The REAL Reason Russia Owns Kaliningrad

The true reason why Kaliningrad is Russian is only one: the Red Army recaptured it from Hitler's Third Reich, and Russia has held onto it ever since because it wants to and can.

Interestingly, the Polish government just changed the official polish name of Kaliningrad to Królewiec, which is what it was called before the russians owned it.

I like how you give credit to other videos, shows how involved in the topic you are and how genuine you are. Really good YouTuber here guys

Russian owns Kaliningrad for another reason: access to the North Sea. That's why during the Cold War, this part of the Soviet Union became highly militarized with a major naval base and (I believe) even silos for Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Actually, the Prussians were not Exterminated, their language survived until the 18th Century. In fact, many modern Germans who was expelled from Prussia still have the Old Prussian Ancestry. If you look at the history of German East Settlement (Ostsiedlung) many regions before German settlement were sparsely populated. Plus, many Germans intermarried with the natives. Some still have Polish and Slavic Sounding Surnames. I know this because I have lots of Prussian Friends.

Love the on site reporting, really does help the story telling process

Thank you for this video! I am Latvian myself, and no one bats an eye for the 700 years of hardship, slavery and cultural genocide that were forced upon us by the Teutonic Order, Germans and Russians. Had Lithuanians not fought for their access to the sea, Latvians and Estonians would had the same fate as Prussians. By not allowing the Germans to pass through to Livonia via land, only allowing sea travel, Lithuanians indirectly saved us. The Baltic languages (Latvian, Lithuanian and Prussian) are quite similar and I can understand a few words of Prussian, so it's really scary to think that we could have had the same fate. And no one outside of the Baltics mourn for the innocent nation that got decimated. No one cares for the surviving nations. Again - thank you for bringing this topic up and bringing it up the way you did!

I'm from Kaliningrad. This was a great video on the history of my region. You did miss that Elizabeth* 1 conquered Konigsberg during the 7 years war and made plans to incorporate it into the Russian Empire. Hope you can visit the city and other small towns in the Oblast one day and encounter the merging of two cultures. *Elizabeth not Catherine the Great

Why is Gibraltar British?  Timeline of Kaliningrad The history of the city may be divided into four periods: the Old Prussian settlement known as Twangste before 1255; the Polish city of Królewiec from 1454 to 1455 and then fief of Poland from 1456 to 1657; the German city of Königsberg from 1657 to 1945; and the Russian city of Kaliningrad from 1945 to present. Historical affiliations Old Prussians (until 1255) Teutonic Order 1255–1466 Kingdom of Poland 1454–1455 Kingdom of Poland / Teutonic Order (fief of Poland) 1466–1525 Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth / Duchy of Prussia (fief of Poland) 1525–1656 Sweden 1656–1657 Duchy of Prussia 1657–1701 Kingdom of Prussia 1701–1758 Russian Empire 1758–1762 Kingdom of Prussia 1762–1918 German Empire 1871–1918 Weimar Germany 1918–1933 Nazi Germany 1933–1945 Russian SFSR (as part of the Soviet Union) 1945–1991 Russian Federation 1991–present

Also...Lithuania had an option have Kaliningrad's territories, when we got back Klaipėda's region. But due to big russian population, it was decided not to take it (I might be wrong), because it would've been dangerous to have a big precentage of russian people living in Lithuania post-soviet union collapse. Again, sources are needed for these, so if anyone has these soruces please comment bellow.

The reason Brandenburg was renamed to Prussia is because they couldnt be called kings inside the HRE. So they called themselves "kings in prussia", when prussia became a kingdom. In other words, inside the HRE they were dukes, outside they had the freedom to call themselves kings. Only after becoming powerful enough, did they call themselves "kings of prussia", not just "in" prussia. So their whole realm was renamed like this.

Wow! It is soooo cool, that you've made this video, Jochem! I was born in the Kaliningrad region, but haven't been there for a long time. It was so emotional to watch you walking around... And I enjoyed for the story as always, thank you!

It's not entirely true that the Baltic Old Prussians were exterminated. Many of them were in fact assimilated and mixed with German settlers, to the point where many Germans today descend from those old tribes.

10:50 interestingly enough, that actually kind of happened. There are tons of places in the US named after Native American tribes, Native American individuals, or named using their languages. That includes over half of the states (Kansas, Massachusetts, Texas, the Dakotas, Illinois, Connecticut, etc, etc.) and cities all across the country. Obviously, the Native American population has shrunk by something like 95% since European contact, so much like the Old Prussians, plenty of the tribes that places are named after are totally gone. Also I laughed out loud at your graphic because I'd put money on there being more plainly white Americans claiming Cherokee ancestry than there are actual Cherokee.

2:10 The fact you say Christian fundamentalists instead of just "Christians" says a lot about you use nuance in your explanations, something YouTube could use a lot more. It's so important regarding these topics and I don't know any other channel that does it like this. Your vid on the bombs in Japan was also a good example of how you put things in perspective. Keep on going like this man! So refreshing this.

great topic and very interesting in todays political climate. would love to see a video about the Lithuanian-polish commonwealth as well and understand the development of eastern-central Europe over the last century. keep up the good work!

Wow dude talk about a coincidence I just saw on the news like 10 minutes ago Poland is considering not recognizing the name that Russia has for this territory anymore

Excellent survey of the history of Königsberg/Królewiec (aka "Kaliningrad"). I had just spent some time yesterday arguing with people who claimed that "Kaliningrad has always been Russian". If the argument had happened today, I would have directed them to this video. However, there are two points that I think you probably should have mentioned in your survey: 1.) The Old Prussians were a Baltic tribe, so they were neither Germanic nor Slavic, they were related to the Lithuanians and Latvians. That is why their fate was so compelling for the Lithuanians who saw that they needed to find an ally and join Christendom lest they suffer the same fate (which eventually led to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). BTW, the Old Prussian language went extinct in the 18th century. 2.) There were about 140,000 Germans left in what would become the Kaliningrad oblast when the war ended. Starvation reduced their numbers, historians estimate that tens of thousands died of starvation and disease. Over the period between 1947 and 1951 all the remaining Germans were transported to East Germany (102,407 by Soviet documents). The area was then entirely repopulated by Soviet citizens, mostly Russians. A couple of peripheral points that I'll make, just because I'm on a roll: - My favorite, because it is just so ironic: In the 16th c. the majority of the Polish nobility, like the majority of residents of Königsberg, had converted to Protestantism (esp. Lutheranism). Meanwhile the Pope continued to actively support the Catholic Teutonic military order as a bastion of Catholicism in an ever more Protestant Poland. In 1521, in order to eliminate this problem (as advised by Martin Luther) the Poles got Albert, the nephew of the Polish King and Grand-master of the Teutonic order to resign from the order, convert to Lutheranism, and to expel the order from Prussia, thus eliminating the order from Poland. In exchange Königsberg was then separated from the Polish crown, and became a vassal state. This was formalized in 1525, by the treaty of Kraków, by which Albert became the first duke of the "Duchy of Prussia", the world's first protestant state, which established his family, the Hohenzollerns, as its hereditary rulers. Later, after the disastrous invasion of Poland by the Protestant Swedes (known as "the Deluge"), because of both real and suspected collaboration by some local Protestants, there was a backlash against Protestantism and most of the Polish nobility eventually converted back to Catholicism. From that point on, what had been a very dynamic connection between Königsberg and the Commonwealth, began to diverge, not for ethnic, but for religious reasons. In 1525 Königsberg's population included 25% Polish Lutherans (Catholics and Calvinists were not counted). That number would begin to dwindle, both by conversions and migrations. In the end Prussia become an independent kingdom in 1701. - Before WWII, East Prussia's largest minorities were Jews, Poles and Lithuanians, there were still virtually no Russians. - When Stalin's ally and loyal Stalinist Kalinin died in 1946, Stalin named three cities after him, so, yes, they had three "Kaliningrads"! In the 1990's all of them, except for Königsberg, were renamed (one by Gorbachev and one by Yeltsin). - On my father's side, my background is from Old Prussians who left Prussia for Kraków sometime in or before the 14th c. From my great-grandfather down to myself, we were all formally Calvinists (baptism records further back seem to have been lost). - When someone says "Ukraine has always been Russian", it is important to recognize that that statement is similarly bizarre. Since the founding of Kievan Rus', all parts of Ukraine have spent at least a couple of centuries longer not being under Russian control than they ever spent under such control. Some parts, namely the two western provinces of Galicia and Volhynia, had never had any connection to Russia until after WWII, when, like Königsberg, they were absorbed into the Soviet Union, becoming part of the Ukrainian SSR. At that time most Poles who lived there were expelled to Poland, but no Russians moved in at that time.

The case of prussia taking on the names seems on one hand kind of weird but on the other hand not that uncommon from what I've seen for places to take on the name of the tribe that inhabited it; Friesland tracking it's name back to the frisii that used to inhabit the general area, Burgundy from the germanic tribe that once inhabited retained that name on subsequent kingdoms after the first one as well as the Duchy it became later despite the people being more so French/Arpitan (Note I'm no expert, and if anyone is more familiar and wants to correct me, feel free)

Can't wait for the next video!