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Flight and expulsion of Germans during and after World War II
(demographic estimates)
Background
1944–50 flight and expulsion of Germans German–Soviet population transfers Potsdam Agreement
Wartime flight and evacuation
German evacuation East Prussia
Post-war flight and expulsion
Czechoslovakia Poland (incl. former German territories) Netherlands Romania
Later emigration
Refugees in Schleswig-Holstein Emigration from Poland
Other themes
Wolf children
v t e

The flight and expulsion of Germans was the forced migration of German nationals from the former eastern territories of Germany and ethnic Germans from areas across Europe to the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany in the end and direct aftermath of World War II. With at least twelve million Germans directly affected, it was the largest movement of any European people in modern history, and the largest of several post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe which displaced a total of about twenty million people.

The expulsions of the German population had been agreed on by the allied leaders of the US, U.K and the Soviet Union, and supported by France. The policy was part of the geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of postwar Europe and revenge for the Nazi initiation of the war and subsequent brutal occupations and atrocities.

As the Red Army advanced towards German-settled areas at the end of World War II, a considerable exodus of German refugees began from the areas near the front lines. Many Germans fled spontaneously or under vague and haphazardly implemented evacuation orders of the German government in 1944 and in early 1945. Most of those who remained or returned were forced to leave by local authorities between 1945 and 1950. Census figures in 1950 place the total number of ethnic Germans still living in Eastern Europe at approximately 2.6 million, about 12 percent of the pre-war total.

The majority of the flights and expulsions occurred in the former eastern territories of Germany, Sudetenland and other regions of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Others occurred in Hungary, northern Yugoslavia (predominantly in the Vojvodina region), and other regions of Central and Eastern Europe.

Past research provided estimates ranging from 13.5 to 16.5 million people who fled or were either evacuated, directly expelled or killed. Recent research places the number at more than 12 million, including all those who fled during or directly after the war to both the Western and Eastern zones of Germany and to Austria. At least two million people perished due to flight and expulsion, 400,000 to 600,000 of whom by physical force.

Background

Before World War II, Eastern and East-Central Europe generally lacked clearly shaped ethnic settlement areas. Rather, outside of certain ethnic majority areas, there were vast mixed areas and abundant smaller pockets settled by various ethnicities. Within these mixed-ethnic areas, including the major cities of Central and Eastern Europe, regular interaction between various ethnic groups took place on a daily basis. While not always harmonious, the ethnic groups interacted with each other on every civic and economic level.

With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, ethnicity of the citizens became an issue in territorial claims, the self-perception/identity of states and claims of ethnic superiority. Prussia introduced the idea of ethnicity-based settlement in an attempt to ensure her territorial integrity.

The Treaty of Versailles resulted in creation or recreation of multiple states across Central and Eastern Europe, that before World War I had been integrated in the Habsburg and German empires. Although these countries were created and named on the basis of their respective ethnic majority, none of them were ethnically homogeneous. Attempts to change ethnic demographics were made, for example, in the newly recreated Polish state by reducing the number of Germans in the Polish Corridor.

Beginning in 1933, Nazi Germany used prior historical German settlement areas as a basis for its territorial claims to justify the annexation of Austria and the annexation of the Sudetenland in the Munich Agreement. A new dimension was introduced by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed on large scale population exchanges not following historic ethnic settlement patterns. Rather, the resettlement of the Baltic Germans into annexed Poland, accompanied by forced expulsions and mass murder of Jewish communities aimed at a completely new design for occupied territories. Following the racist concept of lebensraum, the Nazis devastated Eastern Europe during World War II, introducing previously unknown ethnic cleansing practices. Ethnicity during the war became a major factor determining people's fate, as people of the "wrong" ethnicity, such as Jews and Gypsies, were excluded from all community life, subjected to atrocities, and likely ended up murdered (as in the Holocaust. Other subject peoples, such as Russian prisoners of war, were often murdered (in concentration camps; others in Russian territory were sent to Gulags), resettled (e.g. Volga Germans) or enslaved (e.g. forced labour in Germany and in the Soviet Union). During the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, many citizens of German descent registered with the Deutsche Volksliste. Some of them held important positions in the hierarchy of Nazi administration or otherwise participated in Nazi atrocities, causing enmity against the Germans, which would later be used as the justification for their expulsion.

Evacuation and flight of Germans during the war

Evacuation and flight to areas within Nazi Germany

Late in the war, as the Red Army advanced westward, Germans were apprehensive regarding the pending Soviet takeover. Many were aware of the Soviet reprisals on German civilians. Soviet soldiers committed reprisal rapes and other crimes. News of these atrocities, like the Nemmersdorf massacre, were in part exaggerated and spread by the Nazi propaganda machine.

The plans to evacuate Ethnic German populations westwards from Eastern Europe and from the former eastern territories of Germany into Germany proper, were prepared by various Axis authorities towards the end of the war. In most cases, however, implementation was delayed until Soviet and Allied forces had defeated the Nazi forces and advanced into the areas to be evacuated. The responsibility for leaving millions of Ethnic Germans in these vulnerable areas until combat conditions overwhelmed them can be attributed directly to the draconian measures taken by the Nazis against anyone even suspected of 'defeatist' attitudes and the fanaticism of many Nazi functionaries in their execution of Hitler's 'no retreat' orders.

The first mass movement of German civilians in the eastern territories was composed of both spontaneous flight and organized evacuation, starting in the summer of 1944 and continuing through the early spring of 1945. Conditions turned chaotic in the winter, when miles-long queues of refugees pushed their carts through the snow trying to stay ahead of the Red Army. From the Baltic coast, thousands were evacuated by ship in Operation Hannibal. Between 23 January 1945 and the end of the war, 2,022,702 people were transported via the Baltic Sea, between 200,000 and 250,000 of them to occupied Denmark.

Most of the evacuation efforts commenced in January 1945, when Soviet forces were already at the eastern border of Germany. About 6 to 8.35 million Germans had fled or were evacuated from the areas east of the Oder-Neisse line before Soviet and the attached Polish Army took control of the region. Refugee treks and ships which came into reach of the advancing Soviets suffered high casualties when targeted by low-flying aircraft, torpedoes, or were rolled over by tanks. Many refugees tried to return home when the fighting in their homelands ended. Before June 1, 1945, some 400,000 crossed back over the Oder and Neisse rivers eastward, before Soviet and Polish communist authorities closed the river crossings; another 800,000 entered Silesia from Czechoslovakia.

Evacuation and flight to Denmark

Between February 11 and May 9, between 200,000 and 250,000 Germans were evacuated across the Baltic Sea to Nazi occupied Denmark, based on an order issued by Hitler on 4 February. The German refugee population thus amounted to 5% of the Danish population. Most of the refugees were from East Prussia, Pomerania, and the Baltic states. Many of the refugees were women, children, or elderly. A third of the refugees were younger than 15 years old. The German authorities in Denmark confiscated public buildings and even small villages to make room for the refugees.

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

The situation eased after 68 Danish clergy in an open letter spoke up in defense of the refugees and Social Democrate Johannes Kjærbjørn took over the administration of the refugees on 6 September 1945. For refugees on Bornholm, situation was different as the island was occupied by the Red Army on 9 May 1945. Some 3,000 refugees and 17,000 Wehrmacht soldiers were shipped to Kolberg between 9 May and 1 June by the Soviets.

In 1945, more than 13,000 people died, among them some 7,000 children. Sometimes, these deaths are partially blamed on denial of medical care by Danish medical staff, others say this may be true for isolated incidents but overall medical treatment of the refugees by Danish medical personal was sufficient. Another debate focusses on whether or not refugees were starved, as some say, while others say the refugees have all received sufficient rations of 2,000 kcal a day in 1945 and 2,500 in 1946. The debates result from a study conducted by Kirsten Lylloff, who says that the Danish Association of Doctors and the Danish Red Cross had decided in March 1945 that German refugees would not receive any medical care, resulting in the deaths of 80% of the small children during the following months.

An overall 17,209 refugees died and are buried in Denmark. Denmark did not expel any Danish citizens of German ethnicity. The last refugees departed on 25 February 1949. In the Treaty of London on 26 February 1953, West Germany and Denmark agreed on compensation payments of 160 million Danish Crowns, which West Germany paid between 1953 and 1958.

Expulsions following Germany's defeat

The Second World War ended in Europe with Nazi Germany's defeat in May 1945. By this time, all Eastern and much of Central Europe was under Soviet occupation, including most of the historical German settlement areas outside Germany and the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. The Allies of World War II settled the terms of occupation and territorial truncation of Germany as well as the expulsion of 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 XIII 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 between American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones in the post World War II Germany.

Expulsions that took place before the Allies agreed on the actual terms at Potsdam are referred to as "wild" expulsions (Template:Lang-de). They were conducted by military and civilian authorities in Soviet occupied post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia in the spring and summer of 1945. The Potsdam Declaration requested that those countries temporarily stop the expulsions due to the refugee problems created by expulsions of Germans before the Potsdam meeting. While expulsions from Czechoslovakia were temporarily slowed down, this was not true for Poland and the former eastern territories of Germany. Sir Geoffrey Harrison, one of the drafters of the respective Potsdam article, stated 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 states. Property in the affected territory that belonged to Germany and Germans was confiscated and transferred to the Soviet Union, nationalized or redistributed among the local population. Of the many post-war forced migrations, the largest was the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe, primarily from (1) the territory of 1937 Czechoslovakia ( which included the areas the Nazis called the Sudetenland); and (2) the territory that became post-war Poland. Poland's postwar borders had been shifted west to the Oder-Neisse line, far into former German territory.

Expulsions and resettlements of other ethnicities took place contemporary to the expulsion of the Germans. From Tito's Yugoslavia, not only the Germans, but also most Italians were expelled. Poland did not only expel Ethnic Germans, but also expelled 482,000 and resettled 140,000 Ukrainians (Operation Wisla). In Czechoslovakia, not only were Sudeten Germans expelled, but also Hungarians during the ocysta. Also, the post-war Lithuania and Ukraine expelled not only Germans but also Poles, and the same happened to the remaining Polish population in Belarus.

Czechoslovakia

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

Before the 1938 German annexation of the Sudetenland, more than 20% of the population in Czechoslovakia had been ethnic Germans. In May 1945, between 3.2 and 4 million Germans remained in Sudetenland and other Czechoslovak territories.

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

In the months following the end of the war, "wild" expulsion occurred between May and August 1945. These "wild" expulsions affected between 700,000 and 800,000 people and were encouraged by polemical speeches made by several Czechoslovak statesmen and were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers. In some cases, though, they were initiated by or conducted with the assistance of the regular army.

The regular transfer according to the Potsdam agreements proceeded from 25 January 1946 until October of that year. An estimated 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone of what would become West Germany. A little over 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone (which later became East Germany). About 250,000 ethnic German anti-fascists and those ethnic Germans crucial for industries were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia. Male intermarried Germans were expelled, often with their spouses, whereas intermarried women were allowed to stay.

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

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

Hungary

In contrast to expulsions from other states, the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary was dictaded from outside, and began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet Commander-in-Chief ordered expulsions. Three percent of the German pre-war population (appr. 20,000 people) had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many of them returned to their homes the next spring. Overall, 60,000 Germans had fled. In January 1945 the Soviet Army collected 32,000 ethnic Germans and expelled them to the Soviet Union for slave labor. From some villages the entire adult population was deported to labour camps in the Donets Basin. Many of them died there as a result of hardships and ill-treatment. Overall, between 100,000 and 170,000 Hungarian Germans were deported to the Soviet Union.

In 1945, the official Hungarian figures showed 477,000 citizens of German vernacular in Hungary, 303,000 of whom had declared German nationality. Of the German nationals, 33% were children younger than twelve years or elderly over 60 years, another 51% were women.

On 29 December 1945, the new Hungarian Government ordered the expulsion of every person who had declared him/herself German in the 1941 census, or was a member of the Volksbund, the SS or any other armed German organisation. In accordance with this decree, mass expulsions began. Rural populations were affected more than urban population and Germans with needed skills like miners. Germans married to Hungarians were not expelled, regardless of sex. The first wagon departed from Budaörs (Wudersch) on 19 January 1946 with 5788 people. About 180,000 German-speaking Hungarian citizens were deprived of their rights and all possessions, and expelled to the Western zones of Germany. Up to July 1948, a further 35,000 people were expelled to the Eastern zone of Germany. Most of the expelled Germans found new homes in the western provinces of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and Hesse. During the expulsions, numerous demonstrations, spontaneous and organized protests of the Hungarian population took place.

In 1947 and 1948, a forced population exchange took place between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Some 74,000 ethnic Hungarians were expelled from Slovakia in exchange for about the same number of Slovaks from Hungary. They and the Székelys of Bukovina were settled in the former German villages of southeastern Transdanubia. In some parts of Tolna, Baranya, and Somogy counties, the original population was totally replaced by the new settlers. The resettlement policies however did not match the situation in the expulsion areas. The expulsions were badly organized, often delayed and did not yield the envisioned deadlines and gains of land. Acquisition of land for distribution to Hungarian refugees and nationals was one of the main causes for the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary, and the failure in organizing the redistribution led to social tensions.

By the end of the expulsions an estimated 200,000 Germans remained in Hungary, yet only 22,445 declared themselves German in the 1949 census. An order of 15 June 1948 halted the expulsions, and a governmental decree of 25 March 1950 declared all expulsion orders void and allowed the expellees to repatriate.

The Netherlands

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

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

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

Poland

Throughout 1944 and into the first months of 1945, as the Red Army advanced through Eastern Europe and the provinces of Eastern Germany, some Soviet and Allied troops as well as nationalist militias and sometimes civilian populations exacted revenge on ethnic Germans and German nationals. 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 remained. The Polish courier Jan Karski warned US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 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".

In 1945, the eastern territories of Germany (most of Silesia and Pomerania, East Brandenburg, and East-Prussia) as well as Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany (especially Warthegau and Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia) were occupied by the Soviet Red Army and Polish military forces. Early expulsions in Poland were undertaken by the Polish Communist military authorities even before the Potsdam Conference ("wild expulsions"), to ensure the later integration into an ethincally homogeneous Poland as envisioned by the Polish Communists: "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multinational ones." Germans were defined as either Reichsdeutsche, people enlisted in 1st or 2nd Volksliste groups, and those of the 3rd group, who held German citizenship. About 1.1 million German citizens of Slavic descent were "verified" as "autochtone" Poles. Of those, most were not expelled, yet hundreds of thousands emigrated to Germany after 1950, including most Masurians.

The Soviet Union transferred territories to the east of the Oder-Neisse line to Poland in July 1945. All Germans were expropriated and placed under restrictive jurisdiction. Subsequent to this, most remaining Germans were expelled from pre-war Poland and the so-called "Recovered Territories" to the territories west of the Oder-Neisse Line. Some, prior to their expulsion, were used as forced labor in Communist administered camps such as those run by Salomon Morel and Czesław Gęborski. Examples of these include Central Labour Camp Jaworzno, Central Labour Camp Potulice, Łambinowice, Zgoda labour camp and others. Besides these large camps, numerous other forced labor, puntive and internment camps, urban ghettos, and detention centers sometimes consisting only of a small cellar were set up. Germans considered "indispensable" for the Polish economy were retained until the early 1950s, and had virtually left by 1960.Close to 165,000 Germans were transported to the Soviet Union for forced labor where most of them perished.

The attitude of Polish civilians, many of whom had experienced brutalities only surpassed by the treatment of the Jews during the preceeding Nazi occupation, was ambiguous. Many engaged in looting and atrocities, including murder, beatings, rapes and others. On the other hand, there were incidents when Poles, even freed slave labourers, protected Germans by e.g. disguising them as Poles. The attitude of the Soviet soldiers was ambiguous also. Many of them committed numerous atrocities, most prominently rapes and murder, did not always distinguish between Poles and Germans and often mistreated them alike. Other Soviets were taken aback by the brutal treatment of the Germans and engaged in their protection.

Thomasz Kamusella is citing estimates of 7 million expelled during both "wild" and "legal" expulsions from the "Recovered Territories" until 1948, joined by an additional 700,000 from areas of pre-war Poland. Overy cites approximate totals of those evacuated, migrated, or expelled between 1944–1950 from East Prussia: 1.4 million to Western Germany, 609,000 to Eastern Germany; from West Prussia: 230,000 to Western Germany, 61,000 to Eastern Germany; from the former German area East of the Oder-Neisse encompassing most of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Brandenburg: 3.2 million to Western Germany, 2 million to Eastern Germany.

Romania

The flight of Germans from Romania started in the fall of 1944. Early in 1945, during the Soviet occupation of Romania, they initiated the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the territory. Tens of thousands of Romania's Germans were expelled, many of whom lost their lives in the process of emigration. Some expulsions were part of the Soviet plan for German war reparations in the form of forced labor, according to the 1944 secret Soviet Order 7161. Of a pre-war ethnic German population of 786,000, approximately 213,000 were evacuated, expelled, or migrated to Austria or Western Germany, and about 400,000 still resided in Romania in 1950.

Soviet Union

The Baltic, Bessarabian and other Germans in areas that became Soviet controlled following the partition of the eastern parts of Europe by Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 were resettled to the Third Reich including annexed areas like Warthegau during the Nazi-Soviet population exchange. Only few returned when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and temporarily seized control of these areas, primarily these returnees were employed by the Nazi occupation forces to establish a link between Nazi administration and local population. Those resettled shared the fate of the other Germans in their respective resettlement area.

Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin in September 1941 deported the ethnic Germans living in still Soviet-controlled parts of the USSR, most notably about 400,000 Volga Germans and about 80,000 Germans from Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and other areas, to remote areas primarily in Siberia, Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan, where they were to remain after the war. Many died during the deportations. The able-bodied men and childless women were then enlisted in the trud army ("working army") for forced labour.

Those Germans who had remained on Soviet-controlled soil despite the Nazi-Soviet population transfers and whose settlement areas had become German-controlled to fast for the Soviet authorities to deport them, remained in place until 1943, when the Red Army reclaimed ground and the Wehrmacht withdrew westward. From January 1943, most of them moved in treks to Warthegau, some of them to Silesia, where they were to settle. Between 250,000 and 320,000 had reached Nazi Germany by the end of 1944. Upon 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 carried off for work in the Altreich. When the Red Army took these areas in early 1945, 200,000 of them had not yet been evacuated by the German authorities, who were still occupied with their "racial evaluation". In contrast to the other Germans in these areas, they were regarded Soviet citizens and "repatriated" to camps and special settlements in the Soviet Union. Another 70,000 to 80,000 who after the war found themselves in the Soviet occupation zone were treated the same way, based on an agreement with the Western Allies. The death toll during arrests and deportation was at an estimated 15% to 30%, 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 do forced labour in analogy to the trud army until the end of 1955. At this time, all of the 1.5 million Germans in the Soviet Union were in custody. They were released by an amnesty decree of 13 September 1955 and the Nazi collaboration charge was taken back by a decree of 23 August 1964, yet no former individual or collective property was restored.

A different situation emerged in northern East Prussia with Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad) and the adjacent Memel territory with Memel (Klaipeda). These territories were annexed by the Soviet Union after the war, with northern East Prussia becoming an exclave of the Russian Soviet Republic, and Memel integrated into the Lithuanian Soviet Republic. Many Germans from East Prussia and the Memel territory were evacuated by Nazi authorities throughout the Operation Hannibal or fled in panic before the Soviet Army approached. After the war, most of the surviving ethnic Germans were expelled. Ethnic Russians and families of military staff settled in the region. In June 1946 114,070 German and 41,029 Soviet citizens were registered in the Kaliningrad Oblast, with an unknown number of disregarded unregistered persons. Between 1945 and 1947, about half a million Germans were expelled. Between August, 24 and October, 26 1948 21 transports with in total 42,094 Germans left the Kaliningrad Oblast to the Soviet Occupation Zone. The last remaining Germans left in November 1949 (1,401 persons) and January 1950 (7 persons). Thousands of German children, called wolf children, were left orphaned and unattended or died with their parents during a harsh winter without any food. Between 1945 and 1947, about 600,000 Russians settled the region.

Yugoslavia

After World War II, the majority of the roughly 500,000 German-speaking people from Yugoslavia (mostly the Danube Swabians) left for Austria and West Germany. After 1950, thanks to the "displaced persons" act (of 1948), they also emigrated to the United States of America. Because of ethnic German support to Nazi Germany, specifically the mobilization of some in the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, many ethnic Germans suffered persecution and sustained great personal and economic losses. Many perished as local population and partisans took revenge for Nazi Germany's atrocities, including mass rapes and detention in concentration camps. At least 5,800 were shot, the surviving and yet unarrested were compelled to forced labour.

The Soviets in late 1944 deported about 27,000-30,000 Germans, 90% of them women, to the Donets basin for forced labour, 16% perished.

In Slovenia the German population at the end of World War I was concentrated in Styria, more precisely in Maribor, Celje and a few other towns. In total they numbered about 28,000 in 1931. The number was higher after 1941. Southern Slovenia was then occupied by Italian troops, who transferred ethnic Germans from the enclave of Kočevje to German-occupied Styria. When German forces began to retreat before the Soviet Army, many ethnic Germans fled with them in fear of reprisals. The Liberation Front of Slovenia expelled most of the remainder after it seized complete control in the region.

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

Since March 1945, Germans were placed in so-called "village camps". Separate camps existed for those perceived able to work and for those who were not. In the latter camps, holding primarily children and elderly, mortality rate was about 50%. A part of the children were then placed into state-run homes, where conditions were better, yet German language was banned. These children were later handed over to Yugoslav families, and not all German parents relaiming their children in the 1950s succeeded.

The camp system was shut down in March 1948. A total of 48,447 people had died in the camps, 7,199 were shot by partisans, another 1,994 were taken to Soviet camps. The Germans, still considered Yugoslav citizens, were employed in the industry or military, and could buy themselves free of Yugoslav citizenship by the equivalent of a three months salary. By 1950, 150,000 had made their way to post-war Germany, another 150,000 to Austria, 10,000 to the USA, and 3,000 to France.

Some ethnic Germans remained in Yugoslavia, particularly those married to local partners.

Demographic estimates

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

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

Casualties

Estimates of deaths associated with the expulsions are in the range of 2-3 millions. These estimates were first made by a German commission headed by Theodor Schieder in the 1950s, and since have remained the official estimate given by the German government. Since the 1970s, however, some historians like Ingo Haar have suggested downward revisions to 400,000 to 600,000, while others, including the German government, stick to the higher figures. The official German position is that the numbers are not contradictory, 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 also includes people who on their way to post-war Germany have died of epidemics, hunger, cold, air raids and the like.

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

In countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the war whose population was not dubbed "inferior" (Untermensch) by the Nazis, there were relations of Wehrmacht soldiers and indigenous women which in some cases resulted in offspring. After Wehrmacht's withdrawal, these women and their children of German descent were ill-treated. Though plans were made in Norway to expel the children and their mothers to Australia, these plans never were executed. For many war children, the situation would ease only decades after the war.

Condition of the expellees after arriving in post-war Germany

Those who arrived were in bad shape - particularly in the harsh winter of 1945/46, trains were arriving carrying "the dead and dying in each carriage (other dead had been thrown from the train along the way)". Beatings, rapes and murders accompanied the expulsions and an estimated 200,000 to 2 million perished on their way west. On 29 October 1946, the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany already held 9.5 million refugees and expellees: 3.6 millions in the British zone, 3.1 millions in the US American zone, 2.7 millions in the Soviet zone, 100,000 in Berlin, and 60,000 in the French zone. These numbers were subsequently increasing, two million additional expellees were counted in the western zones in 1950 (7.9 million, 16.3% of the population), and in the Soviet zone the number rose to 4.2 million in 1948 (24.2% of the population) and 4.4 million in 1950. Thus, a total of 12.3 million Heimatvertriebene amounted for 18% of the population in the two German states created from the Allied occupation zones (Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic) in 1950. Because of their influx, the population of the post-war German territory had risen by 9.3 million (16%) from 1939-1950 despite the wartime losses.

Once they arrived, they found themselves in a country devastated by a self-instigated war, with housing shortage lasting until the 1960s, which along with other shortages led to social conflicts with the local population. The situation eased only in West Germany when in the course of the economic boom in the 1950s unemployment rates approached zero.

After the war, the area west of the new eastern border of Germany was crowded with expellees, some of them living in camps, some looking for relatives, some just stranded. Of the total population, between 16.5% and 19.3% were expellees in the western occupation zones, and 24.2% in the Soviet occupation zone. In Schleswig-Holstein, expellees made up 45% of the population, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, expellees made up 40%; similar percentages were reached along the eastern border all the way to Bavaria, while in the westernmost German regions the numbers were significantly lower, especially in the French zone of occupation.

France wasn't invited to the Potsdam Conference. So it took its liberties to approve some decisions of the Potsdam Agreements and to dismiss others. As to the question of the expellees France maintained the position, that it didn't approve the expulsions therefore it was not responsible to accommodate and nourish the destitute expellees in its zone of occupation. While the few refugees, who had reached the area to become the French zone before July 1945, were taken care of, the French military government for Germany succeeded to keep off expellees deported from the East to come into the French zone.

Britain and the US protested at the French military government, but they weren’t given any handle to force France to bear the consequences of the expulsion policy approved by them in Potsdam. France persevered its argument to clearly differentiate between war-related refugees and post-war expellees. In December 1946 it absorbed in its zone German refugees from Denmark, where 250,000 Germans had found a refuge before the Soviets by sea vessels between February and May 1945. But these clearly were refugees from the eastern parts of Germany, no expellees. Danes of German ethnicity remained untouched and Denmark didn’t expel them. With this French humanitarian act, many were rescued, because German refugees had bad times in Denmark with a high death toll.

Until the summer of 1945, the allies had not yet decided on how to deal with the expellees. France suggested an emigration to South America and Australia and the settlement of "productive elements" in France, while the Soviet SMAD suggested a resettlement of millions of expellees in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The Soviets, who encouraged and partly carried out the expulsions, only co-operated little with the Americans and Britons, who had to absorb the expellees in their zones of occupation. In contradiction to the Potsdam Agreements the Soviets neglected their obligation to provide supplies needed for the expellees deprived of any considerable means. It was agreed in Potsdam, that 15% of all equipment, especially from metallurgical, chemical and machine manufacturing industries, dismantled in Western zones, would be transferred to the Soviets in return for food, coal, potash (a basic material for fertilisers), timber, clay products, petroleum products etc.

When the Western deliveries started in 1946, they turned out to be a one-way road. The Soviet deliveries in return, so desperately needed to feed, warm and to endow the robbed expellees with basic housewares as well as to increase the agricultural production on the remaining cultivation area, didn’t materialise. So the US stopped all deliveries on May 3, 1946, while the expellees from the areas under Soviet rule were deported in unabated numbers to the West until the end of 1947.

In the British and US zone the supply situation noticeably worsened. Especially in the British zone, which due to its location on the Baltic already harboured a great number of refugees, who had come over sea, the anyway modest rations had to be further shortened by a third in March 1946. In Hamburg e.g., the average living space per capita, which had dropped 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 the trade unions organised a strike in Hamburg against too short rations, where protesters were also complaining about a too deliberate absorption of expellees.

The US and Britain had to import food into their zones, with Britain itself dependent on food imports and Britain’s finances exhausted after having fought Nazi Germany for the entire war, partly as the single opponent, with France defeated, the US standing by, and the Soviet Union invading Eastern Poland, the Baltic states and Finland as agreed with Nazi Germany in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

So Britain had to run deeper into debts with the US, the US had to spend more for the survival of its zone, while the Soviets gained applause among many Eastern Europeans, who plundered – many of them as impoverished by German occupants and war actions as they were – the belongings of refugees and expellees, often even before they were actually expelled. Since the Soviet Union was the only power among the Allies, which allowed and encouraged the looting, murder and robbery in the area under its military influence, the perpetrators and profiteers blundered into a situation that they became dependent on a perpetuation of the Soviet rule in their countries in order not to be dispossessed again of their booty and to stay unpunished.

With ever more expellees sweeping into post-war Germany, the allies' aim changed toward a policy of assimilation, which was believed to be the best way of stabilizing both Germany and the peace in Europe by not creating another minority problem. This policy also gave way to the assignment of German citizenship to the expellees like the Volksdeutsche, who had been by citizenships Poles, Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Romanians etc.

When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, a law was drafted on 24 August 1952 primarily thought to easie the financial situation of the expellees. The law, termed "Lastenausgleichsgesetz", granted partial compensation and easy credit to the expellees, after the loss of their civilian property had been estimated 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 organizations were set up to integrate the expellees into the post-war German society.

While the Stalinist regime in the Soviet occupation zone did not allow the expellees to organize and with most expellees assimilating into their host communities in the course of the next decades, in the western zones some expellees over time established a variety of organizations. The most prominent and still active one is the Federation of expellees.

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 motivations behind 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 agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner". The major motivations revealed are:

• 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 post-war Germany were seen as a potentially troublesome "fifth column", that would, furthermore, because of its social structure interfere, with the envisioned Sovietization 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.

• Another motivation was to punish the Germans, who were found by some to be collectively guilty of the Nazi war crimes.

A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states

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 their respective own nation state gave rise to a series of expulsions and resettlements of Germans, Poles, Ukranians and others who after the war found themselves outside their supposed home states.

As early as on September 9, 1944, Khrushchev and Osobka-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 territory then dubbed "Recovered Territories". Czech Eduard Benes in his decree of May 19, 1945, termed Magyars and Germans "unreliable for the state" and made way to confiscations and expulsions.

View of a German minority as potentially troublesome

Distrust of and enmity

One of the reasons given by Stalin for the population transfer of Germans from the former eastern territories of Germany was the claim that these areas were a stronghold of the Nazi movement. However neither Stalin nor the other influential advocates of this argument didn't require that expellees would be checked for their political attitudes, let alone for 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 normally were not spared from expulsion. Polish Communist propaganda used and manipulated the hate 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 the wartime Nazi activities. Created on order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, a Nazi ethnic German organization called Selbstschutz carried out executions during "Intelligenzaktion" alongside operational groups of German military and police, in addition to such activities as identifying Poles for execution and illegally detaining them. To Poles, expulsion of Germans was seen as an effort to avoid such events in the future and as a result, Polish exile authorities proposed a population transfer of Germans as early as 1941.

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". From this point of view, the policy achieved its goals: the 1945 borders are stable and ethnic conflicts are relatively marginal.

Punishment of ethnic Germans for Nazi aggression

The expulsions were also driven by a desire for revenge, given the brutal way Germans treated non-German civilians in the Nazi occupied territories during the war. Thus, the expulsions were motivated by the animus engendered by the war crimes, atrocities, brutalities and uncivilized rule of the German conquerors. Czechoslovakian President Eduard Benes, 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; he blamed all Germans as responsible for the Nazi actions during a ceremony in remembrance of the Lidice massacre. In Poland and Czechoslovakia, newspapers, leaflets and politicians across the political spectrum, which narrowed during the post-war Communist take-over, asked for revenge for wartime sorrow. Responsibility of the German population for Nazi crimes was also asserted by commanders of the late and post-war Polish military. Karol Świerczewski, commander of the 2nd 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, who had suffered the loss of three million Polish Jews and another three million Poles, including her elite, and deportation of tens of thousands due to the Nazi lebensraum concept, all Germans were seen by most Poles as Nazi-perpetrators who could now finally be collectively punished for their past deeds.

The Allies' Nuremburg Trials did not hold the German people collectively responsible for the atrocities of the Nazis, but the Trials indicted and found guilty numerous top Nazis for crimes against humanity and a variety of war crimes.

Legality of the expulsions

The view of international law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Prior to World War II, a number of major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as the League of Nations.

The tide started to turn when the charter of the Nuremberg Trials of German Nazi leaders declared forced deportation of civilian populations to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity, and this opinion was progressively adopted and extended through the remainder of the century. Underlying the change was the trend to assign rights to individuals, thereby limiting the rights of nation-states to impose fiats which adversely affected them.

There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law. . No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-way transfers, since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.

Thus, although the signatories to the Potsdam Agreements and the expelling countries may have considered the expulsions to be legal under international law at the time, there are historians and scholars in international law and human rights who argue that the expulsions of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe should now be considered as episodes of ethnic cleansing, and thus a violation of human rights. For example, Timothy V. Waters argues in "On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing" that if similar circumstances arise in the future, the precedent of the expulsions of the Germans without legal redress would also allow the future ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law.

There are some historians, such as Alfred de Zayas, who argue that the expulsions were war crimes and crimes against humanity even in the context of international law of the time. De Zayas writes:

"...the only applicable principles were the Hague Conventions, in particular, the Hague Regulations, ARTICLES 42-56, which limited the rights of occupying powers – and obviously occupying powers have no rights to expel the populations – so there was the clear violation of the Hague Regulations"

"And, obviously, if you want to apply the Nuremberg Principles to the German Expulsions, considering that the London Agreement was supposed to reflect, and not to create international law, so if that was applicable to the German crimes against the Poles with regard to deportation of Poles, and deportation of French for purposes of "Lebensraum," certainly it was applicable to the expulsions by the Poles of Germans and by the Czechs of Germans. So, if you apply these Nuremberg principles and the Nuremberg judgement, you would have to arrive at the conclusion that the Expulsion of the Germans clearly constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity."

De Zayas argues this point in greater detail in his seminal articles "International Law and Mass Population Transfers" and "The Right to One's Homeland, Ethnic Cleansing and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia"..

Legacy of the expulsions

In the immediate post-war era, there was relatively little public criticism in the west about the expulsions. This was in part due to the Potsdam Agreement on population transfers, and the slowly realized ramifications of the later Nuremberg Trials which condemned ethnic cleansing. Memories of Nazi atrocities were still a very raw wound, especially in Slavic Europe and for the Jews. There was some discussion of the expulsions in the first decade and a half after World War II, and the subject matter was not taught in high schools or universities. In the 1970s and 1980s a Harvard-trained lawyer and historian, Alfred de Zayas published "Nemesis at Potsdam" (Routledge, with a preface by Eisenhower advisor Robert Murphy) and "A Terrible Revenge" (Macmillan), both of which became bestsellers in Germany in their respective editions with C.H.Beck, Munich and Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, two highly respected publishers. Further serious research was undertaken by Stanford Professor Norman Naimark, who published with Harvard University Press "The Russians in Germany" (1995) and "Fires of Hatred" (2001). In November 2000 a major conference on ethnic cleansing in the 20th century was held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, which placed the German experience in the context of other expulsions and genocides. Professor Steven Vardy of Duquesne and Professor Hunt Tooley of Texas edited the volume "Ethnic Cleansing in 20th-Century Europe", published in 2003.

The fall of the Soviet Union, the spirit of glasnost and the unification of Germany opened the door to a renewed examination of these events. In the early 1990s, the Cold War ended and the occupying powers withdrew from Germany. The issue of the treatment of Germans after World War II began to be re-examined, having previously been overshadowed by Nazi Germany's war crimes. The primary motivation for this change was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which allowed for a discussion of issues that had previously been marginalized, such as the allegations of crimes committed by the Soviet Army during the World War II and the expulsion of Germans from Eastern and Central Europe.

A Centre against Expulsions is 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 idea to create a Center has been criticised, especially in Poland. Polish politicians and media have long lampooned a new trend in Germany which, according to the Polish view, seeks to paint Germans as victims of WW II. Polish side is arguing that there is no moral equivalent to how Jews, Poles and many others suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

See also

• A Terrible Revenge
• Bakker-Schut Plan
• Federation of Expellees
• German exodus from Eastern Europe
• Treaty of Zgorzelec
• Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
• Organised persecution of ethnic Germans
• Operation Paperclip
• Population transfer in the Soviet Union
• Expulsion of Poles by Germany
• Ethnic cleansing
• Population transfer
• Victor Gollancz
• World War II-era population transfers

References

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2. ^ Arie Marcelo Kacowicz, Pawel Lutomski, Population resettlement in international conflicts: a comparative study, Lexington Books, 2007, p.100, ISBN 073911607: "...largest movement of any European people in modern history"
3. ^ Peter H. Schuck, Rainer Münz, Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany, Berghahn Books, 1997, p.156, ISBN 1571810927
4. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.4
5. Bernard Wasserstein, Barbarism and civilization: a history of Europe in our time, Oxford University Press, 2007, p.419: "largest population movement between European countries in the twentieth century and one of the largest of all time." ISBN 0198730748
6. "Text of Churchill Speech in Commons on Soviet=Polish Frontier". The United Press. December 15, 1944. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
7. ^ Detlef Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938-1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum "Transfer" der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2005, pp.398ff, ISBN 3486567314
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19. Werner Buchholz, Pommern, Siedler, 1999, p.516, ISBN 3886802728: reference confirming this for Pomerania
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21. Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.31, ISBN 3833441151, citing Martin Holz: Evakuierte, Flüchtlinge, Vertriebene, pp.86,87
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23. ^ Manfred Ertel. "A Legacy of Dead German Children", Spiegel Online, May 16, 2005
24. ^ Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch, Holm Sundhaussen, Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung, p.84
25. Andreas Kunz, Wehrmacht und Niederlage: Die bewaffnete Macht in der Endphase der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft 1944 bis 1945, 2nd edition, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2007, p.93, ISBN 3486583883: 3.5 million refugees in the East on 28 January 1945, 8.35 refugees in the East on 6 March 1945. Numbers based on contemporary documents of administration and Nazi party offices.
26. Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch, Holm Sundhaussen, Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung, p.85
27. ^ Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.27, ISBN 3833441151
28. Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, pp.34,35, ISBN 3833441151
29. ^ Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.42, ISBN 3833441151
30. Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.38, ISBN 3833441151
31. Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.52, ISBN 3833441151: 6,540 between May and September 1945
32. ^ Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.53, ISBN 3833441151, pointing also to the work of Kirsten Lylloff on p.54
33. Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.54, ISBN 3833441151
34. Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.52, ISBN 3833441151
35. Erwin Ay, Rettende Ufer: Von Ostpreußen nach Dänemark, BoD – Books on Demand, 2005, p.61, ISBN 3833441151
36. ^ US Department of State, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Bureau of Public Affairs, Bureau of Public Affairs: Office of the Historian, Timeline of U.S. Diplomatic History, 1937-1945, The Potsdam Conference, 1945
37. *Agreements of the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference
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64. ^ Template:Nl the documentary Black Tulip.
65. Julius Streicher published The Horror in the East in Der Stürmer, #8/1945
66. R. J. Rummel, Irving Louis Horowitz (1997). Death by Government. Transaction Publishers. p. 302. I would rather be frank with you, Mr. President. Nothing on earth will stop the Poles from taking some kind of revenge on the Germans after the Nazi collapse. There will be some terrorism, probably short-lived, but it will be unavoidable. And I think this will be a sort of encouragement for all the Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong.
67. Philipp Ther, Deutsche Und Polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in SBZ/ddr und in Polen 1945-1956, 1998, p.56, ISBN 3525357907, 9783525357903: From June until mid July, Polish military and militia expelled nearly all people from the districts immediately east of the rivers
68. The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.27
69. Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen, Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present, 2005, p.197, ISBN 1576077969, 9781576077962
70. Naimark, Russian in Germany. p. 75 reference 31:" a citation from the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party, May 20-21, 1945."
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72. Philipp Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945-1956, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998, p.306, ISBN 3525357907
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76. Jankowiak, p. 35
77. Overy, ibid.
78. The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.
79. ^ Conseil de l'Europe Assemblée parlementaire Session Strasbourg, Council of the European Union in Straßburg, Documents, Document 7172: Report on the situation of the German ethnic minority in the former Soviet Union, Council of Europe, 1995, p.7, ISBN 9287127255
80. ^ Conseil de l'Europe Assemblée parlementaire Session Strasbourg, Council of the European Union in Straßburg, Documents, Document 7172: Report on the situation of the German ethnic minority in the former Soviet Union, Council of Europe, 1995, p.8, ISBN 9287127255
81. Isabel Heinemann, "Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut": das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas, 2nd edition, Wallstein Verlag, 2003, p.469, ISBN 3892446237: Heinemann says 250,000 is the number given by primary sources, but also cites and dismisses as too high the 320,000 estimate given by Ingeborg Fleischmann, Die Deutschen, pp.284-286
82. Isabel Heinemann, "Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut": das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas, 2nd edition, Wallstein Verlag, 2003, pp.469,470, ISBN 3892446237
83. Isabel Heinemann, "Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut": das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas, 2nd edition, Wallstein Verlag, 2003, p.470, ISBN 3892446237
84. ^ Conseil de l'Europe Assemblée parlementaire Session Strasbourg, Council of the European Union in Straßburg, Documents, Document 7172: Report on the situation of the German ethnic minority in the former Soviet Union, Council of Europe, 1995, p.10, ISBN 9287127255
85. Piotr Eberhardt, Jan Owsinski, Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth-century Central-Eastern Europe: History, Data, Analysis, M.E. Sharpe, 2003, p.456, ISBN 0765606658
86. Andreas Kossert, Damals in Ostpreussen, p. 179-183, München 2008 ISBN 978-3-421-04366-5
87. Piotr Eberhardt, Jan Owsinski, Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth-century Central-Eastern Europe: History, Data, Analysis, M.E. Sharpe, 2003, p.457, ISBN 0765606658
88. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. pp.5354
89. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.54
90. Aleksander Ravlic, ed. An International Symposium - SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE 1918-1995. Croatian Heritage Foundation & Croatian Information Centre. ISBN 953-6525-05-4. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
91. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.55
92. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.56
93. The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.57
94. ^ Manfred Görtemaker, Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Von der Gründung bis zur Gegenwart, C.H.Beck, 1999, p.169, ISBN 3406445543
95. ^ Michael Levitin, Germany provokes anger over museum to refugees who fled Poland during WWII, Telegraph.co.uk, 26 Feb 2009,
96. "Tyskerunger" tvingades bli sexslavar by Anna-Maria Hagerfors, Dagens Nyheter, 2004-07-10.
97. Krigsbarn
98. Ville sende alle «tyskerunger» ut av landet
99. Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen, Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present, 2005, p.199, ISBN 1576077969, 9781576077962
100. Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen, Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present, 2005, p.199, ISBN 1576077969, 9781576077962
101. ^ Axel Schildt, Deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert: ein Lexikon, C.H.Beck, 2005, p.159, ISBN 3406511376
102. ^ Wacław Długoborski, Zweiter Weltkrieg und sozialer Wandel: Achsenmächte und besetzte Länder, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981, pp.119,120, ISBN 3525357052
103. Philipp Ther in Dierk Hoffmann, Michael Schwartz, Geglückte Integration?: Spezifika und Vergleichbarkeiten der Vertriebenen-Eingliederung in der SBZ/DDR, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1999, pp.140,141, ISBN 348664503
104. Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen, Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present, 2005, p.200, ISBN 1576077969, 9781576077962
105. Manfred Görtemaker, Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Von der Gründung bis zur Gegenwart, C.H.Beck, 1999, p.170, ISBN 3406445543
106. ^ Philipp Ther, Deutsche Und Polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in SBZ/ddr und in Polen 1945-1956, 1998, p.13, ISBN 3525357907, 9783525357903
107. Cf. the report of the Central Archive of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate on the first expellees arriving in that state in 1950 to be resettled from other German states.
108. Cf. the report of the Central Archive of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate on the absorption of German refugees, who first found refuge in Denmark.
109. "Children were starved in war aftermath". New historical research opens a black chapter in the history of Danish conduct during World War II. The Copenhagen Post. 2005-04-15. Retrieved 2008-06-22.
110. ^ Philipp Ther, Deutsche Und Polnische Vertriebene, p.137
111. Cf. section III. Reparations from Germany, paragraph 4 Agreements of the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference
112. Lehmann, Hans Georg, Chronik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945/49 bis 1981, München: Beck, 1981, (Beck'sche Schwarze Reihe; Bd. 235), ISBN 3-406-06035-8, pp. 32seq.
113. Bake, Rita, »Hier spricht Hamburg«. Hamburg in der Nachkriegszeit: Rundfunkreportagen, Nachrichtensendungen, Hörspiele und Meldungen des Nordwestdeutschen Rundfunks (NWDR) 1945-1949, Hamburg: Behörde für Bildung und Sport / Amt für Bildung / Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2007, ISBN 978-3-929728-46-0, p. 57
114. Bake, Rita, »Hier spricht Hamburg«. Hamburg in der Nachkriegszeit: Rundfunkreportagen, Nachrichtensendungen, Hörspiele und Meldungen des Nordwestdeutschen Rundfunks (NWDR) 1945-1949, Hamburg: Behörde für Bildung und Sport / Amt für Bildung / Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2007, ISBN 978-3-929728-46-0, p. 7
115. Manfred Görtemaker, Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Von der Gründung bis zur Gegenwart, C.H.Beck, 1999, p.171, ISBN 3406445543
116. Dierk Hoffmann, Michael Schwartz, Geglückte Integration?: Spezifika und Vergleichbarkeiten der Vertriebenen-eingliederung in der SBZ/ddr, 1999, p.156, ISBN 348664503X, 9783486645033
117. Alfred M. De Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, page 2,
118. Renata Fritsch-Bournazel, Europe and German Unification: Germans on the East-West Divide, 1992, p.77, ISBN 0854966846, 9780854966844: The Soviet Union and the new Communist governments of the countries where these Germans had lived tried between 1945 and 1947 to eliminate the problem of minority populations that in the past had formed an obstacle to the development of their own national identity
119. ^ Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch, Holm Sundhaussen, Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung, p.91
120. ^ Philipp Ther, Ana Siljak, Redrawing Nations, p.155
121. ^ Arie Marcelo Kacowicz, Pawel Lutomski, Population resettlement in international conflicts: a comparative study, Lexington Books, 2007, p.102, ISBN 073911607
122. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.6
123. Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945, p.259, 1993, ISBN 0807820660, 9780807820667,
124. Alfred M. De Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, page 2,
125. Alfred M. De Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, page 2,
126. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.5
127. Alfred M. De Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, page 2,
128. ^ Zybura, p. 202
129. ^ Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch, Holm Sundhaussen, Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung, p.92
130. Karl Cordell, Andrzej Antoszewski, Poland and the European Union, 2000, p.166, ISBN 0415238854, 9780415238854 ´ (Situation in Poland) "Almost all Germans were held personally responsible for the policies of the Nazi party"
131. ^ Arie Marcelo Kacowicz, Pawel Lutomski, Population resettlement in international conflicts: a comparative study, Lexington Books, 2007, pp.101,102, ISBN 073911607
132. Renata Fritsch-Bournazel, Europe and German Unification: Germans on the East-West Divide, 1992, p.77, ISBN 0854966846, 9780854966844: The Soviet Union and the new Communist governments of the countries where these Germans had lived tried between 1945 and 1947 to eliminate the problem of minority populations that in the past had formed an obstacle to the development of their own national identity
133. Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch, Holm Sundhaussen, Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung, p.87
134. Bogdan Musiał: "Niechaj Niemcy się przesuną". Stalin, Niemcy i przesunięcie granic Polski na Zachód Arcana nr 79 (1/2008)
135. Tragic was the fate of Czechoslovaks of German Ethnicity and Jewish religion. They were clearly victims of the Nazi occupation but nevertheless qualified to be denaturalised, if they had declared their native language to be German in the census of 1930. In 1945 Czechoslovakian nationalists and communists regarded this entry in the forms as act of disloyalty against the republic. Cf. Assor, Reuven, '«Deutsche Juden» in der Tschechoslowakei 1945-1948', In: Odsun: Die Vertreibung der Sudetendeutschen; Dokumentation zu Ursachen, Planung und Realisierung einer 'ethnischen Säuberung' in der Mitte Europas, 1848/49 - 1945/46, Alois Harasko and Roland Hoffmann (eds.), Munich: Sudetendeutsches Archiv, 2000, pp. 299seqq.
136. Wojciech Roszkowski: "Historia Polski 1914-1997" Warsaw 1998 PWNW page 171
137. ^ "Polacy - wysiedleni, wypędzeni i wyrugowani przez III Rzeszę", Maria Wardzyńska, Warsaw 2004".
138. "Text of Churchill Speech in Commons on Soviet=Polish Frontier". The United Press. 1944-12-15. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
139. ^ Detlef Brandes in Ulf Brunnbauer, Michael G. Esch, Holm Sundhaussen, Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung: "ethnische Säuberungen" im östlichen Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts, LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, 2006, p.93, ISBN 3825880338, , Quote from source (German original): "'Jetzt werden die Deutschen erfahren, was das Prinzip der kollektiven Verantwortung bedeutet', hatte das Organ der polnischen Geheimarmee im Juli 1944 geschrieben. Und der Befehlshaber der 2. Polnischen Armee wies seine Soldaten am 24. Juni 1945 an, mit den Deutschen 'so umzugehen, wie diese es mit uns getan haben', so daß 'die Deutschen von selbst fliehen und Gott danken, daß sie ihren Kopf gerettet haben'. Politiker jeglicher Coleur, Flugblätter und Zeitungen beider Staaten riefen nach Vergeltung für die brutale deutsche Besatzungspolitik.", English translation: "'Now the Germans will get to know the meaning of the principle of collective responsibility', the outlet of the Polish secret army wrote in July, 1944. And the commander of the 2nd Polish Army instructed his soldiers on 24 June 1945, to 'treat' the Germans 'how they had treated us', causing 'the Germans to flee on their own and thank God for having saved their lifes'. Policians of all political wings, leaflets and newspapers of both states called for revenge for the brutal occupation policy."
140. ^ Timothy Snyder, Journal of Cold War Studies, Volume 5 Issue 3, Forum on Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 edited by Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak, Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, Quote: "By 1943, for example, Polish and Czech politicians across the political spectrum were convinced of the desirability of the postwar expulsion of Germans. After 1945 a democratic Czechoslovak government and a Communist Polish government pursued broadly similar policies toward their German minorities. (...) Taken together, and in comparison to the chapters on the Polish expulsion of the Germans, these essays remind us of the importance of politics in the decision to engage in ethnic cleansing. It will not do, for example, to explain the similar Polish and Czechoslovak policies by similar experiences of occupation. The occupation of Poland was incomparably harsher, yet the Czechoslovak policy was (if anything) more vengeful. (...) Revenge is a broad and complex set of motivations and is subject to manipulation and appropriation. The personal forms of revenge taken against people identified as Germans or collaborators were justified by broad legal definitions of these groups..."
141. Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Spring 2001, p116
142. Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law. Retrieved on 2006, 12-13
143. http://www.meaus.com/expulsion-by-czechs-1945.htm THE EXPULSION: A crime against humanity, By Dr. Alfred de Zayas A transcript of part of a lecture on the Expulsion given in Pittsburgh in 1988.
144. Alfred de Zayas, International Law and Mass Population Transfers, Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 16, pp. 207-258
145. Alfred de Zayas, The Right to One's Homeland, Ethnic Cleansing and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Criminal Law Forum 1995, pp. 257-314
146. Steven Vardy, Hunt Tooley, Ethnic Cleansing in 20th-Century Europe, Columbia University Press 2003, ISBN 0-88033-995-0
147. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/4841432/Germany-provokes-anger-over-museum-to-refugees-who-fled-Poland-during-WWII.html
148. http://www.polskieradio.pl/thenews/foreignaffairs/artykul104484_chancellor_merkel_criticizes_polish_media.html

Sources

• Baziur, Grzegorz. Armia Czerwona na Pomorzu Gdańskim 1945-1947 , Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2003. ISBN 83-89078-19-8
• Beneš, Z., D. Jančík et al. Facing History: The Evolution of Czech and German Relations in the Czech Provinces, 1848-1948, Prague: Gallery. ISBN 80-86010-60-0
• German statistics (Statistical and graphical data illustrating German population movements in the aftermath of the Second World War published in 1966 by the West German Ministry of Refugees and Displaced Persons)
• Grau, Karl F. Silesian Inferno, War Crimes of the Red Army on its March into Silesia in 1945 , Valley Forge, PA: The Landpost Press, 1992. ISBN 1-880881-09-8
• Jankowiak, Stanisław. Wysiedlenie i emigracja ludności niemieckiej w polityce władz polskich w latach 1945-1970 , Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2005. ISBN 83-89078-80-5
• Naimark, Norman M. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949, Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7
• Podlasek, Maria. Wypędzenie Niemców z terenów na wschód od Odry i Nysy Łużyckiej, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Polsko-Niemieckie, 1995. ISBN 8386653000
• Prauser, Steffen and Arfon Rees (eds.). The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, (EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2004/1) Florense: European University Institute.
• Reichling, Gerhard. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, 1986. ISBN 3-88557-046-7
• Report on Agricultural and Food Requirements of Germany, 1947. (Provides statistics about population transfer)
• Zybura, Marek. Niemcy w Polsce , Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2004. ISBN 83-7384-171-7

Further reading

• Artico, Davide. Terre Riconquistate: Degermanizzazione e polonizzazione della Bassa Slesia dopo la II Guerra Mondiale, Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2006. ISBN 88-7694-886-4
• Bacque, James. Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation 1944-1950, London: 1997. ISBN 0-316-64070-0
• Balfour, Michael and John Mair. Four-Power Control in Germany and Austria 1945-1946, Oxford University Press, 1956.
• Barnouw, Dagmar. The War in the Empty Air. Indiana University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-253-34651-7.
• Baziur, Grzegorz. Armia Czerwona na Pomorzu Gdańskim 1945-1947 Warszawa: IPN, 2003. ISBN 83-89078-19-8
• Botting, Douglas The Aftermath: Europe, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1983. ISBN 0-8094-3411-3
• Byrnes, James F.Speaking Frankly, New York & London: 1947.
• Davies, Norman. God's Playground, 2 vols., New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1982. ISBN 0-231-05353-3 and ISBN 0-231-05351-7.
• de Zayas, Alfred M. A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950, 1994. ISBN 0-312-12159-8; rev. ed. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006. ISBN 13: 978-1-4039-7308-5, ISBN-10: 1-4039-7308-3
• de Zayas, Alfred M. Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans & the Expulsion of the Germans, London: Routledge, 1977; rev. ed. University of Nebraska Press, 1989. ISBN 0-897-25360-4.
• Gibbs, Philip. Thine Enemy, London: 1946.
• Giertych, Jedrzej. Poland and Germany: a reply to congressman B. Carrol Reece of Tennessee, London: Jedrzej Giertych, 1958. Eur**E*917**(128126711T)
• Gollancz, Victor In Darkest Germany, London: 1947.
• Jankowiak, Stanisław Wysiedlenie i emigracja ludności niemieckiej w polityce władz polskich w latach 1945-1970, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa, 2005. ISBN 83-89078-80-5
• Gruesome Harvest by Ralph Franklin Keeling, Institute of American Economics, 1947. ISBN 1-59364-008-0 (2004 reprint)
• Keesing's Research Report, Germany and Eastern Europe since 1945, New York: 1973.
• Lieberman, Benjamin. Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe, 2006. ISBN-10: 1566636469; ISBN-13: 978-1566636469.
• Łossowski, Piotr and Bronius Makauskas. Kraje bałtyckie w latach przełomu 1934-1944, Warszawa: Instytut Historii PAN; Fundacja Pogranicze, 2005. ISBN 8388909428
• Naimark, Norman. Flammender Hass: Ethnische Säuberungen im 20. Jahrhundert, (2004).
• Neary, Brigitte U. and Holle Schneider-Ricks. Voices of Loss and Courage: German Women Recount Their Expulsion from East Central Europe, 1944-1950, Rockport: Picton Press, 2002. ISBN 0-89725-435-X
• Neary, Brigitte U. Frauen und Vertreibung: Zeitzueginnen berichten." Graz, Austria: Ares Verlag, 2008. ISBN 978-3-902475-58-9.
• Nitschke, Bernardetta Wysiedlenie ludności niemieckiej z Polski w latach 1945-1949, Zielona Góra, 1999.
• Nuscheler, F. Internationale Migration: Flucht u. Asyl, 2004.
• Owen, Luisa Lang and Charles M. Barber. Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered (Eastern European Studies, 18), Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1-58544-212-7
• Schieder, Theodor (ed.). Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern & Central Europe, Bonn: Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, & War Victims, (Dates may indicate year of English translations rather than original publication):
  • vol.1: The Expulsion of the German Population from the Territories East of the Oder-Neisse Line (1959).
  • vol.2/3: The Expulsion of the German Population from Hungary and Rumania (1961).
  • vol. 4: The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia (1960).
• Surminski, A. (ed.). Flucht und Vertreibung: Europa zwischen 1939 u. 1948, 2004.
• Truman, Harry S. Memoirs - 1945: Year of Decisions, Time Inc.: 1955; reprint New York: 1995. ISBN 0-8317-1578-2
• Truman, Harry S. Memoirs - 1946-52: Years of Trial & Hope, Time Inc.: 1955; reprint New York: 1996. ISBN 0-8317-7319-7
• Vardy, Steven Bela and T. Hunt Tooley (eds.). Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe, ISBN 0-88033-995-0 (This volume is the result of the conference on Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe held at Duquesne University in November 2000.)
• von Krockow, Christian. Hour of the Women, Stuttgart: 1988; New York: 1991; London: 1992. ISBN 0-571-14320-2
• Whiting, Charles. The Home Front: Germany, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1982. ISBN 0-8094-3419-9.

External links

• Children who lost their parents in the expulsions from historical Eastern Germany, seek their parents. Video testimony.
• Ethnic cleansing in post World War II Czechoslovakia: the presidential decrees of Edward Benes, 1945-1948 Available as MS Word for Windows file.
• Várdy, Steven Béla and Tooly, T. Hunt: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe Available as MS Word for Windows file (3.4 MB)
• Refugees camp 1950 Image
• Refugees Image
• Statistics Of Poland's Democide Democide Addenda By R.J. Rummel
• THE EXPULSION: A crime against humanity, By Dr. Alfred de Zayas A transcript of part of a lecture on the Expulsion given in Pittsburgh in 1988.
• Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law (PDF)
• Interest of the United States in the transfer of German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, and Austria, Foreign relations of the United States: diplomatic papers, Volume II (1945) pp. 1227-1327 (Main URL)
• Frontiers and areas of administration Foreign relations of the United States (the Potsdam Conference), Volume I (1945)

• Deportation
• Forced migration
• Democides
• Human migrations
• 20th century in Germany
• Aftermath of World War II
• German diaspora
• Germany–Poland relations
• Ethnic cleansing