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Located on the Baltic Sea, sandwiched between the nations of Lithuania and Poland, is the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad, as it exists today, does not have a deep history. For most of its history it was known as Koenensberg. The reason it exists at all dates back to the Teutonic Knights in the Middle Ages and the aftermath of two world wars in the 20th century. Today, its status is unique, to say the least, and it has the potential to become a geopolitical flashpoint. Learn more about Kaliningrad and its history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Quint's. The holiday season is upon us and that means buying gifts for friends and family. So why not get something that's top tier but affordable? That's where Quince comes in. Quint's has great items like $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury and wool coats that are equal part stylish and durable. And you'll pay a fraction of what you would from other retailers. And their prices are literally listed on the Quint's website. I just got an Australian merino wool sweater that looks great and cost only half of what it would have if I had bought it somewhere else. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quince cuts out the middleman to deliver premium quality ethics at half the cost of similar brands and often even bigger discounts. Give and get timeless quality staples that last this season with quince. Go to quince.com daily for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-E.com daily free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com daily this episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile. The reality is that smartphones and their associated mobile plans have become an indispensable part of the modern world. You almost can't get by without one. So if you have to have a monthly plan, why spend any more than you need to? That's why I recommend Mint Mobile. All their plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your current phone, current phone number and keep all of your current contacts. Nothing has to change except the amount you pay. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees and no bs. Ready to say yes to saying no? Make the switch@mintmobile.comeed that's mintmobile.comeed upfront payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 GB on unlimited plan taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. To understand how Kaliningrad became a Russian exclave, we have to go way back in time. The region currently known as Kaliningrad is situated around the Pragolia River. The region was originally inhabited by a group known as the Old Prussians, a Baltic tribe with their own language and pagan culture. They spoke Old Prussian, which was a western Baltic language closely related to Lithuanian and Latvian but now extinct before their conquest in the 13th century. The old Prussians were organized in clan based societies, practiced a polytheistic religion centered on nature and ancestor worship, and were known for farming, amber trading and occasional raids on neighboring lands. It should be noted that the Old Prussians were not a Germanic people, despite the later association of the name with the Kingdom of Prussia. In the 13th century, the Teutonic Knights expanded along the southeastern Baltic coast during the Northern Crusades. The Northern Crusades were a series of Christian military campaigns from the late 12th to 14th centuries in which German, Danish and Swedish forces, along with the papacy, backed Teutonic and Livonian knights sought to conquer and convert the pagan Baltic and Finnic peoples around the southeastern Baltic Sea, including the Prussians, Livonians, Lithuanians, and Estonians. This area around the Baltic Sea was one of the last remaining pagan regions in Europe. In 1255, the Teutonic Knights founded a fortress on the site of an Old Prussian settlement and named it Kunisberg in honor of Ottokar II of Bohemia, whose forces had joined the campaign. The name simply means the the King's Mountain in German. The Teutonic Knights systematically colonized the region, bringing in German settlers and converting or displacing the native Old Prussian population. By the 16th century, the Old Prussian language and culture had largely disappeared. Kunisberg had grown into a significant trading city, joining the hanseatic League in 1340. In 1525, the state, run by the Teutonic Order, was secularized by Grand Master Albrecht of Brandenburg Ansbach, who became Duke Albrecht and transformed the monastic territory into the Lutheran Duchy of Prussia. Under Polish rule, Konigsberg became a center of the Reformation and a hub of learning. The University of Konigsberg, commonly referred to as the Albertina, was founded in 1544 and later gained fame through scholars such as Immanuel Kant. Kant spent his entire life in Konigsberg and never traveled more than 10 miles away from it, and while I'm on the subject of the University, I feel I should mention the famous Konigsberg bridge problem, as I have no idea if I'll ever have another opportunity to talk about it. The city of Konigsberg in the 18th century was built around the previously mentioned Pragolia river, which split into two branches, forming two islands. These land masses were connected by seven bridges linking the north bank, south bank and the two islands in various combinations. The popular puzzle asks the question, can a person start anywhere, walk through the city and cross each bridge exactly once without repeating any bridge and end up in the same place? In 1736, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler reduced the problem to an abstraction where he ignored the geography and just focused only on how the land areas are connected. Euler proved that it was impossible and in the process created the foundation of modern graph theory and topology. In the process. In 1618, the Duchy passed by inheritance to the Hohenzollern family of Brandenburg, thus creating the Kingdom of Brandenburg Prussia. In 1701, the Hohenzollern King and elector in the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick iii, crowned himself King of Prussia at Konigsberg, finalizing the shift from a crusader state to a dynastic state during the Seven Years War. The city was occupied by Russia from 1758 to 1762, then returned to Prussia after the death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia. Throughout the 19th century, Konigsberg remained the principal city of East Prussia, boasting a provincial administration, an active port and a growing industrial base. Here I'd like to provide a brief overview of Prussia. They've appeared in a few episodes, but I've never really explained what Prussia was. Prussia became the largest and most powerful of the German kingdoms. It was spread throughout much of what is today northern Germany, which included various other duchies and principalities within it, like holes and Swiss cheese. But it also extended to the east in what is today northern Poland. When Germany unified in the 19th century, Prussia was the driving force behind unification and the Prussian king became the Kaiser of of the new German Empire. The important thing is that the Baltic coast of what is today Poland was part of Prussia. From Konigsberg to the current German border, the area was primarily ethnically and linguistically German, with significant Lithuanian and Polish minorities. In fact, my ancestors were from Prussia and arrived in the United States before Germany was unified. On the census form, my great great great grandfather listed Prussia as his country of birth. Although it's today part of Poland, Konigsberg grew in population and importance throughout the 19th century. By 1910, it had reached a population of approximately 250,000 people and was a significant Baltic city during the First World War. East Prussia was briefly invaded by Russia in 1914. But German forces under Hindenburg and Ludendorff defeated the Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg, becoming national heroes. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany by creating the Polish Corrid, also known as the Danzig Corridor and sometimes the Pomeranian Corridor, Making Konigsberg and its surrounding province an exclave of Germany. East Prussia was separated both as a punishment to Germany and to make Poland viable by guaranteeing a seaport and avoiding total dependence on German or Soviet goodwill. Despite the isolation, the city remained an important German cultural and economic center. However, the fact that it was cut off from the rest of Germany became a major issue. Between Konigsberg and the rest of Germany was some Polish territory and the semi autonomous city of Danzig which today is called gdask. Germany resented the customs and passport controls required to go across Poland to reach East Prussia. Poland resisted German demands for extraterritorial roads and rails to connect Konigsberg to the rest of Germany. After 1933 and the rise of the Nazis, Berlin pressed harder. Hitler demanded the return of Danzig and an extraterritorial highway and railway access to the corridor. Warsaw feared that conceding would unravel its position and invite further demands. In March of 1939, Britain and France guaranteed Poland's independence. Over the summer of 1939, tensions rose in Danzig and along the border. On September 1st, 1939, when Germany finally invaded Poland, Berlin framed the Corridor dispute as a key justification for the invasion. Allied bombing in 1944 devastated the historic center of the city including much of the medieval corps. And a prolonged siege by the Red army ended with the Battle of Konigsberg. From the 6th to the 9th of April of 1945, the status of Konigsberg changed dramatically with the end of the war. The Soviets now occupying it didn't want to give it back. However, it wasn't in the same way that they didn't want to give back the rest of Eastern Europe. The Soviets sought to incorporate Konigsberg and East Prussia into the Soviet Union itself. The reasons why the Soviets wanted Konigsberg were pretty straightforward. First, they wanted an ice free Baltic port and naval base. Konigsberg and the nearby port of Palau, now called Baltiysk, offered the Soviet Union its only ice free year round port on the Baltic Sea. Leningrad could still freeze up in the winter. Second, by occupying East Prussia, the USSR gained a fortified wedge between Poland and Lithuania, pushing its western military frontier further from Leningrad. Third, Stalin argued that Germany had invaded Russia twice in 25 years and that the Soviet Union had suffered the highest casualties of any Allied nation taking East Prussiahistorically, the core of Prussian militarism was presented as both punishment and and compensation. At the Potsdam Conference, which took place in July and August of 1945, the United States and United Kingdom accepted Stalin's claims with minimal resistance, partly because they needed Soviet cooperation in occupying Germany. They wanted Soviet entry into the war against Japan, and they were already conceding Poland's borders and didn't want another major fight. Technically, the final Potsdam wording stated that the area would be placed under the administration of the USSR pending a final peace treaty, which never happened, effectively making Soviet control permanent. In 1946, Konigsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in honor of Mikhail Kalinin, the former titular head of the Supreme Soviet, who had just died months earlier. The Soviets, however, had a problem. Kaliningrad was filled with Germans, Germans whose families had lived there for generations. Many Germans had fled when the Red army was approaching, and more were killed in the fighting. The remaining Germans were subject to what historians now consider an ethnic cleansing. Surviving Germans in Konigsberg and the countryside were concentrated, registered, and often pressed into forced labor for clearing ruins and rebuilding. The NKVD ran camps and holding sites. Food was scarce, disease was common, and mortality rates were high. In the first few months. The Potsdam Conference authorized the transfer of German populations from areas assigned to Poland and the USSR supposedly in an orderly and humane way. In practice, it was rough and coercive. In the new Kaliningrad oblast, Soviet authorities stripped Germans of property, restricted movement, and organized deportation trains. Some were sent deeper into the USSR for forced labor, but most were expelled to the Soviet occupation zone in Germany and and from there, many of them moved to the West. By 1948, almost all Germans had been removed from Kaliningrad. The region was repopulated mainly by Russians, with additional Ukrainians and Belarusians. Place names were changed. German institutions were dissolved. Invisible traces of German life were reduced or completely erased. The next big change to Kaliningrad occurred with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when all of the other Soviet republics gained independence. Kaliningrad, which was always technically part of the Russian Soviet Republic, remained part of the new Russian Federation. The former East Bloc countries and former Soviet states lined up to join the European Union and NATO as quickly as possible to distance themselves from Russia and to provide protection. As a result, Kaliningrad found itself wedged between Lithuania and Poland, both of which became EU and NATO members. The gap between Kaliningrad and Belarus, a Russian ally, is known as the Sulwauki Gap. The gap is only 65 kilometers, or approximately 40 miles long, and is one of the most strategically important pieces of real estate in Europe. The gap prevents Russia from having land access to Kaliningrad, and if the Russians were to take it, it would cut off the Baltic states from the rest of Europe. As the westernmost point of Russia, it has become highly militarized, and it's also believed to be where a great deal of Russian toxic waste is stored. Today, the Kaliningrad oblast has approximately a million residents and is predominantly Russian. The region faces economic challenges due to its isolation, but remains strategically vital to Russia. The Kaliningrad question, due to its unique geographic position, remains a sensitive geopolitical issue and probably will for quite some time. The region stands as a unique geopolitical anomaly, a Russian military outpost surrounded by NATO and EU territory, carrying the legacy of its German past while being firmly rooted in its Russian present. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible, and I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast, and links to those are available in the show Notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read on the show.