DějinyGeschichteDejiny

The expulsion or forced resettlement of Germans from Czechoslovakia is still one of the most controversial topics among the public in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany, even though its study has made great progress since the collapse of the communist system in Czechoslovakia. This volume, which emerged from a conference of the German-Czech and German-Slovak Historical Commissions, presents new research findings on important stages of the expulsion. It deals in particular with the expulsions forced and planned by the National Socialists, the attitude of the Allied Great Powers, the suffering of those affected and the question of the expulsion victims. As the comparisons with Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia show, the expulsion from Czechoslovakia was not an isolated event. For at that time, after the experiences of the 1930s, the Munich Agreement of 1938 and the National Socialist "Volkstumspolitik", not only the governments in exile and resistance movements, but also the Allied Great Powers considered forced national homogenisation a legitimate means of preventing the resurgence of separatist movements in East-Central and Southeast Europe.