No better than them

[Incongruous]

Recently there was a lot of talk about the Nazis and one member brought up the expulsions of the Germans from Eastern and central Europe. I have never read anything about this, I will admit that I have never found any sympathy with the Germans, the Blitz, Holocaust and other acts always seemed to justify a demonising of the entire nation. A German killed was not as important as the others killed.

However, I recently got talking to a Hungarian-Germn down the road and he told me how the Czechs had expelled him and his family for being ethnic Germans. I had heard about this but said that such actions, although I cannot condone them (I question myself about this part), are understandable. He flew up from his seat and began telling me that what happened to German minorities in Europe was nothing more than racism and a close brother of Nazi ideology, he told me that no only were Germans cleansed via deportation but hat the Czech had also killed thousands of Germans. That they had done all this with the consent of men like Winston Churchill, the men who had claimed to hate Nazism.

I have read a few articles on the expulsion of the German minorities, and I feel rather angry, it was nothing but full blooded racism but has been overlooked becuse it was aimed at the "Germans".
In effect, what the Allies allowed to happen was nothing better than what they had fought.

I'm not really sure of the point to this thread, other than I feel it should be discussed.

[Rhyfelwyr]

It is shocking, however in reality we need to accept that things can't always be ideal, and sometimes you have to support one evil regime to beat another (we were allied with the Soviets after all, the only state to kill more Jews than the Nazis). The Nazi programme of ethnic cleansing would have been on a much much greater scale had they gotten their way, Nazi Germany was expansionist, the eastern European states with smaller German populations were not.

[LittleGrizzly]

One of the oldest sayings "two wrongs don't make a right" it applys here, there are things that need to be done to secure victory, lets assume that destorying dresden's industrial capacity was essential to winning WW2, then i would have been supportive of the action, but there are too many actions taken in anger....

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

However, I recently got talking to a Hungarian-Germn down the road and he told me how the Czechs had expelled him and his family for being ethnic Germans. I had heard about this but said that such actions, although I cannot condone them (I question myself about this part), are understandable. He flew up from his seat and began telling me that what happened to German minorities in Europe was nothing more than racism and a close brother of Nazi ideology, he told me that no only were Germans cleansed via deportation but hat the Czech had also killed thousands of Germans. That they had done all this with the consent of men like Winston Churchill, the men who had claimed to hate Nazism.

I have read a few articles on the expulsion of the German minorities, and I feel rather angry, it was nothing but full blooded racism but has been overlooked becuse it was aimed at the "Germans".
In effect, what the Allies allowed to happen was nothing better than what they had fought.

And he was absolutely right. It's all well and good for everyone else to sit around and say "the Germans deserved it," but when it happens to your family, when you see the effects in your parents, in your grandparents, you have a bit of a different outlook. Two wrongs do not make a right, and saying that an entire people are guilty of a crime is nothing short of racism.

[Brenus]

“we were allied with the Soviets after all, the only state to kill more Jews than the Nazis”: Can give from where you pick this information? I doubt the Soviets killed around 5 millions Jews in around 3 years in camps specially designed for that.
Can you provide the Soviet equivalent of the Bodensee conference? It will help.

About the “ethnic cleansing” of the German Minorities:
First, you can’t compare the expulsion and the genocide. I know that today it is a word used and abused but…
Second, just study how many volunteers these “minorities” gave to the Nazi, and what attitude did they adapt during the German Occupation. That will gave you a little clues on the reason why the expulsion.
In term of politic, the reason evoked by Hitler for the invasion (then annexing) of Czechoslovakia was the protection of the German minorities. I think he took the same reason for Poland, but this will have to be confirmed.
So, after the WW2, well, it was decided by the victims of the Nazi aggression that this won’t be an pretext again.

[Strike For The South]

The Germans reaped what they sowed. Those German minorities had been living there forever and then Hitler comes along and well you know the rest. Do I condone there actions? No but Im not going to shed a tear for the Germans.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Its probably not best to talk about 'the Germans'. Obviously the Allies were very much right in intervening on the side they did, but nonetheless every German story of suffering as a minority in eastern Europe is just as tragic as that of other ethnic groups in Germany.

“we were allied with the Soviets after all, the only state to kill more Jews than the Nazis”: Can give from where you pick this information? I doubt the Soviets killed around 5 millions Jews in around 3 years in camps specially designed for that.
Can you provide the Soviet equivalent of the Bodensee conference? It will help.

I'm afraid I can't, I just remember it from my history class.

[Strike For The South]

Its probably not best to talk about 'the Germans'. Obviously the Allies were very much right in intervening on the side they did, but nonetheless every German story of suffering as a minority in eastern Europe is just as tragic as that of other ethnic groups in Germany.

Maybe this is true, but I dont blame the eastern Europeans one bit. In fact there reaction was very restrained compared to what the Germans had been doing towards them.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I will shed a tear for the Germans. Of course the treatment of the Germans was wrong. It was a bloody disgrace.

One doesn't have to choose sides, or to belittle the suffering of one side, or to pick a side that was more wrong, or less wrong. Nor to agree with neo-nazi revisionists that all violence was equal, nor to agree with communists apologists about historical necessities.

One can simply denounce hypernationalism, choose to abhor all totalitarian violence, and strife for a peaceful, democratic Europe that never again will have to endure this.


To quote my favourite German poet Schiller, trying to connect form with content:

Joy! Schöner Götterfunken! Fille de l'Élysée!
Intoxicated with your fire, heavenly one, we tread thy sanctuary
Tes charmes relient, was der Mode Schwert geteilt
All men become brothers, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.




(note to self: rewrite Schiller into a multilingual whole whilst retaining metrum, a semblance of rhyme and the integrity of the flow of the language. )

Nazi Germany was expansionist, the eastern European states with smaller German populations were not

I'm afraid they were. Poland was feasting on the flesh of Czechoslovakia together with Germany in 1938. The Hungarians and Bulgarians were perennial irredentists. Apart from Czechoslovakia, none of the Eastern European states were democracies.

And never mind Stalin, who never did not have the conquest of as much of Europe as possible in mind.

[Jolt]

Actually, I see the expulsion of the Germans as the perfectly rational act after the wars if we look into the following things:


- Nazi Germany was using ethnic Germans and historical German settlements outside their own borders as a reason to expand at the expense of the neighbouring countries, in Austria and Czech Sudetenland, and later Bohemia-Moravia

- Ethnic Germans had been a source of great instability for the Czech Government prior to the Munich Agreement, and for the Polish Government prior to the Declaration of War, and escalated (And permitted escalation) things enough so Hitler could intervene.

As a result, this war was indirectly triggered because Germans lived in regions outside of Germany, and these were used as casus belli to start a bloody war which murdered millions. Knowing this, the Allied governments logically decided that such a situation was never to happen again, and as to provide stability to the countries, it was decided to forcefully remove all the Germans from neighbouring countries, into Germany itself. Bloody, true, but it comes as a pretty logical to me, and not as part of some evil mischievous plan to get revenge on the German people.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Maybe this is true, but I dont blame the eastern Europeans one bit. In fact there reaction was very restrained compared to what the Germans had been doing towards them.

Sorry, but a lot of "Eastern European states" were Axis nations.

One doesn't have to choose sides, or to belittle the suffering of one side, or to pick a side that was more wrong, or less wrong. Nor to agree with neo-nazi revisionists that all violence was equal, nor to agree with communists apologists about historical necessities.

[Strike For The South]

Sorry, but a lot of "Eastern European states" were Axis nations.

Eh the biggest expulsions were in Czechoslovakia and Poland while there others were mostly stronged armed by the Soviets. Frankly I dont care how German or Soviet power politics worked at the time nor do I feel it necessary to paint the Germans in a better light. Was the average solider a manic? No but I will always believe the Allies were "right" and the Axis were "wrong"

[InsaneApache]

Recently there was a lot of talk about the Nazis and one member brought up the expulsions of the Germans from Eastern and central Europe. I have never read anything about this, I will admit that I have never found any sympathy with the Germans, the Blitz, Holocaust and other acts always seemed to justify a demonising of the entire nation. A German killed was not as important as the others killed.

However, I recently got talking to a Hungarian-Germn down the road and he told me how the Czechs had expelled him and his family for being ethnic Germans. I had heard about this but said that such actions, although I cannot condone them (I question myself about this part), are understandable. He flew up from his seat and began telling me that what happened to German minorities in Europe was nothing more than racism and a close brother of Nazi ideology, he told me that no only were Germans cleansed via deportation but hat the Czech had also killed thousands of Germans. That they had done all this with the consent of men like Winston Churchill, the men who had claimed to hate Nazism.

I have read a few articles on the expulsion of the German minorities, and I feel rather angry, it was nothing but full blooded racism but has been overlooked becuse it was aimed at the "Germans".
In effect, what the Allies allowed to happen was nothing better than what they had fought.

I'm not really sure of the point to this thread, other than I feel it should be discussed.

Listen mate, it's hard to accept but that's life. The Germans lost. That's what happens when you lose.

Try to think about it this way;

What would the world be like if the Nazis had won?

Much, much more the lesser of two evils, by several magnitudes.

Just my 'umble opinion of course.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Listen mate, it's hard to accept but that's life. The Germans lost. That's what happens when you lose.

We've accepted that it happens - the fact remains that it was unjust and cruel.

[Caius]

We've accepted that it happens - the fact remains that it was unjust and cruel.

Cruel for the Germans? What about the Jews?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Cruel for the Germans? What about the Jews?

Do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Can something be cruel towards Germans while something else is cruel to the Jews? Yes, I think so.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I don't think we should deny the suffering that many Germans endured. Of course, numbers wise it may seem to pale into comparison when considering how many died by the Nazi regime.

But each individual German's suffering was just as great (generally speaking) as that of any individual of another ethnic background, and it should not be ignored or tossed aside as insignificant.

Remember those who were persecuted - all of them.

[CountArach]

They are human beings. It is wrong by definition.

[seireikhaan]

For them that live by the sword, shall perish by it.

[Tribesman]

Just wondering , when it comes to Germans expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia for examples what proportion were original residents and what proportion were settlers shipped there from other places to make the territories more Germanic for the thousand year reich ?
Actually when you think of it didn't Nazi Germany have a deal with lots of different eastern european countries to deport the all the ethnic Germans to German territory....so would that mean that the eastern european countries were just completing the deal ....but its just that the Germany for the Germans territory had shrunk somewhat by then

[Seamus Fermanagh]

“we were allied with the Soviets after all, the only state to kill more Jews than the Nazis”: Can give from where you pick this information? I doubt the Soviets killed around 5 millions Jews in around 3 years in camps specially designed for that.
Can you provide the Soviet equivalent of the Bodensee conference? It will help.

Actually, it was Tsarist Russia that launched occasional pogroms against Russian Jews. At other times and places, they enjoyed a semi-protected status. All rather mixed up.

Soviet Russia didn't really single Jews out very much at all, at least under Stalin. Stalin killed people in gulags, butchered his own officer corps, starved millions during the forced collectivization of agriculture, and even sent someone to axe Trotsky a question -- in short, he butchered millions (some sources suggest he and Beria killed substantially more people than did the Nazi regime) and was willing to kill anybody who might vaguely, possibly, conceivably, become a threat to Papa Joe sometime in the next half century. He just didn't go after Jews with any particular hatred. He was a very ecumenical monster.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

For them that live by the sword, shall perish by it.

Once again presuming, of course, that all Germans actively supported the National Socialist regime and all of its expansionist and racial policies, as well as the war.

[Strike For The South]

Once again presuming, of course, that all Germans actively supported the National Socialist regime and all of its expansionist and racial policies, as well as the war.

They did nothing to stop it

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

They did nothing to stop it

Partially untrue (Germans did resist) and partially unreasonably idealistic (not much that Germans could have done about it once the murderer was consolidated in power).

[KarlXII]

They did nothing to stop it

That, and it is unknown how many did support the nationalistic or racial ideologies of the Nazi regime, or those who were part of the German settlers who took over the houses of the undesirables.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

(some sources suggest he and Beria killed substantially more people than did the Nazi regime)

Some seventeen million (according to some brief research) were killed by the Nazi regime, whereas Stalin's era was responsible for the deaths of between twenty and forty-three million. Just some statistics.

[Strike For The South]

Partially untrue (Germans did resist) and partially unreasonably idealistic (not much that Germans could have done about it once the murderer was consolidated in power).

You can always resist. The Germans had what was coming to them. Such is war.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

You can always resist.

It's awfully easy for you to sit back in your chair in Texas and say that.

The Germans had what was coming to them. Such is war.

Such is racism. You can never vilify an entire people, you can never assume guilt of an entire nation, and you can never, ever say that an entire race "got what was coming to them." That is exactly the type of racism that the Nazis used to justify what they did to the Jews.

[Strike For The South]

It's awfully easy for you to sit back in your chair in Texas and say that.

Same could be said for you.

Such is racism. You can never vilify an entire people, you can never assume guilt of an entire nation, and you can never, ever say that an entire race "got what was coming to them." That is exactly the type of racism that the Nazis used to justify what they did to the Jews.

That maybe so I never said the expellers were perfect. Im just not going to feel bad for the Germans especially the ones who moved there as Tribsey alluded to. You start a war you better finish it or reap the consequences.

[seireikhaan]

Once again presuming, of course, that all Germans actively supported the National Socialist regime and all of its expansionist and racial policies, as well as the war.

Who said I was only referring to Germans?