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Sudaten German deportees, 1945.

?Government of the Czech Republic.

Sudaten Germans await deportation to Germany, 1945. Note the large swastika scrawled on the back of one elderly man's coat to identify him as German. The ethnic German communities of Eastern Europe generally supported German expansion in that direction in 1941-'42. This was understandable, for obvious reasons. However, the consequences were disastrous for their communities in many ways. In the latter part of the war, eastern "Volksdeutsch" found themselves being treated as pawns by the Nazis as they attempted to shore up their eastern empire, many of them ending up conscripted into "volunteer" Waffen-SS units where they were often used as cannon fodder. Worse perhaps, at the end of the war, German and ethnic German communities in the East were subjected to a huge programme of "ethnic cleansing" at the hands of the Soviets and the new governments of the eastern countries, involving their expulsion to the new, reduced German territory. I say "German" as well as "ethnic German", because the Nazi programme of Germanisation in the East had involved "encouraging" large numbers of "Reichsdeutsch" as well as their eastern cousins to resettle in strategic occupied territories, particularly in Poland. This, of course, significantly increased the numbers of people displaces westward when the war ended. Ethnic Germans from as far east as Russia, the Ukraine and the Balkans were caught up in this; some of these people (while identified as "German", did not even speak a recognizable version of High German. The conditions in Germany did not favour any sort of comfortable resettlement in their "native" country, at least in the short to medium term. The ethnic cleansing of German and ethnic German communities in the East, whether they were of new settlers or of long-established ethnic German communities, occasioned a very great deal of suffering which, I think has been little understood at least up to relatively recently. I suppose, however, that it was inevitable, given what had gone before ... Best regards, JR.