German Expulsions After WWII - Cold War DOCUMENTARY

Our historical documentary series on the Cold War continues with a video on the expulsion and deportation of the Germans after World War 2.

#ColdWar #GermanExpulsions #Documentary

[guywerry]

Just found this and it is quite interesting - we had an elderly lady going to our church in Canada. She was an ethnic German living in eastern Poland and she was about 11 years old when the war started.
Her Father was conscripted by one of the warring armies and to the day she died she had no idea of what happened to him.
After the war she and her family bounced around several of the Displaced Person camps until she was able to emigrate to Canada about 1950.
She eventually married in Canada, to another European refugee, and learned English only when her children stared in school, although she spoke Polish, German and Ukrainian.


The life story was incredible and it was such a privilege to have known her and hear her story - we have NO freaking idea how GOOD we have it here in North America!

[filipcao]

My family is from what used to be East Prussia. My grandma who is Polish, lives in a house that was built before the war and one day a family of Germans showed up and were staring at her house from the street. Turns out they were descendants of the German family that used to live in that house so my grandma invited them over for lunch the next day and they had a great time and were very grateful for her hospitality!

[ivefabris]

I live in a town that lost around 90 % of its prewar population, in this case it was Italian, the whole region (Istria) passed from Italy to Yugoslavia, and in the next 10 years (from 1945 to the mid 50's) nearly everybody left. Seventy years later the void left by the original inhabitants can be still seen and felt...

[richardaubrecht]

There should be a mention how the Germans reacted to those Volksdeutsche fleeing from the East. They were treated too often as Untermenschen, as a pest, barely worthy of the barnyard space they graciously granted them. This is still one of the reason the old generation of expatriots stick together so much. They were hated in their old countries (for being associated with the crimes of Naziism) AND their new coutry (which despite their alleged kinship simply mistrust the Eastern "barbarians"). Thankfully that changed after some time, but still, many of the older folks sympathise more with their old region than the new one. An acquitance of mine once had problem with the town rules about marketplace taxes. The clerk, after hearing she's from Eger (yet Czech trough and trough), declared "You're from Eger? Me too!" And all was well and forgiven.

[roastbeef]

My great grandmother aged 12(in 1944) was expelled from her home in Silesia, Germany, into inner Germany. Once she arrived there, people thought that her family was Polish, therefore didn’t like them! On her refugee she saw many horrifying sights and still to this day dosen’t like talking about it. Aged 18(in 1949) she moved to Britain with all her sisters, now all of their descendants are British. My great grandmother shall be 90 this year, I know at least 1 of her sisters is still alive, living in the same city as her, I have yet to meet her!

[oilersridersbluejays]

My dad’s family was from East Prussia. My grandfather was drafted in 1939 and miraculously survived practically the entirety of the war. He and my grandmother fled to the west and eventually ended up here in Canada.

[rosswebster]

My great, great grandmother emigrated from Tilsit in East Prussia in the 1870s. Given that Tilsit is now Sovetsk in the Russian Oblast of Kaliningrad I’m doubtful that any remaining potential relatives live there anymore.

[barbarasunday]

My dad's earliest childhood memories were of that world, his family was ethnic German in Silesia, I was born in the USA decades later, and the stories I grew up hearing are simply unimaginable and heartbreaking. The stories they could not bear to discuss were likely so much worse still. I appreciate videos like this so much because it helps me understand people that I love

[ctixbwi]

There were many ethnic groups affected by the WWII. About 500 000 Finnish citizens (Swedish & Finnish speaking) became refugees 1939 due to the “Winter War” which ended 13.3.1940. Many moved back 1941-43 when the lost land was retaken. But were refugees again by summer 1944 after the heavy assault by the Red Army. The Finnish Army held, preventing occupation and leaders succeeded to negotiate armistice by September 1944. The Red Army decided to focus on the race to Berlin. The resettling of so many refugees in a country with a population less than 5M was not without problems. The peace terms bore down heavily on the nation. My grandparents and parents were among the generations who saved the nation, rebuilt it and guaranteed the peace for later generations. Let’s hope and pray never again anywhere on Earth. Regardless the heavy cost, I believe Finland did not suffer as badly as other nations on both sides did. I was born 1954 and grew up during a time of relative prosperity; work, food, clothing and housing seemed at times scant but was or became always available when needed in the 50-70’s. I was happy 1972 affording a Honda CB 350 cc motorcycle on savings from summer jobs! I hope future generations of youth grow up in peace and receive the opportunities I was fortunate to have.

[NathanS__]

Yeah, the way you guys worded it makes it sound like the German Empire planted all those ethnic germans in the east and not that they had been there for several centuries.

[Yora]

I'm from Lübeck, which is exactly on the very northern end of the border between West and East Germany. My mother said when she was in school in the 70s, in her entire class of 30 girls, she was the only one who had two native born parents. Everyone else had at least one or two parents who had fled from the East.
On my father's side, my grandfather is a refugee from Pommerania. Quite interestingly, the refugees from Pommerania had pretty good relationships with the Poles who settled in their old villages when they were allowed to visit their old homes. Because the Poles who were now living there were not the people who had expelled them, but the people who had also been forcibly expelled and resettled by the Soviets when they annexed the eastern part of Poland. The Poles in Pommerania had suffered through the same shit as the Germans that used to live there. Which is completely different from the situation in the Sudetenland, where people were chased out at gunpoint by their own neighbors and coworkers.

[coladola]

The Soviets weren't just thinking about deportations of Poles and Ukrainians - they did that. After WW2 (nd during it) there were a lot of expulsions in Europe, not just Germans.

[nemeczek]

Post-WWI "protecting ethnic minorities" became a convenient casus belli. Therefore, having ethnic monorities on one's territory got risky. Moreover, a land grab can also be legitimized by expulsion and replacement of the original inhabitants and then incorporating the territorty into the motherland (or fatherland) via a referendum. As long as borders can be shifted to "protect" minorities, expulsions will be inevitable.

[ottovonostrovo]

My father's family and relatives were Masuren Deutsche and were displaced from East, West Prussia and Pommerania after WW2. My dad's family had settled in Kolberg after being displaced following WW1 from the Posen province! His forefathers were teachers (and one of our great Oma's was a Kaschuben German aristocrat who'd moved as a child to East Prussia after her father died) and they were only allowed to speak only high German at home! But we were all Protestants and ALL were displaced west with most ending up in West Germany. None remained in our homeland!! The Masuren Deutsche like my ancestors were why so many areas where a vote was carried out following WW1 declared themselves for Germany/Prussia, including Danzig! My dad chose to emigrate with his family to Canada in the 1950s.

[MrJoecool]

I praised this channel for having the courage to talk about this horrible fact of history that has been kept in hiding for so long.

[gmilitaru]

This documentary is merely an introduction in the topic, it only scratches its surface. Where could I go more in depth from here?

[jakovvodanovic]

Overlooked part of history. Thank you!

[JesseJoyce-cjxg]

I’m glad to see this covered, as it’s often overlooked. I’m half German, and some of my German ancestry is Danube Swabian (Donau Schwaben), from the historical region of the Banat (today mostly in Romania and Hungary). They left in the mid 1800s and came to America, and I’m glad they were spared the horrors that later came to the families that remained. The last of my ancestors to leave Europe for America (they all had to cross the ocean at some point, mostly Germans, British and Irish) were my great great grandparents, who were born in Germany and came to the US about 1900. They lived through both world wars in America, and I’ve always thought it must have been a strange experience speaking with a German accent, as a naturalized American citizen, during WWII. My family was very lucky that they happened to leave before all that, those from Germany proper but particularly the volksdeutsche lines of my family. I often wonder about the fates of my cousins, who stayed behind.

[gauravsinha]

A brutal part of war no one talks about, good to see someone is focusing on it today these things are happening in different parts of

[saulchapnick]

You are right. It is important to discuss the many mass ethnic expulsions and mass murders that took place in Europe after the war. You neglected to mention that many of the Germans that were expelled, lived on those regions for many generations.