Nemesis at Potsdam - Publishing History

Publishing History

The book was first published by Routledge & K. Paul in 1977 with the title Nemesis at Potsdam : the Anglo-Americans and the expulsion of the Germans : background, execution, consequences. It contained a preface by US Ambassador Robert Murphy, a participant at the Potsdam Conference and former political advisor of General Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II and of General Lucius Clay during the American military government in Germany. Routledge published a 2nd edition in 1979. The third edition, published by University of Nebraska Press in 1989, the title Nemesis at Potsdam : the expulsion of the Germans from the East was published in 1979 by the University of Nebraska Press. A 1998 edition was published by Picton Press, Rockland, Maine, 2003 296 pp. ISBN 0-89725-360-4.

The book is a revised version of a doctoral dissertation for the History Faculty of the University of Göttingen in Germany. Although a scholarly book with 761 endnotes and 47 pages of bibliography: archives, interviews and secondary sources, the book quickly became a best seller. It received praise in the American Journal of International Law, the American Historical Review,Foreign Affairs, the Times Educational Supplement, British Book News etc. However, some historians have criticized the book contending that de Zayas had not given enough space to the Nazi crimes, that he relied too much on the stories of the German victims and their political representatives, that he is too legalistic in his analysis of the Potsdam conference, and because of the tone of the "moral outrage" expressed by the author. (Lothar Kettenacker in the "Historische Zeitschrift", John Campbell, Detleff Brandes, and in the Polish and Czech Press: O III Rzeszy coraz sympatyczniej, Trybuna Ludu 30.VII.1980, Nr. 179.)

An enlarged German edition, with previously unpublished photographs from the United States Army Signal Corps, facsimiles of documents from the National Archives, Public Record Office, Federal Swiss Archives in Bern, and Bundesarchiv-Koblenz, was published in October 1977 by C.H. Beck in Munich, and had several editions., published under the title Die Nemesis von Potsdam. ISBN 3-7766-2454-X. The Herbig edition was positively reviewed in Die Presse (Vienna) and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.