what happen to the Sudeten Germans?

Belfast

Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czechoslovakia_during_and_after_World_War_II

Another piece of ethnic cleansing that followed world wars II

will this come back to haunt us the way south Ossetia and kosova etc did ?

History seem to have left a lot of potential time bomb waiting to explode.

I am not say the Germany are going to invade again any time soon.

But who what will happen to some of these forgotten issues in Histroy in the future.

As Patton said only the dead have seen the last of war

ejmaztec

We had a bit of a discussion about this on this thread:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055307134

Belfast

ejmaztec wrote: »

We had a bit of a discussion about this on this thread:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055307134

Thanks for the link

merrionsq

Belfast wrote: »

will this come back to haunt us the way south Ossetia and kosova etc did ?

History seem to have left a lot of potential time bomb waiting to explode.

Hardly likely. Unlike the examples you use of minorities with borders, the Sudeten Germans were sent back to Germany.

The worst that's likely to come from it is demands for apologies, compensation, or restitution of property. To which the Czechs would no doubt respond: look at how the Sudeten minority provoked WWII, and look at how the Germans invaded and brutally occupied Czechoslovakia.

ejmaztec

merrionsq wrote: »

Hardly likely. Unlike the examples you use of minorities with borders, the Sudeten Germans were sent back to Germany.

The worst that's likely to come from it is demands for apologies, compensation, or restitution of property. To which the Czechs would no doubt respond: look at how the Sudeten minority provoked WWII, and look at how the Germans invaded and brutally occupied Czechoslovakia.

The Sudeten Germans weren't sent back to Germany - they were sent to Germany (the ones who survived, that is). Their ancestors migrated to those areas centuries before.

I think that it would be much the same, in a hypothetical situation, were the Ulster Scots all rounded up and shipped over to Scotland.

merrionsq

Yes, a sort of collective punishment. To the victor the spoils. The Czechs will always be able to point to worse atrocities like Lidice.

ejmaztec

merrionsq wrote: »

Yes, a sort of collective punishment. To the victor the spoils. The Czechs will always be able to point to worse atrocities like Lidice.

Why do you consider that Lidice was a worse atrocity than what happened to the Sudeten Germans?

FiSe

Think it's fifty - fifty now, between the 'Germans' and the 'Czechs'

We have to understand, that occupation of Bohmen und Mahren, not Czechoslovakia as Slovakia was 'independent' state, wasn't the worst. Poland and Soviet states like Ukraine, Belarus have much, much worse experience with German led occupation than Czechs, French or let's say Dutch.

I can see the expulsion of 'Germans' from Czechoslovakia as an act of revenge for inflicted national shame.
Firstly Czechs were not prepare and not villing to fight for their independance in 1939, secondly their resistance movement was not as strong as let's say Polish and thirdly most of the citizens of the protectorat were more than happy to do their best for German war efforts.
Am not judging people who wanted to survive during the hard and dangerous times.

I have a book which I got from my Czech friend it's called 'Skonceno, podepsano' and deals with period of wild expulsion in May 1945. Got sick when I went through it for the first time.
Pictures say it all, 'Germans' burned alive, beaten to death by hysterical crowd, drowning alive in the town's fountains, rapes, killing of infants, hanging, crushing of skulls, you name it...

Another thing is, that 'German' meant Czech and 'Czech' meant German, people of both nationalities lived side by side for centuries, were getting married, having children and the German nationality was, in many cases only word in the ID.
It's far too complicated and history of this unfortunate events is so twisted and so subjective. Discussions on this topis always remindes me the ones of Irish War for Independence and Irish Civil War or northern 'Troubles'

McArmalite

Belfast wrote: »

Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czechoslovakia_during_and_after_World_War_II

Another piece of ethnic cleansing that followed world wars II

will this come back to haunt us the way south Ossetia and kosova etc did ?

History seem to have left a lot of potential time bomb waiting to explode.

I am not say the Germany are going to invade again any time soon.

But who what will happen to some of these forgotten issues in Histroy in the future.

As Patton said only the dead have seen the last of war

From wiki - " Several thousand died violently (some sources refers to 16.000 reported direct violent death including 6000 suicides[6] during the expulsion and many more died from hunger and illness as a consequence. In 1946, an estimated 1.3 million ethnic Germans were deported to the American zone of what would become West Germany. An estimated 800,000 were deported to the Soviet zone (in what would become East Germany). " Very appaling facts there. Though I'm sure the same was repeated across Eastern Europe against ethnic Germans. I never knew that such happened in Czechslovakia. I have been to Prague and know a few Czechs in Dublin and I have to say I like the people very much.

From the stuff on wiki I also see the Hungarians were also affected. The Hungarians are sometimes not the most populiar nation in Eastern Europe mainly because they were seen as allies of the Austrians/Germans under the Hapsburg empire. This is particularily the case with Romanians, to this day their are areas of Romania where people are ethnically Hungarian and use the language as the everyday spoken word, 6% of the population ( conversely it is the case that their are ethnic Romanian communities in todays Hungary and also use the language as the everyday spoken word, 2% of Hungary ). I know a Romanian woman and if you question here about Romanian history etc and bring up the Hungarians, you can quite quickly sense a very deep anamosity there. An anamosity I'd say that could be comparable to ourselves and the unionists, the Palastinians and the isreali's etc

Fratton Fred

slightly OT, but isn't George Hook's wife a Sudeten German, or at least her parents. I recall something about this in his autobiograpy. She had a very moving early life.

FiSe

McArmalite wrote: »

From wiki - " Several thousand died violently (some sources refers to 16.000 reported direct violent death including 6000 suicides[6] during the expulsion and many more died from hunger and illness as a consequence. In 1946, an estimated 1.3 million ethnic Germans were deported to the American zone of what would become West Germany. An estimated 800,000 were deported to the Soviet zone (in what would become East Germany). " Very appaling facts there. Though I'm sure the same was repeated across Eastern Europe against ethnic Germans. I never knew that such happened in Czechslovakia. I have been to Prague and know a few Czechs in Dublin and I have to say I like the people very much.

From the stuff on wiki I also see the Hungarians were also affected. The Hungarians are sometimes not the most populiar nation in Eastern Europe mainly because they were seen as allies of the Austrians/Germans under the Hapsburg empire. This is particularily the case with Romanians, to this day their are areas of Romania where people are ethnically Hungarian and use the language as the everyday spoken word, 6% of the population ( conversely it is the case that their are ethnic Romanian communities in todays Hungary and also use the language as the everyday spoken word, 2% of Hungary ). I know a Romanian woman and if you question here about Romanian history etc and bring up the Hungarians, you can quite quickly sense a very deep anamosity there. An anamosity I'd say that could be comparable to ourselves and the unionists, the Palastinians and the isreali's etc

It's the same everywhere, bring the 'German question' while talking to your Czech friends and you might be very surprised, bring the 'Hungarian question' to people from Slavakia, bring the 'Ukrainian question' to people from Poland, bring the 'Russian question' to anyone from the eastern block. Ehm, bring the 'English question' to someone from Ireland :rolleyes:

It's far from being a Time Bomb, though.
I think that people should be more open to other sides of the story and in general not to be so emotional about what happened in times when none of us was born...

Sorry, OT, but just thought :cool: