And yet, as was the case at Nemmersdorf, there was no panic.Īs a dedicated National Socialist, as a fanatical follower of Adolf Hitler, it was Erich Koch’s duty as district chief of East Prussia to hold the line, no matter the cost. By mid-October 1944, the Soviet Army had finally reached the Reich’s border. Each day the rumble to the east grew more distinct each night the red glow on the horizon throbbed more angrily. While the rest of the Reich’s urban centers had long since been reduced to smoking rubble, the cities and towns of East Prussia, beyond the range of Allied bombers, remained, for the most part, untouched.Īlthough the unscathed condition of the province was envied elsewhere in Germany, Prussians, especially those nearest the eastern frontier, knew better than most that the war was reaching its climax. Thus, it was with no small amount of irony that despite its martial reputation, East Prussia was one of the few spots in Germany that had not been devastated by the current war. It was here, in the “Breadbasket of Germany”-a fertile plain of large estates and proud, noble families-that much of the leadership for the German Army, past and present, had come. As a consequence, a strong military tradition had developed. Jutting eastward into often hostile Slavic lands, the old Teutonic province, unlike the rest of Germany, had faced a host of real or potential enemies for the entirety of its long existence. The war, like a wall of angry red lava, was rushing down on the sleeping hamlet and was only moments from arrival.įor six hundred years East Prussia had served as the frontier outpost of Germany. But that was about to change all was about to be violently swept away forever. Outwardly, at least, and despite a world engulfed in smoke and flame, nights in Nemmersdorf passed peacefully, predictably, as they always had. In the dark village square, the old town clock patiently tolled the passing hours as it had night after night, year after year, century after century. Just beyond, in the barns that adjoined most homes, milk cows rustled softly among the hay and fodder. The children of the village lay snug, warm and seemingly secure beside their mothers, as they always had and as they imagined they always would in the bedrooms below, grandfathers, now the only men remaining, coughed quietly in the night, then rose from time to time as they always had for a cup of water, a glass of shnapps or perhaps a quiet moment’s draw on the pipe. Millions of Germans were already dead, millions more were crippled or maimed and many others who had survived in tact were staggering toward starvation. And yet, the village of Nemmersdorf slept.įor six years now the Third Reich had been mortally engaged in the most violent and cataclysmic war the world had ever known. No one with eyes to see or mind to think could doubt that utter defeat was not only certain, but imminent. Her cities lay in ruins, her industry had been shattered, her economy was on the verge of collapse and worse, the Allied armies of the world were locking a death-grip on the very borders of the Reich itself. The once-mighty German nation teetered at the brink. Dark and still, only the twinkling of street lamps suggested life in the tiny town.

ON THE NIGHT OF October 20, 1944, the village of Nemmersdorf lay mantled in sleep. Readers will witness for themselves the fate of German women as the rampaging Red Army raped and murdered its way across Europe–all females, from “eight to eighty” feared the dreaded words, “Frau Komm.” The worst nautical disasters in history which claimed thousands of lives, the greatest mass migration known to man in which millions perished, the fate of those wretched victims in post-war death camps and torture chambers, these and many other dark secrets of World War II now come to light in Hellstorm. The reader will view up close the horrors of the Eastern Front during the last months of fighting and through the mud, blood and madness of combat they may come to understand how the same German soldiers, who only moments before had destroyed an enemy tank, could now risk their own lives to rescue the trapped Soviet crew inside.

Throughout this book readers will see what Allied airman saw as they rained down death on German cities or the reader will experience what those below experienced as they sat trembling in their bomb shelters awaiting that very same death from above. In a chilling “you-are-there” style, the author places the reader at the scene, in the moment. There has never been such a terrible retelling of the story, however, as one will find in Hellstorm. Thousands of books, movies and documentary films have been devoted to the war. Millions were killed, billions in property was destroyed, ancient cultures were reduced to rubble–World War II was truly man’s greatest cataclysm. It was the most deadly and destructive war in human history.

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