WWII expulsions spectre lives on

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Marcus
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WWII expulsions spectre lives on

#1

Post by Marcus » 04 Aug 2004, 21:17

"Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble," declared British prime minister Winston Churchill. "A clean sweep will be made."
This clean sweep, or the forced removal of millions of ethnic Germans from the liberated countries of eastern Europe in the immediate aftermath of war, was meant to spell the end of strife.
German nationalists had historically used the existence of German minorities in other countries to make territorial claims; Adolf Hitler used them to bolster his case for aggressive expansion.
But the row over the brutality which accompanied the expulsion of these people, many of whom were raped, beaten and killed, has yet to be tidily resolved. All of them lost their homes.
Decrees authorising the confiscation of property belonging to some of the 3 million ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia have soured relations with the Czech Republic several times, and the subject recently bubbled to the surface in Poland, where a similar process unfolded.
A fringe German group, the Prussian Trust, has begun a series of lawsuits against Poland to recover property seized after the war - a move which has prompted near national hysteria as Warsaw remembers the 200,000 Poles slaughtered by the Nazis in the 1944 uprising.
Speaking at the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising at the weekend, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder firmly distanced himself from claims for compensation by the group, which has filed for reparations for some 30,000 former German properties in Poland at the European Court of Human Rights.
But short of the German government constructing a legal settlement under which Germany would itself meet the compensation claims of the group, they cannot be stopped from pursuing their demands.
Germany's principal organisation representing the expelled and their families, the League of Expelled Germans, which has long demanded the Polish and Czech governments acknowledge crimes and human rights violations committed against the expelled, has also disassociated itself from the group.
But it believes Germany must go some way to addressing the demands - if only to give Poles legal certainty that the matter is closed and their property safe from the prospect of future lawsuits.
But for most of the expelled the issue was not one of property, but of "sympathy and reconciliation" between the people of both Germany and Poland, said the League's president, CDU politician Erika Steinbach.
The main aim of the League is the establishment of a centre dedicated to remembering those expelled across Europe, which would house a permanent exhibition on the fate of the ethnic Germans. They want it in Berlin.
Mr Schroeder does not want it built in Berlin - or anywhere in Germany for that matter, arguing that millions were expelled from their homelands during the 20th Century and that a German location would give undue prominence to the fate of the expelled Germans.
...
"The centre against expulsion would be a place dedicated to truth, not to the perversion of history and the corruption of facts," she said, noting that the centre would finally endow the expelled and their families with a sense of identity.
Germans' own suffering, long a taboo, is increasingly a legitimate grounds for open discussion.
It was confronted most prominently by left-wing literary doyen Guenther Grass in Crabwalk, a novel which focused on the plight of the more than 8,000 German refugees who died when their boat was torpedoed by the Russians in 1945.
...
But while Mr Grass may have qualms about establishing a centre for the expelled in Berlin, he believes an open discussion is essential if German suffering during those years is not to become the preserve of the nationalist right.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3528506.stm

Let's keep this thread a civil and mature discussion about the expulsion of millions of Germans and volksdeutsche from eastern Germany. This is an important topic and one that needs to be discussed.

Any attempts to turn this into some sort of mud slinging, either of individuals or nationalities will not be tolerated, consider this an advance warning.

/Marcus

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#2

Post by David Thompson » 04 Aug 2004, 21:46

Interested readers can find more on the subject of the expulsion of Germans after WWII at:

9 million Germans expelled?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1698
The fate of ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6878
Notes from a Land of the Dead [Poland]
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6803
Father, shoot me [Poland]
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6291
Soviet forces encouraged the expulsion of Germans
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=3504
Expulsion of German-speaking people from Alsace-Lorraine
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6523
Fleeing the Red Hordes
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=45738
Czech Parliament Decision [on Expulsion of Sudeten Germans]
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1826
Soviets Order Volga Population Exiled to Siberia
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=387


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Marcus
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#3

Post by Marcus » 04 Aug 2004, 22:00

A post dealing with the issue of a possible compensation from Poland was moved to a new thread, please keep this thread focused on the expulsion and facts about it, thanks.

/Marcus

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#4

Post by Obserwator » 04 Aug 2004, 23:30

Let's keep this thread a civil and mature discussion about the expulsion of millions of Germans and volksdeutsche from eastern Germany.
One needs to remember that among the so called "victims of expulsions"
were colonists who robbed Polish homes and property(the leader of BdV-Steinbach is a daughter of an officer who took a polish home by force), members of Nazi party,people who posesed Polish slaves, and members of Selbstshutz organisation which commited atrocites and genocide against polish people since 1939 and "Operation Tannenberg".
German minority has overwhelmingly supported Reich in its wars of conquest-both in Chechoslovakia and Poland where it formed paramilitary organisations aimed against the countries it lived in, eagerly accepted German troops in those countries and benefits of regime that was installed in those countries. Due to German policy of extermination and planned0 slaughter of 6 milion Poles in concentration camps, wholescale destruction of Polish cites and organised murder of Polish elites, kidnapping of children etc-it was the most sane and merciful solution to relocate German people from the ones they hurt.
Due to overwhelming support of the German people towards the regime and their past activites against Poland and other countries(long before Hitler came to power) expulsions was believed and proved the most effective and civil way of preventing war for the next 60 years.

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#5

Post by Rauli » 04 Aug 2004, 23:46

Obserwator wrote:
Let's keep this thread a civil and mature discussion about the expulsion of millions of Germans and volksdeutsche from eastern Germany.
German minority has overwhelmingly supported Reich in its wars of conquest-both in Chechoslovakia and Poland.
Do I remember it wrong, but didn´t Poland took part of division of Chechoslovakia?

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#6

Post by Dan » 05 Aug 2004, 00:15

Do I remember it wrong, but didn´t Poland took part of division of Chechoslovakia?
When I think of beating the war drums, I think as much of Lipski (sp) as I do of Hitler.

And this story of going door to door confiscating German looking kids is brought up every so often here, but there's not much in the way of facts that I've seen.

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#7

Post by Obserwator » 05 Aug 2004, 00:31

Poland took part of division of Chechoslovakia?
You mean part of Poland that was took by Chechoslovakia from Poland in 1919 during the Polish-Soviet war, and draw a border line when Soviets attacked Warsaw.
And this story of going door to door confiscating German looking kids is brought up every so often here, but there's not much in the way of facts that I've seen.
It's well established fact.
http://www.ushmm.org/education/resource ... lor=E2D15F
There are even pictures of the children in the camp.

A link to a polish interview with president o "Dzieci Zamojszczyzny" or "Children of Zamojszczyzna" a region where 20.000 children were taken to concentration camps by Germans, some who were considerd "aryan" taken for adoptation instead of being murdered. He is one of those who survived.
http://roztocze.net/newsroom.php/13293

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#8

Post by David Thompson » 05 Aug 2004, 02:12

Dan – For more details on the "story of going door to door confiscating German looking kids," check the trial of the administrators of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (SS - Rasse - und Siedlungshauptamt) -- available on-line at The Mazal Library website at:

http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/04a/NMT04-T0599.htm

If you’d like, I’ll start posting source materials on that subject as a thread for one of the “other” war crimes. The operations of the RuSHA are by no means widely known, and I'd like to know more as well.

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#9

Post by David Thompson » 05 Aug 2004, 02:17

Obserwator -- Are you saying that the Soviet, Polish, Czech and Yugoslav expulsions of racial Germans are less of a war crime, or more excusable, than the Nazi expulsions of Soviet, Polish, Czech and Yugoslav nationals?

Under what circumstances can it be said that one crime justifies another?

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#10

Post by Obserwator » 05 Aug 2004, 02:29

you saying that the Soviet, Polish, Czech and Yugoslav expulsions of racial Germans are less of a war crime, or more excusable, than the Nazi expulsions of Soviet, Polish, Czech and Yugoslav nationals?

Under what circumstances can it be said that one crime justifies another?
First of all, not all Germans were expelled.Secondly Germans often fled before the Red Army arrived.Third of all, the methods used were civil (with exceptions) in contrast to brutal and murderous methods of Germans-they are well documented by Institute of National Memory in Poland. Fourth-a significant number of those "expelled" were colonists-like Steinbach their current leader.Fifth of all-yes one can't compere the genocide of German Reich towards other nations to expulsions of German citizens.
It isn't a crime to shoot someone who tries to kill your whole family.
Like it or not-German minorites were active in supporting German atrocites(Selbstsutz), wars, and gladly took benefits from Poles that were murdered or expelled-their are a lot of documents in IPN depicting their behaviour during expullsion of Poles.They were hostile to Poland long before Hitler came to Poland.
German policy was to exterminate Poles, destroy their country, during the German occupation and war in Poland, Poles didn't really distinguish between Wehrmaht, Waffen SS etc-brutality came from German citizens not some organistations that ware part of German govt.
Expelling Germans wasn't a crime. It was an act of self-preservation.

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#11

Post by Dan » 05 Aug 2004, 02:56

If you’d like, I’ll start posting source materials on that subject as a thread for one of the “other” war crimes. The operations of the RuSHA are by no means widely known, and I'd like to know more as well.


Thank you very much, David. I would like this, and I suspect others will also.

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#12

Post by Beppo Schmidt » 05 Aug 2004, 03:32

It isn't a crime to shoot someone who tries to kill your whole family.
No, but it is a crime to then go on to shoot that person's entire family for what he did.
Expelling Germans wasn't a crime. It was an act of self-preservation.
So said Hitler about the Jews.
Third of all, the methods used were civil (with exceptions) in contrast to brutal and murderous methods of Germans-they are well documented by Institute of National Memory in Poland.
I wouldn't call forced marches, beatings, and shootings "civil".

I get very tired of hearing these people respond to every mention of crimes against Germans with endless reminders of the crimes of the German Reich. Do the crimes of the German government mean that no German can be recognized as a victim?

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#13

Post by David Thompson » 05 Aug 2004, 04:16

Obserwator -- You said:
Expelling Germans wasn't a crime. It was an act of self-preservation.

I disagree. The old rule that "blows and bites beget like" is well known, even in the animal kingdom. It is when a substitute victim is chosen as a scapegoat instead of the actual oppressor that the injustice begins. There is no justification for these vile acts of plunder, rapine, and murder. People who, having been the victims of crime, then turn criminal are no better than their teachers -- in this case, the Nazis.

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#14

Post by Panzermahn » 05 Aug 2004, 05:58

Thanks for the news article, Marcus,

maybe finally in the 21st century and more than 50 years after the end of WW2, the world will finally recognised that germans too are victims in WW2..

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#15

Post by xcalibur » 05 Aug 2004, 06:13

Joachim Chan wrote:Thanks for the news article, Marcus,

maybe finally in the 21st century and more than 50 years after the end of WW2, the world will finally recognised that germans too are victims in WW2..
Thanks so much for once again stating the obvious.

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