Talk:Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)/Archive 9

message: I've shuffled a bit the subsections of the "Controversy over reasons and justifications for the expulsions":
Moved "An attempt to restore pre-Nazi demographics in the areas where native populations were displaced by Nazi ethnic cleansing and expansion." to the bottom and "Compensation to Poland for territories occupied by the Soviet Union". Still, I have to admit, I'm not feeling comfortable about this section and would prefer that we leave it until later. The reasons given are of various weight, some are Poland-specific, others are more general, most of them are just speculations (although often very reasonable), and all this lacks any support in sources. It's also highly controversial and we could discuss it for ages without much progress. So my suggestion is to leave it for now and focus on the more general problems of the article instead. --Lysytalk 17:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was perhaps most recently responsible for this "Controversy..." section.  It was part of my effort to help resolve edit-warring and POV pushing by including all POVs in the article (and in one place rather than spread all over the article).  I tried to order the reasons somewhat but I wasn't sure what weight to give to the various reasons so there was a certain amount of randomness to the order.  I agree that the varous reasons need to be grounded in the sources and preferably attached to citations.  I am not familiar enough with the topic and the sources to do this.  I assumed that, somewhere out there, there was a reliable source for each of the reasons and I repeatedly urged the warring POV-pushers to document their claims.  Remember, we're not trying to say that any of the purported reasons is a "valid" reason.  We're simply trying to assert that some reliable source asserted it as a reason.  Ideally, this source would be one of the key decision makers: e.g. a leader such as Churchill, Stalin or Roosevelt or an act of Parliament or the U.S. Congress.  Failing that, the work of a historian or politician would help.  Feel free to use  tags liberally throughout the section.  It's time we made this section more encyclopedic. --Richard 18:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see and I think you did a good job by isolating all these cases. I'm still having some problems making a clear difference between individual points, but I believe this can be discussed later. --Lysytalk 22:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, I think the discussion can be deferred.  For now, I will just make the point that this section has gotten messy because every so often some POV-pushing German or Pole comes along (usually an anon IP) and insists on inserting their particular POV.  This usually winds up in the "Reasons" section and, after a while, the section got messy.  I kind of lost interest in keeping it neat.  I guess I just got ground down from trying to fight the POV-pushing.  --Richard 22:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of  reasons and justifications for the expulsions 

message: OK, I reviewed the text that was moved to the German exodus from Eastern Europe article.
I think the problem is that some topics should be discussed in this article, some in that article and some in both articles.  Here is my first cut
6.1 Cold War assessments of the expulsions (here definitely, maybe in the Exodus article also)
6.2 Expelled Germans in postwar Germany    (mostly in the Exodus article)
6.2.1 Federation of Expellees              (both)
6.2.2 Centre Against Expulsions            (both)
6.3 Polish-German relations                (mostly in the Exodus article)
6.4 Czech-German relations                 (mostly in the Exodus article)
6.5 The German minority in Hungary         (mostly in the Exodus article)
6.6 Russia                                 (mostly in the Exodus article)
6.7 Re-examination of the expulsions in the 1990s (mostly here, mention in the Exodus article)
--Richard 08:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Let me get back to this later. I appreciate your patience. Feel free to edit the article as you feel is appropriate. I can always complain later ;-) --Lysytalk 22:24, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving of Legacy section to the [[German exodus from Eastern Europe]] article 

message: After re-reading parts of Isaac Deutscher's biography of Stalin, I have to correct one thing I said above. Poland's western border (the Oder-Neisse Line) had not been determined at the time of Teheran, in November '43. At Teheran, Stalin secured Western agreement only to eastern border, generally the "Curzon Line" — although Roosevelt apparently argued for inclusion of L'wów/L'vov/L/viv (Lemberg) in postwar PL. But at Teheran the Big Three already were discussing "compensation" for Poland through annexations of Germany territory.
Sca 14:59, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Correction

message: I personally don't recall anything about Solzhenitsyn objecting "during his military service" to Red Army conduct in eastern Germany. I bvelieve he got in trouble for a letter to a friend criticizing Stalin.
However:  Solzhenitsyn, who had been a Red Army captain in East Prussia, recorded in Volume One of The Gulag Archipelago that "all of us knew very well that if the girls were German they could be raped and then shot.  This was almost a combat distinction." (P. 21 of U.S. paperback ed., 1973.)  Sca 14:00, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Still, this does not seem to be related to "cold war assessment", and in fact does not seem very encyclopaedic at all. --Lysytalk 21:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Solzhenitsyn note

message: Many re-examiners don't remember WWII (Erika Steinbach, Peter Glotz). Many recent German books are written by such people, who present idealized image of Nazi Germany, where any town had a working camp. Erika Steinach lived near Piaśnica execution place, not far from Stutthof. Xx236 11:52, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, what's your point ? --Lysytalk 12:05, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Anyway, what part of the article do you relate this to ? --Lysytalk 17:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-examination of the expulsions in the 1990s 

message: :The border on Oder-Neisse line which historically had been a border of the Polish Piast dynasty, was actively pursued by the Polish government in Exile
It's  not obvious. The statement should be removed.
Xx236 12:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which part of the sentence do you find dubious ? --Lysytalk 12:09, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Actively pursued by the Polish government in Exile ? 

message: Citizens of the SU (not only Russians) colonized deserted areas in the West, replaced Germans and Poles. It was kind of "Drang nach Westen". Does a Western reader understand this from the article? 
Xx236 15:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  many of whom were expellees themselves from lands further east 

message: I think this Wikipedia-forum helps to inform and to understand. But for the difficult and controversal topic of expulsions we need an independent science-center of international documentation and discussion. It is necessary, because it gives a face to those human beings who lost their lives and who suffered a lot. It is also necessary, to help us understanding the human character and the history and avoiding problems in today's international conflicts. (User, Nov. 16th, 2006)
I prefer to study mass executions first. The evacuation of prisoners from e.g. Auschwitz, too.
Xx236 13:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  further documentations and a forum of documentation and discussion seems to be necessary 

message: *The same the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe was radically different, but Western writers believe that their countries were under Nazi occupation and this Wiki doesn't stress the difference (France - one burned village, Czech Republic - one, Poland - hundreds - how many names of the villages do you know?)
*The best known expelee is Erika Steinbach. The history of her family wasn't in any way more tragic, that the history of Germans expelled from Western Europe. So either Erika isn't a typical expelee or the article Expulsion of Germans after World War II should include any part of Europe.
Xx236 12:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: radically different

message: I see from the "in other languages" box that there are versions of this article on the German (of course), Hungarian and Romanian Wiki sites, but apparently no Russian, Polish or Czech versions. How can this be?
PS:  Can someone (an administrator, perhaps) please archive this page? It's getting overlong. Thanks. Sca 18:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Other-language versions

message: Poland's western borders have been determined by the allies during the Potsdam Conference in summer 1945 by the term Oder-Neisse line. This term means that the rivers of Oder and Neisse should mark the future western borders of Polish administration. But in July 1945 - regardless of the Potsdam Conference - the Soviet Union handed over territories in the west of the Oder-Neisse line (including the important city and port of Stettin) to Poland. After this transfer to Poland organised expulsions of Germans began also in these territories in the west of the Oder-Neisse line. (user, 1 December 2006)
: I'm going to add this to the article.  Anon user (User: 82.207.181.26), please consider getting an account.  Here's some reasons why.
: --Richard 16:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  /* Expulsions of Germans in the west of the [[Oder-Neisse line]] by Poland */ Please put new posts at the bottom of the page; it makes them easier to find and more likely to be read 

message: Was the fate of Kashubians specific in any way? Upper Silesians had exactly the same problems living between Germans and Poles and their number was bigger.
Xx236 16:53, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kashubians? 

message: The fate of the Masurians also should be included. Sca 18:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Masurians

message: Czechoslovakia was quite independent 1945-1948. 
Xx236 12:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soviet-occupied ? 

message: According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 14, the total number of victims of the expulsion was estimated being 473 000 (1964) or 400 000 (1974). Do you really know the subject better than the author - Ingo Haar?
Xx236 15:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But it gets even better! The Federation of Expellees disagrees[] with his numbers. The man should be beatified alongside Ralph Giordano.  Anonytroll 20:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Wait, my bad. Ralph Giordano may constantly bash Germany, but he's for the Centre against expulsions, thus does not qualify. Anonytroll 20:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I think them having it on their website should count for something, though. Anonytroll 12:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Good. I posted critique of Haar's numbers, which quotes different numbers from other sources. Anonytroll 16:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Nope, no relation between the numbers that the FoE uses and this article (which goes on to attack historians). The article does not even discuss numbers. Anonytroll 06:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  400 000 - 473 000 

message: Since most of the victims who died at the hands of the Danes in 1945 were expellee’s, (as stated in the Spiegel article), I think the subject of Danish treatment of the refugees should be inserted somewhere in the article.
Der Spiegel article, Deutsche Welle article --Stor stark7 Talk 23:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Expelees who died in Denmark

message: A number of Germans were expelled from Alsace. A number of Kehl inhabitants were forced to leave, when the city was French (1945-1949).
Xx236 11:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expulsion from France 

message: Poland again as the wildest nation of the East.  
Xx236 16:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Neglected German graveyard west of Warsaw

message: The conflicts existed on low level, between individuals. No Polish-communist structure wanted and/or was able to oppose the Soviet Army. Soviet leadership, probably Stalin himself, defined the status of Sttetin/Szczecin. This article describes the fate of millions, why does it discuss such local matter?
Xx236 13:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  tense conflicts between the Soviets and the Poles  

message: These edits completely miss the point of the "wild expulsions". The desperate expulsions had the aim of creating conditions from which the Polish side could benefit as much as possible at the Potsdam agreement (no Germans in an area, no possibility of a German state there) because they thought the issue of borders was still in question, not because they wanted to follow the future agreement beforehand. This also validates the sentence you wanted to adorn with a -tag, because if it had been clear to the Polish side that they were to keep the territories for annexation anyway, they wouldn't have worried about the borders in the first place and the wild expulsion wouldn't've occured.
Apart from that, the English could be improved and is there a good reason for replacing "expel" with "move out" and deleting the quotation?
As for the sentence "Acording to the terms agreed to at the Potsdam conference, the Soviet Union transferred territories to the west of the Oder-Neisse Line to Poland in July 1945," I don't get it. How is it possible for Soviet Union to act in accordance with the Potsdam agreement or Conference or whatever, when it hasn't even be reached or held? But the sentence you replaced isn't so much better. How can the Soviet Union ignore the future terms of an agreement? Maybe something like "Instead of waiting for the Potsdam Conference" would be better, or what do you think?
I've reverted the edits and would like you to discuss further changes of that nature before making them. Your message on Richard's talk page belonged here but was a good start. Sciurinæ 21:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potsdam Conference 

message: What says the term "Oder-Neisse line"? Doesn't it mean that the rivers Oder and Neisse are giving the line of future borders? My POV: the fact that land in the west of Oder and Neisse has been given to Poland is not acording to the Potsdam Conference negotiations and results. This shows us that negotiations and agreements with western allies have not been respected by USSR and Poland. USSR and Poland were interested in creating hard facts outside international negotiations. And they succeeded: no western ally wanted to oppose (user 82.207.181.26, Dec. 21st 2006).
::Just for fun it might be intresting to read the policy the U.S. was recomended to pursue in Potsdam regarding teritorial dismemberment (Read the state department pages from here on), or go to the main page and on the bottom select page 750 onwards.--Stor stark7 Talk 16:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potsdam Conference II 

message: This is a very interesting analysis of the whole expulsions/vertriebene phenomenon.  I would like to capture some of the key ideas and insert them into the article although I suspect that doing so may give rise to some significant controversy.  --Richard 07:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Memories of universal victimhood: the case of ethnic German expellees 

message: The history of the Documents on the Expulsion ... should be mentioned.
Xx236 09:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What history ? --Lysytalk 09:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Really interesting documents (actually I only read the first one so far and rapidly skimmed over the second one). This should definitely be mentioned in the article as a criticism.--Caranorn 12:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So do it!.  I would but my German is not strong enough to read the documents. --Richard 11:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Documents on the Expulsion ... 

message: *Is the WIkipedia about could be or rather about facts? Generalplan Ost doesn't discuss legal opinions about the plan.
*Who would be considered to be a criminal? Mr. President Truman? Canada was also involved as part of the Commonwealth.
Xx236 09:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm lost.  What's your point? --Richard 19:47, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm lost as well. How is this relevant ? --Lysytalk 08:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  deportations could be considered  

message: "The title wild expulsions comes from German wilde Vertreibung, and describes the manner in which the expulsions were undertaken by the Polish authorities, especially the military"
*The above statement is obviously false, because pre-Potsdam expulsions happened in several countries, eg. in Czechoslovakia. 
*The above statement doesn't inform, which authorities were responsible. The legal Polish government existed in London, the puppet one executed Moscow policy.
*It's not obvious that the word wild describes the manner. It may also decribe the lack of legal basis of the expulsions. In fact the most terrible time after the war was the harsh winter 1945/1946.
Xx236 14:27, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The way some people write 

message: The article pretends that the crimes against Germans happened only outside of post-war Germany. However the same crimes took place in Germany, especially in the SBZ, later GDR - rapes, individual and state robberies, deportations to Siberian camps. German prizoners were transferred from Soviet camps in SBZ to Soviet camps in Poland. The facts are ignored or underestimated, because they don't pass to the nationalistic model.
Xx236 14:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crimes in the SBZ 

message: Polish-German marriages were forbidden in nazi Germany. After the war they happened both in Poland and in Western Germany (Maczków). Mixed marriages are very rare in ethnic cleansing areas. Eg. Ukrainian nationalists murdered frequently Polish-Ukrainian families during the expulsion of Poles. 
The numbers of Polish-German marriages would describe the intensity of the hatred better than biased contributors.
Xx236 14:45, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mixed marriages 

message: There seems to be some concern as to whether direct, intentional killing played a part in the large number of deaths associated with the evacuation, flight and expulsion of Germans.  I would argue that it is not worth asserting that direct, intentional killing played a significant role in the deaths unless it accounted for at least 10% of all deaths.  Assuming for now that the number of deaths was somewhere between 400,000 and 2,000,000, we are looking for evidence to support somewhere between 40,000 and 200,000 deaths attributable to acts of direct, intentional killing.  Whether these deaths were caused by individuals or militias is a secondary issue.
Another question would be how many of the deaths are attributable to Soviet concentration camps.  Does anybody have information on these figures?
--Richard 22:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know about the Soviet camps, but it's been found that about 100 Germans were probably murdered in Aleksandrów Kujawski in spring 1945 by Polish militia. Also about 10-20 German were murdered by militia near Nieszawa and about 100 German POWs were executed by the Soviets near Osięcin in 1945. No bodies or remains of the victims of any of these crimes were found so far, despite a number of extensive excavations. --Lysytalk 09:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The killing of POW's definitely doesn't belong. This was a sad practice on both sides on the East Front (though on the German side it was definitely ordered from the highest levels with the commissary orders). I expect this is already covered in relevant articles.--Caranorn 13:24, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't think we know. Nobody counted them. But tens of thousands definitely are many for me. --Lysytalk 15:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Direct, intentional killing 

message: I think we need to revisit the tone of this article.  First of all, I think we need to make a good faith effort to understand whether we are talking about 400,000 or 2,000,000 deaths.  This is not quite an order of magnitude difference but it is still a factor of 5x difference.
I thought the "scorecard" was ZgV 2,200,000 Overmans 1,100,000 and Haar 400,000-500,000.  We should be able to give some sense of what the "distribution of credibility" is among these estimates.  What I mean is "If you did a poll of historians who have some knowledge of the area, what would they say were the reasonable estimates and what would they say were less plausible estimates."  I had previously been happy to say 1.1 - 2.2 million deaths with 400,000 being a new and low estimate.  Does anybody have evidence to indicate how Haar's estimate of 400,000 has been received in the academic community (and in the news media)?  Does everybody now say "Oh, of course, geez those ZgV guys were way over-exaggerating the numbers."  Or do people say "Well, you know, Haar's methodology has its flaws and Overmans' estimates are really more reliable."
Wikipedia's NPOV policy does not require us to give equal weight to all points of view.  In order to be a useful resource, we do need to give the reader some indication of the direction of mainstream thought on a topic, including mention of challenges to the mainstream doctrine and also characterizing flakier, fringe positions as such.
--Richard 15:31, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Range of estimated deaths

message: The sub-paragraph partially repeats the last sentence above it.
The real history in Germany was:
*critics of the expulsion, detailed documentation of the expulsions and censoring informations about Nazi crimes
*anti-Nazi 1960-ties, till 1990
*return to the post-war critics
Xx236 09:18, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legacy of the expulsions 

message: As I can see in the history of this page it is a target of continuous edit war. One side reverts changes of the other side and vice versa. Both sides sometimes breaks NPOV by adding unreferenced biased statements. One side put there it should be considered as a crime second side removes it and add what should be done with the graves etc. etc. etc. Just people make up your minds, this is encyclopedia here is no place for anything like shall be, should be, will be, going to be or for any personal revenge against anyone, here is place just for what was or were, for the history. Support your edits with references and get out with your personal thoughts about the topic. I wanted to hold back with comments but I must react to the current regtettable situation. ≈Tulkolahten≈≈talk≈ 13:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "could" or "was" is not the point, nor are sources. The sentence "From a legal perspective, the expulsion of Germans violated the Hague Conventions and, applying the Nuremberg Principles, it clearly constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity." would not be more acceptable to what you call "the other side", don't you think so too? The inconvenient legal dimension contrasts the simplistic shifting of all responsibility for the expulsion on the previous German atrocities. Sciurinæ 16:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The point is that there is an edit war. Edit war full of wrath and pain, so stop it. ≈Tulkolahten≈≈talk≈ 18:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit war 

message: The information that the report was Soviet has been removed by an anonymous author. Why the only report quoted is about Polish cruelties (there are thousands reports about other cruelties)? Why is the word Soviet illegal? Why the article was frozen at that moment, rather than reverted?Xx236 11:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  According to a Soviet report, 

message: From Bjork's introduction to his review of two books related to the expulsions:
:Since the end of the Second World War, the German-Polish frontier has been definitively "settled" four times: by Allied fiat at the Potsdam conference in 1945 and subsequently in three Polish-German agreements, the first involving the German Democratic Republic (1950), the second the Federal Republic of Germany (1972), and the third a united Germany (1990). And yet the corollary of that massive transfer of territory--the expulsion and expropriation of millions of "ethnic German" inhabitants--appears to be generating more heated public debate today than ever before. The surge in German interest in the fate of the expellees can be seen as part of a general rehabilitation of the theme of German wartime suffering and victimization (as discussed on H-German last year in the special forum on Sebald's A Natural History of Destruction and Friedrich's Der Brand). Unlike the debate over the Allied bombing of German cities, however, which has largely remained an internal German discussion and produced only a faint echo in the United States or Great Britain (outside of Germanist circles, of course), the debate about the expulsions has engaged Polish cultural elites and, to a lesser extent, a broader Polish public, as much as their German counterparts. The high level of mutual investment in this history is both good news and bad news. With the expulsions playing such a pivotal role in so many personal and family histories on either side of the frontier, renewed scrutiny of the issue has sometimes stirred a probing, honest, and self-critical dialogue. But the revived prospect of property restitution claims by expellees has also spurred a reversion to adversarial discourses and entrenched rhetorical positions. 
I would like to use some of the above text in this article because I think it puts the expulsions in an appropriate context.
--Richard 16:17, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I can only agree with the above text. --Lysytalk 16:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Resurgence of interest in the fate of the expellees 

message: The text below comes from a link provided by Xx236 some time ago.
I more or less understood the opening paragraphs of the article but my command of German is too weak to understand the whole article.  I understand just enough to feel like it's important to understand what is being said but not enough to actually understand it.
:Im Jahre 1995 kam der Kirchliche Suchdienst zu dem Ergebnis: „Der statistische Zahlenbericht der „Gesamterhebung zur Klärung des Schicksals der deutschen Bevölkerung in den Vertreibungsgebieten“ (1965) hat die Ergebnisse des Statistischen Bundesamtes über eine Bevölkerungsbilanz für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete – veröffentlicht im Buch „Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste“ – Wiesbaden 1958 – weitgehend bestätigt“.
 
:Haar reduziert seine Zahl auf die unmittelbar Ermordeten. Das geht auch aus dem von ihm falsch zitierten Bericht des Bundesarchivs aus dem Jahr 1974 eindeutig hervor. Alle anderen Opfer z.B. als Folge von unmenschlicher Zwangsarbeit, Deportation in Viehwaggons - sowohl in Richtung Osten als auch Westen -, oder von Vergewaltigungen, gezielter Mangelernährung und Erschöpfung nach tage- oder wochenlangen Märschen unterwegs oder in Lagern sind für Haar offenbar keine Opfer, sondern eines natürlichen Todes gestorben.
:Mit Sicherheit liegen die Opferzahlen noch höher als in den bisher vorliegenden Erhebungen. Denn bislang völlig unerforscht ist die Zahl derjenigen Vertriebenen, die nach ihrer Ankunft in West- und Mitteldeutschland an den oben genannten Vertreibungsfolgen verstorben sind. Nicht enthalten sind auch die über 300.000 Todesopfer der nach Osten deportierten Russlanddeutschen.
:Eine solche unwissenschaftliche Zahlenklitterung ist im wahrsten Sinne Haar-sträubend.
--Richard 10:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not fit to translate from German to English, but briefly, the above is Erika Steinbach (a politician again!) criticizing Haar's methodology. She claims that Haar reduced the victims to directly murdered only and then goes on producing more or less graphic examples of other victims which she thinks he ignored. She also states that she is sure that the number of victims is higher. To me this is yet another non-professional opinion that is not useful for the purpose of the wikipedia article. --Lysytalk 10:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can someone translate this into English for me?