A Terrible Revenge

A Terrible Revenge

A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 is a book by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas about the expulsion of Germans after World War II. Based on testimonials of German civilians and military, as well as many interviews with British and American politicians and diplomats who participated at the Potsdam Conference, including Robert Murphy, the political adviser of General Eisenhower, Sir Geoffrey Harrison (drafter of article XIII of the Potsdam Protocol concerning population transfers), and Sir Denis Allen (drafter of article IX on the provisional post-war borders), the book also describes the crimes committed by the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia, at the end of World War II, and cites the condemnation of the expulsions by Bertrand Russell, Victor Gollancz, Bishop Bell of Chichester and other contemporary intellectuals.

The author describes the history of German settlements in Central and Eastern Europe since the 12th century, the impact of the Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain on German minorities left in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the failure of the League of Nations system of minority protection, the outbreak of World War II and crimes committed by the Nazis, followed by the fate of the refugees from the former Eastern parts of Germany (Silesia, East Prussia, Pomerania, East Brandenburg), as well as the fate of German minorities in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

In the book, de Zayas claims that approximately two million Germans died during the post period of 1944-1949, although most recent research on the subject has put the number at around half a million.

Dear Readers, as far as the Article on A Terrible Revenge

line 12 must be removed

In the book, de Zayas claims that approximately two million Germans died during the post period of 1944-1949, although most recent research on the subject has put the number at around half a million.

In fact, the most recent research has been conducted by de Zayas and published 2012 in his "50 Theses on the Expulsion of the Germans" ISBN 978-3-9812110-4-7

There,on pp. 55-58 de Zayas convincingly explains that none of the "recent research" is professional or methodologically reliable and that therefore one must continue to rely on the demographic studies of the Statistisches Bundesamt and those of Dr. Fritz Peter Habel and Gerhard Reichling. Although, according to a study at the German Federal Archives of 1974, at least half a million were murdered directly, succumbing to beatings, dying of rape, shooting etc., a million and a half died as a direct consequence of the expulsions, since these were brutal and disorderly and Germany was in a state of total collapse upon their arrival -- so that a humanitarian catastrophe ensued, as abundantly reported in United States and British official memoranda and studies. Moreover, nearly two million East Germans were carted off to slave labour in the Soviet Union and some 40% of them perished on the way to the Urals and Siberia,l during their hard years of slave labour, or during their repatriation. Attempting to reduce the number of German dead from 2.2 million to half a million is as obnoxious as attempting to reduce the number of Holocaust dead from six million to one million as some revisionists do.Dr. Raymond Lohne, Columbia College Chicago70.89.220.194 (talk) 15:53, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

--