Postwar ethnic cleansing

[Don Phillipson]

A new book, Orderly and Humane
The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War.
by R.M. Douglas (of Colgate Univ.) has been attracting
a variety of interesting reviews e.g.
http://www.thenation.com/article/171484/brutal-peace-postwar-expulsions-germans#

The topic is forced relocation of civilians after VE Day, approved by
the Big Three at Potsdam where international borders were redrawn.
E.g. Churchill spoke in Parliament against this during wartime, but
apparently agreed at Yalta. Roughly 10 million Germans were thus
relocated, some with cruelty or massacre.

Some reviewers say this item of postwar history is not quite so neglected
as author Colgate suggests. Most point out that the Nazi idea of
race-based (homogeneous) nations is rooted in the Versailles
Conference, which proposed redrawing the map of Europe on
"national" lines (abolishing Austrian and other empires that for
centuries had included various "nationalities" recognized as
different.)

Nazi doctrine attempted to base "race theory" in current science,
but failed because the genetics of 1920-50 provided no useable technology
to differentiate the races. This left Nazi investigators on the same level
as the phrenologists of 1800 and the physiognomists of 1875, attempting
to calibrate eye colour, ear shape, nose size etc. as the basis of a
"science of race."

In "real life," language turned out to be the most effective tool for
classifying people (as German, Polish, Slovak, etc.) in the absence
of such data as the Czechoslovakian census of 1930 (that invited
respondents to classify themselves.) Thus the real change was
that in 1900 "everyone" believed that modern people ought to be
able to speak two or three languages, so public business in
Moscow, Prague and perhaps every capital except London or
Paris should be able to handle several. Two world wars (and
the demographic ideas of Versailles) made us all monoglot
(just like the Americans?) or bilingual (as English became 1945-80
the predominant international language.)

But we have changed again. Modern migration and multi-
culturalism made Europe polyglot again, so that by 2000 the
world's big cities (including New York as well as London) found
themselves obliged to deal in public hospitals, schools, taxation
departments etc. with 25 to 50 immigrant languages.

[csmdave]

Post by Don Phillipson
A new book, Orderly and Humane
The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War.
by R.M. Douglas (of Colgate Univ.) has been attracting
a variety of interesting reviews e.g.http://www.thenation.com/article/171484/brutal-peace-postwar-expulsio...
The topic is forced relocation of civilians after VE Day, approved by
the Big Three at Potsdam where international borders were redrawn.
E.g. Churchill spoke in Parliament against this during wartime, but
apparently agreed at Yalta. Roughly 10 million Germans were thus
relocated, some with cruelty or massacre.
Some reviewers say this item of postwar history is not quite so neglected
as author Colgate suggests. Most point out that the Nazi idea of
race-based (homogeneous) nations is rooted in the Versailles
Conference, which proposed redrawing the map of Europe on
"national" lines (abolishing Austrian and other empires that for
centuries had included various "nationalities" recognized as
different.)
Nazi doctrine attempted to base "race theory" in current science,
but failed because the genetics of 1920-50 provided no useable technology
to differentiate the races. This left Nazi investigators on the same level
as the phrenologists of 1800 and the physiognomists of 1875, attempting
to calibrate eye colour, ear shape, nose size etc. as the basis of a
"science of race."
In "real life," language turned out to be the most effective tool for
classifying people (as German, Polish, Slovak, etc.) in the absence
of such data as the Czechoslovakian census of 1930 (that invited
respondents to classify themselves.) Thus the real change was
that in 1900 "everyone" believed that modern people ought to be
able to speak two or three languages, so public business in
Moscow, Prague and perhaps every capital except London or
Paris should be able to handle several. Two world wars (and
the demographic ideas of Versailles) made us all monoglot
(just like the Americans?) or bilingual (as English became 1945-80
the predominant international language.)
But we have changed again. Modern migration and multi-
culturalism made Europe polyglot again, so that by 2000 the
world's big cities (including New York as well as London) found
themselves obliged to deal in public hospitals, schools, taxation
departments etc. with 25 to 50 immigrant languages.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

I don't remember seeing much in the news after that about claims for
going back to their place of origin - no yelling like the palestinians
who fled israel during the wars about the right of return.
csmdave

[Don Phillipson]

Post by csmdave

. . . forced relocation of civilians after VE Day, approved by
the Big Three at Potsdam where international borders were redrawn.
E.g. Churchill spoke in Parliament against this during wartime, but
apparently agreed at Yalta. Roughly 10 million Germans were thus
relocated, some with cruelty or massacre.

I don't remember seeing much in the news after that about claims for
going back to their place of origin - no yelling like the palestinians
who fled israel during the wars about the right of return.

This is a different topic.
1. The (Wilsonian?) doctrine justifying relocation (ethnic cleansing)
in 1945-49 (a) uses language rather than genetics as its basic
discriminant, (b) judges that each language group originated in
a recognized geographic territory. Neither is the basis of what
exiled Palestinians claim or say they want.
2. The doctrine is obviously limited to recent time, say 500 years
max. If we applied it to earlier time, citing language, we should
have to evict the English-speaking from England back to the
homelands of their language, viz. Saxony, France and Scandinavia,
leaving behind only the Welsh and Cornish speakers (and depart
Gaelic speakers to Ireland.)