Expulsion and Exodus From Central and Eastern Europe At The End of The War
Most Volksdeutsche left or were expelled from eastern European countries from 1945-1948 towards the end and after the war. Both those who became Volksdeutsche by registering and Reichsdeutsche retained German citizenship during the years of Allied military occupation, after the establishment of East Germany and West Germany in 1949, and later in the reunified Germany.
An estimated 12 million Germans fled or were expelled from the Soviet Union and non-Geman-speaking Central Europe, many of them being Volksdeutsche. Most left the Soviet-occupied territories of Central and Eastern Europe; they comprised the largest migration of any European people in modern history. The Allies had agreed to the expulsions during negotiations in the midst of war. The western powers hoped to avoid ethnic Germans being an issue again in Central and Eastern Europe. Thus the expulsion of Volksdeutsche was demanded by article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement.
Local authorities forced most of the remaining ethnic Germans to leave between 1945 and 1950. Remnants of the ethnic German community survive in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. A significant ethnic German community has continued in Siebenbürgen (Transylvania) in Romania but most of it migrated to West Germany throughout the 1980s. There are also remnant German populations near Mukachevo in western Ukraine.
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