Demographic estimates of the flight and expulsion of Germans

Demographic estimates of the flight and expulsion of Germans have been derived by either addition of registered refugees and expellees or by comparison of pre-war and post-war population data. Estimates of the number of displaced Germans vary in the range of 12.0–16.5 million. The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions was estimated at 2.2 million by the West German government in 1958 using the population balance method. Red Cross data which became available in 1994 has caused some historians in Germany to put the actual total at about 500,000 based on the listing confirmed deaths. However the German Red Cross still maintains that death toll in the expulsions is 2,252,500 persons.

Difficulty of developing accurate estimates

Due to a lack of accurate records listing confirmed deaths, estimates of German population transfers from 1945–1950 and associated deaths depended upon a population balance methodology. West German government official figures derived during the 1950s using the population balance method put the death toll at about 2 million. Recently some German historians believe the death toll is closer to 500,000 based on recently disclosed documentation that listed only confirmed deaths. The wide range of estimates stems from a number of factors. First, the ethnic German population in 1939 was by no means certain because bilingual persons were of dubious German Cultural heritage. Second, Civilian losses were overstated because German military casualties in 1945 were poorly documented. Third, After the war it was difficult to gather reliable population data; post war census data in eastern Europe did not breakout the ethnic German population and during the Cold War there was a lack of cooperation between West Germany and eastern European countries in the effort to locate persons reported missing. Persons reported missing may have been living in eastern Europe after having been assimilated into the local population. Estimates of total populations expelled and deaths 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. Some of the differences may arise from political bias, as the expulsion of Germans was widely utilized as political weapon during the Cold War.

There are also disputes over the definition of "expulsion", which may cover the flight and evacuation during the war as well as forced labor and internment before expulsion and deaths due to malnutrition and disease in the post war era. The estimated losses include civilians killed in battle during the flight and evacuation in the final months of the war as well as direct intentional actions of violent soldiers, militias and senseless killings by opportunistic mobs and individuals in the immediate aftermath of the war. Other deaths occurred in post war internment camps and the deportation to the USSR for forced labor. The privations of a forced migration in a postwar environment characterized by crime, chaos, famine, disease, and cold winter conditions added to the death toll. West German sources give only rough estimates to attribute the proportions of these deaths to specific causes.

Estimating methodology

The estimates can be classified by methodology into two main groups:

Method of counting confirmed deaths

Studies of this kind try to count individual deaths, by various means. Sources may include registry death records, police and military records, church files of missing and killed persons, or reports of relatives.

Studies using the population balance methodology tend to yield higher estimates than those based on detailed research.

Research by German Church Search Service

In 1953 the West German government set up a unified body the Suchdienst (search service) of the German churches working in conjunction with the German Red Cross to trace the individual fates of those persons who were dead or missing as result of the Expulsions and deportations. The information was compiled from the records of the local communities in Eastern Europe(Soll-Listen)and information provided by survivors of the Expulsions. They were able to survey the records(Soll-Listeen) of 31,362 local communities that encompassed 8.6 million persons, only one half of all Germans in the territory of the Expulsions. The German Red Cross sent 2.8 million questionnaires to survivors to obtain relevant information on the fates of the dead and missing. By 1964 conclusions and final report was issued by the Suchdienst (search service) of the German churches which was able to confirm 473,013 civilian deaths in eastern Europe. There were an additional 1,905,991 cases of persons whose fate could not be determined by 1964. This report remained confidential until the end of the Cold War. Dr.Rüdiger Overmans revealed a summary of this unpublished data at a 1994 historical symposium in Poland.

Summary of the Population Surveyed by Search Service Investigation

Description	Amount
Total Cases Investigated by Search Service 1953-1964	17,625,742
Military Deaths	(450,809)
Natural Deaths	( 296,084)
Relocated Before Expulsion	(340,826)
Born After Expulsion	(135,876)
Resettled Before Expulsion	(203,061)
Total Cases in Expulsion	16,199,086

Summary of Results of the Search Service Investigation

Description	Amount
Confirmed Alive	12,848,497
Natural deaths After Expulsion	971,585
Confirmed Deaths in Expulsion	473,013(See Schedule below)
Unresolved Cases	1,905,991 A.
Total Cases in Expulsion	16,199,086

A. Details of Reports for the 1,905,991 Unresolved Cases (Deported 68,416; Interned 17,704; Missing 768,010; Deaths 179,810; No Information provided(ohne jeden Hinweis) 872,051). Overmans refers to 872,051 cases with no information as “Karteileichen”, “card corpses" of persons who could not be traced because insufficient information was provided and therefore of doubtful validity. He considers this to be the most important consideration in the analysis of the 1.9 million unresolved cases.

Source for figures: Dr. Rűdiger Overmans- Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevölkerung durch Flucht und Vertreibung. Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik XXI-1994(This paper was a presentation at an academic conference at Warsaw Poland in 1994)

Confirmed Deaths Listed by German Church Search Service (1964)

Description	Total	Oder-Neisse region, Poland & USSR	Czechoslovakia	SE Europe (Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia)
German Population(millions)	17.0	12.0	3.0	2.0
Violent Deaths	58,256	45,733	5,596	6,927
Suicides	14,356	10,571	3,411	374
Deported	49,542	40,978	705	7,859
In Camps	80,522	29,866	6,615	44,071
During the wartime Flight	93,283	89,992	629	2,662
After wartime Flight	68,876	66,885	1,481	510
Cause undetermined	112,612	110,171	379	2,062
Other Misc.	566	179	73	314
Total Deaths	473,013	389,345	18,889	64,779

Source of Figures -Die Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern. Legenden, Mythos, Geschichte. Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova Paderborn 2010, Page-702 ( Figures for Oder-Neisse region and Poland are summarized from the original source. Figures include 17,209 deaths of refugees in Denmark and about 15,000 in Polish internment camps.)

Rűdiger Overmans believes that the figures of the Church Service are unreliable and should be treated with caution. Overmans made the following observations regarding the Church Service data:

• Non Germans are included in the total population surveyed.

• Military deaths are included in the figures. Total military deaths are understated by more than one-half because there was no coordination with the military search service.

• The figures for expellees in the GDR are not reliable. The number of surviving persons, natural deaths and births after the war in the GDR are understated.

• The figures of persons deported to the USSR are understated.

• The reports given by eye wittnesses surveyed are not reliable in all cases.

• Overmans maintains there are more arguments for the lower figure of 500,000 rather than the higher figure of 2.3 million, he believes that since there are only 473,000 confirmed deaths, new research is needed to determine the fate of the 1.9 million reported missing.

The German historian Ingo Haar maintains that the figure of 473,000 confirmed dead provides realistic view of the total losses due to the flight and expulsions. Ingo Haar points out that 473,000 confirmed dead as well as the 1.9 million unresolved cases from the Search Service were used by the West German government when compiling the 1958 demographic analysis Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste at which put losses 2.225 million. Haar maintains that West German government pressured the Statistisches Bundesamt to match the figures of the Search Service when compiling the 1958 demographic analysis even though their figures included 1.9 million unresolved cases which lacked adequate support. After its completion, the German church numbers were archived and not released to the general public - according to Ingo Haar, this was due to a fear that they were "too low" and would lead to "politically undesirable conclusions".

The German historians Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova have published a detailed study of the flight and expulsions that is sharply crtitical of German accounts of the cold war era. The Hahn's believe that the official German figure of 2 million deaths is an historical myth that lacks foundation. They point out that the figure of 473,013 confirmed deaths includes 80,522 in the post war internment camps, they maintain that most deaths occurred in the flight and evacuation during the war

In 2005 the Church Search Service still maintained that their research put losses at 2,252,500 persons in the expulsions and deportations. They did not provide details of the figure.

1974 German Federal Archive Report

On 28 May 1974, the West German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) issued a report following a directive of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to "compile and evaluate information available in the Federal Archives and elsewhere regarding crimes and brutalities committed against Germans in the course of the expulsion". In particular, the report was to identify deaths due to crimes against international law: the 1958 report of the Federal Office for Statistics listed as "post-war losses" two million people whose fate remained unaccounted for in the population balance, but who according to the 1974 report were "not exclusively victims of crimes against international law". The report defined the term "expulsion" (Vertreibung) "according to its prevailing interpretation", i.e. the "whole uprooting process". Sources used for the report were:

• about 10,000 eyewitness accounts (Erlebnisberichte), compiled primarily during the "documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East Central Europe", conducted on initiative of the Federal Ministry for Expellees between 1950 and 1953, which since 1955 were stored in the Federal Archive. To this stock added eyewitness accounts from the Secret State Archive (GStA) in Dahlem, from the Main State Archive in Düsseldorf, from the collection of the State Commissioner for Refugee Affairs in Stuttgart and from the collection of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, as well as further eyewitness accounts sent to the Federal Archive directly.
• about 18,000 reports about the fate of municipalities (Gemeindeschicksalsberichte), collected since 1952 in the course of the abovementioned "documentation", and from 1954 to 1959 by the Federal Archive itself. These reports were laid out as standartized questionaries about distinct municipalities and covered 85.2% of the municipalities in the former eastern territories of Germany, the majority of those municipalities in the area of pre-war Poland which were previously home to a German population, and other such municipalities in former Sudetenland and southeastern Europe.
• about 12,100 so-called "soul lists" (Seelenlisten) compiled between 1952 and 1956 listing the former German inhabitants of rural and small urban communities east of the Oder-Neisse line, in part noting deaths and their causes.
• information from the archives of German dioceses.

The final report included deaths confirmed by at least two independent sources. Deaths reported by one source only were rejected unless they met certain reliability criteria laid out in a catalogue adopted from Schieder et al. (1958): Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mittewleuropa Vol. I/1, page IIIf. The report states that the sources hint at the magnitude of crimes, but are not sufficient for a thorough statistic. Of only a faction of the sources it is said that they detail names and number of victims, others would merely point to crime scenes but do not elaborate on numbers and details. Especially the extent of crimes in larger municipalities and, with few exceptions, in camps and prisons is not replicable with the sources given according to the report.

In the areas east of the Oder-Neisse line, the reviewers identified 3,250 crime scenes in the sources. For 630 of those, the number of victims could not be established, while 23,200 people were identified who died at the other 2,620 scenes. To estimate a total number of casualties, the 1974 report relied on a data set retrieved from the 1964 Church Search Service report compiling the most complete of the "soul lists". For 455 rural communities of East Prussia and 432 rural communities of Pomerania, these lists reported 1,731 and 1,278 people killed, respectively, which is about 1% of their 1939 population (152,124 and 137,709 inhabitants, respectively). To the number of these identified deaths added the number of 4,000 missing, some of whom may also be unconfirmed deaths. The 1974 report then relates the 1% confirmed deaths as a minimum value to the 1939 population of the former eastern territories of Germany set at 9.6 million people, thus receiving a number of at least 96,000 people killed in that area during the expulsion. Similarly it was estimated that at least 19,000 people were killed during the expulsions from the area of pre-war Poland, which was calculated as 1% of 1,9 million Germans living there in 1944. On the premise that in the area of pre-war Poland, 20% more people were overrun by the advancing Red Army than in areas occupied later on, the number was adjusted to above 20,000, resulting in a total of at least 120,000 people killed east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. Furthermore, it was estimated that 200,000 people were incarcerated in Polish-run and 110,000 in Soviet-run camps and prisons in that area with death rates between 20% and 50%. Therefore, it was estimated that at least 100,000 people died in these camps and prisons. Another 200,000 people died as a result of deportation to the USSR, based on German Red Cross estimates. From addition of these values, the report found that east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, at least 400,000 people died during the expulsions.

Of the abovementioned sources, 2,000 were concerned with Czechoslovakia (including Sudetenland). Of those, only a faction included reliable numbers of killed Germans adding to about 6,000 confirmed deaths. The report cites an estimate by Kurt W. Böhme (1965): Gesucht wird..., p. 264, according to whom 350.000 Germans were interned in camps, about 100,000 of whom died. From the sources, the 1974 report says that the numbers of the interned are likely to be higher, and refers to another study by A. Bohmann (1959): Das Sudetendeutschtum in Zahlen, p. 199, presenting an estimate of up to one million internees. The report further states that from Czechoslovakia, relatively few Germans were deportated to the USSR.

For Yugoslavia, the report says that their sources confirm that about 7,200 Germans were killed outside of camps. The researchers suspected that the numbers given in the sources are in part inflated, but also referred to sources reporting other killings without quantifying the victims. Adding to those numbers the victims of executions of camp inmates, the report estimates that between 15,000 and 20,000 Germans died a "violent death". The report thereby refers to sources about 49 large camps, where of an estimated total of 67,000 deaths about 8,000 were due to violence, and the rest primarily due to starvation, disease and maltreatment. For many small camps and prisons, as well as for Yugoslav German POWs shot in captivity by partisans, the report lacked detailed sources. Regarding the numbers of Yugoslav Germans deported to the USSR, the report refers to Theodor Schieder et al. (1958): Dokumentation der Vertreibung vol. V, p. 97E, citing the numbers of 27,000 to 30,000 deportees and the respective death toll of 4,500 people given there. The report postulates that at least 80,000 Yugoslav Germans died during the expulsions.

The report concludes that

• no distinct group of Germans was preferred as target, instead the remaining German population was targeted as a whole
• the perpetrators were identified as members of the Red Army, the NKVD, Polish militia and security forces, Czechoslovak people's guard and liberation army and Yugoslav partisans
• the sources used for the report were insufficient to calculate a comprehensive balance, especially for the situation in larger communities and camps the available sources were too fragmentary for an overview
• the sources differed in their accounts of number of inmates and deaths in camps
• the total numbers of deaths given in the report are "rough estimates".

Expulsion Deaths Listed by German Federal Archives 1974

Description	Total Deaths	Oder-Neisse region, Poland	Czechoslovakia	Yugoslavia
Violent Deaths during war 1945	138,000	100,000	30,000	8,000
Deported to USSR	205,000	200,000	-	5,000
Forced labor N. East Prussia	40,000	40,000	-	-
In Post War Internment Camps	227,000	60,000	100,000	67,000
Total	610,000	400,000	130,000	80,000

Source for figures- German Federal Archive, Spiegel, Silke Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen 1945-1948. Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28. Mai 1974. Archivalien und ausgewählte Erlebnisberichte. Bonn 1989( The authors maintain that the figures do not include post war deaths due to malnutrition and disease. No figures were given for Romania and Hungary)

Rüdiger Overmans believes that the 1974 report is not definitive and that new research is needed to determine total deaths due to the expulsions. Overmans made the following observations regarding the German Federal Archives Report:

• Some deaths may have gone unreported in the Archives study because there were no eye witnesses to the events.

• The German Federal Archives Report is not comparable to the other studies because the USSR, Hungary, Romania and deaths in the air war were not surveyed.

• Overmans maintains there are more arguments for the lower figures of 500,000 to 600,000 rather than the higher figures of over 2.0 million

The German historian Ingo Haar believes a realistic view of the total deaths due to the expulsions is in the range of 500,000 to 600,000. Harr maintains that these figures include include post war deaths due to malnutrition and disease and that the higher figures of over 2.0 million have been overstated by the German government for political reasons.

Since the fall of the USSR the Soviet archives have been accessible to researchers. The Russian scholar Pavel Polian in 2001 published an account of the deportations during the Soviet era, Against Their Will, Polian's study detailed the Soviet statistics on the employment of German civilian labor during the Stalin era. The research by Polian put the number of deported Germans at 271,672 and deaths at about 66,000. During the Cold war the German Red Cross made rough estimates of those deported at about 400,000 persons of whom about 200,000 perished, these figures were used by the German Federal Archives to compile their 1974 report on deportations to the USSR. The recent disclosures by Polian contradict the figures in the German Federal Archives report of 1974.

In 1995, a joint German and Czech commission of historians revised the number of civilian deaths in Czechoslovakia to between 15,000 and 30,000 persons During the Cold war German historians made rough estimates of about 350,000 persons interned in Czechoslovakia of whom 100,000 perished, these estimates were used by the German Federal Archives They also estimated 30,000 persons killed in during the Prauge uprising and in post war Czechoslovakia. The recent report by the joint German and Czech commission of historians contradict the figures in the German Federal Archives report of 1974.

The German historians Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova have published a detailed study of the flight and expulsions that put the number of dead in Polish internment camps at 15,000 based on information recently published in Poland. These recent disclosures contrdict the figures in the German Federal Archives report of 1974 that put the figure at 60,000. However, the Polish historians Witold Sienkiewicz and Grzegorz Hryciuk maintain that the internment "resulted in numerous deaths, which cannot be accurately determined because of lack of statistics or falsification. Periodically, they could be 10% of inmates. Those interned are estimated at 200-250,000 Germans and the local population, and deaths might range from 15,000 to 60,000 persons."

Allied Strategic Bombing

In early 1945, the then German city of Swinemünde (Świnoujście in contemporary Poland) was the destination port for refugees from East Prussia. On the 12th of March 1945, the US Eighth Air Force raided the city. Due to uncertainty concerning the number of refugees within the city the exact number of casualties is unknown. As the capacity of air raid shelters was limited to the regular populace, many refugees were killed at the spa gardens. The motor vessel Andros, carrying about 2,000 refugees, had just arrived at the harbour and was sunk with the loss of about 570 people. About 500 victims of the raid were identified and buried close to the entrance of the cemetery and the remaining dead were buried in mass graves. The estimated number of victims, including residents of Swinemünde who were also encompassed by the expulsions, varies from about 5,000 to 23,000. 1958 the West German Government demographic study of expellee deaths estimated the total civilian dead in the East Pommerian region due to Anglo-American air raids after 1/31/45 at 8,000. The German War Graves Commission estimates that 20,000 victims are buried at the Golm War Cemetery with further burials within the town limits.

An unknown number of refugees from the east were among the estimated total 18,000-25,000 dead in the Bombing of Dresden in World War II. The German historian Rüdiger Overmans believes that “the number of refugee dead in the Dresden bombing was only a few hundred, hardly thousands or tens of thousands”

Method Using the Population Balance Method

Estimates for the population losses in the Expulsions that appear in historical literature are ultimately derived from reports published by the German government. The "methodology" behind these figures is a computation of the estimated population deficit.

1958 the West German Government Demographic Study

The West German government statistical office was responsible for analyzing the figures relating to the losses. In 1958 they issued a final report, estimating a demographic loss of some 2.225 million German civilians in all of eastern Europe. The figures listed in the table below are from this report Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste(The German Expulsion Casualties) The West German government report of 1958, using prewar population figures, wartime estimates and postwar figures from both German states and in Eastern Europe, concluded that 3,325,000 people died war and expulsions, and estimated that 1,100,000 of these were war dead, including 11,500 civilians killed by Allied Strategic Bombing (up until 1/31/1945), thus reducing the number of civilian deaths in the flight during the war and the subsequent expulsions to 2.225 million. The 1958 German government report also listed a total of approximately 12.0 million who were actually expelled. The summary table in the West German government statistical office report uses a description giving total "post war losses" of 2.225 million persons, however the detailed analysis in the text lists 169,000 civilian deaths during the flight and evacuation during the war ( 128,000 pre-war Germany, 35,000 Czechoslovakia and 4,000 Hungary). The figures in the report also include losses during the Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union.

Description	German Population 1939	War Deaths	Population growth 1939-50	Remained in East Europe & USSR 1950	Expelled by 1950	Unresolved Cases (post war losses)
Germany 1937 Borders(Eastern Provinces)	9,575,200	667,500	546,000	1,134,000	6,981,000	1,338,700
Poland 1939 Borders	1,371,000	108,000	46,000	436,000	688,000	185,000
Free City of Danzig	380,000	22,000	22,000	4,000	290,800	83,200
Czechoslovakia	3,477,000	180,000	235,000	258,700	3,000,400	272,900
Baltic States	249,500	15,000	5,700	19,300	169,500	51,400
Yugoslavia	536,800	40,000	23,500	87,000	297,500	135,800
Hungary	623,000	32,000	17,000	338,000	213,000	57,000
Romania	786,000	35,000	41,000	438,000	253,000	101,000
Total	16,998,500	1,099,500	936,200	2,717,000	11,893,200	2,225,000

Source:
Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50. Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. - Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1958

Notes

• English language sources published during the cold war dealing with the expulsions put the death toll at 2 to 3 million based on the West German government statistical analysis of the 1950s.

• In 2006 The German government reaffirmed its belief that 2 million civilians perished in the flight and expulsion from Eastern Europe. They maintain that the figure is correct because it includes additional post war deaths from malnutrition and disease of those civilians subject to the expulsions. On 29 November 2006 State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Christoph Bergner, outlined the stance of the respective governmental institutions in Deutschlandfunk saying that the numbers presented by the German government and others are not contradictory to the numbers cited by Haar, and that the below 600,000 estimate comprises the deaths directly caused by atrocities during the expulsion measures and thus only includes people who on the spot were raped, beaten, or else brought to death, while the above two millions estimate also includes people who on their way to post-war Germany have died of epidemics, hunger, cold, air raids and the like.

• The German historian Ingo Haar believes that civilian losses in the expulsions have been overstated in Germany for decades for political reasons. Haar argues that during the Cold War the West German government put political pressure on the Statistisches Bundesamt to push the figures upward to agree to the unreliable Church Service figure of 2.3 million dead and missing. Harr disputes the statements of the German government and maintains that the lower estimates of 500-600,000 deaths already include post war deaths due to malnutrition and disease. He also maintains that the figures for the population of prewar Germany include 27,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Harr points out that these issues were raised with the West German government, but the inflated numbers continued to be used when the demographic report was published in 1958 in order to agree with the previous findings of the Schieder commission and the Church Search Service.

• The German scholar Dr. Rüdiger Overmans believes that the statistical foundations of the 1958 West German government demographic report to be questionable and cannot be regarded as definitive. Overmans made the following observations on figures of the 1958 demographic report.

1-The report is not mathematically consistent, because it was not properly proof read.

2-The figures of Germans were overstated by including persons who were of doubtfull German ethnic identity. Persons who became assimilated into the local population in eastern Europe are included in those persons reported as missing.

3-The figure given by the Statistisches Bundesamt for the total German population effected by the expulsions is 16.5 million which is higher than the Church Search Service figure of 16.2 million persons. The two figures are not directly comparable because the Church Search Service figure includes 700,000 Soviet Germans not included in the Statistisches Bundesamt study, which means that the figure for the total population used to compute losses by the Statistisches Bundesamt is inflated by 1.0 million persons.

4-Military losses are understated thus inflating civilian losses.

5-The number of surviving expellees in the GDR is understated thus inflating losses. .

6-Overmans maintains that there are more arguments for a lower figure of 500,000 rather than the higher figures of over 2.0 million. He believes that the previous studies by the German government should be subject to critical revision and new research is needed to establish the actual number of expulsion deaths.

• In his 2000 study of German military casualties Dr. Rüdiger Overmans found 344,000 additional military deaths of Germans from the Former eastern territories of Germany and conscripted ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. Overmans believes this will reduce the number of civilians previously listed as missing in the expulsions.

• The Polish scholar Piotr Eberhardt found that; Generally speaking, the German estimates…are not only highly arbitrary, but also clearly tendentious in presentation of the German losses He maintains that the German government figures from 1958 overstated the total number of the ethnic Germans living in Poland prior to war as well as the total civilian deaths due to the expulsions. For example, Eberhardt points out that the total number of Germans in Poland is given as equal 1,371,000. According to the Polish census of 1931 there were altogether only 741,000 Germans on the entire territory of Poland.

• The German historians Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova have published a detailed study of the flight and expulsions that is sharply critical of German accounts of the cold war era. The Hahn's believe that the official German figure of 2 million deaths is an historical myth that lacks foundation. The Hahns pointed out that the official 1958 figure of 273,000 deaths for Czechoslovakia was prepared by Alfred Bohmann an ex-Nazi party member who had served in the wartime SS, Bohmann was a journalist for an ultra-nationalist Sudeten-Deutsch newspaper in post war West Germany. The Hahn's maintain that the figures for the total ethnic German population in eastern Europe also include German speaking Jews killed in the Holocaust

• The organizations of the ethnic German Expellees from Yugoslavia have traced the fate of the civilians who perished in the expulsions. In 1991-1995 the results of their research were published in a four volume study that listed the names and cause of death for each person. The study identified 57,841 civilians confirmed as dead and 889 listed as missing. This contradicts the 1958 study that estimated losses at 136,000.

• In 1996 a joint Czech-German Historical commission found that the demographic estimate by the German government of 270,000 civilian deaths due to the expulsions from Czechoslovakia was based on faulty data. They estimated total deaths of 15,000-30,000

Estimates by Gerhard Reichling

Population Balance Estimated by Gerhard Reichling 1986

Description	PreWar German Population	Remained in East Europe & USSR 1950	Expelled by 1950	Total Deaths	In Expulsion	In USSR(forced labor)
Former eastern territories of Germany	9,575,000	1,440,000	6,980,000	870,000	730,000	140,000
-Resettled in Eastern Europe during war	-	10,000	460,000	108,000	88,000	20,000
Danzig	380,000	50,000	290,000	40,000	35,000	5,000
Poland	1,200,000	342,000	690,000	174,000	134,000	40,000
Czechoslovakia	3,544,000	306,000	3,000,000	220,000	216,000	4,000
Baltic States	250,000	24,000	170,000	33,000	25,000	8,000
USSR	1,400,000	1,240,000	100,000	310,000	-	310,000
Hungary	600,000	270,000	210,000	84,000	74,000	10,000
Romania	782,000	406,000	250,000	75,000	42,000	33,000
Yugoslavia	536,000	82,000	300,000	106,000	96,000	10,000
Total	18,267,000	4,170,000	12,450,000	2,020,000	1,440,000	580,000

Source for figures-Dr. Gerhard Reichning, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, Teil 1, Bonn 1995. Page 36

• A 1986 study by Dr. Gerhard Reichling "Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen" (the German expellees in figures) concluded 2,020,000 ethnic Germans perished after the war including 1,440,000 as a result of the expulsions and 580,000 deaths due to deportation as forced laborers in the Soviet Union. The figures were rough estimates made by Reichling and not based on an actual enumeration of the dead. Dr. Kurt Horstmann of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany wrote the forward to the study, endorsing the work of Reichling. Reichling was an employee of the Federal Statistical Office who was involved in the study of German expulsion statistics since 1953.

• The German historians Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova have provided an analysis of the work by Reichling. They remark that his work basically a new variant of the information that had been published previously. They refer to his study as "old wine in new bottles" that "magically" comes up with the official figure of 2 million expulsion deaths. They outline his career as an official in the West German civil service that focused on the fate of the expellees in post war Germany. The authors point that Reichling does not clearly explain to readers that the Nazi racial policy of resettlement and deportation during the war was the underlying cause of the subsequent expulsion of the Germans after the war.

Population balance method versus counts of reported death

The principal weakness of statistical calculation is in uncertainty of input parameters, such as war losses. For example, the German researcher Rüdiger Overmans published a study, Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (German military losses in the Second World War), that revises war losses upwards from older estimates. As in the population-balance approach all these numbers are tightly interconnected, this means revision of deaths related to expulsion would be also necessary.

Another example can be quoted from the Opinion of Czech-German commission of historians, explaining how recent changes in the estimated number of Sudeten Germans in East Germany would influence the result of balance calculations in case of Czechoslovakia

If the overall balance-sheet were to incorporate recently published data from the 1950 census in German Democratic Republic, which show only 612,000 former Sudeten Germans living in the GDR in 1950 instead of the figure of 914,000 used up till now, the number of cases unaccounted for would rise to over half a million [note: from 220-270 thousand]. This would lead to absurd results.

Ingo Haar of the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin said on 14 November 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that about 500,000 to 600,000 victims are realistic, based on a German governmental study initiated in the 1960s and published in 1974, reporting 400,000 deaths east of the Oder-Neisse line and 100,000 deaths in Czechoslovakia. Haar said these numbers were compiled from actually reported deaths, while higher figures of about two million deaths were estimated with the population balance method in a German governmental study of 1958. Haar said the higher estimates must be seen in the historical context of the 1950s, when the government of West Germany needed high numbers for political reasons. Military historian Rüdiger Overmans said on 6 December 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that only the about 500,000 registered deaths could be counted, and that the unaccounted cases calculated with the population balance method need first be confirmed by further research.

Federation of Expellees' estimates

The German foundation Centre Against Expulsions of the Federation of Expellees has compiled the following data from various sources.

Time period	Number of expellees (incl. deaths)	Group expelled	Expelled by	Expelled, deported, fled from	To	Deaths*
Aug 1941 - Jun 1942	900,000	Russian-Germans	Soviet Union	Ukraine, Volga Republic, Caucasus, etc.	Siberia, Central Asia, etc.	210,000
Oct 1944 - Mar 1948	200,000	Germans	Yugoslavia	Yugoslavia	Germany, Austria	62,500
Jan/Feb 1945	75,000	Germans	Soviet Union, Romanians	Romania	USSR	11,000
1944 - 1948	2,209,000	Germans	Poland, Soviet Union	East Germany, East Prussia	West Germany, Middle Germany	299,000
1945 - 1948	5,820,000	Germans	Poland	former East Germany, Pomerania, East Brandenburg, Silesia	West Germany, Middle Germany	914,000
1945 - 1948	367,000	Germans	Poland	Free State of Danzig	West Germany, Middle Germany	83,000
1945 - 1948	3,159,000	Germans	Czechoslovakia	Czechoslovakia	West Germany, Middle Germany, Austria	238,000
1945 - 1948	857,000	Germans	Poland	Poland	West Germany, Middle Germany	185,000
1945 - 1948	320,000	Baltic Germans, Romanian-Germans, etc.	Poland, Soviet Union	Poland, East Germany	West Germany, Middle Germany	99,000
1945 - 1948	30,000	Baltic Germans, Romanian-Germans, etc.	Soviet Union	Poland, East Germany	Siberia, Central Asia	10,000
1945 - 1946	280,000	Russian-Germans	Soviet Union, Western Allies	Middle Germany	Siberia, Central Asia, etc.	90,000
1946 - 1948	250,000	Germans	Hungary	Hungary	Germany, Austria	6,000
Totals	13,567,000					2,207,500

This more detailed accounting is susceptible to specific objections and questions about the meaning of the numbers. While the table is presented as estimates of the number of expelled, and column Expelled by suggests which government was responsible, these assertions have been questioned. The following points are relevant to the interpretation of the above statistics

• The statistics used to compile the list of dead by the Centre Against Expulsions are derived from the Schieder commission reports and the 1958 the West German Government Demographic Study Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Ingo Haar maintains that the statistical basis of the data used by the Centre Against Expulsions is empirically unsound. Haar believes out that the statistics include missing persons whose fate in eastern Europe could not be clarified during the cold war and does not necessarily mean that they were deaths in the expulsions. Haar points out that the Centre Against Expulsions includes deaths in the wartime flight with the subsequent expulsions.

• Many Germans were evacuated by German authorities and died during Soviet military operations, starvation and extreme cold during the final months of the war. The German population arrived in a post war Germany that was ravaged by starvation and disease. Polish historians maintain that that most of the deaths occurred during the flight and evacuation during the war, the deportation to the U.S.S.R. for forced labor and after the resettlement due to the harsh conditions in the Soviet occupation zone in post war Germany. This is in sharp contrast to the position Centre Against Expulsions which implies that these deaths were due to the post war expulsions.

• The number of Germans who were expelled was a fraction of those who arrived in Germany. Of the total 11.6 million persons listed by Germany as Expellees, 4.5 million fled during the war, 2.6 million were returned POW and 4.5 million were actually deported to Germany after the war.

• Poland, Hungary and Romania were controlled by Soviet authorities during the post war era when the expulsions occurred. The nominal governments did not have control over policy. Yugoslavia was controlled by Titoist partisans at this time. Czechoslovakia did not come under direct Communsit control until 1948.

• The basis of great part of the expulsion was Potsdam Agreement (Article 12) agreed by the USA, UK and the USSR.

Early estimates compiled in the 1950s

In 1950 West German Government made a preliminary estimate of 3.0 million dead and missing whose fate needed to be clarified. In 1953 the German scholar Gotthold Rhode made an demographic estimate of 3,140,000 dead and missing German military personnel and civilians in eastern Europe from 1939 to 1950. Bruno Gleitze estimated in 1953 800,000 civilian deaths (for Germany within 1937 borders only) among only "Eastern Germans" in the area of the expulsion The Schieder commission issued reports on the flight and expulsions from 1953 to 1961 that estimated losses at 2.2 million persons These early estimates were superseded by subsequent publication in 1958 of the demographic study by the West German government statistical office that put losses at 2,225,000. Since the end of the cold war the statistical foundations of the 1958 West German government demographic report have been challenged by some historians in Germany who now put the actual total at about 500,000deaths based on the listing confirmed deaths by the Red Cross.

Estimates concerning The Czech Republic only

In the Czech Republic these events are not referred to as expulsions, rather they use the expression "Odsun" meaning "evacuation" in English. In the case of Czech Republic, The 1996 Report of the Commission on the losses connected with the transfer, which was prepared a the joint Czech-German Historical Commission . It reported that the number of deaths was 15,000 to 30,000 and that number of 220,000 estimated by the Centre Against Expulsions is not supported by the evidence. The Commission was abel to confirm 15,580 deaths related to the expulsions and an additional 6,667 suicides, a total of 22,247 confirmed deaths. In the final report the Commission raised the total estimated maximum to 30,000 deaths in order to account for the possibility of unreported deaths.The commission found that the demographic estimates by the German government of 220,000 to 270,000 civilian deaths due to expulsions from Czechoslovakia were based on faulty data. The Commission determined that the demographic estimates by the German government counted as missing 90,000 ethnic Germans assimilated into the Czech population; military deaths were understated and that the 1950 census data used to compute the demographic losses was unreliable. [10]

Developing a clear picture of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia is difficult because of the chaotic conditions that existed at the end of the war. There was no stable central government and record-keeping was non-existent. Many of the events that occurred during that period were spontaneous and local rather than being the result of coordinated policy directives from a central government. Among these spontaneous events was the removal and detention of the Sudeten Germans which was triggered by the strong anti-German sentiment at the grass-roots level and organized by local officials.

Records of food rationing coupons show approximately 3,325,000 inhabitants of occupied Sudetenland in May 1945. Of these, about 500,000 were Czechs or other non-Germans. Thus, there were approximately 2,725,000 Germans in occupied Sudetenland in May 1945.

On the initiative of the joint Czech-German Commission of Historians, a statistical and demographic investigation was conducted, resulting in the publication of the "Opinion of the Commission on the losses connected with the transfer". The number that the commission arrived at has since been accepted by a large section of the historians, press and media in other countries:

1. Figures for the victims of the transfer vary enormously and are thus extremely controversial. The values given in German statistical calculations [for deaths resulting from expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia] vary between 220,000 and 270,000 cases that are unaccounted for, which are in many cases interpreted as deaths; the figures given in research carried out so far varies between 15,000 and 30,000 deaths.
2. The discrepancy is due to differing notions of the term "victims of the transfer".
3. In the Commission's view, a particular problem with the "balance-sheet" approach is that most of the data it works with are based on model calculations and estimates that are derived from quantities that cannot be compared with one another.

Tracing the Fates of Individuals In Yugoslavia

The organizations of the ethnic German Expellees from Yugoslavia have traced the fate of the civilians who perished in the expulsions. In 1991-1995 the results of their research were published in a four volume study that listed the names and cause of death of each person. The following is a summary of their findings.

Description	Before Internment	In Internment Camps	In Flight from Internment Camps	In the USSR	Total
Murdered	7,199	558	79		7,836
Driven to Death	154	60	0		214
Deaths while escaping			143		143
Starvation		47,654			47,654
In Forced Labor	0	0		1,994	1,994
Missing	696	175	18		889
Total	8,049	48,447	240	1,994	58,730

The report also listed the deaths of 605 civilians killed in military operations outside of Yugoslavia and 26,064 men who were dead and missing in the German Armed forces. The report mentioned that a total of 166,970 civilians were interned by the Yugoslav authorities and an additional 12,380 were deported to the USSR as forced laborers.

Source: Leidensweg der Deutschen im kommunistischen Jugoslawien / verfasst vom Arbeitskreis Dokumentation im Bundesverband der Landsmannschaft der Donauschwaben aus Jugoslawien, Sindelfingen, und in der Donauschwäbischen Kulturstiftung, München. Imprint München : Die Stiftung, 1991-1995. Vol 4 p. 1018–1019

Estimates concerning Poland only

Poland Expulsions/Deportations

In Poland these events are not referred to as expulsions, rather they use the expression Wysiedlenie i emigracja ludności niemieckiej The Deportation and Emigration of the German people.

A 2005 study in Poland reported the data of Polish government indicated that about 4 million Germans remained on Polish territory in mid 1945, out of the pre war population of about 10 million. The remaining balance were killed in the war, held as POWs or had fled to Germany in the final months of the war. By 1950 about 3.0 million persons had been deported from Poland and 1.1 million persons were verified as Polish citizens. .

By 1964 the Suchdienst (search service) of the German churches was able to confirm 367,392 civilian deaths from the territory of contemporary Poland (detailed as follows: 44,603 violent deaths ; 10,330 suicides; 32,947 forced labor dead ; 27,847 in the transit camps prior to expulsion; 86,860 during in the flight west; 57,814 after the expulsions; 106,991 cause undetermined). There were an additional 1,404,993 unconfirmed cases of persons reported dead and missing.

The 1974 Report of the German archives estimated 60,000 German civilians died in Polish communist camps and 40,0000 in Soviet detention in Poland. Not including 100,000 killed by the Red army and their Allies during the war and 200,000 in forced labor in the USSR.

The Polish historian Bernadetta Nitschke has provided a summary of the research in Poland on the calculation of German losses due to the flight and resettlement of the Germans from Poland only, not including other eastern European countries. Nitschke contrasted the estimate of 1.6 million deaths in Poland reported in 1958 by the West German government with the more recent figure of 400,000 that was detailed by Rudiger Overmans in 1994. She noted that the Polish researcher Stefan Banasiak estimated in 1963 that the death toll during the post war deportations was 1,136 persons, a figure accepted by other Polish historians who maintain that that most of the deaths occurred during the flight and evacuation during the war, the deportation to the U.S.S.R. for forced labor and after the resettlement due to the harsh conditions in the Soviet occupation zone in post war Germany. This is in sharp contrast to the 1958 West German government Schieder commission report which maintained that these deaths occurred after the war on Polish territory.

2,612,000 Germans left Poland in 02.1946 - 12.1949 according to S. Jankowiak, as cited by B. Nitschke.

During the pre-Potsdam expulsions, many Germans were forced to march over 100 and sometimes even 200 kilometres. Different estimates of the number of Germans expelled by People's Army of Poland alone during pre-Potsdam deportations (all numbers after Jankowiak): 365,000 - 1,200,000 Germans were deported by Polish administration.

The 1958 German government report of 1958 listed 7,960,000 expellees from Poland (including the pre-war territories of Germany, Poland and Danzig). This figure includes those persons who fled during the war and returned POWs as well as those who left Poland after the war.

Estimated Deaths

• 1200 thousand, according to K.Kersten, 1964^{[citation needed]}
• In 1965 Andrzej Brożek estimated losses at 1,020,000 in Poland. Barbara Nitschke dismisses this number as too high.
• 300 thousand, according to S.Banasiak^{[citation needed]}
• 400 thousand, K.Skubiszewski^{[citation needed]}
• 500 thousand, A.Ogrodowczyk^{[citation needed]}
• 300-400 thousand, S.Chojnecki, 1980^{[citation needed]}
• 350-450 thousand, A.Magierska, 1978^{[citation needed]}
• 200-250 thousand, T.Białecki, 1970^{[citation needed]}
• 620-630 thousand, S.Zwoniński, 1983^{[citation needed]}
• 230-250 thousand, Cz. Osękowski^{[citation needed]}
• 500-550 thousand, Z. Romanow^{[citation needed]}
• 400 thousand, B.Nitschke^{[citation needed]}
• 400 thousand, M.Wille, 1996^{[citation needed]}
• 600-700 thousand
• 1.6 million per 1958 German Government Study
• 367,000 per 1965 German Church Service
• 400,000 per 1974 German Archives Study

Germans remaining in Poland

Former German citizens remaining in Poland after 1950 in the Oder-Neisse territories are put at 1.1 million according to 1950 Polish Census figures including "autochthons" – Polish-speaking or bilingual German citizens – in Upper Silesia, Masuria and West Prussia. This figure was confirmed by the 1950 German government demographic study of the population. Dr. Gerhard Reichling in 1995 put the total number at 1.3 million in 1950(Note: A significant proportion of Germans remaining in postwar Poland were allowed to emigrate after 1956 and benifited as a result of Brandt's Ostpolitik.)

Casualties

Compilation of death toll estimates of flight, evacuation and expulsion

Year	Estimate	Source	Reference	Provided in	Comments
1950	3,000,000	West German Government	Wirtschaft und Statistik April 1950		This was a preliminary demographic estimate of the losses by the West German government which included 1.5 million from pre-war eastern Germany and 1.5 million ethnic Germans from East Europe, and is no longer considered valid. At this time only 162,000 missing had been registered with the government.
1953	3,140,000(including military dead)	Gotthold Rhode	Zeitschrift Für Ostforschung		Details by country Oder-Neisse region 1,640,000; Poland 280,000, Danzig 90,000; Czechoslovakia 450,000; Yugoslavia 385,000; Rumania 150,000; Hungary; Baltic States 45,500. The first attempt to compute the losses was made in 1953 by the German scholar Gotthold Rhode who estimated civilian and military dead and missing in the area of the expulsions at 3,140,000. This estimate is no longer considered valid.
1953	800,000	Bruno Gleitze	Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung.		Gleitze estimated 800,000 civilian deaths (for Germany within 1937 borders only) among only "Eastern Germans" in the area of the expulsions. The figures in the Gleitze study were ignored by the Schieder commission report, issued in 1953, which gave a figure of 1.617 million civilian deaths among the eastern Germans (in 1937 borders)
1954–1961	2,244,600(Not including military and air raid dead)	Schieder commission	Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa		Details by country Oder-Neisse region 2,167,000(figure includes 500,000 military and 50,000 air raid dead); Poland 217,000, Danzig 100,000; Czechoslovakia 225,600; Yugoslavia 69,000; Rumania 10,000; Hungary 6,000 The statistical information in the Schieder Report was later superseded by the 1958 German Government demographic study.
1958	3,000,000	U.S. Congressman B. Carroll Reece			Based on 1950 West German estimate, no longer considered valid. Charged that 3 million German civilians had died during the expulsions
1958	2,225,000	Statistisches Bundesamt German Federal Statistics Office	Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste, 1939–50 (German losses from expulsion, 1939–50) German Federal Statistics Office.		This is official German government report on losses. Does not include Soviet Germans or Germans resettled in Poland during the war.
1965	2,379,000	German Church Search Service/Red Cross	Gesamterhebung zur Klärung des Schicksals der deutschen Bevölkerung in den Vertreibungsgebieten, (General compilation towards accounting for the fate of the German population in the areas of expulsion), Munich, 1965-German Church Service prepared this report.		Figures were revealed by Dr. Rudiger Overmans in 1994. Includes 473,000 confirmed dead and 1,906,000 unresolved cases
1966	2,111,000	Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims	Facts concerning the problem of the German expellees and refugees		West German government figure cited by Alfred de Zayas
1974	600,000	German Federal Archive	Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen, 1945-1948 : Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28. Mai 1974 : Archivalien und ausgewählte Erlebnisberichte		Includes estimated deaths due to acts of violence, deaths in camps and forced labor. Excludes losses resulting from war related famine and disease.
1977	2,111,000	Alfred de Zayas	Alfred M. de Zayas: A terrible Revenge. Palgrave/Macmillan, New York, 1994-Page 152.		Figures from German Ministry of Expellees, 1967.
1982	2,800,000	Heinz Nawratil	Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung 1945 bis 1948 (the black book of the expulsions 1945 to 1948) (Universitas Verlag, Munich, 9th edition 2001, p. 75)		Nawratil’s figures include the 1958 German government figure of 2.2 million dead plus 350,000 Soviet Germans and 250,000 Germans who were resettled in the Poland during the war which were not included in the 1958 demographic study. In 1987 the German historian Martin Broszat described Nawratil's writings as "polemics with a nationalist-rightist point of view and exaggerates in an absurd manner the scale of "expulsion crimes".
1982	2,000,000 to 2,500,000	West German Interior Ministry	Figure cited by Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova
1986	2,020,000	Dr. Gerhard Reichling	Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen (the German expellees in figures), Teil 1, Bonn 1995, Tabelle 7, page 36		This report has the endorsement of the German government. Includes those who perished as a result of the expulsion and deportation for forced labor in the Soviet Union. Includes the deaths of 310,000 Soviet Germans, and 108,000 Germans resettled in Poland during the war not included in 1958 report.
1995	2.2 million	German Church Search Service/Red Cross	Figure cited by Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova		The German Red Cross issued a statement that their research confirmed the results of the 1958 Demographic study that put total losses at 2.2 million.
2000	500,000 confirmed deaths; 2,000,000 total demographic estimate	Rudiger Overmans	Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (German military losses in the Second World War) The Overmans study did not investigate civilian losses, only military casualties, he merely noted that other studies estimated of expulsion losses were about 500,000.		Overmans believes new research on the number of expulsion deaths is needed since only 500,000 of the reported 2,000,00 deaths are confirmed.
2003	600,000	Bernadetta Nitschke	Wysiedlenie czy wypedzenie? ludnosc niemiecka w Polsce w latach 1945-1949 p. 240	Wysiedlenie czy wypedzenie? ludnosc niemiecka w Polsce w latach 1945-1949p. 240	Figure from 1974 German Archives report mentioned above. Nitschke cites a figure of 610,000 (including Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, resp.: 400,000 + 130,000 + 80,000; in "Wysiedlenie ...", p. 240). She also presented 600,000 in her earlier book available online at http://zbc.uz.zgora.pl/ (page 232)
2005	2,252,500	German Church Search Service/Red Cross	Figure cited by Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova		The German Red Cross did not provide details of this figure.
2006	500,000 to 600,000	Ingo Haar		Deutschlandfunk web site	Figures from German Church Service and German Archives reports mentioned above.
2006	473,000	German Church Search Service/Red Cross	Polish translation of Haar after Süddeutsche Zeitung	Gazeta Wyborcza	Figure is derived from the German Church Service report mentioned above. Confirmed deaths only, does not include 1,906,000 unresolved cases.
2006	400,000	German Federal Archive	Polish translation of Haar after Süddeutsche Zeitung	Gazeta Wyborcza	Figures from German Federal Archive Report mentioned above for Poland only
2010	473,016	Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahnova			Figure from German Church Service mentioned above. Most of the losses occurred in the flight during the war. About 80,000 occurred in eastern Europe in the post-war period.

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