The displacement of entire populations in Stalin's Russia?
The exoduses caused by the partition of India and Pakistan?
No, the answer is the mass movement set in motion amongst other things by the Potsdam Conference of 1945 when the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic States, Poland's frontier was moved several hundred miles to the west, the Sudetenland returned to Czechoslovakia and German elements in Hungary expelled. In all, up to 14 million Germans were forced to move to what was a drastically truncated German state.
I am indebted to my dear friend Finnbarr O'Driscoll for putting me on to a fascinating series of podcasts on BBC Radio 4 entitled "Germany: Memoroes of a Nation", from which I have drawn this information.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/germany
As we know, Germany's main cities lay in ruins by the end of the war. Eight million homes were destroyed or damaged. Yet, within a generation the cities had been rebuilt and the German economy was the fourth largest in the world. How on earth did they manage to do this, starting with the truly daunting task of simply clearing the rubble, especially when they could not even lay claim to righteous anger as a motive force. It appears that Germans can largely thank women for this extraordinary achievement, demolishing buildings by hand and stacking up the bricks and stones. Almost every able-bodied woman was recruited.
Empty bomb sites in Britain were still a common sight in Britain in the 1960s, but by the late 1950s much of Germany had been rebuilt.
How little we know of Germany history, apart from the Nazi era, and how little we know of modern Germany! I doubt if many of us could name more than two or three contemporary politicians. I certainly couldn't. I sometimes think there is little hope for Europe when we know next to nothing about any country other than our own, and care even less!
The exoduses caused by the partition of India and Pakistan?
No, the answer is the mass movement set in motion amongst other things by the Potsdam Conference of 1945 when the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic States, Poland's frontier was moved several hundred miles to the west, the Sudetenland returned to Czechoslovakia and German elements in Hungary expelled. In all, up to 14 million Germans were forced to move to what was a drastically truncated German state.
I am indebted to my dear friend Finnbarr O'Driscoll for putting me on to a fascinating series of podcasts on BBC Radio 4 entitled "Germany: Memoroes of a Nation", from which I have drawn this information.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/germany
As we know, Germany's main cities lay in ruins by the end of the war. Eight million homes were destroyed or damaged. Yet, within a generation the cities had been rebuilt and the German economy was the fourth largest in the world. How on earth did they manage to do this, starting with the truly daunting task of simply clearing the rubble, especially when they could not even lay claim to righteous anger as a motive force. It appears that Germans can largely thank women for this extraordinary achievement, demolishing buildings by hand and stacking up the bricks and stones. Almost every able-bodied woman was recruited.
Empty bomb sites in Britain were still a common sight in Britain in the 1960s, but by the late 1950s much of Germany had been rebuilt.
How little we know of Germany history, apart from the Nazi era, and how little we know of modern Germany! I doubt if many of us could name more than two or three contemporary politicians. I certainly couldn't. I sometimes think there is little hope for Europe when we know next to nothing about any country other than our own, and care even less!
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