"The expulsionator 2: fall of the Germans"

Expulsion throughout history repeats itself, it may surface in different forms but it occurs. You can recall the expulsion of Native Americans in the US, the expulsion of Jews in Germany, the expulsion of Greeks and Turks in 1923, and the expulsion of Germans by Poland and Czech. History repeats its self, like a sequel of a movie (i.e. terminator 2), thus the blog title.

            The primary task for the Czechs was to “clean out the republic as a whole and get rid of Germans”. Czechoslovakia not only wanted to expulse Germans but also make them suffer because of the execution and imprisonment that was put on the Czech people by Nazi Germany. Czech militia moved into areas infested with Germans and attacked the civilians. The Czech militia did not only beat up Germans but killed, forced them to do humiliating and life-threatening tasks to show their hatred. All of these acts influence Germans that weren’t dead to leave. Czech communist and noncommunist all agreed the expulsion of the Germans as part of new stage in the development of the Czech social and economic order.

            The case of the expulsion of the Germans from Poland is both more and less complicated than that of their expulsion from Czech. Many of the Poles engaged in looting, robberies, beatings, killings, and even mass raping. In contrast, there were incidents where the Poles freed German slave laborers and protected Germans by disguising them as one of their own. But just like the Czech, the Poles humiliated the German population and seized their property and goods. In some cases the Poles kicked Germans out of their homes. These acts by the Poles caused Germans to commit suicide, just like the result of the Czech militia’s action. Also something that stood out to me when talking about history repeating itself, today minorities are moved or move into ghettos. Ghettos are the worst areas of towns, cities, and sometimes villages; these ghettos have little work and minimum rations, and left under miserable conditions. In some cases in Poland, the Germans were moved out of their homes into the ghettos. Other than the expulsion and murder of the Germans and Nazi Germans, the polish got creative. The Poles turned the former concentration camps and detention facilities of the Third Reich into the labor camps for Nazis and suspected Nazis.

            Ultimately the motive of these “expulsionators” came from the desire of the new postwar governments to rationalize and control their societies by making them ethnically the same and fully responsive to the goals and needs of the dominant nationality, the same ideas Nazi Germany and other expulsion expressing countries had before them. The point to drive home from this blog as well is that history repeated itself, let’s make sure that this aspect of history does not repeat again.

http://maps.thefullwiki.org/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_from_Poland_during_and_after_World_War_II

http://expelledgermans.org/sudetengermans.htm