Austreibung Expulsion- 2
(The Atrocities of Ethnic Cleansing!!!)
(The Atrocities of Ethnic Cleansing!!!)
Expulsions - 2
| The Day I Will Never Forget May 17, 1945 "LET BYGONES BE BYGONES" GENERAL EISENHOWER 1950 By Karl Hausner I attended college in Landsberg when General Eisenhower traveled from campus to campus returning to the German people the military honor, which was removed from the German troops by the Allies as a result of the Morgenthau Plan. It called for the unconditional surrender and the total destruction of Germany. What went wrong that all of a sudden, we Germans, were was commonly called "Uncle Joe" by Roosevelt. The Nuernberg Trial and all the other trials of Nazi war criminals, or criminals against humanity, were the climax of victory by the Allies. In retrospect, we must admit neither one of these trials enhanced true justice at that time, or for the future. While some of these Nazis should have been severely punished, as they were, at least a neutral court of law should have tried them. Some of the concentration guards, who actually had very little to do with either concentration camps or the crimes committed, were sentenced to death, and in some cases, people who were not even in such positions were executed. After the execution, some were exhonorated. In Landsberg, at the penitentiary, over "360 Nazi criminals" were hanged. At the same time, General Eisenhower spoke these words: "Let bygones be bygones". They were busy finishing the job of execution in spite of the changing circumstances. WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE GREAT ALLIANCE? Joseph Stalin at Pottsdam in 1945 got more than he expected. It is hard to believe, that Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Churchill were so ignorant that they believed Stalin had changed to become a humanitarian. His plan was to bring Communism to the whole world. First to Germany, then France, Italy, Britain and at the end, the rest of it. Although President Roosevelt died too early to see the blunder he had created, President Truman still had the opportunity to correct some of the mistakes, or perhaps even international crimes against humanity, for which many Nazis were executed. First, they permitted the Soviet Union, after Germany had surrendered, to declare war on Japan just a few weeks before the total end. By this military action, Stalin was able to take all the weaponry from the Japanese and give it to the Communist Chinese. Also he prepared them to help the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese for their upcoming attacks. In a short time, Mao Tse Tung claimed victory over the Nationalists in China and China became Communistic. Dividing of Korea and Vietnam were other blunders, perhaps criminal decisions, which Churchill and Truman agreed to. In both cases, it led to war, not just for the natives, but involving American troops and a great deal of resources. This is why Eisenhower suddenly decided to rearm Germany. OTHER INTERNATIONAL CRIMES Stalin and his Allies in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland were able to expel sixteen million German people during which many died. Other millions of non-Germans fled the Soviet occupied regions to West Germany, in the hopes of immigrating to America, Australia or wherever possible. Stalin was mistaken that the expellees, who were driven into West Germany, would become Communists. The opposite occurred and most of us expellees, became determined, not just to resist Communism, but all forms of totalitarianism. Stalin blockaded the access to Berlin, which led to the air supply bridge by the American and British Air Forces to Berlin. In 1948, the three military occupying governors in West Germany, decided to establish a semi autonomous German Government, which became known as the Federal Republic of Germany, under the able leadership of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. GERMAN SOLDIERS AGAIN WERE NEEDED Most of us young Germans had absolutely no interest in any form of military service, even as police. When the new government in West Germany was elected, they even had a hard time to recruit police officers. Nobody wanted to wear a uniform in their lives again. That was the reason why General Eisenhower had to use his influence to convince, not just the German Government, but us, young Germans, to show willingness to join the armed forces again, to defend the West from the threat of Bolshevism. It was a very unpleasant journey for General Eisenhower, because many students in German colleges and universities had spent years in the military and also a significant time in prisoner-of-war camps. These camps, in most instances, were not any better than Nazi POW camps, or concentration camps. The Western Allies cannot be commended for the way these German prisoners-of-war were treated in starvation camps so that 1.2 million of them perished after the war during 1945 and 1946. This was the situation which General Eisenhower had to reverse by saying: "Let bygones be bygones." This was also the lime between 1948 and 1952 when the United States opened its borders to German engineers to participate in the rapidly growing defense industry. This was the time when Wemer von Braun and many of his former colleagues, who worked on the German Missile Program, were moved to the United States to develop the first guided missiles even though, they all had to be members of the NSDAP, the Nazi party. In 1952, as I finished college, a priest, the pastor of Landsherg, Dr. Nikias, who spent 42 months in the Dachau Concentration Camp, recommended that I go, for a few years, to the United States, where he was a missionary in his early years, to increase my perspective of life. Within a few weeks after I applied, I had my visa and the Catholic Church found a sponsor, who was a farmer in Wisconsin, my present neighbor on the farm. The visas, we engineers received, were nicknamed Sputnik visas. Later, General Eisenhower was elected President, and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was the first American in government who understood the threat of Communism. It is hard to believe that Presidents Roosevelt and Truman could not see it. It is my opinion, they believed in socialism and world government. They believed with Stalin, that they could form such an ideal government, the United Nations. Although the United Nations has not yet achieved that dream. Fifty years later, there are still many Americans and other leaders who pursue the course of global government, global involvement and global "protection". THE FIRST AWAKENING When the Communists in Korea moved South, pushing the American troops almost out of the peninsula. General MacArthur proposed to attack the supply lines from Red China. President Truman removed him from his post, because the war in Korea was just a "police action". For some reason, over twenty military actions since World war II have been called police actions, United Nations support for freedom, for justice, Nato operating to stop ethnic cleansing, etc., etc. Wars without declaration of wars. The United States spent ten trillion dollars on military hardware between 1945 and 1990. Just think what could have been built in this country with such a sum of money. Yet, we wasted these resources for the benefit of some, especially those in the defense industry. Shortly after I had arrived in the United States, while working for International Harvester, I had to go to Germany for a few weeks. While applying for my return visa, I had to go to the Selective Service, and had it not been for my already poor eyesight, I would have been drafted into the Korean Conflict. A friend of mine, Jochen Holz, who came with me to the United States, spent his share of time in Korea, even though, as a fifteen year old, he had already been in the paramilitary service just at the end of World War II, where he barely survived. In my essays 1945 In Memory and Concentration Camps, Myths and Realities, I expanded upon the circumstances surrounding World War II and the subsequent period, including our expulsion from the Sudetenland. Since Communism did not succeed in Western Europe, because the German people refused it, they put their efforts into Africa and Central America. I just would like to draw attention to Castro in Cuba and the missile crisis under President Kennedy . In Europe, the Soviets built the Iron Curtain right through Germany, all the way down through the Balkan States. In Asia, we had the Bamboo Curtain. All these costly disasters could have been prevented if wisdom had prevailed at the end of World War II. If Churchill and Truman had insisted that Stalin withdraw his troops and influence from Poland, the Baltic Countries, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, etc., he would have had no power in 1945 to resist such demands. His army was not in any better shape than that of the Germans or the Japanese . "THE EVIL EMPIRE" President Reagan called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. He was one of the first who understood the real plan of the Soviet Union. The Star War technology, which he supported, gave the Soviets the conviction that they could not continue a superiority of military weaponry. They spent all their resources to keep pace with the developments in the United States and other Western nations. Thus, the Soviet Union and the whole Eastern Block collapsed economically, socially, politically and, of course, morally. Although West Germany had tried to convince their former enemies, and especially the Jews, that the crimes committed by the Nazis were deplorable, they paid billions to the State of Israel and to survivors. Yet, certain Jewish groups found it necessary to trademark the Holocaust as if the Nazi crimes on the Jews were the only crimes in the Twentieth Century. They are using resources to brainwash people and as Rabbi Lapin says, "This is deplorable that more American universities teach Holocaust than Jewish history." He will be the last Jew to visit the Holocaust museum, because of falsehoods displayed. Yes, it is deplorable, because all it does is keep certain statements alive which already have been weakened or disproved, as I point out in my essay. Concentration Camps, Myths and Realities. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the military threat from there diminished. The satellite countries had broken away, even the great Russian Empire crumbled. For financial reasons, the Holocaust promotion has rapidly increased, and as Professor Ralph Raico from the University of New York says, "It nazifies the German people." More recently, the Holocaust "industry" has targeted Pope Pius XII, the Vatican, the Catholic Church and even neutral Switzerland as contributors or collaborators to the Nazi Holocaust. Without question, Swiss Banks accepted, for decades and centuries, money from all kinds of people. This is what made the Swiss banking system so strong. Nobody complains that Lenin had millions stashed away there. But since Switzerland, that is the Swiss people, have voted not to join the United Nations, NATO, or the European Union, they have become an obstacle to the global government. The Catholic Church is attacked because it is resistant to certain radical agendas, which again ought to be implemented through the United Nations under the flag of population control and population assistance. Without question, there is a strong tendency to form a world government with an agenda which is anti-Christianity and anti-neutrality. Yet, the United States was founded both with Christian Doctrine and with a defensive neutrality. "Let bygones be bygones" is not necessarily a good philosophy, because if you don't know where you come from, you do not know who you are and you do not know where you are going to. We should master the history, learn from it, subscribe to the absolute truth as Jesus Christ commands us. This would be a blessing, not just for the people in the United States, but for other nations, which could form their own philosophy and lifestyle, compete with each other without conflict and not try to force all into one "great, world government". The Roman Empire fell apart. All the other empires, the British, the Spanish, the French and the Soviet, attempted the same, but they all failed. CONCLUSION Have we learned from history? It does not seem so. There are many paradoxes to "Let bygones be bygones." For over fifty years the world is still hunting for "Nazi criminals". Even simple guards of Nazi concentration camps are tried and jailed. But, on the other hand, there have been practically no trials in Russia, Czechoslovakia and all other Eastern European countries of Communist criminals who tortured and killed millions, even ten years ago. There is another major paradox. While the Jewish groups demand compensation from the Vatican and from Switzerland, they do not demand due compensation from Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries, where Jews lost their assets prior or during World War II. Obviously, these countries are not yet sufficiently wealthy. Cultivating the Holocaust, is to "unite all Jews without God", says Rabbi Lapin. It is to extract big money, not just from the German people, as Norman Finkelstein in his book "The Holocaust Industry" points out. By the way, he is Jewish. In Moscow, London, Paris, Washington and elsewhere, more and more the truth will prevail. Regrettably, the Holocaust plays into the hands of radical nationalism. If economic conditions in Eastern Europe do not quickly improve, Russia will be the next country with significant anti- semitism. Therefore, let us be honest, let us practice what we preach and let ns put the historic facts on the table, so that the next generations can have more confidence in our political leaders and in our judicial systems. ENDNOTES, RECOMMENDED READING: 1) From the Author: "1945 In Memory", "When World War II Was Over", "Concentration Camps,MythandRealities", "HitlersCross", "WhyChristiaintylosttheClilture", "World War n, a Conflict between National Socialism and International Socialism", "The Silent Majority" and other essays. 2) Alfred M. de Zayas, "The Wehnnacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945", University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. 3) Alfred M. de Zayas, "A Terrible Revenge - the Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950", St. Martin's Press, New York. 4) James Bacque, "Crimes and Mercies", the Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950, Warner Books, London. 5) James Bacque, "Other Losses", An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II, Little Brown and Company, Boston, New York, Toronto, London. 6) Ralph Franklin Keeling, "Gruesome Harvest" the Allies' Postwar War against the German People, Institute for Historical Review, Torrance, CA, ISBN: 0-939484-40-4. 7) Norman G. Finkelstein, "The Holocaust Industry", Reflection on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, VERSO, London, New York, ISBN: 1-85984-773-0. 8) James Paulding, "Brothers In The Storm", Video, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO. 9) Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War", Multnomah Publishers, Sisters, OR. ISBN: 1-57673-366-1. 10) Petr Novick, "The Holocaust in American Life", Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, New York, ISBN: 0-395-84009-0. 11) Wolfgang Juchem, "Truth and Justice Versus Lies and Hatred", Heimat Publishers, Toronto. 12) John Sack, "An Eye for an Eye", Basic Books, ISBN: 0-9675691-0-9. 13) Inglende Zway, "The Crime of being German", The Book Guild Ltd., London, ISBN: 1-85776- 204-5. 14) Patrick J. Buchanan, "A Republic Not an Empire, " Regnery Publishing, Washington, DC, ISBN: 0-89526-272-X. 15) Ernst Zuendel, "Ethnic Cleansing, Then and Now", Samisdat Publishers, Toronto, Canada. 16) Erich Anton Helfert, "Valley of the Shadow", Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, CA, ISBN; 0- 88739-117-6. 17) Ralph Raico, "Nazifying the Germans", Chronicles, January 1997. Author's address: Karl Hausner 28 Concord Drive Fax: (630)543-2102 Oak Brook, IL 60523-1767 E-mail: medical@elmed.com ========================== The many faces of the Sudetenland By David Vaughan Usually in Czech Books we discuss poetry or prose, but for this week's programme we look at an intriguing book that fits neither category. Instead it is a collection of interviews, coming from a part of the Czech Republic that has gone through huge and sometimes traumatic changes over the last sixty or seventy years. I talk with two people who were very closely involved in the book, Matej Spurny and Ondrej Matejka. Matej Spurny and Ondrej MatejkaFirst of all, Matej, tell us a little bit about the book. Its title is "Sudetske osudy", which could be roughly translated as "Sudeten stories". Matej Spurny: "These are dialogues with seventeen people, most of whom live in the Sudetenland - or the borderland of the Czech Republic - today." This is a part of the country that for many of our listeners will have very strong historical echoes. The Sudetenland was the part of Czechoslovakia that had a predominantly German- speaking population before the war. MS: "Most of the Germans were expelled after the war, and just a few of them - mostly Germans who had Czech wives or vice-versa - could stay, as well as a few antifascists and some Germans who worked in a factory where they were needed, but these were just a few thousand people. The first part of the book is made up of interviews with these people." Matej SpurnyJust to give us an idea - we are talking about a huge area of this country, and when you say that the Germans were expelled, we are talking about the expulsion literally of millions of people, aren't we? MS: "Yes, we are talking about the expulsion of three or three-and-a-half million people, and this region makes up a third of today's Czech Republic." How many Germans did stay? MS: "About three hundred thousand Germans remained, but most of them left the country in the sixties. Today there are fewer than fifty thousand Germans." As you say, the first third of the book is made up of interviews with people who lived in the Sudetenland before the war. Are these just Sudeten Germans, and are they just those who stayed? MS: "There are three interviews with Sudeten Germans. One of them had to leave after the war as a child. What is interesting is that he came back in the 1990s and today he lives in the Sudetenland again. Then there are two interviews with German women who could stay, then one interview with a Czech woman who lived in the Sudetenland before the war, because there were also thousands of Czech people living there, and there are two further women - one Czech-German, the other German-Jewish. So they are very interesting stories from this dramatic time." Tell me something about their stories. MS: "The first story - the German man who had to leave - is sort of a typical story of a Sudeten German, because millions of them had to leave, most to West Germany. They built their lives in West Germany somehow. The other people, the mixed families, also constitute a huge theme in this area, because thousands of families were somehow mixed, of Czech- Jewish-German origin, and in these years their lives were very dramatic and very complicated. So these are mostly not very happy stories." Many of the Germans who stayed now have grown-up children - or even grown-up grandchildren. Do they still speak German? MS: "Mostly not, or maybe they speak it but it's just a foreign language for them. There are too few Germans today to keep the society somehow compact, and the communist regime made sure that they couldn't live in one place." So this is the first group of people who you interviewed in the book. Who were in the second and third groups? MS: "I think the second part of the book is even more interesting for the Czech society to read about, because these are people, mostly Czech people, who came from the eastern countries, at that time from the Soviet Union or Romania. These were people whose ancestors had emigrated to Ukraine or Romania etc in the 18th or 19th century, and after the war - with this Slavic ideology - it was said that it's good if these people come back. Some of them wanted to also, and here was the Sudetenland, which was quite empty after the expulsion of the Germans. Some two hundred thousand people like that came to the Sudetenland - and to southern Slovakia also - after the Second World War in the years 1945-48. We spoke with some of these people. It is interesting because they were Czech, most of them spoke Czech or Slovak, but they grew up in a totally different society and culture. Most of them didn't know electricity and so on, and they came to the Sudetenland and had somehow to live together with the Czech people and the few Germans who were still there." MS: "The third group is actually the largest group in today's Sudetenland. These are the Czechs, and most of the Czechs interviewed in our book are people who came to the Sudetenland directly after the Second World War. One or two are actually communists, who came to build the new land with a lot of enthusiasm. There is one man who is a dissident who looked for some place where he could hide from the communists. So these are very different sides of the stories of the Sudetenland." I'd also like to ask you about your own story, because you actually come from the Sudetenland. That is where you grew up. MS: "I was born in Prague, but when I was three years old I went with my parents to the Giant Mountains, which are in the north-northeast of Bohemia - so right in this region - and certainly this was a very important motivation for me to ask some questions myself: what is the history of this country, why are there so few people whose families were already living here before the war, and that was how I came to this theme." When you were growing up in the 1980s in the mountains, were there still - and are there still today - fragments of the old world? It's very hard for somebody from outside to imagine what it is like to live in a place where ninety percent or maybe more than ninety percent of the population has just disappeared and been replaced. It's extraordinary to imagine it. It must be a strange place to grow up. MS: "I think that for most people who live there it is not a strange place. It's just a normal place where people live for years, but maybe if you are sensitive or if you look around a bit, then you feel there is something different, something strange. There are also a few people, one of them my teacher - who is also interviewed in this book - from mixed families or even German people." This is your teacher from primary school? Ondrej MatejkaMS: "Yes, that is my teacher from primary school, who a bit later told me a lot about the history and about her family, which had been living in Pec [pod Snezkou] - in this village - since ages actually." This isn't the only book which you have produced about the border regions of the Czech Republic. I'd like to ask you a bit more about how your interest came about and what other projects you have been doing as part of your interest in the region. And for that I'd like to turn to Ondrej Matejka. Ondrej Matejka: "Our biggest project up to now is called 'Das verschwundene Sudetenland - Zmizele Sudety'. We could translate it as the 'Disappeared Sudetenland'. Our point is that we just wanted to show that there is a big civilization, actually a disappeared civilization of Sudeten Germans, a civilization hundreds and hundreds of years old, and that after the war this civilization, this culture, just disappeared." The way that you bring that across in the book 'Disappeared Sudetenland' is very powerful. You place photographs of what it looked like before next to the same scene as it looks today. In some cases you have a photograph showing a whole village - and in the picture you can see the life of the village, but then in the next photograph - as it looks today - there is nothing left, there is literally just a field. OM: "It's very effective, because you can in very simple ways just see that many, many villages disappeared, that the people disappeared, and that means that also that the culture connected with the people living there has disappeared. For Czechs, and for Czech society, this kind of culture, this German culture, is almost totally unknown. For most of the Czechs the Sudetenland is synonymous with a land which is somehow destroyed. So we have tried to explore the rich history of this country and to show it to Czechs, not only because we want to be nostalgic. Our goal is to show that there are some traditions that maybe we could connect with. We could try to keep them alive and use them for us." I would like to ask both of you about the association that you have founded, called "Antikomplex", which is exploring some of the issues that you have been talking about. Up until the fall of communism any discussion of this topic was pretty much taboo, wasn't it? Have you found it difficult to create a non-political foundation on which you can build your research and your work? OM: "It was difficult for us to find the right way how to discuss it, because at the beginning we were trying to discuss these topics in a rather political way, and I would say that we weren't very successful. After three or four years, we tried to find a new way and this new way is a non-political one, showing what we have lost. We have seen that it works." Matej, what sort of responses have you encountered in your work? MS: "We can see that Czech society is changing, because even in the 1990s the Sudeten question was a political-historical question and speaking about this question meant a conflict, which today is no longer the case. When we created this exhibition 'Disappeared Sudetenland', there were just a few negative reactions, but these are maybe five percent of people who come to our events." But the name of your association, "Antikomplex" is slightly provocative, isn't it? It is implying that there is a prevailing complex on the Czech side about the history of the borderlands and the expulsion of the Germans. MS: "Yes, this title of our association comes of course from when it was first founded in 1998. At that time we were about eighteen or nineteen years old and it was our rebellious time, when we were very critical of Czech society. We had a theory, which I think is not false, that the problems which we have with the Germans and with speaking in a critical way about our own history also come from a lack of self-confidence. We have a complex that we are a small nation, there is this feeling that we shouldn't speak about our own mistakes in a critical way, because it will make us even weaker and smaller. It is a sort of inferiority complex. We wanted to fight against this complex, because we are a country and a society with a very rich history and we don't have to think that we are small and weak, but we also have to speak about our own mistakes, about the things which went wrong in our history, and we also have to show this German history of our land because that's also a part of our culture. These cultures were connected." ============================================================== Expulsion of Germans after World War Two From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The expulsion of Germans after World War II refers to the forced migration and ethnic cleansing of German nationals (Reichsdeutsche) and ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from Germany and parts of territory formerly claimed by Germany in the first three years after World War II. The policy was one of a number of expulsions in various Central and Eastern European countries which displaced and relocated a number of nationalities in addition to the Germans. Stalin had made the westward shift of borders part of his demands and these had been acceded to by the U.S. and the U.K. Initially, the U.S. and the U.K. saw the expulsions as necessary to create ethnic homogeneity and to suppress ethnic violence originating from expansion of Germans towards the East. All three Allies had agreed to the policy of the expulsions, and the Soviet Union implemented the policy with U.S. and British acquiescence.[1] The policy had been agreed to by the Allies as part of the reconfiguration of postwar Europe. [2] As the Red Army advanced towards Germany at the end of World War II, a considerable exodus of German refugees began from the areas near the front lines. Many Germans fled their areas of residence under vague and haphazardly implemented evacuation orders of the Nazi German government in 1943, 1944, and in early 1945, or based on their own decisions to leave in 1945–1948. Others remained and were later forced to leave by local authorities. However, in no East European nation were all ethnic Germans forced to leave. Census figures in 1950 place the total number of ethnic Germans still living in Eastern Europe at approximately 2.6 million, about 12 percent of the pre-war total.[3] The majority of the flights and expulsions occurred in Czechoslovakia, Poland and the European Soviet Union. Others occurred in territories of northern Yugoslavia (predominantly in the Vojvodina region), and other regions of Central and Eastern Europe. The total number of the Germans expelled after the war remains unknown, as most of the past research provided a combined estimate, including those that were evacuated by German authorities, fled or were killed during the war (see Demographic estimates of the German exodus from Eastern Europe). By some accounts, this forced migration of ethnic Germans resulted in the transfer of between 13.5-16.5 million people and was the largest of several similar post-World War II migrations orchestrated by the victorious Big Three Allied powers. However, the actual cited research places the number at just over 12 million, including all those who fled during the war or migrated later, forcibly or otherwise, to both the Western and Eastern zones of Germany and to Austria.[3] Over the course of the sixty years since the end of the war, estimates of total deaths of German civilians have ranged from 500,000 to a high of 3 million. Although the German government's official estimate of deaths due to the expulsions stood at 2.2 million for several decades, recent analyses have led some historians to conclude that the actual number of deaths attributable to the expulsions was actually much lower - in the range of 500,000 to 1.1 million. The higher figures, up to 3.2 million, typically include all war-related deaths of ethnic Germans between 1939-45, including those who served in the German armed forces.[3] The debate about the number of deaths and their cause continues to be the subject of heated controversy. More than half a century later, a controversy is spurred by contentious demands of some organizations of the expellees or their descendants, e.g. the Prussian Trust, for compensation for lost properties. Contents: 1 Background 2 Evacuation by German authorities during the war 3 Expulsions following Germany's defeat 3.1 Czechoslovakia 3.2 Poland 3.2.1 Pre-war Poland 3.2.2 Former eastern territories of Germany 3.2.2.1 Advance of the Red Army 3.2.2.2 Pre-Potsdam deportations (May - July 1945) 3.2.2.3 Post-July 1945 expulsions 3.3 Hungary 3.4 Yugoslavia 3.5 Romania 3.6 Slovenia 3.7 Russia 3.8 Lithuania 3.9 The Netherlands 3.10 Norway 3.11 Denmark 3.12 France 4 Fate of the expellees after arriving post-war Germany 5 Demographic estimates 5.1 Timing and causes of deaths 6 Reasons and justifications for the expulsions 6.1 Compensation to other countries for their for territories lost to the Soviet Union 6.2 A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states 6.3 Distrust of and enmity towards Nazi-influenced German communities 6.4 Prevention of violence between majority populations and German minorities 6.5 Punishment of ethnic Germans for Nazi aggression 6.6 Removing any basis for future extra-territorial claims by Germany 6.7 Making room for Polish expellees and returnees 6.8 Making the Polish state dependent on the Soviet Union 6.9 Property compensation in Eastern European countries 6.10 An attempt to restore demographics in areas previously occupied by the Nazis 7 Legality of the expulsions 8 Legacy of the expulsions 9 See also 10 References 11 Sources 12 Further reading 13 External links Background: Population migrations were one of the central elements of the 20th century history of Europe.[4] The concept of "ultranationalism" which required ethnic homogeneity as a basis of political order became one of the most effective and powerful ideologies of the era. This ultranationalism presented the displacement of parts of the population as a legitimate political methodology, it rationalized the use of force against minorities and made millions of human beings into victims of arbitrariness, persecution, and, often, brutal expulsion. [History of German settlement in Eastern Europe|German historical colonization of Eastern Europe]] that took place over almost a millennium resulted in a number of people of German descent living in other countries as far east as Russia. Their existence was misused by German nationalists, most notably the Nazis, to justify their aggressive territorial demands towards other countries, which led directly to the German invasion of Poland and World War II and to the Nazi genocide of Jews, Roma, and parts of the Slavic populations. As Nazi Germany invaded first Czechoslovakia and later Poland and other European nations, some members of the ethnic German minorities in those countries aided the invading forces and the subsequent Nazi occupation. These acts caused enmity against the Germans, and would later be used as part of the justification for the expulsions.[5] Many of the citizens of German descent in the German-occupied countries applied for German citizenship by registering with the Deutsche Volksliste. Some of them held important positions in the hierarchy of Nazi administration. Eventually, numbers of ethnic Germans had been complicit in the crimes of the Nazi invaders. As the Nazi regime crumbled in the face of the advancing Allied armies, they feared being targeted in reprisal for their crimes and so sought to flee to Germany proper. Other ethnic Germans were motivated by atrocities perpetrated by some in the advancing Soviet army, partially by soldiers exacting revenge for what German armed forces had done in their homeland. Some Soviet soldiers committed rapes as reported in numerous German accounts, medical reports and ex-forced laborers' accounts. News of these atrocities were exaggerated and spread by the German propaganda machine like the Nemmersdorf massacre. Evacuation by German authorities during the war: The plans to evacuate some German populations westwards from Eastern Europe and from some cities in the Eastern Gaue of Greater Germany were prepared by various Nazi authorities towards the end of the war. In most cases, however, their implementation was either delayed until Soviet and allied forces had already advanced into the areas to be evacuated, or it was prohibited entirely by the Nazi apparatus. The responsibility for leaving millions of Germans in these areas until combat conditions overwhelmed them can be attributed directly to both the draconian measures taken by the Nazis towards the end of the war against anyone even suspected of 'defeatist' attitudes [such as evacuation was considered] and the fanaticism of many Nazi functionaries in their witless support of useless 'no retreat' orders. The first mass movement of German civilians in the eastern territories was composed of both spontaneous flight and organized evacuation starting in the summer of 1944 and continuing through spring of 1945. Most of the evacuation efforts commenced in January 1945, when Soviet forces were already at the Eastern border of Greater Germany. About six million Germans were evacuated from the areas east of the Oder- Neisse line before Red Army and Polish Army took control of the region[6]. Many of those tried to return when the fighting in their homelands ended. Before June 1, 1945, some 400,000 crossed the Oder and Neisse rivers eastward before Polish authorities closed the river crossings, another 800,000 entered Silesia from Czechoslovakia[7]. Expulsions following Germany's defeat: Expulsions that took place before the Allies agreed on the actual terms at the Potsdam Conference are referred to as "wild" expulsions (German: Wilde Vertreibungen). They were conducted by military and civilian authorities in Soviet occupied post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia in the spring and summer of 1945.[8]. These actions gave way in spring 1946 to a series of larger, better organized, and less lethal "forced resettlements" which continued through 1947. A final major wave of resettlement resumed in 1948 and 1949. If the participants of the Potsdam Conference envisioned "orderly population transfers", the reality on the ground turned out to beanything but that. Any transfer of millions of people is likely to be difficult even in the best of circumstances. Attempting a forced transfer amidst the chaos, destruction and privation of postwar Europe could only result in a humanitarian catastrophe. The Potsdam Agreement called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans between American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones in the post World War II Germany. In actuality, nearly twice as many expelled Germans found refuge in the occupation zones that later formed "West Germany" than in "East Germany" (Soviet Zone), and large numbers of German expellees eventually went to other countries of the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Spain. As part of the nationalization that all citizens in Communist countries faced, property in the affected territory that belonged to Germany and Germans was confiscated and transferred to the Soviet Union, nationalized or redistributed among the local population. It is worth noting that the expulsion was not always indiscriminate. In Czechoslovakia, large numbers of skilled Sudeten German workmen were forced to remain to labor for the country.[9] Likewise in the Opole (Oppeln) region in Upper Silesia, natives who declared themselves as belonging to Polish nationality were allowed to stay. In fact, some of them (though not all of them) had uncertain national identity or considered themselves to be Germans. Their status as a national minority was accepted in 1955, along with state help in regard to economic assistance and education.[10] Flight and expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia during and after World War II: During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, especially after the Nazis' bloody reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, most of the Czech resistance groups demanded a solution to the "German problem" which would have to be solved by transfer/expulsion. These demands were adopted by the Government-in-Exile which, beginning in 1943, sought the support of the Allies for this proposal.[12] The final agreement for the transfer of the German minority however was not reached until 2 August 1945 at the end of Potsdam Conference. In the months following the end of the war, "wild" expulsion occurred between May and August 1945. These "wild" expulsions were encouraged by polemical speeches made by several Czechoslovak statesmen. The "wild" expulsions were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers. In some cases, though, they were initiated by or conducted with the assistance of the regular army.[13] The regular transfer according the Potsdam agreements proceeded from 25 January 1946 until October of that year. An estimated 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone of what would become West Germany. A little over 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone (which later became East Germany).[14] About 250,000 ethnic German anti-fascists and those ethnic Germans crucial for industries were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia.[3] Estimates of casualties among the expellees range between 20,000 and 200,000 people, depending on source.[15] These casualties include violent deaths and suicides, deaths in internment camps [15] and natural causes.[16] Of these, several thousand died violently during the "wild" expulsion and many more died from hunger and illness as a consequence thereof. Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II: At the Yalta Conference, the Allies agreed to place certain territories that had been part of Germany under Polish and Soviet administration. Upon gaining control of these lands, the Polish and Soviet authorities started to expel the German population from the so-called Regained Territories. The Polish minority in those territories (according to Polish sources 1,3 million Poles in 1939, increased during the war by millions of Polish slave workers taken by Germany[17], while in 1925 in this area 676.000 people gave Polish as their native language [1]) was then increased to majority by moving in Polish citizens who had been expelled from the former eastern territories of Poland (Kresy Wschodnie), which had now been annexed by the Soviet Union. Pre-war Poland: On February 6, 1945, the Soviet NKVD ordered the mobilization of all German men (17 to 50 years old) in the Soviet-controlled territories, many of whom were then transported to the Soviet Union for forced labor. In the East German territories, which the Soviet authorities had put under Polish administration, the Soviets did not always distinguish between Poles and Germans and often mistreated them alike.[18] Of the pre-war ethnic German population of about 1.4 million: 420,000 migrated, evacuated or were expelled to Western Germany; 268,000 to Eastern Germany; and 431,000 still lived in Poland in 1950. Many were prior to their expulsion for years used as forced labor in Polish camps such as those run by Salomon Morel and Czesław Gęborski. For example Central Labour Camp Jaworzno, Central Labour Camp Potulice, Łambinowice, Zgoda labour camp and others. The real estate property left by the expellees was nationalized by the communist government just like other private property regardless of ethnic background. Former eastern territories of Germany: Advance of the Red Army: Throughout 1944 and into the first months of 1945, as the Red Army advanced through the countries of Eastern Europe and the provinces of Eastern Germany, some Soviet and allied troops (as well as nationalist militias and native populations who had suffered under the Nazis) exacted revenge on ethnic Germans and German nationals. While many Germans had already fled ahead of the advancing Soviet Army, millions of Reichs- and Volksdeutsche remained in East and West Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, the Sudetenland, and in pockets throughout Central and Eastern Europe. German propaganda under Joseph Goebbels controlled and spun, at least partially, information regarding Red Army atrocities. A number of historians have expressed skepticism, backed up by historical study, regarding the extent of the so-called Nemmersdorf massacre in this context. The Nazi propaganda machine disseminated overblown descriptions of this event, in gruesome and graphic detail, to boost the motivation of German soldiers. Julius Streicher published The Horror in the East in Der Stürmer, #8/1945. Pre-Potsdam deportations (May - July 1945): In 1945, the former German Silesian, Pomeranian and East-Prussian territories were occupied by Polish and Russian military forces. Early expulsions in Poland were undertaken by the Polish Communist military authorities even before the Potsdam Conference. To ensure territorial incorporation into Poland, Polish Communists ordered that Germans were to be expelled. "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multinational ones," a citation from the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party, May 20- 21, 1945.[19] Germans were defined as either Reichsdeutsche, people enlisted in 1st or 2nd Volksliste groups, and those of the 3rd group, who held German citizenship. The early expulsions were often more brutal than the organized population transfer that came afterwards. Sources suggest that the expulsions in Poland were not as brutal as those in Czechoslovakia.[20] However, one source, Russians in Germany states that, according to a Soviet soldier: "Polish soldiers relate to German women as to free booty".[21] Post-July 1945 expulsions: The Soviet Union transferred territories to the east of the Oder-Neisse Line to Poland in July 1945. Subsequent to this, most Germans were expelled to the territories west of the Oder-Neisse Line. The approximate totals of those evacuated, migrated, or expelled from East Prussia between 1944–1950 are: 1.4 million to Western Germany, 609,000 to Eastern Germany; from West Prussia: 230,000 to Western Germany, 61,000 to Eastern Germany; from the former German area East of the Oder-Neisse: 3.2 million to Western Germany, 2 million to Eastern Germany.[22] Hungary: In Hungary the persecution of the German minority began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet Commander-in-Chief ordered expulsions. Three percent of the German pre-war population (appr. 20,000 people) had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many of them returned to their homes the next spring. In January 1945 the Soviet Army collected 32,000 ethnic Germans and expelled them to the Soviet Union for slave labor. Many of them died there as a result of hardships and ill-treatment. On 29 December 1945, the new Hungarian Government ordered the expulsion of every person who had declared him/herself German in the 1941 census, or was a member of the Volksbund, the SS or any other armed German organisation. In accordance with this decree, mass expulsions began. The first wagon departed from Budaörs (Wudersch) on 19 January 1946 with 5788 people. Some 185,000 to 200,000 German-speaking Hungarian citizens were deprived of their rights and all possessions, and expelled to the Western zone of Germany. Up to July 1948, a further 50,000 people were expelled to the Eastern zone of Germany. Most of the expelled Germans found new homes in the western provinces of Baden- Württemberg, Bavaria, and Hesse. In 1947 and 1948, a forced population exchange took place between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Some 74,000 ethnic Hungarians were expelled from Slovakia in exchange for about the same number of Slovaks from Hungary. They and the Székelys of Bukovina were settled in the former German villages of southeastern Transdanubia. In some parts of Tolna, Baranya, and Somogy counties, the original population was totally replaced by the new settlers. In 1949, only 22,455 people dared to declare themselves German. The previous statement is somewhat suspect, as census data for 1950 identified 270,000 ethnic Germans in Hungary. About half of the German community in Hungary was able to survive the dark years between 1944 and 1950. Yugoslavia: After World War II, the majority of German-speaking people from Yugoslavia (mostly the Danube Swabians) left for Austria and West Germany. After 1950, thanks to the "displaced persons" act (of 1948), they also emigrated to the United States of America. Because of ethnic German support to Nazi Germany, specifically the mobilization of some in the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, many ethnic Germans suffered persecution and sustained great personal and economic losses. Many perished as local population and partisans took revenge for Nazi Germany atrocities. But some ethnic Germans did remain in Yugoslavia, particularly those married to local partners. The government nationalized the property of those expelled on the basis of the decision on the transition of enemy property into state ownership, on state administration over the property of absent persons, and on sequestration of property forcibly appropriated by occupation authorities of November 21, 1944 by the Presidency of AVNOJ[23] Expulsion of Germans from Romania after World War II: Early in 1945, during the Soviet occupation of Romania, they initiated the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the territory. Tens of thousands of Romania's Germans were expelled, many of whom lost their lives in the process of emigration. Some expulsions were part of the Soviet plan for German war reparations in the form of forced labor, according to the 1944 secret Soviet Order 7161. Of a pre-war ethnic German population of 786,000, approximately 213,000 were evacuated, expelled, or migrated to Austria or Western Germany. About 400,000 still resided in Romania in 1950.[3] Slovenia: In Slovenia the German population at the end of WWI was concentrated in Styria, more precisely in Maribor, Celje and a few other towns. In total they numbered about 28,000 in 1931. The number was higher after 1941. Southern Slovenia was then occupied by Italian troops, who transferred ethnic Germans from the enclave of Kočevje to German-occupied Styria. When German forces began to retreat before the Soviet Army, many ethnic Germans fled with them in fear of reprisals. The Liberation Front of Slovenia expelled most of the remainder after it seized complete control in the region. Russia: Having been the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia, Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad) was an important city in the history of Germany. It was where Immanuel Kant lived all his life. Under the Nazis, Konigsberg belonged to the German province (Gau) of East Prussia, which had been an exclave of Weimar Germany between 1918 and 1939. Many of the Germans from East Prussia were evacuated by Nazi authorities or fled in panic before the Soviet Army approached. After the war, all of the surviving ethnic Germans were expelled. Ethnic Russians and families of military staff settled in the region. The expelled Germans mostly headed to West Germany. Thousands of German children were left unattended or died with their parents during a harsh winter without any food. Survivors formed wolf children gangs. Today, the area, called Kaliningrad Oblast, is an exclave of Russia, separated from the rest of the country by Lithuania and Poland. Lithuania: A part of western Lithuania along the seacoast was annexed by Nazi Germany as Memelland in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. The area, including Klaipėda (German: Memel), an important Baltic seaport, had been part of East Prussia, the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth and then the German Empire until the Treaty of Versailles. After the war, the area was claimed by the Soviet Union, (which included annexed Lithuania). Most of its German inhabitants fled to Germany, joining the exodus of those from Königsberg and other Eastern Prussian cities. German civilian remnants were put on deportation trains in 1946. Many Ethnic Germans from rural areas fled their homes by wagon, taking only a few essentials and non- perishable food items. They traveled for weeks in wagon train-like formations. Many made their way to the Baltic Sea, and horrifying accounts exist of wagons trying to cross the Baltic to escape to Germany, only to fall through the ice. Others turned back and made their way to port cities like Pillau, where they boarded overcrowded ships going to places like Denmark or Kiel. These ships then navigated the mine-strewn waters, a few falling prey to aircraft or submarines. Once there, many spent the rest of the war in refugee camps. Illnesses such as dysentery were not uncommon during this time, and many of the young and elderly died on foreign soil. Ethnic Lithuanians and other Soviet citizens replaced the ethnic German population. Unverified rumors state that a number of orphaned ethnic German children too young to go on the long trek as refugees were taken in by Lithuanian families. The Netherlands - Operation Black Tulip: After World War II the Dutch wanted to expel 25,000 Germans living in the Netherlands. The Germans (who often had Dutch wives/husbands and children) were called 'hostile subjects' (Dutch: vijandelijke onderdanen). The operation started on 10 September 1946 in Amsterdam, where Germans and their families were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and given one hour to collect 50 kg of luggage. They were allowed to take 100 Guilders with them. The rest of their possessions went to the Dutch state. They were taken to internment camps near the German border, the biggest of which was Mariënbosch near Nijmegen. In total, about 3,691 Germans (less than 15 percent of the 25,000 total population of Germans in the Netherlands) were expelled, their possessions confiscated by the Dutch state. The Allied forces that occupied the Western zone of Germany opposed this operation for fear that other countries might follow suit and the western zone was not in an economic condition to receive such large numbers of expellees. The British troops in Germany reacted by evicting 100,000 ethnic Dutch in Germany to the Netherlands. The operation ended in 1948. On 26 July 1951, the state of war between the Netherlands and Germany officially ended, and the Germans were no longer regarded as state enemies. Norway: While Norway lacked a German community, there were relations of Wehrmacht soldiers and Norwegian women during the war. These women and their children of German descent were ill- treated after the war. Denmark: In the final weeks of the war, between February 11 and May 9, about 250,000 ethnic German refugees fled across the Baltic Sea, fleeing the advancing Soviet Army. For the most part, the refugees were from East Prussia, Pomerania, and the Baltic states. Many of the refugees were women, children, or elderly. A third of the refugees were younger than 15 years old. The refugees were interned in hundreds of camps from Copenhagen to Jutland, placed behind barbed wire and guarded by military personnel. The largest camp, located in Oksbøl, on the west coast of Jutland, held 37,000 refugees. In the camps, both food rations and medical care were miserable. The Danish Doctors' Association decided not to provide medical care, and the Danish Red Cross likewise refused to take action. In 1945 alone, more than 13,000 people died, among them some 7,000 children under five who either starved to death or were unable to fight infections due to extreme malnutrition.[24] Denmark did not expel any Danish citizens of German ethnicity. France: A number of Germans were expelled from Alsace and Lorraine. Some inhabitants of Kehl were forced to leave, when the city was French (1945-1949). Fate of the expellees after arriving post-war Germany: After the war, the area west of the new eastern border of Germany was crowded with expellees, some of them living in camps, some looking for relatives, some just stranded. In Mecklenburg- Vorpommern, expellees made up for 40% of the population, similar percentages were reached along the eastern border all the way to Bavaria, while in the westernmost German regions the numbers were significantly lower. Until the summer of 1945, the allies had not yet decided on how to deal with the expellees. France suggested an emigration to South America and Australia and the settlement of "productive elements" in France, while the Soviet SMAD suggested a resettlement of millions of expellees in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern[25]. With ever more expellees sweeping into post-war Germany, the allies' aim changed toward a policy of assimilation, which was believed to be the best way of stabilizing both Germany and the peace in Europe by not creating another minority problem[26]. This policy also gave way to the assignment of German citizenship to the expellees, Volksdeutsche as well as Reichsdeutsche from the former eastern territories of Germany. Administrative organizations were set up to integrate the expellees into the post-war German society. While the Stalinist regime in the Soviet occupation zone did not allow the expellees to organize and with most expellees assimilating into their host communities in the course of the next decades, in the western zones some expellees over time established a variety of organizations, the most prominent being the Federation of expellees. Demographic estimates of the German exodus from Eastern Europe: During the period of 1944/1945 - 1950, possibly as many as 14 million Germans were forced to flee or were expelled as a result of actions of the Red Army, civilian militias, and/or organized efforts of governments of the reconstituted states of Eastern Europe. The areas from which the Germans escaped, or which were expelled, were subsequently re- populated by nationals of the states to which they now belonged, many of whom were expellees themselves from lands further east. In the first few decades after the end of the war, estimates of deaths associated with the expulsions were in the range of 2-3 million. Since the 1970s, however, some historians have suggested downward revisions to 500,000 to 1.1 million. However, some historians still support estimates of 2 million deaths. The higher numbers are now considered to include deaths from all war-related causes, not simply as a direct result of the flight and expulsions. Many of these deaths were the result of ill-prepared German evacuation plans, Nazi fanaticism, and chaotic flight. Some were senseless killings by opportunistic mobs and individuals. Other deaths were caused by the privations of a forced migration in a postwar environment characterized by crime, chaos, famine, disease, and cold winter conditions. There were also incidents of direct, intentional actions of violence by militias. It is almost impossible to attribute accurate proportions of deaths to specific causes. Due to a lack of accurate records, many estimates of population transfers and associated deaths depend upon a "population balance" methodology. Estimates of total populations expelled and deaths during the expulsions often include figures from the evacuation, because these people were not allowed to return, thus making it difficult to arrive at an accurate and undisputed estimate of population movements and deaths due solely to the expulsions. Timing and causes of deaths: More importantly, these deaths are often reported as being "the result of the expulsions" but are arguably better characterized as "happening contemporaneously with the expulsions but not necessarily caused by the expulsions". It is impossible to determine how many deaths happened "before" versus "after" the end of the war (i.e., before vs. after May 8, 1945). Any estimate of the number of deaths must be based on either a gross "population balance" methodology or on the examination of actual death records. The "population balance" methodology relies on census data that was taken years before the end of the war and years after the end of the war and thus cannot provide this kind of "before and after" comparison. Many deaths went unrecorded and thus actual death records substantially underestimate the actual number of deaths. The difficulty is that no one can say by how much the actual death records understate the actual deaths. Thus, it will never be possible to determine with certainty how many deaths happened before the war ended and how many afterwards. This question is important because it affects how many deaths should be attributed to evacuation, flight, pre-Potsdam "wild" expulsions, and expulsions that occurred after the Potsdam Agreements, which is seen by some as a general sanction for the expulsions. Other people assert that the Potsdam Agreements called for suspending further expulsions and bringing them under Allied control.[27] It is also difficult, when using the "population balance" methodology, to attribute the number of deaths to specific causes (e.g. wartime bombing, evacuation casualties, disease in refugee camps). For example, at the time of the Allied bombing of Dresden, there were estimated to be between 200,000 and 300,000 refugees from the Eastern front taking refuge in the city. There is no official record of how many of those refugees perished as a result of the Allied bombing. Reasons and justifications for the expulsions: Given the complex history of the region and the divergent interests of the victorious Allied powers, it is difficult to ascribe a definitive set of motivations behind the expulsions. Various groups, including the public in the affected countries, as well as historians, perceive the reasons for the Potsdam decisions and subsequent transfers differently. The key issues that motivated the expulsions are thought to include: Compensation to other countries for their for territories lost to the Soviet Union: Poland's old and new borders, 1945Poland lost 43 percent of its pre-war territory due to the fact that the Soviet Union insisted on keeping what it had annexed as a result of the partition of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union in the beginning of the war. While some cities, like Gdańsk (Danzig), were transferred to Poland as part of the "clean sweep" (see below) that eliminated minorities and strategically risky borders, other cities, like Wrocław (Breslau) or Szczecin (Stettin), would hardly have been transferred to Poland had it not lost Vilnius (Wilno), Hrodna (Grodno) and Lviv (Lwów). Thus, from the perspective of the Polish, Communist, and Western Allies, one justification for the expulsion of the Germans was compensation of Poland for territories taken by the Soviet Union. Objections to this theory argue that the territories Stalin took from Poland in the east, were actually behind the Curzon Line, which was proposed as the border after World War I by the Western Allies in that war, and which Poland had taken from the Soviet Union in 1920-22. Objections to this argue that the Curzon line was an Anglocentric arbitrary line (in fact two lines) not based on ethnic data, which was not either agreed to or respected by the Soviets, who revised it by annexing ethnically Polish lands near Grodno. A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states: Dominating nationalities in Poland around 1931 according to Polish sources.This was presented as the key reason for the official decisions of the Potsdam conference and previous Allied conferences involving the Polish and Czech exile governments, as cited in this article. There is a long history of the Polish and Czech nations trying to protect themselves against German eastward expansionism (see also Drang nach Osten article), as well as the late compensatory nationalism of newly independent Eastern European nation-states. The border on the Oder-Neisse line was actively pursued by the Polish government in exile, which, under the pressure from the Soviet Union and its Western allies, was looking for possible compensation for the Soviet-occupied eastern regions which Stalin was not willing to give back, in part based on the majority of the population being Ukrainian/Ruthenian and Belorussian.[citation needed] The territories that had been handed over to Poland and Czechoslovakia by the Versailles treaty caused particular trouble to these states. Especially, the Czech exile government in London insisted on a solution to the bitter lesson forced on it in 1938: no stability without ethnic homogeneity. The utter military and moral defeat of Germany provided an opportunity for achieving ethnic homogeneity by means heretofore only used on a large scale by the Germans themselves. In the case of Czechoslovakia, not only the Sudeten Germans but also the Hungarian minority of Southern Slovakia became caught up in the postwar population displacements. Distrust of and enmity towards Nazi-influenced German communities: Level of support for the Nazis during the 1933 electionsDuring the German elections of 1933, the Nazi party's areas of strongest support was in those eastern areas of Germany whose population was later expelled. The German provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania, and Frankfurt on the Oder were the only ones where the Nazis received over 55% of the vote. The Nazis obtained over 50% in much of Silesia. Part of the reason for the population transfer of Germans from those territories was the perception of Stalin that they are a stronghold of Nazi movement[28]. There was an expressed fear of disloyalty of Germans in Silesia and Pomerania based on the Nazi activities of numbers of ethnic Germans during the war, and even after the end of the war. As a result of these activities, there was no political party which would agree to Germans continuing to live in Silesia and Pomerania. To Poles, expulsion of Germans was seen as an effort to avoid such events in the future and as a result, Polish exile authorities proposed a population transfer of Germans as early as 1941.[29] Transferring the ethnic German population to the west was advocated as a necessary means of achieving inter-ethnic peace. Prevention of violence between majority populations and German minorities: The participants at the Potsdam Conference asserted that expulsions were the only way to prevent ethnic violence. As Winston Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, insofar as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions…".[30] From this point of view, the policy achieved its goals: the 1945 borders are stable and ethnic conflicts are relatively marginal. Editorial Commentary: The original theory on the expulsions of the Ethnic Germans from the Eastern European Countries and elsewhere was to have been achieved by a monitoring system established by the four allied powers. Actually, the expulsions began before the Potsdam Conference, without any monitoring whatsoever. This permitted the Communists and the Partisans to commit wholesale murder, rape and torture against innocent women, children and the elderly. To convince others that what they did was justified, they concluded that the Germans had committed treason, sedition, and other crimes against their neighbors, which was never proven, and was at the most a made-up lie, contrived to give them authenticity on the atrocities that they committed. The original plan was to kill everyone, after they had tortured or raped them to death. Some of the children raped had not even entered puberty; and some of the elderly women raped and tortured were eighty plus years old. Military tribunals were set up by civilians who had never even been in the military. The sentences meted out in most cases were execution by hanging, beheading, mutilation, and shooting. And while this was happening, the allies looked the other way, and even tried to convince the world that this never happened. The Baltic countries and others that had allied with Germany during the war were people who had originally been subjected to unthinkable crimes by the Soviets and others. The war was supposedly fought to eliminate the world from tyranny, but the end conclusions resulted in the complete enslavement of all of the Eastern European Countries by the Red Monsters from the Soviet Union and their puppets. Remember, also, that those that murdered, tortured, and raped non-combatant and innocent women, children and adults were granted perpetual immunity from prosecution; while any German (volkdeutsch) that resisted, even by throwing up their arms against the perpetrators, could be charged with sedition, treason, resisting arrest, and armed resistance, which was immediately punishable by death, without a legal trial. It was a crowd of lynch-syndrome people who was pretected by the allied laws, most of them directly in violation of the Geneva Convention. There was even discussions about bombing Switzerland, until the accuracy of the Swiss aircraft guns brought down some of the allied planes. (Of cource, this also cannot be proven; but neither can anarchy). By: German-American World Historical Society, Inc. Johannes Rammund De Balliel-Lawrora, Executive Director and Historic Review Director =============================== Sudetenland is a term for the German settlement area of the Bohemian Lands (Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia), used only sporadically before 1918. The German ethnic group in the Bohemian Lands (with approximately 3.5 million citizens) was referred to, since the early 1900s, as "Sudetendeutsche" (Sudeten Germans). The Bohemian Lands were part of the Austrian Monarchy until 1918. From 1918 to 1938, the Sudetenland was part of Czechoslovakia. After the "Münchner Abkommen" (the Munich Agreement) in 1938, the Sudetenland was the official term (1938-1945) for the Reichsgau Sudetenland. After the end of WW II, the Sudetenland was again reintegrated into Czechoslovakia and its German ethnic group was expelled. The Coming of World War II: Annexation & Absorption into Germany The first solid indication of how the Nazis would treat occupied territories came in Czechoslovakia, and the auguries were both misleading and ominous. In 1938 Hitler's troops marched into the Czech Sudetenland; it was largely populated by Germans, who welcomed the invaders warmly. In most of the region, a carnival atmosphere prevailed. To greet the occupying troops, whom the Czech forces had been ordered not to resist, huge Nazi flags — smuggled in earlier by NSDAP party agents — sprouted from buildings. Women wept or cheered at the sight of German soldiers, and garlanded them with flowers. One admirer was so carried away by excitement that a bouquet of roses she tossed to the Führer hit him in the face as he drove by into his new domains. Behind these festive scenes were a few darker vignettes. A German mob in the town of Cesky Krumlov fired at the backs of retreating Czech soldiers; in other towns shops and homes belonging to Czechs and Jews were vandalized and ransacked; a railroad station clerk was shot dead when he refused to turn his cash over to Sudeten freebooters. In Prague, veterans of the legendary Czech legion were observed weeping. President Eduard Benes despairingly left the capital of truncated Czechoslovakia for a self-imposed exile in England. Even more ominous for Europe's immediate future were Hitler's words as he spoke at the Czech town of Cheb, congratulating his new subjects on their love for the Fatherland. He grandiosely assured them that "over the greater German Reich is laid a German shield protecting it, and a German sword protecting it!" Careful listeners noted that territory in German control for barely a day had somehow become part of the Reich, and clearly saw signs of the future in the words "greater" and "sword." As for Hitler himself, convinced that the mere threat of force could make him master of Europe, he began boldly to plot his next move. In March 1939, German troops entered Bohemia and Moravia, the last two provinces of Czechoslovakia, and Hitler informed the world that "Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist." The intergration of the Sudetenland into the Greater Reich was brought about by a minimum of suffering on the part of the Chech minority, and without the calamity of murders and rapes of the non-German population. Benes, who had resigned as President of Czechoslovakia went into exile in England. When the war ended in 1945, the Germans were exploited and murdered by uncontrolable mobs who plundered, raped, tortured, and murdered innocent German woman and children, and finally expelled those who survived, most finding a save haven in Bavaria. When the Germans took back their country in 1939, they did not indiscriminately expel the Chechs or the Slovaks; which of course was not the case when the Third Reich capitulated and surrended to the Allied Powers. It is ironic that the Chechs had come to believe that the Sudetenland had always been there land; when actually they were guests who were permitted to live in peace and harmony with their German neighbors. The Germans had settled in the Sudeten mountains hundreds of years before the Czechs migrated to the area; and dispite their claims to Prague, that city had originally been founded and built by the German ethnic majority, hundreds of years before. Benes, whose ancestral claim was not correct, as to his being Chech, when in fact he was of Germanic heritage. Ironic isn't it. But history, it seems, does repeat itself. _______________________________________________________________________ |
