The wind blew sharply across the frozen fields of East Prussia. It was the winter of 1944/45, one of the coldest Europe had ever experienced—and one of the most horrific moments in German history. Endless columns of exhausted figures moved along the snow-covered roads: concentration camp prisoners, herded together by SS guards with rifles and dogs, who monitored the march. These desperate movements, these final transports of horror, would go down in history as "death marches"—a term that still c