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During later stages of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and post-war period from 1944 to 1950,
Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...
fled and were expelled to present-day Germany from
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...
, which led to de-Germanization there. The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories was proposed by
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
, in conjunction with the
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
and Czechoslovak exile governments in
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
at least since 1942. In late 1944 the Czechoslovak exile government pressed the Allies to espouse the principle of German population transfers. On the other hand, Polish
prime minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
Tomasz Arciszewski Tomasz Stefan Arciszewski (; 4 November 1877 – 20 November 1955) was a Polish socialist politician, a member of the Polish Socialist Party and the 31st Prime Minister of Poland, 3rd Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile in London fro ...
, in an interview for ''The Sunday Times'' on 17 December 1944, supported the annexation of Warmia-Masuria, Opole Regency, north-east parts of
Lower Silesia Lower Silesia ( pl, Dolny Śląsk; cz, Dolní Slezsko; german: Niederschlesien; szl, Dolny Ślōnsk; hsb, Delnja Šleska; dsb, Dolna Šlazyńska; Silesian German: ''Niederschläsing''; la, Silesia Inferior) is the northwestern part of the ...
(up to the
Oder The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows thr ...
line), and parts of
Pomerania Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...
(without
Szczecin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the German border, it is a major s ...
), but he opposed the idea of expulsion. He wanted to
naturalize Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the i ...
the Germans as Polish citizens and to assimilate them.
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
, in concert with other communist leaders, planned to expel all ethnic Germans from east of the
Oder The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows thr ...
and from lands which from May 1945 fell inside the Soviet occupation zones. In 1941, his government had already transported Germans from Crimea to Central Asia. Between 1944 and 1948, millions of people, including ethnic Germans () and German citizens (), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into Germany. The West German government put the total at 14.6 million, including a million ethnic Germans who had settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II, ethnic German migrants to Germany after 1950, and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from
former eastern territories of Germany The former eastern territories of Germany (german: Ehemalige deutsche Ostgebiete) refer in present-day Germany to those territories east of the current eastern border of Germany i.e. Oder–Neisse line which historically had been considered Ger ...
ceded to the
People's Republic of Poland The Polish People's Republic ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million nea ...
and the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
(about seven million), and from Czechoslovakia (about three million). The areas affected included the former eastern territories of Germany, which were annexed by Poland (see
Recovered Territories The Recovered Territories or Regained Lands ( pl, Ziemie Odzyskane), also known as Western Borderlands ( pl, Kresy Zachodnie), and previously as Western and Northern Territories ( pl, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne), Postulated Territories ( pl, Z ...
) and the Soviet Union after the war, as well as Germans who were living within the borders of the pre-war
Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of ...
, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the
Baltic States The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, ...
. The
Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
had made plans—only partially completed before the Nazi defeat—to remove many Slavic and Jewish people from Eastern Europe and settle the area with Germans.Hans-Walter Schmuhl. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, 1927–1945: crossing boundaries. Volume 259 of Boston studies in the philosophy of science. Coutts MyiLibrary. SpringerLink Humanities, Social Science & LawAuthor. Springer, 2008. , 9781402065996, p. 348–349 The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000–600,000 and up to 2 to 2.5 million."Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus den Gebieten jenseits von Oder und Neiße"
bpb.de; accessed 6 December 2014.
The removals occurred in three overlapping phases, the first of which was the organized evacuation of ethnic Germans by the Nazi government in the face of the advancing
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
, from mid-1944 to early 1945. The second phase was the disorganised fleeing of ethnic Germans immediately following the 's defeat. The third phase was a more organised expulsion following the Allied leaders' Potsdam Agreement, which redefined the Central European borders and approved expulsions of ethnic Germans from the former German territories transferred to Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia. Many German civilians were sent to internment and labour camps where they were used as forced labour as part of German reparations to countries in eastern Europe. The major expulsions were complete in 1950. Estimates for the total number of people of German ancestry still living in
Central and Eastern Europe Central and Eastern Europe is a term encompassing the countries in the Baltics, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe (mostly the Balkans), usually meaning former communist states from the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact in Europe. ...
in 1950 range from 700,000 to 2.7 million.


Background

Before World War II,
East-Central Europe East Central Europe is the region between Germanic languages, Germanic, West Slavic languages, West Slavic, and Hungarian language, Hungarian-speaking Europe and the East Slavs, East Slavic countries of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Those lands a ...
generally lacked clearly shaped ethnic settlement areas. There were some ethnic-majority areas, but there were also vast mixed areas and abundant smaller pockets settled by various ethnicities. Within these areas of diversity, including the major cities of
Central and Eastern Europe Central and Eastern Europe is a term encompassing the countries in the Baltics, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe (mostly the Balkans), usually meaning former communist states from the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact in Europe. ...
, regular interaction among various ethnic groups had taken place on a daily basis for centuries, while not always harmoniously, on every civic and economic level.Kati Tonkin reviewing Jurgen Tampke's "Czech-German Relations and the Politics of Central Europe: From Bohemia to the EU", ''The Australian Journal of Politics and History'', March 200
Findarticles.com
; accessed 6 December 2014.
With the rise of
nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...
in the 19th century, the ethnicity of citizens became an issue in territorial claims, the self-perception/identity of states, and claims of ethnic superiority. The
German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
introduced the idea of ethnicity-based settlement in an attempt to ensure its territorial integrity. It was also the first modern European state to propose population transfers as a means of solving "nationality conflicts", intending the removal of Poles and
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
from the projected post–
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
"
Polish Border Strip The term "Polish Border Strip" (german: Polnischer Grenzstreifen; pl, polski pas graniczny) or "Polish Frontier Strip" refers to those territories which the German Empire wanted to annex from Congress Poland after World War I. It appeared in plans ...
" and its resettlement with Christian ethnic Germans. Following the collapse of Austria-Hungary,
the Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...
, and the German Empire at the end of World War I, the
Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
pronounced the formation of several independent states in Central and Eastern Europe, in territories previously controlled by these imperial powers. None of the new states were ethnically homogeneous. After 1919, many ethnic Germans emigrated from the former imperial lands back to the
Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
and the
First Austrian Republic The First Austrian Republic (german: Erste Österreichische Republik), officially the Republic of Austria, was created after the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 September 1919—the settlement after the end of World War I w ...
after losing their privileged status in those foreign lands, where they had maintained minority communities. In 1919 ethnic Germans became national minorities in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. In the following years, the Nazi ideology encouraged them to demand local autonomy. In Germany during the 1930s,
Nazi propaganda The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation o ...
claimed that Germans elsewhere were subject to persecution. Nazi supporters throughout eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia's
Konrad Henlein Konrad Ernst Eduard Henlein (6 May 1898 – 10 May 1945) was a leading Sudeten German politician in Czechoslovakia. Upon the German occupation in October 1938 he joined the Nazi Party as well as the '' SS'' and was appointed ''Gauleiter'' of the ...
, Poland's
Deutscher Volksverband ''Deutscher Volksverband in Polen'' (DVV), or the German People's Union in Poland, was a Nazi German extreme right-wing political party founded in 1924 in central Poland by members of the ethnic German minority who did not wish to join the minor ...
and
Jungdeutsche Partei ''Jungdeutsche Partei in Polen'' (JDP), or the Young German Party in Poland ( pl, Partia Młodoniemiecka w Polsce), was a Nazi German extreme right-wing political party founded in 1931 by members of the ethnic German minority residing in the Seco ...
, Hungary's ''Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn'') formed local Nazi political parties sponsored financially by the
German Ministry of Foreign Affairs , logo = DEgov-AA-Logo en.svg , logo_width = 260 px , image = Auswaertiges Amt Berlin Eingang.jpg , picture_width = 300px , image_caption = Entrance to the Foreign Office building , headquarters = Werderscher Mark ...
, e.g. by Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. However, by 1939 more than half of Polish Germans lived outside of the formerly German territories of Poland due to improving economic opportunities. Ethnic German population: 1958
West German West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
estimates versus pre-war (1930/31) national census figures Notes: * According to the national census figures the percentage of ethnic Germans in the total population was: Poland 2.3%; Czechoslovakia 22.3%; Hungary 5.5%; Romania 4.1% and Yugoslavia 3.6%. * The West German figures are the base used to estimate losses in the expulsions. * The West German figure for Poland is broken out as 939,000 monolingual German and 432,000 bi-lingual Polish/German.Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50.Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. - Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1958 p. 276 * The West German figure for Poland includes 60,000 in
Zaolzie Trans-Olza ( pl, Zaolzie, ; cs, Záolží, ''Záolší''; german: Olsa-Gebiet; Cieszyn Silesian: ''Zaolzi''), also known as Trans-Olza Silesia (Polish: ''Śląsk Zaolziański''), is a territory in the Czech Republic, which was disputed betwee ...
which was annexed by Poland in 1938. In the 1930 census, this region was included in the Czechoslovak population. * A West German analysis of the wartime
Deutsche Volksliste The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List), a Nazi Party institution, aimed to classify inhabitants of Nazi-occupied territories (1939-1945) into categories of desirability according to criteria systematised by ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich H ...
by Alfred Bohmann ( de) put the number of Polish nationals in the
Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany Following the Invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic was annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under the German civil administration. The rest of Nazi ...
who identified themselves as German at 709,500 plus 1,846,000 Poles who were considered candidates for
Germanisation Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, German people, people and German culture, culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationa ...
. In addition, there were 63,000 Volksdeutsch in the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
.
Martin Broszat Martin Broszat (14 August 1926 – 14 October 1989) was a German historian specializing in modern German social history. As director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History) in Munich from 1972 until his deat ...
cited a document with different Volksliste figures 1,001,000 were identified as Germans and 1,761,000 candidates for
Germanisation Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, German people, people and German culture, culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationa ...
. The figures for the
Deutsche Volksliste The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List), a Nazi Party institution, aimed to classify inhabitants of Nazi-occupied territories (1939-1945) into categories of desirability according to criteria systematised by ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich H ...
exclude ethnic Germans resettled in Poland during the war. * The national census figures for Germans include German-speaking Jews. Poland (7,000) Czech territory not including Slovakia (75,000) Hungary 10,000, Yugoslavia (10,000) During the Nazi German occupation, many citizens of German descent in Poland registered with the
Deutsche Volksliste The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List), a Nazi Party institution, aimed to classify inhabitants of Nazi-occupied territories (1939-1945) into categories of desirability according to criteria systematised by ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich H ...
. Some were given important positions in the hierarchy of the Nazi administration, and some participated in
Nazi atrocities The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notabl ...
, causing resentment towards German speakers in general. These facts were later used by the Allied politicians as one of the justifications for the expulsion of the Germans. The contemporary position of the German government is that, while the Nazi-era war crimes resulted in the expulsion of the Germans, the deaths due to the expulsions were an injustice. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, especially after the
reprisals A reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Since the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP 1), reprisals in the laws of war are extremel ...
for the assassination of
Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
, most of the Czech resistance groups demanded that the "German problem" be solved by transfer/expulsion. These demands were adopted by the
Czechoslovak government-in-exile The Czechoslovak government-in-exile, sometimes styled officially as the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia ( cz, Prozatímní vláda Československa, sk, Dočasná vláda Československa), was an informal title conferred upon the Czechos ...
, which sought the support of the Allies for this proposal, beginning in 1943. The final agreement for the transfer of the Germans was not reached until the
Potsdam Conference The Potsdam Conference (german: Potsdamer Konferenz) was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Pe ...
. The expulsion policy was part of a geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of postwar Europe. In part, it was retribution for Nazi Germany's initiation of the war and subsequent atrocities and
ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
in
Nazi-occupied Europe German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...
.Arie Marcelo Kacowicz & Paweł Lutomski, ''Population Resettlement in International Conflicts: A Comparative Study'', Lexington Books, 2007, p. 100; Allied leaders
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
of the United States,
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
of the United Kingdom, and
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
of the USSR, had agreed in principle before the end of the war that the border of Poland's territory would be moved west (though how far was not specified) and that the remaining ethnic German population were subject to expulsion. They assured the leaders of the émigré governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia, both occupied by Nazi Germany, of their support on this issue.
Alfred M. de Zayas Alfred-Maurice de Zayas (born 31 May 1947) is a Cuban-born American lawyer and writer, active in the field of human rights and international law. From 1 May 2012 to 30 April 2018, he served as the first UN Independent Expert on the Promotion o ...
, ''A Terrible Revenge'', New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 1994 (reprinted 2006); ; accessed 26 May 2015.
Detlef Brandes, ''Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum "Transfer" der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen'', Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2005, pp. 398seqq;
Google.de
/ref>


Reasons and justifications for the expulsions

Given the complex history of the affected regions and the divergent interests of the victorious Allied powers, it is difficult to ascribe a definitive set of motives to the expulsions. The respective paragraph of the Potsdam Agreement only states vaguely: "The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agreed that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner." The major motivations revealed were: * ''A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states'': This is presented by several authors as a key issue that motivated the expulsions.Alfred M. de Zayas, ''Nemesis at Potsdam'', p. 2
/ref>Fritsch-Bournazel, Renata. ''Europe and German Unification: Germans on the East-West Divide'', 1992, p. 77; , : The Soviet Union and the new Communist governments of the countries where these Germans had lived tried between 1945 and 1947 to eliminate the problem of minority populations that in the past had formed an obstacle to the development of their own national identity.Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch & Holm Sundhaussen, ''Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung'', p. 91Philipp Ther & Ana Siljak, ''Redrawing Nations'', p. 155Arie Marcelo Kacowicz & Paweł Lutomski, Population resettlement in international conflicts: a comparative study,
Lexington Books Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing compa ...
, 2007, p. 102;
Google.de
/ref>Steffen Prauser and Arfon Ree
''The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 6
* ''View of a German minority as potentially troublesome'': From the Soviet perspective, shared by the communist administrations installed in Soviet-occupied Europe, the remaining large German populations outside postwar Germany were seen as a potentially troublesome '
fifth column A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. According to Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz, "fifth columns" are “domestic actors who work to un ...
' that would, because of its social structure, interfere with the envisioned
Sovietisation Sovietization (russian: Советизация) is the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets (workers' councils) or the adoption of a way of life, mentality, and culture modelled after the Soviet Union. This often included ...
of the respective countries. The Western allies also saw the threat of a potential German 'fifth column', especially in Poland after the agreed-to compensation with former German territory. In general, the Western allies hoped to secure a more lasting peace by eliminating the German minorities, which they thought could be done in a humane manner.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Ree
''The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 5
The proposals from the Polish and Czech governments-in-exile to expel ethnic Germans after the war received support from
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
How Winston Churchill Stopped the Nazis
. ''
Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
''. 20 August 2010.
and
Anthony Eden Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 until his resignation in 1957. Achieving rapid promo ...
."
The Myriad Chronicles
'". Johannes Rammund De Balliel-Lawrora, 2010. p.113.
* ''Another motivation was to punish the Germans'':Zybura, p. 202 the Allies declared them collectively guilty of German war crimes.Ulf, Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch & Holm Sundhaussen, ''Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung'', p. 92 * ''Soviet political considerations'': Stalin saw the expulsions as a means of creating antagonism between the Soviet satellite states and their neighbours. The satellite states would then need the protection of the Soviet Union. The expulsions served several practical purposes as well.


Ethnically homogeneous nation-state

The creation of ethnically homogeneous nation states in Central and Eastern Europe was presented as the key reason for the official decisions of the Potsdam and previous Allied conferences as well as the resulting expulsions. The principle of every nation inhabiting its own nation state gave rise to a series of expulsions and resettlements of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and others who after the war found themselves outside their supposed home states. The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey lent legitimacy to the concept. Churchill cited the operation as a success in a speech discussing the German expulsions. In view of the desire for ethnically homogeneous nation-states, it did not make sense to draw borders through regions that were already inhabited homogeneously by Germans without any minorities. As early as 9 September 1944, Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
and Polish communist
Edward Osóbka-Morawski Edward Bolesław Osóbka-Morawski (5 October 1909 – 9 January 1997) was a Polish activist and politician in the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) before World War II, and after the Soviet takeover of Poland, Chairman of the Communist-dominated inte ...
of the
Polish Committee of National Liberation The Polish Committee of National Liberation ( Polish: ''Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego'', ''PKWN''), also known as the Lublin Committee, was an executive governing authority established by the Soviet-backed communists in Poland at the la ...
signed a treaty in
Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...
on population exchanges of Ukrainians and Poles living on the "wrong" side of the
Curzon Line The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. It was first proposed by George Curzon, 1st Marque ...
. Many of the 2.1 million Poles expelled from the Soviet-annexed
Kresy Eastern Borderlands ( pl, Kresy Wschodnie) or simply Borderlands ( pl, Kresy, ) was a term coined for the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic, it ...
, so-called 'repatriants', were resettled to former German territories, then dubbed 'Recovered Territories'. Czech
Edvard Beneš Edvard Beneš (; 28 May 1884 – 3 September 1948) was a Czech politician and statesman who served as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938, and again from 1945 to 1948. He also led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile 1939 to 1945 ...
, in his decree of 19 May 1945, termed ethnic
Hungarians Hungarians, also known as Magyars ( ; hu, magyarok ), are a nation and  ethnic group native to Hungary () and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry, and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Urali ...
and Germans "unreliable for the state", clearing a way for confiscations and expulsions.


View of German minorities as potential fifth columns


Distrust and enmity

One of the reasons given for the population transfer of Germans from the former eastern territories of Germany was the claim that these areas had been a stronghold of the Nazi movement. Neither Stalin nor the other influential advocates of this argument required that expellees be checked for their political attitudes or their activities. Even in the few cases when this happened and expellees were proven to have been bystanders, opponents or even victims of the Nazi regime, they were rarely spared from expulsion. Polish Communist propaganda used and manipulated hatred of the Nazis to intensify the expulsions. With German communities living within the pre-war borders of Poland, there was an expressed fear of disloyalty of Germans in Eastern Upper Silesia and
Pomerelia Pomerelia,, la, Pomerellia, Pomerania, pl, Pomerelia (rarely used) also known as Eastern Pomerania,, csb, Pòrénkòwô Pòmòrskô Vistula Pomerania, prior to World War II also known as Polish Pomerania, is a historical sub-region of Pome ...
, based on wartime Nazi activities. Created on order of Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
, a Nazi
ethnic German , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...
organisation called
Selbstschutz ''Selbstschutz'' (German for "self-protection") is the name given to different iterations of ethnic-German self-protection units formed both after the First World War and in the lead-up to the Second World War. The first incarnation of the ''Selb ...
carried out executions during ''
Intelligenzaktion The ''Intelligenzaktion'' (), or the Intelligentsia mass shootings, was a series of mass murders which was committed against the Polish intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society) early in the ...
'' alongside operational groups of German military and police, in addition to such activities as identifying Poles for execution and illegally detaining them. To Poles, expulsion of Germans was seen as an effort to avoid such events in the future. As a result, Polish exile authorities proposed a population transfer of Germans as early as 1941.Maria Wardzyńska, ''Polacy – wysiedleni, wypędzeni i wyrugowani przez III Rzeszę'', Warsaw 2004. The
Czechoslovak government-in-exile The Czechoslovak government-in-exile, sometimes styled officially as the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia ( cz, Prozatímní vláda Československa, sk, Dočasná vláda Československa), was an informal title conferred upon the Czechos ...
worked with the
Polish government-in-exile The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile ( pl, Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie), was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Pola ...
towards this end during the war.


Preventing ethnic violence

The participants at the Potsdam Conference asserted that expulsions were the only way to prevent ethnic violence. As
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
expounded in the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
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 the prospect of disentanglement of populations, not even of these large transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions than they have ever been before". Polish resistance fighter, statesman and courier
Jan Karski Jan Karski (24 June 1914 – 13 July 2000) was a Polish soldier, resistance-fighter, and diplomat during World War II. He is known for having acted as a courier in 1940–1943 to the Polish government-in-exile and to Poland's Western Allies ab ...
warned President
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
in 1943 of the possibility of Polish reprisals, describing them as "unavoidable" and "an encouragement for all the Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong."


Punishment for Nazi crimes

The expulsions were also driven by a desire for retribution, given the brutal way German occupiers treated non-German civilians in the German-occupied territories during the war. Thus, the expulsions were at least partly motivated by the animus engendered by the war crimes and atrocities perpetrated by the German belligerents and their proxies and supporters. Czechoslovak President
Edvard Beneš Edvard Beneš (; 28 May 1884 – 3 September 1948) was a Czech politician and statesman who served as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938, and again from 1945 to 1948. He also led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile 1939 to 1945 ...
, in the National Congress, justified the expulsions on 28 October 1945 by stating that the majority of Germans had acted in full support of Hitler; during a ceremony in remembrance of the
Lidice massacre The Lidice massacre was the complete destruction of the village of Lidice in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now the Czech Republic, in June 1942 on orders from Adolf Hitler and the successor of the ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler ...
, he blamed all Germans as responsible for the actions of the German state. In Poland and Czechoslovakia, newspapers, leaflets and politicians across the political spectrum, which narrowed during the post-war Communist take-over, asked for retribution for wartime German activities.Timothy Snyder, ''Journal of Cold War Studies'', volume 5, issue 3, ''Forum on Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948'', edited by Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak, Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing compa ...
, 2001; Quote: "By 1943, for example, Polish and Czech politicians across the political spectrum were convinced of the desirability of the postwar expulsion of Germans. After 1945 a democratic Czechoslovak government and a Communist Polish government pursued broadly similar policies toward their German minorities. (...) Taken together, and in comparison to the chapters on the Polish expulsion of the Germans, these essays remind us of the importance of politics in the decision to engage in ethnic cleansing. It will not do, for example, to explain the similar Polish and Czechoslovak policies by similar experiences of occupation. The occupation of Poland was incomparably harsher, yet the Czechoslovak policy was (if anything) more vengeful. (...) Revenge is a broad and complex set of motivations and is subject to manipulation and appropriation. The personal forms of revenge taken against people identified as Germans or collaborators were justified by broad legal definitions of these groups...
FAS.harvard.edu
accessed 6 December 2014.
Responsibility of the German population for the crimes committed in its name was also asserted by commanders of the late and post-war Polish military.
Karol Świerczewski Karol Wacław Świerczewski (; callsign ''Walter''; 10 February 1897 – 28 March 1947) was a Polish and Soviet Red Army general and statesman. He was a Bolshevik Party member during the Russian Civil War and a Soviet officer in the wars foug ...
, commander of the Second Polish Army, briefed his soldiers to "exact on the Germans what they enacted on us, so they will flee on their own and thank God they saved their lives."Detlef Brandes, in Brunnbauer/Esch/Sundhaussen's ''Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung: "ethnische Säuberungen" im östlichen Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts'', Berlin, Hamburg and Münster:
LIT Verlag LIT Verlag is a German academic publisher founded in 1980. Its managing director is Wilhelm Hopf. Its principal place of publication is Münster; further publishing offices are located in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, London, Zurich, and New York C ...
, 2006, p. 93;

Quote from source (German original): "'Jetzt werden die Deutschen erfahren, was das Prinzip der kollektiven Verantwortung bedeutet', hatte das Organ der polnischen Geheimarmee im Juli 1944 geschrieben. Und der Befehlshaber der 2. Polnischen Armee wies seine Soldaten am 24. Juni 1945 an, mit den Deutschen 'so umzugehen, wie diese es mit uns getan haben', so daß 'die Deutschen von selbst fliehen und Gott danken, daß sie ihren Kopf gerettet haben'. Politiker jeglicher Couleur, Flugblätter und Zeitungen beider Staaten riefen nach Vergeltung für die brutale deutsche Besatzungspolitik" (English translation: "'Now the Germans will get to know the meaning of the principle of collective responsibility', the outlet of the Polish secret army wrote in July 1944. And the commander of the 2nd Polish Army instructed his soldiers on 24 June 1945, to 'treat' the Germans 'how they had treated us', causing 'the Germans to flee on their own and thank God for having saved their lives'. Politicians of all political wings, leaflets and newspapers of both states .e. PL and CScalled for revenge for the brutal occupation policy.")
In Poland, which had suffered the loss of six million citizens, including its elite and almost its entire
Jewish population As of 2020, the world's "core" Jewish population (those identifying as Jews above all else) was estimated at 15 million, 0.2% of the 8 billion worldwide population. This number rises to 18 million with the addition of the "connected" Jewish pop ...
due to
Lebensraum (, ''living space'') is a German concept of settler colonialism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' became a geopolitical goal of Imperi ...
and
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
, most Germans were seen as Nazi-perpetrators who could now finally be collectively punished for their past deeds.Arie Marcelo Kacowicz & Paweł Lutomski, ''Population resettlement in international conflicts: a comparative study'',
Lexington Books Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing compa ...
, 2007, p. 101seq;


Soviet political considerations

Stalin, who had earlier directed several population transfers in the Soviet Union, strongly supported the expulsions, which worked to the Soviet Union's advantage in several ways. The satellite states would now feel the need to be protected by the Soviets from German anger over the expulsions. The assets left by expellees in Poland and Czechoslovakia were successfully used to reward cooperation with the new governments, and support for the Communists was especially strong in areas that had seen significant expulsions. Settlers in these territories welcomed the opportunities presented by their fertile soils and vacated homes and enterprises, increasing their loyalty.


Movements in the later stages of the war


Evacuation and flight to areas within present-day Germany

Late in the war, as the Red Army advanced westward, many Germans were apprehensive about the impending Soviet occupation. Most were aware of the Soviet reprisals against German civilians. Soviet soldiers committed numerous rapes and other crimes.Matthew J. Gibney & Randall Hansen, ''Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present'', 2005, p. 198; ; ; accessed 26 May 2015.Earl R. Beck, ''Under the Bombs: The German Home Front, 1942–1945'',
University Press of Kentucky The University Press of Kentucky (UPK) is the scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and was organized in 1969 as successor to the University of Kentucky Press. The university had sponsored scholarly publication since 1943. In 194 ...
, 1999, p. 176; ; accessed 26 May 2015.
News of atrocities such as the
Nemmersdorf massacre The Nemmersdorf massacre was a civilian massacre perpetrated by Red Army soldiers in the late stages of World War II. Nemmersdorf (present-day Mayakovskoye, Kaliningrad Oblast) was one of the first prewar ethnic German settlements to fall to ...
were exaggerated and disseminated by the Nazi propaganda machine. Plans to evacuate the ethnic German population westward into present-day Germany, from Poland and the (former) eastern territories of Germany, were prepared by various Nazi authorities toward the end of the war. In most cases, implementation was delayed until Soviet and Allied forces had defeated the German forces and advanced into the areas to be evacuated. The abandonment of millions of ethnic Germans in these vulnerable areas until combat conditions overwhelmed them can be attributed directly to the measures taken by the Nazis against anyone suspected of 'defeatist' attitudes (as evacuation was considered) and the fanaticism of many Nazi functionaries in their execution of Hitler's 'no retreat' orders.Andreas Kunz, ''Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945'' (2nd edition), Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2007, p. 92; The first exodus of German civilians from the eastern territories was composed of both spontaneous flight and organized evacuation, starting in mid-1944 and continuing until early 1945. Conditions turned chaotic during the winter when kilometers-long queues of refugees pushed their carts through the snow trying to stay ahead of the advancing Red Army. Refugee treks which came within reach of the advancing Soviets suffered casualties when targeted by low-flying aircraft, and some people were crushed by tanks. The German Federal Archive has estimated that 100–120,000 civilians (1% of the total population) were killed during the flight and evacuations.Silke Spieler (ed.), ''Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen 1945–1948. Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28. Mai 1974. Archivalien und ausgewählte Erlebnisberichte'', Bonn: Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen, 1989, pp. 23–41; . Polish historians Witold Sienkiewicz and Grzegorz Hryciuk maintain that civilian deaths in the flight and evacuation were "between 600,000 and 1.2 million. The main causes of death were cold, stress, and bombing." The mobilized
Strength Through Joy NC Gemeinschaft (KdF; ) was a German state-operated leisure organization in Nazi Germany.Richard Grunberger, ''The 12-Year Reich'', p. 197, It was part of the German Labour Front (german: link=no, Deutsche Arbeitsfront), the national labour org ...
liner, ''Wilhelm Gustloff'', was sunk in January 1945 by Soviet Navy submarine S-13, killing about 9,000 civilians and military personnel escaping
East Prussia East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
in the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history. Many refugees tried to return home when the fighting ended. Before 1 June 1945, 400,000 people crossed back over the
Oder The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows thr ...
and
Neisse The Lusatian Neisse (german: Lausitzer Neiße; pl, Nysa Łużycka; cs, Lužická Nisa; Upper Sorbian: ''Łužiska Nysa''; Lower Sorbian: ''Łužyska Nysa''), or Western Neisse, is a river in northern Central Europe.Silesia Silesia (, also , ) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at around 8,000,000. Silesia is split ...
through Czechoslovakia.Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch & Holm Sundhaussen, ''Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung'', pp. 84-85 In accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, at the end of 1945 – wrote Hahn & Hahn – 4.5 million Germans who had fled or been expelled were under the control of the Allied governments. From 1946–1950 around 4.5 million people were brought to Germany in organized mass transports from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. An additional 2.6 million released POWs were listed as expellees.


Evacuation and flight to Denmark

From the
Baltic coast The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10 ...
, many soldiers and civilians were evacuated by ship in the course of
Operation Hannibal Operation Hannibal was a German naval operation involving the evacuation by sea of German troops and civilians from the Courland Pocket, East Prussia, West Prussia and Pomerania from mid-January to May 1945 as the Red Army advanced during th ...
.Andreas Kunz, ''Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945'', 2nd edition, Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2007, p. 93; . Between 23 January and 5 May 1945, up to 250,000 Germans, primarily from East Prussia,
Pomerania Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...
, and the
Baltic states The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, ...
, were evacuated to Nazi-occupied
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...
,Manfred Ertel
"A Legacy of Dead German Children"
''Spiegel Online'', 16 May 2005.
based on an order issued by Hitler on 4 February 1945. When the war ended, the German refugee population in Denmark amounted to 5% of the total Danish population. The evacuation focused on women, the elderly and children — a third of whom were under the age of fifteen. After the war, the Germans were interned in several hundred refugee camps throughout Denmark, the largest of which was the
Oksbøl Refugee Camp The Oksbøl Refugee Camp was the largest camp for German refugees in Denmark after World War II. Background In early 1945 the Red Army started the East Prussian and East Pomeranian Offensives, soon interrupting the overland route to the weste ...
with 37,000 inmates. The camps were guarded by
Danish Defence Danish Defence ( da, Forsvaret, fo, Danska verjan, kl, Illersuisut) is the unified armed forces of the Kingdom of Denmark charged with the defence of Denmark and its constituent, self-governing nations Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The De ...
units. The situation eased after 60 Danish clergymen spoke in defence of the refugees in an open letter, and
Social Democrat Social democracy is a Political philosophy, political, Social philosophy, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocati ...
Johannes Kjærbøl took over the administration of the refugees on 6 September 1945. On 9 May 1945, the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
occupied the island of
Bornholm Bornholm () is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of Poland. Strategically located, Bornholm has been fought over for centuries. It has usually been ruled by ...
; between 9 May and 1 June 1945, the Soviets shipped 3,000 refugees and 17,000 Wehrmacht soldiers from there to Kolberg. In 1945, 13,492 German refugees died, among them 7,000 children under five years of age. According to Danish physician and historian Kirsten Lylloff, these deaths were partially due to denial of medical care by Danish medical staff, as both the Danish Association of Doctors and the Danish
Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
began refusing medical treatment to German refugees starting in March 1945. The last refugees left Denmark on 15 February 1949. In the Treaty of London, signed 26 February 1953,
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
and Denmark agreed on compensation payments of 160 million Danish kroner for its extended care of the refugees, which West Germany paid between 1953 and 1958.


Following Germany's defeat

The Second World War ended in Europe with Germany's defeat on 8 May 1945. By this time, all of Eastern and much of Central Europe was under
Soviet occupation During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively handed over by Nazi Germany in the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. These included the eastern regions of Poland (incorporated into two different ...
. This included most of the historical German settlement areas, as well as the
Soviet occupation zone The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
in eastern
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. The Allies settled on the terms of
occupation Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, th ...
, the territorial truncation of Germany, and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from post-war Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the Allied Occupation Zones in the Potsdam Agreement, drafted during the
Potsdam Conference The Potsdam Conference (german: Potsdamer Konferenz) was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Pe ...
between 17 July and 2 August 1945. Article XII of the agreement is concerned with the expulsions and reads:
The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.
The agreement further called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans for resettlement among American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones comprising post–World War II Germany.Anna Bramwell, ''Refugees in the Age of Total War'', Routledge, 1988, pp. 24-25; Expulsions that took place before the Allies agreed on the terms at Potsdam are referred to as "irregular" expulsions (''Wilde Vertreibungen''). They were conducted by military and civilian authorities in Soviet-occupied post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia in the first half of 1945. In
Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
, the remaining Germans were not expelled;
ethnic German , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...
villages were turned into internment camps where over 50,000 perished from deliberate starvation and direct murders by Yugoslav guards.''Leidensweg der Deutschen im kommunistischen Jugoslawien'', authored by Arbeitskreis Dokumentation im Bundesverband der Landsmannschaft der Donauschwaben aus Jugoslawien, Sindelfingen, and by Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung, Munich: Die Stiftung, 1991–1995, vol. 4, pp. 1018–1019. In late 1945 the Allies requested a temporary halt to the expulsions, due to the refugee problems created by the expulsion of Germans.US Department of State, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Bureau of Public Affairs, Bureau of Public Affairs: Office of the Historian, Timeline of U.S. Diplomatic History, 1937–1945, The Potsdam Conference, 1945
State.gov; accessed 6 December 2014.
While expulsions from Czechoslovakia were temporarily slowed, this was not true in Poland and the former eastern territories of Germany. Sir
Geoffrey Harrison Sir Geoffrey Wedgwood Harrison (18 July 1908 – 12 April 1990) was a British diplomat, who served as the United Kingdom's ambassador to Brazil, Iran and the Soviet Union. Harrison's tenure in Moscow was terminated in 1968, when he was recalled ...
, one of the drafters of the cited Potsdam article, stated that the "purpose of this article was not to encourage or legalize the expulsions, but rather to provide a basis for approaching the expelling states and requesting them to co-ordinate transfers with the Occupying Powers in Germany." After Potsdam, a series of expulsions of ethnic Germans occurred throughout the Soviet-controlled Eastern European countries.Philipp Ther, ''Deutsche und Polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in SBZ/ddr und in Polen 1945–1956'', 1998, p. 21; , . Property and materiel in the affected territory that had belonged to Germany or to Germans was confiscated; it was either transferred to the Soviet Union, nationalised, or redistributed among the citizens. Of the many post-war forced migrations, the largest was the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe, primarily from the territory of 1937 Czechoslovakia (which included the historically German-speaking area in the Sudeten mountains along the German-Czech-Polish border (Sudetenland)), and the territory that became post-war Poland. Poland's post-war borders were moved west to the Oder-Neisse line, deep into former German territory and within 80 kilometers of Berlin. Polish refugees from the Soviet Union were resettled in the former German territories that were awarded to Poland after the war. During and after the war, 2,208,000 Poles fled or were expelled from the eastern Polish regions that were annexed by the USSR; 1,652,000 of these refugees were resettled in the former German territories.Piotr Eberhardt, ''Political Migrations in Poland 1939–1948'', pp. 44–49; accessed 26 May 2015.


Czechoslovakia

The final agreement for the transfer of the Germans was reached at the
Potsdam Conference The Potsdam Conference (german: Potsdamer Konferenz) was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Pe ...
. According to the West German
Schieder commission Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population tr ...
, there were 4.5 million German civilians present in
Bohemia-Moravia The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The Cz ...
in May 1945, including 100,000 from Slovakia and 1.6 million refugees from Poland. Between 700,000 and 800,000 Germans were affected by irregular expulsions between May and August 1945.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Ree
''The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 17; accessed 26 May 2015.
The expulsions were encouraged by Czechoslovak politicians and were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers and the army. Transfers of population under the Potsdam agreements lasted from January until October 1946. 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone, part of what would become West Germany. More than 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone, which later became
East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
. About 250,000 ethnic Germans were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia. According to the West German
Schieder commission Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population tr ...
250,000 persons who had declared German nationality in the 1939 Nazi census remained in Czechoslovakia; however the Czechs counted 165,790 Germans remaining in December 1955. Male Germans with Czech wives were expelled, often with their spouses, while ethnic German women with Czech husbands were allowed to stay. According to the Schieder commission, Sudeten Germans considered essential to the economy were held as
forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
ers. The West German government estimated the expulsion death toll at 273,000 civilians, and this figure is cited in historical literature.Alfred M. de Zayas, ''A terrible Revenge'', p. 152 However, in 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was between 15,000 and 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.Jörg K. Hoensch & Hans Lemberg, ''Begegnung und Konflikt. Schlaglichter auf das Verhältnis von Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutschen 1815–1989'', Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2001; .Final Statement and Conclusions of the Czech-German Historical Commission, 1996

, dt-ds-historikerkommission.de; accessed 26 May 2015.
P. Wallace (11 March 2002)

''Time'' magazine; retrieved 16 November 2007.
The German Red Cross Search Service (''Suchdienst'') confirmed the deaths of 18,889 people during the expulsions from Czechoslovakia. (Violent deaths 5,556; Suicides 3,411; Deported 705; In camps 6,615; During the wartime flight 629; After wartime flight 1,481; Cause undetermined 379; Other misc. 73.)


Hungary

In contrast to expulsions from other nations or states, the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary was dictated from outside Hungary.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
''The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 8; accessed 26 May 2015.
It began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
Commander-in-Chief ordered the expulsions. In February 1945 the Soviet-dominated
Allied Control Commission Following the termination of hostilities in World War II, the Allies were in control of the defeated Axis countries. Anticipating the defeat of Germany and Japan, they had already set up the European Advisory Commission and a proposed Far Easter ...
ordered the Hungarian
Ministry of Interior An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministry ...
to compile lists of all ethnic Germans living in the country. Initially the Census Bureau refused to divulge information on Hungarians who had registered as
Volksdeutsche In Nazi German terminology, ''Volksdeutsche'' () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". The term is the nominalised plural of '' volksdeutsch'', with ''Volksdeutsche'' denoting a sin ...
, but acceded under pressure from the Hungarian
State Protection Authority The State Protection Authority ( hu, Államvédelmi Hatóság, ÁVH) was the secret police of the People's Republic of Hungary from 1945 to 1956. The ÁVH was conceived as an external appendage of the Soviet Union's KGB in Hungary responsible ...
. Three percent of the German pre-war population (about 20,000 people) had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many had returned. Overall, 60,000 ethnic Germans had fled.Bernard Wasserstein
''European Refugee Movements After World War Two''
bbc.co.uk; accessed 6 December 2014.
According to the West German
Schieder commission Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population tr ...
report of 1956, in early 1945 between 30–35,000 ethnic German civilians and 30,000 military POW were arrested and transported from Hungary to the Soviet Union as forced labourers. In some villages, the entire adult population was taken to labor camps in the
Donbass The Donbas or Donbass (, ; uk, Донба́с ; russian: Донба́сс ) is a historical, cultural, and economic region in eastern Ukraine. Parts of the Donbas are controlled by Russian separatist groups as a result of the Russo-Ukrai ...
. 6,000 died there as a result of hardships and ill-treatment. Data from the Russian archives, which was based on an actual enumeration, put the number of ethnic Germans registered by the Soviets in Hungary at 50,292 civilians, of whom 31,923 were deported to the USSR for reparations labor implementing the
Order 7161 Order 7161 is the top secret USSR State Defense Committee Order no 7161ss (Постановление № 7161cc ГКО СССР) of December 16, 1944 about mobilisation and internment of able-bodied Germans for reparation works in the USSR. (The ...
. 9% (2,819) were documented as having died.Pavel Polian, ''Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR'',
Central European University Press Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center (disambiguation), center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa ...
, 2003, pp. 286–93; ; accessed 26 May 2015.
In 1945, official Hungarian figures showed 477,000 German speakers in Hungary, including German-speaking Jews, 303,000 of whom had declared German nationality. Of the German nationals, 33% were children younger than 12 or elderly people over 60; 51% were women.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 38; accessed 26 May 2015.
On 29 December 1945, the postwar Hungarian Government, obeying the directions of the
Potsdam Conference The Potsdam Conference (german: Potsdamer Konferenz) was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Pe ...
agreements, ordered the expulsion of anyone identified as German in the 1941 census, or had been a member of the Volksbund, the SS, or any other armed German organisation. Accordingly, mass expulsions began. The rural population was affected more than the urban population or those ethnic Germans determined to have needed skills, such as
miner A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, ...
s.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
''The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 39, cadmus.iue.it; accessed 25 May 2015.
Germans married to Hungarians were not expelled, regardless of sex.Philipp Ther, ''Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956'', Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998, p. 305; ; accessed 26 May 2015. The first 5,788 expellees departed Wudersch on 19 January 1946. About 180,000 German-speaking Hungarian citizens were stripped of their citizenship and possessions, and expelled to the Western zones of Germany.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
''The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 47; accessed 26 May 2015.
By July 1948, 35,000 others had been expelled to the
Soviet occupation zone of Germany The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
. Most of the expellees found new homes in the south-west German province of
Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...
, but many others settled in
Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
and
Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...
. Other research indicates that, between 1945 and 1950, 150,000 were expelled to western Germany, 103,000 to Austria, and none to eastern Germany. During the expulsions, numerous organized protest demonstrations by the Hungarian population took place.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
''The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 41; accessed 26 May 2015.
Acquisition of land for distribution to Hungarian refugees and nationals was one of the main reasons stated by the government for the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from Hungary. The botched organization of the redistribution led to social tensions.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Ree
''The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 43; accessed 26 May 2015.
22,445 people were identified as German in the 1949 census. An order of 15 June 1948 halted the expulsions. A governmental decree of 25 March 1950 declared all expulsion orders void, allowing the expellees to return if they so wished. After the
fall of Communism The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, was a revolutionary wave that resulted in the end of most communist states in the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Natio ...
in the early 1990s, German victims of expulsion and Soviet forced labor were rehabilitated. Post-Communist laws allowed expellees to be compensated, to return, and to buy property. There were reportedly no tensions between Germany and Hungary regarding expellees. In 1958, the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by 1950, 270,000 Germans remained in Hungary; 60,000 had been assimilated into the Hungarian population, and there were 57,000 "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified. The editor for the section of the 1958 report for Hungary was Wilfried Krallert, a scholar dealing with Balkan affairs since the 1930s when he was a Nazi Party member. During the war, he was an officer in the SS and was directly implicated in the plundering of cultural artifacts in eastern Europe. After the war, he was chosen to author the sections of the demographic report on the expulsions from Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The figure of 57,000 "unresolved cases" in Hungary is included in the figure of 2 million dead expellees, which is often cited in official German and historical literature.


Netherlands

After World War II, the Dutch government decided to expel the German expatriates (25,000) living in the Netherlands.the documentar
''Black Tulip''
geschiedenis.vpro.nl; accessed 26 May 2015.
Germans, including those with Dutch spouses and children, were labelled as "hostile subjects" ("vijandelijke onderdanen"). The operation began on 10 September 1946 in
Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
, when German expatriates and their families were arrested at their homes in the middle of the night and given one hour to pack 50 kg of luggage. They were only allowed to take 100
guilder Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch and German ''gulden'', originally shortened from Middle High German ''guldin pfenninc'' "gold penny". This was the term that became current in the southern and western parts of the Holy Roman Empir ...
s with them. The remainder of their possessions were seized by the state. They were taken to internment camps near the German border, the largest of which was Mariënbosch concentration camp, near
Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...
. About 3,691 Germans (less than 15% of the total number of German expatriates in the Netherlands) were expelled. The Allied forces occupying the Western zone of Germany opposed this operation, fearing that other nations might follow suit.


Poland, including former German territories

Throughout 1944 until May 1945, as the Red Army advanced through Eastern Europe and the provinces of eastern Germany, some German civilians were killed in the fighting. While many had already fled ahead of the advancing Soviet Army, frightened by rumors of Soviet atrocities, which in some cases were exaggerated and exploited by Nazi Germany's propaganda, millions still remained. A 2005 study by the
Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences ( pl, Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of ...
estimated that during the final months of the war, 4 to 5 million German civilians fled with the retreating German forces, and in mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million Germans remained in the territories under Polish control. By 1950, 3,155,000 had been transported to Germany, 1,043,550 were naturalized as Polish citizens and 170,000 Germans still remained in Poland.
pp. 455-60,466
According to the West German
Schieder commission Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population tr ...
of 1953, 5,650,000 Germans remained in what would become Poland's new borders in mid-1945, 3,500,000 had been expelled and 910,000 remained in Poland by 1950. According to the Schieder commission, the civilian death toll was 2 million; in 1974, the
German Federal Archives The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv (BArch) (german: Bundesarchiv) are the National Archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952. They are subordinated to the Federal Commissioner for Culture and t ...
estimated the death toll at about 400,000. (The controversy regarding the casualty figures is covered below in the section on casualties.) During the 1945 military campaign, most of the male German population remaining east of the Oder–Neisse line were considered potential combatants and held by Soviet military in detention camps subject to verification by the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
. Members of Nazi party organizations and government officials were segregated and sent to the USSR for forced labour as reparations.Kai Cornelius, ''Vom spurlosen Verschwindenlassen zur Benachrichtigungspflicht bei Festnahmen'', BWV Verlag, 2004, p. 126; . In mid-1945, the eastern territories of pre-war Germany were turned over to the Soviet-controlled Polish military forces. Early expulsions were undertaken by the Polish Communist military authorities even before the Potsdam Conference placed them under temporary Polish administration pending the final Peace Treaty,Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
''The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1. p. 27; accessed 26 May 2015.
in an effort to ensure later territorial integration into an ethnically homogeneous Poland.Matthew J. Gibney & Randall Hansen, ''Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present'', 2005, p. 197; , . The Polish Communists wrote: "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multinational ones." The Polish government defined Germans as either ''Reichsdeutsche'', people enlisted in first or second ''Volksliste'' groups; or those who held German citizenship. Around 1,165,000 German citizens of Slavic descent were "verified" as "
autochthonous Autochthon, autochthons or autochthonous may refer to: Fiction * Autochthon (Atlantis), a character in Plato's myth of Atlantis * Autochthons, characters in the novel ''The Divine Invasion'' by Philip K. Dick * Autochthon, a Primordial in the ...
" Poles.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
''The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 28.
Of these, most were not expelled; but many chose to migrate to Germany between 1951–82,Reichling, Gerhard. ''Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen'', Bonn: 1995, p. 53; ; accessed 26 May 2015. including most of the
Masurians The Masurians or Mazurs ( pl, Mazurzy; german: Masuren; Masurian: ''Mazurÿ''), historically also known as Prussian Masurians (Polish: ''Mazurzy pruscy''), is an ethnographic group of Polish people, that originate from the region of Masuria, ...
of East Prussia.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
''The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 30; accessed 26 May 2015.
At the Potsdam Conference (17 July–2 August 1945), the territory to the east of the Oder–Neisse line was assigned to Polish and Soviet Union administration pending the final peace treaty. All Germans had their property confiscated and were placed under restrictive jurisdiction. The Silesian voivode Aleksander Zawadzki in part had already expropriated the property of the German Silesians on 26 January 1945, another decree of 2 March expropriated that of all Germans east of the Oder and Neisse, and a subsequent decree of 6 May declared all "abandoned" property as belonging to the Polish state. Germans were also not permitted to hold Polish currency, the only legal currency since July, other than earnings from work assigned to them. The remaining population faced theft and looting, and also in some instances rape and murder by the criminal elements, crimes that were rarely prevented nor prosecuted by the Polish Militia Forces and newly installed communist judiciary. In mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million Germans resided in territory east of the
Oder–Neisse Line The Oder–Neisse line (german: Oder-Neiße-Grenze, pl, granica na Odrze i Nysie Łużyckiej) is the basis of most of the international border between Germany and Poland from 1990. It runs mainly along the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers a ...
. By early 1946, 550,000 Germans had already been expelled from there, and 932,000 had been verified as having Polish nationality. In the February 1946 census, 2,288,000 people were classified as Germans and subject to expulsion, and 417,400 were subject to verification action, to determine nationality. The negatively verified people, who did not succeed in demonstrating their "Polish nationality", were directed for resettlement. Those Polish citizens who had
collaborated Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
or were believed to have collaborated with the Nazis, were considered "traitors of the nation" and sentenced to forced labor prior to being expelled. By 1950, 3,155,000 German civilians had been expelled and 1,043,550 were naturalized as Polish citizens. 170,000 Germans considered "indispensable" for the Polish economy were retained until 1956, although almost all had left by 1960. 200,000 Germans in Poland were employed as
forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
in communist-administered camps prior to being expelled from Poland. These included
Central Labour Camp Jaworzno The Jaworzno concentration camp was a concentration camp in WW2 German-occupied Poland and later in Communist Poland. It was first established by the Nazis in 1943 during the Second World War and was later used from 1945 to 1956 by the Soviet NKVD a ...
,
Central Labour Camp Potulice After the end of World War II, the Central Labour Camp in Potulice ( pl, Centralny Obóz Pracy w Potulicach) became a detention centre for Germans and anti-communist Poles. It was set up by the Soviet and Polish Communist authorities in Potulice ...
,
Łambinowice Łambinowice (german: Lamsdorf) is a village in Nysa County, Opole Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Łambinowice. It lies approximately north-east of Nysa and south-west of ...
and
Zgoda labour camp Zgoda () was a labour camp (sometimes also described as a concentration camp), set up in February 1945 in Zgoda district of Świętochłowice, Silesia. It was controlled by the communist secret police until its closure in November of the same ye ...
. Besides these large camps, numerous other forced labor, punitive and internment camps, urban ghettos and detention centers, sometimes consisting only of a small cellar, were set up.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
''The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 29; accessed 26 May 2015.
The
German Federal Archives The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv (BArch) (german: Bundesarchiv) are the National Archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952. They are subordinated to the Federal Commissioner for Culture and t ...
estimated in 1974 that more than 200,000 German civilians were interned in Polish camps; they put the death rate at 20–50% and estimated that over 60,000 probably died. Polish historians Witold Sienkiewicz and Grzegorz Hryciuk maintain that the internment:
resulted in numerous deaths, which cannot be accurately determined because of lack of statistics or falsification. At certain periods, they could be in the tens of percent of the inmate numbers. Those interned are estimated at 200–250,000 German nationals and the indigenous population and deaths might range from 15,000 to 60,000 persons."
Note: The indigenous population were former German citizens who declared Polish ethnicity. Historian R. M. Douglas describes a chaotic and lawless regime in the former German territories in the immediate postwar era. The local population was victimized by criminal elements who arbitrarily seized German property for personal gain. Bilingual people who were on the
Volksliste The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List), a Nazi Party institution, aimed to classify inhabitants of Nazi-occupied territories (1939-1945) into categories of desirability according to criteria systematised by ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich H ...
during the war were declared Germans by Polish officials who then seized their property for personal gain. The
Federal Statistical Office of Germany The Federal Statistical Office (german: Statistisches Bundesamt, shortened ''Destatis'') is a federal authority of Germany. It reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Office is responsible for collecting, processing, presenting and ...
estimated that in mid-1945, 250,000 Germans remained in the northern part of the former East Prussia, which became the
Kaliningrad Oblast Kaliningrad Oblast (russian: Калинингра́дская о́бласть, translit=Kaliningradskaya oblast') is the westernmost federal subject of Russia. It is a semi-exclave situated on the Baltic Sea. The largest city and administr ...
. They also estimated that more than 100,000 people surviving the Soviet occupation were evacuated to Germany beginning in 1947. German civilians were held as "reparations labor" by the USSR. Data from the Russian archives, newly published in 2001 and based on an actual enumeration, put the number of German civilians deported from Poland to the USSR in early 1945 for reparations labor at 155,262; 37% (57,586) died in the USSR. The West German Red Cross had estimated in 1964 that 233,000 German civilians were deported to the USSR from Poland as forced laborers and that 45% (105,000) were dead or missing.Kurt W. Böhme, ''Gesucht wird – Die dramatische Geschichte des Suchdienstes'', Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1965, p. 274 The West German Red Cross estimated at that time that 110,000 German civilians were held as forced labor in the Kaliningrad Oblast, where 50,000 were dead or missing. The Soviets deported 7,448 Poles of the
Armia Krajowa The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) esta ...
from Poland. Soviet records indicated that 506 Poles died in captivity.
Tomasz Kamusella Tomasz Kamusella FRHistS (born 24 December 1967) is a Polish scholar pursuing interdisciplinary research in language politics, nationalism and ethnicity. Education Kamusella was educated at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Faculty of P ...
maintains that in early 1945, 165,000 Germans were transported to the Soviet Union. According to Gerhardt Reichling, an official in the German Finance office, 520,000 German civilians from the Oder–Neisse region were conscripted for forced labor by both the USSR and Poland; he maintains that 206,000 perished. The attitudes of surviving Poles varied. Many had suffered brutalities and atrocities by the Germans, surpassed only by the German policies against Jews, during the
Nazi occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 ...
. The Germans had recently expelled more than a million Poles from territories they annexed during the war. Some Poles engaged in looting and various crimes, including murders, beatings, and rapes against Germans. On the other hand, in many instances Poles, including some who had been made slave laborers by the Germans during the war, protected Germans, for instance by disguising them as Poles. Moreover, in the
Opole Opole (; german: Oppeln ; szl, Ôpole) ; * Silesian: ** Silesian PLS alphabet: ''Ôpole'' ** Steuer's Silesian alphabet: ''Uopole'' * Silesian German: ''Uppeln'' * Czech: ''Opolí'' * Latin: ''Oppelia'', ''Oppolia'', ''Opulia'' is a city loc ...
(Oppeln) region of
Upper Silesia Upper Silesia ( pl, Górny Śląsk; szl, Gůrny Ślůnsk, Gōrny Ślōnsk; cs, Horní Slezsko; german: Oberschlesien; Silesian German: ; la, Silesia Superior) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located ...
, citizens who claimed Polish ethnicity were allowed to remain, even though some, not all, had uncertain nationality, or identified as ethnic Germans. Their status as a national minority was accepted in 1955, along with state subsidies, with regard to economic assistance and education.Piotr Madajczyk, Rocznik Polsko-Niemiecki Tom I ''"Mniejszość niemiecka w Polsce w polityce wewnętrznej w Polsce i w RFN oraz w stosunkach między obydwu państwami"'', Warsaw, 1992 The attitude of Soviet soldiers was ambiguous. Many committed atrocities, most notably rape and murder, and did not always distinguish between Poles and Germans, mistreating them equally. Other Soviets were taken aback by the brutal treatment of the German civilians and tried to protect them. Richard Overy cites an approximate total of 7.5 million Germans evacuated, migrated, or expelled from Poland between 1944 and 1950.
Tomasz Kamusella Tomasz Kamusella FRHistS (born 24 December 1967) is a Polish scholar pursuing interdisciplinary research in language politics, nationalism and ethnicity. Education Kamusella was educated at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Faculty of P ...
cites estimates of 7 million expelled in total during both the "wild" and "legal" expulsions from the recovered territories from 1945 to 1948, plus an additional 700,000 from areas of pre-war Poland.


Romania

The ethnic German population of Romania in 1939 was estimated at 786,000. In 1940
Bessarabia Bessarabia (; Gagauz: ''Besarabiya''; Romanian: ''Basarabia''; Ukrainian: ''Бессара́бія'') is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Be ...
and
Bukovina Bukovinagerman: Bukowina or ; hu, Bukovina; pl, Bukowina; ro, Bucovina; uk, Буковина, ; see also other languages. is a historical region, variously described as part of either Central or Eastern Europe (or both).Klaus Peter BergerT ...
were occupied by the USSR, and the ethnic German population of 130,000 was deported to German-held territory during the
Nazi–Soviet population transfers The Nazi–Soviet population transfers were population transfers of ethnic Germans, ethnic Poles, and some ethnic East Slavs that took place from 1939 to 1941. These transfers were part of the German '' Heim ins Reich'' policy in accordance with ...
and 80,000 from Romania. 140,000 of these Germans were resettled in German-occupied Poland; in 1945 they were caught up in the flight and expulsion from Poland. Most of the ethnic Germans in Romania resided in
Transylvania Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...
, the northern part of which was annexed by Hungary during World War II. The pro-German Hungarian government, as well as the pro-German Romanian government of Ion Antonescu allowed Germany to enlist the German population in Nazi-sponsored organizations. During the war 54,000 of the male population was conscripted by Nazi Germany, many into the
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
. In mid-1944 roughly 100,000 Germans fled from Romania with the retreating German forces. According to the West German
Schieder commission Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population tr ...
report of 1957, 75,000 German civilians were deported to the USSR as forced labour and 15% (approximately 10,000) did not return. Data from the Russian archives which was based on an actual enumeration put the number of ethnic Germans registered by the Soviets in Romania at 421,846 civilians, of whom 67,332 were deported to the USSR for reparations labour, and that 9% (6,260) died.
The roughly 400,000 ethnic Germans who remained in Romania were treated as guilty of collaboration with Nazi Germany and were deprived of their civil liberties and property. Many were impressed into forced labour and deported from their homes to other regions of Romania. In 1948, Romania began a gradual rehabilitation of the ethnic Germans: they were not expelled, and the communist regime gave them the status of a national minority, the only
Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
country to do so. In 1958 the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by 1950, 253,000 were counted as expellees in Germany or the West, 400,000 Germans still remained in Romania, 32,000 had been assimilated into the Romanian population, and that there were 101,000 "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified. The figure of 101,000 "unresolved cases" in Romania is included in the total German expulsion dead of 2 million which is often cited in historical literature. 355,000 Germans remained in Romania in 1977. During the 1980s many began to leave, with over 160,000 leaving in 1989 alone. By 2002, the number of ethnic Germans in Romania was 60,000.


Soviet Union and annexed territories

The
Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages * Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...
, Bessarabian and ethnic Germans in areas that became Soviet-controlled following the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , long_name = Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , image = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H27337, Moskau, Stalin und Ribbentrop im Kreml.jpg , image_width = 200 , caption = Stalin and Ribbentrop shaking ...
of 1939 were resettled to
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, including annexed areas like
Warthegau The ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' (initially ''Reichsgau Posen'', also: ''Warthegau'') was a Nazi German ''Reichsgau'' formed from parts of Polish territory annexed in 1939 during World War II. It comprised the region of Greater Poland and adjacent ...
, during the Nazi-Soviet population exchange. Only a few returned to their former homes when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and temporarily gained control of those areas. These returnees were employed by the Nazi occupation forces to establish a link between the German administration and the local population. Those resettled elsewhere shared the fate of the other Germans in their resettlement area.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Ree
''The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War''
, cadmus.iue.it, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1; accessed 26 May 2015.
The ethnic German minority in the USSR was considered a security risk by the Soviet government, and they were deported during the war in order to prevent their possible collaboration with the Nazi invaders. In August 1941 the Soviet government ordered ethnic Germans to be deported from the European USSR, by early 1942, 1,031,300 Germans were interned in "special settlements" in
Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
and
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
. Life in the special settlements was harsh and severe, food was limited, and the deported population was governed by strict regulations. Shortages of food plagued the whole Soviet Union and especially the special settlements. According to data from the Soviet archives, by October 1945, 687,300 Germans remained alive in the special settlements; an additional 316,600 Soviet Germans served as labour conscripts during World War II. Soviet Germans were not accepted in the regular armed forces but were employed instead as conscript labour. The labour army members were arranged into worker battalions that followed camp-like regulations and received
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
rations. In 1945 the USSR deported to the special settlements 203,796 Soviet ethnic Germans who had been previously resettled by Germany in Poland. These post-war deportees increased the German population in the special settlements to 1,035,701 by 1949. According to J. Otto Pohl, 65,599 Germans perished in the special settlements. He believes that an additional 176,352 unaccounted for people "probably died in the labour army". Under Stalin, Soviet Germans continued to be confined to the special settlements under strict supervision, in 1955 they were rehabilitated but were not allowed to return to the European USSR. The Soviet-German population grew despite deportations and forced labour during the war; in the 1939 Soviet census the German population was 1.427 million. By 1959 it had increased to 1.619 million. The calculations of the West German researcher Gerhard Reichling do not agree to the figures from the Soviet archives. According to Reichling a total of 980,000 Soviet ethnic Germans were deported during the war; he estimated that 310,000 died in forced labour.Gerhard Reichling, ''Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen'', part 1, Bonn: 1995, pp. 21–36; . During the early months of the invasion of the USSR in 1941 the Germans occupied the western regions of the USSR that had German settlements. A total of 370,000 ethnic Germans from the USSR were deported to Poland by Germany during the war. In 1945 the Soviets found 280,000 of these resettlers in Soviet-held territory and returned them to the USSR; 90,000 became refugees in Germany after the war. Those ethnic Germans who remained in the 1939 borders of the Soviet Union occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 remained where they were until 1943, when the Red Army liberated Soviet territory and the Wehrmacht withdrew westward. From January 1943, most of these ethnic Germans moved in treks to the Warthegau or to Silesia, where they were to settle.Conseil de l'Europe Assemblée parlementaire Session Strasbourg (Council of the European Union in Straßburg), Documents, Document 7172: Report on the situation of the German ethnic minority in the former Soviet Union, Council of Europe, 1995, p. 8;
Google.de
/ref> Between 250,000 and 320,000 had reached Nazi Germany by the end of 1944.Isabel Heinemann, ''"Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut": das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas'', 2nd edition, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003, p. 469; ; accessed 26 May 2015.
Heinemann posits that 250,000 is the number given by primary sources, but dismisses as too high the 320,000 estimate given by Ingeborg Fleischmann, ''Die Deutschen'', pp. 284–286.
On their arrival, they were placed in camps and underwent 'racial evaluation' by the Nazi authorities, who dispersed those deemed 'racially valuable' as farm workers in the annexed provinces, while those deemed to be of "questionable racial value" were sent to work in Germany. The Red Army captured these areas in early 1945, and 200,000 Soviet Germans had not yet been evacuated by the Nazi authorities, who were still occupied with their 'racial evaluation'. They were regarded by the USSR as Soviet citizens and repatriated to camps and special settlements in the Soviet Union. 70,000 to 80,000 who found themselves in the
Soviet occupation zone The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
after the war were also returned to the USSR, based on an agreement with the Western Allies. The death toll during their capture and transportation was estimated at 15% to 30%, and many families were torn apart. The special "German settlements" in the post-war Soviet Union were controlled by the Internal Affairs Commissioner, and the inhabitants had to perform forced labour until the end of 1955. They were released from the special settlements by an amnesty decree of 13 September 1955, and the Nazi collaboration charge was revoked by a decree of 23 August 1964.Conseil de l'Europe Assemblée parlementaire Session Strasbourg (Council of the European Union in Straßburg), Documents, Document 7172: Report on the situation of the German ethnic minority in the former Soviet Union
Council of Europe, 1995, p. 10; .
They were not allowed to return to their former homes and remained in the eastern regions of the USSR, and no individual's former property was restored. Since the 1980s, the Soviet and Russian governments have allowed ethnic Germans to emigrate to Germany. Different situations emerged in northern East Prussia regarding
Königsberg Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was named ...
(renamed
Kaliningrad Kaliningrad ( ; rus, Калининград, p=kəlʲɪnʲɪnˈɡrat, links=y), until 1946 known as Königsberg (; rus, Кёнигсберг, Kyonigsberg, ˈkʲɵnʲɪɡzbɛrk; rus, Короле́вец, Korolevets), is the largest city and ...
) and the adjacent
Memel territory Memel, a name derived from the Couronian-Latvian ''memelis, mimelis, mēms'' for "mute, silent", may refer to: *Memel, East Prussia, Germany, now Klaipėda, Lithuania **Memelburg, ( Klaipėda Castle), the ''Ordensburg'' in Memel, a castle built in ...
around Memel (
Klaipėda Klaipėda (; ; german: Memel; pl, Kłajpeda; russian: Клайпеда; sgs, Klaipieda) is a city in Lithuania on the Baltic Sea coast. The capital of the eponymous county, it is the third largest city and the only major seaport in Lithuan ...
). The Königsberg area of East Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union, becoming an exclave of the
Russian Soviet Republic The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
. Memel was integrated into the Lithuanian Soviet Republic. Many Germans were evacuated from East Prussia and the Memel territory by Nazi authorities during
Operation Hannibal Operation Hannibal was a German naval operation involving the evacuation by sea of German troops and civilians from the Courland Pocket, East Prussia, West Prussia and Pomerania from mid-January to May 1945 as the Red Army advanced during th ...
or fled in panic as the Red Army approached. The remaining Germans were conscripted for forced labour. Ethnic Russians and the families of military staff were settled in the area. In June 1946, 114,070 Germans and 41,029 Soviet citizens were registered as living in the
Kaliningrad Oblast Kaliningrad Oblast (russian: Калинингра́дская о́бласть, translit=Kaliningradskaya oblast') is the westernmost federal subject of Russia. It is a semi-exclave situated on the Baltic Sea. The largest city and administr ...
, with an unknown number of unregistered Germans ignored. Between June 1945 and 1947, roughly half a million Germans were expelled.Piotr Eberhardt & Jan Owsinski, ''Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth-century Central-Eastern Europe: History, Data, Analysis'', M.E. Sharpe, 2003, p. 456; . Between 24 August and 26 October 1948, 21 transports with a total of 42,094 Germans left the Kaliningrad Oblast for the
Soviet Occupation Zone The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
. The last remaining Germans were expelled between November 1949 (1,401 people) and January 1950 (7). Thousands of German children, called the "
wolf children is a 2012 Japanese anime drama film directed and co-written by Mamoru Hosoda. The second original feature film directed by Hosoda and the first work written by him, the film stars the voices of Aoi Miyazaki, Takao Osawa and Haru Kuroki. The st ...
", had been left orphaned and unattended or died with their parents during the harsh winter without food. Between 1945–47, around 600,000 Soviet citizens settled in the oblast.


Yugoslavia

Before World War II, roughly 500,000 German-speaking people (mostly
Danube Swabians The Danube Swabians (german: Donauschwaben ) is a collective term for the ethnic German-speaking population who lived in various countries of central-eastern Europe, especially in the Danube River valley, first in the 12th century, and in grea ...
) lived in the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia The Kingdom of Yugoslavia ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Kraljevina Jugoslavija, Краљевина Југославија; sl, Kraljevina Jugoslavija) was a state in Southeast Europe, Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 unt ...
. Most fled during the war or emigrated after 1950, thanks to the "
displaced person Forced displacement (also forced migration) is an involuntary or coerced movement of a person or people away from their home or home region. The UNHCR defines 'forced displacement' as follows: displaced "as a result of persecution, conflict, g ...
s" act (of 1948); some were able to
emigrate to the United States Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...
. During the final months of World War II a majority of the ethnic Germans fled Yugoslavia with the retreating Nazi forces. After the liberation,
Yugoslav Partisans The Yugoslav Partisans,Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Slovene: , or the National Liberation Army, sh-Latn-Cyrl, Narodnooslobodilačka vojska (NOV), Народноослободилачка војска (НОВ); mk, Народноослобод ...
exacted revenge on ethnic Germans for the wartime atrocities of Nazi Germany, in which many ethnic Germans had participated, especially in the
Banat Banat (, ; hu, Bánság; sr, Банат, Banat) is a geographical and historical region that straddles Central and Eastern Europe and which is currently divided among three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania (the counties of T ...
area of the
Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia The Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia (german: Gebiet des Militärbefehlshabers in Serbien; sr, Подручје Војног заповедника у Србији, Područje vojnog zapovednika u Srbiji) was the area of the Kin ...
. The approximately 200,000 ethnic Germans remaining in Yugoslavia suffered persecution and sustained personal and economic losses. About 7,000 were killed as local populations and partisans took revenge for German wartime atrocities. From 1945-48 ethnic Germans were held in labour camps where about 50,000 perished.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
"The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War"
, cadmus.iue.it, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, pp. 53–54; accessed 26 May 2015.
Those surviving were allowed to emigrate to Germany after 1948. According to West German figures in late 1944 the Soviets transported 27,000 to 30,000 ethnic Germans, a majority of whom were women aged 18 to 35, to Ukraine and the
Donbass The Donbas or Donbass (, ; uk, Донба́с ; russian: Донба́сс ) is a historical, cultural, and economic region in eastern Ukraine. Parts of the Donbas are controlled by Russian separatist groups as a result of the Russo-Ukrai ...
for forced labour; about 20% (5,683) were reported dead or missing. Data from Russian archives published in 2001, based on an actual enumeration, put the number of German civilians deported from Yugoslavia to the USSR in early 1945 for reparations labour at 12,579, where 16% (1,994) died. After March 1945, a second phase began in which ethnic Germans were massed into villages such as Gakowa and
Kruševlje Kruševlje ( sr-Cyrl, Крушевље) is a small settlement (hamlet) in Serbia. It is situated in the Sombor municipality, West Bačka District, Vojvodina province. It is mostly populated by Serbs. Name In Serbian language, Serbian, the vill ...
that were converted into labour camps. All furniture was removed, straw placed on the floor, and the expellees housed like animals under military guard, with minimal food and rampant, untreated disease. Families were divided into the unfit women, old, and children, and those fit for slave labour. A total of 166,970 ethnic Germans were interned, and 48,447 (29%) perished. The camp system was shut down in March 1948.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Ree
"The Expulsion of "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War"
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, pp. 53–56; accessed 26 May 2015.
In
Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...
, the ethnic German population at the end of World War II was concentrated in
Slovenian Styria Styria ( sl, Štajerska), also Slovenian Styria (''Slovenska Štajerska'') or Lower Styria (''Spodnja Štajerska''; german: Untersteiermark), is a traditional region in northeastern Slovenia, comprising the southern third of the former Duchy of ...
, more precisely in
Maribor Maribor ( , , , ; also known by other #Name, historical names) is the second-largest city in Slovenia and the largest city of the traditional region of Styria (Slovenia), Lower Styria. It is also the seat of the City Municipality of Maribor, th ...
,
Celje ) , pushpin_map = Slovenia , pushpin_label_position = left , pushpin_map_caption = Location of the city of Celje in Slovenia , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Cou ...
, and a few other smaller towns (like
Ptuj Ptuj (; german: Pettau, ; la, Poetovium/Poetovio) is a town in northeastern Slovenia that is the seat of the Municipality of Ptuj. Ptuj, the oldest recorded city in Slovenia, has been inhabited since the late Stone Age and developed from a Roman ...
and
Dravograd Dravograd (; german: Unterdrauburg) is a small town in northern Slovenia, close to the border with Austria. It is the seat of the Municipality of Dravograd. It lies on the Drava River at the confluence with the Meža and the Mislinja. It is ...
), and in the rural area around
Apače Apače (; german: Abstall) is a town in Slovenia and it is located on the border between Slovenia and Austria. It is the seat of the Municipality of Apače, which is the northernmost municipality in the traditional region of Slovenian Styria. It ...
on the
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n border. The second-largest ethnic German community in Slovenia was the predominantly rural
Gottschee County Gottschee (, sl, Kočevsko) refers to a former German-speaking region in Carniola, a crownland of the Habsburg Empire, part of the historical and traditional region of Lower Carniola, now in Slovenia. The region has been a county, duchy, distric ...
around
Kočevje Kočevje (; german: Gottschee; ''Göttscheab'' or ''Gətscheab'' in the local Gottscheerish dialect; it, Cocevie) is a city in the Municipality of Kočevje in southern Slovenia. It is the seat of the municipality. Geography The town is loc ...
in
Lower Carniola Lower Carniola ( sl, Dolenjska; german: Unterkrain) is a traditional region in Slovenia, the southeastern part of the historical Carniola region. Geography Lower Carniola is delineated by the Ljubljana Basin with the city of Ljubljana to the no ...
, south of
Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...
. Smaller numbers of ethnic Germans also lived in Ljubljana and in some western villages in the Prekmurje region. In 1931, the total number of ethnic Germans in Slovenia was around 28,000: around half of them lived in Styria and in Prekmurje, while the other half lived in the Gottschee County and in Ljubljana. In April 1941, southern Slovenia was occupied by Italian troops. By early 1942, ethnic Germans from Gottschee/Kočevje were forcefully transferred to German-occupied Styria by the new German authorities. Most resettled to the
Posavje The Lower Sava Valley ( sl, Posavje, also ''Spodnje Posavje'' and ''Posavska regija''Ferenc, Tone. 1995. "Posavje". ''Enciklopedija Slovenije'' vol 9. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, pp. 155–156.) is a region in southeastern Slovenia on the border ...
region (a territory along the
Sava The Sava (; , ; sr-cyr, Сава, hu, Száva) is a river in Central and Southeast Europe, a right-bank and the longest tributary of the Danube. It flows through Slovenia, Croatia and along its border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and finally th ...
river between the towns of
Brežice Brežice (; german: Rann ) is a town in eastern Slovenia in the Lower Sava Valley, near the Croatian border. It is the seat of the Municipality of Brežice. It lies in the center of the Brežice Plain ( sl, Brežiško polje), which is part of the ...
and
Litija Litija (; german: Littai''Leksikon občin kraljestev in dežel zastopanih v državnem zboru,'' vol. 6: ''Kranjsko''. 1906. Vienna: C. Kr. Dvorna in Državna Tiskarna, pp. 90, 92–93.) is a town in the Litija Basin in central Slovenia. It is the ...
), from where around 50,000
Slovenes The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians ( sl, Slovenci ), are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Slovenia, and adjacent regions in Italy, Austria and Hungary. Slovenes share a common ancestry, culture, history and speak Slovene as their n ...
had been expelled. Gottschee Germans were generally unhappy about their forced transfer from their historical home region. One reason was that the agricultural value of their new area of settlement was perceived as much lower than the Gottschee area. As German forces retreated before the
Yugoslav Partisans The Yugoslav Partisans,Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Slovene: , or the National Liberation Army, sh-Latn-Cyrl, Narodnooslobodilačka vojska (NOV), Народноослободилачка војска (НОВ); mk, Народноослобод ...
, most ethnic Germans fled with them in fear of reprisals. By May 1945, only a few Germans remained, mostly in the
Styria Styria (german: Steiermark ; Serbo-Croatian and sl, ; hu, Stájerország) is a state (''Bundesland'') in the southeast of Austria. With an area of , Styria is the second largest state of Austria, after Lower Austria. Styria is bordered to ...
n towns of Maribor and Celje. The
Liberation Front of the Slovenian People The Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation ( sl, Osvobodilna fronta slovenskega naroda), or simply Liberation Front (''Osvobodilna fronta'', OF), originally called the Anti-Imperialist Front (''Protiimperialistična fronta'', PIF), was a Slovene ...
expelled most of the remainder after it seized complete control in the region in May 1945. The Yugoslavs set up internment camps at Sterntal and
Teharje Teharje () is a settlement in the City Municipality of Celje in eastern Slovenia. It lies on the right bank of the Voglajna River on the eastern outskirts of Celje. The area is part of the traditional region of Styria. It is now included with t ...
. The government nationalized their property on a "decision on the transition of enemy property into state ownership, on state administration over the property of absent people, and on sequestration of property forcibly appropriated by occupation authorities" of 21 November 1944 by the Presidency of the Anti-Fascist Council for the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia. After March 1945, ethnic Germans were placed in so-called "village camps".Steffen Prauser and Arfon Ree
"The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War"
, cadmus.iue.it, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 55; accessed 26 May 2015.
Separate camps existed for those able to work and for those who were not. In the latter camps, containing mainly children and the elderly, the mortality rate was about 50%. Most of the children under 14 were then placed in state-run homes, where conditions were better, though the German language was banned. These children were later given to Yugoslav families, and not all German parents seeking to reclaim their children in the 1950s were successful. West German government figures from 1958 put the death toll at 135,800 civilians. A recent study published by the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia based on an actual enumeration has revised the death toll down to about 58,000. A total of 48,447 people had died in the camps; 7,199 were shot by partisans, and another 1,994 perished in Soviet labour camps.Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees
"The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War"
, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 57; accessed 26 May 2015.
Those Germans still considered Yugoslav citizens were employed in industry or the military, but could buy themselves free of Yugoslav citizenship for the equivalent of three months' salary. By 1950, 150,000 of the Germans from Yugoslavia were classified as "expelled" in Germany, another 150,000 in Austria, 10,000 in the United States, and 3,000 in France. According to West German figures 82,000 ethnic Germans remained in Yugoslavia in 1950. After 1950, most emigrated to Germany or were assimilated into the local population.


Kehl, Germany

The population of
Kehl Kehl (; gsw, label= Low Alemannic German, Low Alemannic, Kaal) is a town in southwestern Germany in the Ortenaukreis, Baden-Württemberg. It is on the river Rhine, directly opposite the French city of Strasbourg, with which it shares some munic ...
(12,000 people), on the east bank of the
Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , so ...
opposite
Strasbourg Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...
, fled and was evacuated in the course of the
Liberation of France The liberation of France in the Second World War was accomplished through diplomacy, politics and the combined military efforts of the Allied Powers of World War II, Allied Powers, Free French forces in London and Africa, as well as the French R ...
, on 23 November 1944. The
French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed For ...
occupied the town in March 1945 and prevented the inhabitants from returning until 1953.


Latin America

Fearing a Nazi Fifth Column, between 1941 and 1945 the US government facilitated the expulsion of 4,058 German citizens from 15
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
n countries to
internment camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without Criminal charge, charges or Indictment, intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects ...
in
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
and
Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
. Subsequent investigations showed many of the internees to be harmless, and three-quarters of them were returned to Germany during the war in exchange for citizens of the Americas, while the remainder returned to their homes in Latin America.


Palestine

At the start of World War II, colonists with German citizenship were rounded up by the British authorities and sent to internment camps in Waldheim and
Bethlehem Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital o ...
of
Galilee Galilee (; he, הַגָּלִיל, hagGālīl; ar, الجليل, al-jalīl) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Galilee traditionally refers to the mountainous part, divided into Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and Lower Galil ...
. 661
Templers Templers may refer to: * Templers, South Australia is a town in South Australia * Templers (religious believers) are members of the Temple Society See also *Instituts-Templers Instituts-Templers is a district of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. It's ...
were deported to Australia via
Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
on 31 July 1941, leaving 345 in
Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...
. Internment continued in
Tatura Tatura is a town in the Goulburn Valley region of Victoria, Australia, and is situated within the City of Greater Shepparton local government area, north of the state capital (Melbourne) and west of the regional centre of Shepparton. At the 2 ...
,
Victoria, Australia Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of , the second most populated state (after New South Wales) with a population of over 6.5 million, and the most densely populated state in Au ...
, until 1946–47. In 1962 the
State of Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
paid 54 million
Deutsche Mark The Deutsche Mark (; English: ''German mark''), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it was ...
s in compensation to property owners whose assets were nationalized.
Adi Schwartz Adi Schwartz is an Israeli journalist and academic. A former staff writer for Haaretz, he currently works as a freelance journalist for Israeli and international newspapers and magazines. His primary fields of interest include the Arab-Israeli co ...

The nine lives of the Lorenz Cafe
, ''Haaretz'', 20 January 2008.


Human losses

Estimates of total deaths of German civilians in the flight and expulsions, including
forced labour of Germans in the Soviet Union Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during the German-Soviet war, Axis-Soviet campaigns (1941-1945) of Worl ...
, range from 500,000 to a maximum of 3.0 million people.Rüdiger Overmans, "Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevölkerung durch Flucht und Vertreibung". A parallel Polish-language summary translation was also included. This paper was a presentation at an academic conference in
Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
in 1994: ''Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik, XXI''.
Although the German government's official estimate of deaths due to the flight and expulsions has stood at 2 million since the 1960s, the publication in 1987-89 of previously classified West German studies has led some historians to the conclusion that the actual number was much lower – in the range of 500,000 to 600,000. English language sources have put the death toll at 2 to 3 million based on the West German government figures from the 1960s.R.J. Rumme
''Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900''
(1,863,000 in post war expulsions and an additional 1.0 million in wartime flight)
Alfred M. de Zayas, ''A terrible Revenge''.
Palgrave Macmillan Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains off ...
, New York (1994); , pp. 152- (2,111,000)
Charles S. Maier, ''The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity'', Harvard University (1988); , pp. 75- (2,000,000)Douglas Botting, ''The Aftermath: Europe (World War II)'',
Time-Life Books Time Life, with sister subsidiaries StarVista Live and Lifestyle Products Group, a holding of Direct Holdings Global LLC, is an American production company and direct marketer conglomerate, that is known for selling books, music, video/DVD, ...
(1983); , pp. 21, 81- (2,000,000)
H.W. Schoenberg, ''Germans from the East: A Study of their migration, resettlement and subsequent group history, since 1945'', Springer, London, Ltd. (1970); , pp. 33- (2,225,000)''Encyclopædia Britannica'': 1992– (2,384,000)Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, ''The Expulsion of German Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War'', European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1. pp. 4- (2,000,000)


West German government estimates of the death toll

* In 1950 the West German Government made a preliminary estimate of 3.0 million missing people (1.5 million in prewar Germany and 1.5 million in Eastern Europe) whose fate needed to be clarified. These figures were superseded by the publication of the 1958 study by the
Statistisches Bundesamt The Federal Statistical Office (german: Statistisches Bundesamt, shortened ''Destatis'') is a federal authority of Germany. It reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Office is responsible for collecting, processing, presenting and ...
. * In 1953 the West German government ordered a survey by the Suchdienst (search service) of the German churches to trace the fate of 16.2 million people in the area of the expulsions; the survey was completed in 1964 but kept secret until 1987. The search service was able to confirm 473,013 civilian deaths; there were an additional 1,905,991 cases of persons whose fate could not be determined. * From 1954 to 1961 the
Schieder commission Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population tr ...
issued five reports on the flight and expulsions. The head of the commission Theodor Schieder was a rehabilitated former Nazi party member who was involved in the preparation of the Nazi
Generalplan Ost The ''Generalplan Ost'' (; en, Master Plan for the East), abbreviated GPO, was the Nazi German government's plan for the genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, and colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by Germans. It was to be un ...
to colonize eastern Europe. The commission estimated a total death toll of about 2.3 million civilians including 2 million east of the
Oder Neisse line The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows thr ...
. * The figures of the
Schieder commission Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population tr ...
were superseded by the publication in 1958 of the study by the West German government
Statistisches Bundesamt The Federal Statistical Office (german: Statistisches Bundesamt, shortened ''Destatis'') is a federal authority of Germany. It reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Office is responsible for collecting, processing, presenting and ...
, Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste (The German Expulsion Casualties). The authors of the report included former Nazi party members, :de:Wilfried Krallert,
Walter Kuhn Walter Kuhn (27 September 1903 – 5 August 1983), was an Austrian-born German folklorist (german: Volkskundler, italics=yes), historian and Ostforscher. Prior to World War II, Kuhn belonged to the German minority in Poland. His academic work spe ...
and :de:Alfred Bohmann. The
Statistisches Bundesamt The Federal Statistical Office (german: Statistisches Bundesamt, shortened ''Destatis'') is a federal authority of Germany. It reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Office is responsible for collecting, processing, presenting and ...
put losses at 2,225,000 (1.339 million in prewar Germany and 886,000 in Eastern Europe). In 1961 the West German government published slightly revised figures that put losses at 2,111,000 (1,225,000 in prewar Germany and 886,000 in Eastern Europe) * In 1969, the federal West German government ordered a further study to be conducted by the
German Federal Archives The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv (BArch) (german: Bundesarchiv) are the National Archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952. They are subordinated to the Federal Commissioner for Culture and t ...
, which was finished in 1974 and kept secret until 1989. The study was commissioned to survey
crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
such as deliberate killings, which according to the report included deaths caused by military activity in the 1944–45 campaign, forced labor in the USSR and civilians kept in post-war internment camps. The authors maintained that the figures included only those deaths caused by violent acts and inhumanities (Unmenschlichkeiten) and do not include post-war deaths due to malnutrition and disease. Also not included are those who were raped or suffered mistreatment and did not die immediately. They estimated 600,000 deaths (150,000 during flight and evacuations, 200,000 as forced labour in the USSR and 250,000 in post-war internment camps. By region 400,000 east of the
Oder Neisse line The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows thr ...
, 130,000 in Czechoslovakia and 80,000 in Yugoslavia). No figures were given for Romania and Hungary. * A 1986 study by Gerhard Reichling "Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen" (the German expellees in figures) concluded 2,020,000 ethnic Germans perished after the war including 1,440,000 as a result of the expulsions and 580,000 deaths due to deportation as forced labourers in the Soviet Union. Reichling was an employee of the Federal Statistical Office who was involved in the study of German expulsion statistics since 1953. The Reichling study is cited by the German government to support their estimate of 2 million expulsion deaths


Discourse

The West German figure of 2 million deaths in the flight and expulsions was widely accepted by historians in the West prior to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. The recent disclosure of the German Federal Archives study and the Search Service figures have caused some scholars in Germany and Poland to question the validity of the figure of 2 million deaths; they estimate the actual total at 500–600,000. The German government continues to maintain that the figure of 2 million deaths is correct. The issue of the "expellees" has been a contentious one in German politics, with the Federation of Expellees staunchly defending the higher figure.


Analysis by Rüdiger Overmans

In 2000 the German historian
Rüdiger Overmans Rüdiger Overmans (born 6 April 1954 in Düsseldorf) is a German military historian who specializes in World War II history. His book ''German Military Losses in World War II'', which he compiled as leader of a project sponsored by the Gerda H ...
published a study of German military casualties; his research project did not investigate civilian expulsion deaths.Rüdiger Overmans, ''Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg'', Munich: Oldenbourg 2000, pp. 286–89; . In 1994, Overmans provided a critical analysis of the previous studies by the German government which he believes are unreliable. Overmans maintains that the studies of expulsion deaths by the German government lack adequate support; he maintains that there are more arguments for the lower figures than for the higher figures. ("Letztlich sprechen also mehr Argumente für die niedrigere als für die höhere Zahl.") In a 2006 interview, Overmans maintained that new research is needed to clarify the fate of those reported as missing. He found the 1965 figures of the Search Service to be unreliable because they include non-Germans; the figures according to Overmans include military deaths; the numbers of surviving people, natural deaths and births after the war in Eastern Europe are unreliable because the Communist governments in Eastern Europe did not extend full cooperation to West German efforts to trace people in Eastern Europe; the reports given by eyewitnesses surveyed are not reliable in all cases. In particular, Overmans maintains that the figure of 1.9 million missing people was based on incomplete information and is unreliable. Overmans found the 1958 demographic study to be unreliable because it inflated the figures of ethnic German deaths by including missing people of doubtful German ethnic identity who survived the war in Eastern Europe; the figures of military deaths is understated; the numbers of surviving people, natural deaths and births after the war in Eastern Europe are unreliable because the Communist governments in Eastern Europe did not extend full cooperation to West German efforts to trace people in Eastern Europe. Overmans maintains that the 600,000 deaths found by the German Federal Archives in 1974 is only a rough estimate of those killed, not a definitive figure. He pointed out that some deaths were not reported because there were no surviving eyewitnesses of the events; also there was no estimate of losses in Hungary, Romania and the USSR. Overmans conducted a research project that studied the casualties of the German military during the war and found that the previous estimate of 4.3 million dead and missing, especially in the final stages of the war, was about one million short of the actual toll. In his study Overmans researched only military deaths; his project did not investigate civilian expulsion deaths; he merely noted the difference between the 2.2 million dead estimated in the 1958 demographic study, of which 500,000 have so far have been verified. He found that German military deaths from areas in Eastern Europe were about 1.444 million, and thus 334,000 higher than the 1.1 million figure in the 1958 demographic study, lacking documents available today included the figures with civilian deaths. Overmans believes this will reduce the number of civilian deaths in the expulsions. Overmans further pointed out that the 2.225 million number estimated by the 1958 study would imply that the casualty rate among the expellees was equal to or higher than that of the military, which he found implausible.


Analysis by historian Ingo Haar

In 2006, Haar called into question the validity of the official government figure of 2 million expulsion deaths in an article in the German newspaper ''
Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of SZ is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and social-democrat. History ...
''. Since then Haar has published three articles in academic journals that covered the background of the research by the West German government on the expulsions.Ingo Haar, "Straty zwiazane z wypedzeniami: stan badañ, problemy, perspektywy", ''Polish Diplomatic Review''
, 2007, nr 5 (39); accessed 6 December 2014.
Haar maintains that all reasonable estimates of deaths from expulsions lie between around 500,000 and 600,000, based on the information of Red Cross Search Service and German Federal Archives. Harr pointed out that some members of the
Schieder commission Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population tr ...
and officials of the
Statistisches Bundesamt The Federal Statistical Office (german: Statistisches Bundesamt, shortened ''Destatis'') is a federal authority of Germany. It reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Office is responsible for collecting, processing, presenting and ...
involved in the study of the expulsions were involved in the Nazi plan to colonize Eastern Europe. Haar posits that figures have been inflated in Germany due to the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
and domestic German politics, and he maintains that the 2.225 million number relies on improper statistical methodology and incomplete data, particularly in regard to the expellees who arrived in East Germany. Haar questions the validity of population balances in general. He maintains that 27,000 German Jews who were Nazi victims are included in the West German figures. He rejects the statement by the German government that the figure of 500–600,000 deaths omitted those people who died of disease and hunger, and has stated that this is a "mistaken interpretation" of the data. He maintains that deaths due to disease, hunger and other conditions are already included in the lower numbers. According to Haar the numbers were set too high for decades, for postwar political reasons.


Studies in Poland

In 2001, Polish researcher Bernadetta Nitschke puts total losses for Poland at 400,000 (the same figure as the German Federal Archive study). She noted that historians in Poland have maintained that most of the deaths occurred during the flight and evacuation during the war, the deportations to the USSR for forced labour and, after the resettlement, due to the harsh conditions in the
Soviet occupation zone The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
in postwar Germany. Polish demographer Piotr Eberhardt found that, "Generally speaking, the German estimates… are not only highly arbitrary, but also clearly tendentious in presentation of the German losses." He maintains that the German government figures from 1958 overstated the total number of the ethnic Germans living in Poland prior to the war as well as the total civilian deaths due to the expulsions. For example, Eberhardt points out that "the total number of Germans in Poland is given as equal to 1,371,000. According to the Polish census of 1931, there were altogether only 741,000 Germans in the entire territory of Poland."


Study by Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahn

German historians Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahn published a detailed study of the flight and expulsions that is sharply critical of German accounts of the Cold War era. The Hahns regard the official German figure of 2 million deaths as an historical myth, lacking foundation. They place the ultimate blame for the mass flight and expulsion on the wartime policy of the Nazis in Eastern Europe. The Hahns maintain that most of the reported 473,013 deaths occurred during the Nazi organized flight and evacuation during the war, and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union; they point out that there are 80,522 confirmed deaths in the postwar internment camps. They put the postwar losses in eastern Europe at a fraction of the total losses: Poland- 15,000 deaths from 1945 to 1949 in internment camps; Czechoslovakia- 15,000–30,000 dead, including 4,000–5,000 in internment camps and ca. 15,000 in the Prague uprising; Yugoslavia- 5,777 deliberate killings and 48,027 deaths in internment camps; Denmark- 17,209 dead in internment camps; Hungary and Romania - no postwar losses reported. The Hahns point out that the official 1958 figure of 273,000 deaths for Czechoslovakia was prepared by Alfred Bohmann, a former Nazi Party member who had served in the wartime SS. Bohmann was a journalist for an ultra-nationalist Sudeten-Deutsch newspaper in postwar West Germany. The Hahns believe the population figures of ethnic Germans for eastern Europe include German-speaking Jews killed in the Holocaust.Hans Henning Hahn & Eva Hahn, ''Die Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern. Legenden, Mythos, Geschichte'', Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010, pp. 659–726, 839: ill., maps; 24 cm. D820.P72 G475 2010; They believe that the fate of German-speaking Jews in Eastern Europe deserves the attention of German historians. ("Deutsche Vertreibungshistoriker haben sich mit der Geschichte der jüdischen Angehörigen der deutschen Minderheiten kaum beschäftigt.")


German and Czech commission of historians

In 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths in Czechoslovakia to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was at least 15,000 people and that it could range up to a maximum of 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.


Rebuttal by the German government

The German government still maintains that the figure of 2–2.5 million expulsion deaths is correct. In 2005 the
German Red Cross The German Red Cross (german: Deutsches Rotes Kreuz ; DRK) is the national Red Cross Society in Germany. With 4 million members, it is the third largest Red Cross society in the world. The German Red Cross offers a wide range of services within ...
Search Service put the death toll at 2,251,500 but did not provide details for this estimate. On 29 November 2006, State Secretary in the German
Federal Ministry of the Interior An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministry ...
,
Christoph Bergner Christoph Bergner (born 24 November 1948) is a German politician and member of the conservative CDU. Bergner was the 3rd Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt from 1993 until 1994. Life and political career Christoph Bergner was born in Zwickau ...
, outlined the stance of the respective governmental institutions on
Deutschlandfunk Deutschlandfunk (DLF, ''Broadcast Germany'') is a public-broadcasting radio station in Germany, concentrating on news and current affairs. It is one of the four national radio channels produced by Deutschlandradio. History Broadcasting in the ...
(a public-broadcasting radio station in Germany) saying that the numbers presented by the German government and others are not contradictory to the numbers cited by Haar and that the below 600,000 estimate comprises the deaths directly caused by atrocities during the expulsion measures and thus only includes people who were raped, beaten, or else killed on the spot, while the above two million estimate includes people who on their way to postwar Germany died of epidemics, hunger, cold, air raids and the like.
Christoph Bergner Christoph Bergner (born 24 November 1948) is a German politician and member of the conservative CDU. Bergner was the 3rd Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt from 1993 until 1994. Life and political career Christoph Bergner was born in Zwickau ...
, Secretary of State in Germany's Bureau for Inner Affairs, outlines the stance of the respective governmental institutions on Deutschlandfunk on 29 November 2006

dradio.de; accessed 17 November 2016.


''Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung'' by Heinz Nawratil

A German lawyer, Heinz Nawratil, published a study of the expulsions entitled ''Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung'' ("Black Book of Expulsion"). Nawratil claimed the death toll was 2.8 million: he includes the losses of 2.2 million listed in the 1958 West German study, and an estimated 250,000 deaths of Germans resettled in Poland during the war, plus 350,000 ethnic Germans in the USSR. In 1987, German historian
Martin Broszat Martin Broszat (14 August 1926 – 14 October 1989) was a German historian specializing in modern German social history. As director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History) in Munich from 1972 until his deat ...
(former head of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich) described Nawratil's writings as "polemics with a nationalist-rightist point of view and exaggerates in an absurd manner the scale of 'expulsion crimes'." Broszat found Nawratil's book to have "factual errors taken out of context." German historian Thomas E. Fischer calls the book "problematic". James Bjork (Department of History,
King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...
) has criticized German educational DVDs based on Nawratil's book.


Condition of the expellees after arriving in post-war Germany

Those who arrived were in bad condition—particularly during the harsh winter of 1945–46, when arriving trains carried "the dead and dying in each carriage (other dead had been thrown from the train along the way)".Matthew J. Gibney & Randall Hansen, ''Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present'', 2005, p. 199; ,
Google Books
/ref> After experiencing Red Army atrocities, Germans in the expulsion areas were subject to harsh punitive measures by Yugoslav partisans and in post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia. Beatings,
rapes Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, Abusive power and control, ...
and murders accompanied the expulsions. Some had experienced massacres, such as the Ústí (Aussig) massacre, in which 80–100 ethnic Germans died, or
Postoloprty massacre Postoloprty (; german: Postelberg) is a town in Louny District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 4,600 inhabitants. Administrative parts The villages of Březno, Dolejší Hůrky, Hradiště, Levonice, Malnice, Mr ...
, or conditions like those in the Upper Silesian Camp
Łambinowice Łambinowice (german: Lamsdorf) is a village in Nysa County, Opole Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Łambinowice. It lies approximately north-east of Nysa and south-west of ...
(Lamsdorf), where interned Germans were exposed to sadistic practices and at least 1,000 died. Many expellees had experienced hunger and disease, separation from family members, loss of civil rights and familiar environment, and sometimes
internment Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
and forced labour. Once they arrived, they found themselves in a country devastated by war. Housing shortages lasted until the 1960s, which along with other shortages led to conflicts with the local population.Manfred Görtemaker, ''Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Von der Gründung bis zur Gegenwart'', Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999, p. 169;
Google Books
/ref> The situation eased only with the West German economic boom in the 1950s that drove unemployment rates close to zero.Manfred Görtemaker, ''Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Von der Gründung bis zur Gegenwart'', Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999, p. 170;
Google Books
accessed 6 December 2014.
France did not participate in the
Potsdam Conference The Potsdam Conference (german: Potsdamer Konferenz) was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Pe ...
, so it felt free to approve some of the Potsdam Agreements and dismiss others. France maintained the position that it had not approved the expulsions and therefore was not responsible for accommodating and nourishing the destitute expellees in its zone of occupation. While the French military government provided for the few refugees who arrived before July 1945 in the area that became the French zone, it succeeded in preventing entrance by later-arriving ethnic Germans deported from the East.Cf. the repor
"Vor 50 Jahren: Der 15. April 1950. Vertriebene finden eine neue Heimat in Rheinland-Pfalz"
of the Central Archive of the State of
Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...
on the first expellees arriving in that state in 1950 to be resettled from other German states.
Britain and the US protested against the actions of the French military government but had no means to force France to bear the consequences of the expulsion policy agreed upon by American, British and Soviet leaders in Potsdam. France persevered with its argument to clearly differentiate between war-related refugees and post-war expellees. In December 1946 it absorbed into its zone German refugees from Denmark, where 250,000 Germans had traveled by sea between February and May 1945 to take refuge from the Soviets. These were refugees from the eastern parts of Germany, not expellees; Danes of German ethnicity remained untouched and Denmark did not expel them. With this humanitarian act the French saved many lives, due to the high death toll German refugees faced in Denmark. Until mid-1945, the Allies had not reached an agreement on how to deal with the expellees. France suggested immigration to South America and Australia and the settlement of 'productive elements' in France, while the Soviets' SMAD suggested a resettlement of millions of expellees in
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV; ; nds, Mäkelborg-Vörpommern), also known by its anglicized name Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, is a state in the north-east of Germany. Of the country's sixteen states, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern ranks 14th in po ...
.Philipp Ther, ''Deutsche und Polnische Vertriebene'', p. 137. The Soviets, who encouraged and partly carried out the expulsions, offered little cooperation with humanitarian efforts, thereby requiring the Americans and British to absorb the expellees in their zones of occupation. In contradiction with the Potsdam Agreements, the Soviets neglected their obligation to provide supplies for the expellees. In Potsdam, it was agreed that 15% of all equipment dismantled in the Western zones—especially from the metallurgical, chemical and machine manufacturing industries—would be transferred to the Soviets in return for food, coal,
potash Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form.
(a basic material for fertiliser), timber, clay products, petroleum products, etc. The Western deliveries started in 1946, but this turned out to be a one-way street. The Soviet deliveries—desperately needed to provide the expellees with food, warmth, and basic necessities and to increase agricultural production in the remaining cultivation area—did not materialize. Consequently, the US stopped all deliveries on 3 May 1946, while the expellees from the areas under Soviet rule were deported to the West until the end of 1947. In the British and US zones the supply situation worsened considerably, especially in the British zone. Due to its location on the
Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages * Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...
, the British zone already harbored a great number of refugees who had come by sea, and the already modest rations had to be further shortened by a third in March 1946. In
Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...
, for instance, the average living space per capita, reduced by air raids from 13.6 square metres in 1939 to 8.3 in 1945, was further reduced to 5.4 square metres in 1949 by billeting refugees and expellees. In May 1947, Hamburg trade unions organized a strike against the small rations, with protesters complaining about the rapid absorption of expellees. The US and Britain had to import food into their zones, even as Britain was financially exhausted and dependent on food imports having fought Nazi Germany for the entire war, including as the sole opponent from June 1940 to June 1941 (the period when Poland and France were defeated, the Soviet Union supported Nazi Germany, and the United States had not yet entered the war). Consequently, Britain had to incur additional debt to the US, and the US had to spend more for the survival of its zone, while the Soviets gained applause among Eastern Europeans — many of whom were impoverished by the war and German occupation — who plundered the belongings of expellees, often before they were actually expelled. Since the Soviet Union was the only power among the Allies that allowed and/or encouraged the looting and robbery in the area under its military influence, the perpetrators and profiteers blundered into a situation in which they became dependent on the perpetuation of Soviet rule in their countries to not be dispossessed of the booty and to stay unpunished. With ever more expellees sweeping into post-war Germany, the Allies moved towards a policy of assimilation, which was believed to be the best way to stabilise Germany and ensure peace in Europe by preventing the creation of a marginalised population. This policy led to the granting of
German citizenship German nationality law details the conditions by which an individual holds German nationality. The primary law governing these requirements is the Nationality Act, which came into force on 1 January 1914. Germany is a member state of the Europ ...
to the ethnic German expellees who had held citizenship of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, etc. before World War II. When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, a law was drafted on 24 August 1952 that was primarily intended to ease the financial situation of the expellees. The law, termed the ''Lastenausgleichsgesetz,'' granted partial compensation and easy credit to the expellees; the loss of their civilian property had been estimated at 299.6 billion
Deutschmarks The Deutsche Mark (; English: ''German mark''), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it was ...
(out of a total loss of German property due to the border changes and expulsions of 355.3 billion Deutschmarks).Manfred Görtemaker, ''Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Von der Gründung bis zur Gegenwart'', Munich: C.H. Beck (1999), p. 171;
Google Books
accessed 6 December 2014.
Administrative organisations were set up to integrate the expellees into post-war German society. While the
Stalinist Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory o ...
regime in the Soviet occupation zone did not allow the expellees to organise, in the Western zones expellees over time established a variety of organizations, including the
All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights The All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights (german: Gesamtdeutscher Block/Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten or GB/BHE) was a right-wing political party in West Germany, which acted as an advocacy group of the Germa ...
. The most prominent—still active today—is the Federation of Expellees (''Bund der Vertriebenen'', or BdV).


"War children" of German ancestry in Western and Northern Europe

In countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the war, sexual relations between Wehrmacht soldiers and local women resulted in the birth of significant numbers of children. Relationships between German soldiers and local women were particularly common in countries whose population was not dubbed "inferior" (''
Untermensch ''Untermensch'' (, ; plural: ''Untermenschen'') is a Nazi term for non- Aryan "inferior people" who were often referred to as "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mainly ethnic Poles, Serbs, and later also Russians). The ...
'') by the Nazis. After the Wehrmacht's withdrawal, these women and their children of German descent were often ill-treated.Anna-Maria Hagerfors
"'Tyskerunger' tvingades bli sexslavar"
''
Dagens Nyheter ''Dagens Nyheter'' (, ), abbreviated ''DN'', is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It is published in Stockholm and aspires to full national and international coverage, and is widely considered Sweden's newspaper of record. History and profile ''Da ...
'', 10 July 2004.


Legacy of the expulsions

With at leastSteffen Prauser and Arfon Rees,
The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War
'', European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, p. 4
12 millionSchuck, Peter H. & Rainer Münz. ''Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany'',
Berghahn Books Berghahn Books is a New York and Oxford-based publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creat ...
, 1997, p. 156;
Weber, Jürgen. ''Germany, 1945–1990: A Parallel History'',
Central European University Press Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center (disambiguation), center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa ...
, 2004, p. 2;
Germans directly involved, possibly 14 millionMichael Levitin
Germany provokes anger over museum to refugees who fled Poland during WWII
Telegraph.co.uk ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...
; accessed 6 December 2014.
or more, it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in European historyArie Marcelo Kacowicz & Paweł Lutomski, ''Population resettlement in international conflicts: a comparative study'', Lexington Books, 2007, p. 100; : "...largest movement of European people in modern history
Google.de
/ref> and the largest among the post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe (which displaced 20 to 31 million people in total). The exact number of Germans expelled after the war is still unknown, because most recent research provides a combined estimate which includes those who were evacuated by the German authorities, fled or were killed during the war. It is estimated that between 12 and 14 million German citizens and foreign ethnic Germans and their descendants were displaced from their homes. The exact number of casualties is still unknown and is difficult to establish due to the chaotic nature of the last months of the war. Census figures placed the total number of ethnic Germans still living in Eastern Europe in 1950, after the major expulsions were complete, at approximately 2.6 million, about 12 percent of the pre-war total. The events have been usually classified as population transfer or as ethnic cleansing.
R.J. Rummel Rudolph Joseph Rummel (October 21, 1932 – March 2, 2014) was an American political scientist and professor at the Indiana University, Yale University, and University of Hawaiʻi. He spent his career studying data on collective violence and war w ...
has classified these events as
democide Democide is a term coined by American political scientist Rudolph Rummel to describe "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by special agent, government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government p ...
, and a few scholars go as far as calling it a
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
. Polish sociologist and philosopher Lech Nijakowski objects to the term "genocide" as inaccurate
agitprop Agitprop (; from rus, агитпроп, r=agitpróp, portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', " propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in Soviet Russia where it referred ...
. The expulsions created major social disruptions in the receiving territories, which were tasked with providing housing and employment for millions of
refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.
s. West Germany established a ministry dedicated to the problem, and several laws created a legal framework. The expellees established several organisations, some demanding compensation. Their grievances, while remaining controversial, were incorporated into public discourse. During 1945 the British press aired concerns over the refugees' situation; this was followed by limited discussion of the issue during the Cold War outside West Germany. East Germany sought to avoid alienating the Soviet Union and its neighbours; the Polish and Czechoslovakian governments characterised the expulsions as "a just punishment for Nazi crimes". Western analysts were inclined to see the Soviet Union and its satellites as a single entity, disregarding the national disputes that had preceded the Cold War. The
fall of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
and the
reunification of Germany German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...
opened the door to a renewed examination of the expulsions in both scholarly and political circles. A factor in the ongoing nature of the dispute may be the relatively large proportion of German citizens who were among the expellees and/or their descendants, estimated at about 20% in 2000. A 1993 novel ''
Summer of Dead Dreams ''Summer of Dead Dreams'' (german: Sommer der toten Träume) is a novel by German writer Harry Thürk, published in 1993 by Mitteldeutscher Verlag. It is an autobiography with fictional elements. The book was translated to English, Polish (by M ...
'' written by
Harry Thürk Harry Thürk (8 March 1927 – 24 November 2005) was a German writer. Life In 1934, Thürk moved with his family to Neustadt. After attending trade school, he began to work for the German train system (Reichsbahn). After being drafted in 1944 ...
– a German author who left Upper Silesia annexed by Poland shortly after the war had ended – contained graphic depictions of the treatment of Germans by Soviets and Poles in Thürk's hometown of
Prudnik Prudnik (, szl, Prudnik, Prōmnik, german: Neustadt in Oberschlesien, Neustadt an der Prudnik, la, Prudnicium) is a town in southern Poland, located in the southern part of Opole Voivodeship near the border with the Czech Republic. It is the ...
. It depicted the maltreatment of Germans while also acknowledging German guilt, as well as Polish animosity toward Germans and, in specific instances, friendships between Poles and Germans despite the circumstances. Thürk's novel, when serialized in Polish translation by the ''Tygodnik Prudnicki'' ("Prudnik Weekly") magazine, was met with criticism from some Polish residents of Prudnik, but also with praise, because it revealed to many local citizens that there had been a post-war German ghetto in the town and addressed the tensions between Poles and Soviets in post-war Poland. The serialization was followed by an exhibition on Thurk's life in Prudnik's town museum.


Status in international law

International law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Before World War II, several major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as the
League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
. The tide started to turn when the charter of the
Nuremberg trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...
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 could adversely affect such individuals. The Charter of the then-newly formed
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
stated that its
Security Council The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, and ...
could take no enforcement actions regarding measures taken against World War II "enemy states", defined as enemies of a Charter signatory in WWII.Charter of the United Nations.
Chapters 1–19 at Human Rights Web Hrweb.org; accessed 26 May 2015.
The Charter did not preclude action in relation to such enemies "taken or authorized as a result of that war by the Governments having responsibility for such action." Thus, the Charter did not invalidate or preclude action against World War II enemies following the war.Krzysztof Rak & Mariusz Muszyński

; accessed 6 December 2014.
This argument is contested by
Alfred de Zayas Alfred-Maurice de Zayas (born 31 May 1947) is a Cuban-born American lawyer and writer, active in the field of human rights and international law. From 1 May 2012 to 30 April 2018, he served as the first UN Independent Expert on the Promotion o ...
, an American professor of
international law International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
.
ICRC The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signator ...
's legal adviser Jean-Marie Henckaerts posited that the contemporary expulsions conducted by the Allies of World War II themselves were the reason why expulsion issues were included neither in the
UN Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, i ...
of 1948, nor in the
European Convention on Human Rights The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by t ...
in 1950, and says it "may be called 'a tragic anomaly' that while deportations were outlawed at Nuremberg they were used by the same powers as a 'peacetime measure'". It was only in 1955 that the Settlement Convention regulated expulsions, yet only in respect to expulsions of individuals of the states who signed the convention. The first international treaty condemning mass expulsions was a document issued by the
Council of Europe The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold European Convention on Human Rights, human rights, democracy and the Law in Europe, rule of law in Europe. ...
on 16 September 1963, ''Protocol No 4 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Securing Certain Rights and Freedoms Other than Those Already Included in the Convention and in the First Protocol'', stating in Article 4: "collective expulsion of aliens is prohibited." This protocol entered into force on 2 May 1968, and as of 1995 was ratified by 19 states. There is now general consensus about the 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." 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. 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 Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
, 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. In the 1970s and 1980s a
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
-trained lawyer and historian,
Alfred de Zayas Alfred-Maurice de Zayas (born 31 May 1947) is a Cuban-born American lawyer and writer, active in the field of human rights and international law. From 1 May 2012 to 30 April 2018, he served as the first UN Independent Expert on the Promotion o ...
, published '' Nemesis at Potsdam'' and '' A Terrible Revenge'', both of which became bestsellers in Germany.Alfred M. de Zayas
"The Expulsion: a crime against humanity"
, meaus.com; accessed 26 May 2015; Transcript of part of a lecture given in
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
in 1988.
De Zayas argues that the expulsions were war crimes and
crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
even in the context of international law of the time, stating, "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." He argued that the expulsions violated the Nuremberg Principles. In November 2000, a major conference on ethnic cleansing in the 20th century was held at
Duquesne University Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit ( or ; Duquesne University or Duquesne) is a private Catholic research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded by members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, Duquesne first opened as the Pittsbu ...
in
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
, along with the publication of a book containing participants' conclusions. The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
José Ayala Lasso José Ayala Lasso (born in Quito on 29 January 1932) is a retired Ecuadorian lawyer and diplomat, currently residing in Quito. He served as Foreign Minister of Ecuador on three occasions. Career Pursuant to United Nations General Assembly ...
of
Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...
endorsed the establishment of the Centre Against Expulsions in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. José Ayala Lasso recognized the "expellees" as victims of gross violations of human rights. De Zayas, a member of the advisory board of the
Centre Against Expulsions The Centre Against Expulsions (german: Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen, ZgV) was a planned German documentation centre for expulsions and ethnic cleansing, particularly the expulsion of Germans after World War II. Since March 19, 2008 the name of the ...
, endorses the full participation of the organisation representing the expellees, the Bund der Vertriebenen (Federation of Expellees), in the Centre in Berlin.


The Berlin Centre

A Centre Against Expulsions was to be set up in Berlin by the German government based on an initiative and with active participation of the German Federation of Expellees. The Centre's creation has been criticized in Poland. It was strongly opposed by the Polish government and president
Lech Kaczyński Lech Aleksander Kaczyński (; 18 June 194910 April 2010) was a Polish politician who served as the city mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005, and as President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010. Before his tenure as president, he prev ...
. Former Polish prime minister
Donald Tusk Donald Franciszek Tusk ( , ; born 22 April 1957) is a Polish politician who was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019. He served as the 14th Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 and was a co-founder and leader of the Civic Pla ...
restricted his comments to a recommendation that Germany pursue a neutral approach at the museum. The museum apparently did not materialize. The only project along the same lines in Germany is "Visual Sign" (''Sichtbares Zeichen'') under the auspices of the Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung (SFVV). Several members of two consecutive international Advisory (scholar) Councils criticised some activities of the foundation and the new Director Winfried Halder resigned. Dr Gundula Bavendamm is a current Director.


Historiography

British historian
Richard J. Evans Sir Richard John Evans (born 29 September 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ''The Third Reich Trilogy'' (2003–2008). Evans was ...
wrote that although the expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe was done in an extremely brutal manner that could not be defended, the basic aim of expelling the ethnic German population of Poland and Czechoslovakia was justified by the subversive role played by the German minorities before World War II.Richard J. Evans, ''In Hitler's Shadow'', New York:
Pantheon Pantheon may refer to: * Pantheon (religion), a set of gods belonging to a particular religion or tradition, and a temple or sacred building Arts and entertainment Comics *Pantheon (Marvel Comics), a fictional organization * ''Pantheon'' (Lone S ...
, 1989, pp. 95–100.
Evans wrote that under the
Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
the vast majority of ethnic Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia made it clear that they were not loyal to the states they happened to live under, and under Nazi rule, the German minorities in Eastern Europe were willing tools of German foreign policy. Evans also wrote that many areas of eastern Europe featured a jumble of various ethnic groups aside from Germans, and that it was the destructive role played by ethnic Germans as instruments of Nazi Germany that led to their expulsion after the war. Evans concluded by positing that the expulsions were justified as they put an end to a major problem that plagued Europe before the war; that gains to the cause of peace were a further benefit of the expulsions; and that if the Germans had been allowed to remain in Eastern Europe after the war, West Germany would have used their presence to make territorial claims against Poland and Czechoslovakia, and that given the Cold War, this could have helped cause World War III. Historian
Gerhard Weinberg Gerhard Ludwig Weinberg (born 1 January 1928) is a German-born American diplomatic and military historian noted for his studies in the history of Nazi Germany and World War II. Weinberg is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History ...
wrote that the expulsions of the Sudeten Germans was justified as the Germans themselves had scrapped the
Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, Germany, the United Kingdom, French Third Republic, France, and Fa ...
.


Political issues

In January 1990, President of Czechoslovakia,
Václav Havel Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as ...
, requested forgiveness on his country's behalf, using the term expulsion rather than transfer. Public approval for Havel's stance was limited; in a 1996 opinion poll, 86% of Czechs stated they would not support a party that endorsed such an apology. The expulsion issue surfaced in 2002 during the
Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
's application for membership in the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
, since the authorisation decrees issued by
Edvard Beneš Edvard Beneš (; 28 May 1884 – 3 September 1948) was a Czech politician and statesman who served as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938, and again from 1945 to 1948. He also led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile 1939 to 1945 ...
had not been formally renounced. In October 2009, Czech President
Václav Klaus Václav Klaus (; born 19 June 1941) is a Czech economist and politician who served as the second president of the Czech Republic from 2003 to 2013. From July 1992 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in January 1993, he served as the secon ...
stated that the Czech Republic would require exemption from the
European Charter of Fundamental Rights The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) enshrines certain political, social, and economic rights for European Union (EU) citizens and residents into EU law. It was drafted by the European Convention and solemnly proclai ...
to ensure that the descendants of expelled Germans could not press legal claims against the Czech Republic. Five years later, in 2014, the government of Prime Minister
Bohuslav Sobotka Bohuslav Sobotka (; born 23 October 1971) is a Czech politician and lawyer who served as the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from January 2014 to December 2017 and Leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) from 2010 until his resig ...
decided that the exemption was "no longer relevant" and that the withdrawal of the opt-out "would help improve Prague's position with regard to other EU international agreements." In June 2018, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German former politician and scientist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Oppo ...
said that there had been "no moral or political justification" for the post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans.


Misuse of graphical materials

Nazi propaganda pictures produced during the Heim ins Reich and pictures of expelled Poles are sometimes published to show the flight and expulsion of Germans.


See also

*
Generalplan Ost The ''Generalplan Ost'' (; en, Master Plan for the East), abbreviated GPO, was the Nazi German government's plan for the genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, and colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by Germans. It was to be un ...
*
Dutch annexation of German territory after World War II At the end of World War II, plans were made in the Netherlands to annex German territory as compensation for the damages caused by the war. In October 1945, the Dutch state asked Germany for 25 billion guilders in reparations. In February ...
*
Expulsion of Poles by Germany The Expulsion of Poles by Germany was a prolonged anti-Polish campaign of ethnic cleansing by violent and terror-inspiring means lasting nearly half a century. It began with the concept of Pan-Germanism developed in the early 19th century and culm ...
*
Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany The Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany during World War II was a massive operation consisting of the forced resettlement of over 1.7 million Poles from the territories of German-occupied Poland, with the aim of their Germanization (see Lebensr ...
*
German reparations for World War II After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treati ...
* Istrian-Dalmatian exodus *
Operation Paperclip Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World Wa ...
*
Persecution of Germans The persecution of Germans based on their ethnicity has occurred at various points throughout history. These instances have been due to either one of two reasons: 1. The German populations in the area were considered, correctly or not, linked ...
*
Population transfer in the Soviet Union From 1930 to 1952, the government of the Soviet Union, on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin under the direction of the NKVD official Lavrentiy Beria, forcibly transferred populations of various groups. These actions may be classified ...
*
Pursuit of Nazi collaborators The pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the Third Reich at the outbreak of World War II but collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war. Hence, th ...
*
Treaty of Zgorzelec The Treaty of Zgorzelec (Full title ''The Agreement Concerning the Demarcation of the Established and the Existing Polish-German State Frontier'', also known as the ''Treaty of Görlitz'' and ''Treaty of Zgorzelic'') between the Republic of Po ...
*
Victor Gollancz Sir Victor Gollancz (; 9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a British publisher and humanitarian. Gollancz was known as a supporter of left-wing causes. His loyalties shifted between liberalism and communism, but he defined himself as a Christ ...
*
War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II Around six million Polish citizensProject in PosterumRetrieved 20 September 2013.World War II evacuation and expulsion Mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people took place across most countries involved in World War II. A number of these phenomena were categorised as violations of fundamental human values and norms by ...
*
Deportation of Germans from Latin America during World War II During World War II, 4,058 ethnic Germans along with several hundred other Axis-nationals living in Latin America were deported to the United States and their home countries, often at the behest of the US government. Although the arrest, inte ...


References


Sources

* Baziur, Grzegorz. ''Armia Czerwona na Pomorzu Gdańskim 1945–1947''
ed Army Gdańsk Pomerania 1945–1947 Ed, ed or ED may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Ed'' (film), a 1996 film starring Matt LeBlanc * Ed (''Fullmetal Alchemist'') or Edward Elric, a character in ''Fullmetal Alchemist'' media * ''Ed'' (TV series), a TV series that ran fro ...
Warsaw:
Instytut Pamięci Narodowej The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state resea ...
, 2003; * Beneš, Z., D. Jančík et al., ''Facing History: The Evolution of Czech and German Relations in the Czech Provinces, 1848–1948'', Prague: Gallery; * Blumenwitz, Dieter: ''Flucht und Vertreibung'', Cologne: Carl Heymanns, 1987; * Brandes, Detlef
Flucht und Vertreibung (1938–1950)
European History Online European History Online (''Europäische Geschichte Online, EGO'') is an academic website that publishes articles on the history of Europe between the period of 1450 and 1950 according to the principle of open access. Organisation EGO is issued ...
, Mainz:
Institute of European History The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, Germany, is an independent, public research institute that carries out and promotes historical research on the foundations of Europe in the early and late Modern period. Though autonomous i ...
, 2011, retrieved 25 February 2013. * De Zayas, Alfred M.: ''A terrible Revenge''.
Palgrave Macmillan Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains off ...
, New York, 1994. . * De Zayas, Alfred M.: ''Nemesis at Potsdam'', London, UK 1977; . * Douglas, R.M.: ''Orderly and Humane. The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War''.
Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...
, 2012;
German statistics
(Statistical and graphical data illustrating German population movements in the aftermath of the Second World War published in 1966 by the West German Ministry of Refugees and Displaced Persons) * Grau, Karl F. ''Silesian Inferno, War Crimes of the Red Army on its March into Silesia in 1945'', Valley Forge, PA: The Landpost Press, 1992; * * Jankowiak, Stanisław. ''Wysiedlenie i emigracja ludności niemieckiej w polityce władz polskich w latach 1945–1970'' xpulsion and emigration of German population in the policies of Polish authorities in 1945–1970 Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2005; * Naimark, Norman M. ''The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949'', Cambridge:
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
, 1995; * Naimark, Norman M.: ''Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth–Century Europe''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001; * Overy, Richard. ''The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich'', London:
Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War
' (PDF file, direct download), EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2004/1; Florence: European University Institute. Contributors: Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, Piotr Pykel, Tomasz Kamusella, Balazs Apor, Stanislav Sretenovic, Markus Wien, Tillmann Tegeler, and Luigi Cajani. Accessed 26 May 2015. * Reichling, Gerhard. ''Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen'', 1986;
Truman Presidential Library: Marshall Plan Documents
trumanlibrary.org; accessed 6 December 2014. * Zybura, Marek. ''Niemcy w Polsce'' ermans in Poland Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2004; . * Suppan, Arnold: "Hitler- Benes- Tito". Wien 2014. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Drei Bände. .


External links


A documentary film about the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary

Timothy V. Waters, ''On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing''
Paper 951, 2006,
University of Mississippi School of Law The University of Mississippi School of Law, also known as Ole Miss Law, is an ABA-accredited law school located on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. The School of Law offers the only dedicated aerospace law curr ...
(PDF)
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 (Note: Page 1227 begins with a Czechoslovak document dated 23 November 1944, several months before Czechoslovakia was "liberated" by the Soviet Army.)
Main URL
wisc.edu)
Frontiers and areas of administration.
Foreign relations of the United States (the Potsdam Conference), Volume I (1945), wisc.edu
History and Memory: mass expulsions and transfers 1939-1945-1949
M. Rutowska, Z. Mazur, H. Orłowski
Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950

"Unsere Heimat ist uns ein fremdes Land geworden..." Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neiße 1945–1950. Dokumente aus polnischen Archiven. Band 1: Zentrale Behörden, Wojewodschaft Allenstein






Flucht und Vertreibung Gallerie- Flight & Expulsion Gallery]
Deutsche Vertriebenen – German Expulsions (Histories & Documentation)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Expulsion Of Germans After World War Ii Post–World War II forced migrations, Germans Forced migration in the Soviet Union Sudetenland Aftermath of World War II in Germany Aftermath of World War II in Poland Aftermath of World War II in the Soviet Union German diaspora in Europe German diaspora in Poland Germany–Soviet Union relations Czechoslovakia–Germany relations Estonia–Germany relations Germany–Latvia relations Germany–Lithuania relations Ethnic cleansing of Germans Ethnic cleansing in Europe Anti-German sentiment in Europe Genocides in Europe