German Expellees

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Flight and expulsion

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"Die Vertreibung" from artist Professor Manfred Schatz

German expellees (German: Heimatvertriebene: "homeland expellees") are victims of forced expulsion (as planned during the Potsdam Conference) and ethnic cleansing of German nationals (Reichsdeutsche) and ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from (especially from eastern regions of the German Empire at the end of World War I and the first years afterwards, but also during 1945 and in the first three years after World War II 1946–48 (mainly by Communist Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary etc., with the help of the Red Army). A quarter of this population died or were killed during the expulsions and many German children were kidnapped and turned over to Slav families.

History

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Expellees of Eastern Germany in Berlin in 1945

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The Brünn death march (German: Brünner Todesmarsch; For decades, various estimates assumed that the "Brünn death march" included around 20,000 to 35,000 German civilians, and isolated figures of over 40,000 were also given. However, thanks to Czech files (→ Czech Hell), the number of participants in the march can now be reliably given as at least 27,000. This corresponds to almost exactly half of Brünn's German population of around 53,000 at the time. Estimates of the number of victims of the “Brünn death march” varied widely. More recent studies from the 1990s lead to a figure of around 5,200 deaths, mostly women and children.)

The Volksdeutsche had largely lived in lands which at times were ruled by German or Holy Roman Empire connected rulers, and were given State rights as German settlers. In the case of Bohemian Germans, they lived in a land which for for 1200 years was part of the Holy Roman Empire or fully German lands. The Bohemian Germans (later known as Sudeten-Germans; Sudetendeutschland) and the people of parts of Silesia, Posen, and West Prussia, former German citizens, had since 1919 lived in the newly created "Polish Corridor" and millions were already evicted and expelled by brutal oppression by Polish and Czech Slavs as well as anti-German Bolsheviks between 1919 and 1939.

WWII

Many Germans fled their areas, homes and towns of residence under evacuation orders of the German government in early 1945, or made their own decisions to leave, in 1945-1948. Others remained but were later expelled by the new communist authorities. The majority of the flights and expulsions occurred in areas of today's Czech Republic, Poland and Russia. Others occurred in territories of today's Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia (predominantly in the Vojvodina region), Lithuania, Slovenia and other regions of Central and Eastern Europe. Numerous atrocities occurred during the expulsions and flight, such as mass killings and mass rapes. More generally, there were various Allied atrocities during and after the war causing millions of deaths. It is estimated that another 2 to 5 million ethnic German refugees died, many from starvation.

This forced migration of ethnic Germans from East Prussia, Silesia, East Pomerania, East Brandenburg, Saxony east of the Neisse, Sudetenland and other regions resulted in the transfer of about 16.5 million people and was the largest of several similar post-World War II migrations orchestrated by the victorious plutocratic Western Allies and the communist Soviet Union. Over the course of the seventy years since the end of the war, estimates of total deaths of German civilians have been rising based upon new materials. Although the German government's official estimate of deaths due to the expulsions stands at 2.2 million this like the deaths from Allied bombings has been played down. The debate about the number of deaths and their causes continues to be the subject of heated controversy: new materials, since 2014, estimate that there were up to 12 million civilian German war and post-war victims of World War II.

Museum

In June 2022, a new museum dedicated to the memory of both those who fled in dire circumstances, and the expulsions, was opened in Berlin, with some degree of opposition. Needless to say, Poland, which now occupies the German provinces – most of East Prussia, West Prussia, Silesia, Upper Silesia, Pomerania and Danzig, and which has 'blood on its hands', protested and "rejected" this new centre, forcing the withdrawal of the nominated new museum Director, Erika Steinbach (then CDU, since 2022 AfD), because she was a conservative and president of the "Federation of Expellees" (Bund der Vertriebenen) from 1998 to 2014.

Relations

More than half a century later, relations between unified Germany and its East European neighbors remain somewhat difficult due to an often emotional controversy concerning the rights of expellees. Much of the controversy is spurred by contentious demands of some groups of the expellees or their descendants for revocation of expulsion decrees, official apologies, prosecution of perpetrators, restoration of, or compensation for, stolen properties.

Poems

Dr. h. c. Agnes Miegel („Mutter Ostpreußen“), like Ursula Haverbeck-Wetzel and many others an expellee from East Prussia, wrote in "Farewell to Königsberg" (Abschied von Königsberg), one of her countless poems:

We wander away from the ruined streets,

But we know those who leave you crying:

If our eyes never see you again

if we perish with our blood,

With our belongings

That there is still life in you, o mother,

And that you, Königsberg, are not mortal!

Quotes

• "The expulsion of millions of Germans is the greatest crime in history!" – Pope Pius XII about the genocide of the German people during and after the Second World War

See Also

• Ludwig Fritsch
• Operation Hannibal
• Potsdam Conference
• Ravishing the women of conquered Europe
• Documents on the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans

Further reading

• Professor Theodor Schieder et al:
  • The Expulsion of the German Population from the Territories East of the Oder-Neisse-Line, vol. 1, Federal Ministry for Expellees, etc., Bonn 1954
  • The Expulsion of the German Population from Czecho-Slovakia, vol. iv., published by the Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, Bonn, West Germany, 1960
• Dr. Austin J. App: The Sudeten-German Tragedy, Md., 1979
• Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
  • A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994 (Archive); ISBN 1-4039-7308-3; second revised edition, Palgrave/Macmillan, New York 2006.
  • The German expellees – Victims in War and Peace, New York, 1993
• Gary B. Cohen: The Expulsions of Ethnic Germans from East-Central Europe at the End of World War II, 2010
• The Evils of Forced Migration: Do Integration Policies Alleviate Migrants' Economic Situations?, 2011 (full text)

External links

• Massaker von Aussig
• Wolfskinder (East Preußen)
• Lager Friedland
• German forced laborers (in German)
• Gedächtnisstätte Guthmannshausen, German memorial for the Heimatvertriebene