Orderly and Humane

Orderly and Humane
Author: R. M. Douglas
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 696
Release: 2012-06-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300183763

The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: “a major achievement” (New Republic). Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless. In this authoritative and objective account, historian R.M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of the World War II.

Coming Home to Germany?

Coming Home to Germany?
Author: David Rock
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781571817181

The end of World War II led to one of the most significant forced population transfers in history: the expulsion of over 12 million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1950 and the subsequent emigration of another four million in the second half of the twentieth century. Although unprecedented in its magnitude, conventional wisdom has it that the integration of refugees, expellees, and Aussiedler was a largely successful process in postwar Germany. While the achievements of the integration process are acknowledged, the volume also examines the difficulties encountered by ethnic Germans in the Federal Republic and analyses the shortcomings of dealing with this particular phenomenon of mass migration and its consequences.

Redrawing Nations

Redrawing Nations
Author: Philipp Ther
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780742510944

After World War II, some 12 million Germans, 3 million Poles and Ukrainians, and tens of thousands of Hungarians were expelled from their homes and forced to migrate to their supposed countries of origin. Using freshly available materials from Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Czechoslovak, German, British, and American archives, the contributors to this book provide a sweeping, detailed account of the turmoil caused by the huge wave of forced migration during the nascent Cold War. The book also documents the deep and lasting political, social, and economic consequences of this traumatic time, raising difficult questions about the effect of forced migration on postwar reconstruction, the rise of Communism, and the growing tensions between Western Europe and the Eastern bloc. Those interested in European Cold-War history will find this book indispensable for understanding the profound--but hitherto little known--upheavals caused by the massive ethnic cleansing that took place from 1944 to 1948.

Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar Germany and France

Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar Germany and France
Author: Manuel Borutta
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137508418

This volume compares one of the largest instances of 'ethnic cleansing' – the German expellees from the East (Vertriebene) – with the most important case of decolonization migration – the French repatriates of Algeria (pieds-noirs).

The Lost German East

The Lost German East
Author: Andrew Demshuk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2012-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107020735

After 1945, Germany was inundated with ethnic German refugees expelled from Eastern Europe. Andrew Demshuk explores why they integrated into West German society.

Forgotten Voices

Forgotten Voices
Author: Ulrich Merten
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2012-08-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1412846943

The news agency Reuters reported in 2009 that a mass grave containing 1,800 bodies was found in Malbork, Poland. Polish authorities suspected that they were German civilians that were killed by advancing Soviet forces. A Polish archeologist supervising the exhumation, said, "We are dealing with a mass grave of civilians, probably of German origin. The presence of children . . . suggests they were civilians." During World War II, the German Nazi regime committed great crimes against innocent civilian victims: Jews, Poles, Russians, Serbs, and other people of Central and Eastern Europe. At war’s end, however, innocent German civilians in turn became victims of crimes against humanity. Forgotten Voices lets these victims of ethnic cleansing tell their story in their own words, so that they and what they endured are not forgotten. This volume is an important supplement to the voices of victims of totalitarianism and has been written in order to keep the historical record clear. The root cause of this tragedy was ultimately the Nazi German regime. As a leading German historian, Hans-Ulrich Wehler has noted, "Germany should avoid creating a cult of victimization, and thus forgetting Auschwitz and the mass killing of Russians." Ulrich Merten argues that applying collective punishment to an entire people is a crime against humanity. He concludes that this should also be recognized as a European catastrophe, not only a German one, because of its magnitude and the broad violation of human rights that occurred on European soil. Supplementary maps and pictures are available online at http://www.forgottenvoices.net

The German Minority in Interwar Poland

The German Minority in Interwar Poland
Author: Winson Chu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2012-06-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107008301

Explores what happened when Germans from three different empires were forced to live together in Poland after the First World War.

War Stories

War Stories
Author: Robert G. Moeller
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2003-04-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520239105

Moeller conveys the complicated story of how West Germans recast the past after the Second World War. He demonstrates the 'selective remembering' that took place among West Germans during the postwar years: in particular, they remembered crimes committed against Germans.

A Terrible Revenge

A Terrible Revenge
Author: Alfred M. De Zayas
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 179
Release: 1994
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780312121594

The closing phase and the aftermath of World War II saw millions of refugees and displaced persons wandering across Easter Europe in one of the most brutal and chaotic migrations in world history. The genocidal barbarism of the Nazi forces has been well documented. What hitherto has been little known is the fate of fifteen million German civillians who found themselves at the mercy of Soviet armies and on the wrong side of new postwar borders. All over Eastern Europe, the inhabitants of communities that had been established for many centuries were either expelled or killed. Over two million Germans did not survive. Many of these people had supported Hitler, and for the Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, and surviving Jews, their fate must have seemed just. However, the great majority--East Prussian farmers, Silesian industrial workers, their wives and children--were guiltless. Their fate, sentenced purely by race, remains an appalling legacy of the period. Alfred de Zayas's book describes this horrible retribution. On the basis of extensive research in German and American archives, he outlines the long history of these German communities, scattered from the Baltic to the Danude, and, most movingly, reproduces the testimonies of surviors from the catastrophic exodus that marked the final end to Nazi fantasies of Lebensraum.