Ian Connor

German expellees in the SBZ/GDR and the Oder-Neisse ‘peace border’1

In the early post-war years many expellees in the Soviet Occupation Zone wanted to return to their homelands. However, their hopes were dashed when the German Democratic Republic and Poland signed the Görlitz Treaty in July 1950, recognising the Oder-Neisse line as Poland’s western border. This chapter will explore the attitude of the expellees to this ‘peace border’. It will also examine the strategies the ruling Socialist Unity Party employed in its efforts to win expellee support for the Görlitz Treaty and assess to what extent they were successful.

One of the groups most severely affected by the experience of disloca- tion after the Second World War were the German refugees and expellees from the East who fled or were expelled into Germany from their homelands in eastern and central Europe from 1944 onwards. Some fled from the advancing Soviet troops in the final months of the war. However, the majority were either expelled by the native popula- tions of countries such as Czechoslovakia in revenge for the brutal treatment they had suffered at the hands of the Nazis or compulsorily transferred in accordance with Article 13 of the Potsdam Protocol, drawn up by the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Govern- ments in August 1945. By April 1949, Germany, divided into four zones, each occupied by one of the wartime allies (the United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union), accommodated some 12 million German refugees and expellees. Of these, more than 4.3 million had settled in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ).2 The majority of them – Silesians, Pomeranians, East Prussians and East Brandenburgers – originated from those areas east of the Oder-Neisse line which had belonged to Germany on 31 December 1937. In addition to these ‘National Germans’ (Reichsdeutsche), the SBZ also accommodated many different groups of Ethnic Germans (Volks- deutsche) who had lived as German minorities in foreign countries prior to their flight or expulsion. While the Western Allies referred to these new population groups as ‘refugees’, ‘expellees’ or ‘newcom- ers’, the Soviet Union rejected the expression ‘expellees’ because of its implication that the Germans from the East had been forcibly 168 Ian Connor ejected from their homes by the Red Army. The Soviet authorities therefore insisted on calling these new population elements ‘reset- tlers’, a term which was intended to indicate that there was no pros- pect of them being able to return home. In common with usual aca- demic practice, this chapter will use the terms ‘expellees’, ‘refugees’, ‘new population groups’ and ‘resettlers’ interchangeably. The plight of the refugees and expellees in the SBZ was unenviable. Many mourned the loss of family and friends. Others had become separated from their loved ones during their flight or expulsion. In addition, some expellees were traumatised by the atrocities they had suffered or witnessed. They had all forfeited their homes and many had been able to salvage only their most precious personal possessions. The feelings of dislocation and displacement engendered by flight or expulsion were aggravated by the economic deprivation the expellees had to endure after their arrival in the SBZ. They were hit with particular severity by the post-war food shortage because they lacked the ‘connections’ to participate in the thriving Black Market. The housing conditions of many expellees were deplorable and more than half of the complaints they submitted to the Government of Saxony in 1949 concerned accommodation.3 Over- crowding was a particular problem and a survey carried out in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania discovered that in 1950, five years after the end of the war, 4,610 ‘resettlers’ were living in ‘barns, stables and halls’.4 Against this background, the overriding concern of many expellees was to return to their former homelands and this is the issue on which this chapter will focus. However, their hopes were dashed by the decision of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), under pressure from the Soviet Union, to recognise the Oder-Neisse frontier as the permanent ‘peace border’ between Germany and Poland, a highly contentious ruling which had a profound effect on the refugees and expellees. While the Western Allies and all the West German parties except the German Communist Party (KPD) publicly pledged their support for the return of the eastern territories,5 the Soviet Union and SED adopted a quite different stance. The announcement by Walter Ulbricht, Vice-Chairman of the SED, in October 1948 that the Oder- Neisse frontier represented the permanent ‘peace border’ between Germany and Poland provoked anger and consternation among the refugees and expellees. Despite strident opposition from many