I disagree with your opinion that expelling hostile and rebellious minorities is immoral. The world is a cruel place where the single most important goal is survival and I don't think there's anything wrong with expelling a people group who is threat to the survival of a nation. German minorities living in Eastern and Central European nations where actively undermining their host nations and Soviet Union and it's satellite states had ample reasons for the expulsion of their German minorities.
@@elhombredeoro955 Did you even watch the video ? first there is the UN convention then forbid all kind of expulstion and ethic clennings as crime against humanity.ALso the most expulstion came form territories that belong to germany before stalin annex them.
It was not collective punishment nor "ethnic cleansing". The British and the Americans agreed to expulsion of ethnic Germans because they willingly gave up their Czechoslovak, Polish or Yugoslavian citizenship by accepting "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" which was in fact oath of allegiance to Third Reich. They effectively took German citizenship. Many of them joined German armed forces which is another way to lose Czechoslovak, Polish or Yugoslavian citizenship. I know as a fact that in Yugoslavia they were placed in internment camps (just like in Denmark) because they were treated as foreigners (they no longer had Yugoslavian citizenship). Many died. At the time one did not need to be in internment camp in order to die of hunger. Some were brought to justice and executed after a trial because of war crimes they have committed as members of Prince Eugen Volunteer Division. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_SS_Volunteer_Mountain_Division_Prinz_Eugen Even today many countries can revoke ones citizenship under these conditions: Run for public office in a foreign country Enter military service in a foreign country Apply for citizenship in a foreign country Commit an act of treason (join SS).
Just found this and it is quite interesting - we had an elderly lady going to our church in Canada. She was an ethnic German living in eastern Poland and she was about 11 years old when the war started. Her Father was conscripted by one of the warring armies and to the day she died she had no idea of what happened to him. After the war she and her family bounced around several of the Displaced Person camps until she was able to emigrate to Canada about 1950. She eventually married in Canada, to another European refugee, and learned English only when her children stared in school, although she spoke Polish, German and Ukrainian. The life story was incredible and it was such a privilege to have known her and hear her story - we have NO freaking idea how GOOD we have it here in North America!
Wonderful story Guy. And I noticed you said she learned English when she came to Canada. In the USA, the latinos who come from other countries refuse to learn English and then they join gangs like MS-13 or the Latin Kings, etc. and begin to sell drugs for the the cartels and they begin to destroy America like termites destroy a house from within.
Well...Europe has been fighting each other for hundreds of years...they started both WORLD WARS (Germany) which in turn caused millions to die n suffer! Ther terrorized All of Europe..so imho..it was like karma and now they were reaping what they sowed! Look at what they did in the Scandinavian countries....purposely Starving the people especially the children! I believe it was the winter of 43 or 44, not sure but I viewed film footage of it and it was horrific! I also saw a film on protestants n catholics hating Jews! When you think of all the damage done thru our all of Europe, it's hard to feel sorry for the Germans! Now look at Europe. It's nothing like it used to be...inept leaders welcoming "refugees" with totally different cultures n religions into Germany, France, England mainly, you will have disastrous results....they already have! Spain is doing a better job...as well as Poland n Hungary! So yes, we have had it good in America but it wasn't free....and we are now seeing the Evil n corruption in our own country! We may have to shed blood to take our country back! We are trying to be peaceful about it..but time will tell!
I live in a town that lost around 90 % of its prewar population, in this case it was Italian, the whole region (Istria) passed from Italy to Yugoslavia, and in the next 10 years (from 1945 to the mid 50's) nearly everybody left. Seventy years later the void left by the original inhabitants can be still seen and felt...
I live in a town that lost 99% of its prewar populiation. Before WW1 my town belonged to Germany after WW1 Lithuania took it and right before WW2 Germany took it back. Until 1945 town was dominated by germans and areas around town was dominated by lithuaninans. 1944/1945 when soviets were nearing about 99.9% fled and only few ever came back.
I always thought that the peninsula looked odd being apart of Croatia. It just looks like a weird appendage someone slapped onto the country and now I know that's kind of what happened
There should be a mention how the Germans reacted to those Volksdeutsche fleeing from the East. They were treated too often as Untermenschen, as a pest, barely worthy of the barnyard space they graciously granted them. This is still one of the reason the old generation of expatriots stick together so much. They were hated in their old countries (for being associated with the crimes of Naziism) AND their new coutry (which despite their alleged kinship simply mistrust the Eastern "barbarians"). Thankfully that changed after some time, but still, many of the older folks sympathise more with their old region than the new one. An acquitance of mine once had problem with the town rules about marketplace taxes. The clerk, after hearing she's from Eger (yet Czech trough and trough), declared "You're from Eger? Me too!" And all was well and forgiven.
My family is from what used to be East Prussia. My grandma who is Polish, lives in a house that was built before the war and one day a family of Germans showed up and were staring at her house from the street. Turns out they were descendants of the German family that used to live in that house so my grandma invited them over for lunch the next day and they had a great time and were very grateful for her hospitality!
My great grandmother aged 12(in 1944) was expelled from her home in Silesia, Germany, into inner Germany. Once she arrived there, people thought that her family was Polish, therefore didn’t like them! On her refugee she saw many horrifying sights and still to this day dosen’t like talking about it. Aged 18(in 1949) she moved to Britain with all her sisters, now all of their descendants are British. My great grandmother shall be 90 this year, I know at least 1 of her sisters is still alive, living in the same city as her, I have yet to meet her!
My dad’s family was from East Prussia. My grandfather was drafted in 1939 and miraculously survived practically the entirety of the war. He and my grandmother fled to the west and eventually ended up here in Canada.
@@patriciabrenner9216Your ancestors are the only criminals around here. How small brained has someone to be, to think a German soldier equals a criminal? Allied soldiers were criminals as well then.
@@patriciabrenner9216 It's not his fault that he was influenced by Nazi propaganda in the end he was just a puppet in the hands of the generals someone who can't think
My great, great grandmother emigrated from Tilsit in East Prussia in the 1870s. Given that Tilsit is now Sovetsk in the Russian Oblast of Kaliningrad I’m doubtful that any remaining potential relatives live there anymore.
They used to make really good cheese (Tilsit Cheese)there when it was a part of Prussia!! No more, it is now made in Schleswig Holstein and Switzerland!!
My dad's earliest childhood memories were of that world, his family was ethnic German in Silesia, I was born in the USA decades later, and the stories I grew up hearing are simply unimaginable and heartbreaking. The stories they could not bear to discuss were likely so much worse still. I appreciate videos like this so much because it helps me understand people that I love
Yeah, the way you guys worded it makes it sound like the German Empire planted all those ethnic germans in the east and not that they had been there for several centuries.
To be frank, some of them were planted there by the Empire, particulary the first generation of settlers living in Posen and West Prussia before 1914, but yeah... it's a very bad choice of words on his part.
Germans lived in Czechia since at least 1200s. BTW, this whole video had a tinge of Marxist propaganda - the 2015 hordes of violent Afghans and North Africans are put in the same bag as 1945 German families.
@@cernejr What nation was it that launched two of the bloodiest wars in the history of Europe by attacking pretty much every country around them? The Afghans or the North Africans?
@@goldenfiberwheat238 July 28 [The ethnic German emperor of] Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia July 30 Germany sends Russia an ultimatum August 1 Germany declares war on Russia and mobilizes August 2 Germany invades Luxembourg August 3 Germany declares war on France. August 4 Germany invades Belgium
There were many ethnic groups affected by the WWII. About 500 000 Finnish citizens (Swedish & Finnish speaking) became refugees 1939 due to the “Winter War” which ended 13.3.1940. Many moved back 1941-43 when the lost land was retaken. But were refugees again by summer 1944 after the heavy assault by the Red Army. The Finnish Army held, preventing occupation and leaders succeeded to negotiate armistice by September 1944. The Red Army decided to focus on the race to Berlin. The resettling of so many refugees in a country with a population less than 5M was not without problems. The peace terms bore down heavily on the nation. My grandparents and parents were among the generations who saved the nation, rebuilt it and guaranteed the peace for later generations. Let’s hope and pray never again anywhere on Earth. Regardless the heavy cost, I believe Finland did not suffer as badly as other nations on both sides did. I was born 1954 and grew up during a time of relative prosperity; work, food, clothing and housing seemed at times scant but was or became always available when needed in the 50-70’s. I was happy 1972 affording a Honda CB 350 cc motorcycle on savings from summer jobs! I hope future generations of youth grow up in peace and receive the opportunities I was fortunate to have.
Charles McCarron Yes, 500 000 Finnish refuges did not get much attention among the hoards of refuges throughout Europe during and after WWII! The key battles cost the Sovjets too much to stomach conquering Finland. It could have set them back months and months for the race to catch Berlin first. Fortunately for Finland, they preferred to be first in Berlin. Finnish observers hidden in the Russian rear were able to inform armistice negotiators that Soviet forces were moved from the Finnish front against Germany, which enabled negotiators to negotiate slightly better terms. But the terms were as such burdensome enough! Finland became under Soviet influence but remained independent and escaped occupation! Marshall Mannerheim was never happy being an ally with Nazi Germany. The Ribbentrop pact and Russian demands 1939 started the Winter War. It is questionable if Finland had any option to stay outside of Germany’s Barbarossa endeavor? I don’t think anyone could have been happy with what transpired once the WWII was in progress! I hope that shall be a warning to future leaders and generations never again!!
Charles McCarron Yes, I am aware if Hitler’s visit and that unique recording. Mannerheim recognized well the complicated scenario Finland was in. It was easy for Germany to find sympathizers in Finland 1941 for the Barbarossa endeavor after Finland had been forced to defend itself in the Winter War 1939-40. It would have been better if those sympathizers had tempered their desire for revenge! Mannerheim did know Russia well, being a former general in the Russian imperial army himself. He was also fluent in German and a skillful cautious diplomat. He would have preferred to stay in retirement but was called back to serve the country when the storms of war begun to brew. It is my understanding he would have preferred to keep Finland on the sidelines out of the war. But the complicated scenario with Ribbentrop’s secret schemes and how events unfolded caused matters to run out of Finland’s control. My generation born in the 50’s considered ourselves fortunate! Most of us had a good childhood growing up in peace and relatively good prosperity. Good opportunities in receiving an education and work. There were concerns due to the cold war but it stayed cold fortunately. Things did begin to decline slowly in 90’s and later. Even while some part of the population did very well till about 2010. I am now concerned where we are really heading!? USA was long a leading stabilizing factor. USA has today become a destabilizing factor! And unreliable to be trusted. EU’s problems have become more pronounced!
@@elbucho8867 Yes, The years after WWII were still precarious. The USSR's focus remained primarily in central Europe. And possibly beyond. But Finland never felt at ease. It seems that neither did anyone else during the cold war years, when the concern of that it could turn hot any moment simply because of some silly miscalculation or inadvertent mishaps somewhere. The consequences were known by all to be terminal for all! Finland did have a bilateral trade with the USSR, which was beneficial for both helping reduce tentions. Much of that trade has unfortunately withered, very likely after Russia developed in to an oligarcy. Russia has severe problems today, which primarily are internal. Russia has much work ahead to overcome their current internal challenges. Venturing on the old path to seek domination of central Europe or all of it will only exhaust Russia and Europe. Peaceful co-existence is essential!
I'm from Lübeck, which is exactly on the very northern end of the border between West and East Germany. My mother said when she was in school in the 70s, in her entire class of 30 girls, she was the only one who had two native born parents. Everyone else had at least one or two parents who had fled from the East. On my father's side, my grandfather is a refugee from Pommerania. Quite interestingly, the refugees from Pommerania had pretty good relationships with the Poles who settled in their old villages when they were allowed to visit their old homes. Because the Poles who were now living there were not the people who had expelled them, but the people who had also been forcibly expelled and resettled by the Soviets when they annexed the eastern part of Poland. The Poles in Pommerania had suffered through the same shit as the Germans that used to live there. Which is completely different from the situation in the Sudetenland, where people were chased out at gunpoint by their own neighbors and coworkers.
In so called Sudetenland the good Germans vote 90% of their votes for NSDAP and before their neighbors and coworkers chased them the good Germans chased those neighbors and coworkers and expelled them from their own land of Bohemia. There is nothing like sudetenland and never was, its just nazi term propaganda.
The Soviets weren't just thinking about deportations of Poles and Ukrainians - they did that. After WW2 (nd during it) there were a lot of expulsions in Europe, not just Germans.
@@Yora21 This one was pretty much justified. Keeping Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine could have ended up in another Volhynia. it might have been the best way to stop the tragic circle of revenge. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia
Sure. That was also bad. Still not the same scale as with the germans. 3,5 mil poles and some million Ukrainians. Pointing out the worst crime of them all is still very valid. Funnyly was Poland very involved in the ethnic cleansing post ww2
My father's family and relatives were Masuren Deutsche and were displaced from East, West Prussia and Pommerania after WW2. My dad's family had settled in Kolberg after being displaced following WW1 from the Posen province! His forefathers were teachers (and one of our great Oma's was a Kaschuben German aristocrat who'd moved as a child to East Prussia after her father died) and they were only allowed to speak only high German at home! But we were all Protestants and ALL were displaced west with most ending up in West Germany. None remained in our homeland!! The Masuren Deutsche like my ancestors were why so many areas where a vote was carried out following WW1 declared themselves for Germany/Prussia, including Danzig! My dad chose to emigrate with his family to Canada in the 1950s.
Masuren was actually just the southern part of east prussia. You are right about the votes there but Pommern and Danzig were pretty much completely german. That also didn't really matter as much german speaking places became part of poland for strategic reasons anyway. In upper silesia were the held referenda too they chose to split the territory arbitraryly. My family also has a related background.
@@filipnalewaja5609Ridiculous smooth brain, all of Poland was settled by Germanic tribes 2000 years ago up to Crimea (Crimean Goths). Slavs arrived later. Educate yourself before you genocide innocent families
Post-WWI "protecting ethnic minorities" became a convenient casus belli. Therefore, having ethnic monorities on one's territory got risky. Moreover, a land grab can also be legitimized by expulsion and replacement of the original inhabitants and then incorporating the territorty into the motherland (or fatherland) via a referendum. As long as borders can be shifted to "protect" minorities, expulsions will be inevitable.
My family was expelled from Marineweirder, Prussia (now Kwigzyn, Poland) and lost everything due to these expulsions. This was a genocide-lite against the German people, and is never mentioned in schools.
We Germans don't like to talk about it very much. We don't want to give the impression that we're pushing the blame on someone else. Even though the Soviets were not much better in many cases.
You are right. It is important to discuss the many mass ethnic expulsions and mass murders that took place in Europe after the war. You neglected to mention that many of the Germans that were expelled, lived on those regions for many generations.
Sadly that's what happens when a group loses a brutal war. Here in Serbia there are 300 000 Serbian refuges from 1990's wars from regions where Serbs lived for over 300+ years. Alot were expeled after the war. In Kosovo in just few months after the war when 40 000 NATO troops were present, 700 civilians were killed in their houses that didn't leave. In Kosovo in 2004 German soldiers refused to defend private property, people and churches that were attacked in a riot by teens of thousands of albanians, while French soldiers opened fire on so called protesters..
@@1GTX1 The Yugoslav Wars were fucked up. Bosniaks killed Croats and Serbians. Everyone killed Bosniaks. Croations killed Serbians. Serbians killed Croats and Albanians. Albanians killed Serbians. It was one of the most fucked up conflicts in the last years of the 20th century.
@@1GTX1 Since the Second Word War German troops have lost their fighting ability. Don't expect anything. If they had shot a few people down there, the whole world would have accused them of being the same cruel occupiers of the Balkans as the Wehrmacht had been.
the worst treated were the Volga Germans who got deported to Siberia during WW2 due to fears of them collaborating with the nazi's. At least 1.5 million would be brought to siberia practically enslaved and would cause the region they inhabited for centuries to never return to the numbers it once was. They mostly then were spread around Central Asia and Siberia after WW2 becoming sigificant minorities in those regions though they decreased once Germany reunified with only the one in Kazahstan being sigificant
There are some autobiographies I can recall. For example, I know of one autobiography written by an ethnic German, but I need to find the book again to find the title. Also, I think there was a single edition of the book too, so it might be harder to source. But if I find it I will put the title here so you can find it. It's written in German, English, and Gottscheerisch (I believe).
@Русское море: James Buck is a very untrustworthy writer, he made up a lot of his stories out of imagination. read "Other Losses" with care and distrust, and check what others say.
A brutal part of war no one talks about , good to see someone is focusing on it .....even today these things are happening in different parts of world.....
Actually in the countries where it happened we talk about it quite a lot. It shaped the lives, landscape and everything here. Greetings from the so-called Sudetenland.
It's still happening in Germany, they are allowing refugees to just flood through Europe from those other parts of the world. It really needs to stop, yet they are too afraid of being labelled Nazi to do so.
@Русское море Ты мне напомнил старый анекдот. Приходит Андропов (А) к Брежневу (Б). А: Мы тратим уйму сил борясь с перебежчиками, а в результате имеем рост количества антисоветчиков внутри границ. Давайте откроем на месяц границы, пусть все недовольные уедут. Б: Ты что, хочешь, чтоб в СССР мы остались вдвоём? А: А второй кто?
Русское море I’m sorry, what government did the US overthrow, and please tell me you’re not talking about that scumbag Yanukovych. He was overthrown in the Euromaidan protests. That was the people of Ukraine, not America
Русское море Actually, Stalin exploited the famine to explicitly target ethnic minorities, from Kazakhs to Volga Germans and of course Ukrainians. And many nations offered aid but it was rejected and the Soviets continued to export grain during the period despite people desperately needing that grain. It was intentional on the government’s part, it was calculated, and it was cruel
My Great Great Grandfather emigrated to Wisconsin in the mid 1800s from a town called Knappendorf in the region of the Sudetenland. In the 1980s one of my family members revisited the town (now called Knapovec) to try to find any sign of our family lineage. While she was there, she met a Czech woman who spoke German to her. When asked about the family, she recalled that she knew one of the members of the family, who was at the time a man in his 60s. She said that he was the only one that she knew, but she did not know if he had any family or not. She recalled that in June 1945, the Russians showed up to the town and gave everyone exactly 10 minutes to pack up all of their belongings before they were forced to March to the new Germany. She never heard from him again. Though I find it quite sad that my family is not where they used to be, I am content with at least knowing what happened to them. I’ll try to do some more research and find if anyone else from my family had moved to Germany but it gets really hard when you’re looking for records that probably don’t exist.
The early part of this video is very flawed and misconstructs early german identity and nationalism. A Bavarian and a Saxon are not a different ethnic groups lol, they are both germanics coming from the same migration wave around 200 AD. Maybe the channel doesnt know ancient history good enough but this stuff is harmful because uneducated people will think that modern nation states are just some arbitrary construction instead of a long historical process of negation. There was already an ethnic german identity in early medieval times, most famous example was Otto the greats anti slavic policies in 968. The idea that ethnic supremacy was an invention of the 19th century is high school tier research of history. Not an attack on the channel as a whole, still a fan!
Also to compare the refugee crisis of >ethnic germans< into Germany after forced expulsion to a wave of volunteer refugees who leave their own countries to go to germany is pretty disingenuous but i doubt any viewer could take that serious. Sad!
@@barccy nobody denies that borders on the edges can be a bit wacky but there is always a central dominant ethnic group. A pole living on the edges of germany doesnt invalidate the "germanic" peoples. Kind of like orange and yellow, nobody can tell you when specifically yellow turns to orange but i can still tell the concept of orange and yellow apart. Same for nation states, is the ethnic border to the slavic/french/hungarian borders a bit wacky? obv but there is still a clear core territory and a core ethnicity. Germany and the german peoples were always a distinct group that negated itself from the romans, celts, slavs and hungarians.
This is tangential to your post, but it seems like you would know. The Saxons are named after a long, curved blade they used called a saex. The Scythians are named after a long, curved blade they used called a scythe. Is there any proven connection between the two groups? This era is not my specialty, but it seems like that's too much for coincidence. Any ideas?
I want to thank you for the amazing information you provide to your viewers. This is fascinating material. I appreciate all of your efforts. Many thanks!
I’m glad to see this covered, as it’s often overlooked. I’m half German, and some of my German ancestry is Danube Swabian (Donau Schwaben), from the historical region of the Banat (today mostly in Romania and Hungary). They left in the mid 1800s and came to America, and I’m glad they were spared the horrors that later came to the families that remained. The last of my ancestors to leave Europe for America (they all had to cross the ocean at some point, mostly Germans, British and Irish) were my great great grandparents, who were born in Germany and came to the US about 1900. They lived through both world wars in America, and I’ve always thought it must have been a strange experience speaking with a German accent, as a naturalized American citizen, during WWII. My family was very lucky that they happened to leave before all that, those from Germany proper but particularly the volksdeutsche lines of my family. I often wonder about the fates of my cousins, who stayed behind.
According to the book "After the Reich" approximately 15 million Germans were expelled from their homelands in central and eastern Europe. These were people who lived outside of Germany for generations. Of that 15 million, it is estimated that 3 million Germans were murdered by other ethnic groups during their journey to Germany. Each time a train carrying Germans entered an eastern European town, the Germans were forced to disembark. Their possessions were stolen, the men beaten and murdered, and the women were assaulted. This happened repeatedly throughout the long journey to Germany. Because of this forced migration, the population in Germany was actually higher than what it was before WW II.
No, they lived inside of Germany for generations. Slubice is not any less German than it's neighbour city Frankfurt. The border was drawn for strategic reasons after World War 2 and isn't defined by historical circumstances.
@@benmatlock5746 In the 1800's Germans had been invited to settle on Russian land by Catherine the Great They lived in small communities and some had settled deep inside Russia.
They lived on slavic lands stołem by germans, so at the end they got what they deserved. Germans should be happy thath they were not exterminated after all their crimes.
Italian scholar Claudio Magris wrote that WW2 eliminated two previously-important groups from Eastern Europe: the Jews and the Germans. I think he's correct: both the butchered and the butchers disappeared from the map of that area, even though the former were exterminated while the latter were violently forced to move into the two new German states (German Federal Republic and German Democratic Republic) and sometimes even killed in the process.
One can never forgive the Nazi cruelties, but I feel sorry for so many ordinary Germans who were dragged into the war by Hitler and lost everything because they were born in the wrong country in the wrong time. I always thought we Allies were better then then the Nazis, but this makes me feel ashamed.
Unfortunately if you watch video of ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland welcoming the German army you can understand why these countries wanted Germans out after the war.
My grandmother fled from East-Prussia over 'a frozen part of the Ostsee'. Apparently the village she grew up in was gifted to a Russian general for his war efforts. Her family undertook attempts to get back back their property untill the late 70's. I could never confirm wether this was true or not and where she actually lived. I have been wanting to research it but have no clue where to begin, since everyone has died for over ten years now.
@@patriciabrenner9216 Are you insane? These were civilians living simple lives and they had been living in the region for 400 years...Misguided Hatred is never the answer...
The fate of your grandmother is shared by hundredthousand of east prussians. You can find a lot of informations in the internet. East Prussia was a country once belonging to the prussian kingdom. In the eighteenths century it had a low population due to pandemies and the prussian king Frederic the Great offered protestantic😮 refugees from the catholic austrian empire to give them farmland. So your grandmothers ancestors may have come from regions like Salzburg. My mother is also coming from east prussia. When the red army approached to the west her family were transported 1944 to Saxony and later she came to Hamburg. In 1945 the country senator (gauleiter) Koch, a terrible nazi forbad any escape and a tragedy happened. The russians attacked this country as the first german soil and made a propaganda story of it. The red army following the blood trace of the SS through her homeland (over 600 belorussian villages were massacred) was offered a revenge by Stalin. His official slogan was: „kill the germans in their caves!“ The russian offensive came with bitter fightings and some russian massacres, which was immediately used by the nazi propaganda. The civil population tried to flee in panic and long refugee treks of horsewagons filled the streets to the west. It was Winter and extremely cold and the treks were attacked by bombers and artillery. The only free road was leading over the frozen bay. Many wagons were breaking through the ice. Who made it alive arrived in cities further west like Danzig coming under siege. Passenger ships were the last way out but many were sunk by russian torpedos. The worst case was the sinking of the Wilhelm-Gustloff. Arriving in harbours further west the refugees were exposed to angloamerican airattacks. I It should also be mentioned that the inmates of concentration camps were often massacred by the ss guards. In East prussia 5000 women were shot or were forced to run in the icecold sea. Today the southern half of east prussia is belonging to poland. The northern half came to russia and is an enclave, isolated from the russian mainland by poland and the baltic states. It‘s mainly military area.
@@suchendnachwahrheit9143 Hum no. The Germans are the reason this happened. With their lebensraum and heimat and their looking down on others. They were a people of criminals.
It’s a really difficult topic. When discussing it from the distance of 80 years its’s quite clear. Though when you lived it... in Czechoslovakia, your neighbors were excited for Hitler, in Sudetenland they actively worked against your state , then they evicted you in 1938 or made you the “untermensch”. After that in 1939, they locked you in “protectorate” , started killing your jewish neighbors and thought themselves the king of the world. Also need to consider that even in april 1945, the german army was still massacring people in villages, making sure people in prisons/concentration camps don’t live to see the liberation. When you come home and find out most of your family was murdered usually you are not such a big fan. I would wish the expulsion did not happen. It hurt my country a lot . Though I understand why it happened. The biggest issue there was that some people who wanted to make up for their inactivity/collaboration during the occupation comitted attricities which should not happened. Most of them were not punished as well.
@Fabian Kirchgessner yet I would say that the Czechs got it harder-they were killed, enslaved and were to be annihilated by Germans-that IS genocide for you and also sudeten Germans did not help any Czechs that have escaped concentration camps or any Czech refugees/people who desperately needed help-even killed them and actively supported Hitler and the genocide of Czechs-didn't even one second considered themselfes guilty or evil by the actions that they made...Czechs on another hand only expelled the sudeten Germans-I would say that they were pretty kind to only expell the sudeten Germans after what they did to Czechs.
@KA- BOOM!!! They were citizens of those Eastern European countries, they're descendants of German colonists which were settling in the east in previous centuries.
@KA- BOOM!!! Dutch are closely related to the Germans, so I guess they would try to assimilate them or promote pan-Germanic unity. I'm not sure what was actual Hitler's plan for the Netherlands.
Hitler was insane, yes! Buy the ordeal of civilians being " cleansed", killed or displaced is not only his fault, but also the result of communist tyrants who applied this as a purposeful policy, and the allies are also to blame for not defending eastern Europe, condemnig it to more than 2 generations of tyranny... Shame on the so called "humankind" and human rights and so called democrats....
Poland was not a "new country". Poland is an ancient European commonwealth but it was partitioned right at the end of the 18th century. After WWI they managed to re-emerge from the ashes of Europe.
My grandparents on my mother's and father's side are germans from the Volga region of Russia. They came from different villages: leaving for USA America in the 1920s. My father's family came through Ellis Island. My mother's family came through Canada. My grandfather was returned to Europe because he had scabies. I guess they didn't know what Scabies were, so they sent him back instead of putting him in quarantine. At least that's the story things back then was very different. They also changed my Grandfather's name, his name was Ebe, but to them it sound, Uebe. I guess that happened to alot of people. A year later he finally arrived. Where they eventually found each other in Wisconsin, then we became a blended family. Both families 👪 where farmers in Wisconsin. As a child Both of grandparents only spoke German, finally English-speaking came to light in the 1960s. It's amazing enough we children didn't speak German, I guess we could understand it. Since most of us were born during WW2, our parents chose not to teach us German, so that we were not subjected to hatred.
My Aunt who is now 96 had this happen to her and her family, I have it recorded. She lived in a part of Germany that became part of Poland. There was also a lot of looting done, and not telling Germans they were leaving their homes forever.
Dear David ...... You did not give even an adequate historical background to why there were millions of ethnics Germans in Eastern Europe to begin with. You reduced 800 years of immigration and settlement to two sentences, namely the supposed conflict between ethnicity and nationalism. I think that the persons watching this program deserved a better explanation. The history of German settlement in Easter Europe is very complicated and varied. Already in the 12th century we can see the movement of Saxons to Transylvania and the setting up of German civil societies in Poland such as the city of Krakow which was established with a system of German laws. Another factor is the drawing up of borders based on kingdoms which pre-dated any sort of feeling to account for ethnic groups within such a kingdom. I would suggest that you remake the beginning as it is historically weak. The end is much better....Stephan in Ottawa
@@mirekpavlik7334 So you are saying that you can injure and kill people because of what they voted? Take their posessions by force? What about their children? Should you maybe kill their parents and deport them like animals? I think it is better to treat people like people and not divide them into groups.
Poland was not a "new state" how can you be so ignorant? Poland's history is over 1000 years old and at some point was one of major superpowers on the continent. in 1918 we managed to win our freedom from greedy states that over 100 years earlier decided to occupy our teritory. You want to deal with history then learn it first.
@@heartsofiron4ever since Poland was a "new state" then Russia's claim that Poland took part of Russia's teritory is true and suddenly it turns out that it was Poland who actually invaded Russia and Germany beginning II World War. Give me a break
Wow. When this channel would be talking about the expulsion of Germans from ethnic German areas, I was expecting when the Czechs had committed brutal atrocities against the Germans in the Sudetenland. Many of them died the same way POWs in occupied German lands died: digging their own graves, executed in mass numbers, raped, etc. Well, I hope that this channel can cover it soon because this event hasn’t really been talked about which was the reason why that I wondered why there weren’t many Germans in the Czechia today or during the Cold War.
Most Germans were brutally evicted and ethnically cleansed from the Sudentenland by the Czech's after the war, but murder was uncommon. Most of it was forcing the Germans to leave their former homes and just walk across the border in very harsh conditions.
No, murder wasn't common. there are cases of marches where the Czechs guarding the Germans were as brutal as the nazis were, like the Brno march, but those were rare. Joint Czech-German historical commission counted some 10 000 people killed, and another 10 000 dead from other reasons, out of some 2 200 000 deported. Part of my family was also deported, by the way.
in the Hultschiner Laendchen, Deutsch Krawarn and the Troppauer area you will still find the native Germans from before 1945 and their descendents still. There are German cultural ties and good connections to the Germans remaining in the Ratibor area of what is now Poland, Silesia. ( Schlesien) But true in most of the romantic and beautiful Sudentenland there are few Germans left. Look at Freiwaldau /Jesenik and also Zuckmantel at all those villas and even factories. No wonder they kicked out the real German owners as they wanted to get those villas for near free, which they did. Gruss. R.
Another reason for the mass expulsion of Germans post WWII was that at the time many world leaders considered the 1923 "population exchange" between Greece and Turkey as somewhat of a success that lead to more stability in the relationships between both countries.
i also wanna know how they repopulated all these once german towns and cities. how did stettin go from being a core german city to being completely depopulated and replaced with poles?
The Soviets took over parts of Poland and the polish population had to leave. So there were a lot of polish, who needed a new place to live. In the case of Stettin, I know, that some groups of germans first had to stay: Workers, who were responsible for electricity for example to keep the city working.
Germans have been settled along the Volga River Region in Russia since the 1700s. During WW2, Stalin formed these Germans to Siberia. My grandmother heard from her sister in the 60s and thar was the last time.
There were roughly 1.5 million “Germans from Russia” in Russia in 1900. Roughly 250K left for Canada, the US and South America between 1900 and 1914. Famine due to farm collectivization in the 1920s killed about a 1/3 of those left. The remaining million were deported to Siberia and Khazatastan in the late 30s and early 40s. Few Volga Germans remained in Russia to be expelled to Germany by the end of WWII.
Milovan Djilas, who was either Tito's number two and an author, or a political prisoner and an author wrote in Wartime that the ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia had not aided the Nazis, were good citizens and were probably the most productive ethnicity in the country, and expelling them for the reason they did was wrong. When the Nation State is discussed it should be pointed out how the concept of a single national identity or single origin is maybe Iceland and no where else. Yet places where preserving this myth is considered an important national issue, are usually persecuting some of their citizens. The groups we all belong to are once refugees, currently refugees or in the future will be refugees. Good episode.
This English speaking presenter (American?) shows clear misunderstanding of the concept of nation and its importance. Also, he missed the main reasons for expulsion of Germans. For example, they penetrated Czech lands for a thousand years, but never accepted the laws of the land and oppressed the local population economically and culturally. Before the WWII, they acted treasonously against the government, actively joined the Naci movement and contributed to the occupation of the country. They wished to be a part of the Third Reich and their wish was fulfilled after the war.
The ethnic migrations actually began be3fore the outbreak of the war. Hitler and Stalin came to an agreement, Stalin would send the "Volga Germans" to Germany in exchange for which Hitler would send Slavs living in Germany such as the Wends and Sorbs. I believe the total number of Germans "repatriated" by this program amounted to about 5 million. Many of these people were resettled in conquered lands to the east, i.e., Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia as part of Hitler's plans to Aryanise Eastern Europe. After the end of the war they were expelled to Germany.
There is far more to it tan that though. First, your numkber is to high for that. Second, the ctieria of who was ethnical german was redicioulousoly lose. If you had a german ancestor 4 generations ago, but didnt even speak german to begin with, you were considered a german. And no not all the gertmans expelled after WW2 were these newly moved germans. Most were "germans" who lived their for generations already.
That was at least voluntarily done to the germans, even if based on lies. And many stayed behind, hence why there were still germans to kick out after the war.
I believe I was adding the transfer of Germans, which happened to the planned transfer of Slavs, which apparently didn't happen. It also includes actual Germans who were resettled in conquered areas during the war. There were also 2.7 million Volkesdeustche from Polish areas who participated in the virtual enslavement of the Polish population. As far as their actualethnicity, well, if they said they were German and the Nazis said they were German, who is to argue?
Wow that was moving. Particularly when it was mentioned why Germany may have taken so many refugees recently from Syria. Amazing. Thank you this and all the episodes.
My ethnic German grandfather was born in Hungary in 1938. Him and his remaining family were deported to East Germany in 1948. Life eventually turned out well for him, and he's still happily living in Canada 66+ years after leaving Europe forever
Guys. I empathize. But after the Sudentenland fiasco, could you really blame the Slavic nations for being wary of having significant German minorities within their borders?
Exactly. As Czech, I can tell you, that the Czecho-German issues here simply stopped once the Germans were gone. Sad but true. So yeah, good riddance I guess.
@@PotatoSmasher420 Having talked extensively on this very topic with several Czech historians, its is easy to see that there was extensive collaboration with the Nazis by the German minorities in the region. The Czechs lost their freedom partially do to their German minority, mob justice and vengeance after was almost a natural consequences of the actions done by the Germans done during the war.
@Silvana Barilla Crap. Germans weren't ready to participate, there was huge movement for joining Germany or Austria that was inspired by the WIlson's ideas. They really thought that the victorius powers would gave MORE territories to the defeated Germany... Anyway, as the German-speaking parts of Bohemia and Moravia contained two thirds of the country's coal and large part of the industry, they were considered necessary for the survival of the country (which was true - after the Sudeten crisis, the republic was economically neutered) and were occupied during the winter of 1918. Most calls for independence died out in 1919, as the Germans saw that the living in Germany was far worse, and THERE WAS MINORITY RIGHTS PROTECTION in the Czechoslovakia. In fact, famous German politician and nazi collaborateur boasted that during his whole life and political carreer (he was member of Parliament) in Czechoslovakia, he never learned Czech. There were even German political parties in the government. What killed the relationship between the nations was the Great economical crisis, which hit German speaking areas with their light export-oriented industry extra hard, and Hitler's promises. Part of my family is Czech German, by the way.
0:44 a state and a nation are not the same thing a nation like the Hausa stretch across many states like Nigeria but to call Nigeria anything other than a state or country would be false as they represent at least partly many different nations. Best example in Europe is Switzerland since they are 4 nations, 4 languages, 1 state and 1 ethnic group. Or Britain as the English, Scottish,Welsh and Irish are all different ethnically and nationally but are one country/state
He rightfully mentioned Germans being deported to work in Soviet Union. However, I am reading a memoirs of Soviet conquest in Poland and it seemed it was arbitral decision of Soviet security to deport or murder someone. All people were filtered and some were taken. They did return after years or not. It was not completely based on nationality, but Soviet citizens were in the worst position. Locals do not subscribe to the view that only Germans were taken. Arbitrary decision, Poles, Germans or Ukrainians. Moreover, Soviet Union performed ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians populations within new borders of Poland. They were deported to internment camps in Eastern Ukraine, exactly at the time of famine. Many of them didn't survive.
Germany and Poland had a problem to solve, constant deadly violence at their border, France and Britain had nothing to do with this but they used Poland to get their war with Germany. They had promised the Poles to come and help, they didn't, and they declared war on Germany instead... if they had stayed out of it, Germany and Soviet Russia would have destroyed each other, and the world would have been at peace much sooner and millions of lives would have been saved.
With the exception of one of my grandfathers my entire family has been expulsed from the former east German regions. My "step grandpa" is still telling stories about this time. He always tells about how they had to hide from the Russian soldiers. He was alone with some neighbors fleeing and when they got caught by them the checked his pants to see if he is actually a boy. He says the girl and it's mother have "not been that lucky".
@@Davey-Boyd My turn? The Germans did expel my family from Poland, I mean the ones they didn't murder. They had to flee for their lives. So it was these people's turn!
The cycle of violence in the world is a disgusting and cruel reminder of how bad our world can be, which is why we should always be thankful for peace.
My mother's family, ethnic German-Hungarians, were expelled from Hungary and settled in Germany. Don't think for a minute that the native Germans welcomed their ethnic brethren with open arms. The Germans were very hostile toward ethnic Germans. German-Hungarians were called "garlic eaters" and "gypsies." They didn't want to rent to them nor feed them. Some of this is understandable given that the German's themselves were without homes and food. An uncle who had lived in Germany during the war, had some contacts and was able to secure my mother's family an apartment. Eventually, my mother's mother, brothers and sisters emigrated to Canada while my father took our family to the US. So my family was one of the fortunate ones to have found new, welcoming homes in Canada and the US. We are forever grateful.
I would think that they would be welcomed as nazism preached the unity of the German people on the basis of their race, even if the expelled Germans came from foreign lands.
I think thats not true, maybe your mother say that because thats her experience. But in European sense and the realities of it its alot more grounded West Germany or East Germany pretty much welcome any foreign volkdeutsche with open arms to solve the refugee crisis All those stigma you said is rather pre WW1 where German unity were rather not unified, but even Nazis welcome ethnic Germans with open arms, and also post war sufferings of fellow Germans regardless of origins as a sense of unity
@@AlamoOriginal That's not entirely true. Most people from East Prussia fled to the West. In my state (Schleswig-Holstein), the population doubled in just one year, and that at a time when the big cities were completely bombed and the locals had hardly any living space. In some cases, forced accommodation was necessary. Especially in rural areas, people who owned houses had to share with refugees. The available food, which was barely enough for the locals, also had to be shared. It is logical that the refugees from the East were not always welcomed with open arms at first. Those were very hard times for both parties. I was born in 1949 and can still remember that until the end of the 1950s there were large wooden barracks camps in which refugees had to live until reconstruction slowly got underway. When I started school in 1956, there were 42 children in my class. More than half of the children came from refugee families, most of them from East Prussia and Pomerania.
@@callsigndd9ls897 yeah my apologies if my wording is not too representative, but i do have some sort of family books stored in local library chronicling their struggle fleeing from anywhere east of the Oder, funnily enough its rather vague where they tell they originally came from (probably and most likely due to Volkdeustche nazi connections), but i believe from somewhere in Silesia But they mentioned all the time despite the sufferings under Red armies expulsion, and the chaoticness of crazy Nazi generals in the east telling the population to stay and fight, once we reach proper Germany, everyone helped each other, we stayed in back then small town near Gelsenkirchen, heavily bombed but there, mutual sufferings is healed by helping each other, the stigma is non existent about supposedly cowardice refugees or German beggars from the east. But trust me when i say theres not much prejudice towards fellow Germans in the aftermath of our collective guilt for starting the war
Beyond the suffering of the individuals who were cleansed from their homes the expulsions fucked Germany up for generations to come. Most of those who had to go to Germany settled in cities. Too many people crowded into cities has contributed to Germany's low birthrate (nearly Japan-level bad). Kinda tragically ironic that Hitler's quest for lebensraum lead to the exact opposite...
This is weird part of our history here in Czechia, many people never heard about some murdering Germans after WWII because it was banned to speak about that during communism and in 90s, people who remembered that were pretty much all already dead and ofcourse a lot of people don't believe to that or they say it was ok to kill them and when someone said we did crimes, he was immediately marked as nazi and german lover. But now, 30 years after revolution, we speak about that topic pretty often, it's not tabu anymore to speak about that and most of people at least heard something about that and don't deny that terrible things happened, but ofcourse some people slightly exaggerate that when they compare it to holocaust, but yes, many germans were murdered just for beying Germans after 1945. But on other hand, it solved the problem for the future, we don't have to care about german speakers anymore. With knowledge of these events, it's really hard to watch what is happening in middle east right now, they are repeating the same mistakes as we did in Europe many years ago.
6:45 I always found this really laughable. I've heard this argument once or twice in today's Czechia and Croatia and Serbia, even in Germany. It's ridiculous. My grandmother was born in Yugoslavia and after being forcibly removed to first Silesia in Poland, she was then sent to a refugee camp in Austria, where she met my grandfather, who had recovered from wounds in the war, only to discover that his family, too, had been forcibly removed from the Sudetenland. My grandparents moved to Germany from Austria and then from Germany to the United States and, for my entire life, even after holding 3 different citizenships, living in 6-7 different countries in her life after being expelled, my grandmother never once called herself or considered herself "German" or thought of Germany as "home". Her mother lived in Germany and most of her relatives moved to Germany, but she always considered herself Yugoslavian and would tell people she was from Yugoslavia and when, in the twilight of her life, at 97 years, telling us every single story she could remember about going home and how much she missed home and what she wouldn't give to go home one more time, "home" was always and forever, for her, Yugoslavia. Slavonija. Baranja. Beli Manastir. The notion that these people would somehow be quick to betray their homeland and couldn't be loyal is insane. What these states feared was that they wouldn't accept the ethno-supremacy baked into the politics they were cooking up for the next 60 years at the time; politics that ultimately lead to the self-implosion that leaves Yugoslavia as a memory.
My uncle franz bauer also came from beli monastir and married my auntie her maiden name was knezevic my volksdecher uncle franz owned a flour mill in beli monastir i still don't know what became of them ,I live in the uk where my father lazar knezevic settled after 1945
@@victorknezevich7281 my grandmother was theresia bauer... and her father was also franz bauer, but ... i am sure there were many "franz"es ... perhaps we are distant relatives ...?
From 1939 Germans use force to transfer milions of Pols from west anexed part of occupy Poland to General Governand in central Poland. They leve that people in open country without house, food, money in autum and winter, like strain dogs. About this you do film on YT. Germans start war, he lost her and they pay a price. Too little as against to conquered nation of central and east Europe.
I am half German myself. It's sad what happened to the ethnic Germans expelled from these territories and labour camps. But given what the Nazis did, I understand why the native populations wanted German speakers out. At least those who could prove that they fought against Hitler or who married natives were allowed to stay. Thank you for enriching my knowledge on this issue. I hope those who died during these expulsions are resting in eternal and blissful peace.
@@readisgooddewaterkant7890 The comparison would make sense if German refugees ran right through Germany and France to board a ship, go to the US and finally move on foot to Panama for refuge.
"They suspected Germans wouldn't be loyal to to these new nation states" No shit sherlock ... after what happened just few years in Czechoslovakia what the hell can you expect. Entirely justified.
In Vojvodina the Partisans expelled the Germans or killed them to take their homes. For example my great grandfather was born in a German town in Vojvodina which is now settled with Serb colonist from Croatia, Bosnia etc.
Not to mention how essential they were in the industrial and cultural life of the region. Before the end of WW1 ethnically the region was around 30% Serb, 30% German, 30% Hungarian and 10% Slovak, Ruthene, Romanian, Croatian and others.
My ancestors left Silesia (Prussia) in the 1850s because the Prussian government (pre-modern Germany) was already becoming Nationalistic and Militaristic at that time. Some of their family members stayed in Prussia and thought that the ones who left were mad for fleeing to the undeveloped and barely populated continent of Australia.. But the ones who fled Prussia (Germany) were actually the lucky ones because they did not have to endure 3 major wars and many decades of conflict leaving behind nothing but a trail of destruction. Nationalism and Patriotism may sound like a good idea but in reality they come at a very high price.. If you ever have the chance to leave before a war happens then take it... to this very day I don't even know what happened to the ones who stayed behind...
My family left for Australia in 1861 Pomeranian Prussians (Wendish) from Wolin. We fought as ANZAC lighhorse WW1 and my great uncle was killed as a Bomber Gunner fire bombing Berlin in WW2. It seems no matter where we ""run"" in the world War will always be a constant pushed onto us by governments
My original comment: I had read some books with various post-war stories from the region, sadly don't have it on me right now, but there was one story of a German lynched in the middle of a town while the militiaman (there was no police in Communist Poland, hence Milicja/Militia instead of Policeman) had "coincidentelly" taken a smoke break and looked the other way as people beated a poor guy with some wooden clubs and even their bare hands. There were more of the gruesome stuff, but mostly it came down to harrasement. Prussia largely avoided large massacres. There were no sawing off the body parts, as in Polish Volhynia during the war. But still, the value of the Germans was at all low after the war. And not just the Germans. I know a story of a local Mazurians, happy to see the first Polish settlers in their village. Instead, the first thing those Poles did was to rob them. Sadly, to an average Pole, stories such as this, depicting the crimes of not just the Communist Russians, but Polish Communist regime as well as regular Poles themselves are largely unkown. Hell, it's a blasphemy to talk ill about it at all. Many Poles view the takeover of the former German lands are just and don't care about the fate of the Germans who had lived there. As I have relatives among both Germans and Poles, I try to look at the whole thing as objectively as I can. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't give away my home region, I'm glad Poland has got the border it has now, because those are the best borders this country had in the last 500 years or so. Defensible, with wide coast line (just think about how tiny Polish coastline was before the war, and the Germans wanted to take even that away), those are really good borders (apart from that straight line along Kaliningrad Oblast), also, it seems we won't escape having the "Big Brother" lurking just to the north, then it were the Germans, now we exchanged them for the Russians. But this all came at the price. Price of human lifes. Both Polish and German. And we shouldn't forget that. To any German, I wish our countries put our past behind us, and worked together for a better future as partners. Cheers.
Siege of India? Behenkelavde. India wasn't sieged, it makes no sense how can a whole nation of 3.2 million sq miles be sieged? Use your brain mate. It was attacked
As a Slovak I am ashamed of such terrible crimes. Germany may have done terrible things during the war but that is no excuse for what we did to innocent germans. It's a disgrace that Slovak nationalistic government didn't cancel Benes edicts.
Darker part ? Tell me alternative please ? Would you like expect the war to end and people would just go sign and dance together ? Rly after all the shit the nazis did to native population in occupied countries ? Like ok Hans I know you were responsible for the dead of my children but its okay no problem see you tommorow ?
Basically what inspired The Promise from Avatar where Fire Nation colonists-whether if they are born in Earth Kingdom or not-are deported to their country to restore the balance of power. In context, the world suffered a century-long conquest and war with Fire Nation that colonized western half of Earth Kingdom (large chunk of the populace in the colonies being bicultural), exterminated an entire civilization of Air Nomads, and devastated the Southern Water Tribe. Not to mention embedded cultural segregation based on elements before the war. So concept of dual citizenship is lost to them, even the good guys Aang Gang.
My grandmother emigrated to the USA just before WWII. Her siblings in Poland fled from the Russians except one sister. Out of her husband, five children and two grandchildren, only one son lived herself and one grandson.The spoke Russian and thought they would be ok. Biggest mistake. She eventually with her son and grandson would up in Germany near Lubeck. I still have distant family in Poland who have German ancestry and were allowed to stay since they had Polish mates.
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Would you make a video about the Pakistani ISI, the British MI6 and so on???
I disagree with your opinion that expelling hostile and rebellious minorities is immoral. The world is a cruel place where the single most important goal is survival and I don't think there's anything wrong with expelling a people group who is threat to the survival of a nation. German minorities living in Eastern and Central European nations where actively undermining their host nations and Soviet Union and it's satellite states had ample reasons for the expulsion of their German minorities.
@@elhombredeoro955 Did you even watch the video ? first there is the UN convention then forbid all kind of expulstion and ethic clennings as crime against humanity.ALso the most expulstion came form territories that belong to germany before stalin annex them.
It was not collective punishment nor "ethnic cleansing". The British and the Americans agreed to expulsion of ethnic Germans because they willingly gave up their Czechoslovak, Polish or Yugoslavian citizenship by accepting "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" which was in fact oath of allegiance to Third Reich. They effectively took German citizenship. Many of them joined German armed forces which is another way to lose Czechoslovak, Polish or Yugoslavian citizenship. I know as a fact that in Yugoslavia they were placed in internment camps (just like in Denmark) because they were treated as foreigners (they no longer had Yugoslavian citizenship). Many died. At the time one did not need to be in internment camp in order to die of hunger. Some were brought to justice and executed after a trial because of war crimes they have committed as members of Prince Eugen Volunteer Division. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_SS_Volunteer_Mountain_Division_Prinz_Eugen
Even today many countries can revoke ones citizenship under these conditions:
Run for public office in a foreign country
Enter military service in a foreign country
Apply for citizenship in a foreign country
Commit an act of treason (join SS).
@@HomerXXX Stalin anexxed german teritories ? How? Go back to school....
Just found this and it is quite interesting - we had an elderly lady going to our church in Canada. She was an ethnic German living in eastern Poland and she was about 11 years old when the war started.
Her Father was conscripted by one of the warring armies and to the day she died she had no idea of what happened to him.
After the war she and her family bounced around several of the Displaced Person camps until she was able to emigrate to Canada about 1950.
She eventually married in Canada, to another European refugee, and learned English only when her children stared in school, although she spoke Polish, German and Ukrainian.
The life story was incredible and it was such a privilege to have known her and hear her story - we have NO freaking idea how GOOD we have it here in North America!
Sounds exactly like my Omas life story
Wonderful story Guy. And I noticed you said she learned English when she came to Canada. In the USA, the latinos who come from other countries refuse to learn English and then they join gangs like MS-13 or the Latin Kings, etc. and begin to sell drugs for the the cartels and they begin to destroy America like termites destroy a house from within.
D W My Oma as well!
😭
Well...Europe has been fighting each other for hundreds of years...they started both WORLD WARS (Germany) which in turn caused millions to die n suffer! Ther terrorized All of Europe..so imho..it was like karma and now they were reaping what they sowed! Look at what they did in the Scandinavian countries....purposely Starving the people especially the children! I believe it was the winter of 43 or 44, not sure but I viewed film footage of it and it was horrific! I also saw a film on protestants n catholics hating Jews! When you think of all the damage done thru our all of Europe, it's hard to feel sorry for the Germans! Now look at Europe. It's nothing like it used to be...inept leaders welcoming "refugees" with totally different cultures n religions into Germany, France, England mainly, you will have disastrous results....they already have! Spain is doing a better job...as well as Poland n Hungary! So yes, we have had it good in America but it wasn't free....and we are now seeing the Evil n corruption in our own country! We may have to shed blood to take our country back! We are trying to be peaceful about it..but time will tell!
I live in a town that lost around 90 % of its prewar population, in this case it was Italian, the whole region (Istria) passed from Italy to Yugoslavia, and in the next 10 years (from 1945 to the mid 50's) nearly everybody left. Seventy years later the void left by the original inhabitants can be still seen and felt...
I live in a town that lost 99% of its prewar populiation. Before WW1 my town belonged to Germany after WW1 Lithuania took it and right before WW2 Germany took it back. Until 1945 town was dominated by germans and areas around town was dominated by lithuaninans. 1944/1945 when soviets were nearing about 99.9% fled and only few ever came back.
@Majestic Satire yep
Yea, i heard that the croatian Ustasha in the partisan uniforms killed or exiled 200 000 Italian civilians in Istria. Correct me if i am wrong.
I always thought that the peninsula looked odd being apart of Croatia. It just looks like a weird appendage someone slapped onto the country and now I know that's kind of what happened
Is it now in Slovenia?
There should be a mention how the Germans reacted to those Volksdeutsche fleeing from the East. They were treated too often as Untermenschen, as a pest, barely worthy of the barnyard space they graciously granted them. This is still one of the reason the old generation of expatriots stick together so much. They were hated in their old countries (for being associated with the crimes of Naziism) AND their new coutry (which despite their alleged kinship simply mistrust the Eastern "barbarians"). Thankfully that changed after some time, but still, many of the older folks sympathise more with their old region than the new one. An acquitance of mine once had problem with the town rules about marketplace taxes. The clerk, after hearing she's from Eger (yet Czech trough and trough), declared "You're from Eger? Me too!" And all was well and forgiven.
It's Cheb Nazi shithole.
My family is from what used to be East Prussia. My grandma who is Polish, lives in a house that was built before the war and one day a family of Germans showed up and were staring at her house from the street. Turns out they were descendants of the German family that used to live in that house so my grandma invited them over for lunch the next day and they had a great time and were very grateful for her hospitality!
That is a very nice story to hear, putting the bad things behind them and moving forward as fellow human beings.
My great grandmother aged 12(in 1944) was expelled from her home in Silesia, Germany, into inner Germany. Once she arrived there, people thought that her family was Polish, therefore didn’t like them! On her refugee she saw many horrifying sights and still to this day dosen’t like talking about it. Aged 18(in 1949) she moved to Britain with all her sisters, now all of their descendants are British. My great grandmother shall be 90 this year, I know at least 1 of her sisters is still alive, living in the same city as her, I have yet to meet her!
What are you waiting for?
Hope you meet your aunt before she passes away...
@@cerxusinvellum2289
Facts, I'd have visited at least once 😅
My dad’s family was from East Prussia. My grandfather was drafted in 1939 and miraculously survived practically the entirety of the war. He and my grandmother fled to the west and eventually ended up here in Canada.
God Bless, my granddad was drafted in the Prussian Army for WWI. Came to America via Canada to Buffalo NY. My birthplace.
A pity this criminal survived
@@patriciabrenner9216Your ancestors are the only criminals around here. How small brained has someone to be, to think a German soldier equals a criminal? Allied soldiers were criminals as well then.
@@patriciabrenner9216 It's not his fault that he was influenced by Nazi propaganda in the end he was just a puppet in the hands of the generals someone who can't think
My great, great grandmother emigrated from Tilsit in East Prussia in the 1870s. Given that Tilsit is now Sovetsk in the Russian Oblast of Kaliningrad I’m doubtful that any remaining potential relatives live there anymore.
in lithuanian we call it tilžė, a highly significant place for book smugglers 1864-1904
oblast translates to county I think
Let us say none.
@@nondvcordvco4244 oblast is zone or region
They used to make really good cheese (Tilsit Cheese)there when it was a part of Prussia!! No more, it is now made in Schleswig Holstein and Switzerland!!
My dad's earliest childhood memories were of that world, his family was ethnic German in Silesia, I was born in the USA decades later, and the stories I grew up hearing are simply unimaginable and heartbreaking. The stories they could not bear to discuss were likely so much worse still. I appreciate videos like this so much because it helps me understand people that I love
Oh German heartbreak... after they murdered and stole all over Europe.
Yeah, the way you guys worded it makes it sound like the German Empire planted all those ethnic germans in the east and not that they had been there for several centuries.
To be frank, some of them were planted there by the Empire, particulary the first generation of settlers living in Posen and West Prussia before 1914, but yeah... it's a very bad choice of words on his part.
Germans lived in Czechia since at least 1200s. BTW, this whole video had a tinge of Marxist propaganda - the 2015 hordes of violent Afghans and North Africans are put in the same bag as 1945 German families.
@@cernejr What nation was it that launched two of the bloodiest wars in the history of Europe by attacking pretty much every country around them? The Afghans or the North Africans?
Wimbold germany didn’t start ww1
@@goldenfiberwheat238
July 28 [The ethnic German emperor of] Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia
July 30 Germany sends Russia an ultimatum
August 1 Germany declares war on Russia and mobilizes
August 2 Germany invades Luxembourg
August 3 Germany declares war on France.
August 4 Germany invades Belgium
There were many ethnic groups affected by the WWII. About 500 000 Finnish citizens (Swedish & Finnish speaking) became refugees 1939 due to the “Winter War” which ended 13.3.1940. Many moved back 1941-43 when the lost land was retaken. But were refugees again by summer 1944 after the heavy assault by the Red Army. The Finnish Army held, preventing occupation and leaders succeeded to negotiate armistice by September 1944. The Red Army decided to focus on the race to Berlin. The resettling of so many refugees in a country with a population less than 5M was not without problems. The peace terms bore down heavily on the nation. My grandparents and parents were among the generations who saved the nation, rebuilt it and guaranteed the peace for later generations. Let’s hope and pray never again anywhere on Earth. Regardless the heavy cost, I believe Finland did not suffer as badly as other nations on both sides did. I was born 1954 and grew up during a time of relative prosperity; work, food, clothing and housing seemed at times scant but was or became always available when needed in the 50-70’s. I was happy 1972 affording a Honda CB 350 cc motorcycle on savings from summer jobs! I hope future generations of youth grow up in peace and receive the opportunities I was fortunate to have.
Charles McCarron
Yes, 500 000 Finnish refuges did not get much attention among the hoards of refuges throughout Europe during and after WWII! The key battles cost the Sovjets too much to stomach conquering Finland. It could have set them back months and months for the race to catch Berlin first. Fortunately for Finland, they preferred to be first in Berlin. Finnish observers hidden in the Russian rear were able to inform armistice negotiators that Soviet forces were moved from the Finnish front against Germany, which enabled negotiators to negotiate slightly better terms. But the terms were as such burdensome enough! Finland became under Soviet influence but remained independent and escaped occupation! Marshall Mannerheim was never happy being an ally with Nazi Germany. The Ribbentrop pact and Russian demands 1939 started the Winter War. It is questionable if Finland had any option to stay outside of Germany’s Barbarossa endeavor? I don’t think anyone could have been happy with what transpired once the WWII was in progress! I hope that shall be a warning to future leaders and generations never again!!
Charles McCarron
Yes, I am aware if Hitler’s visit and that unique recording. Mannerheim recognized well the complicated scenario Finland was in. It was easy for Germany to find sympathizers in Finland 1941 for the Barbarossa endeavor after Finland had been forced to defend itself in the Winter War 1939-40. It would have been better if those sympathizers had tempered their desire for revenge! Mannerheim did know Russia well, being a former general in the Russian imperial army himself. He was also fluent in German and a skillful cautious diplomat. He would have preferred to stay in retirement but was called back to serve the country when the storms of war begun to brew. It is my understanding he would have preferred to keep Finland on the sidelines out of the war. But the complicated scenario with Ribbentrop’s secret schemes and how events unfolded caused matters to run out of Finland’s control. My generation born in the 50’s considered ourselves fortunate! Most of us had a good childhood growing up in peace and relatively good prosperity. Good opportunities in receiving an education and work. There were concerns due to the cold war but it stayed cold fortunately. Things did begin to decline slowly in 90’s and later. Even while some part of the population did very well till about 2010. I am now concerned where we are really heading!? USA was long a leading stabilizing factor. USA has today become a destabilizing factor! And unreliable to be trusted. EU’s problems have become more pronounced!
ctixbwi they were very fortunate to keep their independence unlike the Baltic nations.
@@elbucho8867
Yes, The years after WWII were still precarious. The USSR's focus remained primarily in central Europe. And possibly beyond. But Finland never felt at ease. It seems that neither did anyone else during the cold war years, when the concern of that it could turn hot any moment simply because of some silly miscalculation or inadvertent mishaps somewhere. The consequences were known by all to be terminal for all! Finland did have a bilateral trade with the USSR, which was beneficial for both helping reduce tentions. Much of that trade has unfortunately withered, very likely after Russia developed in to an oligarcy. Russia has severe problems today, which primarily are internal. Russia has much work ahead to overcome their current internal challenges. Venturing on the old path to seek domination of central Europe or all of it will only exhaust Russia and Europe. Peaceful co-existence is essential!
Given how the Finns helped the Nazis, I say well deserved! Let us not forget how many were in the Waffen SS!
I'm from Lübeck, which is exactly on the very northern end of the border between West and East Germany. My mother said when she was in school in the 70s, in her entire class of 30 girls, she was the only one who had two native born parents. Everyone else had at least one or two parents who had fled from the East.
On my father's side, my grandfather is a refugee from Pommerania. Quite interestingly, the refugees from Pommerania had pretty good relationships with the Poles who settled in their old villages when they were allowed to visit their old homes. Because the Poles who were now living there were not the people who had expelled them, but the people who had also been forcibly expelled and resettled by the Soviets when they annexed the eastern part of Poland. The Poles in Pommerania had suffered through the same shit as the Germans that used to live there. Which is completely different from the situation in the Sudetenland, where people were chased out at gunpoint by their own neighbors and coworkers.
Ah yes . The horrors of sudetland ...
In so called Sudetenland the good Germans vote 90% of their votes for NSDAP and before their neighbors and coworkers chased them the good Germans chased those neighbors and coworkers and expelled them from their own land of Bohemia. There is nothing like sudetenland and never was, its just nazi term propaganda.
Got what they deserved germans and austrians killed and Fried to destroy Czech republic, so karma.
The Soviets weren't just thinking about deportations of Poles and Ukrainians - they did that. After WW2 (nd during it) there were a lot of expulsions in Europe, not just Germans.
So much for the socialist brotherhood of all men.
@@Yora21 This one was pretty much justified. Keeping Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine could have ended up in another Volhynia. it might have been the best way to stop the tragic circle of revenge.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia
The Soviets deported over 200k citizens from Poland and the Baltic in their invasion of 1939-41.
Who were they?
Sure. That was also bad. Still not the same scale as with the germans. 3,5 mil poles and some million Ukrainians. Pointing out the worst crime of them all is still very valid. Funnyly was Poland very involved in the ethnic cleansing post ww2
My father's family and relatives were Masuren Deutsche and were displaced from East, West Prussia and Pommerania after WW2. My dad's family had settled in Kolberg after being displaced following WW1 from the Posen province! His forefathers were teachers (and one of our great Oma's was a Kaschuben German aristocrat who'd moved as a child to East Prussia after her father died) and they were only allowed to speak only high German at home! But we were all Protestants and ALL were displaced west with most ending up in West Germany. None remained in our homeland!! The Masuren Deutsche like my ancestors were why so many areas where a vote was carried out following WW1 declared themselves for Germany/Prussia, including Danzig! My dad chose to emigrate with his family to Canada in the 1950s.
Masuren was actually just the southern part of east prussia. You are right about the votes there but Pommern and Danzig were pretty much completely german. That also didn't really matter as much german speaking places became part of poland for strategic reasons anyway. In upper silesia were the held referenda too they chose to split the territory arbitraryly. My family also has a related background.
German colonist such as you ancestors were rightfully expelled from those originally Polish lands.
@@filipnalewaja5609Ridiculous smooth brain, all of Poland was settled by Germanic tribes 2000 years ago up to Crimea (Crimean Goths). Slavs arrived later. Educate yourself before you genocide innocent families
Post-WWI "protecting ethnic minorities" became a convenient casus belli. Therefore, having ethnic monorities on one's territory got risky. Moreover, a land grab can also be legitimized by expulsion and replacement of the original inhabitants and then incorporating the territorty into the motherland (or fatherland) via a referendum. As long as borders can be shifted to "protect" minorities, expulsions will be inevitable.
True, that's why Baltic countries expel ethnic Russians. If Russia keeps expanding its territory, i feel no pity for those expelled Russians.
Overlooked part of history. Thank you!
My family was expelled from Marineweirder, Prussia (now Kwigzyn, Poland) and lost everything due to these expulsions. This was a genocide-lite against the German people, and is never mentioned in schools.
We Germans don't like to talk about it very much. We don't want to give the impression that we're pushing the blame on someone else. Even though the Soviets were not much better in many cases.
@Anonymous Guy No it won't. Because poles can't win a war, not for themselves anyway.
The whole incident should be called Convas of Slavic vengeance 🤣🤣🤣
@Anonymous Guy And the new Russian border will be outside Warsaw.
You are right. It is important to discuss the many mass ethnic expulsions and mass murders that took place in Europe after the war. You neglected to mention that many of the Germans that were expelled, lived on those regions for many generations.
Sadly that's what happens when a group loses a brutal war. Here in Serbia there are 300 000 Serbian refuges from 1990's wars from regions where Serbs lived for over 300+ years. Alot were expeled after the war. In Kosovo in just few months after the war when 40 000 NATO troops were present, 700 civilians were killed in their houses that didn't leave. In Kosovo in 2004 German soldiers refused to defend private property, people and churches that were attacked in a riot by teens of thousands of albanians, while French soldiers opened fire on so called protesters..
@@1GTX1 The Yugoslav Wars were fucked up. Bosniaks killed Croats and Serbians. Everyone killed Bosniaks. Croations killed Serbians. Serbians killed Croats and Albanians. Albanians killed Serbians. It was one of the most fucked up conflicts in the last years of the 20th century.
@@1GTX1 Since the Second Word War German troops have lost their fighting ability. Don't expect anything. If they had shot a few people down there, the whole world would have accused them of being the same cruel occupiers of the Balkans as the Wehrmacht had been.
the worst treated were the Volga Germans who got deported to Siberia during WW2 due to fears of them collaborating with the nazi's. At least 1.5 million would be brought to siberia practically enslaved and would cause the region they inhabited for centuries to never return to the numbers it once was. They mostly then were spread around Central Asia and Siberia after WW2 becoming sigificant minorities in those regions though they decreased once Germany reunified with only the one in Kazahstan being sigificant
I praised this channel for having the courage to talk about this horrible fact of history that has been kept in hiding for so long.
This documentary is merely an introduction in the topic, it only scratches its surface. Where could I go more in depth from here?
Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands" has some good work on this as does Robert Gellately's "Lenin, Hitler and Stalin"
There are some autobiographies I can recall. For example, I know of one autobiography written by an ethnic German, but I need to find the book again to find the title. Also, I think there was a single edition of the book too, so it might be harder to source. But if I find it I will put the title here so you can find it. It's written in German, English, and Gottscheerisch (I believe).
@Русское море you are the living stereotype of the guy who judges a book by its cover
Read the fucking book first lol
@Русское море I would be careful. He makes a lot of claims in the book that have been debunked.
@Русское море: James Buck is a very untrustworthy writer, he made up a lot of his stories out of imagination. read "Other Losses" with care and distrust, and check what others say.
A brutal part of war no one talks about , good to see someone is focusing on it .....even today these things are happening in different parts of world.....
Actually in the countries where it happened we talk about it quite a lot. It shaped the lives, landscape and everything here. Greetings from the so-called Sudetenland.
It's still happening in Germany, they are allowing refugees to just flood through Europe from those other parts of the world. It really needs to stop, yet they are too afraid of being labelled Nazi to do so.
Are you planning on episode about Ukrainian nationalists after the war?
@Русское море "The richest republic of the Soviet Union" sounds like the richest hut of the concentration camp.
@Русское море Ты мне напомнил старый анекдот. Приходит Андропов (А) к Брежневу (Б).
А: Мы тратим уйму сил борясь с перебежчиками, а в результате имеем рост количества антисоветчиков внутри границ. Давайте откроем на месяц границы, пусть все недовольные уедут.
Б: Ты что, хочешь, чтоб в СССР мы остались вдвоём?
А: А второй кто?
@Русское море Its not like the Soviets did this thing called Holodomor that killed 6 million Ukrainians lmao
Русское море I’m sorry, what government did the US overthrow, and please tell me you’re not talking about that scumbag Yanukovych. He was overthrown in the Euromaidan protests. That was the people of Ukraine, not America
Русское море Actually, Stalin exploited the famine to explicitly target ethnic minorities, from Kazakhs to Volga Germans and of course Ukrainians. And many nations offered aid but it was rejected and the Soviets continued to export grain during the period despite people desperately needing that grain. It was intentional on the government’s part, it was calculated, and it was cruel
My Great Great Grandfather emigrated to Wisconsin in the mid 1800s from a town called Knappendorf in the region of the Sudetenland. In the 1980s one of my family members revisited the town (now called Knapovec) to try to find any sign of our family lineage. While she was there, she met a Czech woman who spoke German to her. When asked about the family, she recalled that she knew one of the members of the family, who was at the time a man in his 60s. She said that he was the only one that she knew, but she did not know if he had any family or not. She recalled that in June 1945, the Russians showed up to the town and gave everyone exactly 10 minutes to pack up all of their belongings before they were forced to March to the new Germany. She never heard from him again. Though I find it quite sad that my family is not where they used to be, I am content with at least knowing what happened to them. I’ll try to do some more research and find if anyone else from my family had moved to Germany but it gets really hard when you’re looking for records that probably don’t exist.
dont be sure they ever arrived in germany though
The early part of this video is very flawed and misconstructs early german identity and nationalism.
A Bavarian and a Saxon are not a different ethnic groups lol, they are both germanics coming from the same migration wave around 200 AD. Maybe the channel doesnt know ancient history good enough but this stuff is harmful because uneducated people will think that modern nation states are just some arbitrary construction instead of a long historical process of negation.
There was already an ethnic german identity in early medieval times, most famous example was Otto the greats anti slavic policies in 968. The idea that ethnic supremacy was an invention of the 19th century is high school tier research of history.
Not an attack on the channel as a whole, still a fan!
Also to compare the refugee crisis of >ethnic germans< into Germany after forced expulsion to a wave of volunteer refugees who leave their own countries to go to germany is pretty disingenuous but i doubt any viewer could take that serious. Sad!
@@barccy nobody denies that borders on the edges can be a bit wacky but there is always a central dominant ethnic group.
A pole living on the edges of germany doesnt invalidate the "germanic" peoples.
Kind of like orange and yellow, nobody can tell you when specifically yellow turns to orange but i can still tell the concept of orange and yellow apart.
Same for nation states, is the ethnic border to the slavic/french/hungarian borders a bit wacky? obv but there is still a clear core territory and a core ethnicity.
Germany and the german peoples were always a distinct group that negated itself from the romans, celts, slavs and hungarians.
@@barccy I wouldn't say that's the only reason an empire falls. Infighting is one but there's way more reasons such as economic trouble.
This is tangential to your post, but it seems like you would know.
The Saxons are named after a long, curved blade they used called a saex. The Scythians are named after a long, curved blade they used called a scythe. Is there any proven connection between the two groups? This era is not my specialty, but it seems like that's too much for coincidence. Any ideas?
@@kentchamberlain5720 The Scythian and saxons are both indo european and thats more or less where the connection starts and ends basically.
In Czechoslovakia ethnic Germans were forced to leave at gun point with 3 hours to pack. Of course this included Germans who had opposed the Nazis.
@@tompeled6193 why?
@@botowner8623 They betrayed the Czech nation. They were traitors.
Yes, those who were Nazis had to leave the country, the others could stay. If your grandmother told you otherwise, now you know why...
@@mirekpavlik7334 Funny isn't it that after the war all said they weren't Nazis.
@@botowner8623 because suddeten germans destabilised czechoslovakia before ww2 and were hitlers excuse to invade czechoslovakia.
I want to thank you for the amazing information you provide to your viewers. This is fascinating material. I appreciate all of your efforts. Many thanks!
1:54 Hungary is on the map since 895
I’m glad to see this covered, as it’s often overlooked. I’m half German, and some of my German ancestry is Danube Swabian (Donau Schwaben), from the historical region of the Banat (today mostly in Romania and Hungary). They left in the mid 1800s and came to America, and I’m glad they were spared the horrors that later came to the families that remained. The last of my ancestors to leave Europe for America (they all had to cross the ocean at some point, mostly Germans, British and Irish) were my great great grandparents, who were born in Germany and came to the US about 1900. They lived through both world wars in America, and I’ve always thought it must have been a strange experience speaking with a German accent, as a naturalized American citizen, during WWII. My family was very lucky that they happened to leave before all that, those from Germany proper but particularly the volksdeutsche lines of my family. I often wonder about the fates of my cousins, who stayed behind.
According to the book "After the Reich" approximately 15 million Germans were expelled from their homelands in central and eastern Europe. These were people who lived outside of Germany for generations. Of that 15 million, it is estimated that 3 million Germans were murdered by other ethnic groups during their journey to Germany. Each time a train carrying Germans entered an eastern European town, the Germans were forced to disembark. Their possessions were stolen, the men beaten and murdered, and the women were assaulted. This happened repeatedly throughout the long journey to Germany. Because of this forced migration, the population in Germany was actually higher than what it was before WW II.
No, they lived inside of Germany for generations. Slubice is not any less German than it's neighbour city Frankfurt. The border was drawn for strategic reasons after World War 2 and isn't defined by historical circumstances.
@@benmatlock5746 In the 1800's Germans had been invited to settle on Russian land by Catherine the Great They lived in small communities and some had settled deep inside Russia.
Oh well... Karma is a bitch.
They lived on slavic lands stołem by germans, so at the end they got what they deserved. Germans should be happy thath they were not exterminated after all their crimes.
@@patriciabrenner9216 why Karma?
Italian scholar Claudio Magris wrote that WW2 eliminated two previously-important groups from Eastern Europe: the Jews and the Germans. I think he's correct: both the butchered and the butchers disappeared from the map of that area, even though the former were exterminated while the latter were violently forced to move into the two new German states (German Federal Republic and German Democratic Republic) and sometimes even killed in the process.
The term butcher and butcher’s is subject to the era not the race.
not all areas did Germans support the Nazi's
One can never forgive the Nazi cruelties, but I feel sorry for so many ordinary Germans who were dragged into the war by Hitler and lost everything because they were born in the wrong country in the wrong time. I always thought we Allies were better then then the Nazis, but this makes me feel ashamed.
The lesson is. Don't start stupid nationalist wars. It always turns out bad for everyone involved.
Calling Poland 'a new country" is outrageous
Why? Up to 1916 there had been no such country.
nonsense. Read a book.
@@thkempe Nonsense. Read a history book.
@@thkempe not at all, never...
@@KR-jt4ut reading might be too tough, a yt video, maybe?
Unfortunately if you watch video of ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland welcoming the German army you can understand why these countries wanted Germans out after the war.
Thanks for this great video.
when you see of of your fav channel comment on a video and only four people like it
Dutch=deutsch
My grandmother fled from East-Prussia over 'a frozen part of the Ostsee'. Apparently the village she grew up in was gifted to a Russian general for his war efforts. Her family undertook attempts to get back back their property untill the late 70's.
I could never confirm wether this was true or not and where she actually lived. I have been wanting to research it but have no clue where to begin, since everyone has died for over ten years now.
Good they were expelled. A pity they survived. Given what Germans had done, this lot paid a bit!
@@patriciabrenner9216 Are you insane? These were civilians living simple lives and they had been living in the region for 400 years...Misguided Hatred is never the answer...
The fate of your grandmother is shared by hundredthousand of east prussians. You can find a lot of informations in the internet. East Prussia was a country once belonging to the prussian kingdom. In the eighteenths century it had a low population due to pandemies and the prussian king Frederic the Great offered protestantic😮 refugees from the catholic austrian empire to give them farmland. So your grandmothers ancestors may have come from regions like Salzburg.
My mother is also coming from east prussia. When the red army approached to the west her family were transported 1944 to Saxony and later she came to Hamburg. In 1945 the country senator (gauleiter) Koch, a terrible nazi forbad any escape and a tragedy happened. The russians attacked this country as the first german soil and made a propaganda story of it. The red army following the blood trace of the SS through her homeland (over 600 belorussian villages were massacred) was offered a revenge by Stalin. His official slogan was: „kill the germans in their caves!“
The russian offensive came with bitter fightings and some russian massacres, which was immediately used by the nazi propaganda. The civil population tried to flee in panic and long refugee treks of horsewagons filled the streets to the west. It was Winter and extremely cold and the treks were attacked by bombers and artillery. The only free road was leading over the frozen bay. Many wagons were breaking through the ice. Who made it alive arrived in cities further west like Danzig coming under siege. Passenger ships were the last way out but many were sunk by russian torpedos. The worst case was the sinking of the Wilhelm-Gustloff. Arriving in harbours further west the refugees were exposed to angloamerican airattacks. I
It should also be mentioned that the inmates of concentration camps were often massacred by the ss guards. In East prussia 5000 women were shot or were forced to run in the icecold sea.
Today the southern half of east prussia is belonging to poland. The northern half came to russia and is an enclave, isolated from the russian mainland by poland and the baltic states. It‘s mainly military area.
@@patriciabrenner9216 Shameful being. You are the very reason such disasters will happen again, no matter who will be the one to commit those deeds.
@@suchendnachwahrheit9143 Hum no. The Germans are the reason this happened. With their lebensraum and heimat and their looking down on others. They were a people of criminals.
It’s a really difficult topic. When discussing it from the distance of 80 years its’s quite clear. Though when you lived it... in Czechoslovakia, your neighbors were excited for Hitler, in Sudetenland they actively worked against your state , then they evicted you in 1938 or made you the “untermensch”. After that in 1939, they locked you in “protectorate” , started killing your jewish neighbors and thought themselves the king of the world. Also need to consider that even in april 1945, the german army was still massacring people in villages, making sure people in prisons/concentration camps don’t live to see the liberation. When you come home and find out most of your family was murdered usually you are not such a big fan. I would wish the expulsion did not happen. It hurt my country a lot . Though I understand why it happened. The biggest issue there was that some people who wanted to make up for their inactivity/collaboration during the occupation comitted attricities which should not happened. Most of them were not punished as well.
@Fabian Kirchgessner yet I would say that the Czechs got it harder-they were killed, enslaved and were to be annihilated by Germans-that IS genocide for you and also sudeten Germans did not help any Czechs that have escaped concentration camps or any Czech refugees/people who desperately needed help-even killed them and actively supported Hitler and the genocide of Czechs-didn't even one second considered themselfes guilty or evil by the actions that they made...Czechs on another hand only expelled the sudeten Germans-I would say that they were pretty kind to only expell the sudeten Germans after what they did to Czechs.
Germans and austrians starterd killing Czecha. Jewish neighbours collaborated massively with germans and austrians.
The end result of hitlers insanity. Unimaginable pain and suffering for millions
All his fault
@KA- BOOM!!! They were citizens of those Eastern European countries, they're descendants of German colonists which were settling in the east in previous centuries.
@KA- BOOM!!! Dutch are closely related to the Germans, so I guess they would try to assimilate them or promote pan-Germanic unity. I'm not sure what was actual Hitler's plan for the Netherlands.
Hitler was insane, yes! Buy the ordeal of civilians being " cleansed", killed or displaced is not only his fault, but also the result of communist tyrants who applied this as a purposeful policy, and the allies are also to blame for not defending eastern Europe, condemnig it to more than 2 generations of tyranny... Shame on the so called "humankind" and human rights and so called democrats....
@@carlosgauerke2466 how were the Allies going to stop Stalin? They would get steamrolled if they tried in 1945 in Europe (plus it was illogical)
Poland was not a "new country". Poland is an ancient European commonwealth but it was partitioned right at the end of the 18th century. After WWI they managed to re-emerge from the ashes of Europe.
Well it *was* a new country(political entity), just an old nation.
Poland has been a country since the 0970's!....and prob much earlier than that.
The slavs arent native to Poland
My maternal grandparents were German refugees in postwar Europe. The eventually made their way to Canada, some of them at least
Wouldn't it be ironic if Germans had to go back to empty lands in Eastern Europe from Canada if things go bad there
My grandparents on my mother's and father's side are germans from the Volga region of Russia. They came from different villages: leaving for USA America in the 1920s. My father's family came through Ellis Island. My mother's family came through Canada. My grandfather was returned to Europe because he had scabies. I guess they didn't know what Scabies were, so they sent him back instead of putting him in quarantine. At least that's the story things back then was very different. They also changed my Grandfather's name, his name was Ebe, but to them it sound, Uebe. I guess that happened to alot of people. A year later he finally arrived. Where they eventually found each other in Wisconsin, then we became a blended family. Both families 👪 where farmers in Wisconsin. As a child Both of grandparents only spoke German, finally English-speaking came to light in the 1960s. It's amazing enough we children didn't speak German, I guess we could understand it. Since most of us were born during WW2, our parents chose not to teach us German, so that we were not subjected to hatred.
My Aunt who is now 96 had this happen to her and her family, I have it recorded. She lived in a part of Germany that became part of Poland. There was also a lot of looting done, and not telling Germans they were leaving their homes forever.
Dear David ...... You did not give even an adequate historical background to why there were millions of ethnics Germans in Eastern Europe to begin with. You reduced 800 years of immigration and settlement to two sentences, namely the supposed conflict between ethnicity and nationalism. I think that the persons watching this program deserved a better explanation. The history of German settlement in Easter Europe is very complicated and varied. Already in the 12th century we can see the movement of Saxons to Transylvania and the setting up of German civil societies in Poland such as the city of Krakow which was established with a system of German laws. Another factor is the drawing up of borders based on kingdoms which pre-dated any sort of feeling to account for ethnic groups within such a kingdom. I would suggest that you remake the beginning as it is historically weak. The end is much better....Stephan in Ottawa
A small correction: despite the depressed birthrate, the DDR never fully solved their postwar housing shortfall even by 1990.
No, that's the anti-GDR myth.
high perentages of ethnic germans in poland and czechoslovakia collaborated with and supported worked for the Nazis...
In Czechoslovakia 90% of Germans voted for NSDAP party, but now they are all innocent and don't know what they have done...
@@mirekpavlik7334 So you are saying that you can injure and kill people because of what they voted? Take their posessions by force? What about their children? Should you maybe kill their parents and deport them like animals? I think it is better to treat people like people and not divide them into groups.
... because Poland and Czechoslovakia were already treating them like shit
@@mirekpavlik7334 So what? LOL
@@PantheraKitty so they're gone LOL
Poland was not a "new state" how can you be so ignorant? Poland's history is over 1000 years old and at some point was one of major superpowers on the continent. in 1918 we managed to win our freedom from greedy states that over 100 years earlier decided to occupy our teritory. You want to deal with history then learn it first.
the polish republic was a new state
@@heartsofiron4ever yes and this is how alternative version of history is created...
@@heartsofiron4ever since Poland was a "new state" then Russia's claim that Poland took part of Russia's teritory is true and suddenly it turns out that it was Poland who actually invaded Russia and Germany beginning II World War. Give me a break
@@STRACHU100 true, the polish republic just wanted to unite the poles under one banner
@@heartsofiron4ever Its a bit more than that... We wanted to be free again and make our own future. Idea still illusive even today.
Wow. When this channel would be talking about the expulsion of Germans from ethnic German areas, I was expecting when the Czechs had committed brutal atrocities against the Germans in the Sudetenland. Many of them died the same way POWs in occupied German lands died: digging their own graves, executed in mass numbers, raped, etc. Well, I hope that this channel can cover it soon because this event hasn’t really been talked about which was the reason why that I wondered why there weren’t many Germans in the Czechia today or during the Cold War.
Most Germans were brutally evicted and ethnically cleansed from the Sudentenland by the Czech's after the war, but murder was uncommon. Most of it was forcing the Germans to leave their former homes and just walk across the border in very harsh conditions.
No, murder wasn't common. there are cases of marches where the Czechs guarding the Germans were as brutal as the nazis were, like the Brno march, but those were rare. Joint Czech-German historical commission counted some 10 000 people killed, and another 10 000 dead from other reasons, out of some 2 200 000 deported. Part of my family was also deported, by the way.
The Studentenland still suffers today from a lack of population
in the Hultschiner Laendchen, Deutsch Krawarn and the Troppauer area you will still find the native Germans from before 1945 and their descendents still. There are German cultural ties and good connections to the Germans remaining in the Ratibor area of what is now Poland, Silesia. ( Schlesien) But true in most of the romantic and beautiful Sudentenland there are few Germans left. Look at Freiwaldau /Jesenik and also Zuckmantel at all those villas and even factories. No wonder they kicked out the real German owners as they wanted to get those villas for near free, which they did. Gruss. R.
@@robertomanz6399 They weren't exactly native.
This is a very overlooked and tragic topic. Thank you for giving it its own video!
I just found this site and am so glad I did. All this is still so fascinating to me and indeed, relevant to current world events. Excellent job, Sir!
Another reason for the mass expulsion of Germans post WWII was that at the time many world leaders considered the 1923 "population exchange" between Greece and Turkey as somewhat of a success that lead to more stability in the relationships between both countries.
That says a lot about those world leaders.
i also wanna know how they repopulated all these once german towns and cities. how did stettin go from being a core german city to being completely depopulated and replaced with poles?
The Soviets took over parts of Poland and the polish population had to leave. So there were a lot of polish, who needed a new place to live. In the case of Stettin, I know, that some groups of germans first had to stay: Workers, who were responsible for electricity for example to keep the city working.
Stop beliving the kraut lies, there were no "german cities" german were a minority in all of these places.
Some towns unforunatly just never grew back and became a shadow of it's formerself and an eerie reminder
It depended on their current government.
Hats off, great episode guys.
Germans have been settled along the Volga River Region in Russia since the 1700s. During WW2, Stalin formed these Germans to Siberia. My grandmother heard from her sister in the 60s and thar was the last time.
There were roughly 1.5 million “Germans from Russia” in Russia in 1900. Roughly 250K left for Canada, the US and South America between 1900 and 1914. Famine due to farm collectivization in the 1920s killed about a 1/3 of those left. The remaining million were deported to Siberia and Khazatastan in the late 30s and early 40s. Few Volga Germans remained in Russia to be expelled to Germany by the end of WWII.
Germans always create wealth and have skills
Milovan Djilas, who was either Tito's number two and an author, or a political prisoner and an author wrote in Wartime that the ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia had not aided the Nazis, were good citizens and were probably the most productive ethnicity in the country, and expelling them for the reason they did was wrong.
When the Nation State is discussed it should be pointed out how the concept of a single national identity or single origin is maybe Iceland and no where else. Yet places where preserving this myth is considered an important national issue, are usually persecuting some of their citizens. The groups we all belong to are once refugees, currently refugees or in the future will be refugees.
Good episode.
Wasn’t there so called Volga Germans which were Germans that lived in Russia which were like all moved farther East into Russia during the war
the wolga germans were ask to sett le there by Kathrine the great of russia
Yes.
They were brought to Krasnoyarsk
I don't think anyone would want to be a refugee during or after WWII. My compliments to those who made this video a reality.
Thank you for sharing this!
This English speaking presenter (American?) shows clear misunderstanding of the concept of nation and its importance. Also, he missed the main reasons for expulsion of Germans. For example, they penetrated Czech lands for a thousand years, but never accepted the laws of the land and oppressed the local population economically and culturally. Before the WWII, they acted treasonously against the government, actively joined the Naci movement and contributed to the occupation of the country. They wished to be a part of the Third Reich and their wish was fulfilled after the war.
My father was ten years old when the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary took place. He was traumatized for the rest of his life.
The ethnic migrations actually began be3fore the outbreak of the war. Hitler and Stalin came to an agreement, Stalin would send the "Volga Germans" to Germany in exchange for which Hitler would send Slavs living in Germany such as the Wends and Sorbs. I believe the total number of Germans "repatriated" by this program amounted to about 5 million. Many of these people were resettled in conquered lands to the east, i.e., Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia as part of Hitler's plans to Aryanise Eastern Europe. After the end of the war they were expelled to Germany.
There is far more to it tan that though. First, your numkber is to high for that. Second, the ctieria of who was ethnical german was redicioulousoly lose. If you had a german ancestor 4 generations ago, but didnt even speak german to begin with, you were considered a german.
And no not all the gertmans expelled after WW2 were these newly moved germans. Most were "germans" who lived their for generations already.
That was at least voluntarily done to the germans, even if based on lies. And many stayed behind, hence why there were still germans to kick out after the war.
"Wend" and "Sorb" in the context of 20th century Germany as synonyms, though, with Wend being considered pejorative nowadays.
I believe I was adding the transfer of Germans, which happened to the planned transfer of Slavs, which apparently didn't happen. It also includes actual Germans who were resettled in conquered areas during the war. There were also 2.7 million Volkesdeustche from Polish areas who participated in the virtual enslavement of the Polish population. As far as their actualethnicity, well, if they said they were German and the Nazis said they were German, who is to argue?
@Silvana Barilla NO, Wenden was used for West Slavs west of Oder in general.
Strange how a history-focused channel could ignore details like the prohibition on imports and even aid of food from countries like Sweden.
Hungary appeared after WW1 ? What nonsense are you talking about ?
There’s an excellent book on this topic called “Orderly and Humane.”
Wow that was moving. Particularly when it was mentioned why Germany may have taken so many refugees recently from Syria. Amazing. Thank you this and all the episodes.
Many people were not happy, but there were plenty of old German people who were saying "Remember when we came here?"
Outstanding job as usually.
Their still is a subsequent minority of native Germans in modern Poland today, especially in Lower Silesia and southern half of former East Prussia
Thank you for covering this
My ethnic German grandfather was born in Hungary in 1938. Him and his remaining family were deported to East Germany in 1948.
Life eventually turned out well for him, and he's still happily living in Canada 66+ years after leaving Europe forever
I also live in Canada and am of the same age.
@@ottomeyer6928 Did you come from Hungary?
I bet the Hungarians are also happy that he left their land. Win win situation!
@@gostavoadolfos2023 The economic damage in these countries was enourmous though.
Braindrain on an unimaginable scale.
Guys. I empathize. But after the Sudentenland fiasco, could you really blame the Slavic nations for being wary of having significant German minorities within their borders?
Exactly. As Czech, I can tell you, that the Czecho-German issues here simply stopped once the Germans were gone. Sad but true. So yeah, good riddance I guess.
@@PotatoSmasher420 Perhaps all countries should get rid of their "significant minorities" to avoid issues.
@Polish Hero Witold Pilecki Indeed. Germanic presence in the now west Poland comes long before the west Slavs arrived.
@@PotatoSmasher420 Having talked extensively on this very topic with several Czech historians, its is easy to see that there was extensive collaboration with the Nazis by the German minorities in the region. The Czechs lost their freedom partially do to their German minority, mob justice and vengeance after was almost a natural consequences of the actions done by the Germans done during the war.
@Silvana Barilla Crap. Germans weren't ready to participate, there was huge movement for joining Germany or Austria that was inspired by the WIlson's ideas. They really thought that the victorius powers would gave MORE territories to the defeated Germany... Anyway, as the German-speaking parts of Bohemia and Moravia contained two thirds of the country's coal and large part of the industry, they were considered necessary for the survival of the country (which was true - after the Sudeten crisis, the republic was economically neutered) and were occupied during the winter of 1918. Most calls for independence died out in 1919, as the Germans saw that the living in Germany was far worse, and THERE WAS MINORITY RIGHTS PROTECTION in the Czechoslovakia. In fact, famous German politician and nazi collaborateur boasted that during his whole life and political carreer (he was member of Parliament) in Czechoslovakia, he never learned Czech. There were even German political parties in the government. What killed the relationship between the nations was the Great economical crisis, which hit German speaking areas with their light export-oriented industry extra hard, and Hitler's promises. Part of my family is Czech German, by the way.
0:44 a state and a nation are not the same thing a nation like the Hausa stretch across many states like Nigeria but to call Nigeria anything other than a state or country would be false as they represent at least partly many different nations.
Best example in Europe is Switzerland since they are 4 nations, 4 languages, 1 state and 1 ethnic group. Or Britain as the English, Scottish,Welsh and Irish are all different ethnically and nationally but are one country/state
He rightfully mentioned Germans being deported to work in Soviet Union. However, I am reading a memoirs of Soviet conquest in Poland and it seemed it was arbitral decision of Soviet security to deport or murder someone. All people were filtered and some were taken. They did return after years or not. It was not completely based on nationality, but Soviet citizens were in the worst position. Locals do not subscribe to the view that only Germans were taken. Arbitrary decision, Poles, Germans or Ukrainians.
Moreover, Soviet Union performed ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians populations within new borders of Poland. They were deported to internment camps in Eastern Ukraine, exactly at the time of famine. Many of them didn't survive.
Unfortunately, violence begets violence.
Germany and Poland had a problem to solve, constant deadly violence at their border, France and Britain had nothing to do with this but they used Poland to get their war with Germany. They had promised the Poles to come and help, they didn't, and they declared war on Germany instead... if they had stayed out of it, Germany and Soviet Russia would have destroyed each other, and the world would have been at peace much sooner and millions of lives would have been saved.
With the exception of one of my grandfathers my entire family has been expulsed from the former east German regions. My "step grandpa" is still telling stories about this time. He always tells about how they had to hide from the Russian soldiers. He was alone with some neighbors fleeing and when they got caught by them the checked his pants to see if he is actually a boy. He says the girl and it's mother have "not been that lucky".
What goes around comes around.
@@patriciabrenner9216 So when it is your turn you will be fine then?
@@Davey-Boyd My turn? The Germans did expel my family from Poland, I mean the ones they didn't murder. They had to flee for their lives. So it was these people's turn!
@@patriciabrenner9216 You are an evil piece of work aren't you
@@patriciabrenner9216 yes, but that was ordered by the NAZI government. Not even a proper GERMAN government, and especially not the GERMAN PEOPLE.
My family also went through it …😢
They were expelled but returned back to Poland/Silesia
How old is that tea on the table?
There is a reason it never gets touched... 😂
The cycle of violence in the world is a disgusting and cruel reminder of how bad our world can be, which is why we should always be thankful for peace.
My mother's family, ethnic German-Hungarians, were expelled from Hungary and settled in Germany. Don't think for a minute that the native Germans welcomed their ethnic brethren with open arms. The Germans were very hostile toward ethnic Germans. German-Hungarians were called "garlic eaters" and "gypsies." They didn't want to rent to them nor feed them. Some of this is understandable given that the German's themselves were without homes and food. An uncle who had lived in Germany during the war, had some contacts and was able to secure my mother's family an apartment. Eventually, my mother's mother, brothers and sisters emigrated to Canada while my father took our family to the US. So my family was one of the fortunate ones to have found new, welcoming homes in Canada and the US. We are forever grateful.
I would think that they would be welcomed as nazism preached the unity of the German people on the basis of their race, even if the expelled Germans came from foreign lands.
@@heruy8274 Yes, one would think that, but that turned out not to be the case.
I think thats not true, maybe your mother say that because thats her experience. But in European sense and the realities of it its alot more grounded
West Germany or East Germany pretty much welcome any foreign volkdeutsche with open arms to solve the refugee crisis
All those stigma you said is rather pre WW1 where German unity were rather not unified, but even Nazis welcome ethnic Germans with open arms, and also post war sufferings of fellow Germans regardless of origins as a sense of unity
@@AlamoOriginal That's not entirely true. Most people from East Prussia fled to the West. In my state (Schleswig-Holstein), the population doubled in just one year, and that at a time when the big cities were completely bombed and the locals had hardly any living space. In some cases, forced accommodation was necessary. Especially in rural areas, people who owned houses had to share with refugees. The available food, which was barely enough for the locals, also had to be shared. It is logical that the refugees from the East were not always welcomed with open arms at first. Those were very hard times for both parties. I was born in 1949 and can still remember that until the end of the 1950s there were large wooden barracks camps in which refugees had to live until reconstruction slowly got underway. When I started school in 1956, there were 42 children in my class. More than half of the children came from refugee families, most of them from East Prussia and Pomerania.
@@callsigndd9ls897 yeah my apologies if my wording is not too representative, but i do have some sort of family books stored in local library chronicling their struggle fleeing from anywhere east of the Oder, funnily enough its rather vague where they tell they originally came from (probably and most likely due to Volkdeustche nazi connections), but i believe from somewhere in Silesia
But they mentioned all the time despite the sufferings under Red armies expulsion, and the chaoticness of crazy Nazi generals in the east telling the population to stay and fight, once we reach proper Germany, everyone helped each other, we stayed in back then small town near Gelsenkirchen, heavily bombed but there, mutual sufferings is healed by helping each other, the stigma is non existent about supposedly cowardice refugees or German beggars from the east. But trust me when i say theres not much prejudice towards fellow Germans in the aftermath of our collective guilt for starting the war
Beyond the suffering of the individuals who were cleansed from their homes the expulsions fucked Germany up for generations to come. Most of those who had to go to Germany settled in cities. Too many people crowded into cities has contributed to Germany's low birthrate (nearly Japan-level bad). Kinda tragically ironic that Hitler's quest for lebensraum lead to the exact opposite...
german people should had voted out the psycho, but yet they were too intoxicated with his 'lebenstraum' idea
@@oraclerex once Hitler was elected with 33% of the vote, there was no possibility of voting him out again.
This is weird part of our history here in Czechia, many people never heard about some murdering Germans after WWII because it was banned to speak about that during communism and in 90s, people who remembered that were pretty much all already dead and ofcourse a lot of people don't believe to that or they say it was ok to kill them and when someone said we did crimes, he was immediately marked as nazi and german lover.
But now, 30 years after revolution, we speak about that topic pretty often, it's not tabu anymore to speak about that and most of people at least heard something about that and don't deny that terrible things happened, but ofcourse some people slightly exaggerate that when they compare it to holocaust, but yes, many germans were murdered just for beying Germans after 1945. But on other hand, it solved the problem for the future, we don't have to care about german speakers anymore. With knowledge of these events, it's really hard to watch what is happening in middle east right now, they are repeating the same mistakes as we did in Europe many years ago.
are you a Czech German
@@dpwXXIPolskaPolak No, I am originally from Prague.
I’ve met a lot of Eastern Europeans of German descent.
6:45
I always found this really laughable. I've heard this argument once or twice in today's Czechia and Croatia and Serbia, even in Germany. It's ridiculous.
My grandmother was born in Yugoslavia and after being forcibly removed to first Silesia in Poland, she was then sent to a refugee camp in Austria, where she met my grandfather, who had recovered from wounds in the war, only to discover that his family, too, had been forcibly removed from the Sudetenland. My grandparents moved to Germany from Austria and then from Germany to the United States and, for my entire life, even after holding 3 different citizenships, living in 6-7 different countries in her life after being expelled, my grandmother never once called herself or considered herself "German" or thought of Germany as "home". Her mother lived in Germany and most of her relatives moved to Germany, but she always considered herself Yugoslavian and would tell people she was from Yugoslavia and when, in the twilight of her life, at 97 years, telling us every single story she could remember about going home and how much she missed home and what she wouldn't give to go home one more time, "home" was always and forever, for her, Yugoslavia. Slavonija. Baranja. Beli Manastir.
The notion that these people would somehow be quick to betray their homeland and couldn't be loyal is insane. What these states feared was that they wouldn't accept the ethno-supremacy baked into the politics they were cooking up for the next 60 years at the time; politics that ultimately lead to the self-implosion that leaves Yugoslavia as a memory.
Thanks for the story.
So pro Nazis deny what they did. I am happy they were expelled, not so they survived. Brutal what was the Germans did inj the East.
My uncle franz bauer also came from beli monastir and married my auntie her maiden name was knezevic my volksdecher uncle franz owned a flour mill in beli monastir i still don't know what became of them ,I live in the uk where my father lazar knezevic settled after 1945
@@victorknezevich7281 What became of them? They probably died.
@@victorknezevich7281 my grandmother was theresia bauer... and her father was also franz bauer, but ... i am sure there were many "franz"es ... perhaps we are distant relatives ...?
From 1939 Germans use force to transfer milions of Pols from west anexed part of occupy Poland to General Governand in central Poland. They leve that people in open country without house, food, money in autum and winter, like strain dogs. About this you do film on YT. Germans start war, he lost her and they pay a price. Too little as against to conquered nation of central and east Europe.
I am half German myself. It's sad what happened to the ethnic Germans expelled from these territories and labour camps. But given what the Nazis did, I understand why the native populations wanted German speakers out. At least those who could prove that they fought against Hitler or who married natives were allowed to stay.
Thank you for enriching my knowledge on this issue. I hope those who died during these expulsions are resting in eternal and blissful peace.
Please don't compare the German postwar refugees to current economic migrants. It's not comparable at all.
syrian war, war in yemen, afganistan war are all war refugees
@@readisgooddewaterkant7890 The comparison would make sense if German refugees ran right through Germany and France to board a ship, go to the US and finally move on foot to Panama for refuge.
"They suspected Germans wouldn't be loyal to to these new nation states"
No shit sherlock ... after what happened just few years in Czechoslovakia what the hell can you expect. Entirely justified.
Thank you for writing those courageous words. We are lucky to have such a noble man as you among us.
Reasoned yes. Justified no.
will you guys do a video on the Angolan war where cuba and ussr fought agains South Africa
Good video. Time someone told what happened after WWII.
In Vojvodina the Partisans expelled the Germans or killed them to take their homes.
For example my great grandfather was born in a German town in Vojvodina which is now settled with Serb colonist from Croatia, Bosnia etc.
Not to mention how essential they were in the industrial and cultural life of the region.
Before the end of WW1 ethnically the region was around 30% Serb, 30% German, 30% Hungarian and 10% Slovak, Ruthene, Romanian, Croatian and others.
a grear number of Serbs came from regions of Krajina and Lika.
@@kavbojctinko4131 Another case of expulsion.
7:24, I'm sure she didn't get a fair trial!
My ancestors left Silesia (Prussia) in the 1850s because the Prussian government (pre-modern Germany) was already becoming Nationalistic and Militaristic at that time. Some of their family members stayed in Prussia and thought that the ones who left were mad for fleeing to the undeveloped and barely populated continent of Australia.. But the ones who fled Prussia (Germany) were actually the lucky ones because they did not have to endure 3 major wars and many decades of conflict leaving behind nothing but a trail of destruction.
Nationalism and Patriotism may sound like a good idea but in reality they come at a very high price..
If you ever have the chance to leave before a war happens then take it... to this very day I don't even know what happened to the ones who stayed behind...
My family left for Australia in 1861 Pomeranian Prussians (Wendish) from Wolin. We fought as ANZAC lighhorse WW1 and my great uncle was killed as a Bomber Gunner fire bombing Berlin in WW2. It seems no matter where we ""run"" in the world War will always be a constant pushed onto us by governments
As a Pole from former East Prussia, I wanted to share some stories here, but alas, my comment gets deleted every time. A shame.
Seriously ?
@zain mudassir No, just few stories I either heard from witnessess or read about in a book.
My original comment:
I had read some books with various post-war stories from the region, sadly don't have it on me right now, but there was one story of a German lynched in the middle of a town while the militiaman (there was no police in Communist Poland, hence Milicja/Militia instead of Policeman) had "coincidentelly" taken a smoke break and looked the other way as people beated a poor guy with some wooden clubs and even their bare hands.
There were more of the gruesome stuff, but mostly it came down to harrasement. Prussia largely avoided large massacres. There were no sawing off the body parts, as in Polish Volhynia during the war. But still, the value of the Germans was at all low after the war.
And not just the Germans. I know a story of a local Mazurians, happy to see the first Polish settlers in their village. Instead, the first thing those Poles did was to rob them.
Sadly, to an average Pole, stories such as this, depicting the crimes of not just the Communist Russians, but Polish Communist regime as well as regular Poles themselves are largely unkown. Hell, it's a blasphemy to talk ill about it at all. Many Poles view the takeover of the former German lands are just and don't care about the fate of the Germans who had lived there.
As I have relatives among both Germans and Poles, I try to look at the whole thing as objectively as I can.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't give away my home region, I'm glad Poland has got the border it has now, because those are the best borders this country had in the last 500 years or so.
Defensible, with wide coast line (just think about how tiny Polish coastline was before the war, and the Germans wanted to take even that away), those are really good borders (apart from that straight line along Kaliningrad Oblast), also, it seems we won't escape having the "Big Brother" lurking just to the north, then it were the Germans, now we exchanged them for the Russians.
But this all came at the price. Price of human lifes. Both Polish and German. And we shouldn't forget that.
To any German, I wish our countries put our past behind us, and worked together for a better future as partners. Cheers.
You must create an episode about the siege of India (1971), it is a big part of the cold war history which made India support USSR even more.
Siege of India? Behenkelavde.
India wasn't sieged, it makes no sense how can a whole nation of 3.2 million sq miles be sieged? Use your brain mate.
It was attacked
As a Slovak I am ashamed of such terrible crimes. Germany may have done terrible things during the war but that is no excuse for what we did to innocent germans. It's a disgrace that Slovak nationalistic government didn't cancel Benes edicts.
There were no innocent German. I am happy this lot paid a bit for their crimes.
@@patriciabrenner9216 Racist
@@Ghreinos Hum no. The Germans were.
@@patriciabrenner9216 Yes, many were racists and many were antisemitic, but you are literally racist towards Arabs or other cultures.
@@Ghreinos As Arabs aren't a race, neither are culture try to use words that fit the situation. You are the racist I would say.
Indeed, since the greatest generation who lived these experiences has all but died out, this " darker" part of post war needs to be told.
RE; Syria
Darker part ? Tell me alternative please ? Would you like expect the war to end and people would just go sign and dance together ? Rly after all the shit the nazis did to native population in occupied countries ? Like ok Hans I know you were responsible for the dead of my children but its okay no problem see you tommorow ?
hopefully it will never be repeated again
Good video. Would like to hear more detail. My mom was an expelled Sudeten German. I guess I'm lucky to exist.
It’s so odd that Americans keep forgetting about Operation Barbarossa and the German expulsions when they talk about WWII
Basically what inspired The Promise from Avatar where Fire Nation colonists-whether if they are born in Earth Kingdom or not-are deported to their country to restore the balance of power.
In context, the world suffered a century-long conquest and war with Fire Nation that colonized western half of Earth Kingdom (large chunk of the populace in the colonies being bicultural), exterminated an entire civilization of Air Nomads, and devastated the Southern Water Tribe. Not to mention embedded cultural segregation based on elements before the war. So concept of dual citizenship is lost to them, even the good guys Aang Gang.
Fascinating connection I didn't make to The Promise
Your right. I never bothered to put the two together, it explains so much. Thank you.
homo homini lupus est!
No mention of Austria? Also, note that besides the Soviet actions, and those of local governments, mob violence was behind a lot of this.
soviet rape wasnt just propaganda it was real
My grandmother emigrated to the USA just before WWII. Her siblings in Poland fled from the Russians except one sister. Out of her husband, five children and two grandchildren, only one son lived herself and one grandson.The spoke Russian and thought they would be ok. Biggest mistake. She eventually with her son and grandson would up in Germany near Lubeck. I still have distant family in Poland who have German ancestry and were allowed to stay since they had Polish mates.