AustreibungExpulsions6

  Austreibung Expulsions - 6

    Dealing with the Legacy
          of World War 2:
  The Expulsion of German
Minorities from Eastern Europe:
Current Debates and Tensions

               Student: Cecile Combes
                Universite' Marc Bloch
                         Strasbourg
                   Date: January 2006

Introduction:

The expulsion of German minorities from Eastern territories
after the 2nd World War is a part of history that has for long
time been repressed. Germany has always been haunted by
its historical culpability. But since 2002, a change in attitudes
occurred- partly due to the increase in the number of reports
on this subject, as Quentin Perret’s noticed.
1) Since 2000, the project led by the German League of
Expellees to build a Centre Against Expulsion in Berlin which
mainly focused on the fate of the German minorities
continues to fuel tensions between Germany and Poland.

2) Further conflicts between the two countries arose in 2004
and these were due to demands from the Prussian Claims
Society concerning goods left by Germans in Poland more
than 50 years ago. Debates are now mainly focused on the
Centre and the image it might convey to the next generations
if it is built in Berlin. This idea was strongly criticised by both
German and Polish politicians and intellectuals. But Angela
Merkel (German Chancellor) supports the building of the
Centre in Berlin although the Polish President Kwasniewski
warned Germany about the bad consequences this
construction could have on their bilateral relationships.
Many questions remain unanswered in this debate: do past
events still have influence on Polish society and its views on
Germany? What role would the Centre Against Expulsion play
and does it hide any danger concerning the way past historical
events will be understood?

First of all, I will explain the origins of the current tensions
between Germany and Poland. The second part of my work
will be focused on the emergence of ethnic cleansing in the
19th century and what it implies, considering the millions of
Europeans involved.

1. Quentin Perret, Allemagne : polémique sur le « Centre des
expulsions », available from http://repid.com/articleImprim.
php3?id_article=126.

2. Zentrum gegen Vertreibung who were victim of it. The third
part will deal with aspects of German expulsions from
Eastern territories that were decided at the Potsdam
Conference on August 2, 1945.

Finally, the German exodus from Poland itself will be the
subject of the fourth part, with focus on the Polish case.

I) The origins of the debates between Germany and Poland:

A) The agreement over compensation claims:

The Prussian Claims Society was created in 2000 and in early
September 2004 its President, Rudi Pawelka, claimed that he
had gathered hundreds of complaints of former German
expellees from Polish territories. Therefore, he demanded
compensation for their lost property. The Prussian Claims
Society was in addition ready to take cases to both Polish and
European courts. In response to this highly contested
decision, on 10th September 2004, the Polish parliament
called on the government to estimate the total damages
Germany caused to Poland in World War II and to begin talks
with Berlin.

The text of the resolution stated: “Parliament declares
that Poland has not yet received war reparations payments
and damages for the enormous extent of destruction and
material and non-material cost brought on by German
aggression, occupation and genocide”.3

The German Chancellor at that time Gerhard Schröder and
Poland’s Prime Minister Marek Belka met on 27th September
in Berlin and they decided to set up a joint team of lawyers in
charge of dealing with claims for reparations. Their work was
to ensure that “individual claims which could be lodged in the
courts by Germans are considered null and void.”4

But both politicians agreed that no reparation claims would
be taken into account. Marek Belka insisted that the resolution
agreed by the Polish parliament had no legally binding effect
for him or his government. On the German3 Dennis Stute,
“Berlln Shocked By Polish Reparations Vote”, 12th September
2004, available from http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,
2144,1325939,00.html4 BBC News, Germans and Poles settle
WWII row, 27th September 2004, available from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3692444.stm
side, Gerhard Schröder stated that both countries considered
the question of reparations settled.

Tensions worsened then in July 2004, when the German
parliament decided to open European talks about the
construction of a Centre Against Expulsion. This project
was set up by the two chairpersons of the BdV (German
League of Expellees), Erika
Steinbach and Peter Glotz, that was created on 6th September
2000.

B) The project of The Centre Against Expulsion:

The objective of the Centre was to counteract displacements
and expulsions of peoples all over the world, to outlaw and to
prevent expulsions and thus create understanding and
reconciliation among nations. The Centre would be built in
Berlin and focused on expulsions that affected both Germans
after the Second World War and European populations in
general.

The project has four parts: the first part of the
exhibition concerns the expulsions and displacements before
1933 (with the focus on Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey); the
second part focuses on the displacements that took place
from 1933 to 1945 under National Socialist Germany and the
Soviet Union; the third part deals with the expulsions from
1944 to 1950, following the Conference of Potsdam; The last
part is dedicated to the expulsions from 1950 to the present.

An important part of the exhibition is, nevertheless, focused
on the German minorities exclusively and this triggered anger
among Poles as it will be explained later.

The initial part of this exhibition consists in defining the
concept of home country. The purpose is to show how
Germans experienced their home country before they were
expelled from the various settlement areas. The emphasis is
also put on the relationships between the German minority
and the ruling majority in Poland, Czechoslovakia and
Hungary.

The second part is dedicated to the situation of flight and
expulsions of the Germans from Eastern Europe towards the
end of the Second World War and after the Potsdam
Agreement. The conditions in which the refugees had to
flee are tackled in this part.

The third part deals more especially with the living
conditions of the expellees in the occupation zones.

Finally, the last part of the exhibition is about the new
beginnings of the minorities in the newly formed German
Democratic Republic (GDR) as well as abroad as many
emigrated to the USA, SouthAmerica or Australia.5

C) The debates over the Centre against Expulsion:
The main bone of contention concerns the nature of the
Centre itself and the image it will convey to future
generations, especially if it is built in Berlin, the former
capital of the third Reich. The Polish-German affairs specialist
Jerzy Haszynski fears that young Germans will believe that
the victims of the Second World War were two
People: the Jews and the Germans. The Memorial of the
Holocaust has indeed recently been built in Berlin so the
Centre Against Expulsion should, according to him,
not be in the same city.

Haszynski denounces the fact that Poles are portrayed as a
nation of perpetrators and accused Erika Steinbach of
comparing the suffering of the German expellees to those of
Holocaust victims. The newly elected Polish President
Kwasniewski also confirmed his opposition to the building of
the Centre, pointing out that some Germans would like to
revise history and see Germans as victims rather
than perpetrators.

In Germany, Angela Merkel clearly supports the idea of
building this Centre of Expulsion. She assured that the centre
will not become a monument to German martyrdom and will
not change the German approach to the history of the Third
Reich and its consequences.6   Unlike her, the former
Chancellor Schröder was opposed to the idea of building the
centre in Berlin and he asked several times the BdV to
reconsider whether Berlin was really the right place for the
memorial. Along with intellectuals such as Günter Grass and
the President of the German Parliament Wolfgang Thierse,
Schröder promoted the idea of a more European-focused
centre that would be located in Poland or in the city of Görlitz-
Zgorzelec that is situated on the German-Polish 5 Centre
against Expulsion, available from http://www.z-g-v.
de/english/aktuelles 6 Hardy Graupner, Berlin Close to New “
Centre of Expulsion”, 1st August 2005, available from
http://dw-world.de/popups/popup_printcontent/0,,1664849,00.
html border.7

Now that the issue that divides Germany and Poland is
defined, it is important to consider the phenomenon that is at
the very origin of this conflict, that is to say ethnic cleansing.

Before focusing on the German expulsions from Poland, it is
worth trying to understand what factors led to ethnic
cleansing and its characteristics.

II) The origins of ethnic cleansing:

A) Evolution of the conception of state and nation:

“Ethnic cleansing" is always directed at a particular ethnic
group or nation perceived as harmful, and the goal is always
the complete removal of that group from a given territory”.8

By the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century,
the emergence of racist ideas made it desirable to "cleanse"
societies and nations. Ethnic cleansing finally became a
common practice in Europe in the 20th century and it
occurred in four major waves. Before 1933, it mainly affected
South-Eastern Europe. The second wave lasted from 1933 to
1945 and was the result of the German conception of a racially
clean "Lebensraum" and the advance of the German army.

From 1944 to 1950, the Allies themselves adopted ethnic
cleansing for their post-war European order. This period led to
the expulsion of millions of people, among them German
minorities. Finally, from 1950 onwards, ethnic cleansing
mainly affected Eastern European states.

The development of the idea of a nation and the conception of
the modern nation in the 19th century were the two main
factors that triggered nationalist feelings and then expulsions.
From the late eighteenth century on, various European states
began to introduce a set of homogeneous institutions over
territories with distinct legal, economic and political systems.
The concept of centralization was seen as necessary 7

Expatica, German WWII expellee centre plan angers Poles, 18
July 2005, available from http://www.expatica
com/source/site_article.asp
subchannel_id=52&story_id=22034&name=German8 Philip
Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations, Ethnic Cleansing in
East-Central Europe ,Lanham, 1944-1948 p 44-47 for modern
state bureaucracy. It was argued that bureaucracies needed
clear national subdivisions of populations to operate
effectively. State business was more efficiently conducted in
a single language, state-run schools taught uniform curricula
throughout entire territories and military service demanded
the inculcation of a single, coherent sense of belonging.

Enlightment thinkers, such as the German philosopher Johann
Gottfried Herder, began to discuss identities based on
language, culture and shared values. While the
French model embraced political values such as "Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity" to assert its identity, others, such as
Germany, relied more on a cultural and linguistic definition
of identity. Many of the Eastern European nations did not have
their own states before 1918 which made the cultural or
linguistic model much more appealing. All the European
nations that had already codified languages (such as the
Poles, Germans, Danes…) could easily build a sense of
national identity whereas others (such as Bulgarians,
Croatians, Albanians, Ukrainians…) standardized their
languages over the course of the century.

The concept of nationalism transformed from an abstract
ideology into a social reality and the cultural elite that aimed
at spreading a sense of nationality had little tolerance for
those outside their definitions. But state building often
clashed with the aspirations of newly formed national groups
and the process of linguistic and cultural standardization met
with more opposition the later it occurred. For example, in
Central and Eastern Europe, a number of autonomist or
separatists movements began to demand independence
using the very terms with which their oppressors were
demanding homogeneity. These newly created nations
emphasized centralization as well and they themselves were
intolerant towards culturally different groups or minorities. As
movements for national political independence grew, so did
the desire of states and dominant national groups to suppress
them.

All the great European multinational empires- Ottoman,
Habsburg, and Romanov - tried to unify their populations but
could not do so on the basis of nationality. They nevertheless
failed to create institutional mechanisms by which the various
emerging national groups could be integrated and by the end
of the 19th century, multinational states were in serious
danger.

The formation of nation states was even more difficult for
countries founded after World War 1 such as Poland,
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia that had to start from
scratch. In addition these countries had to establish their own
rules over different and disputed territories, often partially
inhabited by ethnic minorities. In this context, ideas related to
the assimilation of minorities began to emerge in Europe.9

B) Attitudes toward minorities:

In the 19th century it was commonly believed that
“nondominant ethnic groups” could be assimilated within a
few generations. 10

For example, Prussian officials were convinced they could
“lift” Slavic speakers to supposedly higher levels of German
culture. But assimilation policies failed most of the time and
minorities began to be considered as a hindrance to the
development of states. Attitudes toward minorities especially
hardened after World War 1 and during the interwar period,
attempts to homogenize disputed territories went hand in
hand with centralization. Distinct borders were drawn and
each side made careful distinctions between “them” and “us”.

Mixed identities or mixed ancestry were less and less
tolerated and, in some cases, nation became synonymous
with ancestry. Great feats in the field of science, for example
medicine, also explained the emergence of ethnic cleansing
ideas. The concept of “national engineering” was developed
in Prussia in the 19th century and it was used to secure its
rule over Polish territories. Ethnic Germans were settled in
those territories in the 1830s and the aim was to change the
ethnic composition of areas inhabited by Poles. The Poles
adopted the same attitude toward Ukrainians in the 20th
century so as to preserve the Polishness of territories that
were dominated by Ukrainians. To put it in a nutshell, state
formation and nation building made ethnic cleansing possible
in 9 Philip Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations, Lanham,
2001 10 Philip Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations,
Lanham, 2001 large parts of Europe. In addition, intolerant
attitudes toward minorities and ideas of national engineering
began to spread among Europeans. The Holocaust
represented a highpoint in ethnic cleansing, of course, still it
should not been forgotten that the procedure continued after
the Second World War, directed against Germans.11

II) The legal basis of the expulsion of German minorities: the
Potsdam Agreement:

A) Motives of the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia:

The uprooting of German populations from Eastern-Central
Europe was an idea that was first of all supported by
Czechoslovakia.12 This was first due to the fact that it had the
largest number (close to 3.5 million) and the largest
percentage (about 23%) of German minorities among all
countries in Europe. In addition, the interest of this
massive minority, of which the bulk were the Sudeten
Germans, collided too often with those of the Czechoslovak
state and this had always caused friction, even before the
rise of Hitler. The Czechs had also not forgotten the Munich
Agreement of 1938 and the consequences it had on
Czechoslovakia.13   Dr Eduard Benes, the exiled President
of Czechoslovakia who had been expulsed during the Third
Reich, initiated ideas about the expulsion of German
minorities as early as 1940 and his plan appealed to
President Roosevelt.

Poland, the other Slavic victim of Hitler, totally agreed with the
expulsion of Germans from their country. Although the Polish
leaders had different political orientations, they did not
discuss this issue.

Last but not least, Stalin was very supportive of this idea for
several reasons. First, he was more eager than the Western
powers to “solve” all minority problems in his sphere of
influence. Second, Stalin calculated that the mass expulsions
would sharply12 G.C Paikert, The German exodus, a selective
study of the post World War II expulsion of German
populations and its effects, The Hague, 1962, p 9-13

13 On 29th September 1938, Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain,
Edouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini signed the Munich
Agreement which transferred the Sudentenland to Germany.
increase German antagonism toward its eastern neighbours
and therefore make Poland and Czechoslovakia more
dependent on Soviet protection. Stalin also argued that ethnic
Germans could never adapt to Soviet standards because of
their different background and would only prove disruptive of
Communist conformity. By dumping millions of ethnic
Germans into war-devastated and overcrowded Germany,

Stalin also thought Communism would spread further. He
hoped that all these homeless Germans would succumb to
radicalism and that he could extend the Soviet influence.

B) Motives of the Western Allies: Great Britain and the US:
Great Britain and the US accepted the proposition of the
expulsions because they were eager to collaborate with their
wartime ally, the Soviet Union. They also tended to
sympathize with the Soviet troops who gave their lives to
fight the German enemy.

Memories of the monstrous treatment of millions of Jews also
played a major part in their view of German people.14 It is
worth mentioning that British and American leaders
referred to the Treaty of Lausanne (January 1923) that had
mandated the Greek -Turkish transfer of populations.15
Germans began to flee from eastern territories in early 1945
as the Red Army gained ground in Eastern Europe and it did
not take long time before Germany capitulated. These
Germans feared revenge from the victims of Nazism as soon
as the Nazi control would cease. The second phase of the
exodus was dominated by the vindictive measures of Poland
and Czechoslovakia. This period lasted from May to July
1945 and is often referred to as the “wild” phase. This phase
was dominated by revengeful feelings from both nations.

The third phase of the expulsion was actually provided by the
Potsdam agreement that gave a legal basis to the expulsions.
When President Truman (United States), Prime Minister Attlee
(Great Britain) and Stalin met for the Potsdam Conference on
August 2, 1945, they agreed that post-war Europe should be
rearranged to prevent future wars. In particular, the German
minorities in 14 G.C Paikert, The German exodus, p 20-21
15 Philip Ther and Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations, Lanham,
2001, p 50

East Central Europe had to be “dissolved” to prevent future
violence. The Allies indeed decided the “transfer” of Germans
from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary .

Accordingly, over five million Germans were forced to leave
their homelands before 1949. The Potsdam Agreement was
meant to improve the treatment of Germans and the
“transfer” had to be carried out in a “humane and orderly
manner”. But the Allies failed to implement this measure and
according to some German historians, Czech as well as Polish
authorities acted in a spirit of revenge.16 It seems that the
expulsions were permeated by resentful feelings and did not
take place are they were meant to like it will be illustrated in
the following part as the expulsions from Polish territories
lustrate it.

III) The German exodus from the Eastern territories: the Polish
case17

A) The Polish motives:

Polish demands for the expulsion of German minorities
addressed first territories that had been controlled by
Germany during the war. The Poles had plans for getting
back territories such as Lower Silesia. They were eager to
define precisely the Pole and argued that Germans and Poles
could not live together anymore. They applied the principle of
“collective guilt” to the Germans.

The desire for revenge permeated Polish society and the
Poles treated the Germans badly: they stole as much as they
could from them (furniture, clothes,
valuables and foodstuffs) and rape and pillage were common.

B) The carrying out of the expulsions:

German homes were open territories and the Poles took
whatever they wanted from the dwellings. Those who tried to
defend themselves were often beaten or sent to
internment camps or labour camps that had been used during
the third Reich. Rules in 16 G.C Paikert, The German exodus, a
selective study of the post World War II expulsion of German
populations and its effects, The Hague, 1962,p 7

17 N.M Naimark, Fires Of Hatred, Ethnic Cleansing In
Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge,
Massachussets, 2001, p 108-137. the camps about discipline
were often adopted from the Nazi example. Germans
suffered from disease, malnutrition and beatings; stomach
typhus was the biggest killer, veneral disease was rampant
and uncontrollable given the lack of medicine. They
were forced to wear the letter N for Niemiec (German) on their
sleeves; they were forbidden to enter restaurants, theatres or
taverns and they were placed under Polish authorities outside
the law. Nevertheless, the treatment of the Germans
depended on their status on the Volksliste (People’s List) that
had been established by the Nazi administration during the
war. Volksdeutsche (local Germans) who had been a minority
in pre-1939 Poland had their rights and property taken away
and they were treated as traitors, sometimes immediately
executed or sent to prisons and camps. As for
Reichdeutsche (Germans from the Reich), they were either
prosecuted as war criminals or deported to the Soviet Union
for forced labour. Others, mostly Silesians, were allowed to
apply for “verification” as Poles.

C) Re-Polonization and De-Germanization:

Forced deportation to occupied Germany was the fate of most
Germans who lived in the new areas that were designated for
Polish occupation: Lower Silesia, eastern Pomerania, eastern
Brandenburg and the southern part of East Prussia. Re-
Polonization and De-Germanization were of the highest
priority and communists and leaders firmly supported
expulsion. Towns and streets were renamed, German
storefronts were taken down, “Prussian-Hitler” memorials
were taken down, German inscriptions were removed from
buildings, church interiors and gravestones. People
were forbidden to speak German though they could hardly
speak Polish, especially in Silesia. From April 1946 on, the
government forbade the use of German in public places and
even at home. But Polish authorities nevertheless
experienced difficulties to getting the people of Silesia to
think of themselves as part of a unified Polish nation.

D) Problems encountered by the Polish authorities:

The region of Upper Silesia clearly illustrates the problems
that were encountered by governors. The region had always
been disputed between Poland and Germany and after 1945 it
was granted to postwar Poland. Millions of what Polish
authorities called “indubitable Germans” were expelled, but
those Silesians referred to as “ethnic Poles” insufficiently
aware of their “Polishness” were allowed to stay on, after
being sifted out from “indubitable Germans” by a process of
“national verification”.18

Although the Silesian Governor Zawadzki was strictly against
the mixing of Poles and Germans, he could not solve the
identity problem of Silesians who felt neither Polish nor
German. His plans are illustrated by the following sentence:
“Now the task consists of the shaping of these two distinct
biological groups into a single entity”. But many Silesians felt
themselves closer to German than to Polish culture. This was
enhanced by the fact that many Silesians were sent to camps
even before it was determined that they were eligible for
verification. In September 1947, Zawadzki was still annoyed
that so much German was spoken both on the streets and in
private, despite the laws against it. Zawadzki recognised that
the Silesians were handled in a disrespectful manner but he
explained that this only happened because the newly arrived
Poles wanted their homes and their lands back. So the identity
problem among the expellees remained quite important once
they were settled in the new territories. Measures had to be
taken later on by the German government to help them to
integrate to reassert their identity.

18 Tamasz Kamusella, Silesians, 12th November 2005,
available from http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002171.
php

Conclusion:

Today, the building of a Centre dedicated to the former
expellees is primarily a problem in terms of the symbolic
message such a monument would have. More precisely, both
Polish and German intellectuals and politicians are worried
about the consequences it could have on the perception of
the Second World War. They fear a victimization of the
Germans and do not embrace the Centre Against Expulsion
proposed by the BdV because they believe it to be too
focused on the fate of German expellees. The history of
ethnic cleansing helps to understand why the Centre is such a
divisive issue. In particular, it is important to consider the fate
of German minorities after the Second World War. This began
even before the capitulation of Germany in 1945 and the
Potsdam Agreement gave a legal basis to their expulsion.
Actually, the expulsions took place in circumstances that did
not comply to what had been agreed at the Potsdam
Conference . The feelings of former German expellees must
be mixed because some of them feel fully integrated in
today’s Germany whereas others still do not agree with the
issue of compensation. By joining expellee organisations they
try to defend their interest and to reassert their identity as
they claim that the German expulsions were not sufficiently
taken into account compared to the expulsion of other
populations.

Bibliography:
Nationalism:

- Ferrrari Jean, L’idée De Nation, Editions Universitaires de
Dijon, Dijon,1986

- Woolf Stuart, Nationalism In Europe 1815 To The Present,
Routledge, London, 1996

Expulsion and ethnic cleansing:

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Diffusion, Paris.

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//www.mondediplomatique.
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(accessed 2nd November 2005)

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Centre Plan Angers Poles, July 2005, available from
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subchannel_id=52&story_id=
2034&name=German+WWII+expellee+centre+plan+angers+Pol
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2144,1681377,00.html (accessed on 31st October 2005)

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