Uprooted, expelled and transferred
Millions of Germans were uprooted from Poland and Czechoslovakia; hundreds of thousands from Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia; and smaller numbers from the Baltic states and the Netherlands.
A large number of Germans fled their homes. Others were moved: they were expelled, physically transferred or swapped. In the Baltic states and Yugoslavia, flight was most common; in Poland, the predominant method is questioned and the population movements particularly large and varied; in the Netherlands, expulsions were followed by a larger population transfer in the other direction; in Czechoslovakia, officially sanctioned expulsions outnumbered spontaneous expulsions.
The countries they were uprooted from included protectorates (Poland, Bohemia and Moravia), puppet states (Slovakia, Croatia, the Netherlands), Axis allies (Hungary, Romania), and countries caught in civil war for much of the time (most of Yugoslavia). Large ethnic-German minorities remained in some countries (eg, Romania); only a rump remained in others (eg, Czechoslovakia, Poland). Varying numbers of the residual ethnic-German minorities took up West Germany's Cold War offer of resettlement (particularly the case in Romania). The number of Hungarians expelled from Czechoslovakia (about 50,000) was smaller than the number of Slovaks and Hungarians (about 120,000 each) who were moved in a bilaterally agreed population transfer in 1946.
A sensitive subject
The tangled history of a planned documentation centre on forced migration in Berlin reflects the sensitivity of the topic in Germany.
The centre was, in its original form, a project of the Union of the Expelled (BdV), an association of ethnic Germans expelled from central and eastern Europe. Over the years, it was toned down and received the backing of the government, which was given the last word on appointments to the centre's governing board.
The BdV was given three seats on the board but was thwarted this spring when it tried to nominate its president, Erika Steinbach, to one of those seats.
A member of the German parliament for the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Steinbach is a highly divisive figure. Her nomination was opposed by the CDU's coalition partner at the time, the Social Democrats, and by the Polish government.
Now that the Social Democrats have been displaced in the federal government coalition by the Free Democrats (FDP), the BdV wants to try again; a decision is expected on 17 November. During a visit to Warsaw last Saturday (31 October), Guido Westerwelle, Germany's new foreign minister and leader of the FDP, signalled that he opposed Steinbach's nomination. The matter could easily turn into the first serious challenge for Chancellor Angela Merkel's new coalition.
Daily online news
