Talk:Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)/Archive 6

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Disrespect for other opinions

I think some editors of this page are somewhat one-sided in their opinions and do not accept any other opinions. This is very unfortunate and shows me their inability to be tolerant to other views. It seems a waste of time to even contribute if 2 or 3 people control this page like their opinion is G*d's word. I also do not agree with some assumptions made, like "most" or "the Germans" or "the Poles". It is very generalizing, has plenty of omissions and exchangable "most" and "the" words (very manipulating), and does not take into account individual experience and individual suffering. Other opinions are not respected here.

Can we compromise on the activities of German minorities section?

User:25 213.70.74.165 keeps deleting this section and I keep reverting his deletion. This sort of useless edit-warring gets us nowhere. The truth is... the section is in the article for far more time than it is out. Check the logs. This time, the text remained deleted for 4 1/2 hours. The last time, it was reverted almost immediately.

Thus, User:25 213.70.74.165 is only managing to make his/her point for a fraction of the time and the rest of the time the text he/she is objecting to stands. Thus, the repeated deletions serve only to annoy the rest of us and there is no chance that the text will remain deleted if he/she continues in this manner.

Furthermore, these repeated deletions without explanation constitute vandalism and could result in User:25 213.70.74.165 being blocked if someone were to appeal this to an administrator.

I prefer that we do not go down that road if we don't have to.

I got here via the RFC and I came to help, not to join in an edit war.

Can I suggest that we work towards a compromise that will get User:25 213.70.74.165's point across in a manner that is acceptable to all?

I do not completely understand User:25 213.70.74.165's point although I understand some of it.

Here are the possibilities:

1) Selbstschutz was terminated in 1940 and therefore could not be used as a reason for the expulsions

Response: The memory of past events can influence current events

2) Not many Germans were involved in Selbstschutz

Response: I'm willing to credit this if there's documentation. I've asked User:Molobo for English sources and though some have been provided, the most critical passage remains supported by a Polish website. Here's the text in question:

"Every tenth German living in Poland was a member of Selbstschutz and 25% of the German population belonged to Nazi-sponsored organizations aiding in the Nazi conquest of Poland."

I would guess that this assertion is something that User:25 213.70.74.165 would object to. I am confounded by the lack of an English translation but nonetheless, let's assume that the Polish source does actually document those numbers. It is incumbent on User:25 213.70.74.165 to find a source refuting the numbers. Does the Centre against Expulsions say nothing on this question?

3) Even if some Germans in Poland aided the Nazis, that was not a reason for expelling the entire population.

Response: There are two ways to read the above sentence. One is "very few people in Poland, especially in the Polish government thought about the aid given to the Nazis by Germans in Poland". I doubt that this statement is true but we could insert if if it were sourced.

The other way to read the above sentence is "the aid given to the Nazis was not a valid reason to expel the entire population."

I agree with this but it needs to be sourced.

I am out of time this morning. I need to get going. Let's all think of a way to defuse this controversy so as to get past the edit-warring. And, please, let's discuss here rather than engage in edit-warring.

Happy editing.

--Richard 14:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

1) Selbstschutz was terminated in 1940 and therefore could not be used as a reason for the expulsions This was irrelevent in the opinion of Poles. It was given as example of unwillngess of German minority to be loyal to Poland. I actually restricted myself to connected examples. If I would want to give more examples of such behaviour I could give information about German minority pushing for ethnic expulsion of Poles in WWI already. "Every tenth German living in Poland was a member of Selbstschutz and 25% of the German population belonged to Nazi-sponsored organizations aiding in the Nazi conquest of Poland." Well as to Selbstschutz-it had 81,000 or so members in Poland out of 741,000 Germans living in it.The actuall percentage is a bit higher as you see. And you have to remember that as Selbstschutz was made out of fit men, it didn't include women, children and elderly who compromised part of population also. If you would count only the male population from which those 81,000 that was recruted , you would get larger numbers in terms of support. But again I didn't do this this time.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Molobo (talk • contribs)

It would really help if you could provide a translation of the relevant text from this website http://www.1939.pl/epizody/kolumna.htm. I am particularly interested in the paragraph that starts "W okresie II wojny światowej ..." and ends with "zrezesaly 25% mniejśzoci niem."

I am guessing that the last sentence in that paragraph provides support for the assertion that 25% of the German population belonged to Nazi-sponsored organizations ("organizacjach hitlerowskich"). Hey! If I keep this up, I'll wind up teaching myself Polish!  ;^)

--Richard 21:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh, I will try to translate the related parts as soon as possible. And you are right about the translation :) --Molobo 00:14, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Since when did finding one source in a foreign language mean that it was verified or accurate? usually if one cannot find more then one source for information on such a controversial subject, it is pure conjecture and conspiracy theory (which I wouldnt put past Molobo seeing his previous links on other articles). and come on, it states Nazi-sponsored organizations, many different organizations were sponsored by the Nazis, the Red Cross was sponsored by Nazis as well as other humanitarian organizations, by the definition given, anyone working for the Red Cross was a Nazi collaborator. More sources need to be found that can verify this. this of course is not to mention that this is not some peer reviewed published article, but from a website, which can be created by anyone!

--Jadger 02:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, I agree but you got to start somewhere. I haven't seen any sources for any of the other counter-claims (which is why I deleted them). As stated higher up, we should all be willing to have both sides of the debate included in the article provided they are sourced to reliable sources that we can verify. A Polish source cannot be verified by me. Maybe somebody else who can read Polish can help us verify the sources. (The Polish website is not the only source provided by Molobo. Check out the citations.)

Note that verifying the sources doesn't mean verifying the truth of the assertion. Given that there is controversy over the assertion, the best way to couch this information is "According to Polish historian A, X is true."

Then later, we can say "According to German historian B, X is an exaggeration and, in fact, Y is true."

I didn't delete the counter-claim because I thought it was untrue (although I did think it was badly stated). I deleted it because there was no source provided even after I asked for sources. We can put it back. Where's the source?

I have to believe that, if these assertions made by Molobo are being seriously challenged by anybody (e.g. Centre against Expulsions), then there should be a verifiable source for the challenges. So, where are they?

The critical point here is the claim that Selbstschutz had 81,000 or so members in Poland out of 741,000 Germans living in Poland. That is the support for the 10% figure. 81,000 members sounds high to me but, me personally, I have no evidence to challenge the claim. Do you? If so, please provide the source.

Furthermore, I am not convinced that 81,000 members of Selbstschutz engaged in active support and collaboration with the Nazi invaders. But, once again, I have no basis to challenge that claim either. Do you?

I am trying to help by being a more or less impartial referee. But, as I've stated before, unless you guys provide sources, you are dooming yourself to endless edit-warring.

--Richard 02:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Source of 81,000 number[1], actually I made a mistake its 82,000. The source is on-line encyclopedia of PWN using Wielka Encyklopedia PWN as source . As to pre-war German population data from census[2] --Molobo 10:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Presumably, this is the sentence which provides support for 82,000. "Selbstschutz na okupowanych ziemiach pol. osiągnął liczbę 82 tys." Can you translate this for us so we can be clear what it says? I'm assuming for now it means "Selbstchutz had 82,000 members in Poland" but it would be helpful to have a full translation.

Now, the next point is that critics are charging that, even if Selbstschutz had 82,000 members, that doesn't mean this was the reason that the authorities expelled the Germans. So, now what you really need is a declaration from a Polish statesman of that time or by a Polish historian linking Selbstschutz to the expulsions. It could be an excerpt from a speech or a memoir. It could be a passage in a historian's academic paper.

--Richard 15:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

According to a recent article by a Polish historian - Zamość expulsion eyewitness - all German adult male settlers wore black uniforms. I don't know the exact meaning of it, but they were members of a Nazi organization. Xx236 08:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't fully understand what you are trying to say. Sounds like the Polish historian is arguing that all the adult German males wore black uniforms which signified membership in a Nazi organization. Every last adult German male in Poland? or in Zamość? (I assume that's the name of a town) When did they wear the black uniforms? Surely not during the expulsion.

--Richard 08:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Now, I mean German settlers in Zamość region 1942-1944. The local Poles called them Czarni (Blacks) because of the uniforms. Xx236 12:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

But, are we to conclude that all male German settlers in Poland were Czarni? Moreover, if all male German settlers wore black, perhaps there was peer pressure that made doing so a requirement. During the de-Nazification campaign in Germany, I believe it was acknowledged that many members of the Nazi party joined simply to get ahead or to preserve their jobs. Same with members of the Communist party in Communist countries.

Finally, this discussion is OR. We need sources that assert these things and specifically link them to the expulsions. It is not sufficient for us to say "A is true (sourced)" and "B is true (sourced)" therefore "A => B is true (unsourced)". That is still OR.

--Richard 15:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't claim anything general about the Germans in Poland, I have given an example of tens of thousands of German settlers in Zamość region, who were hated by local Poles and had to leave in 1944. I believe that many Germans should have been allowed to stay in Communist Poland, but the ones who were expelled to Western Germany won. Xx236 15:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Purported reasons for the expulsion

The main reason was Soviet leadership's (or Stalin's) opinion, especially the future of Germany. It's absurd to ignore the main reason and to include a so long discussion about secondary reasons. Stettin was annexed to Poland, probably because the SU wanted to control the harbor.

In Poland the expulsion was generally a state policy. Local authorities wanted to keep many German workers and were pressed from above to deport them. The state policy was imposed by or at least consulted with Moscow.

Xx236 08:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Can you source this? Or just put it in the article and see who objects?

--Richard 08:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes I can source this. --Molobo 10:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oder-Neisse line contains some info, but it does not translate Stalin's language into plain English. Xx236 12:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

German minority section

I am not willing to participate in the “Selbstschutz”-discussion any more. Regardless whether the whole Selbstschutz-issue could have been a sound reason for the expulsion (by the way, it would not have been), it was simply not the reason. The reason was that Stalin and Truman decided in Potsdam to shift Poland to the west in order to secure that the Soviet Union could permanently keep the territories occupied by the Red Army in the course of the execution of the Hitler-Stalin-Treaty in 1939. In order to clear room for the Polish refugees and to prevent future ethnic violence in the new western parts of Poland/former eastern parts of Germany, the German population had been expelled.

However taking a look at the main side, the west-shift of Poland is mentioned in a little, tiny paragraph hidden somewhere in the middle part of the page whereas the article about German minority organisations grows and grows. I do not mind writing about Selbstschutz, Werwolf, etc. but please not on this page as there is no significant connex (it was not the reason and it would not even have been a proper reason). Neither do I want to relativise or conceal anything what happened before and during WWII but it makes me sad and angry how the topic is handled here.

Millions were expelled from their homes where their ancestors had lived partly for more than 600 years, and millions were killed on their way to the west, mostly women, children and old men, driven like cattle, fucked, burned and robbed. This is a cheerless part of European history and would have deserved a better, ie more objective and academic treatment. Instead of this it has become a platform where everybody seems to be allowed to post his own history regardless how wrong and unsystematic it may ever be.

Anyway, I am tired of fighting against windmills and hence abstain from deleting the weird Selbstschutz section from now on. I wish you guys a lot of fun with your homemade-history on this page in the future (“Wo rohe Kräfte sinnlos walten, da kann sich kein Gebild gestalten”, Friedrich Schiller). (213.70.74.164 09:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

Indeed, there should be sources that include the purported reason as reason. If not, why should it be more than original research? It's a vanity edit, anyway, the Selbstschutz article was written by Molobo and links to it were spread by him over Wikipedia. This would explain why there were three or four links to Selbstschutz in this article... Sciurinæ 09:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I am seeing a distinction that I hadn't focused on before. There are at least two parts to the expulsions: the official actions of the national governments and the response, enmity and actions of the local officials and populace during the expulsions.

I think we need a little more historical detail about how the expulsions were actually implemented. Did Polish and Soviet Army units come and herd the Germans into railroad cars? Or was the expulsion left to be implemented by local officials?

How did the local populace react to the expulsions? One assumes that there were not protest rallies in favor of keeping the Germans or examples of Poles hiding Germans in their attics.

Who actually did the robbing, raping and killing? Soldiers? Or locals?

I'm going to assume that locals participated in some of the worst crimes of the expulsions. And, if this is true, why did they? Were they just being opportunistic? (i.e. did they do it just because they could?) Or was it because of pent-up anger and resentment?

Thus, when we talk about "reasons", it may be useful to distinguish between the reasons for the official actions at the national government level and the reasons for the actions of the local populace against the German populace who had been their neighbors for hundreds of years.

Seen in this light, 213.70.74.164 has a valid point. The Selbstschutz/Werwolf stuff probably wasn't the primary reason for the expulsions at the national government level. However, that and the "Czarni" stuff probably was very much in the minds of the local populace which gave them the emotional drive to support the expulsions and to try to hurt the Germans as they left rather than just watch them leave.

Please respond to this. I know it's OR but I see it as a way to integrate the viewpoints of different editors. If no one objects, I will restructure the article to bring out these points. It sure would be helpful if someone could dig up a source that supports this line of thinking.

--Richard 15:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

213.70.74.164 - vandalism

Would you please discuss my text rather than removing in from this discussion? Xx236 14:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Germans were hurt. Poor them. But 60% of Germans in Czechoslovakia voted for the Czechoslovak branch of the nazi party (which actually united with the German one later). There was a 3/4 million Czech minority in the Sudetenland - expelled. 350 000 Czechoslovakian citizens were Jews - 20 000 survived. The terror against the Czechs was incredible, whole villages were destroyed and inhabitants executed just for power-demonstration reasons. Unlike Germany, Czechoslovakia had laws that protected civil and religious freedoms of its citizens - even Germans had their own schools and could use German as an official language in their areas. By voting for the Nazi party and destroying Czechoslovakia, leaving it prey to Russia after the war, they did serious evil. You don't support a party that wants to exterminate people, start wars for new territories etc. and expect receiving bread, honey and warm milk in reward, do you?

I am not saying this because I would think that it is important for the article. But people like you - 213, Sciurinae etc., who "disconnect" the expulsions from the war, claiming that "the expulsion is a cheerless part of the history" - IT is not, will you ever get it? The whole war is the cheerless part of the history, not only the expulsions separately. Then whine about Germans suffering and being killed. Poor you. You are making me nauseated. Anyway, thanx for your abstaining 213. ackoz 14:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Why do I disconnect the expulsion from the war? I expressively connected it to the Potsdam Conferrence which is undoubtfully connected to WWII. And why I am not allowed to lament the victims, are they second-class victims? (213.70.74.164 15:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

Last edit

I added the citation needed for the fact that most of the Germans in Czechoslovakia were Nazi supporters.

I also added some text from http://countrystudies.us/czech-republic/26.htm , it should be public domain and it demonstrates the situation in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia. But it is quite long. If anyone is able to shorten it, please do so, but these facts should be preserved:

• minority rights were protected by Czechoslovakia
• Germans living in Czechoslovakia never ever wanted it to even exist
• more tensions arose because of the economic situation and security situation on the borders with Germany
• the things that happened later were a result of German nationalism, not of Czechoslovaks oppressing the Germans (which was suggested in the article as I saw it first time)

ackoz 14:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

OK .. 213 no discussion with you no more, all your changes will be reverted if you really removed something from the discussion. You are an idiot. ackoz 14:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, you angry, angry little man with your big, big flag... No discusions with you any more - that sounds indeed seductively! By the way, calling me an idiot convinces me of your intellectual helplessness and mental narrowness. As for the deleted comment, it would have been better for Xx236 "reputation" to keep it deleted. It had been undoubtfully millions of victims (approx. 2 million) and to claim it was the guilt of a non-existing German governmemt (formed in 1949!) that so many died between 1945 - 1948 as they did not organize their own expulsion is cynicism at its best. (213.70.74.165 14:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

It's undoubtfully cynical to claim 2 million German victims after the war. Hundreds of thousands of Germans died during the "Flucht", see above "Flucht und Vertreibung", many perished in the Soviet Union (PoWs, miners). It didn't have any connection to any expulsion, it was a war and Communism. As for the expulsion: Even the biased German Wiki claims 60.000-80.000 victims of camps in Poland. I don't want to discuss this numbers now, the reader can compare 80 000 in Poland plus 30 000 in Czechoslovakia (according to German historian Peter Glotz) and alleged 2 millions. Xx236 15:34, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

For your information just two sources concerning the overall number of two millions victims (please note that the BPB and the WDR have an excellent international reputation):

http://www.bpb.de/themen/SMG6CJ,0,0,Die_Vertreibung_der_Deutschen_aus_den_Gebieten_jenseits_von_Oder_und_Nei%DFe.html http://www.wdr.de/tv/nachtkulturundgeschichtszeit/gzvertriebenen_2.html

(213.70.74.165 15:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

"millions were killed on their way to the west" is an example of German home-made history. The total number of German victims wasn't "millions" and many of the victims died of infections. The German government was responsible for the too late and poorly organised evacuation ("Flucht").

The Germans created many myths about the expulsion. Now a German demands academic treatment. Yes, yes, yes! But the academic treatment has been done. There are thousands of pages of published documents.

"Instead of this it has become a platform where everybody seems to be allowed to post his own history regardless how wrong and unsystematic it may ever be." Exactly and you are one of the ill informed and emotional posters. Xx236 12:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

restored the deleted contri ackoz 14:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Please, observe no personal attacks

--Richard 15:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

What about 213? He has been attacking me since May the 19. Xx236 15:57, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, 213 has done far worse. He/she has repeatedly deleted text without discussion. However, engaging in personal attacks makes it impossible to discuss these controversial issues rationally. I know it's hard to ignore personal attacks and not retaliate but I must ask everybody to do so as it just lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. Let's focus on the issues not on personal attacks like calling people silly or idiotic or anything like that.

Instead of getting caught up in this personal debate, please read my text about two kinds of reasons (national and local) and tell me if it makes sense to you.

--Richard 16:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and my comment about WP:NPA was directed at everybody not just at Xx236. Xx236 just happened to be the last person to have posted in this thread.

--Richard 16:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Which personal attacks are you talking about, Xx236? Please quote. (213.70.74.165 16:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

There is perhaps a distinction to be made between incivility and personal attacks. I'm not going to split hairs and say that X is incivility and Y is a personal attack. The words I'm objecting to are phrases such as "angry, angry little man with the big big flag", "you are an idiot" and "ill informed emotional posters". These do not help discussion but only serve to inflame emotions. Please stop.

--Richard 16:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I do not know whether he is a little man nor is the flag big, but he was definitively angry, and compared with calling me a "poor" and "ill informed" "idiot" who dares to "whine" for German victims my response was rather civil. Anyway, you are absolutely right that personal attacks do not help us. (213.70.74.165 16:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

Ackoz's text insertion about the Sudeten Germans

Ugh. Thanks for that, I think. I feel like I wanted a drink of water and got hit by a fire hose.

It's all very interesting but it has made a mess of the section. I don't have time to trim it down today. Maybe you can take a whack at it. That information belongs somewhere but not all in that section. Maybe not all in this article. Maybe it's an article unto itself if one doesn't already exist.

The critical information is the bit about the 60% vote in the 1935 elections. We should, perhaps, focus on that for now.

--Richard 16:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I trimmed and wikified the text. What now? ackoz 20:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a good first step. I think more trimming is necessary (like by about 33% for Poland and 50% for Czechoslovakia). Perhaps a new article is needed for that info. What we need to do is focus on the key facts and not provide all the supporting evidence lest this turn into a history of the Nazi occupation (hey, maybe those are good titles for the articles we need Nazi occupation of Poland and Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia). Then we can just put a few facts here and reference those articles for the full details.

I still would like to know what people think of my idea of distinguishing between reasons for official actions of the national governments (Poland, Czechoslovakia and USSR) and the unofficial actions of locals. My argument is that the geopolitical issues of territiorial exchanges drove the actions of national governments but the micropolitical issues of personal enmity drove the actions of locals.

--Richard 20:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles about occupation of Poland and Czechoslovakia allready exist, Treatment of the Polish citizens by the occupants, Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles, Holocaust in Poland,Occupation of Czechoslovakia, Germans in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, History of Poland (1939–1945), Reichsgau Wartheland ... and probably more. I think if the text is worth, it would be much better to improve existing articles than to found new ones.

Your idea seems logical and for long time I had thought so, but after study of some serious historical works I had to change my opinion. The two are tightly interconnected and can't be separated. For example, in Czechoslovakia, president Beneš in several speeches at the end of the war called for no mercy with Germans and indicated the "German problem" would have to be solved by transfers/expulsion. (In Czech, he used unusual word "vylikvidovat", which is compound of "likvidovat"=liquidate,dispose,clear,... and preopositon "vy-" indicating outward direction). Proably this had some bad influnecne on the moods on local level.

Whats more serious, some of the acts which at first sigh seem as cases of personal enemity of locals were in fact planned operations. There were cases of massacres commited by paramilitary groups (...under Czechoslovakian law in fact illegal armed forces... but with strong ties to Communist party), where the opearations were done with prior agreement of Red army, and probably planned under supervision of Communist party and/or even operatives of Czech government. It was proposed the motivation was to provide arguments for Podstam conference (supporting the line of reasoning: you see the ethnic violance, transfers are the way how to stop it). However, in other cases the authorities stopped ongoing "genuine local" mob violence. --Wikimol

23:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, ooh, I'm practically salivating on my keyboard. Assertions backed up by sources? Not only sources but sources that are contemporaneous with the expulsions? I can't believe it. Please write this stuff up for the article and provide the sources.

Note: The above info is only vis-a-vis Czechoslovakian policy. Is there anything similar for Poland?

My theory about all this is that lots of people in Europe thought that there was a problem with other people living inside their borders. First it was Germans who wanted the ethnic Germans inside their borders and then later it was the Poles and the Czechs who wanted them outside their borders.

--Richard 00:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That's right. Except that Germans not only wanted the ethnic Germans to be inside their borders, but also ethnically clean, ie without jews, gipsies, poles and czechs, just the high race. Czechs didn't care about jews, gipsies or poles or anyone and didnt consider themselves the high race, they just wanted to get rid of Germans. Theres the difference. ackoz 01:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Ha! Ha! Ha! Of course, Czechs LOVE gypsies. Colonel Mustard 14:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Territorial claims of German nationalists

Current text of the article includes this sentence "After the war, Germany's and Austria-Hungary's loss of territory and the rise of communism in the Soviet Union meant that more Germans than ever constituted sizable minorities in various countries."

I think I inserted the sentence but I don't remember the phrase "and the rise of communism in the Soviet Union". I don't understand what the rise of communism has to do with their being more German minorities between the two World Wars. Can someone explain this to me?

--Richard 06:06, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no Polish section in the "Chronicle of the Expulsion"

I just noticed that there is no Polish section in the "Chronicle of the Expulsion". This is singularly odd since we spend a fair amount of time talking about Poland in the background and reasons sections. We need some text describing the actual events of the expulsions in Poland similar to what we have for Czech Republic and Slovakia.

--Richard 06:20, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

A known participant has removed my text:

"millions were killed on their way to the west" is an example of German home-made history. The total number of German victims wasn't "millions" and many of the victims died of infections. The German government was responsible for the too late and poorly organised evacuation ("Flucht").    

- - The Germans created many myths about the expulsion. Now a German demands academic treatment. Yes, yes, yes! But the academic treatment has been done. There are thousands of pages of published documents. - - "Instead of this it has become a platform where everybody seems to be allowed to post his own history regardless how wrong and unsystematic it may ever be." Exactly and you are one of the ill informed and emotional posters. - Xx236 12:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to start a revert war. The above text is based on many academic sources. Xx236 12:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The above message was left by Xx236 on my Talk Page. It's OK to leave me messages on my Talk Page if they are directed solely at me. However, there is now developing a pattern of leaving messages there that should be put on this Talk Page. I am moving this message here. The other message was left by 213.70.74.164 but essentially duplicates the sources in his/her message below so I will not copy that message here.

Please do not leave me messages on my Talk Page if they are about the substance of this article. It clutters up my Talk Page and deprives other editors of a chance to read it.

--Richard 13:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Orderly population transfer

Maybe "orderly population transfer" is an oxymoron. I inserted the comparison to the Partition of India and somebody subsequently added the population transfer between Greece and Turkey which is fine by me especially because it provides a more European analog to the expulsions of Germans.

Here's my question: was the expulsion of Germans a more horrific episode than either of those two episodes? We say that, in all three cases, the populations being transferred suffered greatly. I'm sure there were rapes and murders in India although Gandhi probably helped to reduce those. How about between Greece and Turkey? Or when Poles moved out of Russia?

What I'm asking is: was the incidence of rape and murder higher in the case of the expulsions of Germans than in other similar population transfers? I know it may be hard to get at data on this but what I'm really asking is whether we generally believe that they are or are not.

I know Hindus and Muslims in India were attacked. Were Poles in transit from Russia to Poland attacked? Were Greeks and Turks in transit to their respective "mother countries" attacked?

This is important because it puts the expulsions in historical context and perspective. I'd like to hear what you guys think.

--Richard 06:34, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

This is extremely hard to tell. Data on casualties vary from cca 200 000 to 2 million. Moreover, the conditions probably varied in different areas - Czech wikipedia has this data: 250 000 Germans were allowed to stay. approx. 19 000 died, which includes murders, suicide, concentration camps etc. Again, these figures can be inaccurate, although in case of Czech republic, the difference between Czech and German numbers is usually not that big. ackoz 09:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Center Against Expulsions provides a table that totals deaths to be just under 2 million.

Who claims that it is 200,000? I think someone claimed on this Talk Page that the number was closer to 1 million. What is the source for that number? What is the reasoning that comes up with that number?

Also, Center Against Expulsions claims 3,159,000 Germans expelled, 238,000 deaths. This is a big difference from the 19,000 asserted in the Czech Wikipedia. Can you help dig up the source for the estimate of 19,000 deaths asserted in the Czech Wikipedia?

By now, you know that I am not interested in saying X is right or Y is right. I am happy to say X claims 238,000 deaths and Y claims 19,000 deaths.

--Richard 07:25, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

There were different periods and places:

1. Escape and Red Army crimes;
2. "Wild" expulsions and camps
3. Potsdam expulsions
4. Deportations to the Soviet Union
5. Several waves of free emigration

Some Germans travelled with their furniture (the Communists), others starved. De Zayas presents many crimes.

The same was true about Poles - some survived Ukrainian massacres, some returned from Soviet camps, some travelled with their cows and/or furniture, some starved after leaving the train in Poland. Many were robbed by Soviet guards.

Generally the fate of Poles was better than the one of Germans.

Many Germans select the Soviet crimes and extrapolate them on any place and time. Xx236 09:19, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

German minority section

Dear Richard,

in response to your call for a compromise concerning the revert war on the Expulsion of Germans after World War II-side, I would like to say the following:

I am not willing to participate in the “Selbstschutz”-discussion on the qouted side any more. Regardless whether the whole Selbstschutz-issue could have been a sound reason for the expulsion (by the way, it would not have been), it was simply not the reason. The reason was that Stalin and Truman decided in Potsdam to shift Poland to the west in order to secure that the Soviet Union could permanently keep the territories occupied by the Red Army in the course of the execution of the Hitler-Stalin-Treaty in 1939. In order to clear room for the Polish refugees and to prevent future ethnic violence in the new western parts of Poland/former eastern parts of Germany, the German population had been expelled.

However taking a look at the main side, the west-shift of Poland is mentioned in a little, tiny paragraph hidden somewhere in the middle part of the page whereas the article about German minority organisations grows and grows. I do not mind writing about Selbstschutz, Werwolf, etc. but please not on this page as there is no significant connex (it was not the reason and it would not even have been a proper reason). Neither do I want to relativise or conceal anything what happened before and during WWII but it makes me sad and angry how the topic is handled here.

Millions were expelled from their homes where their ancestors had lived partly for more than 600 years, and millions were killed on their way to the west, mostly women, children and old men, driven like cattle, fucked, burned and robbed. This is a cheerless part of European history and would have deserved a better, ie more objective and academic treatment. Instead of this it has become a platform where everybody seems to be allowed to post his own history regardless how wrong and unsystematic it may ever be.

Anyway, I am tired of fighting against windmills and hence abstain from deleting the weird Selbstschutz section from now on. I wish you guys a lot of fun with your homemade-history on this page in the future (“Wo rohe Kräfte sinnlos walten, da kann sich kein Gebild gestalten”, Friedrich Schiller).

Best regards (213.70.74.164 09:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

Dear 213 (hey, if you don't want to create an account, how about telling us your name or nickname so you don't have to be called "213"),

Thank you for your message. More importantly, thank you for not deleting article text anymore. I find such behavior incredibly annoying.

In all the editing work that I have done on this article, just about the only text that I have flat out deleted was text you wrote earlier saying "but this is provably false...". I want to communicate to you that I deleted it not because I disagreed with you but because the tone of the writing was too argumentative for an encyclopedic argument. If you wish to call an assertion into question, add text like "Some historians dispute the accuracy (or the relevance) of this factor ...". If the argument you were referring to was provably false, we wouldn't put it in the article at all.

I have taken the points you made above into account and made an initial effort to incorporate them into the article. I agree that the Selbstschutz/Werwolf sections were growing out of proportion with excessive detail and I have made some effort to cut them back.

But please consider my perspective on the Selbstschutz/Werwolf question. I agree with you that Selbstschutz/Werwolf were not the reasons for the expulsions. It's clear to me that the geopolitical issues of Soviet territorial expansionism and the re-establishment of Polish territorial integrity could only occur at the expense of German territory. It's further clear that Poland wanted the land for Poles and not for Germans. It's not pretty but "to the victors go the spoils".

From that perspective, Selbstschutz/Werwolf are minor side issues in the story of the expulsions. However, the question is why the virulence of Benes in his speeches? Why was there, in Benes' opinion, a "German problem"? Why didn't Poles stick up for their German neighbors and at least guarantee them safe passage out of Poland? My answer is: because of the enmity built up over the last two or three decades of German nationalism and the support of ethnic Germans for the German nationalist movement.

Did that enmity go back centuries or only decades? I don't know. What I feel confident of is that the operations of Selbstschutz, German collaborators and the existence of Werwolf even if ineffective did not lessen that enmity but rather increased it.

Because of the actions of some (many) ethnic Germans during WWII, Poles and Czechs had come to believe that they could not forge a nation with Germans of suspect loyalties within their borders. And thus, they saw the expulsions as justified not only on some grand geopolitical scale but also at a very visceral and emotional level. Maybe this is what was meant by the "rational reasons and emotional reasons" text that I deleted.

Do you agree with this interpretation?

If you agree and if this is not the story that the article tells now, then let us work together to change it.

--Richard 06:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

number of overall German casulties

Just to bring the discussion about the figures to an end:

it had been approx. 2 million German casulties, please refer to the attached 55 (!) sources (ps angry man and Xx236: I know, all 55 sources are lying, faked, completely wrong, biased, falsified, sponsored by Nazi organisations, bla, bla, bla...)

1 Vgl. dazu Gerhard Reichling, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. 2 Teile, Bonn 1986/89.

Andere Autoren nehmen noch höhere Zahlen an, so Heinz Nawratil, Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen, Verschleppten, München - Berlin 1987, S. 27-32.

2 Vgl. Lutz Niethammer, Diesseits des "Floating Gap". Das kollektive Gedächtnis von Identität im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs, in: Kerstin Platt/Mileran Dabag (Hrsg.), Generation und Gedächtnis. Erinnerungen und kollektive Identitäten, Opladen 1985, S. 25-50. Vgl. auch die Einleitung der Herausgeberinnen, ebd., S. 25-50.

3 Hans-Georg Lehmann, Der Oder-Neiße-Konflikt, München 1979, S. 63.

4 Michael Schwartz, Vertreibung und Vergangenheitspolitik. Ein Versuch über geteilte deutsche Nachkriegsidentitäten, in: Deutschland Archiv, 30 (1997), S. 177-195, hier S. 179.

5 Vgl. Hermann Weiss, Die Organisationen der Vertriebenen und ihre Presse, in: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.), Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten. Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen, Frankfurt/M. 1985, S. 193-208; Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Vertriebene, in: Werner Weidenfeld/Karl-Rudolf Korte (Hrsg.), Handwörterbuch der deutschen Einheit, Frankfurt/M. 1992, S. 732-741, hier S. 736.

6 Zum BHE vgl. Franz Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten 1950-1960, Meisenheim am Glan 1968.

7 Vgl. Josef Foschepoth, Potsdam und danach. Die Westmächte, Adenauer und die Vertriebenen, in: W. Benz (Anm. 5), S. 70-90, hier insbes. S. 86 ff.

8 A. M. de Zayas (Anm. 5), S. 737. Vgl. ferner Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Die Zeit der Weltkriege (Gebhardt, Handbuch der Deutschen Geschichte, Bd. IV), Stuttgart 1976, S. 681.

9 Wilhelm Pieck, Reden und Aufsätze. Auswahl aus den Jahren 1908 bis 1950, Bd. 2, Berlin 1954, S. 555.

10 Walter Dirks/Eugen Kogon, Verhängnis und Hoffnung im Osten. Das Deutsch-Polnische Problem, in: Frankfurter Hefte, 2 (1947), S. 470-487. Wieder abgedruckt (und danach zitiert) bei W. Benz (Anm. 5), S. 125-142. 11 Ebd., S. 127.

12 Ebd., S. 130.

13 Vgl. Christoph Klessmann (Hrsg.), Nicht nur Hitlers Krieg. Der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf 1989.

14 Vgl. Hellmuth Auerbach, Literatur zum Thema. Ein kritischer Überblick, in: W. Benz (Anm. 5), S. 219-231, hier S. 219.

15 Vgl. Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ostmitteleuropa. In Verbindung mit Adolf Distelkamp, Rudolf Laun, Peter Rassow, Hans Rothfels (und ab Bd. I/3 auch Werner Conze) bearbeitet von Theodor Schieder, hrsg. vom Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, 1954-1963; nachgedruckt München 1984. Hier wird nach der Originalausgabe zitiert.

16 Zur Entstehung des Projektes siehe Mathias Beer, Im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Das Großforschungsprojekt Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 46 (1998), S. 345-389.

17 Dokumentation, Vorwort zu Bd. I (Anm. 15), S. I-VII, hier S. I.

18 Ebd., S. VI f.

19 Vgl. Götz Aly, Macht, Geist, Wahn. Kontinuitäten deutschen Denkens, Berlin 1997; ders./Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung, Hamburg 1991; Angelika Ebbinghaus/Karl-Heinz Roth, Vorläufer des ‘Generalplans Ost’. Eine Dokumentation über Theodor Schieders Polendenkschrift vom 7. Oktober 1939, in: 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, (1992) 1, S. 62-95. Vgl. auch Peter Schöttler (Hrsg.), Geschichte als Legitimationswissenschaft, Frankfurt/M. 1997; ders., Schuld der Historiker, in: Die Zeit, Nr. 14, 1997, S. 15.

20 M. Beer (Anm. 16), S. 389.

21 Dokumentation, Vorwort zu Bd. I (Anm. 15), S. VII.

22 Vgl. Martin Broszat, Massendokumentation als Methode zeitgeschichtlicher Forschung, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 2 (1954), S. 202-213; Theodor Schieder, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten als wissenschaftliches Problem, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 8 (1960), S. 1-16.

23 Hans Rothfels in seiner Vorbemerkung des Herausgebers zum Aufsatz von Theodor Schieder, ebd., S. 1.

24 Ebd., S. 2.

25 Vgl. Dokumentation (Anm. 15), Bd. I, Vorwort, S. 1.

26 Vgl. Edgar Günther Lass, Die Flucht. Ostpreußen 1944/45, Bad Nauheim 1964.

27 Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50, hrsg. vom Statistischen Bundesamt Wiesbaden, Stuttgart 1958.

28 Exemplarisch für die Tagebücher: Hans Graf Lehndorff, Ostpreußisches Tagebuch. Aufzeichnungen eines Arztes aus den Jahren 1945-1947, München 1961; Taschenbuchausgabe München 1967. Zur Darstellung der Kriegsgeschehnisse siehe Jürgen Thorwald, Es begann an der Weichsel, Stuttgart 1950; ders., Das Ende an der Elbe, Stuttgart 1950; Kurt Dieckert/Horst Grossmann, Der Kampf um Ostpreußen. Ein authentischer Dokumentationsbericht, München 1960; Hans von Ahlfen, Der Kampf um Schlesien. Ein authentischer Dokumentationsbericht, München 1961; Erich Murawski, Die Eroberung Pommerns durch die Rote Armee, Boppard am Rhein 1969.

29 Vgl. Martin Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik 1939-1945, Stuttgart 1961.

30 Vgl. Konrad Kwiet, Die NS-Zeit in der westdeutschen Forschung 1945-1961, in: Ernst Schulin (Hrsg.), Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (1945-1965), München 1989, S. 181-198.

31 Von den 81 Abgeordneten, die sich im Bundestag 1965-1969 als "Heimatvertriebene" bezeichneten, gehörten 36 der CDU/CSU, 38 der SPD und 7 der FDP an (Heribert Knorr, Der parlamentarische Entscheidungsprozess während der Großen Koalition 1966 bis 1969. Struktur und Einfluss der Koalitionsfraktionen und ihr Verhältnis zur Regierung der Großen Koalition, Meisenheim am Glan 1975, S. 37).

32 Vgl. Vorstand der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Hrsg.), Parteitag der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands vom 17. bis 21. März 1968 in Nürnberg. Protokoll der Verhandlungen, Bonn o. J., S. 11 und 996.

33 Vgl. Bernd Faulenbach, NS-Interpretationen und Zeitklima. Zum Wandel in der Aufarbeitung der jüngsten Vergangenheit, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 22/87, S. 19-30; ders., Emanzipation von der deutschen Tradition? Geschichtsbewusstsein in den sechziger Jahren, in: Werner Weidenfeld (Hrsg.), Politische Kultur und deutsche Frage. Materialien zum Staats- und Nationalbewusstsein der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Köln 1989, S. 73-92.

34 Vgl. u. a. Heinz Nawratil, Vertreibungsverbrechen an Deutschen. Tatbestand, Motive, Bewältigung, München 1982; Wilfried Ahrens, Verbrechen an Deutschen. Dokumente der Vertreibung, Rosenheim 1983; vgl. auch H. Auerbach (Anm. 14), S. 226.

35 Vgl. Winfried Schlau, Die Eingliederung in gesellschaftlicher Hinsicht, in: Hans Joachim von Merkatz (Hrsg.), Aus Trümmern werden Fundamente. Vertriebene-Flüchtlinge-Aussiedler - Drei Jahrzehnte Integration, Düsseldorf 1979, S. 151-162, insbes. S. 159 f. Vgl. ferner M. Schwartz (Anm. 4), S. 189.

36 Richard von Weizsäcker, Reden und Interviews, Bd. I, 1. Juli 1984-30. Juni 1985, Bonn 1986, S. 12.

37 Vgl. Marion Frantzioch, Die Vertriebenen. Hemmnisse und Wege der Integration, Berlin 1987; Rainer Schulze/Doris von der Brelie-Lewien/Helga Grebing (Hrsg.), Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte. Bilanzierung der Forschung und Perspektiven für die künftige Forschungsarbeit, Hildesheim 1987; Paul Erker, Revolution des Dorfes. Ländliche Bevölkerung zwischen Flüchtlingsstrom und landwirtschaftlichem Strukturwandel, in: Martin Broszat u. a. (Hrsg.), Von Stalingrad zur Währungsreform, München 1988, S. 367-425. Vgl. auch Michael Schwartz, Integration von Flüchtlingen im Nachkriegsdeutschland. Ein Forschungskolloquium des Institutes für Zeitgeschichte, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 44 (1996), S. 629-631; Sylvia Schraut/Thomas Grosser (Hrsg.), Die Flüchtlingsfrage in der Nachkriegsgesellschaft, Mannheim 1996. Siehe ferner H. J. von Merkatz (Anm. 35).

38 Andreas Hillgruber, Zweierlei Untergang. Die Zerschlagung des Deutschen Reiches und das Ende des europäischen Judentums, Berlin 1986, S. 12 f.

39 Vgl. Alfred Heuß, Versagen und Verhängnis. Vom Ruin deutscher Geschichte und ihres Verständnisses, Berlin 1984.

40 Vgl. ebd., S. 142.

41 Ebd., S. 208 f.

42 Vgl. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen. 7., erw. Aufl., Berlin 1988.

43 Vgl. W. Benz (Anm. 5).

44 Vgl. A. Hillgruber (Anm. 38). Zum Historikerstreit siehe "Historikerstreit". Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, München - Zürich 1987; Bernd Faulenbach, Die Bedeutung der NS-Vergangenheit für die Bundesrepublik. Zur politischen Dimension des "Historikerstreits", in: ders./Klaus Bölling, Geschichtsbewusstsein und historisch-politische Bildung in der Bundesrepublik, Düsseldorf 1988, S. 9-38.

45 A. Hillgruber (Anm. 38), S. 9.

46 Vgl. "Historikerstreit" (Anm. 44).

47 Vgl. Empfehlungen für die Schulbücher der Geschichte und Geographie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Volksrepublik Polen, Schriftenreihe des Georg-Eckert- Institutes für internationale Schulbuchforschung, Bd. 22/XV., erweiterte Neuaufl. Braunschweig 1995; Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Hrsg.), Die deutsch-polnischen Schulbuchempfehlungen in der öffentlichen Diskussion der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Eine Dokumentation, Braunschweig 1979. Stellungnahmen aus dem Umfeld der Vertriebenen insbesondere in: Materialien zu deutsch-polnischen Schulbuchempfehlungen. Eine Dokumentation kritischer Stellungnahmen, Bonn 1980.

48 Helga Grebing hat die Frage aufgeworfen, ob nicht das Nichtakzeptieren der Leidensgeschichte der Vertriebenen "ein weiteres Kapitel der Unfähigkeit der Deutschen (sei), Trauerarbeit zu leisten: wie gegenüber den Opfern des Nationalsozialismus nun auch gegenüber den Opfern seiner Folgen", in: R. Schulze/D. v. d. Brelie-Lewien/H. Grebing (Anm. 37), S. 2.

49 Karlheinz Lau, Verlieren wir das historische Ostdeutschland aus dem Geschichtsbild?, in: Deutschland Archiv, 28 (1995), S. 633-640.

50 Vgl. Herbert Ammon, Stiefkind der Zunft. Die deutsche Zeitgeschichtsforschung hat sich für das Thema Vertreibung wenig interessiert, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung vom 5. September 1997, S. 10; Alfred Theisen, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen. Ein unbewältigtes Kapitel europäischer Zeitgeschichte, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 7-8/95, S. 20-33.

51 Verlage dieser Art sind der Laumann-Verlag Dülmen, der Marx-Verlag in Leimen und der Rautenberg-Verlag in Leer. Im Laufe der Jahre haben alle Städte und Regionen im Osten ihre (Laien-)Historiker gefunden, die über ihre Stadt oder Region Bücher und Aufsätze veröffentlichten.

52 Vgl. Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang. Eine Novelle, Göttingen 2002; K. Erich Franzen, Die Vertriebenen. Hitlers letzte Opfer, München 2001 (Buch zur ARD-Fernsehserie); Spiegel-Serie "Die Flucht", Nr. 13 ff., 2002.

53 Vgl. Detlev Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938-1945. Pläne und Entscheidungen zum "Transfer" der Deutschen aus Polen und der Tschechoslowakei, München 2001; Philipp Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene. Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945-1956, Göttingen 1999; Manfred Zeidler, Kriegsende im Osten. Die Rote Armee und die Besetzung Deutschlands östlich von Oder und Neiße 1944/45, München 1996.

54 Peter Steinbach, Die Vergegenwärtigung von Vergangenem. Zum Spannungsverhältnis zwischen individueller Erinnerung und öffentlichem Gedenken, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 3-4/97, S. 3-13, hier S. 4.

55 Vgl. Bernd Faulenbach, Von der nationalen zur universalen Erinnerungskultur?, in: Jahrbuch Arbeit, Bildung, Kultur 19/20 (2001/02), S. 225-236.

(213.70.74.164 10:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC))

Hello, 213. I believe you, that as a result of the post war mess, expulsions and general hostility towards Germans, 2 million German civilians died. However, some of them could have died from diseases, hunger etc., some (for sure) committed suicide, some were murdered, some were active in the Nazi administration etc. But we don't want to say: bad slavs killed 2 million German women and children on their way to Germany - that is not true. There were various reasons why people died in that period, not only being killed by the Czech/Polish mob. Moreover, you think that there was enough food and healthcare for anyone? In these settings, you shouldnt expect the governments of occupied states to take care about citizens of the occupying state. Exactly like someone suggested above, we want to document:

How many people

• were murdered in the brief post-WW2 period by the Red Army
• were murdered by civilians or paramilitary organisations
• died as a result of the post-WW2 humanitarian catastrophe (diseases, hunger - also affected non-Germans)
• commited suicide
• died in concentration camps
• died in the process of Postdam - expulsion
• died when escaping from the Russian-occupied areas voluntarily
• survived
• were allowed to stay
• were allowed to stay but left voluntarily later

If you have the de Zayas book, or access to the document "Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen.", you could provide some numbers. I will search for the numbers in Czech sources. Then, we can compare them and find the differences.

Wikipedia should be (is not) an encyclopedia. Not a place to whine about poor German women and children.

ackoz 12:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Escape, War, Expulsion

There happened many processes:

• the escape of the population (not only German) 1944/1945,

the deportation of prisoners (including German people) - so called Death Marches, e.g. from Auschwitz,

• the war - looses in defended cities, victims of air attacks (Dresden),
• the expulsions, deportations to the SU, Soviet crimes in the SBZ.

The best way to get two millions of victims is to mix everything and to call it "Expulsion". If we are discussing the expulsion literally - there weren't 2 million victims. Even the extremely biased Center against Expulsions doesn't give such numbers: http://www.z-g-v.de/aktuelles/?id=58.

I don't like the continous ad-personam attacks. There are many German sources giving much lower estimates. I don't see any reason to accuse me of anything, because I stay in the limits of an academic discussions. The article quotes:

• Gerhard Reichling. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Bonn 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7.
• Rűdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000

Are the authors lying?

It's standard that any eyewitnesses overestimate the numbers of victims. Some Germans confirmed that more than 2 millions died in Auschwitz, the last estimates give about 1 million.

Xx236 14:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I have to say that I have been befuddled as to the meaning of the table that is currently in the article at the beginning of the "Summary of German Expellee Population". I can figure out the math but I'm at a loss as to what point it is trying to make. Can somebody help me? More importantly, put the explanation in the article.

Table from Center Against Expulsions

Thank you so much for that link to the Center against Expulsions. The table is great and I think we should use the relevant part of it in the article.

I disagree with your conclusion, though. Just adding up the numbers in my head, if you take the entries in that table that include Germans from 1944 to 1948, you get approximately 2 million.

Now you can argue what kinds of deaths those constitute. It's entirely possible that some of those are deaths due to disease or malnutrition. I think it's reasonable to suggest that if we can find a source who has critiqued the numbers of the Center against Expulsions. Has anybody done an analysis on the numbers? Not any of us, I mean any reliable source.

--Richard 17:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I need some help as my command of German is rather poor. In the table from the Center Against Expulsion website, it says "Zahl der Vertriebenen einschl. Tote". What does "einschl." mean? Does it mean "including" or "excluding"?

--Richard 17:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK "including". --Wikimol

Thanks. I need some more help with translation.

"Pommern" - is this Pomerania in English?

"Maehren" - is this Moravia in English?

"Russland-deutsche" - is this Russian-Germans in English?

"Mittel-Deutschland" - I translated this as "Central Germany" but where is this?

I understand West Germany and East Germany but "Central Germany"?

--Richard 08:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Pommern - yes, Maehren - yes. Russland-deutsche ... Germans in Russia may be better. Mitteldeutschland .. Middle Germany.

My question is how to include the POV Z-G-V intentionaly uses old and inaccurate estimatates? This claim is based on "Opinion of the Commission on the losses connected with the transfer" by joint Czech-German commission of historians (verbatim quote in Facing history, chapter VI. p. 230-232 (Victims ...)), which suggests in case of Czecholslovakia maximum number of victims is ~30000 and numbers like 220000 should not be used. --Wikimol 09:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh boy, I just read pp. 230-232 in Facing history, chapter VI. Now, I understand what all the fuss is about these numbers. So, if (and I'm not saying it's OK to conclude this yet) this order of magnitude problem exists across the board, then you are talking more like 200,000 - 300,000 dead. This discrepancy must be documented but there are two problems:

1. Right now, we only have a source that says the Czech numbers are probably lower, we need more sources to call all of the Centre's numbers into question

2. We also need a way to present the two tables in the article now in proper perspective. I'm guessing that we have to drop both tables and just summarize them in words. Because of the way Wikipedia is formatting the tables, they take up an inordinate amount of space and it would be almost impossible to suggest that they are not truth once the reader has seen them in such a huge format.

I don't have time to do this right now but I will try to get to it when I can.

--Richard 22:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I just inserted Wikimol's text and cleaned it up a bit. I'm assuming that the debate is mostly about the estimates of the deaths and nobody really gets worked up about whether we are talking about 13 million expellees or 16 million expellees.

--Richard 01:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I want to emphasize the "Opinion of the Commission" only deals with Czechoslovakia. No easy implications for the total number are possible. The case of Poland was different, great number of Germans fled in very harsh contions, in winter, between fighting armies... which probably cost relatively many lives. (Bohemia was liberated at the absolute end of the war, there was almost no heavy fihting except Prague uprising, and Germany was really close.)

The most NPOV solution probably would be to include all signifficant estimates with links to sources. Even if IMO the joint Czech-German commision is much more objective and reasonable than ZGV, it is just another Opinion. ...also the Commission itself is subject of various opinions, one of them stating basically "its a bunch of Czech nationalists + credible German scholars under their bad influence" (I read something like that from Bohumil Doležal, which is good indication Sudeten German organizations will also have this attitude)

Maybe, one day there would be separate article Expulsion of German after WWII in historiography and public discourse. There are interesting comments on that. --Wikimol 19:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I was aware while reading the "Opinion of the Commission" that it was talking only about Czechoslovakia and I was wondering if the issues raised in that report would apply to other countries as well. Lower down on this talk page, Ackoz suggested changing the number for Czechoslovakia in the z-g-d table. I objected because that would suggest that all the other numbers in the z-g-d table are correct.

We don't know that yet. What we know for sure is that the "Opinion of the Commission" disagrees with z-g-d on the number for Czechoslovakia. We do not know it the z-g-d numbers are reliable for all other countries. Wikimol is suggesting that there is not the same order of magnitude difference for deaths of Germans in Poland. But is there a difference? Is it 1/2 or 2/3 of the z-g-d number? Maybe 213's 55 sources will shed some light on this question.

After all, if only the Czechoslovakia estimate of deaths is wrong, you're still looking at 1,750,000 deaths which (in the greater scheme of things) is not that much different from 2 million.

--Richard 19:58, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Gaining a perspective on this sad chapter in European history

OK, as a thought experiment, consider these extreme positions:

1) The German minorities were fully in favor of the Nazis, rejoiced when they marched into Czechoslovakia and Poland, collaborated in targeting Poles and Czechs for extermination and therefore, having gambled on the Nazis and lost, deserved everything they got.

2) The German minorities were innocent pawns in a great geopolitical game and didn't deserve to be thrown off their ancestral homeland.

Clearly the truth lies somewhere between the two

1) The Poles were evil in expelling the German minorities for their "sins" and should have just left the Germans to live side-by-side with them as they had for centuries

2) The Poles were 100% justified in their actions towards the Germans and the Germans deserved everything they got.

Clearly the truth lies somewhere between the two

1) The Poles did nothing but stand by passively and watch as Germans marched out of Poland and into Germany

2) The Poles exploited every chance to take advantage of the departing Germans and robbed, raped and murdered them at every opporunity

Clearly the truth lies somewhere between the two

One problem is that we try to talk about groups of individuals as if they were one monolithic group. The Germans did this, the Poles did that. No, they didn't. Individual Germans did things. Individual Poles did things. Governments did things. The "Poles" can't do anything, they're individuals not a monolithic group. Same goes for the Germans.

Another reason we keep having these edit wars is we keep trying to push a POV version of the truth which is closer to one extreme or the other. I think it is wiser to say that there are valid perspectives that run the gamut from one extreme to another. It is not for us to say where exactly the truth lies. No one may ever know and there is more than one truth depending on which town you were in and at which time.

My vision for this article is that we present multiple truths and let the reader decide for himself/herself.

--Richard 20:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Another thought about ethnic cleansing

So, something I've been wondering about...

In any mixed community, there are intermarriages. Thus, one problem with ethnic cleansing is that the ethnic lines are not always clear. Didn't Germans marry Poles? What did these families do? Was it the case that a woman would marry into another ethnic group and learn the language of the other group? "I was Pole but now I speak German" "I was a German but now I speak Polish"

"My Dad is German, my Mom is Polish, we speak both languages. I'm German." or... "My Dad is Polish, my Mom is German, I'm Polish." or... "I'm German AND I'm Polish". Americans have this problem all the time except most of them only speak English. Didn't Europeans have this problem 60 years ago?

How is it we talk about "Germans" and "Poles" as if there are clear lines dividing the ethnic groups?

--Richard 20:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Various funny means .. face measuring, behavior during the occupation, German citizenship etc. were used at that time to distinguish Germans from non Germans (as with Jews and non Jews.. seen Hitlerjunge Solomon?) .. there is no clear line. I have already said, that one of my friend's grandfather is German - but was allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia because they measured his face somehow and "discovered", that he was not so German as he thougt :) We shoudln't be using nationalities here as an argument at all .. in fact, the Germanisation was applied quite strongly in the Czech lands during 17-19th century, after the battle of Bila hora in 1620. Czech was even not used as a written language, and most of the German speaking families in towns were actually Czech, even the mother of TGM was german-speaking with a Czech name, and mother of Konrad Henlein was born as Dvorackova, which was later changed by Henlein to Dworzak (or something like that) to sound more German, but it is still a Czech name. Nationality is more about what you think about yourself than a genetic thing. ackoz 01:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

How is it we talk about "Germans" and "Poles" as if there are clear lines dividing the ethnic groups? Because German government made itself several classification lists on which it marked who was Pole and who was German, during the war. Some of those classified as Germans (they were several groups of German available) had a chance to rehabilite themselfs if they proved they were forced, or worked for Polish underground etc. --Molobo 16:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Great, thank you. But this is not documented in the article and it should be. Can you write a few sentences about this?

--Richard 06:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point - a memeber of family of the prominent Polish politician Donald Tusk was on "Wilhelm Gustloff". Does it make Tusk a German? Many Upper Silesians and Kashubs were between the Poles and the Germans.

Peter Glotz' mother was Czech.

Xx236 11:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Nationalsocialist vs. Nazi

Some time ago, somebody (I think it was 213) kept substituting Nationalsocialist for Nazi. We reverted those edits. However, in the spirit of cooperation and discussion, I would like to understand what the point of those edits was. From an American standpoint, I have no understanding of why anyone would prefer using the term "Nationalsocialist" instead of "Nazi". In America, we understand "Nazi" and use that almost exclusively to refer to Hitler's party. It is only with some effort that we come to understand "Nationalsocialist" to mean the same thing.

Or, is it the same thing? Is 213 or whoever was making those edits trying to make a point that we just didn't grasp?

Please help me understand what that little revert war was all about.

--Richard 06:20, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

In my view (note that I'm not an American or a native English speaker), the problem with the term "Nazi" is that it's been used to refer to many things in the past and as a variety of meanings. Of course the basic meaning is a member of the NSDAP, and as such is almost synonymous to Nationalsocialist. However, depending on the context, it could have a variety of other meanings. For instance: a synonym to Germany (as in "Nazi Wehrmacht" for instance). In such a way it is a strange half-synonym as in English the authors usually refer to any "bad things" done during the WWII as done by the Nazis, while the "good things" were done by the Germans. You know, people refer to Nazi concentration camps, but to German journalists or lawyers or football championships, and so on. Because of that the term Nazi is very strongly associated with atrocities and I understand why some people would prefer to use less-loaded terms instead. Not that I supported it... //Halibutt 09:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Chronicle of the expulsions - needs an 'Eastern Germany' section

This article makes no reference to the fact that most of the Germans expelled were expelled from what was then Germany - i.e. East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia. Perhaps this information is going to be added to the 'Poland' section, although these parts of Eastern Germany were not formally annexed to Poland - indeed, the People's Republic of Poland did not yet exist - when most of the expulsions occurred. I notice that the History of Poland articles basically assert that Lwow was stolen from Poland, but imply that Stettin was liberated from a temporary Nazi occupation... hmm... so we'll see what our Polish historians come up with, shall we? Colonel Mustard 14:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

OR

WP:NOR. Why on earth should Selbstschutz be relevant to the expulsion of Germans? Is there any source on the whole wide web that categorises it as reason or are we inventing some reasons? Why can't the author, who usually can come up with anything on the net, not provide anything tangible here? Selbstschutz is so well-known and relevant that — quite distinct from Wehrwolf, which was created in the early days of Wikipedia — Selbstschutz was only created in late 2005. Yes, I do think there's reason to doubt that this is the notable part of background. (while the rest is a black and white summary of the background related to Poland... actually just a black summary.)

"As Selbstschutz counted 82,000 members out of 741,000 Germans living in Poland, over 10 % of Germans living in Poland were members of this organisation(this percentage would increase if one would count only fit male members of German community, who were able to enlist in Selbstschutz, rather then whole population)."

Tell me when you've found a source you can translate for your edits, Molobo, and not only for this paragraph. I'm growing tired of your attitude to delete original research opposed to your views and at the same time some added in favour of yours. You should have familiarised yourself with the policy by now. And don't you criticise abbreviations like ('u' = 'you', '2' = 'to' or 'two' and 'ur' = 'your' ) used to have enough space in the edit summary.

All in all, if the 'introduction' is becoming too long, it should be put into another article and summarized here. Sciurinæ 19:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Why on earth should Selbstschutz be relevant to the expulsion of Germans? Is there any source on the whole wide web that categorises it as reason or are we inventing some reasons? According to Doctor Wardzynska who works in IPN Institute yes it was a reason and researches the issues of population movements in the war period and yes it was one of the issues. --Molobo 20:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC) Why can't the author, who usually can come up with anything on the net, not provide anything tangible here? I have already provided the neccessary source.Actually two even, but as Polish one was more informative, I deleted German source. --Molobo 20:04, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, if I might add something to the discussion, I don't think that this exactly is the article where we should use Web sources heavily. It is a very complicated issue, with lots of nationality-related POVs, and WEB sources usually represent one of these POVs. In this case, even if the WP policy favors the use of web sources, apart from the official ones, we should look for more scholarly books to support our "facts". Sciurinae, it might be easier for you to get your hands on this book: [3] Der 'Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz' in Polen 1939/40 von Christian Jansen, Arno Weckbecker. I think there is a big chance that it will be available in your Uni-bibliothek. Both authors are German university scholars, so I don't expect this book to be biased (Christian Jansen - Uni Bochum, Weckbecker is probably from Heidelberg). I would be really grateful, if you could find it and tell us what they think about Selbschutz. ackoz 21:55, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that books are necessarily less biased than Web pages per se. I think the difference is that the biases in books tend to be more commonly accepted biases than Web pages. Anybody can put up a web page, sometimes for free, other times for minimal amounts of money. Thus the most wacky fringe theory can easily be published on the website.

A book that is published by a reputable publishing house must appeal to tens of thousands of readers, preferably a few hundred thousand readers. Otherwise, the publishing house won't waste its investment dollars on it. That doesn't mean the book isn't biased. Just that the bias is more widely accepted.

That said, I agree that Wikipedia policy frowns on websites as sources and prefers books published by reputable publishing houses (i.e. not vanity-published books)

--Richard 04:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Deleted table of German Expellee Population

I'm putting this table here because I am replacing it with the table from the Centre against Expulsions which I find more understandable. I am open to the idea that the Centre against Expulsions table may have inflated figures. If anyone wants to put a sourced challenge to those figures, I will not object. I just have trouble understanding the point that the table below is trying to make. I think the table from the Centre against Expulsions is much more to the point.

German Expellee Population 1939-50
Description	Germany	Eastern Europe	Total
Population in 1939	9,500,000	7,100,000	16,600,000
Wartime Transfers In	500,000	0	500,000
Natural Increase 1939-1950	600,000	400,000	1,000,000
Military Losses 1939-45	900,000	550,000	1,450,000
Civilian Losses	800,000	500,000	1,300,000
Remaining in East Europe	1,450,000	1,500,000	2,950,000
Expellee Population 1950	7,450,000	4,950,000	12,400,000

Notes:
Germany-The pre-war eastern German provinces that became Polish in 1945 and Kaliningrad region that became Soviet
Eastern Europe- Includes ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Danzig, the Baltic nations, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. Does not include the USSR.
Population in 1939- Includes bilinguals who were listed as Germans.
Military Losses 1939-45 Research by R. Overmans has increased this total by 360,000 thus reducing civilian losses.
Wartime Transfers In -Wartime evacuation of persons from western Germany.
Civilian Losses -Losses primarily during military campaign in 1945, also includes 270,000 dead in the USSR after being deported as laborers. This table reflects the research of Reichling and Overmans that has adjusted the estimate of civilian deaths downward from the 1958 German government estimate of 2.1 million dead.
Remaining in East Europe-Primarily bilinguals except in the case of Romania. Research by G. Reichling has increased this total by 230,000 thus reducing civilian losses

Sources:
Gerhard Reichling. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Bonn 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7.
Rűdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000. ISBN 3-486-56531-1 Fritz Peter Habel Dokumente zur Sudetenfrage Langen Müller, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7844-2691-3. Alfred de Zayas Die Nemesis von Potsdam Herbig, Munich 2005. ISBN 3-7766-2454-X. Newest statistical survey pp. 32-34.

This table also has a good point - it can be used to show how some of the estimates of number of victims were constructed

German Expellee Population 1939-50
Description	Germany	Eastern Europe	Total
Expellee Population 1950	7,450,000	4,950,000	12,400,000
-Population in 1939	-9,500,000	-7,100,000	-16,600,000
-Wartime Transfers In	-500,000	0	-500,000
-Natural Increase 1939-1950	-600,000	-400,000	-1,000,000
-Military Losses 1939-45	-900,000	-550,000	-1,450,000
-Remaining in East Europe	-1,450,000	-1,500,000	-2,950,000
=Number of vicitms	800,000	500,000	1,300,000

...given the scale of the results and precision of the 5 rows you subtract, the weakness of statistical estimates is obvious. You can get almost anything, if you want to. --Wikimol 09:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused, Wikimol. The first table was in the article before before I deleted it last night. I don't know exactly where those numbers come from except that there are four sources listed.

I wrote "Where does your table come from?" Forget that question. I now see that your table is just a re-ordering of the rows of the original table.

If I understand you correctly, you are raising a valid point. Even the act of assembling a table of data from multiple sources runs the risk of being original research because the act of selecting which data to include in the table can be original research. It's better to publish a table from one source and cite the source. Let the reader connect the dots himself.

--Richard 15:56, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I took another look at the two tables and I realized that the numbers are the same, only the order of the rows is changed. However, changing the order of the rows has a significance. Because the table is obviously a computation, we must ask "What is solid reliable input data", "What is estimated data" and "What is the computed result?"

Is the estimate of 1.3 million computed by this table or is it input data that is taken from another source? If it comes from another source, what is that source?

Ultimately, the question is: Does this table come from one of the sources cited or is it a composite made up from numbers in the the four sources?

I think the table that I deleted needs to go back into the article as it provides support for the estimate of 1.3 million deaths. Question is which version should go back in, the one I deleted or the re-arranged version provided by Wikimol?

In the table from the Center Against Expulsions, it should be clear that the 2 million number is simply the addition of the numbers in the table. I added that row as an aid for the reader.

Please don't use the table from Center, it presents very biased and inaccurate data. The responsible organisation was founded by a Nazi. We shouldn't promote organisations like that as objective sources of information. --Molobo 12:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. This is a just one set of numbers provided by one source (very possibly an organization with a bias). Nobody has objected to the mention of U.S. Congressman Reece who claimed in 1957 that there were 16 million expelled and 3 million deaths. The intro to the article claims 16.5 million expelled and 500,000 to 3 million deaths.

I have sources for 13.6 expelled to 16 million expelled. I have sources for 2 to 3 million deaths.

If we use Wikipedia guidelines, we should delete the claim of 500,000 deaths as unsourced.

I see now that the 500,000 number could be based on the original table which stated that there were 500,000 deaths in Eastern Europe and 800,000 deaths in "Germany" but "Germany" is defined in the notes as "The pre-war eastern German provinces that became Polish in 1945 and Kaliningrad region that became Soviet." So, the number of deaths should be considered to be 1.3 million according to this table, NOT 500,000.

Do you dispute the figures provided by Reece and by the Centre Against Expulsions? Fine. Provide your numbers and your sources.

Put up or shut up. (Sorry for the incivility, I'm not trying to be uncivil. I'm just trying to say that statements have to be sourced.)

It's OK to document why one source is less reliable than another source but I haven't seen any argument against the numbers in the Center Against Expulsions table except that "it was founded by a Nazi". That is not inherently an attack on its reliability. If you argue that the Center Against Expulsions has a Nazi agenda which colors the reliability of the numbers, then that should be documented.

Somebody claimed that the real number was closer to 1 million. OK, where's the source?

I do personally believe 2 to 3 million may be over-estimates. But, if they are, where's the source that says that? It could be as simple as some Polish historian or Polish politician saying "The 2 million number is an over-estimate".

Someone suggested a couple of books as sources for numbers (I think one of them was de Zayas). Anybody have access to those books? Let's see what those books say.

Remember, the priniciple is give the reader all the available sources and some perspective by which to judge the sources. Then, let the reader decide for himself which source to believe.

--Richard 15:56, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry but using data from Center is beyond any acceptence. Please find another source. I can't accept using data the source provides as objective. --Molobo 17:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but you don't own this article any more than I do. If you object, let's see what the consensus is. I will yield to whatever the consensus is.

I'm happy to include any objections to the credibility of the source. I do not argue that the Center Against Expulsions is the only source, the best source or even a good source. However, it is a source and one whose numbers fall into the range of 1.3 million to 3 million. It is not your prerogative to "blackball" a source just because you think it is biased. It is your prerogative to provide information about why the source is not reliable.

We should find some book about this - the Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen would be great. Richard - I cannot judge if the numbers are correct or not, but we should not use a source whose existence is opposed by 2 governments and disputed even in Germany. Moreover I have seen blatant disinformation on the webpage of the Centre already. However, we should keep the table as is now until we get something better. ackoz 17:37, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Ugh. OK, that's two votes against the Centre. It would be good if you guys would put this info in the article, Centre against Expulsions

Still, I am assuming that the only thing questionable about their table is the numbers. In other words, I am assuming that the dates, locations and actors are correct. I think this level of detail is far better than the table that was there before. If the numbers in the Center's table are not good estimates, fine, let's find better numbers. However, the table format is, IMO, what we need.

--Richard 18:04, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the G-V-D table

• yes, the structure is IMO reasonable
• the descriptions are a bit more problematic
  • for example: the column title is Expelled by, yet some of the numbers include also those who fled of were evacuated by Nazi authorities. (Some do not, like those transferred inside USSR.)
• yes, the numbers will be the root of the dispute
  • for example: I allready commented on the number of victims of expulsion from Czechoslovakia. (I checked only this one number.) Compared to estimate by joint Czech-German commission of researchers, the number is higher by one order.

--Wikimol 20:57, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the "older table". Point I tried to make was

• What are "input numbers" and what computed result?
  • My guess: the death tolls are results and the rest are inut data. That's why I reordered it that way.
• Than, what is the accuracy of input data?
  • That should be stated, especially if the data come from various sources. Preferably all data should be of the form "Expellee Population 1950 ... 7,450,000+-150,000". If not, at least some indication of how they were obtained should be given. E.g. "German census according to Book1", "demographists estimate from Study5",...
• Than, what's the accuracy of result?

--Wikimol 21:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Where can we get the results published by the joint Czech-German commission of researchers? We could use this table (I mean the structure) and the numbers you will suggest, at least for Czechoslovakia, would that be OK?

Anyway, if there is a bilateral board of scholars and then an unilateral expellees organisation, tightly connected with people who demand material retribution, we should only use the scholar version, not both. ackoz 00:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ugh, no. Please do NOT change the Center Against Expulsions table. That would constitute original research. After all, the total would change from 1,997,500 to maybe 1,750,000 and that wouldn't serve anybody's purpose. Ideally, we'd find a similar table covering all the expulsions in some scholarly source. Or, if we can dig up enough numbers from a variety of sources, we can consider populating the Center's table with the numbers we find. However, that is getting awfully close to being original research. I would want to footnote every number with the source to avoid the charge of original research.

Even if we wind up removing the Center's table, I think we still need to quote the total death estimates asserted by both Congressman Reece (3 million) and the Center (2 million) and then explain why those numbers are way too high. The relevant text is in pp. 230-232 of the Czech document that Wikimol dug up.

--Richard 00:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok NP .. I wouldn't change it myself anyway. ackoz 11:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I didnt see the last (your?) edit under the table. It looks very good now. Do you think that there should be another table just for the casualties? ackoz 11:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

If we can develop a comprehensive table that challenges the Center's table, I would use that drop the Center's table and then just say "The C-A-E website provides a table with much higher numbers totalling 2 million deaths." The only reason that I have the C-A-E table in there now is that it provides great detail for each country and the previous table was only a summary across all countries.

--Richard 16:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I should also comment that we still need to deal with User:213.70.74.164's 55 sources that he claims support the 2 million figure. I don't read German well enough to validate or invalidate User:213.70.74.164's claim that these sources support the 2 million figure.

Note to User:213.70.74.164. I would be happy if you write and insert some appropriate text that summarizes the point that you claim these sources are asserting.

However, I have to believe that 55 sources must carry some weight. We have to balance those against the report of the "joint commission of Czech and German historians". As I've stated many times before, we need to provide as many perspectives as are reasonable (no wacky fringe theories) and provide as many references as we can to help the reader decide for himself.

At the moment, I think the total number of deaths is somewhere between 1.3 million and 2 million. This completely discounts Congressman Reece's charge of 3 million deaths. And yet, he had something like 30 pages of testimony read into the Congressional record. Someday, somebody should read his testimony and see why his numbers are so high.

It is really hard to walk a neutral line here. I'm not claiming to be perfect or that I always see the NPOV. I am a bit more objective because, knowing nothing, I don't have any preconceptions or emotional attachments to one side or another. I do admit that I move from one side to another based on the last thing that I read.

But, maybe I am a good example of the "tabula rasa" (clean slate) reader who comes to the article knowing nothing. It is our job to provide an objective summary of the past and current state of knowledge on this topic.

My approach has been to insert everything I read that is sourced trying to cast it in as NPOV a light as possible. (i.e. this is not necessarily the truth but it is true that somebody reliable asserted it).

If anybody feels that we are going too far in one direction or another, please speak up. But, please, no edit wars or personal attacks.

--Richard 16:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ad the 55 sources & the final number...

• personaly I have no idea of the number
• sheer quantity of sources tells litle about the truth

... In fact, attitudes towards the expulsion in Germany are a serious problem for German collective memory. As a result of massive state intervention, the collective memory of the odsun in Western Germany has not been able to develop any more freely than it was in Communist Czechoslovakia.

In the Federal Republic of Germany a whole network of institutions and organisations, financed by the state and established during the 1950s, have served as a "material representation" of the suffering endured by Germans at the hands of their East European neighbours, but above all for supporting revisionist attitudes towards the Potsdam Agreement. Moreover, they have conserved intellectual traditions from the pre-World War II period as well as from the National Socialist (NS) regime. In fact, post-war "de-Nazification" was not as comprehensive as most people believe, as German historians have been discovering over the last five years or so.

...

They have also published a huge number of books and pamphlets, some of which have deeply intruded into German academic historiography, most Germans these days actually adhere to the traditional Sudeten German views and interpretations of Czech history without being aware of the origins of this presumed "academic historiography." Sudeten Dialogues, Martin D Brown and Dr Eva Hahn, ce-review.org

• • but Wikipedia is not about truth, but about NPOV and verifiability => the number should be mentioned somewhere
• I did not studied the list carefuly, but I recognize some of the names - IMO Theodor Schieder works exactly fit the above given description of old state sponsored research, heavily influenced by cold war and revisionist agenda. On the other hand, Philip Ther is relatively young researcher and IMO without that biases. But from the list its hard to tell in what context the number is mentioned.

I would suggest

• through the article, some number of some reasonably recent review work in English should be used
• in the numbers section, all common estimates could be mentioned - if it grows too long, it can be split to separate article

--Wikimol 22:00, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Some discussions about the number of victims on axis forum: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1698&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6291&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 " As also pointed out in the Spiegel article, the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia have been the only ones so far to prepare a detailed documentation of their losses during the war and postwar period, resulting in a figure half the estimate of the Federal Statistics Bureau. According to another article published in the same feature, a total of 48,447 ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia lost their lives to privation, disease and violence between 1944 and 1948. "

That's why I think the previous estimates were too high. If the only detailed study halved the earlier estimated death numbers, it is highly probably that other numbers are too high too. Szopen 07:48, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Whole quote, which is quote interesting: "That this order of magnitude must be too high became apparent at the time already from lists of missing civilians; only about one-tenth – ca. 200,000 people – were being searched by relatives and friends. So far however only the Danube Svabians [ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia, translators’ note] made the effort to individually document all victims – and halved the estimates of the Federal Statistics Bureau for their region."

"There was indeed an estimate made by the German Federal Statistics Bureau in the late 1950's that over two million ethnic Germans had perished during the flight from the Red Army at the end of the war and the postwar expulsions from Germany's former Eastern territories and various countries of Eastern Europe, mainly Poland and Czechoslovakia."

"This estimate, which in the second paragraph is referred to as being well above the mark, has recently been challenged by German historians, for example by Rüdiger Overmans, author of Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Overmans writes the following (my translation):"

"The deaths during flight and expulsion concerned the Germans in the immediate postwar period as much as the fate of the missing soldiers, and similar efforts were made to clarify the fate of the missing civilians or bring families together. A huge scientific project reconstructed the events historiographically, the Federal Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt), the refugees’ associations and the clerical search service did a lot with the financial support of the Federal Government to quantitatively assess the fate of those expelled as accurately as possible. The result can be summarized in the conclusion that about 2 million Germans had been killed during flight and expulsion - not including those from the respective territories who had died during military service."

"These casualty figures, however, which for decades have been an integral part of the respective serious literature, are the result not of a counting of death records or similar concrete data, but of a population balance which concluded that the fate of about 2 million inhabitants of the expulsion territories could not be clarified and that it must therefore be assumed that they had lost their lives in the course of these events. In the last years, however, these statements have been increasingly questioned, as the studies about the sum of reported deaths showed that the number of victims can hardly have been higher than 500,000 persons - which is also an unimaginable number of victims, but nevertheless only a quarter of the previous data. In favor of the hitherto assumed numbers it could always be said, however, that the balance didn’t say that the death of these people had been proven, but only that their fate could not be clarified."

"As also pointed out in the Spiegel article, the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia have been the only ones so far to prepare a detailed documentation of their losses during the war and postwar period, resulting in a figure half the estimate of the Federal Statistics Bureau. According to another article published in the same feature, a total of 48,447 ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia lost their lives to privation, disease and violence between 1944 and 1948"

End of quote from forum.axis Szopen 07:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

This article is getting long

It's 64kb which is not terribly long but it is longer than the recommended 30-50 kb. We could try to trim it but I was wondering how people feel about this idea: Why not move the "Legacy of the Expulsions" to a separate article? I'm not sure what the title would be but perhaps "German Minorities in Eastern Europe".

Thoughts?

--Richard 08:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

No .. we should try to write an encyclopedia, we already have too much detail in the article and what we get is a poorly researched historical textbook. Just exclude things that are not important. For me - reasons could be much shorter. We could move the expelee organisationst to a separate article. ackoz 18:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I disagree. The expellee organisations needs to stay although it really only has to mention the organizations and then provide a link to the articles. The key point is to explain that they exist and how the Eastern Europeans feel about them.

Now, I do agree that we should move stuff out that's not important. In truth, much of the "Legacy" section could be moved to Ethnic German. As for making the reasons shorter, yes, I agree but where? People keep adding more stuff and it's a chore to try and keep that section short.

--Richard 18:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

OR tag

I removed the tag. I already provided you with the name of a book Der 'Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz' in Polen 1939/40 von Christian Jansen, Arno Weckbecker.. As both are German authors and university teachers, I would hesitate to claim that Molobo is doing some original research about Selbstschutz here. Your main objection (Sciurinae) was that no internet sources mentions Selbstschutz as important to the prewar nationality struggle background. I would say, that if there are historians who write books of this topic, we shouldn't consider it irrelevant. ackoz 17:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

The book has been reviewed http://www.ikgn.de/zeitschrift_nordost-archiv.ausgabe.1997.02.htm#rezensionen

Xx236 08:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Expelled by

"Expelled by" column ignores that:

• many Germans were evacuated by German authorities (East Prussia, Silesia, Poland) and died during that evacuation,
• the basis of the expulsion was Potsdam treaty signed by the USA, UK and SU, not by Poland or Romania.
• The Soviets expelled, deported to the SU or killed many Germans in any "liberated" by them area. In your table German POWs from e.g. Silesia were allegedly expelled by "Poland". They were transported to Siberia, many died there, later the survivors were tranferred to Western Germany. The only Poles they met were eventually Polish prisoners in Siberia.
• Poland was directly controlled by Soviet authorities in 1945 (till at least 1947) - Red Army, NKVD, Soviet Embassy. The same for former Nazi allies - Hungary, Romania. I don't know if and how much Czechoslovakia was independend 1945-1948.

Xx236 10:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)]

OK, I put most of the above text into the article below the z-g-d table. However, it occurs to me that another approach is to simply delete the column altogether. I'd like to hear what other people think about this issue.

--Richard 12:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Table in "Summary of German Expellees"

I finally focused on what this table is and how it was constructed.

I now believe this table is based on unacceptable original research. Here's my argument:

Immediately above the table, the text says

According to Federal Statistics Bureau of Germany in 1958 more than 2.1 million had lost their lives during this process. The monumental statistical work of the Gesamterhebung zur Klärung des Schicksals der deutschen Bevölkerung in den Vertreibungsgebieten, Bd. 1-3, München 1965, confirms this figure. The standard study by Gerhard Reichling "Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen" concludes that 2,020,000 Germans perished as a result of the expulsion and deportation to slave labour in the Soviet Union. The Centre against Expulsions estimates that just under 2 million German civilians died.

One German researcher, Rüdiger Overmans, has claimed that only 1,100,000 people lost their lives. These lower figures and the methodology for obtaining them are disputed by some scholars including Dr. Fritz Peter Habel and Alfred de Zayas, who maintain in the newest editions of their publications that the death toll was well over two million.

Four of the above sources are mentioned as sources for the table (Reichling, Overmans, Habel and de Zayas). However, these sources differ in their estimates of lives lost. Specifically, Overmans believes it was 1,100,000 whereas the others believe it was over 2 million.

The notes for the table indicate that Overmans estimate was used to adjust the numbers in the table downward. As a result, you have a set of numbers that none of the sources would agree to. This is most easily understood by looking at the "Civilian losses" row. The total is 1.3 million which is not a number that any of the four sources would agree to.

I believe this is a good example of how easy it is to slip into original research. One or more of the Wikipedia editors built this table as a composite of the research done by the four sources. This would have been marginally OR if every number in the table could be sourced to a specific source. (An example would be numbers for Poland from one source, numbers for Czechoslovakia from another source.)

However, when you start modifying numbers by using one source to revise the numbers of another source, you are definitely in the realm of OR.

The problem is that you have no guarantee that any source would agree that the methodology used to apply Overmans estimate to come up with 1.3 million would be accepted by any reliable source. Three of the sources would say "Nein. 2 million +". Overmans would say "Nein. 1.1 million". So, who can you cite that would support "1.3 million"? Nobody. That makes it OR.

A better way to present this information is to find a set of numbers that one source (Reichling, Habel or de Zayas) presents and then present Overmans adjustments as a separate idea in a follow-on paragraph. It may be reasonable to blend Reichling, Habel and de Zayas in one table IF the numbers are close. The text of the article say the Habel and de Zayas estimate "well over 2 million". I don't know what "well over" means. Are we saying 2.1 million or 2.3 million? If it's 2.1 million, their numbers could be blended with Reichling's numbers. If it's 2.3 million, then it's debatable whether their numbers are effectively the same as Reichling's or are substantially different.

However, it's not obvious why we would need to blend the three sources. If they are in substantial agreement, it should be sufficient to pick one and say that the other two are in substantial agreement.

If there is a consensus among Wikipedia editors that my analysis above is correct, then we will need someone to fix the table according to the points made above.

--Richard 12:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Some more data about numbers expelled and number of deaths

This is from the Axis History Forum. Thanks to User:Szopen for providing the link to the forum. http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1698&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

The Statistisches Bundesamt of West Germany prepared a detailed account of these horrors in 1958, the key data of which can be found in Gunnar Heinsohn's Lexikon der Völkermorde, published in 1998 by the Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag in Reinbek by Hamburg. They are reproduced hereafter:

Baltic Countries and Memel Territory
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 256,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 256,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 66,000

Yugoslavia
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 550,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 523,000
Thereof killed during flight
or expulsion: 135,000

German Eastern territories (East Prussia, East Pomerania, East Brandenburg, Silesia, Danzig)
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 10,000,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 7,400,000
Thereof killed during flight or expulsion: 1,225,000

Poland
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 1,400,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 675,000
Thereof killed during flight or expulsion: 263,000

Romania
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 785,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 347,000
Thereof killed during flight or expulsion: 101,000

Checoslovaquia
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 3,274,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 2,921,000
Thereof killed during flight or expulsion: 238,000

Hungary
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 597,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 259,000
Thereof killed during flight or expulsion: 53,000

Total German Eastern territories and Eastern Europe
Ethnic German population 1944/45: 16,862,000
Thereof fled or expelled: 12,381,000
Thereof killed during flight or expulsion: 2,081,000

These figures refer to the postwar period 1945-1950. During the war itself, according to Heinsohn's "Lexikon", ca. 1.1 million ethnic Germans from the above mentioned territories lost their lives, as members of the German armed forces, through the outrages of and on the flight from the conquering Red Army or through allied bombing. According a statement by the Bundesminister für Vertriebene in 1962, quoted by Heinsohn, there were 128,000 refugees from the Eastern territories among those killed by allied bombing in Germany.

--Richard 12:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Question to Molobo. You claimed that the numbers from the Centre Against Expulsions were unacceptable because the Centre was founded by a Nazi. Do you also dispute the Statistisches Bundesamt of West Germany as an acceptable source? Not the truth of the numbers but the acceptability of the source. We have Ruediger Overmans as a source for a much lower number and we are working on text that argues that the 2 million number is considered too high by some historians. So I'm not asking you to accept 2 million deaths. I am asking you to accept that there are reliable sources that put the number at 2 million.

For example, I think we could re-construct the Center's table with the numbers from the Statistisches Bundesamt and get the same numbers. If we sourced the new table to the Statistisches Bundesamt, would this be acceptable to you?

P.S. I still believe in principle that the Center is a reliable source and that the claim that was founded by a Nazi doesn't affect this. However, since it seems evident that the Center is a secondary source and we now have a primary source available, it seems that the we should use the primary source instead.

--Richard 13:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

This is also from the Axis History Forum.

Numbers quoted from Richard Overy "Historical Atlas of the Third Reich"

a-Pre-war population b-German war losses (includes losses during expulsion) c-german population by 1950 still in the territory d-Settled in FRG e-Settled in GDR f-Settled in Austria

Baltic States: a-249500 b-65600 c-15000 d-109900 e-56900

Dantzig: a-380000 b-111900 c-4000 d-230200 e-60600

Poland(pre-1939 frontiers): a-1371000 b-293000 c-431000 d-419600 e-268400

Czechoslovakia: a-3477000 b-446600 c-250000 d-1917800 e-1082000

Hungary: a-623000 b-89000 c-270000 d-149500 f-103500

Romania: a-786000 b-136000 c-400000 d-178200 f-34800

Yugoslavia: a-536800 b-175800 c-82000 d-148000 f-149500

Eastern Germany:

Silesia: a-4576500 b-727100 c-870000 d-2090000 e-1138600

East Brandenburg: a-642000 b-214000 c-16000 d-152900 e-277100

East Pomerania: a-1883700 b-461900 c-55000 d-922800 e-541800

East Prussia: a-2473000 b-489400 c-160000 d-1375500 e-608900

As it can be seen these numbers are still incomplete. For instance it is well known that some people from Czechoslovakia took refuge in Austria. How many?

Some others (from all the territories) were settled in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia,.... Again Mr Overy doesn't tell us.

It is difficult to understand from Mr. Overy if Memel is included in East Prussia or in the Baltic States.

Some germans from the western territories of the USSR might have avoided the transfer to Siberia and Central Asia in 1941. How many of them took refuge in post-war Germany, Austria or the Americas? ( There were for instance 400000 germans in the Ukraine SSR prior to 1939)

A lot of POW settled in the countries where they had been retained. How many and in which countries he doesn't tell us.

Finally some germans civilians from Romania, Hungary and other territories were taken by the soviets during the period 1944/1950 to the USSR. It seems that Mr. Overy didn't took notice of this either.

--Richard 13:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Restored "Deaths" column to the Center Against Expulsions table

It seems their numbers are not more biased than the general bias of German numbers for most of the postwar period. I think it is adequate to call all the numbers into question by saying that some German historians (along with the Poles and the Czechs) believe the numbers are much lower.

We are now faced with the fact that these tables are huge and take up way too much space in the article.

I'm wondering if this level of detail is useful in the article. Somebody (I think it was Wikimol) suggested moving the debate over the numbers to an article about the historiography of the expulsions.

I didn't like the idea at the time but we may have to do something in order to manage the surfeit of numbers. At this point, having all these tables of numbers will more likely serve to confuse than to enlighten the reader.

It seems that, at the very least, we should choose between the Statistisches Bundesamt table and the Center Against Expulsions table. In truth, I like the Center Against Expulsions table better because it's more informative (modulo the issues about things like who was actually responsible for the expulsions which are noted below the table). On the other hand, there are people who would make charges of bias against the Center Against Expulsions. Similar charges can be made against the Statistisches Bundesamt but at least the underlying bias of their numbers is less politically suspect.

Where I want to go with this is to say that the preponderance of German historians believed the 2 million number for decades but recently there has been evidence from German, Polish and Czech historians suggesting the real number might be much lower. At this time, there is no clear consensus whether the real number is closer to 1.3 million or closer to 2 million.

Comments?

--Richard 16:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)== Archives ==

Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II/Archive1 holds early undated discussion (probably before 2004-03-23)

Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II/Archive2 holds discussion posted here in 2004

Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II/Archive3 holds discussion posted here in 2005

Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II/Archive4 holds discussion posted here in Jan-Apr 2006

Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II/Archive5 holds discussion posted here in May 2006

Disrespect for other opinions

I think some editors of this page are somewhat one-sided in their opinions and do not accept any other opinions. This is very unfortunate and shows me their inability to be tolerant to other views. It seems a waste of time to even contribute if 2 or 3 people control this page like their opinion is G*d's word. I also do not agree with some assumptions made, like "most" or "the Germans" or "the Poles". It is very generalizing, has plenty of omissions and exchangable "most" and "the" words (very manipulating), and does not take into account individual experience and individual suffering. Other opinions are not respected here.

Can we compromise on the activities of German minorities section?

User:25 213.70.74.165 keeps deleting this section and I keep reverting his deletion. This sort of useless edit-warring gets us nowhere. The truth is... the section is in the article for far more time than it is out. Check the logs. This time, the text remained deleted for 4 1/2 hours. The last time, it was reverted almost immediately.

Thus, User:25 213.70.74.165 is only managing to make his/her point for a fraction of the time and the rest of the time the text he/she is objecting to stands. Thus, the repeated deletions serve only to annoy the rest of us and there is no chance that the text will remain deleted if he/she continues in this manner.

Furthermore, these repeated deletions without explanation constitute vandalism and could result in User:25 213.70.74.165 being blocked if someone were to appeal this to an administrator.

I prefer that we do not go down that road if we don't have to.

I got here via the RFC and I came to help, not to join in an edit war.

Can I suggest that we work towards a compromise that will get User:25 213.70.74.165's point across in a manner that is acceptable to all?

I do not completely understand User:25 213.70.74.165's point although I understand some of it.

Here are the possibilities:

1) Selbstschutz was terminated in 1940 and therefore could not be used as a reason for the expulsions

Response: The memory of past events can influence current events

2) Not many Germans were involved in Selbstschutz

Response: I'm willing to credit this if there's documentation. I've asked User:Molobo for English sources and though some have been provided, the most critical passage remains supported by a Polish website. Here's the text in question:

"Every tenth German living in Poland was a member of Selbstschutz and 25% of the German population belonged to Nazi-sponsored organizations aiding in the Nazi conquest of Poland."

I would guess that this assertion is something that User:25 213.70.74.165 would object to. I am confounded by the lack of an English translation but nonetheless, let's assume that the Polish source does actually document those numbers. It is incumbent on User:25 213.70.74.165 to find a source refuting the numbers. Does the Centre against Expulsions say nothing on this question?

3) Even if some Germans in Poland aided the Nazis, that was not a reason for expelling the entire population.

Response: There are two ways to read the above sentence. One is "very few people in Poland, especially in the Polish government thought about the aid given to the Nazis by Germans in Poland". I doubt that this statement is true but we could insert if if it were sourced.

The other way to read the above sentence is "the aid given to the Nazis was not a valid reason to expel the entire population."

I agree with this but it needs to be sourced.

I am out of time this morning. I need to get going. Let's all think of a way to defuse this controversy so as to get past the edit-warring. And, please, let's discuss here rather than engage in edit-warring.

Happy editing.

--Richard 14:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

1) Selbstschutz was terminated in 1940 and therefore could not be used as a reason for the expulsions This was irrelevent in the opinion of Poles. It was given as example of unwillngess of German minority to be loyal to Poland. I actually restricted myself to connected examples. If I would want to give more examples of such behaviour I could give information about German minority pushing for ethnic expulsion of Poles in WWI already. "Every tenth German living in Poland was a member of Selbstschutz and 25% of the German population belonged to Nazi-sponsored organizations aiding in the Nazi conquest of Poland." Well as to Selbstschutz-it had 81,000 or so members in Poland out of 741,000 Germans living in it.The actuall percentage is a bit higher as you see. And you have to remember that as Selbstschutz was made out of fit men, it didn't include women, children and elderly who compromised part of population also. If you would count only the male population from which those 81,000 that was recruted , you would get larger numbers in terms of support. But again I didn't do this this time.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Molobo (talk • contribs)

It would really help if you could provide a translation of the relevant text from this website http://www.1939.pl/epizody/kolumna.htm. I am particularly interested in the paragraph that starts "W okresie II wojny światowej ..." and ends with "zrezesaly 25% mniejśzoci niem."

I am guessing that the last sentence in that paragraph provides support for the assertion that 25% of the German population belonged to Nazi-sponsored organizations ("organizacjach hitlerowskich"). Hey! If I keep this up, I'll wind up teaching myself Polish!  ;^)

--Richard 21:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh, I will try to translate the related parts as soon as possible. And you are right about the translation :) --Molobo 00:14, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Since when did finding one source in a foreign language mean that it was verified or accurate? usually if one cannot find more then one source for information on such a controversial subject, it is pure conjecture and conspiracy theory (which I wouldnt put past Molobo seeing his previous links on other articles). and come on, it states Nazi-sponsored organizations, many different organizations were sponsored by the Nazis, the Red Cross was sponsored by Nazis as well as other humanitarian organizations, by the definition given, anyone working for the Red Cross was a Nazi collaborator. More sources need to be found that can verify this. this of course is not to mention that this is not some peer reviewed published article, but from a website, which can be created by anyone!

--Jadger 02:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, I agree but you got to start somewhere. I haven't seen any sources for any of the other counter-claims (which is why I deleted them). As stated higher up, we should all be willing to have both sides of the debate included in the article provided they are sourced to reliable sources that we can verify. A Polish source cannot be verified by me. Maybe somebody else who can read Polish can help us verify the sources. (The Polish website is not the only source provided by Molobo. Check out the citations.)

Note that verifying the sources doesn't mean verifying the truth of the assertion. Given that there is controversy over the assertion, the best way to couch this information is "According to Polish historian A, X is true."

Then later, we can say "According to German historian B, X is an exaggeration and, in fact, Y is true."

I didn't delete the counter-claim because I thought it was untrue (although I did think it was badly stated). I deleted it because there was no source provided even after I asked for sources. We can put it back. Where's the source?

I have to believe that, if these assertions made by Molobo are being seriously challenged by anybody (e.g. Centre against Expulsions), then there should be a verifiable source for the challenges. So, where are they?

The critical point here is the claim that Selbstschutz had 81,000 or so members in Poland out of 741,000 Germans living in Poland. That is the support for the 10% figure. 81,000 members sounds high to me but, me personally, I have no evidence to challenge the claim. Do you? If so, please provide the source.

Furthermore, I am not convinced that 81,000 members of Selbstschutz engaged in active support and collaboration with the Nazi invaders. But, once again, I have no basis to challenge that claim either. Do you?

I am trying to help by being a more or less impartial referee. But, as I've stated before, unless you guys provide sources, you are dooming yourself to endless edit-warring.

--Richard 02:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Source of 81,000 number[4], actually I made a mistake its 82,000. The source is on-line encyclopedia of PWN using Wielka Encyklopedia PWN as source . As to pre-war German population data from census[5] --Molobo 10:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Presumably, this is the sentence which provides support for 82,000. "Selbstschutz na okupowanych ziemiach pol. osiągnął liczbę 82 tys." Can you translate this for us so we can be clear what it says? I'm assuming for now it means "Selbstchutz had 82,000 members in Poland" but it would be helpful to have a full translation.

Now, the next point is that critics are charging that, even if Selbstschutz had 82,000 members, that doesn't mean this was the reason that the authorities expelled the Germans. So, now what you really need is a declaration from a Polish statesman of that time or by a Polish historian linking Selbstschutz to the expulsions. It could be an excerpt from a speech or a memoir. It could be a passage in a historian's academic paper.

--Richard 15:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

According to a recent article by a Polish historian - Zamość expulsion eyewitness - all German adult male settlers wore black uniforms. I don't know the exact meaning of it, but they were members of a Nazi organization. Xx236 08:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't fully understand what you are trying to say. Sounds like the Polish historian is arguing that all the adult German males wore black uniforms which signified membership in a Nazi organization. Every last adult German male in Poland? or in Zamość? (I assume that's the name of a town) When did they wear the black uniforms? Surely not during the expulsion.

--Richard 08:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Now, I mean German settlers in Zamość region 1942-1944. The local Poles called them Czarni (Blacks) because of the uniforms. Xx236 12:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

But, are we to conclude that all male German settlers in Poland were Czarni? Moreover, if all male German settlers wore black, perhaps there was peer pressure that made doing so a requirement. During the de-Nazification campaign in Germany, I believe it was acknowledged that many members of the Nazi party joined simply to get ahead or to preserve their jobs. Same with members of the Communist party in Communist countries.

Finally, this discussion is OR. We need sources that assert these things and specifically link them to the expulsions. It is not sufficient for us to say "A is true (sourced)" and "B is true (sourced)" therefore "A => B is true (unsourced)". That is still OR.

--Richard 15:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't claim anything general about the Germans in Poland, I have given an example of tens of thousands of German settlers in Zamość region, who were hated by local Poles and had to leave in 1944. I believe that many Germans should have been allowed to stay in Communist Poland, but the ones who were expelled to Western Germany won. Xx236 15:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Purported reasons for the expulsion

The main reason was Soviet leadership's (or Stalin's) opinion, especially the future of Germany. It's absurd to ignore the main reason and to include a so long discussion about secondary reasons. Stettin was annexed to Poland, probably because the SU wanted to control the harbor.

In Poland the expulsion was generally a state policy. Local authorities wanted to keep many German workers and were pressed from above to deport them. The state policy was imposed by or at least consulted with Moscow.

Xx236 08:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Can you source this? Or just put it in the article and see who objects?

--Richard 08:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes I can source this. --Molobo 10:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oder-Neisse line contains some info, but it does not translate Stalin's language into plain English. Xx236 12:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

German minority section

I am not willing to participate in the “Selbstschutz”-discussion any more. Regardless whether the whole Selbstschutz-issue could have been a sound reason for the expulsion (by the way, it would not have been), it was simply not the reason. The reason was that Stalin and Truman decided in Potsdam to shift Poland to the west in order to secure that the Soviet Union could permanently keep the territories occupied by the Red Army in the course of the execution of the Hitler-Stalin-Treaty in 1939. In order to clear room for the Polish refugees and to prevent future ethnic violence in the new western parts of Poland/former eastern parts of Germany, the German population had been expelled.

However taking a look at the main side, the west-shift of Poland is mentioned in a little, tiny paragraph hidden somewhere in the middle part of the page whereas the article about German minority organisations grows and grows. I do not mind writing about Selbstschutz, Werwolf, etc. but please not on this page as there is no significant connex (it was not the reason and it would not even have been a proper reason). Neither do I want to relativise or conceal anything what happened before and during WWII but it makes me sad and angry how the topic is handled here.

Millions were expelled from their homes where their ancestors had lived partly for more than 600 years, and millions were killed on their way to the west, mostly women, children and old men, driven like cattle, fucked, burned and robbed. This is a cheerless part of European history and would have deserved a better, ie more objective and academic treatment. Instead of this it has become a platform where everybody seems to be allowed to post his own history regardless how wrong and unsystematic it may ever be.

Anyway, I am tired of fighting against windmills and hence abstain from deleting the weird Selbstschutz section from now on. I wish you guys a lot of fun with your homemade-history on this page in the future (“Wo rohe Kräfte sinnlos walten, da kann sich kein Gebild gestalten”, Friedrich Schiller). (213.70.74.164 09:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

Indeed, there should be sources that include the purported reason as reason. If not, why should it be more than original research? It's a vanity edit, anyway, the Selbstschutz article was written by Molobo and links to it were spread by him over Wikipedia. This would explain why there were three or four links to Selbstschutz in this article... Sciurinæ 09:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I am seeing a distinction that I hadn't focused on before. There are at least two parts to the expulsions: the official actions of the national governments and the response, enmity and actions of the local officials and populace during the expulsions.

I think we need a little more historical detail about how the expulsions were actually implemented. Did Polish and Soviet Army units come and herd the Germans into railroad cars? Or was the expulsion left to be implemented by local officials?

How did the local populace react to the expulsions? One assumes that there were not protest rallies in favor of keeping the Germans or examples of Poles hiding Germans in their attics.

Who actually did the robbing, raping and killing? Soldiers? Or locals?

I'm going to assume that locals participated in some of the worst crimes of the expulsions. And, if this is true, why did they? Were they just being opportunistic? (i.e. did they do it just because they could?) Or was it because of pent-up anger and resentment?

Thus, when we talk about "reasons", it may be useful to distinguish between the reasons for the official actions at the national government level and the reasons for the actions of the local populace against the German populace who had been their neighbors for hundreds of years.

Seen in this light, 213.70.74.164 has a valid point. The Selbstschutz/Werwolf stuff probably wasn't the primary reason for the expulsions at the national government level. However, that and the "Czarni" stuff probably was very much in the minds of the local populace which gave them the emotional drive to support the expulsions and to try to hurt the Germans as they left rather than just watch them leave.

Please respond to this. I know it's OR but I see it as a way to integrate the viewpoints of different editors. If no one objects, I will restructure the article to bring out these points. It sure would be helpful if someone could dig up a source that supports this line of thinking.

--Richard 15:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

213.70.74.164 - vandalism

Would you please discuss my text rather than removing in from this discussion? Xx236 14:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Germans were hurt. Poor them. But 60% of Germans in Czechoslovakia voted for the Czechoslovak branch of the nazi party (which actually united with the German one later). There was a 3/4 million Czech minority in the Sudetenland - expelled. 350 000 Czechoslovakian citizens were Jews - 20 000 survived. The terror against the Czechs was incredible, whole villages were destroyed and inhabitants executed just for power-demonstration reasons. Unlike Germany, Czechoslovakia had laws that protected civil and religious freedoms of its citizens - even Germans had their own schools and could use German as an official language in their areas. By voting for the Nazi party and destroying Czechoslovakia, leaving it prey to Russia after the war, they did serious evil. You don't support a party that wants to exterminate people, start wars for new territories etc. and expect receiving bread, honey and warm milk in reward, do you?

I am not saying this because I would think that it is important for the article. But people like you - 213, Sciurinae etc., who "disconnect" the expulsions from the war, claiming that "the expulsion is a cheerless part of the history" - IT is not, will you ever get it? The whole war is the cheerless part of the history, not only the expulsions separately. Then whine about Germans suffering and being killed. Poor you. You are making me nauseated. Anyway, thanx for your abstaining 213. ackoz 14:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Why do I disconnect the expulsion from the war? I expressively connected it to the Potsdam Conferrence which is undoubtfully connected to WWII. And why I am not allowed to lament the victims, are they second-class victims? (213.70.74.164 15:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

Last edit

I added the citation needed for the fact that most of the Germans in Czechoslovakia were Nazi supporters.

I also added some text from http://countrystudies.us/czech-republic/26.htm , it should be public domain and it demonstrates the situation in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia. But it is quite long. If anyone is able to shorten it, please do so, but these facts should be preserved:

• minority rights were protected by Czechoslovakia
• Germans living in Czechoslovakia never ever wanted it to even exist
• more tensions arose because of the economic situation and security situation on the borders with Germany
• the things that happened later were a result of German nationalism, not of Czechoslovaks oppressing the Germans (which was suggested in the article as I saw it first time)

ackoz 14:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

OK .. 213 no discussion with you no more, all your changes will be reverted if you really removed something from the discussion. You are an idiot. ackoz 14:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, you angry, angry little man with your big, big flag... No discusions with you any more - that sounds indeed seductively! By the way, calling me an idiot convinces me of your intellectual helplessness and mental narrowness. As for the deleted comment, it would have been better for Xx236 "reputation" to keep it deleted. It had been undoubtfully millions of victims (approx. 2 million) and to claim it was the guilt of a non-existing German governmemt (formed in 1949!) that so many died between 1945 - 1948 as they did not organize their own expulsion is cynicism at its best. (213.70.74.165 14:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

It's undoubtfully cynical to claim 2 million German victims after the war. Hundreds of thousands of Germans died during the "Flucht", see above "Flucht und Vertreibung", many perished in the Soviet Union (PoWs, miners). It didn't have any connection to any expulsion, it was a war and Communism. As for the expulsion: Even the biased German Wiki claims 60.000-80.000 victims of camps in Poland. I don't want to discuss this numbers now, the reader can compare 80 000 in Poland plus 30 000 in Czechoslovakia (according to German historian Peter Glotz) and alleged 2 millions. Xx236 15:34, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

For your information just two sources concerning the overall number of two millions victims (please note that the BPB and the WDR have an excellent international reputation):

http://www.bpb.de/themen/SMG6CJ,0,0,Die_Vertreibung_der_Deutschen_aus_den_Gebieten_jenseits_von_Oder_und_Nei%DFe.html http://www.wdr.de/tv/nachtkulturundgeschichtszeit/gzvertriebenen_2.html

(213.70.74.165 15:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

"millions were killed on their way to the west" is an example of German home-made history. The total number of German victims wasn't "millions" and many of the victims died of infections. The German government was responsible for the too late and poorly organised evacuation ("Flucht").

The Germans created many myths about the expulsion. Now a German demands academic treatment. Yes, yes, yes! But the academic treatment has been done. There are thousands of pages of published documents.

"Instead of this it has become a platform where everybody seems to be allowed to post his own history regardless how wrong and unsystematic it may ever be." Exactly and you are one of the ill informed and emotional posters. Xx236 12:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

restored the deleted contri ackoz 14:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Please, observe no personal attacks

--Richard 15:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

What about 213? He has been attacking me since May the 19. Xx236 15:57, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, 213 has done far worse. He/she has repeatedly deleted text without discussion. However, engaging in personal attacks makes it impossible to discuss these controversial issues rationally. I know it's hard to ignore personal attacks and not retaliate but I must ask everybody to do so as it just lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. Let's focus on the issues not on personal attacks like calling people silly or idiotic or anything like that.

Instead of getting caught up in this personal debate, please read my text about two kinds of reasons (national and local) and tell me if it makes sense to you.

--Richard 16:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and my comment about WP:NPA was directed at everybody not just at Xx236. Xx236 just happened to be the last person to have posted in this thread.

--Richard 16:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Which personal attacks are you talking about, Xx236? Please quote. (213.70.74.165 16:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

There is perhaps a distinction to be made between incivility and personal attacks. I'm not going to split hairs and say that X is incivility and Y is a personal attack. The words I'm objecting to are phrases such as "angry, angry little man with the big big flag", "you are an idiot" and "ill informed emotional posters". These do not help discussion but only serve to inflame emotions. Please stop.

--Richard 16:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I do not know whether he is a little man nor is the flag big, but he was definitively angry, and compared with calling me a "poor" and "ill informed" "idiot" who dares to "whine" for German victims my response was rather civil. Anyway, you are absolutely right that personal attacks do not help us. (213.70.74.165 16:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

Ackoz's text insertion about the Sudeten Germans

Ugh. Thanks for that, I think. I feel like I wanted a drink of water and got hit by a fire hose.

It's all very interesting but it has made a mess of the section. I don't have time to trim it down today. Maybe you can take a whack at it. That information belongs somewhere but not all in that section. Maybe not all in this article. Maybe it's an article unto itself if one doesn't already exist.

The critical information is the bit about the 60% vote in the 1935 elections. We should, perhaps, focus on that for now.

--Richard 16:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I trimmed and wikified the text. What now? ackoz 20:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a good first step. I think more trimming is necessary (like by about 33% for Poland and 50% for Czechoslovakia). Perhaps a new article is needed for that info. What we need to do is focus on the key facts and not provide all the supporting evidence lest this turn into a history of the Nazi occupation (hey, maybe those are good titles for the articles we need Nazi occupation of Poland and Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia). Then we can just put a few facts here and reference those articles for the full details.

I still would like to know what people think of my idea of distinguishing between reasons for official actions of the national governments (Poland, Czechoslovakia and USSR) and the unofficial actions of locals. My argument is that the geopolitical issues of territiorial exchanges drove the actions of national governments but the micropolitical issues of personal enmity drove the actions of locals.

--Richard 20:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles about occupation of Poland and Czechoslovakia allready exist, Treatment of the Polish citizens by the occupants, Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles, Holocaust in Poland,Occupation of Czechoslovakia, Germans in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, History of Poland (1939–1945), Reichsgau Wartheland ... and probably more. I think if the text is worth, it would be much better to improve existing articles than to found new ones.

Your idea seems logical and for long time I had thought so, but after study of some serious historical works I had to change my opinion. The two are tightly interconnected and can't be separated. For example, in Czechoslovakia, president Beneš in several speeches at the end of the war called for no mercy with Germans and indicated the "German problem" would have to be solved by transfers/expulsion. (In Czech, he used unusual word "vylikvidovat", which is compound of "likvidovat"=liquidate,dispose,clear,... and preopositon "vy-" indicating outward direction). Proably this had some bad influnecne on the moods on local level.

Whats more serious, some of the acts which at first sigh seem as cases of personal enemity of locals were in fact planned operations. There were cases of massacres commited by paramilitary groups (...under Czechoslovakian law in fact illegal armed forces... but with strong ties to Communist party), where the opearations were done with prior agreement of Red army, and probably planned under supervision of Communist party and/or even operatives of Czech government. It was proposed the motivation was to provide arguments for Podstam conference (supporting the line of reasoning: you see the ethnic violance, transfers are the way how to stop it). However, in other cases the authorities stopped ongoing "genuine local" mob violence. --Wikimol

23:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, ooh, I'm practically salivating on my keyboard. Assertions backed up by sources? Not only sources but sources that are contemporaneous with the expulsions? I can't believe it. Please write this stuff up for the article and provide the sources.

Note: The above info is only vis-a-vis Czechoslovakian policy. Is there anything similar for Poland?

My theory about all this is that lots of people in Europe thought that there was a problem with other people living inside their borders. First it was Germans who wanted the ethnic Germans inside their borders and then later it was the Poles and the Czechs who wanted them outside their borders.

--Richard 00:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That's right. Except that Germans not only wanted the ethnic Germans to be inside their borders, but also ethnically clean, ie without jews, gipsies, poles and czechs, just the high race. Czechs didn't care about jews, gipsies or poles or anyone and didnt consider themselves the high race, they just wanted to get rid of Germans. Theres the difference. ackoz 01:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Ha! Ha! Ha! Of course, Czechs LOVE gypsies. Colonel Mustard 14:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Territorial claims of German nationalists

Current text of the article includes this sentence "After the war, Germany's and Austria-Hungary's loss of territory and the rise of communism in the Soviet Union meant that more Germans than ever constituted sizable minorities in various countries."

I think I inserted the sentence but I don't remember the phrase "and the rise of communism in the Soviet Union". I don't understand what the rise of communism has to do with their being more German minorities between the two World Wars. Can someone explain this to me?

--Richard 06:06, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no Polish section in the "Chronicle of the Expulsion"

I just noticed that there is no Polish section in the "Chronicle of the Expulsion". This is singularly odd since we spend a fair amount of time talking about Poland in the background and reasons sections. We need some text describing the actual events of the expulsions in Poland similar to what we have for Czech Republic and Slovakia.

--Richard 06:20, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

A known participant has removed my text:

"millions were killed on their way to the west" is an example of German home-made history. The total number of German victims wasn't "millions" and many of the victims died of infections. The German government was responsible for the too late and poorly organised evacuation ("Flucht").    

- - The Germans created many myths about the expulsion. Now a German demands academic treatment. Yes, yes, yes! But the academic treatment has been done. There are thousands of pages of published documents. - - "Instead of this it has become a platform where everybody seems to be allowed to post his own history regardless how wrong and unsystematic it may ever be." Exactly and you are one of the ill informed and emotional posters. - Xx236 12:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to start a revert war. The above text is based on many academic sources. Xx236 12:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The above message was left by Xx236 on my Talk Page. It's OK to leave me messages on my Talk Page if they are directed solely at me. However, there is now developing a pattern of leaving messages there that should be put on this Talk Page. I am moving this message here. The other message was left by 213.70.74.164 but essentially duplicates the sources in his/her message below so I will not copy that message here.

Please do not leave me messages on my Talk Page if they are about the substance of this article. It clutters up my Talk Page and deprives other editors of a chance to read it.

--Richard 13:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Orderly population transfer

Maybe "orderly population transfer" is an oxymoron. I inserted the comparison to the Partition of India and somebody subsequently added the population transfer between Greece and Turkey which is fine by me especially because it provides a more European analog to the expulsions of Germans.

Here's my question: was the expulsion of Germans a more horrific episode than either of those two episodes? We say that, in all three cases, the populations being transferred suffered greatly. I'm sure there were rapes and murders in India although Gandhi probably helped to reduce those. How about between Greece and Turkey? Or when Poles moved out of Russia?

What I'm asking is: was the incidence of rape and murder higher in the case of the expulsions of Germans than in other similar population transfers? I know it may be hard to get at data on this but what I'm really asking is whether we generally believe that they are or are not.

I know Hindus and Muslims in India were attacked. Were Poles in transit from Russia to Poland attacked? Were Greeks and Turks in transit to their respective "mother countries" attacked?

This is important because it puts the expulsions in historical context and perspective. I'd like to hear what you guys think.

--Richard 06:34, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

This is extremely hard to tell. Data on casualties vary from cca 200 000 to 2 million. Moreover, the conditions probably varied in different areas - Czech wikipedia has this data: 250 000 Germans were allowed to stay. approx. 19 000 died, which includes murders, suicide, concentration camps etc. Again, these figures can be inaccurate, although in case of Czech republic, the difference between Czech and German numbers is usually not that big. ackoz 09:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Center Against Expulsions provides a table that totals deaths to be just under 2 million.

Who claims that it is 200,000? I think someone claimed on this Talk Page that the number was closer to 1 million. What is the source for that number? What is the reasoning that comes up with that number?

Also, Center Against Expulsions claims 3,159,000 Germans expelled, 238,000 deaths. This is a big difference from the 19,000 asserted in the Czech Wikipedia. Can you help dig up the source for the estimate of 19,000 deaths asserted in the Czech Wikipedia?

By now, you know that I am not interested in saying X is right or Y is right. I am happy to say X claims 238,000 deaths and Y claims 19,000 deaths.

--Richard 07:25, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

There were different periods and places:

1. Escape and Red Army crimes;
2. "Wild" expulsions and camps
3. Potsdam expulsions
4. Deportations to the Soviet Union
5. Several waves of free emigration

Some Germans travelled with their furniture (the Communists), others starved. De Zayas presents many crimes.

The same was true about Poles - some survived Ukrainian massacres, some returned from Soviet camps, some travelled with their cows and/or furniture, some starved after leaving the train in Poland. Many were robbed by Soviet guards.

Generally the fate of Poles was better than the one of Germans.

Many Germans select the Soviet crimes and extrapolate them on any place and time. Xx236 09:19, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

German minority section

Dear Richard,

in response to your call for a compromise concerning the revert war on the Expulsion of Germans after World War II-side, I would like to say the following:

I am not willing to participate in the “Selbstschutz”-discussion on the qouted side any more. Regardless whether the whole Selbstschutz-issue could have been a sound reason for the expulsion (by the way, it would not have been), it was simply not the reason. The reason was that Stalin and Truman decided in Potsdam to shift Poland to the west in order to secure that the Soviet Union could permanently keep the territories occupied by the Red Army in the course of the execution of the Hitler-Stalin-Treaty in 1939. In order to clear room for the Polish refugees and to prevent future ethnic violence in the new western parts of Poland/former eastern parts of Germany, the German population had been expelled.

However taking a look at the main side, the west-shift of Poland is mentioned in a little, tiny paragraph hidden somewhere in the middle part of the page whereas the article about German minority organisations grows and grows. I do not mind writing about Selbstschutz, Werwolf, etc. but please not on this page as there is no significant connex (it was not the reason and it would not even have been a proper reason). Neither do I want to relativise or conceal anything what happened before and during WWII but it makes me sad and angry how the topic is handled here.

Millions were expelled from their homes where their ancestors had lived partly for more than 600 years, and millions were killed on their way to the west, mostly women, children and old men, driven like cattle, fucked, burned and robbed. This is a cheerless part of European history and would have deserved a better, ie more objective and academic treatment. Instead of this it has become a platform where everybody seems to be allowed to post his own history regardless how wrong and unsystematic it may ever be.

Anyway, I am tired of fighting against windmills and hence abstain from deleting the weird Selbstschutz section from now on. I wish you guys a lot of fun with your homemade-history on this page in the future (“Wo rohe Kräfte sinnlos walten, da kann sich kein Gebild gestalten”, Friedrich Schiller).

Best regards (213.70.74.164 09:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

Dear 213 (hey, if you don't want to create an account, how about telling us your name or nickname so you don't have to be called "213"),

Thank you for your message. More importantly, thank you for not deleting article text anymore. I find such behavior incredibly annoying.

In all the editing work that I have done on this article, just about the only text that I have flat out deleted was text you wrote earlier saying "but this is provably false...". I want to communicate to you that I deleted it not because I disagreed with you but because the tone of the writing was too argumentative for an encyclopedic argument. If you wish to call an assertion into question, add text like "Some historians dispute the accuracy (or the relevance) of this factor ...". If the argument you were referring to was provably false, we wouldn't put it in the article at all.

I have taken the points you made above into account and made an initial effort to incorporate them into the article. I agree that the Selbstschutz/Werwolf sections were growing out of proportion with excessive detail and I have made some effort to cut them back.

But please consider my perspective on the Selbstschutz/Werwolf question. I agree with you that Selbstschutz/Werwolf were not the reasons for the expulsions. It's clear to me that the geopolitical issues of Soviet territorial expansionism and the re-establishment of Polish territorial integrity could only occur at the expense of German territory. It's further clear that Poland wanted the land for Poles and not for Germans. It's not pretty but "to the victors go the spoils".

From that perspective, Selbstschutz/Werwolf are minor side issues in the story of the expulsions. However, the question is why the virulence of Benes in his speeches? Why was there, in Benes' opinion, a "German problem"? Why didn't Poles stick up for their German neighbors and at least guarantee them safe passage out of Poland? My answer is: because of the enmity built up over the last two or three decades of German nationalism and the support of ethnic Germans for the German nationalist movement.

Did that enmity go back centuries or only decades? I don't know. What I feel confident of is that the operations of Selbstschutz, German collaborators and the existence of Werwolf even if ineffective did not lessen that enmity but rather increased it.

Because of the actions of some (many) ethnic Germans during WWII, Poles and Czechs had come to believe that they could not forge a nation with Germans of suspect loyalties within their borders. And thus, they saw the expulsions as justified not only on some grand geopolitical scale but also at a very visceral and emotional level. Maybe this is what was meant by the "rational reasons and emotional reasons" text that I deleted.

Do you agree with this interpretation?

If you agree and if this is not the story that the article tells now, then let us work together to change it.

--Richard 06:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

number of overall German casulties

Just to bring the discussion about the figures to an end:

it had been approx. 2 million German casulties, please refer to the attached 55 (!) sources (ps angry man and Xx236: I know, all 55 sources are lying, faked, completely wrong, biased, falsified, sponsored by Nazi organisations, bla, bla, bla...)

1 Vgl. dazu Gerhard Reichling, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. 2 Teile, Bonn 1986/89.

Andere Autoren nehmen noch höhere Zahlen an, so Heinz Nawratil, Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen, Verschleppten, München - Berlin 1987, S. 27-32.

2 Vgl. Lutz Niethammer, Diesseits des "Floating Gap". Das kollektive Gedächtnis von Identität im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs, in: Kerstin Platt/Mileran Dabag (Hrsg.), Generation und Gedächtnis. Erinnerungen und kollektive Identitäten, Opladen 1985, S. 25-50. Vgl. auch die Einleitung der Herausgeberinnen, ebd., S. 25-50.

3 Hans-Georg Lehmann, Der Oder-Neiße-Konflikt, München 1979, S. 63.

4 Michael Schwartz, Vertreibung und Vergangenheitspolitik. Ein Versuch über geteilte deutsche Nachkriegsidentitäten, in: Deutschland Archiv, 30 (1997), S. 177-195, hier S. 179.

5 Vgl. Hermann Weiss, Die Organisationen der Vertriebenen und ihre Presse, in: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.), Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten. Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen, Frankfurt/M. 1985, S. 193-208; Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Vertriebene, in: Werner Weidenfeld/Karl-Rudolf Korte (Hrsg.), Handwörterbuch der deutschen Einheit, Frankfurt/M. 1992, S. 732-741, hier S. 736.

6 Zum BHE vgl. Franz Neumann, Der Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten 1950-1960, Meisenheim am Glan 1968.

7 Vgl. Josef Foschepoth, Potsdam und danach. Die Westmächte, Adenauer und die Vertriebenen, in: W. Benz (Anm. 5), S. 70-90, hier insbes. S. 86 ff.

8 A. M. de Zayas (Anm. 5), S. 737. Vgl. ferner Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Die Zeit der Weltkriege (Gebhardt, Handbuch der Deutschen Geschichte, Bd. IV), Stuttgart 1976, S. 681.

9 Wilhelm Pieck, Reden und Aufsätze. Auswahl aus den Jahren 1908 bis 1950, Bd. 2, Berlin 1954, S. 555.

10 Walter Dirks/Eugen Kogon, Verhängnis und Hoffnung im Osten. Das Deutsch-Polnische Problem, in: Frankfurter Hefte, 2 (1947), S. 470-487. Wieder abgedruckt (und danach zitiert) bei W. Benz (Anm. 5), S. 125-142. 11 Ebd., S. 127.

12 Ebd., S. 130.

13 Vgl. Christoph Klessmann (Hrsg.), Nicht nur Hitlers Krieg. Der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Deutschen, Düsseldorf 1989.

14 Vgl. Hellmuth Auerbach, Literatur zum Thema. Ein kritischer Überblick, in: W. Benz (Anm. 5), S. 219-231, hier S. 219.

15 Vgl. Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ostmitteleuropa. In Verbindung mit Adolf Distelkamp, Rudolf Laun, Peter Rassow, Hans Rothfels (und ab Bd. I/3 auch Werner Conze) bearbeitet von Theodor Schieder, hrsg. vom Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, 1954-1963; nachgedruckt München 1984. Hier wird nach der Originalausgabe zitiert.

16 Zur Entstehung des Projektes siehe Mathias Beer, Im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Das Großforschungsprojekt Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 46 (1998), S. 345-389.

17 Dokumentation, Vorwort zu Bd. I (Anm. 15), S. I-VII, hier S. I.

18 Ebd., S. VI f.

19 Vgl. Götz Aly, Macht, Geist, Wahn. Kontinuitäten deutschen Denkens, Berlin 1997; ders./Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung, Hamburg 1991; Angelika Ebbinghaus/Karl-Heinz Roth, Vorläufer des ‘Generalplans Ost’. Eine Dokumentation über Theodor Schieders Polendenkschrift vom 7. Oktober 1939, in: 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, (1992) 1, S. 62-95. Vgl. auch Peter Schöttler (Hrsg.), Geschichte als Legitimationswissenschaft, Frankfurt/M. 1997; ders., Schuld der Historiker, in: Die Zeit, Nr. 14, 1997, S. 15.

20 M. Beer (Anm. 16), S. 389.

21 Dokumentation, Vorwort zu Bd. I (Anm. 15), S. VII.

22 Vgl. Martin Broszat, Massendokumentation als Methode zeitgeschichtlicher Forschung, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 2 (1954), S. 202-213; Theodor Schieder, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten als wissenschaftliches Problem, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 8 (1960), S. 1-16.

23 Hans Rothfels in seiner Vorbemerkung des Herausgebers zum Aufsatz von Theodor Schieder, ebd., S. 1.

24 Ebd., S. 2.

25 Vgl. Dokumentation (Anm. 15), Bd. I, Vorwort, S. 1.

26 Vgl. Edgar Günther Lass, Die Flucht. Ostpreußen 1944/45, Bad Nauheim 1964.

27 Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50, hrsg. vom Statistischen Bundesamt Wiesbaden, Stuttgart 1958.

28 Exemplarisch für die Tagebücher: Hans Graf Lehndorff, Ostpreußisches Tagebuch. Aufzeichnungen eines Arztes aus den Jahren 1945-1947, München 1961; Taschenbuchausgabe München 1967. Zur Darstellung der Kriegsgeschehnisse siehe Jürgen Thorwald, Es begann an der Weichsel, Stuttgart 1950; ders., Das Ende an der Elbe, Stuttgart 1950; Kurt Dieckert/Horst Grossmann, Der Kampf um Ostpreußen. Ein authentischer Dokumentationsbericht, München 1960; Hans von Ahlfen, Der Kampf um Schlesien. Ein authentischer Dokumentationsbericht, München 1961; Erich Murawski, Die Eroberung Pommerns durch die Rote Armee, Boppard am Rhein 1969.

29 Vgl. Martin Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik 1939-1945, Stuttgart 1961.

30 Vgl. Konrad Kwiet, Die NS-Zeit in der westdeutschen Forschung 1945-1961, in: Ernst Schulin (Hrsg.), Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (1945-1965), München 1989, S. 181-198.

31 Von den 81 Abgeordneten, die sich im Bundestag 1965-1969 als "Heimatvertriebene" bezeichneten, gehörten 36 der CDU/CSU, 38 der SPD und 7 der FDP an (Heribert Knorr, Der parlamentarische Entscheidungsprozess während der Großen Koalition 1966 bis 1969. Struktur und Einfluss der Koalitionsfraktionen und ihr Verhältnis zur Regierung der Großen Koalition, Meisenheim am Glan 1975, S. 37).

32 Vgl. Vorstand der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Hrsg.), Parteitag der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands vom 17. bis 21. März 1968 in Nürnberg. Protokoll der Verhandlungen, Bonn o. J., S. 11 und 996.

33 Vgl. Bernd Faulenbach, NS-Interpretationen und Zeitklima. Zum Wandel in der Aufarbeitung der jüngsten Vergangenheit, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 22/87, S. 19-30; ders., Emanzipation von der deutschen Tradition? Geschichtsbewusstsein in den sechziger Jahren, in: Werner Weidenfeld (Hrsg.), Politische Kultur und deutsche Frage. Materialien zum Staats- und Nationalbewusstsein der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Köln 1989, S. 73-92.

34 Vgl. u. a. Heinz Nawratil, Vertreibungsverbrechen an Deutschen. Tatbestand, Motive, Bewältigung, München 1982; Wilfried Ahrens, Verbrechen an Deutschen. Dokumente der Vertreibung, Rosenheim 1983; vgl. auch H. Auerbach (Anm. 14), S. 226.

35 Vgl. Winfried Schlau, Die Eingliederung in gesellschaftlicher Hinsicht, in: Hans Joachim von Merkatz (Hrsg.), Aus Trümmern werden Fundamente. Vertriebene-Flüchtlinge-Aussiedler - Drei Jahrzehnte Integration, Düsseldorf 1979, S. 151-162, insbes. S. 159 f. Vgl. ferner M. Schwartz (Anm. 4), S. 189.

36 Richard von Weizsäcker, Reden und Interviews, Bd. I, 1. Juli 1984-30. Juni 1985, Bonn 1986, S. 12.

37 Vgl. Marion Frantzioch, Die Vertriebenen. Hemmnisse und Wege der Integration, Berlin 1987; Rainer Schulze/Doris von der Brelie-Lewien/Helga Grebing (Hrsg.), Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte. Bilanzierung der Forschung und Perspektiven für die künftige Forschungsarbeit, Hildesheim 1987; Paul Erker, Revolution des Dorfes. Ländliche Bevölkerung zwischen Flüchtlingsstrom und landwirtschaftlichem Strukturwandel, in: Martin Broszat u. a. (Hrsg.), Von Stalingrad zur Währungsreform, München 1988, S. 367-425. Vgl. auch Michael Schwartz, Integration von Flüchtlingen im Nachkriegsdeutschland. Ein Forschungskolloquium des Institutes für Zeitgeschichte, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 44 (1996), S. 629-631; Sylvia Schraut/Thomas Grosser (Hrsg.), Die Flüchtlingsfrage in der Nachkriegsgesellschaft, Mannheim 1996. Siehe ferner H. J. von Merkatz (Anm. 35).

38 Andreas Hillgruber, Zweierlei Untergang. Die Zerschlagung des Deutschen Reiches und das Ende des europäischen Judentums, Berlin 1986, S. 12 f.

39 Vgl. Alfred Heuß, Versagen und Verhängnis. Vom Ruin deutscher Geschichte und ihres Verständnisses, Berlin 1984.

40 Vgl. ebd., S. 142.

41 Ebd., S. 208 f.

42 Vgl. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen. 7., erw. Aufl., Berlin 1988.

43 Vgl. W. Benz (Anm. 5).

44 Vgl. A. Hillgruber (Anm. 38). Zum Historikerstreit siehe "Historikerstreit". Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, München - Zürich 1987; Bernd Faulenbach, Die Bedeutung der NS-Vergangenheit für die Bundesrepublik. Zur politischen Dimension des "Historikerstreits", in: ders./Klaus Bölling, Geschichtsbewusstsein und historisch-politische Bildung in der Bundesrepublik, Düsseldorf 1988, S. 9-38.

45 A. Hillgruber (Anm. 38), S. 9.

46 Vgl. "Historikerstreit" (Anm. 44).

47 Vgl. Empfehlungen für die Schulbücher der Geschichte und Geographie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Volksrepublik Polen, Schriftenreihe des Georg-Eckert- Institutes für internationale Schulbuchforschung, Bd. 22/XV., erweiterte Neuaufl. Braunschweig 1995; Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Hrsg.), Die deutsch-polnischen Schulbuchempfehlungen in der öffentlichen Diskussion der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Eine Dokumentation, Braunschweig 1979. Stellungnahmen aus dem Umfeld der Vertriebenen insbesondere in: Materialien zu deutsch-polnischen Schulbuchempfehlungen. Eine Dokumentation kritischer Stellungnahmen, Bonn 1980.

48 Helga Grebing hat die Frage aufgeworfen, ob nicht das Nichtakzeptieren der Leidensgeschichte der Vertriebenen "ein weiteres Kapitel der Unfähigkeit der Deutschen (sei), Trauerarbeit zu leisten: wie gegenüber den Opfern des Nationalsozialismus nun auch gegenüber den Opfern seiner Folgen", in: R. Schulze/D. v. d. Brelie-Lewien/H. Grebing (Anm. 37), S. 2.

49 Karlheinz Lau, Verlieren wir das historische Ostdeutschland aus dem Geschichtsbild?, in: Deutschland Archiv, 28 (1995), S. 633-640.

50 Vgl. Herbert Ammon, Stiefkind der Zunft. Die deutsche Zeitgeschichtsforschung hat sich für das Thema Vertreibung wenig interessiert, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung vom 5. September 1997, S. 10; Alfred Theisen, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen. Ein unbewältigtes Kapitel europäischer Zeitgeschichte, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 7-8/95, S. 20-33.

51 Verlage dieser Art sind der Laumann-Verlag Dülmen, der Marx-Verlag in Leimen und der Rautenberg-Verlag in Leer. Im Laufe der Jahre haben alle Städte und Regionen im Osten ihre (Laien-)Historiker gefunden, die über ihre Stadt oder Region Bücher und Aufsätze veröffentlichten.

52 Vgl. Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang. Eine Novelle, Göttingen 2002; K. Erich Franzen, Die Vertriebenen. Hitlers letzte Opfer, München 2001 (Buch zur ARD-Fernsehserie); Spiegel-Serie "Die Flucht", Nr. 13 ff., 2002.

53 Vgl. Detlev Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938-1945. Pläne und Entscheidungen zum "Transfer" der Deutschen aus Polen und der Tschechoslowakei, München 2001; Philipp Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene. Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945-1956, Göttingen 1999; Manfred Zeidler, Kriegsende im Osten. Die Rote Armee und die Besetzung Deutschlands östlich von Oder und Neiße 1944/45, München 1996.

54 Peter Steinbach, Die Vergegenwärtigung von Vergangenem. Zum Spannungsverhältnis zwischen individueller Erinnerung und öffentlichem Gedenken, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 3-4/97, S. 3-13, hier S. 4.

55 Vgl. Bernd Faulenbach, Von der nationalen zur universalen Erinnerungskultur?, in: Jahrbuch Arbeit, Bildung, Kultur 19/20 (2001/02), S. 225-236.

(213.70.74.164 10:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC))

Hello, 213. I believe you, that as a result of the post war mess, expulsions and general hostility towards Germans, 2 million German civilians died. However, some of them could have died from diseases, hunger etc., some (for sure) committed suicide, some were murdered, some were active in the Nazi administration etc. But we don't want to say: bad slavs killed 2 million German women and children on their way to Germany - that is not true. There were various reasons why people died in that period, not only being killed by the Czech/Polish mob. Moreover, you think that there was enough food and healthcare for anyone? In these settings, you shouldnt expect the governments of occupied states to take care about citizens of the occupying state. Exactly like someone suggested above, we want to document:

How many people

• were murdered in the brief post-WW2 period by the Red Army
• were murdered by civilians or paramilitary organisations
• died as a result of the post-WW2 humanitarian catastrophe (diseases, hunger - also affected non-Germans)
• commited suicide
• died in concentration camps
• died in the process of Postdam - expulsion
• died when escaping from the Russian-occupied areas voluntarily
• survived
• were allowed to stay
• were allowed to stay but left voluntarily later

If you have the de Zayas book, or access to the document "Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen.", you could provide some numbers. I will search for the numbers in Czech sources. Then, we can compare them and find the differences.

Wikipedia should be (is not) an encyclopedia. Not a place to whine about poor German women and children.

ackoz 12:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Escape, War, Expulsion

There happened many processes:

• the escape of the population (not only German) 1944/1945,

the deportation of prisoners (including German people) - so called Death Marches, e.g. from Auschwitz,

• the war - looses in defended cities, victims of air attacks (Dresden),
• the expulsions, deportations to the SU, Soviet crimes in the SBZ.

The best way to get two millions of victims is to mix everything and to call it "Expulsion". If we are discussing the expulsion literally - there weren't 2 million victims. Even the extremely biased Center against Expulsions doesn't give such numbers: http://www.z-g-v.de/aktuelles/?id=58.

I don't like the continous ad-personam attacks. There are many German sources giving much lower estimates. I don't see any reason to accuse me of anything, because I stay in the limits of an academic discussions. The article quotes:

• Gerhard Reichling. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Bonn 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7.
• Rűdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000

Are the authors lying?

It's standard that any eyewitnesses overestimate the numbers of victims. Some Germans confirmed that more than 2 millions died in Auschwitz, the last estimates give about 1 million.

Xx236 14:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I have to say that I have been befuddled as to the meaning of the table that is currently in the article at the beginning of the "Summary of German Expellee Population". I can figure out the math but I'm at a loss as to what point it is trying to make. Can somebody help me? More importantly, put the explanation in the article.

Table from Center Against Expulsions

Thank you so much for that link to the Center against Expulsions. The table is great and I think we should use the relevant part of it in the article.

I disagree with your conclusion, though. Just adding up the numbers in my head, if you take the entries in that table that include Germans from 1944 to 1948, you get approximately 2 million.

Now you can argue what kinds of deaths those constitute. It's entirely possible that some of those are deaths due to disease or malnutrition. I think it's reasonable to suggest that if we can find a source who has critiqued the numbers of the Center against Expulsions. Has anybody done an analysis on the numbers? Not any of us, I mean any reliable source.

--Richard 17:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I need some help as my command of German is rather poor. In the table from the Center Against Expulsion website, it says "Zahl der Vertriebenen einschl. Tote". What does "einschl." mean? Does it mean "including" or "excluding"?

--Richard 17:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK "including". --Wikimol

Thanks. I need some more help with translation.

"Pommern" - is this Pomerania in English?

"Maehren" - is this Moravia in English?

"Russland-deutsche" - is this Russian-Germans in English?

"Mittel-Deutschland" - I translated this as "Central Germany" but where is this?

I understand West Germany and East Germany but "Central Germany"?

--Richard 08:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Pommern - yes, Maehren - yes. Russland-deutsche ... Germans in Russia may be better. Mitteldeutschland .. Middle Germany.

My question is how to include the POV Z-G-V intentionaly uses old and inaccurate estimatates? This claim is based on "Opinion of the Commission on the losses connected with the transfer" by joint Czech-German commission of historians (verbatim quote in Facing history, chapter VI. p. 230-232 (Victims ...)), which suggests in case of Czecholslovakia maximum number of victims is ~30000 and numbers like 220000 should not be used. --Wikimol 09:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh boy, I just read pp. 230-232 in Facing history, chapter VI. Now, I understand what all the fuss is about these numbers. So, if (and I'm not saying it's OK to conclude this yet) this order of magnitude problem exists across the board, then you are talking more like 200,000 - 300,000 dead. This discrepancy must be documented but there are two problems:

1. Right now, we only have a source that says the Czech numbers are probably lower, we need more sources to call all of the Centre's numbers into question

2. We also need a way to present the two tables in the article now in proper perspective. I'm guessing that we have to drop both tables and just summarize them in words. Because of the way Wikipedia is formatting the tables, they take up an inordinate amount of space and it would be almost impossible to suggest that they are not truth once the reader has seen them in such a huge format.

I don't have time to do this right now but I will try to get to it when I can.

--Richard 22:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I just inserted Wikimol's text and cleaned it up a bit. I'm assuming that the debate is mostly about the estimates of the deaths and nobody really gets worked up about whether we are talking about 13 million expellees or 16 million expellees.

--Richard 01:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I want to emphasize the "Opinion of the Commission" only deals with Czechoslovakia. No easy implications for the total number are possible. The case of Poland was different, great number of Germans fled in very harsh contions, in winter, between fighting armies... which probably cost relatively many lives. (Bohemia was liberated at the absolute end of the war, there was almost no heavy fihting except Prague uprising, and Germany was really close.)

The most NPOV solution probably would be to include all signifficant estimates with links to sources. Even if IMO the joint Czech-German commision is much more objective and reasonable than ZGV, it is just another Opinion. ...also the Commission itself is subject of various opinions, one of them stating basically "its a bunch of Czech nationalists + credible German scholars under their bad influence" (I read something like that from Bohumil Doležal, which is good indication Sudeten German organizations will also have this attitude)

Maybe, one day there would be separate article Expulsion of German after WWII in historiography and public discourse. There are interesting comments on that. --Wikimol 19:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I was aware while reading the "Opinion of the Commission" that it was talking only about Czechoslovakia and I was wondering if the issues raised in that report would apply to other countries as well. Lower down on this talk page, Ackoz suggested changing the number for Czechoslovakia in the z-g-d table. I objected because that would suggest that all the other numbers in the z-g-d table are correct.

We don't know that yet. What we know for sure is that the "Opinion of the Commission" disagrees with z-g-d on the number for Czechoslovakia. We do not know it the z-g-d numbers are reliable for all other countries. Wikimol is suggesting that there is not the same order of magnitude difference for deaths of Germans in Poland. But is there a difference? Is it 1/2 or 2/3 of the z-g-d number? Maybe 213's 55 sources will shed some light on this question.

After all, if only the Czechoslovakia estimate of deaths is wrong, you're still looking at 1,750,000 deaths which (in the greater scheme of things) is not that much different from 2 million.

--Richard 19:58, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Gaining a perspective on this sad chapter in European history

OK, as a thought experiment, consider these extreme positions:

1) The German minorities were fully in favor of the Nazis, rejoiced when they marched into Czechoslovakia and Poland, collaborated in targeting Poles and Czechs for extermination and therefore, having gambled on the Nazis and lost, deserved everything they got.

2) The German minorities were innocent pawns in a great geopolitical game and didn't deserve to be thrown off their ancestral homeland.

Clearly the truth lies somewhere between the two

1) The Poles were evil in expelling the German minorities for their "sins" and should have just left the Germans to live side-by-side with them as they had for centuries

2) The Poles were 100% justified in their actions towards the Germans and the Germans deserved everything they got.

Clearly the truth lies somewhere between the two

1) The Poles did nothing but stand by passively and watch as Germans marched out of Poland and into Germany

2) The Poles exploited every chance to take advantage of the departing Germans and robbed, raped and murdered them at every opporunity

Clearly the truth lies somewhere between the two

One problem is that we try to talk about groups of individuals as if they were one monolithic group. The Germans did this, the Poles did that. No, they didn't. Individual Germans did things. Individual Poles did things. Governments did things. The "Poles" can't do anything, they're individuals not a monolithic group. Same goes for the Germans.

Another reason we keep having these edit wars is we keep trying to push a POV version of the truth which is closer to one extreme or the other. I think it is wiser to say that there are valid perspectives that run the gamut from one extreme to another. It is not for us to say where exactly the truth lies. No one may ever know and there is more than one truth depending on which town you were in and at which time.

My vision for this article is that we present multiple truths and let the reader decide for himself/herself.

--Richard 20:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Another thought about ethnic cleansing

So, something I've been wondering about...

In any mixed community, there are intermarriages. Thus, one problem with ethnic cleansing is that the ethnic lines are not always clear. Didn't Germans marry Poles? What did these families do? Was it the case that a woman would marry into another ethnic group and learn the language of the other group? "I was Pole but now I speak German" "I was a German but now I speak Polish"

"My Dad is German, my Mom is Polish, we speak both languages. I'm German." or... "My Dad is Polish, my Mom is German, I'm Polish." or... "I'm German AND I'm Polish". Americans have this problem all the time except most of them only speak English. Didn't Europeans have this problem 60 years ago?

How is it we talk about "Germans" and "Poles" as if there are clear lines dividing the ethnic groups?

--Richard 20:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Various funny means .. face measuring, behavior during the occupation, German citizenship etc. were used at that time to distinguish Germans from non Germans (as with Jews and non Jews.. seen Hitlerjunge Solomon?) .. there is no clear line. I have already said, that one of my friend's grandfather is German - but was allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia because they measured his face somehow and "discovered", that he was not so German as he thougt :) We shoudln't be using nationalities here as an argument at all .. in fact, the Germanisation was applied quite strongly in the Czech lands during 17-19th century, after the battle of Bila hora in 1620. Czech was even not used as a written language, and most of the German speaking families in towns were actually Czech, even the mother of TGM was german-speaking with a Czech name, and mother of Konrad Henlein was born as Dvorackova, which was later changed by Henlein to Dworzak (or something like that) to sound more German, but it is still a Czech name. Nationality is more about what you think about yourself than a genetic thing. ackoz 01:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

How is it we talk about "Germans" and "Poles" as if there are clear lines dividing the ethnic groups? Because German government made itself several classification lists on which it marked who was Pole and who was German, during the war. Some of those classified as Germans (they were several groups of German available) had a chance to rehabilite themselfs if they proved they were forced, or worked for Polish underground etc. --Molobo 16:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Great, thank you. But this is not documented in the article and it should be. Can you write a few sentences about this?

--Richard 06:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point - a memeber of family of the prominent Polish politician Donald Tusk was on "Wilhelm Gustloff". Does it make Tusk a German? Many Upper Silesians and Kashubs were between the Poles and the Germans.

Peter Glotz' mother was Czech.

Xx236 11:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Nationalsocialist vs. Nazi

Some time ago, somebody (I think it was 213) kept substituting Nationalsocialist for Nazi. We reverted those edits. However, in the spirit of cooperation and discussion, I would like to understand what the point of those edits was. From an American standpoint, I have no understanding of why anyone would prefer using the term "Nationalsocialist" instead of "Nazi". In America, we understand "Nazi" and use that almost exclusively to refer to Hitler's party. It is only with some effort that we come to understand "Nationalsocialist" to mean the same thing.

Or, is it the same thing? Is 213 or whoever was making those edits trying to make a point that we just didn't grasp?

Please help me understand what that little revert war was all about.

--Richard 06:20, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

In my view (note that I'm not an American or a native English speaker), the problem with the term "Nazi" is that it's been used to refer to many things in the past and as a variety of meanings. Of course the basic meaning is a member of the NSDAP, and as such is almost synonymous to Nationalsocialist. However, depending on the context, it could have a variety of other meanings. For instance: a synonym to Germany (as in "Nazi Wehrmacht" for instance). In such a way it is a strange half-synonym as in English the authors usually refer to any "bad things" done during the WWII as done by the Nazis, while the "good things" were done by the Germans. You know, people refer to Nazi concentration camps, but to German journalists or lawyers or football championships, and so on. Because of that the term Nazi is very strongly associated with atrocities and I understand why some people would prefer to use less-loaded terms instead. Not that I supported it... //Halibutt 09:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Chronicle of the expulsions - needs an 'Eastern Germany' section

This article makes no reference to the fact that most of the Germans expelled were expelled from what was then Germany - i.e. East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia. Perhaps this information is going to be added to the 'Poland' section, although these parts of Eastern Germany were not formally annexed to Poland - indeed, the People's Republic of Poland did not yet exist - when most of the expulsions occurred. I notice that the History of Poland articles basically assert that Lwow was stolen from Poland, but imply that Stettin was liberated from a temporary Nazi occupation... hmm... so we'll see what our Polish historians come up with, shall we? Colonel Mustard 14:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

OR

WP:NOR. Why on earth should Selbstschutz be relevant to the expulsion of Germans? Is there any source on the whole wide web that categorises it as reason or are we inventing some reasons? Why can't the author, who usually can come up with anything on the net, not provide anything tangible here? Selbstschutz is so well-known and relevant that — quite distinct from Wehrwolf, which was created in the early days of Wikipedia — Selbstschutz was only created in late 2005. Yes, I do think there's reason to doubt that this is the notable part of background. (while the rest is a black and white summary of the background related to Poland... actually just a black summary.)

"As Selbstschutz counted 82,000 members out of 741,000 Germans living in Poland, over 10 % of Germans living in Poland were members of this organisation(this percentage would increase if one would count only fit male members of German community, who were able to enlist in Selbstschutz, rather then whole population)."

Tell me when you've found a source you can translate for your edits, Molobo, and not only for this paragraph. I'm growing tired of your attitude to delete original research opposed to your views and at the same time some added in favour of yours. You should have familiarised yourself with the policy by now. And don't you criticise abbreviations like ('u' = 'you', '2' = 'to' or 'two' and 'ur' = 'your' ) used to have enough space in the edit summary.

All in all, if the 'introduction' is becoming too long, it should be put into another article and summarized here. Sciurinæ 19:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Why on earth should Selbstschutz be relevant to the expulsion of Germans? Is there any source on the whole wide web that categorises it as reason or are we inventing some reasons? According to Doctor Wardzynska who works in IPN Institute yes it was a reason and researches the issues of population movements in the war period and yes it was one of the issues. --Molobo 20:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC) Why can't the author, who usually can come up with anything on the net, not provide anything tangible here? I have already provided the neccessary source.Actually two even, but as Polish one was more informative, I deleted German source. --Molobo 20:04, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, if I might add something to the discussion, I don't think that this exactly is the article where we should use Web sources heavily. It is a very complicated issue, with lots of nationality-related POVs, and WEB sources usually represent one of these POVs. In this case, even if the WP policy favors the use of web sources, apart from the official ones, we should look for more scholarly books to support our "facts". Sciurinae, it might be easier for you to get your hands on this book: [6] Der 'Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz' in Polen 1939/40 von Christian Jansen, Arno Weckbecker. I think there is a big chance that it will be available in your Uni-bibliothek. Both authors are German university scholars, so I don't expect this book to be biased (Christian Jansen - Uni Bochum, Weckbecker is probably from Heidelberg). I would be really grateful, if you could find it and tell us what they think about Selbschutz. ackoz 21:55, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that books are necessarily less biased than Web pages per se. I think the difference is that the biases in books tend to be more commonly accepted biases than Web pages. Anybody can put up a web page, sometimes for free, other times for minimal amounts of money. Thus the most wacky fringe theory can easily be published on the website.

A book that is published by a reputable publishing house must appeal to tens of thousands of readers, preferably a few hundred thousand readers. Otherwise, the publishing house won't waste its investment dollars on it. That doesn't mean the book isn't biased. Just that the bias is more widely accepted.

That said, I agree that Wikipedia policy frowns on websites as sources and prefers books published by reputable publishing houses (i.e. not vanity-published books)

--Richard 04:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Deleted table of German Expellee Population

I'm putting this table here because I am replacing it with the table from the Centre against Expulsions which I find more understandable. I am open to the idea that the Centre against Expulsions table may have inflated figures. If anyone wants to put a sourced challenge to those figures, I will not object. I just have trouble understanding the point that the table below is trying to make. I think the table from the Centre against Expulsions is much more to the point.

German Expellee Population 1939-50
Description	Germany	Eastern Europe	Total
Population in 1939	9,500,000	7,100,000	16,600,000
Wartime Transfers In	500,000	0	500,000
Natural Increase 1939-1950	600,000	400,000	1,000,000
Military Losses 1939-45	900,000	550,000	1,450,000
Civilian Losses	800,000	500,000	1,300,000
Remaining in East Europe	1,450,000	1,500,000	2,950,000
Expellee Population 1950	7,450,000	4,950,000	12,400,000

Notes:
Germany-The pre-war eastern German provinces that became Polish in 1945 and Kaliningrad region that became Soviet
Eastern Europe- Includes ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Danzig, the Baltic nations, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. Does not include the USSR.
Population in 1939- Includes bilinguals who were listed as Germans.
Military Losses 1939-45 Research by R. Overmans has increased this total by 360,000 thus reducing civilian losses.
Wartime Transfers In -Wartime evacuation of persons from western Germany.
Civilian Losses -Losses primarily during military campaign in 1945, also includes 270,000 dead in the USSR after being deported as laborers. This table reflects the research of Reichling and Overmans that has adjusted the estimate of civilian deaths downward from the 1958 German government estimate of 2.1 million dead.
Remaining in East Europe-Primarily bilinguals except in the case of Romania. Research by G. Reichling has increased this total by 230,000 thus reducing civilian losses

Sources:
Gerhard Reichling. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Bonn 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7.
Rűdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000. ISBN 3-486-56531-1 Fritz Peter Habel Dokumente zur Sudetenfrage Langen Müller, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7844-2691-3. Alfred de Zayas Die Nemesis von Potsdam Herbig, Munich 2005. ISBN 3-7766-2454-X. Newest statistical survey pp. 32-34.

This table also has a good point - it can be used to show how some of the estimates of number of victims were constructed

German Expellee Population 1939-50
Description	Germany	Eastern Europe	Total
Expellee Population 1950	7,450,000	4,950,000	12,400,000
-Population in 1939	-9,500,000	-7,100,000	-16,600,000
-Wartime Transfers In	-500,000	0	-500,000
-Natural Increase 1939-1950	-600,000	-400,000	-1,000,000
-Military Losses 1939-45	-900,000	-550,000	-1,450,000
-Remaining in East Europe	-1,450,000	-1,500,000	-2,950,000
=Number of vicitms	800,000	500,000	1,300,000

...given the scale of the results and precision of the 5 rows you subtract, the weakness of statistical estimates is obvious. You can get almost anything, if you want to. --Wikimol 09:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused, Wikimol. The first table was in the article before before I deleted it last night. I don't know exactly where those numbers come from except that there are four sources listed.

I wrote "Where does your table come from?" Forget that question. I now see that your table is just a re-ordering of the rows of the original table.

If I understand you correctly, you are raising a valid point. Even the act of assembling a table of data from multiple sources runs the risk of being original research because the act of selecting which data to include in the table can be original research. It's better to publish a table from one source and cite the source. Let the reader connect the dots himself.

--Richard 15:56, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I took another look at the two tables and I realized that the numbers are the same, only the order of the rows is changed. However, changing the order of the rows has a significance. Because the table is obviously a computation, we must ask "What is solid reliable input data", "What is estimated data" and "What is the computed result?"

Is the estimate of 1.3 million computed by this table or is it input data that is taken from another source? If it comes from another source, what is that source?

Ultimately, the question is: Does this table come from one of the sources cited or is it a composite made up from numbers in the the four sources?

I think the table that I deleted needs to go back into the article as it provides support for the estimate of 1.3 million deaths. Question is which version should go back in, the one I deleted or the re-arranged version provided by Wikimol?

In the table from the Center Against Expulsions, it should be clear that the 2 million number is simply the addition of the numbers in the table. I added that row as an aid for the reader.

Please don't use the table from Center, it presents very biased and inaccurate data. The responsible organisation was founded by a Nazi. We shouldn't promote organisations like that as objective sources of information. --Molobo 12:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. This is a just one set of numbers provided by one source (very possibly an organization with a bias). Nobody has objected to the mention of U.S. Congressman Reece who claimed in 1957 that there were 16 million expelled and 3 million deaths. The intro to the article claims 16.5 million expelled and 500,000 to 3 million deaths.

I have sources for 13.6 expelled to 16 million expelled. I have sources for 2 to 3 million deaths.

If we use Wikipedia guidelines, we should delete the claim of 500,000 deaths as unsourced.

I see now that the 500,000 number could be based on the original table which stated that there were 500,000 deaths in Eastern Europe and 800,000 deaths in "Germany" but "Germany" is defined in the notes as "The pre-war eastern German provinces that became Polish in 1945 and Kaliningrad region that became Soviet." So, the number of deaths should be considered to be 1.3 million according to this table, NOT 500,000.

Do you dispute the figures provided by Reece and by the Centre Against Expulsions? Fine. Provide your numbers and your sources.

Put up or shut up. (Sorry for the incivility, I'm not trying to be uncivil. I'm just trying to say that statements have to be sourced.)

It's OK to document why one source is less reliable than another source but I haven't seen any argument against the numbers in the Center Against Expulsions table except that "it was founded by a Nazi". That is not inherently an attack on its reliability. If you argue that the Center Against Expulsions has a Nazi agenda which colors the reliability of the numbers, then that should be documented.

Somebody claimed that the real number was closer to 1 million. OK, where's the source?

I do personally believe 2 to 3 million may be over-estimates. But, if they are, where's the source that says that? It could be as simple as some Polish historian or Polish politician saying "The 2 million number is an over-estimate".

Someone suggested a couple of books as sources for numbers (I think one of them was de Zayas). Anybody have access to those books? Let's see what those books say.

Remember, the priniciple is give the reader all the available sources and some perspective by which to judge the sources. Then, let the reader decide for himself which source to believe.

--Richard 15:56, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry but using data from Center is beyond any acceptence. Please find another source. I can't accept using data the source provides as objective. --Molobo 17:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but you don't own this article any more than I do. If you object, let's see what the consensus is. I will yield to whatever the consensus is.

I'm happy to include any objections to the credibility of the source. I do not argue that the Center Against Expulsions is the only source, the best source or even a good source. However, it is a source and one whose numbers fall into the range of 1.3 million to 3 million. It is not your prerogative to "blackball" a source just because you think it is biased. It is your prerogative to provide information about why the source is not reliable.

We should find some book about this - the Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen would be great. Richard - I cannot judge if the numbers are correct or not, but we should not use a source whose existence is opposed by 2 governments and disputed even in Germany. Moreover I have seen blatant disinformation on the webpage of the Centre already. However, we should keep the table as is now until we get something better. ackoz 17:37, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Ugh. OK, that's two votes against the Centre. It would be good if you guys would put this info in the article, Centre against Expulsions

Still, I am assuming that the only thing questionable about their table is the numbers. In other words, I am assuming that the dates, locations and actors are correct. I think this level of detail is far better than the table that was there before. If the numbers in the Center's table are not good estimates, fine, let's find better numbers. However, the table format is, IMO, what we need.

--Richard 18:04, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the G-V-D table

• yes, the structure is IMO reasonable
• the descriptions are a bit more problematic
  • for example: the column title is Expelled by, yet some of the numbers include also those who fled of were evacuated by Nazi authorities. (Some do not, like those transferred inside USSR.)
• yes, the numbers will be the root of the dispute
  • for example: I allready commented on the number of victims of expulsion from Czechoslovakia. (I checked only this one number.) Compared to estimate by joint Czech-German commission of researchers, the number is higher by one order.

--Wikimol 20:57, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the "older table". Point I tried to make was

• What are "input numbers" and what computed result?
  • My guess: the death tolls are results and the rest are inut data. That's why I reordered it that way.
• Than, what is the accuracy of input data?
  • That should be stated, especially if the data come from various sources. Preferably all data should be of the form "Expellee Population 1950 ... 7,450,000+-150,000". If not, at least some indication of how they were obtained should be given. E.g. "German census according to Book1", "demographists estimate from Study5",...
• Than, what's the accuracy of result?

--Wikimol 21:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Where can we get the results published by the joint Czech-German commission of researchers? We could use this table (I mean the structure) and the numbers you will suggest, at least for Czechoslovakia, would that be OK?

Anyway, if there is a bilateral board of scholars and then an unilateral expellees organisation, tightly connected with people who demand material retribution, we should only use the scholar version, not both. ackoz 00:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ugh, no. Please do NOT change the Center Against Expulsions table. That would constitute original research. After all, the total would change from 1,997,500 to maybe 1,750,000 and that wouldn't serve anybody's purpose. Ideally, we'd find a similar table covering all the expulsions in some scholarly source. Or, if we can dig up enough numbers from a variety of sources, we can consider populating the Center's table with the numbers we find. However, that is getting awfully close to being original research. I would want to footnote every number with the source to avoid the charge of original research.

Even if we wind up removing the Center's table, I think we still need to quote the total death estimates asserted by both Congressman Reece (3 million) and the Center (2 million) and then explain why those numbers are way too high. The relevant text is in pp. 230-232 of the Czech document that Wikimol dug up.

--Richard 00:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok NP .. I wouldn't change it myself anyway. ackoz 11:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I didnt see the last (your?) edit under the table. It looks very good now. Do you think that there should be another table just for the casualties? ackoz 11:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

If we can develop a comprehensive table that challenges the Center's table, I would use that drop the Center's table and then just say "The C-A-E website provides a table with much higher numbers totalling 2 million deaths." The only reason that I have the C-A-E table in there now is that it provides great detail for each country and the previous table was only a summary across all countries.

--Richard 16:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I should also comment that we still need to deal with User:213.70.74.164's 55 sources that he claims support the 2 million figure. I don't read German well enough to validate or invalidate User:213.70.74.164's claim that these sources support the 2 million figure.

Note to User:213.70.74.164. I would be happy if you write and insert some appropriate text that summarizes the point that you claim these sources are asserting.

However, I have to believe that 55 sources must carry some weight. We have to balance those against the report of the "joint commission of Czech and German historians". As I've stated many times before, we need to provide as many perspectives as are reasonable (no wacky fringe theories) and provide as many references as we can to help the reader decide for himself.

At the moment, I think the total number of deaths is somewhere between 1.3 million and 2 million. This completely discounts Congressman Reece's charge of 3 million deaths. And yet, he had something like 30 pages of testimony read into the Congressional record. Someday, somebody should read his testimony and see why his numbers are so high.

It is really hard to walk a neutral line here. I'm not claiming to be perfect or that I always see the NPOV. I am a bit more objective because, knowing nothing, I don't have any preconceptions or emotional attachments to one side or another. I do admit that I move from one side to another based on the last thing that I read.

But, maybe I am a good example of the "tabula rasa" (clean slate) reader who comes to the article knowing nothing. It is our job to provide an objective summary of the past and current state of knowledge on this topic.

My approach has been to insert everything I read that is sourced trying to cast it in as NPOV a light as possible. (i.e. this is not necessarily the truth but it is true that somebody reliable asserted it).

If anybody feels that we are going too far in one direction or another, please speak up. But, please, no edit wars or personal attacks.

--Richard 16:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ad the 55 sources & the final number...

• personaly I have no idea of the number
• sheer quantity of sources tells litle about the truth

... In fact, attitudes towards the expulsion in Germany are a serious problem for German collective memory. As a result of massive state intervention, the collective memory of the odsun in Western Germany has not been able to develop any more freely than it was in Communist Czechoslovakia.

In the Federal Republic of Germany a whole network of institutions and organisations, financed by the state and established during the 1950s, have served as a "material representation" of the suffering endured by Germans at the hands of their East European neighbours, but above all for supporting revisionist attitudes towards the Potsdam Agreement. Moreover, they have conserved intellectual traditions from the pre-World War II period as well as from the National Socialist (NS) regime. In fact, post-war "de-Nazification" was not as comprehensive as most people believe, as German historians have been discovering over the last five years or so.

...

They have also published a huge number of books and pamphlets, some of which have deeply intruded into German academic historiography, most Germans these days actually adhere to the traditional Sudeten German views and interpretations of Czech history without being aware of the origins of this presumed "academic historiography." Sudeten Dialogues, Martin D Brown and Dr Eva Hahn, ce-review.org

• • but Wikipedia is not about truth, but about NPOV and verifiability => the number should be mentioned somewhere
• I did not studied the list carefuly, but I recognize some of the names - IMO Theodor Schieder works exactly fit the above given description of old state sponsored research, heavily influenced by cold war and revisionist agenda. On the other hand, Philip Ther is relatively young researcher and IMO without that biases. But from the list its hard to tell in what context the number is mentioned.

I would suggest

• through the article, some number of some reasonably recent review work in English should be used
• in the numbers section, all common estimates could be mentioned - if it grows too long, it can be split to separate article

--Wikimol 22:00, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Some discussions about the number of victims on axis forum: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1698&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6291&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 " As also pointed out in the Spiegel article, the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia have been the only ones so far to prepare a detailed documentation of their losses during the war and postwar period, resulting in a figure half the estimate of the Federal Statistics Bureau. According to another article published in the same feature, a total of 48,447 ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia lost their lives to privation, disease and violence between 1944 and 1948. "

That's why I think the previous estimates were too high. If the only detailed study halved the earlier estimated death numbers, it is highly probably that other numbers are too high too. Szopen 07:48, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Whole quote, which is quote interesting: "That this order of magnitude must be too high became apparent at the time already from lists of missing civilians; only about one-tenth – ca. 200,000 people – were being searched by relatives and friends. So far however only the Danube Svabians [ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia, translators’ note] made the effort to individually document all victims – and halved the estimates of the Federal Statistics Bureau for their region."

"There was indeed an estimate made by the German Federal Statistics Bureau in the late 1950's that over two million ethnic Germans had perished during the flight from the Red Army at the end of the war and the postwar expulsions from Germany's former Eastern territories and various countries of Eastern Europe, mainly Poland and Czechoslovakia."

"This estimate, which in the second paragraph is referred to as being well above the mark, has recently been challenged by German historians, for example by Rüdiger Overmans, author of Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Overmans writes the following (my translation):"

"The deaths during flight and expulsion concerned the Germans in the immediate postwar period as much as the fate of the missing soldiers, and similar efforts were made to clarify the fate of the missing civilians or bring families together. A huge scientific project reconstructed the events historiographically, the Federal Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt), the refugees’ associations and the clerical search service did a lot with the financial support of the Federal Government to quantitatively assess the fate of those expelled as accurately as possible. The result can be summarized in the conclusion that about 2 million Germans had been killed during flight and expulsion - not including those from the respective territories who had died during military service."

"These casualty figures, however, which for decades have been an integral part of the respective serious literature, are the result not of a counting of death records or similar concrete data, but of a population balance which concluded that the fate of about 2 million inhabitants of the expulsion territories could not be clarified and that it must therefore be assumed that they had lost their lives in the course of these events. In the last years, however, these statements have been increasingly questioned, as the studies about the sum of reported deaths showed that the number of victims can hardly have been higher than 500,000 persons - which is also an unimaginable number of victims, but nevertheless only a quarter of the previous data. In favor of the hitherto assumed numbers it could always be said, however, that the balance didn’t say that the death of these people had been proven, but only that their fate could not be clarified."

"As also pointed out in the Spiegel article, the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia have been the only ones so far to prepare a detailed documentation of their losses during the war and postwar period, resulting in a figure half the estimate of the Federal Statistics Bureau. According to another article published in the same feature, a total of 48,447 ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia lost their lives to privation, disease and violence between 1944 and 1948"

End of quote from forum.axis Szopen 07:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

This article is getting long

It's 64kb which is not terribly long but it is longer than the recommended 30-50 kb. We could try to trim it but I was wondering how people feel about this idea: Why not move the "Legacy of the Expulsions" to a separate article? I'm not sure what the title would be but perhaps "German Minorities in Eastern Europe".

Thoughts?

--Richard 08:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

No .. we should try to write an encyclopedia, we already have too much detail in the article and what we get is a poorly researched historical textbook. Just exclude things that are not important. For me - reasons could be much shorter. We could move the expelee organisationst to a separate article. ackoz 18:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I disagree. The expellee organisations needs to stay although it really only has to mention the organizations and then provide a link to the articles. The key point is to explain that they exist and how the Eastern Europeans feel about them.

Now, I do agree that we should move stuff out that's not important. In truth, much of the "Legacy" section could be moved to Ethnic German. As for making the reasons shorter, yes, I agree but where? People keep adding more stuff and it's a chore to try and keep that section short.

--Richard 18:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)