Expelling The Germans

Author : R. M. Douglas
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 696 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2012-06-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300183764

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Orderly and Humane by R. M. Douglas Pdf

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

Author : Ulrich Merten
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 357 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351519540

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Forgotten Voices by Ulrich Merten Pdf

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

Author : Matthew Frank
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199233649

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Expelling the Germans by Matthew Frank Pdf

An examination of British involvement in the forced migration of German minorities from Poland and Czechoslovakia, this work based on archival research focuses on the refugee crisis caused by this mass movement of population, and on subsequent British attempts to offset its worst effects.

Author : H.W. Schoenberg
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9789401032452

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Germans from the East by H.W. Schoenberg Pdf

Who, in 1945 and 1946, could have foreseen that the economic and social integration of the millions of Germans from the East expelled into West Germany after Wodd War II would largely be accomplished in a few years? And, who could have foreseen that many years after this accomplishment the political repercussions of the expulsions would go on? Yet, surprisingly enough, this is what has happened. In 1969, as usual, the major issues of the federal election campaign in West Germany hardly reflect any specific economic and social concerns of the expellees, not even those bruited about by the NPD (N ationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands). At the same time, how ever, all the political parties vying in the campaign, with the exception of the newly founded, less influentialDKP (the new German Commu nist Party), pay considerable deference to the political interests of the expellees in the German question. Whether these interests represent the opinion of most of the expellees and whether the expellee associ ations in fact speak for many voters is another matter. Why are these questions rarely posed? Why, despite the economic and social integration of the expellees, do the East German Home land Provincial Societies - the Landsmannschaften - retain much influence? The explanation of this phenomenon becomes increasingly clear if one reads the intelligent and superbly documented analysis by Hans Schoenberg.

Author : Matthew Frank
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2008-03-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191528477

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Expelling the Germans by Matthew Frank Pdf

Expelling the Germans focuses on how Britain perceived the mass movement of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of British archival material, Matthew Frank examines why the British came to regard the forcible removal of Germans as a necessity, and evaluates the public and official responses in Britain once mass expulsion became a reality in 1945. Central to this study is the concept of 'population transfer': the contemporary idea that awkward minority problems could be solved rationally and constructively by removing the population concerned in an orderly and gradual manner, while avoiding unnecessary human suffering and economic disruption. Dr Frank demonstrates that while most British observers accepted the principle of population transfer, most were also consistently uneasy with the results of putting that principle into practice. This clash of 'principle' with 'practice' reveals much not only about the limitations of Britain's role but also the hierarchy of British priorities in immediate post-war Europe.

Author : Ian Connor
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2018-02-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526129802

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Refugees and expellees in post-war Germany by Ian Connor Pdf

At the end of the Second World War, some 12 million German refugees and expellees fled or were expelled from their homelands in Eastern and Central Europe into what remained of the former Reich. The task of integrating these dispossessed refugees and expellees in post-war Germany was one of the most daunting challenges facing the Allied occupying authorities after 1945. The first study in English of the economic, social and political integration of the German refugees and expellees in post-war Germany, this book is based on extensive research in German archives and also incorporates the findings of numerous local and regional studies undertaken by German scholars. While its main focus is on the German Federal Republic, the book also provides coverage of the refugee problem in the German Democratic Republic. This accessible book on a key aspect of post-war German history will be of particular interest to undergraduates of history, politics and German.

Author : Erika Vora
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2012-07-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9781477137826

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SILENT NO MORE by Erika Vora Pdf

This book reveals untold living history of thirty ethnic German survivors who finally broke their silence and talked about their heart-breaking experiences of forced deportation, expulsion, and flight during WWII and its aftermath. They were deported from their homes in Romania and Yugoslavia; expelled from their homes in Czechoslovakia; and had to flee from their homes in Poland and all the Eastern provinces of Germany, These ethnic German survivors tell of their weeks-long treacherous over-crowded cattle-train transports, back-breaking work in forced labor camps, starvation and homelessness during bitter cold winters, witnessing mass rapes and beatings to death. They are among the fifteen million Germans who were expelled from their homes in East-Central Europe during the largest forced mass migration of the twentieth century. These now aged survivors, who experienced humanities darkest side but have no malice toward their perpetrators, exemplify the unbreakable and indelible human spirit.

Author : Philipp Ther,Ana Siljak
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2001-11-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9781461642985

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Redrawing Nations by Philipp Ther,Ana Siljak Pdf

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

Author : Jean Medawar,David Pyke
Publisher : Skyhorse
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2012-01-12
Category : History
ISBN : 9781611459647

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Hitler's Gift by Jean Medawar,David Pyke Pdf

Between 1901 and 1932, Germany won a third of all the Nobel Prizes for science. With Hitler's rise to power and the introduction of racial laws, starting with the exclusion of all Jews from state institutions, Jewish professors were forced to leave their jobs, which closed the door on Germany’s fifty-year record of world supremacy in science. Of these more than 1,500 refugees, fifteen went on to win Nobel Prizes, several co-discovered penicillin—and more of them became the driving force behind the atomic bomb project. In this revelatory book, Jean Medawar and David Pyke tell countless gripping individual stories of emigration, rescue, and escape, including those of Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber, Leo Szilard, and many others. Much of this material was collected through interviews with more than twenty of the surviving refugee scholars, so as to document for history the steps taken after Hitler’s policy was enacted. As one refugee scholar wrote, “Far from destroying the spirit of German scholarship, the Nazis had spread it all over the world. Only Germany was to be the loser.” Hitler’s Gift is the story of the men who were forced from their homeland and went on to revolutionize many of the scientific practices that we rely on today. Experience firsthand the stories of these geniuses, and learn not only how their deportation affected them, but how it bettered the world that we live in today.

Author : Egon Harings
Publisher : Tredition Gmbh
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2018-03-06
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 374691485X

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Germany After World War II by Egon Harings Pdf

The Second World War is over. Germany is just a field of rubble. The people have no accommodations. They live in ruins. So-called rubble-women provide for the first construction houses; their men are still in prisoner-of-war camps. Germany is occupied by Allied troops. Hunger is prevalent. Then the year 1949. Two German states emerge. Germany is divided and the eastern territories are under Polish and Russian administration. Millions of Germans are expelled from these territories. West Germany takes in most of the expellees. Then the economic miracle. The people in West Germany are doing well again. In 1990 the reunification. But Germany has to give up its eastern territories. -- This book reports on the history of Germany from the era of Konrad Adenauer to the great age of Angela Merkel. The reader learns about the founding of the European Union and its economic power today, too, and more.

Author : Dan Diner,Gotthart Wunberg
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : History
ISBN : 1845452208

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Restitution and Memory by Dan Diner,Gotthart Wunberg Pdf

The myriad debates on restitution and memory, which have been going on in Europe for decades, indicate that World War II never ended. It is still very much with us, paradoxically re-invoked by the events of 1989/90 and the expansion of Europe to the east in the aftermath of the collapse of communism and economic globalization. The growing privatization and reprivatization in Eastern Europe revive pre-war memories that lay buried under the blanket of collectivization and nationalization of property after 1945. World War II did not only result in the death and destruction on a large scale but also in an a far-reaching revolution of existing property relations. This volume offers an assessment of the problematic of restitution and its close interconnection with the discourses of memory that have recently emerged.

Author : George E. Blau
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1955
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN : IND:39000003543241

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The German Campaign in Russia by George E. Blau Pdf

Author : Michal Kopeček
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2008-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9786155211423

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Past in the Making by Michal Kopeček Pdf

Historical revisionism, far from being restricted to small groups of ‘negationists,’ has galvanized debates in the realm of recent history. The studies in this book range from general accounts of the background of recent historical revisionism to focused analyses of particular debates or social-cultural phenomena in individual Central European countries, from Germany to Ukraine and Estonia. Where is the borderline between legitimate re-examination of historical interpretations and attempts to rewrite history in a politically motivated way that downgrades or denies essential historical facts? How do the traditional ‘national historical narratives’ react to the ‘spill-over’ of international and political controversies into their ‘sphere of influence’? Technological progress, along with the overall social and cultural decentralization shatters the old hierarchies of academic historical knowledge under the banner of culture of memory, and breeds an unequalled democratization in historical representation. This book offers a unique approach based on the provocative and instigating intersection of scholarly research, its political appropriations, and social reflection from a representative sample of Central and East European countries.

Author : Milton Mayer
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 391 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2017-11-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226525976

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They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer Pdf

National Book Award Finalist: Never before has the mentality of the average German under the Nazi regime been made as intelligible to the outsider.” —The New York TImes They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” These ten men were not men of distinction, according to Mayer, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune. A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.

Author : Alfred M. De Zayas
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : History
ISBN : 0312121598

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A Terrible Revenge by Alfred M. De Zayas Pdf

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