Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)
Date | 1944–1950 |
---|---|
Location | Eastern Europe |
Deaths | 500,000 – 2.5 million |
Displaced | 12–14.6 million |
Flight and expulsion of Germans during and after World War II |
(demographic estimates) |
Background |
---|
|
Wartime flight and evacuation |
Post-war flight and expulsion |
Later emigration |
Other themes |
History of Germany |
---|
During the later stages of
The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories had been proposed by
Between 1944 and 1948, millions of people, including ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) and German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were
and from Czechoslovakia (about three million).The areas affected included the former eastern territories of Germany, which were annexed by Poland,[9][10] as well as the Soviet Union after the war and Germans who were living within the borders of the pre-war Second Polish Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states. The Nazis had made plans—only partially completed before the Nazi defeat—to remove Jews and many Slavic people from Eastern Europe and settle the area with Germans.[11][12] The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000[13][14] up to 2.5 million according to the German government.[15][16][17]
The removals occurred in three overlapping phases, the first of which was the organized evacuation of ethnic Germans by the Nazi government in the face of the advancing Red Army, from mid-1944 to early 1945.[18] The second phase was the disorganised fleeing of ethnic Germans immediately following the Wehrmacht's defeat. The third phase was a more organised expulsion following the Allied leaders' Potsdam Agreement,[18] which redefined the Central European borders and approved expulsions of ethnic Germans from the former German territories transferred to Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia.[19] Many German civilians were sent to concentration and slave labor camps where they were used as slave labor as part of German “reparations” to countries in Eastern Europe.[20] The major expulsions were completed in 1950.[18] Estimates for the total number of people of German ancestry still living in Central and Eastern Europe in 1950 ranged from 700,000 to 2.7 million.
Background
Before World War II, East-Central Europe generally lacked clearly delineated ethnic settlement areas. There were some ethnic-majority areas, but there were also vast mixed areas and abundant smaller pockets settled by various ethnicities. Within these areas of diversity, including the major cities of Central and Eastern Europe, people in various ethnic groups had interacted every day for centuries, while not always harmoniously, on every civic and economic level.[21]
With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the ethnicity of citizens became an issue[21] in territorial claims, the self-perception/identity of states, and claims of ethnic superiority. The German Empire introduced the idea of ethnicity-based settlement in an attempt to ensure its territorial integrity. It was also the first modern European state to propose population transfers as a means of solving "nationality conflicts", intending the removal of Poles and Jews from the projected post–World War I "Polish Border Strip" and its resettlement with Christian ethnic Germans.[22]
Following the
Population movements
Geographical region |
West German estimate for 1939 |
National Census data 1930–31 |
Reduction |
---|---|---|---|
Poland (1939 borders) | 1,371,000[25] | 741,000[26] | 630,000 |
Czechoslovakia | 3,477,000[25] | 3,232,000[27] | 245,000 |
Romania | 786,000[25] | 745,000[28] | 41,000 |
Yugoslavia | 536,800[25] | 500,000[29] | 36,800 |
Hungary | 623,000[25] | 478,000[30] | 145,000 |
Netherlands | 3,691[31] | 3,691[32] | 3,500 |
Notes:
- According to the national census figures the percentage of ethnic Germans in the total population was: Poland 2.3%; Czechoslovakia 22.3%; Hungary 5.5%; Romania 4.1% and Yugoslavia 3.6%.[33]
- The West German figures are the base used to estimate losses in the expulsions.[25]
- The West German figure for Poland is broken out as 939,000 monolingual German and 432,000 bi-lingual Polish/German.[34]
- The West German figure for Poland includes 60,000 in Trans-Olza which was annexed by Poland in 1938. In the 1930 census, this region was included in the Czechoslovak population.[34]
- A West German analysis of the wartime Deutsche Volksliste by Alfred Bohmann (de) put the number of Polish nationals in the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany who identified themselves as German at 709,500 plus 1,846,000 Poles who were considered candidates for Germanisation. In addition, there were 63,000 Volksdeutsch in the General Government.[35] Martin Broszat cited a document with different Volksliste figures 1,001,000 were identified as Germans and 1,761,000 candidates for Germanisation.[36] The figures for the Deutsche Volksliste exclude ethnic Germans resettled in Poland during the war.
- The national census figures for Germans include German-speaking Jews. Poland (7,000)[37] Czech territory not including Slovakia (75,000)[38] Hungary 10,000,[39] Yugoslavia (10,000)[40]
During the Nazi German occupation, many citizens of German descent in Poland registered with the
During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, especially after the
The expulsion policy was part of a geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of postwar Europe. In part, it was retribution for Nazi Germany's initiation of the war and subsequent atrocities and
Reasons and justifications for the expulsions
Given the complex history of the affected regions and the divergent interests of the victorious Allied powers, it is difficult to ascribe a definitive set of motives to the expulsions. The respective paragraph of the Potsdam Agreement only states vaguely: "The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agreed that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner." The major motivations revealed were:
- A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states: This is presented by several authors as a key issue that motivated the expulsions.[51][52][53][54][55][56]
- View of a German minority as potentially troublesome: From the Soviet perspective, shared by the communist administrations installed in Sovietisation of the respective countries.[57] The Western allies also saw the threat of a potential German 'fifth column', especially in Poland after the agreed-to compensation with former German territory.[51] In general, the Western allies hoped to secure a more lasting peace by eliminating the German minorities, which they thought could be done in a humane manner.[51][58] The proposals from the Polish and Czech governments-in-exile to expel ethnic Germans after the war received support from Winston Churchill[1] and Anthony Eden.[2]
- Another motivation was to punish the Germans:[51][53][56][59] the Allies declared them collectively guilty of German war crimes.[58][60][61][62]
- Soviet political considerations: Stalin saw the expulsions as a means of creating antagonism between Germany and its Eastern neighbors, who would thus need Soviet protection.[63] The expulsions served several practical purposes as well.
Ethnically homogeneous nation-state
The creation of ethnically homogeneous nation states in Central and Eastern Europe[52] was presented as the key reason for the official decisions of the Potsdam and previous Allied conferences as well as the resulting expulsions.[53] The principle of every nation inhabiting its own nation state gave rise to a series of expulsions and resettlements of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and others who after the war found themselves outside their supposed home states.[64][54] The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey lent legitimacy to the concept. Churchill cited the operation as a success in a speech discussing the German expulsions.[65][66]
In view of the desire for ethnically homogeneous nation-states, it did not make sense to draw borders through regions that were already inhabited homogeneously by Germans without any minorities. As early as 9 September 1944, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Polish communist Edward Osóbka-Morawski of the Polish Committee of National Liberation signed a treaty in Lublin on population exchanges of Ukrainians and Poles living on the "wrong" side of the Curzon Line.[64][54] Many of the 2.1 million Poles expelled from the Soviet-annexed Kresy, so-called 'repatriants', were resettled to former German territories, then dubbed 'Recovered Territories'.[62] Czech Edvard Beneš, in his decree of 19 May 1945, termed ethnic Hungarians and Germans "unreliable for the state", clearing a way for confiscations and expulsions.[67]
View of German minorities as potential fifth columns
Distrust and enmity
One of the reasons given for the population transfer of Germans from the former eastern territories of Germany was the claim that these areas had been a stronghold of the Nazi movement.[68] Neither Stalin nor the other influential advocates of this argument required that expellees be checked for their political attitudes or their activities. Even in the few cases when this happened and expellees were proven to have been bystanders, opponents or even victims of the Nazi regime, they were rarely spared from expulsion.[69] Polish Communist propaganda used and manipulated hatred of the Nazis to intensify the expulsions.[55]
With German communities living within the pre-war borders of Poland, there was an expressed fear of disloyalty of Germans in
To Poles, expulsion of Germans was seen as an effort to avoid such events in the future. As a result, Polish exile authorities proposed a population transfer of Germans as early as 1941.[71] The Czechoslovak government-in-exile worked with the Polish government-in-exile towards this end during the war.[72]
Preventing ethnic violence
The participants at the Potsdam Conference asserted that expulsions were the only way to prevent ethnic violence. As
Polish resistance fighter, statesman and courier Jan Karski warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 of the possibility of Polish reprisals, describing them as "unavoidable" and "an encouragement for all the Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong."[74]
Punishment for Nazi crimes
The expulsions were also driven by a desire for retribution, given the brutal way German occupiers treated non-German civilians in the German-occupied territories during the war. Thus, the expulsions were at least partly motivated by the animus engendered by the war crimes and atrocities perpetrated by the German belligerents and their proxies and supporters.[53][59] Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, in the National Congress, justified the expulsions on 28 October 1945 by stating that the majority of Germans had acted in full support of Hitler; during a ceremony in remembrance of the Lidice massacre, he blamed all Germans as responsible for the actions of the German state.[60] In Poland and Czechoslovakia, newspapers,[75] leaflets and politicians across the political spectrum,[75][76] which narrowed during the post-war Communist take-over,[76] asked for retribution for wartime German activities.[75][76] Responsibility of the German population for the crimes committed in its name was also asserted by commanders of the late and post-war Polish military.[75]
In Poland, which had suffered the loss of six million citizens, including its elite and almost its entire Jewish population due to Lebensraum and the Holocaust, most Germans were seen as Nazi-perpetrators who could now finally be collectively punished for their past deeds.[62]
Soviet political considerations
Stalin, who had earlier directed several population transfers in the Soviet Union, strongly supported the expulsions, which worked to the Soviet Union's advantage in several ways. The satellite states would now feel the need to be protected by the Soviets from German anger over the expulsions.[63] The assets left by expellees in Poland and Czechoslovakia were successfully used to reward cooperation with the new governments, and support for the Communists was especially strong in areas that had seen significant expulsions. Settlers in these territories welcomed the opportunities presented by their fertile soils and vacated homes and enterprises, increasing their loyalty.[77]
Movements in the later stages of the war
Evacuation and flight to areas within Germany
Late in the war, as the Red Army advanced westward, many Germans were apprehensive about the impending Soviet occupation.[78] Most were aware of the Soviet reprisals against German civilians.[79] Soviet soldiers committed numerous rapes and other crimes.[78][79][80] News of atrocities such as the Nemmersdorf massacre[78][79] were exaggerated and disseminated by the Nazi propaganda machine.[81]
Plans to evacuate the ethnic German population westward into Germany, from Poland and the eastern territories of Germany, were prepared by various Nazi authorities toward the end of the war. In most cases, implementation was delayed until Soviet and Allied forces had defeated the German forces and advanced into the areas to be evacuated. The abandonment of millions of ethnic Germans in these vulnerable areas until combat conditions overwhelmed them can be attributed directly to the measures taken by the Nazis against anyone suspected of 'defeatist' attitudes (as evacuation was considered) and the fanaticism of many Nazi functionaries in their execution of Hitler's 'no retreat' orders.[78][80][82]
The first exodus of German civilians from the eastern territories was composed of both spontaneous flight and organized evacuation, starting in mid-1944 and continuing until early 1945. Conditions turned chaotic during the winter when kilometers-long queues of refugees pushed their carts through the snow trying to stay ahead of the advancing Red Army.[18][83]
Refugee treks which came within reach of the advancing Soviets suffered casualties when targeted by low-flying aircraft, and some people were crushed by tanks.[79] The German Federal Archive has estimated that 100–120,000 civilians (1% of the total population) were killed during the flight and evacuations.[84] Polish historians Witold Sienkiewicz and Grzegorz Hryciuk maintain that civilian deaths in the flight and evacuation were "between 600,000 and 1.2 million. The main causes of death were cold, stress, and bombing."[85] The mobilized Strength Through Joy liner Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk in January 1945 by Soviet Navy submarine S-13, killing about 9,000 civilians and military personnel escaping East Prussia in the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history. Many refugees tried to return home when the fighting ended. Before 1 June 1945, 400,000 people crossed back over the Oder and Neisse rivers eastward, before Soviet and Polish communist authorities closed the river crossings; another 800,000 entered Silesia through Czechoslovakia.[86]
In accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, at the end of 1945—wrote Hahn & Hahn—4.5 million Germans who had fled or been expelled were under the control of the Allied governments. From 1946 to 1950 around 4.5 million people were brought to Germany in organized mass transports from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. An additional 2.6 million released POWs were listed as expellees.[87]
Evacuation and flight to Denmark
From the
Between 23 January and 5 May 1945, up to 250,000 Germans, primarily from East Prussia, Pomerania, and the Baltic states, were evacuated to Nazi-occupied Denmark,[88][89] based on an order issued by Hitler on 4 February 1945.[90] When the war ended, the German refugee population in Denmark amounted to 5% of the total Danish population. The evacuation focused on women, the elderly and children—a third of whom were under the age of fifteen.[89]
After the war, the Germans were interned in several hundred refugee camps throughout Denmark, the largest of which was the
According to Danish physician and historian
Following Germany's defeat
The
The Allies settled on the terms of
The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.[99]
The agreement further called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans for resettlement among American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones comprising post–World War II Germany.[100]
Expulsions that took place before the Allies agreed on the terms at Potsdam are referred to as "irregular" expulsions (Wilde Vertreibungen). They were conducted by military and civilian authorities in Soviet-occupied post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia in the first half of 1945.[98][101]
In Yugoslavia, the remaining Germans were not expelled; ethnic German villages were turned into internment camps where over 50,000 perished from deliberate starvation and direct murders by Yugoslav guards.[100][102]
In late 1945 the Allies requested a temporary halt to the expulsions, due to the refugee problems created by the expulsion of Germans.[98] While expulsions from Czechoslovakia were temporarily slowed, this was not true in Poland and the former eastern territories of Germany.[100] Sir Geoffrey Harrison, one of the drafters of the cited Potsdam article, stated that the "purpose of this article was not to encourage or legalize the expulsions, but rather to provide a basis for approaching the expelling states and requesting them to co-ordinate transfers with the Occupying Powers in Germany."[100]
After Potsdam, a series of expulsions of ethnic Germans occurred throughout the Soviet-controlled Eastern European countries.
Polish refugees expelled from the Soviet Union were resettled in the former German territories that were awarded to Poland after the war. During and after the war, 2,208,000 Poles fled or were expelled from the former eastern Polish regions that were merged to the USSR after the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland; 1,652,000 of these refugees were resettled in the former German territories.[105]
Czechoslovakia
The final agreement for the transfer of the Germans was reached at the Potsdam Conference.
According to the West German
Between 700,000 and 800,000 Germans were affected by irregular expulsions between May and August 1945.[108] The expulsions were encouraged by Czechoslovak politicians and were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers and the army.[109]
Transfers of population under the Potsdam agreements lasted from January until October 1946. 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone, part of what would become West Germany. More than 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone, which later became East Germany.[110]
About 250,000 ethnic Germans were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia.[111] According to the West German Schieder commission 250,000 persons who had declared German nationality in the 1939 Nazi census remained in Czechoslovakia; however the Czechs counted 165,790 Germans remaining in December 1955.[112] Male Germans with Czech wives were expelled, often with their spouses, while ethnic German women with Czech husbands were allowed to stay.[113] According to the Schieder commission, Sudeten Germans considered essential to the economy were held as forced labourers.[114]
The West German government estimated the expulsion death toll at 273,000 civilians,[115] and this figure is cited in historical literature.[116] However, in 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was between 15,000 and 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.[117][118][119][120]
The German Red Cross Search Service (Suchdienst) confirmed the deaths of 18,889 people during the expulsions from Czechoslovakia. (Violent deaths 5,556; Suicides 3,411; Deported 705; In camps 6,615; During the wartime flight 629; After wartime flight 1,481; Cause undetermined 379; Other misc. 73.)[121]
Hungary
In contrast to expulsions from other nations or states, the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary was dictated from outside Hungary.[122] It began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet Red Army Commander-in-Chief ordered the expulsions. In February 1945 the Soviet-dominated Allied Control Commission ordered the Hungarian Ministry of Interior to compile lists of all ethnic Germans living in the country. Initially the Census Bureau refused to divulge information on Hungarians who had registered as Volksdeutsche, but acceded under pressure from the Hungarian State Protection Authority.[123] Three percent of the German pre-war population (about 20,000 people) had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many had returned. Overall, 60,000 ethnic Germans had fled.[103]
According to the West German Schieder commission report of 1956, in early 1945 between 30 and 35,000 ethnic German civilians and 30,000 military POW were arrested and transported from Hungary to the Soviet Union as forced labourers. In some villages, the entire adult population was taken to labor camps in the Donbas. 6,000 died there as a result of hardships and ill-treatment.[124]
Data from the Russian archives, which were based on an actual enumeration, put the number of ethnic Germans registered by the Soviets in Hungary at 50,292 civilians, of whom 31,923 were deported to the USSR for reparation labor implementing Order 7161. 9% (2,819) were documented as having died.[125]
In 1945, official Hungarian figures showed 477,000 German speakers in Hungary, including German-speaking Jews, 303,000 of whom had declared German nationality. Of the German nationals, 33% were children younger than 12 or elderly people over 60; 51% were women.[126] On 29 December 1945, the postwar Hungarian Government, obeying the directions of the Potsdam Conference agreements, ordered the expulsion of anyone identified as German in the 1941 census, or who had been a member of the Volksbund, the SS, or any other armed German organisation. Accordingly, mass expulsions began.[103] The rural population was affected more than the urban population or those ethnic Germans determined to have needed skills, such as miners.[127][128] Germans married to Hungarians were not expelled, regardless of sex.[113] The first 5,788 expellees departed from Wudersch on 19 January 1946.[127]
About 180,000 German-speaking Hungarian citizens were stripped of their citizenship and possessions, and expelled to the Western zones of Germany.
Acquisition of land for distribution to Hungarian refugees and nationals was one of the main reasons stated by the government for the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from Hungary.[128] The botched organization of the redistribution led to social tensions.[128]
22,445 people were identified as German in the 1949 census. An order of 15 June 1948 halted the expulsions. A governmental decree of 25 March 1950 declared all expulsion orders void, allowing the expellees to return if they so wished.[128] After the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, German victims of expulsion and Soviet forced labor were rehabilitated.[130] Post-Communist laws allowed expellees to be compensated, to return, and to buy property.[132] There were reportedly no tensions between Germany and Hungary regarding expellees.[132]
In 1958, the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by 1950, 270,000 Germans remained in Hungary; 60,000 had been assimilated into the Hungarian population, and there were 57,000 "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified.[133] The editor for the section of the 1958 report for Hungary was Wilfried Krallert, a scholar dealing with Balkan affairs since the 1930s when he was a Nazi Party member. During the war, he was an officer in the SS and was directly implicated in the plundering of cultural artifacts in eastern Europe. After the war, he was chosen to author the sections of the demographic report on the expulsions from Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The figure of 57,000 "unresolved cases" in Hungary is included in the figure of 2 million dead expellees, which is often cited in official German and historical literature.[116]
Netherlands
After World War II, the Dutch government decided to expel the German expatriates (25,000) living in the Netherlands.[134] Germans, including those with Dutch spouses and children, were labelled as "hostile subjects" ("vijandelijke onderdanen").[134]
The operation began on 10 September 1946 in Amsterdam, when German expatriates and their families were arrested at their homes in the middle of the night and given one hour to pack 50 kg (110 lb) of luggage. They were only allowed to take 100 guilders with them. The remainder of their possessions were seized by the state. They were taken to internment camps near the German border, the largest of which was Mariënbosch concentration camp, near Nijmegen. About 3,691 Germans (less than 15% of the total number of German expatriates in the Netherlands) were expelled. The Allied forces occupying the Western zone of Germany opposed this operation, fearing that other nations might follow suit.
Poland, including former German territories
Throughout 1944 until May 1945, as the Red Army advanced through Eastern Europe and the provinces of eastern Germany, some German civilians were killed in the fighting. While many had already fled ahead of the advancing Soviet Army, frightened by rumors of Soviet atrocities, which in some cases were exaggerated and exploited by Nazi Germany's propaganda,[135] millions still remained.[136] A 2005 study by the Polish Academy of Sciences estimated that during the final months of the war, 4 to 5 million German civilians fled with the retreating German forces, and in mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million Germans remained in the territories under Polish control. By 1950, 3,155,000 had been transported to Germany, 1,043,550 were naturalized as Polish citizens and 170,000 Germans still remained in Poland.[137]
According to the West German Schieder commission of 1953, 5,650,000 Germans remained in what would become Poland's new borders in mid-1945, 3,500,000 had been expelled and 910,000 remained in Poland by 1950.[138] According to the Schieder commission, the civilian death toll was 2 million;[139] in 1974, the German Federal Archives estimated the death toll at about 400,000.[140] (The controversy regarding the casualty figures is covered below in the section on casualties.)
During the 1945 military campaign, most of the male German population remaining east of the Oder–Neisse line were considered potential combatants and held by Soviet military in detention camps subject to verification by the NKVD. Members of Nazi party organizations and government officials were segregated and sent to the USSR for forced labour as reparations.[125][141]
In mid-1945, the eastern territories of pre-war Germany were turned over to the Soviet-controlled Polish military forces. Early expulsions were undertaken by the Polish Communist military authorities[142] even before the Potsdam Conference placed them under temporary Polish administration pending the final Peace Treaty,[143] in an effort to ensure later territorial integration into an ethnically homogeneous Poland.[144] The Polish Communists wrote: "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multinational ones."[145][146] The Polish government defined Germans as either Reichsdeutsche, people enlisted in first or second Volksliste groups; or those who held German citizenship. Around 1,165,000[147][148][149] German citizens of Slavic descent were "verified" as "autochthonous" Poles.[150] Of these, most were not expelled; but many[151][152] chose to migrate to Germany between 1951 and 1982,[153] including most of the Masurians of East Prussia.[154][155]
At the Potsdam Conference (17 July – 2 August 1945), the territory to the east of the Oder–Neisse line was assigned to Polish and Soviet Union administration pending the final peace treaty. All Germans had their property confiscated and were placed under restrictive jurisdiction.[150][156] The Silesian voivode Aleksander Zawadzki in part had already expropriated the property of the German Silesians on 26 January 1945, another decree of 2 March expropriated that of all Germans east of the Oder and Neisse, and a subsequent decree of 6 May declared all "abandoned" property as belonging to the Polish state.[157] Germans were also not permitted to hold Polish currency, the only legal currency since July, other than earnings from work assigned to them.[158] The remaining population faced theft and looting, and also in some instances rape and murder by the criminal elements, crimes that were rarely prevented nor prosecuted by the Polish Militia Forces and newly installed communist judiciary.[159]
In mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million Germans resided in territory east of the Oder–Neisse Line. By early 1946, 550,000 Germans had already been expelled from there, and 932,000 had been verified as having Polish nationality. In the February 1946 census, 2,288,000 people were classified as Germans and subject to expulsion, and 417,400 were subject to verification action, to determine nationality.[137]: 312, 452–66 The negatively verified people, who did not succeed in demonstrating their "Polish nationality", were directed for resettlement.[105]
Those Polish citizens who had
The
The Federal Statistical Office of Germany estimated that in mid-1945, 250,000 Germans remained in the northern part of the former East Prussia, which became the Kaliningrad Oblast. They also estimated that more than 100,000 people surviving the Soviet occupation were evacuated to Germany beginning in 1947.[164]
German civilians were held as "reparation labor" by the USSR. Data from the Russian archives, newly published in 2001 and based on an actual enumeration, put the number of German civilians deported from Poland to the USSR in early 1945 for reparation labor at 155,262; 37% (57,586) died in the USSR.
The attitudes of surviving Poles varied.
The attitude of Soviet soldiers was ambiguous. Many committed atrocities, most notably rape and murder,[80] and did not always distinguish between Poles and Germans, mistreating them equally.[169] Other Soviets were taken aback by the brutal treatment of the German civilians and tried to protect them.[170]
Richard Overy cites an approximate total of 7.5 million Germans evacuated, migrated, or expelled from Poland between 1944 and 1950.[171] Tomasz Kamusella cites estimates of 7 million expelled in total during both the "wild" and "legal" expulsions from the recovered territories from 1945 to 1948, plus an additional 700,000 from areas of pre-war Poland.[156]
Romania
The ethnic German population of Romania in 1939 was estimated at 786,000.
The roughly 400,000 ethnic Germans who remained in Romania were treated as guilty of collaboration with Nazi Germany [citation needed] and were deprived of their civil liberties and property.[citation needed] Many were impressed into forced labour and deported from their homes to other regions of Romania.[citation needed] In 1948, Romania began a gradual rehabilitation of the ethnic Germans: they were not expelled, and the communist regime gave them the status of a national minority, the only Eastern Bloc country to do so.[178]
In 1958, the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by 1950, 253,000 were counted as expellees in Germany or the West, 400,000 Germans still remained in Romania, 32,000 had been assimilated into the Romanian population, and that there were 101,000 "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified.[179] The figure of 101,000 "unresolved cases" in Romania is included in the total German expulsion dead of 2 million which is often cited in historical literature.[116] 355,000 Germans remained in Romania in 1977. During the 1980s, many began to leave, with over 160,000 leaving in 1989 alone. By 2002, the number of ethnic Germans in Romania was 60,000.[103][111]
Soviet Union and annexed territories
The
The
According to J. Otto Pohl, 65,599 Germans perished in the special settlements. He believes that an additional 176,352 unaccounted for people "probably died in the labor army".[186] Under Stalin, Soviet Germans continued to be confined to the special settlements under strict supervision, in 1955 they were rehabilitated but were not allowed to return to the European USSR.[187] The Soviet-German population grew despite deportations and forced labor during the war; in the 1939 Soviet census the German population was 1.427 million. By 1959 it had increased to 1.619 million.[188]
The calculations of the West German researcher Gerhard Reichling do not agree to the figures from the Soviet archives. According to Reichling a total of 980,000 Soviet ethnic Germans were deported during the war; he estimated that 310,000 died in forced labour.[189] During the early months of the invasion of the USSR in 1941 the Germans occupied the western regions of the USSR that had German settlements. A total of 370,000 ethnic Germans from the USSR were deported to Poland by Germany during the war. In 1945 the Soviets found 280,000 of these resettlers in Soviet-held territory and returned them to the USSR; 90,000 became refugees in Germany after the war.[189]
Those ethnic Germans who remained in the 1939 borders of the Soviet Union occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 remained where they were until 1943, when the Red Army liberated Soviet territory and the Wehrmacht withdrew westward.
Different situations emerged in northern East Prussia regarding
Yugoslavia
Before World War II, roughly 500,000 German-speaking people (mostly
After the liberation, Yugoslav Partisans exacted revenge on ethnic Germans for the wartime atrocities of Nazi Germany, in which many ethnic Germans had participated, especially in the Banat area of the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. The approximately 200,000 ethnic Germans remaining in Yugoslavia suffered persecution and sustained personal and economic losses. About 7,000 were killed as local populations and partisans took revenge for German wartime atrocities.[103][197] From 1945 to 1948 ethnic Germans were held in labour camps where about 50,000 perished.[197] Those surviving were allowed to emigrate to Germany after 1948.[197]
According to West German figures in late 1944 the Soviets transported 27,000 to 30,000 ethnic Germans, a majority of whom were women aged 18 to 35, to Ukraine and the Donbas for forced labour; about 20% (5,683) were reported dead or missing.[103][197][198] Data from Russian archives published in 2001, based on an actual enumeration, put the number of German civilians deported from Yugoslavia to the USSR in early 1945 for reparation labour at 12,579, where 16% (1,994) died.[199] After March 1945, a second phase began in which ethnic Germans were massed into villages such as Gakowa and Kruševlje that were converted into labour camps. All furniture was removed, straw placed on the floor, and the expellees housed like animals under military guard, with minimal food and rampant, untreated disease. Families were divided into the unfit women, old, and children, and those fit for slave labour. A total of 166,970 ethnic Germans were interned, and 48,447 (29%) perished.[102] The camp system was shut down in March 1948.[200]
In
The Yugoslavs set up internment camps at
After March 1945, ethnic Germans were placed in so-called "village camps".[202] Separate camps existed for those able to work and for those who were not. In the latter camps, containing mainly children and the elderly, the mortality rate was about 50%. Most of the children under 14 were then placed in state-run homes, where conditions were better, though the German language was banned. These children were later given to Yugoslav families, and not all German parents seeking to reclaim their children in the 1950s were successful.[200]
West German government figures from 1958 put the death toll at 135,800 civilians.[203] A recent study published by the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia based on an actual enumeration has revised the death toll down to about 58,000. A total of 48,447 people had died in the camps; 7,199 were shot by partisans, and another 1,994 perished in Soviet labour camps.[204] Those Germans still considered Yugoslav citizens were employed in industry or the military, but could buy themselves free of Yugoslav citizenship for the equivalent of three months' salary. By 1950, 150,000 of the Germans from Yugoslavia were classified as "expelled" in Germany, another 150,000 in Austria, 10,000 in the United States, and 3,000 in France.[200] According to West German figures 82,000 ethnic Germans remained in Yugoslavia in 1950.[111] After 1950, most emigrated to Germany or were assimilated into the local population.[189]
Kehl, Germany
The population of Kehl (12,000 people), on the east bank of the Rhine opposite Strasbourg, fled and was evacuated in the course of the Liberation of France, on 23 November 1944.[205] The French Army occupied the town in March 1945 and prevented the inhabitants from returning until 1953.[205][206]
Latin America
Fearing a
Palestine
At the start of World War II, colonists with German citizenship were rounded up by the
Human losses
Estimates of total deaths of German civilians in the flight and expulsions, including
West German government estimates of the death toll
- In 1950 the West German Government made a preliminary estimate of 3.0 million missing people (1.5 million in prewar Germany and 1.5 million in Eastern Europe) whose fate needed to be clarified.Statistisches Bundesamt.
- In 1953 the West German government ordered a survey by the Suchdienst (search service) of the German churches to trace the fate of 16.2 million people in the area of the expulsions; the survey was completed in 1964 but kept secret until 1987. The search service was able to confirm 473,013 civilian deaths; there were an additional 1,905,991 cases of persons whose fate could not be determined.[221]
- From 1954 to 1961 the Oder Neisse line.[222]
- The figures of the
- In 1969, the federal West German government ordered a further study to be conducted by the Oder Neisse line, 130,000 in Czechoslovakia and 80,000 in Yugoslavia). No figures were given for Romania and Hungary.[225]
- A 1986 study by Gerhard Reichling "Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen" (the German expellees in figures) concluded 2,020,000 ethnic Germans perished after the war including 1,440,000 as a result of the expulsions and 580,000 deaths due to deportation as forced labourers in the Soviet Union. Reichling was an employee of the Federal Statistical Office who was involved in the study of German expulsion statistics since 1953.[226] The Reichling study is cited by the German government to support their estimate of 2 million expulsion deaths[17]
Discourse
The West German figure of 2 million deaths in the flight and expulsions was widely accepted by historians in the West prior to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War.[210][211][212][213][214][219][227][216][228][229] The recent disclosure of the German Federal Archives study and the Search Service figures have caused some scholars in Germany and Poland to question the validity of the figure of 2 million deaths; they estimate the actual total at 500–600,000.[230][231][232]
The German government continues to maintain that the figure of 2 million deaths is correct.[233] The issue of the "expellees" has been a contentious one in German politics, with the Federation of Expellees staunchly defending the higher figure.[234]
Analysis by Rüdiger Overmans
In 2000 the German historian Rüdiger Overmans published a study of German military casualties; his research project did not investigate civilian expulsion deaths.[235] In 1994, Overmans provided a critical analysis of the previous studies by the German government which he believes are unreliable. Overmans maintains that the studies of expulsion deaths by the German government lack adequate support; he maintains that there are more arguments for the lower figures than for the higher figures. ("Letztlich sprechen also mehr Argumente für die niedrigere als für die höhere Zahl.")[209]
In a 2006 interview, Overmans maintained that new research is needed to clarify the fate of those reported as missing.[236] He found the 1965 figures of the Search Service to be unreliable because they include non-Germans; the figures according to Overmans include military deaths; the numbers of surviving people, natural deaths and births after the war in Eastern Europe are unreliable because the Communist governments in Eastern Europe did not extend full cooperation to West German efforts to trace people in Eastern Europe; the reports given by eyewitnesses surveyed are not reliable in all cases. In particular, Overmans maintains that the figure of 1.9 million missing people was based on incomplete information and is unreliable.[237] Overmans found the 1958 demographic study to be unreliable because it inflated the figures of ethnic German deaths by including missing people of doubtful German ethnic identity who survived the war in Eastern Europe; the figures of military deaths is understated; the numbers of surviving people, natural deaths and births after the war in Eastern Europe are unreliable because the Communist governments in Eastern Europe did not extend full cooperation to West German efforts to trace people in Eastern Europe.[209]
Overmans maintains that the 600,000 deaths found by the German Federal Archives in 1974 is only a rough estimate of those killed, not a definitive figure. He pointed out that some deaths were not reported because there were no surviving eyewitnesses of the events; also there was no estimate of losses in Hungary, Romania and the USSR.[238]
Overmans conducted a research project that studied the casualties of the German military during the war and found that the previous estimate of 4.3 million dead and missing, especially in the final stages of the war, was about one million short of the actual toll. In his study Overmans researched only military deaths; his project did not investigate civilian expulsion deaths; he merely noted the difference between the 2.2 million dead estimated in the 1958 demographic study, of which 500,000 have so far have been verified.[239] He found that German military deaths from areas in Eastern Europe were about 1.444 million, and thus 334,000 higher than the 1.1 million figure in the 1958 demographic study, lacking documents available today included the figures with civilian deaths. Overmans believes this will reduce the number of civilian deaths in the expulsions. Overmans further pointed out that the 2.225 million number estimated by the 1958 study would imply that the casualty rate among the expellees was equal to or higher than that of the military, which he found implausible.[240]
Analysis by historian Ingo Haar
In 2006, Haar called into question the validity of the official government figure of 2 million expulsion deaths in an article in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.[241] Since then Haar has published three articles in academic journals that covered the background of the research by the West German government on the expulsions.[242][243][244][245]
Haar maintains that all reasonable estimates of deaths from expulsions lie between around 500,000 and 600,000, based on the information of Red Cross Search Service and German Federal Archives. Harr pointed out that some members of the
Studies in Poland
In 2001, Polish researcher Bernadetta Nitschke puts total losses for Poland at 400,000 (the same figure as the German Federal Archive study). She noted that historians in Poland have maintained that most of the deaths occurred during the flight and evacuation during the war, the deportations to the USSR for forced labour and, after the resettlement, due to the harsh conditions in the
Study by Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahn
German historians Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahn published a detailed study of the flight and expulsions that is sharply critical of German accounts of the Cold War era. The Hahns regard the official German figure of 2 million deaths as an historical myth, lacking foundation. They place the ultimate blame for the mass flight and expulsion on the wartime policy of the Nazis in Eastern Europe. The Hahns maintain that most of the reported 473,013 deaths occurred during the Nazi organized flight and evacuation during the war, and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union; they point out that there are 80,522 confirmed deaths in the postwar internment camps. They put the postwar losses in eastern Europe at a fraction of the total losses: Poland- 15,000 deaths from 1945 to 1949 in internment camps; Czechoslovakia- 15,000–30,000 dead, including 4,000–5,000 in internment camps and ca. 15,000 in the Prague uprising; Yugoslavia- 5,777 deliberate killings and 48,027 deaths in internment camps; Denmark- 17,209 dead in internment camps; Hungary and Romania - no postwar losses reported. The Hahns point out that the official 1958 figure of 273,000 deaths for Czechoslovakia was prepared by Alfred Bohmann, a former Nazi Party member who had served in the wartime SS. Bohmann was a journalist for an ultra-nationalist Sudeten-Deutsch newspaper in postwar West Germany. The Hahns believe the population figures of ethnic Germans for eastern Europe include German-speaking Jews killed in the Holocaust.[250] They believe that the fate of German-speaking Jews in Eastern Europe deserves the attention of German historians. ("Deutsche Vertreibungshistoriker haben sich mit der Geschichte der jüdischen Angehörigen der deutschen Minderheiten kaum beschäftigt.")[250]
German and Czech commission of historians
In 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths in Czechoslovakia to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was at least 15,000 people and that it could range up to a maximum of 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.[117]
Rebuttal by the German government
The German government still maintains that the figure of 2–2.5 million expulsion deaths is correct. In 2005 the German Red Cross Search Service put the death toll at 2,251,500 but did not provide details for this estimate.[251]
On 29 November 2006, State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Christoph Bergner, outlined the stance of the respective governmental institutions on Deutschlandfunk (a public-broadcasting radio station in Germany) saying that the numbers presented by the German government and others are not contradictory to the numbers cited by Haar and that the below 600,000 estimate comprises the deaths directly caused by atrocities during the expulsion measures and thus only includes people who were raped, beaten, or else killed on the spot, while the above two million estimate includes people who on their way to postwar Germany died of epidemics, hunger, cold, air raids and the like.[252]
Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung by Heinz Nawratil
A German lawyer,
Condition of the expellees after arriving in post-war Germany
Those who arrived were in bad condition—particularly during the harsh winter of 1945–46, when arriving trains carried "the dead and dying in each carriage (other dead had been thrown from the train along the way)".[258] After experiencing Red Army atrocities, Germans in the expulsion areas were subject to harsh punitive measures by Yugoslav partisans and in post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia.[259] Beatings, rapes and murders accompanied the expulsions.[258][259] Some had experienced massacres, such as the Ústí (Aussig) massacre, in which 80–100 ethnic Germans died, or Postoloprty massacre, or conditions like those in the Upper Silesian Camp Łambinowice (Lamsdorf), where interned Germans were exposed to sadistic practices and at least 1,000 died.[259] Many expellees had experienced hunger and disease, separation from family members, loss of civil rights and familiar environment, and sometimes internment and forced labour.[259]
Once they arrived, they found themselves in a country devastated by war. Housing shortages lasted until the 1960s, which along with other shortages led to conflicts with the local population.[260][261] The situation eased only with the West German economic boom in the 1950s that drove unemployment rates close to zero.[262]
France did not participate in the Potsdam Conference, so it felt free to approve some of the Potsdam Agreements and dismiss others. France maintained the position that it had not approved the expulsions and therefore was not responsible for accommodating and nourishing the destitute expellees in its zone of occupation. While the French military government provided for the few refugees who arrived before July 1945 in the area that became the French zone, it succeeded in preventing entrance by later-arriving ethnic Germans deported from the East.[263]
Britain and the US protested against the actions of the French military government but had no means to force France to bear the consequences of the expulsion policy agreed upon by American, British and Soviet leaders in Potsdam. France persevered with its argument to clearly differentiate between war-related refugees and post-war expellees. In December 1946 it absorbed into its zone German refugees from Denmark,[263] where 250,000 Germans had traveled by sea between February and May 1945 to take refuge from the Soviets. These were refugees from the eastern parts of Germany, not expellees; Danes of German ethnicity remained untouched and Denmark did not expel them. With this humanitarian act the French saved many lives, due to the high death toll German refugees faced in Denmark.[264][265][266]
Until mid-1945, the Allies had not reached an agreement on how to deal with the expellees. France suggested immigration to South America and Australia and the settlement of 'productive elements' in France, while the Soviets' SMAD suggested a resettlement of millions of expellees in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.[267]
The Soviets, who encouraged and partly carried out the expulsions, offered little cooperation with humanitarian efforts, thereby requiring the Americans and British to absorb the expellees in their zones of occupation. In contradiction with the Potsdam Agreements, the Soviets neglected their obligation to provide supplies for the expellees. In Potsdam, it was agreed[268] that 15% of all equipment dismantled in the Western zones—especially from the metallurgical, chemical and machine manufacturing industries—would be transferred to the Soviets in return for food, coal, potash (a basic material for fertiliser), timber, clay products, petroleum products, etc. The Western deliveries started in 1946, but this turned out to be a one-way street. The Soviet deliveries—desperately needed to provide the expellees with food, warmth, and basic necessities and to increase agricultural production in the remaining cultivation area—did not materialize. Consequently, the US stopped all deliveries on 3 May 1946,[269] while the expellees from the areas under Soviet rule were deported to the West until the end of 1947.
In the British and US zones the supply situation worsened considerably, especially in the British zone. Due to its location on the Baltic, the British zone already harbored a great number of refugees who had come by sea, and the already modest rations had to be further shortened by a third in March 1946. In Hamburg, for instance, the average living space per capita, reduced by air raids from 13.6 square metres (146 sq ft) in 1939 to 8.3 in 1945, was further reduced to 5.4 square metres (58 sq ft) in 1949 by billeting refugees and expellees.[270] In May 1947, Hamburg trade unions organized a strike against the small rations, with protesters complaining about the rapid absorption of expellees.[271]
The US and Britain had to import food into their zones, even as Britain was financially exhausted and dependent on food imports having fought Nazi Germany for the entire war, including as the sole opponent from June 1940 to June 1941 (the period when Poland and France were defeated, the Soviet Union supported Nazi Germany, and the United States had not yet entered the war). Consequently, Britain had to incur additional debt to the US, and the US had to spend more for the survival of its zone, while the Soviets gained applause among Eastern Europeans—many of whom were impoverished by the war and German occupation—who plundered the belongings of expellees, often before they were actually expelled. Since the Soviet Union was the only power among the Allies that allowed and/or encouraged the looting and robbery in the area under its military influence, the perpetrators and profiteers blundered into a situation in which they became dependent on the perpetuation of Soviet rule in their countries to not be dispossessed of the booty and to stay unpunished. With ever more expellees sweeping into post-war Germany, the Allies moved towards a policy of
When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, a law was drafted on 24 August 1952 that was primarily intended to ease the financial situation of the expellees. The law, termed the Lastenausgleichsgesetz, granted partial compensation and easy credit to the expellees; the loss of their civilian property had been estimated at 299.6 billion
"War children" of German ancestry in Western and Northern Europe
In countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the war, sexual relations between Wehrmacht soldiers and local women resulted in the birth of significant numbers of children. Relationships between German soldiers and local women were particularly common in countries whose population was not dubbed "inferior" (Untermensch) by the Nazis. After the Wehrmacht's withdrawal, these women and their children of German descent were often ill-treated.[276][277][278]
Legacy of the expulsions
With at least[279] 12 million[97][280][281] Germans directly involved, possibly 14 million[260][282] or more,[283] it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in European history[281][284][285] and the largest among the post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe (which displaced 20 to 31 million people in total).[280]
The exact number of Germans expelled after the war is still unknown, because most recent research provides a combined estimate which includes those who were evacuated by the German authorities, fled or were killed during the war. It is estimated that between 12 and 14 million German citizens and foreign ethnic Germans and their descendants were displaced from their homes. The exact number of casualties is still unknown and is difficult to establish due to the chaotic nature of the last months of the war. Census figures placed the total number of ethnic Germans still living in Eastern Europe in 1950, after the major expulsions were complete, at approximately 2.6 million, about 12 percent of the pre-war total.[111]
The events have been usually classified as population transfer,
The expulsions created major social disruptions in the receiving territories, which were tasked with providing housing and employment for millions of
A 1993 novel, Summer of Dead Dreams, written by Harry Thürk—a German author who left Upper Silesia annexed by Poland shortly after the war had ended—contained graphic depictions of the treatment of Germans by Soviets and Poles in Thürk's hometown of Prudnik. It depicted the maltreatment of Germans while also acknowledging German guilt, as well as Polish animosity toward Germans and, in specific instances, friendships between Poles and Germans despite the circumstances. Thürk's novel, when serialized in Polish translation by the Tygodnik Prudnicki ("Prudnik Weekly") magazine, was met with criticism from some Polish residents of Prudnik, but also with praise, because it revealed to many local citizens that there had been a post-war German ghetto in the town and addressed the tensions between Poles and Soviets in post-war Poland. The serialization was followed by an exhibition on Thurk's life in Prudnik's town museum.[308]
Status in international law
International law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Before World War II, several major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as the
There is now general consensus about the legal status of involuntary population transfers: "Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law."[314] No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-way transfers, since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others. Although the signatories to the Potsdam Agreements and the expelling countries may have considered the expulsions to be legal under international law at the time, there are historians and scholars in international law and human rights who argue that the expulsions of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe should now be considered as episodes of ethnic cleansing, and thus a violation of human rights. For example, Timothy V. Waters argues in "On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing" that if similar circumstances arise in the future, the precedent of the expulsions of the Germans without legal redress would also allow the future ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law.[315]
In the 1970s and 1980s, a
In November 2000, a major conference on ethnic cleansing in the 20th century was held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, along with the publication of a book containing participants' conclusions.[319]
The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Berlin Centre
A Centre Against Expulsions was to be[when?] set up in Berlin by the German government based on an initiative and with active participation of the German Federation of Expellees. The centre's creation has been criticized in Poland.[323] It was strongly opposed by the Polish government and president Lech Kaczyński. Former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk restricted his comments to a recommendation that Germany pursue a neutral approach at the museum.[323][324] The museum apparently did not materialize. The only project along the same lines in Germany is "Visual Sign" (Sichtbares Zeichen) under the auspices of the Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung (SFVV).[325] Several members of two consecutive international Advisory (scholar) Councils criticised some activities of the foundation and the new Director Winfried Halder resigned. Dr Gundula Bavendamm is a current Director.[326]
Historiography
British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that although the expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe was done in an extremely brutal manner that could not be defended, the basic aim of expelling the ethnic German population of Poland and Czechoslovakia was justified by the subversive role played by the German minorities before World War II.[327] Evans wrote that under the Weimar Republic the vast majority of ethnic Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia made it clear that they were not loyal to the states they happened to live under, and under Nazi rule, the German minorities in Eastern Europe were willing tools of German foreign policy.[327] Evans also wrote that many areas of eastern Europe featured a jumble of various ethnic groups aside from Germans, and that it was the destructive role played by ethnic Germans as instruments of Nazi Germany that led to their expulsion after the war.[327] Evans concluded by positing that the expulsions were justified as they put an end to a major problem that plagued Europe before the war; that gains to the cause of peace were a further benefit of the expulsions; and that if the Germans had been allowed to remain in Eastern Europe after the war, West Germany would have used their presence to make territorial claims against Poland and Czechoslovakia, and that given the Cold War, this could have helped cause World War III.[327]
Historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that the expulsions of the Sudeten Germans was justified as the Germans themselves had scrapped the Munich Agreement.[328]
Political issues
In January 1990, the president of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, requested forgiveness on his country's behalf, using the term expulsion rather than transfer.[329][330] Public approval for Havel's stance was limited; in a 1996 opinion poll, 86% of Czechs stated they would not support a party that endorsed such an apology.[331] The expulsion issue surfaced in 2002 during the Czech Republic's application for membership in the European Union, since the authorisation decrees issued by Edvard Beneš had not been formally renounced.[332]
In October 2009, Czech president
On 20 June 2018, which was World Refugee Day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that there had been "no moral or political justification" for the post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans.[335]
Misuse of graphical materials
Nazi propaganda pictures produced during the Heim ins Reich and pictures of expelled Poles are sometimes published to show the flight and expulsion of Germans.[336]
See also
- Generalplan Ost
- Dutch annexation of German territory after World War II
- Expulsion of Poles by Germany
- Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany
- German reparations for World War II
- Internment of German Americans
- Istrian-Dalmatian exodus
- Operation Paperclip
- Persecution of Germans
- Population transfer in the Soviet Union
- Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
- Treaty of Zgorzelec
- Victor Gollancz
- War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II
- World War II evacuation and expulsion
- Deportation of Germans from Latin America during World War II
- Displaced persons camps in post–World War II Europe
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- ^ Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch & Holm Sundhaussen, Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung, p. 787.
- ^ Bogdan Musiał, "Niechaj Niemcy się przesuną". Stalin, Niemcy i przesunięcie granic Polski na Zachód, Arcana nr 79 (1/2008)
- ^ Tragic was the fate of Czechoslovaks of German ethnicity and Jewish religion. They were clearly victims of the Nazi occupation but nevertheless qualified to be denaturalized if they had declared their native language to be German in the census of 1930. In 1945 Czechoslovakian nationalists and communists regarded this entry in the forms as an act of disloyalty against the republic. Cf. Reuven Assor, ""Deutsche Juden" in der Tschechoslowakei 1945–1948", Odsun: Die Vertreibung der Sudetendeutschen; Dokumentation zu Ursachen, Planung und Realisierung einer 'ethnischen Säuberung' in der Mitte Europas, 1848/49 – 1945/46, Alois Harasko & Roland Hoffmann (eds.), Munich: Sudetendeutsches Archiv, 2000, pp. 299seqq.
- ^ Wojciech Roszkowski, Historia Polski 1914–1997, Warsaw: 1998 PWNW, p. 171.
- ^ a b Maria Wardzyńska, Polacy – wysiedleni, wypędzeni i wyrugowani przez III Rzeszę, Warsaw 2004.
- ISBN 978-3-525-36288-4.
- ^ "Text of Churchill Speech in Commons on Soviet-Polish Frontier". The United Press. 15 December 1944.
{{cite journal}}
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(help) - ISBN 978-1-56000-927-6., probably short-lived, but it will be unavoidable. And I think this will be a sort of encouragement for all the Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong.
I would rather be frank with you, Mr. President. Nothing on earth will stop the Poles from taking some kind of revenge on the Germans after the Nazi collapse. There will be some terrorism
- ^ ISBN 3-8258-8033-8, [2]; Quote from source (German original): "'Jetzt werden die Deutschen erfahren, was das Prinzip der kollektiven Verantwortung bedeutet', hatte das Organ der polnischen Geheimarmee im Juli 1944 geschrieben. Und der Befehlshaber der 2. Polnischen Armee wies seine Soldaten am 24. Juni 1945 an, mit den Deutschen 'so umzugehen, wie diese es mit uns getan haben', so daß 'die Deutschen von selbst fliehen und Gott danken, daß sie ihren Kopf gerettet haben'. Politiker jeglicher Couleur, Flugblätter und Zeitungen beider Staaten riefen nach Vergeltung für die brutale deutsche Besatzungspolitik" (English translation: "'Now the Germans will get to know the meaning of the principle of collective responsibility', the outlet of the Polish secret army wrote in July 1944. And the commander of the 2nd Polish Army instructed his soldiers on 24 June 1945, to 'treat' the Germans 'how they had treated us', causing 'the Germans to flee on their own and thank God for having saved their lives'. Politicians of all political wings, leaflets and newspapers of both states [i.e. PL and CS] called for revenge for the brutal occupation policy.")
- ^ a b c Timothy Snyder, Journal of Cold War Studies, volume 5, issue 3, Forum on Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948, edited by Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak, Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001; Quote: "By 1943, for example, Polish and Czech politicians across the political spectrum were convinced of the desirability of the postwar expulsion of Germans. After 1945 a democratic Czechoslovak government and a Communist Polish government pursued broadly similar policies toward their German minorities. (...) Taken together, and in comparison to the chapters on the Polish expulsion of the Germans, these essays remind us of the importance of politics in the decision to engage in ethnic cleansing. It will not do, for example, to explain the similar Polish and Czechoslovak policies by similar experiences of occupation. The occupation of Poland was incomparably harsher, yet the Czechoslovak policy was (if anything) more vengeful. (...) Revenge is a broad and complex set of motivations and is subject to manipulation and appropriation. The personal forms of revenge taken against people identified as Germans or collaborators were justified by broad legal definitions of these groups..." FAS.harvard.edu; accessed 6 December 2014.
- ]
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- ^ a b Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War Archived 1 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 39, cadmus.iue.it; accessed 25 May 2015.
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- ^ a b the documentary Black Tulip, geschiedenis.vpro.nl; accessed 26 May 2015.(in Dutch)
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- ^ OCLC 66381296. Archived from the original on 31 July 2017. Retrieved 31 July 2017. [3] Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machinepp. 455-60,466
- ^ Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, Theodor Schieder (compiler) in collaboration with A. Diestelkamp [et al.], Bonn, Bundesministerium für Vertriebene (ed.), 1953, pp. 78, 155.
- ^ Theodor Schieder (compiler) in collaboration with A. Diestelkamp [et al.], Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, vol. 1 Bonn, Bundesministerium für Vertriebene (ed.), 1953, p. 160.
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- ^ Naimark, Russian in Germany. p. 75, reference 31: "a citation from the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party, 20–21 May 1945."
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- ^ Kosiński, Leszek (1960). "Pochodzenie terytorialne ludności Ziem Zachodnich w 1950 r." [Territorial origins of inhabitants of the Western Lands in year 1950.] (PDF). Dokumentacja Geograficzna (in Polish). 2. Warsaw.
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- ^ Belzyt, Leszek (1996). "Zur Frage des nationalen Bewußtseins der Masuren im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (auf der Basis statistischer Angaben)". Journal of East Central European Studies (in German and English). 45 (1). Archived from the original on 6 February 2019. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
- ^ a b c d Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War Archived 1 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 29; accessed 26 May 2015.
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- ^ Witold Sienkiewicz & Grzegorz Hryciuk, Wysiedlenia, wypędzenia i ucieczki 1939–1959: atlas ziem Polski: Polacy, Żydzi, Niemcy, Ukraińcy, Warsaw: Demart, 2008, p. 187, (in Polish); "Efektem były liczne zgony, których nie można dokładnie określic z powodu brak statystyk lub ich fałszowania. Okresowo mogly one sięgać kilkudziesięciu procent osadzonych. Szacunki mówią o 200–250 tys internowanych Niemców i ludności rodzimej, a czego zginąć moglo od 15 do aż 60tys. osób."
- ^ Sakson. Mazurzy - społeczność pogranicza. Wydawnictwo Instytutu Zachodniego. Poznań 1990
- ^ Douglas, R.M., Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 275-276
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- ^ a b Kurt W. Böhme, Gesucht wird – Die dramatische Geschichte des Suchdienstes, Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1965, p. 274(in German)
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- ^ Reichling, Gerhard. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, part 1, Bonn: 1986 (revised edition 1995), p. 33(in German)
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- ISBN 1-57607-796-9: "The Poles began driving Germans out of their houses with a brutality that had by then almost become commonplace: People were beaten, shot and raped. Even Soviet soldiers were taken aback, and some protected the German civilians."
- ^ Overy, ibid. as: from East Prussia – 1.4 million to West Germany, 609,000 to East Germany; from West Prussia – 230,000 to West Germany, 61,000 to East Germany; from the former German provinces east of the Oder-Neisse line, encompassing most of Silesia, Pomerania and East Brandenburg – 3.2 million to West Germany, 2 million to East Germany.
- ^ Gerhard Reichling, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, part 1, Bonn: 1995, p. 17
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- ^ Gerhard Reichling, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, part 1, Bonn: 1995, p. 23.
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- ^ Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees,The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War Archived 1 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine, cadmus.iue.it, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1; accessed 26 May 2015.
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Heinemann posits that 250,000 is the number given by primary sources, but dismisses as too high the 320,000 estimate given by Ingeborg Fleischmann, Die Deutschen, pp. 284–286. - ^ ISBN 92-871-2725-5.(in French)
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- ^ a b c Rüdiger Overmans, "Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevölkerung durch Flucht und Vertreibung". A parallel Polish-language summary translation was also included. This paper was a presentation at an academic conference in Warsaw in 1994: Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik, XXI.
- ^ a b R.J. Rummel.Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 (1,863,000 in post war expulsions and an additional 1.0 million in wartime flight)
- ^ ISBN 1-4039-7308-3, pp. 152- (2,111,000)
- ^ ISBN 0-674-92975-6, pp. 75– (2,000,000)
- ^ ISBN 0-8094-3411-3, pp. 21, 81– (2,000,000)
- ^ ISBN 90-247-5044-X, pp. 33- (2,225,000)
- ^ Hermann Kinder, Werner Hilgemann & Ernest A. Menze, Anchor Atlas of World History, vol. 2: 1978– (3,000,000)
- ^ a b Encyclopædia Britannica: 1992– (2,384,000)
- ^ Kurt Glaser & Stephan Possony, Victims of Politics (1979) – (2,111,000)
- ^ Sir John Keegan, The Second World War, 1989 - (3.1 million including 1.0 million during wartime flight)
- ^ a b Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, The Expulsion of German Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1. pp. 4– (2,000,000)
- ^ Wirtschaft und Statistik April 1950
- ^ Pistohlkors, Gert : Informationen zur Klärung der Schicksale von Flüchtlingen aus den. Vertreibungsgebieten östlich von Oder und Neiße. Published in Schulze, Rainer, Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte : Bilanzierung der Forschung und Perspektiven für die künftige Forschungsarbeit Hildesheim : A. Lax, 1987 pages 65-66
- ^ Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, Bonn 1954-1961 Vol 1-5
- ^ Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50.Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. - Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1958 pages 38 and 45/46
- ^ The Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, Page 78
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- ^ Gerhard Reichning, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, Teil 1, Bonn 1995.(revised edition) Page 36
- ^ Kinder, Hermann & Werner Hilgemann & Ernest A. Menze; Anchor Atlas of World History, Vol. 2: 1978– (3,000,000)
- ^ Kurt Glaser & Stephan Possony, Victims of Politics (1979) – (2,111,000)
- ^ Sir John Keegan, The Second World War (1989) – (3.1 million including 1.0 million during wartime flight)
- ^ Ingo Haar, Süddeutsche Zeitung 14. November 2006, "Hochgerechnetes Unglück, Die Zahl der deutschen Opfer nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wird übertrieben"
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- ISBN 978-3-506-77044-8
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- ^ ""Haar"-sträubende Zahlenklitterung des Historikers Ingo Haar". Bund der Vertriebenen, Pressemitteilung vom 17 November 2006.
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- ^ "Zahl der Vertreibungsopfer ist neu zu erforschen: Rüdiger Overmans", Deutschlandfunk; accessed 6 December 2014.(in German)
- ^ Rüdiger Overmans, "Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevölkerung durch Flucht und Vertreibung" (a parallel Polish summary translation was also included; this paper was a presentation at an academic conference in Warsaw in 1994), Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik, XXI (1994).(in Polish)
- Warsaw, Polandin 1994), Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik, XXI.
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- ^ Ingo Haar, "Hochgerechnetes Unglück, Die Zahl der deutschen Opfer nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wird übertrieben", Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 November 2006.
- ^ Ingo Haar, Die Deutschen "Vertreibungsverluste –Zur Entstehung der "Dokumentation der Vertreibung - Tel Aviver Jahrbuch, 2007, Tel Aviv : Universität Tel Aviv, Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften, Forschungszentrum für Geschichte; Gerlingen [Germany] : Bleicher Verlag
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A reappraisal of the German expulsions from Eastern Europe became possible after 1989 and the collapse of communism. This contributed to a willingness on the part of Eastern European societies to remember the events of 1944 to 1948. An increasing and fruitful collaboration between Germany and the "affected" countries in the east was reflected in growing political contacts and in scholarly exchanges.
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External links
- A documentary film about the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary
- Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law (PDF)
- Interest of the United States in the transfer of German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, and Austria, Foreign relations of the United States: diplomatic papers, Volume II (1945) pp. 1227–1327 (Note: Page 1227 begins with a Czechoslovak document dated 23 November 1944, several months before Czechoslovakia was "liberated" by the Soviet Army.) (Main URL, wisc.edu)
- Frontiers and areas of administration. Foreign relations of the United States (the Potsdam Conference), Volume I (1945), wisc.edu
- History and Memory: mass expulsions and transfers 1939-1945-1949, M. Rutowska, Z. Mazur, H. Orłowski
- Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950
- "Unsere Heimat ist uns ein fremdes Land geworden..." Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neiße 1945–1950. Dokumente aus polnischen Archiven. Band 1: Zentrale Behörden, Wojewodschaft Allenstein
- Dokumentation der Vertreibung (in German)
- Displaced Persons Act of 1948
- Flucht und Vertreibung Gallerie- Flight & Expulsion Gallery
- Deutsche Vertriebenen – German Expulsions (Histories & Documentation) Archived 1 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine