the changing relationship between expellees and the german, czech, and polish governments

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HOW TO CITE THIS SCHOLARLY ESSAY: Institute for Research of Expelled Germans. "The changing relationship between expellees and the German, Czech, and Polish governments" http://expelledgermans.org/germanexpellees.htm (accessed Day-Month-Year).

This article supports our essay on the role of distorted historical memory and ethnic nationalism (with Germans being equally guilty) as a cause for forgetting the expulsions (click here), as well as our essay on the problem of ethnic bias and ulteriour nationalist revisionism among expellee scholars today (click here). This article analyses the political and economic background behind the consistent decisions of the governments of Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic to ignore the expulsion of Germans. It also analyses the the ongoing question of financial restitution and commemorative monuments. In short, the article traces how changes in international relations and economics caused the German government's position on expellees to change from support to virtual abandonment.

 

From the spring of 1945 until the close of 1948, with varying degrees of direct involvement, the governments of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States orchestrated the expulsion of virtually all ethnic German minorities from Eastern Europe. By the end of the expulsion programs, more than 10,000,000 German-speaking civilians had been removed, with as many as 5,000,000 more fleeing prematurely due to fear of reprisals against the local populations after the brutal war crimes of the Third Reich. Falsely depicting the ethnic German communities as universally pro-Nazi agents of pan-German irredentism, their diverse ideologies were ignored in the interest of attaining modern, homogenized ethnic states free from all remnants of “foreign hegemony.” Before their deportation, hundreds of thousands more were forced into compulsory labor to rebuild the nations that Germany had decimated, dismissing the fact that most of these diasporic communities' ancestors had not even seen Germany for centuries. Nearly all of the 1,084,828 ethnic Germans in the USSR were shipped on trains to the wastelands of Kazakhstan to perform forced labor alone before the German armies had a chance to reach them, [1] with some estimating as high as a 30% death rate. [2] [3] Rather than targeting SS volunteers or confirmed Nazi collaborators, the German ethnic identity itself was singled out for removal. The post-war governments, in their aspirations to forge fully-sovereign states on a unified ethnic basis, completely remapped the demography of Europe. In total, at least 473,013 expellees may have died in transit due to hypothermia, starvation, and to a lesser extent direct violence [x]. The Red Cross and the West German government cited as many as 2,200,000 deaths [y].

Despite being what Gerhard Weinberg described as “the largest single [forced] migration of people in a short period of which we know,” [4] arguably only rivaled by the exchange between India and Pakistan after 1947, collective memory in both the United States and Europe often has absolutely no awareness that more than 10,000,000 civilians were subjected to government-sponsored ethnic cleansing, forced labor, and expulsion purely along divisive ethnic lines. This paradoxical ignorance of such a severe forced population transfer derives from a number of historical, cultural, economic, and political factors. Standard historiographical dogma, which rightfully places most responsibility for the atrocities of World War II in the hands of Germany, makes it unpopular to assert the reality that ethnic German civilians with diverse political ideologies could have been victims of the war and its aftermath at the same time. Even the mention of the subject by politicians immediately incites a barrage of accusations of nationalism, Antisemitism, Nazi apologetics, or an attempt to undermine the horrors inflicted by Germany against other peoples. In asking the question, “why do we commemorate some tragedies and not others?,” many German nationalists and revisionists quite foolishly invent an international conspiracy by Jewish groups to supposedly “hide” all genocides other than the Holocaust. In reality, the reasons behind our complete absence of historical memory on the German story are far more complicated, and involve the deep-seated political, cultural, and academic traditions of Germans, Czechs, Poles, and many other peoples alike. Commemoration and even public awareness of one of the worst ethnic cleansings of the twentieth century has been totally obfuscated by three main causes: 1) the desire of modern EU states to maintain positive diplomatic and economic détente; 2) drastically distorted historical memory as fueled by each involved nation's ethnic nationalisms and; 3) the enduring presence of nationalist and neo-Nazi revisionism in preventing legitimate scholarly discourse on the expulsions.

In order to understand the reasons why the ethnic cleansings against the Germans have been forgotten and uncommemorated, it is necessary to analyze why the German government has reversed its longstanding sponsorship of German expellees and now almost entirely refuses to acknowledge the subject. Upon their resettlement after their expulsion – primarily in occupied West Germany and Austria – displaced Germans languished in refugee camps for years, eventually transferred to subsidized housing. The conservative governments of Konrad Adenauer (1949-63) and Kurt Kiesinger (1966-69) promised to support the economic and psychological needs of the expelled Germans, additionally promising to commemorate their experience and pressure the involved nations for compensation. West Germany directly sponsored and represented expellee interests by instating the Law of Return (Rückkehrgesetz). Under this injunction, all uprooted persons of German blood were granted German citizenship in absentia, thereby reinforcing the German government's support and acknowledgment of the ethnic cleansings. Upon arrival, an endless plethora of expellee interest organizations were formed, and were often officially sponsored and subsidized by both the regional and federal governments. [5] The Sudeten Germans and Danube Swabians, respectively forced out of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, are especially commemorated in Austria. [6, 7] The most salient organizations in Germany were the Federation of Expellees and the League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights. The Centrists of the Free Democratic Party hosted official forums for commemoration, giving the expellees major influence on German politics to the point that it was said that “nothing happens behind the backs of expellees.” [8]

The expellee groups exploited the new human rights consciousness of the European Economic Community (EEC) and argued that Heimatrecht – the right to homeland – is a basic human right of self-determination. These groups were offered vague promises by the state to eventually settle the question of full commemoration and indemnity from not only the German government, but from the Czechoslovaks, Poles, Yugoslavs, and Soviets who orchestrated the ethnic cleansings. This was to be not only in the form of financial compensation, but also the possible return of property in a way similar to those returned to victims of the Holocaust. Adenauer insisted at the Paris Conference on German War Debt in 1951 that Germany's reparations must be kept to a minimum, and continued to acknowledge the human rights abuses performed against ethnic Germans as an equally important crisis of World War II. [9] These promises were presented in the context of Germany's still unresolved border with Poland. After the war, the Allies forced Germany to forfeit some 30% of its territory to Poland, thereby leaving as many as 7,000,000 German minorities in a new Poland that was rightfully seething with vengeance. [10] The Adenauer government and its successors considered the “lost lands” in the east, along with the expelled Germans and their seized property, to be an indivisible part of Germany, and continued to promise their official acknowledgment of the expellee legacy. [11] Thus, the memory that German minorities were removed from these lands was often tied to the notion that these lands belonged to Germany. The government's sponsorship of the commemoration and its obdurate stance towards the lost lands was so strong that it was even criticized by Eisenhower for its irredentist implications that may have destabilized East-West relations at the height of the Cold War. [12]

This official support for the memory of the ethnic cleansing gradually made a volte face under Willy Brandt's conservative government (1969-74). Under his tenure, West Germany pursued a new political doctrine of Ostpolitik (“Eastern Politics”), in which West Germany tacitly renounced its claim to be the sole German state and began active cooperation with East Germany. In addition, West Germany now increasingly opened dialogue with the Warsaw Pact states, especially Poland. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and most other states that had orchestrated the ethnic cleansings became increasingly independent of the Soviet Union during this period, and could therefore be courted by West Germany as new economic partners and diplomatic allies. Poland quickly became Germany's primary trading partner, with Germany significantly engaging in mutually-auspicious trade with the Eastern bloc states that were rapidly drifting away from Leonid Brezhnev's dictate. As the German government was the prime sponsor of commemoration for the ethnic cleansing of Germans, it was this process of mutual cooperation between Germany and the complicit states of the East that paved the way for this tragedy to be forgotten. Further, the fact that West Germany was now overwhelmed by immigration further discouraged the government from emphasizing its previous role as the protective father of uprooted Germans abroad. Shortly prior to and after reunification, the German government even asked the Soviet Union to keep the displaced Germans out of Germany because of the draining financial costs. [13] Economic downturns, combined with growing guest worker settlement from Yugoslavia and Poland made the expensive and diplomatically-problematic question of expellee restitution an inconvenience. This was exacerbated by growing nationalism in Poland and Czechoslovakia. The pervasive belief among Poles and Czechoslovaks of an underlying German expansionism, chauvinism, and irredentism made commemoration of this ethnic cleansing mutually inauspicious. [14, 15] Naturally, the fact that the German government still tacitly claimed the lost lands in the east further excited Polish fears of a rebirth in German expansionist nationalism.

It was not until the reunification of Germany in 1990 that this territorial cession was formally confirmed. As a result, the German government reversed its previous promises to the expellees to seek a possible return of their property in the eastern lands from which they were cleansed. Poles had equally as fair a claim to these territories as the Germans, but the treaty ultimately represented far more: the German government's overall abandonment of the memory of the ethnic cleansing and a pragmatic preference for positive diplomacy and economic rapprochement. The German government effectively used the expellee interest groups to cement their legitimacy as the universal German state vis-a-vis East Germany and the Warsaw Pact states. As soon as this commemoration became fiscally injurious, the German government effectively discarded them and their historical memory. These economic and political factors are the main reasons why the ethnic cleansing of more than 10,000,000 civilians has been purged from our historical memory, since their prime sponsor abandoned their story in the name of mutual economic growth.

Since reunification, the German government has almost completely refused to acknowledge or commemorate the legacy of the expulsions. Although Germany has often subsidized the development of hospitals, schools, and small businesses in the regions to which German minorities were expelled abroad (particularly in Kazakhstan), [16] Germany has distanced itself from the subject as being of no benefit and only causing strong diplomatic consequences. Although as many as a million persons of German blood abroad were given German citizenship since 1991 [17] -- including those who could not even speak German due to forced assimilation policies until 1998 [18] -- the German government's longstanding advocacy for commemoration of the anti-German ethnic cleansings quickly evaporated.

As the government justified its newfound position, the question of expellee restitution and commemoration is easily the greatest obstacle today to the positive relations between Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. [18] Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (ruled 1998-2005) epitomized the German government's abandonment of the commemoration effort before a conference of angry expellees, arguing that “the federal government will not encumber its relations with these countries with political and legal questions that come from the past.” He added that the former German territories in the east may have German historical heritage and influence, but are by no means German nationality. [19] He and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer further described the memory of the nearly 3,000,000 [20] German civilians expelled from Czechoslovakia as the prime source of division between the two countries today. [21] Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk similarly averred that the memory of the cleansing was against German and Polish interests, and even argued that Germany should resolve the question by paying the indemnity for both the German and Polish victims of Nazi atrocities themselves. [22] In response to criticism by German nationalists and expellee groups themselves, both the governments of Schröder and Angela Merkel reaffirmed their refusal to lead any international petitions or efforts for restitution and commemoration. [23] It was simply more convenient and propitious to simply forget the ethnic cleansing altogether.

Recently, with the expansion of the human rights-conscious European Union system, the issue has resurfaced in full strength. Ostensibly, all constituent nations within the EU are responsible fsor past human rights infractions via the permanent tribunal in Strassburg, France. The Prussian Trust (preußische Treuhand), [24] founded in 2001, has become the center of an international political controversy following their submission of thirteen lawsuits against the Polish government through the Strassburg court, calling for official recognition of the ethnic cleansing against their minorities and the return of property to displaced German families. Fifty more lawsuits are planned for the immediate future. [25] The Prussian Trust insists that it is not attempting to divert blame off of Germany for its war-time atrocities, but believes that civilians should not be punished out of collective guilt solely because their ethnicity. [26] The EU court ultimately rejected the lawsuits, arguing that they lack jurisdiction to adjudicate on human rights abuses that occurred prior to the institution's inception. [27] The Merkel government agreed with the decision, but noted that her government cannot legally infringe upon the lawsuits of expellees at the private level. [28] Other organizations like the Copernicus Group and “Memory and Solidarity” have worked to overcome these nationalistically-charged tensions by encouraging the expulsions to be discussed on an EU-wide level with participants from all nations involved in the ethnic cleansing.

The Polish government, under the reputedly nationalistic Kaczynski brothers Jaroslaw and the late Lech, interpreted the restitution lawsuits as the rebirth of German chauvinism, nationalism, and their longstanding anti-Polish sentiment that the two states had spent the last twenty years overcoming. The foreign ministry directly referred to the Prussian Trust's lawsuits as “an attempt at reversing moral responsibility for the effects of World War II...Legal claims against Poland can disturb the Polish-German dialogue and in a long-term perspective damage the relations between the two states. [29] Several sources estimate that, were the Polish government to compensate the victims, Poland would be forced to pay a crippling €19,000,000,000. [30] Understandably, Poles have critical economic reasons for not remembering the ethnic cleansing rather than merely nationalistic factors. As a result, the capitulation of the German government on their promises of commemoration have combined with a need for positive economics with Poland, thereby consigning our collective awareness of the ethnic cleansing to oblivion.

The Czech Republic is equally obdurate on their memory of their expulsion of more than 95% of their more than 3,000,000 Germans and Hungarians on exclusionary ethnic lines. [31] The Beneš Decrees, which legalized the seizure of German and Hungarian civil property by Czechoslovak citizens during the expulsions, are still codified in Czech state law today (although not at all enforced or relevant). Upon their accession to the European Union in 2004, the legality of such discriminatory injunctions were increasingly seen as incompatible with the new human rights platform. In 2009, proponents of the new EU constitution specifically challenged the Decrees as unconstitutional. Bavarian minister Edmund Stoiber demanded that the Czechs now be required under EU law to abrogate the Decrees and acknowledge their ethnic cleansing of the forgotten German minority, arguing that the Decrees contradicted “the law, the spirit, and the culture of Europe.” [32] The Eurosceptic president Vaclav Klaus reflected an enduring belief in Czech society that the laws were an inherent part of Czech statehood and descended from their just expulsion of a Nazi “Fifth Column.” Klaus argued that the lifting of the Decrees would become a basis for a torrent of economically-crippling lawsuits by expelled German families that would be unbearable for the comparatively poor nation. He responded that the EU charter should include an exemption for the Decrees, [34] reflecting the reality that the story of the ethnic cleansing has been hidden by the nationalistic historical memory of the Czechs and the Poles.

Following the election of the new Czech president Miloš Zeman of the left-leaning Party of Civic Rights in 2013, the situation is no less volatile. While foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg continues to take a more moderate and cooperative position regarding the Sudeten Germans, Zeman insisted that the expulsion was a somewhat generous punishment: "if some were citizens of a country and collaborated with a state that occupied their country, then the transfer is more moderate than, for instance, death penalty." While he rightly pointed out that some 90% of Sudeten Germans voted for the Henleinist party that sought annexation with Germany by 1938, he insisted that the Benes Decrees were a legal and just part of the Czech constitution (Prague Daily Monitor). Zeman has never failed to excite political controversy. Schwarzenberg suggested that Zeman tone down his rhetoric, while Czech prime minister Petr Nečas pointed out that incendiary rhetoric about the Sudeten Germans was an unnecessary obstacle to positive relations: "relations with Germany have been developing very positively, the relations with Austria are on a good level. It is meaningless, it has no sense and it is of no good to use unnecessarily strong statements."

Despite the official position, there are dissident voices in the Czech Republic that have denounced or otherwise recognised the expulsion, including Vaclav Havel himself, a leader of the multi-party movement in socialist Czechoslovakia (Charter 77) and the founder of the post-communist state after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Havel argued that the romanticised position of Vaclav Klaus was “dangerous” for the Czech nation's modernization and its détente with Germany, the wealthiest country on the continent and its largest trading partner. [34] Along with Havel, former foreign minister and 2013 presidential candidate Karl Schwarzenberg denounced Klaus' hardline position and described the Benes Decrees as contradictory to the human rights platform that has become associated with Europe. In 2013, he argued that: “the Beneš decrees have not been valid for 20 years. When the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms was incorporated in the Czech Constitution, the decrees became invalid...What we committed in 1945 would today be considered a grave violation of human rights and the Czechoslovak government, along with president Beneš, would have found themselves in The Hague” (Richter, Cesky Rozhlas). Despite dissident voices, however, the Czech government, most Czech politicians, and most of Czech society continue to view the transfer of Germans as a necessary process of liberation from the yoke of German hegemony. As late as 2013, Vaclav Klaus argued that the idea of Prague denouncing the Benes Decrees is "scornful of Czech history and as a Czech, I feel threatened by them" (Richter, Cesky Rozhlas). Czech presidential candidate Miloš Zeman reacted by arguing that Karl Schwarzenberg and other Czech politicians who denounce the Benes Decrees are "“speaking like a Sudeten German, not like a president" (Ibid.). It was more beneficial to the Czech state--just like Germany--to transcend the painful past and chart a course of economic and political cooperation.

However, 2008 saw the first significant case of Czechs returning property to German families that were forced out by the Czechoslovak government under Edvard Beneš. The lawsuit took almost 50 years for the Walderobe family, and was subject to incendiary accusations by Czechs of German racism, Nazi apologetics, and revisionism. [35] Opponents argued that the family, like most Sudeten Germans, were advocates of the pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party under Konrad Henlein. Most Germans supported the far-right because of their desire for autonomy and their opposition to what they saw as their reduced ethnic franchise, rather than any direct desire for genocide, Antisemitism, or conquest of the Czech state by the Nazi armies. [36] Despite this auspicious exception, our collective memory of one of the largest forced migrations of the twentieth century has been almost completely hidden due to the inability of Germans, Poles, Czechs to simply acknowledge this history without exciting nationalistic tensions.

In 2015, the leading Sudeten German organisation Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft made a surprising shift by revising their official language to avoid words like 'restitution' and 'compensation', words that have dominated expellee politics for over 50 years. These words are usually perceived as revanchist by the Czech, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and other governments that were involved in the expulsions (Deutsche Welle, 2015 - note z). This is a very significant about-face because expellee lobbies have always maintained political agendas that seem very contradictory to those accused governments. Most prominently, Sudeten German leaders have often been confused why their positive demands for human rights, integration, and cross-cultural dialogue have not been taken seriously by Prague. Here again, the Landsmannschaft insists that they will act as a "go-between in the German-Czech dialogue" and work to denounce all human atrocities carried out against Germans, Czechs, Jews, and Silesians alike. However, Czechs continue to dismiss Sudeten German lobbies as revisionist, revanchist, or simply disingenuous when they simultaneously demand very vague goals like the "return" of the homeland and demand compensation for Czech atrocities. It remains to be seen whether the new Sudeten German political agenda will be treated differently by Prague.

Paradoxically, the ethnic cleansing of the Germans of Eastern Europe has been formally or at least partially acknowledged by other nations. Here too, the reasons behind this commemoration are almost completely political. Rather than springing from a desire to denounce such a brutal ethnic cleansing, each nation has its own political or economic motivation for accepting the memory of the expelled Germans. This paradox reveals the nature of distorted historical memory and why nations remember some tragedies and omit others. Estonia [37] and Latvia [38] have formally acknowledged this history and denounce it in their official museums, thoroughly documenting the critical role of ethnic Germans in shaping their national histories prior to their total removal by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. [39] These nations are open to admit the ethnic cleansings because they played no role in them, because they actively hope to deride the hated Russia for their wanton brutality after the war, and because they hope to enjoy the economic auspices of trade with Germany.

Similarly, the issue of the expelled Germans from the former Yugoslavia is equally political. Croatia has officially acknowledged the ethnic cleansing. Former Prime Minister Ivo Sanadar shocked foreign diplomats when he demanded that Serbia, the Czech Republic, and other governments pay German families restitution for their human rights abuses against their minorities. [40] In 1996, Germany and Croatia agreed on cooperative funding for memorials to war crimes committed by Germany against Yugoslavs and vice versa. [41] Here, too, the motives are largely political. Croatia hopes to integrate into the EU by courting Germany and depicting itself as a vanguard of human rights. Croatia also hopes to deflect its responsibility in committing some of the worst atrocities of World War II by annihilating almost all of its Jewish and Serbian populations. Equally so, Croats are merely deflecting the brutality of Yugoslavia onto the bitterly hated Serbs, who to this day refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoings against their ethnic Germans despite the fact that they were universally forced into compulsory labor in prison camps by Serbian partisans. [42] In precisely the same fashion, Slovenia has formally acknowledged the ethnic cleansing, even awarding €7,000 to one Justin Stanovnik for his forced removal from his home and internment in a labor camp in Slovenia under Tito's authority. Despite efforts by German groups in Serbia like the Society for Serbian-German Cooperation, [43] Serbia remains unchanged, shaping its historical memory to perceive their treatment of Germans as merely the removal of criminals and Fascists.

In a similar fashion, Slovakia (and not the Czech Republic) has formally acknowledged the expulsions, partly with the politicized motive of passing the blame onto the disliked Czechs and maximizing their economic partnership with Germany. Both Hungary and Romania also officially acknowledge the memory of the ethnic cleansing, with Hungary even granting autonomy to its German minority and publishing a day-to-day analysis of the expulsion process. [44] Hungarian historical memory passes the blame for the expulsions, with great validity, [45] onto the Americans, British, and Soviets. Many also divert blame for the ethnic cleansing onto the hated Mátyás Rakósi, particularly vilified because of widespread Antisemitism in shaping Hungarian understanding of their modern history under Communism. Romania similarly offers their Transylvania Saxons great franchise, allowing German groups like the Democratic Forum of Romania to politicize the legacy of ethnic cleansing. [46] Romania rightfully has little concern since their German minority disappeared primarily due to emigration and poor conditions, rather than human rights atrocities.

The fact that these nations at least partially acknowledge the expulsion of Germans and not Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, or the Soviet Union exemplifies the politics of forgetting. The only nations that have made a conscious effort to obfuscate the ethnic cleansing are those most responsible. As they are the most important parties involved in the question of commemoration, their conscious distortion of their historical memory and their manipulative politics have made the expulsions almost completely unknown in our collective consciousness despite their severity. By their preference for positive economics and their inability to simply acknowledge a general human atrocity without inciting intense nationalism, these governments have rendered the historical experiences of more than 10,000,000 civilians as a mere anomaly.

On a high note, the intensification of a world humanist consciousness has increasingly invigorated expellee groups and general human rights organisations to raise awareness on the story of the destroyed ethnic German communities. In February of 2010, hundreds of scholars, historians, human rights representatives, and diplomats met in St. Louis, Missouri to hold the groundbreaking academic conference "The Forgotten Genocide." The televised event, where the Institute for Research of Expelled Germans was represented and gave a speech on the Volga Germans (see video here), included a press conference and roundtable discussion on the state of commemoration today (see video below).

 
Scholars and diplomats Tomislav Sunić, Kearn Schemm, Rudolf Püschel, and Andreas Wesserle hold a roundtable discussion and a press conference on the state of commemoration of ethnic cleansing against German minorities (Click HERE to see the rest of the speech segments and more)

 

 

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Citations/Footnotes

1) Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 80.

2) Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, "A People on the Move: Germans in Russia and in the Former Soviet Union: 1763-1997," North Dakota State University, http://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/history_culture/history/people.html.

3) Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (Hill and Wang, 2001), 799.

4) Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2002), 14.

5) Pertti Ahonen, After the Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe 1945-1990 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004), 109.

6) Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans,” http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm

7) Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The forced labour, imprisonment, expulsion, and emigration of the Germans of Yugoslavia," http://expelledgermans.org/danubegermans.htm

8) Ahonen, 176.

9) Jean Dingell, “The Question of the Polish Forced Labourer during and in the Aftermath of World War II: The Example of the Warthegau Forced Labourers,” Remember.org, http://remember.org/educate/dingell.html

10) Mazower, 412.

11) Ahonen, 110.

12) Ibid, 114.

13) John Tagliabue, "Bonn Urges Russia to Restore Land for its Ethnic Germans," New York Times, 11 January, 1992.

14) Goralski, Witold. “Interview with A. Dybczynski.” 9 March, 2004.

15) Karl Cordell, Germany's Foreign Policy towards Poland and the Czech Republic: Ostpolitik Revisited (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2005), 149.

16) Tagliabue.

17) Brown 2003, 233.

18) Ibid.

19) Pawel Lutomski, “The Debate about a Center against Expulsions: An Unexpected Crisis in German-Polish Relations?,” German Studies Review, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2004): 452.

20) Staff, 2000, "Expelled Germans get recognition, not cash," http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/04/news/mn-15361

21) Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans," http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm

22) Alix Kroeger, "Fischer against Sudeten monument,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3182123.stm

23) Lutomski 459.

24) Staff Writer, 2006, “Poles Angered by German WWII Compensation Claims,” http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,455183,00.html

25) Preußische Treuhand, “Die Grundidee,” http://www.preussische-treuhand.org/de/Grundidee.html

26) Staff Writer, 2006.

27) Geir Moulson, “Court rejects Germans' property restitution claims,” http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/09/europe/EU-Germany-Poland.php

28) Ibid.

29) Staff Writer, 2006.

30) Anna Fotyga, “Statement of the [Polish] Minister of the Foreign Affairs,”
http://www.msz.gov.pl/index.php?document=8688

31) Lutomski, 458.

32) Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans," http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm

33) Staff, 2007, "Stoiber enters Sudeten German row, defends expellees," http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2559416,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf

33) Katerina Zachovalova, "Czech Republic's EU holdout has public support," Time, http://time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1931664,00.html?xid=yahoo-feat?artId=1931664?
contType=article?chn=world

34) Ibid.

35) Staff, 2008, "Czechs must return forest to Walderobe family,"
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/index_view.php?id=331063

36) Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The removal and discriminatory laws of Czechoslovakia against Carpathian and Sudeten Germans," http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm

37) Eesti Instituut, "Baltic Germans in Estonia," http://www.einst.ee/historic/society/baltic_germans.htm

38) Latvijas Instituts, "Germans in Latvia," http://www.li.lv/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=78&lang=en

39) Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The Baltic German community destroyed under Hitler and Stalin's non-aggression pact," http://expelledgermans.org/balticgermans.htm

40) Eduard Šoštarić, "Diplomate razbjesnio povrat imovine Austrijancima," Nacional, No. 525, 6 June, 2005.

41) Veleposlanstvo Republike Hrvatske u Njemačkoj, "Zbirka međunarodnih ugovora," http://de.mvp.hr/?mh=160&mv=925

42) Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The forced labour, imprisonment, expulsion, and emigration of the Germans of Yugoslavia," http://expelledgermans.org/danubegermans.htm

43) B92 News (Belgrade 92 News), "Serbia's Germans form national council," http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2007&mm=12&dd=16&nav_id=46226

44) Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, “A magyarországi németek kitelepítése és az 1941, évi népszámlálás,” http://www.nepszamlalas.hu/hun/egyeb/nemet/bevezeto.html

45) Institute for Research of Expelled Germans, "The expelled German community of Hungary,"
http://expelledgermans.org/hungarygermans.htm

46) Klausjohannis.ro, “Forumul Democrat al Germanilor din România,” http://www.klausjohannis.ro/files/fdgr.htm

Richter, Jan. "Beneš decrees re-surface in Czech presidential race." Český rozhlas. http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/benes-decrees-re-surface-in-czech-presidential-race.

[x] While the West German government and the Red Cross maintained an unverified and controversial number of over 2 million for many decades, and expellee groups often exaggerated to as many as 3 or 4 million as part of genocide, most scholarly estimates today cite a minimum of 400,000 deaths. Hahn and Hahnova cite 473,013, Ingo Haar "“no more than 0.5 to 0.6 million,” and Overmanns roughly 600,000. See Ingo Haar, “Die deutschen ’Vertreibungsverluste’ – Forschungsstand, Kontexte, und Probleme,“ in Mackensen, Rainer. Ursprünge, Arten und Folgen des Konstrukts
"bevölkerung" vor, im und nach dem "dritten Reich": zur Geschichte der Deutschen Bevölkerungswissenschaft(1. Aufl. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009), Hahnová, Eva, and Hans-Henning Hahn. Die Vertreibung im Deutschen Erinnern: Legenden, Mythos, Geschichte (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010), and Overmans, Rüdiger. "Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevölkerung durch Flucht und Vertreibung," Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik (XXI-1994).

[y] Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (Hill and Wang, 2001), 799.

Prague Daily Monitor, "PN Nečas slams Zeman over Sudeten German remarks," http://praguemonitor.com/2013/04/25/pn-ne%C4%8D-slams-zeman-over-sudeten-german-remarks.

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