A Terrible Revenge

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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.

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.

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]

Contents

[edit] 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

[edit] 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

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.

[edit] 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

[edit] 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.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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