EXPULSION OF THE SUDETEN GERMANS

Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after WWII

Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after WWII

Introduction

The expulsion of Germans after World War II refers to the compelled migration and ethnic cleansing of German nationals (Reichsdeutsche) and ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from Germany and parts of territory previously claimed by Germany in the first three years after World War II.

The principle was one of the number of expulsions in various Central and Eastern European countries which displaced and relocated the number of nationalities in addition to the Germans. Stalin had made the westward shift of boundaries part of his claims and these had been acceded to by the U.S. and the U.K. Initially, the U.S. and the U.K. saw the expulsions as necessary to create ethnic homogeneity and to suppress ethnic aggression originating from expansion of Germans towards the East. All three Allies had agreed to the principle of the expulsions, and the Soviet Union applied the principle with U.S. and British acquiescence. The principle had been agreed to by the Allies as part of the reconfiguration of postwar Europe.

As the Red Army advanced towards Germany at the end of World War II, the considerable exodus of German refugees began from the areas near the front lines. Many Germans escaped their areas of residence under vague and haphazardly applied evacuation orders of the Nazi German government in 1943, 1944, and in early 1945, or based on their own decisions to leave in 1945-1948. Others remained and were later compelled to leave by local authorities. However, in no East European nation were all ethnic Germans compelled to leave. Census figures in 1950 place the total number of ethnic Germans still dwelling in Eastern Europe at approximately 2.6 million, about 12 per hundred of the pre-war total.

The majority of the flights and expulsions appeared in Czechoslovakia, Poland and the European Soviet Union. Others appeared in territories of to the north Yugoslavia (predominantly in the Vojvodina region), and other regions of Central and Eastern Europe.

 

Discussion

The total number of the Germans expelled after the war remains unidentified, as most of the past research supplied the blended estimate, encompassing those that were evacuated by German authorities, escaped or were slain throughout the war. By some accounts, this compelled migration of ethnic Germans resulted in the transfer of between 13.5-16.5 million persons and was the largest of several similar post-World War II migrations orchestrated by the victorious Big Three Allied powers. However, the actual cited research places the number at just over 12 million, encompassing all those who escaped throughout the war or migrated later, forcibly or otherwise, to both the Western and Eastern zones of Germany and to Austria. Over the course of the sixty years since the end of the war, estimates of total deaths of German civilians have ranged from 500,000 to the high of 3 million. Although the German government's official estimate of deaths due to the expulsions stood at ...