Historical Memory and the expulsion of ethnic Germans in Europe, 1944- 1947 Thesis submitted by Robert Bard to the University of Hertfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2009 1 Contents Page no. Abstract--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4 Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------------------------5 Chapter 1 Historical Background --------------------------------------------------------------------18 Chapter 2 Historic and Collective Memory: The Nature of German History ------------------38 Chapter 3 Historical memory of the expulsions in the 1950s and 1960s -----------------------51 Chapter 4 1986: Hillgruber and de Zayas -----------------------------------------------------------66 Chapter 5 Historical memory: from 1993 to the present day -------------------------------------74 Chapter 6 Historical memory: Visual imagery and Guido Knopp -------------------------------85 Chapter 7 The Bund der Vertriebenen and the shaping of historical memory-----------------123 Chapter 8 The Reception of German historical memory of the expulsions by Polish historians and politicians --------------------------------------------------------144 Chapter 9 The Reception of German historical memory of the expulsions by Czech historians and politicians --------------------------------------------------------155 Conclusion --------------------------------------------------------------------------------170 Illustrations Figure 1. Map of 1930s Europe ---------------------------------------------------------21 Figure 2. Map showing the areas that comprised the new 1918 Polish Republic ----------------------------------------------------------------29 Figure 3. Death at Nemmersdorf -------------------------------------------------------33 Figure 4. Red Army advance route, and Gustloff route ---------------------------- 34 Figure 5. DVD cover illustration from 1981 documentary -------------------------90 Figure 6. DVD cover illustration from Die grosse Flucht --------------------------94 Figure 7. Two newsreel photographs of Nemmersdorf killings---------------------95 Figure 8. Fleeing civilians from German newsreel-----------------------------------96 Figure 9. Newsreel photograph RAF fighter over Germany ------------------------96 Figure 10. Harvest autumn eastern Germany, contemporary illustration -----------97 Figure 11. Boarding the Gustloff, contemporary illustration. ------------------------98 Figure 12. Clip from 1959 German film, ‗Night over Gotenhafen‘------------------98 Figure 13. Scene on board the Gustloff --------------------------------------------------99 2 Page no. Figure 14. Series of stills from newsreel of ‗Fortress Breslau‘. -----------------99,100 Figure 15. Stills of soldier who was at ‗Fortress Breslau‘. ---------------------------101 Figure 16. Stills of German child soldiers. ---------------------------------------------102 Figure 17. Polish newsreel of Germans being expelled ------------------------------103 Figure 18. German newsreel showing falling bombs.---------------------------------104 Figure 19. Newsreel footage of Edvard Beneš ----------------------------------------105 Figure 20. Book cover illustration Die grosse Flucht---------------------------------107 Figure 21. Refugees fleeing in winter from book, Die grosse Flucht ------------ 111 Figure 22. Fleeing refugees amid scenes of destruction ------------------------------112 Figure 23. Russian tanks roll into Mühlhausen, East Prussia -----------------------113 Figure 24. Guido Knopp's Die Grosse Flucht cover from the DVD ---------------116 Figure 25. Knopp using the images of young children, and orphans ---------------118 Figure 26. Gegen das Vergessen, Die grosse Flucht, 2003 DVD cover ------------118 Figure 27. Doku-staged picture of Hitler Youth being sworn in by the regime----121 Figure 28. The Breslau Death March from the ZDF website----------------------- -121 Figure 29 Wprost depicting Erika Steinbach dressed as Nazi dominatrix---------135 Figure 30. Illustration, German Chancellor with a Hitler moustache. --------------153 Figure 31. Reconciliation Cross in Teplice nad Metuji. ------------------------------163 Bibliography -------------------------------------------------------------------------------.177 Appendices Appendix 1. Television and radio in Germany --------------------------------------185 Appendix 2. Beneš Decrees ------------------------------------------------------------186 Appendix 3. Beneš Decrees Radio Prague article -----------------------------------188 Appendix 4. German-Czech Declaration on Mutual Relations and their future development, 21 January 1997 ---------------------------------191 Appendix 5. Images of expulsion. -----------------------------------------------------195 3 Abstract As the Second World War in Europe came to an end the Russians advanced from the east towards Berlin. German occupation of Poland and Czechoslovakia had been particularly brutal. Both of these countries, products of German defeat at the end of World War I contained millions of ethnic Germans, who had previously co-existed with their Slav neighbours, often for many centuries, but were now perceived by these neighbours as having encouraged and collaborated with Nazi Germany. Russians, Poles and Czechs now sought revenge triggering the largest forced expulsion in recorded history. Somewhere between 8 and 16.5 million ethnic Germans fled to the west, and between 2 and 3 million perished during flight. Expellee property was subsequently seized by the Poles and Czechs. In broad terms, until the 1990s these events were seen within Germany as part of a submerged collective memory, suppressed in part by their having lost the war. In the last 20 years with an increasingly powerful expellee organisation (the Bund der Vertriebenen, Federation of Expellees) influencing mainstream German politics, academia, and the German media, an attempt has been made to change historical memory, or rewrite what has been referred to as an ‗unacceptable past.‘ This, in recent years has led to claims by former expellees against the Czech Republic, and Poland for restitution. This in itself has led to bitter accusations by these countries that the expellees have rewritten German history portraying themselves as victims of the Second World War. This thesis explores the methods employed by the expellee groups and their supporters in the restructuring of their historical memory by examining literature dating from the 1950s until the present day from primarily German and American sources, as well as German television documentaries from 2000. These sources are considered in relation to how collective and historical memory have evolved into a position that has allowed the expellees to create an ‗acceptable past‘. 4 Introduction In 1944 the Nazi hierarchy deliberately generated a fear in the hearts of the German population lying in the path of the advancing Russians. This fear, it hoped, would lead the population to resist the Russians, or in Hitler‘s terminology ‗fight to the last man.‘1 In fact the fear generated from Berlin into the hearts of the population was well justified: the leaders, having initiated a campaign against the Slav Untermensch of the utmost brutality and cruelty, had no illusions as to what they could expect in return.2 The hierarchy believed that the expectation of a merciless assault by the Russians on the German civilian population would lead both the German armed forces and civilians in the east to put up a desperate attempt to hold off the Red Army, and allow Germany time to regroup her forces. By January 1945 the Red Army had begun the ‗Great Offensive‘, causing a wave of approximately 5 million Germans to flee westwards. The propaganda created by Goebbels in Berlin warning the Germans that the Russians were barbarians, created panic amongst the civilian populations that lay in the path of the Russian advance, which was characterised by ruthless pillaging, rape, and murder.3 These waves of refugees were in a sense, unlike the later forced expulsions, voluntary. The aftermath of the war saw Poles and Czechs exacting revenge against their remaining ethnic German populations in the form of pogroms and seizure of property. Many ethnic Germans were seized by the Russians and sent as forced labourers to camps in Siberia.4 1 Order given by Hitler to Helmuth Weidling, the Commander of the Berlin Defence area on 23rd April 1945. Weidling was ordered not to surrender and to fight to the last man. Wilhelm Willemar, ‗The German Defence of Berlin‘, Department of the Navy -- Naval Historical Centre, p.8, < http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/germandefberl.htm> [accessed 14 July 2009] 2 The Nazis had enslaved or murdered in the region of 10 million Russians, Poles, and Czechs. One in six of the Polish population had been exterminated, and in Czechoslovakia, of a 12 million population, 300,000 persons, mostly Jews, suffered the same fate. For a detailed analysis of figures and groups involved see R. C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: the Poles under German occupation, 1939-1944. New York, Hippocrene. (1997). Chapter 1, titled ‗The German Occupation of Poland,‘ pp.1-39 3 For details of the Russian advance , see A. Beevor, The fall of Berlin, 1945. New York, Viking. (2002), 4 A. M.De Zayas, A terrible revenge : the ethnic cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950, New York, St. Martin's Press. (1994), pp.116-124 5 The