It is clear that this book is well researched by s...omeone who is well informed about the nuances of German attitudes to their fellow citizens from former German homeland territories lost in 1945. What is so shocking is the dismissive way that the dispossessed of former East Prussia are viewed by the International community and Germans from territories that are still within Germany today. Because there is no easy solution to the grotesque injustice perpetrated against them (why did they deserve to be ethnically cleansed and robbed of their homes and property any more than any other Germans in 1945?). The problem lies in the fact that the East Prussian, Hinterpommeranian and Silesian Germans have no easy remedy to compensation without disrupting Poles and Russians who have put down roots in these lands over the past 70+ years. What was done to Jews and Slavs in their name did not mean they should have suffered more than any other Germans, and the ignoring of their case is disingenuous of both the International community and today's German government. You cannot put one crime right (The Holocaust) by committing another crime in revenge (Selective Ethnic Cleansing). It was initiated by Stalin, but shamefully connived in by Churchill and Roosevelt/Truman. The book never reaches a satisfactory conclusion or clarity about this, and somehow tries to rehabilitate the perpetrators, or certainly their motives, within the atmosphere of universal anger against the German people in 1945. On old East Prussia, it's culture, it's leading families, urban and rural communities the book is quite outstanding. One is left with a real sense of what pre-1945 East Prussia was like, historically, socially and physically. This is without doubt the finest book on East Prussia in the English language.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned