Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War

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by R. M. Douglas


  50. Maud Schenk-Sopher, “Report on Conditions in ‘Rupa’ Internment Camp,” July 17, 1945, ÚPV-T, box 11c, item 488.

  51. Staněk, Tábory v ĉeskych zemích, p. 90.

  52. Daily Herald, October 9, 1945.

  53. M. Saschková to the Prague Delegation, CICR, dated “January 1946”; Menzel to CICR Geneva, January 9, 1946; letter from P. Drozd, Veltrusy nad Vltavou, January 5, 1946, G 97/IV, box 1160, CICR.

  54. Dr. A. Bedo, Chief, Eligibility Division, Preparatory Commission for the International Refugee Organization, to A. Brownlee, January 13, 1948, Aleta Brownlee papers, accession no. 69059–9.13, box no. 5, “Displaced Persons—Children: Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), 1945–1949” folder, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

  55. Macardle, Children of Europe, p. 301.

  56. M. I. Robinson, Rayner’s Lane, London, in Daily Herald, September 16, 1945.

  57. Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 414, col. 366 (October 10, 1945).

  58. Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 5th ser., vol. 138, col. 388 (December 5, 1945).

  59. Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 5th ser., vol. 138, col. 390 (December 5, 1945).

  60. Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 414, col. 2362 (October 26, 1945).

  61. Daily Herald, October 12, 1945.

  62. Pasák, “Přemysl Pitters Protest”; Obzory, November 24, 1945.

  63. See, e.g., Rudé právo, May 8, 1946.

  64. H. H. C. Prestige, Aliens Department, Home Office, to C. F. A. Warner, Foreign Office, September 19, 1945; B. A. B. Burrows, Foreign Office, to Prestige, October 9, 1945, FO 817/14.

  65. C. O’Neill to J. E. Barrell, Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, February 7, 1946, FO 938/241.

  66. Minute by Maj. P. B. Monahan, Civil Affairs (Displaced Persons) Division, War Office, February 4, 1946, FO 938/241.

  67. Hynd to P. J. Noel-Baker, February 15, 1946, FO 938/241.

  68. Nichols to J. M. Troutbeck, Foreign Office, April 1, 1946, FO 938/241.

  69. R. M. A. Hankey and M. Winch, “Tour of Upper and Lower Silesia—September 1945,” October 8, 1945, FO 371/47651.

  70. Lt.-Col. P. F. A. Growse, British Liaison Team, Kaławsk, to the Voivode of Lower Silesia, Wrocław, April 22, 1946, FO 1052/471.

  71. Telegram from Archibald Clark Kerr, Moscow Embassy, to Foreign Office, June 13, 1945, FO 371/47087; telegram from Nichols, Prague Embassy, to Foreign Office, June 22, 1945, FO 371/47088.

  72. Quoted in Sudeten German Social Democratic Party, Evidence on the Reign of Racialism in Czechoslovakia (London: Der Sozialdemokrat, 1945), p. 11.

  73. See, e.g., Szczecin City Council to the Szczecin Voivodeship Department of Public Safety, December 20, 1946; same to Szczecin Voivodeship Settlement Department, October 15, 1947, in Borodziej and Lemberg, Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neiße, vol. 3, pp. 488–9, 565–6.

  74. B. Frommer, “Expulsion or Integration: Unmixing Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia,” East European Politics and Societies 14:2 (2000): 382.

  75. G. E. Schafft, From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 127–8; D. Majer, “Non-Germans” Under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939–1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 121–7, 246–8.

  76. T. Zahra, “‘Children Betray Their Father and Mother’: Collective Education, Nationalism, and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948,” in D. Schumann, ed., Raising Citizens in the “Century of the Child”: The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Berghahn, 2010), pp. 187, 196–7.

  77. A. Warring, “Intimate and Sexual Relations,” in R. Gildea, O. Wieviorka, and A. Warring, eds., Surviving Hitler and Mussolini: Daily Life in Occupied Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2007), pp. 107–8, 112.

  78. Order in Council No. 12250/M.E. (1945), December 22, 1945, FO 371/55390.

  79. Polish Red Cross, Wrocław, to the Main Delegate for Repatriation Affairs, MZO, July 3, 1946, MZO 527c/B-7332.

  80. Memorandum by S. Jarzyk, Office of the Plenipotentiary for Lower Silesia, February 12, 1946, MZO 323/B-5427.

  81. Text of Decree no. 33, August 2, 1945, FO 371/47154.

  82. Frommer, “Expulsion or Integration,” p. 388.

  83. Nová doba, August 23, 1946.

  84. Obzory, November 24, 1945.

  85. Quoted in Frommer, “Expulsion or Integration,” p. 393.

  86. Quoted ibid., pp. 392–3.

  87. Quoted ibid., p. 399 n. 64.

  88. Právo lidu, August 3, 1946.

  89. Marriage Law of September 24, 1945, Art. XII, quoted in J. Szułdrzyński, The Pattern of Life in Poland, vol. 6: The Family (Paris: Mid-European Research and Planning Centre, 1952), p. 47.

  90. E. Roman, Hungary and the Victor Powers 1945–1950 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 66.

  91. Statement of a twenty-six-year-old female Potulice detainee, n.d., covered by letter from O. P. Brennscheidt (the author’s cousin) to the CICR, June 15, 1947, G 97/1159, CICR.

  92. M. Kent, Eine Porzellanscherbe im Graben: Eine deutsche Flüchtlingskindheit (Berne: Scherz, 2003), p. 83.

  93. HQ Military Government, Lk Husum & Eiderstedt, CCG (BE) to 312 HQ Military Government, Schleswig-Holstein Region, September 16, 1946, FO 1052/358.

  94. Unsigned letter to Landsratsamt, Herford, May 16, 1946, concerning Robert Hauk; same to same, May 15, 1946, concerning Josefa Arndt; unsigned and undated (c. May 1946) statement concerning Ida Hartmann; unsigned and undated (c. May 1946) statement concerning Magdalena Martin; unsigned and undated (c. May 1946) statement concerning Lisbeth Fladda, FO 1052/474.

  95. See, e.g., letter from H. J. von Joeden, July 1, 1946, G 97/box 1161, CICR.

  96. Chief Secretary, Office of the Deputy Military Governor, to the General Department, Control Office for Germany and Austria, June 14, 1946, FO 1049/515.

  97. Statement by M. Runge, April 11, 1946, FO 1052/323.

  98. Dr. Mawick, Oberkreisdirektor of Kreis Grafschaft Bentheim, to the Oberpräsident, Regional Youth Office, Hanover, April 16, 1946, FO 1052/474.

  99. O. Lehner, head of CICR delegation, Prague, to the Ministry of the Interior, August 6, 1947, G 97/1162, CICR.

  100. Davies and Moorhouse, Microcosm, p. 445.

  101. K. Cordell and S. Wolff, “Ethnic Germans in Poland and the Czech Republic: A Comparative Evaluation,” Nationalities Papers 33:2 (June 2005): 262, 268.

  102. Macardle, Children of Europe, p. 285.

  103. Unpublished typescript memoir, “Whose Children,” box 9, part II, p. 201, Aleta Brownlee papers, Hoover Institution Archives.

  104. Circular letter from Brownlee, September 20, 1948, box no. 5, “Displaced Persons—Children: Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), 1945–1949” folder, Brownlee papers.

  105. W. Byford-Jones, Berlin Twilight (London: Hutchinson, 1947), pp. 54–5.

  106. Swanstrom, Pilgrims of the Night, p. 49.

  CHAPTER 9. THE WILD WEST

  1. Memorandum by Inspector Jan Slowikowski, MZO, August 18, 1948; statement by Tomasz Dziedzic, Jelenia Góra Municipal Authority in Szklarska Poręba, February 9, 1948; memorandum by Ryszard Pietkiewicz, Wrocław Voivodeship Settlement Department, January 29, 1948; minute by Kazimierz Ociepka, Szklarska Poręba, May 12, 1948; minute by Dziedzic, May 13, 1948, MZO 196/783/B-5903.

  2. Quoted in F. D. Raška, The Czechoslovak Exile Government in London and the Sudeten German Issue (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2002), p. 66.

  3. Z. Zeman and A. Klimek, The Life of Edvard Beneš 1884–1948: Czechoslovakia in Peace and War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 189.

  4. Quoted in E. Glassheim, “Ethnic Cleansing, Communism, and Environmental Devastation in Czechoslovakia’s Borderlands, 1945–1989,” Journal of Modern History 78:1 (March 2006): 78.

  5. V. F. Cavendish-Bentinck to E.
Bevin, September 13, 1945, FO 371/47608.

  6. C. Kraft, “Who Is a Pole, and Who Is a German? The Province of Olsztyn in 1945,” in P. Ther and A. Siljak, eds., Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 116.

  7. Manchester Guardian, October 30, 1944.

  8. J. Krejĉí and P. Machonin, Czechoslovakia, 1918–92: A Laboratory for Social Change (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 79.

  9. A. Suppan, Austrians, Czechs, and Sudeten Germans as a Community of Conflict in the Twentieth Century (Minneapolis: Center for Austrian Studies, 2006), p. 34.

  10. I. S. Pogány, Righting Wrongs in Eastern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 54.

  11. The Economist, January 1, 1944.

  12. L. Olejnik, Zdrajcy narodu? Losy volksdeutschów w Polsce po II wojnie światowej (Warsaw: Trio, 2006), pp. 27–28, 32.

  13. W. R. Dubiański, Obóz pracy w Mysłowicach w latach 1945–1946 (Katowice: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2004), p. 7; A. Ehrlich, “Between Germany and Poland: Ethnic Cleansing and Politicization of Ethnicity in Upper Silesia under National Socialism and Communism, 1939–1950” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 2005), pp. 209, 220.

  14. Z. Radvanovský, “The Social and Economic Consequences of Resettling Czechs into Northwestern Bohemia, 1945–1947,” in Ther and Siljak, Redrawing Nations, p. 251.

  15. Quoted in Y. Weiss, “Ethnic Cleansing, Memory and Property—Europe, Israel/Palestine, 1944–1948,” in R. Gross and Y. Weiss, eds., Jüdische Geschichte als allgemeine Geschichte: Festschrift für Dan Diner zum 60. Geburtstag (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), p. 164.

  16. Foreign Office Economic Intelligence Department, “The Polish Settlement and the Population of Germany,” August 27, 1945, FO 371/46990.

  17. Unsigned memorandum of Polish government in exile, London, “Conditions in Poland (Memorandum no. 5),” n.d. (c. June 1945), FO 371/47649.

  18. L. G. Holliday, First Secretary (Commercial), British Embassy, Warsaw, “Report on a Tour of the Baltic Ports,” n.d. (c. September 16, 1945), FO 371/47650.

  19. Holliday, “Observations on a Tour Made Between May 5th and May 14, 1946 by Mr L. G. Holliday, First Secretary (Commercial) of H.M. Embassy, Warsaw,” May 20, 1946, FO 371/36596.

  20. P. Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebenen: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), p. 190; memorandum by Special Reports Branch, H.Q. Intelligence Division, CCG (BE), May 18, 1947, FO 943/321.

  21. Cavendish-Bentinck to Hankey, September 24, 1946, FO 371/56691.

  22. Untitled memorandum by G. Lias, June 10, 1947, covered by letter from Sir Anthony Rumbold, British Ambassador, Prague, to G. M. Warr, Northern Department, Foreign Office, August 15, 1947, FO 371/65823.

  23. J. Topinka, “Zapomenutý kraj: Ĉeské pohraniĉí 1948–1960 a takzvaná akce dosídlení,” Soudobé dějiny 12:3–4 (2005): 538–9.

  24. Svobodné slovo, August 2, 1945.

  25. Pravda (Plzeň), September 26, 1946.

  26. N. Davies and R. Moorhouse, Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), p. 408.

  27. T. D. Curp, “The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing: The P.P.R., the P.Z.Z. and Wielkopolska’s Nationalist Revolution, 1944–1946,” Nationalities Papers 29:4 (2001): 585.

  28. Jan Czyśew, Starost’s Office, Gdańsk, “Situation Report for the Month of April, 1946, from the Area of the Administrative District of Bytow, Gdańsk Voivodeship,” n.d., MZO 196/666/B-5777.

  29. Report by Maj. E. M. Tobin, n.d. (c. April 1946), FO 1052/324; Lt.-Col. P. F. A. Growse, “Report by Liaison Team, Kohlfurt, up to 3 May 1946,” May 4, 1946, FO 1052/474.

  30. Kraft, “Who Is a Pole, and Who Is a German?” p. 114.

  31. British Army of the Rhine Intelligence Bureau report on interrogation of Filip Stanisław Kornelak, June 22, 1946, FO 371/56596.

  32. Unsigned “Beobachtungen und Eindrücke von einer Reise Poznań-Szczecin-Poznań,” August 27, 1945, in W. Borodziej and H. Lemberg, eds., Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neiße 1945–1950: Dokumente aus polnischen Archiven, vol. 3: Wojewodschaft Posen, Wojewodschaft Stettin (Hinterpommern) (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2004), p. 384.

  33. T. Staněk, Verfolgung 1945: Die Stellung der Deutschen in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien (außerhalb der Lager und Gefängnisse) (Vienna: Böhlau, 2002), p. 85.

  34. D. W. Gerlach, “For Nation and Gain: Economy, Ethnicity and Politics in the Czech Borderlands, 1945–1948,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2007), pp. 40–45.

  35. J. Vaculík, “Reemigrace zahraniĉnich Ĉechů a Slováků v letech 1945–1948,” Slezský sborník 93:1–2 (1995): 53–58.

  36. Gerlach, “For Nation and Gain,” p. 80.

  37. Ibid., p. 94.

  38. A. Wiedemann, “Komm mit uns das Grenzland aufbauen!” Ansiedlung und neue Strukturen in den ehemaligen Sudetengebieten 1945–1952 (Essen: Klartext, 2007), pp. 165–9.

  39. A. von Arburg, “Tak ĉi onak: Nucené přesídlení v komplexním pojetí poválecné sídelní politiky v ĉeských zemich,” Soudobé dějiny 10:3 (2003): 253.

  40. P. B. Nichols, “The Transfer of Germans from Karlovy Vary,” November 30, 1946, FO 371/56070.

  41. Report by Pawel Grzeszczak, Resettlement Officer, Miastko, June 28, 1946, MZO 196/666/B-5777, AAN.

  42. D. Gerlach, “Beyond Expulsion: The Emergence of ‘Unwanted Elements’ in the Postwar Czech Borderlands, 1945–1950,” East European Politics and Societies 24:2 (May 2010): 280–1.

  43. Maj. A. D. Spottswood, Displaced Persons Division, U.S. Forces in Austria, to Col. E. E. Hyde, December 28, 1945, Office of Military Government for Germany Records of the Civil Administration Division: The Combined Repatriation Executive, U.S. Elements: “Records re Interzonal Population Transfers, 1945–49,” “C.R.X. Memos to Polish Representative” file, RG 260, 390/42/26–27/6–1, box 221, NARA.

  44. Z. Březina, “The Czechoslovak Democrat: The Life, Writing, and Politics of Hubert Ripka from 1918 to 1945” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 2008), pp. 260–1.

  45. The Economist, July 20, 1946.

  46. Der Spiegel interview with Bartoszewski, 2002, in S. Auer and S. Burgdorff, eds., Die Flucht: Über die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002), p. 166.

  47. T. D. Curp, A Clean Sweep? The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing in Western Poland, 1945–1960 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), p. 56.

  48. Holliday, “Observations on a Tour Made Between May 5th and May 14, 1946 by Mr L. G. Holliday, First Secretary (Commercial) of H.M. Embassy, Warsaw,” May 20, 1946, FO 371/56596.

  49. See G. Strauchold, Myśl zachodnia i jej realizacja w Polsce Ludowej w latach 1945–1957 (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2003), pp. 86–7.

  50. E. Hrabovec, “The Catholic Church and Deportation of Ethnic Germans from the Czech Lands,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 16:1–2 (March–June 2000): 66.

  51. F. Bednář, The Transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia from the Ideological and Ecclesiastical Standpoint (Prague: Protestant Publishing Company, 1948), pp. 26, 57–8.

  52. Rev. Robert Smith, D.D., in The Scotsman, November 5, 1946.

  53. Topinka, “Zapomenutý kraj,” 554.

  54. Transcript of Radio Warsaw broadcast, September 10, 1945, FO 371/46990.

  55. P. Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 140.

  56. Davies and Moorhouse, Microcosm, p. 438.

  57. Unsigned and undated memorandum, “Land Reform” (c. September 1945), FO 371/47651.

  58. Cavendish-Bentinck to Sargent, August 26, 1945, FO 371/47650.

  59. Curp, A Clean Sweep? p. 54.

  60. Holliday, “Observations of a Tour Made Between May 5th and May 14, 1946.”

  61. Ibid.

  62. T
her, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebenen, p. 167.

  63. Holliday, “Report on a Tour in Silesia,” August 28, 1945, FO 371/47650.

  64. Davies and Moorhouse, Microcosm, p. 427.

  65. Charles Lambert, in Daily Herald, November 7, 1945.

  66. Transcript of Radio Lublin broadcast, June 2, 1945, FO 371/46731.

  67. Quoted in Kenney, Rebuilding Poland, p. 143.

  68. Unsigned letter, “A Trip to Stettin,” August 15, 1945, covered by letter from Cavendish-Bentinck to Bevin, August 23, 1945, FO 371/47650.

  69. R. M. A. Hankey and M. B. Winch, “Tour of Upper and Lower Silesia—September 1945,” October 8, 1945, FO 371/47651.

  70. J. Walters, British Vice Consul, Szczecin, “Stettin General Report No. 3, May 26, 1946, FO 371/56596.

  71. F. Król, Voivodeship Resettlement Committee, Bydgoszcz, September 5, 1945, MZO 665/B-5776.

  72. W. Gomułka to G. Zhukov, K. Rokossovsky, and V. Lebedev, January 10, 1946, in Borodziej and Lemberg, eds., Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neiße, vol. 1: Zentrale Behörden, Wojewodschaft Allenstein (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2000), p. 205.

  73. For a similar pattern in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, see N. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 92–3.

  74. Deposition of A. Richter, Brackewede bei Bielefeld, April 17, 1946, FO 1052/324.

  75. J. Egit, Grand Illusion (Toronto: Lugus, 1991).

  76. Quoted in D. J. Allen, The Oder-Neisse Line: The United States, Poland, and Germany in the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. 52.

  77. Cavendish-Bentinck to Bevin, September 21, 1946, FO 371/56598; A. B. Lane, I Saw Poland Betrayed (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948), pp. 262–3.

  78. F. B. Bourdillon, “Impressions of Poland,” n.d. (c. November 1945), FO 371/56598.

  79. D. Gosewinkel and S. Meyer, “Citizenship, Property Rights and Dispossession in Postwar Poland (1918 and 1945),” European Review of History 16:4 (August 2009): 587.

  80. R. Blanke, “When Germans and Poles Lived Together: From the History of German-Polish Relations,” in K. Bullivant, G. Giles, and E. Pape, eds., Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences (Yearbook of European Studies, vol. 13) (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), p. 47.

 

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