Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)

The expulsion of Germans after World War II refers to the forced migration of people considered Germans (Reichsdeutsche and some Volksdeutsche) from various European states and territories during 1945 and in the first three years after World War II 1946-48.

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. Several million people were involved in this movement which was driven by fear of the advancing Soviet army. Of these, several hundred thousand died of cold or hunger or in Allied bombardment, though hundreds of thousands of others soon made their way back to the area.^[1]

The next phase consisted of so-called "wild" expulsions conducted by military and civilian authorities in summer 1945. 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.

The majority of the deportations occurred in areas belonging to Czech Republic, Poland and Russia after the war. Others occurred in territories of today's Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia (predominantly in the Vojvodina region), Lithuania, Slovenia and other regions of Central and Eastern Europe.

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 Western Allies and the Soviet Union. 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 as high as 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 debate about the number of deaths and their cause continues to be the subject of heated controversy.

More than half a century later, relations between unified Germany and its East European neighbors remain somewhat difficult due to a heated and emotional controversy concerning the morality of the expulsions and the rights of expellees (the "Heimatvertriebene"). Much of the controversy is spurred by contentious demands of some groups of the expellees or their descendants for revocation of expulsion decrees, official apologies, prosecution of perpetrators, or compensation for lost properties. Underlying this controversy are disagreements about who was responsible for the expulsions, what the motivations were and whether the expulsions were morally justified.

Background

Part of the motivation behind the expulsions is based on events in the history of Germany and Europe, especially Eastern Europe. Colonisation and migrations that took place over almost a millennium led to pockets of Germans living throughout Eastern Europe as far east as Russia. The existence of these pockets was misused by German nationalists, most notably the Nazis, to justify wars of aggression which led up to World War II.

During the German occupation of Europe, many ethnic Germans applied for German citizenship by registering with the Deutsche Volksliste, and some held important positions in the hierarchy of Nazi administration. The expulsions of German minorities at the end of World War II were part of negotiated agreements between the victorious Allies to redraw national borders and arrangements for "orderly population transfers" to remove the ethnic minorities that were viewed as troublesome.

Forced migrations were a central element of European history in the 20th century. The concept of "nationalism" which demanded ethnic homogeneity as a basis of political order became one of the most effective and powerful ideologies of the era. This nationalism presented the displacement of parts of the population as a legitimate political means, legitimized the use of force against minorities and made millions of human beings into victims of arbitrariness, persecution and expulsion.

Chronology of the expulsions

If the participants of the Potsdam Conference envisioned "orderly population transfers", the reality on the ground turned out to be anything 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.

Yet the conditions of German expulsion in general were much better to those, in which Polish population had been expelled during Germaan occupation. The transportation was supervised by Western officers and the time left for preparation before the travel was usually much longer than 15 minutes of preparation usually left to Poles expelled by German authorities under occupation of Poland. Also, Germans were allowed to take their moveables, while Poles previously expelled by German authorities were at the same time robbed out of their property.

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 refugees eventually went to other countries of the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Spain.

As part of the nationalisation 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, nationalised 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 labour for the country [1]. Likewise in the Opole (Oppeln) region in Upper Silesia, natives who were who declared themselves as belonging to Polish nationality were allowed to stay. In fact part of them (and not all of them) had uncertain national identity or considered themselves to be Germans. Their status as a national minority was accepted in 1955, alongside with the state's help in regard to economic assistance, and education.^[2]

Czechoslovakia

Before the 1938 German annexation of the Sudetenland, roughly 20% of the population in Czechoslovakia had been ethnic Germans.^[3]

During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, especially after the Nazis bloodily revenged the assassination of Heydrich, most of the Czech resistance groups demanded the final solution of 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.^[4] 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 the "wild" expulsion happened from May till August 1945. These "wild" expulsions were encouraged by polemical speeches made by several Czechoslovak statesmen. The "wild" expulsions were executed by order of local authorities mostly by groups of armed volunteers. However in some causes were initiated or pursued with the assistance of the regular army.^[5] Several thousand died violently during the "wild" expulsion and many more died from hunger and illness as a consequence. The regular transfer according the Potsdam Conference proceeded from 25 January 1946 till October of that year. An estimated 1.6 million ethnic Germans were deported to the American zone of what would become West Germany. An estimated 800,000 were deported to the Soviet zone (in what would become East Germany). [2] About 244,000 Germans were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia.

Estimates of casualties range between 20,000 and 200,000 people, depending on source.^[6] These casualties include violent deaths and suicides, deaths in internment camps^[7] and natural causes.^[8]

Hungary

In Hungary the persecution of the German minority began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet Commander-in-Chief ordered the deportations. Five percent of the German 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 next spring. In January 1945 the Soviet Army collected 32,000 ethnic Germans and deported them to the Soviet Union to do slave labour. Many of them died there as a result of the hardships and cruelties. On 29 December 1945, the new Hungarian Government ordered the deportation 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 deportations 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 deported to West Germany. Until July 1948, further 50,000 people were deported to the Eastern zone of Germany. Most of the deported Germans found a new home 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 deported 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, although the real numbers were certainly higher. Probably half of the German community was able to survive the dark years between 1944 and 1950 in Hungary.

Poland

On February 6, 1945, Soviet NKVD ordered mobilisation of all German men (17 to 50 years old) in the Soviet-controlled territories. Many of them were then transported to Soviet Union for forced labour. In the East German territories which the Soviet authorities put under Polish administration the Soviets did not always distinguish between the Poles and Germans and often treated them alike.^[9]

At the Yalta Conference, the Allies agreed to place certain territories that had been part of Germany prior to 1937 under Polish and Soviet administration, with the final borders to be determined in the peace treaty following the war. Upon gaining control of these lands, the Polish and Soviet authorities started to expel the German population of the lands newly under their control. The plan was that, with the German populace expelled, Germany would not be able to make claims to the territories again. The land was then populated with Polish citizens who had been expelled from the Kresy Wschodnie (eastern borderlands), which had newly been annexed by the Soviet Union. In 1990, Germany gave up any claims to the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line in the treaty of final settlement, in order to speed up German re-unification.

Advance of the Red Army

In the first months of 1945, as the Red Army advanced through the countries of Eastern Europe and the provinces of Eastern Germany, Soviet troops, as well as native populations and militias 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.

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 already before the Potsdam Conference. To ensure their incorporation to Poland, the 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 multi-national ones." a citation from Plenum of Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party, May 20-21, 1945.^[10] 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 phase of "wild" expulsions was more brutal than the organized population transfer that came afterward. Sources suggest that the expulsions in Poland were not as brutal as those in Czechoslovakia.^[11] Only in one source, Russian in Germany can be found: "Polish soldiers relate to German women as to free booty".^[12]

Historians disagree as to the number of Germans deported during this phase of expulsion. The estimates range from 300 thousand to 500 thousand people.^{[citation needed]} Many Germans evacuated during the war weren't allowed to return to their homes.

Post-July 1945 expulsion

The Soviet Union transferred territories to the east of the Oder-Neisse Line to Poland in After July 1945, most Germans were expelled to the territories west of the Oder-Neisse Line.

Yugoslavia

After the second world war and the resultant "expulsion" of Germans from eastern Europe, the majority of German-speaking people living in Yugoslavia left for Austria and West Germany. However, some remained, particularly those married to local partners.

In 1944, and following World War II, these Danube Swabians(German:Donauschwaben) were driven from their homes and homeland. They were exiled, suffered persecution and sustained great personal and economic losses. Many perished. Most survivors ended up in Germany and Austria, and after 1950, thanks to the "displaced persons" act (of 1948), also in the United States of America.

Romania

In Romania the Germans had to perform slave Labour for the Romanians in Russia, which the new Romanian state had agreed with the Russians. A large part of the Danube Canal to Constance in Romania itself, was also built by German slave labour.

Slovenia

Russia

Having been the capital of Kingdom of Prussia, Königsberg (now renamed Kaliningrad) was an important city in the history of Germany, also being where Immanuel Kant lived all his life. Under the Nazis it belonged to the German province (Gau) of East Prussia, which itself 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 entered. Those who remained suffered the terror of the Soviet occupation. After the war, all the surviving Germans were expelled and the region was settled by ethnic Russians and the families of military staff. The expelled Germans mostly headed to the territory of the future Western Germany.

Today, the area, named Kaliningrad Oblast, is an exclave of Russia, separated from the rest of the country by Lithuania and Belarus.

Lithuania

A part of western Lithuania, along the seacoast was annexed by Nazi Germany as Memelland in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the war. The area, including Klaipėda (German: Memel), an important Baltic sea port, had been part of East Prussia, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and then German Empire until the Treaty of Versailles.

After the war, the area belonged to the Soviet Union, (which included occupied Lithuania). Most of its German inhabitants fled to Germany, joining the exodus of the others from Königsberg and other Eastern Prussian cities. German civilian remnants were put on deportation trains in 1946. Ethnic Lithuanians and Russians from other areas of the Soviet Union replaced the German population. A number of orphaned German children were too small to go on the long trek as refugees on their own, and thus were taken in by Lithuanian families.

The Netherlands

After World War II the Dutch wanted to expel 25 000 Germans living in the Netherlands. The Germans (who often had Dutch wives 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 concentration camps near the German border, the biggest of which was Mariënbosch near Nijmegen.

The allied forces that occupied western Germany opposed this operation for fear that other countries might follow suit and western Germany was not in an economic condition to receive such a large number of migrants. The British troops in Germany reacted by evicting 100,000 Dutch citizens 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

see War children

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). Polish soldiers in Western Germany reported rapes committed by French soldiers.

Controversy over 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 affected countries and historians, perceive the reasons for the Potsdam decision and subsequent transfers differently. The key issues that motivated the expulsions include:

Compensation to Poland for territories occupied by the Soviet Union
A desire to consolidate the new borders by creating ethnically homogeneous nation states
Distrust of and enmity towards German communities
Prevention of ethnic violence between majority populations and German minorities
A desire to punish ethnic German minorities for activities in support of the Nazi invasion
A desire to expel ethnic Germans in the hopes of invalidating German territorial claims
Making room for Polish returnees
Making the future Polish state dependent on Soviet Union
Appropriation of German property left behind by the expellees
An attempt to restore pre-Nazi demographics in the areas where native populations were displaced by Nazi ethnic cleansing and expansion.

Compensation for territories lost to the Soviet Union

Poland 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 1939. 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, that was proposed to be the border after World War I, and which Poland had taken from the Soviet Union in 1922.

A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation states

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 longer history of the Polish and Czech nations trying to assert 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 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. [3]

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 bitter lesson it had learned in 1938: no stability without ethnic homogeneity. The utter military and moral defeat of Germany provided a chance for achieving ethnic homogeneity by means normally not available. In case of Czechoslovakia, not only the Sudeten Germans but also the Hungarians of Southern Slovakia became victims of the postwar ethnic cleansing campaign.

Distrust of and enmity towards German communities in Poland

There was an expressed fear of disloyalty of Germans in Silesia and Pommerania based in part on the pro-Nazi activities of members of the German ethnic group during the war and even after the end of the war. As a result of these activities, there was not a political party that would agree with Germans continuing to live in Silesia and Pomerania. To Poles, deportation of Germans was seen as an effort to avoid such events in the future and as a result Polish authorities proposed population transfer of Germans already in the late 1941.^[13]

Transferring the German-speaking population to the west was advocated as a necessary means of achieving inter-ethnic peace.

Preventing ethnic violence

The participants at the Potsdam Conference asserted the 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, in so far 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…". From this point of view the policy achieved its goals: the 1945 borders are stable and ethnic conflicts are relatively marginal.

Retribution

One justification offered for the expulsions is that the actual purpose of the policy was to punish the Germans for Germany's actions during World War II, including its expulsion of Poles and Czechs from territories annexed to Nazi Germany; and at the same time to create ethnically homogeneous nation states that would not give rise to the kind of ethnic tensions that had preceded the war.

From this perspective, the expulsions were viewed as an act of historical justice, because, for example, some Sudeten Germans strongly contributed to the destruction of pre-war Czechoslovakia. The Czech public opinion saw this act as betrayal. The Nazi occupation forces had planned to kill, deport, or enslave the Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior (Untermensch), and to repopulate the land with German peoples. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class.

Also, there was little empathy for German victims after the World War II experience, especially since the German government had itself ethnically cleansed a large number of areas (e.g. Reichsgau Wartheland) during the war.

Invalidating German territorial claims

According to one argument, the purpose of expelling Germans from areas now belonging to other countries was to invalidate German territorial claims to the land. The purported objective was to prevent a repetition of what happened in the Sudetenland where the Nazis based territorial claims based upon the large number of ethnic Germans living there.

Making room for Polish returnees

Even before former German territories were captured by the Red Army, around 2 million Poles from eastern Poland (behind the Curzon line) were expelled by the Soviets to western Poland or deported to gulag camps in Siberia. Additionally, an estimated 800,000 people from Warsaw were deported by the Germans to special work camps. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were expelled to Germany as forced labour. Ca 600,000 of them worked on German territories ceded to Poland. Another thousands of Poles were war emigrees in Western countries and in the Polish army in the West. After the end of the war, these people returned and needed housing in a country devastated by war, where especially the housing stock in towns had been dramatically destroyed by war and by German purposeful destruction action (e.g. Warsaw in 1944-1945) not known in such a scale in Western countries. According to this line of reasoning, Germans were expelled to make housing available for the returnees. The same trains which carried expelled Germsns to the west, on their way back eastward carried those Poles from western countries home. The scale of migrations for Poland was comparatively not less than that of Germans after 1945.

Making the future Polish state dependent on the Soviet Union

Never stated as the official reason, some believe that one of the Soviet motivations for the expulsions was to make the Polish state more dependent on the Soviet Union protection against potential future German demands.

Material gains from the German property left behind by the expellees

Polish communist administration often purposefully did not inform the Germans intended for deportation about their scheduled transport time until 24 hours before the departure. It has been alleged that the reason for this was to make it more difficult for the Germans to organize the transport of their property.^[14]

A restoration of pre-Nazi Eastern European demographics

Part of Nazi Germany's long term policy for Central and Eastern Europe was to create a "Greater Germany" which was to be built by means of removing a variety of non-Germans from Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other areas in Eastern Europe. Some Germans living in these areas were placed there as part of the Nazi settlement policies (particularly in Eastern Poland), and had replaced those who were removed or killed by the Nazis during the occupation. However, many Germans had lived in Eastern Europe for centuries and the ones settled during the war were in fact a minority which mainly consisted of those who were forced to leave the territories occupied by the Red Army in the course of the execution of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

During the war, Germans succeeded in expelling about a million of Poles from the Reich territory. In many instances, the Poles were given 10 minutes notice and each adult was allowed to collect up to 30kg of belongings in that time, before they were thrown out of their houses and transported east. ^{[citation needed]} On top of that about 3 million Poles were deported to Germany for forced labor in German factories and 5 million in German concentration camps. Further 6 million Polish citizens were killed during the war. All these actions resulted in significant changes in demographics at the end of the war.

The results

During the period of 1944/1945 - 1950, more than 14 million Germans were forced to flee or were expelled as a result of actions of the Red Army, civilian militia and/or organised efforts of governments of the reconstituted states of Eastern Europe.

The areas, from which the Germans escaped, or which were ethnically cleansed, 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, many historians still support estimates of 2 million deaths.

Many of these deaths were the result of ill-prepared German evacuation and chaotic flight. Many 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 violent 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 the end of the war" vs. "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 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 the evacuation, flight, pre-Potsdam "wild" expulsions and expulsions that occurred after the Potsdam Agreement which is seen by some people as a general sanction of the expulsions. Other people assert that the Potdam Agreement called for suspending further expulsions and bringing them under Allied controll. ^[15]

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. In addition, typhus epidemics continued to kill many Germans after they reached refugee camps inside the new borders of Germany.^{[citation needed]}

Controversy over responsibility for the expulsions

There is considerable, contentious debate over how much blame for the deaths and suffering of the expelled Germans should be placed on the shoulders of the nations who expelled the Germans. Whether the actual death toll be 1 million or 2 million, it is clear that the blame must be shared among the Allied Powers who made the decision to authorize the population transfers, the Soviet Union which had effective control over the countries involved, the national governments that put the expulsions into motion, and also the paramilitary organizations and local civilians who took advantage of the opportunity to rob, rape, torture and murder the expellees as they transited out of their homelands. in addition, though collectively referred to as "Germans" many of those expelled, like Baltic and Volga Germans, had lived in these respective regions before they even were nation states, and could hardly be described as "Germans" anymore so then German-Americans could be. Further more, the annexation of eastern German provinces, such as East Prussia's incorporation into Poland, which was occupied by the Red Army at the time, are clear take-overs of what was clearly, for the last thousand years, a German region. In fact, the historical dualism between Prussia and Vienna, is argued, to be one of the main forces behind what became the German national identity, and of course Germany itself. East Prussia, was of course in eastern Germany, but it being the hot-bed of German militarism that it was didn't help to keep it from being annexed either.

A natural assumption would put the blame on the people and governments of the countries that sanctioned the expulsions. However, a countervailing perspective argues that there were only two forces orchestrating the new order after the Second World War: the United States and the Soviet Union. Thus, this perspective argues that the responsibility for all the expulsions (Germans, Poles, Ukrainians etc) rests on those two allies and that the countries that the policies were implemented in had no say in this. Other perspectives suggest that, while these two countries may have planned, sanctioned and even facilitated the expulsions, some responsibility must be charged to the national and local authorities in the countries where the expulsions took place.

In particular, much blame is placed on the Soviet regime at the time (in particular Josef Stalin) for its program of ethnic cleansing of the German people from the Soviet Union and Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. Many of the deaths were caused by death marches ordered by Soviet officials, banditry, famine, widespread disease and overall poor living conditions that prevailed in that part of postwar Europe.

Yet another perspective argues that the expulsions were not driven primarily by ethnic hatred against the ethnic Germans. Instead, it is argued that blame must be shared by the Nazi occupation and the ethnic Germans who supported the occupying forces Nazi regime because of the harsh and oppressive way that they treated the non-Germans in the occupied nations. This perspective argues that the expulsions were motivated by an animus engendered by the war crimes, atrocities and oppressive rule of the German occupation.^[16]

Legality of the expulsions

The view of international law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Prior to World War II, a number of major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as the League of Nations.

The tide started to turn when the Charter of the Nuremberg Trials of German Nazi leaders declared forced deportation of civilian populations to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity, and this opinion was progressively adopted and extended through the remainder of the century. Underlying the change was the trend to assign rights to individuals, thereby limiting the rights of states to make agreements which adversely affect them.

There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law. (Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Spring 2001, p116). No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-transfers, since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3491/europecountriesmapen586wx9.png

Thus, although the signatories to the Potsdam agreement and the expelling countries may have considered the expulsions to be legal under the international law of the time, there are historians and scholars in international law and human rights who argue that the expulsions of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe should now be considered as episodes of ethnic cleansing, and thus a violation of human rights. For example, Timothy V. Waters argues in "On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing" that if similar circumstances arise in the future, the precedent of the expulsions of the Germans without legal redress would also allow the future ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law.^[17]

There are some historians such as Alfred de Zayas who argue that the expulsions were war crimes and crimes against humanity even in the context of international law of the time. De Zayas writes:

"...the only applicable principles were the Hague Conventions, in particular, the Hague Regulations, ARTICLES 42-56, which limited the rights of occupying powers -- and obviously occupying powers have no rights to expel the populations -- so there was the clear violation of the Hague Regulations"

"And, obviously, if you want to apply the Nuremberg Principles to the German Expulsions, considering that the London Agreement was supposed to reflect, and not to create international law, so if that was applicable to the German crimes against the Poles with regard to deportation of Poles, and deportation of French for purposes of "Lebensraum," certainly it was applicable to the expulsions by the Poles of Germans and by the Czechs of Germans. So, if you apply these Nuremberg principles and the Nuremberg judgement, you would have to arrive at the conclusion that the Expulsion of the Germans clearly constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity."^[18]

Legacy of the expulsions

During the Cold War era, there was relatively little public awareness in the West of the expulsions and thus scant discussion over the morality of the policy. Perhaps the primary reason for this is that Cold War geopolitics discouraged criticism of post-war Allied policies by the West Germans and of post-war Soviet policies by the East Germans. There was some discussion of the expulsions in the first decade and a half after World War II but serious review and analysis of the events was not undertaken until the 1990s.

The fall of the Soviet Union, the spirit of glasnost and the unification of Germany opened the door to a renewed examination of these events. In the early 1990s, the Cold War ended and the occupying powers withdrew from Germany. The issue of the treatment of Germans after World War II began to be re-examined, having previously been overshadowed by Nazi Germany's war crimes. The primary motivation for this change was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which allowed for discussion of issues that had previously been marginalised, such as the allegations of crimes committed by the Soviet Army during the World War II and the expulsion of Germans from their homelands in Eastern and Central Europe. There has, however, been little discussion of the responsibility of the U.S. and U.K. in sanctioning the expulsions through their being signatories to the Potsdam agreement.

Writers have taken played a role in stimulating and shaping the debate. Günter Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, was the first to break the taboo. He is an ardent Social Democrat and close companion of Willy Brandt, and unlikely to minimise Nazi crimes. He dealt with the exodus in Crabwalk, the story of the vessel Wilhelm Gustloff, which was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine on 30 January 1945. 9,400 refugees fleeing the Red Army died in the icy Baltic.

References

^ Bjork, James. http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=263131117051503
^ Rocznik Polsko-Niemiecki Tom I "Mniejszość niemiecka w Polsce w polityce wewnętrznej w Polsce i w RFN oraz w stosunkach między obydwu państwami" Piotr Madajczyk Warszawa 1992
^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. pg. 18.
^ Československo-sovětské vztahy v diplomatických jednáních 1939-1945. Dokumenty. Díl 2 (červenec 1943 – březen 1945). Praha. 1999. (ISBN 808547557X)
^ Biman, S. - Cílek, R.: Poslední mrtví, první živí. Ústí nad Labem 1989. (ISBN 807047002X)
^ P. WALLACE/BERLIN "Putting The Past To Rest", Time Magazine Monday, Mar. 11, 2002
^ P. WALLACE/BERLIN "Putting The Past To Rest", Time Magazine Monday, Mar. 11, 2002
^ Z. Beneš, Rozumět dějinám. (ISBN 80-86010-60-0)
^ Jankowiak, p. 35
^ Naimark, Russian in Germany. p. 75 reference 31
^ http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=260621074909720
^ Naimark, Russian in Germany. p. 76 reference 34
^ "Polacy - wysiedleni, wypędzeni i wyrugowani przez III Rzeszę", Maria Wardzyńska, Warsaw 2004". Created on order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the organization called Selbstschutz cooperated in executions during „Intelligenzaktion”, made alongside operational groups of security policy, by identifying local Poles and interning them
^ Jankowiak, p. 135
^ ”The Czechoslovak Government, the Polish Provisional Government and the Control Council in Hungary are at the same time being informed of the above and are being requested meanwhile to suspend further expulsions pending an examination by the Governments concerned of the report from their representatives on the Control Council." (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/decade/decade17.htm)
^ Zybura, p. 202
^ Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law. Retrieved on 2006, 12-13
^ http://www.meaus.com/expulsion-by-czechs-1945.htm THE EXPULSION: A crime against humanity, By Dr. Alfred de Zayas A transcript of part of a lecture on the Expulsion given in Pittsburgh in 1988.

Sources

Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Gerhard Reichling. 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7
Geopolitics of the Central European Region. The view from Prague and Bratislava, Oskar Krejčí, Veda, Bratislava 2005. 494 p. (Free download)
Report on agricultural and food requirements of Germany (February 1947, provides statistics about population transfer)
German statistics In 1966, the West German Ministry of Refugees and Displaced Persons published statistical and graphical data illustrating German population movements, whether voluntary or enforced, in the aftermath of the Second World War.
The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, European University Institute, Florense. EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2004/1, Edited by Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
Facing History - The evolution of Czech and German relations in the Czech provinces, 1848-1948, Z. Beneš, D. Jančík, J. Kuklík, E. Kubů, V. Kural, R. Kvaček, V. Pavlíček, J. Pešek, R. Petráš, Z. Radvanovský, R. Suchánek, Gallery, Prague, ISBN 80-86010-60-0
Silesian Inferno, War Crimes of the Red Army on its March into Silesia in 1945 , Karl F. Grau, The Landpost Press, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1992, ISBN 1-880881-09-8
Jankowiak, Stanisław (2005). "Wysiedlenie i emigracja ludności niemieckiej w polityce władz polskich w latach 1945-1970" (Expulsion and emigration of German population in the policies of Polish authorities in 1945-1970). Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. ISBN 83-89078-80-5.
Zybura, Marek (2004). "Niemcy w Polsce" (Germans in Poland). Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie. ISBN 83-7384-171-7.
Baziur, Grzegorz (2003). "Armia Czerwona na Pomorzu Gdańskim 1945-1947" (Red Army in Gdańsk Pomerania 1945-1947). Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. ISBN 83-89078-19-8.
Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7

External links

Children who lost their parents in the expulsions from historical Eastern Germany, seek their parents. Video testimony.
Ethnic cleansing in post World War II Czechoslovakia: the presidential decrees of Edward Benes, 1945-1948 Available as MS Word for Windows file.
Várdy, Steven Béla and Tooly, T. Hunt: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe Available as MS Word for Windows file (3.4 MB)
Refugees camp 1950 Image
Refugees Image
Statistics Of Poland's Democide Democide Addenda By R.J. Rummel
THE EXPULSION: A crime against humanity, By Dr. Alfred de Zayas A transcript of part of a lecture on the Expulsion given in Pittsburgh in 1988.
Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law (PDF)
A first-hand account of the expulsion.

[1] Bjork, James. http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=263131117051503

[Rocznik-2] Rocznik Polsko-Niemiecki Tom I "Mniejszość niemiecka w Polsce w polityce wewnętrznej w Polsce i w RFN oraz w stosunkach między obydwu państwami" Piotr Madajczyk Warszawa 1992

[EU-3] The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. pg. 18.

[4] Československo-sovětské vztahy v diplomatických jednáních 1939-1945. Dokumenty. Díl 2 (červenec 1943 – březen 1945). Praha. 1999. (ISBN 808547557X)

[5] Biman, S. - Cílek, R.: Poslední mrtví, první živí. Ústí nad Labem 1989. (ISBN 807047002X)

[6] P. WALLACE/BERLIN "Putting The Past To Rest", Time Magazine Monday, Mar. 11, 2002

[7] P. WALLACE/BERLIN "Putting The Past To Rest", Time Magazine Monday, Mar. 11, 2002

[8] Z. Beneš, Rozumět dějinám. (ISBN 80-86010-60-0)

[9] Jankowiak, p. 35

[10] Naimark, Russian in Germany. p. 75 reference 31

[11] ttp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=260621074909720

[12] Naimark, Russian in Germany. p. 76 reference 34

[Wardzyńska-13] "Polacy - wysiedleni, wypędzeni i wyrugowani przez III Rzeszę", Maria Wardzyńska, Warsaw 2004". Created on order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the organization called Selbstschutz cooperated in executions during „Intelligenzaktion”, made alongside operational groups of security policy, by identifying local Poles and interning them

[Jankowiak-14] Jankowiak, p. 135

[Potsdam_Agreement:”-15] ”The Czechoslovak Government, the Polish Provisional Government and the Control Council in Hungary are at the same time being informed of the above and are being requested meanwhile to suspend further expulsions pending an examination by the Governments concerned of the report from their representatives on the Control Council." (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/decade/decade17.htm)

[Zybura202-16] Zybura, p. 202

[17] Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law. Retrieved on 2006, 12-13

[18] ttp://www.meaus.com/expulsion-by-czechs-1945.htm THE EXPULSION: A crime against humanity, By Dr. Alfred de Zayas A transcript of part of a lecture on the Expulsion given in Pittsburgh in 1988.

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