Nemmersdorf (present-day Mayakovskoye, Kaliningrad Oblast) was one of the first prewar ethnic German settlements to fall to the advancing Red Army during the war.

[1][2] Nazi German authorities organized an international commission to investigate, headed by the Estonian Hjalmar Mäe and other representatives of neutral countries, such as Francoist Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The Nazi Propaganda Ministry (separately) used the Völkischer Beobachter and the cinema news series Wochenschau to accuse the Soviet Army of having killed dozens of civilians at Nemmersdorf and having summarily executed about 50 French and Belgian noncombatant prisoners-of-war, who had been ordered to take care of thoroughbred horses but had been blocked by the bridge.

The former chief of staff of the German Fourth Army Major General Erich Dethleffsen, testified on 5 July 1946 before an American tribunal in Neu-Ulm: When in October, 1944, Russian units temporarily entered Nemmersdorf, they tortured the civilians, specifically they nailed them to barn doors, and then shot them.

[1]Karl Potrek of Königsberg, the leader of a Volkssturm company present when the German Army took back the village, testified in a 1953 report: In the farmyard stood a cart, to which more naked women were nailed through their hands in a cruciform position ... Near a large inn, the 'Roter Krug', stood a barn and to each of its two doors a naked woman was nailed through the hands, in a crucified posture....

Some babies had had their heads bashed in.At the time, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry disseminated a graphic description of the events to dehumanize Soviets in eyes of German soldiers.

[6] Additionally, the writer Joachim Reisch, who also claimed to be witness to the events, placed the Soviet presence in Nemmersdorf to less than four hours of heavy fighting in front of the bridge, before pulling back to defensive positions.