Orderly and humane : the expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War / R.M. Douglas.

9780300198201 paperback alkaline paper
0300198205 paperback alkaline paper
9780300166606 hardcover alkaline paper
0300166605 hardcover alkaline paper

New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, ©2012.

English

xii, 486 pages, [8] pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

D820.P72 G426 2012

940.53/14508931

"Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized and helped to carry out the forced relocation of German speakers from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable--between 12,000,000 and 14,000,000 civilians, most of them women and children--and the losses horrifying--at least 500,000 people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, while locked in trains en route, or after arriving in Germany exhausted, malnourished, and homeless. This book is the first in any language to tell the full story of this immense manmade catastrophe. Based mainly on archival records of the countries that carried out the forced migrations and of the international humanitarian organizations that tried but failed to prevent the disastrous results, Orderly and Humane : The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War is an authoritative and objective account. It examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the expulsions were conceived, planned, and executed and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The book is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing," and of what to this day remains, outside Germany, a virtually unknown chapter of the Second World War."--Jacket.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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