A 2011 German War Documentary narrated by Alastair Duncan, broadcast on SBS.
A reconstruction of the Soviet assault on East Prussia, the German eastern front; and German efforts to hold them back. The Red Army major offensive began in June1944, adv…
A 2011 German War Documentary narrated by Alastair Duncan, broadcast on SBS.
A reconstruction of the Soviet assault on East Prussia, the German eastern front; and German efforts to hold them back. The Red Army major offensive began in June1944, advancing rapidly. By October, they were well inside Eastern Prussia. There was a brief lull in November. Then, on 12th January, 1945, the Russian attack on Hitler's Reich began, with a superiority of twenty to one. The Red Army advanced on a broad front, capturing important cities. The ban on fleeing was lifted, and in the scramble to escape, over a million civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, paid dearly for the crimes of Hitler's Reich.
Most significantly, Königsberg, after being reduced to rubble, surrendered to Stalin on 27th April. For the people trapped in the city, it was a time of great suffering, as the Red Army continued to vent its hatred and revenge on all Germans for Nazi war atrocities. Sixty years on, the memories are still there, though the hate is gone, and hope remains. A far reaching outome is that old East Prussia no longer exists, and its former royal captial is now a Russian city, Kaliningrad. Its people have found new homelands.
Recreation of the battle scenes, with aerial maps showing the German eastern front, the Baltic and Atlantic fronts, escape routes to the west, and Red Army advance. The story draws on personal narratives of participants of the war, experiences of civilians caught up in it, and selected footage from the newsreels and from the German, Polish and Russian national archives.
