Why This German City Doesn’t Exist Anymore

Why This German City Doesn’t Exist Anymore

This German city doesn’t exist anymore. Its name 
was Königsberg, a city that was once the pride of the German nation. But 80 years ago, it was 
wiped off the map forever. But that’s not going to stop us from traveling to what’s left behind. 
Because today, we are retracing the haunting final days of old Königsberg while learning why the 
heroes of the Soviet Red Army turned its lights off for the last time. The ghosts of this lost 
German city can teach us an invaluable lesson   from history. That’s never been more important 
to learn. I’m the Borsch Bandit and this is my journey across the former Soviet Union. Join me 
as we uncover stories and legacies, the Soviet sagas. We are heading to modern-day Kaliningrad 
for the 80th anniversary of Soviet Victory Day to retrace the history of how Königsberg became 
a Soviet stronghold, visiting remnants left   from the German city and exploring the World War 
II battle that ended German rule here forever. I’m here today in Kaliningrad with my victory day 
flag here wearing the St. George’s ribbon. May 9th, 2025 for the 80th anniversary of the Soviet 
victory against fascism, the day that World War II came to an end, or as they call it in this part 
of the world, the Great Patriotic War. It was on this day that years of bloody conflict came to 
an end. In just a few years, this continent saw a level of death and destruction that is simply 
incomprehensible to the modern mind. Over 50 million people in Europe would die from this 
war. Half of that number, over 26 million of those people were citizens of the Soviet Union. 
Look at all the people gathered here today. This day is sacred for millions across the former 
Soviet Union, especially here in Russia. It’s understandable, of course, especially when you 
know how many Soviet people gave their lives in   this war. You can see people carrying photographs 
of their family members who served. This is a tradition in Russia known as the immortal 
regiment. These people will march together   later with these photos to remember the Soviet 
heroes who marched together over 80 years ago. But what if I told you this day should be sacred 
for all people? And why do I say that? Well, to understand why this victory was so important, 
we have to understand what was defeated. We have to understand what was on the line if the Soviet 
Union and its allies lost this war. To understand the heroism of the brave Soviet soldiers, we 
have to understand the villains they defeated, Nazi Germany. And there’s no better place in 
Russia to learn about this villain, as Kaliningrad is the only place in Russia that was once part of 
Nazi Germany. These are the few remaining remnants of the old German city of Königsberg you’re seeing 
now. If these statues and bricks could speak,   they could tell you about the brave Soviet heroes 
who fought here. They could also tell you about the cries and screams of death, final moments 
of a conquered people who falsely believed that   they were the racially superior master race that 
could never be defeated. Yet, they were. They were defeated. Anyway, of course, I’m referring to the 
long removed East Prussian people that built these   buildings. And by the time I’m done telling 
this story here today, it should be crystal clear why this day should be sacred to all people 
everywhere. Because there is one important lesson in this history that has never been more important 
for all of us to learn so that we never again ever repeat this horrific history. There’s probably 
nowhere better to start the introduction to this now extinct region of Germany that was once 
called East Prussia than over a delicious plate of Königsberg Klopse. These creamy white meatballs 
were a traditional East Prussian meal that was developed right here in the long lost German city 
of Kingsburg. You can still order these today in Kaliningrad’s fine dining restaurants as a local 
reference to Kaliningrad’s predecessor. Believe it or not, they’re still served all over what’s left 
of modern Germany today. Even if the city that created it doesn’t exist anymore. Unfortunately, 
East Prussia wasn’t just delicious meatballs. It has a very dark and evil side to its legacy. East 
Prussia held deep symbolic weight. It was the land of the Kaisers, where the first Prussian 
king was crowned in 1701 in the fortress city of Königsberg. But the roots of East Prussia’s 
identity go even deeper to the Teutonic Order. German crusader knights sent to conquer, convert, 
and colonize the pagan tribes who spoke a now extinct Baltic tongue called Old Prussian. And 
over the centuries, this region became Germanized,   but not entirely. A significant Lithuanian and 
Polish minorities remained. The first Lithuanian book was printed right here in Königsberg. The 
city even had its own Polish-speaking Lutheran   seminary. East Prussia may have been a part 
of Germany, but it was often made to feel like an outsider. It spoke a dialect of German that 
borrowed Lithuanian words like “Alus” for beer. Its regional food recipes like “Beetenbartsch” 
mirrored the borscht of their Slavic neighbors. That’s why many Germans didn’t see East Prussians 
as fully German. But then Germany lost the First   World War and the old Prussian monarchy fell. New 
borders gave Poland access to the Baltic Sea via the Danzig corridor, cutting East Prussia off from 
mainland Germany. Then Lithuania seized even more land in the north, turning the Prussian town of 
Memel into the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda. The Prussian economy based on foreign trade collapsed, 
and so did the region’s German pride. East Prussia now found itself isolated, economically shattered, 
and vulnerable. And into this weakness stepped a new voice to exploit the situation, the Nazi 
party. By 1925, the Nazis had set up shop in East Prussia and soon found their local champion, 
Eric Koch, a brutal many Hitler figure who turned uncertainty and ethnic tensions into political 
fuel. Taking advantage of pre-existing bigotries, he blamed East Prussia’s troubles on ethnic 
scapegoats, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Jews, and the Bolsheviks. In Koch’s Nazi vision, East 
Prussia wasn’t just German, it was the most German. as a racial colony bull work against 
the east. But the Nazis weren’t the only ones offering a solution. Their main adversary was the 
fast growing communist party of Germany. People at the time said that East Prussia was caught in 
a struggle between the swastika and the sickle. The communists weren’t cowards. They even fought 
the Nazis in the streets. They denounced racism   as a tool of the wealthy to divide the working 
class. But too many East Prussians gave in to their nationalist fears and racial bigotry and 
committed their support to the Nazi cause. And by 1933, when Adolf Hitler rose to power, East 
Prussia already had the highest level of Nazi support in Germany. Eric Koch wasn’t just a party 
leader anymore. He now ruled the region of East Prussia. And what happened next would drag East 
Prussia into the darkest chapter of its history. After 1933, under Nazi ideology, Jews were banned 
from public roles as they were considered to be at the bottom of a brutal racial hierarchy. 
By 1935, Jews were stripped of citizenship and the persecution escalated to 1938 when 
Königsberg’s majestic synagogue was torched and Jewish children from the orphanage next door 
fled barefoot into the cold. This day of darkness was felt across Germany’s Jewish population, 
known as the night of broken glass. Nearly all of Königsberg’s Jews would be deported to ghettos 
or death camps by 1942. Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Maly Trostenets. For the 80th anniversary of 
its destruction, the Königsberg synagogue would   be rebuilt in 2018 in its original design as 
a symbolic rebirth of a new Jewish community here in modern Kaliningrad. Holocaust survivors 
from Königsberg celebrated this rebirth at the reopening ceremony while bearing the memory 
of their community erased and a Königsberg   that watched in silence. So right across the 
river from the rebuilt Königsberg synagogue is the rebuilt Königsberg Lutheran Cathedral. Let’s 
head over there now and we’ll continue this story. this is a Kazakhstan. There is an unwritten law you must follow as a 
redneck like me when traveling across the former   Soviet Union, and that is if you see a Soviet 
barbecue, it is your sworn duty to stop and eat delicious meat. There’s one thing that separates 
real barbecue from fake, and that’s a good old smoke ring. Check that out. So, this market here 
is on the same island as the Lutheran Cathedral I was talking about earlier, and today it’s called 
Kant Island. Back before the war, it was called Kneiphof Island. And it used to be a densely 
populated urban area as you can see in these old depictions. Did you know that the bridges that 
connected this island to the rest of the city are   the origin of Leonhard Euler’s contribution to the 
mathematical graph theory in 1736? Good thing this ain’t a math video. But anyway, you can see this 
island is clearly deurbanized. The cathedral is now one of the few permanent structures left. And 
this is a direct result of the destruction left from World War II. But before I get into that, 
I want to talk about the significant role old   Königsberg and East Prussia played on the Eastern 
Front of that war. When the German Wehrmacht launched its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union 
from East Prussia, Nazi leadership expected an easy victory grounded in their belief in racial 
superiority over the Slavs and the Jews. In the opening weeks, over 30,000 Jews were executed by 
the Einsatzgruppen. East Prussian police units repurposed for mass murder. Colonel Otto Lasch, 
later promoted to general, led East Prussian forces in the attacks on Riga and Leningrad. In 
Leningrad, nearly a million civilians were starved to death during that siege. This battle that Lasch 
would describe in his memoir as earning his East Prussian soldiers immortal glory led to a mass 
atrocity and war crime. East Prussia became more than a military base. It was the ideological model 
for Nazi colonial rule in the east. Its racially stratified governance was exported to occupied 
Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus. Local collaborators, shamefully and foolishly, initially welcomed 
the Nazis, but Nazi racial policies swiftly revealed their greatest mistake because Slavs, 
Jews, Roma, and political opponents were quickly classified as subhuman. The disabled were executed 
as burdens. All were destined for forced labor and extermination. The aim was total colonization of 
Eastern Europe by German sellers with the locals reduced to slaves to serve them. Eric Koch, 
the brutal Gauleiter of East Prussia, launched   his crimes in 1940 with the execution of 1,558 
mentally disabled people, and he rewarded the killers with amber boxes and Nazi vacations. 1941, 
he was appointed Reichs Kommissar of Ukraine, where he oversaw the murder of over 20,000 Jews 
in mass shootings. Koch infamously declared, “Ukrainian children need no schools. What they’ll 
learn, German masters will teach.” He also said that any Ukrainian deemed worthy to dine with 
him should be shot. By 1944, under Koch’s rule, 1.2 million Jews and 4.1 million Soviet civilians 
had been murdered in Ukraine. As the Red Army and partisan fighters pushed westward, Koch and his 
officials retreated to Königsberg. Meanwhile, General Lasch attempted to stall the 
Soviet advance. After months of brutal   fighting and retreat, he prepared to lead the 
defense of Königsberg. And during this chaos, 13,000 Jewish forced laborers would marched into 
the city. Like I said earlier, this island was a densely populated area back in the old German 
days. If you were an old citizen of Königsberg, you’d likely remember this area as one of the core 
centers of your city. We can even see some of the remnants of the urban life here in these old tram 
tracks that probably took passenger trams right past this beautiful cathedral. While this is the 
original Königsberg cathedral, this is not what   the cathedral looked like after a fateful day 
in August of 1944 when the RAF British bombers firebombed Königsberg. And within two nights, the 
medieval city center, especially this very island, was nearly obliterated. Survivors jumped into the 
Pregel River here to escape the flames, only to be consumed by the phosphorus once they emerged. 
The cathedral’s roof was completely destroyed, only really ruins of the walls remain. But 
thankfully, the grave of Emmanuel Kant was   mostly undamaged. Emmanuel Kant was a brilliant 
philosopher from Königsberg back in the 1700s, and honestly, he deserves his own video. Of course, 
today this island has been renamed after him by a Russian people that have adopted him as their own, 
a symbol of local pride for a modern Kaliningrad. This cathedral sat in ruins for most of its time 
after the war. It wouldn’t be restored until the 1990s. And when the Russians were carrying out 
the work, they discovered hundreds of children’s   skeletons. They initially thought it must have 
been casualties from the British bombing raid. But unconfirmed witness testimony has claimed that 
these are actually the remains of some of the Jews   that I mentioned earlier that had been evacuated 
to Königsberg from their concentration camps to use his slave labor to prepare for the final 
defense of Königsberg. The Nazis brought so much death across Europe that it followed them right 
back to this ground. But if you think about it,   there’s no greater revenge for the Nazis than the 
descendants of the Soviet Red Army laughing and enjoying themselves with delicious food and drink 
on the same spot 80 years later. Right across the Pregel River, or as it’s called today in Russian, 
the Pregolya River is an original building that actually survived the war for the most part. The 
old Königsberg Stock Exchange building. Here’s a   photo of it before the war. I mean, and imagine 
if these old German lion statues could talk to you. Like, they could they could tell you about 
the horrific screams of death they would have   heard on multiple occasions throughout the war. 
And of course, they’re still here. While much of the original city was destroyed, this building 
was damaged somewhat during the 1944 bombing. For example, you can see here in this photo, the 
building has been hit, but it is a lot more intact than the ruined structures back across the river 
on Kneiphof Island in the background where we were   just a minute ago. This building was one of the 
only, if not the only building restored under the Soviet administration in 1967 to serve as a marine 
cultural center. And one of the things that saved it was its beautiful neoclassical architecture 
design. And this is an original piece of one of   those famous uh Königsberg bridges I was telling 
you about earlier. Of course, that bridge had to be rebuilt as well. Late 1944 saw Königsberg 
shaken by bombing raid, scrambling to prepare for the coming Soviet offensive. Eric Koch’s 
Nazi leadership refused civilian evacuations, insisting all citizens aid the war effort and 
fight to the last man. They used civilians to hastily build fortifications while old men and 
young boys were conscripted into the ragtag Volkssturm militia units which I will discuss 
later. Christmas 1944 was surreal. Families feasted lavishly in denial celebrating what would 
be their final holiday in the city as if the war didn’t exist. That delusion ended just weeks later 
when the Soviet Red Army reached East Prussia’s borders. By January 1945, they had encircled 
Königsberg to begin their final siege. The Nazis then forced thousands of Jewish captives on death 
marches towards the seaside village of Palmnickin, guarded by Ukrainian collaborators who had been 
trained to work as concentration camp guards. They lied to the Jewish captives about where they 
were going, claiming that boats awaited them to   take them safely to Sweden. But fewer than 3,000 
survived the march. Those who collapsed were shot, leaving a trail of bodies behind them 
along the roadside. Once they arrived,   they brought them to the frozen Baltic Sea, where 
there were no boats to Sweden. The SS used some Hitler Youth child soldiers to keep the captives 
under armed guard and gave the children alcoholic schnappes to prepare them for what followed. 
Martin Bergau was one of the Hitler youth holding guard over the Jews lined up that day. A Jewish 
mother realizing what was about to happen asked Bergau to let her move up in line so she could be 
executed next to her daughter. Bergau accepted, but when she stepped out of line, another young 
Hitler youth began to beat her with the butt of his rifle. Bergau shouted at him, telling him 
that he gave her permission and to let her   continue. The perpetrators then prepared their 
rifles and ordered the captive to wade in the icy water and opened fire without mercy. 
One of the few survivors, Eva Nagler, said that as the innocent people were shot, she 
heard the screams of the wounded and suffering. And as they cried for help, the Nazis walked 
through, shooting any of the wounded to finish them off. Thankfully, Eva Nagler escaped so she 
could later write about the event in her book,   Massacre on the Baltic. And today, the 
story is known as the Palmnicken Massacre. Königsberg was called the fortress city for a 
reason because it had 15 forts spread around its edge. But these forts were built in the 1800s. 
By 1945, they were quite outdated, crumbling reminders of a different era. But the Nazi forces 
still had to use them regardless because it was their main defensive line around the city. Today, 
many lie in ruins, but we’re going to visit a   couple of the intact ones. Starting with one of 
the most intact, fort number 11, Dönhoff. By early 1945, the Soviets had encircled the city, cutting 
it off from the rest of Germany. Food was scarce, civilians were in a constant state of hunger, 
being rationed with just 180 gram of bread a day. Desperation grew, and the Nazi commanders enforced 
order with brutal fear. Looters and deserters were executed, their bodies were hung in the streets. 
Hitler had ordered no surrender, and Königsberg was ordered to fight to the death. Imagine the 
German soldiers in these damp, cold forts, sleep deprived, hungry, morale fading fast as the Soviet 
artillery thundered outside in the distance. There were brief breakouts from the siege to the 
port of Pillau, which brought supplies and   evacuations. But by April, the Soviets once 
again encircled Königsberg and prepared for the final assault. And we’re heading back in 
time now to another fort to watch it. All right, so we’re here right now. We’re at fort number 
five. We’re gonna figure out where we’re going here. We’re gonna have a reenactment, I believe. 
I want to re-emphasise that the Nazis did not believe this moment was possible. They viewed the 
Soviet people as racially inferior. How could this ethnically diverse army of workers and peasants 
have possibly fought their way to German soil? For the first time since the Nazi regime sent 
the German communist to the concentration camps, communists were back at the gates of Königsberg. 
Communist soldier Bikbulatov was leading one of the many assaults that day and he announced 
the advance to his comrades. Forward guardsmen, nothing can stop us. You see, this army was made 
from millions of ordinary men and women. But what wasn’t ordinary about them was their bravery and 
their courage. One of the Soviet soldiers fighting that day was Guard Senior Sergeant Telebayev from 
the 31st Guards Division. Telebayev stood up in the heat of battle under exploding artillery 
and machine gun fire and shouted for our party, for the Soviet motherland, for our great people, 
forward guardsmen. and he led his platoon in a charge against German trenches between forts 
number eight and 10, breaking through enemy lines within minutes. Amid fierce close quarters combat, 
he killed six Nazis and took three prisoner, but he was wounded. And despite his injuries, 
Telebayev refused to leave the battlefield. Instead, he pressed on, rallying his comrades 
and pushing deeper into the enemy’s defenses. His bravery helped secure a key breakthrough 
on the northeastern edge of the fortress city. And yet another example of unbreakable Soviet 
courage. Telebayev wasn’t just a cherrypicked example. Across the eastern front, 23 million 
Soviet soldiers had been wounded. But 80% of those wounded soldiers returned to duty to finish 
the fight. This horrible war would be won by the unbreakable spirit of the wounded as the bravery 
of Soviet people would not give up until the world was freed from Nazism and fascism. So you’re 
looking at actual damage still left from the assault on Königsberg. This was a concrete 
pillbox outside of fort number five here,   which was basically a separate fortification used 
to protect the approach to the main fort. On the third day of the assault on April 8th, 1945, 
this pill box was destroyed with a direct hit from a Soviet 280 mm projectile, and it’s still 
here in that condition 80 years later. The day I am filming this here is the 80th anniversary of 
Victory Day here in Kaliningrad. So, naturally,   I’ve been on the go all day, and I haven’t 
actually had a chance to eat. And that’s why I’m excited to try here what I’ve 
been told is called soldiers porridge,   which seems to be an opportunity for the people 
here to try an authentic food ration that their Soviet veteran ancestors may have eaten from what 
seems to be an authentic Soviet field kitchen. Going off the long lines here, I’m not the only 
one excited to fill their stomachs right now. is what I have been told is solders 
porridge. Of course, this is Grechka, which is I think it’s like buckwheat 
porridge. And we’ve got a little tea there. You can hear the gunshots in the background. 
I hope. Yeah. I don’t know if you can hear   the gunshots, but Oh, yeah. Tastes like your 
grechka. Oh, it looks like you got a little bit of meat there. You see a little bit of meat 
mixed in there with the grechka guy. I think whatever this is, it’s pretty well seasoned. 
I can see if you were super hungry, you definitely wouldn’t be complaining. You’d 
be thanking God for getting to your next meal, probably. Yeah, that’s good. As the Soviet forces 
break through Königsberg’s outer perimeter forts, we return now to the heart of the city. But 
let’s remember what the Soviets are walking   into while we watch this rare footage 
from March 1945. Recovered from its lost tapes and kindly provided by the Maximus and 
History YouTube channel. Be sure to go check   them out. They have some great videos if you are 
interested in this history. To put it plainly, this is not the same city that it was before 
the war. Despite steadfast Soviet advance,   Eric Koch’s Nazi administration blocked most of 
the civilian evacuations while the hypocritical Koch fled himself. Over 200,000 civilians remain 
trapped in this city when the Soviet army arrives. And Eric Koch’s Nazi party expected all of them 
to help defend the city to the last man. By April 1945, the civilian population is surviving among 
rubble already months into siege conditions. As long as they are working in the defense, they are 
rationed just enough food to survive. Earlier I   mentioned the Volkssturm, a militia of poorly 
trained civilians largely made up of old men, young boys. In Königsberg, there 
were 10,000 Volkssturm conscripts,   forming a major part of the German defense. 
Nazi propaganda praised the Volkssturm as the embodiment of national and racial unity. But in 
reality, they were under equipped, undertrained, and forced into service with very low morale. 
Deserters were publicly executed. Bodies were left hanging in the streets as a warning. This was a 
regular sight in Königsberg. To give you an idea, by this stage of the war, over 20,000 German 
soldiers had already been executed by their   own side. Königsberg had three defensive belts. 
The mission of the Soviet 11th Guard’s army was to push through the southern flank and reach the 
Pregel River, but they faced fierce resistance,   fighting block by block. General Lasch quickly 
saw that the situation was hopeless and requested permission to surrender. Hitler refused, 
ordering Königsberg to fight to the last man, and later that night, the Soviet 11th Guard’s army 
courageously crossed the Pregel River under heavy fire. And by dawn, they established a position on 
the other side, cutting off the inner defensive   ring, including General Lasch’s command bunker 
from the rest of the German forces on the Sambian Peninsula. Soviet Marshall Vasilevsky called on 
Lash to surrender. Again, Hitler refused. The Germans launched one last failed counterattack, 
and the next day, the defensive structure left in the city collapsed entirely. Realizing there was 
no hope, Lasch defied Hitler’s orders and secretly contacted the Soviets, agreeing to surrender his 
remaining forces. The Soviet delegation would   then meet him right here in this very command 
bunker. Let’s go down and take a look. Okay. When Lasch described his final day in this 
bunker, it sounds very grim. The Soviets knew exactly where the bunker was, and it was 
constantly taking direct hits from heavy   artillery. But surprisingly, it actually withstood 
the blasts. Two women from the Nazi party had come down to the bunker to seek shelter. And when the 
officers here took them into their assigned room,   they both took their own lives. That evening, 
Soviet officers from the Belorussian Russian front arrived to the bunker to conclude 
the formal surrender, and they began   immediately broadcasting the surrender out to 
the remaining German soldiers across the city. I want to show you the maps from the last day. 
This is the remaining German position starting in   the morning of April 9th, 1945. And by just that 
evening, these were the only remaining pockets of German resistance in that city. What Lasch seemed 
to tell himself perhaps to try and grapple with   the guilt of the war is that his choice to disobey 
Adolf Hitler in surrendering saved many lives and in some ways that is true to an extent. But when 
we look at these maps, I think it’s abundantly   clear how little of choice General Lasch actually 
had in surrendering the city. That didn’t stop some of the Nazi fanatics from refusing to 
surrender though. In fact, one of the Nazi party   officers tried to storm the bunker to shoot Soviet 
officers inside, but failed in his attempt. Horst Böhme, an SS officer and leading perpetrator of 
the Holocaust, immediately delegated new fortress commanders upon hearing that Lasch had betrayed 
his orders. But all of these ragtag resistances   were soon crushed. No one even really knows what 
happened to Burma. It’s assumed that he was either killed in the battle or killed himself to avoid 
capture. Remember old Gauleiter lighter Eric Koch who refused the civilian evacuations? Well, he 
was long gone by this point. He was able to catch   a flight back to Germany where he would desert 
himself and live in hiding under a pseudonym for a few years before being discovered by the British 
and arrested. General Otto Lasch was taken to   Leningrad as a prisoner of war and tried for war 
crimes. There was another item the Germans had overlooked. They overlook people and generals may 
win campaigns, but people win wars. And on that fatal June 22nd, when the Russian people first 
learned of the invasion of their country, their grim faces told of their determination to fight 
and to die, but never to surrender. They knew this wasn’t a question of who occupied what piece 
of land. This was a question of life or death. That’s right. Wars are won by the people. And 
this war was won 80 years ago by the unbreakable determination of the Soviet people to whom the 
entire world owes a tremendous debt of gratitude. They never gave up until they flew the red flag 
over every city they liberated between Stalingrad and Berlin. and they hoisted that same red flag 
over a defeated Königsberg just weeks before the end of the war. I’m here for the 80th anniversary 
of that final victory. And I told you at the beginning I would show you why this day should be 
sacred for all people everywhere. That’s because that single victory day has given us eight decades 
of freedom from the threat of Nazi Germany. The scary thing to remember is that while East 
Prussian people who lived in this city went down   the dark road of racism and fascism, they were not 
uniquely evil people. The truth is that without vigilance, any country can go down the road of 
racism and fascism. And today in the Western world where we live, far too many people are making the 
same fatal mistake as the East Prussians made some 90 years ago. Compare the Western world today 
with where East Prussia was before the Nazis. People aren’t getting paid enough. Everything 
costs too much. People are struggling to afford   basic needs and housing. And the situation for 
East Prussians back then sounds like our lives today. Nazis used these situations to gain power 
by turning people’s struggles into hate against those they claim are inferior. And these Nazis 
will try to lie to us, divide us, and turn us against one another. But the reality is they don’t 
care about any of us. Who was it running away in   the end from East Prussia like a weak coward? It 
was Eric Koch. the East Prussian Nazi leader. And just like the rest of the Nazis, he was too afraid 
to face the music for his crimes. The Nazis told the East Prussians that they would easily crush 
the Soviets because they said they were the   German master race. And the Soviet Red Army was 
formed from over 100 different ethnic groups. But where’s all these so-called master race East 
Prussians at today? They’re gone. They’re not here anymore. East Prussia doesn’t exist anymore. 
Racism comes from weakness and strength comes from working class unity. The Nazis in Königsberg 
rejected civilian evacuations numerous times. And instead of protecting their own people, they 
spent their time murdering innocent people right   up until the very end. And then the leaders 
ran away and left a bunch of child soldiers and their grandpas behind to fight in their place. 
If we don’t take action in our communities today across the western world to stop Nazism while 
we still can, we will meet the same fate as Königsberg and the rest of East Prussia. Total 
destruction. I don’t know what better lesson we can take from this history. Crush Nazism every 
time it tries to raise its ugly head or we will be crushed ourselves. I’m here at one of the actual 
Soviet tanks that rolled into this city 80 years ago and started a new chapter for this land. And 
I’d like to lay this flower here as many others have out of tremendous respect for the enormous 
sacrifice sustained by the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. And I’d like to dedicate this 
video and all of the work that went into it to the millions of brave men and women who fought 
against Nazism. Never forget their sacrifice.

00:00 Intro
00:56 Victory Day Celebration
03:37 Who Was East Prussia?
07:03 Jewish Life in Königsberg
08:19 Kneiphof Island
09:57 Operation Barbarossa
12:14 British RAF Bombings
14:05 Königsberg Stock Exchange Building
15:09 Königsberg’s Last Christmas
15:53 Palmnicken Massacre
17:35 Perimeter Forts in the Siege
18:52 Reenactment of Soviet Assault
21:30 Trying Soldier’s Porridge
22:55 Battle Enters City
25:21 Soviets Surround Bunker & German Surrender
27:55 Closing Thoughts
31:55 Credits

In this video: This German City Doesn’t Exist Anymore

What happened to the lost German city of Königsberg? Once the pride of East Prussia, this historic city was wiped off the map 80 years ago in the aftermath of World War II. Today, its memory survives only through ruins, stories, and the city that replaced it: Kaliningrad, Russia.

In this documentary-style journey, filmed during the 80th Anniversary of Victory Day (May 9, 2025), we retrace the haunting final days of Königsberg, uncovering the rise of Nazism in East Prussia, the brutality of Erich Koch’s Nazi regime, the tragedy of the Palmnicken Massacre, and the heroic Soviet Red Army soldiers who liberated the city.

From Königsberg Cathedral and Kant Island, to Fort No. 5 and the command bunker where General Otto Lasch surrendered, this video explores both the destruction and the lessons left behind. Along the way, we also look at the culture of East Prussia—its traditions, food like Königsberger Klopse, and the diverse heritage that was erased in the war.

Above all, this story asks: what can the ghosts of Königsberg teach us today?
The fall of Königsberg is not just a local story—it’s a warning about fascism, racism, and the dangers of forgetting history.

✪ If you enjoyed this deep dive into WWII history, don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more historical documentaries and on-the-ground explorations.

📌 Topics covered in this video:

The lost city of Königsberg and East Prussia

Nazi occupation, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust in Königsberg

The Siege of Königsberg and Soviet victory in 1945

Victory Day in Kaliningrad (2025)

Lessons from history on standing against fascism

#Königsberg #Kaliningrad #WWII #VictoryDay #HistoryDocumentary #EastPrussia #Travel #SovietUnion