Keith Lowe

Revenge & Repercussions

Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War

By

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. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Neville never shed his sense of being the junior, and perhaps least-deserving Chamberlain.' From the archive, Mic… ,
    • 'The erecting and immediate destruction of a series of straw men rather detracts from what is for the most part an… ,
    • RT : A magnificent demolition job on this "acid laced tirade...unpleasantly self-obsessed...self pitying polemic...book… ,
    • 'Seventy years on, the time we have left to gather such first-hand testimony is running out.' John Keay on the sig… ,
    • The author 'seethes with contemptuous indignation at the shiny junk that an unregulated construction industry dumps… ,
    • 'The physical courage he demonstrated as a young man [...] gave way to intellectual power; radical thought, gifted… ,
    • 'While Jane Austen didn’t perhaps achieve the full recognition that she deserved in her lifetime, even then she out… ,
    Follow Us