WWII expulsions spectre lives on

[Karwats]

Fredd
In my defence I did research on the subject-note 3 quotes. Also have done a lot previously. Some of which are similar to szopen.
From family "Urkunde"-family history book- for lack of better translation. My family stayed in and around Grünberg today Zielona Gora area from at least 1300's-so very long time indeed.


"lack of political will" is this because these people are seen as eliteist or just because not good politics at the time.???

There are some cases when part of real estates were returned or at least there are prospects for it.

I take it this is "new" and not court case since 1989 ???

Brgds

[Marcus]

Marcus you made a one rather common error – you are judging action taken in 1945-1948 from today’s perspective.

It's not an error, ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing and murder is murder regardless of who happens to be the victim and when it occurs.

/Marcus

[Obserwator]

It's not an error, ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing and murder is murder regardless of who happens to be the victim and when it occurs.

Thankfully this was relocation of German citizens due to their patricipation in genocide of Poles and Jews-decided by Allied powers at Potsdam confrerence- not ethnic cleansing like Germans conducted in occupied territories.
One needs to just study the methods and circumstances under both occured to see that compering the two is absurd.

As to

murder is murder

that is a flawed argument. For example-state execution of a criminad conducted under legal basis isn't murder.

[Marcus]

It's not an error, ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing and murder is murder regardless of who happens to be the victim and when it occurs.

Thankfully this was relocation of German citizens not ethnic cleansing.

Sure and the events during the Wars in former Yugoslavia wasn't either.

/Marcus

[Obserwator]

Sure and the events during the Wars in former Yugoslavia wasn't either.

I thought we were talking about WWII.
Do you consider German genocide of Poles and Jews equal to relocation of german citizens ?

And I think it's also absurd to see this without seeying what led to those decisions.Otherwise soon we shall see posts that Germany was the victim of WWII. :roll:

Oh and two more questions:
Why did the "expulled" choose a former colonist as their leader ?

Why don't they ever attack Russian authorites like they attack Poles ?

[Marcus]

Sure and the events during the Wars in former Yugoslavia wasn't either.

I thought we were talking about WWII.
Do you consider German genocide of Poles and Jews equal to relocation of german citizens ?

The scale of the German crimes were larger, but I've never agreed with the idea that the crimes of one side makes the crimes of the other side acceptable.

The "he started it" excause may be acceptable in kindergarten, but has no place in discussions such as this.

/Marcus

[Obserwator]

The scale of the German crimes were larger,

Larger ? We are talking about planned extermination of a whole nation, razing cites, murdering pregnant women, executing children in concentration camps. Treating other nations as animals.
On the other side we have some germans being redirected to Germany with some incidents of violence, sometimes by former prisoners of concentration camps. :roll:
I think saying there were "larger" crimes isn't right. It misses the point. German crimes can't be compered with isolated cases of violence.

And my two questions :

Why did the "expulled" choose a former colonist as their leader ?

Why don't they ever attack Russian authorites like they attack Poles ?

[Marcus]

I think saying there were "larger" crimes isn't right. It misses the point. German crimes can't be compered with isolated cases of violence.

The scale of the German crimes were larger, so the term is correct.

And my two questions

What makes you think I can speak for that organization? If you want to know, I suggest contacting them rather than demanding answers from non-members.

/Marcus

[Obserwator]

The scale of the German crimes were larger, so the term is correct.

But completely unappropriate to use. It is like saying, Mr.X killed 100 children by an axe, during the attempt of his capture Mr.Y damaged his car. Mr. X's crimes are larger then Mr. Y's

What makes you think I can speak for that organization?

Tell me then what you personally think.
As you do have personal opinion about those events after all.
You consider them a crime while many don't - pointing at Potsdam conference as a legal basis for those actions.

[Marcus]

The scale of the German crimes were larger, so the term is correct.

But completely unappropriate to use. It is like saying, Mr.X killed 100people by an axe, during the attempt of his capture Mr.Y damaged his car. Mr. X's crimes are larger.

Let's just agree to disagree on the term. I see no reason to go out of my way to underline the obvious by using stronger language, I prefer to try and stay as objective as possible.

What makes you think I can speak for that organization?

Tell me then what you personally think.

I don't know anything about that organization so I have nothing to base any response on, sorry.

As you do have personal opinion about those events after all.
You consider them a crime while many don't - pointing at Potsdam conference as a legal basis for those actions.

Some of the actions by the Germans were supported the law, that does not make them any less of a crime to me.

/Marcus

[michael mills]

It is certainly true that part of the ethnic German minority in pre-1939 Poland collaborated with the German invaders and participated in the expulsion of ethnic Poles from the western Polish territories annexed by Germany (West Prussia, Wartheland, East Upper Silesia).

However, Obserwator exaggerates when he extends that collaboration to the entire ethnic German population of Poland.

Furthermore, not all the German colonists in the Polish territories annexed by Germany were volunteers filled with a desire to kick out Poles. In fact, most of them were ethnic Germans who had been relocated from the Baltic States, the eastern Polish provinces annexed by the Soviet Union, Bukovina and Bessarabia); they wanted to be resettled in Germany itself, but instead were directed to former Polish territory where they bore the brunt of Polish hostility.

In many ways those German "colonists" were victims rather than perpetrators. They were placed in a situation that they did not create themselves.

Finally, although the expulsion of the ethnic German population from pre-1939 Poland (some hundreds of thousands) may have had some justification as a measure to remove the cause of several decades of border conflict, there was certainly no justification for the expulsion of many millions of Germans from the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse annexed by Poland. That German population had been settled there for many centuries, and was the overwhelming majority in those provinces.

The population of Stettin and Breslau had not done anything against the people of Poland. They were not colonists, but people settled for centirues on land that was indisputably German by any criterion.

In summary, the number of ethnic Germans expelled by the Polish Government from 1945 onward was many times greater than the number of ethnic Poles driven from their homes by the German occupiers between 1939 and 1945, and many times greater than the number of innocent Poles who lost their lives at German hands.

Obserwator is clearly propagating the same Polish chauvinism as a number of other contributors to this forum. I do not dispute their right to say what they think, but to my mind Polish chauvinism, whether directed against Germans or Ukrainians (these days the Polish chauvinists are too cowardly to attack their other traditional target, the Jews, although they may do so in private for all I know) is just as distorted as any other form of chauvinism.

[Obserwator]

Obserwator is clearly propagating the same Polish chauvinism as a number of other contributors to this forum. I do not dispute their right to say what they think, but to my mind Polish chauvinism, whether directed against Germans or Ukrainians (these days the Polish chauvinists are too cowardly to attack their other traditional target, the Jews, although they may do so in private for all I know) is just as distorted as any other form of chauvinism.

Is this the moment where I should say Sieg Hail ?

[Brotherhood of the Cross]

... the eastern Polish provinces annexed by the Soviet Union, Bukovina and Bessarabia);

Those teritories belonged to Romania and their occupation was one of reasons for which Romania went along Germany to fight the Soviets. Nowadays Bukovina is part of Ukraina and Bessarabia is independent: Moldavia. As for the Germans living there, I don't know of any significant number being present around the anexation period. Most Germans in Romania were concentrated in Western and Central part.

[David Thompson]

Obserwator -- You asked, in response to a post from Michael Mills:

Is this the moment where I should say Sieg Hail ?

No. This is the moment when you should provide some factal evidence for your many unsupported claims.

I try to run this section of the forum for the benefit of the readers, but your posts are very long on opinion and very short on facts. Even if a post is polemical but contains valuable information, I will leave it alone, but your posts seem to be all opinion and no proof. Here is a sampling of eight of your claims (my italics highlight the undocumented portion of each claim):

(1)

relocation of German citizens due to their patricipation in genocide of Poles and Jews-decided by Allied powers at Potsdam confrerence

(2)

study the methods and circumstances under both occured to see that compering the two is absurd.

(3)

it's also absurd to see this without seeying what led to those decisions.

(4)

We are talking about planned extermination of a whole nation, razing cites, murdering pregnant women, executing children in concentration camps. Treating other nations as animals.

(5)

Why don't they ever attack Russian authorites like they attack Poles ?

(6)

German crimes can't be compered with isolated cases of violence.

(7)

You consider them a crime while many don't - pointing at Potsdam conference as a legal basis for those actions.

(8)

But completely unappropriate to use. It is like saying, Mr.X killed 100 children by an axe, during the attempt of his capture Mr.Y damaged his car. Mr. X's crimes are larger then Mr. Y's

None of these statements of yours have anything you've provided to back them up. Start providing some factual back-up or prepare yourself for deletions.

From the H&WC section rules:

Claims and Proof

The fifth rule of the forum is: "When quoting from a book or site, please provide info on the source (and a link if it is a website)."

If a poster raises a question about the events, other posters may answer the question with evidence. If a poster stops asking questions and begins to express a point of view, he then becomes an advocate for that viewpoint. When a person becomes an advocate, he has the burden of providing evidence for his point of view. If he has no evidence, or doesn't provide it when asked, it is reasonable for the reader to conclude that his opinion or viewpoint is uninformed and may fairly be discounted or rejected.

Undocumented claims undercut the research purposes of this section of the forum. Consequently, it is required that proof be posted along with a claim. The main reason is that proof, evidence, facts, etc. improve the quality of discussions and information. A second reason is that inflammatory, groundless threads attack, and do not promote, the scholarly purpose of this section of the forum.

This requirement applies to each specific claim. In the past, some posters have attempted to evade the proof requirement by resort to the following tactics, none of which are acceptable here:

A general reference to a website, or a book without page references; citations or links to racist websites; generalized citations to book reviews; and citations to unsourced articles.

Noncomplying posts are subject to deletion after warning.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

[Fredd]

Observator - I could agree that sometimes you overdo with blaming Germans as a nation for crimes perpetrated by their ancestors. My one grandparents were lucky and met some dissent Germans during the war when they were forced to labor on a German farm. It not so common to treat forced labor like human not animals (the later stance was widespread but there were dissent Germans either! )

Obserwator is clearly propagating the same Polish chauvinism as a number of other contributors to this forum. I do not dispute their right to say what they think, but to my mind Polish chauvinism, whether directed against Germans or Ukrainians (these days the Polish chauvinists are too cowardly to attack their other traditional target, the Jews, although they may do so in private for all I know) is just as distorted as any other form of chauvinism.

Michael Mills your post was HIGHLY OFFENSIVE. It was the purest demagoguery to mention the Jews at this context. I hope you just lost your temper. Anyway I congratulate you your knowledge of what 'Polish chauvinist' may think in private. Could you be so kind and share with us what they think about other topics - since you are so knowledgeable about their private thoughts