Eradicated

“Many [German] civilians, even in areas such as East Prussia and Silesia, which now [October 1944] lay close to the Red Army, found it difficult to comprehend the notion that their entire world was on the verge of extinction, that the streets in which they shopped, the farms on which they milked cows, the communities in which they had lived their lives, would forever be destroyed within a matter of months.” – Max Hastings, Armageddon