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National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Eagle Glassheim
Eagle Glassheim
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Princeton University
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Beginning in January of 1946, trains filled with Sudeten Germans—forty wagons, thirty passengers per wagon—left Czechoslovakia daily for the American Zone of occupied Germany. By the end of 1946, the Czechoslovak government completed the “organized transfer” of almost 2 million Germans, and it did so in a manner that in many respects fulfilled the mandate of the Potsdam agreement that the resettlement be “orderly and humane.” But a focus on these regularized trainloads of human cargo obscures the extent of the humanitarian disaster facing Germans during the summer months of 1945, immediately after the Nazi capitulation. By the end of 1945, Czech soldiers, security forces, and local militias had already expelled over 700,000 Sudeten Germans to occupied Germany and Austria. As many as 30,000 Germans died on forced marches, in disease-filled concentration camps, in summary executions, and massacres.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 463 - 486
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2000

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References

1. Radomír, Luža, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans (New York, 1964), 279–86.Google Scholar

2. Though historians disagree widely on the number of deaths, a recent report from a Czech-German “Joint Commission of Historians” agreed on a range from 19,000 to 30,000 dead. The commission's collective conclusions appear in Konfliktní společenství, katastrofa, uvolnění: Náčrt výkladu německo-českých dějin od 19. století (Conflictual Community, Catastrophe, Detente: An Outline of an Interpretation of Czech-German History from the Nineteenth Century) (Prague: Ústav mezinárodních vztahů, 1996)Google Scholar. The commission's figures included “more than 6,000 victims of acts of violence” and 5,000 estimated suicides.

3. See in particular Alfred de, Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944–1950 (New York, 1994).Google Scholar

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5. Luža devotes ten of the fourteen chapters in his book to building a case for Sudeten German responsibility for the breakdown of Czech-German relations and for Nazi atrocities. Only three chapters deal with the expulsions themselves. See Luža, , Transfer.Google Scholar

6. The foremost advocate of the documentary approach is Tomáš Staněk. See his Perzekuce (Persecution) (Prague, 1996)Google Scholar and Odsun Němců z Československa 1945–1947 (The Transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia, 1945–1947) (Prague, 1991).Google Scholar

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10. Ibid.

11. Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992), 27 May 1994, par. 129. My thanks to Roy Gutman for providing me with this reference.

12. Czechs tended not to destroy German property, because they expected to get legal title to it. Czech settlers and so-called gold-diggers (zlatokopové) began moving into the Sudetenland within weeks after the German capitulation, and a series of presidential decrees in the summer of 1945 confirmed their claims to German property.

13. Czechoslovakia was officially a state of the Czechs and Slovaks, referred to collectively as Czechoslovaks. Though a small minority of interwar citizens accepted this amalgam as their national identity, the vast majority was either Czech or Slovak. The two languages are closely related and mutually intelligible, but they are clearly not two dialects of one language.

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15. Contrary to Czech national mythology, White Mountain was more a religious than a national dispute. Czechs and Germans—noble and commoner alike—served on both sides of the conflict. See Evans, R. J. W., The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), 195–216.Google Scholar

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21. Modráček, National Assembly, Meeting 46 (16 April 1919).

22. Ladislav, Holý, The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation (Cambridge, 1996), 121.Google Scholar

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30. Bruce Lockhart, memorandum marked “Secretary of State,” 14 June 1942. Columbia University Special Collections, Jaromír Smutný papers, box 22, folder 7.

31. In a 1992 article on ethnic cleansing, Hans Lemberg shows how the idea of population transfer had gained legitimacy in Europe and America well before World War II. See “Ethnische Säuberung: Ein Mittel zur Lösung von Nationalitätenproblemen?” in Lemberg, , Mit unbestecklichem Blick … Studien von Hans Lemberg zur Geschkhte der böhmischen Länder und der Tschechoslowakei (Munich, 1998), 377–96.Google Scholar

32. On administrative chaos, see Emilia, Hrabovec, “Neue Aspekte zur ersten Phase der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Mähren 1945,” in Nationale Frage und Vertreibung in der Tschechoslowakei und Ungarn 1938–1948, ed. Richard, Plaschka, Horst, Haselsteiner, Arnold, Suppan, and Anna, Drabek (Vienna, 1997), 117–40.Google Scholar

33. Beneš speeches at Brno and in Prague, 12 and 16 May 1945, and in Tabor, 16 June 1945. Printed in Edvard, Beneš, Odsun Zěmců z Ceskoshvenska (The Transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia), ed., Karel, Novotný (Prague, 1996), 138–39, 148Google Scholar. Politicians and newspapers from across the political spectrum regularly used the term “liquidate” in reference to the Germans in 1945. Though the term may have had domestic roots, it was likely an appropriation of Nazi terminology.

34. Speech at Plzeň, 15 June 1945, in ibid., 146.

35. Provincial National Committee, Prague (ZNV Praha) to District National Committees (ONV), 12 June 1945, Státní ústřední archiv (SÚA) Prague, Ministerstvo vnitra-Noskův archiv (MV-N), carton 254, #160.

36. Stanislav, Biman and Roman, Cílek, Poslední mrtví, první živí: české pohraničí květen až srpen 1945 (The Last Dead, the First Living: The Bohemian Borderlands, May to August 1945) (Ústí nad Labem, 1989), 116.Google Scholar

37. See Tomáš, , Odsun, 61.Google Scholar

38. “Naše půda bude vyrvána z cizáckých rukou” (Our Soil Will Be Snatched Away From Foreign Hands). Rudé právo, 7 June 1945, 1.Google Scholar

39. Zdeněk, Fierlinger, 1 July 1945, in Odčiňujeme Bílou horu [We Are Rectifying White Mountain] (Prague: Jednotný svaz českých zemědělců, 1945), 12.Google Scholar

40. Quoted in Andrei, Bell, “The Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans: A Breakdown in the Ethnic Boundary Maintenance Mechanisms” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1997), 317.Google Scholar

41. Expulsion and flight figures are from Theodor, Schieder, ed., Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central-Europe, vol. 4 (Bonn: Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, and War Victims, 1960), 127Google Scholar. Czech and German sources have long disagreed on the number of deaths. German historians, many of them Sudeten expellees, have claimed upwards of 200,000 deaths during the expulsions from Czechoslovakia. See, for example, Friedrich, Prinz, Geschichte Böhmens 1848–1948 (Berlin, 1991), 468Google Scholar. A recent joint report of the Czech-German historians’ commission has settled on the range of 17,000 to 30,000 dead, a more reasonable figure. See Konfliktní společenství, 29–30.

42. For a particularly nationalist and anti-Semitic take on the census of 1930, see Moravská Orlice (Moravian Eagle), 8 January 1933 and 2 April 1933.Google Scholar

43. Wingfield, , “Conflicting Constructions,” 154.Google Scholar

44. Beneš speech, Brno city hall, 12 May 1945, Beneš, , Odsun, 138.Google Scholar

45. Benjamin, Frommer, “Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1999), 51–52Google Scholar. See also Karel, Kaplan, Poválečné Československo: národy a hranice (Postwar Czechoslovakia: Nations and Borders) (Munich, 1985), 140.Google Scholar

46. This narrative and the quotes in this paragraph are from three internal Interior Ministry documents. SÚA, MV-N, carton 254, #160. Dates are 1 and 2 June 1945 and undated (June, 1945). See also Staněk, , Perzekuce, 87–90.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., 88.

48. Staněk, , Odsun, 75.Google Scholar

49. Jaroslav Stránský was a leader of the Czech National Socialists, a left-wing nationalist party unrelated to the Nazi Party in Germany.

50. Telephone report of Bedrich Pokorný, Velitel Národní bezpečnostní stráže pro Moravu v Brně, to Ministry of Interior, 2 June 1945. SÚA, MV-N, carton 254 #160.

51. Ibid.

52. Staněk, , Perzekuce, 89Google Scholar. That means that between 5,000 and 6,000 Germans of the original 30,000 were able to return home.

53. Referát plk. Bartíka p. ministru vnitra, undated (June 1945). SÚA, MV-N, carton 254 #160.

54. Staněk, , Perzekuce, 89–90.Google Scholar

55. See the accounts of the march reproduced in Schieder, , Documents on the ExpulsionGoogle Scholar. Maria Zatschek reported that “hundreds” died during the march (Schieder, 484).

56. As reported in Interior Ministry memo #Z-379/45, 1 June 1945. SÚA, MV-N, carton 254 #160.

57. The Czech National Socialists were unrelated to the German party of the same name. Founded in the 1890s as a socialist alternative to the nationalist Young Czechs, the party evolved during the interwar period into a nationalist alternative to the Social Democrats. The party's most prominent member, at least before his election as president in 1935, was Edvard Beneš.

58. Staněk, , Perzekuce, 87–88.Google Scholar

59. Staněk, , Odsun, 82.Google Scholar

60. Zdeněk, Radvanovský, “Nucené vysídlení a odsun Němcůz města a okresu Ústí nad Labem v letech 1945–1946” (Forced Resettlement and the Transfer of Germans from the Town and District of Ústí nad Labem from 1945–1946), in Studie o sudetoněmecké otázce (Studies on the Sudeten German Question), ed. Václav, Kural (Prague, 1996), 132–33.Google Scholar

61. Jeremy King documents a similar “switching” in the south Bohemian town of České Budějovice (Budweis) during the Nazi occupation. Around 11 percent of Czechs in the Budweis district made the switch in 1939. See King's, “Loyalty and Polity, Nation and State: A Town in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848–1948” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1998), 331.Google Scholar

62. A. Piffl, Kronika města Ústí nad Labem za válečná léta 1938–1945 (Chronicle of Ústí nad Labem During the War Years 1938–1945), 1947. Quoted in Radvanovský, , “Nucené vysídlení,” 137.Google Scholar

63. Radvanovský, , “Nucené vysídlení, 137–38.Google Scholar

64. Ibid., 139–40. Radvanovský puts the official total of internees at 5,458, but adds that many more were interned before official records began in late June. The official death count of 286 included some violent deaths immediately following liberation and many from malnutrition and disease, including 160 deaths from typhus in late 1945.

65. Ibid., 140–43. Around 1,600 Germans remained in concentration camps in the region at the end of July. Ministry of Information report to Ministry of Interior, 4 August 1945, p. 5. Archiv Ministerstva vmtra [Archive of the Ministry of Interior] (AMV), Prague, LM:11873.

66. Bohmann, A., Die Ausweisung der Sudetendeutschen dargestellt am Beispiel dcs Stadt- und Land- kreises Aussig (Marburg, 1955), 50Google Scholar. Quoted in Radvanovský, , “Nucené vysídlení,” 141.Google Scholar

67. Staněk, , Perzekuce, 131.Google Scholar

68. In a recent dissertation, Andrei Bell (a.k.a. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff) documents the common image in Czech periodicals in 1945 of Germans as “dangerous guests.” See Bell, , “The Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans,” 293.Google Scholar

69. “Jed werwolfu v duši každého Němce” (The Poison of the Werewolf is in the Soul of Every German), Svobodné slovo, 1 August 1945, 1Google Scholar. The Communist press made a similar argument in a number of articles in July of 1945. See “Očistíme nemilosrdně naše pohraničí od německých vlkodlaků: Bezpečnost republiky vyžaduje rychlého vystěhování Němců” (We Will Cleanse Mercilessly Our Borderlands of German Werewolves: The Security of the Republic Demands the Rapid Removal of the Germans), in Rudé právo, 11 July 1945, 1.Google Scholar

70. Staněk, , Perzekuce, 138–52.Google Scholar

71. Ministry of Information report to Ministry of Interior, 4 August 1945, p. 2. AMV, Prague, LM: 11873.

72. The Ministry of Information report claimed that the bridge violence began when a German cried out “Germany lives! Long live Germany!” Ibid., p. 2.

73. Radvanovský, “Události 31. července 1945 v Ústí nad Labem” (Events of 31 July 1945 in Ústí nad Labem) in Kural, , Studie, 120–22.Google Scholar

74. Staněk, , Perzckuce, 136.Google Scholar

75. Ironically, Minister of Interior Nosek and Minister of Defense Svoboda concluded that the Ústí “pogrom” happened because the Czech authorities had not dealt harshly enough with Germans in the previous weeks. “As long as we and the general public act firmly [toward the Germans],” Svoboda said the day after the explosion, “then the street will not rule.” The assembled officials pledged a new wave of intervention to “liquidate werewolves” and the acceleration of the expulsion of the remaining two million “unreliable” Germans. Ministry of Information report to Ministry of Interior, 4 August 1945, p. 8. AMV, Prague, LM:11873.

76. In a perceptive article on genocide in history, Jared Diamond shows an interesting pattern in genocidal activity since the fifteenth century. Before 1900, most genocides took place as a result of colonial encounters, with Europeans (or descendents of Europeans) destroying aboriginal peoples. From 1900–1950, the locus of genocide moved to Europe, and the pace accelerated. Since 1950, there have been no fewer than seventeen genocides, predominantly in Third World countries in Africa and Asia. Diamond blames the twentieth-century increase in genocides on denser populations, improved communications, and improved technologies. See Diamond, , The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York, 1992), 284–97.Google Scholar

77. There is a sizable literature on the relationship of “modernity” to the Holocaust and other twentieth century cases of human engineering. See in particular the stimulating Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, 1989)Google Scholar by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. For a critical view of the modernization theories, see Michael, Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide (Cambridge, 1997) 169–82.Google Scholar

78. On technology and genocide, see Alan, Beyerchen, “Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the Technology of Racism in the Third Reich,” Central European History 30, no. 3 (1997): 386–402Google Scholar. Beyerchen makes the argument that bureaucracy, by shaping possibilities for action, functions as a kind of technology. Incidentally, the case of Rwanda suggests that old-fashioned methods (machetes) can be just as destructive as newer technologies.

79. The founding father and first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk, raised and rejected the idea of a transfer of minorities in a 1918 book on the postwar shape of Europe. His reason seems quaint in retrospect: it would be impossible to convince them to move! Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, Nová Evropa (New Europe) (Brno, 1994 [1918]), 107–9.Google Scholar

80. Václav, Havel, address on Czech-German relations, 17 February 1995, reprinted in the Newsletter of the Embassy of the Czech Republic 3, no. 3 (03 1995): 4.Google Scholar

81. In fact, American academia is still producing the occasional work that proposes population transfer as a legitimate solution to minority problems today. See Andrew, Bell-Fialkoff's troubling book, Ethnic Cleansing (New York, 1996)Google Scholar. Bell-Fialkoff considers “the transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia by the Allies [sic] in 1945–47 [sic]” a paradigmatic case of justified expulsion (p. 220). He draws on a similar argument by the American political scientist Joseph Schechtman in the 1960s. See Schechtman, , Postwar Population Transfers in Europe, 1945–1955 (Philadelphia, 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82. Making a slightly different argument, Jan Gross cites “wartime experience of spiritual crisis, crisis of values, and normative disorganization” as a precondition for the Communist seizure of power in East Central Europe. Gross, , “War as Revolution,” in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949, ed., Norman, Naimark and Leonid, Gibianskii (Boulder, 1997), 24.Google Scholar

83. “Směrnice pro Národní výbory o nejnutnějších opatřenich v zemědělství” (Directives for National Committees Concerning the Most Pressing Measures in Agriculture), Ministry of Agriculture, 10 May 1945, p. 2. SÚA, Ministerstvo zemědělsrví (Ministry of Agriculture) (MZ-S), carton 372, #195.