Why Does Russia Own This Old Piece of Germany?

When I was a child, I knew a map of Poland and thought that the Kaliningrad region is the whole of Russia, so when someone told me Russia is the biggest country in the world, I thought they lost their mind because Poland is clearly bigger.

The sheer loss of history and culture that occured in the second world war is simply unquantifiable. Entire cities that stood for centuries were just raised to the ground. I see it in my hometown too.

When I was a kid, around 7 perhaps, it was the time when I would obsessively look at maps. I noticed the small part near Poland and saw no label or whatsoever, I put my finger to it and told everyone that I'm going to claim it as my country.

My mom was born in konigsberg in 1938.during WWII my grandma took her 7 children to Bavaria through the middle of the war all alone .she was a great lady.

My grandpa‘s family had to flee from Eastern Prussia when he was a kid. This was the first time I got an adequate explanation and visualization of what happened back then, thank you!

In 1998, I worked in a care home in Germany. We had a few old ladies from this area, who retained their strong East Prussian accent even more than 50 years after they were forced to leave. Many were traumatised, full of nostalgia for their homeland and never really adjusted to life as "exiled" people. In a few years there'll be no more Germans with any first-hand connection to this area....

It’s always sad when a historic city disappears, but Germans in the comments acting like they didn’t actually plan to do the same with slavic cities like Warsaw is just silly!

Because they won the WWII.

Kaliningrad is a very important naval port for Russia, as most of their ports, with the exception of their ports in The Black Sea, freeze over during the Winter. Without it, the Russia navy would be severely limited.

My grandmother had to flee from Königsberg, but she always talked about it how beautiful it was when it belonged to germany. She lived more than 70years in Hamburg but she still call her home Königsberg and not Hamburg.

When I was in 1st grade and was learning about Poland's neighbours I always wondered why Russia wouldn't just give away this piece of land, since their country wasn't even connected to it by land. I was 6 and had no idea about how important this land is.

I was thinking about this yesterday and this video popped straight into my recommendation today... Thank you!

Kaliningrad / Königsberg / Królewiec was part of Germany for 75 years (1871-1945), before that it was part of Prussia for about 200 years (1701-1871), before that it was dependent on Poland (as a fief) for 200 years (1466-1674), and before that it was owned by the Teutonic Knights for over 200 years (1255-1466), and before that, it belonged to the Baltic tribe of Prussians.

My family from my mothers side is from there- my grandmother was eaten up inside by her homesickness to the area her whole life and I grew up with the stories. She was one of the civilians that had to flee. My grandfather was a professor at the University of then still wiith the German name Königsberg.

Fascinating! Your channel is the best!

I’ve never witnessed a more seamless segway from history lesson to advertisement in my life

I live in kaliningrad and I wanna tell why it was rebuilded like regular soviet city. first of all Konigsberg was totaly destroed ( I mean it was totaly burned to the ground, you can easily find photos in web ) by british airforce bombing in august of 1944, after that just use your imagination: thousands of soviet people, who just tired after war, came there and begin big construction, their goal was not to repair this beautiful german buildings, they just want to build places for living , repair infrastructure easy and fast . And still Kalingrad have 2 old districts full of german archeteture ( about 35 % of city )

My grandfather grew up in Königsberg in the 1920ies and 30ies. He died some years ago. He always sometimes told us about his childhood. Sounded chill. Still glad living today. The 20ies were very shaky in Germany and the 30ies... Well you all know what happened there. In the war he was conscripted, after the war he was British POW for a short period of time before moving to west Berlin. He didn't go back to east Prussia until the 1990ies, when he was retired

Thank you so much for structured and educational videos. If it wasn't for you, I would never be curious about history, I always hated it since school because I have difficulty remembering dates. But now a lot of my friends and me too are history nerds thanks to your videos. By the way 1500 dollar per month couldn't be the average wage in Russia back in 2014. According to official sources it was 1000 dollars a month back in 2014 and now it's 850 dollars. But of course in reality most of the people earn much below average. We have a tremendous wage gap between major cities (Moscow and Saint Petersburg) and the rest of the country. 1500 dollars a month could be an average wage in Moscow though while the rest of the country's average in reality was and still is around 600 dollars a month.

It's funny how you put a picture of Riga instead of Konigsberg at 3:38. Greetings from Latvia!