[quote=Tim;831551][quote=Voland;830669]

Extraordinary. I suppose the Germans of the post-war era were focused on the present and future, and the "expellees" were a constant reminder of the past? The resettlement of 13 million people is in itself a remarkable accomplishment. I suppose at this point the vast majority of them are dead - yet with people like yourself it remains a reality.




That sums pretty much up what i was trying to say. Refugees and resistance fighters were living reminders of what most Germans were busy not to focus on anymore.
Those who were adults at that time are mostly dead now or at least very old. But many who were children or youths can still tell you about that. In some areas of Germany the population almost doubled because of the influx of refugees . You have to see that it was also a devastated country where the locals wher barely able to feed their families anyway and then had to take in refugees speaking in strange accents , having strange customs, telling horrifying stories about their escape from the east and having basically nothing and so often had to deal with hostility after the war.
In Bavaria Sudeten German children were sometimes sitting separately in the classroom because the local parents wanted it that way. To play together or make contacts was also not allowed.
You have to see this was a very rural and conservative population who just didn´t know how to cope with this "different" refugees. ( it needed one generation)
Neugablonz in southern Bavaria is an example of a Sudeten refugee camp which later turned in to a city of its own :

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neugablonz

I will definitely check Lukacs out, thank you. I also heard the name before, but never seriously came across one of his books.
My grandmother´s story is an example of that I guess.
Ethnic Germans and Czechs had been living with each other in the Hlucin region , the Hultschiner Ländchen, for many centuries, since the middle ages , when Polish, Hungarian and Bohemian kings invited german settlers to come to Silesia and Moravia. Their relation was not without conflicts, but there had never been major troubles. They were neighbours, schoolmates, collegues at work etc., there were many friendships, also "mixed" couples and marriages. "Big" politics in Berlin or Prague was something else than the personal relations on the ground. My great-grandfather was constantly fighting with his Czech neighbours over politics, but that was in the local pub or at the dinner table and they still were friends. After all it was them who warned him about Czech paramilitaries who were rounding up Germans and shooting them in neighbouring villages. They hid the family and other ethnic Germans for some days and then even gave them company until they were able to join a refugee treck. My grandmother never wanted revenge or compensation and mostly saw her fate as a lesson for future generations. I am happy that she lived long enough to see the Iron curtain fall and was able to see her hometown once again. I can only guess what it must have meant for her to see the places she had last seen in 1945 once again, to see her parents house , that she had to abandon as a young woman in her twenties again with over seventy. The Czech family who was living there took her up very nicely.
( Imagine somebody would come to your house and tell you :" I´ve been expelled from here fifty years ago and just want to have a look..)
Apart from the human side the expellation of the ethnic Germans (my grandmother was a citizen of Czechoslovakia before 1938 and until the Benes decrees) was also a cultural and economical loss for these countries themselves which is now beginning to be recognized.
Today small minorities remain mostly in Russia, Romania , Poland (upper Silesia) , but the last migration wave was only after 1990 when the borders came down. So the "resettlement" has not ended completely.

I mean to put out the following thoughts for intellectual thought but please do not assume that I am saying them out of personal indifference to people because that is not the intent.

Following WWII, there was a massive realignment of peoples throughout Europe. Ethnic Germans were expelled from areas where they had long live in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Rumania and many other places, and the Germans were expelled from all parts of Germany ceded to Poland and Russia east of the Oder-Neisse line of rivers (Koenigsberg, Danzig, Breslau, Stettin, etc). Poles were likewise expelled from all lands taken by Russia and shifted to the areas given to Poland from Germany in replacement. Russians were relocated to the new Russian borders. Other ethnic shifts likewise occurred to fit new borders.

One reason this was done, besides to the victor goes the spoils of course, was an attempt to end once and for all the problems of large and boisterous ethnic minorities living in each nation whose ethnic culture and loyalties belonged to another nation. This factor was a source of internal agitation to hosting nations and as well as a source of temptation to the 'homeland' of these ethnic minorities to seek to acquire areas where their own ethnic people resided with the ethnic's minority groups' connivance. And this certainly did happen (examples, Danzig and Pomeranian Germans agitated for their return to Germany with Germany desiring to reannex those areas, the Sudeten Germans doing likewise, Alsace-Lorraine/Alsass-Lothringen in France constantly going back and forth between France and Germany from the 1700s forward, Lithuanian and Russian border disputes, Polish and Russian border disputes, German/Hungarian/Slav border disputes in the former Austria-Hungary empire nations, etc).

This massive shifting does seemed to have stabilised a large number of states into homogenous peoples and cultures, thus removing this great source of repeated agitation. It was ugly to do in the short term, but maybe it just prevented a vicious cycle from repeating itself once again. After all, the same problem exists in northern Ireland today with two sets of people of different culture, background and loyalties with historical animosity towards each other, and it's still an ugly and troubled experience to this date.

What do you all think of the post WWII shifting of ethnic peoples into their respective ethnic homeland borders as either a long term good idea or bad idea and/or any other commentary about that?

Good post OSB.

I agree that the post war displacements have produced some increase in stability, though I'm not sure at what cost yet. The only thing worse than political instability is racial purity and nationalism and Europe has not proven they are beyond THAT game yet. Even Germany still squawks about their Turkish immigrant and Poland makes me VERY nervous on this racism and nationalism issue these days.

That being said, the real place where the problem is most manifest is the Balkans - if there is any benefit to this policy, this is where it needs to be applied. The Ottomans did lots of shuffling of ethinics around in a policy of 'divide and rule' that was only matched by their Austro-Hungarian successors as rulers over the same territories who played the same games for the same reasons. The result is our Balkan powerderkeg.

I agree with your thoughts, though the price paid for the increase of ethnical stability was way too high.

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The straight talk express. You gotta love it.

And let's not forget all the German and other children bred and disposed of just for an experiment for the Nazi Regime.

These poor children were created just to strengthen the Aryan race. How sad that these children had no real parents; never ever had any ID that told them who they were; always lived in an orphanage; and after the war they were disposed of by putting them into mental hospitals claiming they were mentally sick. The Nazi couldn't wait to get rid of them because they were created out of wedlock and back then it was really frowned upon. And just having them around after the war was over, brought more attention to the Nazi's which they didn't want.
Many of them never ever knew they were part of the Leibensborn experiment. Talk about guinea pigs.

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Those people should definitely be remembered. But not unless the fact that it was their own government that put them in that position is also remembered.

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This massive shifting does seemed to have stabilised a large number of states into homogenous peoples and cultures, thus removing this great source of repeated agitation. It was ugly to do in the short term, but maybe it just prevented a vicious cycle from repeating itself once again. After all, the same problem exists in northern Ireland today with two sets of people of different culture, background and loyalties with historical animosity towards each other, and it's still an ugly and troubled experience to this date.

What do you all think of the post WWII shifting of ethnic peoples into their respective ethnic homeland borders as either a long term good idea or bad idea and/or any other commentary about that?[/quote]





I kind of disagree. The political and ethnical landscape in Europe was largely stabilized because of the cold war, where each country concerned was firmly anchored in one of the political camps, and such disputes where put aside because of that. Obviously the Poles had no opportunity to claim their lost homes in Ukraine or Belarus back from the Soviet Union and neither had the Germans. For the GDR this was not an issue officially and western Germany was on the other side. The expulsion was in ALL countries concerned obviously a human tragedy and i think we got out of the vicious circle in spite and not because of it. It needed courageous political leaders like Willy Brandt in western Germany who convinced the majority of voters that for the sake of future generations this painful reality had to be accepted and finally signed peace treaties with the countries concerned. But for example the german conservatives ( Brandt was a social democrat) for a long time ( and long after that ) harboured revisionist tendencies and Germany finally officially accepted the polish western Border in the two plus four treaties of 1990. The Union of the Expellees is up till today not doing much to help overcome historical tensions, and also on the polish side ( not that extreme in the Czech republic, i think) exaggerated fears of the Germans coming back to their ancient homelands linger on and disturb bilateral relations. The expulsion was creating an excellent breeding ground for hatred and revisionism and the cold war, the economic recovery , the european integration and more than forty years saved us from entering the vicious circle of constant revenge for something once again.
The Germans in the Soviet Union were not expelled by the way but shared the fate of many minorities under Stalin. They were deported from their homes in the Baltics or in the Wolga region and resettled in Central Asia and Sibiria. Most ended up in their "ethnical homeland" after 1990.

Well most of the Lebensborn children just ended up beeing adopted by normal families in Germany and abroad and never knew about their past. ( I once read about a number of them sent to the USA) Nobody had an ID or something that said "Lebensborn" I am not aware that they were put into mental asylums or something like that.
But at least this was a Nazi policy that did not result in death. Unlike than in the case of the approximately fifty children whose remains were uncovered in Germany in October. They had most likely been considered "not worthy to live" and been killed by Nazi doctors in a nearby hospital. There had been rumours around the town for long, but only after talking to a time witness a local administration official ordered excavations to begin. And they found a mass grave....


http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

Do you see any indication that this is not the case ?

The trend of German Rememberance for their WW2 victims should make anybody cautious of subverted attempts at rewriting history. But that's all it is. Being cautious. I didn't say otherwise.

__________________
Many bad policies are simply good policies taken too far.
-Thomas Sowell

Well the historical facts are well established with enough time witnesses still alive. No serious political force in Germany is engaging in any kind of rewriting of history.
The victims of the carpet bombings and of the expulsions were mainly civilians and non-combatants and i don´t see why anybody has to be cautious if past generations remember the very heavy price ordinary Germans had to pay themselves for Hitler.