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Commemoration of ethnic cleansing against German minorities in Eastern Europe blocked by economic pragmatism, distorted nationalism, and academic bias
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library, Director of the Institute for Research of Expelled Germans)

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This is an excerpt of one of my graduate dissertations on the ethnic cleansing (expulsion) of over 10,000,000 ethnic German civilians from various Eastern European countries, in which over 2,000,000 died regardless of their diverse political beliefs. It is from our partner website, the Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, located at www.expelledgermans.org. This essay answers the question: why has almost no one ever heard of any expulsion of German civilians from Hungary, Romania, USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia despite the deaths of millions?

This article may NOT under ANY circumstances be redistributed without the expressed permission of the author.

From the spring of 1945 until the close of 1948, with varying degrees of direct involvement, the governments of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States orchestrated the expulsion of virtually all ethnic German minorities from Eastern Europe. By the end of the expulsion programs, more than 10,000,000 German-speaking civilians had been removed, with as many as 5,000,000 more fleeing prematurely due to fear of reprisals against the local populations after the brutal war crimes of the Third Reich. Falsely depicting the ethnic German communities as universally pro-Nazi agents of pan-German irredentism, their diverse ideologies were ignored in the interest of attaining modern, homogenized ethnic states free from all remnants of “foreign hegemony.” Before their deportation, hundreds of thousands more were forced into compulsory labor to rebuild the nations that Germany had decimated, dismissing the fact that most of these diasporic communities' ancestors had not even seen Germany for centuries. Nearly all of the 1,084,828 ethnic Germans in the USSR were shipped on trains to the wastelands of Kazakhstan to perform forced labor alone before the German armies had a chance to reach them,1 with some estimating as high as a 30% death rate.2 By the end of the expulsions, more than 2,280,000 civilians were dead, primarily due to exhaustion, hypothermia, and starvation.3 Rather than targeting SS volunteers or confirmed Nazi collaborators, the German ethnic identity itself was singled out for removal. The post-war governments, in their aspirations to forge fully-sovereign states on a unified ethnic basis, completely remapped the demography of Europe, erasing the historical memory of the lost German minorities that had dramatically contributed to the culture and architecture of their host nations for centuries.

Despite being what Gerhard Weinberg described as “the largest single [forced] migration of people in a short period of which we know,”4 arguably only rivaled by the exchange between India and Pakistan after 1947, collective memory in both the United States and Europe often has absolutely no awareness that more than 10,000,000 civilians were subjected to government-sponsored ethnic cleansing, forced labor, and expulsion purely along divisive ethnic lines. This paradoxical ignorance of such a severe forced population transfer derives from a number of historical, cultural, economic, and political factors. Standard historiographical dogma, which rightfully places most responsibility for the atrocities of World War II in the hands of Germany, makes it unpopular to assert the reality that millions of ethnic German civilians with diverse political ideologies could have been victims of the war and its aftermath at the same time. Even the mention of the subject by politicians immediately incites a barrage of accusations of nationalism, Antisemitism, Nazi apologetics, or an attempt to undermine the horrors inflicted by Germany against other peoples. In asking the question, “why do we commemorate some tragedies and not others?,” many German nationalists and revisionists quite foolishly invent an international conspiracy by Jewish groups to supposedly “hide” all genocides other than the Holocaust. In reality, the reasons behind our complete absence of historical memory on the German story are far more complicated, and involve the deep-seated political, cultural, and academic traditions of Germans, Czechs, Poles, and many other peoples alike. Commemoration and even public awareness of one of the worst ethnic cleansings of the twentieth century has been totally obfuscated by three main causes: 1) the desire of modern EU states to maintain positive diplomatic and economic détente; 2) drastically distorted historical memory as fueled by each involved nation's ethnic nationalisms and; 3) the enduring presence of nationalist and neo-Nazi revisionism in preventing legitimate scholarly discourse on the experience of the millions of expelled German civilians.

The Changing Approach to Commemoration by Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic:
How and Why Germany Broke its Promises to the Memory of Expelled Germans

In order to understand the reasons why the ethnic cleansings against the Germans have been forgotten and uncommemorated, it is necessary to analyze why the German government has reversed its longstanding sponsorship of German expellees and now almost entirely refuses to acknowledge the subject. Upon their resettlement after their expulsion – primarily in occupied West Germany and Austria – displaced Germans languished in refugee camps for years, eventually transferred to subsidized housing. The conservative governments of Konrad Adenauer (1949-63) and Kurt Kiesinger (1966-69) promised to support the economic and psychological needs of the expelled Germans, additionally promising to commemorate their experience and pressure the involved nations for compensation. West Germany directly sponsored and represented expellee interests by instating the Law of Return (Rückkehrgesetz). Under this injunction, all uprooted persons of German blood were granted German citizenship in absentia, thereby reinforcing the German government's support and acknowledgment of the ethnic cleansings. Upon arrival, an endless plethora of expellee interest organizations were formed, and were often officially sponsored and subsidized by both the regional and federal governments.5 The Sudeten Germans and Danube Swabians, respectively forced out of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, are especially commemorated in Austria.6 7 The most salient organizations in Germany were the Federation of Expellees and the League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights. The Centrists of the Free Democratic Party hosted official forums for commemoration, giving the expellees major influence on German politics to the point that it was said that “nothing happens behind the backs of expellees.”8

The expellee groups exploited the new human rights consciousness of the European Economic Community (EEC) and argued that Heimatrecht – the right to homeland – is a basic human right of self-determination. These groups were offered vague promises by the state to eventually settle the question of full commemoration and indemnity from not only the German government, but from the Czechoslovaks, Poles, Yugoslavs, and Soviets who orchestrated the ethnic cleansings. This was to be not only in the form of financial compensation, but also the possible return of property in a way similar to those returned to victims of the Holocaust. Adenauer insisted at the Paris Conference on German War Debt in 1951 that Germany's reparations must be kept to a minimum, and continued to acknowledge the human rights abuses performed against ethnic Germans as an equally important crisis of World War II.9 These promises were presented in the context of Germany's still unresolved border with Poland. After the war, the Allies forced Germany to forfeit some 30% of its territory to Poland, thereby leaving as many as 7,000,000 German minorities in a new Poland that was rightfully seething with vengeance.10 The Adenauer government and its successors considered the “lost lands” in the east, along with the expelled Germans and their seized property, to be an indivisible part of Germany, and continued to promise their official acknowledgment of the expellee legacy.11 Thus, the memory that millions of Germans had been forced from these lands was often tied to the notion that these lands belonged to Germany. The government's sponsorship of the commemoration and its obdurate stance towards the lost lands was so strong that it was even criticized by Eisenhower for its irredentist implications that may have destabilized East-West relations at the height of the Cold War.12

This official support for the memory of the ethnic cleansing gradually made a volte face under Willy Brandt's conservative government (1969-74). Under his tenure, West Germany pursued a new political doctrine of Ostpolitik (“Eastern Politics”), in which West Germany tacitly renounced its claim to be the sole German state and began active cooperation with East Germany. In addition, West Germany now increasingly opened dialogue with the Warsaw Pact states, especially Poland. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and most other states that had orchestrated the ethnic cleansings became increasingly independent of the Soviet Union during this period, and could therefore be courted by West Germany as new economic partners and diplomatic allies. Poland quickly became Germany's primary trading partner, with Germany significantly engaging in mutually-auspicious trade with the Eastern bloc states that were rapidly drifting away from Leonid Brezhnev's dictate. As the German government was the prime sponsor of commemoration for the ethnic cleansing of Germans, it was this process of mutual cooperation between Germany and the complicit states of the East that paved the way for this tragedy to be forgotten. Further, the fact that West Germany was now overwhelmed by immigration further discouraged the government from emphasizing its previous role as the protective father of uprooted Germans abroad. Shortly prior to and after reunification, the German government even asked the Soviet Union to keep the displaced Germans out of Germany because of the draining financial costs.13 Economic downturns, combined with growing guest worker settlement from Yugoslavia and Poland made the expensive and diplomatically-problematic question of expellee restitution an inconvenience. This was exacerbated by growing nationalism in Poland and Czechoslovakia. The pervasive belief among Poles and Czechoslovaks of an underlying German expansionism, chauvinism, and irredentism made commemoration of this ethnic cleansing mutually inauspicious.14 15 Naturally, the fact that the German government still tacitly claimed the lost lands in the east further excited Polish fears of a rebirth in German expansionist nationalism.

It was not until the reunification of Germany in 1990 that this territorial cession was formally confirmed. As a result, the German government reversed its previous promises to the expellees to seek a possible return of their property in the eastern lands from which they were cleansed. Poles had equally as fair a claim to these territories as the Germans, but the treaty ultimately represented far more: the German government's overall abandonment of the memory of the ethnic cleansing and a pragmatic preference for positive diplomacy and economic rapprochement. The German government effectively used the expellee interest groups to cement their legitimacy as the universal German state vis-a-vis East Germany and the Warsaw Pact states. As soon as this commemoration became fiscally injurious, the German government effectively discarded them and their historical memory. These economic and political factors are the main reasons why the ethnic cleansing of more than 10,000,000 civilians has been purged from our historical memory, since their prime sponsor abandoned their story in the name of mutual economic growth.

Since reunification, the German government has almost completely refused to acknowledge or commemorate the legacy of the expulsions. Although Germany has often subsidized the development of hospitals, schools, and small businesses in the regions to which German minorities were expelled abroad (particularly Kazakhstan),16 Germany has distanced itself from the subject as being of no benefit and only causing strong diplomatic consequences. The question of expellee restitution and commemoration is easily the greatest obstacle today to the positive relations between Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic today.17 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (ruled 1998-2005) epitomized the German government's abandonment of the commemoration effort before a conference of angry expellees, arguing that “the federal government will not encumber its relations with these countries with political and legal questions that come from the past.” He added that the former German territories in the east may have German historical heritage and influence, but are by no means German nationality.18 He and foreign minister Joschka Fischer further described the memory of the nearly 3,000,00019 German civilians expelled from Czechoslovakia as the prime source of division between the two countries today.20 Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk similarly averred that the memory of the cleansing was against German and Polish interests, and even argued that Germany should resolve the question by paying the indemnity for both the German and Polish victims of Nazi atrocities themselves.21 In response to criticism by German nationalists and expellee groups themselves, both the governments of Schröder and Angela Merkel reaffirmed their refusal to lead any international petitions or efforts for restitution and commemoration.22 It was simply more convenient and propitious to simply forget the ethnic cleansing altogether.

Recently, with the expansion of the human rights-conscious European Union system, the issue has resurfaced in full strength. Ostensibly, all constituent nations within the EU are responsible for past human rights infractions via the permanent tribunal in Strassburg, France. The Prussian Trust (preußischer Treuhand),23 founded in 2001, has become the center of an international political controversy following their submission of thirteen lawsuits against the Polish government through the Strassburg court, calling for official recognition of the ethnic cleansing against their minorities and the return of property to displaced German families. Fifty more lawsuits are planned for the immediate future.24 The Prussian Trust insists that it is not attempting to divert blame off of Germany for its war-time atrocities, but believes that civilians should not be punished out of collective guilt solely because their ethnicity.25 The EU court ultimately rejected the lawsuits, arguing that they lack jurisdiction to adjudicate on human rights abuses that occurred prior to the institution's inception.26 The Merkel government agreed with the decision, but noted that her government cannot legally infringe upon the lawsuits of expellees at the private level.27 Other organizations like the Copernicus Group and “Memory and Solidarity” have worked to overcome these nationalistically-charged tensions by encouraging the expulsions to be discussed on an EU-wide level with participants from all nations involved in the ethnic cleansing.
The Polish government, under the nationalist Kaczynski brothers Jaroslaw and the late Lech, interpreted the restitution lawsuits as the rebirth of German chauvinism, nationalism, and their longstanding anti-Polish sentiment that the two states had spent the last twenty years overcoming. The foreign ministry directly referred to the Prussian Trust's lawsuits as “an attempt at reversing moral responsibility for the effects of World War II...Legal claims against Poland can disturb the Polish-German dialogue and in a long-term perspective damage the relations between the two states.28 Several sources estimate that, were the Polish government to compensate the victims, Poland would be forced to pay a crippling €19,000,000,000.29 Understandably, Poles have critical economic reasons for not remembering the ethnic cleansing rather than merely nationalistic factors. As a result, the capitulation of the German government on their promises of commemoration have combined with a need for positive economics with Poland, thereby consigning our collective awareness of the ethnic cleansing to oblivion.

The Czech Republic is equally obdurate on their memory of their expulsion of more than 95% of their more than 3,000,000 Germans and Hungarians on exclusionary ethnic lines.30 The Beneš Decrees, which legalized the seizure of German and Hungarian civil property by Czechoslovak citizens during the expulsions, are still codified in Czech state law today (although not at all enforced or relevant). Upon their accession to the European Union in 2004, the legality of such discriminatory injunctions were increasingly seen as incompatible with the new human rights platform. In 2009, proponents of the new EU constitution specifically challenged the Decrees as unconstitutional. Bavarian minister Edmund Stoiber demanded that the Czechs now be required under EU law to abrogate the Decrees and acknowledge their ethnic cleansing of the forgotten German minority, arguing that the Decrees contradicted “the law, the spirit, and the culture of Europe.”31 The Eurosceptic president Vaclav Klaus reflected an enduring belief in Czech society that the laws were an inherent part of Czech statehood and descended from their just expulsion of a Nazi “Fifth Column.” Klaus argued that the lifting of the Decrees would become a basis for a torrent of economically-crippling lawsuits by expelled German families that would be unbearable for the comparatively poor nation. He responded that the EU charter should include an exemption for the Decrees,32 reflecting the reality that the story of the ethnic cleansing has been hidden by the nationalistic historical memory of the Czechs and the Poles. Former president Vaclav Havel argued that this romanticized position of Vaclav Klaus was “dangerous” for the Czech nation's modernization and its détente with Germany, the wealthiest country on the continent and its largest trading partner.33 Yet again, economics have superseded the memory of ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses.

However, 2008 saw the first significant case of Czechs returning property to German families that were forced out by the Czechoslovak government under Edvard Beneš. The lawsuit took almost 50 years for the Walderobe family alone, and was subject to incendiary accusations by Czechs of German racism, Nazi apologetics, and revisionism.34 Opponents argued that the family, like most Sudeten Germans, were advocates of the pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party under Konrad Henlein. Most Germans supported the far-right because of their desire for autonomy and their opposition to what they saw as their reduced ethnic franchise, rather than any direct desire for genocide, Antisemitism, or conquest of the Czech state by the Nazi armies.35 Despite this auspicious exception, our collective memory of one of the largest forced migrations of the twentieth century has been almost completely hidden due to the inability of Germans, Poles, Czechs to simply acknowledge this history without exciting nationalistic tensions.

Paradoxically, the ethnic cleansing of the Germans of Eastern Europe has been formally or at least partially acknowledged by other nations. Here too, the reasons behind this commemoration are almost completely political. Rather than springing from a desire to denounce such a brutal ethnic cleansing, each nation has its own political or economic motivation for accepting the memory of the expelled Germans. This paradox reveals the nature of distorted historical memory and why nations remember some tragedies and omit others. Estonia36 and Latvia37 have formally acknowledged this history and denounce it in their official museums, thoroughly documenting the critical role of ethnic Germans in shaping their national histories prior to their total removal by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.38 These nations are open to admit the ethnic cleansings because they played no role in them, because they actively hope to deride the hated Russia for their wanton brutality after the war, and because they hope to enjoy the economic auspices of trade with Germany.

Similarly, the issue of the expelled Germans from the former Yugoslavia is equally political. Croatia has officially acknowledged the ethnic cleansing. Former Prime Minister Ivo Sanadar shocked foreign diplomats when he demanded that Serbia, the Czech Republic, and other governments pay German families restitution for their human rights abuses against their minorities.39 In 1996, Germany and Croatia agreed on cooperative funding for memorials to war crimes committed by Germany against Yugoslavs and vice versa.40 Here, too, the motives are largely political. Croatia hopes to integrate into the EU by courting Germany and depicting itself as a vanguard of human rights. Croatia also hopes to deflect its responsibility in committing some of the worst atrocities of World War II by annihilating almost all of its Jewish and Serbian populations. Equally so, Croats are merely deflecting the brutality of Yugoslavia onto the bitterly hated Serbs, who to this day refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoings against their ethnic Germans despite the fact that they were universally forced into compulsory labor in prison camps by Serbian partisans.41 In precisely the same fashion, Slovenia has formally acknowledged the ethnic cleansing, even awarding €7,000 to one Justin Stanovnik for his forced removal from his home and internment in a labor camp in Slovenia under Tito's authority. Despite efforts by German groups in Serbia like the Society for Serbian-German Cooperation,42 Serbia remains unchanged, shaping its historical memory to perceive their treatment of Germans as merely the removal of criminals and Fascists.

In a similar fashion, Slovakia (and not the Czech Republic) has formally acknowledged the expulsions, partly with the politicized motive of passing the blame onto the disliked Czechs and maximizing their economic partnership with Germany. Both Hungary and Romania also officially acknowledge the memory of the ethnic cleansing, with Hungary even granting autonomy to its German minority and publishing a day-to-day analysis of the expulsion process.43 Hungarian historical memory passes the blame for the expulsions, with great validity,44 onto the Americans, British, and Soviets. Many also divert blame for the ethnic cleansing onto the hated Mátyás Rakósi, particularly vilified because of widespread Antisemitism in shaping Hungarian understanding of their modern history under Communism. Romania similarly offers their Transylvania Saxons great franchise, allowing German groups like the Democratic Forum of Romania to politicize the legacy of ethnic cleansing.45 Romania rightfully has little concern since their German minority disappeared primarily due to emigration and poor conditions, rather than human rights atrocities.

The fact that these nations at least partially acknowledge the expulsion of Germans and not Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, or the Soviet Union exemplifies the politics of forgetting. The only nations that have made a conscious effort to obfuscate the ethnic cleansing are those most responsible. As they are the most important parties involved in the question of commemoration, their conscious distortion of their historical memory and their manipulative politics have made the expulsions almost completely unknown in our collective consciousness despite their severity. By their preference for positive economics and their inability to simply acknowledge a general human atrocity without inciting intense nationalism, these governments have rendered the historical experiences of more than 10,000,000 civilians as a mere anomaly.

Distorted Historical Memory and Ethnic Nationalism as
Causes of our Lack of Historical Memory of Expelled Germans

German, Polish, and Czech scholars and citizens have been unable to divorce their enduring ethnic pride, revanchism, and nationalistic versions of history from the basic need to simply commemorate the universalized removal of a people on ethnic grounds. Despite the new rhetoric of multi-cultural cooperation in the European Union, the seemingly sacral nature of ethnic identities, nationalism, and national history have remained unshakable. Old wounds persist unhealed, and inter-cultural tensions endure strongly in Europe today. As a result, the contradictory distortions of history by each involved culture has been one of the major obstacles to commemoration of the ethnic cleansing, and in shaping our general politics of forgetting.

Due to the maelstrom of brutality, genocides, and population transfers by so many different belligerent actors during World War II, as well as the role of these struggles in creating national myths, each European culture views the war and its aftermath through its own distinct lens of historical memory. Each version of history as framed by these ethnic identities is severely biased and obfuscatory.

The Germans are ambivalent. For some, the expelled Germans were the last victims of Hitler's war, subjected to ethnic cleansing as a byproduct of the brutality of the German army and National Socialism. For others, the diasporic Germans were victims of Red Army atrocities and often-exaggerated mass rapes. In both interpretations, the expelled German civilians are, in general, depicted as innocent victims of a brutal ethnic cleansing. For nationalists (and a sizable portion of Germans), the somber memory of ethnic cleansing is tied to the romanticized loss of Germany's eastern territories and Prussia, the founding locus of German statehood and reunification in 1871. Nationalists equally overlook the mass forced relocation of native Polish families to make way for German “living space,” portraying the conquest of Poland as the mere “recovery” of ancient German territory. The expulsion of Germans from the forfeited territories are, for most Germans, not seen as the removal of criminal Nazi settlers, but of innocent German families who settled centuries ago and laid the foundations for state-building and modernization in Eastern Europe. As in all cases, historical memory is vastly distorted by chauvinism, nationalism, and irredentism. In the eyes of most Germans, therefore, a great crime has been committed against civilians and must be acknowledged. The perpetrators of this crime are understood differently, either being primarily the Soviets, Poles and Czechs, the Allies, or all of the above. However, due to the German government's effective betrayal of the memory of the ethnic cleansing and the other factors outlined in this essay, even many Germans are unaware of this history.

For the Poles, understandably, history is understood completely differently than in the Germanocentric account. With great truth, Poles see the war as a catastrophic era of German malevolence against the Polish people and the extinction of their long-awaited sovereignty. Poles emphasize the fact that Poland suffered more than almost any other nation during the war, primarily the fault of the Germans, having lost nearly 21.4% of their total population.46 Like the Russians and Soviets, the Germans – not merely the state but the ethnic identity altogether – were seen as the mortal enemies of Polish nationality and statehood. The modern framework of uniform identities and collective guilt, as facilitated by both the Third Reich and authoritarian Poland before the war, paved the way for the universal victimization of the German minority on exclusionary ethnic lines. Now, as a result of Berlin's atrocities, the modernizing state framed it such that to be German was to be a Nazi regardless of one's personal ideology or nationality. As a result, the German minority that had settled in Poland, often for as many as seven centuries since the rule of the German Teutonic Order, was now universally seen as a subversive, “Fifth Column” remnant of Nazi occupation. As Poles understood it, they were simply resolving a teleological struggle against centuries of German hegemony by expelling their physical presence. The fact that more than 436,000 ethnic Germans were transferred from the rest of Eastern Europe to occupied Poland under Heinrich Himmler's orders and often placed in the stolen homes of Polish citizens further emphasized the belief that the German minority was almost synonymous with Nazi imperialism.47

That most ethnic Germans populated the eastern territories of Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia that Poles consider to be just as Polish as German further reinforced the national mythos that the German minority was an element of foreign occupation. The Poles, therefore, interpret the meaning of their national space differently than the Germans. This framework of a Polish national space inevitably facilitated their post-war program to purify the heterogeneous lands that were seen as being the historical property of the Polish people. For this reason, Poles are often bitterly angered when Germans raise the question of the ethnic cleansing because they logically associate it with the irredentism and “Prussian militarism” so typically connected with the Germans.48 German implications of Polish atrocities consistently reignite inter-ethnic tension between the two cultures,49 leading to a noticeable mutual ethnic antipathy on both sides of the border even today.50 Thus, the Poles have their own version of this same history just as the Germans do. This dichotomy, combined with the role of intense ethnic nationalism and national myth on both sides, makes a fair discussion of the ethnic cleansing greatly inconvenient and problematic.

Additionally, Poles and especially Polish nationalists often insist that they played no or little direct role in the ethnic cleansing against the civilian “Fifth Column.” Instead, they deflect the blame onto the Soviet Red Army, which equally terrorized the Poles as they did the German minorities and equally vanquished Polish sovereignty as did the Nazis.51 Under this modus of collective memory, the expulsions were not the conscious orchestration of the Polish state, but an unfortunate byproduct of a terrible war, of Nazi criminality, and the inhumane legacy of Communism and Soviet hegemony. Poles also rightfully emphasize that at the same time as Germans were being expelled (by the Soviets, they claim), Joseph Stalin orchestrated the systematic expulsion of more than 2,000,000 ethnic Poles from eastern Poland, now shorn of its territory just like Germany.52 Polish memory of World War II almost solely revolves around the persistent victimization of Poles by both Germans and Soviets, especially emphasizing the massacre of over 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviets at Katyn. Many also argue angrily that the comparatively poor nation of Poland should not be forced to compensate Germany when Poles themselves hardly received any from Berlin for the mass deportations, forced labor, and murders of Poles during the war.53 They argue that a half-billion Deutschmarke was hardly enough to alleviate the loss of 21.4% of Poland's population.54 Given the Polish understanding of these historical processes, most Poles are stunned and angered when Germans claim to have suffered during the war. In such an environment, commemoration efforts are greatly obstructed.

These deflections and obfuscations of Polish responsibility ignore the direct orchestration by the Polish government in organizing the forced labor and expulsion of its heterogeneous minorities. Not only did Polish Communist First Secretary Władysław Gomułka assert that the Polish state and its national space be built on lines of ethnic homogeneity,55 but he argued that the territorial purification programs were a prerequisite for establishing a lastly-independent Polish homeland with inviolable sovereignty and solidarity.56 The Polish version of this history bypasses the government internment of ethnic Germans in forced labor camps prior to their expulsion, often in the same concentration camps used by the Nazis (like the Zgoda subcamp of Auschwitz itself), with the same food rations, and using white armbands to single out the German ethnic identity as universally criminal.57 58 It overlooks the estimated 20- to as many as 50% death rate in the labor camps prior to their expulsion.59 It omits the general reality that the post-war state, in its effort to attain modernity and national unity, consciously pursued its right to exist by homogenizing its national space through ethnic cleansing.

The Czechs, too, have their own version of historical memory. They emphasize the role of their former Sudeten German minority in “causing” the dismantlement of Czechoslovak statehood at the Munich Conference of 1938. The Germans, at that point 28.8% of the national population, had rapidly gravitated towards pan-German nationalism, overwhelmingly supporting the pro-Hitler Konrad Henlein. The collapse of Czechoslovak sovereignty began with their German minority's call for the annexation of the Sudetenland region into the Third Reich. Thus, as Czechs and Slovaks remember, their German minority was the very cause of their suffering and the extinction of their independence. They were seen as the impetus for years of anguish under the police state of Gestapo chief Reinhardt Heydrich. Under this interpretation, the post-war expulsion of the German minority along lines of universalized ethnic exclusion was a necessary process of state-building and liberation from Nazi imperialism. To be German was to be a Nazi, a criminal awaiting the justice of the reborn Czechoslovak state. As for the Poles, the notion that Germans would claim to have suffered during the war is inconceivable to most Czechs. This singular memory of history, as fueled by Czech nationalism and national identity, greatly obstructs any dialogue between Germans and Czechs over the basic question of how to simply acknowledge the ethnic cleansing.

This version of history critically obfuscates the diverse motivations for the overall Nazification of the German minority by falsely and universally equating German nationalism with gas chambers and Hitler's atrocities. The Sudeten Germans gravitated towards pan-Germanism primarily because they perceived themselves (with only limited truth) to be a marginalized ethnic minority in a Slavocentric state, because they believed themselves to be unfairly taxed and disproportionately affected by government agricultural redistribution, and because they perceived pan-Germanism to be more responsive to their social interests than obeisance to the Czechoslovak state. Considering the early timeframe, they did not become Nazified because they advocated mass murder, world war, the Holocaust, or the direct abolition of the Czechoslovak nation. Especially by the end of the war and the radicalization of Nazi atrocities, the previous unity of the Sudeten Germans under the Nazi banner fragmented into diverse political ideologies. That all Germans were universally equated with Nazi atrocities by the reborn Czechoslovak state ignored the complicated historical evolution of the German minority.

Czech historical memory overlooks the fact that the Czechoslovak government directly orchestrated the depopulation of their entire German minority solely along markers of ethnic distinction, with only 800,000 to remain for forced labor prior to their impending expulsion with the rest of the Germans.60 It forgets the fact that the diverse ideologies of the victims were irrelevant: whether National Socialist, left-liberal, or Communist, all Germans were affected by discriminatory ethnic policies.61 It ignores the history that even children – incapable of commitment to irredentist subversion or Nazi atrocities – were also expelled and interned, and forced to wear white armbands to single them out for removal alongside their parents.62 This historical memory omits the fact that ethnic Germans and Hungarians were jailed in many of the same camps used by the Gestapo and the SS, including the famous Theresienstadt. It forgets that despite government orders to make the expulsions humane, at least 6,000 Germans were shot or executed,63 64 and that rogue commanders organized the filling of mass graves with German civilians without official approval.65 It forgets that thousands of civilians starved to death on long forced marches with no food to the distant border with Austria only to be turned back by the border guards, and had to march all the way back to the prison camps, further exacerbating the death toll.66

The importance of “founding fathers” and symbols of sovereignty in Czech national identity further hinders the collective willingness of Czechs to even consider any complicity in ethnic cleansing. As in the case of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey has refused to acknowledge any injustice committed against their Armenian minority because it would directly implicate Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the very symbol of Turkish national identity and the embodiment of the republic's raison d'etre. To undermine the founding fathers undermines the entire concept of Turkishness and the proud laicized state. The Czechs find their analogue in Edvard Beneš, their national hero, fighter for independence, and president of Czechoslovakia from 1935-38 and again after the war from 1945-48. Beneš is revered in Czech historical memory for maintaining the sole democracy in Central Europe until it was betrayed by the Allies and obliterated by the National Socialists, for fighting for Czechoslovakia in exile, and for returning after the war to rebuild a sovereign state on a unified basis of nationalism and purified ethnic homogeneity. His fall from power in 1948 after Soviet occupation further imbues him with the romanticized image of a Czechoslovak hero and freedom fighter.

This romanticized memory of Czech history overlooks the fact that the same hero imposed the Beneš Decrees on its civilian population, which legalized the confiscation of property from the Hungarian and German minorities and facilitated their removal. It ignores the direct platform of the reborn Czechoslovak state to purify its national space in order to create a unified, centralized nation and attain modernity. It was noted by a foreign traveler in post-war Czechoslovakia that the “nation survives only on its hope for revenge.”67 This revenge was directed not against Berlin, but against the German ethnicity itself along modern lines of singular exclusion. The Czech version of history obscures the fact that Beneš himself used the same vocabulary as the Third Reich on his project of state-building, announcing that the Czechs and Slovaks must achieve their own “Lebensraum” via “the departure or expulsion” of all Germans accused of collaboration with the Nazi imperialists (eventually to apply to nearly all ethnic Germans).68 Beneš continued that “the German question in our republic must be liquidated,” encouraging the Czechs and Slovaks to “wait patiently...to cleanse the republic.”69 Foreign Minister Tomáš Masaryk reflected similarly after the expulsions that the nation was finally “finished with the Germans of Czechoslovakia...There is no possible way to get us to live under the same umbrella again.”70 Only through the homogenization of the nation could a free Czechoslovakia be re-established. Like the Poles, the Czechoslovak state pursued its right to exist by their removal of these minority elements it deemed to be the source of their collective demise and the extinction of their sovereignty. The direct role of the Czechs' “founding fathers” in facilitating the ethnic cleansing has been conveniently forgotten in Czech historical memory, similar to how many German nationalists diminish the horrendous Nazi atrocities and focus solely on the so-called “genocide” against ethnic Germans.71 72

As all of these factors demonstrate, enduring ethnic chauvinism, romanticism, and national pride as common to all three ethnic groups greatly cloud any attempt to commemorate or even acknowledge the deaths of more than 2,280,000 civilians. What the Germans remember as ethnic cleansing or even genocide, the Czechs and Poles remember as merely the punishment of Nazi criminals and the formation of states long denied their sovereignty by German hegemony.

The polarity in historical memory between these three peoples has recently been epitomized in the case of Germany's Erika Steinbach. A member of the Federation of Expellees and an MP, Steinbach is easily the foremost advocate of expellee restitution. In 2000, she began organized the construction of a “Centre Against Expulsion” in Berlin with partial federal sponsorship. Intended to denounce ethnic cleansing and displacement in general and not only the suffering of the Germans, the very notion of commemorating the expulsion of German civilians has even become a major obstacle to the overall diplomatic relations between Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Poles almost universally reject the idea of the Centre Against Expulsion, with some calling it a “Centre Against Reconciliation [between the two nations].” They argue that, due to underlying inherent German nationalism, the Centre would equate German plight with that of the Poles.73 President Jaroslaw Kaczynski further reflected this national perception by insisting that the Germans should “remember who was the perpetrator and who was the victim.”74 Due to nationalism, the media hysteria over the subject of commemoration in Poland and the Czech Republic has made the relatively insignificant Federation of Expellees seem like a central mover of German foreign policy.75 For these reasons, Steinbach is now more famous in the two complicit countries than in Germany itself.76 A 2003 cover montage in the Polish magazine Wprost depicted Steinbach riding Chancellor Schröder whilst wearing an SS uniform, reflecting a deeply-ingrained equation in Polish memory that Germans of even remote national sentiment are prone to German irredentism and revisionism. In 2007, Gazeta Wyborcza reproduced the montage and added their own that portrayed a triptych with Steinbach next to an SS man and a knight of the crusading Teutonic Order. As this symbolic imagery demonstrates, Poles remember history – with much credence – as one of a consistent struggle against enduring German hegemony.

The raising of discussion of Polish atrocities by Germans and expellee advocates like Erika Steinbach is therefore inconceivable in the Polish version of historical memory. The Poles' perceived connection between Germans and imperial ambitions has direct implications on the commemoration effort, since most Germans were cleansed from regions in Poland that are a source of bitter dispute between the two peoples. The prominent Polish magazine Rzeczpospolita expressed concern that the “Germanness” of Prussia, Silesia, and Pomerania – now depopulated of Germans – was a significant underlying focus of the Centre. It is seen as the resurfacing of German “Drang nach Osten” and irredentism.77 They feared that the Centre was focused almost exclusively on the suffering of ethnic Germans.78 Others pointed out that Steinbach was not innocently commemorating an ethnic cleansing, but was herself of questionable character. They claimed that Steinbach refused to accept the forfeiture of Prussia and the eastern territories to Poland in 1990, and is therefore a closet nationalist and historical revisionist.79 Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski reflected that Steinbach was a poor choice to represent the Centre because she “came to our country with Hitler and had to flee with Hitler...she was never expelled...The people who were really expelled were the Polish family driven from their home in which Steinbach later lived, in a land that wasn't hers.”80 As this reveals, Polish national sentiment interprets the drive to commemorate the ethnic cleansing as being subconsciously tied to German expansionism and a romanticized claim to the “lost lands” of the east. This hostile environment, with equal fault on both sides, makes dispassionate commemoration almost impossible.

Polish Foreign Minister Władysław Bartoszewski even reflected the polarity in national memory by suggesting that if the Germans were to build their Centre Against Expulsion, the Poles should construct their own variant that emphasizes the timeless belligerence of the Germans against the Polish nation even going back to the Partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century.81 This exemplified the popular Polish interpretation that the Germans uprooted from Poland were not innocent settlers, but a legacy of centuries of foreign intrusion and the obstruction of the long-awaited Polish statehood. Bartoszewski refused to even speak with Steinbach, exclaiming, “I will not argue with this person. She does not exist for me. I will not do her the honour of entering into a debate with her.”82 Prime Minister Donald Tusk agreed that “our position is firm. This person [Steinbach] is unacceptable for Poland...Steinbach is a problem for our country.”83 Similarly, former Czech Prime Minister Miloš Zeman put in the Czechs' interpretation by reminding the Germans and Steinbach that the expelled Germans were “traitors” and “Hitler's fifth column,” greatly angering many Germans.84 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has tacitly accepted the construction of the Centre, but insisted to the Poles that she would ensure that the general crime of ethnic cleansing and displacement be the focus of the scholarship, rather than solely the suffering of Germans. Donald Tusk, upon hearing the agreement, effectively declared the burial of the memory of ethnic cleansing a “good solution for Poland and Germany.”85 German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer encouraged Merkel to consider that we “should not be prisoners of history.”86 Ironically, only days later, he commemorated the memory of German atrocities against Jews and Namibians, still leaving many increasingly-disgruntled Germans as prisoners of that tragic history.

As these statements illustrate, merely discussing the question of commemorating the death of more than 2,280,000 civilians incites the deep-seated forces of polar ethnic identities, nationalism, and inter-cultural antipathy. The Germans, Czechs, and Poles each have their own distorted memories of this extremely controversial past. In an environment of such discordant nationalisms, any dispassionate discussion has been vastly obstructed by the modern states, which prefer economics and national romanticism to acknowledgment of one of the worst forced population exchanges of the twentieth century. As a result, our collective memory has forgotten the ethnic cleansing altogether.

Enduring Ethnic Bias and Nationalist Revisionism Among Academics
as a Cause for Forgetting the Ethnic Cleansing

The final factor inhibiting commemoration and causing us to forget the ethnic cleansing is the latent ethnic bias and nationalist revisionism in academics. Arguments either for or against commemoration among scholars and institutions are often inextricably linked to ethnic nationalism and its associated versions of distorted historical memory. For a variety of reasons, many of the proponents of publicizing the expulsions are to varying degrees tied to German nationalism, historical revisionism, or even unfortunately to neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial. Whereas most Polish and Czech scholars either do not fully scrutinize the ethnic cleansing or simply overlook it in their historiography, many German advocates of the expellee story have an ulterior motive. This greatly compromises the legitimacy of scholarship on the subject and further discourages commemoration altogether, since opponents rightfully point to an general underlying revisionism or German nationalism. The link between revisionism and the effort to document the ethnic cleansing springs from several factors. Very few proponents have been willing to analyze the expulsions with fair attention to each culture's interpretation. Many nationalists use the story of the suffering of so many ethnic Germans to emphasize that Germany has been “victimized.” Such biased discussions and one-sided polemics are frequent on a-historical White Nationalist forums like Stormfront, Stirpes, and the National Alliance. As they present it, the end of the war saw the rape of Germany's ancient eastern territories, the crippling of its armies, its national humiliation, and the mass murder of all traces of the German race from the mountains of northern Italy to the distant hills of Central Asia. Nazi atrocities are either overlooked or underplayed. This romanticized victimology of Germans abroad is presented as an impetus for German nationalism and national solidarity around lines of German blood, rather than mere nationality.

Many nationalists also use the fact that the memory of the complete demographic reconstruction of Europe and one of the worst expulsions of the twentieth century has been almost completely forgotten as evidence of an international conspiracy. Predictably, either spoken aloud or surreptitiously believed, “the Jews” are the main target of blame. They claim that the present invulnerability of Jews to criticism for their atrocities against Palestinians or domination of the media derives from the fact that Jews have consistently hid the reality that other peoples were also singled out for racial resettlement than the Ashkenazim during the Holocaust. As they argue, the world has not heard the story of the ethnic cleansing against Germans because the Jews have undermined the rights and honor of their mortal enemies, the Germans. The current illegality of Holocaust denial, in their eyes, verifies the myth of a conscious Jewish conspiracy by Jews against Germany. With many proponents of expellee commemoration surreptitiously asserting such Antisemitic polemics, few are keen to hear the story of the plight of Germans, who are already often perceived to have a proclivity for belligerence and war.

Admittedly, the mention of this ethnic cleansing does indeed often inspire fervent criticism from angry Jewish groups both in Germany and abroad. Understandably, many Jews (and especially Zionists, Holocaust survivors, and Israeli nationalists) are afraid that excessive attention on the suffering of Germans will either diminish the importance of the Holocaust, or divert responsibility off of the Germans and onto Hitler alone. By portraying the German people as yet another people ruined by Hitler's war, some fear, the exclusivity and severity of the Jewish tragedy will be undermined. Others refuse to acknowledge that an ethnic cleansing even occurred. One article written by a Holocaust survivor insisted that even considering the deaths of a supposed “small number” (“only” 2,280,000) would be an insult to the Jews.87 He continued that “...to label as victims the millions of ethnic Germans who were expelled from their homes in Eastern Europe after the defeat of the Nazis is to make a mockery of the Holocaust...it seems that the conviction that Germans do not have enough Lebensraum keeps smoldering in Germans' subconscious. How else to explain an effort to reclaim German heritage in Eastern Europe other than as a Drang nach Osten?”88 Like the Poles, Czechs, and Germans, many Jews therefore have their own highly chauvinistic version of historical memory as well. Unfortunately, nations and sponsors of general human rights have thus far been unable to simply commemorate the death of millions of German civilians without exciting bitter lines of nationalistic division and hatred. Although Jewish groups do indeed play a limited role in obfuscating the memory of the ethnic cleansing, the historical factors behind this deletion of tragedy from our collective consciousness are far more complicated and involve many different nations, as outlined throughout this essay.

The common link between expellee groups and revisionism is evident in the fact that the first president of the Federation of Expellees, Hans Krüger (1959-1963), was forced to resign his post when it was discovered that he was sympathetic with National Socialism and was previously affiliated with the NSDAP.89 Another study by Der Spiegel found that “of the almost 200 high-raking members of the [Federation]...in the years prior to 1982, more than a third can be found in the members' index of the NSDAP or are in another way tainted...Three former general secretaries and several vice-presidents are affected.”90 As another salient example, the late Jörg Haider, the popular ultra-right pan-Germanist, demanded that the Czech Republic abolish its discriminatory Beneš Decrees and pay Germany indemnity for Czech atrocities against ethnic German civilians. Czech nationalists responded with equally bitter denunciation. The Polish magazine Rzeczpospolita, along with most other Poles, consider expellee groups like Landsmannschaft Ostpreussen (East Prussia) and their scholars to be tainted by neo-Nazism and secretly calling for a return of the lost eastern territories.91 As a result, many see any advocacy of the story of ethnic cleansing against Germans to be a means to a nationalist or revisionist end.

Although most scholars documenting the expulsions are not outright neo-Nazis, many of these notions of disgruntlement with a supposed outside effort to downplay the suffering of Germans are pervasive among scholars and in German society itself. The “betrayal” of the victims by the German government further exemplifies to those of this mindset that the current German state is illegitimate, un-German, and a puppet of external forces (usually claimed to be either the EU liberals, the Americans, or the Jews). As a result, various manifestations of German nationalism and revisionism almost always play a role in documenting the expulsions. With these feelings of tension on all sides in mind, few German government officials – desperately nervous of appearing Rechtsextrem (extreme right) – are willing to entertain the question of an ethnic cleansing of Germans after Hitler's war.

These general underlying remnants of bias and revisionism are present in most scholarly works on the subject. Many of the authors and advocates have family or deceased relatives who suffered in the expulsions, further inflaming their passion and stifling a dispassionate effort for simple documentation of history. This is especially evident in the typically polemical wording of the writings and the biased presentation of post-war historiography. Words like “extermination,” “genocide,” and even “Holocaust” are common, often surreptitiously working to put the suffering of Germans on par with the other, more famous victims of the war and often even the Holocaust itself. German sources are equally vehement, adopting words like Vernichtung (annihilation), Massenmord (mass murder), Vergewaltigung (rape), and moralisches Verbrechen (moral crime). Other writings hastily describe prison camps used in Czechsolovakia and Yugoslavia as “extermination camps” or “death camps.” Others emphasize mass rapes by foaming-at-the-mouth Red Army officers, and children beaten to death en masse with gunstocks. This historical memory among many Germans overlooks the reality that the treatment of Germans was an expulsion and an ethnic cleansing with much accompanying violence, but by no means an intentional effort to exterminate the entire German race (the legitimate qualifier for a genocide). Although the occurrence of mass rapes and massacres is undeniable, the vast majority of expelled Germans died due to starvation and hypothermia, and were force marched to the border rather than “exterminated.” The petulant vocabulary of German historiography demonstrates the common underlying motives of ethnic bias, family passion, and nationalism in documenting the ethnic cleansing.

Another major historiographical fault in most writings on the subject is the vast discrepancy in the number of victims and casualties. In the case of the expelled Yugoslav Germans, for example, more reliable scholarly sources calculate the death toll at ~46,000 German civilians during the expulsions,92 whilst others exaggerate it as high as 85,399.93 For the Germans of Hungary, expellee interest groups raise the number of dead as high as 65,000,94 whilst others claim it to be only 6,000.95 For the Czechoslovak case, expellee groups insist as many as 270,000,96 whilst more erudite scholars and Czech dissident groups like Antikomplex reduce it to only 15-30,000.97 Even Alfred de Zayas (most famous for A Terrible Revenge),98 one of the most scholarly and prominent advocates of the German story, is often criticized for his overly-passionate and ulterior interests in publicizing the expulsions. With such academic contradictions, coming to a dispassionate and truly scholarly conclusion on the history of ethnic cleansing of Germans is quite problematic.

In other cases, many scholars and expellee groups completely overlook the role of National Socialism in some German minority communities prior to their expulsion. This is a severe lacuna in explaining why these regimes found it necessary to orchestrate their complete removal of ethnic lines. Most expelled German communities had little direct or universal affiliation with Nazism or the invading German armies, whilst others (like the Volga Germans of USSR) did not even get a chance to commit treason before they were expelled.99 Others groups of Germans, however, were complicit in Nazi atrocities and sustaining German military occupation. Most saliently, the Danube Swabians of Hungary and the former Yugoslavia were pervasively involved in collaboration with indigenous far-right organizations and the German Wehrmacht, and even comprised one of the most brutal segments of the SS, Division-Prinz Eugen.100 Most scholarship simply overrides these factors in causing the expulsions, beginning their historical analysis with the Germans' peaceful settlement in the eighteenth century and skipping to the Communists' malevolence towards a completely innocent German minority. The vastly polemical, biased, and finger-pointing nature of expellee scholarship greatly stymies any legitimate international dialogue between academics or governments in commemorating such a severe ethnic cleansing.

From personal experiences as the Director of the Institute for Research of Expelled Germans (www.expelledgermans.org) and a researcher with the rare platform of dispassionately documenting the history of the expulsions, many problems can be inferred. Although I obdurately refuse cooperation with or contributions from groups or individuals espousing pro-Nazi, revisionist, or nationalistic motives, my research is occasionally used without permission on other websites for the purpose of presenting the German race as “victimized,” and often to undermine the suffering of Jews and other peoples during the war. This misuse often occurs on websites like Stormfront, among the foremost belligerent and Antisemitic (and therefore one-sided) White Nationalist organizations.

Others have directly criticized the effort of my research to present only the most corroborated casualty figures and lampoon the greatly inflated totals often used by other advocates of expellee commemoration. So too, many emails reveal that some nationalists oppose my willingness to acknowledge the role of National Socialism or SS volunteering when and where it occurred as a potential catalyst for the expulsions, insisting to me that all expelled Germans were innocent victims of genocide and extermination. Others emails have equated my “watered down” (i.e. not polemical) scholarship as evidence that I am a turncoat to the German people and a subscriber to the supposed lie of what three emailers called the “Holohoax.” My own personal interaction and discussions with expellee advocates at academic conferences on the subject further demonstrates the unfortunate reality that many speakers and writers on the topic surreptitiously bear varying degrees of German nationalism, irredentism, and even Antisemitic revisionism. These experiences demonstrate the enduring role of hidden biases in expellee scholarship and historiography. With such an academic environment of firebrand nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, and distorted historical memory as equally present among Germans, Poles, and Czechs, the commemoration effort is greatly hindered. These firm shortcomings are therefore a major cause for the complete absence of the ethnic cleansings from our collective awareness in general.

Conclusion

The struggle for commemoration of the ethnic cleansing against German minorities tells us a great deal about history, politics, and nationalism in building the modern world. It demonstrates that even in ethnic cleansings that the Allied High Commission ordered be carried out “humanely” at the Potsdam Conference of 1945, over 2,280,000 men, women, and children can lose their lives, universally singled out solely because of their ethnic identity as agents of a criminal Nazi past. It reifies that, due to divisive markers of ethnic identities as framed by the modern state, entire ethnicities can be proscribed as categorically “guilty” for the actions of other nations and victimized accordingly. It exemplifies that, due to multiple cultural and political factors, even some of the worst ethnic cleansings of the twentieth century can be almost completely deleted from our understanding of history. It encourages historians and laymen to wonder, “why do we commemorate and remember some tragedies and not others?” As outlined above, the German story demonstrates that each culture has its own drastically distinct lens for viewing its history as fueled and distorted by ethnic nationalism. Most importantly, it reveals that human rights monitors, scholars, and governments have thus far been unable to simply acknowledge the suffering of 10,000,000 civilians solely because of their ethnicity without being diluted by enduring ethnic chauvinism, hypernationalism, and distorted national myths. It is our responsibility to look beyond these limitations and simply devote ourselves to dispassionate, legitimate scholarship and open discussion in order to bring the story of the ethnic cleansing of millions of civilians into our collective consciousness and historical memory.

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is a historian and the Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I have a Cum Laude BA in History with a Minor in Germanic Studies (language and history), am presently working for my Masters in History, and plan to immediately progress to my PhD Doctorate. I have a special academic interest in Europe's diverse ethnic identities, languages, and cultures, and the political struggles of native European and immigrant minority identities. See my staff entry for more information. I am also the Director of the Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, located at www.expelledgermans.org.

CITATIONS:

1. Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 80.
2. Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, "A People on the Move: Germans in Russia and in the Former Soviet Union: 1763-1997," North Dakota State University, http://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/history_culture/history/people.html.
3. Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (Hill and Wang, 2001), 799.
4. Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
   University Press, 2002), 14.
5. Pertti Ahonen, After the Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe 1945-1990 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004), 109.
6. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans,” http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm
7. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The forced labour, imprisonment, expulsion, and emigration of the Germans of Yugoslavia," http://expelledgermans.org/danubegermans.htm
8. Ahonen, 176.
9. Jean Dingell, “The Question of the Polish Forced Labourer during and in the Aftermath of World War II: The Example of the Warthegau Forced Labourers,” Remember.org, http://remember.org/educate/dingell.html
10. Mazower, 412.
11. Ahonen, 110.
12. Ibid, 114.
13. John Tagliabue, "Bonn Urges Russia to Restore Land for its Ethnic Germans," New York Times, 11 January, 1992.
14. Goralski, Witold. “Interview with A. Dybczynski.” 9 March, 2004.
15. Karl Cordell, Germany's Foreign Policy towards Poland and the Czech Republic: Ostpolitik Revisited (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2005), 149.
16. Tagliabue.
17. Pawel Lutomski, “The Debate about a Center against Expulsions: An Unexpected Crisis in German-Polish Relations?,” German Studies Review, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2004): 452.
18. Staff, 2000, "Expelled Germans get recognition, not cash," http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/04/news/mn-15361
19. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans," http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm
20. Alix Kroeger, "Fischer against Sudeten monument,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3182123.stm
21. Lutomski 459.
22. Staff Writer, 2006, “Poles Angered by German WWII Compensation Claims,” http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,455183,00.html
23. Preußische Treuhand, “Die Grundidee,” http://www.preussische-treuhand.org/de/Grundidee.html
24. Staff Writer, 2006.
25. Geir Moulson, “Court rejects Germans' property restitution claims,” http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/09/europe/EU-Germany-Poland.php
26. Ibid.
27. Staff Writer, 2006.
28. Anna Fotyga, “Statement of the [Polish] Minister of the Foreign Affairs,” http://www.msz.gov.pl/index.php?document=8688
29. Lutomski, 458.
30. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans," http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm
31. Staff, 2007, "Stoiber enters Sudeten German row, defends expellees," http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2559416,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf
32. Katerina Zachovalova, "Czech Republic's EU holdout has public support," Time, http://time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1931664,00.html?xid=yahoo-feat?artId=1931664?contType=article?chn=world
33. Ibid.
34. Staff, 2008, "Czechs must return forest to Walderobe family," http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/index_view.php?id=331063
35. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans," http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm
36. Eesti Instituut, "Baltic Germans in Estonia," http://www.einst.ee/historic/society/baltic_germans.htm
37. Latvijas Instituts, "Germans in Latvia," http://www.li.lv/index.phpoption=com_content&task=view&id=78&lang=en
38. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The Baltic German community destroyed under Hitler and Stalin's non-aggression pact," http://expelledgermans.org/balticgermans.htm
39. Eduard Šoštarić, "Diplomate razbjesnio povrat imovine Austrijancima," Nacional, No. 525, 6 June, 2005.
40. Veleposlanstvo Republike Hrvatske u Njemačkoj, "Zbirka međunarodnih ugovora," http://de.mvp.hr/?mh=160&mv=925
41. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The forced labour, imprisonment, expulsion, and emigration of the Germans of Yugoslavia," http://expelledgermans.org/danubegermans.htm
42. B92 News (Belgrade 92 News), "Serbia's Germans form national council," http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2007&mm=12&dd=16&nav_id=46226
43. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, “A magyarországi németek kitelepítése és az 1941, évi népszámlálás,” http://www.nepszamlalas.hu/hun/egyeb/nemet/bevezeto.html
44. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The expelled German community of Hungary," http://expelledgermans.org/hungarygermans.htm
45. Klausjohannis.ro, “Forumul Democrat al Germanilor din România,” http://www.klausjohannis.ro/files/fdgr.htm
46. Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1998), 295.
47. Burleigh, 596.
48. Charles Hawley, “Lingering Fears: Is the World Ready for German Victimhood?,” http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,383263,00.html
49. Jerzy Lukowski, A Concise History of Poland (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 328.
50. Lutomski, 450.
51. Anna Fotyga, “Statement of the [Polish] Minister of the Foreign Affairs,” http://www.msz.gov.pl/index.php?document=8688
52. Mark Blacksell, “Private Property Restitution: The Geographical Consequences of Official Government Policies in Central and Eastern Europe,” The Geographic Journal, Vol. 168, No. 2 (2002): 178-190.
53. Dingell.
54. Ibid.
55. Burleigh, 800.
56. Mazower, 217.
57. Ibid.
58. Burleigh 800.
59. Zygmunt Wozniczka, "Oboz pracy w swietochlowicach," (Dzieje Najnowsze, Rocznik, 31, No. 4, 1999), 18.
60. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans,” http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm
61. Burleigh, 799.
62. Naimark, 117.
63. Rüdiger Overmans, Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevolkerung durcht Flucht und Vertreibung (Dzieje Najnowsze, 1994), 2.
64. Eagle Glassheim, "National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945," Central European History, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2000): 463.
65. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans," http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm
66. Ibid.
67. Glassheim, 471.
68. Ibid., 473-4.
69. Ibid., 471.
70. Naimark, 122.
71. Andrzej Sakson, “Interview with A. Dybczynski,” 10 March, 2004.
72. Cordell, 103.
73. Mark Landler, “Poles riled by Berlin exhibition,” New York Times, 30 August, 2006.
74. Ibid.
75. Cordell, 149.
76. Ibid.
77. Jaromir Sokołowski, “Odwetowcy czy ofiary historii?,” Rzeczpospolita, http://rzeczpospolita.pl/dodatki/plus_minus_030920/plus_minus_a_6.html
78. Ibid.
79. Deutsche Welle 2, “Merkel Says She Won't Insist on Disputed Museum Post,” http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4057645,00.html
80. Stanislaw Waszak, “Poland ups the pressure in WWII memorial feud with Germany,” Expatica, http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/news_focus/Poland-ups-the-pressure-in-WWII-memorial-
    feud-with-Germany--_49974.html
81. Lutomski, 455.
82. AFP/Expatica, “German and Polish leaders to meet amid memorial feud,” http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/dutch-news/German-and-Polish-leaders-to-meet-amid-memorial-feud--_49870.html
83. Waszak.
84. Cordell, 98.
85. Staff Writer, 2008, “Expulsion Center 'No Longer Poisoning German-Polish Relations',” http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,533503,00.html
86. Kroeger.
87. Marek Edelman, “Memorial for German Expulsion ‘Victims’ Makes Mockery of Shoah,”
    The Jewish Daily Forward, 12 September, 2003.
88. Ibid.
89. Deutsche Welle, “League of German expellees unwilling to investigate own past,” http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2135984,00.html
90. Ibid.
91. Sokołowski.
92. Michael Portmann, "Communist retaliation and persecution on Yugoslav territory during and after World War II (1943-1945)," Central and Eastern European Online Library, http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=3dc841b5be864aa3bd1f9ebd503c8638. 64.
93. Stefan Wolff, German Minorities in Europe: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002), 154.
94. Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Ungarn, "Die Vertreibung,” http://www.ldu-online.de/4.html
95. Zentrum gegen Vertreibung, "History of the German expellees and their homelands,"
    http://www.z-g-v.de/english/aktuelles/?id=56
96. Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, "1919-1945," http://www.sudeten.de/cms/?Historie:1919_-_1945#Opfer
97. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans," http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm
98. Maurice Alfred De Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
99. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The vanquished Volga German community," http://expelledgermans.org/volgagermans.htm
100. Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The forced labour, imprisonment, expulsion, and emigration of the Germans of Yugoslavia," http://expelledgermans.org/danubegermans.htm
     
     

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