Katana VentraIP

Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)

During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg (Neumark) and Pomerania (Hinterpommern), which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union.

Date

1944–1950

500,000 – 2.5 million

12–14.6 million

The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories had been proposed by Winston Churchill, in conjunction with the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments in London at least since 1942.[1][2] Tomasz Arciszewski, the Polish prime minister in-exile, supported the annexation of German territory but opposed the idea of expulsion, wanting instead to naturalize the Germans as Polish citizens and to assimilate them.[3] Joseph Stalin, in concert with other Communist leaders, planned to expel all ethnic Germans from east of the Oder and from lands which from May 1945 fell inside the Soviet occupation zones.[4] In 1941, his government had already transported Germans from Crimea to Central Asia.


Between 1944 and 1948, millions of people, including ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) and German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, a total of about 12 million[5] Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. The West German government put the total at 14.6 million,[6] including a million ethnic Germans who had settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II, ethnic German migrants to Germany after 1950, and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from former eastern territories of Germany ceded to the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union (about seven million),[7][8] and from Czechoslovakia (about three million).


The areas affected included the former eastern territories of Germany, which were annexed by Poland,[9][10] as well as the Soviet Union after the war and Germans who were living within the borders of the pre-war Second Polish Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states. The Nazis had made plans—only partially completed before the Nazi defeat—to remove Jews and many Slavic people from Eastern Europe and settle the area with Germans.[11][12] The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000[13][14] up to 2.5 million according to the German government.[15][16][17]


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.[18] 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,[18] which redefined the Central European borders and approved expulsions of ethnic Germans from the former German territories transferred to Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia.[19] Many German civilians were sent to concentration and slave labor camps where they were used as slave labor as part of German “reparations” to countries in Eastern Europe.[20] The major expulsions were completed in 1950.[18] Estimates for the total number of people of German ancestry still living in Central and Eastern Europe in 1950 ranged from 700,000 to 2.7 million.

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%.

[33]

The West German figures are the base used to estimate losses in the expulsions.

[25]

The West German figure for Poland is broken out as 939,000 monolingual German and 432,000 bi-lingual Polish/German.

[34]

The West German figure for Poland includes 60,000 in which was annexed by Poland in 1938. In the 1930 census, this region was included in the Czechoslovak population.[34]

Trans-Olza

A West German analysis of the wartime 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.[35] Martin Broszat cited a document with different Volksliste figures 1,001,000 were identified as Germans and 1,761,000 candidates for Germanisation.[36] The figures for the Deutsche Volksliste exclude ethnic Germans resettled in Poland during the war.

Deutsche Volksliste

The national census figures for Germans include German-speaking Jews. Poland (7,000) Czech territory not including Slovakia (75,000)[38] Hungary 10,000,[39] Yugoslavia (10,000)[40]

[37]

A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states: This is presented by several authors as a key issue that motivated the expulsions.[52][53][54][55][56]

[51]

View of a German minority as potentially troublesome: From the Soviet perspective, shared by the communist administrations installed in , 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.[57] 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.[51] 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.[51][58] The proposals from the Polish and Czech governments-in-exile to expel ethnic Germans after the war received support from Winston Churchill[1] and Anthony Eden.[2]

Soviet-occupied Europe

Another motivation was to punish the Germans:[53][56][59] the Allies declared them collectively guilty of German war crimes.[58][60][61][62]

[51]

Soviet political considerations: Stalin saw the expulsions as a means of creating antagonism between Germany and its Eastern neighbors, who would thus need Soviet protection. The expulsions served several practical purposes as well.

[63]

In 1950 the West German Government made a preliminary estimate of 3.0 million missing people (1.5 million in prewar Germany and 1.5 million in Eastern Europe) whose fate needed to be clarified. These figures were superseded by the publication of the 1958 study by the Statistisches Bundesamt.

[220]

In 1953 the West German government ordered a survey by the Suchdienst (search service) of the German churches to trace the fate of 16.2 million people in the area of the expulsions; the survey was completed in 1964 but kept secret until 1987. The search service was able to confirm 473,013 civilian deaths; there were an additional 1,905,991 cases of persons whose fate could not be determined.

[221]

From 1954 to 1961 the 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.[222]

Schieder commission

The figures of the 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).[223] 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)[224]

Schieder commission

In 1969, the federal West German government ordered a further study to be conducted by the , 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 civilians kept in post-war internment camps. The authors maintained that the figures included only those deaths caused by violent acts and inhumanities (Unmenschlichkeiten) and do not include post-war deaths due to malnutrition and disease. Also not included are those who were raped or suffered mistreatment and did not die immediately. They estimated 600,000 deaths (150,000 during flight and evacuations, 200,000 as forced labour in the USSR and 250,000 in post-war internment camps. By region 400,000 east of the Oder Neisse line, 130,000 in Czechoslovakia and 80,000 in Yugoslavia). No figures were given for Romania and Hungary.[225]

German Federal Archives

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[17]

[226]

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Archived 1 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine

Deutsche Vertriebenen – German Expulsions (Histories & Documentation)