Synopsis
Hitler’s Eastprussia – outline East Prussia as it was: the province along the southeastern Baltic Coast is known for its spectacular landscapes and its old nobility. Nowhere else are the estates as magnificent.
The capital city Königsberg is still its spiritual centre. But the people are turning to a new prophet: Adolf Hitler. National Socialism takes East Prussia by storm. For the mostly impoverished farmers it promises help. But disillusionment with the Weimar Republic also leads most of the nobility to side with Hitler. With that the province is pulled into the maelstrom of terror and war.
The film presents a portrait of the years 1932-1945 in East Prussia, the period which put a dramatic end to its almost 800 years of existence. Personal memories of contemporary witnesses presented in elaborate re-enactments together with rare archive material provide a sensitive and detailed picture of the social and political upheaval; an ideological flash-in-the-pan, which laid waste to this place like so many others in the world, and which was followed by the largest mass exodus in history. Of 2.5 million East Prussians, 2 million became refugees. As early as 1945, the downfall of old East Prussia was officially signed and sealed. A new era had begun, the state was divided and Königsberg, the former outpost of the German Reich in the east became Kaliningrad, the outpost of the Soviet Union in the West.
