More than five years of War Against Humanity. Spartacus, you should be proud. You brought a great passion for the triumph of our better selves to this project, and it still shows today. I think most people would be numb long before this point, and here you are still bringing everything you have to the project. Bravo sir, bravo.
@@freefall9832excuse me?! I don’t take any side except humanity. Given that Germany was the biggest opponent to humanity in WW2, I’m strictly opposed to, and appalled by Germany’s war and conduct in that war. Considering the huuuge amount of atrocities by the Wehrmacht and SS that I have documented, that should be apparent. Let me guess… you couldn’t stomach that I also documented the far lesser, but not insignificant acts of war against humanity by the Western Allies. You got your panties in a bunch because I didn’t laud and celebrate the terror bombing of German children. Is that about right? And German heritage? I live in Germany by choice, I have no “German heritage.” If it was the 1930s or 40s and I was still me, Germany would not be my choice.
My aunt who passed away this year was one of these Germans. I am thankful almost 10 years ago I got her story recorded in interviews as she told me about her entire experience before, during and after the war she was 21 when the war ended.
You should consider sharing her testimony with humanity. With an event like this war, there are so many different aspects, and I have never heard testimony from a German who had to endure that side of the story......
My mom was 5 when the Czech government gave their family 20 minutes to pack up and leave their home in Aussig. This was part of the Sudetenland. My Opa (wounded veteran of the eastern front) and Oma (Czech heritage) were given minutes to vacate with 3 children (7, 5, 2). As they were forced out of their home, a Czech family moved in. They headed west on a train and settled in a town south of Nuremberg. They were incredibly lucky. After the war, reprisals were expected. But, I have recently learned of my Czech and Austrian heritage. Mom is 84, married an American soldier, and did well for herself. But, the stories she tells are sometimes hard to hear. Thank you for shedding light on this tragedy after the guns fell silent.
Tragedy? All these nazi Germans destroyed Czechoslovakia from within and brought a nazi accupation on us. Germans destroyed Czechoslovakia and its future for decades. They should consider how lucky they were to be even left alive. Vast majority of them were traitors of Czechoslovakia
This is not a tragedy this is justice for what your people have done, and that is also EXTREMELY light justice. The fact that this thinking is so strong in Germany (and beyond as the author shows) just shows how little you know about what you did. Also, the author of this video is presenting an extremely one sided perspective and ignores everything that lead up to this. Germans should be happy, that this is the only thing that happened. And I say that as a descendant of those Germans who stayed put. This whole film should be summed up with a phrase: "play stupid games win stupid prizes". At the end of the day they were "expelled" to a country that was allowed to be democratic and prosperous when Poland and Czechoslovakia found themselves poor behind the iron curtain. "Expulsion" or "escape", if anything, was actually good for them. This guy is absolutely insane, wonder how would he feel if he was forced to live after the war with those who murdered his mother, enslaved his father, destroyed all the cultural heritage of his country and so on. It's easy to make those statements 80 years after the war, but I find him extremely ignorant. Now, so many years later, there is peace, and it is good so. But after the war, and the unbelievable crimes, where large section of for instance Polish population was killed?
Yugoslav communist partisans killed many Italian civilians jumping them in deep caves to force expulsion: nearly 250.000 went to Italy to avoid violence.
@@urvanhroboatos8044 Numbers are disputed here, again. And there is also the difference of counting those who lived there before 1918, those that came between 1918 and 1941 (some from Italy, but some also from other regions, that were granted to the Yugoslaw state) and those that came between 1941 and 1945. Also did some who identified as Croats, Slovenes or even Serbs leave. And yet again did some of people have a mixed self identity. There were also killings of people, mostly those (wrongly or not) associated with the Mussolini Regime. Some people were forced harshly, some encouraged, others left on their own and even some went even though authorities didn't want them to go... So in short: It was complicated.
My mother came from East Prussia and had to flee 1945. Her treck crossed a huge frozen inland sea. Some horse carts have been broken through the ice previously and drowned. My mother could see the horses ears rising up from the ice
Yes, after the terror of German invasion and ocfupation, which should be studied by all Germans, the Soviets had absolutely no regard for life of German civilians
Main inspiration for Avatar’s The Promise comic where entire conflict stemmed from Fire Nation colonies being dismantled to “go back to the way it was” but got into older colonies where most didn’t know their home countries. Except Germans in those areas have been living even when majority people are ruling class.
I have long tried to find stories among the descendents of the so-called Volksdeutsche people but, for understandable reasons, many Germans don't like to talk about what their family did and experienced during the war. The most surprising thing that I found is that German pop-star Helene Fischer's paternal grandparents were "Black Sea Germans" and were forcefully relocated to Kazakhstan and Siberia, where Helene was also born. I hope that she will one day speak more about her family roots and what happened during those difficult years. Thank you TimeGhost for another challenging and great video about the aftermath of the war.
I‘m reading Das Wolfsmädchen currently (not sure how it’s called in English) The the story of the German wolf children, who fought for their survival in the forests of Lithuania, is a little-known chapter in post-war German history. I get very emotional reading it but if you are interested it’s a good read
One of my greatuncles from east prussia grew up on a farm there with his two younger siblings. Their father was forced into military service in 44 and died, when the red army passed they took all animals and their mother who was never seen again (aka raped and then murdered). He was the oldest (10 i think) and took the role of leading his younger siblings. To survive they tried to continue working the farm and yoked eachother in front of the plow. They stayed until they were forcefully expelled in 46 or 47.
Yes, it may be niche and not broadly known part of history. It's important not to lose perspective that German nationalism as a whole was supported by majority of those "German victims", and their later persecution was direct result of their hateful and cruel ideology, of what they did to others
I really appreciate this episode for giving me a shared feeling of historical mistreatment with those targeted by these governments. As a descendant of survivors of the greek genocide I often point out how our struggle for recognition is connected with all atrocities in the former Ottoman Empire from Yugoslavia to Yemen, but never did I expect to have that same feeling of solidarity with many German people (I see similarities between these events in the video & the greco-turkish population exchange), I appreciate you expanding my knowledge & compassion for humanity ❤️!
The fate of these Germans is rooted in WWII. They bore almost the entire punishment of Germany for its actions in WWII. It is the other unpunished Germans who owe them something.
Our community here comes from across Europe. Did anyone’s parents or grandparents live through this expulsion? For those further afield have you got family histories that were blighted by expulsions or ethnic cleansing?
Yeah, some. I tried to mention these memories once but then I was reminded that "hateful posts will lead to a loss of your posting privileges". Sorry, for my grandparents (north PL) it was really hard to sympathize with those Germans. After all, Germans worked really hard last 6 years to eradicate any conscious in that area. Besides, local population was not much better off, just switched occupation form nazis to soviets. BTW, do you plan to cover the deportations of other nations?
My grandmother was from the Sudetenland, and she was 3 or 4 years old when she, together with her mom and her older sister were chased out at some point in 1945. I'm unsure if it was during the war or after, but I remember her telling me that it was Soviet soldiers who did it to them. They also (if I remember correctly) raped both her pregnant mother and her 9-10 year old older sister. Her mother was then forced to give birth while travelling, on a random table of a random house along the way
The continuation of the Great War into Russia and its former empire meant that one of my great grandmothers had to leave it and eventually got her way to Canada
A co-worker an ethnic German whose family had lived in Yugoslavia for 250 years, at the end of the war was put into a concentration camp…. They were basically told to “escape” and leave Yugoslavia….or else…..they got to Austria then into displaced persons program and on to the USA
They may have been neighbors to my grandparents. They fled Yugoslavia, ended up in a camp, escaped to Germany through Austria, and eventually ended up in the US in '52.
My mother is a head of a Czech-German friendship organization in ex Sudetenland, so she's in contact with a lot of Germans who were expelled as childern back then. They like to travel here occasionally and seem to feel a bond to their past homeland, but they don't really feel any anger towards us Czechs, and I would say there's no bad blood between us anymore. The current generation doesn't really care, most don't even know that sudetenland was, at least that's my experience.
yes, fortunately I think the bad blood has disappeared mostly. I have visited the places were my anchestors lived and feel no animosity towards anyone living there today. Only thing I personally do not like is the idea that some czech people seem to harbour that they never did anything wrong or if they did that it was 100% justified. It is particularly problematic when it comes to the idea of collective punishment.
@@mikolajtrzeciecki1188 what makes you believe that the Germans today feel partcular anger towards the Czechs? He even stated that this was his personal experience.
My grandmother was just about 18 when she and her family were fleeing from Pomerania. Her older brother had already fallen about 2 years earlier somewhere around Stalingrad. Her father stayed behind for some stupid reason (I think he believed he could save the family farm), he got killed by the Soviets when the expulsions started. Only my grandmother and her mother made it to Germany, I don't know if they were ever raped, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. They first staying in the soviet occupation zone, but my grandmother met my grandfather there (who was a Luftwaffe radio technician in occupied Denmark and managed to get back to Germany after only a rather short few months as PoW) and they left together for the Ruhr industrial area in West Germany to work in the coal mines, which provided a comfortable living for them due to the post-war economic miracle. My grandparents' generation was the one who really suffered from the war started by the Nazis, while not being responsible at all for the war - they were children when the Nazis took over, my grandfathers and granduncles were drafted right out of school during the war and were send to the front (the one who was sent to Denmark was lucky - my other grandfather was on the Eastern front during the majority of the war, and spend 5 years afterwards in a gulag, barely surviving). They never got a vote on this, but had to suffer through the madness started by their parents' and grandparents' generations allowing the Nazis to gain power and enact their genocidal ideology. One of my grandfathers had 12 siblings before the war - less than half of them survived the war.
I’m pretty sure it was the Jews, Poles, and anyone deemed enemies of the Reich who were the victims of the Nazis. Your grandparents cowardice may be reasonable or understandable, but that doesn’t absolve them of serving in the Wehrmacht and fighting to save the Nazi regime. They knew what regime they were fighting for. They saw the death camps and perpetrated mass killings on all fronts of the war. No Nazi, or dog of the Nazis, were victims nor have the right to speak as though they were victims. God will judge them in the end.
@mikebane2866 so in your mind literal CHILDREN, who were like 10 years old when the Nazis took over in 1933, are responsible for all the crimes of Nazi Germany? Young boys who got force drafted in 1939 or 1940, after having been brainwashed for the last 6 to 7 years of the most formative time of their lives, should be expected to just turn around and lead a resistance? Never mind that my grandMOTHERS never fought, they were literal children until the end of the war. That's madness. By this standard, all people everywhere are guilty for some crime committed by some long dead ancestors.
@ Nice straw man. The mindless hoards love straw man arguments, it is cheap, industrial scale, fast food that requires little meaningful effort yet brings that feeling of accomplishment and reward which gets reinforced through other intellectually lazy people. All children deserve a fair chance to develop into an adult, which is when their character is put to the test. Their parents, grandparents, however, they had years to show who they really are inside. If a German was of moral character then they would not have been attracted to support the Nazis, nor attempt to colonize lands they know had been recently taken through their own country’s aggressive expansionist policies. You don’t resettle your German family in Poland unless you’re committed to exterminating or “Germanizing” the Poles.
It's funny how selective your morality is. Your grandparents were young, but their parents applauded German (not Nazi, they were German) nationalist frenzy that brought horror to all Europe. 1/5 of Polish people died thanks to your elected hateful leader. Nationalism, fascism, racism Germans supported is relying on group identity, persecution based on the identity not individual guilt. And at the end they experienced what it means...
My Great Grandfather on my father's side was one of those Hungarians deported to Germany. He and his ancestors had lived in a small village in Tolna county for generations. They were 'asked' to pack up and leave in the early hours one day and were on a train with whatever they could carry. Eventually living in Wiesbaden Germany.
The ending was grim, reminds me of the Dark Gods of Chaos in Warhammer 40,000. So much suffering and despair, and so many don't even realize that life was this way for so many (and some today) and could even be that way for them.
This last paragraph is so insanely powerful. As long as we refuse to understand that they are us. Brings tears to my eyes. Thank you Sparti! For all the work you have done in these years!
My Grandfathers Family was expelled from their Home in Silesia. His Father was made to stay by the soviets because he could act as a vetinarian (he was a farmowner). He never saw him again. His mother died on the way to Berlin due exhaustion / starvation. Now that my Grandfather has passed I regret not having talked more about this as well as the war.
@@RK-cj4oc True. But personally its weird, because without my grandfathers expulsion he would never have met my grandmother, so I woulndt even be here. Furthermore my grandmother lost her first husband and baby during a bombing raid before she met my grandfather (her second husband) So I owe my existence to all that misery somehow.
They are all victims of hatered that started in German Nation, that brought those horrible genocides to all Eastern Europe, and only at the end Germans got a little taste of what they did to others
This is such a difficult conversation - when discussed through a historical perspective. The firsthand brutality that is observed or experienced over an extended period is embedded in your mind, your heart, and your spirit. When one is struggling to survive after this horrific experience, experience that is so broad - how would one react? In retrospect, I can think one way - in the moment, probably the other. This said, we all are living in this moment , hopefully we can step forward.
My grandparents were in Yugoslavia (previously Hungary, now Serbia) when all this was going on. Their ancestors had lived near Odzaci/Hodschag/Hodsag since the 1770s. When the Germans occupied the area my grandfather was drafted. While he was away in the army, my grandmother and their 5 children ended up in a camp once the partisans took over. They escaped eventually, not before starvation brought the total down to 4 children. They made it to Germany through Austria. My grandfather was released from a British POW camp sometime around 1946. They ended up finding their way back to each other (which was good for me because my father was born after that). In 1952 they flew to America as part of a work program and have been here ever since. The stories I've heard from my aunt are in line with what was in this video. Hearing the suffering from a survivor is more impactful than raw numbers.
Age 10 in 1945, Edith walked from Poland to East Berlin and later crossed into West Berlin where she met an English soldier. They married and Edith came to live in the leafy suburbs of South East London. Thirty five years ago my wife June and myself moved just a few days away from Edith. Both of us in childhood had lived through the London Blitz and the V1’s and V2’s close to the Centre. June and Edith were both keen gardeners and became very close friends each living the rest of their lives in each others pockets. They both passed away within a few weeks of each other and I attended both funerals. Before she met Edith, June had met another friend Vera who had served time in the Russian Gulags and was released in an exchange that took place in Switzerland. An RAF pilot flew Vera back to England and they formed a relationship and were later married and settled where previously June and myself lived. After my wife’s passing I became friends with Halina who told me she had Polish parents. Her mother, who was still living, age 14 had been deported to Siberia in cattle trucks. In 1941, Russia and Poland became allies and Helena’s mother was given the option to join the Polish Army in North Africa. She forced marched with her compatriots to the Caspian Sea and was then transported to North Africa. At the end of the War she chose to come to the UK. I also point out, that from time to time both German and Polish friends came over to stay with Edith from time to time, who we met and they became our friends. We never forget, but good people see the best in each other.
My great grandparents that were in the Yugoslav partisans were settled in one of Vojvodinas (province of todays northern Serbia) empty German villages. We have a guy obsessed here with lost German gold and valuables, we call him Dado "Hitler".
As Polish political scientist let me add my two cents here: while Germans were being expelled, so were millions of Poles. A key aspect of post WWII Poland was the forceful (Allied implemented) shift of Poland's borders. At the Potsdam conference it was decided for Poland (without Poland's consent) that the country would loose its eastern half to the Soviet Union, and as "compensation" would receive a third of pre-war Germany. As a result, Germans were not being expelled on a Polish whim, but by Soviet decree to make room for the millions of Poles expelled from modern Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. This is something I believe the video should have mentioned.
@@WorldWarTwo Thank you for answering me. My point is, as much as I thoroughly enjoy the production quality of the video (I love the maps and flags), and am fully aware that there is limited time to discuss all facets in detail, I still feel the wording used here provides a somewhat distorted and warped view of the exact nature of the Polish involvement in these events. Yes, the Soviet Union is mentioned throughout the video, BUT only as a background character, and not the one pulling all the strings. In my opinion, what needs to be clarified is that the "Polish state", "Polish government" or "Warsaw", mentioned numerous times throughout the video wasn't an actually independent and sovereign entity, but a Soviet installed puppet regime implementing Allied (Soviet) decisions, all the while dealing with a refugee crisis of its own caused by the expulsions of Poles from the Soviet Union. I find this to be a key background fact that provides necessary context to understanding the full scope of the events that unfolded, and as such it should not be omitted, as any blame for what happened might end up being misplaced. I appreciate you picking up this subject (hence why I clicked the video) but I do still believe much more discussion is needed if we are to reach clarity regarding these and other similar events. I am glad we get to talk. Cheers from Kraków.
There is a difference. The fate of these Germans is rooted in WWII. They bore almost the entire punishment of Germany for its actions in WWII. It is these other unpunished Germans who owe them something.
While all this was happening in Europe, returned American GI's were trying to find child care for their new babies, and a place to live, and to just get on with their interrupted lives. The fate of the German people you spoke about would have been way down on their care about list. To quote my Dad, "None of us wanted to be over there." Most of those GI's in my family brought that war home with them in their heads where it would live rent-free for the rest of their lives. Again, not a seedbed for caring about displaced Germans. But when I migrated to Canada I ran into a lot of people who had left Europe to come to Canada to start all over again. I listened to many of their stories. Many joined my church. Some were fellow clergy in my denomination. To paraphrase MLK, Jr, "the moral arc of the universe bends toward reconciliation." How important it is to learn from [and effectively teach] our history!
The 1st book that I read that gave me an idea of how brutal the expulsion was, the book Flight in Winter that covered the last 6 months of the Eastern Front in WW2.
Given what the Germans had done to the occupied nations especially in Eastern Europe I am both neither shocked nor surprised to watch this. “All war is a crime no matter how just the cause. If you think war is not a crime ask the dead. Ask the infantry.” Hemmingway.
"We will continue to cut into our own flesh and sacrifice it to the gods of strife and suffering." Their names are Khorne and Slaanesh, Sparty. (Sorry, couldn't resist. Too perfect of a reference to Warhammer 40K)
My dad was in Patton’s Third Army…after the war he had to transport civilians to the Russian zone of occupation. What he witnessed would haunt him the rest of his life. As they unloaded the civilians and handed them all over the Russians immediately separated the women from the men. They weren’t very particular on the ages as they proceeded to rape the females. Dad said they tried to stop what was happening but the Russians raised their rifles at them. His commanding officer ordered his unit back on the trucks. They had to drive off hearing the women scream. He talked about that to his dying day.
The fate of these Germans is rooted in WWII. They bore almost the entire punishment of Germany for its actions in WWII. It is these other unpunished Germans who owe them something.
Thanks for covering this grim conclusion to the WW2 WAH in the best way possible. Beautiful and poignant writing, especially on the last 5 minutes. A special thank you for mentioning at the start the unfortunate fact that this was the largest forced expulsion in the history of humanity... until 1945. I really hope that one day you cover the tragedy of the Partition of India with the depth and sombreness it deserves.
It’s very important to remember that until decades after the war, the lessons the other powers took weren’t that this ethnicized view of the world was wrong, but that it really was a problem that ethnic minorities existed outside of “their” nation’s borders. In that way, for a time, Nazism lived on in the ethnic cleansing and expulsions of Germans. Hitler had one last laugh because of those who claimed to be trying to stop another Hitler from ever appearing. It’s a strong lesson that the fundamental lens through which you view the world can make anyone do awful things, in service of what they think are the morally just ends.
@ they were absolutely categorically wrong. The ethnic nation-state model of state legitimacy did not create global peace and prosperity. It subjected millions to dehumanizing cleansing and being forced from their homes which their families had lived in for centuries, just because of some arbitrary ethnic categorization. If it’s wrong when Nazis cleanse Warsaw and try to turn it into a German City by killing and displacing hundreds of thousands, then it’s wrong when Lithuania tries to make Vilnius a completely Lithuanian City by forcefully converting and displacing hundreds of thousands of German speakers, and when Sudeten German speakers who have been living in that area since before nation states were a thing are pushed across the border from their lands and homes in the name of “state ethnic homogeneity and order.” And if it’s not wrong when those states did it to Germans, then it’s not wrong when the Nazis did it to Slavs. You have to choose, you either are a sympathizer for the ideology of ethnic nation-state homogeneity at all costs or you aren’t.
And somehow the ethnic tension plagued Europe for centuries went way down. And No. The main reason is to minimize the cause belli plagued Europe: " To support (insert ethnic) being suppressed by (insert hostile nation)". Hitler used it so much that people in power wanted to end it. Wow😂😂😂😂😂 Did u equalize what Nazi have in store for slavs to what they did to Germans? Last i check the countries didn't enslave and genocide slowly the Germans. We have plenty of official documents about the plans for the Slavs. Those didn't begin only because Nazi lost
I tend to agree with the author. Responsibility of expulsions stems from the decisions of the allies at the conferences especially the last one at Potsdam
The areas under Soviet control had no restrictions on punishment of Germans. How were the Western countries responsible for that? They treated people in their areas relatively well. Another war to stop the Communist degradation of humanity could have been as big, or bigger, than the war just fought in Europe. A greater horror entirely.
@@gvibration1 You raise a good point. I see the expulsions as morally wrong. The western powers of the conferences acquiesced with Russia to the deportations because they themselves especially the US had deported the Japanese and Italians because of their ethnicity. They were sent to special camps in a human way which contrasted to the brutal nature of the expelled peoples in Eastern Countries such as Poland. In my country, Canada, there were deportations and Expulsions of the French Acadians, the French Government officials and their staffs, the Japanese in British Columbia to internment camps and a number of indigenous tribes in the north.
@miltonthomaslowe agree with your points. War dispenses with many/most of the niceties of life. However, there is still not a moral equivalent. The Soviets had already had the Holmodor and a number of forced mass movements of ethnic/racial/religious groups pre war. Millions of the displaced died post war in labour camps etc. The West had nothing like that and could not have forced the communists to do anything differently without another huge war.
Something that was not mentioned here about this human tragedy and deserves to be, is how the prejudiced, hostile and discriminatory attitude of the local German populations into which these people were displaced lasted towards them, particularly in western Germany. It persisted for DECADES! It is understandable that people of western cities, devastated by Allied bombing and struggling desperately themselves for food and shelter, perhaps did not welcome a further massive influx of homeless, hungry mouths. However, even DECADES later, even when the cities had been largely rebuilt and West Germany was again a very prosperous society, the discrimination and hostility endured. As an example: When I used to visit my Grandparents in Hannover, from London throughout the 1960s and 70s, my Grandmother who was a native Hannoverian and born in 1920 and so very much a product of the Nazi school system of indoctrination (even if she didn’t know it), would often make disparaging remarks about her neighbour, Frau Schindler, because she had been a refugee from the East. At a benign level, this amount to mocking her, behind her back, for her marked eastern accent when speaking German. On a nastier and more telling level, it was questioning her inherent level of not just education but also intelligence because of their origins. It would also be to the point where she she would suggest that she wasn’t even properly ‘clean’ because of her “Polnische Hauswirtschaft” - Polish Housekeeping - which was still a common slang for a dirty, unsanitary house! This discrimination also extended to the workplace etc. again…..for DECADES.
What I find so revealing is the fact that when people belittle refugees, they always highlighted how those people don’t fit into the existing society. And yet here we have Germans from the same state speaking the same language having the same religion who are forcefully repelled due to actions of the whole nation and absolutely no logical other place to go - and still they are looked down upon. Really makes you think how low these complains about refugees sometimes are
Remember Germany is a new country - created in 1871. The individual Germanic states have separate history of over 1000 years. The was i eat way to bring a community together is us and them - the only them in historical times were your near neighbours. You can decry human nature but it will always exert itself!
@@tancreddehauteville764 What a ridiculous statement, every single country on Earth has generalized caricatures of groups of people from a different parts of that country, with each group having severe and often deep seated prejudices against the other.
@@jonahtwhale1779 Good point that you made. Furthermore, during the Cold War, it was much easier for the Wessies to cope with the situation by blaming it on the Ossies. Meanwhile, the Lutheran North also somewhat tried to distance itself from the Austrian-Bavarian Catholic South. Partly due to proximity to the North Sea, there was somewhat of an economic North-South divide in addition to the East-West divide.
Like the USSR did, or Yugoslavia, buy guns, get in shape, form militias, seize power by strength and sacrifice. One cannot take the high road if their enemy refuses to do the same.
My Czech grandma was growing up during wwii. She was living in a small village called Košíky located next to wooded hills in Moravia (only czech people lived there). During war some german conscript escaped from baracs in nerby town Kroměříž not wanting to go into war. Her father found him hiding in a forest (or he came to the door knocking, dont exactly remember). He had helped to hide him in his home and fed him. Also, his girlfriend even came so they could be together in the tough war times. They were (grandmas family) taking care of them both as well as hiding them in their homestead. Every night after dinner, grandma's dad was playing piano, and they all were drinking together, trying to enjoy life as much as they could. After the war, there were supposedly suddenly a lot of proud czechs trying to fight nazis running around. Everyone in this village had to write down if they were hiding german soldiers. My grandgrandfather did that. He was afraid for his own family as he had many kids, and the times were dangerous. These wannabe partisans led them both from grandparent's home into a nerby forest. They shot the conscript as well as his girlfriend.
woah. that is a fascinating story. These "partisans" look suspiciously much like the Nazis who killed jewish people just for their ethnicity without even checking if they did anything bad. They just assume a nationality collectively evil. Even Germans who didnt want to fight i the war and proved it had to be killed in their eyes without proof.
woah. that is a fascinating story. These "partisans" look suspiciously much like the people who killed jewish people just for their ethnicity without even checking if they did anything bad. They just assume a nationality collectively evil. Even Germans who didnt want to fight ii the war and proved it had to be killed in their eyes.
This mass expulsion and associated atrocities were never taught in schools, and I knew little or nothing of it until fairly recently. And I have been reading accounts of the Second World War rather constantly for some fifteen or twenty years. It is humiliating and humbling to realize how the suffering of WWII continued for months and years after the war’s formal end. My ancestors emigrated from Pomerania in 1843-45, and so missed these nightmares by a century. But I have obtained books containing first hand accounts from those who were living in the area of my ancestors, and it is so sad. On one hand, the Germans had it coming, and on the other hand, peasant farmers in Pomerania likely had little to do with Nazi war crimes.
Yes, although the war is over the death and suffering continue. Depressing...I am a USA citizen 69 years old and was never taught anything about WW2 except in the most superficial details.Thanks so much to Time Ghost for illuminating these dark episodes of history that must be remembered.
After the scale of suffering the Nazis inflicted in the name of the German people... it was a guarantee that there was no possibility of a clean reconciliation after the war ended. Unless there is an faction able to stand as a third party, and with the force necessary to prevent it, revenge will always make itself known. It's a primal human reaction after all. ...Then again, if such a faction existed in the first place, WW2 would probably never happened in the first place. The book closes, The End is written on the page... but history doesn't work like that, and scores will be settled. Even for innocents that had no power in the decisions made in their names.
@@alexipestov7002 Agree with your points. That is one reason why a sizable number of nations and regions with experience in Axis occupation are not really that keen to support Ukrainian nationalists as of 2022. It's really the globalist neo-cons that keep pushing the agenda on NATO expansion into Ukraine from 2004 onwards. Meanwhile, for Ukrainian nationalists, the historic alignment with Nazis is practically a core foundation of what they see as the basis of Ukrainian national identity.🙄🙄
My dad moved from Zoppot to Konigsberg to live with his aunt in 1943 (his father was killed). He was 7 when he was put in a boxcar from Konigsberg to Berlin. He then spent 2 years in a Russian controlled orphanage before his mom and uncle (a Berlin police Inspector!) found him. I recently found one more uncle who survived and had been sent to Bavaria. My grandfather's siblings who were all in Zoppot/Danzig I'm starting to learn ended up in Berlin. 80 years later and we are still trying to put back the pieces of our family. When people say to me, my family did not belong there, I ask them how they would feel if they were forced to leave a land generations of their family lived on for 400+ years.
The irony is that Germans were and still wish for displacing and forced removal of people. We can understand your bad experience but you will have no sympathy for Namibians or Jews or Gypsies who lived in specific places for hundreds of years as well. The entire war was fought for Lebensraum and that required removal of millions of people. However, it doesn't end in the past. Even today many Germans wish to remove millions of people from Germany. You must be knowing very well about the far right Germans and their agenda of exter mination and/or mass deportation. Therefore, for such reasons people have less sympathy for Germans. Not because you are less human but because Germans did and wished to do far worse.
I’ve heard the areas, once filled with the German and Hungarian minorities, once a wealthy manufacturing areas of the country are now similar to Detroit here in America, poor and stagnant due, to the people who made it that way forced to leave.
@@TheDigitalApple While getting rid of Germans did cause mass manpower shortages it was not the only reason for the current state of the borderlands. By 1945 a lot of machinery was moved to Germany to replace the losses from the Allied bombardment and from 1943 slave labour was heavily used in those factories because Czechs were not trusted. Then a few of the other reasons why they became so "poor" are because of their location. You will not concentrate your industrial capacity on to border on which is expected heavy fighting (potential War between USSR and Allies) so much of the remaining industry was dismantled and relocated to the "safer" regions of Czechoslovakia where most of the recovery programs were for the same reason aimed. Other reasons include the terrain, population density and education. There is no point in building manufacture for making concrete when you will have like 50 farmers who barely know how to read and count to hundred doing the work and pieces of the work will have to be transported through mountainous terrain tens of kilometres on dirt roads. And to say ALL Sudetelands are now poor is really wrong. Western most yes (because of the location and terrain = there is no point in investing in a hills that will get stormed by enemy tanks in few weeks) is poor but Southern and Northern were heavily industrialized by Communists and are very wealthy regions.
@@TheDigitalApple these areas are in bad economic condition thanks to communist government replacing the light industry with heavy industry. If Germans would have stayed in, after the fall of communism we would have ethnic conflict on the level of Yugoslavia.
For all the hate that still rages in people’s hearts in this comment section. Let’s not forget. This shall never happen to anyone again. Work for it! Not against it. The past is the past. But we can change the present for the better
Excellent video. I had no idea that many Germans were expelled. This expulsion ended hundreds of years of ethnic German communities scattered throughout eastern Europe. Just out of curiosity, did any of the western nations occupied by Germany also expel small numbers of Germans? I'm specifically thinking of Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
Even as the guns have fallen silent. The drums of war no longer are drumming. The cascade of what the war has done, still lingers. As people from the ashes of war try to rebuild and make sense of what has occurred and what is now. Emotions will run rampant. As people will want revenge on those they deem the oppressor. Thus when one goes for an eye for an eye, the whole world goes blind. Let us hope that a war of this magnitude never occurs again. Never Forget.
I am glad, that you did not stop at the end of the war. There was suffering of the effects of the war in the years after. And you cannot say, the Germans deserved this treatment because of the Holocaust. I wonder, if humanity will ever learn from these catastrophes, from the collapse of civilisation and remember, that it takes a lot of effort to build it back up.
I'm from the area the Germans were deported from. My grandparents told me the stories how they had been living with several German families in one house due to the housing issues just after the war. Then they left the country in few waves after '45. From my childhood, in the 90s, I remember how the descendants of the expelled visited their ancestral homes and left us German candies. Never understood how people (especially my countrymen) felt the expullsions were justified. Maybe I'm biased, my family lived in the rural area before and after the war, it was very mixed, German-Masurian area, and although my great-grandparents may have had some bad feelings because of some things Germany had done to them during the war (like erradicate their culture and language during the war), I don't have any connection to it, not really. Poles from "Poland proper" may look at the issue differently, of course. It was a tragedy for both sides. Not just Germans were expelled, I have many family members, both German and Masurian, that were forced to emigrate. Ironic how Masurians were "too German" and seen as the 5th column after the war.
How did you keep your sanity given the nature of this series? I am sure you have seen and read worse than you present here. What happened to the Germans taken by the U.S.S.R.? In comparison to other major wars, was the aftermath of WWII really different other than scale?
WW2 was not the worst thing that humanity did. Not even close to what nature can do. WW2 death was about 3% of world population Mogol invasion of Asia and Europe was about 10-15% of world population. And the we have local events, like 30y wars in Germany with 20%-40% population losses and then Swedish Deluge of Poland with up to 30% population killed within 5 short years. Poland did not recover from this. But all of that pales compared to power of nature. Medieval plague across Asia, North Africa, Europe wiped 75-200 million people, high estimate means 50% of population worldwide gone. Spanish flu was approximately as deadly as WW2 with 2.7% to 5.5% of population worldwide. As Kurt Tucholsky said, humans have tendency to treat all these deaths just as numbers. "Hundreds of thousands of deaths: that is a statistic!". Nevertheless we must keep reminding ourselves. Each and every human put in early grave is a tragedy. Maybe with few exceptions, like Hitler.
From known history, it was sometimes sarcastically said that since the Germans wanted so much to go to the USSR, the USSR was nice enough to ensure these Germans stayed in USSR as long as possible. Among POWs that were not convicted of war crimes, many were sent to the equivalent of the Gulag. Apparently they only made it back to Germany in significant numbers after the death of Stalin. Some died of malnutrition and illness during this prolonged period.
"It is more difficult to undermine faith than knowledge, love succumbs to change less than to respect, hatred is more durable than aversion, and at all times the driving force of the most important changes in this world has been found less in a scientific knowledge animating the masses, but rather in a fanaticism dominating them and in a hysteria which drove" -Jake Featherstone from Harry Turtledove's "Timeline 191"
Not excusing any of the excesses but after Germany used the German population of these counties as an excuse to invade and then what the people of these counties went through during the subsequent German occupation this sort of reaction was to be expected.
@@Hanu9633 What? I have zero clue what any of that means. Edit: Okay now some of it after googling chungus and updoot but why the "I love Stalin" and reddit?
I spent three days mulling over whether to watch this analysis and it is a dismal grand finale to a massively dispiriting but outstanding investigation into the most appalling activities visited on humanity in any century of human history. The scale and the brutality is hard to comprehend and digest and it is the antithesis of Stalin's remark he may have made to Winston Churchill who was visibly upset over the reported death of someone he knew: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
People herded into cattle cars and dying on the journey by the thousands? What type of people could support such a system? Surely they would need to be punished?
The historical context of World War II and its aftermath remains a subject of profound complexity and debate. My ancestors were victims of the Nazi regime's atrocities-a tragic chapter that underscores the horrors of that era. However, I find it deeply perplexing how, in the aftermath of the war, the forced expulsion of Germans from Soviet-controlled territories was broadly permitted and normalized. This raises questions about the ethical standards applied to post-war justice and retribution. The displacement of millions of ethnic Germans, often under brutal conditions, was justified at the time as part of broader efforts to reshape Europe’s political and demographic landscape. However, the double standard is troubling: despite the German leadership’s orchestration of heinous crimes, including attempted genocide, there emerged a prevailing narrative advocating for the restitution of territories perceived as historically "German." This reconciliation with the perpetrators of such crimes, while simultaneously exacting severe collective punishment on ordinary German civilians, reflects a moral and political inconsistency. Equally disturbing was the reaction within Germany itself, particularly from those who remained in the homeland, towards their compatriots returning from exile or displacement. Many returnees faced prejudice, alienation, and inadequate support, which compounded their suffering. Instead of embracing solidarity, segments of the population appeared indifferent or even hostile to the plight of their own "brothers and sisters," a response that challenges ideals of national unity and compassion.
Some explanation of how the Germans got to Eastern Europe and the Balkans would have been good. Who are these communities ? When did they originate ? What was their status there ?
It’s not very complicated… before 1871 Germany didn’t exist. Before WW1 the region was either the German, or the Austro-Hungarian, or the Russian Empire. None of these were based on language ethnicity, although the administration was in German or Russian or Hungarian. At home, people inside Central and Eastern Europe spoke the language of their family. When nation states based on majority language ethnicity of the respective regions were created after WW1, some people ended up on the “wrong side” of the border. This was especially the case in the border regions.
As a Finn, I think it would be important to showcase the Finnish Army's occupation of Eastern Karelia during the joint invasion with Nazi Germany. I believe it is essential to look at and acknowledge the internment/ segregation camp system that was established during the Continuation War and administered by Vaino Kotilainen to integrate karelians into the finnish population and led to the starvation of many finnish women and children. PS-Love your content!
Heartbreaking. My mother and grandmother fled Poland (specifically: Gorzów Wielkopolski (formerly known as Landsberg a.d. Warthe)) in 1945. My great grandmother and my aunt were too sick and weak to make the journey. Both succumbed to starvation in early 1946. I know I know... many if not the majority of those german speaking populations supported the nazis. But did they really all deserve such a fate? When I was younger I'd often argue with my mother about this and felt little mercy for the aunt I never got to know. Now that I've grown a bit older I often think what might have been if that 7 year old girl (in 1946) had survived the war. I would have had another aunt and maybe a lot more cousins. Anyway it is as it is. We cannot change the past. What worries me at the moment is that mankind appearently has learned little and things like this have since happened time and again. This fact alone makes this series so important: To educate people about the past so that they may make better choices in the future. Never forget! 😢
I'm Polish and I was born in Szczecin, which used to be Stettin before the war (a German city). As much as I acknowledge the suffering of the Germans who used to be the inhabitants of the city before the war, it's hard for me to accept that the blame for it falls on my predecessors. After all, the Poles suffered more deaths per capita, it was Poland who was attacked in the first place and it was not Poland who decided to be moved to the west. I'm sure that the viewers of this channel do recognize that all of the decisions were made by the Americans, Soviets and the Brits, so they are the ones to blame for the mass expulsions. If the decisions are considered an inevitable consequence of the war, then the responsibility falls on the Germans themselves or the Soviets. I'm a huge fan of this channel, but I think this episode lacked a statement attributing the responsibility for this suffering to the Germans.
Sure the Nazis started the war, the Soviets wanted to redraw the borders and the Western Allies kinda rubberstamped it. But many Poles, from the grass roots to the new communist leadership, were still very much involved with the process. And those that were still carry part of the guilt. I can understand their rage after everything that happened, Im no saint, I might have acted the same, but revenge is ultimately never a good justification. Its not that rare that victims become perpetrators because of it as soon as the table turns.
@@thezeitos469 But what were they supposed to do, really? The other countries decided the borders. Either the Poles would have let the millions of Germans stay where they were (which was one of the causes of the war in the first place) or they expelled them. There is no in between. Both choices were bad.
If you don't like how the borders have been redrawn, then return 127 thousand square kilometers to the Germans. Everyone blames the Soviets and the Allies, but no one wants to take back what they got after the VICTORY of the Allies and the Soviets over the fascists.
I don't get why they consider it worse for Germans to be expelled by governments made up of people who suffered during the war than "angry mobs." At what point do we stop assigning humanity to people for the power they hold? Soviet, Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, and Polish authorities, as well as German communists, participated in the expulsion because it was sensible and logical in the circumstances imposed on them.
Concentration camps, violent deaths, slave labor, inhumane treatment , all based on race & ethnicity... I WONDER why this abuse of Germans has been buried (that's a rhetorical question). Thai you for this tidbit of history which I, with two degrees in political science, was unaware of.
The epilogues that Spartacus gives at the end of every episode are always deep and touching; but the line "as long as we refuse to understand that 'they' are 'us' " just brought me to tears. "Imagine..."
Before this episode I was aware of the sorry state of forced repatriation of POWs that is a blight on the allies but I had no idea about Germans being expelled. Given the horrible treatment of conquered peoples by the Nazis this is not a surprise but yet another human tragedy of the war.
It is easy to apply the morals and sensibilities of 2024 to the people of 1945 that had suffered under the Germans for up to 6 years. Not an excuse for more brutality, but perhaps an understanding. We should never forget what brutalities humans are capable of against other humans...yet it seems we have, within the lifetime of some people still with us, and certainly within the lifetime of their children.
I always wondered how my Danube Swabian maternal grandfather and his family didn't get expelled from Hungary following the war. Scary to think they were a few of that 270k lucky ones who got to stay. He was only 10 in 1948!
My grandmother came from East Prussia and lived in Königsberg. She was 9 years old when she and her family were expelled. She rarely talked about it, I can only remember one time. Among other things, she told me how she once saw 3 corpses leaning against the wall of a house at the end of the war, one of them had a sign on it saying “Shot for looting”. She burst into tears. She ended up in the Westerwald (in the west of Germany, in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate) where she met my grandfather, who was also still a child at the time. I made a short documentary about my grandpa's childhood memories of the war and afterwards, as my grandma never wanted to talk about this time on camera.
What is that old saying about “He who fights monsters”? Has modern society totally forgotten it? I thought we “moderns” were so civilized, so progressive, so advanced that we’d never stoop so low. Maybe not as low or lower than the monsters. Yet, in the pits of hell we find ourselves today, with war, death, disease, and famine raging across the world today. Never forget, lest we join the forgotten.
Except the Allied didn't stoop so low as Nazi and Jap. Even SU at worst used German labour then released them to rebuild the wasteland that was Western Soviet Union. Comparing that to what the Nazi did and planned...
Thanks Sparty. As nearly as I can remember, in every history book I’ve read this period is treated as a voluntary migration. Usually it’s talked about as people fleeing the encroaching Soviets. Cold War logic I guess.
In Hungary, it started w the ethnic Germans and families who joined the Volksbund and/or the German armed forces. Then it continued in ethnic areas whoever had nice house, property or best land…agitated by the communists. All of this despite that we were allies w Germany, there was no hatred against Germans or atrocities by German forces in Hungary. Germans lived in peace and prosperity in the country for centuries and the atrocities during WW2 were by Hungarian fascists (Arrowcross Party)…pure greed🙄 it was at full play. Ungarndeutsche speaking 🇭🇺🇩🇪
As a Czech, I regret my ancestors doing this. It's a reminder that being a victim doesn't exclude or excuse you from being a perpetrator either. Though not nearly as bad what "they" did to "us", it's still on the pile of "what not to do".
More than five years of War Against Humanity. Spartacus, you should be proud. You brought a great passion for the triumph of our better selves to this project, and it still shows today. I think most people would be numb long before this point, and here you are still bringing everything you have to the project. Bravo sir, bravo.
Love me some Sparty
Thank you 🙏🏼❤️
His German heritage shows in some of his videos. I stopped liking him when I realized he was taking the German side.
@@freefall9832excuse me?! I don’t take any side except humanity. Given that Germany was the biggest opponent to humanity in WW2, I’m strictly opposed to, and appalled by Germany’s war and conduct in that war. Considering the huuuge amount of atrocities by the Wehrmacht and SS that I have documented, that should be apparent.
Let me guess… you couldn’t stomach that I also documented the far lesser, but not insignificant acts of war against humanity by the Western Allies. You got your panties in a bunch because I didn’t laud and celebrate the terror bombing of German children. Is that about right?
And German heritage? I live in Germany by choice, I have no “German heritage.” If it was the 1930s or 40s and I was still me, Germany would not be my choice.
My aunt who passed away this year was one of these Germans. I am thankful almost 10 years ago I got her story recorded in interviews as she told me about her entire experience before, during and after the war she was 21 when the war ended.
Where was she expelled from? Did she resent the expulsion or did she understand the hate from her neighbors?
100 years old then - a very long life.
Thank you for sharing. She must have lived quite the life.
Fascinant
You should consider sharing her testimony with humanity. With an event like this war, there are so many different aspects, and I have never heard testimony from a German who had to endure that side of the story......
My mom was 5 when the Czech government gave their family 20 minutes to pack up and leave their home in Aussig. This was part of the Sudetenland. My Opa (wounded veteran of the eastern front) and Oma (Czech heritage) were given minutes to vacate with 3 children (7, 5, 2). As they were forced out of their home, a Czech family moved in. They headed west on a train and settled in a town south of Nuremberg. They were incredibly lucky. After the war, reprisals were expected. But, I have recently learned of my Czech and Austrian heritage. Mom is 84, married an American soldier, and did well for herself. But, the stories she tells are sometimes hard to hear. Thank you for shedding light on this tragedy after the guns fell silent.
She was lucky she wasnt part of Massaker von Aussig.
Tragedy? All these nazi Germans destroyed Czechoslovakia from within and brought a nazi accupation on us. Germans destroyed Czechoslovakia and its future for decades. They should consider how lucky they were to be even left alive. Vast majority of them were traitors of Czechoslovakia
Oh, so sad. Sarcasm there. They weren't murdered and gased like opa did to the rest of Europe
This is not a tragedy this is justice for what your people have done, and that is also EXTREMELY light justice. The fact that this thinking is so strong in Germany (and beyond as the author shows) just shows how little you know about what you did. Also, the author of this video is presenting an extremely one sided perspective and ignores everything that lead up to this. Germans should be happy, that this is the only thing that happened. And I say that as a descendant of those Germans who stayed put. This whole film should be summed up with a phrase: "play stupid games win stupid prizes". At the end of the day they were "expelled" to a country that was allowed to be democratic and prosperous when Poland and Czechoslovakia found themselves poor behind the iron curtain. "Expulsion" or "escape", if anything, was actually good for them.
This guy is absolutely insane, wonder how would he feel if he was forced to live after the war with those who murdered his mother, enslaved his father, destroyed all the cultural heritage of his country and so on. It's easy to make those statements 80 years after the war, but I find him extremely ignorant. Now, so many years later, there is peace, and it is good so. But after the war, and the unbelievable crimes, where large section of for instance Polish population was killed?
There were also the 200,00 to 300,000 Italian Yugoslavs who were expelled into Italy, and points west.
Perhaps 50,000 and they were not expelled, but opted for Italy.
Yugoslav communist partisans killed many Italian civilians jumping them in deep caves to force expulsion: nearly 250.000 went to Italy to avoid violence.
@@urvanhroboatos8044 Numbers are disputed here, again. And there is also the difference of counting those who lived there before 1918, those that came between 1918 and 1941 (some from Italy, but some also from other regions, that were granted to the Yugoslaw state) and those that came between 1941 and 1945. Also did some who identified as Croats, Slovenes or even Serbs leave. And yet again did some of people have a mixed self identity.
There were also killings of people, mostly those (wrongly or not) associated with the Mussolini Regime.
Some people were forced harshly, some encouraged, others left on their own and even some went even though authorities didn't want them to go...
So in short: It was complicated.
Germans and Italians were not welcome. Surprise, surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle would say.
"Never Forget"
And yet, we keep forgetting.
We don't forget, we choose to ignore the lessons.
Ask native Americans or africans about brits , they dont forget either. You feel guilty about beeing English?
@@Marcel78728 I'm of Irish descent.
@@Marcel78728No point in feeling guilty for things we didnt do. We can learn the lessons without the guilt.
@Marcel78728
No one mentioned feeling guilty. But the lessons of how we got to fascism are being forgotten by people that would rather stay ignorant.
My mother came from East Prussia and had to flee 1945. Her treck crossed a huge frozen inland sea. Some horse carts have been broken through the ice previously and drowned. My mother could see the horses ears rising up from the ice
Yes, after the terror of German invasion and ocfupation, which should be studied by all Germans, the Soviets had absolutely no regard for life of German civilians
Main inspiration for Avatar’s The Promise comic where entire conflict stemmed from Fire Nation colonies being dismantled to “go back to the way it was” but got into older colonies where most didn’t know their home countries. Except Germans in those areas have been living even when majority people are ruling class.
My grandmother was 16 on one of those trains in 1944
Thank you for sharing, and thank you for watching. Never forget.
The numbers in this episode are absolutely mind boggling...
I have long tried to find stories among the descendents of the so-called Volksdeutsche people but, for understandable reasons, many Germans don't like to talk about what their family did and experienced during the war. The most surprising thing that I found is that German pop-star Helene Fischer's paternal grandparents were "Black Sea Germans" and were forcefully relocated to Kazakhstan and Siberia, where Helene was also born. I hope that she will one day speak more about her family roots and what happened during those difficult years. Thank you TimeGhost for another challenging and great video about the aftermath of the war.
I‘m reading Das Wolfsmädchen currently (not sure how it’s called in English) The the story of the German wolf children, who fought for their survival in the forests of Lithuania, is a little-known chapter in post-war German history.
I get very emotional reading it but if you are interested it’s a good read
@@din-a4 Thank you! I will pick it up
One of my greatuncles from east prussia grew up on a farm there with his two younger siblings.
Their father was forced into military service in 44 and died, when the red army passed they took all animals and their mother who was never seen again (aka raped and then murdered). He was the oldest (10 i think) and took the role of leading his younger siblings. To survive they tried to continue working the farm and yoked eachother in front of the plow. They stayed until they were forcefully expelled in 46 or 47.
Yes, it may be niche and not broadly known part of history. It's important not to lose perspective that German nationalism as a whole was supported by majority of those "German victims", and their later persecution was direct result of their hateful and cruel ideology, of what they did to others
I really appreciate this episode for giving me a shared feeling of historical mistreatment with those targeted by these governments. As a descendant of survivors of the greek genocide I often point out how our struggle for recognition is connected with all atrocities in the former Ottoman Empire from Yugoslavia to Yemen, but never did I expect to have that same feeling of solidarity with many German people (I see similarities between these events in the video & the greco-turkish population exchange), I appreciate you expanding my knowledge & compassion for humanity ❤️!
The fate of these Germans is rooted in WWII. They bore almost the entire punishment of Germany for its actions in WWII. It is the other unpunished Germans who owe them something.
Our community here comes from across Europe. Did anyone’s parents or grandparents live through this expulsion?
For those further afield have you got family histories that were blighted by expulsions or ethnic cleansing?
Yeah, some. I tried to mention these memories once but then I was reminded that "hateful posts will lead to a loss of your posting privileges". Sorry, for my grandparents (north PL) it was really hard to sympathize with those Germans. After all, Germans worked really hard last 6 years to eradicate any conscious in that area.
Besides, local population was not much better off, just switched occupation form nazis to soviets.
BTW, do you plan to cover the deportations of other nations?
My grandmother was from the Sudetenland, and she was 3 or 4 years old when she, together with her mom and her older sister were chased out at some point in 1945. I'm unsure if it was during the war or after, but I remember her telling me that it was Soviet soldiers who did it to them. They also (if I remember correctly) raped both her pregnant mother and her 9-10 year old older sister. Her mother was then forced to give birth while travelling, on a random table of a random house along the way
The continuation of the Great War into Russia and its former empire meant that one of my great grandmothers had to leave it and eventually got her way to Canada
Some of my ancestors were prosecuted and driven out from western Poland by Germans in the 18th century. For simply being Polish.
My granddad was from Moravia. Got separated at the end of the war from his parents and walked on foot to the Rhineland.
That is some gorgeous tie, Sparty.
A co-worker an ethnic German whose family had lived in Yugoslavia for 250 years, at the end of the war was put into a concentration camp…. They were basically told to “escape” and leave Yugoslavia….or else…..they got to Austria then into displaced persons program and on to the USA
They may have been neighbors to my grandparents. They fled Yugoslavia, ended up in a camp, escaped to Germany through Austria, and eventually ended up in the US in '52.
You and your team do a fantastic job presenting history for people to understand.
My mother is a head of a Czech-German friendship organization in ex Sudetenland, so she's in contact with a lot of Germans who were expelled as childern back then. They like to travel here occasionally and seem to feel a bond to their past homeland, but they don't really feel any anger towards us Czechs, and I would say there's no bad blood between us anymore. The current generation doesn't really care, most don't even know that sudetenland was, at least that's my experience.
yes, fortunately I think the bad blood has disappeared mostly. I have visited the places were my anchestors lived and feel no animosity towards anyone living there today.
Only thing I personally do not like is the idea that some czech people seem to harbour that they never did anything wrong or if they did that it was 100% justified. It is particularly problematic when it comes to the idea of collective punishment.
@@OsterochseTrue!
" but they don't really feel any anger towards us Czechs" dream on
@@mikolajtrzeciecki1188 what makes you believe that the Germans today feel partcular anger towards the Czechs? He even stated that this was his personal experience.
@@Osterochse Germans in general - no. Descendants of Sudetendeutsche - in many cases do.
My grandmother was just about 18 when she and her family were fleeing from Pomerania. Her older brother had already fallen about 2 years earlier somewhere around Stalingrad. Her father stayed behind for some stupid reason (I think he believed he could save the family farm), he got killed by the Soviets when the expulsions started. Only my grandmother and her mother made it to Germany, I don't know if they were ever raped, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. They first staying in the soviet occupation zone, but my grandmother met my grandfather there (who was a Luftwaffe radio technician in occupied Denmark and managed to get back to Germany after only a rather short few months as PoW) and they left together for the Ruhr industrial area in West Germany to work in the coal mines, which provided a comfortable living for them due to the post-war economic miracle.
My grandparents' generation was the one who really suffered from the war started by the Nazis, while not being responsible at all for the war - they were children when the Nazis took over, my grandfathers and granduncles were drafted right out of school during the war and were send to the front (the one who was sent to Denmark was lucky - my other grandfather was on the Eastern front during the majority of the war, and spend 5 years afterwards in a gulag, barely surviving). They never got a vote on this, but had to suffer through the madness started by their parents' and grandparents' generations allowing the Nazis to gain power and enact their genocidal ideology. One of my grandfathers had 12 siblings before the war - less than half of them survived the war.
I’m pretty sure it was the Jews, Poles, and anyone deemed enemies of the Reich who were the victims of the Nazis. Your grandparents cowardice may be reasonable or understandable, but that doesn’t absolve them of serving in the Wehrmacht and fighting to save the Nazi regime. They knew what regime they were fighting for. They saw the death camps and perpetrated mass killings on all fronts of the war. No Nazi, or dog of the Nazis, were victims nor have the right to speak as though they were victims. God will judge them in the end.
@mikebane2866 so in your mind literal CHILDREN, who were like 10 years old when the Nazis took over in 1933, are responsible for all the crimes of Nazi Germany? Young boys who got force drafted in 1939 or 1940, after having been brainwashed for the last 6 to 7 years of the most formative time of their lives, should be expected to just turn around and lead a resistance? Never mind that my grandMOTHERS never fought, they were literal children until the end of the war. That's madness. By this standard, all people everywhere are guilty for some crime committed by some long dead ancestors.
@ Nice straw man. The mindless hoards love straw man arguments, it is cheap, industrial scale, fast food that requires little meaningful effort yet brings that feeling of accomplishment and reward which gets reinforced through other intellectually lazy people.
All children deserve a fair chance to develop into an adult, which is when their character is put to the test. Their parents, grandparents, however, they had years to show who they really are inside. If a German was of moral character then they would not have been attracted to support the Nazis, nor attempt to colonize lands they know had been recently taken through their own country’s aggressive expansionist policies. You don’t resettle your German family in Poland unless you’re committed to exterminating or “Germanizing” the Poles.
It's funny how selective your morality is. Your grandparents were young, but their parents applauded German (not Nazi, they were German) nationalist frenzy that brought horror to all Europe. 1/5 of Polish people died thanks to your elected hateful leader.
Nationalism, fascism, racism Germans supported is relying on group identity, persecution based on the identity not individual guilt. And at the end they experienced what it means...
My Great Grandfather on my father's side was one of those Hungarians deported to Germany. He and his ancestors had lived in a small village in Tolna county for generations.
They were 'asked' to pack up and leave in the early hours one day and were on a train with whatever they could carry. Eventually living in Wiesbaden Germany.
Hey there! I am from that county, I am a descendant of the ones, that could stay (for whatever reason). From which village was he deported from?
''The garden of bones where we have built the glass house that is our conscience''. Pretty metal, if it wasn't so depressing.
The ending was grim, reminds me of the Dark Gods of Chaos in Warhammer 40,000. So much suffering and despair, and so many don't even realize that life was this way for so many (and some today) and could even be that way for them.
This last paragraph is so insanely powerful.
As long as we refuse to understand that they are us.
Brings tears to my eyes. Thank you Sparti! For all the work you have done in these years!
Thank you so much for the lovely comment, never forget.
That closing monologue is one of the finest, most powerful, pieces of writing, and delivery, that TimeGhost has yet crafted
I totally agree!
My Grandfathers Family was expelled from their Home in Silesia. His Father was made to stay by the soviets because he could act as a vetinarian (he was a farmowner). He never saw him again. His mother died on the way to Berlin due exhaustion / starvation. Now that my Grandfather has passed I regret not having talked more about this as well as the war.
That is brutal
@@RK-cj4oc True. But personally its weird, because without my grandfathers expulsion he would never have met my grandmother, so I woulndt even be here. Furthermore my grandmother lost her first husband and baby during a bombing raid before she met my grandfather (her second husband) So I owe my existence to all that misery somehow.
They are all victims of hatered that started in German Nation, that brought those horrible genocides to all Eastern Europe, and only at the end Germans got a little taste of what they did to others
Your grandfather wasn't liked. Surprise, surprise, surprise
Anyone else been to waiting years for these guys to do an excellent job covering this ?
This is such a difficult conversation - when discussed through a historical perspective. The firsthand brutality that is observed or experienced over an extended period is embedded in your mind, your heart, and your spirit. When one is struggling to survive after this horrific experience, experience that is so broad - how would one react? In retrospect, I can think one way - in the moment, probably the other. This said, we all are living in this moment , hopefully we can step forward.
Insightful words
Reminds me of the monologue from “The Third Man” - “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”
My grandparents were in Yugoslavia (previously Hungary, now Serbia) when all this was going on. Their ancestors had lived near Odzaci/Hodschag/Hodsag since the 1770s. When the Germans occupied the area my grandfather was drafted. While he was away in the army, my grandmother and their 5 children ended up in a camp once the partisans took over. They escaped eventually, not before starvation brought the total down to 4 children. They made it to Germany through Austria. My grandfather was released from a British POW camp sometime around 1946. They ended up finding their way back to each other (which was good for me because my father was born after that). In 1952 they flew to America as part of a work program and have been here ever since.
The stories I've heard from my aunt are in line with what was in this video. Hearing the suffering from a survivor is more impactful than raw numbers.
So your grandfather served hidler and the notsees. A real stand up guy your grandfather.
@@freefall9832 Drafted.
@jimbo9305 I don't hold it against you. Your grandpa took the oath, not you.
that's the reason I don't like war, so many innocents suffer from both sides
"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."
---an old Kenyan proverb
@@ahorsewithnoname773 Yea, or as Ambassador Kosh puts it:
"The avalanche has already begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote"
Age 10 in 1945, Edith walked from Poland to East Berlin and later crossed into West Berlin where she met an English soldier. They married and Edith came to live in the leafy suburbs of South East London. Thirty five years ago my wife June and myself moved just a few days away from Edith. Both of us in childhood had lived through the London Blitz and the V1’s and V2’s close to the Centre. June and Edith were both keen gardeners and became very close friends each living the rest of their lives in each others pockets. They both passed away within a few weeks of each other and I attended both funerals. Before she met Edith, June had met another friend Vera who had served time in the Russian Gulags and was released in an exchange that took place in Switzerland. An RAF pilot flew Vera back to England and they formed a relationship and were later married and settled where previously June and myself lived. After my wife’s passing I became friends with Halina who told me she had Polish parents. Her mother, who was still living, age 14 had been deported to Siberia in cattle trucks. In 1941, Russia and Poland became allies and Helena’s mother was given the option to join the Polish Army in North Africa. She forced marched with her compatriots to the Caspian Sea and was then transported to North Africa. At the end of the War she chose to come to the UK. I also point out, that from time to time both German and Polish friends came over to stay with Edith from time to time, who we met and they became our friends. We never forget, but good people see the best in each other.
That is a remarkable slice of every day life in a terrible time. We, everyday people, survive, endure and thrive. Thanks for sharing. 👍
Wow what a story!
My great grandparents that were in the Yugoslav partisans were settled in one of Vojvodinas (province of todays northern Serbia) empty German villages. We have a guy obsessed here with lost German gold and valuables, we call him Dado "Hitler".
As Polish political scientist let me add my two cents here: while Germans were being expelled, so were millions of Poles. A key aspect of post WWII Poland was the forceful (Allied implemented) shift of Poland's borders. At the Potsdam conference it was decided for Poland (without Poland's consent) that the country would loose its eastern half to the Soviet Union, and as "compensation" would receive a third of pre-war Germany. As a result, Germans were not being expelled on a Polish whim, but by Soviet decree to make room for the millions of Poles expelled from modern Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. This is something I believe the video should have mentioned.
The video clearly outlined Stalin and the Soviet’s role in this.
@@WorldWarTwo Thank you for answering me. My point is, as much as I thoroughly enjoy the production quality of the video (I love the maps and flags), and am fully aware that there is limited time to discuss all facets in detail, I still feel the wording used here provides a somewhat distorted and warped view of the exact nature of the Polish involvement in these events. Yes, the Soviet Union is mentioned throughout the video, BUT only as a background character, and not the one pulling all the strings.
In my opinion, what needs to be clarified is that the "Polish state", "Polish government" or "Warsaw", mentioned numerous times throughout the video wasn't an actually independent and sovereign entity, but a Soviet installed puppet regime implementing Allied (Soviet) decisions, all the while dealing with a refugee crisis of its own caused by the expulsions of Poles from the Soviet Union. I find this to be a key background fact that provides necessary context to understanding the full scope of the events that unfolded, and as such it should not be omitted, as any blame for what happened might end up being misplaced.
I appreciate you picking up this subject (hence why I clicked the video) but I do still believe much more discussion is needed if we are to reach clarity regarding these and other similar events. I am glad we get to talk.
Cheers from Kraków.
There is a difference. The fate of these Germans is rooted in WWII. They bore almost the entire punishment of Germany for its actions in WWII. It is these other unpunished Germans who owe them something.
While all this was happening in Europe, returned American GI's were trying to find child care for their new babies, and a place to live, and to just get on with their interrupted lives. The fate of the German people you spoke about would have been way down on their care about list. To quote my Dad, "None of us wanted to be over there." Most of those GI's in my family brought that war home with them in their heads where it would live rent-free for the rest of their lives. Again, not a seedbed for caring about displaced Germans. But when I migrated to Canada I ran into a lot of people who had left Europe to come to Canada to start all over again. I listened to many of their stories. Many joined my church. Some were fellow clergy in my denomination. To paraphrase MLK, Jr, "the moral arc of the universe bends toward reconciliation." How important it is to learn from [and effectively teach] our history!
The 1st book that I read that gave me an idea of how brutal the expulsion was, the book Flight in Winter that covered the last 6 months of the Eastern Front in WW2.
Chilling and thoughtful conclusion of the current and past human condition.
Given what the Germans had done to the occupied nations especially in Eastern Europe I am both neither shocked nor surprised to watch this. “All war is a crime no matter how just the cause. If you think war is not a crime ask the dead. Ask the infantry.” Hemmingway.
"It is perhaps just as well that war is so terrible; otherwise we might grow too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee.
That’s why we need to be total pacifists.
@@justin_messer Sure, if you can get EVERYONE to agree to it. Otherwise it's unilateral disarmament.
@@davidsumner7604 unilateral disarmament is necessary to get other nations to disarm.
@@justin_messer No, unilateral disarmament encourages other nations to arm more so that they can take advantage of your weakness.
"We will continue to cut into our own flesh and sacrifice it to the gods of strife and suffering." Their names are Khorne and Slaanesh, Sparty. (Sorry, couldn't resist. Too perfect of a reference to Warhammer 40K)
My dad was in Patton’s Third Army…after the war he had to transport civilians to the Russian zone of occupation. What he witnessed would haunt him the rest of his life. As they unloaded the civilians and handed them all over the Russians immediately separated the women from the men. They weren’t very particular on the ages as they proceeded to rape the females. Dad said they tried to stop what was happening but the Russians raised their rifles at them. His commanding officer ordered his unit back on the trucks. They had to drive off hearing the women scream. He talked about that to his dying day.
Russians were very cruel, because they experienced German invasion, which was much more inhumane.
Thank you so much for all you do!!! Spartacus you are one of a kind.
They are almost forgotten.
Because the victors write history.
The fate of these Germans is rooted in WWII. They bore almost the entire punishment of Germany for its actions in WWII. It is these other unpunished Germans who owe them something.
Thanks for covering this grim conclusion to the WW2 WAH in the best way possible. Beautiful and poignant writing, especially on the last 5 minutes. A special thank you for mentioning at the start the unfortunate fact that this was the largest forced expulsion in the history of humanity... until 1945. I really hope that one day you cover the tragedy of the Partition of India with the depth and sombreness it deserves.
My aunt's father was a German from CZSK who settled in Alsace after the war.
It’s very important to remember that until decades after the war, the lessons the other powers took weren’t that this ethnicized view of the world was wrong, but that it really was a problem that ethnic minorities existed outside of “their” nation’s borders. In that way, for a time, Nazism lived on in the ethnic cleansing and expulsions of Germans. Hitler had one last laugh because of those who claimed to be trying to stop another Hitler from ever appearing. It’s a strong lesson that the fundamental lens through which you view the world can make anyone do awful things, in service of what they think are the morally just ends.
And they were wrong? It’s tragic but that lessons understandable
@ they were absolutely categorically wrong. The ethnic nation-state model of state legitimacy did not create global peace and prosperity. It subjected millions to dehumanizing cleansing and being forced from their homes which their families had lived in for centuries, just because of some arbitrary ethnic categorization. If it’s wrong when Nazis cleanse Warsaw and try to turn it into a German City by killing and displacing hundreds of thousands, then it’s wrong when Lithuania tries to make Vilnius a completely Lithuanian City by forcefully converting and displacing hundreds of thousands of German speakers, and when Sudeten German speakers who have been living in that area since before nation states were a thing are pushed across the border from their lands and homes in the name of “state ethnic homogeneity and order.” And if it’s not wrong when those states did it to Germans, then it’s not wrong when the Nazis did it to Slavs. You have to choose, you either are a sympathizer for the ideology of ethnic nation-state homogeneity at all costs or you aren’t.
And somehow the ethnic tension plagued Europe for centuries went way down.
And No. The main reason is to minimize the cause belli plagued Europe: " To support (insert ethnic) being suppressed by (insert hostile nation)". Hitler used it so much that people in power wanted to end it.
Wow😂😂😂😂😂
Did u equalize what Nazi have in store for slavs to what they did to Germans?
Last i check the countries didn't enslave and genocide slowly the Germans.
We have plenty of official documents about the plans for the Slavs. Those didn't begin only because Nazi lost
I tend to agree with the author. Responsibility of expulsions stems from the decisions of the allies at the conferences especially the last one at Potsdam
The areas under Soviet control had no restrictions on punishment of Germans. How were the Western countries responsible for that? They treated people in their areas relatively well.
Another war to stop the Communist degradation of humanity could have been as big, or bigger, than the war just fought in Europe. A greater horror entirely.
@@gvibration1 You raise a good point. I see the expulsions as morally wrong. The western powers of the conferences acquiesced with Russia to the deportations because they themselves especially the US had deported the Japanese and Italians because of their ethnicity. They were sent to special camps in a human way which contrasted to the brutal nature of the expelled peoples in Eastern Countries such as Poland. In my country, Canada, there were deportations and Expulsions of the French Acadians, the French Government officials and their staffs, the Japanese in British Columbia to internment camps and a number of indigenous tribes in the north.
@miltonthomaslowe agree with your points. War dispenses with many/most of the niceties of life.
However, there is still not a moral equivalent. The Soviets had already had the Holmodor and a number of forced mass movements of ethnic/racial/religious groups pre war.
Millions of the displaced died post war in labour camps etc. The West had nothing like that and could not have forced the communists to do anything differently without another huge war.
Absolutely fantastic video, your conclusion is deeply powerful and moving.
Something that was not mentioned here about this human tragedy and deserves to be, is how the prejudiced, hostile and discriminatory attitude of the local German populations into which these people were displaced lasted towards them, particularly in western Germany. It persisted for DECADES!
It is understandable that people of western cities, devastated by Allied bombing and struggling desperately themselves for food and shelter, perhaps did not welcome a further massive influx of homeless, hungry mouths. However, even DECADES later, even when the cities had been largely rebuilt and West Germany was again a very prosperous society, the discrimination and hostility endured. As an example:
When I used to visit my Grandparents in Hannover, from London throughout the 1960s and 70s, my Grandmother who was a native Hannoverian and born in 1920 and so very much a product of the Nazi school system of indoctrination (even if she didn’t know it), would often make disparaging remarks about her neighbour, Frau Schindler, because she had been a refugee from the East.
At a benign level, this amount to mocking her, behind her back, for her marked eastern accent when speaking German. On a nastier and more telling level, it was questioning her inherent level of not just education but also intelligence because of their origins.
It would also be to the point where she she would suggest that she wasn’t even properly ‘clean’ because of her “Polnische Hauswirtschaft” - Polish Housekeeping - which was still a common slang for a dirty, unsanitary house!
This discrimination also extended to the workplace etc. again…..for DECADES.
What I find so revealing is the fact that when people belittle refugees, they always highlighted how those people don’t fit into the existing society. And yet here we have Germans from the same state speaking the same language having the same religion who are forcefully repelled due to actions of the whole nation and absolutely no logical other place to go - and still they are looked down upon.
Really makes you think how low these complains about refugees sometimes are
Amazing that there was racism even between Germans from different parts of Europe.
Remember Germany is a new country - created in 1871.
The individual Germanic states have separate history of over 1000 years.
The was i eat way to bring a community together is us and them - the only them in historical times were your near neighbours.
You can decry human nature but it will always exert itself!
@@tancreddehauteville764 What a ridiculous statement, every single country on Earth has generalized caricatures of groups of people from a different parts of that country, with each group having severe and often deep seated prejudices against the other.
@@jonahtwhale1779 Good point that you made. Furthermore, during the Cold War, it was much easier for the Wessies to cope with the situation by blaming it on the Ossies.
Meanwhile, the Lutheran North also somewhat tried to distance itself from the Austrian-Bavarian Catholic South.
Partly due to proximity to the North Sea, there was somewhat of an economic North-South divide in addition to the East-West divide.
My great grandparents left Germany before the war and had a wonderful life in the USA
Scarily brilliant, as history repeats itself again and again. Thank you - just one question: how do we stop this?
Like the USSR did, or Yugoslavia, buy guns, get in shape, form militias, seize power by strength and sacrifice. One cannot take the high road if their enemy refuses to do the same.
Well written.
My Czech grandma was growing up during wwii. She was living in a small village called Košíky located next to wooded hills in Moravia (only czech people lived there).
During war some german conscript escaped from baracs in nerby town Kroměříž not wanting to go into war. Her father found him hiding in a forest (or he came to the door knocking, dont exactly remember). He had helped to hide him in his home and fed him. Also, his girlfriend even came so they could be together in the tough war times. They were (grandmas family) taking care of them both as well as hiding them in their homestead. Every night after dinner, grandma's dad was playing piano, and they all were drinking together, trying to enjoy life as much as they could.
After the war, there were supposedly suddenly a lot of proud czechs trying to fight nazis running around. Everyone in this village had to write down if they were hiding german soldiers.
My grandgrandfather did that. He was afraid for his own family as he had many kids, and the times were dangerous.
These wannabe partisans led them both from grandparent's home into a nerby forest.
They shot the conscript as well as his girlfriend.
woah. that is a fascinating story. These "partisans" look suspiciously much like the Nazis who killed jewish people just for their ethnicity without even checking if they did anything bad. They just assume a nationality collectively evil. Even Germans who didnt want to fight i the war and proved it had to be killed in their eyes without proof.
woah. that is a fascinating story. These "partisans" look suspiciously much like the people who killed jewish people just for their ethnicity without even checking if they did anything bad. They just assume a nationality collectively evil. Even Germans who didnt want to fight ii the war and proved it had to be killed in their eyes.
Don’t feel bad for any Germans, sorry. That sucks for them, but maybe they should have not elected the Nazis.
Two of my great grandparents were among those who died in the post-war expulsions.
John Tegel
I think this episode, for me, lays bare that we didn't learn anything from the war in the immediate aftermath.
My God, Spartacus channeling Tolstoy with that conclusion. Absolutely masterful.
This mass expulsion and associated atrocities were never taught in schools, and I knew little or nothing of it until fairly recently. And I have been reading accounts of the Second World War rather constantly for some fifteen or twenty years. It is humiliating and humbling to realize how the suffering of WWII continued for months and years after the war’s formal end.
My ancestors emigrated from Pomerania in 1843-45, and so missed these nightmares by a century. But I have obtained books containing first hand accounts from those who were living in the area of my ancestors, and it is so sad. On one hand, the Germans had it coming, and on the other hand, peasant farmers in Pomerania likely had little to do with Nazi war crimes.
Yes, although the war is over the death and suffering continue. Depressing...I am a USA citizen 69 years old and was never taught anything about WW2 except in the most superficial details.Thanks so much to Time Ghost for illuminating these dark episodes of history that must be remembered.
After the scale of suffering the Nazis inflicted in the name of the German people... it was a guarantee that there was no possibility of a clean reconciliation after the war ended.
Unless there is an faction able to stand as a third party, and with the force necessary to prevent it, revenge will always make itself known. It's a primal human reaction after all.
...Then again, if such a faction existed in the first place, WW2 would probably never happened in the first place.
The book closes, The End is written on the page... but history doesn't work like that, and scores will be settled. Even for innocents that had no power in the decisions made in their names.
@@alexipestov7002 Agree with your points. That is one reason why a sizable number of nations and regions with experience in Axis occupation are not really that keen to support Ukrainian nationalists as of 2022.
It's really the globalist neo-cons that keep pushing the agenda on NATO expansion into Ukraine from 2004 onwards.
Meanwhile, for Ukrainian nationalists, the historic alignment with Nazis is practically a core foundation of what they see as the basis of Ukrainian national identity.🙄🙄
My dad moved from Zoppot to Konigsberg to live with his aunt in 1943 (his father was killed). He was 7 when he was put in a boxcar from Konigsberg to Berlin. He then spent 2 years in a Russian controlled orphanage before his mom and uncle (a Berlin police Inspector!) found him. I recently found one more uncle who survived and had been sent to Bavaria. My grandfather's siblings who were all in Zoppot/Danzig I'm starting to learn ended up in Berlin. 80 years later and we are still trying to put back the pieces of our family. When people say to me, my family did not belong there, I ask them how they would feel if they were forced to leave a land generations of their family lived on for 400+ years.
The irony is that Germans were and still wish for displacing and forced removal of people.
We can understand your bad experience but you will have no sympathy for Namibians or Jews or Gypsies who lived in specific places for hundreds of years as well. The entire war was fought for Lebensraum and that required removal of millions of people.
However, it doesn't end in the past. Even today many Germans wish to remove millions of people from Germany. You must be knowing very well about the far right Germans and their agenda of exter mination and/or mass deportation.
Therefore, for such reasons people have less sympathy for Germans. Not because you are less human but because Germans did and wished to do far worse.
Dang sparty, your outros are always a dang thing, but this was above and beyond. Spectacular work.
I'am from Czechia, and I believe that the Germans should stay here. The Sudetenland is now in a really bad shape due to the deportations.
I’ve heard the areas, once filled with the German and Hungarian minorities, once a wealthy manufacturing areas of the country are now similar to Detroit here in America, poor and stagnant due, to the people who made it that way forced to leave.
thank you for the empathy, my friend.
@@TheDigitalApple It's way better than Detroit.
@@TheDigitalApple While getting rid of Germans did cause mass manpower shortages it was not the only reason for the current state of the borderlands. By 1945 a lot of machinery was moved to Germany to replace the losses from the Allied bombardment and from 1943 slave labour was heavily used in those factories because Czechs were not trusted. Then a few of the other reasons why they became so "poor" are because of their location. You will not concentrate your industrial capacity on to border on which is expected heavy fighting (potential War between USSR and Allies) so much of the remaining industry was dismantled and relocated to the "safer" regions of Czechoslovakia where most of the recovery programs were for the same reason aimed. Other reasons include the terrain, population density and education. There is no point in building manufacture for making concrete when you will have like 50 farmers who barely know how to read and count to hundred doing the work and pieces of the work will have to be transported through mountainous terrain tens of kilometres on dirt roads. And to say ALL Sudetelands are now poor is really wrong. Western most yes (because of the location and terrain = there is no point in investing in a hills that will get stormed by enemy tanks in few weeks) is poor but Southern and Northern were heavily industrialized by Communists and are very wealthy regions.
@@TheDigitalApple these areas are in bad economic condition thanks to communist government replacing the light industry with heavy industry. If Germans would have stayed in, after the fall of communism we would have ethnic conflict on the level of Yugoslavia.
For all the hate that still rages in people’s hearts in this comment section. Let’s not forget. This shall never happen to anyone again. Work for it! Not against it. The past is the past. But we can change the present for the better
It's happening right now though, in multiple places.
Its literally happening in south africa, especially if the EFF goon gets in
@@whyshouldwecare3267 we know why you're mentioning SA, despite greater examples like Palestine.
@@bobslobbins2864 I dont care about Palestine, or Israel. Mmm, who hates me more, its a hard choice.
Certainly friendlier than the Germans Final Solution.
Excellent video. I had no idea that many Germans were expelled. This expulsion ended hundreds of years of ethnic German communities scattered throughout eastern Europe. Just out of curiosity, did any of the western nations occupied by Germany also expel small numbers of Germans? I'm specifically thinking of Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
Even as the guns have fallen silent. The drums of war no longer are drumming. The cascade of what the war has done, still lingers. As people from the ashes of war try to rebuild and make sense of what has occurred and what is now. Emotions will run rampant. As people will want revenge on those they deem the oppressor. Thus when one goes for an eye for an eye, the whole world goes blind. Let us hope that a war of this magnitude never occurs again.
Never Forget.
Hi Sparty
Though war is over, people are still suffering. This denotes how wasteful this war is.
Never forget.
Spartacus, your conclusion was powerful and eloquent. I hope everyone who hears your words takes them to heart and strives for a better world.
I am glad, that you did not stop at the end of the war. There was suffering of the effects of the war in the years after. And you cannot say, the Germans deserved this treatment because of the Holocaust. I wonder, if humanity will ever learn from these catastrophes, from the collapse of civilisation and remember, that it takes a lot of effort to build it back up.
I'm from the area the Germans were deported from. My grandparents told me the stories how they had been living with several German families in one house due to the housing issues just after the war. Then they left the country in few waves after '45. From my childhood, in the 90s, I remember how the descendants of the expelled visited their ancestral homes and left us German candies.
Never understood how people (especially my countrymen) felt the expullsions were justified. Maybe I'm biased, my family lived in the rural area before and after the war, it was very mixed, German-Masurian area, and although my great-grandparents may have had some bad feelings because of some things Germany had done to them during the war (like erradicate their culture and language during the war), I don't have any connection to it, not really. Poles from "Poland proper" may look at the issue differently, of course.
It was a tragedy for both sides. Not just Germans were expelled, I have many family members, both German and Masurian, that were forced to emigrate. Ironic how Masurians were "too German" and seen as the 5th column after the war.
Unfortunately, Hitler was elected by them, so they kind of have also were responsible for the atrocities
How did you keep your sanity given the nature of this series? I am sure you have seen and read worse than you present here.
What happened to the Germans taken by the U.S.S.R.?
In comparison to other major wars, was the aftermath of WWII really different other than scale?
WW2 was not the worst thing that humanity did. Not even close to what nature can do.
WW2 death was about 3% of world population
Mogol invasion of Asia and Europe was about 10-15% of world population.
And the we have local events, like 30y wars in Germany with 20%-40% population losses and then Swedish Deluge of Poland with up to 30% population killed within 5 short years. Poland did not recover from this.
But all of that pales compared to power of nature. Medieval plague across Asia, North Africa, Europe wiped 75-200 million people, high estimate means 50% of population worldwide gone.
Spanish flu was approximately as deadly as WW2 with 2.7% to 5.5% of population worldwide.
As Kurt Tucholsky said, humans have tendency to treat all these deaths just as numbers. "Hundreds of thousands of deaths: that is a statistic!". Nevertheless we must keep reminding ourselves. Each and every human put in early grave is a tragedy. Maybe with few exceptions, like Hitler.
From known history, it was sometimes sarcastically said that since the Germans wanted so much to go to the USSR, the USSR was nice enough to ensure these Germans stayed in USSR as long as possible.
Among POWs that were not convicted of war crimes, many were sent to the equivalent of the Gulag. Apparently they only made it back to Germany in significant numbers after the death of Stalin.
Some died of malnutrition and illness during this prolonged period.
"It is more difficult to undermine faith than knowledge,
love succumbs to change less than to respect,
hatred is more durable than aversion,
and at all times the driving force of the most important changes in this world has been found less in a scientific knowledge animating the masses, but rather in a fanaticism dominating them and in a hysteria which drove"
-Jake Featherstone from Harry Turtledove's "Timeline 191"
That ending was INCREDIBLE. It should be a clip (maybe it is, have not looked yet).
As we say in spanish "piel de gallina".
I think we should all just admit that Sparty is very good at his job. Never forget.
Except for his tie, that is.
Thank you for this brilliant video. I knew of the German explusions, but not of the extent .
Spartacus is actually dressed normally!
I only learnt about the unpleasant fate of the sudeten Germans recently.
A grim and depressing episode,but inevitable.
Well said Spartacus
In war it’s always the innocent who are punished for the actions of the guilty
Not excusing any of the excesses but after Germany used the German population of these counties as an excuse to invade and then what the people of these counties went through during the subsequent German occupation this sort of reaction was to be expected.
hecking wholesome based chungus!!! I love Joseph Stalin +1 updoot and reddit gold to you, my firendo!
@@Hanu9633 What? I have zero clue what any of that means.
Edit: Okay now some of it after googling chungus and updoot but why the "I love Stalin" and reddit?
Expected, but not justified
@@wilsonj4705 your opinion is the most reddit shit i've ever read
@@felixklauk4410 Didn't mean to imply otherwise.
I spent three days mulling over whether to watch this analysis and it is a dismal grand finale to a massively dispiriting but outstanding investigation into the most appalling activities visited on humanity in any century of human history. The scale and the brutality is hard to comprehend and digest and it is the antithesis of Stalin's remark he may have made to Winston Churchill who was visibly upset over the reported death of someone he knew: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
People herded into cattle cars and dying on the journey by the thousands? What type of people could support such a system? Surely they would need to be punished?
Sarcasm?
@@tancreddehauteville764 Yes
The Allied.
The occupied.
Sacarism...
Ohh noooo not the Lebensraum :(
Thank you for all you do Spartacus these are hard but wonderful videos you make.
The historical context of World War II and its aftermath remains a subject of profound complexity and debate. My ancestors were victims of the Nazi regime's atrocities-a tragic chapter that underscores the horrors of that era. However, I find it deeply perplexing how, in the aftermath of the war, the forced expulsion of Germans from Soviet-controlled territories was broadly permitted and normalized. This raises questions about the ethical standards applied to post-war justice and retribution.
The displacement of millions of ethnic Germans, often under brutal conditions, was justified at the time as part of broader efforts to reshape Europe’s political and demographic landscape. However, the double standard is troubling: despite the German leadership’s orchestration of heinous crimes, including attempted genocide, there emerged a prevailing narrative advocating for the restitution of territories perceived as historically "German." This reconciliation with the perpetrators of such crimes, while simultaneously exacting severe collective punishment on ordinary German civilians, reflects a moral and political inconsistency.
Equally disturbing was the reaction within Germany itself, particularly from those who remained in the homeland, towards their compatriots returning from exile or displacement. Many returnees faced prejudice, alienation, and inadequate support, which compounded their suffering. Instead of embracing solidarity, segments of the population appeared indifferent or even hostile to the plight of their own "brothers and sisters," a response that challenges ideals of national unity and compassion.
Some explanation of how the Germans got to Eastern Europe and the Balkans would have been good. Who are these communities ? When did they originate ? What was their status there ?
It’s not very complicated… before 1871 Germany didn’t exist. Before WW1 the region was either the German, or the Austro-Hungarian, or the Russian Empire. None of these were based on language ethnicity, although the administration was in German or Russian or Hungarian. At home, people inside Central and Eastern Europe spoke the language of their family. When nation states based on majority language ethnicity of the respective regions were created after WW1, some people ended up on the “wrong side” of the border. This was especially the case in the border regions.
As a Finn, I think it would be important to showcase the Finnish Army's occupation of Eastern Karelia during the joint invasion with Nazi Germany. I believe it is essential to look at and acknowledge the internment/ segregation camp system that was established during the Continuation War and administered by Vaino Kotilainen to integrate karelians into the finnish population and led to the starvation of many finnish women and children. PS-Love your content!
Heartbreaking. My mother and grandmother fled Poland (specifically: Gorzów Wielkopolski (formerly known as Landsberg a.d. Warthe)) in 1945. My great grandmother and my aunt were too sick and weak to make the journey. Both succumbed to starvation in early 1946.
I know I know... many if not the majority of those german speaking populations supported the nazis. But did they really all deserve such a fate? When I was younger I'd often argue with my mother about this and felt little mercy for the aunt I never got to know. Now that I've grown a bit older I often think what might have been if that 7 year old girl (in 1946) had survived the war. I would have had another aunt and maybe a lot more cousins.
Anyway it is as it is. We cannot change the past. What worries me at the moment is that mankind appearently has learned little and things like this have since happened time and again. This fact alone makes this series so important: To educate people about the past so that they may make better choices in the future. Never forget! 😢
I'm Polish and I was born in Szczecin, which used to be Stettin before the war (a German city). As much as I acknowledge the suffering of the Germans who used to be the inhabitants of the city before the war, it's hard for me to accept that the blame for it falls on my predecessors. After all, the Poles suffered more deaths per capita, it was Poland who was attacked in the first place and it was not Poland who decided to be moved to the west. I'm sure that the viewers of this channel do recognize that all of the decisions were made by the Americans, Soviets and the Brits, so they are the ones to blame for the mass expulsions. If the decisions are considered an inevitable consequence of the war, then the responsibility falls on the Germans themselves or the Soviets. I'm a huge fan of this channel, but I think this episode lacked a statement attributing the responsibility for this suffering to the Germans.
Sure the Nazis started the war, the Soviets wanted to redraw the borders and the Western Allies kinda rubberstamped it. But many Poles, from the grass roots to the new communist leadership, were still very much involved with the process. And those that were still carry part of the guilt. I can understand their rage after everything that happened, Im no saint, I might have acted the same, but revenge is ultimately never a good justification. Its not that rare that victims become perpetrators because of it as soon as the table turns.
@@thezeitos469 But what were they supposed to do, really? The other countries decided the borders. Either the Poles would have let the millions of Germans stay where they were (which was one of the causes of the war in the first place) or they expelled them. There is no in between. Both choices were bad.
If you don't like how the borders have been redrawn, then return 127 thousand square kilometers to the Germans.
Everyone blames the Soviets and the Allies, but no one wants to take back what they got after the VICTORY of the Allies and the Soviets over the fascists.
I don't get why they consider it worse for Germans to be expelled by governments made up of people who suffered during the war than "angry mobs." At what point do we stop assigning humanity to people for the power they hold?
Soviet, Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, and Polish authorities, as well as German communists, participated in the expulsion because it was sensible and logical in the circumstances imposed on them.
@@СергейТурутин-ч6г you started the war with Hitler. Irrelevant.
If I didn’t know history as well as I do the title of the video would be raising red flags right now
Going to do a video on the Nuremburg trial?
Yes. A few in fact.
@@spartacus-olsson Looking forward...
Concentration camps, violent deaths, slave labor, inhumane treatment , all based on race & ethnicity... I WONDER why this abuse of Germans has been buried (that's a rhetorical question). Thai you for this tidbit of history which I, with two degrees in political science, was unaware of.
I have never seen a listed bibliography of the books you guys use to research these episodes. Does such a list exist? As usual Sparty...great episode!
The epilogues that Spartacus gives at the end of every episode are always deep and touching; but the line "as long as we refuse to understand that 'they' are 'us' " just brought me to tears. "Imagine..."
Before this episode I was aware of the sorry state of forced repatriation of POWs that is a blight on the allies but I had no idea about Germans being expelled. Given the horrible treatment of conquered peoples by the Nazis this is not a surprise but yet another human tragedy of the war.
As always it is the defenseless civilians that reap the whirlwind that someone else has sown.
It is easy to apply the morals and sensibilities of 2024 to the people of 1945 that had suffered under the Germans for up to 6 years.
Not an excuse for more brutality, but perhaps an understanding. We should never forget what brutalities humans are capable of against other humans...yet it seems we have, within the lifetime of some people still with us, and certainly within the lifetime of their children.
I always wondered how my Danube Swabian maternal grandfather and his family didn't get expelled from Hungary following the war. Scary to think they were a few of that 270k lucky ones who got to stay. He was only 10 in 1948!
Probably because the Hungarians were sided with the Nazis, and are still pretty Right-Wing.
Brilliant content as always!
Cudo !
Excellent script and a relevant subject. +1❤️
My grandmother came from East Prussia and lived in Königsberg. She was 9 years old when she and her family were expelled. She rarely talked about it, I can only remember one time. Among other things, she told me how she once saw 3 corpses leaning against the wall of a house at the end of the war, one of them had a sign on it saying “Shot for looting”. She burst into tears.
She ended up in the Westerwald (in the west of Germany, in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate) where she met my grandfather, who was also still a child at the time. I made a short documentary about my grandpa's childhood memories of the war and afterwards, as my grandma never wanted to talk about this time on camera.
Never forget
I think Ethnic cleansing is bad to be honest.
What is that old saying about “He who fights monsters”? Has modern society totally forgotten it?
I thought we “moderns” were so civilized, so progressive, so advanced that we’d never stoop so low. Maybe not as low or lower than the monsters. Yet, in the pits of hell we find ourselves today, with war, death, disease, and famine raging across the world today.
Never forget, lest we join the forgotten.
Except the Allied didn't stoop so low as Nazi and Jap.
Even SU at worst used German labour then released them to rebuild the wasteland that was Western Soviet Union.
Comparing that to what the Nazi did and planned...
Thanks Sparty. As nearly as I can remember, in every history book I’ve read this period is treated as a voluntary migration. Usually it’s talked about as people fleeing the encroaching Soviets. Cold War logic I guess.
In Hungary, it started w the ethnic Germans and families who joined the Volksbund and/or the German armed forces. Then it continued in ethnic areas whoever had nice house, property or best land…agitated by the communists. All of this despite that we were allies w Germany, there was no hatred against Germans or atrocities by German forces in Hungary. Germans lived in peace and prosperity in the country for centuries and the atrocities during WW2 were by Hungarian fascists (Arrowcross Party)…pure greed🙄 it was at full play. Ungarndeutsche speaking 🇭🇺🇩🇪
As a Czech, I regret my ancestors doing this. It's a reminder that being a victim doesn't exclude or excuse you from being a perpetrator either. Though not nearly as bad what "they" did to "us", it's still on the pile of "what not to do".