Nemersdorf - The Battle for Germany 1944 and 45

The first Russian incursions into East Prussia took place on 22 October 1944, when the 11th Guards Army captured Nemersdorf in several other border hamlets. Five days later, General Friedrich Hossbach's fourth army retook the villages. Hardly one civilian inhabitant survived. Women had been nailed to barn doors and farm carts, or had been crushed by tanks after being raped. Their children had been killed. 40 French POWs working on local farms had been shot. Likewise avowed German Communists. Some babies had their heads bashed in. In one room we found a woman, 84 years old, sitting on a sofa, half of whose head had been sheared off