State-ordered displacement
The
evacuation of East Prussia
was the movement of German civilian population and military personnel from
East Prussia
between 20 January and March 1945, that was initially organized and carried out by
state authorities
but quickly turned into a chaotic flight from the
Red Army
.
[5]
[6]
A part of the
evacuation of German civilians towards the end of World War II
, these events are not to be confused with the
expulsion from East Prussia that followed after the war had ended
. The area that was evacuated was not the
Gau East Prussia
, but the inter-war East Prussia where most people already held German citizenship. German citizens in
Memel
and other regions with proximity to East Prussia also took part in the evacuation, wishing to escape by sea, even though in their regions there was no official evacuation announced.
The evacuation, which had been delayed for months, was initiated due to fear of the Red Army advances during the
East Prussian Offensive
. Some parts of the evacuation were planned as a military necessity,
Operation Hannibal
being the most important military operation involved in the evacuation. However, many refugees took to the roads on their own initiative because of reported
Soviet atrocities against Germans
in the areas under Soviet control. Both spurious and factual accounts of Soviet atrocities were disseminated through the official news and
propaganda
outlets of
Nazi Germany
and by rumors that swept through the military and civilian populations.
Despite having detailed evacuation plans for some areas, the German authorities, including the
Gauleiter
of East Prussia,
Erich Koch
, delayed action until 20 January, when it was too late for an orderly evacuation, and the civil services and
Nazi Party
were eventually overwhelmed by the numbers of those wishing to evacuate. Coupled with the panic caused by the speed of the Soviet advance, civilians caught in the middle of combat, and the bitter winter weather, many thousands of refugees died during the evacuation period. The Soviet forces took control of East Prussia only in May 1945.
[
citation needed
]
According to the West German
Schieder commission
, the civilian population of East Prussia at the beginning of 1944 was 2,653,000
[2]
people. This accounting, which was based on ration cards, included air raid evacuees from western Germany and foreign workers. Before the end of the war an estimated 2 million people
were evacuated, including 500,000
in the autumn of 1944 and 1,500,000
after January 1945. An estimated 600,000
remained behind in Soviet-controlled East Prussia in April?May 1945.
[8]
According to a 1974 West German government study, an estimated 1% of the civilian population was killed during the Soviet offensive.
[3]
The West German search service reported that 31,940 civilians from East Prussia, which also included Memel, were confirmed as killed during the evacuation.
[9]
Propaganda
[
edit
]
German
[
edit
]
The
Red Army
initiated an offensive into
East Prussia
in October 1944, but it was temporarily driven back two weeks later. After that, the
German Ministry of Propaganda
reported that
war crimes
had taken place in East Prussian villages, in particular in
Nemmersdorf
, where inhabitants had been raped and killed by the advancing Soviets.
[10]
Since the Nazi war effort had largely stripped the civil population of able-bodied men for service in the military, the victims of the atrocity were primarily old men, women, and children. Upon the Soviet withdrawal from the area, German authorities sent in film crews to document what had happened, and invited foreign observers as further witnesses. A documentary film from the footage obtained during this effort was put together and shown in cinemas in East Prussia, with the intention of fanaticising civilian and military resolve in resisting the Soviets.
[11]
A Nazi information campaign about the atrocities at Nemmersdorf, as well as other crimes committed in East Prussia, convinced the remaining civilians that they should not get caught by the advancing enemy.
[12]
Soviet
[
edit
]
Murders of Axis
prisoners of war
and German civilians are known from cases at Soviet military tribunals. Also, when Soviet troops moved into East Prussia, large numbers of enslaved
Ostarbeiter
("Eastern workers") were freed, and knowledge of the suffering and deaths of many of these workers hardened the attitude of many Soviet soldiers towards East Prussians.
[13]
Lev Kopelev
, who took part in the invasion of East Prussia, sharply criticized atrocities against the German civilian population. For this he was arrested in 1945 and sentenced to a ten-year term in the
Gulag
for "bourgeois humanism" and for "pity for the enemy".
[14]
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
also served in East Prussia in 1945 and was arrested for criticizing
Joseph Stalin
and Soviet crimes in private correspondence with a friend. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to an eight-year term in a labor camp.
[15]
Of the atrocities, Solzhenitsyn wrote: "You know very well that we've come to Germany to take our revenge" for
German atrocities committed in the Soviet Union
.
[16]
Evacuation
[
edit
]
The evacuation plans for parts of East Prussia were ready in the second half of 1944. They consisted of both general plans and specific instructions for many towns. The plans encompassed not only civilians, but also industry and
livestock
.
[17]
Initially,
Erich Koch
, the
Gauleiter
of East Prussia, forbade evacuation of civilians (until 20 January 1945), and ordered that civilians trying to flee the region without permission should be
instantly shot
. Any kind of preparations made by civilians were treated as defeatism and "
Wehrkraftzersetzung
" (undermining of military morale). Koch and many other Nazi functionaries were among the first to flee during the Soviet advance. Between 12 January and mid-February 1945, almost 8.5 million Germans fled the Eastern provinces of the Reich.
[18]
[19]
Most of the refugees were women and children heading to western parts of Germany, carrying goods on improvised means of transport, such as wooden wagons and carts, as all the motorized vehicles and fuel had been confiscated by the
Wehrmacht
at the beginning of the war. After the Red Army reached the coast of the
Vistula Lagoon
near
Elbing
on 23 January 1945, cutting off the overland route between East Prussia and the western territories,
the only way to leave was to cross the frozen Vistula Lagoon to reach the harbours of
Danzig
or
Gotenhafen
to be evacuated by ships taking part in
Operation Hannibal
. Mingled with retreating Wehrmacht units, and without any camouflage or shelter, the refugees were attacked by Soviet
bombers
and
fighter aircraft
. Many wagons broke through the bomb-riddled ice covering the brackish water. Furthermore, horses and caretakers from the
Trakehner
stud farms were evacuated with the wagon trains.
[21]
[22]
The evacuation was severely hampered by Wehrmacht units, which clogged roads and bridges.
The remaining men aged 16?60 were immediately incorporated into the
Volkssturm
. However, some Volkssturm members, without basic military knowledge and training, escaped into the woods, hoping to simply survive.
[23]
Refugee trains leaving East Prussia were also extremely crowded, and due to the very low temperatures, children often froze to death during the journey. The last refugee train left
Konigsberg
on 22 January 1945.
Berlin military writer
Antony Beevor
wrote, in
Berlin: The Downfall
(2002), that:
[24]
Martin Bormann
, the
Reichsleiter
of the
National Socialist Party
, whose Gauleiters had in most cases stopped the evacuation of women and children until it was too late, never mentions in his diary those fleeing in panic from the eastern regions. The incompetence with which they handled the refugee crisis is chilling, yet in the case of the Nazi hierarchy it is often hard to tell where irresponsibility ended and inhumanity began.
Operation Hannibal
[
edit
]
Operation Hannibal was a military operation that started on 21 January 1945, on the orders of
Admiral
Karl Donitz
, withdrawing German troops and civilians from
Courland
, East Prussia, and the
Polish Corridor
. The flood of refugees turned the operation into one of the largest emergency evacuations by sea in history ? over a period of 15 weeks, somewhere between 494 and 1,080 merchant vessels of all types and numerous naval craft, including Germany's largest remaining naval units, transported about 800,000?900,000 refugees and 350,000 soldiers
across the
Baltic Sea
to Germany and occupied
Denmark
.
[26]
This evacuation was one of the
Kriegsmarine
's most significant activities during the war.
The greatest recorded loss of life from a ship sinking occurred during this operation, when the transport ship
Wilhelm Gustloff
was hit by three torpedoes from the
Soviet submarine S-13
in the Baltic Sea on the night of 30 January 1945. She sank in under 45 minutes; figures for the number of deaths vary from 5,348,
[28]
[29]
to 7,000
[30]
or 9,400.
[31]
The 949 survivors
were rescued by Kriegsmarine vessels led by the
cruiser
Admiral Hipper
,
[30]
although it is claimed that "the big warship could not risk heaving to, with a submarine close by".
Also, on 10 February, the
SS
General von Steuben
left
Pillau
with 2,680 refugees on board; it was hit by torpedoes just after departure, killing almost all aboard.
[34]
Konigsberg
[
edit
]
On 24 January 1945, the
3rd Belorussian Front
, led by General Chernyakhovsky, surrounded the capital city of East Prussia, Konigsberg. The
3rd Panzer Army
and around 200,000 civilians were trapped inside the city.
[35]
In response to this, General
Georg-Hans Reinhardt
, commander of the
Army Group Center
, warned Hitler of the imminent Soviet threat, but the Fuhrer refused to act. Due to the rapid approach of the
2nd Belorussian Front
led by General
Rokossovsky
, Nazi authorities in Konigsberg decided to send trains full of refugees to
Allenstein
, without knowing that the town had already been captured by the Soviet
3rd Guards Cavalry Corps
.
[14]
During the Soviet assault, the
Frische Nehrung
spit
became the last means of escape to the west. However, civilians who tried to escape along the spit were often intercepted and killed by Soviet tanks and patrols.
[36]
Two thousand civilians left Konigsberg every day and tried to reach the already crowded town of Pillau. The final Soviet assault on Konigsberg started on 2 April with a heavy bombardment of the city. The land route to Pillau was once again severed and those civilians who were still in the city died by the thousands. Eventually, the German garrison surrendered on 9 April, and as Beevor wrote, "the rape of women and girls went unchecked in the ruined city"
[37]
Crimes
[
edit
]
The widely publicized killings and rapes in places like Nemmersdorf by the Soviets led to a severe degree of fear in the entire German population of East Prussia. Those that could not escape the advancing Soviets were left to their fate. Wealthy civilians of East Prussia were often shot by Soviet soldiers, their goods stolen, and their houses set on fire.
[38]
Zakhar Agranenko, a playwright serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia, wrote:
"Red Army soldiers don't believe in 'individual liaisons' with German women. Nine, ten, twelve men at a time ? they rape them on a collective basis."
Even Russian women liberated from forced labor camps were raped by Soviet soldiers.
[40]
The rear-guard units of the advancing Soviet armies were responsible for a large proportion of the crimes committed by Red Army personnel.
[41]
Soviet Officers like Lev Kopelev, who tried to prevent crimes, were accused of pity for the enemy and became
Gulag
prisoners.
These acts of violence were influenced by a desire for revenge and retribution for crimes committed by the Nazis during their invasion of the Soviet Union, collectively driven by Soviet propaganda.
The propaganda was a purposeful goad to the Soviet soldier and reflected the will of the political authorities in the Soviet Union right up to Stalin.
There is no question that Stalin was aware of what was happening.
[46]
Given the strict control of the Communist party over the military hierarchy, the pillage and rape in Prussia was the result of the Soviet command at all levels. Only when Stalin saw that it was in the Soviet Union's interests to check the behaviour of the Red Army did he take steps to stop it.
[47]
Aftermath
[
edit
]
The Red Army eliminated all
pockets of resistance
and took control of East Prussia in May 1945. The exact number of civilian dead has never been determined, but is estimated to be at least 300,000. However, most of the German inhabitants, which at that point consisted mainly of children, women, and old men, did escape the Red Army as part of the largest exodus of people in human history.
[48]
Antony Beevor said:
"A population which had stood at 2.2 million in 1940 was reduced to 193,000 at the end of May 1945."
The
Schieder commission
in 1953 estimated casualties in the 1945 campaign at 30,000 civilian dead in East Prussia,
[50]
and overall civilian losses in the entire Oder?Neisse region at 75?100,000.
[51]
The West German
Statistisches Bundesamt
figures from 1958 estimated total civilian losses in East Prussia of 299,200 including 274,200 in the expulsions after May 1945 and 25,000 during the war.
[52]
According to the Statistisches Bundesamt, in total, out of a pre-war population of 2,490,000, about 500,000 died during the war, including 210,000 military dead and 311,000 civilians dying during the wartime flight, postwar expulsion of Germans and forced labor in the Soviet Union; 1,200,000 managed to escape to the western parts of Germany, while about 800,000 pre-war inhabitants remained in East Prussia in summer 1945. The figure of 311,000 civilian deaths is included in the overall estimate of 2.2 million expulsion deaths that is often cited in historical literature.
The West German search service issued its final report in 1965 detailing the losses of the German civilian population due to the flight and expulsions. The West German government authorized its release in 1986, and a summary of the findings was published in 1987 by the German scholar
de:Gert von Pistohlkors
.
[54]
According to the West German search service, the civilian population of East Prussia (including
Memel
) before the flight and expulsions was 2,328,947.
[9]
They put civilian dead and missing at 514,176
[9]
persons. The number of confirmed dead was 123,360 (9,434 violent deaths, 736 suicides, 9,864 deportation deaths, 7,841 in internment camps, 31,940 deaths during the wartime flight, 22,308 during the expulsions and 41,237 from unknown causes).
[9]
There were an additional 390,816
[9]
cases of persons reported missing whose fate could not be clarified. Some historians in Germany maintain that the search service figures of confirmed dead provide a realistic view of the total losses due to the flight and expulsions; they believe that the cases of persons reported missing whose fate could not be clarified are unreliable.
[55]
[56]
The German historian
Rudiger Overmans
maintains that the statistical foundations of the West German government search service report to be unreliable; he believes that new research on the number of expulsion deaths is needed.
[57]
[58]
However, the German government and the German Red Cross still maintain that the higher figures which include the persons reported missing whose fate could not be clarified are correct.
[59]
[60]
The
German Federal Archives
estimated that about 1% (100?120,000 of the estimated 11?12 million total German civilian population) in the
Oder?Neisse
region lost their lives due to military activity in the 1944?45 campaign as well as deliberate killings by Soviet forces.
According to other sources, in summer 1945 about 800,000 Germans were still living in East Prussia.
The Red Army's brutality towards civilians during the East Prussian campaign, coupled with years of Nazi propaganda regarding the Soviet Union, led many German soldiers on the Eastern Front to believe that "there could be no purpose in surviving Soviet victory". This belief motivated many German soldiers to continue fighting even though they believed that the war was lost, and this contributed to higher Soviet casualties.
Most Germans who were not evacuated during the war were
expelled
from East Prussia and the other
former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line
in the years immediately after the end of World War II, as agreed to by the Allies at the
Potsdam conference
, because, in the words of
Winston Churchill
:
Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble. A clean sweep will be made.
After World War II, as also agreed at the
Potsdam Conference
(which met from 17 July until 2 August 1945), all of the area east of the
Oder-Neisse line
, whether recognized by the international community as part of Germany before 1933 or occupied by Germany during World War II, was placed under the jurisdiction of other countries. The relevant paragraph regarding East Prussia in the
Potsdam Agreement
is:
[63]
V. City of
Koenigsberg
and the adjacent area.
The Conference examined a proposal by the Soviet Government to the effect that pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement, the section of the western frontier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which is adjacent to the Baltic Sea should pass from a point on the eastern shore of the Bay of Danzig to the east, north of
Braunsberg
-
Goldap
, to the meeting point of the frontiers of Lithuania, the Polish Republic and East Prussia.
The Conference has agreed in principle to the proposal of the Soviet Government concerning the ultimate transfer to the Soviet Union of the City of Koenigsberg and the area adjacent to it as described above subject to expert examination of the actual frontier.
The President of the United States and the British Prime Minister have declared that they will support the proposal of the Conference at the forthcoming peace settlement.
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Schieder commission 1954
, p. 78 Schieder included for East Prussia the pre-war population of 134,000 in
Memel
but excluded 310,000 from the regions of pre-war East Prussia that were administered as part of
Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia
- ^
a
b
German Federal Archive
Spieler, Silke. ed.
Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen 1945?1948. Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28. Mai 1974. Archivalien und ausgewahlte Erlebnisberichte
.. Bonn: Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen. (1989).
ISBN
3-88557-067-X
. pp. 38?41
- ^
Schieder commission 1954
, p. 65 Schieder estimated the loss of 75,000?100,000 German civilians in the territory of "Ostdeuschland" eastern Germany due to "Gewaltmassenahmen" violent acts. The total base population of the Schieder study was 11,924,000 persons
- ^
Eberhardt, Piotr (2006).
Political Migrations in Poland 1939?1948. 8. Evacuation and flight of the German population to the Potsdam Germany
(PDF)
. Warsaw: Didactica.
ISBN
9781536110357
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 26 June 2015.
- ^
Eberhardt, Piotr (2011).
Political Migrations On Polish Territories (1939?1950)
(PDF)
. Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences.
ISBN
978-83-61590-46-0
.
- ^
Schieder commission 1954
, p. 41 Schieder presented a different set of figures for the territory of East Prussia and Memel that excluded 310,000 persons in the western regions that were included with the population of the province
Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia
. Total population beginning of 1944: 2,350,000. Evacuated-In the fall of 1944: 500,000; after January 1945: 1,350,000. The balance of 500,000 were captured by the Soviet forces.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Gesamterhebung zur Klarung des Schicksals der deutschen Bevolkerung in den Vertreibungsgebieten. Munchen : Zentralstelle des Kirchl. Suchdienstes. See Separate table "Heimatortskartei fur Ostpreussen"
- ^
Beevor 2002
, pp. 3?4.
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 72.
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 185.
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, pp. 75?82.
- ^
a
b
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 73.
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 176.
- ^
Hartmann, Christian (2013).
Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany's War in the East, 1941?1945
. OUP Oxford. pp. 127?128.
ISBN
978-0191636530
.
- ^
Nitschke, p. 43
[
full citation needed
]
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 83.
- ^
Overy notes the
total
pre-war German population of East Prussia as about 2.9 million (
Overy 1996
, p. 111), so the rest of those making up Beevor's 8.5 million must be from other places, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia (with a combined pre-war ethnic German population of just over 8 million).
- ^
Patricia Clough
The Flight Across The Ice: The Escape of the East Prussian Horses
(2009),
ISBN
978-1906598341
- ^
Daphne Machin Goodall
The Flight of the East Prussian Horses
(1973)
ISBN
9780715360613
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 96.
- ^
Beevor 2002
, p. 75.
- ^
figure of 494 merchant vessels (
Williams 1997
, p. 225); figure of 790 vessels of all types (
Brustat-Naval 1985
, p. 240);
figure of 1,080 merchant vessels (
Koburger 1989
, p. 92).
- ^
Irwin J. Kappes
[
full citation needed
]
states 5,348. He does not cite his sources but recommends: A. V. Sellwood,
The Damned Don't Drown: The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff
(a fiction title about the tragedy); and Alfred-Maurice de Zayas,
A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans 1944?1950
.
- ^
Jason Pipes
[
full citation needed
]
, citing Heinz Schon (no page number) claims the loss of life was 9,343
- ^
a
b
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 101.
- ^
"Wilhelm Gustloff: World's Deadliest Sea Disasters".
Unsolved History
, The Discovery Channel. Season 1, Episode 14. (Original air date: 26 March 2003)
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 147.
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 68.
- ^
Beevor & (Ro)
, p. 84.
- ^
Beevor 2002
, p. 188.
- ^
Beevor 2002
, p. 35, "The destructive urge of Soviet soldiers in East Prussia was truly alarming. ... Without thinking they torched houses which could have given them warmth and shelter for the night.".
- ^
Beevor, Antony (1 May 2002).
"They raped every German female from eight to 80"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
13 September
2008
.
The rape of Soviet women and girls seriously undermines Russian attempts to justify Red Army behaviour on the grounds of revenge for German brutality in the Soviet Union.
- ^
Beevor, Antony (1 May 2002).
"They raped every German female from eight to 80"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
13 September
2008
.
In fact, the officers even warned Sister Kunigunde about the second-line troops following on behind. Their prediction proved entirely accurate.
- ^
Beevor, Antony (1 May 2002).
"They raped every German female from eight to 80"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
13 September
2008
.
Beria and Stalin, back in Moscow, knew perfectly well what was going on from a number of detailed reports.
- ^
Beevor 2002
, p. 197, "The Soviet leadership had finally realized that the horror inspired by the Red Army's onslaught on the civilian population was increasing enemy resistance and would complicated the post-war Soviet occupation of Germany.".
- ^
Beevor 2002
, chapters 1?8.
- ^
(
Schieder commission 1954
, p. 39)
- ^
(
Schieder commission 1954
, p. 65)
- ^
(
Statistisches Bundesamt 1958
, p. 38 and 63)
- ^
Pistohlkors, Gert : Informationen zur Klarung der Schicksale von Fluchtlingen aus den. Vertreibungsgebieten ostlich von Oder und Neiße. Published in Schulze, Rainer, Fluchtlinge und Vertriebene in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte : Bilanzierung der Forschung und Perspektiven fur die kunftige Forschungsarbeit Hildesheim : A. Lax, 1987
- ^
Herausforderung Bevolkerung : zu Entwicklungen des modernen Denkens uber die Bevolkerung vor, im und nach dem Dritten Reich Ingo Haar, Bevolkerungsbilanzen“ und ?Vertreibungsverluste. Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der deutschen Opferangaben aus Flucht und Vertreibung Verlag fur Sozialwissenschaften 2007
ISBN
978-3-531-15556-2
- ^
Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahn : Die Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern. Legenden, Mythos, Geschichte. Paderborn 2010,
ISBN
978-3-506-77044-8
- ^
Dr. R?diger Overmans ? Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevolkerung durch Flucht und Vertreibung. (A parallel Polish summary translation was also included, this paper was a presentation at an academic conference in Warsaw Poland in 1994), Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik XXI-1994
- ^
Rudiger Overmans
,
Deutschlandfunk
interview of 6 December 2006
[1]
- ^
Christoph Bergner, Secretary of State in
Germany
's Bureau for Inner Affairs, outlines the stance of the respective governmental institutions in
Deutschlandfunk
on 29 November 2006,
[2]
- ^
[3]
Archived
11 June 2017 at the
Wayback Machine
|Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste ? 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005, p. 12 (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross.)
- ^
Agreements of the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference
Archived
31 October 2010 at the
Wayback Machine
References
[
edit
]
- Beevor, Antony
(2002).
Berlin: The Downfall 1945
. Penguin Books.
ISBN
0-670-88695-5
.
- Beevor, Antony
.
Berlin: The Downfall 1945
(in Romanian).
- Brustat-Naval, Fritz (1985).
Unternehmen Rettung
. Herford, Germany: Koehlers Verlagsgeschellshaft. p. 240.
- Hastings, Max
(2004).
Armageddon. The Battle for Germany 1944?1945
. London: Macmillan.
ISBN
0-330-49062-1
.
- Herausgeber
Statistisches Bundesamt
- Wiesbaden (1958).
Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevolkerungsbilanzen fur die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50
. Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer Verlag
.
- Koburger, Charles W. (1989).
Steel Ships, Iron Crosses, and Refugees
. NY: Praeger Publishers. p. 92.
- Kossert, Andreas (2008).
Damals in Ostpreussen
. Munchen. pp. 160, 168.
ISBN
978-3-421-04366-5
.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
- Krivosheev, G. I. (1997).
Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses
. Greenhill.
ISBN
1-85367-280-7
.
- Manthey, Jurgen (2006).
Konigsberg, dtv Verlag
. Munchen. p. 669.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
- Murphy, Clare (2 August 2004).
"World War II expulsions spectre lives on"
.
BBC News
.
bbc.co.uk
. Retrieved
25 January
2017
.
- Overy, Richard
(1996).
The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich
. London: Penguin Books. p.
111
.
ISBN
0140513302
.
- Roberts, Andrew (2009).
The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War
. Allen Lane.
ISBN
978-0-7139-9970-9
.
- Spiegel, Silke, ed. (1989).
Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen 1945?1948. Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28. Mai 1974. Archivalien und ausgewahlte Erlebnisberichte
. Bonn: Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen. pp. 38?41.
ISBN
3-88557-067-X
.
- Schieder commission
(1954).
Bundesministerium fur Vertriebene, Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa
. Vol. 1. Bonn.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
- Williams, David (1997).
Wartime Disasters at Sea
. Nr Yeovil, UK: Patrick Stephens Limited. p. 225.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- de Zayas, Alfred-Maurice
.
A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944?1950
, 1994,
ISBN
0-312-12159-8
- Duffy, Christopher (1993).
Red Storm on the Reich: The Soviet March on Germany, 1945
. Da Capo Press.
ISBN
0-415-03589-9
.
- Glantz, David M.
The Soviet?German War 1941?45
: Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay
- Hitchcock, William I.
The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945?2002
, 2003,
ISBN
0-385-49798-9
- Walter, Elizabeth B.
Barefoot in the Rubble
, 1997,
ISBN
0-9657793-0-0