Population Balance Method Versus Counts of Confirmed Deaths
The West German government during the cold war conducted investigations of the wartime flight and expulsions. The Schieder commission published a series of reports that documented the expulsions based on eyewitness accounts. Schieder chronicled the flight and expulsions, but did not provide background on the wartime crimes of Nazi Germany in Central and Eastern Europe that motivated the Allies to expel the Germans after the war. Schieder in 1953 estimated that 2 million persons perished in Poland, a figure that continues to endure in Germany. Schieder’s estimate of the casualties was superseded by a separate demographic analysis of prepared by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, in 1958 they estimated losses at 2.225 million. The German Church Search Service working with the German Red Cross attempted to trace and identify those who perished in the expulsions. The investigation of the Church Search Service was only partially successful, by 1965 they were able to confirm about 500,000 deaths but could not clarify the fates of 1.9 million persons that were listed as "unsolved". The findings of the Church Search Service were not published until 1987. Another report was issued by the German Federal Archives that identified 600,000 civilian expulsion deaths due to crimes against international law. This report was not published until 1989.
Ingo Haar who is currently on the faculty of the University of Vienna said on 14 November 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that about 500,000 to 600,000 victims are realistic, based on a German governmental studies initiated in the 1960s. Haar said these numbers were compiled from actually reported deaths, while higher figures of about two million deaths were estimated with the population balance method in a German governmental study of 1958. Haar said the higher estimates must be seen in the historical context of the 1950s, when the government of West Germany needed high numbers for political reasons. During the Cold War West Germany wanted to revert to prewar borders in Central Europe. Military historian Rüdiger Overmans said on 6 December 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that only the about 500,000 registered deaths could be counted, and that the unaccounted cases calculated with the population balance method need be confirmed by further research. However on 29 November 2006 State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Christoph Bergner, reaffirmed the position of the German government that 2 million civilians perished in the flight and expulsion from Central and Eastern Europe. The German Red Cross in 2005 maintained that death toll in the expulsions is 2,251,500 persons.
Read more about this topic: Demographic Estimates Of The Flight And Expulsion Of Germans
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