 | Expulsion of Germans after World War II: Encyclopedia II - Expulsion of Germans after World War II - The results
Expulsion of Germans after World War II - The results
Up to 12.4 million Germans of the postwar population were forced to leave. The estimates of people that lost their lives differ. According to Federal Statistics Bureau of Germany in 1958 more than 2.1 million had lost their lives during this process, however the Bureau estimated the number of Germans who before 1945 had lived east of the Oder and Neiße and deducted the number of those who after the war were living in the German Federal Republic, Austria or the German Democratic Republic, taking the difference as dead. However only one tenth of those presumed dead(200.000) were actively searched by their relatives. New research by German scholar Rüdiger Overmans claims only 1,100,000 people lost their lives.Czech and Polish sources give a much lower estimate (Czech historians arguing that most of estimated population drop is because of soldiers killed at the front). It is worth noting that the only detailed effort to count the casualities was made by ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia, who documented all their victims, resulting in a figure half the estimate of the Federal Statistics Bureau. The deaths were caused by death marches ordered by Nazi officials, banditry, famine and widespread disease that accompanied postwar conditions in that part of Europe as well as appaling conditions in the concentration camps created to hold Germans awaiting expulsion. Probably one of the worst examples of the latter was run by Salomon Morel.
A recent German source gives the following details of the population transfers. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Gerhard Reichling. 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7. Population transfers included 7,122,000 from former eastern Germany, 279,000 from Danzig, 661,000 from Poland , 2,911,000 from Czechoslovakia, 165,000 from the Baltic states, 90,000 from the USSR, 199,000 from Hungary, 228,000 from Rumania and 271,000 from Yugoslavia. The expellee population which in totaled 11,926,000 increased to 12,400,000 in 1950 due to the natural growth in population. In line with nationalisation made towards all citizens in communist countries property in the affected territory that belonged to Germany and Germans was confiscated and redistributed.
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, including the United States, Canada and Australia.
It is worth noting that the expulsion was not always indiscriminate. In Czechoslovakia large numbers of skilled Sudeten German workmen were forced to remain to labour for the Czechs [3].
Other related archives19 January, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1948, 1957, 22 December, 29 December, A Terrible Revenge, Adolf Hitler, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, American, Australia, B. Carroll Reece, Baranya, Belarus, Beneš decrees, Berihah, British, CDU, Canada, Cold War, Curzon line, Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, Czechs, Der Spiegel, East European, East Germany, East Prussia, Ethnic Cleansing, European Union, Evacuation of East Prussia, Federation of Expellees, French, Fulton, Missouri, German exodus from Eastern Europe, German language, Germans, Germans from Slovakia, Germany, Heimatvertriebene, Human migration#Post-World War II Migrations, Hungary, Immanuel Kant, Institute of National Remembrance, Iron Curtain, Israel, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Lev Kopelev, Lithuania, Marek Edelman, May 16, Minorities_in_Poland_after_the_War, Nazi, Nazi children, Oder-Neisse line, Poland, Poles, Potsdam Agreement, Potsdam Conference, Prague, Pursuit of Nazi collaborators, Red Army, Reichsdeutsche, Reichsgau Wartheland, Richard von Weizsacker, Russia, Salomon Morel, Selbstschutz, Slovakia, Somogy, Soviet, Soviet Union, Soviet occupation zone of Germany, Sudetenland, Székelys of Bukovina, Tolna, Transdanubia, United States, Vojvodina region, Volksdeutsche, Václav Havel, Warsaw, Werewolf, West Germany, Western Allies, Winston Churchill, World War II, Yugoslavia, as of 2004, concentration camps, ethnic Germans, exclave, genocide, gulag, holocaust, mass deportation, massacres, nation states, nationalists, post-World War II migrations, powiats, propaganda, the case of Poland, the destruction of pre-war Czechoslovakia
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The results", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
