Talk:Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)/Archive 3

message: "The Potsdam Agreement called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans between American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones in Germany. In actuality, twice as many expelled Germans found refuge in the occupation zones that later formed "West Germany" than in "East Germany", and large numbers went to other countries of the world, many to the United States."
To me this says that a greater than intended number of displaced Germans settled in the East rather than the West, given that the West was made of of three ocupation zones while the East was just one. This is the opposite of what the second sentance seems to primarily convey. matturn 14:40, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Partial reason could be logistical and economical problems of Soviets in their occupation zone. E.g. during first half of 1946 Soviets stopped transfers from Czechoslovakia there.  (page 226). Pavel Vozenilek 22:13, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not questioning whether it's true or not, rather that one sentance (to my reading) is saying one thing, while the next is implying the opposite. matturn 08:34, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

text: I might note here that when Stalin said at Potsdam that the Poles "were taking revenge for the injuries which the Germans had caused them in the course of centuries", Churchill retorted that this revenge "took the form of throwing the Germans into the American and British zones to be fed." (US Dept of State, Foreign Relations of the US, The Conference of Berlin (Potsdam) 1945, vol. II p. 384).Bdell555 23:13, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor Point 

message: I've removed "and at the same time to create ethnically homogenous nation states that would not give rise to the kind of ethnic tensions that had preceded the war"
because it implies that Pomerania, East Prussia, and Silesia were not ethnically homogenous.  In fact these areas would have met most persons' definition of ethnically homogeneous.  Had pre-war Polish and Soviet boundaries not been moved, it would have been unnecessary to expel Germans who were living within pre-war German boundaries on "ethnically homogenous" grounds.  The expellees were expelled because the expellers believed that the borders would be moved.  If one is going to provide more reasons for the expulsion than that, then one must examine the reasons for why the borders were going to be moved.  But ethnic homogenity was not among those reasons for moving the German borders west of their 1938 boundaries since the population within those borders was predominately German.  In short, this was an objective of the post-WWI territorial arrangments, but not post-WWII.Bdell555 22:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a difficult issue because there is pre-Munich Agreement Czechoslovakia and then there is post-Munich Agreement Czechoslovakia.  There is also the fact that Slovakia was rejoined to Czechoslovakia; - that part of the country declared independence in March 1939 (whether it was truly independent is another question).  Anyway, it is perhaps a minor point... I just wanted to call attention to the fact there are two issues here: the expulsion issue and the border change issue.Bdell555 00:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Such was official stand of Czechoslovakia then. (The term used was Czechoslovak, Czechs and Slovaks were officially considered as two branches of one nation.) Pavel Vozenilek 22:52, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "to create ethnically homogenous states