Keith Lowe
Revenge & Repercussions
Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War
By R M Douglas
Yale University Press 486pp £28 order from our bookshop
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the new authorities in eastern Europe embarked on one of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing in history. German families and communities across the region were rounded up, dispossessed, robbed and finally expelled from their countries. It is estimated that up to three million Germans were shunted out of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland in this way. Up to nine million were likewise expelled from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia when these German territories were awarded to Poland after the war. Perhaps another two million were ejected from Yugoslavia, Romania, and other parts of eastern Europe.
These expulsions were almost always accompanied by cruelty and extreme hardship. In the early days, whole communities were given just an hour to gather their belongings before being rounded up and force-marched to the border. Along the way they were beaten, raped and robbed – often repeatedly – before being
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Sign up to our newsletter! Get free articles, selections from the archive, subscription offers and competitions delivered straight to your inbox.
http://ow.ly/zZcW50JfgN5
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete