The
Second World War ended in Europe with Germany's
defeat in May 1945. By this time, all of Eastern and much of Central Europe was under
Soviet occupation. This included most of the
historical German settlement areas, as well as the
Soviet occupation zone in eastern
Germany. The Allies settled on the terms of
occupation, the
territorial truncation of Germany, and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from
post-war Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the Allied Occupation Zones in the Potsdam Agreement, The agreement further called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans for resettlement among American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones comprising post–World War II Germany. (second from left),
Harry Truman (center),
Winston Churchill (right) Expulsions that took place before the Allies agreed on the terms at Potsdam are referred to as "irregular" expulsions (
Wilde Vertreibungen). They were conducted by military and civilian authorities in Soviet-occupied post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia in the first half of 1945. In
Yugoslavia, the remaining Germans were not expelled;
ethnic German villages were turned into internment camps where over 50,000 perished from deliberate starvation and direct murders by Yugoslav guards. In late 1945 the Allies requested a temporary halt to the expulsions, due to the refugee problems created by the expulsion of Germans. While expulsions from Czechoslovakia were temporarily slowed, this was not true in Poland and the former eastern territories of Germany. Property and materiel in the affected territory that had belonged to Germany or to Germans was confiscated; it was either transferred to the Soviet Union, nationalised, or redistributed among the citizens. Of the many post-war forced migrations, the largest was the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe, primarily from the territory of 1937 Czechoslovakia (which included the historically German-speaking area in the Sudeten mountains along the German-Czech-Polish border (Sudetenland)), and the territory that became post-war Poland. Poland's post-war borders were moved west to the
Oder-Neisse line, deep into former German territory and within 80 kilometers of Berlin.
Czechoslovakia The final agreement for the transfer of the Germans was reached at the
Potsdam Conference. According to the West German
Schieder commission, there were 4.5 million German civilians present in
Bohemia-Moravia in May 1945, including 100,000 from Slovakia and 1.6 million refugees from Poland. Between 700,000 and 800,000 Germans were affected by irregular expulsions between May and August 1945. The expulsions were encouraged by Czechoslovak politicians and were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers and the army. Transfers of population under the Potsdam agreements lasted from January until October 1946. 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone, part of what would become West Germany. More than 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone, which later became
East Germany. About 250,000 ethnic Germans were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia. Male Germans with Czech wives were expelled, often with their spouses, while ethnic German women with Czech husbands were allowed to stay. The West German government estimated the expulsion death toll at 273,000 civilians, and this figure is cited in historical literature. However, in 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was between 15,000 and 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported. The German Red Cross Search Service (
Suchdienst) confirmed the deaths of 18,889 people during the expulsions from Czechoslovakia. (Violent deaths 5,556; Suicides 3,411; Deported 705; In camps 6,615; During the wartime flight 629; After wartime flight 1,481; Cause undetermined 379; Other misc. 73.)
Hungary , Hungary, March 1945 In contrast to expulsions from other nations or states, the
expulsion of the Germans from Hungary was dictated from outside Hungary. It began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet
Red Army Commander-in-Chief ordered the expulsions. In February 1945 the Soviet-dominated
Allied Control Commission ordered the Hungarian
Ministry of Interior to compile lists of all ethnic Germans living in the country. Initially the Census Bureau refused to divulge information on Hungarians who had registered as
Volksdeutsche, but acceded under pressure from the Hungarian
State Protection Authority. Three percent of the German pre-war population (about 20,000 people) had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many had returned. Overall, 60,000 ethnic Germans had fled. According to the West German
Schieder commission report of 1956, in early 1945 between 30 and 35,000 ethnic German civilians and 30,000 military POW were arrested and transported from Hungary to the Soviet Union as forced labourers. In some villages, the entire adult population was taken to labor camps in the
Donbas. 6,000 died there as a result of hardships and ill-treatment. Data from the Russian archives, which were based on an actual enumeration, put the number of ethnic Germans registered by the Soviets in Hungary at 50,292 civilians, of whom 31,923 were deported to the USSR for reparation labor implementing
Order 7161. 9% (2,819) were documented as having died. , Hungary In 1945, official Hungarian figures showed 477,000 German speakers in Hungary, including German-speaking Jews, 303,000 of whom had declared German nationality. Of the German nationals, 33% were children younger than 12 or elderly people over 60; 51% were women. On 29 December 1945, the postwar Hungarian Government, obeying the directions of the
Potsdam Conference agreements, ordered the expulsion of anyone identified as German in the 1941 census, or who had been a member of the Volksbund, the
SS, or any other armed German organisation. Accordingly, mass expulsions began. The first 5,788 expellees departed from
Wudersch on 19 January 1946. By July 1948, 35,000 others had been expelled to the
Soviet occupation zone of Germany. but many others settled in
Bavaria and
Hesse. Other research indicates that, between 1945 and 1950, 150,000 were expelled to western Germany, 103,000 to Austria, and none to eastern Germany. Acquisition of land for distribution to Hungarian refugees and nationals was one of the main reasons stated by the government for the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from Hungary. 22,445 people were identified as German in the 1949 census. An order of 15 June 1948 halted the expulsions. A governmental decree of 25 March 1950 declared all expulsion orders void, allowing the expellees to return if they so wished. There were reportedly no tensions
between Germany and Hungary regarding expellees. The editor for the section of the 1958 report for Hungary was
Wilfried Krallert, a scholar dealing with Balkan affairs since the 1930s when he was a Nazi Party member. During the war, he was an officer in the SS and was directly implicated in the plundering of cultural artifacts in eastern Europe. After the war, he was chosen to author the sections of the demographic report on the expulsions from Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The figure of 57,000 "unresolved cases" in Hungary is included in the figure of 2 million dead expellees, which is often cited in official German and historical literature. Germans, including those with Dutch spouses and children, were labelled as "hostile subjects" ("vijandelijke onderdanen"). millions still remained. A 2005 study by the
Polish Academy of Sciences estimated that during the final months of the war, 4 to 5 million German civilians fled with the retreating German forces, and in mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million Germans remained in the territories under Polish control. By 1950, 3,155,000 had been transported to Germany, 1,043,550 were naturalized as Polish citizens and 170,000 Germans still remained in Poland. According to the West German
Schieder commission of 1953, 5,650,000 Germans remained in what would become Poland's new borders in mid-1945, 3,500,000 had been expelled and 910,000 remained in Poland by 1950. According to the Schieder commission, the civilian death toll was 2 million; in 1974, the
German Federal Archives estimated the death toll at about 400,000. (The controversy regarding the casualty figures is covered below in the section on casualties.) During the 1945 military campaign, most of the male German population remaining east of the Oder–Neisse line were considered potential combatants and held by Soviet military in detention camps subject to verification by the
NKVD. Members of Nazi party organizations and government officials were segregated and sent to the USSR for forced labour as reparations. In mid-1945, the eastern territories of pre-war Germany were turned over to the Soviet-controlled
Polish military forces. Early expulsions were undertaken by the Polish Communist military authorities even before the Potsdam Conference placed them under temporary Polish administration pending the final Peace Treaty, in an effort to ensure later territorial integration into an ethnically homogeneous Poland. The Polish Communists wrote: "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multinational ones." The Polish government defined Germans as either
Reichsdeutsche, people enlisted in first or second
Volksliste groups; or those who held German citizenship. Around 1,165,000 German citizens of Slavic descent were "verified" as "
autochthonous" Poles. Of these, most were not expelled; but many chose to migrate to Germany between 1951 and 1982, including most of the
Masurians of East Prussia. At the Potsdam Conference (17 July – 2 August 1945), the territory to the east of the Oder–Neisse line was assigned to Polish and Soviet Union administration pending the final peace treaty. All Germans had their property confiscated and were placed under restrictive jurisdiction. Germans were also not permitted to hold Polish currency, the only legal currency since July, other than earnings from work assigned to them. The remaining population faced
theft and looting, and also in some instances rape and murder by the criminal elements, crimes that were rarely prevented nor prosecuted by the
Polish Militia Forces and newly
installed communist judiciary. In mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million Germans resided in territory east of the
Oder–Neisse Line. By early 1946, 550,000 Germans had already been expelled from there, and 932,000 had been verified as having Polish nationality. In the February 1946 census, 2,288,000 people were classified as Germans and subject to expulsion, and 417,400 were subject to verification action, to determine nationality. The
German Federal Archives estimated in 1974 that more than 200,000 German civilians were interned in Polish camps; they put the death rate at 20–50% and estimated that over 60,000 probably died. Polish historians
Witold Sienkiewicz and
Grzegorz Hryciuk maintain that the internment:resulted in numerous deaths, which cannot be accurately determined because of lack of statistics or falsification. At certain periods, they could be in the tens of percent of the inmate numbers. Those interned are estimated at 200–250,000 German nationals and the indigenous population and deaths might range from 15,000 to 60,000 persons." Note: The indigenous population were former German citizens who declared Polish ethnicity. Historian R. M. Douglas describes a chaotic and lawless regime in the former German territories in the immediate postwar era. The local population was victimized by criminal elements who arbitrarily seized German property for personal gain. Bilingual people who were on the
Volksliste during the war were declared Germans by Polish officials who then seized their property for personal gain. The
Federal Statistical Office of Germany estimated that in mid-1945, 250,000 Germans remained in the northern part of the former East Prussia, which became the
Kaliningrad Oblast. They also estimated that more than 100,000 people surviving the Soviet occupation were evacuated to Germany beginning in 1947. German civilians were held as "reparation labor" by the USSR. Data from the Russian archives, newly published in 2001 and based on an actual enumeration, put the number of German civilians deported from Poland to the USSR in early 1945 for reparation labor at 155,262; 37% (57,586) died in the USSR. The West German Red Cross estimated at that time that 110,000 German civilians were held as forced labor in the Kaliningrad Oblast, where 50,000 were dead or missing. According to Gerhardt Reichling, an official in the German Finance office, 520,000 German civilians from the Oder–Neisse region were conscripted for forced labor by both the USSR and Poland; he maintains that 206,000 perished. in 1946 The attitudes of surviving Poles varied.
Many had suffered brutalities and atrocities by the Germans, surpassed only by the German policies against Jews, during the
Nazi occupation. The Germans had recently expelled more than a million Poles from territories they annexed during the war. Some Poles engaged in looting and various crimes, including murders, beatings, and rapes against Germans. On the other hand, in many instances Poles, including some who had been made slave laborers by the Germans during the war, protected Germans, for instance by disguising them as Poles. Moreover, in the
Opole (Oppeln) region of
Upper Silesia, citizens who claimed Polish ethnicity were allowed to remain, even though some, not all, had uncertain nationality, or identified as ethnic Germans. Their status as a national minority was accepted in 1955, along with state subsidies, with regard to economic assistance and education. The attitude of Soviet soldiers was ambiguous. Many committed atrocities, most notably rape and murder, Other Soviets were taken aback by the brutal treatment of the German civilians and tried to protect them.
Richard Overy cites an approximate total of 7.5 million Germans evacuated, migrated, or expelled from Poland between 1944 and 1950.
Tomasz Kamusella cites estimates of 7 million expelled in total during both the "wild" and "legal" expulsions from the recovered territories from 1945 to 1948, plus an additional 700,000 from areas of pre-war Poland. In 1940,
Bessarabia and
Bukovina were occupied by the USSR, and the ethnic German population of 130,000 was deported to German-held territory during the
Nazi–Soviet population transfers, as well as 80,000 from Romania. 140,000 of these Germans were resettled in German-occupied Poland; in 1945, they were caught up in the flight and expulsion from Poland. Most of the ethnic Germans in Romania resided in
Transylvania, the northern part of which was annexed by Hungary during World War II.
The pro-German Hungarian government, as well as the pro-German Romanian government of
Ion Antonescu, allowed Germany to enlist the German population in Nazi-sponsored organizations. During the war, 54,000 of the male population was conscripted by Nazi Germany, many into the
Waffen-SS. In mid-1944, roughly 100,000 Germans fled from Romania with the retreating German forces. According to the West German
Schieder commission report of 1957, 75,000 German civilians were deported to the USSR as forced labour and 15% (approximately 10,000) did not return. Data from the Russian archives which were based on an actual enumeration put the number of ethnic Germans registered by the Soviets in Romania at 421,846 civilians, of whom 67,332 were deported to the USSR for reparation labour, where 9% (6,260) died. In 1958, the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by 1950, 253,000 were counted as expellees in Germany or the West, 400,000 Germans still remained in Romania, 32,000 had been assimilated into the Romanian population, and that there were 101,000 "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified. The figure of 101,000 "unresolved cases" in Romania is included in the total German expulsion dead of 2 million which is often cited in historical literature. The
ethnic German minority in the USSR was considered a security risk by the Soviet government, and they were deported during the war in order to prevent their possible collaboration with the Nazi invaders. In August 1941 the Soviet government ordered ethnic Germans to be deported from the European USSR, by early 1942, 1,031,300 Germans were interned in "special settlements" in
Central Asia and
Siberia. Life in the special settlements was harsh and severe, food was limited, and the deported population was governed by strict regulations. Shortages of food plagued the whole Soviet Union and especially the special settlements. According to data from the Soviet archives, by October 1945, 687,300 Germans remained alive in the special settlements; an additional 316,600 Soviet Germans served as labour conscripts during World War II. Soviet Germans were not accepted in the regular armed forces but were employed instead as conscript labour. The labor army members were arranged into worker battalions that followed camp-like regulations and received
Gulag rations. In 1945 the USSR deported to the special settlements 203,796 Soviet ethnic Germans who had been previously resettled by Germany in Poland. These post-war deportees increased the German population in the special settlements to 1,035,701 by 1949. According to J. Otto Pohl, 65,599 Germans perished in the special settlements. He believes that an additional 176,352 unaccounted for people "probably died in the labor army". Under Stalin, Soviet Germans continued to be confined to the special settlements under strict supervision, in 1955 they were rehabilitated but were not allowed to return to the European USSR. The Soviet-German population grew despite deportations and forced labor during the war; in the 1939 Soviet census the German population was 1.427 million. By 1959 it had increased to 1.619 million. The calculations of the West German researcher Gerhard Reichling do not agree to the figures from the Soviet archives. According to Reichling a total of 980,000 Soviet ethnic Germans were deported during the war; he estimated that 310,000 died in forced labour. During the early months of the invasion of the USSR in 1941 the Germans occupied the western regions of the USSR that had German settlements. A total of 370,000 ethnic Germans from the USSR were deported to Poland by Germany during the war. In 1945 the Soviets found 280,000 of these resettlers in Soviet-held territory and returned them to the USSR; 90,000 became refugees in Germany after the war. From January 1943, most of these ethnic Germans moved in treks to the Warthegau or to Silesia, where they were to settle. Between 250,000 and 320,000 had reached Nazi Germany by the end of 1944. On their arrival, they were placed in camps and underwent 'racial evaluation' by the Nazi authorities, who dispersed those deemed 'racially valuable' as farm workers in the
annexed provinces, while those deemed to be of "questionable racial value" were sent to work in Germany. They were not allowed to return to their former homes and remained in the eastern regions of the USSR, and no individual's former property was restored. Between 24 August and 26 October 1948, 21 transports with a total of 42,094 Germans left the Kaliningrad Oblast for the
Soviet Occupation Zone. The last remaining Germans were expelled between November 1949 Thousands of German children, called the "
wolf children", had been left orphaned and unattended or died with their parents during the harsh winter without food. Between 1945 and 1947, around 600,000 Soviet citizens settled in the oblast. Most fled during the war or emigrated after 1950 thanks to the
Displaced Persons Act of 1948; some were able to
emigrate to the United States. During the final months of World War II a majority of the ethnic Germans fled Yugoslavia with the retreating Nazi forces. Those surviving were allowed to emigrate to Germany after 1948. Data from Russian archives published in 2001, based on an actual enumeration, put the number of German civilians deported from Yugoslavia to the USSR in early 1945 for reparation labour at 12,579, where 16% (1,994) died. After March 1945, a second phase began in which ethnic Germans were massed into villages such as
Gakowa and
Kruševlje that were converted into labour camps. All furniture was removed, straw placed on the floor, and the expellees housed like animals under military guard, with minimal food and rampant, untreated disease. Families were divided into the unfit women, old, and children, and those fit for slave labour. A total of 166,970 ethnic Germans were interned, and 48,447 (29%) perished. In
Slovenia, the ethnic German population at the end of World War II was concentrated in
Slovenian Styria, more precisely in
Maribor,
Celje, and a few other smaller towns (like
Ptuj and
Dravograd), and in the rural area around
Apače on the
Austrian border. The second-largest ethnic German community in Slovenia was the predominantly rural
Gottschee County around
Kočevje in
Lower Carniola, south of
Ljubljana. Smaller numbers of ethnic Germans also lived in Ljubljana and in some western villages in the
Prekmurje region. In 1931, the total number of ethnic Germans in Slovenia was around 28,000: around half of them lived in Styria and in Prekmurje, while the other half lived in the Gottschee County and in Ljubljana. In April 1941, southern Slovenia was occupied by Italian troops. By early 1942, ethnic Germans from Gottschee/Kočevje were forcefully transferred to German-occupied Styria by the new German authorities. Most resettled to the
Posavje region (a territory along the
Sava river between the towns of
Brežice and
Litija), from where around 50,000
Slovenes had been expelled. Gottschee Germans were generally unhappy about their forced transfer from their historical home region. One reason was that the agricultural value of their new area of settlement was perceived as much lower than the Gottschee area. As German forces retreated before the
Yugoslav Partisans, most ethnic Germans fled with them in fear of reprisals. By May 1945, only a few Germans remained, mostly in the
Styrian towns of Maribor and Celje. The
Liberation Front of the Slovenian People expelled most of the remainder after it seized complete control in the region in May 1945. After March 1945, ethnic Germans were placed in so-called "village camps". Separate camps existed for those able to work and for those who were not. In the latter camps, containing mainly children and the elderly, the mortality rate was about 50%. Most of the children under 14 were then placed in state-run homes, where conditions were better, though the German language was banned. These children were later given to Yugoslav families, and not all German parents seeking to reclaim their children in the 1950s were successful. A recent study published by the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia based on an actual enumeration has revised the death toll down to about 58,000. A total of 48,447 people had died in the camps; 7,199 were shot by partisans, and another 1,994 perished in Soviet labour camps. Those Germans still considered Yugoslav citizens were employed in industry or the military, but could buy themselves free of Yugoslav citizenship for the equivalent of three months' salary. By 1950, 150,000 of the Germans from Yugoslavia were classified as "expelled" in Germany, another 150,000 in Austria, 10,000 in the United States, and 3,000 in France.
Latin America Fearing a
Nazi Fifth Column, between 1941 and 1945 the US government facilitated the expulsion of 4,058 German citizens from 15
Latin American countries to
internment camps in
Texas and
Louisiana. Subsequent investigations showed many of the internees to be harmless, and three-quarters of them were returned to Germany during the war in exchange for citizens of the Americas, while the remainder returned to their homes in Latin America.
Palestine At the start of World War II, colonists with German citizenship were rounded up by the
British authorities and sent to internment camps in
Bethlehem in
Galilee. 661
Templers were deported to Australia via
Egypt on 31 July 1941, leaving 345 in
Palestine. Internment continued in
Tatura,
Victoria, Australia, until 1946–47. In 1962 the
State of Israel paid 54 million
Deutsche Marks in compensation to property owners whose assets were nationalized. == Human losses==