THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND

The defeat of Nazi Germany did not end ethnic cleansing in Europe. It redirected it against the losing master race. In 1945, 18 million ethnic Germans lived abroad in the East. Germans in the Soviet Union mostly stayed put, but most of the rest were now forcibly deported westward. Almost 12 million reached Germany, but over 2 million died en route, the targets of murderous vengeance by the locals. Only a few thousand of them can have been Nazi perpetrators. Oskar Schindler, declared a Righteous Person by both the state of Israel and Hollywood, was one of 3 million German Sudetens expelled, losing his property but staying alive. All leading Polish and Czech politicians supported the expulsions, and so did the Allies. Churchill told the British House of Commons in 1944 that deportations would provide the “most satisfactory and lasting” solution to ethnic problems. “There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble as in Alsace-Lorraine. A clean sweep will be made.” Czech President Benes said the Sudeten Germans were a “non-viable population” and a Czech general declared, “a good German is a dead one.” A Lieutenant Smrcina “cleaned up” a German village by killing 25 men and two women without provocation. Another officer removed from a train and had shot 265 Germans, men, women, and children.