Talk:Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)/Archive 3

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Minor Point

"The Potsdam Agreement called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans between American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones in Germany. In actuality, twice as many expelled Germans found refuge in the occupation zones that later formed "West Germany" than in "East Germany", and large numbers went to other countries of the world, many to the United States."

To me this says that a greater than intended number of displaced Germans settled in the East rather than the West, given that the West was made of of three ocupation zones while the East was just one. This is the opposite of what the second sentance seems to primarily convey. matturn 14:40, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Partial reason could be logistical and economical problems of Soviets in their occupation zone. E.g. during first half of 1946 Soviets stopped transfers from Czechoslovakia there. [1] (page 226). Pavel Vozenilek 22:13, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not questioning whether it's true or not, rather that one sentance (to my reading) is saying one thing, while the next is implying the opposite. matturn 08:34, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I might note here that when Stalin said at Potsdam that the Poles "were taking revenge for the injuries which the Germans had caused them in the course of centuries", Churchill retorted that this revenge "took the form of throwing the Germans into the American and British zones to be fed." (US Dept of State, Foreign Relations of the US, The Conference of Berlin (Potsdam) 1945, vol. II p. 384).Bdell555 23:13, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

"to create ethnically homogenous states

I've removed "and at the same time to create ethnically homogenous nation states that would not give rise to the kind of ethnic tensions that had preceded the war" because it implies that Pomerania, East Prussia, and Silesia were not ethnically homogenous. In fact these areas would have met most persons' definition of ethnically homogeneous. Had pre-war Polish and Soviet boundaries not been moved, it would have been unnecessary to expel Germans who were living within pre-war German boundaries on "ethnically homogenous" grounds. The expellees were expelled because the expellers believed that the borders would be moved. If one is going to provide more reasons for the expulsion than that, then one must examine the reasons for why the borders were going to be moved. But ethnic homogenity was not among those reasons for moving the German borders west of their 1938 boundaries since the population within those borders was predominately German. In short, this was an objective of the post-WWI territorial arrangments, but not post-WWII.Bdell555 22:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

You are right but I think you partially misunderstood this sentence. The Allies would like to create a NEW ethnically homogenous state in Poland west from the old. Ethinc tensions existed in Poland before 1939 and Hitler used them as a pretext for war. And as for Czechoslovakia it was deeply divided between the Czech and German people before 1938 so the Czechs want an ethnically homogenous state as "bonus" of the victory. So I think nobody would think that "Pomerania, East Prussia, and Silesia were not ethnically homogenous". If you fear of this, you should express the whole thing more clearly and not simply delete. Zello 00:05, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Zello: Consider what you are saying here further. Why do you mention the fact that Hitler used the presence of German minorities in other countries as a basis for territorial claims? I suggest you raise that point because it would argue that a possible reason for the 1945 expulsion of Germans was to prevent Germany from having a post-1945 territorial claim against its neighbours. But the argument that supports that reason is circular, which is why I argue that it should be cut out. To phrase this another way, "ethnic violence" is already covered in one of the other points, and to the extent that your point is distinct from that one, reference must be made to the objective of minimizing territorial claims. But the expulsion that this article is about arguably did as much to create a territorial claim (on the part of Germans for former German territory) as it did to minimize territorial claims. To suggest that that the expulsion "solved" a territorial claim is to "beg the question" (that is, presuppose a settled answer to the territorial claim issue). As such, the proferred reason may be rejected on the basis of internal logic as opposed to reference to (debatable) external facts.Bdell555 01:03, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I confess that I don't understand you perfectly. I stated that both the Czech and the Polish state had bad experiences with their German minorities before the war and after the victory they seized the opportunity to create new ethnically homogenous nation states. Nobody would like to see big German minorities behind the new borders, because they feared of renewed tensions. The problem was actually "solved" with the expulsions. I think this deeply unjust but we spoke only about the reasons of the expulsions. And the desire for ethnic homogenity was certainly one of the reasons even if we condemn such thinking. Zello

Zello: I think the simplest way to put it is to note that there were by and large already ethnically homogenous states prior to the majority of the explusions. So how could the expulsions be construed as furthering that objective? If what is implicit here were made explicit (you hint at it again by referencing "bad experiences"), namely that a purpose of the expulsions was to undermine the viability of a post-border revision German territorial claim, then we would have a suggested expulsion reason that at least can be made sense of (albeit a question begging one). As it stands, the article is misleading because it implies that German and Polish residents were completely mixed throughout the areas in which the expulsions occured, such that an expulsion that only expelled Germans outside Germany's pre-war borders would have failed to leave ethnically homogenous states behind. These issues don't need to be addressed if my deletion stands. By the way, if "nobody" wanted Germans were they were, then why was coercion needed to get them out (or, alternatively, who counts as a "body")?Bdell555 04:41, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I understand now. Probably you are right in the case of Poland, but for me it wasn't misleading - I've never thought Silesia or Pomerania mixed territories. But as for the case of Czechoslovakia this was really a mixed country, the borders remained the same and there was an ethnic cleansing to create a homogenous Czech nation-state. I think we should wrote this: "and especially in the case of Czechoslovakia to create an ethnically homogenous nation state that would not give rise to the kind of ethnic tensions that had preceded the war". What's your opinion? Zello 21:51, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

It is a difficult issue because there is pre-Munich Agreement Czechoslovakia and then there is post-Munich Agreement Czechoslovakia. There is also the fact that Slovakia was rejoined to Czechoslovakia; - that part of the country declared independence in March 1939 (whether it was truly independent is another question). Anyway, it is perhaps a minor point... I just wanted to call attention to the fact there are two issues here: the expulsion issue and the border change issue.Bdell555 00:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Such was official stand of Czechoslovakia then. (The term used was Czechoslovak, Czechs and Slovaks were officially considered as two branches of one nation.) Pavel Vozenilek 22:52, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

And btw, prewar Poland was far from being ethnically homogenous (the number I vaguely remember was ~60+% of Poles). Expulsion of Germans, losing territory to Ukraine and Lithuania plus annihilation of Jews resulted to today 97% of Poles. Situation in Czechoslovakia as whole country was quite similar. Pavel Vozenilek 22:58, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

legality of confiscations

I've removed "The legality of that act was based on the state of war between those countries and the German state, whose citizens were affected. In addition, devastations caused by Germany during the war by far exceeded the value of confiscated property."

The existence of a state of war does not in and of itself legalize any action that is associated with that war. If it did, there would be no such thing as war crimes! In fact, looting was specifically enumerated as a war crime at Nuremburg, among other places. I think the observation that there were confiscations is best left uncommented, since trying to either justify the confiscations or condemn them would raise POV issues.Bdell555 23:29, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I put back the intention to create ethnic homogenous state, this was simply true and quite understandable in historical context. I shortened the Churchill's quote as the articles isn't about him. Discussion about legality of confiscations really doesn't belong into article. Pavel Vozenilek 01:23, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

It may not be historically accurate to apply current moral conventions to an historical act, but the expulsions were really ethnic cleansing and not an "orderly transfer"- that is a cynically applied term, since so many otherwise innocent people were murdered in the process. If done today for any other reason, the "expulsions" would invite UN condemnation and probably military action. Your article doesn't mention that the vast majority of people "orderly transferred" were women, children, and the elderly who were forced marched on foot while being preyed upon by Soviet soldiers and marauding partisans (draft age German men were either dead or in Allied POW camps). IMO this article is a sham and should be completely rewritten if not scrapped. I think it has been hijacked by hysterical historical revisionists with a bad case of "victor complex". It sometimes gives people a warm feeling to allow that certain classes of people are removed from the protection of civilized morality. It's basically an acceptable form of racism. So now the self-proclaimed lords of this article can tell themselves and others, 60 years after the fact, that gangraping a young mother while her child watches is sometimes an acceptable crime and an "orderly transfer of populations".

Dear anonymous, you have to remember few things: 1) a lot of Germans escaped of of their own will in the fear of approaching Red Army, 2) A lot of them were evacuated by their own authorities 3) The expulsions were started by Germans themselves in 1939 year, when they extremely brutally were expelling Poles from Greater Poland, Silesia, Pomerania etc. This is just to put the expellings into the context. (BTW, I read recently nice article that after verifying the data of victims of expellings from some Balkan region the number of estimated death was HALVED. I think you may expect similar results for all other regions as well)

If you want to change something, then please, discuss it here. Moreover, for marching on foot it is true mainly for the first phase of expelling, so called "wild expellings" in Polish literature. Then the Polish authorities were trying to provide the Germans with available transport (which doesn't mean much after the devastations of WWII) Szopen 10:34, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Then post your "sources" and do not presume to threaten me with them, because I am not impressed. Trying to create a homogenous ethnic demographic by force is a crime any way you choose to slice it. "Available transport", you are right, does not mean much. The Polish authorities could have done the humane thing and allowed the Germans to remain until the situation improved. They could have *stopped* their citizens and Soviet soldiers from brutalizing the potential expellees. Far fewer people (perhaps even nobody) would have died. It was a crime and this article should reflect this fact.

You will never (with very, very rare exception) meet a German who does not accept that what Nazis did in Poland was a crime!

There is your context. Nobody is relativizing anything. But the act of denying basic human dignity to the victims worsens the impact of the initial crime. It has created the current climate among some Germans who are tired of these evasions and of being continually dehumanized by people in other countries.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=83160&start=30 <- you will see a reference to estimating the number of deaths. Let me quote one fragment:

That this order of magnitude must be too high became apparent at the time already from lists of missing civilians; only about one-tenth – ca. 200,000 people – were being searched by relatives and friends. So far however only the Danube Svabians [ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia, translators’ note] made the effort to individually document all victims – and halved the estimates of the Federal Statistics Bureau for their region.

"There was indeed an estimate made by the German Federal Statistics Bureau in the late 1950's that over two million ethnic Germans had perished during the flight from the Red Army at the end of the war and the postwar expulsions from Germany's former Eastern territories and various countries of Eastern Europe, mainly Poland and Czechoslovakia."

"This estimate, which in the second paragraph is referred to as being well above the mark, has recently been challenged by German historians, for example by Rüdiger Overmans, author of Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Overmans writes the following (my translation):"

"The deaths during flight and expulsion concerned the Germans in the immediate postwar period as much as the fate of the missing soldiers, and similar efforts were made to clarify the fate of the missing civilians or bring families together. A huge scientific project reconstructed the events historiographically, the Federal Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt), the refugees’ associations and the clerical search service did a lot with the financial support of the Federal Government to quantitatively assess the fate of those expelled as accurately as possible. The result can be summarized in the conclusion that about 2 million Germans had been killed during flight and expulsion - not including those from the respective territories who had died during military service."

"These casualty figures, however, which for decades have been an integral part of the respective serious literature, are the result not of a counting of death records or similar concrete data, but of a population balance which concluded that the fate of about 2 million inhabitants of the expulsion territories could not be clarified and that it must therefore be assumed that they had lost their lives in the course of these events. In the last years, however, these statements have been increasingly questioned, as the studies about the sum of reported deaths showed that the number of victims can hardly have been higher than 500,000 persons - which is also an unimaginable number of victims, but nevertheless only a quarter of the previous data. In favor of the hitherto assumed numbers it could always be said, however, that the balance didn’t say that the death of these people had been proven, but only that their fate could not be clarified."

"As also pointed out in the Spiegel article, the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia have been the only ones so far to prepare a detailed documentation of their losses during the war and postwar period, resulting in a figure half the estimate of the Federal Statistics Bureau. According to another article published in the same feature, a total of 48,447 ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia lost their lives to privation, disease and violence between 1944 and 1948."

As for you other question: could POland try to stop her population to "brutalising" the Germans? Well, of course it could and it tried as it could only be expected after six years of brutal occupation (with the exception of Solomon Morel and similar bastards). Could Poland stop Soviet soldiers? You have to be kidding. How exactly? It cannot stop Soviet soldiers for robbing and raping Poles (the amount of this rapes is unknown, and probably will never be known since only in last year or so I found first report about this - officially Soviets were allies and saviours so they COULD NOT of course be raping Polish woman and robbing Poles). COuld POland allow Germans to stay? No, it couldn't. The places were need for few millions of Poles which were expelled by Soviets from the east. The only thing which could avoid the bloodshed and to allow humane conditions for Germans would be to move them to their own country. Of course, some Germans stayed, and the transfer lasted well into 50s and even later there were still Germans who were applying for emmigration into Germany (how many of them were defined as Germans in 1945 is another case).

Besides, really, just thikn about the situation in 1945. During 6 years of occupation almost every ethnic German was treating Poles as bad as he only could. Just read some memories from occupation, how even German children from HJ were behaving. Expectation that Germans could live peacefully amongst the people they were brutalising for years were simply unrealistic, even IF most of ethnic Germans were innocent. It would lead only to bloodshed.Szopen 12:53, 6 October 2005 (UTC)