politalX Politics Store - The Fall of Hitler's Fortress City: The Battle for Konigsberg, 1945
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List Price: £19.99
Our Price: £13.99
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Manufacturer: Greenhill Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5421724
EAN: 9781853677052
ISBN: 1853677051
Label: Greenhill Books
Manufacturer: Greenhill Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2007-03-15
Publisher: Greenhill Books
Studio: Greenhill Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wasted opportunity
Comment: I give this book one star because it is one of the few available in English and may serve to stir interest in this subject.
It's title is misleading since the fall of Königsberg is hardly touched upon at all. The brief overview of East Prussian history is interesting. I note that the writer is or was a history teacher according to another reviewer and this is clear from the potted history of the war in the Est which the book could easily do without. Do we really need a rehash of Stalingrad and Kursk when there is no detail of the Soviet offensive into East Prussia in 1945?
I could not find any reference to Otto Lasch's book nor to other works on the campaign. Since Lasch was the Fortress Commander in Königsberg and presided over its fall, I would have expected him to be heavily quoted which is not the case. Equally bizarre is the reliance placed on Guy Sajer's work. This is not the place to discuss whether his book is a novel rather than a memoir but I feel it should be treated a little more sceptically than seems to be the case here.
It is really a pity that a work that offers so much should deliver so little, although the folkloric picture of the area before the war arrives is well done. The definitive work on this subject is still waiting to be written.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed also
Comment: Like another reviewer I was dissapointed with the amount of space devoted to the actual siege of Koenigsberg. The book was interesting but was spoiled somewhat by the the inferences on a few occasions that the population of East Prussia deserved what they suffered because of the way German soldiers behaved in Russia.Most of the victims in East Prussia were women, chidren and old men who could hardly be held responsible for the behaviour of others.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Left wanting more
Comment: I found the book ultimately unsatisfactory, in that the historical background of Konigsberg and East Prussia occupies 85% of the book; the crucial part of the book(the reason why most people would buy it) dealing with the Russian onslaught on East Prussia and Konigsberg in particular is not covered in any great depth.The author does not identify military units in any detail, so as a piece of military history, it fails. The civilian experience is also not dealt with in any great detail, the actions of the Kriegesmarine are sketchily detailed. Even the Russian side is barely explained. It leaves one with a desire to seek out other histories about
this relatively little(for us in the West) known period.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The obliteration of a fortress and its people
Comment: Isabel Denny has written an immensely readable account of the fall of the prosperous and cultured city of Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad), in 1944, towards the end of the Second World War. Her book covers all aspects of the terrible events, beginning with a history of the city, separated from the rest of Germany by the Polish Corridor, set up after the First World War to give Poland a route to the sea and the port of Danzig (Gdansk).
She goes on to describe the wider context and includes an excellent short description of Operation Barbarossa (the German attack on Russia, leading to the terrible events of Leningrad and Stalingrad). She describes the appalling treatment the German army meted out to the Russian villagers they encountered on the way, and the horror of the siege of Stalingrad. This enables her to go some way to explaining the savagery of the Russian advance through Germany, and the devastation of Koenigsberg as Germany finally lost the war.
The German regional leader, Erich Koch, made the downfall even worse by refusing to accept the overwhelming force of the Russian army, and he compelled every citizen to prepare tank-traps and other fortifications against the Russians. Anyone who expressed any doubt about the German cause could be shot as a traitor, and Koch exercised a total news blackout so that the citizens of Koenigsberg had little idea of the fate that awaited them.
The author makes her account very readable by including many anecdotes and personal accounts from residents of the city. I found myself that with such total destruction anyone survived to tell their tale, but large numbers managed to escape across the ice to local ports where German ships waited to carry them away - but not necessarily to safety - Denny describes the fate of the ex Nazi cruise ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff which was sunk by a Russian submarine with 9000 passengers and crew lost at sea - a bigger disaster by far than the Titanic.
Denny refers several times in quotations and by direct references, that the fall of Koenigsberg and East Prussia can be seen as the retribution of destiny for German treatment of the Russians. While it is understandable that her sources felt this way, they grate a little, when so often tyrants and oppressors *do* get away with their crimes.
The book ends with a description of present day Kaliningrad, and Denny quotes a German visitor, "one cannot escape an uncanny feeling of the old Koenigsberg, like the negative of a damaged photograph, lying ten to twenty feet underneath the city's surface". As I look back on this book I feel that Isabel Denny has revealed this ancient city again for the the 21st century reader so that we have another Pompeii which only survives through excavation and long-buried eye-witness accounts of its rich cosmopolitan culture. An excellent book for the general reader as well as the historian.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hitler's Fortress City - Konigsberg
Comment: This book is a must for anyone who wants not just an insight into a relatively unknown part of the second world war, but also an understanding of how a peaceful rural corner of Europe was turned into a bloodbath as a result of the follies of its leaders. The Russian attack on Konigsberg in 1945 is described in the last chapters of this book, but the real story is how events in Europe after 1919 and Hitler's decision to invade Russia in 1941 led to the destruction and loss of the city.
A thoroughly informative and enjoyable read, it's well written and the best book I've read all year.
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