In Germany, many cities have street names from the home areas of the Germans, who were expelled from the East from 1944 to 1948. 

Here are some examples: 

Breslauer Straße (Wroclaw Street), Danziger Straße (Gdansk Street), Marienburger Street, Stettiner Staße (Szczecin Street)  ... I found these road signs in northern Germany in the town of Pinneberg.

The displaced people from the "cold homeland" were often undesirable during this difficult economic time, told my mother, born in Gdansk in 1927. City officials went from apartment to apartment to see if there were any rooms available. It took years for the millions of refugees to be properly housed, mostly in newly built settlements on the outskirts of the city. "Don't play with the settlement children!" the locals told their children.

Wilhelm hasn’t even had time to finish his training as a metalworker when he is conscripted into the Reich Labour Service and drafted into the Wehrmacht in April 1942. He and his comrades endure dull military service and tough drills. Yet it is not tank battles and military attacks that form the focus of this narrative, but the everyday life of a simple soldier and his relationship with the civilian population. In October 1944, Wilhelm’s troop is housed in private quarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia. In December 1944, Wilhelm and his comrades fight on the German-Luxembourg border in the Wehrmacht’s very last battle, in Echternach, against the Americans. My ebook is available:4.13 €, Print book 13.81 € and kindleunlimited 0 €.

Rezension:

Less discussion of East Prussia than I anticipated - but a very good story

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H27992 / Sönnke, Hans / CC-BY-SA 3.

The Wilhelm-Gustloff was a passenger vessel belonging to the national socialist organization Kraft durch Freude (KdF = strength through Joy). It's sinking by a Russian submarine S-13 off the coast of Pomerania in the Baltic Sea on 30th January 1945 is perhaps the single greatest maritime disaster, with the loss of more than 9,000 lives. The National Socialist regime, in particular, Gauleiter Erich Koch, had rejected an early evacuation of East Prussia. After the breakthrough of the Red Army on the Eastern Front at the start of 1945 many residents of the province found themselves cut off. From the rest of the Reich. On 21st January 1945 Admiral Doenitz ordered operation Hannibal, in which wounded soldiers were to be transported west to German territory using all available ships. Meanwhile, the transport of civilians had been allowed, and 2.5 million people were able to escape across the Baltic Sea.The Wilhelm-Gustloff was also supposed to participate in the evacuation. On 30th January 1945, at around 1310 hours, it left Gotenhafen with an estimated 10,000 people on board. After the official count about another 2,500 other passengers managed to scramble on board. In total only 10,300 people should have been on the Wilhelm-Gustloff: some 8,800 civilians, including a large number of children, and about 1,500 members of the Wehrmacht, including 162 wounded, some 340 naval auxiliaries and 918 marines of the 2nd Submarine Training Division, who were to join the war effort again from Kiel. The Wilhelm- Gustloff had only a small escort, by first two and then just a single ship. Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm Zahn suggested darkening the ship’s lights to navigate through the shallow coastal waters which submarines could not reach. However, he was unable to convince Captain Friedrich Petersen, who decided, based on the ship’s position, to take a route through deep water north along the Stolpe Bank. An alleged radio message from the Navy prompted him to set the position lights to reduce the risk of collision with an oncoming minesweeper squadron. Therefore, the ship was visible even in the dark. In fact, there were no minesweepers on a collision course with the Wilhelm-Gustloff. The actual radio message or its sender could never be clarified. At Stolpmünde the Wilhelm-Gustloff was sighted around 2100 hours by the Soviet S-13 submarine. At 2116 hours, the submarine's commander, Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, ordered four torpedoes to be launched from a distance of about 700 meters. One torpedo jammed, but three hit the Wilhelm-Gustloff on the bow under the E-deck and in the engine room. After a little over an hour, around 2215 hours, the ship sank about 23 nautical miles off the Pomeranian coast.Rescue attemptsShips rushing to the rescue managed to save only 1,252 people, including all four captains and the marine artist, Adolf Bock, whose reports and pictures were later published in “Stern” and other magazines. With the loss of 9,000 people, the sinking of the Wilhelm-Gustloff is, as of 2014, still the largest shipping disaster involving a single ship.What makes the sinking of the Wilhelm-Gustloff of particular interest is the high number of victims. Many factors contributed to this to prevent haphazard attempts to flee the ship and the onset of panic, about 1,000 people were ordered into ship's lounge and held there at gunpoint by officers. As the ship sank, they discovered the windows were made of bulletproof glass which prevented any escape. The fact Wilhelm-Gustloff also had too few lifeboats on board. Many had been taken off the ship in Gotenhafen. They were replaced by smaller rowing boats, which rapidly filled with water. To make matter worse on the night of the sinking, outside temperatures were as low as -20 °C, (-4 F) with the result that many of the remaining boats were frozen in their davits and could not be made sea-worthy. However, the large lifeboats belonging to the ship would never have been enough to save more than 10,000 people, because the ship and its rescue equipment were designed for just 1,900 passengers and crew. From the research by the Gustloff expert, Heinz Schon, it is accepted that the number of survivors was 1,239. While 1,252 people were rescued 13 died soon afterwards as a result of the disaster. But different sources have at different times provided significant deviations in the exact number of deaths (Source: Wikipedia, abridged).