German Kaliningrad

In the spring of 1945, the Third Reich surrendered to the Allied Forces as Germany was destroyed and left in ruins. The province of East Prussia was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union, with the Soviets controlling the northern region which includes the old German city of Königsberg. In 1947, Prussia was abolished and the ethnic Germans were expelled or murdered from Königsberg and the rest of East Prussia. Almost all traces of German life was destroyed and the Soviet controlled territory was Russified. It is now known as Kaliningrad, and no more than between six and eight thousand ethnic Germans reside in the territory today. Most of these ethnic Germans are Volga Germans, ethnic Germans whose ancestors were recruited as immigrants by Empress Catherine II of Russia to settle the area of the Volga region.

During the Second World War, the Volga Germans were considered to be potential collaborators by the Soviet regime. As a result, many of the Volga Germans were transported to Siberia, in which thousands perished. While many have since emigrated to Germany, Volga Germans still reside in the modern day Russian Federation and Kazakhstan, with an estimated population of almost 600,000. As of 2018, the Volga Germans mainly reside in the Altai Krai and Omsk Oblast, and they make up the majority of Russia and Kazakhstan's ethnic German population.

During the latter years of the Brezhnev era, a proposal in June 1979 called for a new German Autonomous Republic within Kazakhstan, with a capital in Ermentau. The proposal was aimed at addressing the living conditions of the displaced Volga Germans. At the time, around 936,000 ethnic Germans were living in Kazakhstan, as the republic's third-largest ethnic group. On 16 June 1979, demonstrators in what is now Astana protested this proposal. Fearing a negative reaction among the majority ethnic Kazakhs and calls for autonomy among local Uyghurs, the ruling Communist Party scrapped the proposal for ethnic German autonomy within Kazakhstan.

However, the territory of Kaliningrad could've been a homeland for the Volga German population. In the late Soviet era, there were rumors that the oblast could've been established as a homeland for Germans living in the Soviet Union. Given the oblast's German history and culture, it would've made sense. Let's imagine what the world might've been if a German homeland was established in Königsberg/Kaliningrad. What if Kaliningrad remained German?