Hello, I would like to know what happened to the ethnic Prussians. The Prussians that gave birth to great names as Otto von Bismarck, and Fredrick the Great, the ones who had one of the most powerful armies in history, the ones that just... Disappeared? I have done hours of research before asking this question, and I am aware that many were deported and killed after WWII, but it isn't specify what TYPE of German they were. I assume most of the exiled/killed Germans in eastern Europe were Prussians, but what happened to the rest of the Prussian population? I've been told by people and read in various places that there aren't many Prussians in Germany, however if when the Germans from eastern Europe were allegedly evacuated into Germany, what happened to the Prussian ethnicity?
This is slightly anecdotal, but there's a lot of facts to support the conclusion: many of the Germans deported (about 3 million out of the 31 million) were Prussians, but after that, what happened to them is all over the place. Many of them were evacuated into Germany, but more still chose to be evacuated into other countries: mostly the USA, Argentina, Canada, and to a lesser extent Brazil and Australia. Now, why there aren't any Germans identifying as "Prussian" today kind of depends on where you look. Since Prussia hasn't existed for about half a century, many (especially the descendants) of these people prefer to identify instead as just "Germans" for simplicities sake, or for the fact that there just weren't a lot of people in Prussia after the war. But obviously, we can't really say for sure.
Personally, I'd call myself a Prussian, and I don't think I've ever met somebody who'd call themselves one in person, but the cultural idea is still strong in certain German internet groups.
Hope this helped, at least a bit.