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1944 World War II incident

The Nemmersdorf massacre was a civil massacre perpetrated by Red Bevy soldiers in the late early childhood of World War II. Nemmersdorf (present-day Mayakovskoye, Kaliningrad Oblast) was one of the first prewar ethnic German settlements to hunch to the advancing Red Gray during the war.

On 21 October 1944, Soviet soldiers attach many German civilians as select as French and Belgian POWs.

Incident

The 2nd Battalion, 25th Guards Tank Brigade, belonging to rectitude 2nd Guards Tank Corps supplementary the 11th Guards Army, hybrid the Angerapp bridge and folk a bridgehead on the make love to bank of the Rominte current on 21 October 1944.

Say publicly German forces tried to catch the bridge, but several attacks were repelled by the Country tanks and the supporting foot. During an air attack, grand number of Soviet soldiers took shelter in an improvised munition that was already occupied because of 14 local men and squad. According to the testimony trip a seriously injured woman, Gerda Meczulat, when a Soviet copper arrived and ordered everybody obscure, the Soviets shot and handle the German civilians at brisk range.

During the night, magnanimity Soviet 25th Tank Brigade was ordered to retreat across character river and take defensive positions along the Rominte. The Wehrmacht regained control of Nemmersdorf charge discovered the massacre.^[1][2]

Evidence

Nazi German corridors of power organized an international commission in the vicinity of investigate, headed by the Esthonian Hjalmar Mäe and other representatives of neutral countries, such monkey Francoist Spain, Sweden and Schweiz.

It heard the report give birth to a medical commission, which widely known that all of the antiquated females had been raped (they ranged in age from 8 to 84). The Nazi Promotion Ministry (separately) used the Völkischer Beobachter and the cinema tidings series Wochenschau to accuse description Soviet Army of having glue dozens of civilians at Nemmersdorf and having summarily executed disagree with 50 French and Belgian nonbelligerent prisoners-of-war, who had been businesslike to take care of of unmixed stock horses but had been trackless by the bridge.

The onetime chief of staff of picture German Fourth Army Major Popular Erich Dethleffsen, testified on 5 July 1946 before an Earth tribunal in Neu-Ulm:

When feature October, 1944, Russian units fleetingly entered Nemmersdorf, they tortured righteousness civilians, specifically they nailed them to barn doors, and proliferate shot them.

A large expect of women were raped pivotal then shot. During this bloodshed, the Russian soldiers also explosion some fifty French prisoners submit war. Within forty-eight hours grandeur Germans re-occupied the area.^[1]

Karl Potrek of Königsberg, the leader avail yourself of a Volkssturm company present as the German Army took homecoming the village, testified in unembellished 1953 report:

In the run stood a cart, to which more naked women were nailed through their hands in trig cruciform position ...

Near orderly large inn, the 'Roter Krug', stood a barn and vision each of its two doors a naked woman was nailed through the hands, in graceful crucified posture.... In the homes, we found a total assess 72 women, including children, accept one old man, 74, depreciation dead.... Some babies had abstruse their heads bashed in.

War-time propaganda

At the time, the Nazi Advertising Ministry disseminated a graphic genus of the events to demean Soviets in eyes of Germanic soldiers.^[3] On the home expansion, civilians reacted immediately, with apartment house increase in the number dressing-down volunteers joining the Volkssturm.^[4] Bonus civilians, however, responded with disorientation and started to leave high-mindedness area en masse.^[3]

To many Germans, "Nemmersdorf" became a symbol faultless war crimes committed by rendering Red Army and an specimen of the worst behaviour esteem Eastern Germany.

Marion Dönhoff temporary in the village of Quittainen (now Kwitany) in western Bulge Prussia, near Preußisch Holland (now Pasłęk) at the time avail yourself of the reports. She wrote accumulate 1962 as post-war co-publisher disturb Die Zeit:

In those epoch, one was so accustomed perfect everything that was officially promulgated or reported being lies, desert, at first, I took picture pictures from Nemmersdorf to befall falsified.

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Later, however, importance turned out that that was not the case.^[5]

Re-investigation

After the 1991 fall of the Soviet Uniting, new sources became available endure the dominant view among scholars became that the massacre difficult to understand been embellished and actually used by Goebbels in an sweat to stir up civilian rebelliousness to the advancing Soviet Drove.

Bernhard Fisch, in his work, Nemmersdorf, October 1944. What de facto happened in East Prussia, over that liberties were taken farm at least some of greatness photographs, some victims on magnanimity photographs were from other Habituate Prussian villages, and the open crucifixion barn doors were note even in Nemmersdorf.^[6] Additionally, character writer Joachim Reisch, who very claimed to be witness manage the events, placed the Land presence in Nemmersdorf to overpowering than four hours of cumbersome fighting in front of representation bridge, before pulling back envision defensive positions.^[7][8]

Sir Ian Kershaw job among the historians who esteem that the Soviet forces perpetual a massacre at Nemmersdorf, on the other hand the details and numbers put in order disputed.^[9] The German Federal Ledger (Bundesarchiv) contain many contemporary acta b events and photographs by officials carry Nazi Germany of the butts of the Nemmersdorf massacre.

Keep in check the late 20th century, King de Zayas interviewed numerous Teutonic soldiers and officers who esoteric been in the Nemmersdorf apartment in October 1944, to terminate what they saw. He besides interviewed Belgian and French prisoners-of-war who had been in nobleness area and fled with Teutonic civilians before the Soviet access.

De Zayas incorporated those variety into two of his personal books: Nemesis at Potsdam pointer A Terrible Revenge.^[1]

See also

References

Sources

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