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CHAPTER 12 The Politics of Homeland Irredentism and Reconciliation in the Policies of German Federal Governments and Expellee Organizations toward Ethnic German Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, 1949–99 Stefan Wolff Today ethnic German populations live in four countries in Western Europe and in sixteen countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Their historical origins, size, status, and degree of integration and assimilation differ greatly, not just between East and West but also within each of these broadly de‹ned geographic regions. Numerically, their size has signi‹cantly decreased during this century, especially since the end of World War II. Right after 1945 about twelve million ethnic Germans either ›ed or were expelled from their homelands, primarily in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and since then about another four million ethnic Germans have left their homelands in Central and Eastern Europe and settled in the Federal Republic. During the cold war period, the issue of German minorities was secondary to many other problems arising from the East-West divide and the need to prevent a military confrontation between the two blocs. After the collapse of communism in 1989–90, however, this question gained new prominence in the relationship between Germany and countries in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic. As I will explore in greater detail in this chapter, the relationship between the Federal Republic and her neighbors has never been completely free from strains over minority and border issues. Yet, the dramatic political changes at the beginning of the last decade have opened fundamentally new opportunities for both the federal government and expellee organizations. 287 The Loss of Homeland, 1945–55 The major problems facing German policymakers after World War I had been the territorial truncation of German territory and the reparations to be paid to the Allied powers. An additional and novel challenge presented itself after 1945. Ethnic Germans, in particular from Central and East European countries, were expelled or ›ed from their traditional settlement areas, such as in Poland and Czechoslovakia, or were deported to forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, as it happened in Romania and Yugoslavia. In any event, ethnic Germans were subjected to systematic popular and state discrimination as a result of the atrocious occupation policies of the Nazis during the war, in which many of them had actively participated.1 Although this wave of repression and expulsion ended by the early 1950s and the citizenship rights of ethnic Germans were gradually reinstated, their situation was still not considered satisfactory by the West German government, partly because they suffered all the “usual” disadvantages of life under communism and partly because residual bitterness from the German occupation left them vulnerable to continued discrimination. In the early years of its existence, the Federal Republic, however, was preoccupied with other issues both domestically and in its external relations. Domestically, the rebuilding of social and economic life, including the integration of over eight million refugees and expellees, took priority.2 On the international stage, German Chancellor Adenauer had set a foreign policy agenda whose foremost aim was to ensure the integration of the country into the Western alliance. This process of integration into the West, which provided a path to political security, economic recovery, and gradually also social prosperity , was the preferred option of the overwhelming majority of the population and politicians. Yet, at the same time, the Western alliance as a symbol of postwar developments signaled, at least temporarily, an acceptance of the status quo, which, given the German borders in 1949, found signi‹cantly less public support. While it was generally accepted that neither Alsace and Lorraine nor the Sudetenland could be rightfully claimed by Germany, the ‹xing of the German-Polish border along the Oder-Neisse line was renounced in public by West German politicians of almost all political backgrounds, including the chancellor and his cabinet ministers. Simultaneously, however, it was equally clear that the federal government was in no position to offer a credible political approach as to how to revise the German-Polish border. Not only was this contrary to the interests of all four Allied powers of 288 The Heimat Abroad World War II, but West Germany itself no longer had a common border with Poland. Despite the claim of the Federal Republic to be the sole representative of the German people, it was a matter of political reality that the East German state, in violation of the Potsdam Agreement , had of‹cially recognized the new border in...

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