German evacuation from Central and Eastern Europe

Expulsion of Sudeten Germans following the end of World War II
Flight and expulsion of Germans during
and after World War II
(demographic estimates)
Background
Wartime flight and evacuation
Post-war flight and expulsion
Later emigration
Other themes

The German evacuation from Central and Eastern Europe ahead of the Soviet Red Army advance during the Second World War was delayed until the last moment. Plans to evacuate people to present-day Germany from the territories controlled by Nazi Germany in Central and Eastern Europe, including from the former eastern territories of Germany as well as occupied territories, were prepared by the German authorities only when the defeat was inevitable, which resulted in utter chaos. The evacuation in most of the Nazi-occupied areas began in January 1945, when the Red Army was already rapidly advancing westward.[1][2]

Until March 1945, the Nazi authorities had evacuated from the eastern territories (prewar Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia) an estimated 10 to 15 million persons, Germans as well as citizens of other nations.[3] In the territory of Germany, which Stalin gave to Poland after the war, there were 10 million residents in 1944–1945, including 7.3 million permanent residents, or Reichsdeutsche (including 1 million ethnic Poles spared by the expulsions, and 6.3 million ethnic Germans), in addition on German territory to be evacuated were 2.5 million transients consisting of 1.5 million bombing raid evacuees from the heartland of Nazi Germany and of 1 million slave workers of many nationalities making products for the SS Ostindustrie and DAW).[4]

Polish historians put the number of "Germans" in early 1945 on the annexed territory of postwar Poland at 12,339,400 (8,885,400 in prewar German territory, 670,000 from prewar Poland; 900,000 ethnic Germans resettled in Poland; 750,000 administrative staff and 1,134,000 bombing raid evacuees). Along with the native German civilians, the Volksdeutsche from the east (i.e. the German-speakers) were evacuated or fled as well.[5] Most of the affected Volksdeutsche had settled into occupied Poland before March 1944.[6] They took up farms and homes of Poles forcibly removed or executed during the ethnic cleansing operations in the preceding years.[7] Meanwhile, the number of returning Reich Germans who had fled eastward temporarily in fear of the British and American bombings in the centre of Germany is also estimated between 825,000 [8][9] and 1,134,000.[7]

Apart from the evacuation of civilians, the Germans also evacuated Nazi concentration camp prisoners from the WVHA controlled enterprises,[10] who were forced to walk to the Austrian and German borders as the Soviets approached from the east.[11] The German SS evacuated camp after camp as the war drew to a close, sending at least 250,000 men and women on death marches starting in March and April 1945. Some of those marches to the geographical centres of Germany and Austria lasted for weeks, causing thousands of deaths along the road.[1][11]

Statistics dealing with the evacuations are incomplete, and there is uncertainty that estimates are accurate because of the atmosphere of the Cold War period, when various governments manipulated them to fit ideological narratives.[12] According to a recent estimate in Germany, up to six million Germans may have fled or had been evacuated from the areas east of the Oder-Neisse line before the Red Army and the Soviet-controlled Polish People's Army took hold of the entire territory of postwar Poland.[13] The West German search service confirmed the deaths of 86,860 civilians from the wartime flight and evacuations from those areas.[14]

  1. ^ a b Yad Vashem, Death Marches. Archived 2019-08-05 at the Wayback Machine The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority 2015. PDF direct download.
  2. ^ Eberhardt 2011.
  3. ^ Hahn & Hahn 2010, p. 685; ill., maps; 24 cm. D820.P72 G475 2010 The authors noted German wartime documents as the source of the figure of 10-15 million.
  4. ^ Andrzej Gawryszewski (2005). Ludność Polski w XX wieku [The People of Poland in the 20th Century] (PDF). Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences PAN. p. 452. ISBN 8387954667. OCLC 66381296 – via direct download, PDF file 38.5 MB, 627 pages. '; and Jan Misztal, PWN 1990, page 83.
  5. ^ Eberhardt 2011, p. 110.
  6. ^ Catherine Epstein (2012). Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. OUP Oxford. pp. 191–192. ISBN 978-0199646531. In March 1944, Greiser sent a telegram to Hitler reporting that the Gau now had one million Germans: "full of pride and joy I may report to you, My Führer; as the first success of this real Germanization process, that today the number of one million has been reached". Greiser raised the proportion of Germans in the Warthegau from 6.6 percent of the population in 1939 to 22.9 percent by April 1944.[page 192] 
  7. ^ a b Eberhardt 2011, pp. 64, 108–110.
  8. ^ Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa Band I/1. Die Verteibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neisse. pp.5-8
  9. ^ Richard Bessel (2012). Germany 1945: From War to Peace. Simon and Schuster. p. 67. ISBN 978-1849832014 – via Google Books.
  10. ^ Elizabeth B. White (1997). "Annual 7: Chapter 1". Majdanek: Cornerstone of Himmler's SS Empire in the East. Los Angeles, California: Simon Wiesenthal Center, Multimedia Learning. Archived from the original on 2019-01-31. Retrieved 2015-12-22.
  11. ^ a b The Holocaust Encyclopedia (2015), The largest death marches, winter of 1944-1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  12. ^ Julia S. Torrie (2010). "For Their Own Good": Civilian Evacuations in Germany and France, 1939-1945. Berghahn Books. p. 181. ISBN 978-1845457259.
  13. ^ Hahn & Hahn 2010, p. 685.
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Overmans55 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).