The expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia

The political representation in exile and the home resistance movement gradually started to contemplate a partial or a complete expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia on the backdrop of intensified Nazi terror, (especially during the Heydrichiade), and in connection with the role this three million minority had played in the breakup of Czechoslovakia. This request which was accepted by all the representatives across the political spectre, was during the years 1942-1943 also accepted by the Allied forces. The Potsdam Conference had created the international legal framework for the expulsion. Until a decision was reached at the conference at the beginning of August 1945, a so called wild expulsion had been taking place, which was accompanied by a great number of excesses and which had caused the death of thousands of innocent people, (the true number of victims is disputed); from January 25th 1946 to October 29th the deportations of the German minority were taking place “in an orderly manner.” According to an official report which president Beneš had received at the start of 1947, during the expulsion 2 170 598 Germans were deported from Czechoslovakia, but it is also necessary to include the number of hundreds of thousands of Germans who had escaped shortly after the end of the war. The post-war expulsion of Germans is still being discussed and disputed. In the disrupted post-war atmosphere a peaceful coexistence of Czechs and the German minority would most probably be unthinkable, but on the other hand it is not possible to overlook the fact that the expulsion of the group of inhabitants who had lived in the Czech border regions for centuries was the source of an irreparable material and cultural damage for our country. Source: pametnaroda.cz