1944 and 1945 saw industrial-scale ethnic cleansing in the eastern part of Germany. Following frontier changes mandated by the Soviet Union and her allies Poland had moved and Danzig had become Gdańsk, so that when Bartsch was released in June 1945 there could be no question of going home. Instead he made his way to Saxony-Anhalt in the central part of Germany which was now being administered as the Soviet occupation zone. The slaughter of war had left a desperate shortage of working age labour, and during 1945/46 Karl-Heinz Bartsch worked as a farm labourer on the Lutzfeld estate. Passing his Abitur back in 1940/41 would, under peacetime conditions, have opened the way to university-level education, and in 1946, with the war over, he enrolled at the Martin Luther University in Halle. He emerged in 1949 with a degree in Agriculture.