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The exodus!
The German exodus from Central and Eastern Europe did not begin in 1944 with the flight of the Red Army, it had already begun in 1939 when Hitler called on "peoples of German nationality" to return "home to the Reich." In his speech in the Reichstag of October 6, 1939, he described the "most important task" after the end of the Polish campaign "a new order of ethnographic conditions, that is, a resettlement of nationalities, so that at the end of the development better dividing lines emerge than the present case.
The impetus for this resettlement program was the additional protocol of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939, which delimited the respective areas of interest in Eastern Europe. Since the Baltic states were Soviet interests, the Germans in these states should have the opportunity to opt for the Reich. In 1939 there were about 17,000 Germans in Estonia, 63,000 in Latvia, and 52,000 in Lithuania.
The situation of the Baltic Germans, who made up the economic or aristocratic upper class, worsened after the First World War, so many of them gradually considered a "return" to the Reich. That is why Hitler's 1939 invitation to resettle in the Reich was definitely attractive to many Baltic Germans. Most opted for Germany in 1939; the others followed in 1941 after the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states. The Germans from Estonia were resettled to the west on the basis of the German-Estonian protocol of October 15, 1939, and the Germans from Latvia under the German-Latvian resettlement agreement of October 30, 1939. But those who stayed behind As well as the Germans from Lithuania, they decided to leave the country on the basis of the German-Soviet resettlement agreement of January 10, 1941.
It should be noted that the Baltic Germans left largely voluntarily and that household items and sometimes horses, cows, pigs and sheep were able to be taken away. They did not settle as a group in their settlement areas, West Prussia and the Warthegau, but lived scattered throughout the country among the rest of the German population. Only in the cities of Posen, Lodz (Litzmannstadt) and Gdynia (Gotenhafen) were they found in larger groups. After the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in the summer of 1941, many Baltic Germans returned, mainly to Lithuania, so they had to flee in the summer of 1944 to avoid being overwhelmed by the advance of the Red Army.
Hitler's "Heim-ins-Reich" program affected not only Baltic Germans, but also ethnic Germans in Volhynia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. Before the war there were around 50,000 Germans living in Volhynia, Poland, who moved to the Posen area in 1939-40. About 215,000 ethnic Germans were resettled from Romania: 93,500 from Bessarabia, 43,000 from North Bucovina, 52,000 from South Bucovina, 154,000 from North Dobruja, 500 from South Dobruja, and 10,000 from Old Romania. They settled mainly in what was then the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and in Warthegau. Only relatively few ethnic Germans were resettled from Yugoslavia, about 35,800 from Carniola (Gottschee, northern Yugoslavia), Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Some of them stayed in occupied Yugoslavia, such as the 14,000 German Gottschee in Lower Styria, while others settled in Poland in the district of Lodz and Lublin. The German minority in Bulgaria, with some 3,500 souls, also emigrated on the basis of a German-Bulgarian resettlement agreement. Many were resettled in Warthegau, others in the Lublin district. Therefore, they were also victims of subsequent flight and displacement.
Source: Die Flucht. Alfred M. de Zayas.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Baltic_Germans
Cheers. Raúl M
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. Cheers. Raúl M