National mythologies and ethnic cleansing: The expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945

Central European History

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 463-486

  Glassheim, Eagle ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33645234451     PISSN: 00089389     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/156916100746428     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. Radomír Luža, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans (New York, 1964), 279-86
2. See in particular Alfred de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York, 1994)
3. See in particular Wenzel Jaksch, Europe's Road to Potsdam, trans. Kurt Glaser (New York, 1963 [1958])
4. Also: Alfred de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East (Lincoln, 1989 [1977])
5. and Odsun Němců z Československa 1945-1947 (The Transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia, 1945-1947) (Prague, 1991)
6. Reprinted in The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice, trans. Paul Wilson (New York, 1997), 21-28
7. For the Czech (and Slovak) dissident debate on the morality of expulsions, see Dohumil Černý, Jan Křen, Václav Rural, and Milan Otáhal, eds., Češi, Němci, Odsun [Czechs, Germans, Transfer] (Prague, 1990)
8. Bradley Abrams summarizes and evaluates that debate in "Morality, Wisdom and Revision: The Czech Opposition of the 1970s and the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans," East European Politics and Societies 9, no. 2 (1995): 234-55
9. The concept of a "cognitive model" comes from Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1997)
10. Philipp Ther, "The Century of Ethnic Cleansing: Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe between 1912 and 1995," conference paper, presented at the American Historical Association Annual Convention, 9 January 1999
11. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (Seatde, 1992 [1974]), 80. By Bohemia, I mean the traditional "Lands of the Bohemian Crown," that is the former Habsburg provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia (the territory of the current Czech Republic)
12. Contrary to Czech national mythology, White Mountain was more a religious than a national dispute. Czechs and Germans - noble and commoner alike - served on both sides of the conflict. See R.J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550-1700 (Oxford, 1979), 195-216
13. Jiří Rak, Bývali Čechové: české mýty a stereotypy (Czechs of Old: Czech Myths and Stereotypes) (Prague, 1994), 107
14. Nancy Meriwether Wingfield, "Conflicting Constructions of Memory: Attacks on Statues of Joseph II in the Bohemian Lands after the Great War," Austrian History Yearbook 28 (1997): 149
15. See Cynthia Paces, "Religious Images and National Symbols in the Creation of Czech Identity, 1890-1938" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1998), 157-58
16. In the years following Czechoslovak independence, crowds and local governments attacked or removed numerous statues of Joseph II, who was "generally considered the personification of Germandom." Zdeněk Hojda and Jiří Pokorný, Polmmíky a zapomníky (Memorials and Forgettings) (Prague, 1997), 133, 142
17. See also Wingfield, "Conflicting Constructions."
18. See the debate on land reform in the National Assembly on 16 April 1919 (session 46). Text at Elektronická knihovna - Český parlament: dokumenty českého parlamentu (Electronic Library - Czech Parliament: documents of the Czech Parliament) (23 February 1999)
19. Modráček, National Assembly, Meeting 46 (16 April 1919)
20. Ladislav Holy, The Utile Czech and the Great Czech Nation (Cambridge, 1996), 121
21. On the relatively favorable conditions in the Protectorate and the lack of serious Czech resistance, see Vojtěch Mastný, The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942 (New York, 1971)
22. "Dopis člena Politického ústředí informující o růstu radikálních postojů vůči Nêmcům" [Letter from a member of the Political Headquarters (PÚ) informing on the increase of radical views toward the Germans], 16 November 1939, in Jitka Vondrová, ed., Češi a sudetoněmecká otázka 1939-1945 (Czechs and the Sudeten-German question 1939-1945) (Prague, 1994), 35
23. Zdeněk Peška, "Pamětní spis o výměně obyvatelstva" (Memorandum on the exchange of populations), October 1939, in Vondrová, ed., Češi, 21-23
24. Stephen Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey (New York, 1932)
25. Peška, "Pamétní spis," in Vondrová, ed., Češi, 22
26. Edvard Beneš, "Depeše pro ÚVOD s programem ŕešení německé otázky v Československu" (Dispatch for ÚVOD with a program for the solution of the German question in Czechoslovakia), 26-27 November 1940, in Vondrová, ed., Češi, 77-79
27. Vladimír Krajina, "Depeše pro P. Drtinu se vzkazem Z. Bořka Dohalského k Benešovu plánu tří německých žup" [Dispatch for P. Drtina with a message of Z. Bofek Dohalský concerning Beneš's plan for three German counties], 3 December 1940, in Vondrová, ed., Češi, 79
28. In a 1992 article on ethnic cleansing, Hans Lemberg shows how the idea of population transfer had gained legitimacy in Europe and America well before World War II. See "Ethnische Säuberung: Ein Mittel zur Lösung von Nationalitätenproblemen?" in Lemberg, Mit unbestechlichem Blick. . . Studien von Hans Lemberg zur Geschichte der böhmischen Länder und der Tschechoslowakei (Munich, 1998), 377-96
29. On administrative chaos, see Emilia Hrabovec, "Neue Aspekte zur ersten Phase der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Mähren 1945," in Nalionale Frage and Vertreibung in der Tschechoslowakei und Ungarn 1938-1948, ed. Richard Plaschka, Horst Haselsteiner, Arnold Suppan, and Anna Drabek (Vienna, 1997), 117-40
30. Beneš speeches at Brno and in Prague, 12 and 16 May 1945, and in Tabor, 16 June 1945. Printed in Edvard Beneš, Odsun Němců Ceskoslovenska (The Transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia), ed., Karel Novomý (Prague, 1996), 138-39, 148. Politicians and newspapers from across the political spectrum regularly used the term "liquidate" in reference to the Germans in 1945. Though the term may have had domestic roots, it was likely an appropriation of Nazi terminology
31. Stanislav Biman and Roman Cílek, Poslední mrtví, první živí české pohraniči květen až srpen 1945 (The Last Dead, the First Living: The Bohemian Borderlands, May to August 1945) (Ústí nad Labem, 1989), 116
32. See Tomáš, Odsun, 61
33. "Naše půda bude vyrvána z cizácký ch rukou" (Our Soil Will Be Snatched Away From Foreign Hands). Rudé právo, 7 June 1945, 1
34. Zdeněk Fierlinger, 1 July 1945, in Odčiňujeme Bílou horu [We Are Rectifying White Mountain] (Prague: Jednotný svaz českých zemědělců, 1945), 12
35. Quoted in Andrei Bell, "The Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans: A Breakdown in the Ethnic Boundary Maintenance Mechanisms" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1997), 317
36. Expulsion and flight figures are from Theodor Schieder, ed., Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central-Europe, vol. IV (Bonn: Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, and War Victims, 1960), 127
37. Czech and German sources have long disagreed on the number of deaths. German historians, many of them Sudeten expellees, have claimed upwards of 200,000 deaths during the expulsions from Czechoslovakia. See, for example, Friedrich Prinz, Geschkhte Böhmens 1848-1948 (Berlin, 1991), 468
38. A recent joint report of the Czech-German historians' commission has settled on the range of 17,000 to 30,000 dead, a more reasonable figure. See Konfliktní společenství, 29-30
39. Benjamin Frommer, "Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1999), 51-52
40. See also Karel Kaplan, Polválečné Československo: národy a hranice (Postwar Czechoslovakia: Nations and Borders) (Munich, 1985), 140
41. See also Staněk, Perzekuce, 87-90
42. Staněk, Odsum, 75
43. See the accounts of the march reproduced in Schieder, Documents on the Expulsion. Maria Zatschek reported that "hundreds" died during the march (Schieder, 484)
44. Stanék, Odsun, 82
45. Zdeněk Radvanovský, "Nucené vysídlení a odsun Némcůz města a okresu Ústí nad Labem v letech 1945-1946" (Forced Resettlement and the Transfer of Germans from the Town and District of Ústí nad Labem from 1945-1946), in Studie o sudetoněmecké otázce (Studies on the Sudeten German Question), ed. Václav Kural (Prague, 1996), 132-33
46. See King's "Loyalty and Polity, Nation and State: A Town in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848-1948" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1998), 331
47. A. Piffl, Kronika města Ústí nad Labem za válečná léta 1938-1945 (Chronicle of Ústí nad Labem During the War Years 1938-1945), 1947
48. Quoted in Radvanovský, "Nucené vysídlení ," 137
49. A. Bohmann, Die Ausweisung der Sudetendeutschen dargestellt am Beispiel des Stadt- und Landkreises Aussig (Marburg, 1955), 50
50. In a recent dissertation, Andrei Bell (a.k.a. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff) documents the common image in Czech periodicals in 1945 of Germans as "dangerous guests." See Bell, "The Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans," 293
51. "Jed werwolfu v duši každého Němce" (The Poison of the Werewolf is in the Soul of Every German), Svobodné slovo, 7 August 1945, 1
52. The Ministry of Information report claimed that the bridge violence began when a German cried out "Germany lives! Long live Germany!" Ibid., p. 2
53. Radvanovský, "Události 31.července 1945 v Ústí nad Labem" (Events of 31 July 1945 in Ústí nad Labem) in Kural, Studie, 120-22
54. Staněk, Perzckuce, 136
55. In a perceptive article on genocide in history, Jared Diamond shows an interesting pattern in genocidal activity since the fifteenth century. Before 1900, most genocides took place as a result of colonial encounters, with Europeans (or descendents of Europeans) destroying aboriginal peoples. From 1900-1950, the locus of genocide moved to Europe, and the pace accelerated. Since 1950, there have been no fewer than seventeen genocides, predominantly in Third World countries in Africa and Asia. Diamond blames the twentieth-century increase in genocides on denser populations, improved communications, and improved technologies. See Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York, 1992), 284-97
56. For a critical view of the modernization theories, see Michael Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide (Cambridge, 1997) 169-82
57. On technology and genocide, see Alan Beyerchen, "Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the Technology of Racism in the Third Reich," Central European History 30, no. 3 (1997): 386-402. Beyerchen makes the argument that bureaucracy, by shaping possibilities for action, functions as a kind of technology. Incidentally, the case of Rwanda suggests that old-fashioned methods (machetes) can be just as destructive as newer technologies
58. The founding father and first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk, raised and rejected the idea of a transfer of minorities in a 1918 book on the postwar shape of Europe. His reason seems quaint in retrospect: it would be impossible to convince them to move! Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Nová Evropa (New Europe) (Brno, 1994 [1918]), 107-9
59. reprinted in the Newsletter of the Embassy of the Czech Republic 3, no. 3 (March 1995): 4
60. In fact, American academia is still producing the occasional work that proposes population transfer as a legitimate solution to minority problems today. See Andrew Bell-Fialkoff's troubling book, Ethnic Cleansing (New York, 1996)
61. See Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers in Europe, 1945-1955 (Philadelphia, 1962)
62. Making a slighdy different argument, Jan Gross cites "wartime experience of spiritual crisis, crisis of values, and normative disorganization" as a precondition for the Communist seizure of power in East Central Europe. Gross, "War as Revolution," in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949, ed., Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (Boulder, 1997), 24