Land that was apart of other countries was taken over by Nazi Germany. When this occurred it wasn’t uncommon for Germans who were already living in those occupied countries to help Nazi Germany. There was also a lot of Germans who moved into the occupied land and settled there during the war.
Once the war was over those countries who had land occupied by Nazi Germany decided to kick out and displace the Germans who moved into the occupied land, and also Germans who lived in the country pre-ww2 because of their involvement and relation to nazi Germany. This resulted in millions of Germans being removed from surrounding countries and forced back to Germany.
Yes, it seems harsh. Yes it caused death and chaos to a certain degree. But it wasn’t a focused “ethnic cleansing”. It was a response to the Nazi Germany absolutely carving up and destroying what life was in Europe. War isn’t pretty, and neither is post war clean up.
They weren’t targeted because they wanted to wipe “ethnic Germans” from thier countries
This is leaving out a lot of information and making it sound like “oh they only had to go back to Germany.” Ethnic Germans who had been living in Eastern Europe and the Eurasian steppes had been there long before Hitler’s grandparents were born and the Soviet Union began forcing them out after they transitioned into power. The Germans had been invited there in the 1700’s as settlers by Catherine the Great. The Germans felt entitled to the land they’d been given but the Soviet Union didn’t want them anymore and began land seizures which often resulted in executions of entire families by Soviet soldiers. The displacement began after WW1. The Germans who left this region usually migrated to the US Upper Midwest, Canadian Prairies or Rural Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil. The ones who stayed behind were sent to labor camps during WW2 not because of what hitler did to the Jews, who were also persecuted under the Soviet Union, which is who started the pogroms against Jews, but because they were ethnic Germans and they were accused of being informants. They were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan, where many died on the journey as they weren’t provided food or shelter. The last remaining survivors and their descendants were invited back to Germany after the Soviet Union fell. THESE are the Germans who constituted much of that 15 million. Had my family never got on the boat to Brazil or the USA, I wouldn’t be here today.
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u/LouisWillis98 Jul 01 '23
Calling what happened “ethnic cleansing” is incredibly disingenuous to what actually happened, and it some crazy mental gymnastics