Author Topic: Western Revisionism of WWI and WWII  (Read 3360 times)

Zea_mays

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Re: Western Revisionism of WWI and WWII
« Reply #30 on: May 23, 2021, 06:52:45 pm »
Polish propaganda from 1931 celebrating how the percent of ethnic Germans had dramatically decreased in Polish territory. You've probably seen a comparable piece of German propaganda in a history textbook, but never one from an 'Allied' nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nalot_niemczyzny_1910_1931.jpg

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Don't even get me started about the ethnic cleansing of German civilians after WWII by the Allied nations. I learned about this after looking into history myself during a mandatory "Holocaust education unit" in school (yes, it's mandatory to teach this in most grade levels in many US states while education on the extermination of Native Americans is not), and I was just so perplexed as to why this wasn't even mentioned if the entire point of 'educating' us on this part of WWII was to tell us ethnic cleansing was bad.

In school, I wrote a paper on it and became indescribably disgusted when I kept seeing people say these civilians deserved to be ethnically cleansed by the "good guys" in revenge for simply being born into the wrong ethnic group. I think this is when I learned that the ideologies and nations which were classified as the "good guys" in WWII were not considered good because they genuinely had admirable principles, but simply because they won and got to write their own history. They did all the same things they accused Germany of doing, but were able to write their own crimes out of the standard history curriculum.

The chilling fact is that the victorious powers conducted the largest ethnic cleansing in 'European' history:

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With at least 12 million Germans directly involved, possibly 14 million or more, it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in European history and the largest among the post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe (which displaced 20 to 31 million people in total).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944–1950)

The following article states the ethnic cleansing of Germans was the largest in world history, although it also suggests conflicts during the partitioning of Pakistan and Bangladesh reached comparable numbers. (Additionally, the destruction of Native Americans, which spanned several centuries, killed tens of millions more people. The Transatlantic slave trade "transferred" over 12 million slaves over multiple centuries as well.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer


Apparently by their own definitions, the Allies committed the largest war crime of WWII with this ethnic cleansing:
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George Orwell, in his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" (written during the World War II evacuation and expulsions in Europe), observed:

    "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things... can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.... Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers."
[...]
The tide started to turn when the Charter of the Nuremberg Trials of German Nazi leaders declared forced deportation of civilian populations to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity.[4]
[...]
There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: "Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law."[5]
[...]
Timothy V. Waters argues, in "On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing," that the expulsions of the ethnic German population east of the Oder-Neisse line the Sudetenland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe without legal redress has set a legal precedent that can permit future ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer#Changes_in_international_law



...Wait, the reason the "good guys" ethnically cleansed tens of millions of people after WWII was to achieve "ethnically-pure" nations??? Obviously, that is an unacceptable reason to deport and kill civilians. However, ...isn't this motive the exact same thing that Western history textbooks tell us made 'Nazi Germany' a uniquely evil nation? For allegedly doing the exact same thing the Allies did, but on a smaller scale?
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The creation of ethnically homogeneous nation states in Central and Eastern Europe[51] was presented as the key reason for the official decisions of the Potsdam and previous Allied conferences as well as the resulting expulsions.[52] The principle of every nation inhabiting its own nation state gave rise to a series of expulsions and resettlements of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and others who after the war found themselves outside their supposed home states.[63][53]
[...]
The participants at the Potsdam Conference asserted that expulsions were the only way to prevent ethnic violence. As Winston Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, insofar as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by the prospect of disentanglement of populations, not even of these large transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions than they have ever been before".[72]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944–1950)

(That Churchill quote sounds more racist than anything I've heard Hitler say).


To Poland's credit, after Beck died, it seemed the Polish government-in-exile became less ethno-centric in its policies, although the Polish government formed by the USSR was not. In addition, the USSR ethnically cleansed over a million Poles from the eastern parts of Poland that the USSR was allowed to keep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_population_transfers_(1944%E2%80%931946)

So, who was the original advocate of ethnically cleansing the Germans, you might ask? Ah yes, Churchill.
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The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories was proposed by Winston Churchill, in conjunction with the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments in London at least since 1942.[2][3] In late 1944 the Czechoslovak exile government pressed[citation needed] the Allies to espouse the principle of German population transfers.
[...]
On the other hand, Polish prime minister Tomasz Arciszewski, in an interview for The Sunday Times on 17 December 1944, supported the annexation of Warmia-Masuria, Opole Regency, north-east parts of Lower Silesia (up to the Oder line), and parts of Pomerania (without Szczecin), but he opposed the idea of expulsion. He wanted to naturalize the Germans as Polish citizens and to assimilate them.[4]

Stalin, in concert with other communist leaders, planned to expel all ethnic Germans from east of the Oder and from lands which from May 1945 fell inside the Soviet occupation zones.[5] In 1941 his government had already transported Germans from Crimea to Central Asia.

Between 1944 and 1948, millions of people, including ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) and German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million[6] Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. The West German government put the total at 14.6 million,[7] including a million ethnic Germans who had settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II, ethnic German migrants to Germany after 1950, and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from former eastern territories of Germany ceded to the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union (about seven million),[8][9] and from Czechoslovakia (about three million).
[...]
The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000–600,000[14][15] and up to 2 to 2.5 million.[16][17][18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%931950)


More cattle cars. This time for Germans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vertreibung.jpg

And Hungarians being ethnically cleansed from post-war Czechoslovakia. Again, one of the standard anti-Nazi propaganda points is that they were uniquely evil for transporting people to camps in a "mechanized" and "efficient" manner. Who would have guessed that any nation with access to rail networks would have used rail networks to transport people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old_people.jpg


...What...? The "good guys" literally implemented a "final solution"? (Successfully!) And its not in the standard history curriculum?
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During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Czech resistance groups demanded the deportation of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia. The decision to deport the Germans was adopted by the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile which, beginning in 1943, sought the support of the Allies for this proposal.[1][2] The final agreement for the expulsion of the German population however was not reached until 2 August 1945 at the end of the Potsdam Conference.

In the months following the end of the war, "wild" expulsions happened from May until August 1945. Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš on 28 October 1945 called for the "final solution of the German question" (Czech: konečné řešení německé otázky) which would have to be solved by deportation of the ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia.[3][4]

The expulsions were carried out by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers. However, in some cases it was initiated or pursued with the assistance of the regular army.[5] Several thousand died violently during the expulsion and more died from hunger and illness as a consequence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czechoslovakia

...What, the "good guys" literally put German children in the exact same concentration camps the Germans had been operating under war time conditions?
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According to the German "Society against Expulsion", some Germans were sent to "concentration camps".[46] A 1964 report by the German Red Cross stated that 1,215 "internment camps" were established, as well as 846 forced labour and "disciplinary centres", and 215 prisons, on Czechoslovak territory.
[...]
According to Alfred de Zayas:

    One of the worst camps in post-war Czechoslovakia was the old Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Conditions under the new Czech administration are described by H. G. Adler, a former Jewish inmate as follows: ... in the majority they were children and juveniles, who had only been locked up because they were Germans. Only because they were Germans...? This sentence sounds frighteningly familiar; only the word 'Jews' had been changed to 'Germans'. [...] The people were abominably fed and maltreated, and they were no better off than one was used to from German concentration camps.[49]

    The civilian internees who survived to be expelled recorded the horrors of months and years of slow starvation and maltreatment in many thousands of affidavits. Allied authorities in the American and British zones were able to investigate several cases, including the notorious concentration camp at České Budějovice in Southern Bohemia. The deputy commander of this camp in the years 1945–6, Václav Hrneček, later fled Czechoslovakia and came to Bavaria where he was recognized by former German inmates of the camp. Hrneček was brought to trial before an American Court of the Allied High Commission for Germany presided by Judge Leo M. Goodman. The Court based an eight-year sentence against Hrneček upon findings that the Budějovice camp was run in a criminal and cruel way, that although there were no gas chambers and no systematic, organized extermination, the camp was a centre of sadism, where human life and human dignity had no meaning.[50]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czechoslovakia

Quote
The Beneš decrees are associated with the 1945-47 deportation of about 3 million ethnic Germans and Hungarians from Czechoslovakia. The deportation, based on Article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement, was the outcome of negotiations between the Allied Control Council and the Czechoslovak government. The expulsion is considered ethnic cleansing (a term in widespread use since the early 1990s) by a number of historians and legal scholars. The relevant decrees omit any reference to the deportation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene%C5%A1_decrees#Legal_basis_for_expulsions

Recall that Czechoslovakia was created after WWI by the Allies, even though the Sudetenland wanted to remain with Austria and Austria itself wanted to join Germany. Instead, the Allies forbid both the Sudetenland from having "self-determination" and forbid Austria from merging with Germany. This whole situation could have been avoided, but the Allies didn't care.
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Austria-Hungary broke apart at the end of World War I. Late in October 1918, an independent Czechoslovak state, consisting of the lands of the Bohemian kingdom and areas belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary, was proclaimed. The German deputies of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia in the Imperial Council (Reichsrat) referred to the Fourteen Points of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and the right proposed therein to self-determination, and attempted to negotiate the union of the German-speaking territories with the new Republic of German Austria, which itself aimed at joining Weimar Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland#World_War_I_and_its_aftermath

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On 13 November 1918, German-Austria asked Germany to start negotiations of union and on 15 November sent a telegram to President Wilson to support union of Germany and Austria. This was grounded in the view that Austria had never been a nation in the true sense. While the Austrian state had existed in one form or another for over 700 years (dating to the Holy Roman Empire), its only unifying force had been the Habsburgs. Apart from being German-inhabited, these Lands had no common "Austrian" identity. They were Habsburg-ruled lands that had not joined the Prussian-dominated German Empire after the Austrian Empire lost the Austro-Prussian War.

On 12 March 1919, the Constituent Assembly re-confirmed an earlier declaration that German-Austria was a constituent part of the German republic. Pan-Germans and Social Democrats supported the union with Germany, while Christian Socialists were less supportive.

During spring and summer of 1919, unity talk meetings between German and Austrian representatives continued. All this changed after 2 June 1919 when the draft peace treaty with Austria was presented, which demonstrated that the Western Allies were opposed to any union between Germany and Austria.
[...]
Article 88 of the treaty, sometimes called a "pre-Anschluss attempt", stated:

    The independence of Austria is inalienable otherwise than with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations. Consequently Austria undertakes in the absence of the consent of the said Council to abstain from any act which might directly or indirectly or by any means whatsoever compromise her independence, particularly, and until her admission to membership of the League of Nations, by participation in the affairs of another Power.

This clause effectively foreclosed any attempt by Austria to unite with Germany.[5]

Likewise, the Treaty of Versailles, dictating the terms of peace for Germany, forbade any union between Austria and Germany. With these changes and the settling of Austria's frontiers, the era of the First Republic of Austria began.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_German-Austria#Failed_union_with_Germany

By the way, the Allies allowed the Soviets to annex part of Czechoslovakia. So much for  all this hubbub about caring for its borders..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Ruthenia#Transcarpathian_Ukraine_-_Soviet_Union_(1945-1991)


The "good guys" using armbands to label ethnic-undesirables and forcing them on death marches?
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Shortly after, the Germans were marked with white armbands and became subject to similar restrictions previously directed against the Jews by the Nazis.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brno_death_march

...The "good guys" lynching people and burning their bodies in concentration camp incinerators?
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The Ústí massacre  was a lynching of ethnic Germans in Ústí nad Labem (Aussig an der Elbe), a largely ethnic German city in northern Bohemia ("Sudetenland"), shortly after the end of World War II, on 31 July 1945. During the incident, at least 43 Germans were killed (confirmed body count) but the estimated numbers range from 80 to thousands of victims.

Intelligence officer and police commandant Bedřich Pokorný, who previously took part in the organisation of so called Brno death march in May 1945, has been sometimes accused of organizing this massacre towards the end of the Potsdam conference (17 July to 2 August 1945) after the government had halted such acts.
[...]
The estimated number of victims is 80–120, with 43 being accounted for specifically: 24 bodies gathered in the city were burned in the crematorium of the former concentration camp in Terezín on 1 August
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Ast%C3%AD_massacre