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> The USSR ethnically cleansed Germany in response? What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%931950) https://en.wikipedi

by zeveb 6y ago

> The USSR ethnically cleansed Germany in response? What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%931950) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German... In particular, postwar Poland basically moved west: the Soviet Union kept the 77.6 thousand square miles of Polish territory it had captured when both Germany and Russia partitioned it in 1939, while Poland was given 48.1 thousand miles of German territory. The Soviet-backed Polish government cleansed the formerly-German territories of ethnic Germans. Given the far worse behaviour of Germany during the war (I believe most Germans survived the ethnic cleansing committed by Poland, while the goal of Nazi Germany was extermination of the Poles), it can be a bit difficult to care about the suffering of Germans. But consider that IIRC roughly two million Germans died in the expulsions from Poland and other countries, and no doubt at least a few of those were innocent women and children (as, of course, were many of Nazi Germany's victims). Two wrongs do not make a right, and mass murder of innocent civilians is always wrong.

the_af 6y ago
> Two wrongs do not make a right, and mass murder of innocent civilians is always wrong. Fully agreed. It's hard to see the two events as similar, though. The scale (and intent) alone is mind-boggingly different. The Germans intended to wipe out Slavs (and other undesirables), and you couldn't opt out of this by swallowing the party line or swearing allegiance to Germany (just as you couldn't opt out of being a Jew -- Nazis didn't care about your religious beliefs, if any; they considered Jewishness a "race" to be exterminated). At best you could hope for their bullshit racial policies to deem you "Germanic", if you looked white enough and weren't Jewish. Compare this with Germans under the Soviet sphere of influence. Puppets, maybe, but alive as long as they cooperated with the ruling ideology. There was no plan to ethnically cleanse them to make room for Soviet citizens in German land.
- cygx 6y ago
  Compare this with Germans under the Soviet sphere of influence. Puppets, maybe, but alive as long as they cooperated with the ruling ideology. There was no plan to ethnically cleanse them to make room for Soviet citizens in German land. The USSR declared Germans in the annexed territories illegal residents. Going by Wikipedia, in 1947/48, officially, 102,125 Germans got shipped from East Prussia to the Soviet Zone, though only 99,481 arrived there (one reason for this was that food wasn't always provided on a journey that took 4-7 days by train). The GDR attributed this discrepancy to a 'calculation error'. There's also the issue of German orphans that were left behind (which are known as 'Wolskinder'). The lucky ones got adopted (eg by Lithuanian farmers), changed their names, and pretended not to be German. The unlucky ones were exploited as cheap labour, starved or got killed. His criticism of the treatment of German civilians was one of the things that got Solzhenitsyn arrested.
  - the_af 6y ago
    I understand all of this. However, again look at the numbers and planned genocide: the Nazis aimed at killing -- murdering, not expelling, mind you -- most of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe. About 30 million people would have been killed, both through starvation and shooting/gassing if they didn't die fast enough, because they were deemed vermin and "surplus" population. And this wasn't even retaliation for anything, it was planned in cold blood. Did the Soviets exterminate all Germans in their sphere of influence once they won the war? What were the Nazi plans had they won (and which they partially implemented during the war)? This doesn't excuse even a single German civilian killed by the Soviets. But the scale and planning are tremendously different, which is why the comparison makes little sense. I think the latter day equivocation that both sides were more or less the same is a regrettable artifact of Cold War thinking.
- senderista 6y ago
  > There was no plan to ethnically cleanse them to make room for Soviet citizens in German land. Do the words "East Prussia" ring a bell? How about "Königsberg"?
  - the_af 6y ago
    Yes, I'm familiar with the massacre. As horrific as it was, these weren't cases of ethnic cleansing. There was no intent to remove Germans from the face of the Earth, like Generalplan Ost was in regards to Slavs. We know this. How? Because the Nazis stated they wanted Slavs killed, but when the Soviets took over East Germany, they didn't wipe out all Germans (as they would have done, had they been bent on racial genocide as the Nazis were). This is the one example were we can clearly compare plans and see outcomes, and how they differed. Even the scales are orders or magnitude different!

by zeveb 6y ago

the_af 6y ago

> Two wrongs do not make a right, and mass murder of innocent civilians is always wrong. Fully agreed. It's hard to see the two events as similar, though. The scale (and intent) alone is mind-boggingly different. The Germans intended to wipe out Slavs (and other undesirables), and you couldn't opt out of this by swallowing the party line or swearing allegiance to Germany (just as you couldn't opt out of being a Jew -- Nazis didn't care about your religious beliefs, if any; they considered Jewishness a "race" to be exterminated). At best you could hope for their bullshit racial policies to deem you "Germanic", if you looked white enough and weren't Jewish. Compare this with Germans under the Soviet sphere of influence. Puppets, maybe, but alive as long as they cooperated with the ruling ideology. There was no plan to ethnically cleanse them to make room for Soviet citizens in German land.

cygx 6y ago
Compare this with Germans under the Soviet sphere of influence. Puppets, maybe, but alive as long as they cooperated with the ruling ideology. There was no plan to ethnically cleanse them to make room for Soviet citizens in German land. The USSR declared Germans in the annexed territories illegal residents. Going by Wikipedia, in 1947/48, officially, 102,125 Germans got shipped from East Prussia to the Soviet Zone, though only 99,481 arrived there (one reason for this was that food wasn't always provided on a journey that took 4-7 days by train). The GDR attributed this discrepancy to a 'calculation error'. There's also the issue of German orphans that were left behind (which are known as 'Wolskinder'). The lucky ones got adopted (eg by Lithuanian farmers), changed their names, and pretended not to be German. The unlucky ones were exploited as cheap labour, starved or got killed. His criticism of the treatment of German civilians was one of the things that got Solzhenitsyn arrested.
- the_af 6y ago
  I understand all of this. However, again look at the numbers and planned genocide: the Nazis aimed at killing -- murdering, not expelling, mind you -- most of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe. About 30 million people would have been killed, both through starvation and shooting/gassing if they didn't die fast enough, because they were deemed vermin and "surplus" population. And this wasn't even retaliation for anything, it was planned in cold blood. Did the Soviets exterminate all Germans in their sphere of influence once they won the war? What were the Nazi plans had they won (and which they partially implemented during the war)? This doesn't excuse even a single German civilian killed by the Soviets. But the scale and planning are tremendously different, which is why the comparison makes little sense. I think the latter day equivocation that both sides were more or less the same is a regrettable artifact of Cold War thinking.
senderista 6y ago
> There was no plan to ethnically cleanse them to make room for Soviet citizens in German land. Do the words "East Prussia" ring a bell? How about "Königsberg"?
- the_af 6y ago
  Yes, I'm familiar with the massacre. As horrific as it was, these weren't cases of ethnic cleansing. There was no intent to remove Germans from the face of the Earth, like Generalplan Ost was in regards to Slavs. We know this. How? Because the Nazis stated they wanted Slavs killed, but when the Soviets took over East Germany, they didn't wipe out all Germans (as they would have done, had they been bent on racial genocide as the Nazis were). This is the one example were we can clearly compare plans and see outcomes, and how they differed. Even the scales are orders or magnitude different!