Thread by @shrikanth_krish

Whenever we think of WW2, the Holocaust springs to mind, and of course the 70MM military+civilian casualties over a 6 year period around the world

What's usually overlooked is the chaos of postwar migrations - mostly involving the Germans of East Europe

(Contd..)

Between 1945 and 1950, much of Eastern Europe was cleansed of German populations

With the consent of the Allied powers!

Germans who had stayed in those countries for centuries!

The Germans were not wanted in the countries of the East, as there was a popular desire to punish them for the ravages of war

In May 1945, the President of Czhechoslovakia declared

"We have decided to eliminate the German problem in our republic once and for all"

Some startling facts-

In an 18 month timeframe in 1945-46, three million Germans were expelled from Czhechoslovakia (mostly from Sudentenland) into Germany

267K died in the course of these expulsions

In Bohemia and Moravia (basically Czhech territory), Germans comprised 29% of the population in 1930 - long before Nazi supremacy

In 1950 census, they were just 1.8%!

German property was placed under state control

During the same period in late 40s -

# Germans expelled from Hungary - 623K
From Romania: 786K
From Yugoslavia : ~500K
From Poland : 1,300,000!

And several more from Eastern German territory - Silesia, East Prussia, Brandenburg

In all 13MM Germans moved into West Germany

The most shocking thing is -

This massive transfer of huge populations and systematic ethnic cleansing had the sanction of the victors of War!

At Potsdam conference involving US, UK, USSR, an Article read -

"the three governments recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary will have to be undertaken"

A New York times correspondent recorded in 1946 -

"The scale of this resettlement ...is without a precedent in history. No one seeing its horrors first hand can doubt that it is a crime against humanity for which history will exact a terrible retribution"

Strangely enough all of this happened in peacetime!

After the end of the war. And nobody objected. Looks like even the nascent United Nations was OK with this

And there was no backlash! The Germans settled into West German society and went about their new lives

It is worth recalling this remarkable peacetime ethnic cleansing from the not-so-distant past

We live in times when all hell breaks loose over things as trivial as a change in the constitutional status of a province in a country like India

It was not that long ago that the world order came to terms with the cruel involuntary displacement of not hundreds of thousands, but millions of Germans, merely as a fact of life!

And the governments that perpetrated these acts got away scot free!

Post-Script :

The information in this thread is drawn from the early parts of the great history of Post-war Europe by Tony Judt, titled "Postwar"