Taboo or Not Taboo?

It is a commonplace that the topic of the flight of Germans from the Red Army at the end of the Second World War, as well as the subsequent expulsion of Germans from eastern Europe, had long been subject to the influence of taboos in West Germany. It is a truism that finds expression not just in popular media, but in a number of scholarly works. Essentially, such works restate notions of taboo that have long been a feature of West German discourse on flight and expulsion. For decades, expellee organizations instrumentalized the concept of taboo; in suggesting that it was somehow forbidden or at least “politically incorrect” in the Federal Republic to address the topic of flight and expulsion, they sought to win sympathy and support for those they purported to represent. complaints about supposed taboos were generally common in nationalist right-wing circles. Most significant is perhaps Heinz Nawratil's Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung, 1945 bis 1948 (Black Book of Expulsion, 1945 to 1948), which appeared in 1982 in an attempt, according to the preface written by former Federal public prosecutor Ludwig Martin, to “break up this silence, contradict denial, and counteract the culture of apology.” Clearly, claims that the topic was “denied” could be used both to suggest that the Soviets, Czechs, and Poles had something to hide, and that the Germans had an ethical and legal right to expect some kind of redress.