Ethnic Cleansing to Uproot Germans After WW II

choi

Andrew Stuttaford, The Tragegy Europe Forgot; Some 12 million Germans, mostly women and children, were expelled from Eastern Europe in 1945, an Allies-endorsed ethnic cleansing. Wall Street Journal, Aug 10, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 36973443279932.html
(book review on RM Douglas, Orderly and Humane; The expulsion of the Germans after World world Two. Yale University Press, 2012)

My comment:
(1) Even when Taiwan was poor (whiel I was a kid there, people there valued life. After a bank heist, Taiwanese were saddened by loss of life, rather than property. There were a smuttering of expression of expelling, or even executing, mainlanders, once Taiwanese regained control, under the harsh rule of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. but people realized it was a huge investment to raise and educate an individual. In any event, Taiwan has experienced one of the lowest birth rates in the world. We need every persons. After studying economics (on my own as a hobby), I also have a hang how much a person contributes to the economy, through consumption if not for paying tax. Few in Taiwan would support deportation/expulsion of any citizen.
(2) Nazi Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany
(On Jan 30, 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany; Table: Surrender of Germany  May 8, 1945; caption of ma 3: Territorial expansion of Germany from 1933 to 1943)

(3) The review states, "The allies had decided that the country's east should be carved up between Poland and Soviet Union."
(a) Poland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland

See the map in section 2.7 World War II.
(b) Oder–Neisse line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oder–Neisse_line
(The line is formed primarily by the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers)

Why is Gadansk colored grey? Because it was a free city before Poland annexed it in 1945. See Gdańsk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gdańsk
(Poland's principal seaport; section 1 Name; section 2.3 The inter-war years, and World War II)
(c) Lusatian Neisse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusatian_Neisse
(The Lusatian Neisse is a left-bank tributary of the Oder river, into which it flows; section 1 Name)

Take notice of "into which." In other words, Oder river starts in Cech Republic where it is known as Odra river (in local language).

(4) The review next states, "Sudeten Germans, Czechoslovakia's second largest ethnic group, [were] now also scheduled for deportation."
(a) Sudetenland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland
(the German name used in English in the first half of the twentieth century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans; The name is derived from the Sudetes mountains, though the Sudetenland extended beyond these mountains)
(b) The relative location in Europe of Sudetes mountains:
http://www.euratlas.net/geography/europe/mountains/sudetes.html

I introduce this map because it is unclear from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetes
where the mountain range is, relative to Sudetenland.

(5) Potsdam Agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Agreement
(Not to be confused with Potsdam Declaration; Executed as a communiqué, the Agreement was no peace treaty according to international law; "In the Three Power Conference of Berlin (formal title of the Potsdam Conference) from July 17 to Aug 2, 1945, they agreed to and adopted the Protocol of the Proceedings, Aug l, 1945, signed at Cecilienhof Castle in Potsdam. The signatories were General Secretary Joseph Stalin, President Harry S. Truman, and Prime Minister Clement Attlee [Labor party; in office July 26, 1945-1951], who, as a result of the British general election of 1945, had replaced Winston Churchill as the UK’s Conference representative")
(6) The review commented, "From the Baltic to the Carpathians and beyond, communities that had flourished for , in some cases, morethan half a millennium were smashed and scattered."

Carpathian Mountains
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Mountains
("The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly 1,500 km (932 mi) long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe (after the Scandinavian Mountains, 1,700 km (1,056 mi))"; section 1 Name)

(7) bullring (n):
"1: an arena for bullfights
2: a short oval track for horse or auto racing"
www.m-w.com

(8) The review remarks, "Deutsche Eylau, a part of the Duchy of Prussia since 1525 is, like the other two towns, a part of Poland today."
(a) For Deutsche Eylau, see Iława
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iława
(on the Eylenz (Iławka) River)
(b) Duchy of Prussia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Prussia
(1525-1618; the first Protestant (Lutheran) duchy--with a dominant German-speaking population, as well as Polish and Lithuanian minorities)

Quote: "In 1525 during the Protestant Reformation, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert, secularized the [Catholic] order's Prussian territory, becoming Albert, Duke of Prussia. His duchy, which had its capital in Königsberg, was established as fief of the Crown of Poland."

Recall Lutheran church is Prostestant.
(c) Teutonic Knights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutonic_Knights
(Catholic religious order  1192-present; as military order 1192–1929; formed in Acre, now a city of Israel) to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals)
(d) Duchy of Prussia was followed by Brandenburg-Prussia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg-Prussia
(1618-1701; created through intermarriages, called personal union, between Electorate of Brandenburg [in the west; based in Brandenburg] and Duchy of Prissia [in the east, based in Königsberg which in 1946 was renamed Kaliningrad, in Russian exclave presently]; In 1701, Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg succeeded in elevating his status to, within Holy Roman Empire, King in Prussia, whose name evolved to Kingdom of Prussia)

* House of Hohenzollern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hohenzollern
(They took their name from their ancestral home, the Burg Hohenzollern castle [near Stuggart, Germany]; The Franconian-Kirschner branch was more successful: members of the Franconian branch became Margrave of Brandenburg in 1415 and Duke of Prussia in 1525)  


(9) Auschwitz concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
(Auschwitz had for a long time been a German name for Oświęcim, the town by and around which the camps were located; the name "Auschwitz" was made the official name again by the Germans after they invaded Poland in September 1939)
(10) Majdanek concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdanek_concentration_camp
(1941-1944; The name 'Majdanek' ("little Majdan") derives from the nearby Majdan Tatarski ("Tatar Maidan") district of Lublin, and was given to the camp in 1941 by the locals; captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army)
(11) Babi Yar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar

(12) The review avers, "In 1943, Gen Wladysław Sikorski, the leader of the 'London Poles,' may have been moving toward accepting a postwar Poland shoved westward."
(a) Władysław Sikorski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Władysław_Sikorski
(1881-1943; During World War II he became [Sept 30, 1939 – July 4, 1943, when he died of a plane crash near Gibraltar] Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile, Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces, and a vigorous advocate of the Polish cause in the diplomatic sphere)
(b) Polish government-in-exile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_government-in-exile
("based in France during 1939 and 1940, first in Paris and then in Angers. From 1940, following the Fall of France, the government moved to London, and remained in the United Kingdom")

(13) The review mocks, "No good could come of a Teuton presence in his Slavic republic."

Teutons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutons
(The Teutons or Teutones were mentioned as a Germanic tribe by Greek and Roman authors)
(14) Alsace-Lorraine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsace-Lorraine
(a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War; made up of 93% of Alsace (7% remained French) and 26% of Lorraine (74% remained French); reversion to France following World War I; section 2.2 Annexation to the French Republic: "The French Government immediately started a Francization campaign that included the forced deportation of all Germans who had settled in the area after 1870. * * * German-language Alsatian newspapers were also suppressed")

(15) Mitteleuropa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitteleuropa
(the German term equal to Central Europe)