The post-war order in central Europe started with the transfer of German population, as well as with the division of Germany into four occupation zones and the de facto delimitation of the Oder-Neisse line as Germany's eastern frontier. In the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD), where the “German problem” is still hotly discussed, transferees are called “expellees”, while they are called “resettlers” in the German Democratic Republic (DDR). Mainly because of difficulty in obtaining historical materials there are few academic achievements concerning the problem of the transferees in the Soviet Zone (SBZ), which this article deals with.
Nazi Germany utilized German ethnic groups for her “living space” policy. On June 23, 1939, she concluded an agreement for population removal with fascist Italy. After the attack on Poland, Hitler advocated “a new order of ethnographic relations”, and Germany made such agreements with Estonia, Latvia, the Soviet Union and others. About one million Germans immigrated, 70% of them into the incorporated and integrated Ex-Polish areas, whose native population would become illiterate helots by the “Germanizing” policy.
It was Beneš, President of the Czechoslovak government in Exile in London, who proposed the removal of German minorities (Sudeten Germans). This proposal was accepted by the governments of the anti-Hitler coalition by the summer of 1943. But at the conferences during World War II the Big Three could come to no agreement about a transfer plan. Meantime the westward exodus of German inhabitants had already begun. The Potsdam Agreement accepted as a fait accompli Germany's eastern frontiers and the transfer of German populations.
By February/March 1944, 825, 000 Germans had been evacuated from Berlin and northwest cities into the territories east of the rivers Order and Neisse. In January, 1945, the Red Army broke the German eastern front, and several times as many Germans fled westwards as eastwards. According to statistics of 1946, 215, 000 were lost as war casualties and 313, 000 went missing.
The Potsdam Agreement requested Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary “meanwhile to suspend further expulsions pending the examination by the Governments concerned of the report from their representatives on the Control Council”. But this request wasn't necessarily effective. On November 20, 1945, the Control Council in Berlin made a plan for scheduled movements of German populations from December 1945 to July 1946. Germans from Poland would be accepted into Soviet (2, 000, 000) and British (1, 500, 000) zones. Those from other countries would be transfered to Soviet (750, 000 from Czechoslovakia), US (1, 750, 000 from Czechoslovakia, 500, 000 from Hungary) and French (150, 000 from Austria) zones. The French government wouldn't undertake any addtional categories of transfer.
As more than 10 million people rushed into three-quarters of the territories of the Weimar Republic, the post-war German population (1946) showed a 10% increase over the pre-war (1939) one (+20% in the US Zone, +14% in the SBZ, +13% in the British Zone, -4% in the French Zone, -27% in Berlin). In the impoverished conditions after the war it was very difficult to take care of transferees (in matters of hygiene, food, housing) and to integrate them into the new society.
In October 1946 760, 000 Displaced Persons still lived in the western zones of occupation, while 5, 991, 000 former prisoners of war and slave-workers had been released. Some of the DPs, above all from Poland and the Baltic Republics, refused repatriation for political and other reasons.
No matter where their final destination was, most of the refugees and transferees flowed into the SBZ at first. Therefore the SBZ, a sparsely populated agricultural area for the most part, showed social confusion with rapid population increase
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