Ingo Haar
Ingo Haar (born 3 February 1965) is a German historian. He received his Master of Arts from the University of Hamburg in 1993 and his PhD in History in 1998 at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. His doctoral dissertation was on "Historians in Nazi Germany: the German history and the`'Ethnic struggle' in the `East'" ("Historiker im Nationalsozialismus: die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der `Volkstumskampf´ im `Osten´"). The book ""German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1919-1945"" of which Haar was a co-editor of (along with Michael Fahlbusch) received the Award  for "Outstanding Book of the Year" in 2005. Dr. Haar is currently on the faculty of the University of Vienna. Previously he was associated with the Centre for Research on Antisemitism ("Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung") at the Technical University of Berlin. Ingo Haar believes that civilian losses in the expulsion of the Germans from eastern Europe have been overstated in Germany for decades for political reasons. Haar argues that Cold War political pressure influenced the findings of the Schieder commission and the 1958 West German government demographic study that estimated 2 million expulsion deaths . Haar maintains that the actual number of  deaths directly related to the expulsions is between 500-600,000 persons based on the findings of the German church search service and the report of the German government archives. Dr. Haar maintains that the figure of 2 million expulsion deaths includes "a fall in the German birth rate, persons assimilated into the local population, military dead, murdered Jews and missing persons" Haar has criticized the Federation of Expellees for inflating the numbers of German victims of the expulsion of Germans after World War II,; the former expellees' president Erika Steinbach in her reply accused Haar of reducing the number of  victims.