Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) | Wikipedia audio article
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Date: 2018-11-28

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Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50)

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SUMMARY
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During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, German citizens and people of German ancestry fled or were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries and sent to the remaining territory of Germany and Austria. After 1950, some emigrated to the United States, Australia, and other countries from there. The areas affected included the former eastern territories of Germany, which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after the war, as well as Germans who were living within the prewar borders of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic States. The Nazis had made plans—only partially completed before the Nazi defeat—to remove many Slavic and Jewish people from Eastern Europe and settle the area with Germans. The post-war expulsion of the Germans formed a major part of the geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II, that attempted to create ethnically homogeneous nations within redefined borders. Between 1944 and 1948 about 31 million people, including ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) as well as German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe.By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. The West German government put the total at 14 million, including ethnic German migrants to Germany after 1950 and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from preexisting German territories ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union (about 7 million), and from Czechoslovakia (about 3 million). During the Cold War, the West German government also counted as expellees 1 million foreign colonists settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000, up to a West German demographic estimate from the 1950s of over 2 million. More recent estimates by some historians put the total at 500-600,000 attested deaths; they maintain that the West German government figures lack adequate support and that during the Cold War the higher figures were used for political propaganda. The German Historical Museum puts the figure at 600,000, maintaining that the figure of 2 million deaths in the previous government studies cannot be supported. The current official position of the German government is that the death toll resulting from the flight and expulsions ranged from 2 to 2.5 million civilians.
The removals occurred in three overlapping phases, the first of which was the organized evacuation of ethnic Germans by the Nazi government in the face of the advancing Red Army, from mid-1944 to early 1945. The second phase was the disorganised fleeing of ethnic Germans immediately following the Wehrmacht's defeat.  The third phase was a more organised expulsion following the Allied leaders' Potsdam Agreement, which redefined the Central European borders and approved expulsions of ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Many German civilians were sent to internment and labour camps where they were used as forced labour as part of German reparations to countries in eastern Europe. The major expulsions were complete in 1950. Estimates for the total number of people of German ancestry still living in Central and Eastern Europe in 1950 range from 700,000 to 2.7 million.