Editing Volksdeutsche (section)

==Expulsion and exodus from Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the war==
[[File:Vertreibung.jpg|right|thumb|[[Sudeten Germans]] expelled after World War II]]

{{Main|Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)}}

Most ethnic Germans fled or were [[Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50)|expelled]] from European countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary) under the [[Potsdam Agreement]] from 1945 to 1948 towards the end and after the war. Those who became ethnic Germans, by registering in the [[Deutsche Volksliste]] and Reichsdeutsche, retained German citizenship during the years of Allied military occupation. Citizenship was further retained after the establishment of [[East Germany]] and [[West Germany]] in 1949, and later in the reunified Germany. In 1953 the [[West Germany|Federal Republic of Germany]] – by its [[Federal Expellee Law]] – naturalised many more East European nationals of German ethnicity, who were neither German citizens nor had enrolled in any 'Volksliste', but had been stranded as refugees in West Germany and fled or were expelled due to their German or alleged German ethnicity.

An estimated 12 million people fled or were expelled from the Soviet Union and non-German-speaking Central Europe, many of them being 'Volksdeutsche'.<ref name=Weber2>Jürgen Weber, Germany, 1945–1990: A Parallel History, Central European University Press, 2004, p. 2, {{ISBN|963-9241-70-9}}</ref><ref name=Kacowicz100/><ref name=Schuck156>Peter H. Schuck, Rainer Münz, ''Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany'', Berghahn Books, 1997, p. 156, {{ISBN|1-57181-092-7}}</ref><ref name=EU4>''[http://cadmus.iue.it/dspace/bitstream/1814/2599/1/HEC04-01.pdf The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091001022039/http://cadmus.iue.it/dspace/bitstream/1814/2599/1/HEC04-01.pdf |date=2009-10-01 }}'', Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1. p. 4</ref> Most left the [[Soviet Union|Soviet]]-occupied territories of Central and Eastern Europe; they comprised the largest migration of any European people in modern history.<ref name="Kacowicz100">Arie Marcelo Kacowicz, Pawel Lutomski, ''Population resettlement in international conflicts: a comparative study,'' Lexington Books, 2007, p. 100, {{ISBN|0-7391-1607-X}}: "… largest movement of any European people in modern history" [https://books.google.com/books?id=ovck_g0xwX0C&dq=expulsion+germans+poland&pg=PA100]</ref><ref>Bernard Wasserstein, ''Barbarism and civilization: a history of Europe in our time'', Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 419: "largest population movement between European countries in the twentieth century and one of the largest of all time." {{ISBN|0-19-873074-8}}</ref>  The then three [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] had agreed to the expulsions during negotiations in the midst of war.{{Citation needed|date=January 2013}} The western powers hoped to avoid ethnic Germans being an issue again in Central and Eastern Europe.<ref name=Churchill-speech>{{Citation |title=Text of Churchill Speech in Commons on Soviet=Polish Frontier |publisher=The United Press |date=December 15, 1944}}</ref><ref name=Brandes398ff>[https://books.google.com/books?id=S8nsdMcJq4cC&dq=expulsion+germans+poland&pg=PA398 Detlef Brandes, ''Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum "Transfer" der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen''], Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2005, pp. 398ff, {{ISBN|3-486-56731-4}}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=grTPyVvBr2QC&dq=expulsion+germans+poland&pg=PA20 Klaus Rehbein, ''Die westdeutsche Oder/Neisse-Debatte: Hintergründe, Prozess und Ende des Bonner Tabus''], Berlin, Hamburg and Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005, pp. 19–20, {{ISBN|3-8258-9340-5}}</ref> The three Allies at the Conference of Potsdam considered the "transfer" of "German populations" from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary an effort to be undertaken (see article 12 of the [[Potsdam Agreement]]), although they asked a halt because of the inflicted burden for the Allies to feed and house the destitute expellees and to share that burden among the Allies. France, which was not represented in Potsdam, rejected the decision of the Three of Potsdam and did not absorb expellees in its zone of occupation. The three Allies had to accept the reality on the ground, since expulsions of Volksdeutsche and Central and Eastern European nationals of German or alleged German ethnicity who never had enrolled as Volksdeutsche, were going on already.

Local authorities forced most of the remaining ethnic Germans to leave between 1945 and 1950. Remnants of the ethnic German community survive in the former [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] republics of Central Asia. A significant ethnic German community has continued in Siebenbürgen ([[Transylvania]]) in [[Romania]] and in Oberschlesien ([[Upper Silesia]]) but most of it migrated to West Germany throughout the 1980s. There are also remnant German populations near [[Mukachevo]] in western Ukraine.<ref>{{cite news|last=Grushenko|first=Kateryna|newspaper=Kyiv Post|date=14 October 2010|title=World in Ukraine: German heritage alive in Transcarpathian Ukraine|url=http://www.kyivpost.com/news/guide/world-in-uktaine/detail/86372/}}</ref>