Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)
During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Reichsdeutsche 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 and Pomerania, which were annexed by the Provisional Government of National Unity of Poland and by the Soviet Union.
The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories had been proposed by Winston Churchill, in conjunction with the Polish and Czechoslovak governments-in-exile in London since at least 1942. 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. 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. In 1941, his government had already transported Germans from Crimea to Central Asia.
Between 1944 and 1948, millions of people, including ethnic Germans and German citizens, were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, about 12 million 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, 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 Polish People's Republic and Soviet Union, and from Czechoslovakia.
The areas affected included the former eastern territories of Germany, which were annexed by Poland, 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 death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000 up to 2.5 million according to the German government.
The removals occurred in three overlapping phases, the first of which was the organized evacuation of ethnic Germans by the Nazi state in the face of the advancing Red Army from mid-1944 to early 1945. The second phase was the disorganised flight of ethnic Germans immediately following the Wehrmacht's surrender. The third phase was a more organised expulsion following the Allied leaders' Potsdam Agreement, which redefined the Central European borders and approved expulsions of ethnic Germans from the former German territories transferred to Poland, Russia, and Czechoslovakia. Many German civilians were sent to internment and labour camps where they were used as forced labour as part of German reparations to countries in Eastern Europe. The major expulsions were completed in 1950. 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.
Background
Before World War II, East-Central Europe generally lacked clearly delineated ethnic settlement areas. There were some ethnic-majority areas, but there were also vast mixed areas and abundant smaller pockets settled by various ethnicities. Within these areas of diversity, including the major cities of Central and Eastern Europe, people in various ethnic groups had interacted every day for centuries, while not always harmoniously, on every civic and economic level.With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the ethnicity of citizens became an issue in territorial claims, the self-perception/identity of states, and claims of ethnic superiority. The German Empire introduced the idea of ethnicity-based settlement in an attempt to ensure its territorial integrity. It was also the first modern European state to propose population transfers as a means of solving "nationality conflicts", intending the removal of Poles and Jews from the projected post–World War I "Polish Border Strip" and its resettlement with Christian ethnic Germans.
Following the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire, and the German Empire at the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles pronounced the formation of several independent states in Central and Eastern Europe, in territories previously controlled by these imperial powers. None of the new states were ethnically homogeneous. After 1919, many ethnic Germans emigrated from the former imperial lands back to the Weimar Republic and the First Austrian Republic after losing their privileged status in those foreign lands, where they had maintained minority communities. In 1919 ethnic Germans became national minorities in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. In the following years, the Nazi ideology encouraged them to demand local autonomy. In Germany during the 1930s, Nazi propaganda claimed that Germans elsewhere were subject to persecution. Nazi supporters throughout eastern Europe formed local Nazi political parties sponsored financially by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, e.g. by the Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. However, by 1939 more than half of Polish Germans lived outside of the formerly German territories of Poland due to improving economic opportunities.
Population movements
| Geographical region | West German estimate for 1958 | National Census data 1930–31 | Reduction |
| Poland | 1,371,000Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50.Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt – Wiesbaden. – Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1958 pp. 45–46 | 741,000 | 630,000 |
| Czechoslovakia | 3,477,000 | 3,232,000 | 245,000 |
| Romania | 786,000 | 745,000 | 41,000 |
| Yugoslavia | 536,800 | 500,000 | 36,800 |
| Hungary | 623,000 | 478,000 | 145,000 |
| Netherlands | 3,691 | 3,691 | 3,500 |
Notes:
- 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%.
- The West German figures are the base used to estimate losses in the expulsions.
- The West German figure for Poland is broken out as 939,000 monolingual German and 432,000 bi-lingual Polish/German.
- The West German figure for Poland includes 60,000 in Trans-Olza which was annexed by Poland in 1938. In the 1930 census, this region was included in the Czechoslovak population.
- A West German analysis of the wartime Deutsche Volksliste by Alfred Bohmann 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. Martin Broszat cited a document with different Volksliste figures 1,001,000 were identified as Germans and 1,761,000 candidates for Germanisation. The figures for the Deutsche Volksliste exclude ethnic Germans resettled in Poland during the war.
- The national census figures for Germans include German-speaking Jews. Poland Czech territory not including Slovakia Hungary 10,000, Yugoslavia
During the Nazi German occupation, many citizens of German descent in Poland registered with the Deutsche Volksliste. Some were given important positions in the hierarchy of the Nazi administration, and some participated in Nazi atrocities, causing resentment towards German speakers in general. These facts were later used by the Allied politicians as one of the justifications for the expulsion of the Germans. The contemporary position of the German government is that, while the Nazi-era war crimes resulted in the expulsion of the Germans, the deaths due to the expulsions were an injustice.
During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, especially after the reprisals for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, most of the Czech resistance groups demanded that the "German problem" be solved by transfer/expulsion. These demands were adopted by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, which sought the support of the Allies for this proposal, beginning in 1943. The final agreement for the transfer of the Germans was not reached until the Potsdam Conference.
The expulsion policy was part of a geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of postwar Europe. In part, it was retribution for Nazi Germany's initiation of the war and subsequent atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Nazi-occupied Europe. Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Joseph Stalin of the USSR, had agreed in principle before the end of the war that the border of Poland's territory would be moved west and that the remaining ethnic German population were subject to expulsion. They assured the leaders of the émigré governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia, both occupied by Nazi Germany, of their support on this issue.
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 motives to 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 agreed that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner." The major motivations revealed were:- 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 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. 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. The proposals from the Polish and Czech governments-in-exile to expel ethnic Germans after the war received support from Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden.
- Another motivation was to punish the Germans: the Allies declared them collectively guilty of German war crimes.
- 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.