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
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“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)
“The Germans—once they were called the nation of thinkers: do they still think at all? Nowadays the Germans are bored with intellect, the Germans distrust intellect, politics devours all seriousness for really intellectual things—Deutschland, Deutschland Über alles was, I fear, the end of German philosophy.”
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“Each one threw down his staff, and they became snakes; but Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 7:12.
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“...I think the Americans are the only people who have good beds. I consider the American bedroom unparalleled for freshness, comfort, and cleanliness. It is worth going all over Europe in order to come home to one’s own bed.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)