Talk:German exodus from Central and Eastern Europe

message: My comment is against the proposed merger of "Expulsion of Germans after World War II" into this article.  I think that while there was certainly a mass exodus of the German people from Eastern Europe, there is a great difference between "exodus" and "expulsion."  The word "exodus" does not account for the 3 million people who died on the forced march.  It also does not account for the brutality and wrongdoing of the expelling peoples, including rape and infanticide.  This is not to say that there was no wrongdoing from the Germans, but this article is specifically refering to what happened to them after the war.  Therefore the two should remain separate, or, if anything, combined into a larger article that could contain both, ie like Cautious suggested below "Fall of German Populations in Eastern Europe."
Cautious, I moved the project from your talk page to your main User page. The purpose is to enable people to comment the article here instead of your talk page. I hope you don't mind.Halibutt 14:48, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed Merger 

message: Resources:
Niemcy na Pomorzu Gdanskim
Germans in Slovenia
The expulsion of the Germans is a big cultural loss for those areas. The new inhabitants have never managed to fill those historical and cultural wastelands with new life.
It is probably the same everywhere where people were forced out of their home countries.--92.224.205.0 (talk) 20:25, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This sort of thinking still goes on?? Hungarian, Romanian and Slavic culture goes on w/o the Germans very nicely.HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Nonsensical

message: Is this topic still disputed? It sure needs some editing. If there is no objection, i'd like to remove the tag and start with some editing to make it more readable.
--The Minister of War 11:39, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disputed? 

message: There is no war Polish and Czech historians against German historians. The division exists mainly between German historians. 
Xx236 14:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just about all historians on the war believe that, although saddened in how it was carried out in many areas, the only way to have eliminated German nationalism/imperialism/pan-Germanism as a cause for a possible THIRD world war was to expel ethnic Germans from those territories.  It also undoubtably saved many of them from reprisal murders in those areas in the years after WW2.  Please educate yourself on the literature on this topic, and see what the percentages actually are. Additionally, Stalin stated the opinion of many Russians when he said that Russia could not afford to fight Germany every generation, which was a real fear at the time. HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:44, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of German victims 

message: In "Territorial claims of German nationalists" it had been written that:
"German nationalists used the existence of large German minorities in other countries as a basis for territorial claims."
This is inaccurate since not every country with a german minority had to fear german claim. Romania had never been asked to give transylvania over to Germany, as hadn't been Hungary to transfer its german speaking areas. 
Which is true is that the status of the territory annexed by Poland and partly of the Czechoslovakia after the war had not been accepted by most of the germans. The presence of germans in these territories can be explained with the fact that it either had been part of germany until the end of WW1, barely 15 years before the Hilter's size of power, or was part of a multi-ethnic state which had been dissolved in the end of WW1, without the germans given the chance to choose their state as promised by Wilson. 
"The "Heim ins Reich" rhetoric of the Nazis over the continued disjoint status of enclaves such as Danzig and Königsberg was an agitating factor in the politics leading up to World War II..."
This merges two topics on a diffused way. Königsberg was the capital of the prussian province of "East Prussia", which has been divorced of Germany after WW1 by the "Polish Corridor", which had been the prussian province of "West Prussia" with Danzig as its capital. 
East Prussia had economical problems by being cut of from the rest of germany, while Danzig had been forcefully recreated in the "Free City of Danzig" under the "protection" of the League of Nations. Indeed this meant for Danzig to be independent against the will of the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants(95% were germans to this time) who wished a reunification with Germany. 
Sure this gave many reasons for trouble.
"According to the 1920 Czechoslovakian constitution, German minority rights were carefully protected; their educational and cultural institutions were preserved in proportion to the population."
In proportion to the population the germans made the second largest group in the Czechoslovakia without it being given the rights of independece as the slovaks had. 
Even when this article shouldn't go into detail too much, it should be noticed that the germans in the Sudetenland had voted for being part of "Deutschösterreich", forming the rest of the german-speaking territory of the former monarchy of Habsburg, but were being invaded by the czech military.
This was one of the main reasons why the germans abandoned this republic in 1938.  
The points above may have been written this way because of the lack of time or knowledge, but for a neutral point of view it is important to know all details of the moved history of the germans in this region.
The Germans wanted self-determination, but they were disadvantaged. Czechs were settled into German areas to weaken the Germans, to impose the Czech language and culture. The Czech president Masaryk even called them "settlers" after 800 years there.--92.230.234.147 (talk) 21:35, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The Talk Pages are for the discussion of Reliable Sources for the benefit of the articles, which you don't cite anywhere in your statement above. HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:48, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with some definitions 

message: Some articles contain sometimes the same informations:
*Recovered Territories
*Historical Eastern Germany
*Evacuation of East Prussia
*Expulsion of Germans after World War II
Isn't it too much?
Xx236 12:49, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger 

message: The discussion about the number of German victims is here Estimates of number of deaths in connection with expulsion of Germans after WWII. 
Xx236 07:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:   more than 2.5 million lost their lives  

message: "politicians who certain Germans claim play the anti-German card for political reasons"
I would rather say, that elderly people are more critical, than the majority of the politicians. One of the main Polish politicians Donald Tusk has probably German family. Quite many German texts about the expulsion sound crazy for many Poles, so we don't need any politicians to lead us.
Xx236 15:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polish criticism of German "revisionism" 

message: The Potsdam Agreement paragraph says something different.
Xx236 13:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about, "The expulsion of up to 100% of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe was tolerated by the Potsdam Agreement, which stated that the process should be undertaken in a 'humane' and 'orderly' manner, though it failed to specify detailed rules for the population transfers, or supervision of the process to prevent crimes against the transferred populations."?ANNRC (talk) 03:55, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  was tolerated by the Potsdam Agreement 

message: I hope I have wikified the article to the satisfaction of those editing here. Can I suggest your next steps to improvement? 
I take it that the page is not going to be merged with Expulsion of Germans after World War II. Therefore it might be useful to think again about the scope of this article. It is not currently clear when the exodus that this article deals with began. After WWI, I guess, but there is far too much detail, to my mind, about how German speakers came to be living in eastern countries. The reader will be worn out before getting to the actual exodus. 
:This is my fault.  I originally wrote that stuff as background for the Expulsion of Germans after World War II and then moved it here because it was applicable here as well.  Any suggestions for cutting it down would be appreciated.  --Richard 17:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your comment. I'm going to boldly cut most of the history out, and then you can feel free either to undo the whole edit or put back piecemeal anything you consider essential. I don't get on with sandboxes much. Just see how it looks. I'm not going to hang around to defend my changes. Itsmejudith 17:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further improvements 

message: User:Itsmejudith trimmed the "Background" section which is a great improvement.  However, in doing so, she dropped the following paragraph:
:The expulsion of Germans after World War II must be interpreted in the context of the evolution of global nationalism in general and European nationalism in particular. It is also useful to compare the mass migrations and forced expulsion of ethnic Germans out of Eastern Europe with other massive transfers of populations, such as exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey and population exchange that occurred after the Partition of India.  In all cases those expelled suffered greatly.
I think some of the above information is useful even if the wording could be improved.  What do you think?
--Richard 19:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree the major trim was an improvement, but perhaps a shortened version of the paragraph Richard cites could be restored. Jd2718 19:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My advice, for what it's worth, is to refer to what good historians say about this, rather than the views of lay editors. The phrase "must be interpreted", in an unsourced paragraph, rang alarm bells for me. If the context is important, could it not be enough to refer the reader to ethnic cleansing? I'll leave it to your collective wisdom to consider this though, and won't be watching the page any more. Itsmejudith 23:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think she's right even though I wrote the paragraph in question.  Anybody know of a good source for this material?  --Richard 00:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shortening the "Background" section 

message: User:IZAK just put a disambig line at the head of the German exodus from Eastern Europe article that says "For other uses, see Exodus (disambiguation)."
Why is this necessary?  I don't see any way that someone could come to that article and not know what it was about or, frankly, have gotten there by accident and actually want to get to any of the other articles in the disambig page instead.
IZAK, can you explain your reasoning to me?  I'm totally befuddled.
--Richard 07:33, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  link to disambig page 

message: There is no Polish minority according to German law, so there are no rights. Even German Wikipedia says so :de:Polnische Minderheit in Deutschland. Xx236 (talk) 15:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: True regarding German law, but that doesn't mean they had no rights. The source   and  sum up the relevant issue. Sciurinæ (talk) 15:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Absurd claims 

message: It contains some true aspects, in that as far as I know, it was the largest exodus in history and that it was not carried out in a truly humane manner - but not "utmost brutality", either. Wordings like "terrorist actions" are POV and "two million were murdered", not only is emotional wording, but it's also incorrect as that would imply that they were all killed rather than died in part in snowstorms and the like. It is also biased in that the historians Overmanns and Haar, by contrast, argue that 500,000-600,000 is more realistic. Sciurinæ (talk) 13:00, 1 July 2008 
(UTC)
15 million Germans were expelled, 3 million of whom died during expulsion. Those numbers are generally accepted in history.--92.224.205.0 (talk) 19:51, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edit wave 

message: Recent edit taken from the article to the talk:
German nationalists used the existence of large German minorities in other countries as a basis for territorial claims. However one has to distinguish between small German minorities who were scattered all over Eastern Europe like e.g. German Sprachinseln(Language Islands) in Czech territory, and German native land that had been cut off from their nation by the controversial Treaty of Versailles like the Sudetenland, a German-speaking traditionally Austrian Territory for over hundreds of years which had been incorparated into a multi-ethnic Czechoslovokian state against people's will. Taking into account that in this Czech-dominated state less than half of its population were Czechs, it is doubtful whether the term "minorities" can be applied at all for this former state. Likewise, the Treaty of Versailles had put 2 Million Germans in former Posen-Westprussia and Upper Silesia under Polish rule, against people's will; altogether 10 Million Germans had been placed under foreign rule, their right of self-determination had been violated, and they had not been allowed by the Allies to vote about their own fate in their Parliament.
The above is an interesting point of view, but belongs to the discussion page rather than the article itself. The conclusions below are simply false.
The Governments of Czechoslovakia and Poland had persecuted and oppressed those Volksdeutsche (Ethnic Germans) in those territories, which implied torture and murder in many cases by the Poles and which to led to at least 700 000 Germans escaping the Polish-occupied land. The German minorities and the German government had filed several thousand protests to the then League of Nations, but without any consequence. In Polish-occupied Posen-Westprussia the oppression of the German population on their own homeland was so strong, that within few years the majority had fled; of about 1 Million Germans (1920) only 300 000 remained by 1926.
Not to mention the POV wording. --Lysytalk 19:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Incorrect - Wilson wished that the treaty settlement would be based upon his suggested "Fourteen Points" - but he was 1) not the head of the only Allied Power at Versailles, and 2) he couldn't possibly "promise" anything, especially in areas where Allied, let alone American, troops were not present to enforce policy. HammerFilmFan (talk) 23:02, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  German pre-WW2 minorities 

message: "The northeastern third of East Prussia was directly annexed by the Soviet Union and remains part of Russia today."
Not Exactly!  How about the more realistic context: "The Northern part of East Prussia was placed under Soviet Administration, pending the final Peace Treaty.  The 1990 Peace Treaty in effect permanently assigned that Soviet administered area to the Soviet Union.  In that regard, Russia is the internationally recognized successor state to the Soviet Union."ANNRC (talk) 04:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Potsdam Conference 

message: To the reverting linguist Mendaliv:  Is it your position that the Potsdam Agreement didn't provide for the expulsion of 100% of the people identified by the "authorities" of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary as "ethnic Germans"?  Are you saying that those "authorities" were somehow limited by International Law from making a "Clean Sweep" if it had been in their interests to do so, whether it be in the then immediate future, or some time later?  Please explain your interpretation of International Law which justifies your revert.ANNRC (talk) 02:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe was tolerated by the Potsdam Agreement 

message: I consider this article very biased and one-sided. Alone calling the expulsion of Germans "exodus" is historical incorrect (it make associations to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt - THE exodus; but that was totally different).
The article states at the beginning: 
"These were part of negotiated agreements between the victorious Allies to redraw national borders and arrange for "orderly population transfers" to remove ethnic minorities that were viewed as "troublesome"."
Well, Silesia, Pomerania or East Prussia had been territories with only or predominantly German population of what the plebiscites after WWI had clearly given evidence. Polish nationalists used the existence of small Polish minorities as a basis for territorial claims... Not the Germans had been "minorities" - in those eastern German territories. The western Allies/world new this more or less but they needed Stalin and so they accepted the annexation of huge German territories by Stalin & Poland.
BTW: After Hitler invaded in Czechoslovakia in 1939 Poland invaded Czechoslovakia, too.
Then the article states:
"In effect, the final agreements compensated Poland with 112,000 km² of former German territories for the 187,000 km² located east of the Curzon line, which would now be part of the USSR."
There were no final agreements. The Potsdam Agreement left open the question about the Polish-German border.
"It was also decided that all ethnic Germans remaining in the new and old Polish territories should be expelled, to prevent any claims of minority rights or possible land claims by any future German government."
Who did decide this? Of course Stalin/Poland decided it, because the Potsdam Agreement put the German territories only under Polish administration (no territorial sovereignty). German minorities had to be transferred from Poland but not from German territory. If you do not believe this then please, read the "Speech of Hope" (6.9.1946) of US Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes - who participated at the Potsdam Conference.
Poles not alone expelled but also annihilated the German population - especially in Upper Silesia (Lamsdorf/Łambinowice) - exactly as mentioned in the article "to prevent any claims of minority rights or possible land claims..." ...well, by the offspring...".
Wikiferdi (talk) 21:56, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polemic and historical incorrect article 

message: "50% of the Germans residing in areas annexed by Germany during WWII and almost 100% residing in unannexed occupied areas were evacuated" - alleged quote from Nitschke. Nitschke informs only that some authors use such method. Xx236 (talk) 10:48, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misquotation 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:World War II evacuation and expulsion which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RFC bot 01:00, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Move discussion in process

message: This whole article is a mess and full of absolutely wrong numbers and even absurd racist comments.
Obviously, it is either written from antigerman people, or brainwashed germans. It indicates that the most expelled (or murdered) germans lived in territories the nazis occupied in WW2, but by far the most of the expelled and killed lived in territories which were for centuries only german settled. The genocide on the "Donauschwaben" from Vojwodina, the Germans from Russia (who were deported or executed in 1940 as traitors although they never saw a german soldier) and others are not even mentioned.
I even missed the expression "genocide" in this article and introduced it. Together with the genocide on the anatolian christians 1915-1923 and the genocide on the european jews, the genocide on the east european germans was the worst crime in history. And it was not the consequence of Nazi politics, it was the consequence of germany incabability to defense itself in 1945, polish plans to conquer Silesia etc were long before the war made. Don`t forget that Poland occupied -together with nazigermany- Cechoslovakia in 1938... Cheers Lüderitz —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.73.210.154 (talk) 15:14, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The whole article 

message: One or more portions of this article duplicated other source(s).  Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you.  Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:55, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem removed 

message: " The exodus ... and was implicated in the rise of Nazism. "
That doesn't make any sense - poorly worded.  HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: So, what are we really trying to say here?  Was there an influx of Eastern Germans into the Weimar Republic in the 1920s?  Did that influx result in the growth of the concept of Lebensraum and Heim ins Reich?  If so, it's news to me but that is what is suggested by the phrase "and was implicated in the rise of Nazism".  --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 14:59, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  this needs to be rephrased in the Lede - 

message: The lead suggests continuous exodus. Germans invaded and occupied a big part of Eastern Europe 1939-1944.Xx236 (talk) 08:14, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: More importantly, the word exodus is not used in this article even once beyond the single paragraph of wp:lede which is not supported by an inline citation. Clearly, there's a bigger problem here. Poeticbent talk 04:33, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Addendum. Assuming good faith and all, as I look further into this matter, the more violations of our norms and practices I notice. According to  WP:COPYPASTE (about copying and pasting from one Wikipedia article to another): "Copying more than one paragraph is content forking and is to be avoided." The Wikipedia:Content forking policy/guideline makes it even clearer. "A point of view (POV) fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines... All POV forks are undesirable on Wikipedia... Wikipedia does not view article forking as an acceptable solution to disagreements between contributors..." And finally: "The most blatant POV forks are those which insert consensus-dodging content under a title that should clearly be made a redirect to an existing article." Here's where the magic word exodus comes in. It is an idea, not a subject, because the subject is already covered by other articles including Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950), Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II and other articles in the :Category:Ethnic cleansing of Germans, a WP:REDFLAG in its own right. Poeticbent talk 20:08, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The original article started with "dawn of German East", so it was probably the title.Xx236 (talk) 12:58, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

text: History of Pomerania (1945–present) presents the same informations and opinions. Xx236 (talk) 06:32, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The lead 

message: I have checked a number of refrences, at least one doesn't work, alleged 1931 data contain a 1900 map.Xx236 (talk) 06:23, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor sources