Talk:Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)/Archive 8

message: Should this be "the expulsion" or "the expulsions" ? --Lysytalk 12:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plural or not ? 

message: I'm concerned about the sentence: "The Oder-Neiße Line had historically been a border of the Polish dynasty of Piasten, had been object of nationalist dreams and was actively pursued by the Polish exile government in London". As far as I know the Polish government in exile actually stated that it was not interested in having Breslau or Stettin within the borders of Poland and it was the Soviets and their puppet Polish government who pushed the border further west. (I understand that "Piasten" used above is German word for the Piast dynasty). --Lysytalk 14:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The script from Frankfurt University which I referred to there says that the Polish exile government would have preferred to have Poland in the pre-war borders, but, under the Soviet pressure, also drew up plans for incorporating Breslau, Stettin etc, which went further than the British government envisaged at that time and actually created concerns that this would have to mean a really massive transfer of populations.
With all the respect, I think we should look for some better research sources than Frankfurt Uni scripts. Of course they are zillion times better than my sources which are presently none. I'll try to find something but probably not within next days. Maybe others could help on this in the meantime. What I remember is that the PL exile government actually pressed the other way round, and that the Western allies started to revise their plans when they realised that Poles were not so happy with "the gift" but it was too late already and the Soviet pressure was too strong for them to withdraw. Any comments anyone ? --Lysytalk 22:31, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

text: This would be really worth documenting in the article if it could be tied to a verifiable reliable source.  --Richard 08:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Did it ? --Lysytalk 09:37, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Anyway, here is one reliable source that I found, the letter of US ambassador Averell W. Harimann to Secretary of State Edward Stettinus (December 19th, 1944), published in "Sprawa polska w czasie drugiej wojny światowej na arenie międzynarodowej. Zbiór dokumentów" (translation back into English mine): [...] during his stay in Moscow, Stanisław Mikołajczyk expressed a view, that he was not sure if moving the Polish border to Oder, particularly beyond Stettin and Breslau, would be a wise move, as these cities and some of the regions were almost completely German. --Lysytalk 19:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  actively pursued by the Polish exile government ? 

message: Well, I agree that, pending someone actually coughing up sources documenting a "debate about the morality of the expulsions", the phrase can go.  That phrase was a compromise crafted as the result of a short edit war between me and another editor who was pushing the "expulsions were justified" POV. 
I changed the last part of the last sentence to change "unmet demands" to "contentious demands" because "unmet" has a faint suggestion that the demands should be met.  I don't feel strongly about this but I think "contentious" is more solidly NPOV.
More importantly, the grammatical construction of the sentence was such that it implied that there were "unmet demands for the characterization of the reasons for the expulsions".  In a convoluted way, this is sort of true in that the Federation of Expellees is demanding that the Polish, Czech and other governments officially characterize the reasons as being "immoral" and therefore apologize for them.  However, this line of reasoning requires the reader to jump through too many mental hoops and it's preferable to just say what we mean outright.  I pulled this idea out into a separate sentence so that "characterization of the reasons" would not be associated with "demands" in the way that the previous version had it.
--Richard 15:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changed last paragraph of intro 

message: Is the expulsion both the evacuation process and the later deportations ? They seem to be two distinct processes, the first one was organised by Germans, the latter by Poles. Is it just my poor understanding of English ? --Lysytalk 06:04, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evacutaion and deportations 

message: I just wanted to quickly comment that this is pretty awkward language and I'm not sure the meaning is right.  I hesitate to make a change, as I'm just looking to clean up prose and there are obviously some dedicated editors here who know much more about the subject than I and who are paying particular attention to word choice.
As I understand the phrase, "correspond to" expresses the concept that objects which are classified in different sets are similar in some aspect, whether in their relation to other members of the set or in terms of their characteristics.  I don't think either is what is intended here.  Rather, I think the point is that "ethnic cleansing" is a general category describing various means and methods which all have the effect, and intent, of changing the distribution of ethnic groups within a population - this is how it is described on the ethnic cleansing page.    Part of the problem I think is that "ethnic cleansing" is not a very-well defined word in English, at least gramatically-speaking.  Sertorius 13:42, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right that these sentences may be awkward and tricky but are contentious at the same time. They may need improvement but it is difficult as the current wording is a result of a fragile consensus. I understand your arguments but claiming that something "can be defined" as crimes against humanity, where in fact it was not [defined as such], would beg for some support in sources. Otherwise it'd be again only Wikipedia editors' opinion that could be easily challenged. --Lysytalk 18:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Correspond to" ethnic cleansing 

message: *Such conditions were standart conditions of life in Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. 
*The expulsion of Germans isn't commonly considered to be crimes against humanity. 
Xx236 14:35, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, these may have been standard conditions but for Jews, Poles or Russians, not for Germans. Anyway, it seems a poor excuse. --Lysytalk 18:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While I don't think that we need to "start one new war in WIkipedia", there's a good point that starting the article with allegations of "crime against humanity" is not up to current wikipedia standards. I've randomly checked a couple of articles, including Warsaw Uprising (e.g. using civilians as human shields), Bombing of Warsaw in World War II (bombing hospitals) or Łapanka (deporting random civilians to labour or concentration camps) to see if any "war crimes" or other criminal behaviour against civilians is similarly discussed there. Why is it so important to mention it in the lead of this particular article then ? --Lysytalk 07:41, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

text: OK, all we need to do is to find a WP:RS to confirm that assertion. --Lysytalk 21:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, should have posted the links.  Expulsions are clearly "crimes against humanity" under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.  Part 2, Article 7, section 1(d).  http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/icc/statute/part-a.htm#2.  As to international law as it existed in 1945, as long as we don't want to get into a debate about the legality of the Nuremberg Tribunal, Article 6 section (c) of the London Charter defines deportation and other inhumane acts against civilians as "crimes against humanity."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Charter_of_the_International_Military_Tribunal.  Sertorius 00:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks, I've already realized this and changed the sentence in the lead to hopefully reflect that deportations are considered "crimes against humanity". --Lysytalk 05:05, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  commonly understood to be crimes against humanity 

message: Stalin designed the border between Soviet lands and the outside world before the division of Germany was decided. The central point were Sudeten. The Oder-Neisse line was the result of strategic planning, a short line from Sudeten to the Świnoujście war harbor. All reasons quoted in the article are rationalizations, speculations or propaganda. Stalin carefully planned post-war Europe, not housing for poor Poles.
Xx236 08:36, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strategic meaning of the Oder-Neisse line 

message: The Erika Steinbach article has been protected to encourage editors to resolve an edit war over the wording of her place of birth (in essence Rahmel vs. Rumia and text describing its location in German-occupied Poland).  There is a vote going on at Talk:Erika Steinbach regarding how to word the place of birth.  Please express your opinion on this issue if you have one.
--Richard 20:23, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Offtopic discussion removed. Kusma (討論) 15:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Kusma, could you please point me to the policy which says that discussions should be removed from talk pages? Szopen 15:35, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is a loooong discussion about this policy/guideline question in the "Deleting contributions which are inconsistent with the purpose of Talk Pages" section on Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines.  Policies and guidelines do not clearly allow removal of material from Talk Pages.  In fact, it is explicitly discouraged.  However, it is legitimate to archive or refactor discussions to remove unrelated material.  User:Kusma did neither, he just deleted it.  That seems inappropriate although I understand and agree with Kusma's point.  I have copied the text from the edit history and moved the discussion over to Talk:Erika Steinbach where it belongs.  --Richard 15:57, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Moving it there was probably better than just deleting it. But in the interest of keeping talk pages focused on the improvement of the article, I think removing an offtopic discussion every now and then serves as a good reminder of the talk page guidelines. As it says there, "Keep on topic: Talk pages are not for general conversation. Keep discussions on the topic of how to improve the associated article.". Kusma (討論) 20:57, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birthplace of Erika Steinbach 

message: Would someone please be intrested in taking a look at the discussion on this page. The accuracy of the English "Expulsions" article is challenged with reference to the German "Expulsion" article and the "higher reliability" (my interpretation) of the users of the latter article.--Stor stark7 Talk 16:43, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Talk:History_of_Germany_since_1945]]

message: I inserted the Map showing which parts of Germany that the Allies gave to Poland and the USSR, and from which all the population was expelled. 
This is the main area of expulsion, and should be shown graphically so the reader understands what is being discussed.
The second larger area of expulsions is the Sudetenland, which also should have a map.
Of course I agree that the best choise would be a special map showing all the population expulsions, but until there is such a one I believe the image above is far better than not having any image at all.
The prefered images would probably look something like what can be found on the web using that Google thingy. 
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*[http://bdv-hessen.de/page_heimat_karte1.html
--Stor stark7 Talk 14:27, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Something like this one would probably best. The current map is irrelevant and actually may lead to misinterpretations, therefore does not belong to the article. I'd like to also correct your statement that your map shows the areas "from which all the population was expelled". This is actually an example of the misinterpretation that I had in mind. Firstly, these areas were not homogeneously German populated. Then, while it might be true that  all the German population escaped or was killed or deported from Kaliningrad area, this is not true for Poland, where about 10-20% of the pre-war German population stayed. --Lysytalk 14:49, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A new map would of course require that someone makes it, or gets permission to use an existing one, which will probably be some time. Meanwhile, to give the readers some context of exactly what is mean by "eastern" europe the map would serve its purpose by showing which parts were Eastern Germany, and which parts were Eastern Europe. Feel free to edit the caption of the image so that there is no missunderstanding, i.e 1: Not all Germans were expelled, just most of them, and 2: There was a Polish minority within the 1937 borders of eastern Germany. --Stor stark7 Talk 15:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This article needs a map/maps showing where the expulsions were from.

message: I took this out ...
Blame must also be shared by the Nazi regime and the Germans who supported them, because if not for those Germans, the Second World War, and this event, would not have occurred.
... because we could get into a technical pissing contest by moving back in time.  Using the logic of someone's line up there is like blaming Jewish people's not converting to Christianity avoid anti-semitism.  If we want to assign blame to the Nazi regime here for the German explusions, we must then blame Britian and France for creating Nazi Germany out of their own war crimes and victomization after the cease-fire (tie) or WWI. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.69.36.139 (talk • contribs) 
: Thanks for explaining your deletion here on the Talk Page.  I agree that the deleted text should not be in the article.  --Richard 19:57, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, I have reverted this assuming it was not explained (from the edit summary), and only now found the explanation again. Still, I do not agree with removal of this text. If the blame is to be assigned at all, it should stay. The link between WW2 and the expulsions is direct, obvious and indisputable. --Lysytalk 22:32, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  What, if the Nazis had been nicer conquerors, the Poles wouldn't have expelled the Germans?  This strikes me as a simplistic view.  I think you have to look further to the whole concept of ethnic nation-states.  The whole 20th century was caught up in the idea of nationalities and having one nation for one nationality.  Even now, you have devolution in the United Kingdom which is pushing Scots, Welsh and English nationalities over British nationality.  Same in the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union.  Nazi atrocities contributed to the rationale for the expulsions but were not necessarily motivated solely or even primarily by them.  --Richard 22:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Not motivated, but contributed not only to the rationale but also to the very act of expulsions. There's been several waves of expulsions in different territories. Some of them have been Soviet/Polish communist organised, while some were more spontaneous ("get rid of the nasty Germans"). In some areas, where the Polish-German relations were friendlier (e.g. in Greater Poland), Polish administration attempted to oppose the expulsions. Of course this was not successful in the long term, as overall attitude was very anti-German. But one can argue that if Poles opposed the expulsion in more areas and more consistently, then the scale of the event would be much smaller and less tragic. --Lysytalk 07:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessing blame expulsions - section removed