From German Königsberg to Soviet Kaliningrad

From German Königsberg to Soviet Kaliningrad PDF

Author: Jamie Freeman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1000221792

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This book explores how the Soviet Union, after capturing and annexing the German East Prussian city of Königsberg in 1945 and renaming it Kaliningrad, worked to transform the city into a model of Soviet modernity. It examines how the Soviets expelled all the remaining German people, repopulated the city and region with settlers from elsewhere in the Soviet Union, destroyed the key remaining German buildings and began building a model Soviet city, a physical manifestation of the societal transformation brought about by communism. However, the book goes on to show that over time many of the model Soviet buildings were uncompleted and that the citizens, aware of their Polish and Lithuanian neighbours to both the east and the west and appreciating their place in the wider Baltic region, came to view themselves as something different from other Soviet and Russian citizens. The book concludes by assessing present developments as the people of Kaliningrad are increasingly rediscovering the city’s pre-Soviet past and forging a new identity for themselves on their own terms.

German Blood, Slavic Soil

German Blood, Slavic Soil PDF

Author: Nicole Eaton

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2023-04-15

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1501767372

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German Blood, Slavic Soil reveals how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, twentieth-century Europe's two most violent revolutionary regimes, transformed a single city and the people who lived there. During World War II, this single city became an epicenter in the apocalyptic battle between their two regimes. Drawing on sources and perspectives from both sides, Nicole Eaton explores not only what Germans and Soviets thought about each other, but also how the war brought them together. She details an intricate timeline, first describing how Königsberg, a seven-hundred-year-old German port city on the Baltic Sea and lifelong home of Immanuel Kant, became infamous in the 1930s as the easternmost bastion of Hitler's Third Reich and the launching point for the Nazis' genocidal war in the East. She then describes how, after being destroyed by bombing and siege warfare in 1945, Königsberg became Kaliningrad, the westernmost city of Stalin's Soviet Union. Königsberg/Kaliningrad is the only city to have been ruled by both Hitler and Stalin as their own—in both wartime occupation and as integral territory of the two regimes. German Blood, Slavic Soil presents an intimate look into the Nazi-Soviet encounter during World War II. Eaton impressively shows how this outpost city, far from the centers of power in Moscow and Berlin, became a closed-off space where Nazis and Stalinists each staged radical experiments in societal transformation and were forced to reimagine their utopias in dialogue with the encounter between the victims and proponents of the two regimes.

Kaliningrad and Cultural Memory

Kaliningrad and Cultural Memory PDF

Author: Edward Saunders

Publisher: Cultural Memories

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781787072749

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In 1945, the Soviet Union annexed the East Prussian city of Königsberg, later renaming it Kaliningrad. Left in ruins by the war, the home of Immanuel Kant became a Russian city. This book looks at Kaliningrad's relationship to the memory of Königsberg through cultural, literary and visual representations.

From German Königsberg to Soviet Kaliningrad

From German Königsberg to Soviet Kaliningrad PDF

Author: Jamie Freeman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 100022189X

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This book explores how the Soviet Union, after capturing and annexing the German East Prussian city of Königsberg in 1945 and renaming it Kaliningrad, worked to transform the city into a model of Soviet modernity. It examines how the Soviets expelled all the remaining German people, repopulated the city and region with settlers from elsewhere in the Soviet Union, destroyed the key remaining German buildings and began building a model Soviet city, a physical manifestation of the societal transformation brought about by communism. However, the book goes on to show that over time many of the model Soviet buildings were uncompleted and that the citizens, aware of their Polish and Lithuanian neighbours to both the east and the west and appreciating their place in the wider Baltic region, came to view themselves as something different from other Soviet and Russian citizens. The book concludes by assessing present developments as the people of Kaliningrad are increasingly rediscovering the city’s pre-Soviet past and forging a new identity for themselves on their own terms.

The Kaliningrad Question

The Kaliningrad Question PDF

Author: Richard J. Krickus

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780742517059

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The only comprehensive English-language study of Kaliningrad, this invaluable book explores the history and uncertain fate of the former East Prussia. Once touted as a future Hong Kong, Russia's western-most oblast has become a black hole of social and economic decay. Often overlooked in the West, this exclave is a potential flashpoint in an already unstable region. Richard Krickus, a leading expert on Kaliningrad, fills a crucial gap by tracing its long history of unstable possession, critiquing Russian and Western policy, and mapping out possible futures for the oblast. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Port Towns and Urban Cultures

Port Towns and Urban Cultures PDF

Author: Brad Beaven

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-05-04

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1137483164

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Despite the port’s prominence in maritime history, its cultural significance has long been neglected in favour of its role within economic and imperial networks. Defined by their intersection of maritime and urban space, port towns were sites of complex cultural exchanges. This book, the product of international scholarship, offers innovative and challenging perspectives on the cultural histories of ports, ranging from eighteenth-century Africa to twentieth-century Australasia and Europe. The essays in this important collection explore two key themes; the nature and character of ‘sailortown’ culture and port-town life, and the representations of port towns that were forged both within and beyond urban-maritime communities. The book’s exploration of port town identities and cultures, and its use of a rich array of methodological approaches and cultural artefacts, will make it of great interest to both urban and maritime historians. It also represents a major contribution to the emerging, interdisciplinary field of coastal studies.

Konigsberg

Konigsberg PDF

Author: Petter Kjellander

Publisher: Leandoer and Eckholm

Published: 2010-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789197589567

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East Prussia was the first genuine part of the German home lands that fell to the Red Army in 1945. Already by 1944 some parts of East Prussia had been under the attack of the Soviets. The tragedy became complete in April 1945. The losses and horrors German civilians had to endure were tremendous. The Red Army showed its worst after the capture of East Prussia. The discovery of the Red Army's behavior in late 1944 in some of the border towns led to the most severe battles ever to be fought in East Prussia. The German army tried in vain to save the civilians from the Red Army onslaught. The battle for East Prussia ended with the siege of Konigsberg and Pillau, April 1945. The loss of human lives during these battles for East Prussia was very high. This book covers a much overlooked and little recorded campaign during World War Two. It draws on sources from both the Russian archives giving the Red Army view and those from the German side gives a good balance, and it contains never before seen pictures of the fighting and a great number of maps and color profiles of the AFVs being employed on both sides in the battle. "

The Battle of Konigsberg

The Battle of Konigsberg PDF

Author: Brian Taylor

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2012-06-24

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781477676295

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From October 1944 to April 1945 the Red Army fought a series of bloody battles in an effort to destroy the German Army in East Prussia and capture the capital city of the province, Königsberg. This book follows these events and recounts in detail the desperate defensive actions the Germans undertook to hold off the Red Army, from the Memel and Gumbinnen Offensives of October 1944 which saw Russian soldiers break into the frontier districts of East Prussia, through the overwhelming attacks of January 1945, to the final stand in Königsberg made by Otto Lasch and his garrison of soldiers, police and Volkssturm in April 1945. Drawing on primary sources, The Battle of Königsberg recounts the terrible story of these campaigns from both German and Soviet perspectives. It provides a detailed and uniquely in-depth study of the final battle for control of the city, giving the reader an insight into one of history's forgotten last stands, of the fall of Fortress Königsberg.

Exclave

Exclave PDF

Author: Nicole M. Eaton

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13:

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"Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg-Kaliningrad, 1928-1948," looks at the history of one city in both Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Russia, follow- ing the transformation of Königsberg from an East Prussian city into a Nazi German city, its destruction in the war, and its postwar rebirth as the Soviet Russian city of Kaliningrad. The city is peculiar in the history of Europe as a double exclave, first separated from Germany by the Polish Corridor, later separated from the mainland of Soviet Russia. The dissertation analyzes the ways in which each regime tried to transform the city and its inhabitants, focusing on Nazi and Soviet attempts to reconfigure urban space (the physical and symbolic landscape of the city, its public areas, markets, streets, and buildings); refashion the body (through work, leisure, nutrition, and healthcare); and reconstitute the mind (through various forms of education and propaganda). Between these two urban revolutions, it tells the story of the violent encounter between them in the spring of 1945: one of the largest offen- sives of the Second World War, one of the greatest civilian exoduses in human history, and one of the most violent encounters between the Soviet army and a civilian population. This dissertation argues that the postwar socialist revolution in Kaliningrad began as a reenactment of the Russian Revolution of 1917, but the encounter with Germans in Kaliningrad changed both the goals and the outcome of that revolution: the Soviets annexed Königsberg to replace the ethnic exclusivity of fascism with the internationalist ideology of socialism, but in the end, they erected Kaliningrad as a Russian national homeland, complete with a Slavic myth of origin and ethnic requirements for membership.

War in the Wild East

War in the Wild East PDF

Author: Ben Shepherd

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0674043553

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In Nazi eyes, the Soviet Union was the "wild east," a savage region ripe for exploitation, its subhuman inhabitants destined for extermination or helotry. An especially brutal dimension of the German army's eastern war was its anti-partisan campaign. This conflict brought death and destruction to thousands of Soviet civilians, and has been held as a prime example of ordinary German soldiers participating in the Nazi regime's annihilation policies. Ben Shepherd enters the heated debate over the wartime behavior of the Wehrmacht in a detailed study of the motivation and conduct of its anti-partisan campaign in the Soviet Union. He investigates how anti-partisan warfare was conducted, not by the generals, but by the far more numerous, average Germans serving as officers in the field. What shaped their behavior was more complex than Nazi ideology alone. The influence of German society, as well as of party and army, together with officers' grueling yet diverse experience of their environment and enemy, made them perceive the anti-partisan war in varied ways. Reactions ranged from extreme brutality to relative restraint; some sought less to terrorize the native population than to try to win it over. The emerging picture does not dilute the suffering the Wehrmacht's eastern war inflicted. It shows, however, that properly judging ordinary Germans' role in that war is more complicated than is indicated by either wholesale condemnation or wholesale exoneration. This valuable study offers a nuanced discussion of the diversity of behaviors within the German army, as well as providing a compelling exploration of the war and counterinsurgency operations on the eastern front.