The German exodus from Central and Eastern Europe describes the dramatic reduction of ethnic German populations in lands to the east of present-day Germany and Austria. The exodus began in the aftermath of World War I and was implicated in the rise of Nazism. It culminated in expulsions of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II. These were arranged by the victorious Allies when they redrew national borders and arranged for "orderly population transfers" to remove ethnic groups that they viewed as "troublesome".
Read more about German Exodus From Central And Eastern Europe: Background, Territorial Claims of German Nationalists, Support of Nazi Invasion By German Population in Invaded Countries, Nazi-Soviet Population Transfers, The Allies Deliberate On The Postwar German-Polish Border, Evacuation and Flight, Expulsion, The Results, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words eastern europe, german, exodus, central, eastern and/or europe:
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)
“I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
“...and all the people answered with one voice, and said, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.””
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 24:2.
“For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)