by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
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Product Description
The genocidal barbarism of the Nazi forces has been well documented. What is little known is the fate of fifteen million German civilians who found themselves on the wrong side of new postwar borders. All over Eastern Europe, the inhabitants of communities that had been established for many centuries were either expelled or killed. Over two million Germans did not survive. Some of these people had supported Hitler, but the great majority were guiltless. In A Terrible Revenge, de Zayas describes this horrible retribution. This new edition includes an updated foreword, epilogue and additional information from recent interviews with the children of the displaced.
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Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Historical facts review and witness accounts of German survivors and refugees from the Eastern sectors, 2008-09-01
This is an exceptionally well researched book. This history and review of available facts of an untold part of history placed stories I had heard from German refugees while I was a child growing up in West Germany after the war in a clear perspective. The descriptions of historical facts and review of sequence of events at the end of the war have brought more clarity than ever to the questions many of us children have asked ourselves. We were the generation who was not told the whole truth about the terrible atrocities German civilians suffered because they were declared guilty by nationality and birth. It is a good thing to have the truth spoken, especially so if it is presented with a good foundation of facts and excerpts from archives as in this book. The witness acoounts are terrifying and heartbreaking. There has never been justice or recourse for these victims, many of whom have immigrated to Canada and the U.S. and quietly integrated themselves into their newly adopted countries' cultures. It also explains the necessity of crisis centres in the big cities of West Germany designed to assist survivors plagued by the images and traumatic memories they were trying so hard to forget. This is a story that has never been told and was well written and presented in this book. Perhaps some day it will be permitted to be presented to a broader audience...although personally, I won't hold my breath: A nation declared guilty by race and birth, women, children, the innocent, resistance fighters, and ordinary soldiers doing their job of defending as ordered by their country without committing any crimes alike, Germans have been the perfect image for everything dark and evil in the past and present. That projected image is simply too convenient to give up. Revenge is the right word for what happened to the German survivors of World War II in the East, and Ethnic Cleansing is the accurate term. This has recently been recognized by the United Nations,and Germany has finally been in a position to honour the millions who died in that ethnic cleansing after 1945.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A terrible, ignored revenge, 2008-08-02
It is difficult to express how much the reading of this book would have provided understanding during my formative years as immediate family members shared first-hand accounts of their trials in former Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, history such as that presented in this work has only started to trickle into the mainstream. Regardless of the fact that the vast majority of East European ethnic Germans discussed here had no connections with or sympathy for the political establishment of the state of Germany during World War II, the problem is that much of what has been associated with Germany in subsequent years is tied to the fact that Germany lost the war to the Allies. While I highly recommend "Barefoot in the Rubble" and "German Boy" (see my reviews for these books), the difference with this work is that it lays out much of the history behind the ethnic cleansing of East European Germans. In addition, rather than focusing on a single individual or a small group of individuals, "A Terrible Revenge" shares dozens of accounts, including excerpts from official reports, along with footnotes. In addition, the appendix to this book shares high-level quantitative population tabulations for the 1939 to 1950 time period that help underscore the great losses of ethnic Germans outside of Germany. A warning to those who are considering to read this book: many horrors of life during the five year period following World War II are shared, including vivid accounts of rapes and the manners in which individuals were murdered by the hoards of Soviet armies that descended upon the Germans of East Europe. While my initial interest in reading this text revolved around its discussion of Donauschwabens (Danube Swabians), many more ethnic Germans were affected. About 15 million found themselves on the wrong side of the new postwar borders within Europe. For readers who are unfamiliar with this part of history, please bear in mind that in no way is "A Terrible Revenge" unsympathetic to other populations affected by World War II and its aftermath. The introduction to this work presents 6 considerations, which include: "all victims of war and tyranny deserve respect and compassion", "the expulsion of the Germans is a legitimate subject for scholarly research", "historians are bound by a scholarly and moral obligation to research and present historical events, to determine the facts and organize them into the greater historical context", "the expulsion cannot be regarded as a question of crime and punishment", "a principle of collective guilt cannot be applied to the expulsions, just as there can be no collective guilt for war", and "the tragic experience of the German expellees could have served as a warning to spare other nations the traumata of expulsion from homeland, heritage, and pride". With this last consideration, the author notes that: "Alas, for decades the facts of the expulsion of the Germans were systematically ignored by the media and even by professional historians, whose function was and remains to do proper research, to chronicle events and to put them in perspective. No wonder that the ethnic cleansing of the 1990's in the former Yugoslavia was presented by the media as unprecedented. The expulsion and spoliation of the Germans remains an important subject for study in the high schools and universities. We owe this recognition to the victims - as we owe the truth to ourselves."
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Important Book, 2008-02-20
As I learned more about the Holocaust, I read scant references to the "Expulsion". My desire to learn more lead me to this book, as a US citiezen, it sickens me to know that our goverment acted in this manner. While I believe the Holocaust is most arguabley the worst human tragedy in the history of mankind, in victory we allowed this ?????. Along with Aurthur Bliss Lane's "I Saw Poland Betrayed", along with the rest of Eastern Europe, it is no wonder why our relations are strained to this day.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Time the World Put Communism on Trial., 2007-08-11
I have this book, and glad I bought it. It's very enlightening.
I'll have to find out what that "Konzentrationslager Dokument F321 fuer den Internationalen Miltaergerichtshof Nuerenberg" is... seems very little info exists for it on the web.
and...
I am wondering when they will put the Nuremberg trials on a second hearing like Trotsky got... Dewey Investigating Committee found Moscow trials were a "perversion of judicial process," how much more so the Nuremberg Trials, and afterall, Soviet Justice demanded fake trials (the General who was appointed by the Russians, had been involved in fake trials in the 1930's in the USSR), since for Stalin, a false charge was just as good as a legitimate charge for more information After the Reich: The Brutal History of The Allied Occupation). ... as for Nuremberg, starting with creating laws, and backdating them, no cross-reference of witnesses, accepting hearsay as testimony, no right to appeal, heck, the officers weren't even allowed to know what charges were being brought against them. Despite an outcry from legal authorities everywhere that Nuremberg Law was hypocritical (e.g., the atomic bomb and the unforgivably inhumane bombing raids) the trial was simply victor's justice and revenge, not justice, but Stalin and his cohorts would have their way. Been reading some other books on the history of world war II and I'm not happy with.... the Seven Million Holocaust against Ukraine, that nobody ever utters a word about -- because the New York Times was too busy denying it (1932-1933), and the League of Nations was too busy sucking up to Stalin, and well.... you should read about the 85-110 Million murdered by Communists... and what about those gas chambers of the KGB? We never hear about them.
You know Joseph Goebbels wasn't denying the Holocaust? You know that? In his speech, "Communism with the Mask Off," he addresses the question that even possibly as many as 6 million may have died due to the famine forced on Ukraine, by Stalin's collectivism stupidity. Wretched. But nobody was listening to Goebbels' warnings about Communist aggression. I don't like it when I see these same Marxists in our governments now, running the media... and of course, that explains why nobody is discussing the 85-110 Million murdered by Communists; Stalin's extermination against nationalism, religious persecution (turning churches into barns, atheistical rampages of hatred and intoleration).. my God! my God! When will the Communists and Marxists be put on trial for their mega-murdering crimes against humanity? When will justice be served on the great criminals responsible for World War II?
This book serves as just one more piece of incriminating evidence against the true criminals responsible for World War II (and several others as well.
"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
-New York Times, November 15, 1931, page 1
"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
- New York Times, August 23, 1933
"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please."
- New York Times, December 9, 1932
"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
- New York Times, May 14, 1933
"What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated."
- New York Times reporter Walter Duranty (1932-1933).
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
 The disregarded genocide, 2007-05-03
The most grievous violation of the right based on historical evolution and of any human right in general is to deprive populations of their right to occupy the country where they live by compelling them to settle elsewhere. ... the victorious powers decided at the end of WWII to impose this fate on hundreds of thousands of human beings ... in a most cruel manner.
-- Albert Schweitzer, ca. Nobel Prize for Peace, Oslo, 1954.
Ancestors of my best family friends lived in rural villages in land near the Danube River watershed. (Biggest crop: cannabis hemp.) They are known as the Danube Swabians and were among several peoples living outside of Germany's early 20th-century borders (often in enclaves resented by their neighbors) referred to as the ethic Germans (Volksdeutsche).
Following WWII, due to concessions made by England and America at Yalta[, approximately 17 million of these East European Germans were systematically expelled from their lands where many of them had lived for centuries.
2,111,000 were killed in the process!
A Terrible Revenge is the story of this forced dispossession.
Human rights activist and author, Dr. de Zayas, paints a sad and brutal picture of The Expulsion. Through touching personal stories of dozens of the victims and through a detailed account of the machinations of states, Dr. de Zayas has raised the issue of this uniquely "disregarded" 20th century genocide to center stage.
Why haven't we heard of this one? And why should we?
To answer the first question, let's go to a Webpage on 20th century genocides, where we obtain the following list:
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
Rwanda: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
Nazi Holocaust: 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
Rape of Nanking: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
Stalin's Forced Famine: 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths
Giving the benefit of the doubt to the accuracy of the numbers, we can see that 2,100,000 killings certainly qualifies The Expulsion as a genocide. It's actually the fourth highest in absolute death count. Also referring to the site's definition of genocide as massive "race" "killing" by intention, The Expulsion meets any objective criteria for inclusion on the standard list.
...
For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]
Brian Wright
Copyright 2007
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