Orderly and Humane

The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War

By: R. M. Douglas

Narrated by: Paul Woodson

The award-winning history of twelve million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: "a major achievement" (New Republic).

Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between twelve and fourteen million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless.

In this authoritative and objective account, historian R. M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of World War II.

©2012 R. M. Douglas (P)2022 Tantor

Forgotten Victims of the Peace

Very interesting book that in many ways compliments Mark Mazower's "Hitler's Empire" and covers the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from former East Prussia and the VolksDeutsche of Central Europe. Most of the book focuses German minority population of Czechoslovakia and the Polish reclaimed land of East Prussia and Silesia. Both states would have similar difficulties organizing both detention and expulsion of their Germans, often prioritizing the expulsion of the elderly, women, and children in appalling conditions, while exploiting the few remaining able bodied adult males as forced laborers. Czechoslovakia would expel roughly one quarter of its' prewar population by expelling some 2.5 million Germans and 500,000 Hungarians, creating an artificial scarcity in laborers, particularly skilled laborers, and leaving the Sudetenland underdeveloped for decades to follow. Czech leader Benes, much to my surprise, even envisioned a Czechoslovakia aligned to the Soviet Union removing its' German minority even before the war! Likewise Poland would expel some 6 million Germans from what is now Western Poland and settling some 2 million Poles from what is now Western Ukraine in the reclaimed land, thereby solving the ethnic warfare between Poles and Ukrainians during the war. Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania quickly followed the example of Czechoslovakia and Poland; however, all three were more constrained by the demands of the big 4 allied powers. All told, some 10-12 million Germans were expelled in a less than 2 year period with some 0.5-1.5 million perishing in the process, and placing Austria and occupied Germany under extreme economic duress. Like the Koreans deported from the Russian Far East to Kazakhstan, the Poles liquidated by the Polish Operation in the 1930s, the expulsion of the Germans and the mass death associated with their removal is one of many tragic episodes occurring ostensibly in peace time which has been overshadowed by the legacy of the Second World War. Narrator Paul Woodson gives an excellent performance in delivery and to my ears, pronunciation as well.