During the later stages of World War II and
the post-war period, German citizens and people
of German ancestry fled, many being murdered
or dying in the process, or were expelled
from various Eastern and Central European
countries and traveled to the remaining territory
of Germany and Austria. The post-war expulsion
of the Germans formed part of Stalin's plan,
in concert with other communist puppets, to
expel all Germans from their lands east of
the Oder and those lands which from May 1945
fell inside the Soviet occupation zones.Between
1944 and 1948 about 31 million people, including
ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) as well as
German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were permanently
or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern
Europe. By 1950, a total of approximately
12 million Germans had fled or were expelled
from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied
Germany and Austria. The West German government
put the total at 14.6 million, including 1
million ethnic Germans 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 preexisting
German territories ceded to Poland, the Soviet
Union (about 7 million) and from Czechoslovakia
(about 3 million).
The areas affected included the former eastern
territories of Germany, which were annexed
by Poland and the Soviet Union after the war,
as well as Germans who were living within
the prewar borders of Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic
States. The Nazis 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.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.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, from mid-1944
to early 1945. The second phase was the disorganised
fleeing of ethnic Germans immediately following
the Wehrmacht'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 Poland,
Czechoslovakia and Hungary. 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 in 1950 range from
700,000 to 2.7 million.
== Background ==
Before World War II, East-Central Europe 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,
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.With the rise of nationalism
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 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 from the projected
post–World War I "Polish Border Strip" and
its resettlement with Christian ethnic Germans.Following
the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Russian
Empire, and the German empire at the end of
World War I, the Treaty of Versailles 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 Germany
and Austria after losing their privileged
status in those foreign lands, where they
had maintained majority 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
claimed that Germans elsewhere were subject
to persecution. Nazi supporters throughout
eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia's Konrad Henlein,
Poland's Deutscher Volksverband and Jungdeutsche
Partei, Hungary's Volksbund der Deutschen
in Ungarn) formed local Nazi political parties
sponsored financially by the German Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, 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
estimates vs 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.
The West German figure for Poland includes
60,000 in Zaolzie 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 by Alfred Bohmann (de) put the
number of Polish nationals in the Polish areas
annexed by Nazi Germany who identified themselves
as German at 709,500 plus 1,846,000 Poles
who were considered candidates for Germanisation.
In addition there were 63,000 Volksdeutsch
in the General Government. Martin Broszat
cited a document with different Volksliste
figures 1,001,000 were identified as Germans
and 1,761,000 candidates for Germanisation.
The figures for the Deutsche Volksliste 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. Some were given important
positions in the hierarchy of the Nazi administration,
and some participated in Nazi atrocities,
causing resentment towards German speakers
in general. These facts were later used by
the Allied politicians as one of the justifications
for 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 for the assassination
of Reinhard Heydrich, 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,
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 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 in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt of the
United States, Winston Churchill of the United
Kingdom, and Joseph Stalin 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.
== 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.
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' that would, because
of its social structure, interfere with the
envisioned Sovietisation 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. The idea to expel the ethnic Germans
was supported by Winston Churchill and Anthony
Eden since 1942.
Another motivation was to punish the Germans;
the Allies declared them collectively guilty
of German war crimes.
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 which were already inhabited homogeneously
by Germans without any minorities. As early
as 9 September 1944, Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin and Polish communist Edward Osóbka-Morawski
of the Polish Committee of National Liberation
signed a treaty in Lublin on population exchanges
of Ukrainians and Poles living on the "wrong"
side of the Curzon Line. Many of the 2.1 million
Poles expelled from the Soviet-annexed Kresy,
so-called 'repatriants', were resettled to
former German territories, then dubbed 'Recovered
Territories'. Czech Edvard Beneš, in his
decree of 19 May 1945, termed ethnic Hungarians
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,
based on wartime Nazi activities. Created
on order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler,
a Nazi ethnic German organisation called Selbstschutz
carried out executions during Intelligenzaktion
alongside operational groups of German military
and police, in addition to such activities
as identifying Poles for execution and illegally
detaining them.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. The Czechoslovak government-in-exile
worked with the Polish government-in-exile
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
expounded in the House of Commons in 1944,
"Expulsion is the method which, insofar as
we have been able to see, will be the most
satisfactory and lasting. There will be no
mixture of populations to cause endless trouble...
A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed
by 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
warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt 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, 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, 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.
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, 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."In Poland,
which had suffered the loss of six million
citizens, including its elite and almost its
entire Jewish population due to Lebensraum
and the Holocaust, most Germans were seen
as Nazi-perpetrators who could now finally
be collectively punished for their past deeds.
=== 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
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. News of atrocities
such as the Nemmersdorf massacre were exaggerated
and disseminated by the Nazi propaganda machine.Plans
to evacuate the ethnic German population westward
into Germany, from Poland and the 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.The first exodus of German civilians
from the eastern territories was composed
of both spontaneous flight and organised evacuation,
starting in mid-1944 and continuing until
early 1945. Conditions turned chaotic during
the winter, when kilometres-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. 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 KdF liner, Wilhelm
Gustloff, was sunk in January 1945 by a Soviet
Navy submarine, killing about 9,000 civilians
and military personnel escaping East Prussia
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 and Neisse rivers eastward, before
Soviet and Polish communist authorities closed
the river crossings; another 800,000 entered
Silesia through Czechoslovakia.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 organised 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, many soldiers and civilians
were evacuated by ship in the course of Operation
Hannibal.Between 23 January and 5 May 1945,
up to 250,000 Germans, primarily from East
Prussia, Pomerania, and the Baltic states,
were evacuated to Nazi-occupied Denmark, 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 with 37,000 inmates. The camps were guarded
by Danish military units. The situation eased
after 60 Danish clergymen spoke in defence
of the refugees in an open letter, and Social
Democrat Johannes Kjærbøl took over the
administration of the refugees on 6 September
1945. On 9 May 1945, the Red Army occupied
the island of Bornholm; 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 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 and
Denmark agreed on compensation payments of
160 million Danish krones 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 in May 1945. By this time,
all of Eastern and much of Central Europe
was under Soviet occupation. This included
most of the historical German settlement areas,
as well as the Soviet occupation zone in eastern
Germany.
The Allies settled on the terms of occupation,
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 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.
Expulsions that took place before the Allies
agreed on the terms at Potsdam are referred
to as "wild" 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, the remaining Germans were not
expelled; ethnic German villages were turned
into internment camps where over 50,000 perished.In
late 1945 the Allies requested a temporary
halt to the expulsions, due to the refugee
problems created by the expulsion of Germans.
While expulsions from Czechoslovakia were
temporarily slowed, this was not true in Poland
and the former eastern territories of Germany.
Sir Geoffrey Harrison, 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. 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 kilometres 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
.
=== 
Czechoslovakia ===
The final agreement for the transfer of the
Germans was reached at the Potsdam Conference.
According to the West German Schieder commission,
there were 4.5 million German civilians present
in Bohemia-Moravia 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 wild expulsions between May
and August 1945. 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.About 250,000 ethnic Germans were
allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia. According
to the West German Schieder commission 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 labourers.The
West German government estimated the expulsion
death toll at 273,000 civilians, this figure
is cited in historical literature.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.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.
It began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet
Commander-in-Chief ordered the expulsions.
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.According to the West German
Schieder commission 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 were taken to labour
camps in the Donbass. 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
labour implementing the Order 7161. 9% (2,819)
were documented as having died.
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.
On 29 December 1945, the postwar Hungarian
Government, obeying the directions of the
Potsdam Conference 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 miners. Germans married to Hungarians
were not expelled, regardless of sex. 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. By July 1948,
35,000 others had been expelled to the Eastern
zone of Germany. Most of the expellees found
new homes in the south-west German province
of Baden-Württemberg, but many others settled
in Bavaria and Hesse. 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.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
organisation of the redistribution led to
social tensions.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
in the early 1990s, German victims of expulsion
and Soviet forced labour 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 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. Germans, even those with
Dutch spouses and children, were labelled
as "hostile subjects" ("vijandelijke onderdanen").The
operation began on 10 September 1946 in Amsterdam,
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 guilders 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,
near Nijmegen. 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 rumours 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 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.According
to the West German Schieder commission of
1953, 5,650,000 Germans remained in Poland
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 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 were considered potential
combatants and held by Soviet military in
detention camps subjected to verification
by the NKVD. Members of Nazi party organizations
and government officials were segregated and
sent to the USSR for forced labour as reparations.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, in an effort
to ensure later territorial integration into
an ethnically homogeneous Poland. 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"
Poles. Of these, most were not expelled; but
many chose to migrate to Germany between 1951–82,
including most of the Masurians of East Prussia.
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.
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 or were believed to have
collaborated with the Nazis, were considered
"traitors of the nation" and sentenced to
forced labour 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 in communist-administered
camps prior to being expelled from Poland.
These included Central Labour Camp Jaworzno,
Central Labour Camp Potulice, Łambinowice
and Zgoda labour camp. Besides these large
camps, numerous other forced labour, punitive
and internment camps, urban ghettos and detention
centres, sometimes consisting only of a small
cellar, were set up.
The German Federal Archives 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 during the war
were declared Germans by Polish officials
who then seized their property for personal
gain.
The Federal Statistical Office of Germany
estimated that in mid-1945, 250,000 Germans
remained in the northern part of the former
East Prussia, which became the Kaliningrad
Oblast. 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 labour"
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 labour 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 labourers, and that
45% (105,000) were dead or missing. The West
German Red Cross estimated at that time that
110,000 German civilians were held as forced
labour in the Kaliningrad Oblast, where 50,000
were dead or missing. The Soviets deported
7,448 Poles of the Armia Krajowa from Poland.
Soviet records indicated that 506 Poles died
in captivity. Tomasz Kamusella 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 labour 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. 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 labourers by the Germans
during the war, protected Germans, for instance
by disguising them as Poles. Moreover, in
the Opole (Oppeln) region of Upper Silesia,
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.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
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
and Bukovina 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 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, 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. In mid-1944 roughly 100,000
Germans fled from Romania with the retreating
German forces. According to the West German
Schieder commission 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
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, Bessarabian and ethnic Germans
in areas that became Soviet-controlled following
the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 were
resettled to the Third Reich, including annexed
areas like Warthegau, 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.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 and
Siberia 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 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. 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. Between 250,000
and 320,000 had reached Nazi Germany by the
end of 1944. 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 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. They
were not allowed to return to their former
homes and remained in the eastern regions
of the USSR, yet 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 (renamed Kaliningrad)
and the adjacent Memel territory around Memel
(Klaipėda). The Königsberg area of East
Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union, becoming
an exclave of the Russian Soviet Republic.
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 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, with an unknown number of unregistered
Germans ignored. Between June 1945 and 1947,
roughly half a million Germans were expelled.
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 last remaining Germans
were expelled between November 1949 (1,401
people) and January 1950 (7). Thousands of
German children, called the "wolf children",
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 the oblast.
=== Yugoslavia ===
Before World War II, roughly 500,000 German-speaking
people (mostly Danube Swabians) lived in Yugoslavia.
Most fled during the war or emigrated after
1950, thanks to the "displaced persons" act
(of 1948); some were able to emigrate to the
United States. 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 exacted
revenge on ethnic Germans for the wartime
atrocities of Nazi Germany, in which many
ethnic Germans had participated, especially
in the Banat area of Serbia. 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. 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 the Ukraine and the Donbass 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 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.In
Slovenia, the ethnic German population at
the end of World War II was concentrated in
Slovenian Styria, more precisely in Maribor,
Celje, and a few other smaller towns (like
Ptuj and Dravograd), and in the rural area
around Apače on the Austrian border. The
second largest ethnic German community in
Slovenia was the predominantly rural Gottschee
County around Kočevje in Lower Carniola,
south of Ljubljana. 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 region (a territory
along the Sava river between the towns of
Brežice and Litija), from where around 50,000
Slovenes 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, most ethnic Germans fled with them
in fear of reprisals. By May 1945, only few
Germans remained, mostly in the Styrian towns
of Maribor and Celje. The Liberation Front
of the Slovenian People 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.
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". 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. 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 (12,000 people), on
the east bank of the Rhine opposite Strasbourg,
fled and was evacuated in the course of the
Liberation of France, on 23 November 1944.
French forces 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 American countries to internment camps
in Texas and Louisiana. 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 and sent, together with Italian and
Hungarian enemy aliens, to internment camps
in Waldheim and Bethlehem of Galilee. 661
Templers were deported to Australia via Egypt
on 31 July 1941, leaving 345 in Palestine.
Internment continued in Tatura, Victoria,
Australia, until 1946-47. In 1962 the State
of Israel paid 54 million Deutsche Marks in
compensation to property owners whose assets
were nationalized.
== Human losses ==
Estimates of total deaths of German civilians
in the flight and expulsions, including Forced
labour of Germans in the Soviet Union, range
from 500,000 to a maximum of 3.0 million people.
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.
=== West German government estimates of the
death toll ===
In 1950 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.
In 1953 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 Schieder commission 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 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 figures of the Schieder commission were
superseded by the publication in 1958 of the
study by the West German government Statistisches
Bundesamt, Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste
(The German Expulsion Casualties). The authors
of the report included former Nazi party members,
de:Wilfried Krallert, Walter Kuhn and de:Alfred
Bohmann. The Statistisches Bundesamt 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, which was finished
in 1974 and kept secret until 1989. The study
was commissioned to survey crimes against
humanity 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 in civilians
kept in post war internment camps. The authors
maintained that the figures included only
those deaths caused 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
Oder Neisse line, 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
published a study of German military casualties,
his research project did not investigate civilian
expulsion deaths. In 1994, Overmans provided
a critical analysis of the previous studies
by 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. ("Letzlich sprechen
also mehr Argumente für die niedrigerte 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. 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.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 and officials of
the Statistisches Bundesamt 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 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 deportation to the USSR for forced
labour and after the resettlement due to the
harsh conditions in the Soviet occupation
zone 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 war as well
as the total civilian deaths due to the expulsions.
For example, Eberhardt points out that "the
total number of Germans in Poland is given
as equal 1,371,000. According to the Polish
census of 1931, there were altogether only
741,000 Germans 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 labour 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. 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 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, Christoph
Bergner, outlined the stance of the respective
governmental institutions on Deutschlandfunk
saying that the numbers presented by the German
government and others are not contradictory
to the numbers cited by Haar, and that the
below 600,000 estimate comprises the deaths
directly caused by atrocities during the expulsion
measures and thus only includes people who
on the spot were raped, beaten, or else brought
to death, while the above two millions estimate
includes people who on their way to postwar
Germany died of epidemics, hunger, cold, air
raids and the like.
==== Research by Rudolph Rummel ====
In 1998, Rudolph Rummel examined the data
by only English-language authors published
before 1991 and found a range from 528,000
to 3,724,000 deaths due to the expulsions.
In his own analysis of these sources, he calculated
the total postwar expulsion deaths to be 1,863,000.
He estimated an additional one million civilians
perished during the wartime flight and evacuation
before the expulsions.
==== 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 (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) 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)". 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 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, or conditions like those
in the Upper Silesian Camp Łambinowice (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
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. The situation eased
only with the West German economic boom in
the 1950s that drove unemployment rates close
to zero.France did not participate in the
Potsdam Conference, 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.
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.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
(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, 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, 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
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 (out of a total loss of German
property due to the border changes and expulsions
of 355.3 billion Deutschmarks). Administrative
organisations were set up to integrate the
expellees into post-war German society. While
the Stalinist 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 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) by
the Nazis. After the Wehrmacht's withdrawal,
these women and their children of German descent
were often ill-treated. Although plans were
made in Norway to expel the children and their
mothers to Australia, the plans never materialised.
For many war children, the situation would
ease only decades after the war.
== Legacy of the expulsions ==
With at least 12 million Germans directly
involved, possibly 14 million or more, it
was the largest movement or transfer of any
single ethnic population in European history
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 has classified
these events as democide, and a few scholars
go as far as calling it a genocide. Polish
sociologist and philosopher Lech Nijakowski
objects to the term "genocide" as inaccurate
agitprop.The expulsions created major social
disruptions in the receiving territories,
which were tasked with providing housing and
employment for millions of refugees. 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 and
the reunification of Germany 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.
=== 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 tide started
to turn when the charter of the Nuremberg
trials of German Nazi leaders declared forced
deportation of civilian populations to be
both a war crime and a crime against humanity,
and this opinion was progressively adopted
and extended through the remainder of the
century. Underlying the change was the trend
to assign rights to individuals, thereby limiting
the rights of nation-states to impose fiats
which could adversely affect such individuals.
The Charter of the then-newly formed United
Nations stated that its Security Council could
take no enforcement actions regarding measures
taken against World War II "enemy states",
defined as enemies of a Charter signatory
in WWII. 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. This argument is contested by Alfred
de Zayas, an American professor of international
law. ICRC'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
of 1948, nor in the European Convention on
Human Rights 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 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, 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-trained lawyer
and historian, Alfred de Zayas, published
Nemesis at Potsdam and A Terrible Revenge,
both of which became bestsellers in Germany.
De Zayas argues that the expulsions were war
crimes and crimes against humanity 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 in
Pittsburgh, along with the publication of
a book containing participants' conclusions.The
former United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights José Ayala Lasso of Ecuador
endorsed the establishment of the Centre Against
Expulsions in Berlin. 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,
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. Former Polish
prime minister Donald Tusk 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 ===
German historian Andreas Hillgruber called
the expulsions a "national catastrophe" and
said in 1986 that they were as tragic as the
Holocaust.British historian Richard J. Evans
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. Evans wrote that under the Weimar Republic
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 the Third Reich 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 wrote that the expulsions
of the Sudeten Germans was justified as the
Germans themselves had scrapped the Munich
Agreement.
=== Political issues ===
In January 1990, President of Czechoslovakia,
Václav Havel, 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's application for membership
in the European Union, since the authorisation
decrees issued by Edvard Beneš had not been
formally renounced.In October 2009, Czech
President Václav Klaus stated that the Czech
Republic would require exemption from the
European Charter of Fundamental Rights to
ensure that the descendants of expelled Germans
could not press legal claims against the Czech
Republic.In June 2018, German Chancellor Angela
Merkel 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
