Prussia began nearly 700 years ago on the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea in what is today the isolated Kaliningrad Oblast (Region) of Russia and the north-eastern part of Poland. The original Prussians, who were mainly hunters and cattle breeders, were part of the Baltic family of Indo-Europeans, and were related by race to the Latvians and Lithuanians who lived in tribes between the lower Vistula (Weichsel) and Nieman (Memel) rivers. In the 13th century the pagan Prussians (Pruzzi) were conquered and forcibly converted to the Roman Catholic religion by the German Knights of the Teutonic Order by invitation of the Polish Crown which was suffering material, human and territorial losses from Pruzzi incursions. The defeat of the Pruzzi resulted in the disappearance of their language, which was related to Lithuanian, and their total assimilation by the 17th century into the culture and life imported by German peasants who were brought in to settle their lands.

In the 15th century, by the first and second treaties of Thorn (1411 and 1466), the Order was compelled to ceed its lands west of the Vistula (Weichsel) - known as Royal Prussia (the Western, green and yellow parts on the map) and to recognise Polish suzerainty over the rest. The Hohenzollerns acquired the territory of the Order as a hereditary duchy (Ducal Prussia) in 1525. During the Protestant Reformation, the Eastern Ducal part of Prussia (purple part of map) with its capital Königsberg (today Kaliningrad), converted to the Lutheran faith, whilst the Western Royal part, with its capital Danzig (today Gdańsk) which was still under Polish occupation, remained Catholic.

This, then, is the heartland of Prussia - a western Catholic and eastern Protestant part, until the mass expulsions of 1944-47 when the German population was either expelled or butchered by the Red Army. Important to note is the fact that the Prussian heartland was always multi-racial, consisting of the majority Germans, assimilated Pruzzi, Lithuanians (in the north-eastern Memelland area), Masurians (a non-Polish Slavic people in the south-east of Ducal Prussia), the Kashubians (a non-Polish Slavic people in the north west of Royal Prussia), and Poles sprinkled throughout both. In addition to these came many refugees from Catholic persecutions of French, Dutch, English, and Scottish origin who settled and assimilated. Towns and villages with such names as Preussisch Holland (Prussian Holland) and Neu Schottland (New Scotland) attest to this fascinating mix.

Prussia was not, however, destined to be a litttle Baltic enclave. Following the Hohenzollern acquisition of Ducal (East) Prussia, it passed under direct control of the electors of Brandenburg in 1618, whose early lands consisted of the territories of Kurmark (with a small village called Berlin), Neumark and Altmark. These unpromising unfertile and sandy lands were to eventually become the centre not only of a great Prussian state but also of the German nation in 1871. Bordering on Pomerania (Pommern) to the north (contested by Danes, Germans and Swedes), Mecklenburg to the north-west, Hannover to the west, Saxony (Sachsen) to the south, Austrian Silesia (Schlesien) to the south-east, and the Polish province of Poznań (Posen) to the east, this little territory would become the economic hub not only of Klein Deutschland (Little Germany) but also of Central Europe.

The new state of Brandenburg-Prussia would thereafter acquire eastern Pomerania (Hinterpommern) (marked blue on the map) and some small holdings in the western part of Germany, and create a country divided in two by a "Polish corridor" consisting of the the former Royal Prussia or West Prussia (Westpreussen). It therefore rightly became a matter of national priority to unite the two parts of the Brandenburg-Prussian State by reacquiring West Prussia.

By the end of 17th century, especially through the efforts of Frederick William (Friedrich Wilhelm), the Great Elector (1640-88), Brandenburg-Prussia had become a unified and fiscally sound state. In 1701 his son and successor, Frederick (Friedrich) II, was permitted by the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I to assume the title 'King of Prussia' as Frederick (Friedrich) I. King Frederick William I (1713-40) made good use of the modest revenues of the kingdom and managed its economy according to mercantilist principles to build an effective conscripted army while he expanded treasury reserves.

Frederick the Great (Friedrich der Grosse) (1740-86), a brilliant statesman and general, used this well forged weapon to seize the large and prosperous province of Silesia (Schlesien) from Habsburg Austria (1740) and in 1772 acquired West (Royal) Prussia back from Poland, minus a small enclave including Danzig (marked yellow on the map) and the city of Thorn, which would be acquired later. In this bold act the Germans of the East, minus some border areas in the Posen Province still remaining in Poland, were brought under the protection of a German state. This also meant a large influx of Catholics from Upper Silesia and West Prussia in what had hitherto been a predominantly Protestant state. The acquisition of Silesia also meant the aquisition of yet another ethic group of people, the Schlonzaks of Upper Silesia, a hybrid race of Germans and Poles. The Prussian borders in the east in 1786 were in many respects the nearest Germans and Poles came to having national borders corresponding to the natural ethnic division of the two peoples.

In 1793 and 1795, Prussia made several further territorial gains in the second and third partitions of Poland, including the Polish Capital, Warsaw (Warszawa). These included the newly named 'South Prussia' (Südpreussen), with capital Posen (coloured pink on the map), 'New East Prussia' (Neu Ostpreussen) with Warsaw (Warschau), and a small annexe to Silesia called New Upper Silesia' (Neu Oberschlesien). With the exception of the northern part of West Prussia, which linked Pommerania to East Prussia, these gains were to be short-lived. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, when the boundaries of Europe were completely redrawn in the favour of France (the German Rhineland being swallowed up in the French Empire), and Prussia's defeat by Napoleon in 1807, nearly all the gains of the Polish partitions were lost to a newly created, and equally short-lived puppet state of France, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. This defeat led to reforms in the army and government, Prussia playing a prominent and decisive part as an ally of England in the final victory over Napoleonic France.

The post-war Congress of Vienna (1814-15) returned to Prussia many of its former holdings in West and South Prussia (renamed the Duchy of Posen) which had been detatched by Napoleon, and added parts of Saxony (Sachsen) and large areas of the Rhineland in the West, with a new corridor between the new 'Western' and 'Eastern' parts of Prussia. The lost parts of Poland with Warsaw (new East Prussia and the eastern part of South Prussia) were added to a lost part of the earlier Austrian partition, which were joined to form a 'Kingdom of Poland' and added to the Russian Empire. These eastern borders of Prussia were to remain unchanged for over a century.

In the next half century, Prussia became (with Austria) one of the two leading states of the German Confederation (shown in the map by the red border). Assuming leadership of the movement for German reunification, the Prussian prime minister, Otto von Bismarck, engaged in a showdown with Austria in the 1860s. Victorious over its rival in the Seven Weeks' War (1866), Prussia then annexed Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, electoral Hesse (Hessen), Nassau, and Frankfurt-am-Main (see pink areas of map), thus linking the western and eastern halves of the Kingdom together. The effectiveness of the Prussian Army was again demonstrated in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), after which the Second German Reich was founded when William (Wilhelm) I of Prussia was acclaimed German emperor.

The map to the right shows the dominant rôle of Prussia in the new Germany, occupying essentially it's northern half. Together with Bavaria (Bayern), Württemberg, Baden, Hesse (Hessen), Thuringia (Thüringen), Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and a number of smaller states like Hamburg, Prussia paved the way for a new Germany that would enter a disasterous war in 1914 and see the beginning of a new dismembership - a new Polish Corridor separating East Prussia from mainland Germany (1919-1939) and then a further partition between Russia and Poland which not only gave the whole of eastern Prussia to Poland but which also resulted in the abolition of the Prussian State which was blamed for nazism and the Second World War.

Today Prussia lies buried under the new federal German states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt (Sachsen-Anhalt), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), North Rhine-Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen), the Saarland, and Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz), and the original Hohenzollern territory is now a district of Baden-Württemberg.

In 2001 the Social Democratic German Government proposed that the State of Brandenburg be renamed Prussia and declared that 2001 would be 'Prussia Year'. Nothing came of it - there were too many protests. Why? Why would socialists want to honour Prussia which was always regarded as conservative, militaristic and reactionary? The truth may startle you, if you have swallowed the lies that have been told after 1945 by those not only looking for a scapegoat to blame the war on but, more importantly, nations like Poland and Russia and their allies who sought to justify not just the annexation of half a country but also the unprecedented explusion and ethnic cleansing of 10 million Prussians, 3 million of whom died in the most horrendous ethnic cleansing pogrom in the history of the world, between 1944 and 1947 - a pogrom which until very recently was taboo even to mention. Today it is almost impossible to read literature on this Prussian Holocaust except in German, since no-one but Germans will even listen.