Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)

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The expulsion of Germans after World War II refers to the forced migration and ethnic cleansing of German nationals (Reichsdeutsche) and ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from various European states and territories in the first three years after World War II. The policy had been agreed to by the Allies during the war, but its implementation caused more suffering than was envisaged by the authors of the policy.

Prior to the end of World War II, there had been a considerable exodus of German refugees from the areas under threat of occupation by the Red Army. Many Germans fled their areas of residence under vague and haphazardly implemented evacuation orders of the Nazi German government in 1943, 1944, and in early 1945, or based on their own decisions to leave in 1945–1948. Others remained and were later forced to leave by local authorities. However, in no East European nation were all ethnic Germans forced to leave. Census figures in 1950 place the total number of ethnic Germans still living in Eastern Europe at approximately 2.6 million, about 12 percent of the pre-war total.

The majority of the flights and expulsions occurred in areas of today's Czech Republic, Poland and Russia. 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.

The total number of the Germans expelled after the war remains unknown, as most of the past research provided a combined estimate, including those that were evacuated by German authorities, fled or were killed during the war. By some accounts, this forced migration of ethnic Germans resulted in the transfer of between 13.5-16.5 million people and was the largest of several similar post-World War II migrations orchestrated by the victorious Big Three Allied powers. However, the actual cited research places the number at just over 12 million, including all those who fled during the war or migrated later, forcibly or otherwise, to both the Western and Eastern zones of Germany and to Austria. Over the course of the sixty years since the end of the war, estimates of total deaths of German civilians have ranged from 500,000 to a high of 3 million. Although the German government's official estimate of deaths due to the expulsions stood at 2.2 million for several decades, recent analyses have led some historians to conclude that the actual number of deaths attributable to the expulsions was actually much lower - in the range of 500,000 to 1.1 million. The higher figures, up to 3.2 million, typically include all war-related deaths of ethnic Germans between 1939-45, including those who served in the German armed forces. The debate about the number of deaths and their cause continues to be the subject of heated controversy.

More than half a century later, a controversy is spurred by contentious demands of some organizations of the expellees or their descendants, e.g. the Prussian Trust, for compensation for lost properties.

Background

Population migrations were one of the central elements of the 20th century history of Europe. The concept of "ultranationalism" which required ethnic homogeneity as a basis of political order became one of the most effective and powerful ideologies of the era. This ultranationalism presented the displacement of parts of the population as a legitimate political methodology, it rationalized the use of force against minorities and made millions of human beings into victims of arbitrariness, persecution, and, often brutal, expulsion.

German historical colonization of Eastern Europe that took place over almost a millennium resulted in a number of people of German descent living in other countries as far east as Russia. Their existence was misused by German nationalists, most notably the Nazis, to justify their aggressive territorial demands towards other countries, which led directly to the German invasion of Poland and World War II.

As Nazi Germany invaded first Czechoslovakia and later Poland and other European nations, some members of the ethnic German minorities in those countries aided the invading forces and the subsequent Nazi occupation. These acts caused enmity against the Germans, and would later be used as part of the justification for the expulsions. Many of the citizens of German descent in the German-occupied countries applied for German citizenship by registering with the Deutsche Volksliste, thus directly supporting the occupation. Some of them held important positions in the hierarchy of Nazi administration. Eventually, numbers of ethnic Germans had been complicit in the crimes of the Nazi invaders. As the Nazi regime crumbled in the face of the advancing Allied armies, they feared being targeted in reprisal for their crimes and so sought to flee to Germany proper. Other ethnic Germans were motivated by atrocities perpetrated by some in the advancing Soviet army, generally by soldiers exacting revenge for what German armed forces had done in their homeland. Some Soviet soldiers committed rapes as reported in numerous German accounts, medical reports and ex-forced laborers' accounts. News of these atrocities were exaggerated and spread by the German propaganda machine.

Evacuation by German authorities during the war

Main article: Evacuation of German civilians during the end of World War II

The plans to evacuate some German populations westwards from Eastern Europe and from some cities in the Eastern Gaue of Greater Germany were prepared by various Nazi authorities towards the end of the war. In most cases, however, their implementation was either delayed until Soviet and allied forces had already advanced into the areas to be evacuated, or it was prohibited entirely by the Nazi apparatus. The responsibility for leaving millions of Germans in these areas until combat conditions overwhelmed them can be attributed directly to both the draconian measures taken by the Nazis towards the end of the war against anyone even suspected of 'defeatist' attitudes and the fanaticism of many Nazi functionaries in their witless support of useless 'no retreat' orders. The first mass movement of German civilians in the eastern territories was composed of both spontaneous flight and organized evacuation starting in the summer of 1944 and continuing through spring of 1945. Most of the evacuation efforts commenced in January 1945, when Soviet forces were already at the Eastern border of Greater Germany. About six million Germans were evacuated from the areas east of the Oder-Neisse line before Red Army and Polish Army took control of the region.

Flight and expulsion after the defeat of Germany

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.

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.

The Potsdam Agreement called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans between American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones in the post World War II Germany. In actuality, nearly twice as many expelled Germans found refuge in the occupation zones that later formed "West Germany" than in "East Germany" (Soviet Zone), and large numbers of German expellees eventually went to other countries of the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Spain.

As part of the nationalization that all citizens in Communist countries faced, property in the affected territory that belonged to Germany and Germans was confiscated and transferred to the Soviet Union, nationalized or redistributed among the local population.

It is worth noting that the expulsion was not always indiscriminate. In Czechoslovakia, large numbers of skilled Sudeten German workmen were forced to remain to labor for the country. Likewise in the Opole (Oppeln) region in Upper Silesia, natives who declared themselves as belonging to Polish nationality were allowed to stay. In fact, some of them (though not all of them) had uncertain national identity or considered themselves to be Germans. Their status as a national minority was accepted in 1955, along with state help in regard to economic assistance and education.

Czechoslovakia

Main article: Flight and expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia during and after World War II

See also: History of Czechoslovakia, Beneš decrees, Sudetenland, Ústí massacre, Brünn death march

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

During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, especially after the Nazis' bloody reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, most of the Czech resistance groups demanded a solution to the "German problem" which would have to be solved by transfer/expulsion. These demands were adopted by the Government-in-Exile which, beginning in 1943, sought the support of the Allies for this proposal. The final agreement for the transfer of the German minority however was not reached until 2 August 1945 at the end of Potsdam Conference.

In the months following the end of the war, "wild" expulsion occurred between May and August 1945. These "wild" expulsions were encouraged by polemical speeches made by several Czechoslovak statesmen. The "wild" expulsions were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers. In some cases, though, they were initiated by or conducted with the assistance of the regular army. The regular transfer according the Potsdam agreements proceeded from 25 January 1946 until October of that year. An estimated 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone of what would become West Germany. A little over 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone (which later became East Germany). About 250,000 ethnic German anti-fascists and those ethnic Germans crucial for industries were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia.

Estimates of casualties among the expellees range between 20,000 and 200,000 people, depending on source. These casualties include violent deaths and suicides, deaths in internment camps and natural causes. Of these, several thousand died violently during the "wild" expulsion and many more died from hunger and illness as a consequence thereof.

Eastern territories of Germany

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. Upon gaining control of these lands, the Polish and Soviet authorities started to expel the German population. The land was then populated with Polish citizens who had been expelled from the former eastern territories of Poland (Kresy Wschodnie), which had now been annexed by the Soviet Union.

Advance of the Red Army

Throughout 1944 and into the first months of 1945, as the Red Army advanced through the countries of Eastern Europe and the provinces of Eastern Germany, some Soviet and allied troops (as well as nationalist militias and native populations who had suffered under the Nazis) exacted revenge on ethnic Germans and German nationals. While many Germans had already fled ahead of the advancing Soviet Army, millions of Reichs- and Volksdeutsche remained in East and West Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, the Sudetenland, and in pockets throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

German propaganda under Joseph Goebbels controlled and spun, at least partially, information regarding Red Army atrocities. A number of historians have expressed skepticism, backed up by historical study, regarding the extent of the so-called Nemmersdorf massacre in this context. The Nazi propaganda machine disseminated overblown descriptions of this event, in gruesome and graphic detail, to boost the motivation of German soldiers. Julius Streicher published The Horror in the East in Der Stürmer, #8/1945. Some historians also claim that the infamous leaflet Kill was faked by German propagandists, based on 1942 article by Ilya Ehrenburg.

Pre-Potsdam deportations (May - July 1945)

In 1945, the former German Silesian, Pomeranian and East-Prussian territories were occupied by Polish and Russian military forces. Early expulsions in Poland were undertaken by the Polish Communist military authorities even before the Potsdam Conference. To ensure territorial incorporation into Poland, Polish Communists ordered that Germans were to be expelled. "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multinational ones." a citation from Plenum of Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party, May 20-21, 1945. Germans were defined as either Reichsdeutsche, people enlisted in 1st or 2nd Volksliste groups, and those of the 3rd group, who held German citizenship.

The early expulsions were often more brutal than the organized population transfer that came afterwards. Sources suggest that the expulsions in Poland were not as brutal as those in Czechoslovakia. However, one source, Russian in Germany states that, according to a Soviet soldier: "Polish soldiers relate to German women as to free booty".

Historians disagree as to the number of Germans deported during this phase of expulsions. The estimates range from 300,000 to 500,000 people. Many Germans evacuated in the last phase of the war were not allowed to return to their homes.

Post-July 1945 expulsions

The Soviet Union transferred territories to the east of the Oder-Neisse Line to Poland in July 1945. Subsequent to this, most Germans were expelled to the territories west of the Oder-Neisse Line. The approximate totals of those evacuated, migrated, or expelled from East Prussia between 1944-1950 are: 1.4 million to Western Germany, 609,000 to Eastern Germany; from West Prussia: 230,000 to Western Germany, 61,000 to Eastern Germany; from the former German area East of the Oder-Neisse: 3.2 million to Western Germany, 2 million to Eastern Germany.

Hungary

In Hungary the persecution of the German minority began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet Commander-in-Chief ordered expulsions. Three percent of the German pre-war population (appr. 20,000 people) had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many of them returned to their homes the next spring. In January 1945 the Soviet Army collected 32,000 ethnic Germans and expelled them to the Soviet Union for slave labor. Many of them died there as a result of hardships and ill-treatment. On 29 December 1945, the new Hungarian Government ordered the expulsion of every person who had declared him/herself German in the 1941 census, or was a member of the Volksbund, the SS or any other armed German organisation. In accordance with this decree, mass expulsions began. The first wagon departed from Budaörs (Wudersch) on 19 January 1946 with 5788 people. Some 185,000 to 200,000 German-speaking Hungarian citizens were deprived of their rights and all possessions, and expelled to the Western zone of Germany. Up to July 1948, a further 50,000 people were expelled to the Eastern zone of Germany. Most of the expelled Germans found new homes in the western provinces of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and Hesse. In 1947 and 1948, a forced population exchange took place between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Some 74,000 ethnic Hungarians were expelled from Slovakia in exchange for about the same number of Slovaks from Hungary. They and the Székelys of Bukovina were settled in the former German villages of southeastern Transdanubia. In some parts of Tolna, Baranya, and Somogy counties, the original population was totally replaced by the new settlers. In 1949, only 22,455 people dared to declare themselves German. The previous statement is somewhat suspect, as census data for 1950 identified 270,000 ethnic Germans in Hungary. About half of the German community in Hungary was able to survive the dark years between 1944 and 1950.

Poland

Main article: Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II

On February 6, 1945, the Soviet NKVD ordered the mobilization of all German men (17 to 50 years old) in the Soviet-controlled territories, many of whom were then transported to the Soviet Union for forced labor. In the East German territories, which the Soviet authorities had put under Polish administration, the Soviets did not always distinguish between Poles and Germans and often (mis)treated them alike. Of the pre-war ethnic German population of about 1.4 million: 420,000 migrated, evacuated or were expelled to Western Germany; 268,000 to Eastern Germany; and 431,000 still lived in Poland in 1950.

The real estate property left by the expellees was nationalized by the communist government.

Yugoslavia

After the second world war, the majority of German-speaking people from Yugoslavia (mostly the Danube Swabians) left for Austria and West Germany, and after 1950, thanks to the "displaced persons" act (of 1948), also to the United States of America. Many suffered persecution, sustained great personal and economic losses, and many perished. However, some remained in Yugoslavia, particularly those married to local partners.

The left property of those expelled was nationalized on the basis of the decision on the transition of enemy property into state ownership, on state administration over the property of absent persons, and on sequestration of property forcibly appropriated by occupation authorities of November 21, 1944 by the Presidency of AVNOJ

Romania

Main article: Expulsion of Germans from Romania after World War II

The expulsion of Germans from Romania after World War II, conducted on Soviet order early in 1945, uprooted tens of thousands of Romania's Germans, many of whom lost their lives. Some expulsions were part of the Soviet plan for German war reparations in the form of forced labor, according to the 1944 secret Soviet Order 7161. Of a pre-war ethnic German population of 786,000, approximately 213,000 had been evacuated, expelled, or migrated to Austria or Western Germany, and 400,000 still resided in Romania in 1950. It is claimed that many of those covered by Order 7161 had either been a part of, or complicit with, the Nazi or Fascist regimes in Romania during the war.

Slovenia

In Slovenia the German population at the end of the war was concentrated in Styria, more precisely in Maribor, Celje and a few other towns and in total numbered about 28.000 in 1931. The number was higher after 1941 as the Germans from the German ethnic enclave of Kočevje in southern Slovenia,at the time under Italian occupation, were transferred by the Italian and German occupying forces to German-occupied Styria. The majority of the German population, frustrated by the loss of overproportionate power in former Habsburg lands, has actively supported the new nazi regime and it's policy of forcible germanization through displacement of people, mass murder and concentration camps in the area. Thus most have fled the area together with the retreating German forces in fear of reprisals and the remainder was mostly expelled by the Liberation Front of Slovenia after it seized complete control in the region.

Russia

Lithuania

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

After the war, the area was claimed by the Soviet Union, (which included annexed Lithuania). Most of its German inhabitants fled to Germany, joining the exodus of those from Königsberg and other Eastern Prussian cities. German civilian remnants were put on deportation trains in 1946. Many Ethnic Germans from rural areas fled their homes by wagon, taking only a few essentials and non-perishable food items. They traveled for weeks in wagon train-like formations. Many made their way to the Baltic Sea, and horrifying accounts exist of wagons trying to cross the Baltic to escape to Germany, only to fall through the ice. Others turned back and made their way to port cities like Pillau, where they boarded overcrowded ships going to places like Denmark or Kiel. These ships then navigated the mine-strewn waters, a few falling prey to aircraft or submarines. Once there, many spent the rest of the war in refugee camps. Illnesses such as dysentery were not uncommon during this time, and many of the young and elderly died on foreign soil. Ethnic Lithuanians and other Soviet citizens replaced the ethnic German population. Unverified rumors state that a number of orphaned ethnic German children too young to go on the long trek as refugees were taken in by Lithuanian families.

The Netherlands

Main article: Operation Black Tulip

After World War II the Dutch wanted to expel 25,000 Germans living in the Netherlands. The Germans (who often had Dutch wives/husbands and children) were called 'hostile subjects' (Dutch: vijandelijke onderdanen). The operation started on 10 September 1946 in Amsterdam, where Germans and their families were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and given one hour to collect 50kg of luggage. They were allowed to take 100 Guilders with them. The rest of their possessions went to the Dutch state. They were taken to internment camps near the German border, the biggest of which was Mariënbosch near Nijmegen. In total, about 3,691 Germans (less than 15 percent of the 25,000 total population of Germans in the Netherlands) were expelled, their possessions confiscated by the Dutch state.

The Allied forces that occupied the Western zone of Germany opposed this operation for fear that other countries might follow suit and the western zone was not in an economic condition to receive such large numbers of expellees. The British troops in Germany reacted by evicting 100,000 ethnic Dutch in Germany to the Netherlands.

The operation ended in 1948. On 26 July 1951, the state of war between the Netherlands and Germany officially ended, and the Germans were no longer regarded as state enemies.

Norway

Further information: War children

Denmark

In the final weeks of the war, between February 11 and May 9, about 250,000 German refugees fled across the Baltic Sea, fleeing the advancing Soviet Army. For the most part, the refugees were from East Prussia, Pomerania, and the Baltic states. Many of the refugees were women, children, or elderly. A third of the refugees were younger than 15 years old.

The refugees were interned in hundreds of camps from Copenhagen to Jutland, placed behind barbed wire and guarded by military personnel. The largest camp, located in Oksboll, on the west coast of Jutland, held 37,000 refugees.

In the camps, food rations were meager and medical care was inadequate, as they were for everyone in Europe in 1945-46. In 1945 alone, more than 13,000 people died, among them some 7,000 children under five.

There were no expulsions of Danish citizens of German ethnicity.

France

A number of Germans were expelled from Alsace and Lorraine. Some inhabitants of Kehl were forced to leave, when the city was French (1945-1949).

Speculations over the reasons and justifications for the expulsions

Given the complex history of the region and the divergent interests of the victorious Allied powers, it is difficult to ascribe a definitive set of motivations behind the expulsions. Various groups, including the public in the affected countries, as well as historians, perceive the reasons for the Potsdam decisions and subsequent transfers differently. The key issues that motivated the expulsions are thought to include:

Compensation to other countries for their territories lost to the Soviet Union
A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states
Distrust of and enmity towards Nazi-influenced German communities
Prevention of violence between majority populations and German minorities
Punishment of ethnic German minorities for activities in support of Nazi aggression
Removing any basis for future extra-territorial claims by Germany
Making room for Polish expellees and returnees
Making the Polish state dependent on Soviet Union
Property compensation in Eastern European countries
An attempt to restore demographics in areas previously occupied by the Nazis.

Compensation to other countries for their 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 the beginning of the war. While some cities, like Gdańsk (Danzig), were transferred to Poland as part of the "clean sweep" (see below) that eliminated minorities and strategically risky borders, other cities, like Wrocław (Breslau) or Szczecin (Stettin), would hardly have been transferred to Poland had it not lost Vilnius (Wilno), Hrodna (Grodno) and Lviv (Lwów).

Thus, from the perspective of the Polish, Communist, and Western Allies, one justification for the expulsion of the Germans was compensation of Poland for territories taken by the Soviet Union.

Objections to this theory argue that the territories Stalin took from Poland in the east, were actually behind the Curzon Line, which was proposed as the border after World War I by the Western Allies in that war, and which Poland had taken from the Soviet Union in 1920-22. Objections to this argue that the Curzon line was an Anglocentric arbitrary line (in fact two lines) not based on ethnic data, which was not either agreed to or respected by the Soviets, who revised it by annexing ethnically Polish lands near Grodno.

A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states

This was presented as the key reason for the official decisions of the Potsdam conference and previous Allied conferences involving the Polish and Czech exile governments, as cited in this article.

There is a long history of the Polish and Czech nations trying to protect themselves against German eastward expansionism (see also Drang nach Osten article), as well as the late compensatory nationalism of newly independent Eastern European nation-states. The border on the Oder-Neisse line was actively pursued by the Polish government in exile, which, under the pressure from the Soviet Union and its Western allies, was looking for possible compensation for the Soviet-occupied eastern regions which Stalin was not willing to give back, in part based on the majority of the population being Ukrainian/Ruthenian and Belorussian.

The territories that had been handed over to Poland and Czechoslovakia by the Versailles treaty caused particular trouble to these states. Especially, the Czech exile government in London insisted on a solution to the bitter lesson forced on it in 1938: no stability without ethnic homogeneity. The utter military and moral defeat of Germany provided an opportunity for achieving ethnic homogeneity by means heretofore only used on a large scale by the Germans themselves. In the case of Czechoslovakia, not only the Sudeten Germans but also the Hungarian minority of Southern Slovakia became caught up in the postwar population displacements.

Distrust of and enmity towards Nazi-influenced German communities

There was an expressed fear of disloyalty of Germans in Silesia and Pomerania based on the Nazi activities of numbers of ethnic Germans during the war, and even after the end of the war. As a result of these activities, there was no political party which would agree to Germans continuing to live in Silesia and Pomerania. To Poles, expulsion of Germans was seen as an effort to avoid such events in the future and as a result, Polish exile authorities proposed a population transfer of Germans as early as 1941.

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

Prevention of violence between majority populations and German minorities

The participants at the Potsdam Conference asserted that expulsions were the only way to prevent ethnic violence. As Winston Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, insofar as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions…". From this point of view, the policy achieved its goals: the 1945 borders are stable and ethnic conflicts are relatively marginal.

Punishment of ethnic German minorities for activities in support of Nazi aggression

One theory offered for the expulsions is that the actual purpose of the policy was to punish 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. Czech public opinion saw this act as a national betrayal. Nazi occupation forces had planned to kill, deport, or enslave the entire Polish, Russian, and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior (Untermensch), and to repopulate all of Eastern Europe with Germans. All urban populations in the German-occupied "lebensraum" were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing the replacement of those governments by a German ruling class.

As a result, 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.

Removing any basis for future extra-territorial claims by Germany

One purpose of expelling ethnic Germans from areas in other countries was to invalidate German territorial claims to land in those nations. The purported objective was to prevent a repetition of what happened in the Sudetenland, where the Nazi government based territorial claims upon the presence of an ethnic German minority living there.

Making room for Polish expellees and 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 kidnapped by the Germans as forced labor. Overall, hundreds of thousands of Poles were taken to Germany as forced labor. About 600,000 of them worked on German territories ceded to Poland. Many thousands more 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 the housing stock in urban areas had been virtually destroyed during the war and by purposeful German destructive actions (e.g. Warsaw in 1944-1945) on a scale unknown in Western European countries. According to this line of reasoning, Germans were expelled to make housing available for the returnees.

Making the Polish state dependent on the Soviet Union

Never stated as an official reason, there is one theory put forth that part of the Soviet Union's motivation for supporting the expulsions was to make the resurgent Polish state dependent on their protection against possible future German demands.

Property compensation in Eastern European countries

No Eastern European nation has ever been compensated for war damages by German aggression to private or public property. According to this rationale, the property of Germans expelled after WW2 was used to compensate war victims.

For example, the Polish Communist administration sometimes purposefully did not inform Germans slated for deportation about their scheduled transport time until 24 hours before 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.

Even so, many people were never directly compensated for war damages by any government, even if the confiscated or abandoned property of Germans was available to that government.

An attempt to restore demographics in areas previously occupied by the Nazis

Further information: Generalplan Ost

Part of Nazi Germany's long term policy for Central and Eastern Europe was to create a "Greater Germany" which was to be created by forcibly removing or enslaving all non-Germans from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and all other Slavic areas of Eastern Europe up to the line Archangel-Astrakan. Some Germans living in these areas were placed there as part of the Nazi settlement policies (particularly in Eastern and Central Poland), and had replaced indigenous nationals who were expelled or killed by Nazi Germany during the occupation. In addition to many wartime settlers from Germany, a number of ethnic Germans from Eastern European countries occupied by the Soviet Union were resettled in Western Poland, in accordance with the terms specified by the Nazi government in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

During the German occupation of Poland, it is estimated that between 1.6 and 2 million Polish people were expelled. In many instances, Poles were given between 15 minutes and 1 hour to collect their personal belongings (usually no more than 15 kilograms per person) before they were thrown out of their homes and transported east. On top of that, about 3 million Poles were deported to Germany for forced labor in German farms and factories and 5 million incarcerated in German concentration camps. All in all, approximately 6 million Polish civilians were murdered by Germany during the war.

However, the majority of the massive demographic changes ordered by the Allies did much more than restore the pre-war demographics. The vast majority of the German population effected by explusion orders were from regions where they had lived for centuries, (i.e. Pomerania, East Brandenburg, Lower Silesia and East Prussia). The region in particular that was the main focus of Nazi Germany's resettlement policies fell outside the political borders of Weimar Germany. All of these actions resulted in significant changes in demographics at the end of the war.

Results

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

The areas from which the Germans escaped, or which were expelled, were subsequently re-populated by nationals of the states to which they now belonged, many of whom were expellees themselves from lands further east.

In the first few decades after the end of the war, estimates of deaths associated with the expulsions were in the range of 2-3 million. Since the 1970s, however, some historians have suggested downward revisions to 500,000 to 1.1 million. However, some historians still support estimates of 2 million deaths. The higher numbers are now considered to include deaths from all war-related causes, not simply as a direct result of the flight and expulsions.

Many of these deaths were the result of ill-prepared German evacuation plans, Nazi fanaticism, and chaotic flight. Some were senseless killings by opportunistic mobs and individuals. Other deaths were caused by the privations of a forced migration in a postwar environment characterized by crime, chaos, famine, disease, and cold winter conditions. There were also incidents of direct, intentional actions of violence by militias. It is almost impossible to attribute accurate proportions of deaths to specific causes.

Due to a lack of accurate records, many estimates of population transfers and associated deaths depend upon a "population balance" methodology. Estimates of total populations expelled and deaths during the expulsions often include figures from the evacuation, because these people were not allowed to return, thus making it difficult to arrive at an accurate and undisputed estimate of population movements and deaths due solely to the expulsions.

Timing and causes of deaths

More importantly, these deaths are often reported as being "the result of the expulsions" but are arguably better characterized as "happening contemporaneously with the expulsions but not necessarily caused by the expulsions".

It is impossible to determine how many deaths happened "before" versus "after" the end of the war (i.e., before vs. after May 8, 1945). Any estimate of the number of deaths must be based on either a gross "population balance" methodology or on the examination of actual death records. The "population balance" methodology relies on census data that was taken years before the end of the war and years after the end of the war and thus cannot provide this kind of "before and after" comparison. Many deaths went unrecorded and thus actual death records substantially underestimate the actual number of deaths. The difficulty is that no one can say by how much the actual death records understate the actual deaths. Thus, it will never be possible to determine with certainty how many deaths happened before the war ended and how many afterwards. This question is important because it affects how many deaths should be attributed to evacuation, flight, pre-Potsdam "wild" expulsions, and expulsions that occurred after the Potsdam Agreements, which is seen by some as a general sanction for the expulsions.

Other people assert that the Potsdam Agreements called for suspending further expulsions and bringing them under Allied control.

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.

Controversy over responsibility for the expulsions

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There is considerable contentious debate over how much blame for the deaths and suffering of the expelled Germans can be placed on the shoulders of the nations who expelled the Germans. Some argue 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 military control over the countries involved, the national governments which put the expulsions into motion and the paramilitary organizations and local civilians who took advantage of the opportunity to rob, rape, torture, and murder expellees as they transited out of their homelands. Others argue that a large measure of blame for the deaths must also be laid at the door of Nazi Germany itself: for ineffectual and incomplete evacuation planning; for equating evacuations with "defeatism", thereby ensuring that many plans were not implemented at all, or too late to be of any use; and for their aggressive and brutal invasions of the nations of Eastern Europe in the first place, in many cases using ethnic Germans as pawns in their twisted version of power politics.

One common approach is to assign blame for these deaths 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. It should also be remembered that the government of Poland was imposed on the nation not only by the Soviet Union, but also by the USA and UK, who withdrew their recognition of the Polish government in exile on July 6, 1945.

Some place much of the blame on the Soviet regime at the time (in particular Josef Stalin) for its program of the 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 the 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 Nazi Germany and the ethnic Germans who supported them, because of the brutal and uncivilized way Germans treated the citizens of conquered nations. This perspective argues that the expulsions were motivated by an animus engendered by the war crimes, atrocities, and uncivilized rule of the German conquerors.

Legality of the expulsions

Further information: Population transfer § Changing status in international law

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 nation-states to impose fiats which adversely affected 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-way transfers, since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.

Thus, although the signatories to the Potsdam Agreements and the expelling countries may have considered the expulsions to be legal under international law at 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.

There are some writers, 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."

Legacy of the expulsions

During the Cold War era, there was relatively little public awareness in the west about 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 a discussion of issues that had previously been marginalized, such as the allegations of crimes committed by the Soviet Army during the World War II and the expulsion of Germans from 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 Agreements.

Writers have played a role in stimulating and shaping the debate. Günter Grass dealt with the exodus in Crabwalk, the story of the vessel Wilhelm Gustloff, which was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine on 30 January 1945 while sailing blacked-out under the command of the German Navy. Somewhere between 6,000 and 9,000 refugees and soldiers fleeing the Red Army died in the icy Baltic.

References

^ Overy (1996). The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich. pp. p. 111. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
Jan Czerniakiewicz (2005). Przesiedlenia ludności w Europie 1915-1959. Warszawa: WSP TWP. pp. p.10. ISBN 8388278630. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
Lumans, Valdis O., Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1939-1945, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, 1993, pp. 243, 257-260.
"Herbert Hoover's press release of The President's Economic Mission to Germany and Austria, Report No. 1: German Agriculture and Food Requirements, February 28, 1947". Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. Retrieved 2007-09-06.
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)
Brian Kenety (2005-04-14). "Memories of World War II in the Czech Lands: the expulsion of Sudeten Germans". Radio Prahs. Retrieved 2007-09-06.
^ P. Wallace (March 11, 2002). "Putting The Past To Rest", Time Magazine. Accessed 2007-11-16.
Z. Beneš, Rozumět dějinám. (ISBN 80-86010-60-0)
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
Overy, ibid.
Jankowiak, p. 35
Aleksander Ravlic, ed. An International Symposium - SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE 1918-1995. Croatian Heritage Foundation & Croatian Information Centre. ISBN 953-6525-05-4. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
Manfred Ertel. A Legacy of Dead German Children Spiegel Online, May 16, 2005
"Polacy - wysiedleni, wypędzeni i wyrugowani przez III Rzeszę", Maria Wardzyńska, Warsaw 2004". Created on order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the organization called Selbstschutz carried out executions during "Intelligenzaktion" alongside operational groups of German military and police, in addition to such activities as identifying Poles for execution and illegally detaining them
Jankowiak, p. 135
Freeman, Atlas of Nazi Germany, 1995, p. 110
”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

Podlasek, Maria (1995). "Wypędzenie Niemców z terenów na wschód od Odry i Nysy Łużyckiej" (in Polish). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Polsko - Niemieckie. ISBN 8386653000.
Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Gerhard Reichling. 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7
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.
Interest of the United States in the transfer of German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, and Austria, Foreign relations of the United States: diplomatic papers, Volume II (1945) pp. 1227-1327 (Main URL)
Frontiers and areas of administration Foreign relations of the United States (the Potsdam Conference), Volume I (1945)

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