Germans to Poles
Communism, Nationalism and Ethnic Cleansing after the Second World War

This book examines the ways Poland dealt with the territories and peoples it gained from Germany after the Second World War.

Hugo Service (Author)

9781107671485, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 July 2013

390 pages, 7 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.69 kg

'With his study Germans to Poles, Hugo Service provides a deep insight into and understanding of these complex processes and offers a step toward studying this area of postwar European history … Based on a rich variety of sources, Service's study is clearly written and well structured.' Agnes Laba, H-Poland

At the end of the Second World War, mass forced migration and population movement accompanied the collapse of Nazi Germany's occupation and the start of Soviet domination in East-Central Europe. Hugo Service examines the experience of Poland's new territories, exploring the Polish Communist attempt to 'cleanse' these territories in line with a nationalist vision, against the legacy of brutal wartime occupations of Central and Eastern Europe by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The expulsion of over three million Germans was intertwined with the arrival of millions of Polish settlers. Around one million German citizens were categorised as 'native Poles' and urged to adopt a Polish national identity. The most visible traces of German culture were erased. Jewish Holocaust survivors arrived and, for the most part, soon left again. Drawing on two case studies, the book exposes how these events varied by region and locality.

Introduction
1. Eastern Europe, 1939–44: occupation, expulsion, killing
2. Poland, 1939–49: territory and Communism
3. War and peace
4. Expulsion
5. Repopulation
6. Verification
7. Expellees, settlers, natives
8. Holocaust survivors and foreigners
9. Assimilation
10. Culture, religion, society
Conclusion: Eastern Europe, 1944–9: Communism, nationalism, expulsion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]