Japanese American Internment - Expulsions and Population Transfers of WWII

Expulsions and Population Transfers of WWII

The internment of Japanese Americans has sometimes been compared to the persecutions, expulsions, and dislocations of other ethnic minorities in the context of World War II, in Europe and Asia. An estimated 500,000 Volga Germans were rounded up and deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, with many of them dying en route. The Volga Germans were deported prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, as they were regarded, in the "war hysteria of the moment", as a potential "Fifth Column".

In 1944, the Red Army rounded up about 500,000 Chechens and Ingushes for relocation; a third of this population perished in the first year, from starvation, cold, and disease. Other nationalities which faced ethnic cleansing for having been identified as potential collaborators with the Germans were the Balkars, Crimean Tartars, Karachi, Kalmyks, and Meskhetians.