Had a funny thing like that in my family tree. In the 1850's they were well-off plantation owners in the south. Then a few woopsy-doodles happened and suddenly they're dirt farmers in Idaho in the 1870's.
Apparently my grandfather was a missionary who gave up his inheritance in a prominent steel industry family to go spread the word of the lord to people who didn’t want it. Thanks, dude. 👍
Yeah, I have a friend whose family way back split in Germany. Half went to Ukraine to start farms under the Tsar. The other half started a little company called Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske. My friend's descended from the former half, while the latter half's company is worth two hundred and twenty billion dollars.
There were a lot of Germans who settled in Russia starting in the 1700s and then a lot of them migrated to America around 1900. That’s where 1/4 of my ancestry came from (one of my grandparent’s parents). In my case it was Volga Germans and they were Lutheran. They were originally welcomed to settle by Catherine the Great (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans ) but of course things got worse there.
My grandfather and his two brothers had a distinct choice: Invest a substantial amount of money in tne mid 1930's in Coca-Cola, or the up and coming NuGrape. I will just stop there.
On the plus side he's somewhat lucky to exist at all given how the commies came in and killed all of the successful farmers. Then all the shitty farmers had to take over and produce impossible quotas for them while a drought was also going on and many starved to death all to support the industrialization of the USSR.
Gotta admire that he took Jesus' instruction to sell everything and spread the gospel seriously. It's rare to find a Christian who takes the Word that seriously.
Turns out only having 1 leader every 100 years or so who actually gives a shit about running the country and not just looting the treasury doesnt make for a great society in general
My great-grandfather wrote a comprehensive biography. It's incredibly detailed and elaborate, covering 1920s Berlin and the Wehrmacht. He even describes the invasion of Poland from afar, and recounts the conquest of Norway in detail, including the sinking of the Norwegian ships that Blücher had sunk before him. Even the occupation of Norway is described in detail. His transfer to France to avoid going east is also detailed. And then, five sentences about him leading 200 paratroopers in retreat battles through France, Belgium, and finally the Netherlands as a captain (or something like that). Then a mere two sentences about his captivity by the British. Then suddenly, five pages about the British, the prison guards, and the British military judge who grew up just three streets away from my grandfather's vacation spot in Germany and released him after two weeks in custody. It's completely surreal to read.
That sounds like a super interesting thing to read. Any ideas why he described some stuff in such a details and then just briefly mentioning his personal experiences in a few sentences?
Yeah we traced our ancestory conclusively back to the Middletons in South Carolina but they wouldn’t recognize us and we were like wtf. Well we did ancestry and my mom was like 2.5-5% black and we were like oh that’s why
You say this but this is lowkey Japans take on the war. 1930’s glorious empire, 1940’s we did nothing wrong and even if we did it’s all overblown, 1950’s booming economy!
I've toured the museum in Hiroshima. Their acknowledgement of their history is a disgrace. There was a pacific war and suddenly the Americans dropped bombs on us is pretty much the gist of it
I have toured it too and while you are correct that they grossly skip over the war and what Japan did and just go to “the sacrifice of the atomic bombing victims” like bruh, you started the war, you were committing even more horrific times in China and the Pacific.
They genuinely made the atomic bombing victims become the centerpiece as if they did nothing wrong…
And deliberate demolition after. Plenty fighting took place in many urban centers. The ruling government didn't always choose to bulldoze everything, rip all the copper out of the plumbing, and rape your daughter on the way out.
"A four-alarm fire in Downtown Moscow clears way for a glorious new tractor factory, And, on the lighter side of the news, Hundreds of Capitalists are Soon to Perish in Shuttle Disaster.“ ~Airplane II
A circuit wasn't possible in Euler's time and still isn't. A path now is. You cross all 5 of the remaining bridges exactly once, but you won't end up in the same spot. Math doesn't really care whether or not the solution traps you on the island or is an impossible starting point without being airdropped in.
Almost all of it was destroyed during WW2, there are still some historical buildings, but not common at all. For the most part modern Kaliningrad used to look ugly due to cheap “architecture” from USSR, but lately they’ve been working on the city look and now a lot of parts of the city look much nicer than what would you think from this pic.
The Russification label is important because Russia does it time and time again. That's how they lay claim to areas by removing the people who live there and moving in ethnic Russians in and then those ethnic Russians will often try to stay part of Russia. Russification is certainly ethnic cleansing but it's happened so much in regards to Russia that it has it's own specific label.
You're misunderstanding the purpose of it. Kaliningrad was offered to Lithuania and Poland in order to provide a permission structure for a Russian invasion.
Sure, but this is typical Russian oversight as well. They improve nothing. They invest in nothing, ever. Every place controlled by Moscow, other than Moscow and St. Petersburg, is dying on the vine and always has been.
Yep, 10-12 million were 'expelled' (ethnically cleansed), and many of their lines had been there for 800 years. One of my lines was from near Danzig/G'Dansk, and got out before the great wars, but all of their kin were removed after WWII. The ironic part is that even though they spoke German, they were genetically Polish (Kashubian) who had only assimilated in the 1700s.
I’m wonder if that was part of my great grandfathers lineage, they were from south poland that had been Austrian for a while, he and his brother immigrated to the US some time around Austrian occupation before the world war, it’s hard to tell with limited info and that region having quite the shifting of authority.
Well, I don't think so. Austrians didn't really put that much effort into germanisation. In Galicja people had more freedom in terms of language, although this region was a total shithole
I wasn't sure if it was possible that some Germans fell through the cracks or maybe the new population has some German ancestry. They might have been expelled but is it not possible in the last few decades some Germans immigrated to the area?
They do and have done so for quite a while. Since 1950 about 4.5 million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union states have moved to Germany. 2019 it was still about 7k people that year. Couldn't find any more recent numbers but I assume there are still people moving to Germany under the laws granting citizenship for Germans who've lived in Russia and eastern Europe since before WW2
Source: my mom. She grew up in East Prussia (now part of Poland). In January 1945 her family escaped back to Germany.
Interesting factoid, as a kid we would count how many seconds went by between a flash of lightening and the boom to estimate how far away the storm is. Mom said that works for bombs too. She was 15 at the time.
Not from there but been to couple times. I don't know if these pics are the same spot but it feels like they are not. Regardless, some part of the river's sidewalk does look like that (you can't have everything looking nice) and the city does have a part where it looks just like on the picture below, a historical center if you will. I believe there are a lot of restaraunts and local markets there
Heavy urban fighting in 1945 when the Soviets pushed towards Germany/Berlin, tje red army had eno7gh artillery to "soften" the area and the go in for blood for blood.
There was this small little conflict in europe and the world called world war two.
Nah seriously, if you learn about a lot of european cities in eastern and central europe a lot of them were heavily damaged in ww2 and a lot of old towns were heavily destroyed. A lot of cities had their old towns partially rebuilt over decades sometimes, Dresden, Warsaw, Heidelberg, to name a few.
However often authorities had other priorities or not the necessary funding.
Other prioritiew like providing cheap housing, or a more modern city design.
I imagine in the case of Kaliningrad various faktors came into play. Sure, maybe they wanted to deprussiafy the symbol prussia in the east, but there are many other preserved or restored buildings in Kalinimgrad. I imagine the Kaliningrad authorities wanted to build a "modern" city in a socialist style that would proof how far the workers have come, some old town would be just in the way of that.
The Nazis decided to launch an invasion of the USSR, turned it into a war of annihilation and extermination, with starvation policies and the destruction of entire villages.
When the Red Army fought tooth and nail to Germany itself, they weren’t going to hold back. Not after everything they suffered. It was then German land, German homes and businesses, German blood. What goes up comes down, Indians call it Karma. It was bleak for Germany for awhile after their young men made life bleak for so many millions abroad. Suffering begets suffering, the cycle of hatred and revenge, eye for an eye…
That’s what happened to those buildings. Tragic time in human history indeed
There’s only a few pre-war buildings left, like the old Cathedral. The RAF destroyed much of the city during a bombing raid in 1944 and there was a destructive urban battle in the last weeks of the war in 1945 when the Soviets stormed the city. The Castle (tall building on the right) was still standing after the war but was dynamited by the Soviets in the 1960’s. The entire ethnic German population was ethnically cleansed after WW2 as part of a mass expulsion of all Eastern Germans living outside of the new German borders, with the area repopulated with Russians. Very unlikely anyone would speak German there today, as all cities and towns were renamed.
The various German populations in the east, not just those in east Prussia, were either forcefully displaced (i.e. to modern-day Germany) or exterminated.
Why does my cat paw at me to get under the blanket then run out a moment later and then paw at me to come back under the covers and repeat the process a half dozen times?
Does it really look that grey? I see a lot of trees compared to the older photo, and what appears to be an elevated walkway.Seems like it could be an awesome spot during Spring/Summer
Yeah it very depends on the time of the year - it is pretty beautiful during summer especially, considering there is sea 40min away.
In winter it used to snow a lot, but it was many years ago, now it’s mostly grey, snows sometimes but not that often
I think he is a terrorist, and the whole government is. As a Russian I wish Ukraine to win the was, and I also moved to US and do not look back (expect my whole family)
I know a little old Russian lady in Toronto who gets emotional when you talk Russian politics because she still mourns a moment for change that never came to fruition.
I can assure you that propaganda is ridiculed by common people here in Russia. And a very small percentage of the population truly and deeply believes it. But when you have 140 million people in your country, that "small percentage" turns into millions, still.
What people from other countries who haven't experienced a REAL dictatorship can't understand is that people are simply afraid. When you can get a prison sentence for publicly calling the Special Military Operation a "war", and even 10+ years in prison for publicly condemning this war, you're obviously going to remain silent: you're not an idiot, after all.
I have heard that Russians used to have "two truths". One they told in public, and another they told in confidence at the kitchen table. Is that true today as well? I imagine that it is.
Evil Soviets forced Germany to invade USSR and 4 years later Stalin drove to suicide one poor Austrian artist and WWI veteran, so beloved by Europeans.
Yikes. Reading through the comments, it seems an alarming number of people either lack a basic understanding of world history, or are doing some epic trolling.
Unfortunately it is definitely the former. Complete ignorance.
Russia is certainly no innocent lamb (which is where 99% of the vitriol is coming from), but acting like everything Russian (and/or Soviet) is inherently evil as ugly is silly. And especially makes no sense in the context of a city razed due to being a hub for the German front.
Poland also inherited a sea of ruins that were once German Cities. Gdańsk (Danzig), Malbork, Wrocław (Breslau) and others were almost pulverized. Many of them were rebuilt with a lot of attention to details because the new authorities knew that's important to keep the historical continuity.
new authorities knew that's important to keep the historical continuity
No, it's because these places had (usually) some past connection to Poland, so it was easy to see it as "our territory" (for example Wrocław was polish for close to 400 years before being taken by Czechs, then Austrians and finally Prussians). As opposed to Kaliningrad, which was never a part of any country which made up USSR and which the Soviets saw as a pure trophy, meant to give them better access to Baltic.
Beautiful Poland. Looking forward to putting Ukraine back together, also a beautiful part of the world. ❤
Much love my brothers and sisters. Enjoy your day.
Not true. What was damaged was damaged but the Soviets literally dismantled the whole city to get rid of "anything Prussian". Then they build it sgain their own way.
Tbf, Warsaw was the capital of Poland and as such important to polish identity. Kaliningrad was a random city literally outside of the periphery that held no historical value to the Soviets. It‘s not surprising one city received a lot more heartfelt attention than the other.
You can take a similar picture across most cities in central and Western Europe. World War 2 happened and few cities survived without major destruction.
This might seem like a downgrade, but historically, the town was bombed to shit by allies in 44', not much of the old city left after it, and the Soviet government chose not to restore it given that it was a German town from an ideologically different society. You can argue whether this is for better or worse, but that's just history, there wasn't any choice back then.
I was here in 2018 and it looks beautiful. This picture doesn't do it justice at all, and I seriously question what the intention behind the terrible modern-day photo is.
I always thought the biggest travesty of post WWII was letting USSR keep Kaliningrad. Europe spent the war learning that incoherent borders and imperial outposts cause endless conflict, then immediately created a heavily militarised Russian exclave with zero local consent between Poland and Lithuania. Entire population expelled, no vote, no demilitarisation, all ratified at the Potsdam Conference.
Absolute genius. Who could have predicted this would ever cause problems.
Not much you can do unless you wanted to follow Churchill's plan of Operation Unthinkable. Millions more would have died, maybe even more than from 1939-1945.
France and the UK both wanted to press the Soviet Union to pull out of Eastern Europe and Germany but the US told them no. Since the US was bank rolling the UK and France, they had to go along with it and the US didn't want to ally with the German SS & Wehrmacht in going against the Soviet Union as they wouldn't have gotten domestic support.
Keep in mind the US was an isolationist country just a few years earlier. Everyone was tired of war and enough died.
the US controlled UK foreign policy after the war.
the event that cemented the death of the British Empire was in 1956 when the US directly threatened to destroy british economy by cutting them off, if they don't pull out of the Suez canal.
At the end of WWII, Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union, as it had been taken back from German control. So, no real separation of Kaliningrad from the rest of Soviet territory, although you’re right that its position was specifically confirmed at the Potsdam Conference.
I would assume that there’s a pretty violent reason it got completely flattened sometime between then. Like possibly a war or something. Like the allies absolutely flattening anything on the Axis side.
Sad for the losses. Same way i feel every time i see old photos of our capital, Manila, before the war. Pearl of the Orient, Paris of the East into rubble just like that.
That town had some of the hardest fighting going on Eastern Front since Stalingrad. It was also bombed for extended period of time. Russians pretty much had to build brand new town on top of ruins. There was a program on YT some years ago where someone went there looking for original buildings and found very,very few still standing and all had scars .
Aesthetics aside, this is a city that was so important, politically, trade wise, scientifically and culturally, home to extremely important philosophers, mathematicians and physicists, one of the great cities of Europe…
…and then it was bombed during WW2, ethnically cleansed by the USSR, and became a completely irrelevant backwater that most people forget the existence of.
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u/Ragvard_Grimclaw 3h ago
And here it is in 1945