Demographic estimates of the flight and expulsion of Germans

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Expulsion of Germans after World War II
(demographic estimates)
Background
Nazi-Soviet population transfers Potsdam Agreement
Flight and evacuation
German evacuation East Prussia
Flight and expulsion
Czechoslovakia Poland (incl. former German territories) Netherlands Romania
Exodus and emigration
Exodus from Eastern Europe Emigration from Poland

Demographic estimates of the flight and expulsion of Germans have been derived by either addition of registrated refugees and expellees or by comparison of pre- and post-war population data. Estimates of the number of displaced Germans vary in the range of 13.5-16.5 million. The deaths of about 500,000 to 600,000 are verified, estimates derived with the population balance method put the death toll at about two million.

Contents 1 Difficulty of developing accurate estimates 2 Estimating methodology 2.1 Method of counting confirmed deaths 2.2 Method of population balance 2.2.1 Example 3 Demographic studies 3.1 US American figures of 1957 and 1958 3.2 German government estimates 1958 3.3 Federation of Expellees' estimates 3.4 Estimates concerning Czechoslovakia only 3.5 Estimates concerning Poland only 3.5.1 Number of Germans expelled from Poland 3.5.2 Germans remaining in Poland 4 Casualties 4.1 Compilation of death toll estimates of flight, evacuation and expulsion 4.2 Population balance method versus counts of reported death 4.2.1 Figures calculated from counts of reported death 4.2.2 Figures calculated using the population balance method 5 Sources 6 References

[edit] Difficulty of developing accurate estimates

Some of these deaths were the result of direct, intentional actions of violent militias and senseless killings by opportunistic mobs and individuals. Other deaths were caused by the privations of a forced migration in a postwar environment characterized by crime, chaos, famine, disease, and cold winter conditions. It is almost impossible to attribute accurate proportions of deaths to specific causes.

Due to a lack of accurate records, many estimates of population transfers and associated deaths depend upon a "population balance" methodology.

Estimates of total populations expelled and deaths during the expulsions often include figures from the evacuation, because these people were not allowed to return, thus making it difficult to arrive at an accurate and undisputed estimate of population movements and deaths due solely to the expulsions.

The wide range of estimates stems from a number of factors. First, the chaos at the end of the war and immediately afterwards made it difficult to gather reliable statistics; hence there are few contemporary sources. Second, various studies used different methodologies, so that results varied by as much as an order of magnitude. There are also disputes over the definition of "expulsion", which may cover flight, evacuation, forcible expulsion, and population transfer count at various periods. Sometimes civilians killed during battles at the end of the war are counted, sometimes not. Some of the differences may arise from political bias, as the expulsion of Germans was widely utilized as political weapon on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

[edit] Estimating methodology

The estimates can be classified by methodology into two main groups:

[edit] Method of counting confirmed deaths

Studies of this kind try to count individual deaths, by various means. Sources may include registry death records, police and military records, church files of missing and killed persons, or reports of relatives.

Studies using the population balance methodology tend to yield higher estimates than those based on detailed research.

[edit] Method of population balance

Generally, this method tries to estimate the size German population before the process (be it expulsion in the narrow sense, or the German exodus from Eastern Europe in the broader sense) and after its end. The population deficit can than be interpreted as the number of deaths. The calculation usually starts with census data from the late 1930s, then accounts for other influences on the population size during the war, which may include military losses, civilian losses, population transfers and natural increase. The starting point for the postwar calculation is usually the expellee population in 1950 as determined by survey in West Germany and Austria, various estimates or official counts of expellees in East Germany, and the population of Germans remaining in East bloc countries.

[edit] Example

One estimate of the number of ethnic Germans expelled is provided by the following table which is based on data culled from a number of sources. It can provide insight into the "methodology" behind some population deficit studies.

German refugees and expellees 1939-1950
Description	East German territories of 1937	Eastern Europe*	Total
Population in 1939**	9,500,000	7,100,000	16,600,000
Wartime transfers in***	500,000	0	500,000
Natural increase 1939-1950	600,000	400,000	1,000,000
Military losses 1939-45****	900,000	550,000	1,450,000
Civilian losses*****	800,000	500,000	1,300,000
Remaining in East Europe******	1,450,000	1,500,000	2,950,000
Expellee population 1950	7,450,000	4,950,000	12,400,000
Sources:	Gerhard Reichling. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. Bonn 1986 ISBN 3-88557-046-7. Rűdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000. ISBN 3-486-56531-1 Fritz Peter Habel Dokumente zur Sudetenfrage Langen Müller, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7844-2691-3. Alfred de Zayas Die Nemesis von Potsdam Herbig, Munich 2005. ISBN 3-7766-2454-X. Newest statistical survey pp. 32-34. Heinz Navratil, Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung 1945 bis 1948 Universitas Verlag, Muenchen, 2001, p. 75.
*Includes ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Danzig, the Baltic nations, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. Does not include the USSR. **Includes bilinguals who were listed as Germans. ***Wartime evacuation of persons from western Germany. ****Research by R. Overmans has increased this total by 360,000 thus reducing civilian losses. *****Losses primarily during military campaign in 1945, also includes 270,000 dead in the USSR after being deported as laborers. This table reflects the research of Reichling and Overmans that has adjusted the estimate of civilian deaths downward from the 1958 German government estimate of 2.1 million dead. ******Remaining in East Europe-Primarily bilinguals except in the case of Romania. Research by G. Reichling has increased this total by 230,000 thus reducing civilian losses

[edit] Demographic studies

[edit] US American figures of 1957 and 1958

Allied American figures from 1957 placed the number of Germans subject to deportation at about 16.5 million. According to this figure, about 3 million Germans were "lost on the way".^{[citation needed]} In 1958, U.S. Congressman B. Carroll Reece charged that 3 million German civilians had died during the expulsions.^[1]

[edit] German government estimates 1958

In West Germany, several influential studies were produced. One of them is Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste, 1939-50 (German losses from expulsion, 1939-50) by the German Federal Statistics Office. Using the population-balance method and census data for 1950, it determined the number of deaths (or in another interpretation, of persons unaccounted for) to be more than 2.1 million.^[2] The three-volume Gesamterhebung zur Klärung des Schicksals der deutschen Bevölkerung in den Vertreibungsgebieten, (General compilation towards accounting for the fate of the German population in the areas of expulsion), Munich, 1965, confirms this figure.

German expellees
Expelled from	Ethnic German population 1944/1945	Fled or expelled	Died during flight or expulsion
Baltic states and Memel Territory	256,000	256,000	66,000
Yugoslavia	550,000	523,000	135,000
Former eastern territories of Germany territories east of the Oder-Neisse line which were part of Germany in 1937 and Danzig	10,000,000	7,400,000	1,225,000
Poland excluding former eastern territories of Germany	1,400,000	675,000	263,000
Romania	785,000	347,000	101,000
Czechoslovakia	3,274,000	2,921,000	238,000
Hungary	597,000	259,000	53,000
Totals	16,862,000	12,381,000	2,081,000

Official German estimates of the German population of German and Polish territories east of the Oder-Neisse Line in 1944, before the Soviet advance, amount to about 11.9 million, including nearly 9.8 million in the territories themselves (borders of 1937). Figures cited by Hans Roos total about 10.1 million. This total includes 8.4 million in the Oder-Neisse territories, 400,000 in the former Free City of Danzig and 1.3 million in Poland, but does not include northern East Prussia, annexed by the Soviet Union (now the Kaliningrad Oblast). The German government estimates that about 7.5 million Germans fled from territories east of the Oder-Neisse in 1944-45, but says about 1.1 million later returned, and puts the number subsequently subject to expulsion at 5.6 million. The total expelled in 1945-50, according to the German government, was 3.5 million. This figure also is cited by Zoltan Szaz.

[edit] Federation of Expellees' estimates

The German foundation Centre Against Expulsions of the Federation of Expellees has compiled the following data from various sources.^[3]

Time period	Number of expellees (incl. deaths)	Group expelled	Expelled by	Expelled, deported, fled from	To	Deaths*
Aug 1941 - Jun 1942	900,000	Russian-Germans	Soviet Union	Ukraine, Volga Republic, Caucasus, etc.	Siberia, Central Asia, etc.	210,000
Oct 1944 - Mar 1948	200,000	Germans	Yugoslavia	Yugoslavia	Germany, Austria	62,500
Jan/Feb 1945	75,000	Germans	Soviet Union, Romanians	Romania	USSR	11,000
1944 - 1948	2,209,000	Germans	Poland, Soviet Union	East Germany, East Prussia	West Germany, Middle Germany	299,000
1945 - 1948	5,820,000	Germans	Poland	former East Germany, Pomerania, East Brandenburg, Silesia	West Germany, Middle Germany	914,000
1945 - 1948	367,000	Germans	Poland	Free State of Danzig	West Germany, Middle Germany	83,000
1945 - 1948	3,159,000	Germans	Czechoslovakia	Czechoslovakia	West Germany, Middle Germany, Austria	238,000
1945 - 1948	857,000	Germans	Poland	Poland	West Germany, Middle Germany	185,000
1945 - 1948	320,000	Baltic Germans, Romanian-Germans, etc.	Poland, Soviet Union	Poland, East Germany	West Germany, Middle Germany	185,000
1945 - 1948	30,000	Baltic Germans, Romanian-Germans, etc.	Soviet Union	Poland, East Germany	Siberia, Central Asia	10,000
1945 - 1946	280,000	Russian-Germans	Soviet Union, Western Allies	Middle Germany	Siberia, Central Asia, etc.	90,000
1946 - 1948	250,000	Germans	Hungary	Hungary	Germany, Austria	6,000
Totals	13,567,000					1,997,500

This more detailed accounting is susceptible to specific objections and questions about the meaning of the numbers.

While the table is presented as estimates of the number of expelled, and column Expelled by suggests which government was responsible, these assertions have been questioned.

• Many Germans were evacuated by German authorities (e.g., in East Prussia, Silesia, Poland) and died during evacuation due to such things as Soviet attack, starvation and extreme cold.
• Within Eastern Europe, many of the expulsions, killing, or transportations of Germans were carried out by the Soviets rather than the nominal governments. For example, German POWs in Silesia, supposedly expelled by Poland., were transported by the Soviet Union to Siberia, where many died in slave labor, though later the survivors were transferred to East Germany.^{[citation needed]}
• Poland was directly controlled by Soviet authorities in 1945 (until at least 1947). This was also true for - Hungary, Romania.
• The basis of great part of the expulsion was Potsdam Treaty agreed by the USA, UK and the USSR.

Specific numbers by country are also open to dispute

• In the case of Czechoslovakia, there exists a report named Opinion of the Commission on the losses connected with the transfer, which was prepared by a joint Czech-German commission of historians. It suggests that, in the case of Czechoslovakia, the maximum number of deaths is 15,000 to 30,000 and that numbers such as the 220,000 estimated by the Centre Against Expulsions are not supported by the evidence.

[edit] Estimates concerning Czechoslovakia only

Developing a clear picture of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia is difficult because of the chaotic conditions that existed at the end of the war. There was no stable central government and record-keeping was non-existent. Many of the events that occurred during that period were spontaneous and local rather than being the result of coordinated policy directives from a central government. Among these spontaneous events was the removal and detention of the Sudeten Germans which was triggered by the strong anti-German sentiment at the grass-roots level and organized by local officials.

Records of food rationing coupons show approximately 3,325,000 inhabitants of occupied Sudetenland in May 1945. Of these, about 500,000 were Czechs or other non-Germans. Thus, there were approximately 2,725,000 Germans in occupied Sudetenland in May 1945.

On the initiative of the joint Czech-German Commission of Historians, a statistical and demographic investigation was conducted, resulting in the publication of the "Opinion of the Commission on the losses connected with the transfer". The number that the commission arrived at has since been accepted by a large section of the historians, press and media in other countries:

1. Figures for the victims of the transfer vary enormously and are thus extremely controversial. The values given in German statistical calculations [for deaths resulting from expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia] vary between 220,000 and 270,000 cases that are unaccounted for, which are in many cases interpreted as deaths; the figures given in research carried out so far varies between 15,000 and 30,000 deaths.
2. The discrepancey is due to differing notions of the term "victims of the transfer".
3. In the Commission's view, a particular problem with the "balance-sheet" approach is that most of the data it works with are based on model calculations and estimates that are derived from quantities that cannot be compared with one another.

[edit] Estimates concerning Poland only

[edit] Number of Germans expelled from Poland

2,612,000 Germans left Poland in 02.1946 - 12.1949 according to S. Jankowiak ^[4], as cited by B. Nitschke.

During the pre-Potsdam expulsions, many Germans were forced to march over 100 and sometimes even 200 kilometres^[5]. Different estimates of the number of Germans expelled by Polish army alone during pre-Potsdam deportations (all numbers after Jankowiak)^[6]:

• 1200 thousand, according to K.Kersten, 1964
• 300 thousand, according to S.Banasiak
• 400 thousand, K.Skubiszewski
• 500 thousand, A.Ogrodowczyk
• 300-400 thousand, S.Chojnecki, 1980
• 350-450 thousand, A.Magierska, 1978
• 200-250 thousand, T.Białecki, 1970
• 620-630 thousand, S.Zwoniński, 1983
• 230-250 thousand, Cz. Osękowski
• 500-550 thousand, Z. Romanow
• 400 thousand, B.Nitschke
• 400 thousand, M.Wille, 1996
• 600-700 thousand ^[7]

On top of that, 365,000 - 1,200,000 Germans were deported by Polish administration^[8].

[edit] Germans remaining in Poland

Germans remaining after 1950 in the Oder-Neisse territories and prewar Poland are put officially at 835,000 and 75,000 respectively, or 910,000 altogether. Roos, however, estimates 1,190,000 Germans remaining in the Oder-Neisse territories, 30,000 in Danzig and 430,000 in Poland. These do not include about 1 million "autochthons" – Polish-speaking or bilingual German citizens – in Upper Silesia, Masuria and West Prussia. Szaz says about 1.1 million Germans remained. Thus, it would appear that about 1 million, and possibly more, Germans remained after 1950. (Note: A significant proportion of Germans remaining in postwar Poland were allowed to emigrate in the 1970s and '80s as a result of Brandt's Ostpolitik and other factors.)

All of these studies are susceptible to the general criticisms of the statistical-balance studies.

[edit] Casualties

[edit] Compilation of death toll estimates of flight, evacuation and expulsion

Year	Estimate	Source	Reference	Provided in	Comments
1958	2,225,000	Statistisches Bundesamt German Federal Statistics Office	Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste, 1939-50 (German losses from expulsion, 1939-50) German Federal Statistics Office.		According to Nitschke, the number given by Statistisches Bundesamt was 1,600,000 (pp. 38, 45-46 of the report); Does not include Soviet Germans.
1965	2,100,000		Gesamterhebung zur Klärung des Schicksals der deutschen Bevölkerung in den Vertreibungsgebieten, (General compilation towards accounting for the fate of the German population in the areas of expulsion), Munich, 1965
1965	1,020,000	Andrzej Brożek	"Losy Niemców w Polsce po roku 1944/1945", Opole 1965, p. 16)	Nitschke, "Wysiedlenie ...", p. 240	according to Nitschke, who dismisses this number as too high.
1965	473,000	A "Special Church Commission"	Polish translation of Haar after Süddeutsche Zeitung	Gazeta Wyborcza
1974	400,000	German Federal Archive	Polish translation of Haar after Süddeutsche Zeitung	Gazeta Wyborcza
1977	2,225,000	Alfred de Zayas	Die Nemesis von Potsdam. Alfred de Zayas, Die Nemesis von Potsdam, 14th revised edition, Herbig, Munich, 2005, pp. 33-34.
1982	2,800,000	Heinz Nawratil	Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung 1945 bis 1948 (the black book of the expulsions 1945 to 1948) (Universitas Verlag, Munich, 9th edition 2001, p. 75)		The book is unreliable, according to Thomas Fischer [6]
1986	2,020,000	Gerhard Reichling	"Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen" (the German expellees in figures) , Teil 1, Bonn 1995, Tabelle 7, page 36		2,020,000 Germans perished as a result of the expulsion and deportation to forced labour in the Soviet Union. Includes the deaths of 310,000 Soviet Germans.
2000	< 500,000	Ruediger Overmans	Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (German military losses in the Second World War)	axishistory forum	"hardly higher than 500,000"
2003	600,000	Bernadetta Nitschke	"Wysiedlenie ...", p. 240	"Wysiedlenie ...", p. 240	Nitschke supports Overmans and claims 610,000 (including Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, resp.: 400,000 + 130,000 + 80,000; in "Wysiedlenie ...", p. 240). She also presented 600,000 in her earlier book available online at http://zbc.uz.zgora.pl/ (page 232)
2006	500,000 to 600,000	Ingo Haar		Deutschlandfunk web site
2006	2,111,000	Pit Pietersen	Pit Pietersen, Kriegsverbrechen der alliierten Siegermächte: Terroristische Bombenangriffe auf Deutschland und Europa 1939-1945, p.569, published by BoD – Books on Demand, 2006, ISBN 3833450452, 9783833450457	[7]	includes the missing

[edit] Population balance method versus counts of reported death

[edit] Figures calculated from counts of reported death

The principal weakness of statistical calculation is in uncertainty of input parameters, such as war losses. For example, the German researcher Rüdiger Overmans published a study, Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (German military losses in the Second World War), that revises war losses upwards from older estimates. As in the population-balance approach all these numbers are tightly interconnected, this means revision of deaths related to expulsion would be also necessary.

On this subject, Overmans wrote:

The deaths during flight and expulsion concerned the Germans in the immediate postwar period as much as the fate of the missing soldiers, and similar efforts were made to clarify the fate of the missing civilians or bring families together. A huge scientific project reconstructed the events historiographically, the Federal Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt), the refugees’ associations and the clerical search service did a lot with the financial support of the Federal Government to quantitatively assess the fate of those expelled as accurately as possible. The result can be summarized in the conclusion that about 2 million Germans had been killed during flight and expulsion - not including those from the respective territories who had died during military service.

These casualty figures, however, which for decades have been an integral part of the respective serious literature, are the result not of a counting of death records or similar concrete data, but of a population balance which concluded that the fate of about 2 million inhabitants of the expulsion territories could not be clarified and that it must therefore be assumed that they had lost their lives in the course of these events. In recent years, however, these statements have been increasingly questioned, as the studies about the sum of reported deaths showed that the number of victims can hardly have been higher than 500,000 persons - which is also an unimaginable number of victims, but nevertheless only a quarter of the previous data. In favor of the hitherto assumed numbers it could always be said, however, that the balance didn’t say that the death of these people had been proven, but only that their fate could not be clarified.^[9]

Another example can be quoted from the Opinion of Czech-German commission of historians, explaining how recent changes in the estimated number of Sudeten Germans in East Germany would influence the result of balance calculations in case of Czechoslovakia

If the overall balance-sheet were to incorporate recently published data from the 1950 census in German Democratic Republic, which show only 612,000 former Sudeten Germans on East Territory instead of the figure of 914,000 used up till now, the number of cases unaccounted for would rise to over half a million [note: from 220-270 thousand]. This would lead to absurd results.

Ingo Haar of the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin said on 14 November 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that about 500,000 to 600,000 victims are realistic, based on a German governmental study initiated in the 1960s and published in 1974, reporting 400,000 deaths east of the Oder-Neisse line and 100,000 deaths in Czechoslovakia.^[10] Haar said these numbers were compiled from actually reported deaths, while higher figures of about two million deaths were estimated with the population balance method in a German governmental study of 1953.^[10] Haar said the higher estimates must be seen in the historical context of 1953, when the Adenauer government of West Germany needed high numbers for political reasons.^[10] Military historian Rüdiger Overmans said on 6 December 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that only the about 500,000 registrated deaths could be counted, and that the unaccounted cases calculated with the population balance method need first be confirmed by further research.^[11]

[edit] Figures calculated using the population balance method

On 29 November 2006 State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Christoph Bergner, outlined the stance of the respective governmental institutions in Deutschlandfunk saying that the numbers presented by the German government and others are not contradictory to the numbers cited by Haar, and that the below 600,000 estimate comprises the deaths directly caused by atrocities during the expulsion measures and thus only includes people who on the spot were raped, beaten, or else brought to death, while the above two millions estimate also includes people who on their way to post-war Germany have died of epidemics, hunger, cold, air raids and the like.^[12]

The German government, using prewar population figures, wartime estimates and postwar figures from both German states and Poland, concludes that 2,167,000 people from the Oder-Neisse territories died as a result of the war and the subsequent expulsions, but estimates that about 500,000 of these were military casualties, reducing the number of civilian deaths to about 1.6 million. To this it adds the deaths of 100,000 Danzigers and 217,000 German residents of Poland, for a total of about 1.9 million civilian deaths.

No breakdown is given by the German government of the proportion who died in the flight from the Red Army, during the occupation or during the expulsions, but an analysis of the figures indicates that about a third of the casualties must have occurred among those who fled during the conquest; the balance apparently occurred during the period of expropriation and expulsion.

Roos says approximately 7.2 million fled or were expelled from the Oder-Neisse territories put under Polish control, along with 380,000 Danzigers and 880,000 German-Poles. "Of these," he says, death claimed about 1.2 million from the territories, 90,000 Danzigers and 200,000 German-Poles, for a total of nearly 1.5 million civilian fatalities, not including those in northern East Prussia.

Walther Hubatsch says about 1.4 million Germans from the Oder-Neisse territories and 600,000 from other areas died, for total of about 2 million. Szaz mentions the 2.16 million cited by the official history, which includes military casualties, but elsewhere says "over 1 million" of the 3.5 million expelled from the territories lost their lives. From these estimates it is evident that 1.5 million to 2 million German civilians lost their lives in the Soviet conquest of eastern Germany and subsequent expulsions.

The study by Dr. Gerhard Reichling "Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen" (the German expellees in figures) concludes that 2,020,000 Germans perished as a result of the expulsion and deportation to slave labour in the Soviet Union.^[13]

Alfred de Zayas has compiled a statistical balance table that takes into account then recent demographic studies and suggests a higher figure of 2,225,000, published 2005 in Die Nemesis von Potsdam. ^[14] An even higher estimate of 2.8 million is made by Dr. Heinz Nawratil in his Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung 1945 bis 1948 (the black book of the expulsions 1945 to 1948) ^[15] The Centre against Expulsions estimates that just under 2 million German civilians died.

[edit] Sources

• Hubatsch, Walther, ed.: The German Question, New York: Herder Book Center, 1967.
• Roos, Hans: A History of Modern Poland, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966, pp. 213, 215-16.
• Schieder, Theodor, ed.: Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe, Bonn (no date).pp. 62, 120, 122-23,.
• Szaz, Zoltan Michael: Germany's Eastern Frontiers: The Problem of the Oder-Neisse Line, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1960, pp. 96, 126, 130.

[edit] References