A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 is a controversial book by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas about the expulsion of Germans after World War II, approved by the Allies and carried out in the Eastern Europe. Based on testimonials of German civilians and military, as well as many interviews with British and American politicians and diplomats who participated at the Potsdam Conference, the book also describes war atrocities allegedly committed by the Soviet Army at the end of World War II. A controversy is a contentious dispute, a disagreement over which parties are actively arguing. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Germans expelled from the Sudetenland // The expulsion of Germans after World War II refers to the escape and mass deportation of people considered Germans (Reichsdeutsche and some Volksdeutsche) from various European states and territories during 1945 and in the first three years after World War II 1946-48. ... The Allies of World War II were the countries officially opposed to the Axis powers during the Second World War. ... Regions of Europe as delineated by the United Nations[1] (UN definition of Eastern Europe marked salmon):  Northern Europe  Western Europe  Eastern Europe  Southern Europe Pre-1989 division between the West (grey) and Eastern Bloc (orange) superimposed on current national boundaries: Russia (dark orange), other countries of the former USSR... This article is about the armed forces of the Soviet Union. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

The author describes the fate of the refugees from the former Eastern parts of Germany (Silesia, East Prussia, Pomerania, East Brandenburg), as well as the fate of German minorities in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Silesia (Czech: ; German: ; Latin: ; Polish: ; Silesian: Åšlónsk) is a historical region in central Europe. ... East Prussia (German: Ostpreu en; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Russian: Восточная Пруссия — Vostochnaya Prussiya) was a province of Kingdom of Prussia, situated on the territory of former Ducal Prussia. ... Duchy of Pomerania ruled by the slavic dynasty of Griffits (Polish: Gryfici, German: Greiffen) was a semi-independent state in the 17th century. ... East Brandenburg or Neumark Brandenburg was the name of historical region. ... Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in Latin, Југославија in Cyrillic, English: Land of the South Slavs) describes four political entities that existed one at a time on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century. ...

In the words of de Zayas,

The tragic experience of the German expellees could have served as a warning to spare other nations the traumata of expulsion from their homelands, heritage, and pride. Alas, for decades the facts of the expulsion of the Germans were systematically ignored by the media and even by professional historians, whose function was and remains to do proper research, to chronicle events and to put them in perspective. No wonder that the ethnic cleansing of the 1990’s in the former Yugoslavia was presented by the media as unprecedented.^[1] Armenian civilians, being cleansed from their homeland during the Armenian Genocide. ... Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in Latin, Југославија in Cyrillic, English: Land of the South Slavs) describes four political entities that existed one at a time on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century. ...

Besides being a concise summary of the historical and legal aspects of the expulsion of the Germans, A Terrible Revenge weaves into the narrative numerous literary references, translated from the German by de Zayas, including moments from Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea" (a novel about refugees), Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell", Rainer Maria Rilke's "Volksweise", as well as from other East German poets including the Silesians Josef von Eichendorff and Gerthart Hauptmann, the East Prussian Agnes Miegel, the Danube Suevian Nicolaus Lenau, and the Sudeten Germans Richard Pleyer and Walter Vorbach.

Table of contents of the book

• Foreword
• The Germans of East Central Europe
• The Expulsion Prehistory: Interbellum Years and World War II
• War and Flight
• Allied Decisions on Resettlement
• Expulsion and Deportation
• The Expellees in Germany - Yesterday and Today
• Epilogue

Printing history

The book originated as a script for a television documentary of the Bayerischer Rundfunk. It is a popular, more accessible rendition of the author's seminal monography on the expulsion ("Nemesis at Potsdam", Routledge, German: Die Nemesis von Potsdam. Die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen", 14 editions with C.H.Beck, dtv, Ullstein and now Herbig, Muenchen). This shorter introduction to the subject matter was initially published in German as Anmerkungen zur Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten (4 editions during 1986-1996, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-17009-297-9), first printed in English under the title of The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1993, Macmillan, London). The new, 1994 Englsih title, included the then neologism "ethnic cleansing", massively used at these times relating to the Yugoslav wars of 1990s. The 5th expanded German 2006 edition was titled "Die deutschen Vertriebenen" (Leopold Stocker Verlag, ISBN 3-902475-15-3). The book ends with 12 historical theses, 14 legal theses and 10 conclusions. The Theses were positively reviewed by Professor Andreas Hillgruber in the Historische Zeitschrift and by Professor Gotthold Rhode in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. http://www.alfreddezayas.com/Articles/Thesenzurvertreibung.pdf Armenian civilians, being cleansed from their homeland during the Armenian Genocide. ... This does not cite its references or sources. ...

The new 2006 English edition with Palgrave Macmillan is expanded by about 20%. It contains additional information from interviews with the children of the displaced, German expellees who migrated to the United States and Canada, new photos and new statistical tables.

Reviews

"This popularly written but still scholarly study follows the author's other successful books in the fields of history and international law [which] were hailed by historians as well as lawyers as masterpieces of academic craftsmanship. His book.presents in a nutshell the history of the ethnic German population which had settled in the early 13th century in large parts of what is nowadays Eastern Europe." Netherlands International Law Review

"This is the story of the ethnic Germans who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some two million died and fifteen million were displaced - driven from their lands buy those opposed to anyone and everything German... De Zayas's moving plea is that one's home should be a human right. As frontiers once more shift in Eastern Europe and families flee in Bosnia, he could hardly have chosen a better moment to deliver it." The Times, (London).

"The author has given the history of these expulsions a dramatic immediacy through a series of eyewitness accounts ...The remarkable sequel to this recital of inhumanity is that this displaced population has, in the 50 years since the war, managed to find a new home in a reunited Germany where nearly 20 percent of the population is made up of first- or second-generation descendants of these exiled millions." Army

"Western historians have long averted their eyes from the stupendous crime authoritatively described by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas in this grim, essential book. The author has impeccable credentials for this work: a law degree from Harvard, a doctorate in history at Göttingen, mastery of five languages. He has worked in foreign archives and interviewed many survivors for this book, his fourth. For many years he has been a senior legal adviser on human rights to an international organization in Switzerland... The author conservatively takes the lowest available estimate of the deaths: over two million people died in the expulsions...." Otttawa Citizen

"De Zayas, a lawyer, historian and human rights expert specializing in refugees and minorities, has uncovered testimony in German and American archives detailing these atrocities, adding a new chapter to the annals of human cruelty. His carefully documented book serves as a reminder that many different peoples have been subjected to ethnic cleansing." Publishers weekly

"Durch seine Nüchternheit und die Macht des geschilderten Fakten ist das Buch eine erschütternde Mahnung." DIE WELT

"In diesem Band zieht der bekannte amerikanische Völkerrechtler und Historiker nach über zehnjähriger intensiver Forschung zum Problemkomplex der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ostmitteleuropa eine knappe, sehr prägnant formulierte Bilanz eben dieser Forschung. Er fängt die Ergebnisse in zehn historischen und sechs völkerrechtlichen 'Thesen' ein, die durch ihre Klarheit und durch das Bemühen des Vfs. um Gerechtigkeit einen festen Platz in der Historiographie zur Geschichte der Vertreibung gewinnen dürften. Der Rez. stimmt den Aussagen zu mit der einen Ausnahme, dass er die Mitverantwortung der westlichen Alliierten an der Vertreibung etwas schärfer formulieren würde. Den 'Thesen' vorausgeschickt sind Zeugnisse von Opfern der Vertreibung (von denen ein erheblicher Teil bisher noch nicht publiziert war). Dazu gehören auch Fotografien (die ebenfalls z.T. noch unveröffentlicht waren). Eine Skizze 'Die Deutschen in Ostmitteleuropa' soll ebenso wie eine knappe Darlegung der Vorgeschichte der Vertreibung (Zwischenkriegszeit und Zweiter Weltkrieg) den weiteren Hintergrund abstekken. Eine Zahlenbilanz (Bevölkerungstabelle) bildet den Abschluss. Heinrich Windelen schrieb ein 'Geleitwort'." Professor Andreas Hillgruber in der Historischen Zeitschrift, 1988, vol. 246, p. 730.

"Der durch seine Bücher über die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen und über die Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle weit über den Kreis der Fachwissenschaft bekannt gewordene amerikanische Jurist spanischer Herkunft... wendet sich an eine breitere Öffentlichkeit. In diesem Taschenbuch wird spürbar, wie tief der Verfasser das den Vertriebenen angetane Unrecht empfindet und wie stark er die Verpflichtung fühlt, als Nichtbetroffener das Geschehen der Jahre 1944 bis 1947 zu ersforschen und darzustellen, ohne Angst, damit sorgfältig abgegrenzte Tabu-Zonen zu verletzen und auch ohne die so häufig und immer aufs neue vorgebrachte angeblich zwangsläufige Verbindung von Schuld und Sühne ... Sein Hauptanliegen ist es nicht, nach Ursche und Wirking zu fragen, soncern das ganze Ausmass der Tragödie durch Einzelbeispiele zu verdeutlichen und den Leser durch die Wiedergabe von authentischen Berichten ebenso zu erschuttern, wie er selbst offenbar erschüttert gewesen ist..." Prof. Gotthold Rhode in der FAZ

Criticism

While the book was acclaimed in reviews for its fitting critique, some reveiwers point out that de Zayas over-emphacizes the territorial revisionism of the 2nd-3rd generation of refugees, pointing out that the opposite West-East migration didn't happen when this possibility arose after the unification of the Germanies. ^[2] It was also criticized for its unbalanced, victim-centered perspective, unsuitable for scholarly works, unfavourably comparing it with a more recent book of Detlef Brandes.

See also

• Not by Their Own Will
• Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
• Journey Back to Youth
• Nemmersdorf massacre
• Detlef Brandes, "Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938-1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum "Transfer" der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen", 2001, ISBN 3-486-56520-6

Book cover: Stalins arm, holding his famous smoking pipe, casually herds people Not by Their Own Will. ... Not by Their Own Will. ... Journey Back to Youth is an award-winning film made by a Russian film maker, Alexander Gutman, which tells the story of four young German girls incorporated into the Soviet Gulag after the end of World War II. External link Brief review of the movie Adapted from the article Journey... Nemmersdorf, in German East Prussia (todays Mayakovskoye, Kaliningrad Oblast) was one of the first German villages to fall to the advancing Red Army on October 21, 1944 at 07:00 hours. ...

References

1. ^ "Theses on the Expulsion of Germans, by de Zayas
2. ^ A review by Rainer Ohliger

• Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950
  • St. Martin's Press, 1994, ISBN 0-312-12159-8
  • Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, ISBN 1-403-97308-3, 2nd edition, paperback