Interesting fact: there are around 200,000 ethnic Germans living in Kazakhstan. They are descendants of the Volga Germans deported by Stalin’s rule in 1941, and there weren’t the only “unreliable” group who were deported: Koreans, Chechens, Kurds and many more ethnicities had the same story. As a Kazakh, I’m very proud that our ancestors helped all these people to survive. My own great-grandparents shared their food and medications with repressed peoples. While most have returned to their ancestral homelands afterwards, some have stayed and still live in Kazakhstan to this day. Our country is home to 120 ethnic groups living in harmony, which we are proud of.
Yes .. I have German relatives that were resettled from Odessa to Siberia. After the Russians “thinning the herd” in the camps after fifteen years were resettled in Kazakhstan. Whole villages of German speaking people.
@ the difference being … 1) Jews were already kicked out of Spain, France, Italy, etc and migrated into Germany and Eastern Europe. Second .. Poles were never kicked out of Germany. This was Prussian lands that has been taken away from Germany to build a Poland. Polish lands were in what most of Belarus and some of Ukraine today. Also .. no one’s defending what happened to some People during Hitlers reign in Germany. The one difference is that Germans were asked and encouraged starting with Catherine the Great to emigrate to Russia. Promised land, free of Religion (most being anabaptists) exemption from conscription and educate their kids in German. These promises were broken by the Czar (WW1) and by Stalin (WW2). There was never a recruitment of Polish people, Romanian, Jewish, etc to come live in Germany. Of course, there was no real Germany then but mostly states run by different Princes, etc. look .. history is written by the victors .. but one cannot use “whataboutism’s” to justify anyone’s loss or hardships.
@@rickschroth9869 “history is written by the victors” why are you implying by that statement? Hmm.. , jews also faced persecution and displacement throughout Europe, including Germany and Eastern Europe. Many Jewish communities in Germany and Eastern Europe existed for centuries before expulsions elsewhere. They didn’t migrate to these regions solely because they were expelled but often because they went after better economic or social opportunities or were fleeing persecution elsewhere. Also while it’s true that Poland underwent partitions in the late 18th century between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, Polish people have always lived in what is now modern day Poland. Poland’s western territories were indeed under Prussian control for some time, but that doesn’t erase Poland’s historical ties to those lands. It’s also worth noting that after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles re-established an independent Poland, restoring lands with significant Polish populations. Germany as a unified nation didn’t exist until 1871, but the former states were diverse and often included significant minority populations.
German killed over 30 millions of civilians on behalf of "collective responsibility", It is fundamentally wrong that you start telling history from the end :(
12 million is a lower estimate, the higher estimate is 18 million with the range being so big because lack of documentation. An unknown amount of people murdered, lynched, killed in concentration camps etc.
On August 22, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." Nazi Germans crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles and to 2.9 million Polish Jews. From the start of the war against Poland, Germany intended to realize the plan of territorial expansion, put forth by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, demanding the acquisition of the so-called living space (Lebensraum) in the East for massive settlement of German colonists.The object of war was to fulfill this territorial Lebensraum refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany. Originally a biology term for "habitat", the publicists for the German Empire (1871-1918) introduced Lebensraum as a concept of nationalism that became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918), as the Septemberprogramm (1914). Lebensraum was an ideological element of Nazism, which advocated Germany's territorial expansion into Eastern Europe, justified by the need for agricultural land in order to maintain the town-and-country balance upon which depended the moral health of the German people. In practice, during the war, the Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) was to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic populations and other peoples living there considered racially inferior to the Germans and to repopulate Eastern Europe with Germanic people to achieve Lebensraum.The populations of cities were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus that would feed Germany, and thereby allow political replacement by and re-population with a German upper class. The eugenics of Lebensraum explicitly assumed the racial superiority of Germans as an Aryan master race (Herrenvolk), who, by virtue of their superiority (physical, mental, genetic) had the right to displace any people they deemed to be Untermenschen (subhumans) of inferior racial stock.
My grandfather was only 9 years old when when a Germans start to occupy Poland during World War II. He had to work as a slave for the Eastern German farmer who like to beat him and calling him "Polish pig" the same thing did German kids. For 5 years he had to suffer this abuse but he still was lucky that he did not end up in concentration camp like other polish kids. Cry me the river or you poor poor Germans who started World War I World War II and tried to conquer the world.🙄
My grandmother was ethnic German from Yugoslavia. Her family was forced to labour camp, and they were forbidden to speak German. She actually left me 30 pages of written memories about World War II and aftermath.
My grandmother's father and brother were shot by the Germans in 1941, along with 2677 other men, women and children, and this was only one of the many massacres Germans did in Yugoslavia. I'm sorry for what happened to your grandmother, but all things considered, it could have been much worse.
I’m part Croatian and my grandfather identified as Yugoslavian (and Italian for his restaurant business), his older brothers and parents identified as Italian, and his grandparents and great aunts identified as Austrian. Within 3 generations their ethnicity changed and for the fourth generation my dad found himself a Croat due to geopolitical events beyond his control. Now I’m here and I guess I’m part Croatian? I’ve never took a DNA test but I’m sure it would be a mix and then some because the region my family is from used to be Venetian and cosmopolitan. Doesn’t matter anyway because I’m mostly Irish but still it’s interesting that within a century their nationalities changed 4 times Most of my extended family who lived through the wars spoke German, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian and they weren’t overly nationalistic. I know a couple of my distant relatives were drafted into the Italian army but then fought for Tito after being captured. My dad recalls his great aunt insisting she was an Austrian subject as well as she was alive for the First World War.
@@Hz-yl7duMy Polish grandfather was only 9 years old when when a Germans started to occupy Poland during World War II. He had to work as a slave for the Eastern German farmer who liked to beat him and call him "Polish pig." The same thing did local German kids. For 5 years he had to suffer this abuse but he still was lucky that he did not end up in concentration camp like other Polish kids. Cry me the river or you poor poor Germans who started World War I World War II and tried to conquer the world.🙄
Some omitted background: 1. Most of the ethnic Germans living in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia had been there from when the lands where they were living were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. "Geographic fallout" from lands ruled by a family for hundreds of years. 2. The current eastern boundary of Poland follows the the line of demarcation per the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. So, the Poles expelled from the Russian/Soviet occupied pre WW II Poland were resettled in Silesia, Pomerania and Southern East Prussia after the Germans either fled, or were expelled. 2 The Volga Germans had been living along the Volga River since the Catherine the Great invited them to settle there.
Germans in Hungary (including Transylvania and present day Slovakia/Serbia) predate the Austrian Empire, they first started settling in the 11th century, but there were several later waves too. The Time of the Austrian empire is the last wave. Germans in Transylvania even predate the Romanians, although the fake history enjoyers over there would never admit it.
Can we stop with the anachronistic term "Austro-Hungarian Empire"? It's just wrong. That wasn't a thing until 1867. Also, bulk of the Germans in Hungary came in the early modern and medieval age
Where is small percentage of Poles were resettled to Silesia from Belarus and today's Ukraine. 1,7 million Polish families were sent to Siberia gulags. By October 1943 upwards of 150,000 Poles had been murdered by ukrainians in Volhynia, but the nightmare was moving toward Eastern Galicia, now bloated with Polish refugees. Polish civilians ,women, children alderley in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. In mixed families the UPA’s Ukrainian nationalists order was unambiguous: kill the Polish spouse and any children resulting from themarriage. The murders were committed with incredible cruelty. Many were burnt alive or thrown into wells. Axes, pitchforks, scythes, knives and other farming tools rather than guns.In the blood frenzy, the Ukrainians tortured their victims with unimaginable bestiality. Victims were scalped. They had their noses, lips and ears cut off. They had their eyes gouged out and hands cut off and they had their heads squashed in clamps. Woman had their breasts cut off and pregnant woman were stabbed in the belly. Men had their genitals sliced off with sickles. In the opinion of the historian Prof. Grzegorz Motyka, an expert on Polish-Ukrainian issues, “although the anti-Polish action was an ethnic cleansing, it also meets the definition of genocide”.
You hid the fact that Poles were similarly expelled from the eastern part of Poland, which fell to the USSR (or were fleeing ethnic cleansing by Ukrainians). So they were given properties from which Germans were in turn expelled. There were even cases where families became friends because they lived together for some time. There are reports of Polish families crying when they arrived at their new home because they knew that a German family would soon cry just like they did a few days earlier.
brother most poles in eastern poland were colonisers, the belarusians and ruthieans (ukranians) were there first poland anexxed and tried to assimilate those lands
@@SadnessiuselessUkrainian revisionist spotter. Lwow was majority Polish for a thousand years. Ukrainians viciously slaughtered many innocents and now karma has repaid your vicious race.
@@SadnessiuselessHave you ever heard about the voluntary political and military union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth)???
@@Sadnessiuseless The German population, taking advantage of the regional divisions in Poland, colonized its current western territories in the same way. Look at the map of Poland from the year 1000, at the time of the creation of the state. Stalin restored the border from the time of Poland's establishment on the map by crossing out 1000 years German drang nach osten.
@Sadnessiuseless please learn to use capital letters. Polish commonwealth was not a national space so there was more tolerance than in Europe today and there was no enforced polonization at all. State was home for Germans Jews Ruthenians Armenians Tatars and so on. Rebirth of 2RP was difficult because it happened in times of nationalism and state didn't want to abandon citizens of 1 republic.
Leaving out the part where "Germans living in USSR" is huge. They annexed Prussia, there were many that lived in Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Perhaps a part 2?
@@BandySeal78551 If you're calling Churchill a hypocrite, you'll get no argument from me. But if you've said anything that disproves his point that I repeated, I've yet to see it. But at least a _bon mot_ is good for upvotes, right?
H**ler really fucked them up for no reason, germanys borders before WW2 were amazing after they got sudenland from chekoslovakia they should of stopped
@@StarJes1 Poland has built many towns and restored them to their original glory, sure you can't hide the commie block district in every single town but you can appreciate the will to do this, unlike Germany, where they are just piling sky scrapers and ugly glass towers everywhere.
I worked with a Romanian women whose name I pointed out sounded German, she told me her family were Saxons but where forced to speak Romanian and Russian. Her father is still scared today to speak German/Saxon, his name is Wilhelm Trausch They never support the Nazis but were persecuted for just being Germanic.
Famous stories that never happened ! In Romania were deported to USSR only those Germans who were in the nazi party or ss, During the communist era the German population in Romania, was about 250k people, they migrated during the 70's for economical reasons exclusively(nobody was oppressing them, they were free to practice their Lutheran, respectively Catholic religion). After the fall of communism, the rest of the German population migrated to Germany for economic reasons .So stop spreading bullshit !
@@etherospike3936 I have an ethnic German uncle who fled Romania as a child in 1944 as the Soviets advanced. Walking and occasional trains that broke down. They left everything. Their family had lived in Romania for several centuries.
In Romania never the Germans was forced to speak Romanian and Russian, forced! There are lies! In Romania the Germans always spoken their language! No assimilation, No persecution! The Romanians always respected the Germans. The Romanians never assimilated the Germans! So many lies. Instead they was assimilated in Poland, Czekoslovakia, Hungary, Baltic states! Tell the truth!
@@rdisconzip yeah, on the grounds of potential Nazi cooperation, the Soviets did mass deportations like that during the war, mainly into Kazakhstan or the Far East & around the Russian Arctic
Discussing “the German problem” in her memoirs, Thatcher wrote: “I do not believe in collective guilt… But I do believe in national character.” Thatcher was really pissed off when Kohl at the EC Summit in Strasbourg on December 8th 1989 openly questioned Western border of Poland. But why? "There was also uncertainty about Germany’s eastern borders, since Kohl - in deference to German expellee associations [Vertriebenenverbände] - found it difficult to definitively accept the loss of Germany’s former eastern territories "
@@FightFilmsS T F U they lost 2/3 of there country and cant even mention the fact that this terretorrys were rightfully german ones. You can wipe your butt with "at least".
Strange that the Soviets stopped their Westward push at the borders of the Slavic Marches. The homelands of the Slavic tribes before the Junker Ostsiedlung. The Soviets reminded Germans where Mutter belongs
Because its just like Britain being called England. Plus it helps Belarusi and Ukranians shift blame whenever it comes to heinous shit they did and profited from
They also spelled "Winton Churchill" without the S in the scene before this ... Whoever is editing needs a talking to EDIT: 9:35 ... Western Meiterraean. Are you kidding me? I really don't know why I am subbed to this channel. No pride in your platform, Knowledgia...
They should really pay more attention. Spelling mistakes everywhere are just a bit annoying, but when you’re labelling the same person twice on the same foto it’s getting out of hand.
I don't know if this counts as a true mistake, but near the beginning the narrator says "The Americans" and an image of Winston Churchill appears, and then "the British" and an image of Harry Truman is shown.
I am German and three of my four grandparents had to flee (the fourth grew up in West Germany). But this where the lucky ones. My grandfather was the only one from a big family coming back from the east front. It is difficult for the Germans to talk about their suffering because, after all, it was we who started the war. We are aware of our responsibility and do not want to give the impression that we are rewriting history or portraying ourselves as victims. At the same time, I see that there are still many collective and unspoken traumas present. If we don't manage to speak about this (without rewriting history) this will again give birth to new painful chapters.
A balanced view. Thank you. The Eastern Germans suffered for the collective activities done in the name of all Germans. It is up to the other Germans to resettle and compensate them as their part of taking collective responsibility. They seem to have done so.
My grandmother (with 5 kids in tow) and 2 of her siblings survived, all ended up in West Germany (Hamburg, Bavaria, West Berlin). My dad was captured and put in a Russian orphanage in East Berlin for nearly 3 years until his uncle found him. It's only been this past year I started finding out about my grandfather's side of the family. We lost all contact when he died in the war.
What did Germans collectively expect? No consequences for being responsible for the deaths of 35,000,000+ fellow Europeans? Germans might argue among themselves about how and why the consequences fell only on Eastern Germans, but they have no reason to complain about the fact of consequences. If the Allies had insisted on an "eye for an eye" punishment, five or six times as many Germans would have died. Overall, the Germans got away with suffering only a tiny proportion of the misery they collectively inflicted.
3:20 It wasn’t just the Russians. The Red Army had Ukrainians, Belarusians, Uzbekistans and a lot more other nationalities. It was the Soviets, not the Russians.
I am a ukrainian from Eastern regions, 80% of my ancestors were either starved to death, or stolen directly from their homes at gunpoint and forcibly mobilized into the Soviet “Black Infantry”, from where they did not return. Neither I, nor anyone from my family, nor any of my relatives have ever associated themselves with "Soviet people" and the "Soviet state". And if you lived in Soviet Moscow (like my mother in her youth), you would know that local russians have never seen ukrainians, baltic peoples, or caucasians, as one of them, as equal people.
"The Red Army had Ukrainians, Belarusians, Uzbekistans and a lot more other nationalities. It was the Soviets, not the Russians." Nah its the Russians, From Russian pov all other ethnic groups inside USSR were, at best, useful cannon fodder... and, at worst, "dangerous anti revolutionary elements". The moment Moscow saw or even percieved a threat to their absolute power from any non russians... they prosecuted, deported and killed en masse those same nations/ethnic groups. Communist oppression and terror cannot be divided from ethno nationalist centered terror orchestarted by Moscow, as often one fed into the other. And those areas cleansed, were then repopulated by Russians.... only if it was deemed impractical, unimportant or unhospitable, "lesser soviets" would be used. Stalin even back during ww2 directly appealed to Russian nationalism, not Ukrainian , Belorussian etc. The main political power of the Soveit communist party always came from imperialistic Russian nationalism and the negation of identity of many slavic nations ....thats why Putin and Russian nationlisits to this day cannot get over the fall of the USSR, when the rest of non Russians celebrate it.
@@ТарасМакаренко-ф3ш That’s your unique case then, I know many Ukrainians who’s family immigrated in the 90s after the collapse of the USSR and before the Russo-Ukrainian war started in 2022, many had good memories of living in the USSR. Ukraine also had one of the biggest Communist parties in the union
@@DD-qw4fz Except your whole argument falls apart when you realize that Stalin was not even Russian, the USSR wasn’t nationalistic until it needed to be in WW2 but they still had many other leaders that weren’t Russian, they had a couple of Ukrainian leaders as well. Not everyone outside of mainland Russia was happy about the collapse of the Soviet Union, just ask central asia or see the deal with Armenia and Azerbaijan going on right now.
Thank you very much for making this video - this is a suppressed part of history and deserves to be known. My father was one of those who made it out with my grandmother - he was only three years old and very sick in December 1944. God knows what my grandmother had to do to protect and save him - 90% of of my family my father’s side where not so lucky and were murdered in 1944 and 1945. May God have mercy with the souls of all victims of all wars - Peace
Poor Germans🤔On August 22, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." Nazi Germans crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles and to 2.9 million Polish Jews. From the start of the war against Poland, Germany intended to realize the plan of territorial expansion, put forth by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, demanding the acquisition of the so-called living space (Lebensraum) in the East for massive settlement of German colonists.The object of war was to fulfill this territorial Lebensraum refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany. Originally a biology term for "habitat", the publicists for the German Empire (1871-1918) introduced Lebensraum as a concept of nationalism that became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918), as the Septemberprogramm (1914). Lebensraum was an ideological element of Nazism, which advocated Germany's territorial expansion into Eastern Europe, justified by the need for agricultural land in order to maintain the town-and-country balance upon which depended the moral health of the German people. In practice, during the war, the Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) was to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic populations and other peoples living there considered racially inferior to the Germans and to repopulate Eastern Europe with Germanic people to achieve Lebensraum.The populations of cities were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus that would feed Germany, and thereby allow political replacement by and re-population with a German upper class. The eugenics of Lebensraum explicitly assumed the racial superiority of Germans as an Aryan master race (Herrenvolk), who, by virtue of their superiority (physical, mental, genetic) had the right to displace any people they deemed to be Untermenschen (subhumans) of inferior racial stock.
@@yukselkoca7 The Germans were supposed to be the victors but failed again. They should take the lesson. All wars in Europe for 100+ years are because of them and the Russians.
My Polish grandfather was only 9 years old when when a Germans started to occupy Poland during World War II. He had to work as a slave for the Eastern German farmer who liked to beat him and call him "Polish pig." The same thing did local German kids. For 5 years he had to suffer this abuse but he still was lucky that he did not end up in concentration camp like other Polish kids. Cry me the river or you poor poor Germans who started World War I World War II and tried to conquer the world.🙄
I don’t know how accurate this video is. I did know an ethnic German from Romania who got stuck in the German army. He fought in Ukraine and Poland and how he made it to Iowa is probably an interesting story. Okumura Sensei, an Aikikai Hachidan, was in the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria, His unit was forced to surrender to the Russians and he spent about eight years as a slave laborer in a Khazakistan tractor factory. Many of the Japanese soldiers who surrendered to the Soviets died in gulags.
Unfortunately this video is very much "unbalanced" At 1:02 Knowledgia says that people from Eastern Europe "have been subjected to cruelties at the Nazis hands". And that's it - no numbers of war and genocide crimes. So against well documented facts he claims that "cruelties were done by mysterious "Nazis" not 500 000 Germans perpetrators out of 10 mln Germans popularizing German civilization in "the East". At 5:35 he mentioned that pre-war Poland had large German minority that was in the fun club of famous watercolourist. But no mention how 100k Poles were caught and the slaughtered by the end of 1939 using the hunt list composed by German. So this film is biased and we can only hope there will be part 2, 3, 4 talking What Germans, Austrians, Nazi Hungarians, Romaniand did in each country that unleashed that tragic revenge -but incomparably weaker initial rule of "the master class".
this video is for click bait entertainment purposes only and is West fashion style as usual keep it one sided one eyed pro Germanophile crocodile tears same old repeated German Propaganda for West ignorance sympathy.
@@zk1919 A lot of videos would have to be made documenting the major crimes. I'm reminded of the Belgian colonial rule in the African Congo. Historians estimate that up to 10 million Africans died as a result of the brutal Belgian colonial rule. A large part of the African population was forced to do hard labor. Those who did not fulfill their quota had their hands and feet chopped off. To punish the parents, their babies were taken away from them and their heads smashed against trees. The conquest of America by European powers also cost the lives of millions of indigenous people. They were plundered, murdered or imprisoned in reservations. But nobody seems to be interested. The focus is only on the Germans.
Educate yourself before you make silly video. On August 22, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." Nazi Germans crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles and to 2.9 million Polish Jews. From the start of the war against Poland, Germany intended to realize the plan of territorial expansion, put forth by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, demanding the acquisition of the so-called living space (Lebensraum) in the East for massive settlement of German colonists.The object of war was to fulfill this territorial Lebensraum refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany. Originally a biology term for "habitat", the publicists for the German Empire (1871-1918) introduced Lebensraum as a concept of nationalism that became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918), as the Septemberprogramm (1914). Lebensraum was an ideological element of Nazism, which advocated Germany's territorial expansion into Eastern Europe, justified by the need for agricultural land in order to maintain the town-and-country balance upon which depended the moral health of the German people. In practice, during the war, the Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) was to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic populations and other peoples living there considered racially inferior to the Germans and to repopulate Eastern Europe with Germanic people to achieve Lebensraum.The populations of cities were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus that would feed Germany, and thereby allow political replacement by and re-population with a German upper class. The eugenics of Lebensraum explicitly assumed the racial superiority of Germans as an Aryan master race (Herrenvolk), who, by virtue of their superiority (physical, mental, genetic) had the right to displace any people they deemed to be Untermenschen (subhumans) of inferior racial stock.
Though understandable, it is a sad reality how harshly many Germans were treated despite their collaboration. It should come as no surprise that the Stalinist communist who came into power encouraged and rewarded this behaviour and thought of collective punishment of all ´´Germans´´. Even if the deportations were the best solution of stability of eastern Europe, nobody can defend the way they were carried out, showing the world that the ´´´victors´´ and ´´freedom fighters´´ to not be so different from the Nazis after all.
Personally all Germans in WW2 can root in hell for what they did to plenty people especially enable some countries to destroy other countries in that time.
well it is not on stalins shoulders alone, many soldiers of the red army wanted to take revenge on the german population because their families were executed by the nazis
What did Germans collectively expect? No consequences for being responsible for the deaths of 35,000,000+ fellow Europeans? Germans might argue among themselves about how and why the consequences fell only on Eastern Germans, but they have no reason to complain about the fact of consequences. If the Allies had insisted on an "eye for an eye" punishment, five or six times as many Germans would have died. Overall, the Germans got away with suffering only a tiny proportion of the misery they collectively inflicted.
@@dominicstocker5144 They could have fought to stop their felow Germans and stand up against them shoulder to shoulder with their true countrymens. Non-action is same as acceptance by silence.
You first should have explained how the Germans got to those places outside of Germany in the first place. Those were settlers from begining of the middle ages until about 1850 when kings wanted to populate areas were wars had decimated the population or were the area was sparcely populated.
Very true! We Germans are accused of being drawn to the East. But most Germans were invited as settlers. The Germans were considered conscientious and hardworking. They brought economic and cultural prosperity to the areas they settled in. Even today, the attractive cities in the East bear witness to the cultural achievements of the Germans. This naturally aroused the envy of the local population, who lived from hand to mouth. The Song of the Volga Germans th-cam.com/video/CgsJ64nlgI8/w-d-xo.html Song of the Volga Germans from the so-called labor army th-cam.com/video/v8n9XPPlCUY/w-d-xo.html
@@polishgigachad7097 The Germans were not temporary guests, but settlers who were to live there permanently. They were assigned deserted or sparsely populated areas that first had to be cultivated and civilized. In the Balkans, Germans were not recruited by foreign rulers, but by the German emperor. They were assigned areas that had been abandoned due to the Turkish wars - such as in Banat and Transylvania. It became their homeland, which they civilized and brought to cultural prosperity through hard work over the centuries. Moreover, the Germans had not behaved badly - as you write so disparagingly. They were not responsible for the war. And certainly not the Russian Germans, who had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with National Socialism. They were not guilty. They were punished just because they were Germans. unofficial hymn of the Volga Germans) th-cam.com/video/CgsJ64nlgI8/w-d-xo.html Song of the Russian Germans who had to do forced labor in the so-called Trud Army under inhumane conditions th-cam.com/video/v8n9XPPlCUY/w-d-xo.html Folk anthem of the Danube Swabians th-cam.com/video/GjZDavFGFXY/w-d-xo.html The politicians who were responsible for conflicts and wars after the First World War were those who failed to find a balance between the peoples and organize a lasting peace. On the contrary, they incited the peoples against each other. In addition, migrants who have made a positive contribution to the host country are better than invaders who have invaded foreign territories. The Poles ignore the fact that their real homeland was in what is now Russia. Germanic tribes lived on what is now Poland, the majority of whom - but by no means all of them - moved on during the Migration Period. The Poles were not invited by the local population, but seized these areas as invaders. The same applies to the so-called Polish eastern territories, which today belong to Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. During the Polish-Lithuanian Union, the Polish imperialists conquered and annexed these areas. Over time, Polish settlers moved there without the consent of the local residents and acted as masters. But at no time were the Poles a majority there. I think the Polish historical narrative ignores and distorts facts in order to portray Poland as the eternal victim of its evil neighbors and to legitimize the seizure of German territories and the expulsion of the German population. The same applies to the Czechs. The Hungarians and Romanians, on the other hand, treated the Germans more fairly. Unlike the Poles and Czechs, they appreciate the cultural achievements of the Germans. One final comment: Europeans were not invited to any of the American states, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They settled there against the will of the indigenous peoples. They displaced and murdered the indigenous peoples and stole their treasures and land. They behaved more than "misbehaved". According to your logic, they should all pay these countries and high reparations to the indigenous peoples. But ask Trump if he would support that.
You mentioned that reasons for relocation were retribution and maintaining ethnic purity but you "forgot" to mention the very top reason which was fear of history repeating itself again. As a Czech, I can tell that the main reason for Benes' decrees (the ones that mandated relocation of Germans) was to prevent another Munich agreement and a scenario where strong German minority in regions like Sedetenland was a pretext for the Nazis to annex parts of Czechoslovakia and then Bohemia as a whole. In fact, the 3 million Germans in Bohemia were a reason why the Czechs joined Slovakia to form Czechoslovakia in the first place. They feared that such a big German minority would overtake the Czech state and they needed Slovaks to balance it out a bit. So *obviously* if the fears were already present as much as 20+ years before the Munich agreement, it's clear that retribution was not the main reason of Benes' decrees 30 years later. Don't make videos about politics and history if you don't understand them the least.
The problem was the founding of Czechoslovakia after the First World War. Contrary to the right of self-determination of peoples demanded by the American President Wilson, the Sudeten Germans were not asked which state they wanted to belong to. They were forcibly assigned to the new state of the Czechs and Slovaks. Moreover, they were disadvantaged in every respect. The name of the newly founded state is revealing. It contains no reference to the German population, although the Germans were the second largest population group, ahead of the Slovaks. And then the Czechs are surprised that the Germans could not identify with the new state. During the wild expulsions, tens of thousands of Germans were brutally murdered. Germans were hung by their legs and fires were lit under their heads. Young men were tortured and then buried alive. Women and children were thrown to their deaths from a bridge. Later, the expulsions of the Germans were not more humane, but more orderly. The scandalous thing about the Benes Decrees, which justify mass population expulsion and are still valid today, is that there is not a bit of regret from the Czechs who want to build Europe with us today. Not a good basis for peaceful coexistence in partnership.
@@adifreitag8579Thank you for your excellent and ACCURATE comments. The decision to follow the historical borders of Bohemia and Moravia in creating the " new Switzerland " after World War I made no sense ethnic wise. So, the Allies allowed the Burgenland area between Austria and Hungary to vote to be part of Austria or Hungary in 1919, which they did for Austria except for Sopron where dead people were counted voting for Hungary. Why? because both Austria and Hungary lost the war. So the people here could vote for their self determination between two losing countries. But then they did not allow all the southern Sudetan areas in Bohemia and Moravia to vote when the ethnic situation was exactly the same. Does that make any sense? Of course it does not. The same thing for the southern Tyrol areas. No vote, you are now going to be part of Italy. The allies did not listen to these people asking for the right of self determination. All of those areas would have voted to remain part of Austria just like Burgenland did and the allies knew it. Those areas never, ever should have been part of Czecolslovakia or Italy FROM THE VERY beginning of the "new borders." Some of the western and northern parts of Bohemia and Moravia would have made an awkward Austrian Czech border but the allies would not allow any of those areas to vote to join Germany either. It is the allies who set the stage for Munich in 1938. The fact is all these southern areas would have voted to remain part of Austria. These were NOT Czech populated areas. No they were not. Austria should have been at least 25% bigger than it became after the absurd Treaty of St. Germain because self determination was denied to many, many people. Many Austrians and areas adjoining the "new Austria"on the "wrong side" of the new borders.
@@adifreitag8579One more thing, the Benes Decrees were and today are still beyond scandalous. Yes, Lidice and other very bad things in World War 2 were terrible, but so is what the Czechs did in 1945 that you accurately described. If the Czech Republic wants to still hold onto the Benes get rid of everyone and everything German (Austrian) in their country then they will need to dismantle everything designed, built painted and sculpted by the German speaking peoples over the centuries. Let's start with the St. Nicholas Church at the end of the Charles bridge in Prague. Designed by, built by, painted by, sculptures by, none other than some of the greatest Austrians and Germans artisans living in the 18th century. When I was there in 1990 I tried to get the tour guide to name these people and when he would not, I did.
@@christopherhall3894 The aim of the policy of the victorious powers at the time was to humiliate and weaken the German Reich. The right of self-determination of peoples proclaimed by the American President Wilson was a farce. It was applied arbitrarily by the victorious powers at the time to weaken Germany and its former allies. The right of self-determination was fundamentally denied to the Germans. Large territories were handed over to foreign states without regard for the German population. Even where the French and British allowed a referendum - as in the case of Upper Silesia - the result of the referendum was ignored. Despite the majority voting to remain part of the German Reich, the industrialized eastern part of Upper Silesia was separated from Germany and handed over to Poland. With their anti-German actions, the French and British promoted political radicalization in Germany and sowed the seeds for the Second World War. "Freikorps Voran" - German Patriotic Song th-cam.com/video/Zoq_ZB_iA7E/w-d-xo.html "The dead awaken" th-cam.com/video/UfUG9D5tvV4/w-d-xo.html It is incomprehensible to me that the European community, which demands the right of self-determination of peoples worldwide, ignores the right of self-determination in its own area - as in the case of the South Tyroleans. unofficial anthem of the whole of Tyrol (The song commemorated the freedom struggle of the Tyroleans under their leader Andreas Hofer against the French occupiers) th-cam.com/video/GBhLJX6bEZs/w-d-xo.html
My Boss is one of them. He is 88 years old and a good soul. He still works at our university. He never had revangist thoughts or hated the Poles. On the contrary, he became a scientist and was very committed to understanding and forgiving each other between Germany and Poland. He was even awarded with a medal in Poland. He is one of the last among us who knows what war really means.
This is one BiG bs - 1st something like Polish Germans does not exist 2) Polish land was taken by the soviets and attached to the USSR so German land (less) was given to Poland as compesation. So saying that Poles were happy to take over what German left is stupid. Poles were kicked out from their houses and forced to move to random places very often destroyed by the war.
There are still many minorities of citizens with Germanic culture throughout Europe. When these populations did not actively cooperate with the Nazis they have, in general, never suffered systematic repression by the governments of their country, even in Hungary and Romania substantial minorities have remained because they had participated in the resistance against the Nazis. In countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, the German cultural minorities have not suffered any revenge. In France, in 1945, there were more than one million Alsatians, the male population of whom was enlisted in the Nazi army. This enrollment was against their will and the population never showed any sympathy for the Hitler regime, and as a result, suffered no discrimination
Very nice video. I am a descendant of two ethnic German people who were executed in Slovenia. I was able to visit the mass grave site and see a memorial dedicated to the innocent. It is fortunate some came forward before their deaths to point out where these terrible events occurred so they could clear the guilt from their minds.
Bro, WTF?? What Germans did to Czechs and Polish at 1939??? They deportated hundred of thousands! You have never heard of polish city of Gdynia and it's habitants faith. And dozens of other! How even germans appeared in western Czechia?? Up yours with that video.
Read in a magazine somewhere that some people think this mass expulsion is a reason for its comparably higher tolerance within Germany for Germans of different origin. I say that with a quite some doubt, but the arguement here was that because there were so many million people of German descent and ethnic Germans that had to resettle all over Germany, most of the times not in regions whose culture or religion they were familiar with, they ultimately were forced to work with one another if they were meant to survie. Like there might have been protestants from Eastern Prussia now finding themselves in a highly Catholic region of Western Germany, which ultimately forced them to interact with one another in various manners, while in previous times they had been isolated from each another. This would have caused a slow erosion of prejudices of each other's group. Though it also lead to the slow erosion of local dialects, as the locals and refugees where then often forced to communicate only in high German to understand one another. Again, that was just an article in some popular science magazine from a while ago, if memory serves me right.
Most of the ethnic Germans arriving in Germany also faced discrimination there. Russian-Germans were treated as Russian migrants for instance. Publicly mentioning being a Prussian was treated as a crime in the DDR while socially also taboo-ized.
Though it wouldn't be as complex a topic, I'd like to see a similar video on how the redrawing of Polish borders after WW II affected Poles. How many were forced to leave their homes? How many generations had the now-refugees been living in the Pale? Was there any compensation for them?
What did Germans collectively expect? No consequences for being responsible for the deaths of 35,000,000+ fellow Europeans? Germans might argue among themselves about how and why the consequences fell only on Eastern Germans, but they have no reason to complain about the fact of consequences. If the Allies had insisted on an "eye for an eye" punishment, five or six times as many Germans would have died. Overall, the Germans got away with suffering only a tiny proportion of the misery they collectively inflicted.
My mom is from East Prussia Province, Germany. Both of her ancestors were born in East Prussia all the way to 1600s. According to my mom's DNA, the map showed the area which is in Poland and Kalingrad as if her ancestors never left until WW 2. My grandfather was a Koenigsburg native, which is Kalingrad now. My mom's birth place is in Poland. When my grandfather was injured from WW 2 and stayed at POW hospital. The Red army let my grandma and mom with a special permit to leave to see him before USSR took over. My grandma's sister and her family had to stay behind in East Germany because her husband was a German officer. My grandparents decided to leave Germany to move to USA. They were frustrated with the German government. All I heard is that Germans are good at building except politics.
You know that originally Prussia belong to the Baltic old Prussian people who were killed by Germans and then Germans stole the land and name "Prussia."
My Grandmother told me a story of how her family walked from Russia to Germany then came to the US. I really didn’t understand until I blistered feet in the Army walking 12 miles. 😭. My grandma was a beast.
Read historical fiction book " The Last Green Valley " by Mark Sullivan. It's about Russian-German " Martel " family fled USSR to Germany, later resettled in Montana.
Make a video about the post war expulsion of Japanese citizens and settlers from their prewar colonies (Korea, Taiwan, Southern Sakhalin, Kuril Islands,Micronesia, Palau- which still has a municipality with Japanese as an official language , etc) and conquests during WW2.
Here in the Netherlands we also expelled all Germans back to Germany most of them had arrived in the 20's and 30's. It didn't go along with atrocities but they were kicked out anyway
Video fails to mention existence of German eastern provinces such as pomerania , West and east Prussia, Silesia. Lands that were historically Germans not mention Danzig issue which vast majority were Germans since early middle ages.
You are confusing the opinion of the majority of Germans with National Socialist propaganda. It was obviously so successful that our eastern enemies still believe it today.
The film fails to mention, that the Nazi Party had had record high support in the areas from which the Germans were later expelled. So if collective responsibility is to be applied (Nazi Germany had no qualms about it), the German expellees were justly punished.
Part of my family were German Austrians in what had been Bohemia under the Habsburgs. My Greatgrandparents migrated to the US in the 1880s, but their family who remained in what was then Czechoslovakia, were expelled to West Germany and Hungary. i still have distant Cousins in Germany.
I was in Romania in the 1970s twice under Ceausescu the communist dictator and the German minority then was well treated and more than tolerated. They had their own German language newspapers and media, controlled however but they were there. IN my many train trips throughout communist Romania i heard German being spoken all the time and openly. It did not seem by the 1970s that they were oppressed more than the regular Romanian people had been. I understand that after 1990 many left for much more prosperous West Germany however even today there is a German minority in Romania in their traditional towns. Gruss, RM.
Romanian was basically German ally in WW2 and one of close economy partner. One of the reason German decided to go all war to USSR was Soviet decision to invasion eastern Romanian which hold almost all of German imported oil.
When the survivors came to West Germany, they didn't just lose their homes and material things. They were forced to assimilate completely to their new environment. All specific local things like traditions, dialects, cuisine, clothes, culture etc. which identified them as "being them" is dying out with the last generation. None of their modrrn day descendants use these things in same way. The only thing which may survive is their DNA. There aren't many young Germans out there who don't have any Eastern origin.
According to historical records, Slavic people expanded westward as far as the area between the Oder and Elbe-Saale rivers, reaching into modern-day Germany, settling in regions like Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Austria, essentially encompassing central Europe as their westernmost boundary.
@kazimierzlenarczyk9067 That is true! And those Slavic people intermixed with Eastern Germans and influenced them much. So, the crucial point is, when the ruling Slavic authorities expulsed their German populations from their lands, they didn't just wipe out the bad German DNA but also their own valuable Slavic DNA from the intermixed Germans out of their country.
@schaumi396 This is bullshit. Any German family if you want to stay they could have stayed just like the German family which my grandmothers brother married the German lady so now I have a cousins who are partially German. I know polish families who escaped from communist Poland to West Germany pretending that they are Germans.
@@schaumi396 Józef Haller von Hallenburg (13 August 1873 - 4 June 1960) was a Polish lieutenant general and legionary in the Polish Legions during the First World War. He was a harcmistrz (the highest Scouting instructor rank in Poland), the president of the Polish Scouting.At the time of the invasion of Poland (1939), Haller was living abroad. From 1940 to 1943 he served as Minister of Education in Władysław Sikorski's government. After 1945 he settled in London
@@schaumi396 It's not true that all German people were expelled from Poland. They were escaping from Poland because they were afraid of Russian Soviet Army. My grandfather told me how Polish women were hiding they were afraid being raped by Red Army soldiers. The Germans families who spoke fluent Polish language stated in Poland. I have an uncles who are half Polish and half German. We have in Poland war heroes who I h actually German 100% but they identified himself as Polish. General Anders not polish name. Józef Unrug (German: Joseph von Unruh; 7 October 1884 - 28 February 1973) was a Polish admiral who helped establish Poland's navy after World War I. During the opening stages of World War II, he served as the Polish Navy's commander-in-chief. As a German POW, he refused all German offers to change sides and was incarcerated in several Oflags, including Colditz Castle.
My academic advisor specialized in German history and had parents/relatives who lived through the Third Reich His father was from the portion of northern Poland that was controlled by the Germans before/during the war. He even made the region his focus for his doctoral thesis When he asked his father if he would have liked to return to his homeland after Poland was taken back after the war. His father said no; despite that region being the only place he knew as home, he knew the lands now belonged to who they rightfully belonged to And don’t get me started about one of his uncles who was captured by the Soviets during the war. The man said with very prophetic words after the wall fell in the '90s.
Most of them escaped afraiding revenge. Actually 90% Germans were very enthusiastic about Hitler till end of 1944 and was supporting his "total campf" policy (killing, steeling and destroying other countries). In Nazi party - NSDAP - in 1944 there were about 8 milion of man (in working age) - about 40% in that age - Nazis were in each family! Like from Breslau (Wrocław) in Jan-Feb 1945. Population from about 1 milion dropped to about 100k. 700k escaped / were evacuated in "die große Flucht" during freezing cold. About 100k were died during evacuation ordered by Germans themselves! Smal part was relocated to Germany after the war... in much better conditions compare with relocations done by Germans during the war...
Most of the 14 million German women, children and old folks that lived in pre-war eastern Germany ran away because they were afraid of revenge!? You mean the ones that weren't murdered right!? Wars are awful and should be avoided at all costs You are wrong, very wrong. You can't argue with the Poles or the Czechs. They try and justify everything and anything that they ever did wrong to the point of absurdity.
@@Knowledgia Thank you for inventing quality content for the long dead Reichs Ministry of Propaganda. None of the numbers in the video were even statistically accurate.
Found this channel recently and specifically clicked this vid to see if they would handle this topic legitimately or not (many would not). I see a lot of anons saying a lot of really messed up stuff (especially the Pole trying to justify genocide in the comments because X or Y other bad thing). The rebuttal to all this is simple: if what the Allies had done would have been good, then they wouldn't have made it illegal to talk about their crimes post-WWII. They passed all sorts of laws banning dissent and then kept talking about "democracy" and "freedom" or whatever. The country is still occupied to this day. The Polish guy, especially, should get a clue, as his country is actually independent, and I ever hear about in WWII discussions from people like him is they act like they're the only victims of anything, almost as bad as the Js. You just look bad talking this way, seriously. Basically everyone suffered under WWII, and doing bad things to other people doesn't make other bad things go away.
First off, you are a great hardworking youtuber who is able to pump out informative & quality videos at a relatively good pace. But don't you think you should have a word with your editor? There is no doubt that he is a very skilled respectable, editor, but i feel like he is not really up to his standards anymore, as keeps screwing up the names in many of your videos. I believe you as a person who prides himself in his work, and being one of the top channels in terms of history would want to ensure that every detail, including the accuracy of names, reflects the high standards your channel is known for. Keep up the good work 👍
Don't like how you call all of those states "Eastern European". Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Baltic States definietly weren't Eastern European
A lesser known fact about Ukraine is that while by far the biggest settlement were the Volga Germans, there were hundreds of small German colonies in western and central Ukraine. Germans in Russia did emigrate in quite large numbers in the late 19th Century to the US. Catherine the Great had offered settlers freedom from military conscription and this was revoked by the Tsar in the latter years of the 19th century. Many of these Germans were were identified as “Kulaks” and murdered by Stalin in the early 1930s. What became of these smaller colonies during WW2 I am not sure. The fate of the Volga Germans is well known but I have found little about the fate of the smaller colonies. There is a large community of descendants of “Germans from Russia” in the North of the Mid-West, they are probably the best source of information about their fate. Personally I think it sad that Germany today does not formally honour these innocents. Alongside the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, there should be a memorial to the millions of German innocents that were victims of genocide by the Soviets and other E Europeans. Manyof these victims were descendants of Germans that had moved east as far back as the medieval era. Those in Ukraine moved in the 18th century. Just a correction to the video, war reparations were not imposed on W Germany at the end of WW2. The Soviets essentially looted anything of value in E Germany.
@Wolf-hh4rv Your hero A Hitler wrote in his book Mein Kampf why he want to attack Poland. Lebensraum !!! provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy (the Master Plan for the East) was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum ('living space') necessary for its survival and that most of the indigenous populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia, death, or enslavement) including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Czech and other Slavic nations considered non-Aryan. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter.Entire indigenous populations were decimated by starvation, allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed
@Wolf-hh4rv Hitler wrote in his book Mein Kampf why he want to attack Poland. Lebensraum !!! provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy (the Master Plan for the East) was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum ('living space') necessary for its survival and that most of the indigenous populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia, death, or enslavement) including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Czech and other Slavic nations considered non-Aryan. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter.Entire indigenous populations were decimated by starvation, allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed
The Germans expelled from what would be Polish territory weren't Polish-Germans, they were simply Germans, as territories such as Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia had been German for at least six or seven centuries. Those millions were in fact expropriated and expelled from what were their ancestral lands.
Only my grandfather made it to West Germany alive. All other relatives "disappeared" during the escape from Romania...nobody else arrived alive. We never heard from them again. There were several families.they lived for 150 years there...
An important video about a page of history which is often overlooked. However, it fails to mention the shifting of borders: As a compensation for Eastern Poland becoming Soviet territory Poland was given parts of Germany that for the most part had hardly any Polish population at all. (And the Soviets took what is now called Kaliningrad.)
Yes, post-war Germany was vocal saying that their firmer Eastern territories had less population than before the war. They were quiet to admit that their fathers and killed approx. 6 mln Polish citizens.
My Polish grandfather was only 9 years old when when a Germans started to occupy Poland during World War II. He had to work as a slave for the Eastern German farmer who liked to beat him and call him "Polish pig." The same thing did local German kids. For 5 years he had to suffer this abuse but he still was lucky that he did not end up in concentration camp like other Polish kids. Cry me the river or you poor poor Germans who started World War I World War II and tried to conquer the world.🙄
On August 22, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." Nazi Germans crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles and to 2.9 million Polish Jews. From the start of the war against Poland, Germany intended to realize the plan of territorial expansion, put forth by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, demanding the acquisition of the so-called living space (Lebensraum) in the East for massive settlement of German colonists.The object of war was to fulfill this territorial Lebensraum refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany. Originally a biology term for "habitat", the publicists for the German Empire (1871-1918) introduced Lebensraum as a concept of nationalism that became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918), as the Septemberprogramm (1914). Lebensraum was an ideological element of Nazism, which advocated Germany's territorial expansion into Eastern Europe, justified by the need for agricultural land in order to maintain the town-and-country balance upon which depended the moral health of the German people. In practice, during the war, the Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) was to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic populations and other peoples living there considered racially inferior to the Germans and to repopulate Eastern Europe with Germanic people to achieve Lebensraum.The populations of cities were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus that would feed Germany, and thereby allow political replacement by and re-population with a German upper class. The eugenics of Lebensraum explicitly assumed the racial superiority of Germans as an Aryan master race (Herrenvolk), who, by virtue of their superiority (physical, mental, genetic) had the right to displace any people they deemed to be Untermenschen (subhumans) of inferior racial stock.
The only territory in there that had been historically ethnically polish was Poznan and parts of West Prussia. Pommern wasn't even 1% Polish and Silesia was well over 80% German, and idk why Poland got a third of Brandenburg and Stettin. it was 1000 years of German Culture wiped out, with cultural cornerstones like Breslau, Stettin or all of Prussia wiped out. the previous occupants of the territory were random pagan Slav or Baltic tribes from way back in the early middle ages.
@@theos77What are bullshits lie 🤣🤣 there were no Germans they were Germanic tribes and Slavic tribes. Germanic tribes in 4th century move to west and south towards Roman Empire. If you move out from your apartment to new apartment, do you think that the previous apartment is still yours🙄🤣 According to historical records, Slavic people expanded westward as far as the area between the Oder and Elbe-Saale rivers, reaching into modern-day Germany, settling in regions like Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Austria, essentially encompassing central Europe as their westernmost boundary.
@@JamesHall-hj5hc Germans should have not start 2WW and kill people, mostly in gas chambers. That way borders would not have to be moved to Oder river, which is natural barrier when it comes to blitz krieg.
Strange how this doesnt get connected to the native American continent and how each individual tribe pushed out another and committed genocide against the other and it was pure and good. Until Europeans showed up and it was bad again
Important to note that hundreds of thousands of Europeans and Germans fought alongside the Red Army in WW2. ‘Quite a number of Soviet Germans ended up in partisan detachments and resistance groups. Their knowledge of the German language made them invaluable and they were frequently used in sabotage and reconnaissance operations. One of the most effective partisan commanders of the entire war was Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander German, who was killed in 1943. His brigade succeeded in wiping out 17 German garrisons and 70 rural district administrations, blowing up 31 rail bridges and killing up to 10,000 enemy soldiers’ Further examples are the Czechoslovakian Legion who liberated Kiev with the Red Army, Berling’s 200,000 strong Polish Pro Communist Army, the Belarusian and Jewish Partizans, the Bulgarian army that was involved in the capture of Vienna, the Yugoslav Partizan army, the Greek Partizans and the Romanian’s who fought with the Red Army in Hungary. Even the Finns changed sides in 1944.
It's a nightmare to be deployed in the Eastern Front Soviets are brutal and then Germans in the East were often subject to political currents and became victims of them. Lastly, some East Germans may see themselves as a disadvantaged group in competition with other minorities, such as Muslims, for social recognition by West Germans
This is literally why we have rules in War such as respecting surrenders and not genociding civilians. Its as simple as looking at the countries they fought: They didnt do genocide contests to british soldiers so they saw no reason to do that to them. On the other hand they ran brothels with soviet sex slaves, put their prisoners in deathcamps and wanted to resettle their lands with germans. Hardly a suprise the soviets would return the favour, albeit anyone would prefer a Gulag over a KZ
@@adamelghalmi9771 Not today lmao. They dont pay church tax as theyre largely atheist, are generally worse off financially and tend to be more conservative. And they have less of a hateboner over Russia
You have forgotten about 4 mil germans that were expelled from Soviet Union sistematicaly since battle of Stalingrad and one mil that had to flee France in autumn 1944. That was a bloody migration as well.
It would be necessary to explain that Polish borders were moved after the Second World War. Their eastern border was moved so the Soviets could occupy that land and the population there was moved to the former German territories of Schlesien, Pommern, Ostbrandenburg and Ostpreußen. The Germans there had to leave and the poles from the eastern territories settled there. Germany accepted the new border once in for all after the reunification of the two Germanys. Today, relations are better, but strained again by the former nationalist government in Poland nurturing nationalist resentments against Germany and just highlighting the brief times of history these territories were governed by Poland and avoiding German history there.
Poland has a very cry baby triggered victim view of their own history especially regarding alleged claims to ‘rightfully polish’ lands that were mostly Germanic.
There are no "former eastern Polish territories". These were the lands of Lithuanians and Ukrainians occupied by Poland (1920-1939). Lithuania has never recognized the occupation of its capital Vilnius and 1/3 of the state. Ukrainians could not claim it because they were completely occupied by poles and bolsheviks. After World War II, Poland had to be left as it should have been naturally: the area around Warsaw and Krakow. Illegal occupation of German lands was a crime. It was the result of friendship between polish and russian criminals.
@@arturasandriusaitis8832 Before the war, the demographic of Vilnius was starkly different from today. In Vilnius, an overwhelming majority of the population were Poles, while Lithuanians made up... less than 1% of the city’s residents xD Similarly, in Lviv, Poles were the dominant group, forming the vast majority of the population. These cities were both vibrant centers of Polish culture and society (it's easy to factcheck this). Nevertheless, currently, no serious voice in Poland questions the fact that today's Vilnius and Lviv are rightfully Lithuanian and Ukrainian cities (please refer to "Giedroyc-Mieroszewski doctrine"), respectively. However, denying the deep Polish traditions and historical ties to both cities is nonsensical. In fact, such denial fits neatly into the Russian narrative, which clumsily attempts to sow divisions between Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine where none exist. The true and persistent source of endangerment in the region has always been Russian imperialism, both historically and in the present. And as regards "Illegal occupation of German lands was a crime" - only can "say": "xD".
@@inhell4heaven And what do the previous sources say? 1) Karpinski Hilaryon. Lexykon Geograficzny Dla Gruntownego Poięcia Gazet I Historyi. Wilno, 1766. P. 602: WILNO. Mieszkancow zas dusz liczy na 60,000. Mieszkają Litwa i Niemcy. VILNIUS. It has 60 thousand inhabitants. Lithuanians and Germans live there. (Translation from Polish). 2) Balinski Michal. Opisanie statystyczne miasta Wilna. Wilno, 1835. P. 61: Mieszkancy miasta Wilna co do ich rodu są Litwini, Rossyanie, Niemcy i Zydzi. Ludnosc innych plemion tak jest male, ze pod tym względem zadnego oddzialu stanowic nie moze. According to their nationality, the inhabitants of the city of Vilnius are Lithuanians, Russians, Germans and Jews. The population of other nationalities is so small that in this respect they can't form any separate unit. (Translation from Polish). NOT ONE POLISH IN VILNIUS IN 1766 AND 1835! Here is the whole truth about the city of Vilnius. Absolutely all historical sources show that there was no major immigration to the city of Vilnius from Poland. The small number of arrivals from Poland before 1795 was incomparably smaller than arrivals from Germany. The same in the time of the tzarist Russia occupation (1795-1915). The first Poles who appeared en masse in Vilnius and the Vilnius region were colonists from Poland who came here during the Polish occupation (1920-1939). There were over 80,000 of them in the city of Vilnius and over 100,000 in the whole regained by Lithuania in 1939 Vilnius district. All of them scramed to communist Poland in 1944-1957.
@@inhell4heaven For various reasons, beginning in the third quarter of the 19th century, some Lithuanian peasants in Eastern Lithuania began to speak a "pidgin language": a mixture of Lithuanian, Belarusian, Russian, and Polish languages. The Russian and Polish occupiers recorded their nationality in the censuses in their favour. Thus, in the tsarist census of 1897, they are recorded as "Belarusians" (56% in Vilnius Governorate). Poles always recorded them as "Polish" (even though they never spoke Polish). Lithuanians have always considered them to be Lithuanians who have recently lost their language. This was demonstrated by these people (together with Lithuanians who preserved their language) in 1939-1940, when they received passports of the Republic of Lithuania. 64% of the residents of the regained in 1939 Vilnius district declared their Lithuanian nationality when receiving Lithuanian passports. I provide statistics by municipalities (valsčius): Paberžė: Lithuanians - 11,500 (81.3 %), Poles - 920 (6.5%); Jašiūnai: Lithuanians - 9,067 (86%), Poles - 654 (6.2%); Maišiagala: Lithuanians - 15,486 (89.2%), Poles - 1,100 (6.3%); Dieveniškės: Lithuanians - 9,100 (83.9%), Poles - 110 (1%); Mickūnai: Lithuanians - 5,921 (46.2%), Poles - 6,065 (47.3%); Nemenčinė: Lithuanians - 16,038 (80.7%), Poles - 2,970 (15%); Riešė: Lithuanians - 14,500 (80.6%), Poles - 2,900 (16.1%); Rudamina: Lithuanians - 9,000 (44.6%), Poles - 2,189 (10,6%); Šalčininkai: Lithuanians - 2,741 (39.5%), Poles - 2,336 (33.6%); Šumskas: Lithuanians - 5,075 (45.2%), Poles - 896 (8%); Turgeliai: Lithuanians - 10,821 (60%), Poles - 2,705 (15%); Naujoji Vilnia: Lithuanians - 868 (9%), Poles - 7,834 (80.7%). In the city of Vilnius, from the 209,000 inhabitants (1939) minus 80,000 Polish colonists (they did not receive Lithuanian citizenship), Lithuanians made up 54.3% (70,000 Lithuanians).
My Oma was living in Bessarabia (modern day Moldova/Ukraine) and my Opa was living in Ukraine prior to WWII. Luckily they were able to flee the Russians and make it to Germany safely. They both eventually emigrated to Canada in the 50s.
@@Adixeeelyes it was. Polish Plasts invited Masses of germans over to silesia beginning from the middle ages and especially many After the mongolians completly devastated silesia in 1240 and Most of the local Population was murdered. Germans were invited there and at the end of the 13th Century they made up 80% of the Population. This germanized slavs shit is stupid and car from the truth.
@@Adixeeel I did an DNA test. My mother family is living in the west of germany since over a thousand years. They cultivate vine there since 700 years. My fathers side is silesian. My father took his live due to the family traumata which was caused by poles before Hitler invaded poland. Im 95% of german heritage. Silesians are the progeny of the eastern franks. If you are clueless, you better dont make any comment about this topic.
German schools, at least in Berlin, barely touch this subject. I believe in the 11th grade, it was discussed for around four hours in total. One of the largest ethnic cleansings ever committed, organized and orchestrated by some of our current 'allies', still within living memory - and the school system deems it less important than e.g the Berlin blockade 1948, which is taught for multiple weeks in elementary school, middle school and highschool, including two museum visits in my case. There are German adults, barely aware of the lives and land lost in this genocide
@@Kai_Peters Im not saying its justified. I'm saying its a natural consequence of being an insufferable dickwhipe. Bad teachers just try to rush the bare minimum. Good ones will teach you how those they occupied were treated. How gold reserves were plundered to fuel the unsustainable warmachine. How factories were filled with eastern european and slaves, not just jewish. How they proclaimed that 50 civilians would be murdered for every Wehrmacht/SS bandit on a raping spree. You know how many are suprised about the Soviet memorials at every KZ? That it wasnt just Jews that got the shit end of the stick? Sure as shit doesnt help that most are basing their knowledge on movies made in the US.
This is a good video and it reveals how terrible the Soviets (and Balkan communities) were to German civilians. You don’t hear about this very much. The old saying applies: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
Blame that Adolph because of him this happened He only said he will end whole Slavic, Jewish and Roma race? Why? What did they do? It was BRITAIN & FRANCE why Germany lost the WW1, what did these innocent guys do? The Germans in the Balkans and in TSARIST and COMMUNIST Russia lived peacefully until the 1940s Even today There are Germans in Post Soviet States and in Balkans ( very few) I ma saying that sometimes because of your stupid dumb leader, you guys are persecuted
Russians treating everyone terrible regardless of ethnicity and the situation. My countrys intellectuals get repressed in 1937 and part of my countries population were exiled to Siberia and died there. It's like the handling the genocide thrown from Turks to Russians.
The answer is - the same thing that happened to the Slavs in about the 9th-10th century from Pomerania, Saxony, Brandenburg, Lusatia, Austria and Pannonia.
Stfu. Germanic tribes were there in ancient times stop asking Like slavs were there First. U were the ones to Drive out the Germanic tribes in the First Place
I have a side of my family that is ethnic German from Romania. From Covaci in the Banat region, they were a well-to-do butcher and market family that had their property stolen by the Russians once they captured the town. Never mind that nobody in the family was involved with the war, one of my distant cousins was kidnapped and forced to work in a mine in Ukraine until being released in 1949. The rest of the family fled once Germany surrendered, made their way to West Germany on foot, and were able to come to America in 1950. The other half of my family was Volhynian German from Ukraine; though my direct line was here before the war, the extended family that was still there was never heard from again. The frustrations of war led to widespread revenge being enacted towards people often not involved; all sides were guilty of this.
4:35 it's not like Germany rebuild itself. It was rebuild with US money to provide stable platform to defend the West against Soviets in the next war. This is why the biggest US bases were located in Germany.
Think again. Germany only received around 11% of the money provided by the marshall plan even though it had the most to rebuild. Close to all of German cities were completely obliterated. Sure the us helped to rebuild Germany, but in the end it was the people, that lived there and the migrants that came to help.
The money provided within the marshall plan doesnt even amount to the value of german infrastructure relocated as part of the reperations to western allies. It was barely any money.
But after the 50s the Poles didn't let Germans go to Germany. The family of the husband of my sister tried for over 20 years to get permission to get out of Poland
There is a strange correlation of German identification and the income difference between Poland and Germany. Since the median salary in Poland has become similar to German minimal, a migrant can count on, a lot of Silesian, Kashubian or Masurian self identifications emerged on the cost of German ones.
@@Ahornblatt2000 Silesia was one of the industry area of Germany. Why you want to get rid of skill worker? And crime to german mostly done by Russian not Polish.
Plus, the Volksdeutsche who returned to Germany also faced discrimination there from the locals. A lot of them had to be taken in by Germans living there and were taken advantage of as well. They were definitely regarded as the lowest class.
@Warmaster2001-c5r First of all I don't even go as a tourist to Germany. Probably the reason that some Polish go to Germany to work because the German business owners begging them to to come to Germany because a lot of young Germans are too lazy and want to stay on unemployment. Second why so many Germans the master race the "master race"🤣 are running away from Germany and moving to Poland buying houses and apartments?
@Warmaster2001-c5r young Germans are lazy and don't want to work. Germany intends the program to attract skilled workers who can fill the roughly 400,000 positions needed each year to address its shortages. Other benefits may include easier pathways to hiring, the Chancenkarte site said.
Very sad what happened to all the ethnic groups in Europe including ethnic Germans who had nothing to do with war but duee to their heritage, they were treated like sh*t.
@@lebarms7832 no In the area of the Czech Republic where 99% of the Germans in Czechoslovakia lived they were 3,149,820 = 29.5% and the Czechs were 7,304,588 = 68.3% according to the census of 1930
My grandfather said he was German and not Czech. He was allowed to stay because of his money and skill set. We'll, until the Commie scum took everything.
Yes. They had been planted there by Austria to guard its then border with the Turks two hundred years before. They were largely pro-Nazi in WWII but not especially fanatical. 60,000 served in the W-SS in WWII, but there were few volunteers and the great majority had to be conscripted.
Germans have lived in Transylvania/Hungary since before the Romanians had arrived. When Romanians took over in the 20th century, they worked to eradicate all other ethnic groups.
@@hdaNhunWe know that Romance-speakers were in the region in Roman times. We also know that there was never a population vacuum in the Dark Ages and the Hungarians were recruiting local Vlach (Romanian) peasants as soldiers and acquiring land off them to build monasteries by the 12th Century. This is about the time the first German settlers arrived. Certainly the Romanians have consolidated their majority hold on Transilvania in the 20th Century. This was helped by the Hungarians and Germans getting rid of of all the area's Jews in early 1944. About 40% of the Germans fled ahead of the Red Army later in 1944 and about 40% left voluntarily after 1990 for a better life in Germany. The Romanians, unsurprisingly replaced them with Romanians from elsewhere in the country. The Hungarian minority in Transilvania is back to where it was before the Magyarization of other peoples by Hungary in the second half of the 19th Century but has shrunk relative to the number of Romanians.
@@ulrichhartmann4585 I didn't mention the Habsburgs, but you are right, the first Germans were settled in the area in the Middle Ages by the Hungarians, not the Austrians. However, this does not give them demonstrable precedence over Vlachs/Romanians. See me previous reply here.
This is a one-sided video. What did Germans collectively expect? No consequences for being responsible for the deaths of 35,000,000+ fellow Europeans? Germans might argue among themselves about how and why the consequences fell only on Eastern Germans, but they have no reason to complain about the fact of consequences. If the Allies had insisted on an "eye for an eye" punishment, five or six times as many Germans would have died. Overall, the Germans got away with suffering only a tiny proportion of the misery they collectively inflicted.
Interesting fact: there are around 200,000 ethnic Germans living in Kazakhstan. They are descendants of the Volga Germans deported by Stalin’s rule in 1941, and there weren’t the only “unreliable” group who were deported: Koreans, Chechens, Kurds and many more ethnicities had the same story. As a Kazakh, I’m very proud that our ancestors helped all these people to survive. My own great-grandparents shared their food and medications with repressed peoples. While most have returned to their ancestral homelands afterwards, some have stayed and still live in Kazakhstan to this day. Our country is home to 120 ethnic groups living in harmony, which we are proud of.
Yes .. I have German relatives that were resettled from Odessa to Siberia. After the Russians “thinning the herd” in the camps after fifteen years were resettled in Kazakhstan. Whole villages of German speaking people.
Now imagine how the romani, poles and jews felt being kicked out of germany
@ the difference being … 1) Jews were already kicked out of Spain, France, Italy, etc and migrated into Germany and Eastern Europe. Second .. Poles were never kicked out of Germany. This was Prussian lands that has been taken away from Germany to build a Poland. Polish lands were in what most of Belarus and some of Ukraine today. Also .. no one’s defending what happened to some People during Hitlers reign in Germany.
The one difference is that Germans were asked and encouraged starting with Catherine the Great to emigrate to Russia. Promised land, free of Religion (most being anabaptists) exemption from conscription and educate their kids in German. These promises were broken by the Czar (WW1) and by Stalin (WW2).
There was never a recruitment of Polish people, Romanian, Jewish, etc to come live in Germany. Of course, there was no real Germany then but mostly states run by different Princes, etc.
look .. history is written by the victors .. but one cannot use “whataboutism’s” to justify anyone’s loss or hardships.
Thank you
@@rickschroth9869 “history is written by the victors” why are you implying by that statement? Hmm.. , jews also faced persecution and displacement throughout Europe, including Germany and Eastern Europe. Many Jewish communities in Germany and Eastern Europe existed for centuries before expulsions elsewhere. They didn’t migrate to these regions solely because they were expelled but often because they went after better economic or social opportunities or were fleeing persecution elsewhere.
Also while it’s true that Poland underwent partitions in the late 18th century between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, Polish people have always lived in what is now modern day Poland. Poland’s western territories were indeed under Prussian control for some time, but that doesn’t erase Poland’s historical ties to those lands. It’s also worth noting that after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles re-established an independent Poland, restoring lands with significant Polish populations.
Germany as a unified nation didn’t exist until 1871, but the former states were diverse and often included significant minority populations.
"This was a brutal time in Eastern Europe" Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?
Europe is brutal
I think you’ve missed the point of the video
@@hamishmacintyre4600 I think you don't know the meme.
German killed over 30 millions of civilians on behalf of "collective responsibility", It is fundamentally wrong that you start telling history from the end :(
As a descendant of one of those Eastern Germans whom were exiled to Central Asia, I appreciate coverage about this topic.
what country are u from?
@rdisconzip Well, my dad is originally Kazakhstan, but I was born in Germany
Mir geht's genau so 👍🏼
Being exiled like that is wild to me. Germany really just got tossed around...
@@user-qf5kl6cv2yAre most German descendants from eastern europe and Central Asia allowed an easier path to German citizenship?
12 million is a lower estimate, the higher estimate is 18 million with the range being so big because lack of documentation. An unknown amount of people murdered, lynched, killed in concentration camps etc.
Genozid
@@TGM90 No ethnic cleaning.
On August 22, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." Nazi Germans crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles and to 2.9 million Polish Jews.
From the start of the war against Poland, Germany intended to realize the plan of territorial expansion, put forth by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, demanding the acquisition of the so-called living space (Lebensraum) in the East for massive settlement of German colonists.The object of war was to fulfill this territorial Lebensraum refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany.
Originally a biology term for "habitat", the publicists for the German Empire (1871-1918) introduced Lebensraum as a concept of nationalism that became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918), as the Septemberprogramm (1914).
Lebensraum was an ideological element of Nazism, which advocated Germany's territorial expansion into Eastern Europe, justified by the need for agricultural land in order to maintain the town-and-country balance upon which depended the moral health of the German people. In practice, during the war, the Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) was to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic populations and other peoples living there considered racially inferior to the Germans and to repopulate Eastern Europe with Germanic people to achieve Lebensraum.The populations of cities were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus that would feed Germany, and thereby allow political replacement by and re-population with a German upper class. The eugenics of Lebensraum explicitly assumed the racial superiority of Germans as an Aryan master race (Herrenvolk), who, by virtue of their superiority (physical, mental, genetic) had the right to displace any people they deemed to be Untermenschen (subhumans) of inferior racial stock.
My grandfather was only 9 years old when when a Germans start to occupy Poland during World War II. He had to work as a slave for the Eastern German farmer who like to beat him and calling him "Polish pig" the same thing did German kids. For 5 years he had to suffer this abuse but he still was lucky that he did not end up in concentration camp like other polish kids. Cry me the river or you poor poor Germans who started World War I World War II and tried to conquer the world.🙄
@KitKat555-fb1xo i bet you are fun to be around
My grandmother was ethnic German from Yugoslavia. Her family was forced to labour camp, and they were forbidden to speak German. She actually left me 30 pages of written memories about World War II and aftermath.
My grandparents we’re also German speakers who left there homeland in Bosnia after WW2.
My grandmother's father and brother were shot by the Germans in 1941, along with 2677 other men, women and children, and this was only one of the many massacres Germans did in Yugoslavia. I'm sorry for what happened to your grandmother, but all things considered, it could have been much worse.
I’m part Croatian and my grandfather identified as Yugoslavian (and Italian for his restaurant business), his older brothers and parents identified as Italian, and his grandparents and great aunts identified as Austrian. Within 3 generations their ethnicity changed and for the fourth generation my dad found himself a Croat due to geopolitical events beyond his control. Now
I’m here and I guess I’m part Croatian? I’ve never took a DNA test but I’m sure it would be a mix and then some because the region my family is from used to be Venetian and cosmopolitan. Doesn’t matter anyway because I’m mostly Irish but still it’s interesting that within a century their nationalities changed 4 times
Most of my extended family who lived through the wars spoke German, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian and they weren’t overly nationalistic. I know a couple of my distant relatives were drafted into the Italian army but then fought for Tito after being captured. My dad recalls his great aunt insisting she was an Austrian subject as well as she was alive for the First World War.
@@Hz-yl7duMy Polish grandfather was only 9 years old when when a Germans started to occupy Poland during World War II. He had to work as a slave for the Eastern German farmer who liked to beat him and call him "Polish pig." The same thing did local German kids. For 5 years he had to suffer this abuse but he still was lucky that he did not end up in concentration camp like other Polish kids. Cry me the river or you poor poor Germans who started World War I World War II and tried to conquer the world.🙄
@@zmajooov You do not say where this happened. In addition the expulsions of the Germans was after the war, not during.
Some omitted background:
1. Most of the ethnic Germans living in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia had been there from when the lands where they were living were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. "Geographic fallout" from lands ruled by a family for hundreds of years.
2. The current eastern boundary of Poland follows the the line of demarcation per the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. So, the Poles expelled from the Russian/Soviet occupied pre WW II Poland were resettled in Silesia, Pomerania and Southern East Prussia after the Germans either fled, or were expelled.
2 The Volga Germans had been living along the Volga River since the Catherine the Great invited them to settle there.
Germans in Hungary (including Transylvania and present day Slovakia/Serbia) predate the Austrian Empire, they first started settling in the 11th century, but there were several later waves too. The Time of the Austrian empire is the last wave. Germans in Transylvania even predate the Romanians, although the fake history enjoyers over there would never admit it.
Can we stop with the anachronistic term "Austro-Hungarian Empire"? It's just wrong. That wasn't a thing until 1867.
Also, bulk of the Germans in Hungary came in the early modern and medieval age
Yes, the Archdukes of Austria were also the Kings of Hungary since 1526, and both became parts of the Austrian Empire in 1804.
@kuro1132 Well then, what better term do you propose? Habsburg Austria?
Where is small percentage of Poles were resettled to Silesia from Belarus and today's Ukraine. 1,7 million Polish families were sent to Siberia gulags. By October 1943 upwards of 150,000 Poles had been murdered by ukrainians in Volhynia, but the nightmare was moving toward Eastern Galicia, now bloated with Polish refugees. Polish civilians ,women, children alderley in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. In mixed families the UPA’s Ukrainian nationalists order was unambiguous: kill the Polish spouse and any children resulting from themarriage. The murders were committed with incredible cruelty. Many were burnt alive or thrown into wells. Axes, pitchforks, scythes, knives and other farming tools rather than guns.In the blood frenzy, the Ukrainians tortured their victims with unimaginable bestiality. Victims were scalped. They had their noses, lips and ears cut off. They had their eyes gouged out and hands cut off and they had their heads squashed in clamps. Woman had their breasts cut off and pregnant woman were stabbed in the belly. Men had their genitals sliced off with sickles.
In the opinion of the historian Prof. Grzegorz Motyka, an expert on Polish-Ukrainian issues, “although the anti-Polish action was an ethnic cleansing, it also meets the definition of genocide”.
You hid the fact that Poles were similarly expelled from the eastern part of Poland, which fell to the USSR (or were fleeing ethnic cleansing by Ukrainians). So they were given properties from which Germans were in turn expelled. There were even cases where families became friends because they lived together for some time. There are reports of Polish families crying when they arrived at their new home because they knew that a German family would soon cry just like they did a few days earlier.
brother most poles in eastern poland were colonisers, the belarusians and ruthieans (ukranians) were there first poland anexxed and tried to assimilate those lands
@@SadnessiuselessUkrainian revisionist spotter. Lwow was majority Polish for a thousand years. Ukrainians viciously slaughtered many innocents and now karma has repaid your vicious race.
@@SadnessiuselessHave you ever heard about the voluntary political and military union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth)???
@@Sadnessiuseless The German population, taking advantage of the regional divisions in Poland, colonized its current western territories in the same way. Look at the map of Poland from the year 1000, at the time of the creation of the state. Stalin restored the border from the time of Poland's establishment on the map by crossing out 1000 years German drang nach osten.
@Sadnessiuseless please learn to use capital letters. Polish commonwealth was not a national space so there was more tolerance than in Europe today and there was no enforced polonization at all. State was home for Germans Jews Ruthenians Armenians Tatars and so on. Rebirth of 2RP was difficult because it happened in times of nationalism and state didn't want to abandon citizens of 1 republic.
Leaving out the part where "Germans living in USSR" is huge. They annexed Prussia, there were many that lived in Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Perhaps a part 2?
seconded! The Volga Germans were proud citizens of Russia before Stalin's paranoia destroyed the community
@@borinne7909 that's absurdic being proud citizens of Russia when Russia treats everyone inside of their empire like garbage.
Today most people pin this all on The Soviets, even though that The Western Allies and the locals were all also on board with it.
Yeah, well I'm an American and I'm on board with it. Churchill was right that ethnic homogeneity would reduce intrastate conflict.
@@BS-vx8dgSaid Churchil while having several colonies
Based Allies?
@@BandySeal78551 If you're calling Churchill a hypocrite, you'll get no argument from me. But if you've said anything that disproves his point that I repeated, I've yet to see it. But at least a _bon mot_ is good for upvotes, right?
@BS-vx8dg
So, the Germans who had nothing to do with the Nazi Party? Being relocated for war reparations is wild....
Germans lost all the Eastward movement they had made over centuries to end back within the borders they had around 900 CE.
H**ler really fucked them up for no reason, germanys borders before WW2 were amazing after they got sudenland from chekoslovakia they should of stopped
Because of war all the amazing cities were destroyed with long history. Now u got modern ugly buildings
Germany would have a gdp of 7T today or more
@@StarJes1 Poland has built many towns and restored them to their original glory, sure you can't hide the commie block district in every single town but you can appreciate the will to do this, unlike Germany, where they are just piling sky scrapers and ugly glass towers everywhere.
Damn
I worked with a Romanian women whose name I pointed out sounded German, she told me her family were Saxons but where forced to speak Romanian and Russian.
Her father is still scared today to speak German/Saxon, his name is Wilhelm Trausch
They never support the Nazis but were persecuted for just being Germanic.
Famous stories that never happened ! In Romania were deported to USSR only those Germans who were in the nazi party or ss, During the communist era the German population in Romania, was about 250k people, they migrated during the 70's for economical reasons exclusively(nobody was oppressing them, they were free to practice their Lutheran, respectively Catholic religion). After the fall of communism, the rest of the German population migrated to Germany for economic reasons .So stop spreading bullshit !
Romania in general worked extra hard to get rid of all other Transylvanian ethnic groups after they annexed it following WWI.
@@etherospike3936
I have an ethnic German uncle who fled Romania as a child in 1944 as the Soviets advanced. Walking and occasional trains that broke down. They left everything. Their family had lived in Romania for several centuries.
Unlike in czekoslovakia serbia or poland, the germans had no problem in romanian after the war.
In Romania never the Germans was forced to speak Romanian and Russian, forced! There are lies!
In Romania the Germans always spoken their language! No assimilation, No persecution!
The Romanians always respected the Germans. The Romanians never assimilated the Germans! So many lies. Instead they was assimilated in Poland, Czekoslovakia, Hungary, Baltic states!
Tell the truth!
Don't forget about Volga Germans suffering after world war 2 my grandma was shot by nkvd in the USSR
My grandpa Dmitrii did it, sorry bro
actually they suffered this fate since 1940, where the germans started operation barbarossa
Well alot of the germans were facists.
Blyat!!
@@rdisconzip yeah, on the grounds of potential Nazi cooperation, the Soviets did mass deportations like that during the war, mainly into Kazakhstan or the Far East & around the Russian Arctic
Discussing “the German problem” in her memoirs, Thatcher wrote: “I do not believe in collective guilt… But I do believe in national character.”
Thatcher was really pissed off when Kohl at the EC Summit in Strasbourg on December 8th 1989 openly questioned Western border of Poland.
But why? "There was also uncertainty about Germany’s eastern borders, since Kohl - in deference to German expellee associations [Vertriebenenverbände] - found it difficult to definitively accept the loss of Germany’s former eastern territories "
At leas they got to keep te Slavic East Germany.
@@FightFilmsS T F U they lost 2/3 of there country and cant even mention the fact that this terretorrys were rightfully german ones. You can wipe your butt with "at least".
Strange that the Soviets stopped their Westward push at the borders of the Slavic Marches.
The homelands of the Slavic tribes before the Junker Ostsiedlung.
The Soviets reminded Germans where Mutter belongs
@@metanoian965 The Slavs living east of Elbe and Saale in fact were the ancestors of modern Eastern Germans.
@@NecSchel Wendish Crusade - Wikipedia
Dear, Knowledgia, why do you constantly call USSR as Russia and it citizens as russians?
It's a big mistake especially for history channel
Because its just like Britain being called England. Plus it helps Belarusi and Ukranians shift blame whenever it comes to heinous shit they did and profited from
It's not a mistake. "USSR" was merely the name given to the Russian Empire for about 70 years.
because central planning
Silly to act like the USSR wasn't a Russian dominated State.
@@eodyn7 I mean Stalin was Georgian. I'm sure it was more so dominated by a bunch of ambitious communist politicians rather than Russians.
Funny how at 1:33 Himmler's name is labeled twice. Once on himself and the second time on Göring lol
They also spelled "Winton Churchill" without the S in the scene before this ... Whoever is editing needs a talking to
EDIT: 9:35 ... Western Meiterraean. Are you kidding me? I really don't know why I am subbed to this channel. No pride in your platform, Knowledgia...
Good catch. Maybe this is an early version of To Tell the Truth?
They should really pay more attention. Spelling mistakes everywhere are just a bit annoying, but when you’re labelling the same person twice on the same foto it’s getting out of hand.
I came looking for this 😅
I don't know if this counts as a true mistake, but near the beginning the narrator says "The Americans" and an image of Winston Churchill appears, and then "the British" and an image of Harry Truman is shown.
01:46 Strange, I thought "diversity is our strength"? 🤔
right the irony🤣
It really, really isn't. 😅
Never trust the communists 😡
That was last month.
apparently not if you have the same skin colour....
I am German and three of my four grandparents had to flee (the fourth grew up in West Germany). But this where the lucky ones. My grandfather was the only one from a big family coming back from the east front. It is difficult for the Germans to talk about their suffering because, after all, it was we who started the war. We are aware of our responsibility and do not want to give the impression that we are rewriting history or portraying ourselves as victims. At the same time, I see that there are still many collective and unspoken traumas present. If we don't manage to speak about this (without rewriting history) this will again give birth to new painful chapters.
Thank you for sharing, because TH-cam has been working to censor it
A balanced view. Thank you.
The Eastern Germans suffered for the collective activities done in the name of all Germans. It is up to the other Germans to resettle and compensate them as their part of taking collective responsibility. They seem to have done so.
My grandmother (with 5 kids in tow) and 2 of her siblings survived, all ended up in West Germany (Hamburg, Bavaria, West Berlin). My dad was captured and put in a Russian orphanage in East Berlin for nearly 3 years until his uncle found him. It's only been this past year I started finding out about my grandfather's side of the family. We lost all contact when he died in the war.
Read Wolfgang Samual - German Boy and Evelyne Tannehill - Abandoned and Forgotten. Incredibly sad.
What did Germans collectively expect? No consequences for being responsible for the deaths of 35,000,000+ fellow Europeans?
Germans might argue among themselves about how and why the consequences fell only on Eastern Germans, but they have no reason to complain about the fact of consequences.
If the Allies had insisted on an "eye for an eye" punishment, five or six times as many Germans would have died. Overall, the Germans got away with suffering only a tiny proportion of the misery they collectively inflicted.
3:20 It wasn’t just the Russians. The Red Army had Ukrainians, Belarusians, Uzbekistans and a lot
more other nationalities. It was the Soviets, not the Russians.
Ja
I am a ukrainian from Eastern regions, 80% of my ancestors were either starved to death, or stolen directly from their homes at gunpoint and forcibly mobilized into the Soviet “Black Infantry”, from where they did not return. Neither I, nor anyone from my family, nor any of my relatives have ever associated themselves with "Soviet people" and the "Soviet state". And if you lived in Soviet Moscow (like my mother in her youth), you would know that local russians have never seen ukrainians, baltic peoples, or caucasians, as one of them, as equal people.
"The Red Army had Ukrainians, Belarusians, Uzbekistans and a lot
more other nationalities. It was the Soviets, not the Russians."
Nah its the Russians,
From Russian pov all other ethnic groups inside USSR were, at best, useful cannon fodder... and, at worst, "dangerous anti revolutionary elements".
The moment Moscow saw or even percieved a threat to their absolute power from any non russians... they prosecuted, deported and killed en masse those same nations/ethnic groups.
Communist oppression and terror cannot be divided from ethno nationalist centered terror orchestarted by Moscow, as often one fed into the other.
And those areas cleansed, were then repopulated by Russians.... only if it was deemed impractical, unimportant or unhospitable, "lesser soviets" would be used.
Stalin even back during ww2 directly appealed to Russian nationalism, not Ukrainian , Belorussian etc.
The main political power of the Soveit communist party always came from imperialistic Russian nationalism and the negation of identity of many slavic nations ....thats why Putin and Russian nationlisits to this day cannot get over the fall of the USSR, when the rest of non Russians celebrate it.
@@ТарасМакаренко-ф3ш That’s your unique case then, I know many Ukrainians who’s family immigrated in the 90s after the collapse of the USSR and before the Russo-Ukrainian war started in 2022, many had good memories of living in the USSR. Ukraine also had one of the biggest Communist parties in the union
@@DD-qw4fz Except your whole argument falls apart when you realize that Stalin was not even Russian, the USSR wasn’t nationalistic until it needed to be in WW2 but they still had many other leaders that weren’t Russian, they had a couple of Ukrainian leaders as well. Not everyone outside of mainland Russia was happy about the collapse of the Soviet Union, just ask central asia or see the deal with Armenia and Azerbaijan going on right now.
Thank you very much for making this video - this is a suppressed part of history and deserves to be known. My father was one of those who made it out with my grandmother - he was only three years old and very sick in December 1944. God knows what my grandmother had to do to protect and save him - 90% of of my family my father’s side where not so lucky and were murdered in 1944 and 1945. May God have mercy with the souls of all victims of all wars - Peace
Thank you for sharing your family's story
Poor Germans🤔On August 22, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." Nazi Germans crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles and to 2.9 million Polish Jews.
From the start of the war against Poland, Germany intended to realize the plan of territorial expansion, put forth by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, demanding the acquisition of the so-called living space (Lebensraum) in the East for massive settlement of German colonists.The object of war was to fulfill this territorial Lebensraum refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany.
Originally a biology term for "habitat", the publicists for the German Empire (1871-1918) introduced Lebensraum as a concept of nationalism that became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918), as the Septemberprogramm (1914).
Lebensraum was an ideological element of Nazism, which advocated Germany's territorial expansion into Eastern Europe, justified by the need for agricultural land in order to maintain the town-and-country balance upon which depended the moral health of the German people. In practice, during the war, the Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) was to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic populations and other peoples living there considered racially inferior to the Germans and to repopulate Eastern Europe with Germanic people to achieve Lebensraum.The populations of cities were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus that would feed Germany, and thereby allow political replacement by and re-population with a German upper class. The eugenics of Lebensraum explicitly assumed the racial superiority of Germans as an Aryan master race (Herrenvolk), who, by virtue of their superiority (physical, mental, genetic) had the right to displace any people they deemed to be Untermenschen (subhumans) of inferior racial stock.
Remember: it’s not genocide if you win
History is written by the victors.
two wrongs don't make a right dickhead
@@yukselkoca7 The Germans were supposed to be the victors but failed again. They should take the lesson. All wars in Europe for 100+ years are because of them and the Russians.
My Polish grandfather was only 9 years old when when a Germans started to occupy Poland during World War II. He had to work as a slave for the Eastern German farmer who liked to beat him and call him "Polish pig." The same thing did local German kids. For 5 years he had to suffer this abuse but he still was lucky that he did not end up in concentration camp like other Polish kids. Cry me the river or you poor poor Germans who started World War I World War II and tried to conquer the world.🙄
@SloveLDK Good to win then, eh!
I don’t know how accurate this video is.
I did know an ethnic German from Romania who got stuck in the German army. He fought in Ukraine and Poland and how he made it to Iowa is probably an interesting story.
Okumura Sensei, an Aikikai Hachidan, was in the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria, His unit was forced to surrender to the Russians and he spent about eight years as a slave laborer in a Khazakistan tractor factory.
Many of the Japanese soldiers who surrendered to the Soviets died in gulags.
Its entirely fictional, most of the supposed deaths in there were made up entirely by East Germany to claim victimhood benefits.
Unfortunately this video is very much "unbalanced" At 1:02 Knowledgia says that people from Eastern Europe "have been subjected to cruelties at the Nazis hands". And that's it - no numbers of war and genocide crimes.
So against well documented facts he claims that "cruelties were done by mysterious "Nazis" not 500 000 Germans perpetrators out of 10 mln Germans popularizing German civilization in "the East".
At 5:35 he mentioned that pre-war Poland had large German minority that was in the fun club of famous watercolourist. But no mention how 100k Poles were caught and the slaughtered by the end of 1939 using the hunt list composed by German.
So this film is biased and we can only hope there will be part 2, 3, 4 talking What Germans, Austrians, Nazi Hungarians, Romaniand did in each country that unleashed that tragic revenge -but incomparably weaker initial rule of "the master class".
this video is for click bait entertainment purposes only and is West fashion style as usual keep it one sided one eyed pro Germanophile crocodile tears same old repeated German Propaganda for West ignorance sympathy.
@@zk1919
A lot of videos would have to be made documenting the major crimes. I'm reminded of the Belgian colonial rule in the African Congo. Historians estimate that up to 10 million Africans died as a result of the brutal Belgian colonial rule. A large part of the African population was forced to do hard labor. Those who did not fulfill their quota had their hands and feet chopped off. To punish the parents, their babies were taken away from them and their heads smashed against trees. The conquest of America by European powers also cost the lives of millions of indigenous people. They were plundered, murdered or imprisoned in reservations. But nobody seems to be interested. The focus is only on the Germans.
1:20 Aw yes Winton Churchill, Winston's conniving evil twin brother
Just as gluttonous yet with twice the mischief!
Winston was pretty evil and conniving already
Thanks!
Thank you so much for your generous support! It helps immensely!
Educate yourself before you make silly video. On August 22, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." Nazi Germans crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles and to 2.9 million Polish Jews.
From the start of the war against Poland, Germany intended to realize the plan of territorial expansion, put forth by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, demanding the acquisition of the so-called living space (Lebensraum) in the East for massive settlement of German colonists.The object of war was to fulfill this territorial Lebensraum refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany.
Originally a biology term for "habitat", the publicists for the German Empire (1871-1918) introduced Lebensraum as a concept of nationalism that became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918), as the Septemberprogramm (1914).
Lebensraum was an ideological element of Nazism, which advocated Germany's territorial expansion into Eastern Europe, justified by the need for agricultural land in order to maintain the town-and-country balance upon which depended the moral health of the German people. In practice, during the war, the Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) was to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic populations and other peoples living there considered racially inferior to the Germans and to repopulate Eastern Europe with Germanic people to achieve Lebensraum.The populations of cities were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus that would feed Germany, and thereby allow political replacement by and re-population with a German upper class. The eugenics of Lebensraum explicitly assumed the racial superiority of Germans as an Aryan master race (Herrenvolk), who, by virtue of their superiority (physical, mental, genetic) had the right to displace any people they deemed to be Untermenschen (subhumans) of inferior racial stock.
Though understandable, it is a sad reality how harshly many Germans were treated despite their collaboration. It should come as no surprise that the Stalinist communist who came into power encouraged and rewarded this behaviour and thought of collective punishment of all ´´Germans´´. Even if the deportations were the best solution of stability of eastern Europe, nobody can defend the way they were carried out, showing the world that the ´´´victors´´ and ´´freedom fighters´´ to not be so different from the Nazis after all.
Personally all Germans in WW2 can root in hell for what they did to plenty people especially enable some countries to destroy other countries in that time.
well it is not on stalins shoulders alone, many soldiers of the red army wanted to take revenge on the german population because their families were executed by the nazis
@@abelnightroad5162not all of them, only a fool would think like that
What did Germans collectively expect? No consequences for being responsible for the deaths of 35,000,000+ fellow Europeans?
Germans might argue among themselves about how and why the consequences fell only on Eastern Germans, but they have no reason to complain about the fact of consequences.
If the Allies had insisted on an "eye for an eye" punishment, five or six times as many Germans would have died. Overall, the Germans got away with suffering only a tiny proportion of the misery they collectively inflicted.
@@dominicstocker5144 They could have fought to stop their felow Germans and stand up against them shoulder to shoulder with their true countrymens. Non-action is same as acceptance by silence.
You first should have explained how the Germans got to those places outside of Germany in the first place. Those were settlers from begining of the middle ages until about 1850 when kings wanted to populate areas were wars had decimated the population or were the area was sparcely populated.
Very true! We Germans are accused of being drawn to the East. But most Germans were invited as settlers. The Germans were considered conscientious and hardworking. They brought economic and cultural prosperity to the areas they settled in. Even today, the attractive cities in the East bear witness to the cultural achievements of the Germans. This naturally aroused the envy of the local population, who lived from hand to mouth.
The Song of the Volga Germans
th-cam.com/video/CgsJ64nlgI8/w-d-xo.html
Song of the Volga Germans from the so-called labor army
th-cam.com/video/v8n9XPPlCUY/w-d-xo.html
@@adifreitag8579 That's right, the Germans were just a guests. And when guests start behaving rudely, they are asked to leave.
@@polishgigachad7097
The Germans were not temporary guests, but settlers who were to live there permanently. They were assigned deserted or sparsely populated areas that first had to be cultivated and civilized. In the Balkans, Germans were not recruited by foreign rulers, but by the German emperor. They were assigned areas that had been abandoned due to the Turkish wars - such as in Banat and Transylvania. It became their homeland, which they civilized and brought to cultural prosperity through hard work over the centuries. Moreover, the Germans had not behaved badly - as you write so disparagingly. They were not responsible for the war. And certainly not the Russian Germans, who had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with National Socialism. They were not guilty. They were punished just because they were Germans.
unofficial hymn of the Volga Germans)
th-cam.com/video/CgsJ64nlgI8/w-d-xo.html
Song of the Russian Germans who had to do forced labor in the so-called Trud Army under inhumane conditions
th-cam.com/video/v8n9XPPlCUY/w-d-xo.html
Folk anthem of the Danube Swabians
th-cam.com/video/GjZDavFGFXY/w-d-xo.html
The politicians who were responsible for conflicts and wars after the First World War were those who failed to find a balance between the peoples and organize a lasting peace. On the contrary, they incited the peoples against each other.
In addition, migrants who have made a positive contribution to the host country are better than invaders who have invaded foreign territories. The Poles ignore the fact that their real homeland was in what is now Russia. Germanic tribes lived on what is now Poland, the majority of whom - but by no means all of them - moved on during the Migration Period. The Poles were not invited by the local population, but seized these areas as invaders. The same applies to the so-called Polish eastern territories, which today belong to Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. During the Polish-Lithuanian Union, the Polish imperialists conquered and annexed these areas. Over time, Polish settlers moved there without the consent of the local residents and acted as masters. But at no time were the Poles a majority there. I think the Polish historical narrative ignores and distorts facts in order to portray Poland as the eternal victim of its evil neighbors and to legitimize the seizure of German territories and the expulsion of the German population. The same applies to the Czechs. The Hungarians and Romanians, on the other hand, treated the Germans more fairly. Unlike the Poles and Czechs, they appreciate the cultural achievements of the Germans.
One final comment: Europeans were not invited to any of the American states, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They settled there against the will of the indigenous peoples. They displaced and murdered the indigenous peoples and stole their treasures and land. They behaved more than "misbehaved". According to your logic, they should all pay these countries and high reparations to the indigenous peoples. But ask Trump if he would support that.
@@polishgigachad7097 Guests who had been there for hundreds of years
You mentioned that reasons for relocation were retribution and maintaining ethnic purity but you "forgot" to mention the very top reason which was fear of history repeating itself again. As a Czech, I can tell that the main reason for Benes' decrees (the ones that mandated relocation of Germans) was to prevent another Munich agreement and a scenario where strong German minority in regions like Sedetenland was a pretext for the Nazis to annex parts of Czechoslovakia and then Bohemia as a whole. In fact, the 3 million Germans in Bohemia were a reason why the Czechs joined Slovakia to form Czechoslovakia in the first place. They feared that such a big German minority would overtake the Czech state and they needed Slovaks to balance it out a bit. So *obviously* if the fears were already present as much as 20+ years before the Munich agreement, it's clear that retribution was not the main reason of Benes' decrees 30 years later. Don't make videos about politics and history if you don't understand them the least.
The problem was the founding of Czechoslovakia after the First World War. Contrary to the right of self-determination of peoples demanded by the American President Wilson, the Sudeten Germans were not asked which state they wanted to belong to. They were forcibly assigned to the new state of the Czechs and Slovaks. Moreover, they were disadvantaged in every respect. The name of the newly founded state is revealing. It contains no reference to the German population, although the Germans were the second largest population group, ahead of the Slovaks. And then the Czechs are surprised that the Germans could not identify with the new state. During the wild expulsions, tens of thousands of Germans were brutally murdered. Germans were hung by their legs and fires were lit under their heads. Young men were tortured and then buried alive. Women and children were thrown to their deaths from a bridge. Later, the expulsions of the Germans were not more humane, but more orderly. The scandalous thing about the Benes Decrees, which justify mass population expulsion and are still valid today, is that there is not a bit of regret from the Czechs who want to build Europe with us today. Not a good basis for peaceful coexistence in partnership.
@@adifreitag8579agree.
@@adifreitag8579Thank you for your excellent and ACCURATE comments. The decision to follow the historical borders of Bohemia and Moravia in creating the " new Switzerland " after World War I made no sense ethnic wise. So, the Allies allowed the Burgenland area between Austria and Hungary to vote to be part of Austria or Hungary in 1919, which they did for Austria except for Sopron where dead people were counted voting for Hungary. Why? because both Austria and Hungary lost the war. So the people here could vote for their self determination between two losing countries. But then they did not allow all the southern Sudetan areas in Bohemia and Moravia to vote when the ethnic situation was exactly the same. Does that make any sense? Of course it does not. The same thing for the southern Tyrol areas. No vote, you are now going to be part of Italy. The allies did not listen to these people asking for the right of self determination. All of those areas would have voted to remain part of Austria just like Burgenland did and the allies knew it. Those areas never, ever should have been part of Czecolslovakia or Italy FROM THE VERY beginning of the "new borders." Some of the western and northern parts of Bohemia and Moravia would have made an awkward Austrian Czech border but the allies would not allow any of those areas to vote to join Germany either. It is the allies who set the stage for Munich in 1938. The fact is all these southern areas would have voted to remain part of Austria. These were NOT Czech populated areas. No they were not. Austria should have been at least 25% bigger than it became after the absurd Treaty of St. Germain because self determination was denied to many, many people. Many Austrians and areas adjoining the "new Austria"on the "wrong side" of the new borders.
@@adifreitag8579One more thing, the Benes Decrees were and today are still beyond scandalous. Yes, Lidice and other very bad things in World War 2 were terrible, but so is what the Czechs did in 1945 that you accurately described. If the Czech Republic wants to still hold onto the Benes get rid of everyone and everything German (Austrian) in their country then they will need to dismantle everything designed, built painted and sculpted by the German speaking peoples over the centuries. Let's start with the St. Nicholas Church at the end of the Charles bridge in Prague. Designed by, built by, painted by, sculptures by, none other than some of the greatest Austrians and Germans artisans living in the 18th century. When I was there in 1990 I tried to get the tour guide to name these people and when he would not, I did.
@@christopherhall3894
The aim of the policy of the victorious powers at the time was to humiliate and weaken the German Reich. The right of self-determination of peoples proclaimed by the American President Wilson was a farce. It was applied arbitrarily by the victorious powers at the time to weaken Germany and its former allies. The right of self-determination was fundamentally denied to the Germans. Large territories were handed over to foreign states without regard for the German population. Even where the French and British allowed a referendum - as in the case of Upper Silesia - the result of the referendum was ignored. Despite the majority voting to remain part of the German Reich, the industrialized eastern part of Upper Silesia was separated from Germany and handed over to Poland. With their anti-German actions, the French and British promoted political radicalization in Germany and sowed the seeds for the Second World War.
"Freikorps Voran" - German Patriotic Song
th-cam.com/video/Zoq_ZB_iA7E/w-d-xo.html
"The dead awaken"
th-cam.com/video/UfUG9D5tvV4/w-d-xo.html
It is incomprehensible to me that the European community, which demands the right of self-determination of peoples worldwide, ignores the right of self-determination in its own area - as in the case of the South Tyroleans.
unofficial anthem of the whole of Tyrol (The song commemorated the freedom struggle of the Tyroleans under their leader Andreas Hofer against the French occupiers)
th-cam.com/video/GBhLJX6bEZs/w-d-xo.html
My Boss is one of them. He is 88 years old and a good soul. He still works at our university. He never had revangist thoughts or hated the Poles. On the contrary, he became a scientist and was very committed to understanding and forgiving each other between Germany and Poland. He was even awarded with a medal in Poland. He is one of the last among us who knows what war really means.
It was russian that do the expullation, eartern polish was expel from belarussian as well and in gun by rred armies.
This is one BiG bs - 1st something like Polish Germans does not exist 2) Polish land was taken by the soviets and attached to the USSR so German land (less) was given to Poland as compesation. So saying that Poles were happy to take over what German left is stupid. Poles were kicked out from their houses and forced to move to random places very often destroyed by the war.
Facts
Thanks so much, very interesting, at least afair my history lessons in Germany in the 90s not much was taught of this part of history.
I am glad you found the video interesting! Thank you so much for your help!!
There were 100 thousand Germans left in Poland, the rest were Poles, not any 1 million Germans who had fresh Polish roots
No german wants to be a pole. Believe me.
@DrEcKiGeRDaN88 You don't understand what I wrote, I'm talking about Poles who were not Germanized even though they were listed as Germans
@@DrEcKiGeRDaN88yes true. germans wanna be Muslim.
There are still many minorities of citizens with Germanic culture throughout Europe. When these populations did not actively cooperate with the Nazis they have, in general, never suffered systematic repression by the governments of their country, even in Hungary and Romania substantial minorities have remained because they had participated in the resistance against the Nazis. In countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, the German cultural minorities have not suffered any revenge. In France, in 1945, there were more than one million Alsatians, the male population of whom was enlisted in the Nazi army. This enrollment was against their will and the population never showed any sympathy for the Hitler regime, and as a result, suffered no discrimination
My Grandparents and Greatgrandparents were deported by Russia (USSR). After the fall of USSR all their descendents were invited to live in Germany!
Germans today don’t accept them even though they are literally more Germanic than Germans born in Germany.
After the fall of the USSR…that sure has a good sound to it even after all these years. Glad to hear they made it back to Germany.
Very nice video. I am a descendant of two ethnic German people who were executed in Slovenia. I was able to visit the mass grave site and see a memorial dedicated to the innocent. It is fortunate some came forward before their deaths to point out where these terrible events occurred so they could clear the guilt from their minds.
My mother’s family left East Silesia after the war to avoid Soviet occupation. They settled in West Germany.
Bro, WTF?? What Germans did to Czechs and Polish at 1939??? They deportated hundred of thousands! You have never heard of polish city of Gdynia and it's habitants faith. And dozens of other! How even germans appeared in western Czechia?? Up yours with that video.
this video has been made by some uneducated german most probably
A lot of us ended up in the US and Canada.
Read in a magazine somewhere that some people think this mass expulsion is a reason for its comparably higher tolerance within Germany for Germans of different origin. I say that with a quite some doubt, but the arguement here was that because there were so many million people of German descent and ethnic Germans that had to resettle all over Germany, most of the times not in regions whose culture or religion they were familiar with, they ultimately were forced to work with one another if they were meant to survie.
Like there might have been protestants from Eastern Prussia now finding themselves in a highly Catholic region of Western Germany, which ultimately forced them to interact with one another in various manners, while in previous times they had been isolated from each another. This would have caused a slow erosion of prejudices of each other's group. Though it also lead to the slow erosion of local dialects, as the locals and refugees where then often forced to communicate only in high German to understand one another.
Again, that was just an article in some popular science magazine from a while ago, if memory serves me right.
Most of the ethnic Germans arriving in Germany also faced discrimination there. Russian-Germans were treated as Russian migrants for instance. Publicly mentioning being a Prussian was treated as a crime in the DDR while socially also taboo-ized.
Though it wouldn't be as complex a topic, I'd like to see a similar video on how the redrawing of Polish borders after WW II affected Poles. How many were forced to leave their homes? How many generations had the now-refugees been living in the Pale? Was there any compensation for them?
What did Germans collectively expect? No consequences for being responsible for the deaths of 35,000,000+ fellow Europeans?
Germans might argue among themselves about how and why the consequences fell only on Eastern Germans, but they have no reason to complain about the fact of consequences.
If the Allies had insisted on an "eye for an eye" punishment, five or six times as many Germans would have died. Overall, the Germans got away with suffering only a tiny proportion of the misery they collectively inflicted.
Stop putting modern city names in historical videos.
I like it, shows something we know so we can see exactly where something is.
is it hard to guess that Lwów is modern Lviv?
@@KliscianFact people watching these shows usually are educated in history they just like it
You seem to think that the whole internet knows about history and what places were called before when in fact most of them don't
It really isn't that serious. Using a modern name doesn't change anything else
My mom is from East Prussia Province, Germany. Both of her ancestors were born in East Prussia all the way to 1600s. According to my mom's DNA, the map showed the area which is in Poland and Kalingrad as if her ancestors never left until WW 2. My grandfather was a Koenigsburg native, which is Kalingrad now. My mom's birth place is in Poland. When my grandfather was injured from WW 2 and stayed at POW hospital. The Red army let my grandma and mom with a special permit to leave to see him before USSR took over. My grandma's sister and her family had to stay behind in East Germany because her husband was a German officer. My grandparents decided to leave Germany to move to USA. They were frustrated with the German government. All I heard is that Germans are good at building except politics.
You know that originally Prussia belong to the Baltic old Prussian people who were killed by Germans and then Germans stole the land and name "Prussia."
My Grandmother told me a story of how her family walked from Russia to Germany then came to the US. I really didn’t understand until I blistered feet in the Army walking 12 miles. 😭. My grandma was a beast.
Read Wolfgang Samual - German Boy and Evelyne Tannehill - Abandoned and Forgotten. Incredibly sad.
Read historical fiction book " The Last Green Valley " by Mark Sullivan. It's about Russian-German " Martel " family fled USSR to Germany, later resettled in Montana.
Make a video about the post war expulsion of Japanese citizens and settlers from their prewar colonies (Korea, Taiwan, Southern Sakhalin, Kuril Islands,Micronesia, Palau- which still has a municipality with Japanese as an official language , etc) and conquests during WW2.
Here in the Netherlands we also expelled all Germans back to Germany most of them had arrived in the 20's and 30's. It didn't go along with atrocities but they were kicked out anyway
Video fails to mention existence of German eastern provinces such as pomerania , West and east Prussia, Silesia. Lands that were historically Germans not mention Danzig issue which vast majority were Germans since early middle ages.
Sounds like the Germans got back what they gave. So much for liebensraum
💯
What the Germans done to Slavs during WW2, that much payback they received. A phrase "Total war" was idealized by Germans and it dig a German graves.
You are confusing the opinion of the majority of Germans with National Socialist propaganda. It was obviously so successful that our eastern enemies still believe it today.
The film fails to mention, that the Nazi Party had had record high support in the areas from which the Germans were later expelled. So if collective responsibility is to be applied (Nazi Germany had no qualms about it), the German expellees were justly punished.
Part of my family were German Austrians in what had been Bohemia under the Habsburgs. My Greatgrandparents migrated to the US in the 1880s, but their family who remained in what was then Czechoslovakia, were expelled to West Germany and Hungary. i still have distant Cousins in Germany.
Wow! And I thought that when the war ended, peace started, and everything was fine.
History is often not as simple as we have been taught in school.
I was in Romania in the 1970s twice under Ceausescu the communist dictator and the German minority then was well treated and more than tolerated. They had their own German language newspapers and media, controlled however but they were there. IN my many train trips throughout communist Romania i heard German being spoken all the time and openly. It did not seem by the 1970s that they were oppressed more than the regular Romanian people had been. I understand that after 1990 many left for much more prosperous West Germany however even today there is a German minority in Romania in their traditional towns. Gruss, RM.
Romanian was basically German ally in WW2 and one of close economy partner. One of the reason German decided to go all war to USSR was Soviet decision to invasion eastern Romanian which hold almost all of German imported oil.
When the survivors came to West Germany, they didn't just lose their homes and material things. They were forced to assimilate completely to their new environment. All specific local things like traditions, dialects, cuisine, clothes, culture etc. which identified them as "being them" is dying out with the last generation. None of their modrrn day descendants use these things in same way. The only thing which may survive is their DNA. There aren't many young Germans out there who don't have any Eastern origin.
According to historical records, Slavic people expanded westward as far as the area between the Oder and Elbe-Saale rivers, reaching into modern-day Germany, settling in regions like Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Austria, essentially encompassing central Europe as their westernmost boundary.
@kazimierzlenarczyk9067 That is true! And those Slavic people intermixed with Eastern Germans and influenced them much. So, the crucial point is, when the ruling Slavic authorities expulsed their German populations from their lands, they didn't just wipe out the bad German DNA but also their own valuable Slavic DNA from the intermixed Germans out of their country.
@schaumi396 This is bullshit. Any German family if you want to stay they could have stayed just like the German family which my grandmothers brother married the German lady so now I have a cousins who are partially German. I know polish families who escaped from communist Poland to West Germany pretending that they are Germans.
@@schaumi396 Józef Haller von Hallenburg (13 August 1873 - 4 June 1960) was a Polish lieutenant general and legionary in the Polish Legions during the First World War. He was a harcmistrz (the highest Scouting instructor rank in Poland), the president of the Polish Scouting.At the time of the invasion of Poland (1939), Haller was living abroad. From 1940 to 1943 he served as Minister of Education in Władysław Sikorski's government. After 1945 he settled in London
@@schaumi396 It's not true that all German people were expelled from Poland. They were escaping from Poland because they were afraid of Russian Soviet Army. My grandfather told me how Polish women were hiding they were afraid being raped by Red Army soldiers. The Germans families who spoke fluent Polish language stated in Poland. I have an uncles who are half Polish and half German. We have in Poland war heroes who I h actually German 100% but they identified himself as Polish. General Anders not polish name. Józef Unrug (German: Joseph von Unruh; 7 October 1884 - 28 February 1973) was a Polish admiral who helped establish Poland's navy after World War I. During the opening stages of World War II, he served as the Polish Navy's commander-in-chief. As a German POW, he refused all German offers to change sides and was incarcerated in several Oflags, including Colditz Castle.
My academic advisor specialized in German history and had parents/relatives who lived through the Third Reich
His father was from the portion of northern Poland that was controlled by the Germans before/during the war. He even made the region his focus for his doctoral thesis
When he asked his father if he would have liked to return to his homeland after Poland was taken back after the war. His father said no; despite that region being the only place he knew as home, he knew the lands now belonged to who they rightfully belonged to
And don’t get me started about one of his uncles who was captured by the Soviets during the war. The man said with very prophetic words after the wall fell in the '90s.
Most of them escaped afraiding revenge. Actually 90% Germans were very enthusiastic about Hitler till end of 1944 and was supporting his "total campf" policy (killing, steeling and destroying other countries). In Nazi party - NSDAP - in 1944 there were about 8 milion of man (in working age) - about 40% in that age - Nazis were in each family!
Like from Breslau (Wrocław) in Jan-Feb 1945. Population from about 1 milion dropped to about 100k. 700k escaped / were evacuated in "die große Flucht" during freezing cold. About 100k were died during evacuation ordered by Germans themselves!
Smal part was relocated to Germany after the war... in much better conditions compare with relocations done by Germans during the war...
Most of the 14 million German women, children and old folks that lived in pre-war eastern Germany ran away because they were afraid of revenge!? You mean the ones that weren't murdered right!? Wars are awful and should be avoided at all costs You are wrong, very wrong. You can't argue with the Poles or the Czechs. They try and justify everything and anything that they ever did wrong to the point of absurdity.
Very interesting topics 👍👍
Thanks for visiting
@@Knowledgia Thank you for inventing quality content for the long dead Reichs Ministry of Propaganda. None of the numbers in the video were even statistically accurate.
1:34 Wow! That second Himmler on the right looks just like Goring! lol
Actually many of the ethnic Germans that left the South Tyrol during the war, returned after the war.
4:40 I have a friend from Munich. However, his grandparents originally came from Czechia. They were expelled after the war unfortunately
Unfortunately for them, fortunately for the Czechs.
@@Jugosloven Carrying a German surname in slavic lands has been a big sign of prestige and privilage, so his life there was probably easy
Found this channel recently and specifically clicked this vid to see if they would handle this topic legitimately or not (many would not). I see a lot of anons saying a lot of really messed up stuff (especially the Pole trying to justify genocide in the comments because X or Y other bad thing). The rebuttal to all this is simple: if what the Allies had done would have been good, then they wouldn't have made it illegal to talk about their crimes post-WWII. They passed all sorts of laws banning dissent and then kept talking about "democracy" and "freedom" or whatever. The country is still occupied to this day. The Polish guy, especially, should get a clue, as his country is actually independent, and I ever hear about in WWII discussions from people like him is they act like they're the only victims of anything, almost as bad as the Js. You just look bad talking this way, seriously. Basically everyone suffered under WWII, and doing bad things to other people doesn't make other bad things go away.
First off, you are a great hardworking youtuber who is able to pump out informative & quality videos at a relatively good pace. But don't you think you should have a word with your editor? There is no doubt that he is a very skilled respectable, editor, but i feel like he is not really up to his standards anymore, as keeps screwing up the names in many of your videos. I believe you as a person who prides himself in his work, and being one of the top channels in terms of history would want to ensure that every detail, including the accuracy of names, reflects the high standards your channel is known for. Keep up the good work 👍
@Knowledgia - Thank you so much! I have never heard of the history contained in this video. SUBSCRIBED so as not to remained uninformed!
Don't like how you call all of those states "Eastern European". Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Baltic States definietly weren't Eastern European
So are Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians the only Eastern Europeans?
@@BoDAssassin yes
Poland and Czechia are central, yes, but Slovakia and the Baltics are definitely eastern.
@@TheZett
The Baltic Countries are Northern Europe. Poland and Czechia are definitely Eastern Europe.
@@BoDAssassin plus Moldova, Romania, Georgia and Armenia
A lesser known fact about Ukraine is that while by far the biggest settlement were the Volga Germans, there were hundreds of small German colonies in western and central Ukraine. Germans in Russia did emigrate in quite large numbers in the late 19th Century to the US. Catherine the Great had offered settlers freedom from military conscription and this was revoked by the Tsar in the latter years of the 19th century.
Many of these Germans were were identified as “Kulaks” and murdered by Stalin in the early 1930s. What became of these smaller colonies during WW2 I am not sure. The fate of the Volga Germans is well known but I have found little about the fate of the smaller colonies. There is a large community of descendants of “Germans from Russia” in the North of the Mid-West, they are probably the best source of information about their fate.
Personally I think it sad that Germany today does not formally honour these innocents. Alongside the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, there should be a memorial to the millions of German innocents that were victims of genocide by the Soviets and other E Europeans. Manyof these victims were descendants of Germans that had moved east as far back as the medieval era. Those in Ukraine moved in the 18th century.
Just a correction to the video, war reparations were not imposed on W Germany at the end of WW2. The Soviets essentially looted anything of value in E Germany.
@Wolf-hh4rv Your hero A Hitler wrote in his book Mein Kampf why he want to attack Poland. Lebensraum !!! provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy (the Master Plan for the East) was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum ('living space') necessary for its survival and that most of the indigenous populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia, death, or enslavement) including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Czech and other Slavic nations considered non-Aryan. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter.Entire indigenous populations were decimated by starvation, allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed
@Wolf-hh4rv Hitler wrote in his book Mein Kampf why he want to attack Poland. Lebensraum !!! provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy (the Master Plan for the East) was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum ('living space') necessary for its survival and that most of the indigenous populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia, death, or enslavement) including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Czech and other Slavic nations considered non-Aryan. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter.Entire indigenous populations were decimated by starvation, allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed
The Germans expelled from what would be Polish territory weren't Polish-Germans, they were simply Germans, as territories such as Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia had been German for at least six or seven centuries. Those millions were in fact expropriated and expelled from what were their ancestral lands.
Only my grandfather made it to West Germany alive. All other relatives "disappeared" during the escape from Romania...nobody else arrived alive. We never heard from them again. There were several families.they lived for 150 years there...
An important video about a page of history which is often overlooked. However, it fails to mention the shifting of borders: As a compensation for Eastern Poland becoming Soviet territory Poland was given parts of Germany that for the most part had hardly any Polish population at all. (And the Soviets took what is now called Kaliningrad.)
Yes, post-war Germany was vocal saying that their firmer Eastern territories had less population than before the war. They were quiet to admit that their fathers and killed approx. 6 mln Polish citizens.
My grandmother's family was expelled from then Poland to East Germany back then. Almost half of them didn't make it alive though...
My Polish grandfather was only 9 years old when when a Germans started to occupy Poland during World War II. He had to work as a slave for the Eastern German farmer who liked to beat him and call him "Polish pig." The same thing did local German kids. For 5 years he had to suffer this abuse but he still was lucky that he did not end up in concentration camp like other Polish kids. Cry me the river or you poor poor Germans who started World War I World War II and tried to conquer the world.🙄
On August 22, 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." Nazi Germans crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles and to 2.9 million Polish Jews.
From the start of the war against Poland, Germany intended to realize the plan of territorial expansion, put forth by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, demanding the acquisition of the so-called living space (Lebensraum) in the East for massive settlement of German colonists.The object of war was to fulfill this territorial Lebensraum refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany.
Originally a biology term for "habitat", the publicists for the German Empire (1871-1918) introduced Lebensraum as a concept of nationalism that became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in the First World War (1914-1918), as the Septemberprogramm (1914).
Lebensraum was an ideological element of Nazism, which advocated Germany's territorial expansion into Eastern Europe, justified by the need for agricultural land in order to maintain the town-and-country balance upon which depended the moral health of the German people. In practice, during the war, the Nazi policy Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East) was to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic populations and other peoples living there considered racially inferior to the Germans and to repopulate Eastern Europe with Germanic people to achieve Lebensraum.The populations of cities were to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus that would feed Germany, and thereby allow political replacement by and re-population with a German upper class. The eugenics of Lebensraum explicitly assumed the racial superiority of Germans as an Aryan master race (Herrenvolk), who, by virtue of their superiority (physical, mental, genetic) had the right to displace any people they deemed to be Untermenschen (subhumans) of inferior racial stock.
Germans were in Poland because of 200 years of colonization and germanization in the first place. So its hard to feel sory for them.
germans were in poland since Augustus.
The only territory in there that had been historically ethnically polish was Poznan and parts of West Prussia. Pommern wasn't even 1% Polish and Silesia was well over 80% German, and idk why Poland got a third of Brandenburg and Stettin. it was 1000 years of German Culture wiped out, with cultural cornerstones like Breslau, Stettin or all of Prussia wiped out. the previous occupants of the territory were random pagan Slav or Baltic tribes from way back in the early middle ages.
@@theos77What are bullshits lie 🤣🤣 there were no Germans they were Germanic tribes and Slavic tribes. Germanic tribes in 4th century move to west and south towards Roman Empire. If you move out from your apartment to new apartment, do you think that the previous apartment is still yours🙄🤣 According to historical records, Slavic people expanded westward as far as the area between the Oder and Elbe-Saale rivers, reaching into modern-day Germany, settling in regions like Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Austria, essentially encompassing central Europe as their westernmost boundary.
@@JamesHall-hj5hc Germans should have not start 2WW and kill people, mostly in gas chambers. That way borders would not have to be moved to Oder river, which is natural barrier when it comes to blitz krieg.
@@JamesHall-hj5hc Where did you learn history? From the Reich's history book?
1:35 is ai doing all of the editing? How did you label two Heinrich himmlers, that guy on the right is not him
1:34 There were two Heinrich Himmlers?!
SSSS
Hermann Göring was trying to trick us;)
there's now two of them???
@@xXxSkyViperxXx Always has been
secret ss black magic
Very good presentation
So long Koenigsberg!
@@GARTEN-KATZEN-SACHSENLAND nicht mal in deinen träumen
Strange how this doesnt get connected to the native American continent and how each individual tribe pushed out another and committed genocide against the other and it was pure and good. Until Europeans showed up and it was bad again
Okay as a czech i feel bad for those people who were peaceful but on the other hand, what u expected after invading half of europe
Didn't know ethnicity = nationality
Important to note that hundreds of thousands of Europeans and Germans fought alongside the Red Army in WW2.
‘Quite a number of Soviet Germans ended up in partisan detachments and resistance groups. Their knowledge of the German language made them invaluable and they were frequently used in sabotage and reconnaissance operations. One of the most effective partisan commanders of the entire war was Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander German, who was killed in 1943. His brigade succeeded in wiping out 17 German garrisons and 70 rural district administrations, blowing up 31 rail bridges and killing up to 10,000 enemy soldiers’
Further examples are the Czechoslovakian Legion who liberated Kiev with the Red Army, Berling’s 200,000 strong Polish Pro Communist Army, the Belarusian and Jewish Partizans, the Bulgarian army that was involved in the capture of Vienna, the Yugoslav Partizan army, the Greek Partizans and the Romanian’s who fought with the Red Army in Hungary.
Even the Finns changed sides in 1944.
It's a nightmare to be deployed in the Eastern Front Soviets are brutal and then
Germans in the East were often subject to political currents and became victims of them.
Lastly, some East Germans may see themselves as a disadvantaged group in competition with other minorities, such as Muslims, for social recognition by West Germans
east germans are no different than west germans, they integrated fairly well after the mass expulsion campaigns
Actions have consequences, big deal
This is literally why we have rules in War such as respecting surrenders and not genociding civilians.
Its as simple as looking at the countries they fought: They didnt do genocide contests to british soldiers so they saw no reason to do that to them. On the other hand they ran brothels with soviet sex slaves, put their prisoners in deathcamps and wanted to resettle their lands with germans. Hardly a suprise the soviets would return the favour, albeit anyone would prefer a Gulag over a KZ
@@adamelghalmi9771 Not today lmao. They dont pay church tax as theyre largely atheist, are generally worse off financially and tend to be more conservative. And they have less of a hateboner over Russia
you should know what you get for being a part of group that actively tried to murder and enslave everyone though
You have forgotten about 4 mil germans that were expelled from Soviet Union sistematicaly since battle of Stalingrad and one mil that had to flee France in autumn 1944. That was a bloody migration as well.
It would be necessary to explain that Polish borders were moved after the Second World War. Their eastern border was moved so the Soviets could occupy that land and the population there was moved to the former German territories of Schlesien, Pommern, Ostbrandenburg and Ostpreußen. The Germans there had to leave and the poles from the eastern territories settled there. Germany accepted the new border once in for all after the reunification of the two Germanys. Today, relations are better, but strained again by the former nationalist government in Poland nurturing nationalist resentments against Germany and just highlighting the brief times of history these territories were governed by Poland and avoiding German history there.
Poland has a very cry baby triggered victim view of their own history especially regarding alleged claims to ‘rightfully polish’ lands that were mostly Germanic.
There are no "former eastern Polish territories". These were the lands of Lithuanians and Ukrainians occupied by Poland (1920-1939). Lithuania has never recognized the occupation of its capital Vilnius and 1/3 of the state. Ukrainians could not claim it because they were completely occupied by poles and bolsheviks.
After World War II, Poland had to be left as it should have been naturally: the area around Warsaw and Krakow. Illegal occupation of German lands was a crime. It was the result of friendship between polish and russian criminals.
@@arturasandriusaitis8832 Before the war, the demographic of Vilnius was starkly different from today. In Vilnius, an overwhelming majority of the population were Poles, while Lithuanians made up... less than 1% of the city’s residents xD Similarly, in Lviv, Poles were the dominant group, forming the vast majority of the population. These cities were both vibrant centers of Polish culture and society (it's easy to factcheck this).
Nevertheless, currently, no serious voice in Poland questions the fact that today's Vilnius and Lviv are rightfully Lithuanian and Ukrainian cities (please refer to "Giedroyc-Mieroszewski doctrine"), respectively. However, denying the deep Polish traditions and historical ties to both cities is nonsensical.
In fact, such denial fits neatly into the Russian narrative, which clumsily attempts to sow divisions between Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine where none exist. The true and persistent source of endangerment in the region has always been Russian imperialism, both historically and in the present.
And as regards "Illegal occupation of German lands was a crime" - only can "say": "xD".
@@inhell4heaven
And what do the previous sources say?
1) Karpinski Hilaryon. Lexykon Geograficzny Dla Gruntownego Poięcia Gazet I Historyi. Wilno, 1766. P. 602:
WILNO. Mieszkancow zas dusz liczy na 60,000. Mieszkają Litwa i Niemcy.
VILNIUS. It has 60 thousand inhabitants. Lithuanians and Germans live there. (Translation from Polish).
2) Balinski Michal. Opisanie statystyczne miasta Wilna. Wilno, 1835. P. 61:
Mieszkancy miasta Wilna co do ich rodu są Litwini, Rossyanie, Niemcy i Zydzi. Ludnosc innych plemion tak jest male, ze pod
tym względem zadnego oddzialu stanowic nie moze.
According to their nationality, the inhabitants of the city of Vilnius are Lithuanians, Russians, Germans and Jews. The
population of other nationalities is so small that in this respect they can't form any separate unit. (Translation from Polish).
NOT ONE POLISH IN VILNIUS IN 1766 AND 1835! Here is the whole truth about the city of Vilnius. Absolutely all historical sources show that there was no major immigration to the city of Vilnius from Poland. The small number of arrivals from Poland before 1795 was incomparably smaller than arrivals from Germany. The same in the time of the tzarist Russia occupation (1795-1915). The first Poles who appeared en masse in Vilnius and the Vilnius region were colonists from Poland who came here during the Polish occupation (1920-1939). There were over 80,000 of them in the city of Vilnius and over 100,000 in the whole regained by Lithuania in 1939 Vilnius district. All of them scramed to communist Poland in 1944-1957.
@@inhell4heaven
For various reasons, beginning in the third quarter of the 19th century, some Lithuanian peasants in Eastern Lithuania began to speak a "pidgin language": a mixture of Lithuanian, Belarusian, Russian, and Polish languages. The Russian and Polish occupiers recorded their nationality in the censuses in their favour. Thus, in the tsarist census of 1897, they are recorded as "Belarusians" (56% in Vilnius Governorate). Poles always recorded them as "Polish" (even though they never spoke Polish). Lithuanians have always considered them to be Lithuanians who have recently lost their language. This was demonstrated by these people (together with Lithuanians who preserved their language) in 1939-1940, when they received passports of the Republic of Lithuania. 64% of the residents of the regained in 1939 Vilnius district declared their Lithuanian nationality when receiving Lithuanian passports. I provide statistics by municipalities (valsčius):
Paberžė:
Lithuanians - 11,500 (81.3 %), Poles - 920 (6.5%);
Jašiūnai:
Lithuanians - 9,067 (86%), Poles - 654 (6.2%);
Maišiagala:
Lithuanians - 15,486 (89.2%), Poles - 1,100 (6.3%);
Dieveniškės:
Lithuanians - 9,100 (83.9%), Poles - 110 (1%);
Mickūnai:
Lithuanians - 5,921 (46.2%), Poles - 6,065 (47.3%);
Nemenčinė:
Lithuanians - 16,038 (80.7%), Poles - 2,970 (15%);
Riešė:
Lithuanians - 14,500 (80.6%), Poles - 2,900 (16.1%);
Rudamina:
Lithuanians - 9,000 (44.6%), Poles - 2,189 (10,6%);
Šalčininkai:
Lithuanians - 2,741 (39.5%), Poles - 2,336 (33.6%);
Šumskas:
Lithuanians - 5,075 (45.2%), Poles - 896 (8%);
Turgeliai:
Lithuanians - 10,821 (60%), Poles - 2,705 (15%);
Naujoji Vilnia:
Lithuanians - 868 (9%), Poles - 7,834 (80.7%).
In the city of Vilnius, from the 209,000 inhabitants (1939) minus 80,000 Polish colonists (they did not receive Lithuanian citizenship), Lithuanians made up 54.3% (70,000 Lithuanians).
My Oma was living in Bessarabia (modern day Moldova/Ukraine) and my Opa was living in Ukraine prior to WWII. Luckily they were able to flee the Russians and make it to Germany safely. They both eventually emigrated to Canada in the 50s.
A forgotten crime.
An ignored war crime.
Womp womp
According to the map, where is there so many german communities in and around Crimea?
Probably the legacy of Medievial Kingdom of Theodoro (Gothia) and russkies inviting Germans to their swamplands.
My family came from Silesia (Schlesien) what a part of Poland today is. My grandmother lost her whole property
she was probably newly Germanized, it's better to check your DNA before you speak because Silesia is not an ethnic territory of Germans
@@Adixeeelyes it was. Polish Plasts invited Masses of germans over to silesia beginning from the middle ages and especially many After the mongolians completly devastated silesia in 1240 and Most of the local Population was murdered. Germans were invited there and at the end of the 13th Century they made up 80% of the Population. This germanized slavs shit is stupid and car from the truth.
@@Adixeeel it was
@@AdixeeelIt literally was though
@@Adixeeel
I did an DNA test. My mother family is living in the west of germany since over a thousand years. They cultivate vine there since 700 years.
My fathers side is silesian. My father took his live due to the family traumata which was caused by poles before Hitler invaded poland.
Im 95% of german heritage.
Silesians are the progeny of the eastern franks.
If you are clueless, you better dont make any comment about this topic.
German schools, at least in Berlin, barely touch this subject. I believe in the 11th grade, it was discussed for around four hours in total.
One of the largest ethnic cleansings ever committed, organized and orchestrated by some of our current 'allies', still within living memory - and the school system deems it less important than e.g the Berlin blockade 1948, which is taught for multiple weeks in elementary school, middle school and highschool, including two museum visits in my case.
There are German adults, barely aware of the lives and land lost in this genocide
It actually is. Its the part where they talk about the Hague Conventions. Aka dont dish out what you cant take
@@elseggs6504 If you were right in believing the genocide to be justified, shouldn't you want the topic to be discussed more, not less?
@@Kai_Peters Im not saying its justified. I'm saying its a natural consequence of being an insufferable dickwhipe.
Bad teachers just try to rush the bare minimum. Good ones will teach you how those they occupied were treated. How gold reserves were plundered to fuel the unsustainable warmachine. How factories were filled with eastern european and slaves, not just jewish. How they proclaimed that 50 civilians would be murdered for every Wehrmacht/SS bandit on a raping spree. You know how many are suprised about the Soviet memorials at every KZ? That it wasnt just Jews that got the shit end of the stick? Sure as shit doesnt help that most are basing their knowledge on movies made in the US.
Maybe don't launch wars of genocide against everyone around you.
Boo hoo you lost
This is a good video and it reveals how terrible the Soviets (and Balkan communities) were to German civilians. You don’t hear about this very much. The old saying applies: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
Blame that Adolph because of him this happened
He only said he will end whole Slavic, Jewish and Roma race? Why? What did they do? It was BRITAIN & FRANCE why Germany lost the WW1, what did these innocent guys do?
The Germans in the Balkans and in TSARIST and COMMUNIST Russia lived peacefully until the 1940s
Even today There are Germans in Post Soviet States and in Balkans ( very few)
I ma saying that sometimes because of your stupid dumb leader, you guys are persecuted
Russians treating everyone terrible regardless of ethnicity and the situation. My countrys intellectuals get repressed in 1937 and part of my countries population were exiled to Siberia and died there. It's like the handling the genocide thrown from Turks to Russians.
The answer is - the same thing that happened to the Slavs in about the 9th-10th century from Pomerania, Saxony, Brandenburg, Lusatia, Austria and Pannonia.
They were not deportiert.
@@ulrichhartmann4585 Yeah, they were massacred.
@@ulrichhartmann4585 No they were not deported. They were "just" sold into slavery. (In a better case)
Stfu. Germanic tribes were there in ancient times stop asking Like slavs were there First. U were the ones to Drive out the Germanic tribes in the First Place
Not exactly. Some of them were (Original Prussians for example) of course but most just assimilated to german settlers
I have a side of my family that is ethnic German from Romania. From Covaci in the Banat region, they were a well-to-do butcher and market family that had their property stolen by the Russians once they captured the town. Never mind that nobody in the family was involved with the war, one of my distant cousins was kidnapped and forced to work in a mine in Ukraine until being released in 1949. The rest of the family fled once Germany surrendered, made their way to West Germany on foot, and were able to come to America in 1950. The other half of my family was Volhynian German from Ukraine; though my direct line was here before the war, the extended family that was still there was never heard from again. The frustrations of war led to widespread revenge being enacted towards people often not involved; all sides were guilty of this.
4:35 it's not like Germany rebuild itself. It was rebuild with US money to provide stable platform to defend the West against Soviets in the next war. This is why the biggest US bases were located in Germany.
Think again. Germany only received around 11% of the money provided by the marshall plan even though it had the most to rebuild. Close to all of German cities were completely obliterated. Sure the us helped to rebuild Germany, but in the end it was the people, that lived there and the migrants that came to help.
The money provided within the marshall plan doesnt even amount to the value of german infrastructure relocated as part of the reperations to western allies. It was barely any money.
😂😂😂 OK when I took the loan for my House the bank build it for me and Not the company🤡
I'm grateful for the migration to Australia by my ancestors, the last of which was early in 1895. In at least 2 ways, my parents "dodged a bullet."
2:04 damn bro foresaw “multiculturalism”
1:35 why does it say Heinrich Himmler twice?
Volhynia (Ukraine) was skipped?
what do you mean back to germany. they were deported from their land they lived for hunderds of years
But after the 50s the Poles didn't let Germans go to Germany. The family of the husband of my sister tried for over 20 years to get permission to get out of Poland
*the soviets ,as all communist dictatorships they would not let people escape.
@BenyNukem
True, but the family was German and they wanted to get rid of them, right?
There is a strange correlation of German identification and the income difference between Poland and Germany. Since the median salary in Poland has become similar to German minimal, a migrant can count on, a lot of Silesian, Kashubian or Masurian self identifications emerged on the cost of German ones.
@@Dziki_z_Lasuyou are funny
@@Ahornblatt2000 Silesia was one of the industry area of Germany. Why you want to get rid of skill worker? And crime to german mostly done by Russian not Polish.
Plus, the Volksdeutsche who returned to Germany also faced discrimination there from the locals. A lot of them had to be taken in by Germans living there and were taken advantage of as well. They were definitely regarded as the lowest class.
Because Germans are racist to this day Eastern Europeans for them are subhumans
@@kazimierzlenarczyk9067 aha than why your ethnicity still migrating to Germany?
@Warmaster2001-c5r First of all I don't even go as a tourist to Germany. Probably the reason that some Polish go to Germany to work because the German business owners begging them to to come to Germany because a lot of young Germans are too lazy and want to stay on unemployment. Second why so many Germans the master race the "master race"🤣 are running away from Germany and moving to Poland buying houses and apartments?
@Warmaster2001-c5r What are you talking about? I don't see any of my comments here. I guess TH-cam is pro German Nazi propaganda
@Warmaster2001-c5r young Germans are lazy and don't want to work. Germany intends the program to attract skilled workers who can fill the roughly 400,000 positions needed each year to address its shortages. Other benefits may include easier pathways to hiring, the Chancenkarte site said.
Very sad what happened to all the ethnic groups in Europe including ethnic Germans who had nothing to do with war but duee to their heritage, they were treated like sh*t.
German minorities were one of the reasons why Germany annexed parts of Czechoslovakia, that might have played a role too
there were more germans in czechoslovakia than czechs...
@@lebarms7832 Where did you get that information?
@@lebarms7832 blud studied at McDonald's School 😂😂
@@lebarms7832 no In the area of the Czech Republic where 99% of the Germans in Czechoslovakia lived they were 3,149,820 = 29.5% and the Czechs were 7,304,588 = 68.3% according to the census of 1930
My grandfather said he was German and not Czech. He was allowed to stay because of his money and skill set. We'll, until the Commie scum took everything.
Dès le début, tu confonds Himmler et Goering, sur une photo. Je ne suis pas allé plus loin!
Never knew so many Germans lived in Romania
Yes. They had been planted there by Austria to guard its then border with the Turks two hundred years before. They were largely pro-Nazi in WWII but not especially fanatical. 60,000 served in the W-SS in WWII, but there were few volunteers and the great majority had to be conscripted.
Germans have lived in Transylvania/Hungary since before the Romanians had arrived. When Romanians took over in the 20th century, they worked to eradicate all other ethnic groups.
@@markaxworthy2508The Germans in Transsyvania had been there since the Middle Ages, long before the Habsburgs.
@@hdaNhunWe know that Romance-speakers were in the region in Roman times. We also know that there was never a population vacuum in the Dark Ages and the Hungarians were recruiting local Vlach (Romanian) peasants as soldiers and acquiring land off them to build monasteries by the 12th Century. This is about the time the first German settlers arrived.
Certainly the Romanians have consolidated their majority hold on Transilvania in the 20th Century. This was helped by the Hungarians and Germans getting rid of of all the area's Jews in early 1944. About 40% of the Germans fled ahead of the Red Army later in 1944 and about 40% left voluntarily after 1990 for a better life in Germany. The Romanians, unsurprisingly replaced them with Romanians from elsewhere in the country. The Hungarian minority in Transilvania is back to where it was before the Magyarization of other peoples by Hungary in the second half of the 19th Century but has shrunk relative to the number of Romanians.
@@ulrichhartmann4585 I didn't mention the Habsburgs, but you are right, the first Germans were settled in the area in the Middle Ages by the Hungarians, not the Austrians. However, this does not give them demonstrable precedence over Vlachs/Romanians. See me previous reply here.
I had no idea. Thanks for the info
This is a one-sided video.
What did Germans collectively expect? No consequences for being responsible for the deaths of 35,000,000+ fellow Europeans?
Germans might argue among themselves about how and why the consequences fell only on Eastern Germans, but they have no reason to complain about the fact of consequences.
If the Allies had insisted on an "eye for an eye" punishment, five or six times as many Germans would have died. Overall, the Germans got away with suffering only a tiny proportion of the misery they collectively inflicted.
They were literally occupants staying there for over a century enforcing their rule yet are being presented as some sort of victims.