Nemesis at Potsdam

Nemesis At Potsdam

The title is drawn from Greek mythology; Nemesis is the Greek goddess of revenge. The implication is that at the Potsdam Conference (17 July to 2 August 1945) the victorious Allies of World War II took revenge on the Germans, entailing significant territorial losses in Eastern Europe and the forced transfer of some 15 million Germans from their homelands in East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, East Brandenburg, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia.

The book is the first scholarly study in the English language concerning the expulsion of Germans after World War II. It effectively broke a taboo in the English-speaking world, and also in Germany and Austria, thus facilitating subsequent research in the subject by other scholars. The book was dedicated to Victor Gollancz, whose seminal book Our Threatened Values had inspired the author when he was a student at Harvard. In chapter VI of the book de Zayas cites Gollancz' clear condemnation of the expulsions: "If the conscience of mankind ever again becomes sensitive, these expulsions will be remembered to the undying shame of all who committed or connived at them…The Germans were expelled, not just with an absence of over-nice consideration, but with the very maximum of brutality. (Our Threatened Values, p. 96). On the basis of US and British archival documents, de Zayas shows that the Western Allies were genuinely appalled at the manner in which the Germans were being expelled and that they lodged diplomatic protest notes in Warsaw and Prague -- to no avail.

The theses of "Nemesis at Potsdam" have been condensed into a new book "50 theses on the expulsion of the Germans from Central and Eastern Europe", published 2012 in Verlag Inspiration, London and Berlin, ISBN 978-3-9812110-4-7...raymond lohne, Ph.D., Columbia College Chicago