The Flight Across the Ice: The Escape of the East Prussian Horses

It is the bitterly cold winter of 1944–45. The Red Army is advancing and millions of East Prussians are desperate to flee, but the Nazis refuse to let them. Finally, with the Russian guns within earshot, they realize that they are surrounded. With them are thousands of the most superb horses in the world—the Trakehner, bred over the past two centuries in Eastern Prussia. The horses flee in large herds or are harnessed to wagons or sleighs and face the same dangers as their guardians and owners. With little to eat and the target of Soviet bombers and tanks, many of them die on the way. Only a few hundred reach the West.