Book excerpt: The German historian’s classic account of the Red Army’s assault on East Prussia at the end of WWII, now available in English translation. Using extensive and vividly detailed eyewitness testimony, Egbert Kieser documents in the catastrophic Russian invasion of Danzig in 1945. Prussian Apocalypse is a riveting portrait of German civilians and soldiers as they fled from the onslaught and their world collapsed around them. In this fluid, authoritative, and accessible translation, Tony Le Tissier brings to bear his expert knowledge of the military defeat of the German armies in the East and the enormity of the human disaster that went with it. Egbert Kieser was born in 1928 in Bad Salzungen, Thringen, and studied philosophy and the history of art at Heidelberg University. He worked as a freelance journalist, writer, and editor. Among his many publications are two outstanding studies of German Second World War history, Prussian Apocalypse and Operation Sea Lion: The German Plan to Invade Britain, 1940.