The Untold Genocide: Unveiling a Hidden Tragedy

The end of the Second World War is often associated with cheering crowds and massive celebrations in cities across Europe and North America. However, few people know the full reality of the post-war period. For many Germans with no connection to Nazism, the end of the conflict was just another chapter filled with horror and suffering. This is the story of millions of Volksdeutsche—ethnic Germans who did not have German citizenship—and Reichsdeutsche—ethnic Germans residing in the German state—who became victims of ethnic cleansing by some Eastern European countries and the Allies troops -Soviet Union, United States, UK, France-. Twelve million were deported after the war, half a million were murdered simply for speaking German, and hundreds of children were raped, killed, or driven to suicide as a result of the atrocities they had to live through. This indiscriminate ethnic cleansing reveals how the Allies and some European countries ultimately became what they had once despised, leading Europe into an anarchic, bloody, and violent peace.

This article highlights the need to shed light on the unknown post-war period and forces humanity to face the uncomfortable truth about this era. By sharing the testimonies of German women and survivors of the genocide in Czechoslovakia and Poland, it aims to learn from past mistakes and face the future with more optimism and humanity.

Figure 1: BBC. (2015). 1945: The Savage Piece [Documentary]

The Forced Expulsion of Germans

During the post-war period, the Volksdeutsche were expelled from several countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as from former German provinces that, following the Potsdam Agreement in 1945, were annexed by Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. This conference, which shaped Europe’s future after World War II, led to the major reconfiguration of borders. This caused the mass expulsion of German populations who, in most cases, fled desperately to Germany and Austria, which were then under Allied control (Eberhardt, 2006).

The deportations occurred in three phases:

1.       Organized evacuation (1944-1945): In response to the advance of the Red Army, the National Socialist government arranged the evacuation of ethnic Germans to territories controlled by the Nazi Party (Merten, 2013).

2.       Disorganized flight (1945): After the surrender of the Wehrmacht—the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945—ethnic Germans who were outside of Germany embarked on a chaotic flight to escape repression from those opposing the National Socialist Party (Winkler, 2015).

3.       Forced expulsion (1945-1950): Following the Potsdam Agreement and the subsequent redefinition of Central European borders, the systematic expulsion of ethnic Germans from territories ceded to Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union took place (Agreement of Berlin, 1945). In addition, many were sent to labor camps to rebuild the areas affected by the war (Gibney, 2005).

Figure 2: Lockeyear, W.T., & No. 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit. (1945). Winston Churchill, President Truman, and Stalin at the Potsdam conference, 23 July 1945.

Due to the historical complexity of the affected countries and the interests of the different Allied powers, it is difficult to attribute a single reason to the deportations that took place following the Potsdam Agreement. However, three of the main reasons were the following:

1.       The creation of homogeneous nation-states: The goal was to eliminate German minorities in order to establish ethnically uniform populations in Central and Eastern Europe (Brunnbauer, 2006).

2.       The "fifth column": German populations were seen as a problematic fifth column. Western countries claimed that their expulsion was the only way to prevent future ethnic conflicts (Churchill, 1945), although this assumption proved to be incorrect.

3.       Collective punishment for Nazi crimes: Many Germans were punished without examination of their ideologies or political activities in an act of widespread retaliation (Brunnbauer, 2006).

The Potsdam Agreement stated that the deportations were to take place in a peaceful and orderly manner, but in practice, the process was truly devastating. The reshaping of borders and the deportation of civilians not only reconfigured the geopolitics and ethnicity of post-war Europe but also raised a moral dilemma about the Allies’ actions and the devastating consequences of their decisions (Churchill, 1945).

Figure 3: Hardy, B. (1951). 1951: The last trickle of Germans leaves the Western Territories of Poland after their expulsion.

Survivor Testimonies of Crimes in Czechoslovakia

The expulsion of the Volksdeutsche from Czechoslovakia began in May 1945 with extremely brutal methods after the government declared ethnic Germans as untrustworthy. They issued an amnesty called justice reprisal, which legalized revenge by allowing forced displacements, rapes, and murders against the German population for a certain period. It was mainly Czechoslovak military and paramilitary groups who committed the vast majority of abuses during the first months. It is estimated that between 700,000 and 800,000 Volksdeutsche were irregularly expelled between May and August 1945 (Prauser, 2004). After the Potsdam Agreements, 1.3 million ethnic Germans were deported to the American zone of West Germany, and 800.000 to the Soviet zone of East Germany (Kenety, 2005). The most severe estimates suggest that up to 30,000 people died in the process.

Various testimonies corroborate the genocide in Czechoslovakia. Meda Mládek, born in 1919, describes the Czech revenge as one of savage proportions. She recalls witnessing how German acquaintances were captured and executed, just as the Nazis did. Across the country, isolated groups of Volksdeutsche were marked with swastikas painted on their backs while they sat on the ground, exhausted, with their suitcases and ripped clothing. Most of them also had bleeding chests after being wounded by sharp objects (Molloy, 2015). Similarly, Helena Dvoráčková, born in 1942, recalls how her father, who always carried a camera to record family moments, filmed what happened two days after Victory Day. In front of their house, he saw how Czech revolutionary guards took 43 Germans to the town’s cinema, shot them in front of the building, and then drove over their bodies with cars (Molloy, 2015). Milena Suková, born in 1924, recounts how her father, a photographer, was tasked with documenting the bodies of murdered Germans. When he returned, he was in a state of shock and emotionally broken. His wife had to care for him all day long, as he was unable to function on his own. In her testimony, she also mentions that German prisoners and anyone who spoke German were forced to dig their own graves. The brutality of the executions was so indiscriminate that even a Swedish family was killed (Molloy, 2015).

Figure 4: Getty Images. (1945). Red Army in Prague.

Moreover, during the Nazi occupation, Kounic College in Brno was used as a prison. However, at the end of the war, it became a detention center for Germans. Emil Pupík, born in 1928, who was imprisoned there, recalls hearing a guard say that they would only kill a third of the prisoners, as they needed the rest for forced labor. At the age of 16, Pupík, who had been a member of the Hitler Youth, was forced to build his own gallows. His death was only avoided because, at the last moment, a Czech officer ordered all activities to be suspended due to an imminent inspection from Prague. Not everyone was as fortunate; it is estimated that 300 Germans were killed in Kounic College. Pupík also remembers Pankrác Prison in Prague. There, public executions were carried out as part of ethnic cleansing, eliminating opposition through short-drop hanging, a method that caused death by strangulation over the course of ten minutes. Multiple videos of these executions were recorded, many of which took place after trials lasting barely five minutes. Age was not an obstacle. Both adults and small children were executed. Those who were too short to reach the gallows were beaten with belts until the soldiers decided to kill them with their own hands, demonstrating that their murderous morality was no different from that of the Nazis (Molloy, 2015).

Survivor testimonies of crimes in Poland

In post-war Poland, millions of civilians were expelled from their homes without warning, stripped of their nationality, and abandoned without any form of economic assistance. Thousands of them were subjected to forced labor in concentration camps run by the communist regime before being ultimately deported (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1958). The main detention camps were located in Jaworzno, Potulice, Lambinowice, and Zgoda, where thousands of people suffered abuse and inhumane conditions. Survivors' testimonies reveal the horrors experienced in these camps, while the Potsdam Conference ignored the genocide taking place in Europe, leaving thousands of victims without recognition or justice (Molloy, 2015).

Gerhard Gruschka, born in 1931, recalled his time in the Zgoda concentration camp in Świętochłowice, where Germans were imprisoned simply because of their origin. The camp commander was Salomon Morel, a Jewish partisan and Stalinist officer later accused of war crimes. At the age of 23, Morel ran the camp with extreme cruelty. Gerhard remembered how this commander justified his actions to the prisoners, detailing how his family had been gassed by the Nazis. Under his command, the prisoners were subjected to constant humiliation: they were forced by Morel to sing German songs and sadism was encouraged among the guards. One of his torture methods consisted of making prisoners form a human pyramid, upon which the guards would dance until the prisoners were crushed to death (Molloy, 2015).

Figure 5: Falkowski, E. (1946). A funeral on Górski Street.

Dorota Boroczek, born in 1931, was imprisoned in Zgoda along with her mother when she was 14 years old. Terrified by what she saw, she even tried to convince her mother to commit suicide, seeing men hanging themselves and many women running toward the electric fence to end their suffering. The prisoners were not given food or medicine, which led some to die from starvation. Dorota recalls seeing some desperately eating the bodies of the dead. She states that a third of the convicts died in Zgoda and that, on some occasions, they were forced to dig their own graves and throw themselves in while the guards urinated and danced on the corpses. For her, life in Zgoda was a true hell (Molloy, 2015).

On the other hand, stadiums and sports fields became centers of mass torture and execution. On June 9, 1945, 8,000 men and children were sent to the Strahov stadium. Horst Theml, born in 1930, recalls that the guards forced them to undress so that the officers could search for SS tattoos on their bodies. If anything suspicious was found, they would beat the prisoner to death in front of everyone. If someone lost consciousness during the torture, they would revive them with salt bags to continue the beating until they died. The corpses were piled up, and the rest of the prisoners were forced to walk next to them and look at the pile of bodies. Additionally, forced marches were also common at these torture centers; if a prisoner couldn’t keep up, he was first brutally beaten and then executed. According to Horst Theml, 75 men died during these marches (Molloy, 2015).

Figure 6: Getty Images. (1937). 20th anniversary of the battle of Zborov, Czech president during an exhibition of the troops in the Stadion of Strahov.

Testimonies from Women Survivors

Regina Mühlhäuser, a historian, argues that rape is a weapon of war, as it breaks connections, destroys families, and tears apart the social cohesion of a society for years (DW Documentary, 2024). However, it was Miriam Gebhardt who shed light on the abuses committed by the liberating soldiers against the German population after World War II. For years, she investigated the excesses perpetrated by the French, British, American, and Soviet armies. In theory, these forces were supposed to liberate and help the German population after the war, yet it wasn't until 80 years later that Margot, Maximiliane Heigl’s mother, broke the silence. It was her granddaughter, upon hearing her grandmother's testimony, who decided to investigate the period of American occupation in the postwar years (DW Documentary, 2024).

Her testimony tells that, in the spring of 1945, after the Allied bombings, the American army occupied the Bavarian city of Landshut (DW Documentary, 2024). In April of that same year, when the air raids became extremely severe, Margot and her family took refuge in a house in Pfarrgasse, next to the village church. When the Americans arrived, they violently stormed the house, armed and looking for possible German soldiers. Upon finding a Wehrmacht uniform— the name of the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945—hung in one of the rooms, they demanded to know where its owner was. In the absence of an answer, they became aggressive, throwing the women into the rooms to abuse them. The family never spoke of what happened, and Margot kept silent for decades. Margot was just one of approximately 1.4 million women who were raped while fleeing from East Prussia and Silesia, many of them were attacked more than once (DW Documentary, 2024).

Figure 7: Hulton-Deutsch Collection. (1945). Russian Soldier and Girlfriend

During the occupation, rectories were among the few German institutions that continued to function, so reports from Bavarian priests constituted a key source for historians and journalists such as Maximiliane Heigl. A report from the St. Nicholas parish in Bad Reichenhall documents that many women and girls were raped by American soldiers, estimating around 200 cases (DW Documentary, 2024). This figure is based on accounts from the village residents, so the actual number is likely higher. After the departure of the American troops, there was a brief period of relative peace, but with the arrival of the French troops, even more horrible crimes against women erupted. In eastern Germany, many women sought abortions, but in order to do so, they had to report having been raped. According to the writings of Dr. Weisch: "in the vast majority of cases, no report was made to the authorities out of shame and fear of disgrace. Consequently, in almost every case, an incredible time-consuming (…) investigation was necessary to (…) differentiate the real rape cases from the faked ones" (DW Documentary, 2024).

The absence of an effective police and judicial infrastructure prevented the systematic registration of the sexual crimes committed during the occupation, leading many women to remain silent, even to their husbands. It is estimated that, between the summer and autumn of 1945, around 110,000 women were raped in Berlin, many of them multiple times, although these figures remain approximate. In addition, historians estimate that, in the two years following the end of the war, 500.000 women were victims of rape in the Soviet occupation zone, while American soldiers are believed to have committed around 190.000 sexual crimes (DW Documentary, 2024). Many women never reported what happened out of shame or fear of reprisals, which contributed to these crimes being largely forgotten.

The consequences of these abuses were also reflected in the post-war births. Documents preserved in the archives of Humboldt University in Berlin or the records from the Empress Auguste Victoria House Children's Hospital, reveal that approximately 5% of the children born between the end of 1945 and the summer of 1946 were children of Russian soldiers (DW Documentary, 2024). In many of these records, the "father" box is marked with the inscription "Russian," accompanied by the notation "rape." In former East Germany and East Berlin, 3.200 children conceived from rapes were officially registered, although the actual number remains unknown. Despite the magnitude of these crimes and the profound impact they had on thousands of women, they were never recognized as victims of war and never received any compensation (DW Documentary, 2024).

Figure 8: Seymour, D. (1948). A reformatory school for tough children. Many children went barefoot because of the acute shortage of footwear.

Conclusion

What is the line between justice and vengeance? While it may seem fair for Germany to bear reparations for all the damage inflicted by the Nazi regime during the war, it is also unquestionable that millions of Germans were indiscriminately punished for their origin, without having any real connection to the National Socialist Party.

This was the fate of thousands of Germans, including those whose testimonies appear throughout this article. After years of peaceful coexistence with their neighbors, they were displaced, shattered, and murdered simply for being and speaking German. While the foundations of the Potsdam Agreement aimed to bring justice and stability, its consequences in Europe showed that ethics and humanity were sacrificed in the pursuit of stability. As seen throughout the article, this is especially evident in the actions of the great powers, who could not have been oblivious to the atrocities unfolding in peacetime—horrors that spared neither children, women, nor men.

Finally, it is imperative to reflect on how little one knows about the recent past, and how history written by the victors tends to omit fundamental parts. This omission not only leads to the oblivion of the lives of millions of people but perpetuates a biased view of events. This shows that one should never accept or conform to the imposed historical narrative. Instead, one must inquire, investigate, and give a voice to the people who have been ignored and silenced in the postwar period.

Biographical References

Textual Sources

Brunnbauer, U., Esch, M. G., & Sundhaussen, H. (Eds.). (2006). Definitionsmacht, Utopie, Vergeltung: "ethnische Säuberungen" im östlichen Europa des 20 [Power of definition, utopia, retribution: "ethnic cleansing" in 20th century Eastern Europe]. LIT Verlag

Churchill, W. S. (1945, February 27). Statement by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons. Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons – Official Report, 10th session of the 37th Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 8 George VI (No. 408; fifth series), 1274–1284. His Majesty's Stationery Office. Site from: Statement by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons (27 February 1945)

Eberhardt, P. (2006). Political Migrations in Poland 1939-1948. Studium Europy Wschodniej-Uniwersytet Warszawski

Gibney, M.J., Hansen, R. (Ed.). (2005). Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present. Bloomsbury

Kenety, B. (2005, 14 April). Memories of World War II in the Czech Lands: The Expulsion of Sudeten Germans. Radio Prahs. Site from: Memories of World War II in the Czech Lands: the expulsion of Sudeten Germans | Radio Prague International

Merten, U. (2013). Forgotten Voices: The Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe After World War II. Routledge

PBS. (n.d.). Agreements of the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference, July 17-August 2, 1945. PBS. American Experience. Site name: American Experience | Truman | Primary Sources

Prauser, S., Rees, A. (Ed.). (2004). The Expulsion of the ‘German’ Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War. Florence: European University Institute. Site from: European University Institute

Statistisches Bundesamt. (1958). Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste: Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939–1950 [The German Expulsion Losses: Population Balances for the German Expulsion Areas 1939–1950]. Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt · Wiesbaden Verlag: W. Kohl hammer Gmb H · Stuttgart. Site from: https://www.statistischebibliothek.de/mir/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/DEMonografie_derivate_00001428/Die_deutschten_Vertreibungsverluste.pdf

Winkler, H.A. (2015). The Age of Catastrophe. A History of the West, 1914-1945. Yale University Press

Documentary Sources

DW Documentary. (2024, May 8). Women as spoils of war at the end of World War Two [Video]. YouTube: Women as spoils of war at the end of World War Two | DW Documentary

Molloy, P. (Director). (2015). 1945: The Savage Piece [Documentary]. BBC: BBC Two - 1945: The Savage Peace

Visual Sources