Allied-occupied Germany - Expulsion Policy

Expulsion Policy

The Potsdam conference, where the victorious Allies drew up plans for the future of Germany, noted in article XIII of the Potsdam Agreement on August 1, 1945 that "the transfer to Germany of German populations (...) in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary will have to be undertaken"; "wild expulsion" was already going on.

Hungary, which had been allied with Germany and where no expulsions had as yet taken place and in addition population was opposed to an expulsion of the German minority, tried to resist this, but in the end had to yield to the pressure exerted mainly by the Soviet Union but also by the Allied Control Council. Of the millions expelled from former eastern territories of Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and elsewhere, when they were not used for forced labor, over a period of years they were sent to the occupation zones of UK, USA, and USSR, who agreed in the Potsdam Agreement to absorb the post-war expellees into their zones, where many remained in refugee camps for a long time.

France was not invited to the Potsdam Conference. As a result, it took its own liberties to approve some decisions of the Potsdam Agreements and to dismiss others. As to the question of the post-war expellees, France maintained the position that it did not approve post-war expulsions and that therefore it was not responsible to accommodate and nourish the destitute expellees in its zone. While the few war-related refugees who had reached the area to become the French zone before July 1945 were taken care of, the French military government for Germany refused to absorb post-war expellees deported from the East into its zone. In December 1946, the French military government for Germany absorbed into its zone German refugees from Denmark, where 250,000 Germans had found a refuge from the Soviets by sea vessels between February and May 1945. These clearly were war-related refugees from the eastern parts of Germany however, and not post-war expellees.