Forgotten Voices : the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe After World War II / Ulrich Merten
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Copyright © 2012 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmit- ted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, Rutgers—Th e State University of New Jersey, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8042. www.transactionpub.com Th is book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2011029450 ISBN: 978-1-4128-4302-7 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Merten, Ulrich, 1930- Forgotten voices : the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II / Ulrich Merten. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-4128-4302-7 (alk. paper) 1. World War, 1939-1945—Refugees—Europe, Eastern. 2. World War, 1939-1945—Forced repatriation. 3. World War, 1939-1945— Atrocities—Europe, Eastern. 4. Population transfers—Germans. 5. Germans—Europe, Eastern—History—20th centruy. I. Title. D809.G3M47 2012 940.53’14—dc23 2011029450 To Carole Merten Lockerbie, indefatigable companion and editor, and Margit Merten Wagner source of my love for German history and culture. Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii Foreword xix I Background 1 Th e Reasons for Ethnic Cleansing 2 Th e Expulsions 7 Th e Flight from the Red Army 11 I I Th e Flight and Expulsion of the German Population from East of the Oder-Neisse Line (Poland) 23 Th e Soviet Attack on East Germany and the Flight of the Civilian Population 23 Th e Soviet Attack on East Prussia 25 Stutthof Concentration Camp 26 Th e Flight of the Population from East Prussia 40 Th e Flight of the Population from West Prussia and Pomerania 47 Th e Flight of the Population from the Warthegau (Province of Poznan) and East Brandenburg 50 Th e Flight of the Population from Silesia 51 Th e Return of the German Population to Th eir Homes East of the Oder-Neisse Line 56 Deportation of German Civilians as Forced Labor to the Soviet Union 58 Forgotten Voices Th e Expulsion of the German Population from East of the Oder-Neisse Line 64 Th e Treatment of German Civilians in the Former Reich Territories 64 Th e Treatment of Volksdeutsche in Poland and in the Soviet Enclave of East Prussia 69 Th e Expulsions 75 A Summary of the Diff erent Stages of the Expulsions 80 Th e Polish Government’s Justifi cation for the Expulsion of the German Population 83 Th e Destruction of the Polish Nation 84 Th e Historical Justifi cation for the Expulsion 86 III Th e Expulsion of the Ethnic German Population from the Former Czechoslovakia 93 Th e History of German Settlements in Czechoslovakia 95 Evacuation and Flight of the Sudeten Germans from the War 101 Slovakia 101 Bohemia and Moravia 102 Th e Prague Uprising 114 Th e Condition of the German Population in Bohemia and Moravia at War’s End 124 Th e Internment of the Sudeten Germans in Labor Camps 131 Th e History of the Th eresienstadt (Terezin) Ghetto 137 Th e Czech Government’s Justifi cation for the Expulsion of the Germans 142 Th e Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans Prior to the Potsdam Conference 146 Th e Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans after the Potsdam Conference 162 Contents I V Th e Expulsion of the Ethnic German Population from Hungary 173 Introduction 174 Th e History of the German Settlements in Hungary 174 Hungary’s German Minority in World War II, Including Service in the Waff en-SS 179 Th e Flight and Evacuation from the Soviet Army 185 Th e Hungarian Government’s Justifi cation for the Expulsion of the German Community 189 Th e Soviet Occupation of Hungary and Forced Labor in the Soviet Union 191 Th e Expulsion of the Ethnic Germans 195 V Th e Flight, Incarceration, and Expulsion of Ethnic Germans from the Former Republic of Yugoslavia 207 Summary 207 Th e History of the German Settlements in Yugoslavia 209 Th e German Minority in World War II 212 Th e Ethnic German Participation in the Waff en-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” 214 Th e Evacuation and Flight of Ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia 219 Deportation to the Soviet Union 219 Th e Fate of the Ethnic German Minority in Tito’s Partisan Government 224 Th e Treatment of Children 231 Th e Flight and Eviction of the Yugoslav German Minority 234 Th e Closing of the Camps, Forced Labor, and Emigration to the German Federal Republic 238 V I Th e Fate of the Ethnic German Minority in Romania 241 Th e Historical Ethnic German Settlements in Romania 241 Th e Transylvanian Saxons 241 Th e Swabians of the Banat 243 Forgotten Voices Th e Inter-War Years 244 Th e German Minority in Romania in World War II 248 Th e Collapse of the Romanian Government and Soviet Occupation 249 Th e Evacuation of Ethnic German Civilians 255 Th e Fate of the German Minority after the War 261 Th e Deportation of Romanian Germans to the Soviet Union 261 Th e Confi scation of German Farms 271 Th e Forced Resettlement of Banat Germans 274 Developments after 1949 279 VII Conclusion: Integration and Reconciliation 283 Integration of Refugees and Expellees into German Society 283 Economic and Social Integration in West Germany 284 Political Integration 286 Integration in the Soviet Zone of Occupation 287 Reconciliation with East European Nations 288 Reconciliation with Poland 289 Reconciliation with Czechoslovakia 292 Reconciliation with Hungary 296 Relations with Romania and the Former Yugoslavia 298 Romania 299 Yugoslavia 300 Concluding Remarks 301 Appendix 303 Bibliography 317 Index 325 Preface Th is book off ers a multifaceted and, in the English language, largely unknown history of the expulsions of Germans from Eastern Europe written by one who himself lost his home. Ulrich Merten, born in 1930 in Berlin, fl ed Nazi Germany for the United States as a child together with his parents, who actively opposed the Nazi regime. His father, Dr. Georg Muhle Merten, was a member of the German Democratic Party and Regierungsrat (Councilor) in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior during the Weimar Republic, which he actively supported. In fact, during the mid-1920s, he became head of a government intel- ligence organization that was in charge of prosecuting antidemocratic activities and thus opposed the Nazi party early on. Once the Nazis were fi rmly ensconced in power, he was charged with high treason and incarcerated in the notorious Oranienburg concentration camp north of Berlin in 1934–1935. Th e years before their emigration to the United States in 1938/1939, when Georg Muhle Merten remained active in the anti-Nazi resistance, were extremely diffi cult for the family. Yet, once he was settled in New York, the elder Merten resumed his anti-Nazi activities and worked for British and American intelligence, in which capacity he helped unveil Nazi commercial and fi nancial activities in the United States and South America. Ulrich Merten, the author of this study, has held a life-long interest in the fate of the German population in the former German provinces of East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Eastern Brandenburg, and the Sudetenland, as well as the destiny of the large German minori- ties in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Rumania that were expelled from their native territories after 1945. After attending universities in Switzerland and Spain, Ulrich Merten graduated from Columbia and Pennsylvania’s Wharton School before embarking on a distinguished career in banking. It was during his extended stays in central Europe in the immediate postwar period that he witnessed fi rst-hand the plight and misery of millions of ethnic German refugees. Now more xi Forgotten Voices than six decades later, retirement has fi nally aff orded him the time to investigate these problems in depth and acquaint the American reader with one of the corollaries of the most destructive war in human his- tory with which even the educated public on this side of the Atlantic is wholly unfamiliar. Before World War II, well over eighteen million Germans lived in what was generally referred to as Eastern Europe during the Cold War, that is, in East Prussia, Pomerania, the eastern Part of Brandenburg, Silesia, the free city of Danzig, as well as in territories outside the-then German Reich, in Czechoslovakia, notably the Sudetenland, in the Baltic States, in interwar Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and in parts of the Soviet Union. 1 Beginning in the late summer months of 1944, of those who had survived the war up until then, more than fourteen million were expelled. Between the end of 1944 and 1948, about two million were killed or died of starvation or suicide. And even though no reliable fi gures exist, there is a basic consensus that the overall number of those who perished was in the neighborhood of two million.2 Of the millions of refugees who survived, more than eight million made it to one of the three Western zones of occupation that became West Germany in 1949; more than four million found a temporary home in the Soviet zone, the latter-day East Germany, from whence many subsequently fl ed to the West; while about half a million, mostly from the Sudetenland, Yugoslavia, and Rumania, found a home in Aus- tria.3 Since Germany’s war-torn and bombed-out cities could barely support their own indigenous populations, refugees were generally settled in rural parts of Germany, such as Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the East, or Bavaria, Schleswig-Holstein and Niedersachsen in the West, to the point that in the late 1940s, the populations of Schleswig Holstein and Niedersachsen had risen by more than 50 percent.