Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1945-12-10
German ResettIement

The State Departments announce
ment Of a detailed plan for the re-
settlement of Germans removed
from their homes under the terms
of the transfer agreement reached
at the Potsdam Conference last
spring regularizes one of the most
tragic aspects of European recon-
struction. BY that agreement the
Big Three" decreed the expulsion
of more than 6,500,000 persons of
German blood and speech both from
former Reich territories assigned to
Poland and Russia and from ada
cent countries such as Czechoslo-
vakia and Hungary. The agreement
provided that these persons should
be transferred in humane and
orderly manner, but the Czecho-
slovak and Polish governments have
been acting unilaterally in violation
OF those provisions, causing grave
hardships and heavy loss of life
among the deportees. Under the
new arrangements, the process will
become an orderly one, proceeding
slowly through the winter months
and rising sharply to a peak during
the spring and summer until the
transfers are completed by August.
The deportees are to be resettled
according to geographical propin-
guilty. The American zone of the
Reich is to receive some 2,000,0 900
"Sudeten" Germans from adjoining
Czechoslovakia, while most of the
100000 deportees from Poland will
be split between the Russian and
British zones. The relatively small
balance (chief1y from Austria and
Hungary will be earmarked for the
French zone of occupation. When
the process is completed, the trun-
Gated Reich will have a population
of about 65,000,0O0, only 100000
fewer than before Hitlers annexa-
tons, but living in an area one
sixth smaller.
So far as the deportees themselves
are concerned, the great majority
deserve the fate which is Detailing
them. The well-nigh universal re-
Spouse, not merely OF the inhabi-
tants of the Reich, but also of the
German minorities elsewhere, to the
nfyiY, nf ~
and its innate right" to universal
domination has rendered Germans
anathema throughout Europe and
provokes general determination to
expel so dangerous and unassimil-
able an element Nevertheless, this
general prescription of Germans has
ominous connotations for the future.
In the first place, the injection of
these displaced millions in an al
ready ruined and diminished Reich
aggravates reconstruction problem
to point which may render it prac-
tically insoluble. Secondly, it gives
international legality to a practice
wholly foreign to modern civilized
procedure-the mass expulsion of
populations from their ancestral
homelands. Such a practice carries
us morally back to the days of
Assyria and Babylonia, which sys-
tematically uprooted conquered peo-
piles, as with the Lost Ten Tribes"
of Israel and the captive Jews who
"sat down beside the waters of
Babylon and wept."
Already the practice is being ex-
tended to others than Germans, be-
cause the Czechoslovak government
is doing the same thing to its Mag
var or Hungarian minority, while
the Soviet Union shuffles the peoples
within it's orbit like decks of cards.
Once accepted in international prac-
tice, no people can feel wholly safe.
1t thus adds another latent terror
to world brutalized by war and
subtly bereft of standards built up
during modern times to point our
fathers deemed inviolate.