Operation Westwind: Breakout from Königsberg '45 

Just the mere mention of Königsberg makes me sad :(

Very wise words!

Exquisite!

God bless you both!

what is the title?

@@yousuck785why East Prussian Diary

Thanks man!

Pillau is today Baltiysk, not Piława.

You're very welcome!

@@bastiaanwillems2252 I'd very much like to add my thanks as well. I learned a lot from it. I appreciated you explaining the exploitation of the child soldiers and how concern for the civilian population was a last thought. It's very sad of course but better to know the truth than not, eh?

Thanks!

Thanks!

Something reenactors and the volkssturm have in common: a lot of old fat guys.

​@@KI.765 To be fair, most of the thin old guys were gone by 1945 because they got called up much earlier in the war. Still boggles my mind how many of the NCOs who marched in Russia in 1941 were Great-War veterans, men in their early 40s.

@@KI.765 probably not that fat in 1945, after years of food shortages. And even old fat people back then usually weren't 2021 level of fat.

@@NaturalLanguageLearning way to not be able to take a mainly tongue in cheek comment. Yes, I'm well aware our fat guys are much fatter than their fat guys were, that's self-evident by looking at period pictures; and in those you'd see some heavier set volkssturm men. Don't worry though, I was impressed with your comment and also think you're very highly intelligent.

@@KI.765 wtf man, I only said people were less fat in 1945. a little bit sensitive aren't we? lol

cannon fodder..... for what??? Clueless kids USED--- gross

@@dleechristy True. Very true.

It is known who was on the ships and they evacuated mostly soldiers and supplies. Evacuation was only officially ordered on the 21st of January and even then civilians were on the bottom of the list.

Evacuate where? Argentina?

Evacuate to the Western Front.

Even if it’s forbidden to say, evacuate civilians, fact is that you can’t really do it completely under the table. You can chose not to report it to Nazi party officials, but the army divisions involved in holding the cities would have to communicate it among each other to practically coordinate it. It is the documents of the latter type that he says don’t concern themselves with the evacuation of civilians.

@@jussim.konttinen4981 The rest of Germany. My Grandmother walked on foot from East Prussia to a place not far away from the Dutch border.

I think soviet wanna take this city cause it was consider a german soil. They wanna take all german land despite the cost.

You do realize that every city represents a network of roads and railways. Without capturing these network of transportation, how would the Red Army guarantee their supply line? The nazis surrounded Leningrad for 2 years without major attempt to capture it, the city endured while tying down Army Group North for 2 years.

Konigsberg wasn't besieged by large forces, most of the front units went towards Vistula estuary and Elbing and Danzig- Sopot-Gdynia and Hel Peninsula. Konigsberg was also a large railroad and automotive hub, garrison and industrial objects, it was defended by Fuhrersbefehl as a Fortress-City

Takes a lot of troops to do that and they may not have that many. Also leaves an enemy in your rear that could conduct raids

@@demonprinces17 The Allies did just that. And if you watch Mark Felton's channel you would have seen the Germans launch raid's into the Allied rear from the Channel Island and Dunkirk until april 1945. In the end it took less troops, or allowed them to use lesser tier troops to just bottle up the Germans and suck in the occasional raid then it cost them to assault well fortified cities.

It is pocket and not Russian word you are using.

@@tokul76 Pocket ! Thank you.

yes and no, remember the Germans were rather close to Moscow as well. Additionally, nearly all countries in 1945 or even before ran into manpower problems. I think I cover some other aspects in this video as well: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XHkBXuJUujI.html

Volkssturm is basically militia, armed civilians. Often not even in uniform, just an armband. Volksgranadier divisions were, if I remember correctly, lower quality infantry divisions formed in the final stages of the war, often with the remnants of infantry divisions that had been mauled at the front.

@@NaturalLanguageLearning Ok, thanx for that.

@@NaturalLanguageLearning not necessarily lower quality, it was a new organization for infantry divisions, it took into account lower manpower (haveing only 6 line battalions instead of 9, which many divisions had been reduced to anyway), but compensated for this by haveing more machine-pistols, assault rifles and light machine guns (at least on paper) compared to earlier infantry units. many were outfitted with lower quality personal, but many were full of high-quality veterans. so they had a rather inconsistent performance.

@@matthiuskoenig3378 yeah, good point. I had heard about some of them performing surprisingly well in some engagements, because of whole squads being armed with Sturmgewehrs, which would have been a huge upgrade in firepower compared to bolt action rifles. But when in came to troop quality the overall quality must have been much lower than the veteran divisions destroyed in the Eastern Front, North Africa and Normandy. Older men (+35, +40), or very young ones with zero experience, rushed training... The best recruits and decorated veterans would mostly be concentrated in the "elite" units, like the panzer divisions, Fallschirmjäger, Gebirgsjäger, Waffen-SS...Same goes for heavy weapons. And I think the 6 battalions instead of 9 was already a thing by the time of the battle of Kursk due to manpower shortages.

Yes, we'll touch on that exact issue in a future episode. A very good observation! I don't think we're disagreeing on that point - the different commands used the "best" units for the job. It makes a lot of sense to move tanks out of the city, and replace a tank division with a Volksgrenadier division.

Thanks for the reply! I look forward to the next video.

Thanks!

Kind of true for the rest of the world too at that point. Total war and all. The Western Allies also didn't care too much either. It would be nice to avoid civilian casualties, but collateral was to be expected. The amount of civilian lives lost during the strategic bombing campaigns is evidence of their priorities.

@@neurofiedyamato8763 yeah but the people on the other side of the Elbe decided that ethnic cleansing was the way to go Cuz reasons I suppose

Terror bombing or euphemistically called by the brits "dehousing" was done by the western allies aswell. Its true that on the ground the western allies were much more humane than the Soviets but up in the air where you cant see the person you are dropping your bombs on the dinner table didnt make much difference.

@@Keckegenkai the difference was the west didn’t target civilians explicitly The Soviets? Did

@@looinrims Third Reich used German minorities in neighboring countries to justify its aggression against those countries. Also, strategic bombing campaigns explicitly did target civilian population among other objectives.

lol

He's becoming incandescent.

Who needs the sun when you can live off of the satisfaction of finding gems in the archives?

He doesn't need sun because he glows like the moon

I have subtitles for all my regular videos.

"At least" it would take several hours to transcribe this talk.

I think it's the lighting as even his beard looks washed out.

@Neil of Longbeck You’re probably right but for a minute there I thought he had become one of the undead! The Nosferatu!!!

I’ve read The Forgotten soldier too, an amazing read, but I’m not sure of its veracity as a true first hand account either, there seem to be no records of a Guy Sajer in the surviving Grossdeutschland Divison records.

@@ericdickison7995 I think it's true - his buddy 'Hals' immigrated to Connecticut....his account of the fighting in the Pilau region is harrowing. It was the 'Veteran' who bailed them out there...

@@aldosigmann419 Hals has been identified??? I had no idea, that truly blows my mind, has he confirmed the story in the book?

@@ericdickison7995 I read it in passing some years back (Hals) but don't recall the source... i always thought the contentions against Sajer weren't very impressive. Sajer must be around 95 now - if he's still alive. He states (Sajer) that his account was the emotional impressions of a terrified teenager swept along in an historic avalanche and not some military representation with pins on a map. I can see that!

He was at Pillau. His division did not fight in this specific battle, but a lot in and around Königsberg!

AN excellent point. We'll touch on that in two of the upcoming interviews!

Listening to these guys is, of course, interesting... I have not looked it up, but MHNV-Bernhard is obviously Austrian and from the name alone and his accent Dr. Willems seems pretty Dutch to me...no Germans involved... ;) P.S.: great channel, good work, Mr. MHNV!

Neither Bernhard nor me is German. He's Austrian, and I'm Dutch. But I still appreciate your comment!

@@bastiaanwillems2252 Thanks for clearing this up! I had my suspicions, but was too lazy to look it up...that`s why we have the experts... ;) Good that my accent-detector still works. :D Keep up the interresting research!

An honest mistake. Austria's very succesful in trading. Germany: -Now, we haff zizz compozer Beethoven to you transfered - böt you haff us somezing in retörn giving! Austria: We'll, we haff ziz painter...

Thanks for your question! The main issue with civilians is the great discrepancy between what commanders claimed after the war, and what they said during the war. Even in the Soviet Union, civilians would be mentioned every now and so often, so it's not uncommon to find civilians in reports. So, if German civilians were as important as was claimed, we should find them high on a list of priorities, but the opposite is true. Whenever they are mentioned, it is at the very end of a list, below all else. They're not fully absent from sources - in fact, the sources just make it clear that they waged a war without care for the population. Clearest examples of this are the matters of rationing and shipping space, where we know how much was allocated to civilians and how much was allocated to the war effort. If evacuating civilians was a concern, we would see that ships would be packed with them. This was not the case. Of course, my short answer here does not do the situation justice at all. If you really want to learn more about it, go to Amazon or Cambridge University Press and get a copy of "Violence in Defeat" (pretty affordable!) All the best, Dr. Bastiaan Willems

@@bastiaanwillems2252 Vielen Dank for this detailed answer, for which I am very grateful :)

No

The Germans didn’t want them in 1991, and to be frank, why would they? As history matters put it: “Kaliningrad is as Russian as any other part of it so why let it go?” Ignore the military and economic significance of Kaliningrad and then realize the whole ethnic cleansing that happened as the red army moved west, and yeah there’s not really a point

no. thats the course of history.

There is no way the Russians are going to give up a year round ice free port in the Baltic.

I think NATO should take Transnistria as compensation for Crimea

I discuss it in depth in my book, 'Violence in Defeat". This goes into depth on this issue and also includes a large number of references. It's a hard pill to swallow, for sure, and the sad part is that it goes even further than what I discuss here.

@@bastiaanwillems2252 well since you made a career of making germans look Bad no matter the facts. I dont trust your acessement. Going to research that myself.

Might as well not talk about anything besides Stalingrad then. Everything except that is irrelevant. /s

So why comment then? Surely that makes your comment meaningless?

Soviet troops got encircled in Kiev during Operation Barbarossa. Would it also be meaningless to discuss it since the Soviets at the time were losing?

I think the fact that the Nazi's send young boys to a meaningless death is worth recording! Never again. Shows the lies told and believed by the Wehraboo"s.

That corridor allowed civilians to reach Pillau, where larger transports could dock during operation hannibal.