peaceful rural corner of Europe was turned into a bloodbath as a result of the follies of its leaders. The Russian attack on Konigsberg in 1945 is described in the last chapters of this book, but the real story is how events in Europe after 1919 and Hitler's decision to invade Russia in 1941 led to the destruction and loss of the city.

A thoroughly informative and enjoyable read, it's well written and the best book I've read all year.