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Refugees moving westwards in 1945. During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania (Hinterpommern), which were annexed by ...
Part of German evacuation from Central and Eastern Europe during World War II East Prussia (red) was separated from Germany and Prussia proper (blue) by the Polish corridor in the inter-war era. The area, divided between the Soviet Union and Poland in 1945, is 340 km east of the present-day Polish–German border.
During the pre-Potsdam expulsions, many Germans were forced to march over 100 and sometimes even 200 kilometres. [167] Different estimates of the number of Germans expelled by People's Army of Poland alone during pre-Potsdam deportations (all numbers after Jankowiak): [168] 365,000 to 1,200,000 Germans were deported by Polish administration. [169]
The evacuation of German people from Central and Eastern Europe ahead of the Soviet Red Army advance during the Second World War was delayed until the last moment. Plans to evacuate people to present-day Germany from the territories controlled by Nazi Germany, including from the former eastern territories of Germany as well as occupied territories, were prepared by the German authorities only ...
Elsewhere in Europe, more than 120,000 people were evacuated in the German city of Dresden, 36,000 in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, and 1,500 in Hungary. [16] September 2004 – Evacuation orders were issued for over 2.8 million residents in advance of Hurricane Frances, potentially the largest in Florida's history. [17]
These non-Germans were targeted for slave labor and eventual extermination. While Generalplan Ost's settlement ambitions did not come into full effect due to the war's turn, millions of Germans, mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, were settled by the Nazis to replace Poles removed or killed during the occupation.
Between 13.5 and 16.5 million German-speakers fled, were evacuated or later expelled from Central and Eastern Europe, [48] [49] making this event the largest single instance of ethnic cleansing in recorded history. estimates of the number of those who died during the process are being debated by historians and they range from 500,000 to 3,000,000.
The German Expellees or Heimatvertriebene (German: [ˈhaɪmaːt.fɐˌtʁiːbənə] ⓘ, "homeland expellees") are 12–16 million German citizens (regardless of ethnicity) and ethnic Germans (regardless of citizenship) who fled or were expelled after World War II from parts of Germany annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union and from other ...