The dual term ‘flight and expulsion’ refers to various forms of forced migration of Germans from the (former) eastern provinces of the German Reich and from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War and in the early post-war years (for further information on flight and expulsion as broader historical phenomena, see the articles‘Flight’,‘Expulsion’,‘forcedmigration’ and‘migration’).

The term ‘expulsion’ became established in the 1950s in the governmental and public discourse of the Federal Republic of Germany and , in the 1960s, was combined with the term ‘flight’ to form the dual concept of ‘flight and expulsion’. This term narrows the focus of a complex situation down to two sub-processes; it is emotionally charged and morally loaded (see the article‘Flight and Expulsion – Interpretations’).

Unlike in the Federal Republic of Germany, the term‘resettlement’was used in the GDR, a term which suggests that the forced migrations took place in an allegedly orderly manner. Since German reunification in 1990, the combined term ‘flight and expulsion’ has generally been used both in everyday language and in academic circles (though here it is sometimes placed in quotation marks and frequently replaced by the more neutral term‘forced migration’).

Literal translations into Eastern European languages (e.g. ucieczka and wypędzenie in Polish, or útěk and vyhnání in Czech) are rare and a relatively recent phenomenon. In Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the forced migration of Germans is usually referred to using the terms ‘wysiedlenie’ ( resettlement) in Polish and ‘odsun’ (expulsion) in Czech and Slovak.

Between 1944 and 1949,forced migrations involving over ten million Germans took place in Eastern Europe (for the issue of accurate quantitative figures, see section 5 below). Those affected included both Germans from the eastern provinces of the German Reich, which in 1945 became part of Poland or the Soviet Union (i.e. East Brandenburg, East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia), as well as members of the German minorities in Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, citizens of the Free City of Danzig, as well as others classified as‘ethnic Germans’during the German occupation, German-speaking Jews and other individuals who were regarded as Germans (e.g. Masurians or Kashubians) or who defined themselves as Germans.^[1]

These forced migrations comprised five overlapping processes: evacuation, flight, (uncontrolled) expulsion, deportation and resettlement (or deportation). Up to 90 per cent of those affected by the forced migrations had previously lived in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic, and around half left their homes before the end of the war.[2] As many men were still serving as soldiers or were prisoners of war during the immediate period of forced migration, it primarily affected women, children and the elderly. A large proportion experienced more than one form of forced migration.

The evacuation of the Germans was organised by the Wehrmacht and the Nazi administration and was linked to the course of the fighting. From 1944 onwards, as the Wehrmacht retreated, evacuations took place from areas that today form part of, amongst others, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine and Hungary. In the winter of 1944–1945, evacuations took place within the Reich from East Prussia and , as the front advanced in early 1945, from Silesia, Pomerania and Eastern Brandenburg . Contrary to official claims, the evacuations were neither well planned nor carried out in good time. Some of those affected refused to leave their homes; others fled of their own accord. The death toll was particularly high during this phase of forced migration .

The evacuation, organised by the state or the NSDAP, was part of the Nazi policy of resettling sections of the German population from Eastern Europe, a policy pursued since the start of the war . Following the establishment of German and Soviet spheres of influence in the Hitler–Stalin Pact of 24 August 1939, the Nazi authoritiesresettled and relocated‘ethnic Germans’from the Soviet-controlled parts of Eastern Europe to the German-occupied Polish territories in the years that followed – territories from which the Polish and Jewish populations had, in turn, been expelled. Following the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, further resettlements of Russian Germans took place in 1943 and 1944, which gave way to clearance operations during the Wehrmacht’s retreat. Even those who had already been resettled were now gradually evacuated from the occupied territories towards the west, before the evacuations eventually reached the Germans within the Reich itself .

Alongside the evacuations organised by the Wehrmacht and the Nazi administration on the one hand, and the (unorganised) expulsions (see below), many Germans fled of their own accord towards the west or south. Initially, they fled from the Red Army; later, from local military units, militia groups and security forces, but also from local civilians and displaced persons who had taken possession of the (hitherto) German territories even before the organised settlement of these areas began. Many people died during their flight from the cold or hunger, fell victim to acts of violence (often of a sexual nature) or committed suicide. Many Germans who had fled returned to their home towns, only to be permanently expelled or resettled from there later on.

In the summer of 1945, Polish and Czechoslovak authorities (as well as, to a lesser extent and somewhat earlier, Yugoslav partisans) carried out expulsions of Germans from areas close to the border. To distinguish it from the later phase of resettlement agreed at the Potsdam Conference – which is also often referred to as ‘expulsion’ – the forced migration during this preceding phase is frequently termed ‘uncontrolled expulsion’. It stemmed from the widespread conviction in political and social circles that coexistence with the Germans would no longer be possible in future. With up to 1.2 million people affected, a comparatively small proportion of the population was involved in this phase of forced migration.^[3]

The specific conditions under which the Polish authorities carried out the expulsion of the Germans differed fundamentally from those in Czechoslovakia. Whilst the Czechoslovak military operated within the pre-war state borders, the Polish military operated in areas unfamiliar to it, which officially still belonged to Germany , as the incorporation of the German eastern provinces into Polish territory was only decided at the Potsdam Conference in early August 1945 (as compensation for the eastern Polish territories lost to the Soviet Union ). For the Czechoslovak government, expulsions were thus a means of resolving a domestic political problem (see the Beneš Decrees); for the Polish government, on the other hand, they were also a means of underpinning its claim to the incorporation of German territories.

As in other European countries, Germans in Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were sent to internment camps (which were often set up on the sites of former Nazi concentration camps), put to forced labour and dispossessed. Their civil rights were curtailed, and they were subjected to looting and violent attacks. Many died of starvation and disease, were killed or took their own lives. Drastic examples involving high death tolls include the special camp at Rudolfsgnad/Knićanin/Rezsőháza in Vojvodina, where over 9,500 people died between 1945 and 1948, the so-called BrnoDeath March at the end of May 1945, in which around 1,700 Germans lost their lives, and the internment camp in Lamsdorf, Silesia (Polish: Łambinowice), where over 1,000 people died.^[4]

In December 1944, that is to say, at the same time as the evacuation and exodus, the forced relocation of Germans to the Soviet Union began. Unlike the deportation of nationals of other countries, in the case of the Germans it was declared to be part of the reparations for the war losses suffered. Those affected were Germans of working age, between 18 and 30 (women) and 17 and 45 (men), in the territories liberated or occupied by the Red Army. Most of them were deployed (much like German prisoners of war) as forced labourers in mines and in heavy industry in what is now Ukraine, in Siberia and in the Caucasus. Many lost their lives on the journey there, and many more at their destinations.

Whilst the (violent) expulsions carried out in 1945 by Yugoslav partisans and by the Polish and Czechoslovak authorities were halted after just a few weeks due to international pressure, the organised resettlement of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary (as well as Austria) stemmed from the decisions of the Potsdam Conference in August 1945. It was carried out with co-operation from the military governors of the four occupation zones and was therefore better organised and less violent than the (uncontrolled) expulsions. The resettlement of most Germans took place during the course of 1946. Only in Poland did the resettlement process continue until 1949. In total, 4.8 million Germans were resettled during this phase.^[5]

The resettlement of the Germans went hand in hand with the repopulation of the areas they had previously inhabited, meaning that the responsible institutions faced major logistical challenges and some new residents were forced to cohabit temporarily with their German predecessors. The decision as to who should be resettled posed difficulties for the local authorities for various reasons. On the one hand, the loyalty of individuals who had been classified as‘ethnic Germans’by the Nazi authorities had to be verified. On the other hand, there were (particularly in Czechoslovakia) Germans who had demonstrated their loyalty through their involvement in the resistance against the German occupation. At the same time, key industrial sectors and infrastructure in the predominantly German-inhabited areas were, at least temporarily, reliant on the knowledge and skills of German specialists. Last but not least, there were people who were married to Germans, and children born of binational relationships. Consequently, a small proportion of Germans were spared from resettlement.

Significant differences can be observed between the individual countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, both in terms of the course of events and the overall outcome of the forced migrations . The proportion of Germans affected by the various phases of flight and expulsion was highest in Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia ( with the exception of the Hultschiner Ländchen/Hlučínsko region). In Hungary , around half of the German population lost their homes.^[6] Germans in Romania were partly affected by evacuation, flight and abduction, but not by expulsion or resettlement, meaning that the German minority remained relatively intact as a group here. In the Soviet Union, too, there were neither expulsions nor resettlements, but deportations did take place.

To prevent the Russian Germans from collaborating with the Nazi regime, the vast majority of them had been deported within the Soviet Union immediately after the German attack in June 1941; they had to accept restrictions on their civil rights and were interned for forced labour in the so-called Trudarmee (Russian: Trudovaja armija). Many lost their lives in the process. In the immediate post-war period (and in contrast to other countries), the number of Germans in the Soviet Union increased – partly as a result of the deportation of Germans of working age from territories liberated or occupied by the Red Army, and partly as a result of the forced repatriation of some of the Russian Germans who had been resettled by the Nazi authorities in the ‘Reichsgaue’ Wartheland or Danzig-West Prussia, or who had been evacuated by the Wehrmacht during its retreat westwards.

In all countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Germans were interned in camps at the end of the war or in the immediate post-war period, but the situation in Yugoslavia differed significantly in this respect from that in other countries. Yugoslavia was the scene of a partisan war and civil war in the 1940s, meaning that the situation of the Germans was determined by various actors. The internment of the Yugoslav Germans began as early as the end of 1944 and affected the vast majority of them.^[7] Although no resettlement took place in 1946, some of the internees were allowed to flee to Hungary and Romania. Following the closure of the camps in 1948, their inmates were deported to Hungary and Austria. The mortality rate among Germans in Yugoslavia was significantly higher than in other countries.

The flight and expulsion of Germans have been the subject of intensive research for decades. Since the 1990s, following the transformation of the political system and as Eastern European archives have been opened up, critical editions of source material have been published and comparative, international research projects have been carried out.^[8] Nevertheless, the history of flight and expulsion remains a subject of controversy both in the media and political sphere and within academia (see also the article‘Flight and Expulsion – Interpretations’).

Firstly, there are differing perspectives on the temporal and geographical scope of the events. In common parlance, the scope is limited in time to the two processes explicitly named in the compound term ‘flight and expulsion’: ‘flight’ is associated with events before the end of the war, whilst ‘expulsion’ is associated with events after it. Consequently, the complexity of the events and the connection between forced migration and the Second World War are often under-examined. In academic circles, however, ‘flight and expulsion’ is now regarded as a ‘code’,^[9] which encompasses various forms of forced migration : evacuation, flight, (unorganised) expulsion, abduction and resettlement. From a geographical perspective, the deportations of Germans within the Soviet Union during the war and the resettlements of Germans from Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands after the war are each treated as separate chapters. Both the differences between the situations of Germans in the various countries and regions of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and the trans-regional interconnections between East and West (e.g. the history of the Germans who were evacuated to occupied Denmark in the final months of the war, the refugees and displaced persons in the Republic of Austria, orthe Germans who had lost their homes and ended up in North and South America) have so far received little attention.

Secondly, there are widely varying figures regarding the scale of flight and expulsion, to the extent that the situation is sometimes described as a ‘maze of figures’.^[10]Eastern Europe Inflated figures are to be found not only in the writings of those affected, in older statistical calculations and in political speeches, but also in some academic publications. Incorrect, manipulated, contradictory and decontextualised figures were and remain commonplace, both with regard to the total number of Germans who were evacuated, fled, expelled, abducted and resettled from the eastern provinces of the German Reich and Eastern Europe, as well as regarding the number of German fatalities that occurred in the course of these forced migrations. As precise calculations for the various regions and stages are only possible to a limited extent due to gaps in the historical record, estimates have repeatedly been relied upon. In the meantime, the scientifically reliable figures have been revised downwards. A total of eleven to twelve million Germans who lost their homes in the eastern provinces of the German Reich and in Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War and in the early post-war years is considered a realistic figure by researchers in research,^[11] as well as a figure of 500,000 to 600,000 German fatalities resulting from the forced migrations .^[12]

Thirdly – and this is where the history of events and the history of interpretation are most closely intertwined – there are differing perspectives on the causes of (the various phases of) flight and expulsion. In public, political and, to some extent, academic debates, the causes of forced migration are not infrequently (1) emotionalised, (2) Europeanised, (3) moralised and (4) nationalised. The first explanatory approach attributes flight and expulsion to the revenge of Eastern and South-Eastern European states and societies for the suffering inflicted by Germany during the Second World War and/or to a long (and allegedly continuous) history of anti-German sentiment in Eastern Europe . The second explanatory approach views flight and expulsion as a peace policy measure aimed at conflict prevention and thus as one of many instances of forced migration carried out in 20th-century European history. Partly complementary to the first, the third explanatory approach regards flight and expulsion as a punishment for the Second World War triggered by Germany . In the fourth explanatory approach, flight and expulsion appear as a biopolitical instrument for the ethnic homogenisation of the states involved. Despite varying degrees of plausibility and popularity, these four explanatory approaches have one thing in common: their proponents often tend to view the relationship between flight and expulsion and the Second World War as a chronological sequence – and thus as consecutive rather than causal. This tendency contrasts with the view of the forced migrations of Germans that prevails in Eastern Europe. Both in the debates on responsibility for the expulsion of Germans, which dissidents in Czechoslovakia have been conducting since the 1970s, and in the discussions among Polish and Czech historians, intellectuals and politicians in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Second World War is regarded not merely as the prelude to flight and expulsion, but as their central cause.

• Adrian von Arburg, Tomáš Staněk (eds.): The Expulsion of the Germans and Changes in the Czech Border Regions 1945–1951. Documents from Czech Archives, [The Resettlement of the Germans and Changes in the Czech Border Region 1945–1951. Documents from Czech Archives]. 3 in 2 vols. Středokluky 2010–2011.

• Mathias Beer: The Flight and Expulsion of the Germans. Background, Course, Consequences. Munich 2011.

• Mathias Beer: Forced Migrations in South-Eastern Europe during the Second World War and Afterwards (1939–1950). In: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 62 (2011), Nos. 3–4, pp. 144–159.

• Włodzimierz Borodziej, Hans Lemberg (eds.): ‘Our homeland has become a foreign land to us...’. The Germans east of the Oder and Neisse 1945–1950. Documents from Polish archives. 4 vols. Marburg 2000–2004.

• Detlef Brandes: The Road to Expulsion 1938–1945. Plans and Decisions on the ‘Transfer’ of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Munich 2005.

• Detlef Brandes, Holm Sundhaussen, Stefan Troebst (eds.): Encyclopaedia of Expulsions. Deportation, Forced Resettlement and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th-Century Europe. Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 2010.

• Alfred Eisfeld, Victor Herdt (eds.): Deportation. Special Resettlement. Labour Army. Germans in the Soviet Union 1941–1956. Cologne 1996.

• Eagle Glassheim: Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands. Migration, Environment, and Health in the Former Sudetenland. Pittsburgh 2016.

• Eva Hahn, Hans Henning Hahn: Expulsion in German Memory. Legends, Myths, History. Paderborn et al. 2010.

• Emilia Hrabovec: Expulsion and Deportation. Germans in Moravia 1945–1947. Frankfurt am Main 1995.

• Grzegorz Hryciuk, Małgorzata Ruchniewicz, Bożena Szaynok, Andrzej Żbikowski: Resettlements, Expulsions and Refugee Movements 1939–1959. Atlas of the History of East Central Europe. Bonn 2012.

• Zoran Janjetović: Between Hitler and Tito. The Disappearance of the Vojvodina Germans. 2nd ed. Belgrade 2005.

• Bernadetta Nitschke: Expulsion and Resettlement of the German Population from Poland 1945 to 1949. 2nd ed. Munich 2004.

• Rüdiger Overmans: Losses to the German Population through Flight and Expulsion, in: Dzieje Najnowsze 26 (1994), No. 2, pp. 51–65.

• Michael Schwartz: Ethnic ‘cleansing’ as a consequence of the war: causes and course of the expulsion of the German civilian population from East Germany and Eastern Europe, 1941 to 1950. In: Rolf-Dieter Müller (ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War. Vol. 10/2: The Collapse of the German Reich in 1945. The Consequences of the Second World War. Munich 2008, pp. 509–656.

• Hugo Service: Germans to Poles. Communism, Nationalism, and Ethnic Cleansing after the Second World War. Cambridge 2013.

• Matěj Spurný: The Long Shadow of Expulsion. Ethnicity and the Construction of Socialism in Czech Border Regions (1945–1960). Wiesbaden 2019.

• Tomáš Staněk: Persecution in 1945. The Situation of Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia (Outside Camps and Prisons). Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 2002.

• Tomáš Staněk: Internment and Forced Labour. The Camp System in the Bohemian Lands 1945–1948. Munich 2007.

• Tomáš Staněk, Adrian von Arburg: Organised, violent deportations? The role of central state authorities in carrying out the ‘evacuation’ of the German population (May to September 1945) [Organised, violent deportations? The role of central state authorities in the ‘evacuation’ of the German population (May–September 1945)]. In: Soudobé dějiny 12 (2005), nos. 3–4, pp. 465–533; 13 (2006), Nos. 1–2, pp. 13–49; 13 (2006), Nos. 3–4, pp. 321–376.

• Ágnes Tóth: Migrations in Hungary in 1945–1948. The expulsion of the Hungarian Germans, internal migration and the Slovak–Hungarian population exchange. Munich 2001.

• Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Nationality Policy in Yugoslavia: The German Minority, 1918–1978. Göttingen 1980.

• Martin Zückert, Michal Schvarc, Martina Fiamová: The Evacuation of Germans from Slovakia in 1944/45. Course, Context, Consequences. Göttingen 2019.

• Collegium Bohemicum (Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic): www.collegiumbohemicum.cz/de/.
• Documentation and Exhibition Centre for Germans in Poland (Opole, Poland): cdwbp.opole.pl.
• Documentation Centre for the Deportations of Upper Silesians to the USSR in 1945 (Radzionków, Poland): deportacje45.pl.
• Documentation Centre for Flight, Expulsion and Reconciliation (Berlin): https://www.flucht-vertreibung-versoehnung.de

[1] For the sake of brevity, the term ‘Germans’ is used here in a general sense. Figures relating to the individual stages of flight and expulsion in the various countries and regions can be found in the respective articles.

[2] Hahn/Hahn , Die Vertreibung im Germanen Erinnern, pp. 695ff.

[3] Ruchniewicz, Krzysztof: ‘The Violent Expulsion of Germans from Poland’. In: Brandes/Sundhaussen/Troebst, *Lexikon der Vertreibungen*, pp. 725–728, here p. 727; Brandes, Detlef: ‘The Violent Expulsion from Czechoslovakia’. In: Ibid., pp. 728–730, here p. 730.

[4] Danube Swabian Cultural Foundation (ed.): The Ordeal of the Germans in Communist Yugoslavia. Vol. 3. Munich 1995, p. 235; Staněk, Persecution, p. 120; Nowak, Edmund: Lamsdorf. In: Brandes/Sundhaussen/Troebst, Encyclopaedia of Expulsions, pp. 376ff., here p. 377.

[5] Hahn/Hahn , The Expulsion in German Memory, pp. 674, 691ff.

[6] Beer, Forced Migrations in South-Eastern Europe, p. 156.

[7] Beer, Forced Migrations in South-Eastern Europe, pp. 156ff.

[8] The two most comprehensive collections of sources from Eastern European archives are: Borodziej/Lemberg, ‘Our Homeland Has Become a Foreign Land to Us …’ and Arburg/Staněk, The Expulsion of Germans and the Transformation of the Czech Border Regions 1945–1951.

[9] Beer, The Flight and Expulsion of the Germans, p. 13.

[10] Hahn/Hahn, The Expulsion in German Memory, p. 706.

[11] Overmans , *Personelle Verluste*, p. 55. Cf. Beer, *Flucht und Vertreibung der Germanen*, p. 129; Hahn/Hahn, *Die Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern*, pp. 659, 674, 695.

[12] Overmans , *Human Losses*, p. 61. See Beer, *The Flight and Expulsion of the Germans*, pp. 129–134; Hahn/Hahn, *The Expulsion in German Memory*, pp. 676–678.

Kornelia Kończal: Flight and Expulsion – History of Events. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2024. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p41562 (as at 17 December 2024).