Abstract
The expulsion of entire populations at the end of armed conflicts was not in the European tradition. With the exception of the Greek-Turkish exchange of 1923 to 1926, European statesmen did not contemplate or carry out resettlement schemes prior to World War II. Of course, such schemes were not drawn up in a vacuum but were engendered by the so-called minorities problem, which had been exacerbated by the reordering of European states in 1919–20 as a consequence of World War I.
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NOTES
Permanent Court of International Justice, Series B. No. 6, pp. 6 et seq., In fact, over 1 million Germans left the provinces of Posen and West Prussia (the Corridor) as a result of various coercions. I studied many of the German petitions and protests filed with the League of Nations, at the League of Nations Archives in Geneva. See also E. Kulischer, Europe on the Move (New York, 1948), pp. 134–5
H. Rauschning, Die Entddeutschung Posens und Westpreussens (Berlin, 1930). Also Herbert von Truhardt, Völkerbund und Minderheiten-petitionen (Leipzig, 1931);
H. Pieper, Die Minderheitenfrage und das Deutsche Reich 1919–1934 (Hamburg, 1974).
Arnold Toynbee, “Czechoslovakia’s German Problem,” The Economist, 10 July 1937, p. 72.
Upon returning from Munich, Chamberlain addressed a cheering crowd outside 10 Downing Street. He spoke of “peace with honour,” and the crowd wanted to believe it. John Wheeler-Bennett, Munich: Prologue to Tragedy (New York, 1948), p. 181.
A. Toynbee, “A Turning Point in History,” Foreign Affairs (January 1939), p. 316. See also The Times, June 2, 1938, in which the Dean of St. Paul’s expresses a similar point of view.
Their transcripts can be examined and checked in the files of the Armed Forces Investigations Bureau (Wehrmacht Untersuchungsstelle) in the German Federal Archives/Military Archives in Freiburg. As to the trustworthiness of the transcripts, see A. de Zayas, “The Wehrmacht Bureau on War Crimes,” in Historical Journal 35 (1992): 383–399.
BA-MA, RW 2/v.56. Concerning the 1939 deportations, an as yet unpublished Dokumentation der Verschleppungsmaersche exists in the German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Eastern Documents 7. See also Chapter 15 in A. de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939–1945 (Lincoln, Neb., 1989), pp. 130–141.
For a recent study of the death marches, see Hans Freiherr von Rosen, Dokumentation der Verschleppung der Deutschen aus Posen—Pommerellen im September 1939 (Berlin, 1990).
Wachenheim, “Hitler’s Transfers of Population in Eastern Europe,” Foreign Affairs 20 (1942): 705.
L. Holborn (ed.), War and Peace Aims of the United Nations, vol. 1 (New York, 1943), p. 462.
Emphasis added. For an interesting overview into the history of the phrase “crimes against humanity,” see Schwelb, Crimes Against Humanity, 23 B.Y.I.L. (1946), pp 178–226. IMT, vol. 1, p. 11.
Also United Nations, History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (London, 1948), especially pp. 35ff and 188ff
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© 1993 Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
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de Zayas, AM. (1993). The Expulsion Prehistory: Interbellum Years and World War II. In: The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22836-2_2
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