AustreibungExpulsion2

Austreibung Expulsion- 2
(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 given the go ahead to rebuild and
rearm; and Stalin, who was commonly called "Uncle
Joe" by Roosevelt, intentions of overthrowing
Europe, than the world, than the United States of
America, was put on hold. Thanks goodness common
sense finally prevailed.

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 1.8
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. "When the United States moved out of
Korea, it didn't bother Truman's conscience to leave
many of the G.I.'s there to later become known as
Missing Persons. Truman, an actual no body, was
true to his character - A NO BODY...."

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 Matejka:First 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 in 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 protected 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 course, 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
arguments 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 part
Germanic heritage. Ironic isn't it. But history, it
seems, does repeat itself.

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