after the collapse of the Third Reich and the end of World War II the German people were caught in an unprecedented spiral of suffering and reprisal from the devastating advance of the Red Army in the East to the forced expulsions of entire communities the German population fell victim to atrocities on an unimaginable scale rapes executions mass famines and deportations marked the daily lives of men women and children German soldiers faced a fate as Relentless as the war itself many were dragged to the freezing fields of

Siberia where hunger cold and forced labor became their new enemies the few who returned found an unrecognizable Home Missing wives destroyed lives and a country that preferred to forget what was that tragic year really like for the German [Music] people 1945 Nazi Germany’s tragic year while the British and Americans were busy with the liberation of France by early 1945 Soviet forces pushed from the East getting closer and closer to Berlin Nazi strategists came and went to the furas bunker unable to stop the massacre

of their own troops many German cities had surrendered to the bombing campaigns and Hitler and his officials realized their dream of a universal Reich was over Berlin the heart of the Reich was a Battleground Adolf Hitler grew increasingly delusional and cut off from reality especially since he retreated to his underground bunker his propaganda Minister yoseph Geral fed him a steady stream of lies about inexistent German victories even when Soviet artillery fire could be heard not far from the bunker meanwhile the German people

struggled for survival food and basic necessities became scarce most cities were completely destroyed forcing civilians into bomb shelters or fleeing into the countryside gitter Regional Nazi leaders often remained in denial clinging to power and resorting to increasingly brutal measures against denters and suspected deserters within the Nazi leadership itself cracks began to show on the 23rd of April Herman guring sent Hitler a telegram asking to assume leadership of the regime but this infuriated Hitler who declared guring a

traitor to the Reich he had no option but to flee South in the hopes of negotiating a separate surrender with the Allies Heinrich himler head of the SS attempted to make contact with the Western allies eyes behind Hitler’s back but was ultimately captured and took his own life by biting into a capsule of arsenic on the early morning of the 29th A desperate Hitler married Ava Brown and dictated his last will and testament knew of the Soviet troops closing in on the bunker were becoming more alarming at 3:30 p.m. on the 30th a loud

explosion was heard in the underground bunker and SS troops found Hitler and Eva dead in their study the troops had Specific Instructions of burning the bodies so that the Allied troops could not find them and they never did news of Hitler’s death plunged Nazi Germany into further disarray yoseph Gobles and his wife Magda took the same path by poisoning themselves and their six children on May 2nd with Berlin surrounded Soviet forces finally stormed the reichstag building raising the red flag over the German Capital this marked

the end of the third reich’s physical existence fighting continued in Berlin and other Germans cities for a few days but on May 7th Grand Admiral Carl dunitz the newly appointed president of the Reich signed an unconditional surrender document formerly ending the war in Europe but that did not mean that everything went back to normal at that point allies started a race against the clock in order to find and prosecute the many Nazi war criminals that were now attempting to go undercover and start a new life as far from Germany as possible

some of the most loyal Nazi officials like Martin Borman Hinrich h and Robert leay chose to take their own lives over standing trial at nurmberg others surrendered to the new authorities in the hopes of saving their lives Herman guring who was under house arrest for conspiring against Hitler was freed on May 5th by a passing Luft vafer unit and he made his way to the US lines to surrender he thought it was better to surrender to the Americans than to the Soviets a reasoning which probably saved his life considering how the Soviets had

the custom of shooting Nazis on site 1945 was not a good year for the Nazis the Red Army had been pushing their troops back since January when they Advanced over occupied Poland reaching the Oda River in late January on the 27th of January they came face to face with the horror of the extermination camps when the Soviets entered aitz from that moment on and until May 7th they would continue their unflinching offensive towards Berlin these dramatic months were the setting for some of the most brutal and least Le known events of

the 20th century Dresden Hamburg Berlin three cities turned to dust German cities and towns were mostly populated by women and children as the men were affected to the war effort in the front lines or were already dead by then by the time combat broke in the streets of Berlin in April 1945 an estimated 1.5 million women and girls lived in the city many had lost their homes to the ceaseless bombing of Soviet mortar and their husband to the Battlefront there was food and water shortage and basic Services were all but cut to add to

their suffering experts have calculated that one in three of these women suffered some kind of sexual assault at the End of the World War II many of them met the perpetrators face to face during the week of April 24th to May 5th 1945 when the Soviets surrounded the city of Berlin killing the last traces of a Nazi resistance only a few days before the iconic photograph of the Soviet flag flying at top the reichstag was taken many women suffered at the hands of these so-called Heroes the Battle of Berlin was bloody and cruel not only

because it really was The Last Stand of the Nazis who had nothing more to lose but also because it consisted mostly of close quarter combat and the fighting troops were severely unprepared these were not the elite troops of the Waffen SS the defense of Berlin was left to General helmouth vings mostly depleted and disorganized ized Reserve division moreover General videl’s Garrison consisted almost entirely of elderly men of the national militia and kids from the Hitler Youth including little girls with no fighting experience they had to

fight starved and vicious Soviet troops who were eager to finally end hostilities the official casualties of the Battle of Berlin were more than 900,000 Germans and 360,000 polish and Soviet the number of abused women varies according to the Source going from 20,000 to 100,000 up to almost a million during the bombing and fighting in Berlin at least the Defenders saw their enemies face to face this was not something that the unfortunate people at Dresden in East Germany could say until 1945 Dresden had been spared

from Allied Air Raids almost miraculously but on February 13th and 14th 1945 the city was nearly destroyed when incendiary bombs Unleashed a firestorm in the the city in total 2,000 British and American planes dropped almost four tons of explosive and incendiary Bombs Over the helpless City killing the amazing quantity of 25,000 people after the war Churchill claimed that such destruction was justified as Dresden was home to more than 100 factories which provided War supplies to the front line however once the dust of the bombing

settled it was easy to see that not just the industrial part of town was was attacked but all of it the first wave of Lancaster’s British four engined heavy bombers appeared over Dresden on the night of Tuesday February 13th 1945 around 10 p.m. after 5 hours of flight these 240 Royal Air Force planes encountered practically no opposition in the skies and no anti-aircraft fire from below however even when they knew that most of the population underneath were unarmed civilians they began the infamous Onslaught which devastated the

Saxon City it was Germany’s seventh most populated city with 600,000 inhabitants at the time the Allies also attacked the neighboring cities of chemnitz and Leipzig after the fact Royal Air Force memos from the time were discovered celebrating that the weather was sufficiently benign to allow low-level accurate marking they were absolutely certain of what parts of the town they were bombing the crews themselves could bomb in a careful and relatively relaxed fashion at a lower altitude than usual in this case mostly between 10,000 and

13,000 ft in a short window of about 15 minutes they Unleashed 880 tons of bombs on dresden’s City Center the high explosive weapons shattered Windows gouged out craters in the streets and flattened walls firefighters were forced to take cover the bombs also set in motion waves of High Press air as the incendiaries falling on the roofs of buildings ignited manifolds small fires a firestorm one of the most Dreadful outcomes of high-tech Warfare ensued what happened then in Dresden with its structures of brick sandstone and

drywood was apocalyptic City authorities usually could count on a thousand firefighters but The Inferno was too much for them and for the relief that came from neighboring cities only 2 and a half hours passed before the populace confronted a second wave of lancasters this group consisted of 550 heavy bombers more than than twice the size of the first wave between approxima

tely 120 and 140 a.m. the lancasters inundated a city that was already a flame The Firestorm created in the initial raid now reached a fury of Devastation that can only be described as hell on Earth at noon the following day Ash Wednesday more than 300 B17 flying fortresses from the United States 8th Air Force struck Dresden with towers of smoke from the earlier attack still shooting 15,000 ft into the air the Americans had enormous difficulty finding their targets they did hit the blea city’s marshling yard but residential areas were also bombed and

this was still not the end on February 15th a fourth raid hit Dresden more than 200 b7s originally sent to destroy an oil plant close to nearby leipsig switched targets due to poor weather The marshalling Yards were not hit but residential areas were even that did not end dresden’s torment the eth Air Force returned on March 2nd and April 17th again going after the Rail Yards and Industrial districts Dresden remained a blaze for several weeks now a ghost city as everyone that was still alive fled leaving their

possessions behind even more deadly was the bombing of Hamburg that occurred over a long period throughout the war just a few months after the European War’s conclusion the United States conducted a survey publicly released on 30 October 1945 which gave the German estimates of 60,000 to 100,000 deaths in the Hamburg bombings this is perhaps four times the amount of Dresden perhaps anticipating the destruction that they would unleash in Hamburg the Allies named the bombing of Hamburg operation gomorah the same

name of the biblical town over which God reigned Brimstone and fire in 1943 Hamburg Germany housed many manufacturing plants and Transportation centers and was home to the Blom and Vos shipyards which built the uots threatening the very existence of Great Britain for this reason it held a great strategic importance for the Allies making it a likely Target of bombings between 1 and 2 a.m.

 on July 23rd 1943 2,300 tons of bombs were dropped on the city setting a new world record for the time included in the aerial Salvo were 8,000 blockbusters and 4,000 so-called cookies along with over 350,000 individual incendiary bombs it was these incendiary bombs that caused much of the Havoc eyewitnesses described the next few hours as filled with a continuing stream of explosions time Stood Still as people crammed into shelters with the mass of humanity shaking along with the structures concrete walls with no lights water or food the people who made it to

safety could only wait most of the destruction was not from the explosions but the ensuing fires this was intended as incendies started the fires but cleverly placed high explosive bombs along with Delayed Action fuses prevented fire brigades from reacting to the resulting Blaze as the RAF bombers cleared the area and returned home it was discovered that this first raid cost them a mere 12 planes on the ground however hundreds of thousands of civilians lay dead or wounded the war ended for Hamburg on May 3rd throughout the day local radio stations

broadcast the news that British troops were ready to March peacefully into the city large posters informed the populace that a general curfew would be in force beginning at 1 p.m. with exceptions made only for employees of the electricity Gas and Water Utilities cruelties suffered by German citizens abroad one of the first civilian German civilian populations to suffer for their nationality were those who lived outside the borders of Germany Hitler had had a policy of populating the conquered lands with true Aryans

that is entire populations in Poland France Latvia and other countries were sent to concentration camps where they were made slaves while their homes were gifted to families of German colonist the objective according to Hitler was to improve the race of these backwards countries the problem for these colonists started when the Allied Powers began to liberate them ejecting the German Army from the territories and sometimes leaving it to the local population to get back what was theirs in Poland for example there were

millions of reasons for strong retaliation after all the German State killed around 5 to 6 million polish citizens during the war for this reason polish Communists had begun to suppress the German population west of the Boba River to underline their demand for a border on the western Nisa River the Allies passed a resolution recommending the orderly transfer of German population back to their original country but this only became the legitimation of the expulsion of Germans from the nebulous parts of Central

Europe if they had not already fled from the advancing Red Army between July and August 1945 an agreement was signed in post Dam among all the Allied Powers regarding what to do with the displaced Germans unfortunately for most of the Germans behind the borders of the countries that had been occupied by Nazi Germany it was too late they were forcefully expelled killed properties seized or destroyed or they left on their own accord for fear of facing the locals Revenge most of the Germans in Poland or near the Eastern Front were

aware of the Soviet reprisals against German civilians Soviet soldiers committed sexual assault and other crimes a conduct that Not only was not reprimanded by the red army officers but it was encouraged also news of atrocities such as the nesd dorf Massacre were exaggerated and disseminated by the Nazi propaganda machine plans to evacuate the ethnic German population Westward into Germany from Poland and the Eastern territories of Germany were prepared by various Nazi authorities toward the end of the war in

most cases implementation was delayed until Soviet and Allied Forces had defeated the German forces and advanced into the areas to be evacuated the abandonment of millions of ethnic Germans in these vulnerable areas until combat conditions overwhelmed them can be attributed directly to to the fact that Nazis were suspicious of those citizens who did not stand their ground until the last breath they were considered cowards and traitors and Hitler had a strong no retreat policy the first Exodus of German civilians

from the Eastern territories was composed of both spontaneous flight and organized evacuation starting in mid 1944 and continuing until 1845 early 1945 conditions turned chaotic during the winter when kilometers long cues of refugees pushed their carts through the snow trying to stay ahead of the advancing Red Army whenever advancing Soviets caught up with Refugee TRS they would be attacked brutally these refugees were also targeted by low flying aircraft and there were reports of people being crushed by tanks it is estimated that up

to 120,000 civilians were killed during the flight and evacuations but the number of displaced Germans was in the millions the main causes of death were cold stress and bombing a ship filled with 9,000 civilians and military personnel escaping East Prussia was sunk in January 1945 by a Soviet navy submarine nobody survived and it was the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history many refugees tried to return home when the fighting ended before 1 June 1945 400,000 people crossed back over the odor and niser

rivers Eastward before before Soviet and polish communist authorities closed the river Crossings another 800,000 entered cesia through Czechoslovakia in accordance with the potam agreement at the end of 1945 4.5 million Germans who had fled or been expelled were now under the control of the Allied governments from 1946 to 1950 another 4.

5 million people were brought to Germany and organized Mass transports from Poland Czechoslovakia and Hungary an additional 2.6 million released prisoners of War were listed as expellees the Unspeakable brutality of the Red Army against Germans some people think it was not D-Day what sealed the course of the war but the hurried decision by Hitler of invading the Soviet Union when Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 it came as a big surprise to both Stalin and the Allied Powers after all they had been in good terms until recently and even

signed a pact of non-aggression in 1939 nonetheless Germany ordered their troops to invade the neighboring nation and to charge against Moscow in what was known as operation Barbarosa the Eastern Front became in the next years the cruelest battleground of World War II Nazis had a special hatred against polish and Soviet soldiers but they were met with a similar degree of violence when Soviets managed to capture Nazis not only they were brutally tortured and executed during the war but the Captivity of German prisoners of War

continued years after the end of hostilities nothing could have prepared Hitler for what he found in the Eastern Front the harsh winter Soviet discipline and the fierce partisan activity made any advancement toward Moscow and ordeal Nazi soldiers died in the thousands due to starvation cold weather and the many skirmishes and traps laid by Soviet partisans but even these deaths became preferable to what the Soviets did with captured Germans these Soviet men and women were looking for an opportunity to get back at the Germans throughout

operation Barbarosa and the German invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler had ordered his soldiers to liquidate all so-called Bolsheviks and anyone who could be considered their allies or accomplice for the vermar the order was clear all Slavic peoples had to be eliminated the war waged by Germany against the Soviet Union was a war of extermin Nation quite contrary to how they acted on the Western Front and the treatment of the French moreover the Germans were ordered by Hitler to Scorch Earth on their retreat with these orders

the Nazi soldiers massacred entire Villages and destroyed towns they left only death and destruction in their wake but when the red armies started to retaliate all the German actions quickly came back to haunt them these terrible genocidal actions on the part of Hitler’s soldiers stuck in the collective imagination of so Soviet soldiers in fact it did not take much propaganda on the part of Stalin to demonize the Germans many of these Russians who fought against the Nazis were themselves victims their homes destroyed their mothers brothers and

sisters massacred the Soviet people undoubtedly bore the brunt of the war there were more than 27 million people killed with all this accumulated resentment and hatred for the Germans Soviet youth answered Stalin’s Call to Arms to push the Germans back in what can only be described as a truly destructive passion Stalin too ordered the Red Army to initiate a scorched Earth policy to deny the Germans and their allies basic supplies as they Advanced Eastward to carry out that order destruction battalions were formed

in Frontline areas having the authority to summarily execute any suspicious person the destruction battalions burn down villages schools and public buildings as a part of this policy the Red Army and the Soviet Secret Police massacred thousands of anti-soviet prisoners the secret police was in charge of the prisoners of War they were responsible for bringing them from the front line where they were captured to the prisoner of war camps in Inland Russia but as most transports were used for the war effort Stalin’s secret

police decided to save Resources by making the prisoners March through the cold Russian steps in Ukraine and Western Bellar Russia 60,000 people were forced to evacu uate on foot the official Soviet count had more than 9,800 reportedly executed in prisons 1,443 executed in the process of evacuation 59 killed for attempting to escape 23 killed by German bombs and 1,57 deaths from other causes not all of these prisoners were German many were political prisoners that had been captured before the war even began in

total the Soviet Union killed almost a million captured Nazis out of the 90,000 captured in the Battle of Stalingrad the bloodiest of the whole campaign only 5,000 Germans were lucky enough to be sent back to their country alive the key to understanding this bloodbath lies in the fact that Soviet authorities did not punish and sometimes actually encouraged brutality against the German prisoners they were not committing war crimes nor violating International treaties but barely doing a service to the motherland by erasing

the fascist Pig from the land with the advancement of the war the political administration of the Red Army tried to limit the practice of killing prisoners as they could be valuable sources of intelligence that could be used against the enemy but their efforts were fruitless in Battle Red Army men and commanders did not bother capturing soldiers and officers there are known cases of captives that were strangled and stabbed to death with knives of bayonets seeing that they could not stop their soldiers from murdering captured

Germans the Red Army chose to take an administrative approach asking officers to at least make an inventory of the weapons and personal belongings taken from the dead Germans anti-soviet German propaganda German demonization by the Soviets throughout operation Barbarosa and the German invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler had ordered his soldiers to liquidate all so-called Bolsheviks and anyone who could be considered their allies or accomplices for the verar the order was clear all Slavic peoples had to be eliminated the war waged by

Germany against the Soviet Union was a war of extermination quite contrary to how they acted on the Western Front and the treatment of the French moreover the Germans were ordered by Hitler to Scorch Earth on their retreat with these orders the Nazi soldiers massacred entire Villages and destroyed towns they left only death and destruction in their wake these terrible genocidal actions on the part of Hitler’s soldiers stuck in the collective IM ination of Soviet soldiers in fact it did not take much propaganda

on the part of Stalin to demonize the Germans many of these Russians who took Berlin were themselves victims their homes destroyed their mothers brothers and sisters massacred the Soviet people undoubtedly bore the brunt of the war there were more than 27 million people killed with all this accumulated resentment and hatred for the Germans Soviet youth answered Stalin’s Call to Arms to push through East Prussia toward Berlin in what can only be described as a truly destructive passion encouraged by the large caches of alcoholic

beverages conveniently left behind by the retreating Germans Red Army volunteers and soldiers bravely carried through the Russian winter these young soldiers were also joined by the Soviet prisoners of War they freed along the way once in Berlin they faced a resistance carried out by inexperienced young and old German common people as well as regular soldiers Joseph G had ordered the Berlin inhabitants that they must build a fierce defense Street by Street house by house to repel the big Russian Beast or die trying and many

died fighting until their last breath in October 1944 Red Army troops Advanced into East Prussia and thus for the first time into the Reich proper everywhere they had gone they had seen the aftermath of German troops destructive frenzy almost every Red Army soldier had lost family members their hatred for the fanatical Invaders and their thirst for Revenge were further stoked by Soviet propaganda and put into action during a first wave of violence of which the village of nemmersdorf became a symbol there German soldiers who reconquered

the town found traces of a massacre that had claimed the lives of numerous citizens predominantly elderly men and women Geral had exploited the massacre in a major propaganda campaign releasing pictures of the bodies to newspapers and Weekly News reels the idea was to show the German populace what they could expect if bolshevism in fact got hold of the Reich in late October 1944 the vermar succeeded in pushing the Red Army back beyond the reich’s borders but the German military did not have enough men in reserve to resist the major offensive

launched by the Soviets on January 12th 1945 within 3 weeks Soviet troops Advanced 500 km Westward liberating the parts of Poland that Germany had occupied and annexed and seizing the majority of Eastern Germany the violence that had characterized the red Army’s first incursion into East Prussia returned the pitiless war of extermination the vermar and the SS had conducted against the Soviet Union now created a backlash the civilian German population was forced to endure what had happened at nemmersdorf when the Soviet

army established a bridge head on the Western Bank of the nearby Roma River in October of 1944 had been inhumane but it was also largely exaggerated by the Nazi propaganda Ministry of Joseph gobbles the German forces had tried to retake the bridge but several attacks were repelled by the Soviet tanks and the supporting infantry during an air attack a number of Soviet soldiers took shelter in an improvised bunker that was already occupied by 14 local men and women a Soviet officer arrived and ordered everybody out so the Soviets shot and

killed the German civilians at close range during the night the Soviet 25th tank Brigade was ordered to retreat across the river and take defensive positions along the romin the vermar regained control of nemmersdorf and discovered the massacre the Soviets hated the Germans particularly not the least because of the propaganda that the Soviet government had been feeding them daily for years during the early stages of World War II it was overtly presented as a war between capitalists which would weaken them and allow communist Triumph

as long as the Soviet Union wisely stayed out but as the Soviet Union entered the war and joined the side of the British and American capitalists this approach was toned down especially after the invasion of the Soviet Union by the German Army the Germans became progressively depicted in a bad light the government used the cruel Siege of Leningrad as an example of the wretchedness of Germans and the Battle of Stalingrad as an example of the Soviet bravery the result was an exacerbated hatred towards everyone who

was German no matter the part they played in the current war and this in turn helped the Soviets carry out the numerous war crimes against German civilian population in World War II execution or trial the fate of German prisoners of War when victory was just a matter of time the heads of government of the Allied powers held a meeting at Yalta in the Soviet Union there the United States President Franklin D Roosevelt British prime minister Winston Churchill and general secretary of the Bolshevik party Joseph Stalin the main objective of this

meeting was to decide what would happen to Europe after the war it was clear that the world would never be the same after the largest armed conflict in human history hundreds of European cities would need to be completely reconstructed whole countries would need to reshape their governments and of course there was the topic of punishing the enemy here Allied some of the main differences between Roosevelt and the rest of leaders Stalin and Churchill were of the idea that Nazi should be given an exemplary punishment they

should be summarily tried and executed as soon as possible so that the world could move on and the war was forgotten but Eisenhower had a different idea he proposed a highly publicized International trial that would expose the Nazi cruelties in front of the whole world Churchill agreed with his American peer and so the famous nurmberg trials began to be planned Roosevelt died in April shortly after the Yalta Conference it was successor Harry Truman who appointed judges from the three countries in France to form the

so-called International Military Tribunal or IMT the sessions held in the Bavarian city of nurburg lasted nearly a year and forever changed the face of international criminal law four major charges were laid down during the nurburg trials conspiracy to wage aggressive war crimes against peace war crimes and crimes against humanity it was the task of the IMT to try 24 of the most prominent military and political leaders of Nazi Germany some of them in absentia as they had not been captured yet others like Adolf Hitler yoseph

Geral Heinrich himler and many other prominent Nazis had committed suicide around the time of the end of the war on the 20th of November 1945 6 and a half months after Germany’s surrender the trials of the major German war officials began in nurburg each of the four Allied Nations Prov ided two judges and a prosecution team and the presiding judge was Lord Justice Jeffrey Lawrence representing Great Britain the court was provided with simultaneous translations in English German Russian and French and the rules and procedures for the trial

were cul from the participants legal systems while the nurburg trials were effective in exposing the Nazi crimes to a wide audience it had an unwanted result something that both Stalin and Churchill had pointed out at Yalta judging only the most prominent leaders meant that the common Nazi soldiers who pulled the triggers and pushed Jews into the gas Chambers would walk free moreover it meant putting forward the idea that the Civil population who mostly supported the Nazi government had been deceived into following the leaders

and they were actually unaware of the full extent of Hitler’s criminality which was something Stalin was not prepared to accept not after all the suffering experienced by the Soviet people due to the extent of the destruction the Nazis left in the Soviet Union the Reconstruction work was expected to take a long time Stalin had already stated several times that as the war came to an end prisoners of all the enemy States irrespective of nationality could expect long terms of forced labor this increased deployment into the

Soviet economy had been well signposted by moscow’s public statements in the previous two years at Tran In late 1943 Stalin had spoken of needing 4 Mill forced laborers for many years as reparations by the summer of 1944 this had become 5 million for 10 years a demand repeated at subsequent meetings of the Allied Powers a general order on the 16th of December 1944 decreed that all German men between the ages of 17 and 45 and all women between 18 and 4530 in the liberated territories of Southeastern Europe who were capable of

work were to be taken to the USSR with within 2 months around 110,000 had already been identified and transported to be joined by another 100,000 from occupied Germany in the first months of 1945 this was also the fate of the German prisoners in Soviet hands with only around 100,000 who were too ill too old or Too Young being Exempted the remainder were coralled in approximately 60 camps in Poland and Eastern Germany prior to their transport into the Soviet Union a process that was completed by the end of October

1945 prisoner labor was also sent to specific locations in other Sovereign territories where important raw materials were at stake for example to yakimov in Czechoslovakia where they were tasked with mining the uranium necessary for Stalin’s new nuclear industry at first Stalin claimed that they were planning on keeping prisoners for as long as it was needed for reconstruction a task that he had calculated would take 15 years in actuality the USSR released most of its axis prisoners between May 1945 and the end of 1949 which still was considerably

longer than most of the Allied Powers most of these released prisoners were old ill or unfit for work for one reason or another on the 6th of June 1945 it was decreed that any future releases and repatriations would require polit Bureau approval and would be based on a series of stated criteria by this stage the secret police had already compiled a list of around 225,000 German and Austrian soldiers in camps and hospitals who were unfit for work but this excluded officers who were required to remain in captivity by August a total of

78,000 55 prisoners had been identified as qualified for release among them 412,000 Germans again on the basis that they were unfit for work but what happened to the rest although interested in getting rid of prisoners who were economically useless the Soviet authorities were still Keen to stop those with evident anti-soviet views from leaving and so anyone suspected was to be held back under a suitable pretext as the USSR wanted to maximize the labor potential of the prisoners Sergey krof as head of the ministry of development

put forward a plan to send home 150,000 men unfit for labor and increase the rations of the remaining prisoners by 10% to improve productivity German accounts of captivity reflected on the hunger culture in most of the 2,500 camps inside the Soviet Union but also noted that this was shared by the neighboring civil populations there simply was not enough food in the country whose productive capacity was completely destroyed during the war the same German accounts speak of widespread dentry among the prisoners and also

reflect on their behavior patterns on the hoarding of food on the taboos that remained about eating certain things even in the direst Hunger on the ways in which food was stolen and traded within the camp and even the prisoners slow movement in everything they did desperation was also evident in the attempts at self-mutilation once it was known that those unfit for work were being sent home there were accounts of men amputating fingers or inducing blindness most subtle were attempts to ingest excessive quantities of salt that

would induce eeda and it was reckoned that some men were repatriated as a result but that others died in the attempt where marked cowardice and mass auto elimination at demin as the Soviet Army advanced in German territory Hitler spoke to the population through his minister of propaganda Joseph gubbles the message was clear resist until the last breath do not flee do not yield every German needed to stop the Red Army in their towns or die trying this direct order from the Reich fura brought tragic consequences for the civilian population

of the Third Reich perhaps no other part of the Reich suffered so much as the Pomeranian town of demin and it was mainly due to the cowardice exhibited by the German Army in late April 1945 with the Red Army approaching the party and state functionaries at demon and other Pomeranian cities were the first to turn tail and flee the area they had been the first ones to demand that their fellow Germans H out until final victory was secured the vermark units stationed in and around Dem did the same despite having sworn Hitler that they would

rather have a heroic downfall than abandon their positions or become prisoners they hastily deserted the city after demolishing the bridges across the pen and its tributaries the treble and toena that had fatal consequences for those Left Behind whose route to the West Was now blocked residents who had not fled in time were trapped along with hundreds of refugees all they could do was fearfully wait for Soviet troops to arrive Their Fear was justified many people had heard stories about the crimes the vermar and the SS

had committed in occupied areas of the Soviet Union those who had been unable to flee to the West bore the brunt of Soviet retributions accounts of atrocities spread like wildf fire and the people who remained behind in Demon knew only too well what was in store as they waited for the first Red Army soldiers to appear April 30th the same day when Hitler ended his own life in his Berlin bunker was a bright clear spring day that morning the Thunder of artillery could be heard at demon and the sounds of approaching tanks grew louder and

louder residents of demon and refugees sought shelter in basements women blackened their face with ashes and wrapped their heads in torn bandages to make themselves as unattractive as possible a handful of citizens braved potential repercussions and hung white sheets and towels from their Windows as a sign the city would surrender without a fight a Vanguard of two Soviet tank brigades reached the southern edge of town before noon where they found the destroyed Bridges which prevented them from quickly pressing on toward rostock

as originally planned by midday tanks and other vehicles were backed up into the city’s historic Center by afternoon following two brief gun battles demon was completely in the hands of Soviet troops 21 City residents had already taken their own lives before the soldiers arrived after Darkness fell the true nightmare began all the tanks armored personnel carriers trucks and huge amounts of military hardware had transformed the city into a seething army camp hundreds of soldiers halted in the middle of their march to

Victory swarmed out looking for watches jewelry schnaps women and opportunities for sex and violence in addition to their feelings of triumph over the Nazis Soviet soldiers were celebrating Mayday that night the first buildings in Demon were burned down the town’s closely huddled beam and mor houses fed the Flames which continued for several days largely destroying the historic City Center much worse was the terror inflicted by marauding often drunk Red Army soldiers hundreds of women and girls were assaulted a number of

residents murdered and many dwellings plundered these actions were followed by an act of mass suicide the dimensions of which exceeded anything that transpired in other German cities and towns in the final days of the war Collective Panic seemed to seize the City’s population with whole families ending their own lives among the dead were infants and small children school kids and adolescents young men and women affluent couples pensioners and the extremely aged there was no patent to the suicides backgrounds careers and social status

the victims included hundreds of refugees from Pomerania East and West Prussia and other regions in addition to hundreds of people from demin and the surrounding area those who who were able ingested poison or put a bullet in their brain others slit their wrists or hanged themselves the greatest number however drowned themselves women filled knapsacks with rocks tied their children’s and their own hands together at the wrists and wed into the water Weeks Later corpses were still floating in the waters of the pen and its

tributaries there are various estimates of the number of people who took their own lives in demin an improvised registry contained the names of 612 people of whom 400 killed themselves in November 1945 the Regional Council of the area around demon put the number of killings between 700 and 1,000 the mass auto eliminations of demon were a unique event nonetheless the chaos of the end of the war prompted people in many places across Germany to take their lives in what can accurately be called an auto elimination

epidemic balance of Germany at the end of the war the so-called Thousand-Year Reich fell catastrophically in a short time between the end of 1944 and the first half of 1945 but the German tribulations had just started they had lost all the conquered territories but also some of their earlier possessions like the Sudan land the S and other areas Germany lost 1/4 of the territory it had before the war to Ali deao annexations not only this but they were forced to pay reparations to the United Kingdom France and the Soviet Union of

course for a broke country with a good part of its industrial capacity destroyed and no own country it was extremely difficult to achieve this for this reason the Allies took it upon them to completely reorganize the country from the ground up they achieved this by dividing Germany into different areas of influence controlled by the different European Allied countries Berlin a symbol of the defeat of Germany by the Allies was itself divided into different zones each one controlled by either the Soviet Union the United Kingdom the

United States and France American policy in post-war Germany from April 1945 until July 1947 had been that no help should be given to the Germans in rebuilding their Nation except for the minimum required for the Germans not to die of starvation immediately after the war the Allies started a campaign of industrial disarmament for Germany this was a plan to destroy Germany’s capability to wage war by complete or partial de-industrialization the first industrial plan for Germany signed in 1946 required the destruction of

1,500 manufacturing plants to lower German heavy industry output to roughly 50% of its 1938 level from that moment onwards the Germans would strongly depend on expensive imported goods which made it even more difficult for citizens to achieve a decent standard of living the Allied occupation of Germany lasted until 1948 West Germany or the Federal Republic of Germany was officially established in May 1949 East Germany or the German Democratic Republic was established in October 1949 under their occupying governments

the two germanies followed very different paths West Germany was allied with the United States Britain and France and became a western capitalist country with a market economy in contrast East Germany was Allied by the Soviet Union and fell under highly centralized communist rule there was a time when there appeared to be no end to Adolf Hitler’s thirst for power and territories during these years approximately from 1933 to 1943 Nazi Germany appeared to be unbeatable and all the German citizens enjoyed ample

benefits mostly sustained by the plunder of the German Jews and the annexed territories populations common workers could go on Long vacations buy cars and appliances and were constantly told that they were r Ally superior to the rest of the world population however this fever dream of the Nazis ended catastrophically in 1945 when they were defeated in all the lines by the combined forces of the Allied Powers What followed was a period of suffering that was both unexpected and unbearable many took their own lives

unable to cope with this others suffered in their own flesh all the abuse and pain the Nazis had exerted upon others Millions lost their lives their houses their families were forced to migrate or simply were left on the streets as Beggars whole cities turned to dust families destroyed Minds forever Poisoned With the memories of hunger suffering and pain this was the only Heritage the German population received from the Nazi criminals that governed them between 1933 and 1945