Talk:Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)

Euphemisms?

It's interesting how the article uses language almost euphemistically. "Expulsion" is used in place of where "ethnic cleansing" would be appropriate nearly every single time; Contrast with articles dealing with the Armenian Genocide which use "harsher" language more liberally, so to speak. This article has some major issues. User: Dehler 15:04, 14 January 2020

Expulsion is used when transfered people are guilty, ethnic cleansing when transfered people are innocent. The Sudeten Germans Flocked to Hitler - Herrenvolk und Lebensraum. They were guilty.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.15.218.62 (talk) 07:46, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

There is no such thing as collective guilt. It exists only in propaganda and such language displays inhumane thinking. And maybe you should do a little research on the Sudetendeutsche opposision to the Nazis and their fate. --93.203.105.178 (talk) 14:47, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Supposing there were enough of them remaining.
You should do a little research on the Sudetendeutsche opposision to the Nazis and their fate in Dachau concentration camp and elsewhere during the Nazi-German occupation of the democratic Czechoslovakia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.23.6.193 (talk) 14:52, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

It is claimed that Sudeten Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia were based on the concept of collective guilt. This is not true.
Almost every decree explicitely stated that the sanctions did not apply to anti-fascists.
About 90% of the German population of the Czech borderlands had supported the Nazi and affilation to Nazi-Germany. Some 280 000 Germans in Czechoslovakia remained Czechoslovak citizens after the transfer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.23.6.193 (talk) 15:37, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

I've noticed this issue too. This expulsion led to the use of forced labour, rapes, executions, massacres, and the extinction of German language dialects and cultures. It surpassed the Jewish Holocaust of World War Two in terms of numbers of victims and was a great travesty for German heritage. Take Kaliningrad, where Germans were executed and used as slaves and German culture was erased and replaced (evidence most strikingly in the new architecture of the city. It is simply another example of the vilification of Germans post-war. Doorfrench (talk) 13:49, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@"didn't apply to anti-fascists": in terms of the degrees this may be technically true (although not all of them contained this restriction), but in practice it meant nothing: one set of my grand parents lived in Czecheslovakia for a few generations. They were communists, and actively fought the Nazis. My grand father died in the process, and my grand mother spent the several years in a Gestapo prison, and was even officially acknowledged as an anti-fascist (including getting special stipend for the rest of her life from the East German government). And she was indeed formally offered the chance to stay in the village she was born: as one of a single-digit number of people (of the entire village), none of which she knew. Now, want to guess what this meant in practice? 174.59.220.235 (talk) 17:51, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

This article should be reworded to more accurately reflect that it was an ethnic cleansing. "Expulsion" is only appropriate when talking about removing the Germans who had settled in areas that the Nazis conquered in WWII. When we're talking about removing Germans from areas where they had been living for hundreds of years, that's ethnic cleansing by any reasonable definition of the term. Whether removing the Germans was justified or not is frankly irrelevant, as this does not change the fact that it was an ethnic cleansing. Just because Nazi Germany committed one of the worst crimes in history with the Holocaust doesn't mean that we should use euphemisms to talk about what happened to Germans after the war.

I propose largely replacing "expulsion" with "ethnic cleansing" whenever it refers to Germans living in areas where Germans had historically lived who were then forcibly removed. Megathonic (talk) 17:25, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

where Germans had historically lived who were then forcibly removed; so expulsion? This entire discussion is flawed because expulsion is a form of ethnic cleansing in the same way population exchange (e.g. Population exchange between Greece and Turkey) is a form of ethnic cleansing in the same way genocide is a form of ethnic cleansing. The full definition of ethnic cleansing is the attempt to get rid of—through deportation, displacement or even mass killing—members of an unwanted ethnic group (emphasis mine). Curbon7 (talk) 19:20, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

If "expulsion is a form of ethnic cleansing", then it shouldn't be controversial for the article to clearly state that millions of Germans were ethnically cleansed from their homes. The reason that can be controversial to say is because there is a difference in connotation between merely "expelling" people and the harsher implications under "ethnically cleansing" an entire demographic. Mass-killing isn't a requirement for ethnic cleansing to have occurred, but even if it were, in some cases, Germans were deliberately mass-killed in revenge for Nazi crimes, and in any case, their removal was done with flagrant disregard to civilian deaths if 500,000 to 1+ million died as a direct consequence. Megathonic (talk) 20:01, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Genocide Denial

What's up with the genocide denial in this article? 2003:C0:F720:F000:389F:2BEB:D917:7561 (talk) 08:14, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Because this wasn't a genocide. Not even close. SinoDevonian (talk) 01:16, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

It was a genocide under the CPPCG which says that

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical

destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Crainsaw (talk) 11:55, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

The Allied expulsion removed the Nazi Herrenvolk und Lebensraum ideology from the Czech crown lands once and for all. 171.23.6.193 (talk) 08:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

No one has denied Holocaust in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.15.223.133 (talk) 12:01, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

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Hungary section of the article

In contrast to expulsions from other nations or states, the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary was dictated from outside Hungary. The section mixes the term "forced labor" with expulsion. Approximately 200 000 civilian Hungarian citizens were deported to the Soviet Union as forced laborers irrespective of their ethnicity/nationality. It's not to be mixed with the expulsion of the ethnic Germans to Germany. For the expulsion there was no "dictate from outside Hungary". The source of this information in the article is inactive. Hagnes2002 (talk) 10:35, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Population Movements Chart

The section Population Movements includes a chart regarding the change in ethnic Germans in various countries. However, the title says it compares 1958 and 1930–31, while the actual columns of data refer to 1939 and 1930–31. I would assume that the data is actually from 1958 and it’s just a typo that has never been noticed for the last decade, but the numbers come from reference books, and I can’t be sure what the correct answer is. I am changing the column to 1958 because that makes far more sense, but wanted to flag it in was I am in the wrong—in which case it should still be cleared up.

Separately, population numbers for the Netherlands were added to the chart several years later—but while the rest of the entries show the reduction in German population via subtraction, this one does not. It provides two similar citations which may or may not be to the same source, but it is hard to tell what they are specifically pointing to (which is kind of the point of a citation). Butterboy (talk) 19:06, 17 November 2024 (UTC)