The aim of the Russian Military Historical Society is to come to terms with the suffering of civilian populations during the Second World War. On Friday the society published documents dealing with the expulsion of Germans from Poland after the war.

75 years ago, in September 1946, the Polish government passed a racist decree separating the ethnic Germans from the ethnic Polish people. 

The decision to expel the Germans from Poland was taken at the meeting of the three main allies, the Soviet Union, Roosevelt’s United States and Clement Atlee’s Britain. Of the three Allied leaders, only Clement Atlee was elected due to public repugnance of the ousted wartime plutocrat Winston Churchill.

The notorious conference that sealed the fate of 22 nations and their abject peoples took place at Potsdam near Berlin in August 1945. The aim of the conference of dictators was the national-territorial delimitation in Central and Eastern Europe and the restoration of Poland as a national state all be it under the direct control of Stalin’s and his henchmen whose security was guaranteed by Britain and the United States. Ironically, it was the sovereignty of Poland that France and Germany declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Neither then nor since has Germany declared war on France or Britain. On the contrary, Hitler vowed to defend Britain and its Empire. Hitler stated that ‘like the Catholic Church the British Empire provided world stability.’

READ MORE Your parents were told World War II was to defend Poland’s Sovereignty

On Friday , the Russian Military History Society (RMHG) published Soviet archive documents about the expulsion of Germans from Poland. These documents show that the expulsion of the Germans from Poland involved violence, looting and forced labour. In a letter from Dora Kletzin from 1946, which is quoted by the RMHG, it says:

‘The Poles are inhuman. They also do not understand the suffering they inflict on people. People are robbed and forced to starve. Szczecin became a city of death and suicides.’

The ethnic Germans were deprived of the right to decide for themselves about their departure and to choose a new place of residence. When leaving, they were allowed to take 500 Reichsmarks per person and ‘as much luggage as they could lift’. 

After the devastating war, Poland needed workers to restore agriculture and industry. People unable to work were therefore expelled first, and people with qualifications were granted permission to leave the country last.

Between 1946 and 1949, up to 2.4 million people were expelled to Germany from the former eastern territories. The total number of Germans displaced from Poland is between 3.5 and 3.6 million people. In total, 14 million ethnic Germans died in terrible circumstances ~ after the German armed forces (not the elected government which had been arrested and hanged) surrendered. Source