Post-ww2 Deportation Of German Minorities

In the years immediately following the Second World War, an immense quantity of East-Central Europe s German minority population was forcibly deported to the newly allied-occupied Germany. The exact number of deported Germans is heavily disputed, with the consensus ranging from eleven and half to twelve million deportations.[1] The primary perpetrators of these deportations were the newly established and newly communist controlled nations of Poland and Czechoslovakia, with Norman Naimark claiming in his work Fires of Hatred that Polish and Czechoslovak-led exiling of ethnic Germans totalled eleven and a half million people, with as many as two and a half million dying during the process of expulsion.[2] These huge numbers of both deaths and deportations can be seen as evidence for the ruthless, tit-for-tat methodology of the Polish and Czechoslovak deportations, with this mistreatment being theoretically justified by the German atrocities in Nazi-occupied East-Central Europe.[3] When examined from a broad and basic level, an argument can be made that the deportations of German minorities from both Poland and Czechoslovakia can be seen being not only ruthless and fatal due to the immense numbers of deaths, but also as all-encompassing due to the mass numbers of actual deportations. However, numerous examples of evidence can be found supporting an alternative conclusion to the question of how the Polish and Czechoslovak authorities decided whom was deported from the new Polish and Czechoslovak states. Upon reassessment and more precise examination of the deportation policies of both new states, the German minority deportation can be seen as far less all-encompassing and generalised. Alternative examinations made by historians such as Hugo Service describe the decision-making processes of Polish and Czechoslovak authorities with regards to these deportations as being, in spite of their immense scale, extremely deliberate and both economically and politically motivated.[4] Especially in the case of the new Polish state, the primary objective of the expulsion of not only German, but also Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian minorities in Poland was the establishment of an ethnically homogenous Polish state free of any other national minorities.[5] However, both the Polish and Czechoslovak authorities often stopped short of removing their entire minority populations, primarily motivated by economic issues which would result in an all-encompassing deportation such as shortages of specific skilled labour.

A primary example of the post-Second World War importance of ethnic hegemony with regards to the deportations of minorities from both Poland and Czechoslovakia can be seen when comparing the post-Second World War settlement to the 1919 settlement in the aftermath of the First World War. Within the reestablishment of East-Central Europe s borders in the aftermath of the Great War, the establishment of ethnic hegemony was not seen as the primary objective of the Great Powers and the newly established independent republics such as Poland[6] and Czechoslovakia.[7] The primary concerns regarding the reestablishment of Europe s borders were instead more often strategic and economic, rather than the removal of ethnic minorities.[8]

This is in stark contrast to the reestablishment of both Poland and Czechoslovakia in the wake of their respective German occupations during the Second World War. Matthew Frank describes in his essay Reconstructing the Nation State: Population Transfer in Central and Eastern Europe, 1944-8 how the failures of the post-First World War settlements to secure long-term European peace and prosperity resulted in ethnic minorities within Poland and Czechoslovakia being utilised as a political scapegoat, with the establishment of an ethnic hegemony for these newly established states becoming the most important task for the authorities of East-Central Europe s new communist regimes.[9]

The importance assigned to the establishment of ethnic hegemony within both Czechoslovakia and Poland after the Second World War by their respective authorities is showcased strongly through a comparison to the importance of hegemonic nations after the First World War. Ethnic hegemony can be seen as the primary political objective of these newly established regimes, which is in stark contrast to the aims of post-Great-War East-Central Europe s political establishment, which prioritised economic and strategic issues when attempting to establish authority.

This prevalence of prominent hegemonic thinking can be seen as important when describing the establishment of the ethnic hegemony as the primary motivation for both Czechoslovak and Polish mass deportation of their ethnic minorities in the years following the end of the Second World War.

On the contrary to this argument regarding ethnic hegemony, an argument can be made that denazification and the removal of all peoples seen as sympathetic to the previous occupying Nazi regime was the primary objective for the newly established Czechoslovak republic with regards to its policy of deportation in the wake of the Second World War. The post-war regime, in order to attain public support, established a policy of national purification , in order to remove and punish any remnants of Nazi occupation in Czechoslovakia. This purification targeted not only Czechoslovakia s Sudeten German minorities, but also alleged ethnic Czechoslovaks collaborators and traitors who aided the German occupation of Czechoslovakia from 1939.[10] However, within this policy of national purification , ethnically Czechoslovak collaborators were not subject to deportation or repatriation, the likes of which would happen to the Sudeten Germans. Ethnic Czechoslovaks instead became victims of internally mandated retribution rather than expulsion of which happened to ethnic Germans, which resulted in their trial with accusations of offences against national honour for crimes such as appeasing the previous German regime or attempting to attain German nationality.[11]

This Czechoslovak policy of punishing pro-German Czechoslovaks also resulted in the punishment of ethnic Czechoslovaks attempting to prevent the de-Germanification of the nation in the fallout of the Second World War and Nazi occupation. Detailed in The Small Decree, any Czechoslovaks attempting to interfere in the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans would be charged and sentenced to up to a year in prison.[12]

On a surface level, the Czechoslovak policy of national purification can be seen as an example of how Czechoslovak authorities did not solely target ethnic Germans in its post-war nationalisation policies. Ethnic Czechoslovaks who were seen as acting in a collaborative measure were punished alongside their ethnically German counterparts for their crimes against the nation . However, this policy did not treat German and Czechoslovak conspirators as equals with regards to their punishments. Ethnic Czechoslovaks were tried and interned to prisons within the new Czechoslovakia, with ethnic Germans being extradited and repatriated away into the new German territories. Therefore, the punishment of collaborative ethnic Czechoslovaks by the new Czechoslovak authorities cannot be seen as evidence against the ethnonationalist policy of Czechoslovak deportations of German Sudeten minorities.

The roots of the Czechoslovakian authorities desires to remove their German minorities can be seen as early as 1938, during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.[13] Norman Naimark claims in his aforementioned work Fires of Hatred that both the Polish and Czechoslovak governments in exile on the outbreak of the Second World War were planning and campaigning for the removal of their German minorities, describing how the operative principle of the Czechoslovak and Polish authorities was the forced relocation of their minority populations. [14]. This can clearly be seen as an example of the premeditated nature of this Czechoslovak and Polish policy of German expulsion, with the policy having visible foundations six years prior to its implementation after the end of the Second World War. The consistency of the Czech authorities and their desire to implement a policy of German minority expulsion can also be seen by examining 1943 conversations between future Czech President Edvard Benes and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Benes disclosed his desire to solve the German problem in Czechoslovakia for good to Stalin,[15] claiming that The defeat of Germany presents us with the singular historical possibility to clean out radically the German element from our state .[16]

In the case of Czechoslovakia, it is clear that the potential policy of extensive German deportation was a deliberate and long-considered policy which had its foundations in the wartime government in exile from the outbreak of war and the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, the intended policy showcased by the would-be Czechoslovak authorities can be also be described as an indiscriminate policy of deportation, with the sole requirement for an individual to be exiled being a German ethnicity. The long-term nature of these plans, as well as their specific focus on indiscriminate German deportations, can be seen as extremely useful for supporting the argument that the Czechoslovak policy of deportation was intended to be all-encompassing with regards to their German minority, not allowing for any exemptions in order to establish a Czechoslovakian ethnic hegemony.

With regards to Czechoslovak deportations of its German population, a traditional assessment of portrayed the mass expulsion as a chaotic, ill-organised event, with German minorities being hounded away from their homes and land through spontaneous acts of violence and by the newly liberated Czechoslovak population. This traditional assessment depicts the Czechoslovak authorities as passive and disorganised with regards to this hounding of its German populace, allowing for them to be hounded out of the nation through non-interference in bottom-up policies of forced deportation. However, it is difficult to describe the Czechoslovak actions and attitude the deportation of their German populace as being at all passive , with numerous examples of direct and deliberate actions intended to drive away Czechoslovakia s ethnically German population.[17]

A prime example of what would traditionally be considered an example spontaneous and disorganised Czechoslovak violence and aggression against Sudeten Germans can be found when examining the Usti nad Labem massacre. The massacre was instigated by a fire and following series explosions inside a local munitions warehouse in which twenty-eight people, of both German and Czech descent, were killed. This incident was blamed entirely on a supposed German Werewolf organisation, resulting in a Czech militia slaughtering the village s ethnic German population in an act of revenge. [18]

This incident, perpetrated by an unofficial Czechoslovak militia, would traditionally be seen as an example of non-intervention by Czechoslovak authorities with regards to the German deportation movement, as there is little to link the massacre directly to Czechoslovak authorities. However, numerous factors can be seen as contributing to both the indirect and direct impact of Czechoslovak policies on incidents such as the Usti nad Labem massacre. The primary influence of the Czechoslovak authorities on the spontaneous incidents of mass violence against the German minority populations was the clearly influential messages put forward by the newly established Czechoslovak Communist Party, which put to the public messages demanding that they cleanse the Fatherland of the agents of a treachery without equal in the history of our people! [19] Additionally, reports from eyewitnesses of the massacre claimed that Czech state police did not interfere at all and allowed for this massacre to happen in front of their eyes, with others reporting that police were seen joining in on the assault of the German minority.[20] Furthermore, leader of the Czech National Socialist Party Prokop Drtina declared that the primary task for Czechs was to clean out the republic as a whole and completely of Germans .[21]

Numerous reports can be found detailing how Czechoslovak authorities sought to weaponize tragic incidents in order to promote Czechoslovak hatred of the German population and inspire spontaneous anti-German uprisings and pogroms.[22] This hatred was deliberately curated by Czechoslovak authorities from an ethnonationalist perspective. Czechoslovak authorities utilised the immense post-occupation Czech hostilities regarding their German compatriots to promote and enforce an ethnically homogenous nation state, free of a German minority. Czechoslovak authorities could justify the act of removing Czechoslovakia s German population as a kind of civic duty for its ethnically Czechoslovak populace, linking together the idea of being Czech to harming and removing the anti-Czech ethnic German minority population.

The obvious and deliberate interference from Czechoslovak authorities during the numerous atrocities committed to the Sudeten German population can be seen as useful when assessing their compliance in the movement to drive the German minority away from Czechoslovakia. This interference, both direct and indirect, showcases a clearly deliberate aim from the Czech authorities to enforce a top-down assault on the German populace with the end goal of enforcing all remaining German minorities to leave Czechoslovakia.

In spite of the aforementioned political desire from the new state of Czechoslovakia s authorities to create an ethnically homogenous nation free of minorities, it is impossible to describe the establishment of an ethnically homogenous state as the sole motivation and factor behind the selection of those individuals deported from Czechoslovakia in the fallout of the Second World War. A true attempt to create a fully homogenous Czech state would refuse to consider any alternate issues which an all-encompassing deportation would create, such as economic issues and shortages of skilled labour. However, in the case of Czechoslovakia, it is clear that the authorities took economic and labour-based issues into consideration when deciding whom to deport from the newly re-established Czechoslovakia.

A clear example of how Czechoslovak authorities considered economic factors when deciding which sections of their German minority population can be seen when analysing German minorities who were both allowed an extended stay in Czechoslovakia, as well as those who were allowed to stay permanently. The number of Sudeten Germans remaining in in Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1947 totalled around 200,000, with the majority of those who were not in mixed marriages were industrial workers and their families.[23] This deliberate decision to give priority to skilled industrial workers with regards to remaining in Czechoslovakia can be seen as a solely economic choice, with those workers who remained fulfilling a key economic task for the new Czechoslovak state. A full-scale deportation of the nation s entire German populace, including these key industrial workers who remained, would have resulted in key gaps in the Czechoslovak industrial industry in role fulfilled by ethnic Germans. Therefore, the decision from Czechoslovak authorities to allow a large amount of German industrial workers to be exempt from the widescale German deportation can be seen solely as an economic decision, with Czech authorities sacrificing their key post-war political goal of a German-free, homogenous Czech nation in order to prevent a major labour shortage within the industrial industry by allowing German minorities exemption to expulsion.

It is clear that Czechoslovak authorities based their theoretical policies on deportations on the idea of establishing a land free of ethnic Germans, utilising the post-war hatred within the Czechoslovak population to unite the people of the nation with a shared enemy and a shared goal: to establish an ethically Slavic nation free of German minorities.[24] However, the implementation of this policy was not solely based upon the ideology of ethnic hegemony. In reality, Czechoslovak authorities based their decisions regarding German deportations on economic and industrial issues. German minorities who were deemed essential to the survival of the Czechoslovak industrial industry were granted special treatment with regards to their status as a citizen of Czechoslovakia. The fundamental motivations of the Czechoslovak deportation policy were sacrificed in the name of economic and industrial stability, meaning that the Czech authorities were not solely using a catchall ethnic basis for their system of deportation after the Second World War.

The policy of German minority deportation can also be seen as having a history of wartime Polish authority support, especially with regards to the Polish government in exile. During Poland s joint occupation by both Germany and the Soviet Union,[25] Polish Foreign Minister in exile in 1940, August Zaleski, described the deportation of Germans from pre-war Poland and East Prussia as Poland s major war aims.[26] Additionally, Polish President in exile W adys aw Sikorski described the need for the German horde, which for centuries had penetrated to the east, should be destroyed and forced to draw back far [to the west]. [27] Finally, the Soviet-backed Polish government, which replaced the London based government in exile in 1943-4, continued to develop and went on to implement the previously suggested ethno-nationalistic policies of the previous government in exile, focusing on the deportation of Poland s German minority.[28]

Each of these three examples showcases that the policy of German deportation was a longstanding strategy of both the London based government in exile, as well as the later Soviet-endorsed regime. Furthermore, these early theories regarding German deportations can be seen as both all-encompassing and ethnically motivated, with the deportation of all German minorities being described as a key element to the reestablishment of the Polish state. Therefore, these examples of longstanding goals for an ethnically homogenous Polish state can be seen as evidence for the later deportations of Poland s non-ethnically Polish populations being solely motivated by the desire to establish Poland as a homogenously Polish state.

In a similar vein to the historiography of Czechoslovak deportations of German minorities, the history of German minorities and their deportation had focused primarily on the plight of the minorities and their trials, describing them as victims of wild and uncontrolled attacks from unorganised rogue militias who forced Germans to flee for their lives. These historiographies depicted the disruption of German lives as being unorganised and bottom-up, with previously oppressed ethnic Polish populations choosing to enact their own national vengeance upon ethnic German minorities.[29]

More modern historiography however details the very deliberate and organised nature of Polish attempts to make difficult the lives of ethnic German minorities in the re-established Polish state. In the months following the liberation of Poland from Nazi occupation, numerous policies were put in place to encourage the voluntary migration of ethnic Germans from newly established Polish territories. Ethnic Germans were forced to pay a premium for goods, had their land taken away and given the Polish state and were given significantly less wages than their ethnically Polish counterparts for their labour.[30] Each of these policies was implemented by the Polish government in order to deliberately inconvenience the ethnic German minority population, with he goal of forcing them to voluntarily migrate back to their homeland of occupied Germany. These policies were not spontaneous acts of violence and threats to enforce migration by isolated groups and individuals, but instead were examples of top-down, government approved policies which were directly intended to pauperise the German population of Poland.

This top-down nature of Polish expulsion policy can be seen as an example of the ethnic motivations behind the expulsion of German minorities. Rather than being seen as an example of spontaneous, vengeful anti-German acts committed without official support, these actions can be seen instead as an example of the Polish authorities choosing to deliberately hound German minorities out of the new Polish state through financial and social castration from society solely to establish Polish ethnic hegemony.

However, in a similar vein to the Czechoslovak deportations of German minorities, it is impossible to describe the Polish deportation policy as being a direct act of tit-for-tat vengeance with regards to the treatment of Polish populations under German occupation. Furthermore, it is also not possible to describe the deportations of German minorities from the Polish state as being all-encompassing and motivated solely by the political goal of establishing a ethnically Polish nation state.

A primary example of how the Polish deportation policy was not solely based on Polish national vengeance on its ethnic population can be seen in the treatment of Poland s German-Jewish population. When questioned on what would be the fate of Poland s German Jews, primary delegate of repatriation Josef Jaroszek refused to differentiate between ethnic Germans and Jewish Germans, stating: I must stress that it is our task to repatriate the German population .[31] This equal treatment of ethnic German and Jewish German minorities can be seen as an example of the unwavering ethnic motivation of the Polish deportation policy, which enforced deportation even on the perceived non-aggressive Jewish German population as strictly as it did to the ethnic Germans who would be considered prime targets for vengeful, tit-for-tat styled poor treatment and deportation. This equal treatment showcases the clear ethnically motivated motivations behind Polish deportation policy, with Polish authorities choosing to target innocent German Jews in order to attain a racial homogeneous nation state.

However, describing the Polish deportation of German minority populations cannot be seen as complete and all-encompassing. As was the case with Czechoslovakia, Polish authorities made a conscious decision to allow a small number of ethnic Germans to remain in newly established Polish territories in order to allow for continued industrial production in the fallout of the Second World War. German industrial workers in skilled positions were given exemption from deportation, preventing Polish industry from collapsing due to labour shortages and skill deficits. Unskilled workers were given priority with regards to expulsion, with Polish authorities choosing to allow economically important workers a right to remain in their place.[32] This can unquestionably be seen as an example of Polish authorities adjusting their deportation policy of ethnic hegemony in order to prevent an economic, industrial and labour crisis in newly established Polish territory.

Furthermore, Polish authorities also prioritised the removal of ethnic Germans who represented an economic burdens to the new Polish state, with early deportation phases prioritising the removal of German cripples the elderly and single mothers who would require greater economic support.[33] This can be clearly be seen as an example of Polish authorities utilising the German deportation policy to lessen the Polish state s economic burden by removing costly German ethnic individuals.

It is clear that in the cases of both Czechoslovakia and Poland, newly the newly established nations previously under German occupation can be seen as utilising an ethnic deportation policy in order to gain nationalistic styled support. However, neither of these examples can be seen as based solely on differing ethnicities, with both states basing their choices with regards to German deportation on additional issues to racial hegemony, with economic and industrial issues also helping to shape their deportation systems, allowing for necessary key workers to be granted deportation immunity.

[1] Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Clensing in Twentieth-Century Europe, (Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 13.

[2] Ibid, p.14.

[3] Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2012), pp. 198-199.

Hugo Service, Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland, 1945 9 , Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 37, p. 532.

Ibid.

Norman Davies, God`s Playground. A History of Poland. Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.) pp 393 434

Matthew Frank, Reconstructing the Nation State: Population Transfer in Central and Eastern Europe, 1944-8 in Jessica Reinisch And Elizabeth White (eds.), The Disentanglement of Populations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) p. 27.

Ibid, pp. 27-28.

Benjamin Frommer, To Prosecute or to Expel? Czechoslovak Retribution and the Transfer of Sudeten Germans in Philipp Ther Ana Siljak (eds.), Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 (Oxford: Rowman Littlefield, 2001), pp. 221-222.

Ibid, pp. 224-225.

Ibid.

Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Volume I: Ascent 1889 1939 (London: Random House, 2016), pp. 752 753.

Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p. 108.

Ibid, p. 114.

in G. P. Murashko and A. F. Noskova, Natsional no-territorial nyi vopros v kontekste poslevoennykh realnostei vostochnoi evropy, Natsionalnyi vopros v Vostochnoi Evrope (Moscow: RAN, 1995), p. 231, cited in Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p. 114.

Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p. 115.

Ibid, p. 116

Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p. 116.

Ibid.

Ibid, p. 115.

Archives of the Herder Institute (AHI), Pravo Lidu, June 12, 1945 on Lidice, cited in Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p. 115.

Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p. 120.

Naimark, Fires of Hatred, p. 110.

,

Naimark, p. 123.

Cited in Brandes, Vorgeschichte von Flucht und Vertreibung, p. 385 cited in Naimark, p. 123.

Service, Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland, p. 532.

Service, Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland, pp. 528-529.

Ibid, p. 538.

Service, Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland, p. 543.

Service, Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland, pp. 543-544.

Service, Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland, p. 544.