page_title: Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)
section_title: Distrust and enmity
hierarchical_section_title: Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950) / Reasons and justifications for the expulsions / View of German minorities as potential fifth columns / Distrust and enmity
context_page_description: During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled or were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and the former German provinces of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia, which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. In 1957, Walter Schlesinger discussed reasons for these actions, which reversed the effects of German eastward colonization and expansion: he concluded, "it was a devastating result of twelve years of National Socialist Eastern Policy." The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories was considered by Winston Churchill and by the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments in London at least since 1942. In late 1944 the Czechoslovak exile government pressed the Allies to espouse the principle of German population transfers. On the other hand, Polish prime minister Tomasz Arciszewski, in an interview for The Sunday Times on 17 December 1944, supported the annexation of Warmia-Masuria, Opole Regency, north-east parts of Lower Silesia, and parts of Pomerania, but he opposed the idea of expulsion.
context_section_description: One of the reasons given for the population transfer of Germans from the former eastern territories of Germany was the claim that these areas had been a stronghold of the Nazi movement. Neither Stalin nor the other influential advocates of this argument required that expellees be checked for their political attitudes or their activities. Even in the few cases when this happened and expellees were proven to have been bystanders, opponents or even victims of the Nazi regime, they were rarely spared from expulsion. Polish Communist propaganda used and manipulated hatred of the Nazis to intensify the expulsions.
  With German communities living within the pre-war borders of Poland, there was an expressed fear of disloyalty of Germans in Eastern Upper Silesia and Pomerelia, based on wartime Nazi activities. Created on order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, a Nazi ethnic German organisation called Selbstschutz carried out executions during Intelligenzaktion alongside operational groups of German military and police, in addition to such activities as identifying Poles for execution and illegally detaining them.
  To Poles, expulsion of Germans was seen as an effort to avoid such events in the future. As a result, Polish exile authorities proposed a population transfer of Germans as early as 1941. The Czechoslovak government-in-exile worked with the Polish government-in-exile towards this end during the war.
caption: Votes for the Nazi Party in the March 1933 elections