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Professor Alexander Brusov of the State Historical Museum, Moscow, and his diary

It would take Beliaeva, Brusov and Pozharsky five days to complete the L,ooo-mile journey, squeezed into a military van that looped around the chaos of surrender. Brusov wrote: Tnsterburg, spent the night. Gerdawyen, stayed in a hotel. And Villan...' The professor could not remember what they did in Villan.

'Konigsberg: city in ruins,' Brusov wrote on their arrival on 31 May. 'Conditions very hard, no cooperation from anyone - the army or the people.' The place was still on fire, the stench of decomposing flesh hanging in the air. The Red Army had reduced the medieval city to a pile of rubble fogged by acrid smoke. Surviving citizens wandered past jeering Soviet soldiers. Covered in soot and ash with shredded clothes, the Germans were unable to comprehend the savagery of the assault or the suddenness with which defeat had overcome them.

But despite the top-level orders they were acting upon, Brusov's team was forced to wait by the Soviet Military Administration, which warned them the area was still not secure. It was barely two months since a Soviet artillery bombardment had smashed Konigsberg's last defences. On 2 April 1945 Red Army officers had recalled seeing the buildings 'crumble into piles of stone', leaving thousands buried alive.10 On 6 April, the Soviet's LLth Guards Army and 43rd Army had fought their way into the city, flame-throwers scorching the buildings, rousting residents hiding in cellars, while citizens hung sheets from their windows, desperately signalling surrender. Hundreds attempted a futile breakout on 8 April, only to be spotted by Red Army artillery units that cut them to pieces.

One survivor, General Otto Lasch, the Nazi Kommandant of Konigsberg, would write a book about the last days of the city. In it he described how the castle briefly became a safe haven for German citizens until the Red Army attacked its main gates in the late afternoon of 9 April, forcing its surrender at 9 p.m. As lines of communication between the castle and his bunker on the city's Parade Platz had been severed, Lasch would not learn of the capitulation until 1 a.m. Early on 10 April, General Lasch and his fellow officers emerged on to the broken streets carrying bedrolls and knapsacks.

Within three days Hitler had sentenced Lasch to death, accusing him of cowardice. Konigsberg had meant a great deal to Hitler. More than 50,000 German soldiers had died in three months of intensive fighting and 92,000 prisoners were taken by the Soviets in the campaign for East Prussia. Hitler warned all commanders on the Eastern Front that 'he who gives orders to retreat... is to be shot on the spot'.11 However, by 30 April, Hitler was dead and on 8 May Marshal Zhukov, mastermind of the Soviet assault on Berlin, received the German Chief of Staff's unconditional surrender in the officers' mess of a military engineering college in Berlin-Karlshorst.

Soviet tanks on the streets of Konigsberg during the final attack, April 194s

The surrender of General Otto Lasch (centre), 10 April 194$

And so it was unsurprising that the Red Army still needed time to secure Konigsberg, and while they did Brusov readied his search team, recruiting two translators, Lieutenant Sardovsky and Captain E. A. Chernishov, of the Third Belorussian Front. In his diary Brusov wrote that Chernishov was '[aged] thirty, sympathetic, not a silly man. Studied at the department of foreign languages in Moscow. Musically talented. It is so pleasant and easy to work with him.'

Brusov also looked for the officer whom Pravda claimed had located the Konigsberg Castle Gift Book, Colonel D. D. Ivanyenko. He was still in town but was being chaperoned by Major Krolic, a political commissar, and was not available for debriefing. The Gift Book 'appeared to have vanished', Brusov noted, perplexed.

Brusov tried to interview some of the remaining German citizens. 'No one wants to cooperate with us,' he complained to his