Postwar forced resettlement of Germans echoes through the decades
Seventy-five years ago, Allied Forces declared victory in Europe on May 8, 1945. Millions across the continent had been persecuted, displaced and killed because of their national, ethnic or religious backgrounds.
For some, including those Jews and Roma who had survived the Holocaust, the war’s end took power away from their persecutors and executioners.
My research traces the history of the roughly 14 million ethnic Germans expelled by national governments across Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, in reaction to the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. Their suffering would extend into German and European politics all the way to the present.
Centuries of history
Going back at least a millennium, people who speak German and follow German cultural traditions had spread across Eastern Europe in waves of conquest and migration. When Europe’s borders were redrawn at the end of World War I, these people became substantial minorities in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Yugoslavia.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/postwar-forced-resettlement-of-germans-echoes-through-the-decades-137219