The chances are that you, the reader, have never even heard of Königsberg or East Prussia unless you are a history buff or a descendant of one of the refugees who in 1944 fled from this eastern province of Germany before the advancing Red Army, or were expelled by the Soviet and Polish régimes between 1945 and 1947. Until recently - with the virtual disappearance of the generation that experienced the horrors of this period of communist genocide and ethnic cleansing - it was politically incorrect in both the West and the East to even discuss the plight of East Prussia (Ostpreußen) and its inhabitants. Few are aware, let alone care about, this piece of dark history, desensitised as we have become by the countless wars of ethnic cleansing over the last half century: Bosnia, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, and Rwanda to name but five.

It was agreed by the Allied Powers in 1944 that the historic province of East Prussia should be divided between Poland (the southern part) and the Russian Federation (the northern part) on the flimsy and untrue pretext that the Soviet Union needed an ice-free port in winter. There were no historic precedents for this claim even though East Prussia had briefly been a vassal of Poland during imperial times. The population was either entirely German or its Slavic elements had voted in a plebiscite following the First World War to remain a part of Germany, so there was never any doubt as to the inhabitants' wishes.

Unfortunately, the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, had already determined to annex the eastern provinces of Poland and had unilaterally decided that to justify this he would have to compensate his new and unwilling ally with all of Germany's eastern territories, a full one-third of that country's land. This war booty included not only East Prussia but Pomerania, Mark Brandenburg, and the industrially rich Silesia. Worse - because it was unprecedented in history - it was decided that the entire German population of these areas would be "transferred" to Germany. Of the 10 million or so inhabitants, over three million - men, women, and children - died in peace time between (1945-47) under the most horrendous conditions.

It had been agreed by the Western powers - the USA, Great Britain, and France - that the occupation of these territories by Poland and the USSR was provisional pending a properly negotiated peace treaty between the Allies and Germany. By the time this took place following reunification of the western and central parts of the country, nobody - apart from the Germans who had waited so lond and who stood to lose so much - was particularly interest in resurrecting old disputes after a 50 year peace. Accordingly the West German government of Helmut Kohl was pressurised by the American President to renounce her legitimate territorial claims as the price for the reunification of West and East Germany.

As all politicians know, time has a way of blurring not only memories but justice too. Besides, a new generation of Poles and Russians had since grown up in the eastern German territories who would naturally not wish to be "transferred" themselves. The de facto situation took precedence over the de jure.

The German Province of East Prussia was invaded by the Soviet Red Army in 1944 and after its had been pillaged, looted and destroyed, a thousand years of history was effectively obliterated. Whole villages of Germans were massacred in scenes reminiscent of our modern day Srebrenica's. Of the original 2.2 million inhabitants of East Prussia, some 300,000 were killed and the rest deported to rump Germany where they have since become assimilated.

Few believe that realistically the German east will ever be returned to Germany and no decent person wants to see millions of Polish refugees deported back to the original Polish heartland.

There is, however, still the question of the Russian part of East Prussia in the north, which since the break-up of the Soviet Union has become detached from the motherland by a Lithuanian-White Russian "Corridor" reminiscent of the "Polish Corridor" that once separated Germany from East Prussia in the inter-war period.

The Russian Kaliningrad Oblast is one of the poorest and most polluted areas of the Russian Federation. Formerly a huge Soviet military base, its function has become somewhat redundant. There have been talks of it becoming a kind of "Russian Hong Kong", economically independent of the rest of Russia, though nothing has yet come of this. It remains one of the last bastions of communism in the ex-USSR.

Shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed, secret discussion were being held between West Germany and the USSR to have the large German population in the heartland of Russia transferred to the Kaliningrad area and to make it into another "German Volga Republic", a large German enclave on the Volga broken up by Stalin after the Nazi invasion of 1941. Nothing came of these talks.

In 1990, the New Covenant Church of God received a prophecy about the future of the Königsberg area. It followed 1½ years after the fulfilment of an earlier prophecy which stated that Germany would be reunited (see Prophecies on Germany: Reunification, Berlin & Königsberg, New Covenant Press, 1989, 2002, Arvika, Sweden). This is what the revelation says:

"It shall come to pass that the German government and those of wealth shall purchase back the ancient land of northern East Prussia, together with the city of Königsberg, which is called Kaliningrad by the Russians. And they shall bring out their gold, and the Russians shall lust after it, being in great poverty. And this I shall permit, saith Yahweh, on account of the righteousness of the former inhabitants, whose sons and daughters shall return unto their fathers' inheritance" (Olive Branch, 278:2-6).

This page was created on 27 August 2009 Last updated on 27 August 2009

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