Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Wiser
There aren't any Germans left: they all got "removed" after WW II. The unlucky ones got expelled to West Germany. The really unlucky ones got sent East first to make little rock out of big rock in a Gulag before going to the West. The NKVD took care of the lucky ones.....need anything more be said about that?
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I know Matt Germany evacuated well over 2 million German civilians from East Prussia in 1945 including what is now Kaliningrad during Operation Hannibal, although many civilians were still trapped in Konigsberg when it fell to the Red Army in April 1945. I think there were less than 200,000 Germans left in the whole of East Prussia by May 1945. Its hard to know the precise figure for casualties as this region was Included in the Oder-Neisse border shifting that occurred after the Potsdam Agreement. Remaining civilians were expelled and soldiers sent to POW camps. But as late as 1950 Poland recorded that there was still 164,000 Germans living in Polish territory that was East Prussia before the war. However more Germans remained, they just hid their identities by Slavicising their names. I actually know a Russian of German origin from Kaliningrad who's family did that until the 1990's. He on the other hand never hid his German roots and was also a very large Soviet Marine with Spetsnaz training, so if he got a hard time in the Soviet military for being German it wasn't to his face.
The whole issue of the lost eastern German territories is still controversial and a touchy subject to many in Germany and Eastern Europe. The legitimacy of the border shifting after Potsdam is also controversial, as West Germany never recognised its legitimacy and refused to have any diplomatic relations with any country who did (including East Germany) until the 1970's after Ostpolitik. Many Germans and their children were born and have roots in East Prussia, and the lost eastern territories is one of the issues that the German far-right bang on about. Germany probably would have a legitimate case in any international tribunal to seek monetary compensation against Russia, Poland and others for losses incurred by the terms of Potsdam, although no German government would ever be likely to do that. However German legitimacy to ownership of Kaliningrad (Konigsberg) would be at least as solid as Russian claims to the Crimea.