History of Ketrzyn

failed 20 July plot against Hitler. In 1945 the area suffered devastation from both the retreating Germans and advancing Soviets during the Vistula-Oder campaign. Some ruins of the Wolfsschanze remain. The town itself served as a Wehrmacht garrison town until it was occupied by the Red Army on 27 January 1945.

After the war, the town was transferred to Poland under border changes promulgated at the Potsdam Conference. Its surviving German residents who had not evacuated were subsequently expelled westward and replaced with Poles. The town was renamed Rastembork in 1945, and in 1946 to Kętrzyn after the Kashubian historian and activist Wojciech Kętrzyński