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The expulsion of Germans after World War II is a phrase that describes the escape and mass deportation of people considered Germans (both Reichsdeutsche and Volksdeutsche) from Soviet-occupied areas outside the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, and is a major part of the German exodus from Eastern Europe during the end of and after World War II.

It came as a reaction to what the germans did. The Germans attacked the poles in 1939 thereby starting world war 2. The germans then enslaved the poles and were able to extreminate 6 million poles. Hitler watned to kill them all but the war ended before he could do that.

In 1941 the germans invaded the Soviet Union and the plan was to claim and settle all areas towards the Ural mountains. The german people needed Lebensraum ("living space", i.e. land and raw materials), and that it should be found in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic 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. But the germans failed, the Soviets unlike the Poles fought back and crushed the nazies. And unlike the germans the victories Soviets allowed the germans to live to exsist they did not plan a full extremination unlike what the germans had in mind for the Soviets. And when the germans lost they war they, the germans, were forced only to give up land and not its whole population. During the war of 1941-1945 the nazies killed atleast 20 million soviet civilians and inslaved huge amounts of its population. The germans also inslaved Poland and were able to exterminate 20% of polands pre-war population.

The process, during which parts of Germany were conquered by the Soviet Union, was claimed to have been aimed to ethnically homogenize nation states, began before the Potsdam Conference, which would call for it to be conducted in an "orderly and humane manner". Due to the postwar atmosphere of chaos, famine, disease, cold winter, deliberate abuse by militias, and senseless killing, German civilian casualties during the expulsion were very high. The estimated number varies by source, from 1.1 million to 3 million. According to Allied information sources revealed after 1990, the German deportation and migration affected up to 16.5 million Germans and was the largest of several similar post-World War II migrations orchestrated by the victorious Western Allies and the Soviet Union, which also included the resettlements and expulsions of millions of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews.

These expulsions and migrations affected German citizens remaining after the war, some of whom had become German citizens during the war, and people considered ethnic Germans. These people were expelled from historically Eastern German areas in present-day Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia (mostly from Vojvodina region), the German province of East Prussia, the later Kaliningrad Oblast (formerly Königsberg area) of Russia, Lithuania, and other East European countries. Some were persecuted because of their activities during the war; most were persecuted solely because of their German ethnicity.

More than half a century after these events took place, the relations of Germany and its East European neighbors remain somewhat difficult due to heated and emotional controversy about the morality of the expulsions and the rights of expellees (Heimatvertriebene). Much of the controversy revolves around unresolved issues of demands for official apologies, compensation for lost properties and proper attribution of the reasons for the expulsions.

Background

Part of the motivation behind the expulsions are based on events in the history of Germany and Europe, especially Eastern Europe. Migrations that took place over more than a millennium led to pockets of Germans living throughout Eastern Europe as far east as Russia. The existence of these pockets were used by German nationalists, most notably the Nazis, to justify wars of aggression which led up to World War II. The expulsions at the end of World War II were part of negotiated agreements between the victorious Allies to redraw national borders and arrange for "orderly population transfers" to remove ethnic minorities that were viewed as troublesome.

Purported reasons for the expulsion

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:

1. Distrust of and enmity towards German communities
2. Preventing ethnic violence between majority populations and German minorities
3. A desire to punish ethnic German minorities for activities in support of the Nazi invasion
4. A desire to expel ethnic Germans in the hopes of invalidating German territorial claims
5. Compensating Poland for territories occupied by the Soviet Union
6. Making room for Polish returnees

Distrust of and enmity towards German communities in Poland

There was an expressed fear of disloyalty of German minority based in part on the pro-Nazi activities of members of the German minority 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 German minority staying in Poland. 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 . Among the reasons that Polish representatives advocated such measures was the fact that there was no Polish family that did not suffer material or family loss as a result of German aggression. Thus, splitting up the two extremely hostile populations was seen by some as a sensible solution to avoiding future conflict.

Preventing ethnic violence

The Allied 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, it may be possible to conclude that the policy achieved its goals: the 1945 borders are stable and ethnic conflicts are relatively marginal, although this stability can also be explained by the rigidity of Soviet control of Eastern Europe during the Cold War era.

Retribution

One justification offered was 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 an "act of historical justice", because, for example, Sudeten Germans strongly contributed to the destruction of pre-war Czechoslovakia. The Czech public opinion saw this act as betrayal.

Tbe Nazi occupation forces had planned to kill, deport, or enslave the Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic 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.

This plan was partially implemented by meanss of the massacre of 20 million Soviet civilians and 6 million Poles most of whom died in German concentration camps.

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 future German claims to territorial expansion to the east

According to one argument, the purpose of expelling Germans from Poland and other Eastern European countries was to invalidate German territorial claims to land in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries.

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 Gdansk (then Danzig), were transferred to Poland as part of the "clean sweep" (see below) that eliminated minorities and strategically risky borders, other cities, like Wroclaw (Breslau) or Szczecin (Stettin), would hardly have been transferred to Poland had it not lost Vilnius (Wilna, Wilno) and Lwiw (Lemberg, Lwow).

One can thus say that one of the reasons, seen from the Polish, Communist and Western-Allied view point, for the expulsion of the Germans was the territorial compensation of Poland for what was kept by the Soviet Union. Of course, this was ultimately a decision not only of Stalin, but with the tacit consent of Great Britain and the United States.

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. After the end of the war, these people returned and needed housing in a country devastated by war. According to this line of reasoning, Germans were expelled to make housing available for the returnees.

Chronicle of the expulsion

If the participants of the Potsdam conference envisioned an "orderly population transfer", 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.

The Potsdam Agreement called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans between American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones in Germany. In actuality, twice as many expelled Germans found refuge in the occupation zones that later formed "West Germany" than in the so-called "East Germany" (Soviet Zone), and large numbers of these Eastern German refugees went eventually to other countries of the world, including the United States, Canada and Australia.

As part of the nationalisation made towards all citizens in communist countries, property in the affected territory that belonged to Germany and Germans was confiscated and redistributed among the 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 Czechs . Likewise in the Opole/Oppeln region in Upper Silesia, natives which were considered "autochthonous" (members of Polish minority in Germany) were allowed to stay. Their status as national minority was accepted in 1955, alongside with state's help in regards to economical assistance, and education .

Czech Republic and Slovakia

See also: History of Czechoslovakia, Beneš decrees, Sudetenland, Ústí massacre.

At the end of World War II, Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš advocated a policy of "no mercy" toward the Germans and indicated the "German problem" would have to be solved by transfers/expulsion. His rhetoric would certainly have inflamed the sentiment of the Czechoslovakian populace against the ethnic Germans.

Before the German annexation of Sudetenland, roughly one-third of the population in the Czechoslovakia had been ethnic Germans. After the war, the Germans living in the border regions of Czechoslovakia were expelled from the country in late 1945. Many thousands died violent deaths during the expulsion and many more died from hunger and untreated illnesses contracted during or after the massive exodus. In 1946, an estimated 1.3 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).

Some of the acts of violence perpetrated against ethnic Germans inside Czechoslovakia, which at first sight appeared to be cases of personal enemity of locals were, in fact, planned operations. There were cases of massacres committed by paramilitary groups (technically illegal but with strong ties to the ruling Communist party), where the operations were done with prior agreement of Red Army, and probably planned under supervision of Communist party and/or even operatives of Czech government. It has been suggested that the motivation for these staged acts of purportedly spontaneous violence against ethnic Germans was to provide arguments to the participants of the Potsdam conference that would support the need for expulsions. The putative line of reasoning was as follows: you can see the ethnic violence, populations transfers are the humane way to stop it. However, in other instances, the authorities stopped ongoing "genuine local" mob violence.

In the summer of 1945 there were a number of incidents and localised massacres of the German population. The following examples are described in a study done by the European University Institute in Florence.

• In the Prerov incident, 71 men, 120 women and 74 children, who were Slovak Germans just passing through Prerov railway station, were taken out of the train, taken outside of the city to a hill named "Svedske sance", there they were forced to dig their own graves and all were shot.
• 30,000 Germans were forced to leave their homes in Brno for labour camps near Austria. They were beaten and it is estimated that several hundred died in the death march.
• Estimates of killed in the Ústí massacre range from 30 - 50 to 600 - 700 civilians. Some women and children were thrown off the bridge into the Elbe River and shot.

Another source also tells of a massacre in Postoloprty and a neighbouring area, where 763 people were shot, and estimates the victims from Brno to 800.

Approximaly 10,000 died in "internment camps" in the years 1945-1948

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, Bayern and Hessen. 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

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Yugoslavia

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Russia

Ethnic Germans living in a small section of Russia were deported after the war. The present Kaliningrad region of Russia, part of the former East Prussia, is a small exclave separated from the rest of Russia by Lithuania and Belarus. It was part of Germany since the Middle Ages. Kaliningrad's former German name was Königsberg. This was an important city in the history of Germany, once the capital of Prussia. Immanuel Kant, the famous German philosopher, was in fact born there, in the present-day Russian exclave. Along with a section of Poland and a very small section of Lithuania, the Kaliningrad exclave formerly formed the German province (under the Nazis: Gau) of East Prussia, which itself had been an exclave of Weimar Germany between 1918 and 1939. After the war, the remaining Germans still living there were expelled and the region was settled by ethnic Russians and the families of military staff. The expelled Germans mostly headed to Western Germany.

Lithuania

An extremely small portion of Lithuania was part of Germany for the length of its history until after the war. The entire portion of Germany which is part of modern-day Lithuania, as well as the entire Russian portion, was part of the German province of East Prussia before 1918 and from 1939 to 1945.

This small section that may otherwise have seemed insignificant included Memel, Germany's northeasternmost city and an important port of the old Prussia. This city was the birthplace of philosopher Immanuel Kant's father and grandfather, as well as of many German politicians and scientists. The fact that the section of Germany now in Lithuanian hands was small but important is reflected in the German national anthem - Von der Maas bis an die Memel ("From the Meuse to the Neman") is part of the song, referring to the Neman River (German: Memel or Memelfluss) that flows near Klaipėda.

After the war, the area was ceded to Lithuania, as had been done in 1919. 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 from overcrowded villages replaced the former German population of Memel and the surrounding formerly mixed German-Lithuanian areas. The city's name was also changed into Klaipėda. The descendants of Germans who were expelled from Lithuania mostly live in the former West Germany, as the rest of the Germans who fled East Prussia.

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. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans were detained in internment camps or sentenced to forced labor, some of them for years. The number of expellees and refugees, whose fate could not be ascertained, was estimated to be around 2.1 million, according to two major studies conducted in 1958 and 1965, which were commissioned by the German Bundestag. Millions of German women were raped (the process of escape and expulsion includes the actions taken by the Red Army against German civilians). Private property of the expelled Germans was confiscated. More 4 million Germans resettled in Germany from the end of 1950s, joining the 14 million expellees and refugees.

A German source from the mid-1980's gives the following estimates of the population transfers.

The integration of expellees and refugees into the German society required great efforts from 1940s till 1960s. In some areas, for instance in Mecklenburg, the number of inhabitants doubled as a result of the influx. Other areas, like Bavaria, which had been predominantly Roman Catholic before the war now had to deal with an influx of non-Catholic and non-Bavarian Germans from the East.

The areas, from which the Germans escaped, or which were ethnically cleansed from Germans, were subsequently re-populated by nationals of the states to which they now belonged.

Assessing blame 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.

Many of the deaths were caused by death marches ordered by Soviet officials, banditry, famine and widespread disease that accompanied postwar conditions in that part of Europe as well as appalling conditions in the concentration camps created to hold German civilians awaiting expulsion. Probably one of the worst examples of the latter was the labor camp "Zgoda" in Świętochłowice, Poland which was run by Salomon Morel, a member of the Polish Communist Party.

Legacy of the expulsion

During the Cold War era, there was little public knowledge 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. It can be surmised that 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.

Cold War assessments of the expulsions

In 1946, Winston Churchill delivered a memorable speech in Fulton, Missouri in the presence of US President Truman. Churchill made the USA aware of the Iron Curtain coming down "from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic". In this speech, Churchill also emphasised the wrongful Soviet-directed Polish incursions into Germany (that is, the land east of the Oder-Neisse line) and the plight of millions of Germans refugees/expellees. However, taking into account his personal responsibility for and - though reluctant - acceptance of the decisions made in Potsdam, the sentence would seem to have been motivated by the contemporary political agenda.

In a speech before the U.S. House of Representatives on May 16, 1957, the Hon. B. Carroll Reece of Tennessee called the deportation and violent expulsion of German civilians "genocide". He charged that over 16 million Germans had been expelled from their homes east of the Oder-Neisse Line,resulting in over 3 million deaths.

Both Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev, during their Soviet military service, had objected to the brutal treatment of German civilians of East Prussia. Lev Kopelev wrote about the cruel events in post-1945 East Prussia in the autobiographical trilogy To Be Preserved Forever (Хранить вечно, Khranit' Venchno).

Expelled Germans in postwar Germany

After World War II many expellees (German: Heimatvertriebene) from the land east of the Oder-Neisse found refuge in both West Germany and East Germany. Refugees who had fled voluntarily but were later refused to return are often not distinguished from those who were forcibly deported, just as people born to German parents that moved into areas under German occupation either on their own or as Nazi colonists.

In a document signed 50 years ago the Heimatvertriebene organisations have also recognized the plight of the different groups of people living in today's Poland who were by force resettled there. The Heimatvertriebene are just one of the groups of millions of other people, from many different countries, who all found refuge in today's Germany.

Some of the expellees are active in politics and belong to the political right-wing. Many others do not belong to any organizations, but they continue to maintain what they call a lawful right to their homeland. The vast majority pledged to work peacefully towards that goal while rebuilding post-war Germany and Europe.

The expellees are still highly active in German politics, and are one of the major political factions of the nation, with still around 2 million members. The president of their organization is as of 2004 still a member of the national parliament.

Although expellees (in German Heimatvertriebene) and their descendants were active in West German politics, the prevailing political climate within West Germany was that of atonement for Nazi actions. However the CDU governments have shown considerable support for the expellees and German civilian victims.

Re-examination of the expulsions in the 1990s

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 reexamined, 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 issues previously marginalised, such as the crimes committed by the Soviet Army during the World War II, to be raised.

In November and December 1993, an exhibit on the Ethnic Cleansing 1944-1948 was held at Stuart Center of De Paul University, in Chicago, where it was called an unknown holocaust, which had been forgotten about.

Reports have surfaced of both Czech nationalist as well as Soviet massacres of German civilians (see the book A Terrible Revenge). Also, some of the former German concentration camps were used as temporary camps for German civilians.

Polish-German relations

Although relations between Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany have generally been cordial since 1991, there remain disputes about the War, the post-War expulsion, the treatment of the current German minority in Poland and the treatment of German heritage in modern day Western Poland.

Since 1990, historical events have been examined by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. Its role is to investigate the crimes of the past without regard to the nationality of victims and perpetrators. In Poland, crimes motivated by the nationality of victims are not covered by a statute of limitations, therefore the criminals can be charged in perpetuity. In a few cases, the crimes against Germans were examined. One suspected perpetrator of retaliatory crimes against expelled innocent German civilians, Salomon Morel, fled the country to Israel, which has denied Polish requests for his extradition.

Finalization of the Polish-German border

The Oder-Neisse line was officially considered completely unacceptable by the CDU controlled German government for decades. Even the Social Democrats of the SPD initially refused to accept the Oder-Neisse line. The 1991 Polish-German border agreement finalized the Oder-Neisse line as the Polish-German border. The agreement gave to minority groups in both countries several rights, such as the right to use national surnames, speak their native languages, and attend schools and churches of their choice.

Polish criticism of German "revisionism"

Some Poles criticise the fact that the current German historical view tends to assert that Germans were victims rather than perpetrators in the War. Such positions are viewed critically in Poland, as they ignore the widespread collaboration and support for the Nazi Occupation by the German minority in the pre-1939 Polish Republic, and the fact that German people enjoyed privileged status during the war, while Poles were classified as subhumans by German authorities.

Some German expellees, on the other hand, criticise the fact that the official Polish perspective on the War and the post-War events is mostly based on a collectivist view (of mixed communist and nationalist ideas), that does not look at the individual suffering on both sides, and emphasises on the ethnic background of the individuals.

Restrictions on the sale of property to foreigners

In November 2005 Der Spiegel published a poll from Allensbach Institut which estimated that 61% of Poles believed Germans would try to get back territories that were formerly under German control or demand compensation,.

There are also some worries among Poles that rich descendants of the expelled Germans would buy the land the Polish state confiscated in 1945. It is believed that this may result in large price increases, since the current Polish land price is low compared to Western Europe. This led to Polish restrictions on the sale of property to foreigners, including Germans: special permission is needed. This policy is comparable to similar restrictions on the Baltic Åland Islands. These restrictions will be lifted 12 years after the 2004 accession of Poland to the European Union, i.e on May 1 2016. The restrictions are weak, they are not valid for companies and certain types of properties.

The attempts by German organisations to build a Centre Against Expulsions dedicated to German people's alleged suffering during World War II has led Polish politicians and activists to propose a Center for Martyrology of Polish Nation (called also Center for the Memory of Suffering of the Polish Nation) that would document the systematical oppression conducted on Polish people by German state during World War II and which would serve to educate German people about atrocities their state and regime conducted on their neighbours. However this proposal was attacked and rejected by German politicians.

Indemnity Claims

The officially proposed policy of the Heimatvertriebene is not to repeat the post-war expulsions with new persecutions, annexations and population transfers. Most Heimatvertriebene accept the territorial changes of 1945 as far as territorial claims are concerned and consider the Poles now living in former East Germany as friends and neighbours in the European Union. However, a few of them demand compensation from the Poles and support the Prussian Claims Inc..

At the end of August 2004, a heated debate took place in the Polish Sejm over a proposed bill calling upon the Polish government to enforce Germany's payment of reparations for damage inflicted on Poland during World War II. The issue of German reparations was raised in response to signals coming from Germany, or rather from certain German circles which in civil legal proceedings wanted to lay indemnity claims for property left behind in the postwar territory of Poland. The Polish nation had reacted strongly to statements made by Erika Steinbach, chair of the Union of the Expelled (BdV), and claims made by Prussian Claims Inc.. Polish politicians asserted that only a response in the form of Poland's reparations claim could suppress endeavors of German citizens and their political advocates who are attempting to claim indemnity from Polish citizens in civil proceedings. The majority of Poles have not received any compensation from the Soviet Union or Germany for losses suffered during World War II.

Czech-German relations

On 28 December 1989, Václav Havel, at that time a candidate for president of Czechoslovakia (he was elected one day later), suggested that Czechoslovakia should apologise for the expulsion of ethnic Germans after World War II. Most of the other prominent politicians disagreed with this proposal. There was also no reply from leaders of Sudeten German organizations. Later, the German President Richard von Weizsäcker answered this by apologizing to Czechoslovakia during his visit to Prague on March 1990 after Václav Havel repeated his apology saying that the expulsion was "the mistakes and sins of our fathers". The Beneš decrees, however, remain in force in Czechoslovakia.

In Czech-German relations, the topic has been effectively closed by the Czech-German declaration of 1997. One principle of the declaration was that parties will not burden their relations with political and legal issues which stem from the past.

However, some expelled Sudeten Germans or their descendants are demanding return of their former property, which was confiscated after the war. Several such cases have been taken to Czech courts. As confiscated estates usually have new inhabitants, some of whom have lived there for more than 50 years, attempts to return to a pre-war state may cause fear. The issue is revived periodically in Czech politics. As in Poland, there are restrictions in the Czech Republic on land purchases by foreigners. According to a survey by the Allensbach Institut in November 2005, 38% of Czechs believe Germans want to regain territory they lost or will demand compensation.

Recognition of Sudeten German anti-Nazis

In 2005 Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek announced an initiative to publicise and formerly recognise the deeds of Sudeten German Anti-Nazis. Although the move was received positively by most Sudeten Germans and the German minority, there has been criticism that the initiative is limited to Anti-Nazis who actively fought for the Czechoslovak state, but not Anti-Nazis in general. The German minority in particular also expected some financial compensation for their mistreatment after the War. ]

Status of the German minority in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

There are about 40,000 Germans remaining in the Czech Republic. Their number has been consistently decreasing since World War II. According to the 2001 census there remain 13 municipalities and settlements in the Czech Republic with more than 10% Germans.

The situation in Slovakia was different from that in the Czech lands, in that the number of Germans was considerably lower and that the Germans from Slovakia were almost completely evacuated to German states as the Soviet army was moving west through Slovakia, and only the fraction of them that returned to Slovakia after the end of the war was deported together with the Germans from the Czech lands.

German minority in Hungary

Today the German minority in Hungary have minority rights, organisations, schools and local councils but spontaneous assimilation is well under way. Many of the deportees have visited their old homes since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990.

Russia

Many descendants of Germans who were expelled from the former city of Königsberg can be found today in Germany. Although the deportation of Germans from this northern part of former East Prussia often was conducted in a violent and aggressive way by Soviet officials who sought to exact revenge for the Nazi terror in Soviet areas during the war, the present Russian inhabitants of the Kaliningrad sector (northern East Prussia) have much less animus against Germans. German names have even been revived in commercial Russian trade. Thus, it is possible that, in the future, the name of Kaliningrad might be reverted to the original name, Königsberg. Because the exclave was a military zone during Soviet times and nobody was allowed to enter without special permission, many old German Prussian villages are still intact, though they have become dilapidated over the course of time.

German Expellee Organizations

Federation of Expellees

The Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) (German for "Federation of Expellees") is a non-profit organization formed to represent the interests of Germans displaced from their homes in Historical Eastern Germany and other parts of Eastern Europe by the expulsion of Germans after World War II. ("Heimatvertriebene": "Homeland expellees").

It represents the diaspora of German citizens (today numbering approximately 15 million) who after World War II were transferred from Poland and the Soviet Union and former German territories, together with ethnic Germans who were transferred from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and other countries. The current president is CDU politician Erika Steinbach.

Centre Against Expulsions

The foundation Centre Against Expulsions has its registered office in Wiesbaden and is headed by CDU politician Erika Steinbach. One of Steinbach's main aims is to build the Centre Against Expulsions (Template:Lang-de) in Berlin, a memorial dedicated to the victims of forced migrations or ethnic cleansing in Europe, particularly those of the Germans displaced after World War II.

It was initiated by the Federation of Expellees, with the support of the CDU/CSU faction in the German parliament and of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who intends to support the building of the centre.

The initiative, supported by the CDU/CSU faction in German Parliament, has caused much controversy, both in Germany and abroad. Many believe that the movement to build a centre and monument against forced migration is an attempt to present Germans as victims of the war and thereby downplay the German responsibility for Holocaust, atrocities and the outbreak of the war.

See also

• Berihah
• Centre Against Expulsions
• Human migration#Post-World War II Migrations
• Federation of Expellees
• Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
• Evacuation of East Prussia
• War children
• Minorities in Poland after the War
• Victor Gollancz in German Misplaced Pages
• Victor Gollancz
• Red Army atrocities

Notes

1. Template:Pl iconPolacy - wysiedleni, wypędzeni i wyrugowani przez III Rzeszę" Doctor Maria Wardzyńska Warsaw 2004" Created on order of Reichsfuhrer SS H.Himler from German minority, terrorist organisation called Selbstschutz co-worked in mass executions during „Intelligenzaktion”, made alongside operational groups of security policy, by pointing out local Poles and interning them
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
3. The Czech Republic: From Liberal Policy to EU Membership By Dušan Drbohlav Charles University
4. Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. pg. 18.
5. Z. Beneš, et. al Facing History - The evolution of Czech and German relations in the Czech provinces, 1848-1948 pg. 221
6. Z. Beneš, et. al Facing History - The evolution of Czech and German relations in the Czech provinces, 1848-1948 pg. 223
7. Template:De icon Gerhard Reichling (1986). Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Bonn: Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen (Cultural Society of the German Expelees). p. 72. ISBN 3885570467. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)

References

• Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Gerhard Reichling. 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7
• Krejčí, Oskar: "Geopolitics of the Central European Region. The view from Prague and Bratislava" Bratislava: Veda, 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 online downlown in PDF format from Czech governmental website
• 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 1-88-088109-8
• Oskar Krejčí: "Geopolitics of the Central European Region. The view from Prague and Bratislava" Bratislava: Veda, 2005. 494 p. (Free download)

External links

• 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.
• Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes by William A. Schabas "genocidal intent .. at Potsdam"

Further reading

• Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered (Eastern European Studies, 18) Luisa Lang Owen and Charles M. Barber, Texas A&M University Press, January, 2003, hardcover, 288 pages, ISBN 1-58-544212-7
• God's Playground. 2 vols, Davies, Norman, 1982 and several reprints. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. ISBN 0231053533 and ISBN 0231053517.
• Krejčí, Oskar: "Geopolitics of the Central European Region. The view from Prague and Bratislava" Bratislava: Veda, 2005. 494 p. (Free download)
• Stanisław Jankowiak, Wysiedlenie i emigracja ludności niemieckiej w polityce władz polskich w latach 1945-1970, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa 2005, ISBN 8389078805

The following publications might shed a different light on what is presented in the article above:

• "Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern & Central Europe" compiled by an editorial board headed by Professor Theodor Schieder, of the University of Cologne. Published by the Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, & War Victims, Bonn (Dates may indicate the year of the English translations rather than the original publication):
  • vol.1: "The Expulsion of the German Population from the Territories East of the Oder-Neisse Line" (1959).
  • vol.2/3:"The Expulsion of the German Population from Hungary and Rumania" (1961).
  • vol. 4: "The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia" (1960)
• "Speaking Frankly" by James F.Byrnes, New York & London, 1947.
• "Nemesis at Potsdam - The Anglo-Americans & the Expulsion of the Germans", by Dr. Alfred M. de Zayas, Routledge, London, 1st published 1977, revised edition 1979. 3 editions University of Nebraska Press, 2 editions Picton Press, Rockport Maine, newest edition 2003.
• Germany and Eastern Europe since 1945" - Keesing's Research Report, New York, 1973.
• Four-Power Control in Germany and Austria 1945-1946" by Michael Balfour and John Mair for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Oxford University Press, 1956.
• "In Darkest Germany" by Victor Gollancz, London, 1947.
• "Thine Enemy" by Sir Philip Gibbs, London, 1946.
• "The Home Front:Germany" by Charles Whiting, Time-Life Books, Virginia, 1982.ISBN 0-8094-3419-9.
• "The Aftermath:Europe" by Douglas Botting, Time-Life Books, Virginia, 1983.ISBN 0-8094-3411-3
• "Hour of the Women" by Count Christian von Krockow, Stuttgart,1988, New York, 1991, London, 1992. ISBN 0-571-14320-2,
• "Crimes and Mercies - The Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation 1944 - 1950" by James Bacque, London, 1997. ISBN 0-316-64070-0.
• "Memoirs - 1945:Year of Decisions" by Harry S.Truman, 1st pub.,by Time Inc.,1955, reprint New York 1995. ISBN 0-8317-1578-2.
• "Memoirs - 1946-52:Years of Trial & Hope" by Harry S.Truman, 1st pub.,by Time Inc.,1955, reprint New York 1996. ISBN 0-8317-7319-7.
• A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 - Alfred-Maurice de Zayas - 1994 - ISBN 0-3121-2159-8. New Revised edition with Palgrave/Macmillan, New York 2006, ISBN 13: 978-1-4039-7308-5, ISBN-10: 1-4039-7308-3

• Deportation
• Forced migration
• Great migrations
• History of Germany
• Aftermath of World War II
• German diaspora