War and Flight

Abstract

Many today ignore or minimize the horrors of the expulsion of the Germans. Journalists and politicians seldom speak about it. When they do, they mention a “transfer of populations,” which sounds harmless enough. Even historians in the East and in the West have had a tendency to use similar euphemisms. Yet, in order to understand how the Germans themselves perceive the expulsion, it is necessary to look for a more encompassing definition of the term Vertreibung, or expulsion, which is seen in Germany as embracing not only the mass expulsions in the summer and fall of 1945 but also the evacuations of German populations undertaken by German authorities beginning in the fall of 1944, the general flight of refugees in the spring of 1945 and the organized forced resettlements that began in 1946. The term is perceived in this manner because the evacuees and those who fled fully intended to return to their home regions at the conclusion of hostilities. However, Polish and Soviet authorities prevented the refugees from returning, thereby uprooting them and, in a very real sense, making expellees out of them.