East Prussia: Background information when reading Skeletons at the Feast

East Prussia

This article relates to Skeletons at the Feast

The Central European region known as Prussia extended from the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea to the Masurian Lake District which is now divided between Poland, Russia, and Lithuania. East Prussia was a province in the Eastern part of the region which, along with the rest of Prussia, became part of the German Empire during the unification of Germany in 1871. In 1875, almost three-quarters of the region were ethnically German, the remainder were Polish and Lithuanian.

As the Russian troops marched across Europe in the waning months of World War II, many ethnic Germans evacuated or were forcibly expelled from territories claimed by Germany during the early years of World War II, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, and also from parts of Germany.

The evacuation of East Prussia took place between January and March 1945. Although the German military had had evacuation plans in place for some months, the order to evacuate was delayed for too long making an orderly evacuation impossible. The result was chaos for much of the civilian population who, caught in the middle of the combat, were left to make their own evacuation plans, traveling during a bitterly cold winter that left many thousands dead.

The Soviet Union took control of East Prussia in May 1945. Although many of the German civilians had managed to evacuate it is estimated that about 300,000 were killed during the Soviet offensive and many others were later expelled. Census counts in 1950 showed 2.6 million Germans still living in Eastern Europe, about 12% of pre-war totals.


Maps

• A map of the German Empire in 1871.
• A map of Europe showing the borders from 1914 to 1956
• A map of modern-day Europe
  

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This "beyond the book article" relates to Skeletons at the Feast. It originally ran in May 2008 and has been updated for the February 2009 paperback edition. Go to magazine.