The Second World War — and After, 1939–47

Abstract

War provides the opportunity to pay off old scores. The Second World War and its immediate aftermath would see minorities massacred in or cleansed from their homelands as national majorities took revenge for the failure of these minorities to become loyal citizens and their support for if not outright collaboration with the invading armies whether from kin states or not. Added to which the first post-war European conference, held by the victorious Allies at Potsdam, would sanction the deportation of German minorities in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.¹ Altogether some 30 million Europeans (60 per cent of them Germans) would lose their homeland.²