The Germans who remained in East Prussia after the war were simply forgotten. German population in East Prussia after World War II Deportation of Germans from Poland 1945

Below is the promised article about the deportation of Germans. I just want to remind you: the Kaliningrad region is less than a third East Prussia, and Stalin gave most of it to Poland and Lithuania.

On July 14, 1945, residents of the German-Silesian town of Bad Salzbrunn, already renamed in the Polish manner to Szczawno-Zdrój, received a special order for their eviction to Germany. The Germans were allowed to take 20 kg of luggage with them each. The eviction proceeded in stages. At one of the last stages, they tried to deport perhaps the most famous resident of Silesia: laureate Nobel Prize According to literature, Gerhart Hauptmann was given the eviction order by a certain colonel Soviet army. For the writer, this was a blow from which he never recovered. Before dying he asked: “Am I still in my house?” The house belonged to him, but it was already on Polish soil.

Hauptmann became one of the victims of a grandiose action, during which about 15 million European Germans fled from their homes and were expelled - from the Adriatic to the Baltic. More than 2 million of them died.
At the instigation of Winston Churchill, in Article XIII of the Protocol of the Potsdam Peace Conference (July 19 - August 2, 1945), the deportation of Germans was designated as “orderly transfers of German populations,” that is, “orderly relocation of the German population.” Soviet sources simply called it relocation. Polish - “the return of the German population” (powrót ludnosci niemieckiej).

The deported Germans, and after them many politicians, historians and publicists, gave this phenomenon a completely different name - “flight and expulsion” (Flucht und Vertreibung). Already in 1946, West German bishops appealed to the Western world not to respond to the crimes of Nazism with a crime against the German people. They were supported by Pope Pius XII. American historian Alfred de Zayas, in his book “Nemesis at Potsdam,” directly accuses the Allies of complicity with Stalin: according to him, Great Britain and the United States, wittingly or unwittingly, provided the Bolsheviks with legal cover for the mass deportations of Germans.
From the early 30s to the mid-50s, according to domestic historians, 15 peoples and 40 nationalities were subjected to Bolshevik repressions and deportations in the USSR, about 3.5 million people were expelled from their homes. During various special operations of the NKVD-MVD-MGB, about 1 million Germans were injured, more than 200 thousand. died. Among them were the descendants of those who, at the call of Catherine II, came to Russia to help develop the south of the empire. And those who found themselves on the territory of the USSR as a result of Soviet aggression against Poland in September 1939. Finally, those who lived on German territory that the Anglo-American allies surrendered to Stalin in accordance with Article VI of the Potsdam Treaty.

After the fall of Königsberg on April 9, 1945, the north of East Prussia and the Memel region became part of the USSR. Memel-Klaipeda and a strip of land north of the Neman became part of Lithuania, the rest of the territory, less than a third of East Prussia, became part of the RSFSR. Most of East Prussia went to Poland. Later, after the end of the war, during the demarcation of the border between the USSR and Poland, Stalin straightened the border line on the map with a pencil, and the Polish town of Ilavka, which once bore the German name Preussisch-Eylau, and now Bagrationovsk, became part of the USSR.

The Soviet authorities quickly began to develop the acquired territories. Here, in the very west of the country, a powerful military outpost was created: a base navy, underground airfields, defense industry. Soon they were supplemented by silo-based missiles with nuclear warheads, which could reach anywhere in Europe in a matter of minutes.
Already in 1945, trains with immigrants from Belarus, Pskov, Kalinin, Yaroslavl and Moscow regions went to the Kaliningrad region. By order of Stalin, they went to restore industry and Agriculture former East Prussia. They were supposed to “peacefully oust” the indigenous German population from there.

According to official data for the spring of 1947, 110,217 “Potsdam” Germans ended up on Soviet territory. Plus, on the territory of the Kaliningrad region, in camps #445 and #533, 11,252 prisoners of war and 3,160 internees were detained, who, in addition to armed guards, were vigilantly monitored by 339 secret police officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who identified war criminals and reactionary officers who were looking for contact with the Lithuanian anti-Soviet underground.
Apparently, at first the Soviet leadership was not very clear about what to do with the Germans, who overnight became residents, but not citizens, of the country of socialism. With the camp prisoners everything was more or less clear: prisoners of war were used in the pulp and paper and shipbuilding industry, and then some were sent home to Germany and Austria, and the rest to Siberia. But it was absolutely unclear what to do with the civilian population.

Those who were able to work worked and received food cards. But there were only 36.6 thousand of them (among them, by the way, teachers of German schools and even clergy). The rest were busy clearing the ruins or not busy at all.
“The non-working German population... does not receive food supplies, as a result of which they are in an extremely depleted state,” Kaliningrad authorities reported to Moscow in 1947. “As a result of this situation, a sharp increase in criminal crime has recently been observed among the German population (theft of food, robberies and even murders), as well as in the first quarter of 1947, cases of cannibalism appeared, which were registered in the region... 12. By engaging in cannibalism, some Germans not only eat the meat of corpses, but also kill their children and relatives. There are 4 cases of murder for the purpose of cannibalism.”
The Germans were allowed to travel to Germany, and many of them took advantage of this right. However, it was obvious to the Kaliningrad authorities that it would not be possible to manage solely through licensing measures. On April 30, 1947, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Kaliningrad Region, Major General Trofimov, sent a memorandum to the USSR Minister of Internal Affairs, Colonel General Kruglov: “In accordance with the instructions of the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Colonel General comrade. Serov dated February 14, 1947 #2/85 From April 2, 1947, I began the partial resettlement of Germans from the Kaliningrad region who had relatives in the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany. Currently, resettlement permits have already been issued for 265 people. This event caused a massive flow of applications from Germans with requests for permission to travel to Germany, based on justified reasons for both joining families and difficult material living conditions... The presence of the German population in the region has a corrupting effect on the unstable part of not only the civilian Soviet population, but also the military personnel of a large the number of Soviet army and navy located in the region, and contributes to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Introduction of Germans into everyday life Soviet people by using them quite widely as low-paid or even free servants, it contributes to the development of espionage... The German population... has a negative impact on the development of the new Soviet region... I consider it advisable to raise the question of the organizational resettlement of Germans in the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany.”

Finally, on October 11, 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted resolution #3547-1169с “On the resettlement of Germans from the Kaliningrad region of the RSFSR to the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany.” Three days later, Minister of Internal Affairs Kruglov issued order #001067, according to which the new head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Kaliningrad region, General Demin, was charged with the resettlement of 30 thousand Germans from the region to Germany in 1947. A Moscow brigade led by General Stakhanov arrived to help the local police. General management of the operation was taken over by First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs General Ivan Serov.

The deportation of Germans from East Prussia was carried out within a year without any serious disruptions or deviations from the plans launched from Moscow. In the reports of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the action is described in detail, by day and hour. The settlers were allowed to take with them 300 kg of personal property (“with the exception of items and valuables prohibited for export by customs rules”). It was specifically noted that one of the deputy echelon chiefs was supposed to be engaged in “intelligence work among the Germans.” Each settler was ordered to be provided with “dry rations for 15 days according to the norms of industrial and communications workers.” In total, according to preliminary estimates, 105,558 people were to be resettled.

The first train left for the destination station Pozewalk on October 22, 1947, the last on October 21, 1948. A total of 48 trains were sent, deporting 102,125 people. The deportation was well organized, as evidenced by the relatively small number of victims. For example, in October-November 1947, according to the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, 26 migrants died from exhaustion and one from a broken heart along the way. Similar deportations in the rest of Europe were accompanied by thousands of victims. Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs did not spare the Germans who were evicted from Silesia, Transylvania, and the Sudetenland.
Since we were talking about the “Potsdam” Germans, whose fate could, in principle, be of interest to the world community, just in case, right at the stations before departure, the settlers wrote and handed over to the guards letters “expressing gratitude to the Soviet government for the care shown and the organized resettlement,” preserved in the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs . The texts in German and Russian (in reliable translations by the security officers) were written, of course, according to a single model: “With this we express our heartfelt gratitude to the Soviet Union for their attitude towards us during the period of residence under your leadership. We worked together with our Russian comrades in friendship and harmony. We also thank the police for the good organization of sending us to Germany and for the help provided to those in need. Food was in abundance. With great gratitude we say goodbye to Soviet Union. Car #10".
In general, everything went like clockwork, as evidenced by the reports addressed to the minister and the 284 letters of gratitude filed with them. Not forgotten, however, is the unworthy act of a certain captain Barinov, who, while drunk, fell behind the train and quarreled with Polish railway workers, for which he was approximately punished. The rest, as General Demin reported, worked “conscientiously, intensely and often for several days without rest.”
On November 30, 1948, Minister Kruglov wrote in writing (report #4952/k) about the completion of the operation to Stalin, Molotov and Beria. Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians became the indigenous population of East Prussia.

In 1946, Stalin signed a decree according to which 12 thousand families must be resettled “on a voluntary basis” for permanent residence. Over the course of three years, residents of 27 different regions of the RSFSR, union and autonomous republics arrived in the region, whose reliability was carefully monitored.

These were mainly immigrants from Belarus, Pskov, Kalinin, Yaroslavl and Moscow regions
Thus, from 1945 to 1948, tens of thousands of Germans and Soviet citizens lived together in Kaliningrad. At this time, German schools, churches, and other public institutions operated in the city. On the other hand, due to the memory of the very recent war, the German population was subjected to looting and violence by the Soviets, which manifested itself in forced evictions from apartments, insults and forced work.

However, according to many researchers, the conditions of close living of two peoples in a small territory contributed to their cultural and universal rapprochement. Official policy also tried to help eliminate hostility between Russians and Germans, but this vector of interaction was soon completely rethought: the deportation of Germans to Germany was being prepared.

The “peaceful displacement” of Germans by Soviet citizens did not produce effective results, and by 1947 there were more than 100,000 Germans on the territory of the USSR. “The non-working German population... does not receive food supplies, as a result of which they are in an extremely depleted state. As a result of this situation, a sharp increase in criminal crime has recently been observed among the German population (food theft, robbery and even murder), and also in the first quarter of 1947, cases of cannibalism appeared, which were registered in the region... 12.

When practicing cannibalism, some Germans not only eat the meat of corpses, but also kill their children and relatives. There are 4 cases of murder for the purpose of cannibalism,” the Kaliningrad authorities reported.

In order to liberate Kaliningrad from the Germans, permission was issued to return to their homeland, but not all Germans were able or willing to use it. Colonel General Serov spoke about the measures taken: “The presence of the German population in the region has a corrupting effect on the unstable part of not only the civilian Soviet population, but also the military personnel of a large number of the Soviet army and navy located in the region, and contributes to the spread of venereal diseases. The introduction of Germans into the life of Soviet people through their fairly widespread use as low-paid or even free servants contributes to the development of espionage...” Serov raised the question of the forced relocation of Germans to the territory of the Soviet occupation of Germany.

After this, from 1947 to 1948, about 105,000 Germans and Letuvinniks - Prussian Lithuanians - were resettled to Germany from the former East Prussia. It was argued that the resettlement organized by the Germans during World War II, which, in particular, led to the Holocaust, justified this deportation. The resettlement took place practically without casualties, which was due to the high degree of its organization - the deportees were given dry rations, allowed to take a large amount of cargo with them, and were treated conscientiously. Many letters of gratitude from the Germans, written by them before the resettlement, are also known: “With great gratitude we say goodbye to the Soviet Union.”

Thus, Russians and Belarusians, Ukrainians and former residents of other union republics began to live in the territory that was once called East Prussia. After the war, the Kaliningrad region began to rapidly become militarized, becoming a kind of “shield” of the USSR on the western borders. With the collapse of the USSR, Kaliningrad turned into an enclave Russian Federation, and to this day remembering his German past.

Today it snowed in Budapest, and every time I clean up the front yard, I constantly remember the stories of old-timers from Kaliningrad that I heard back in Soviet times.

There are now approximately twenty million Germans and their descendants living in Germany who were deported from countries after the Second World War of Eastern Europe.
Already at the end of the war, citizens of German nationality, fearing reprisals from local population, began to flee Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary. But after the final victory over Nazi Germany, the deportation of Germans from the countries of Eastern Europe was already of a forced mass nature and went down in history under the name of the “second wave of deportation”

At the Potsdam Conference, the leaders of the USSR, USA and Great Britain actually legalized the deportation of Germans.
Currently, a government structure has been created in Germany - the "Deportation Fund" on the basis of the long-existing "Union of Deported Germans", the purpose of which is to study the history of "totalitarian regimes", including the "crimes of Stalinism".

In August 2012, with the personal participation of Angela Merkel, the foundation received the eloquent name “Escape. Expulsion. Combination” (Stiftung “Flucht.Vertreibung. Versoehnung”) and construction of a museum for the victims of deportation began in Berlin. Repeated attempts were made to open a monument to the victims, but if this did not raise any objections from our country, Poland’s ardent protest against such German initiatives threatened an international scandal.

At one time, Polish President Lech Kaczynski spoke unequivocally on this issue, classifying it as a “bottleneck” in Polish-German relations. He said that the opening of a center in Berlin dedicated to the history of deportations would worsen relations between the two countries. The Polish president also emphasized then that any hints and talk about possible compensation to the Germans by the Polish side are unacceptable and provocative.

And if the “crimes of Stalinism” are no longer in doubt among anyone in Europe, then Poland and the Czech Republic flatly refuse to “sprinkle ashes on their heads,” although the largest and most brutal deportation of Germans took place precisely from their territories.
Constantly demanding repentance from Germany and Russia, Poland itself is not ready for such repentance, because its own “historical past” , unlike us, carefully protects.

The expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe was accompanied by large-scale organized violence, including not only the confiscation of property, but even placement in concentration camps. In total, as a result of deportation, up to 14 million Germans were expelled, of which about 2 million died

In Poland by the end of the war, over 4 million Germans lived: mainly in German territories transferred to Poland in 1945, as well as in historical areas of compact residence of Germans in Poland (about 400 thousand people). In addition, more than 2 million Germans lived in the territory of East Prussia, which came under the control of the USSR.

Already in the winter of 1945, expecting the imminent arrival Soviet troops, the Germans living in Poland moved west, and the local Polish population began mass violence against the refugees. In the spring of 1945, entire Polish villages specialized in robbing fleeing Germans: men were killed and women were raped.

The Polish authorities subjected the remaining German population to persecutions similar to those practiced in Nazi Germany under
attitude towards Jews. Thus, in many cities, ethnic Germans were required to wear distinctive signs on their clothes, most often a white armband, sometimes with a swastika or the letter “N”.

By the summer of 1945, the Polish authorities began to round up the remaining Germans into concentration camps, usually designed for 3-5 thousand people. Only adults were sent to the camps, while children were taken away from their parents and transferred either to orphanages or to Polish families, and they were subsequently raised as Poles.

The adult German population was used for forced labor, and in the winter of 1945/1946 the mortality rate in the camps reached 50%.
The exploitation of internees was actively carried out until the autumn of 1946, when the Polish government decided to begin deporting the surviving Germans. On September 13, a decree was signed on the “separation of persons of German nationality from the Polish people.”
However, due to the fact that the German population made a great contribution to the restoration of the destroyed economy of Poland after the war, the final deportation was constantly delayed, despite the decree, and began only after 1949.

Violence against German prisoners continued in the camps. Thus, in the Potulice camp between 1947 and 1949, half of the prisoners died from hunger, cold, disease and abuse by guards.

If the deportation of the German civilian population from Poland was one of the most massive, then their eviction from Czechoslovakia recognized as the most cruel.

Hanged ordinary wounded German soldiers from a hospital in Prague as a result of the arbitrariness and debauchery of the Czech military.

The first working version of the eviction of the Germans was presented by the Benes government to the Allied powers back in November 1944. According to the Benes memorandum, deportations were to be carried out in all areas where the Czech population was smaller
67% (two thirds), and continue until the German population falls below 33%.
The Czech authorities began to implement these plans immediately after the liberation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops.

On May 17, 1945, a detachment of Czech soldiers entered the town of Landskron (today Lanskroun) and held a “trial” of its residents of German nationality, during which 121 people were sentenced to death within three days - the sentences were carried out immediately. In Postelberg (today Postoloprty), over the course of five days - from June 3 to 7, 1945 - the Czechs tortured and shot 760 Germans aged 15 to 60 years, a fifth of the city's German population.

. Victims of the Postelberg massacre (Postolproty).

One of the most horrific incidents occurred on the night of June 18-19 in the city of Prerau (today Przherov). There, Czech soldiers returning from Prague, where they were celebrating the end of the war, encountered a train carrying the German population, who had been evacuated to Bohemia at the end of the war and were now deported to the Soviet occupation zone. The Czechs ordered the Germans to get off the train and start digging a pit for a mass grave.
Old men and women had difficulty following the soldiers' orders, and the grave was ready only by midnight. After this, Czech soldiers under the command of officer Karel Pazur shot 265 Germans, among whom were 120 women and 74 children. The oldest civilian killed was 80 years old, and the youngest was eight months old. Having finished the execution, the Czechs plundered the things that belonged to the refugees.

Dozens of similar cases occurred in the spring and summer of 1945 throughout Czechoslovakia.

The most famous was the Brünn Death March: during the expulsion of 27 thousand Germans from the city of Brno, almost 8 thousand of them died.

The tragedy unfolded in the city of Usti nad Labem at the end of July 1945, when, after an explosion at an ammunition depot, local Germans were suspected of sabotage and their killings began throughout the city. Citizens of German nationality were easily identified by their white armbands. More than 5 thousand Sudeten Germans died then - they were easily identified by their white armbands.

In the fall of 1945, Czechoslovak President Edvard Benes signed a decree, which received the force of law, expelling the Germans from the country.
All of Czechoslovakia was divided into 13 districts, each headed by a person responsible for the work. Total in the Ministry of Internal Affairs department
1,200 people worked on eviction issues.

Entire villages and towns inhabited by the Germans experienced the unjustified revenge of the Czechs. All over the country, marching columns were formed from the German population: people were not allowed to collect practically any things and were driven to the border without stopping. Those who fell behind or fell were often killed right in front of the entire column. The local Czech population was strictly prohibited from providing any assistance to the deported Germans.
At the border, displaced persons were subjected to a “customs clearance” procedure, during which even those
the few things they have endured.

The final resettlement of the German population from Czechoslovakia ended only in 1950.

In Hungary persecution of the German population began in March 1945. The new Hungarian authorities adopted a land reform project, according to which the lands of German organizations and individuals of German nationality were subject to confiscation.
In December 1945, a decree was adopted on the “deportation of traitors to the people.” This category included persons who reverted to a German surname between 1940 and 1945, as well as those who indicated German as their native language in the 1940 census. All property of the deportees was subject to unconditional confiscation. According to various estimates, deportation in Hungary affected from 500 to 600 thousand ethnic Germans.

The deportation of Germans proceeded more calmly in Romania. At the end of the war, about 750 thousand Germans lived here, many of whom were centrally resettled to Romania back in 1940 from territories ceded to the USSR - the resettlement of Germans to Romania from Soviet Moldova was regulated by an agreement between the USSR and Germany of September 5, 1940.

After the capitulation of the Antonescu government and the arrival of Soviet troops, the new Romanian government abstained from the policy of oppressing the German minority. Although in areas densely populated by Germans, a curfew was imposed, and cars, bicycles, radios and other items considered dangerous were confiscated from residents. In Romania, there were virtually no recorded cases of organized violence against the German population.
The gradual deportation of Germans from the country continued until the early 1950s, and the Germans themselves subsequently began to seek permission to leave for Germany.

In Soviet Königsberg, renamed Kaliningrad in 1946, After the war, 20,000 Germans lived (before the war, 370 thousand).
After the entry of Soviet troops into the city, work began almost immediately to adapt the Germans to a new life: German The newspaper "New Time" was published, and schools remained where teaching was conducted in German. Working Germans were given food cards.

But then a decision was made to evict the German population, and almost all of them were sent to Germany by 1947. Some specialists were left in the city to restore the destroyed economy, but they also could not obtain Soviet citizenship and were expelled from the country.

The deportation of Germans from the Kaliningrad region took place in a smooth and organized manner. Those leaving were given money for travel expenses and food. In the reporting statements, these payments were listed down to the penny. And the leaving Germans were required to provide receipts stating that they had no complaints. These handwritten papers with words of gratitude Soviet power for help with the resettlement, are still kept in the archives. They are certified by a translator and a senior officer.

In total, 48 trainloads of settlers were sent through Poland to Germany. The organization of transportation was clear - officers were severely punished for drunkenness and any violations of discipline while escorting trains.

During the entire deportation of Germans, two people died due to an attack of heart failure.
Some Germans believed until the very end that they would return, and even took with them the copper door handles of their houses.

* * *
In Kaliningrad, old-timers told me that German Frau, even after receiving the eviction order, continued to regularly go outside the gate in aprons in the morning and sweep the street in front of the house.

Years pass, and I still remember these stories and try to understand: what motivated these women and why did they act this way?
Were you hoping that the eviction wouldn't happen? Habit of order? The desire to maintain an illusory sense of stability in your soul, as if nothing is happening and life is going on as usual?
Or was it a farewell tribute of love to their home, which they were leaving forever?

But there will never be a clear answer to these questions.

14 million Germans were forced from their homes in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and other Eastern European countries after the end of the war. Only 12 million managed to reach Germany alive. The tragedy of the expulsion of the German civilian population has not yet been realized by Germany's neighbors

“Breslau, Oppeln, Gleiwitz, Glogau, Grünberg are not just names, but memories that will live in the souls of more than one generation. Refusing them is a betrayal. The cross of exile must be borne by the entire people,” these words addressed in 1963 to the Germans expelled from Eastern European countries belong to German Chancellor Willy Brandt.

It is symbolic that, listing the cities from which the German population was brutally expelled, Brandt also names Gleiwitz, a small town on the old border of Germany and Poland, where World War II began with German provocation.

One way or another, at the end of the war, the bitterest cup had to be drunk not by the military elite who started it, but by the ethnic Germans living in the countries of Eastern Europe. Despite the fact that the Hague Convention of 1907, in force at that time, directly prohibited the alienation of property of the civilian population (Article 46), and also denied the principle of collective responsibility (Article 50), almost one and a half ten million Germans, mainly women, old people and children, within three years they were expelled from their homes, and their property was plundered.

The expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe was accompanied by massive organized violence, including confiscation of property, placement in concentration camps and deportation - even though already in August 1945 the statute of the international military tribunal in Nuremberg recognized the deportation of peoples as a crime against humanity.

Polish disaster

The expulsion of Germans reached its greatest scale in Poland. By the end of the war, over 4 million Germans lived in this country. They were mainly concentrated in the German territories transferred to Poland in 1945: in Silesia (1.6 million people), Pomerania (1.8 million) and East Brandenburg (600 thousand), as well as in historical areas densely populated by Germans on the territory of Poland (about 400 thousand people). In addition, more than 2 million Germans lived in East Prussia, which was coming under Soviet control.

Already in the winter of 1945, expecting the imminent arrival of Soviet troops, the Germans living in Poland moved west, and the local Polish population began mass violence against refugees. In the spring of 1945, entire Polish villages specialized in robbing fleeing Germans - men were killed, women raped.

Already on February 5, 1945, the Prime Minister of the Polish provisional government, Boleslaw Bierut, issued a decree transferring the former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line under Polish control, which was an overt claim to reorganize the borders after the end of the war.

On May 2, 1945, Bierut signed a new decree, according to which all property abandoned by the Germans automatically passed into the hands of the Polish state - in this way it was supposed to facilitate the process of resettlement to the west of the country from the eastern territories, which were partially transferred to the Soviet Union.

German refugees during the Death March from Lodz. All ethnic Germans from this Polish city were evicted. This group initially consisted of 150 people, only 10 of them reached Berlin.

At the same time, the Polish authorities subjected the remaining German population to persecutions similar to those practiced in Nazi Germany against Jews. Thus, in many cities, ethnic Germans were required to wear distinctive signs on their clothes, most often a white armband, sometimes with a swastika. However, the matter was not limited to hanging identification marks on the Germans.

By the summer of 1945, Polish authorities began to round up the remaining German population into concentration camps, usually designed for 3–5 thousand people. Only adults were sent to the camps, while children were taken away from their parents and transferred either to orphanages or to Polish families - in any case, their further education was carried out in the spirit of absolute Polonization. Adults were used for forced labor, and in the winter of 1945/1946 the mortality rate in the camps reached 50%.

The exploitation of the interned German population was actively carried out until the autumn of 1946, when the Polish government decided to begin deporting the surviving Germans. On September 13, a decree was signed on the “separation of persons of German nationality from the Polish people.” However, the continued exploitation of concentration camp prisoners remained an important component of the Polish economy, and the deportation of Germans was still postponed, despite the decree. Violence against German prisoners continued in the camps. Thus, in the Potulice camp between 1947 and 1949, half of the prisoners died from hunger, cold, disease and abuse by the guards.

The final deportation of Germans from Polish territory began only after 1949. According to estimates by the Union of Expelled Germans, the losses of the German population during the expulsion from Poland amounted to about 3 million people.

Truly Czech thoroughness

The second country after Poland in terms of the scale of the solution to the “German question” was Czechoslovakia. In pre-war Czechoslovakia, Germans made up a quarter of the country's population. They were mainly concentrated in the Sudetenland - 3 million Germans lived here, accounting for 93% of the region's population. A significant proportion of Germans were also present in Moravia (800 thousand people, or a quarter of the population), and there was a large German community in Bratislava.

Czechs greet Americans as liberators in 1945, with a dead German at their feet

In 1938, having received the approval of the heads of government of Great Britain, France and Italy at a conference in Munich, Nazi Germany occupied the Sudetenland, annexing the areas inhabited by Germans to its territory. In 1939, German troops occupied the remaining part of Czechoslovakia, establishing the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on the territory of the Czech Republic, and the puppet Slovak Republic on the territory of Slovakia. The Czech government went to London.

It was in London that the Czech government-in-exile first formulated plans for the mass deportation of ethnic Germans after the end of the war. Hubert Ripka, President Edvard Beneš's closest adviser, dreamed of a mass expulsion of Germans as early as 1941, speculating in the pages of the newspaper Čechoslovak, the official organ of the Czech government in exile, about the “organized application of the principle of resettlement of peoples.”

President Benes fully shared his advisor's views. In the fall of 1941 and winter of 1942, Benes published two articles in The Nineteenth Century and After and Foreign Affairs, where he developed the concept of “population transfer” that would help bring order to post-war Europe. Not being sure whether it would be possible to convince the British to implement plans to deport the three million German population, the Czech government in exile, just in case, began similar negotiations with representatives of the Soviet leadership.

In March 1943, Beneš met with Soviet Ambassador Alexander Bogomolov and asked for support for his plans to ethnically cleanse post-war Czechoslovakia. Bogomolov avoided discussing the plans, but Benes was tireless and already during a trip to the United States in June 1943, he was able to convince both the American and Soviet leadership to support plans for the deportation of the Germans. With this support, the Czech government began to develop a detailed plan for ethnic cleansing. The first working version of the deportation of Germans was presented by the Benes government to the Allied powers already in November 1944. According to the Benes memorandum, deportations should be carried out in all areas where the Czech population is less than 67% (two thirds), and continue until the German population is reduced to below 33%.

A beaten German in the vicinity of Pilsen, Czechoslovakia.Those who did not manage to escape in time fell victim to the frenzied violence on the part of the Czechs, which was committed until July 1945. Photo Bundesarchiv/DER SPIEGEL

The Czech authorities began to implement these plans immediately after the liberation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops. Already in the spring of 1945, massive violent actions against ethnic Germans began throughout the country.

The main engine of violence was the volunteer 1st Czechoslovak brigade under the command of Ludwik Svoboda - the so-called Army of Freedom. Ludwik Svoboda had long-standing scores with ethnic Germans. In 1938, after the annexation of the Sudetenland to Germany, Svoboda became one of the founders of the Defense of the Nation, a partisan Czech rebel organization. Now 60 thousand Czech soldiers under the command of Ludwik Svoboda had the opportunity to take revenge on the defenseless German population.

Cut to the root

Entire villages and towns inhabited by the Germans experienced the unpunished violence of the Czechs. All over the country, marching columns were formed from the German population; people were not allowed to collect practically any things - and were driven to the border without stopping. Those who fell behind or fell were often killed right in front of the entire column. The local Czech population was strictly prohibited from providing any assistance to the deported Germans.

American soldiers discoveredon the side of the roada German beaten to death after the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Western Bohemia. Photo: Bundesarchiv/DER SPIEGEL

During just one such “death march” - the expulsion of 27 thousand Germans from Brno - over a distance of 55 km, according to various estimates, from 4 to 8 thousand people died.

At the border, expelled Germans were subjected to a “customs clearance” procedure, during which even the few things they had carried were often taken away from them. But those who managed to reach the occupation zones in the territory of the former Germany - even robbed - were jealous of their compatriots who remained under Benes' rule.

On May 17, 1945, a detachment of Czech soldiers entered the town of Landskron (today Lanskroun) and held a “trial” of its residents, during which 121 people were sentenced to death within three days - the sentences were carried out immediately. In Postelberg (today Postoloprty), over the course of five days - from June 3 to 7, 1945 - the Czechs tortured and shot 760 Germans aged 15 to 60 years, a fifth of the city's German population.

One of the most horrific incidents occurred on the night of June 18-19 in the city of Prerau (today Przherov). There, Czech soldiers returning from Prague from the end-of-war celebrations encountered a train carrying the German population who had been evacuated to Bohemia at the end of the war and were now deported to the Soviet occupation zone. The Czechs ordered the Germans to get off the train and start digging a pit for a mass grave. Old men and women had difficulty following the soldiers' orders, and the grave was ready only by midnight. After this, Czech soldiers under the command of officer Karol Pazur shot 265 Germans, among whom were 120 women and 74 children. The oldest civilian killed was 80 years old, and the youngest was eight months old. Having finished the execution, the Czechs plundered the things that belonged to the refugees.

Dozens of similar cases occurred in the spring and summer of 1945 throughout Czechoslovakia.

“Spontaneous acts of retaliation” reached their peak in June-July 1945, when armed detachments scurried throughout the Czech Republic, terrorizing the German population. To maintain the level of violence, the Benes government even formed a special body dedicated to ethnic cleansing: a department was organized in the Ministry of Internal Affairs to carry out “odsun” - “expulsion”. All of Czechoslovakia was divided into 13 districts, each headed by someone responsible for expelling the Germans. In total, 1,200 people worked in the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for expulsion issues.

This rapid escalation of violence caused the Allies to express their dissatisfaction with these actions, which immediately aroused strong discontent among the Czechs, who viewed the killing and expulsion of Germans as their natural right. The result of the Czechs' dissatisfaction was a note dated August 16, 1945, in which the Czech government raised the issue of complete deportation of the remaining 2.5 million Germans. According to the note, 1.75 million people were to move to the American occupation zone, and 0.75 million to the Soviet one. About 500 thousand Germans had already been expelled from the country by this time. The result of the negotiations between the Czechs and the Allied powers was permission to deport the German population, but in an organized manner and without incident. By 1950, Czechoslovakia had gotten rid of its German minority.

Europe without Germans

The violence against ethnic Germans that occurred in Poland and the Czech Republic was observed to varying degrees in other countries of Eastern Europe. In Hungary, the conflict between the Hungarian authorities and the German minority was clearly evident even before the war. Already in the 1920s, immediately after the formation of the national Hungarian state, the country began to pursue a policy of severe discrimination against the German minority. German schools were closed, ethnic Germans were purged from government bodies. A man with a German surname was barred from any career. In 1930, an order of the Minister of Defense required all officers wearing German names and last names, change them to Hungarian ones - or resign.

Family of German refugees, West Germany, 1948

The position of the Germans improved markedly after Hungary became a satellite of Nazi Germany, but few of the Germans living in Hungary doubted that with the departure of German troops their situation would deteriorate very seriously. That is why in April 1944, German troops made a number of unsuccessful attempts to evacuate ethnic Germans from Hungary.

The persecution began in March 1945. On March 15, the new Hungarian authorities adopted a land reform project, according to which it was possible to confiscate land from both German organizations and German individuals. However, even landless Germans remained a thorn in the side of the Hungarian authorities. Therefore, by December 1945, a decree was prepared on the deportation of “traitors and enemies of the people.”

This category included not only members of German military formations, but also persons who regained their German surname between 1940 and 1945, as well as those who indicated German as their native language in the 1940 census. All property of the deportees was subject to unconditional confiscation. According to various estimates, the deportation affected from 500 to 600 thousand ethnic Germans.

Not a warm welcome

Probably the most peaceful deportation of Germans took place in Romania. At the end of the war, about 750 thousand Germans lived here, many of whom were centrally resettled to Romania in 1940 from territories occupied by Soviet troops (the resettlement of Germans to Romania from Soviet Moldova was regulated by an agreement between the USSR and Germany of September 5, 1940).

After the capitulation of the Antonescu government and the arrival of Soviet troops, the new Romanian government refrained from a policy of oppressing the German minority. Although curfews were imposed in heavily German areas, and cars, bicycles, radios and other items considered dangerous were confiscated from residents, there were virtually no spontaneous or organized incidents of violence against the German population in Romania. The gradual deportation of Germans from the country continued until the early 1950s, and in last years The Germans themselves sought permission to leave for Germany.

By 1950, the population of first the Soviet and Western occupation zones, and then the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany, increased due to the arrival of refugees by 12 million people. The Germans expelled from Eastern European countries were distributed throughout almost all regions of Germany; in some areas, such as Mecklenburg in the northeast of the country, refugees made up 45% of the local population. In few regions of Germany, refugees received accounted for less than 20% of the population.

Meanwhile, despite the significant proportion of refugees, the problem of expelling Germans from Eastern European countries has long remained a taboo topic in both the east and west of the country. In the Western occupation zones - and subsequently in the Federal Republic of Germany - expelled Germans were prohibited from organizing any unions until 1950. According to historian Ingo Haar, who deals with the problems of expelled Germans, this is only the beginning Korean War and worsening relations with the Soviet Union forced Western politicians to acknowledge the suffering of the German people and legalize references to the expulsion of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries.