A sense of the hatred of those days was conveyed in a Polish order in June; it stated that Germans were “to be permitted to take only enough food with them so that on their crossing the River Oder, there is nothing left.”69 The Communist regime reaped the political gains, even when it meant the area’s economy would be adversely affected and take longer to recover.70 For example, at the beginning of June, the population of Breslau (Wrocław) swelled to 200,000, counting only 15,000 Poles. If all the Germans were driven out, what would happen to the city? Across wide swaths of Silesia, there were no Poles whatsoever.71
To replace the Germans, Poles were brought in from elsewhere. One such person was Teresa Postrzewska, who had once lived in Poland’s east. The Soviets forced her out of her homeland, and she had hoped to live in Warsaw, but given the complete desolation of that city, she continued west, then received government aid, along with a new and bigger farm. For her, ethnic cleansing made it possible to have a new home, though because she was little used to the land, she remained dependent on the state.72
The Red Army’s excesses made matters worse for Poland and also partly undermined Stalin’s project of winning people over to Communism. Soldiers ran amok and destroyed property senselessly. One Polish report from early May from the rich Silesian area noted that the war had left many urban areas untouched and that the real destruction came after the fighting when the Red Army burned down 60 to 70 percent of the cities in drunken revelries. Factories not destroyed were disassembled and sent back to the Soviet Union in such numbers that Polish authorities feared the worst. Looking to the future, they said: “We will likely take over only naked walls.”73 The Poles were sickened and revolted by the Red Army’s campaign of rape, which left behind venereal diseases of epidemic proportions.74
At Potsdam in mid-1945, the Western Allies showed some, but not much, concern for what was happening. Indeed its official declaration recognized that “the transfer to Germany of German populations” out of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary “will have to be undertaken.” These “transfers” were supposed to take place “in an orderly and humane manner,” but nothing was done to make that happen.75
The “sanctioned phase” of the expulsions after Potsdam was no more humane than the first. The condition of Germans who survived the trip from Poland or Czechoslovakia—many dying in the cattle cars—became such a scandal that on August 27, just back in the House of Commons from Potsdam, Churchill expressed his uneasiness at the “tragedy” taking place. Until a few weeks before, he had favored these transfers. Only on November 20 did the Allied Control Council in Germany put forward a systematic plan to resettle Germans from the east and negotiations with the occupation powers begin.76
Gomułka visited Moscow that November and brought Stalin the news that Marshal Zhukov, head of the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany, would not accept any more deportees. Stalin brushed that information aside, along with Churchill’s belated objections, and said simply: “You should create such conditions for the Germans that they want to escape themselves. Keep only the ones you need.”77
If some reservations were voiced in the West, most were sympathetic to the “need” for the expulsions. The main complaint from the Western Allies was that starving and propertyless people were being transported to an occupied Germany that was already short of all the essentials.78
The Polish government became fanatical in its efforts to stamp out the smallest sign that Germans had once dwelled in the “recovered territories.” For example, in late 1946 and early 1947, new strictures were decreed to erase any sign of the German language. Fines were levied on anyone heard speaking it, even in private, or found using it in letters with acquaintances. In October 1947 new committees were created to seek out the last vestiges of the hated script in cemeteries, on roadside crosses, on household dishes, and even on ashtrays.79
In spite of this official fanaticism, people found ways of quietly resisting, as can be seen in Silesia. Government instructions for “de-Germanization” (odniemczenie) called for erasing the culture and history of all things Germanic as quickly and completely as possible.80 The last “resettlement” train, carrying 32 persons, left Silesia on January 18, 1951. The ethnic cleansing, begun six years before, had finally ended, and 211,000 persons from that region were gone. According to Polish sources, “at least 22,000” families had been torn apart. What appalled the authorities was to learn in 1952 that 80,000 citizens there still gave “German” as their nationality in their personal passports, so the regime continued its efforts.
BLEMISHES ON VICTORY
Polish and Czech historians insisted for many years that the “resettlement” of the Germans was “necessary” and a “justified act of defense” to avoid being swallowed up by their neighbor. Often Western historians echoed the triumphalism by claiming the ethnic cleansing was needed for postwar “stability.” Anyone who disagreed was denigrated as an apologist for the racist process that the Germans started during the war.
Czesław Miłosz, one of Poland’s most gifted writers and a disappointed patriot, recalled what it was like after the war:
The entire country was gripped by a single emotion: hatred. Peasants, receiving land, hated; workers and office employees, joining the Party, hated; socialists, participating nominally in the government, hated; writers, endeavoring to get their manuscripts published, hated. This was not their government; it owed its existence to an alien army. The nuptial bed prepared for the wedding of the government with the nation was decked with national symbols and flags, but from beneath that bed protruded the boots of an NKVD agent.81
This description fits practically every country in Eastern Europe at that time. Ilya Ehrenburg, who traveled the area, was struck by how the bile of racism spilled over into the postwar period. He saw fistfights between Hungarians and Romanians, and Italians cursing at Slovenes. In Bucharest, Jews told him that people yelled at them, “Too bad Hitler didn’t get you!” In the Sudetenland he saw Czechs force Germans to wear white armbands as a sign of humiliation, and he became extremely upset that Czechoslovakia was adopting fascist methods supposedly to fight fascism.82
All across Eastern Europe, the Germans were driven out. By 1950, 12 to 15 million had fled or were expelled, with most resettled in divided Germany.83 No consensus exists on how many perished, but common estimates range between 1.71 and 2.8 million.84 However, one historian of the Wehrmacht maintains that while scholars tend to underestimate how many Germans were killed in uniform, they overestimate the numbers who died through the expulsions, a figure he puts at between 500,000 and 600,000.85
The anti-Semitism that had flourished virulently in Germany, and that was all over Central and Eastern Europe during the war years, did not dissolve overnight, and it sometimes even flared into violence. The cry of “down with the Z·ydokomuna” or “Jewish Communism” was still heard in parts of Poland. It was reinforced by ancient religious myths that culminated in pogroms in Kraków in August 1945, in which several Jews were killed. In Kielce almost exactly a year later, another 42 people were murdered and others wounded.86 The NKVD reported to Beria that in the period from January to mid-September 1945, 291 Jews were killed on Polish territory. The literature indicates that there were more.87