GPS May 2020

couldn’t refuse: return Memelland to Germany or face war.
The stolen property was returned on the spot with only a concession
that Lithuania would have free access to the port facilities for 99
years. The event was openly and emotionally celebrated by the citizens of
Memel.
Germany immediately began conversion of the port facility into a
major naval base in preparation for the coming war against the Soviet
Union. The war years passed quietly until after the failure of Operation
Barbarossa.
By October 1944, the Soviet army had surrounded Memel, and
while most of the German civilians were evacuated by ship to Danzig
and elsewhere, the German Army made a stand.
The siege of Memel lasted three months, during which time virtually
all civilians in Memel had fled west. Those who made it to Danzig
would flee again a few months later as the Soviet Army closed in on
Berlin to end the war.
When the German military finally evacuated Memel in January
1945, the victorious Russians sacked the city, finding only 6 living
human beings. After the war, Memel became a part of the Kaliningrad
(Königsburg) Oblast of the Soviet Union, but was transferred back to
Lithuania in 1947. All the while, Memellanders, including Lithuanians
who objected to Soviet rule continued their exodus. Those who could
emigrated to West Germany, those who couldn’t wound up in the Gulag.
By 1950, not a single inhabitant of this once quiet German city remained
in Memelland. And that, my friends, was an immense tragedy for all
involved.
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