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Summary: Fwd: A DEFINITE BUY! A+
Review: ...A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 The tragedy of the largest ethnic-cleansing event in history Alfred-Maurice De Zayas' book recounts the events that unfolded during the first few-months of 1945 in Germany's historic eastern provinces. This tragedy, that was the extermination of an 800-year old civilization in Eastern Europe, is regrettably an event that still remains an unknown, even in modern western intellectual circles. De Zayas' book decribes the harrowing tale that the 13 million eastern Germans faced: the largest ethnic-cleansing of human beings, the largest maritime evacuation of civilians, and the most horrific naval disasters in history. The book is a monument to the great cruelty and depravity that mankind is capable of, and the little dignity that even moral powers can have for their victims. It is a dedication to the millions that suffered because of their ethnic origin and to the 2.5 million Germans that vanished. Today, the survivors and relatives of these expellees acount for 1/5 of the German population. This book will be intstrumental in understanding the future evolution of Polish-German and Czech-German affairs. A DEFINITE BUY! A+
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Summary: Revenge
Review: A grim testament of the ethnic cleansing of millions of Germans living in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Third Reich. An all around informative read, especially for those whose history books just happened to neglect this "footnote" of history.
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Summary: The tragedy of the largest ethnic-cleansing event in history
Review: Alfred-Maurice De Zayas' book recounts the events that unfolded during the first few-months of 1945 in Germany's historic eastern provinces. This tragedy, that was the extermination of an 800-year old civilization in Eastern Europe, is regrettably an event that still remains an unknown, even in modern western intellectual circles. De Zayas' book decribes the harrowing tale that the 13 million eastern Germans faced: the largest ethnic-cleansing of human beings, the largest maritime evacuation of civilians, and the most horrific naval disasters in history. The book is a monument to the great cruelty and depravity that mankind is capable of, and the little dignity that even moral powers can have for their victims. It is a dedication to the millions that suffered because of their ethnic origin and to the 2.5 million Germans that vanished. Today, the survivors and relatives of these expellees acount for 1/5 of the German population. This book will be intstrumental in understanding the future evolution of Polish-German and Czech-German affairs. A DEFINITE BUY! A+
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Summary: Absorbing Tome On Ethnic Cleansing Of Post WWII Germans!
Review: Among the most horrific of acts following the carnage of World War Two in Europe was the so-called revenge events against civilian Germans in the eastern-most provinces of what had been Germany until the end of the war and retracing of national boundaries pursuit with treaty agreements that had been reached. Much of the indigenous German population within what is now western Poland was subjected to unspeakable acts of violence, retribution, and forced resettlement, much as the German and Polish Jews had been under the repressive hands of the Third Reich during the war. This well-researched and superbly written book focuses on the ways in which this set of events triggered a genocidal wave of reaction against ethnic Germans unfortunate enough to be living in the areas suddenly no longer part of Germany proper.
This is not to either suggest any legal rationale for the genocide which ensued, but to admit the pent-up grievances and immense frustration of other ethnic groups toward Germany in particular, and to any ethnic Germans in general, such that they became the victims of an incredible amount of focused antipathy and homicidal rage after the war. One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is the way in which the author animates the events with first-person anecdotes, which serve to graphically demonstrate what the edicts and events meant in human terms to those individuals caught in the cross hairs of place and circumstance, victims ineluctably on the wrong side of history.
For anyone well-read in the events of the times, the incidents of brutality in the immediate period following cessation of hostilities are legend, and Jews and other forced "evacuees" returning to liberated Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe most often found all their legal property - farms, houses, apartments, and businesses, - still occupied by people who had summarily usurped them during the war and were now singularly disinterested in giving them back. The lack of simple humanity shown by so many individuals under the duress of war is testimony to the continuing enmity the ethnic Germans soon felt the rage of. Thus this book adds the curious and yet fascinating dimension of those civilian Germans, just as much victimized in their own way by the German Third Reich's geo-political activities as anyone, suddenly victimized for the mere reason of ethnicity and the endless enmity of other groups within the country itself. This is a fascinating book, and one I can highly recommend. Enjoy!
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Summary: An Eye-Opener
Review: An excellent book about a tragedy that is still too often unknown in English-speaking countries. Besides making sure the victims are not forgotten, Zayas's book is also important for Americans who want to understand, beyond the anti-German squibblings of some East Coast media, the complicated relationship of the expellor-states, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia, and today's Germany. My only criticism would be that the pictures and witness accounts of awful, sadistic mass-murder of German civilians in the streets of Bohemia that were cited in Nemesis at Potsdam have been omitted from this--admitedly smaller--book. They were a powerful reminder to Americans, so prone to see history in John Wayne fashion, that evil is not bound to any ethnic group.
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Summary: Important book about forgotten facts.
Review: Being a (young) German, and not from an expelled family, I was quite unaware of what went on during the last days of the war in Eastern Germany. Nobody tells you about that here. The "Vertriebenen" (Expelled ones) are considered to be very strange and right-wing and do not have much public exposure. Reading this book I was very shocked and touched, understanding the pain and loss of those people. Even worse, they are not even allowed to express what they have witnessed. The Shoah is very well documentated (and rightly so), but this dark chapter of the holocaust on the Germans after the war will soon be forgotten. The book is very well written, very balanced and not biased, the facts are proven and documentated. Reading it, I had the same bitter feeling that I head reading the KZ-Documents F321 and other first-hand recollection of the Shoah: Men are beasts, and there is no cruelty they will not commit if they are allowed to do that. Hitler allowed the SS to kill the Jews any which way they wanted. Chuchill and Roosevelt allowed Stalin and Benez to kill the Germans any which way they wanted. And they all did.
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Summary: Tries to Convert Germans From Agressors to Victims
Review: DeZayas masterfully avoids major facts, and invents others. He repeats the baseless canard about 2 million Germans killed during the expulsions (a product of of statistical legerdemain). He fails to inform the reader that almost ALL Germans (not just card-carrying Nazis) supported German imperialistic claims, and that the territories which they were being expelled from had been taken by Germans from their Slavic neighbors over a thousand years of wars of aggression (including the times of the Teutonic Knights, Partitions of Poland, Bismark's Kulturkampf, etc.). Thus DeZayas makes an unconvincing case for his tacit premise that Germans should be free to inflict suffering on others without experiencing any of it in return. For the Germans to experience REAL revenge, they would have had to have suffered in much greater numbers, and over a long period of time.
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Summary: Should be mandatory reading in US schools
Review: I have known about the atrocities this book speaks of for many years now. Unfortunately, I'm among the very few Americans who do know. The level of education at my place of employment is very high, yet nobody knows about these terrible crimes. Mention the holocaust though and people can go on for hours talking about what the learned in school or saw on TV. When you bring up what happened to millions of Germans after the war, you generally get two reactions. One is that you are somehow a nazi sympathizer, and the other is total disbelief. The author is to be commended for his work in bringing this injustice to the attention of the American people, even if his book is not widely known. There is so much more should be done. What happened to the jews was wrong, but so was what happened to the Germans after the war. People who are angered by what they feel is an attempt to make the Germans into victims should do some soul searching, for they obviously have a lot in common with the nazis.
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Summary: BALANCED TRUTH FINALLY - The Other Side
Review: Important and often ignored truths concerning the ugly side of the allied victory over NAZI Germany. De Zayas presents a very much needed perspective into the suffering experienced by ordinary Germans during and after the war - specifically in the former German provences of East Prussia, Silesia and Pommerania, as well as the Sudeten and Donauschwaben Germans.
Not a pleasant read when one hears testimony after testimony of heinous acts of revenge perpetrated by the Poles, Russians and Czechs - esp. the murderous gang rapes which were seen as an almost just reparation for the crimes of the German nation.
De Zayas does an equally admirable job in questioning the "moral high ground" of the allies in prosecuting German millitiary leaders for "war crimes" involing making war on civilian populations, while at the same time they incinerated 100,000+ cilivians in Dresden, sank German refugee ships in the Baltic containing upwards of 8000 cililian passengers fleeing the Russian advance (Wilhelm Gustloff), and sent attack planes to machine-gun fleeing German cililians at Dresden and Danzig (Frische Nehrung).
A BALANACED view you won't get from "cut and paste" historians or Hollywood --- in whose perspective no one but the allies were killed or suffered, only British civilians were killed in air attacks, and all Germans are non-persons screaming "schnell" and "actung."
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Summary: GERMAN CIVILIAN VICTIMS AT CLOSE OF WW II
Review: In his narration, de Zayas appears to have a threefold objective: (1) to describe where all the Volksdeutsche (European Germans living outside of Germany) had settled; (2) how they were mistreated by advancing armies and hostile civilians; and (3) postwar reconciliation of the German displaced persons situation in general. De Zayas description of where the Volksdeutsche were located before World War I and II is interesting and enlightening from a historical perspective. With regard to how the Volksdeutsche were treated, the majority of the book is dedicated to accounts of terror and brutality that the Volksdeutsche received from the advancing Russian military as well as from the citizens of the countries that they had occupied outside of Germany proper. The last section of the book, regarding reconciliation, is well done. I was somewhat disappointed with the book since I had expected a broader view especially with regard to the D.P. (displaced persons) camps, but on reconsideration, since de Zayas is writing on the "ethnic cleaning" of these Volksdeutsche, he has met his goal with his more narrow view. Overall: a good account of the harsh treatment the Volksdeutsche received as World War II came to a close.
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