Mayakovskoye
Encyclopedia
Nemmersdorf
in East Prussia
(today's Mayakovskoye
, Kaliningrad Oblast
) was one of the first pre-war ethnic German villages to fall to the advancing Red Army
in World War 2. On October 21, 1944 it was the scene of a massacre perpetrated by the Soviet soldiers against German civilians and French and Belgian noncombattants. Determining the facts has aroused controversy. Scholars now generally believe that while the massacre occurred, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry embellished the incident for propaganda purposes.
The 2nd Battalion, 25th Guards Tank Brigade, belonging to the 2nd Guards Tank Corps
of the 11th Guards Army
, crossed the Angrapa bridge and established a bridgehead
on the western bank of the river. German forces tried to retake the bridge, but several attacks were repelled by the Soviet tanks and the supporting infantry.
During an air attack, a number of Soviet soldiers took shelter in an improvised bunker already occupied by 14 local men and women. According to the testimony of the seriously injured Gerda Meczulat, when a Soviet officer arrived and ordered everybody out, the Russians shot and killed the German civilians at close range. During the night, the Soviet 25th Tank Brigade was ordered to retreat back across the river and take defensive positions along the Rominte
. The Wehrmacht
regained control of Nemmersdorf and discovered the massacre.
and other representatives of neutral countries, such as Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The commission heard the report from a medical commission. It reported that all the dead women had been raped (they ranged in age from eight to 84). The Nazi Propaganda Ministry,(separately) used the Völkischer Beobachter
and the cinema Wochenschau) to accuse the Soviet Army
of having killed tens of civilians at Nemmersdorf and summarily executed about 50 French and Belgian noncombatant POWs,that had been ordered to take care of thoroughbred horses, but had been blocked by the bridge. The civilians were allegedly killed by blows with shovels or gun butts.
Karl Potrek of Königsberg
, leader of a Volkssturm
company present on the retaking of the village, testified in a 1953 report:
The former chief of staff of the German Fourth Army
, Major General Erich Dethleffsen
, testified on July 5, 1946 before an American tribunal in Neu-Ulm
. He said:
The Nazi Propaganda Ministry disseminated a graphic description of the events with the intention to inspire the German soldiers. On the home front, civilians reacted immediately, with an increase in the number of volunteers joining the Volkssturm. A larger number of civilians responded with panic
, and started to leave the area en masse.
To many Germans, "Nemmersdorf" is a symbol of war crime
s committed by the Red Army, and an example of the worst behavior in Eastern Germany
. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, the post-war co-publisher of the weekly Die Zeit
, at the time of the reports lived in the village of Quittainen (Kwitany) in western East Prussia, near Preussisch Holland (Pasłęk). She wrote in 1962 that:
Fisch documented 23 civilian murders at Nemmersdorf and another 38 in nearby villages, leaving ten unexplained deaths. He was unable to locate the names of some of the photographed victims, presents the possibility that some photographs were altered, shows that some of the victims came from other areas of East Prussia, (which suggests but does not prove that they were not murdered in Nemmersdorf) and states that the account of barn doors being used for the crucifixion of women did not occur in Nemmersdorf, but elsewhere. Fisch's account was presented on TV by German TV Channel ZDF
in 2003.
Another writer, Joachim Reisch, claims to have been at the very scene of the bridge personally when the event was supposed to have occurred. He claims that the Soviet Brigade was at the bridge for less than four hours, and that the entire Russian massacre story as a hoax. He claims to have seen the victims, and alleges that it was probably carried out by German soldiers dressed in Russia army uniforms to create a propaganda event. In the same reference Reisch expresses similar revisionist views on all claimed Soviet atrocities, following exactly the revisionist lines that are still promulgated by Moscow today. Thorsten Hinz reports of that.
Most historians now generally believe that the fact that a massacre by Soviet forces is beyond reasonable dispute.
Nemmersdorf
- Places :* former German name of the settlement Mayakovskoye, today Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia* part of Goldkronach, a town in the district of Bayreuth, Germany- People :...
in East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
(today's Mayakovskoye
Mayakovskoye
Nemmersdorf in East Prussia was one of the first pre-war ethnic German villages to fall to the advancing Red Army in World War 2. On October 21, 1944 it was the scene of a massacre perpetrated by the Soviet soldiers against German civilians and French and Belgian noncombattants. Determining the...
, Kaliningrad Oblast
Kaliningrad Oblast
Kaliningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia situated on the Baltic coast. It has a population of The oblast forms the westernmost part of the Russian Federation, but it has no land connection to the rest of Russia. Since its creation it has been an exclave of the Russian SFSR and then the...
) was one of the first pre-war ethnic German villages to fall to the advancing Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
in World War 2. On October 21, 1944 it was the scene of a massacre perpetrated by the Soviet soldiers against German civilians and French and Belgian noncombattants. Determining the facts has aroused controversy. Scholars now generally believe that while the massacre occurred, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry embellished the incident for propaganda purposes.
Incident
2nd Guards Tank Corps
The 2nd Tatsinskaya Guards Tank Corps was a Red Army armoured formation that saw service during World War II on the Eastern Front. After the war it continued to serve with Soviet occupation forces in Central Europe. It was originally the 24th Tank Corps...
of the 11th Guards Army
11th Guards Army
The 11th Guards Army was a Soviet field army active from 1943 to 1997, which traces its origins to the formation of the Soviet 16th Army in June-July 1940.-History:...
, crossed the Angrapa bridge and established a bridgehead
Bridgehead
A bridgehead is a High Middle Ages military term, which antedating the invention of cannons was in the original meaning expressly a referent term to the military fortification that protects the end of a bridge...
on the western bank of the river. German forces tried to retake the bridge, but several attacks were repelled by the Soviet tanks and the supporting infantry.
During an air attack, a number of Soviet soldiers took shelter in an improvised bunker already occupied by 14 local men and women. According to the testimony of the seriously injured Gerda Meczulat, when a Soviet officer arrived and ordered everybody out, the Russians shot and killed the German civilians at close range. During the night, the Soviet 25th Tank Brigade was ordered to retreat back across the river and take defensive positions along the Rominte
Krasnaya River
The Krasnaya is a river in Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and Poland's Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship.The Krasnaya flows through Romincka Forest and ends at the Pissa River at Gusev. Krasnolesye, Russia is one of the many villages and towns located on the river....
. The Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
regained control of Nemmersdorf and discovered the massacre.
Evidence
German authorities organized an international commission to investigate, headed by Estonian Hjalmar MäeHjalmar Mäe
Hjalmar-Johannes Mäe was an Estonian politician....
and other representatives of neutral countries, such as Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The commission heard the report from a medical commission. It reported that all the dead women had been raped (they ranged in age from eight to 84). The Nazi Propaganda Ministry,(separately) used the Völkischer Beobachter
Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...
and the cinema Wochenschau) to accuse the Soviet Army
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...
of having killed tens of civilians at Nemmersdorf and summarily executed about 50 French and Belgian noncombatant POWs,that had been ordered to take care of thoroughbred horses, but had been blocked by the bridge. The civilians were allegedly killed by blows with shovels or gun butts.
Karl Potrek of Königsberg
Königsberg
Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...
, leader of a Volkssturm
Volkssturm
The Volkssturm was a German national militia of the last months of World War II. It was founded on Adolf Hitler's orders on October 18, 1944 and conscripted males between the ages of 16 to 60 years who were not already serving in some military unit as part of a German Home Guard.-Origins and...
company present on the retaking of the village, testified in a 1953 report:
"In the farmyard stood a cart, to which more naked women were nailed through their hands in a cruciform position...Near a large inn, the 'Roter Krug', stood a barn and to each of its two doors a naked woman was nailed through the hands, in a crucifiedCrucifixionCrucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
posture....In the dwellings we found a total of 72 women, including children, and one old man, 74, all dead....Some babies had their heads bashed in."
The former chief of staff of the German Fourth Army
German Fourth Army
The 4th Army was a field army of Imperial Germany during World War I and of the Wehrmacht during World War II-World War I:At the outset of war, the Fourth Army, with the Fifth Army, formed the center of the German armies on the Western Front, moving through Luxembourg and Belgium in support of the...
, Major General Erich Dethleffsen
Erich Dethleffsen
Erich Dethleffsen was a German general from Kiel. He was married to a daughter of Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, who planned the German invasion of Norway and Denmark during World War II....
, testified on July 5, 1946 before an American tribunal in Neu-Ulm
Neu-Ulm
Neu-Ulm is a town in Bavaria, capital of the Neu-Ulm district. Neighbouring towns include Ulm, Senden, Pfaffenhofen an der Roth, Holzheim, Nersingen and Elchingen. The population is 51,110 .-History:...
. He said:
"When in October, 1944, Russian units temporarily entered Nemmersdorf, they tortured the civilians, specifically they nailed them to barn doors, and then shot them. A large number of women were raped and then shot. During this massacre, the Russian soldiers also shot some fifty French prisoners of war. Within forty-eight hours the Germans re-occupied the area."
The Nazi Propaganda Ministry disseminated a graphic description of the events with the intention to inspire the German soldiers. On the home front, civilians reacted immediately, with an increase in the number of volunteers joining the Volkssturm. A larger number of civilians responded with panic
Panic
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reaction...
, and started to leave the area en masse.
To many Germans, "Nemmersdorf" is a symbol of war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s committed by the Red Army, and an example of the worst behavior in Eastern Germany
Historical Eastern Germany
The former eastern territories of Germany are those provinces or regions east of the current eastern border of Germany which were lost by Germany during and after the two world wars. These territories include the Province of Posen and East Prussia, Farther Pomerania, East Brandenburg and Lower...
. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, the post-war co-publisher of the weekly Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, at the time of the reports lived in the village of Quittainen (Kwitany) in western East Prussia, near Preussisch Holland (Pasłęk). She wrote in 1962 that:
"In those years one was so accustomed to everything that was officially published or reported being lies that at first I took the pictures from Nemmersdorf to be falsified. Later, however, it turned out that that was not the case."
The Re-investigation
After 1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union, new sources of Russian military records were made available to scholars. The historian Bernhard Fisch, himself from East Prussia and a Wehrmacht soldier during the war had been in Nemmersdorf a few days after it was re-taken and remembered a different scene than that portrayed by the Wochenschau cinema. He resolved to research the matter and separate the facts from the Propaganda Ministry fiction. In his book Nemmersdorf, October 1944: What Actually Happened in East Prussia he incorporated the material from Russian records and statements from the many witnesses from both sides, including Soviet General Kuzma N. Galitsky, former commander of 11th Guards Army.Fisch documented 23 civilian murders at Nemmersdorf and another 38 in nearby villages, leaving ten unexplained deaths. He was unable to locate the names of some of the photographed victims, presents the possibility that some photographs were altered, shows that some of the victims came from other areas of East Prussia, (which suggests but does not prove that they were not murdered in Nemmersdorf) and states that the account of barn doors being used for the crucifixion of women did not occur in Nemmersdorf, but elsewhere. Fisch's account was presented on TV by German TV Channel ZDF
ZDF
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
in 2003.
Another writer, Joachim Reisch, claims to have been at the very scene of the bridge personally when the event was supposed to have occurred. He claims that the Soviet Brigade was at the bridge for less than four hours, and that the entire Russian massacre story as a hoax. He claims to have seen the victims, and alleges that it was probably carried out by German soldiers dressed in Russia army uniforms to create a propaganda event. In the same reference Reisch expresses similar revisionist views on all claimed Soviet atrocities, following exactly the revisionist lines that are still promulgated by Moscow today. Thorsten Hinz reports of that.
Most historians now generally believe that the fact that a massacre by Soviet forces is beyond reasonable dispute.
See also
- Metgethen massacreMetgethen massacreMetgethen in East Prussia , located a few kilometers to the west of Königsberg, was a German village which fell to the advancing Red Army in January, 1945.-Timeline:...
- Red Army atrocitiesRed Army atrocitiesWar crimes perpetrated by the armed forces of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1991 include acts committed by the regular army—the Red Army —as well as the NKVD, including the NKVD's Internal Troops. In some cases, these crimes may have been committed on express orders of the early...
- The Crucified SoldierThe Crucified SoldierThe Crucified Soldier refers to the widespread story of an Allied soldier serving in the Canadian Corps who may have been crucified with bayonets on a barn door or a tree, while fighting on the Western Front during World War I...
(World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
)
Further reading
- Gerd R. Ueberschaer, (Hrsg.): Orte des Grauens. 2003
- Thorsten Hinz: Eines der düsteren Kapitel - Nemmersdorf: Neue Aspekte eines Verbrechens, in www.jungefreiheit.de 47/97 14. November 1997
- Joachim Reisch: Ein Storchennest als Mahnmal - Ostpreußen: Ein Augenzeuge erinnert sich an das Massaker von Nemmersdorf, in www.jungefreiheit.de 08/98 13. February 1998
- Archived website mirroring various reports about Nemmersdorf
- German TV channel ZDFZDFZweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
: Die Wahrheit über Nemmersdorf