There are numerous German words which have made their way into the English language. The English vocabulary consists of a hodgepodge of words from other languages, to be sure. However, there are German-origin words which we use everyday in English; kindergarten, sauerkraut, poltergeist (noisy ghost), schadenfreude (joy from the misfortune of others), zeitgeist (spirit of the times), uber, Neanderthal – the list goes on.

Eighty years after the end of World War 2, let’s take the opportunity to learn some more German words. Why? Because the following words denote events and concepts that have reverberated down the decades. Let’s examine one momentous consequence of WW2, a measure carried out by the victorious Allies; the mass expulsion of German communities from Eastern European nations, particularly Czechoslovakia, over the years 1944 – 1950.

German communities had resided in Eastern Europe for centuries. In the immediate aftermath of the war, ethnic Germans who had largely collaborated with the occupying Nazi forces were forcibly expelled. The most famous (or infamous) example of mass deportation of Germans was carried out by the Czechoslovak authorities in 1945-48. The Sudeten Germans who had contributed to the breakup, and eventual Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, were deported by Czech President Edvard Beneš.

Was this mass deportation an instance of intentional ethnic cleansing? Collective revenge by previously oppressed people against their former tormentors? There is a brief answer to these questions – both of them consist of the word No.

This was not ethnic cleansing, nor did it involve purely vengeful motives. Were there cases of revenge? To be certain, yes. Former victims of Nazi atrocities rose up to right the wrongs inflicted upon them. Was this mass revenge on a collective scale? No, it was not. It was an instance of holding perpetrator communities to account for their crimes. I cannot say that these mass expulsions were one hundred percent correct; but I cannot condemn them either.

There was anti-German sentiment at the conclusion of the war. The enormity of Nazi crimes was only just beginning to be understood and publicised to the international community.

In examining these questions and more, we will learn some more German words, terms with specific political and racial meanings.

Germans had settled in central and Eastern Europe through the centuries. For instance, in the 1700s, Russian Empress Catherine II (the Great) invited Germans to settle and farm in the Volga region of the Russian empire. Catherine herself was actually of German descent, not Russian.

At the conclusion of World War One, a defeated German nation lost territories in Eastern Europe. According to the 1919 Versailles Treaty, boundaries were redrawn, creating newly independent Eastern European states, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia. German communities found themselves citizens of these new states, ethnic minorities in newly emergent nations.

Earlier, I mentioned how German words have crept into the English language. Here is another; Volk. Roughly translated as ‘folk’, Pan-German nationalists defined the Volk as a national community. Later far right thinkers, and Nazi party ideologues, defined Volk as a racial community, based on blood and soil. The purity of the German bloodline and the cultivation of the soil were the bedrock of a new Völkisch movement.

Constructing a racial ethnic community based upon an agrarian nationalism, the Nazi party advocated that ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe were part of the one Volk. The Germans living within the borders of Czechoslovakia, renamed Sudeten Germans after the Sudeten mountains, were turned into a wing of Nazi ultranationalist ideology. There were German communities outside of the Sudeten region as well.

Sudeten Germans organised pro-Nazi paramilitary groups, agitated for the secession of Sudeten German communities and their annexation by Nazi Germany. Weakening and undermining the interwar Czechoslovak state, they benefited materially from Nazi German support. Sudeten German organisations, secretly funded by Berlin, defied the Czechoslovak authorities, blocking Czech police, and removing the border crossings between Germany and the Sudeten region.

When Jewish properties were confiscated, they were awarded to ethnic Germans. The latter moved beyond silent acquiescence to Nazi occupation. They informed the Gestapo where Jewish families were hiding. They actively spread Nazi propaganda in the nations they resided. Sudeten Germans helped to conduct terrorist operations deep into Czechoslovak territory, helping to break up that nation thus facilitating its takeover by Nazi Germany.

Indeed, German communities in Eastern Europe were transformed into Volksdeutdche (Germans outside the borders of Germany), ideological and paramilitary battering rams for Nazi expansionism in Eastern Europe. When German troops occupied the Polish city of Łódź, the Volksdeutsche were on hand to facilitate their entry; and they gave the Nazi salute.

At the Potsdam Allied conference in 1945, the great powers agreed with the proposals of the Czechoslovak and Polish governments in exile to expel the German population of Eastern Europe. The restored President of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Beneš, proceeded to implement the plan of forcibly expelling ethnic Germans.

A brutal policy to be sure, one that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Germans from numerous causes. Malnutrition, disease, forcible marching, internment – no sugarcoating the harshness of the expulsions. Let’s not turn the perpetrators into victims – the Germans in Poland, Czechoslovakia and so on were genocide enablers. They were active accomplices to Nazi atrocities.

For instance, the Czechoslovak authorities in the city of Brno forced 20 000 ethnic Germans to march to the border with Austria. 1700 people died.

During the interwar years, Poland forcibly transferred 15 000 Germans from their western borders to further east. Concerned about the dubious loyalty of ethnic Germans, they had witnessed the collective treason of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. The same logic motivated Moscow’s decision to forcibly relocate the Volga Germans in 1941, as Nazi Germany invaded.

These are emotionally charged issues, and there is no denying their brutality. However, we should not be cynically manipulated into condemning them outright either. There are those who are utterly convinced of the righteousness of the Volksdeutsche, and that is that. I am certain there are many shades of accomodation, acquiescence and complicity. These nuances are not an excuse to overlook the guilt of the Volksdeutsche.

The internationally renowned lawyer, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, has taken up the cause of the postwar German expellees. Prior to his books on the subject, the only work highlighting the expulsion of Sudeten Germans was by longtime Holocaust denier and Nazi apologist German American writer Austin App (1902 – 84).

Holocaust deniers like App cynically appropriated the plight of the German expellees to minimise the guilt of the Nazi regime. The old tactic of ‘what you did was just as bad’ was a way of Holocaust deniers to neutralise any ethical or moral guilt the German nation held in the aftermath of the war.

No, De Zayas is definitely not a Holocaust denier or Nazi apologist. His characterisation of the German expellees as victims of ethnic cleansing demonstrates that he has allowed his personal feelings to interfere with his professional judgement. That happens because we are all human, subject to the same emotions which underpin our common humanity.

The Volksdeutsche dedicated themselves to an ideology that undermined our common humanity, and made one nationality mistreat and brutalise other nationalities as subhuman. For that, they should be held accountable.