Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context (Oxford Historical Monographs)

E X PE L L I N G T H E G E R M A N S

OXF O R D H I S TO R I C A L M O N O G R A PH S Editors r. j. w. evans j. harris j. robertson r. service p. a. slack b. ward-perkins j. watts

Expelling the Germans British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context M AT T H EW FR A N K

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Matthew Frank 2007

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–923364–9 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Acknowledgements The idea for the doctoral project on which this book is based can be traced back nearly a decade to a somewhat bleak late autumn spent in a converted old people’s home in a village on the outskirts of Dresden where I was lodged while working as a language assistant at a Gymnasium in the city centre. The process of research, writing and editing over the intervening years has been carried out in a number of places—including a spell of voluntary exile in Omsk—and as a result, I have a number of debts that need acknowledging. My thanks go first of all to the former Arts and Humanities Research Board for supporting my doctoral research while at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Without the award of a three-year postgraduate studentship this project would not have been possible. I am also grateful to the Humanities Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University for appointing me to a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship which has given me the time and resources to prepare this book for publication. I am indebted to Richard Crampton for his supervision and advice during my time as a doctoral student and for acting as advisory editor for this book. My external examiner, Mark Cornwall, provided invaluable comments, as did Martin Conway, who as well as acting as internal examiner subsequently offered much-needed advice and direction. I am also grateful to Wendy Bracewell for her encouragement and support over the years. Delving back into the mists of time, I would like to express my gratitude to Andrew Gwinnett, my A-level European history lecturer at Kingston College of Further Education. I would like to thank those who made time to speak to me about their experiences working with refugees in Germany after the Second World War. Of the people who have both put up with me and put me up during visits to various archives, I would like to make special mention of the Golpons and the Gutkinds. On a more personal note, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my parents—Susan and Stephen Frank—for their love and support. But most of all it is to my wife, Siggy, that I owe everything.

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Contents List of Abbreviations Introduction

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1. Frankfurt-on-Wye/Monmouth an der Oder: Population Transfer before the Second World War

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2. ‘Not a Difference of Principle, but a Difference of Emphasis’: Wartime Studies on Population Transfer, 1940–1945

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3. From Prague to Potsdam: Expulsions from Czechoslovakia and Poland, May–July 1945

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4. ‘In Germany Now’: The German Refugee Crisis, July–October 1945

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5. ‘A Thankless Task’: Official Responses to the Expulsions, August–December 1945

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6. Crisis! What Crisis?: Refugee Rumours and Scares, October 1945–January 1946

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7. ‘Useless Mouths’: Transfers from Czechoslovakia and Poland, 1946–1947

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Conclusion Bibliography Index

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List of Abbreviations ACC APW BAOR BBC WAC BLPES BLT BRC(S) BZR CAB CAC CCG (BE) CEO CFM CO COGA COSBRA CP CR CRX DBFP DBPO DCOS DDF DE DGFP DH DMG DO DP FAU FO FORD FRPS FRS FRUS FYB

Allied Control Council Armistice and Postwar Committee British Army of the Rhine British Broadcasting Corporation Written Archives Centre British Library of Political and Economic Science British Liaison Team British Red Cross (Society) British Zone Review Cabinet Churchill Archives Centre Control Commission for Germany (British Element) Central European Observer Council of Foreign Ministers Colonial Office Control Office for Germany and Austria Council of Societies for British Relief Abroad Communist Party Contemporary Review Combined Repatriation Executive Documents on British Foreign Policy Documents on British Policy Overseas Deputy Chief of Staff Documents Diplomatiques Franc¸ais Daily Express Documents on German Foreign Policy Daily Herald Deputy Military Governor Dominions Office Displaced Person Friends Ambulance Unit Foreign Office Foreign Office Research Department Foreign Research and Press Service Friends Relief Service Foreign Relations of the United States French Yellow Book

List of Abbreviations GA GERG HC HL HNB HS IA& C ICRC ICTGP ILP IPWS IVS IWM JCH LNU LP LRO MG MGBTB Mil. Gov. MLHA NBKR NC NCAA NIARO NEC NL NPC NSN ORC POW PPS PRO PRS PWDP PWE RA RIIA RRS SA SdA

Guardian Archive Gedye Papers House of Commons House of Lords Home News Broadcasts Home Service Internal Affairs and Communications International Committee of the Red Cross Interdepartmental Committee on the Transfer of German Populations Independent Labour Party International Postwar Settlement International Voluntary Service Imperial War Museum Journal of Contemporary History League of Nations Union Light Programme Leicestershire Record Office Manchester Guardian Military Government, British Troops, Berlin Military Government Manchester Labour History Archive Noel-Baker Papers News Chronicle Nineteenth Century and After News International Archive and Record Office National Executive Committee Nachlass National Peace Council New Statesman and Nation Overseas Reconstruction Committee Prisoner of War Parliamentary Private Secretary Public Record Office Public Relations Service Prisoners of War and Displaced Persons Political Warfare Executive Reuters Archive Royal Institute of International Affairs Stokes Papers Seliger-Archiv Sudetendeutsches Archiv

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x SEN SHAEF SMO SOE TLS TUC UNRRA VBK VfZ WO WPN ZEO

List of Abbreviations Save Europe Now Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Senior Medical Officer Special Operations Executive Times Literary Supplement Trade Union Congress United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Verwaltungsbezirk Vierteljahrshefte f¨ur Zeitgeschichte War Office World Pictorial News Zonal Executive Offices

Introduction On 7 October 1956, a large anti-government rally was held in Bonn organized by groups that claimed to represent the Vertriebene (‘expellees’): the official designation for the 10–15 million Germans who had fled, were expelled or had emigrated from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other parts of eastern Europe after the Second World War.¹ Speakers demanded the return of German territories lost to Poland in 1945, the reunification of Germany and the establishment of an All-German assembly in a reconstituted Reichstag in Berlin. The 30,000-strong crowd responded to this nationalist tub-thumbing with ‘disturbing spontaneity’, according to The Times. ‘Flags and emblems that recalled earlier and more disturbing weekends waved above the mass of people’ as the speakers railed against the scheming Mr Churchill, who had bartered away the Oder-Neisse territories, and the cowardly Herr Adenauer, who was not doing enough to get them back. But there was a curious addition to this gallery of villainy. Venomous attacks were also made on a late-middle-aged English writer who had played no role in the high-politics surrounding the wartime decision to expel the Germans. Elizabeth Wiskemann will be familiar to every British history pupil who completed their schooling by the early 1990s as the author of Europe of the Dictators, at one time a standard text on interwar European politics.² She is also known for Czechs and Germans, published for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) just before the Munich crisis.³ After the Second World War, Wiskemann was commissioned, ¹ For what follows, see ‘Four German Cabinet Resignations’, The Times, 8 Oct. 1956. ² E. Wiskemann, Europe of the Dictators, 1919–1945 (London, 1966). Henceforth, place of publication is London unless otherwise indicated. ³ E. Wiskemann, Czechs and Germans: A Study of the Struggle in the Historic Provinces of Bohemia and Moravia (1938); M. Cornwall, ‘Elizabeth Wiskemann and the Sudeten Question: A Woman at the ‘‘Essential Hinge’’ of Europe’, Central Europe, 1/1 (2003), 55–75.

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again by the RIIA, to write a study of the historical background to and the political and socio-economic consequences of the postwar displacement of ethnic Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Germany’s Eastern Neighbours, published in 1956, is one of her lesser-known works.⁴ At the time, however, it provoked quite a controversy in the German Federal Republic and ‘itself made history’, as one reviewer put it.⁵ Written with ‘almost inhuman academic detachment’ and backed up by solid research, the book gave a standard Allied interpretation in which the expulsion of the Germans was as an unfortunate but inevitable and necessary consequence of German expansionism, the Third Reich and the Second World War.⁶ Yet Wiskemann was not uncritical of the manner in which the Germans had been treated. What was controversial was her suggestion that the new Polish western frontier be given not just de facto but de jure recognition. West German refugee organizations and the major political parties outdid each other in condemning the book and its author. Wiskemann was described as ‘dilettante’ and a ‘pupil of Beneˇs’, her book as ‘regrettable’, an ‘apologia of inhumanity’ and a ‘tendentious conglomeration with questionable motives’.⁷ ‘Scurrilous’ pamphlets subsidized by expellee organizations followed which targeted Wiskemann’s character and motives. The campaign of vilification, which Wiskemann suspected the Federal government had orchestrated, only ended two years later after Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the British Labour Party and a friend of Wiskemann’s, intervened and the German Embassy in London made sure the more odious expellee pamphlets were pulped.⁸ The episode serves as a cautionary tale which anyone tackling the subject of the expulsion of the Germans at the end of the Second World War would do well to take heed of. Wiskemann was writing at the height of the Cold War, which imposed an ideological straitjacket on to ⁴ E. Wiskemann, Germany’s Eastern Neighbours: Problems Relating to the Oder-Neisse Line and the Czech Frontier Regions (1956). ⁵ F. Epstein, ‘Germany’s Eastern Neighbours’, Journal of Modern History, 29/2 (1957), 162. ⁶ R. Crossman, ‘The Oder-Neisse Line’, New Statesman and Nation [henceforth, NSN ], 4 Aug. 1956. ⁷ Epstein, ‘Germany’s Eastern Neighbours’, 162–3; ‘Miss Wiskemann Raises a Storm’, The Times, 10 Aug. 1956. ⁸ Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) archives, London, RIIA/17/73, Bayne to Woodhouse, 12 Jan. 1958; Extract of Minutes of and Agenda of Meeting of the [RIIA] Research Committee, 14 Jan. 1958; Woodhouse to Wiskemann, 15 Jan. 1958; RIIA/4/WISK, Wiskemann to Director General RIIA, 1 Oct. 1958; E. Wiskemann, The Europe I Saw (1968), 204–5.

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a longer-standing national dispute, ensuring that for decades this issue was a zero-sum game in which there was no middle ground or room for debate. Although the political situation today has changed radically since the mid-1950s, with the Federal Republic recognizing the permanency of the Oder-Neisse frontier, and with Czechs and Germans, at an inter-state level at least, having reached a common understanding of their experience of war and its aftermath, the expulsions still remain a highly sensitive, politicized and polarizing issue within and between the countries directly involved.⁹ Until quite recently, few writers from outside of central Europe ventured into this territory. Wiskemann, for her part, was the first British author to write extensively on the subject. She was also the last. The amount of scholarly and more popular literature available in the Federal Republic on die Flucht and die Vertreibung is and always has been huge, irrespective of claims that these are ‘forgotten’, ‘ignored’ or ‘taboo’ subjects;¹⁰ and judging from the most recent flood of books, documentaries and exhibitions, it is a trend that seems set to continue.¹¹ Much of the earlier material published in the immediate postwar ⁹ Witness the ongoing furore surrounding the Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) project ‘Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen’, and at the time of writing (August 2006) over the exhibition ‘Erzwungene Wege’ in Berlin. See ‘Kaczynski verurteilt VertriebenenAusstellung’, Spiegel-Online, 10 Aug. 2006; [accessed 29 Aug. 2006]. ¹⁰ For an indication of the amount published by the late 1980s—in the region of 5,000 volumes—see the multi-kilo work by G. Krallert-Sattler (ed.), Kommentierte Bibliographie zum Flüchtlings- und Vertriebenenproblem in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, in Österreich und in der Schweiz (Munich, 1989), supplemented by id., ‘Kommentierte Auswahlbibliographie’, in W. Schlau (ed.), Die Ostdeutschen: Eine dokumentarische Bilanz, 1945–1995 (Munich, 1996), 183–279. Verzeichnis lieferbarer Bücher 2001/2002, 24th edn (Frankfurt/Main, 2001), 3937–8, 14024–5, lists some 100 books on die Vertreibung and die Flucht in print in German as of July 2001. ¹¹ There have also been several television and radio documentaries, magazine serializations and public exhibitions in the last decade, including a three-part ARD documentary (2001), with accompanying book by K. E. Franzen, Die Vertriebenen: Hitlers letzte Opfer (Berlin, 2001); a ZDF series (2001), with book by G. Knopp, Die grosse Flucht: Das Schicksal der Vertriebenen, 3rd edn (Munich, 2002); a Deutschlandfunk series ‘Flucht und Vertreibung’ (2004), based on interviews with expellees; and, more recently, a WDR series (2005), with a parallel publication by a German-Czech-Polish-Russian team of authors, A. von Arburg et al, Als die Deutschen weg waren—Was nach der Vertreibung geschah: Ostpreussen, Schlesien, Sudetenland (Berlin, 2005). See also the four-part series in Der Spiegel (March/April 2002), reprinted and expanded in S. Aust and S. Burgdorff (eds), Die Flucht: Über die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten (Munich, 2005), which coincided with the intense public discussion surrounding Günter Grass’s bestselling novel, Im Krebsgang (Göttingen, 2002), about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. By April 2007, the exhibition Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration will have spent eighteen

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decades is, admittedly, of limited use for the purposes of historical reconstruction, though invaluable for students of Cold War polemics. Mostly, though not exclusively, the purview of nationalists and expellee organizations, this Vertriebenenliteratur had, and to some extent still has, a highly partisan, distinctly revisionist flavour,¹² reflecting the political imperatives of an era during which the expellee issue and the future of ‘eastern Germany’ featured prominently in all areas of public life in the Federal Republic.¹³ Although today the predominant theme in public discourse remains, as it was in the 1950s, that of deutsches Leid (‘German suffering’), the political transformation of central and eastern Europe post-1989 has nevertheless greatly assisted in improving the quality of public debate on the subject, as well as the scope and opportunities for academic research. The opening of archives and the liberalization of higher education in the former eastern bloc—where the subject, if dealt with at all, was handled strictly along ‘official’ lines—as well as unprecedented collaboration between German, Czech, Slovak months on and off at the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn), Deutsches Historisches Museum (Berlin) and the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig der Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. See Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ed.), Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration (Bielefeld, 2005). For a discussion of the place of the expulsions in (West) German public memory of the war, see R. Moeller, ‘Sinking Ships, the Lost Heimat and Broken Taboos: Günter Grass and the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany’, Contemporary European History, 12/2 (2003), 147–81. ¹² Examples of this type of publication abound with typical titles as illuminating as Der Tod sprach polnisch: Dokumente polnischer Grausamkeiten an Deutschen 1919–1949 (published by Arndt with no named author or editor (Kiel, 1999)). See, for instance, the ever-popular H. Nawratil, Das Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung, 1945 bis 1949: Das letzte Kapitel unbewältigter Vergangenheit, 4th rev. edn (Munich, 1999), originally published as Vertreibungsverbrechen an Deutschen (Munich, 1982), which relies on gruesome photographs for effect. Further insights into the expellee world-view can be found at and [accessed 29 Aug. 2006]. ¹³ For the centrality of the expellee problem in West German politics, see P. Ahonen, After the Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe 1945–1990 (Oxford, 2003); M. Stickler, ‘Ostdeutsch heißt Gesamtdeutsch’: Organisation, Selbstverständnis und heimatpolitische Zielsetzungen der deutschen Vertriebenenverbände 1949–1972 (Düsseldorf, 2004). For academic historians and the expellee issue, see E. Wolfrum, ‘Zwischen Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtspolitik: Forschungen zu Flucht und Vertreibung nach dem Zweiten Weltkreig’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 36 (1996), 502–4; M. Beer, ‘Im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Das Grossforschungsprojekt ‘‘Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa’’ ’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 46/3 (1998), 345–89; R. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001), 51–87.

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and Polish historians, has allowed for more nuanced assessments which pay closer attention to the perspective of the expelling countries, the Soviet Union and East Germany.¹⁴ The 1990s also saw the emergence of new conceptual approaches to nationalism and forced migration. The collapse of Yugoslavia revived popular and academic interest in the study of twentieth-century nationalisms and national minorities. It also introduced a new term—ethnic cleansing—into political vocabulary, which historians have come to recognize as being a useful tool to conceptualize the more extreme forms that state-building took in the last century.¹⁵ A considerable amount of research is now being undertaken on different aspects of what is invariably termed ethnic cleansing in postwar Europe,¹⁶ in particular on the reception, resettlement, integration and group identity of German and other expelled populations,¹⁷ ˇ ¹⁴ See T. Stanˇek, Odsun N˘e mc˚u z Ceskoslovenska 1945–1947 (Prague, 1991), 521–9; id., ‘Vertreibung und Aussiedlung der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei 1945–1948’, in J. Hoensch and H. Lemberg (eds), Begegnung und Konflikt: Schlaglichter auf das Verhältnis von Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutschen, 1815–1989 (Essen, 2001), 207–29; id., Verfolgung 1945: Die Stellung der Deutschen in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien (ausserhalb der Lager und Gefängnisse) (Vienna, 2002); E. Hrabovec, Vertreibung und Abschub: Deutsche in Mähren 1945–1947 (Frankfurt, 1996). For the work of the Joint German-Czech and Joint German-Czech-Slovak Historical Commissions, see Gemeinsame deutsch-tschechische Historikerkommission (ed.), Konfliktgemeinschaft, Katastrophe, Entspannung: Skizze einer Darstellung der deutsch-tschechischen Geschichte seit dem 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1996), 57–71; D. Brandes and V. Kural (eds), Der Weg in die Katastrophe: Deutsch-tschechoslowakische Beziehungen 1938–1947 (Essen, 1994); D. Brandes, E. Ivaniˇcková and J. Peˇsek (eds), Erzwungene Trennung: Vertreibungen und Aussiedlungen in und aus der Tschechoslowakei 1938–1947 im Vergleich mit Polen, Ungarn und Jugoslawien (Essen, 1999). For German-Polish collaboration, see H. Lemberg and B. Włodzimierz (eds), ‘Unsere Heimat ist uns ein fremdes Land geworden . . .’: Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neisse, 1945–1950. Dokumente aus polnischen Archiven, 4 vols. (Marburg, 2000–4). ¹⁵ See M. Frank, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in I. McLean and A. McMillan (eds), Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2003), 176–7; R. Hayden, ‘Schindler’s Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing and Population Transfers’, Slavic Review, 55/4 (1996), 727–48; replies in ibid. 749–78; N. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 1–16. ¹⁶ Recent collections include A. Rieber (ed.), Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950 (2000); P. Ther and A. Siljak (eds), Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948 (Lanham, 2001); S. Várdy and T. H. Tooley (eds), Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Boulder, 2003). ¹⁷ For expellees in postwar Germany—East and West—see P. Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956 (Göttingen, 1998); D. Hoffmann, M. Krauss and M. Schwartz (eds), Vertriebene in Deutschland: Interdisziplinäre Ergebnisse und Forschungsperspektiven (Munich, 2000); R. Schulze, R. Rohde and R. Voss (eds), Zwischen Heimat und Zuhause:

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as well as its relationship with retributive justice and national reconstruction.¹⁸ Given that the decision to expel Germans from eastern Europe was discussed at the highest diplomatic level during the Second World War and formally endorsed by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference in July/August 1945, the diplomacy behind the expulsions has long been a matter of interest and speculation, fed by a steady stream of sources, starting with a run of memoirs in the late 1940s and 1950s, the publication of the relevant volumes in the series Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) in the 1960s, the declassification of British official records in the 1970s, and, most recently, though still only partially and sporadically, access to Soviet archival material.¹⁹ British involvement in the expulsion of the Germans, as one of the Big Three and one of the four occupying powers in Germany after 1945, has been covered partly in connection with Great Power diplomacy, wartime planning on the future of Germany and Poland, and relations with European governments-in-exile.²⁰ There is, however, no one single study on Deutsche Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in (West-)Deutschland 1945–2000 (Osnabrück, 2001); M. Schwartz, Vertriebene und ‘Umsiedlerpolitik’: Integrationskonflikte in den deutschen Nachkriegs-Gesellschaften und die Assimilationsstrategien in der SBZ/DDR, 1945 bis 1961 (Munich, 2004). ¹⁸ B. Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (Cambridge, 2005). See also the project ‘Reconstruction in the Immediate Aftermath of War: A Comparative Study of Europe, 1945–50’, at [accessed 29 Aug. 2006]. ¹⁹ J. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (1947); W. Churchill, The Second World War, 6 vols (1948–54). US State Department documents from the period 1944–46 were published between 1960 and 1969 in the series Foreign Relations of the United States; available online via [accessed 29 Aug. 2006]. Sir E. L. Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War (1962), is the abridged official history with material on the topic. The relevant British Foreign Office documents were declassified between 1972 and 1977. Selected documents from 1945 and after have been published as part of Documents on British Policy Overseas, 1st ser. (1984–91). For Soviet documents, see T. Volokitina et al. (eds), Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953 gg, i: 1944–1948 gg (Moscow, 1997); id. (eds), Sovietskii faktor v vostochnoi Evrope 1944–1953, i: 1944–1948 (Moscow, 1999). ²⁰ See, in particular, publications by Detlef Brandes: ‘Das Problem der Deutschen Minderheiten in der Politik der Alliierten 1940–1945’, in J. Kˇren, V. Kural and D. Brandes, Integration oder Ausgrenzung: Deutsche und Tschechen 1890–1945 (Bremen, 1986); Grossbritannien und seine osteuropäischen Alliierten 1939–1943: Die Regierungen Polens, der Tschechoslowakei und Jugoslawiens im Londoner Exil vom Kriegsausbruch bis zur Konferenz von Teheran (Munich, 1988), 392–419; Der Weg zur Vertreibung, 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum ‘Transfer’ der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen, 2nd edn (Munich, 2005). See also K. Henke, ‘Der Weg nach Potsdam—Die

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Britain and the expulsions.²¹ The closest there is to a standard work on the role of the western powers in general is an almost thirty-yearold j’accuse by an American human rights lawyer on Anglo-American ‘guilt’ for the expulsions, widely regarded by scholars as an imbalanced polemic that is ‘in many cases simply incorrect historically’.²² One of the drawbacks of not having a recent and comprehensive study on Britain and the expulsions which looks at more than a narrow range of official sources is that several misconceptions about Britain’s role continue to circulate and be taken as established fact. Revenge is overplayed as a factor in wartime deliberations, as is the supposed naivety or blindness towards earlier precedents as models for planning and executing the forcible removal of populations on a large scale. The extent of the public response in Britain in 1945 to the expulsions, not to mention the content and significance of the public debate on this issue, is ignored or even denied. The expulsions, we have been led to believe, passed with scarcely a word of comment or protest in Britain. None of these suppositions, however, stand up to closer examination. In the latter case, even a glance through the major dailies and periodicals would soon dispel any notion that there was some conspiracy of silence on this issue, as is sometimes implied. This present study seeks, in part, to act as a corrective to these misconceptions and makes a significant contribution to existing research Alliierten und die Vertreibung’, in W. Benz (ed.), Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten: Ursachen, Ereignissse, Folgen (Frankfurt/Main, 1995); H. Lemburg, ‘Die Entwicklung der Pläne für die Aussiedlung der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei’, in Brandes and Kural (eds), Weg in die Katastophe. ²¹ The nearest is the work by a Swedish historian on a selection of Foreign Office files at the British National Archives, formerly the Public Record Office (PRO). See Hans Åke Persson, Rhetorik und Realpolitik: Grossbritannien, die Oder-Neisse-Grenze und die Vertreibung der Deutschen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Potsdam, 1997), originally published as Retorik och Realpolitik: Storbritannien och de fördrivna tyskarna efter andra världskriget (Lund, 1993). ²² Quote is from H. Auerbach, ‘Literatur zum Thema’, in Benz (ed.), Vertreibung der Deutschen, 281. The work referred to is Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans, Background, Execution, Consequences (1977; 2nd rev. edn, 1979; 3rd rev. edn, Lincoln, Neb., 1999). Poorly received on release, it has nevertheless remained the standard work of reference in English. In Germany, it has gone through a staggering fourteen editions and is a popular classic. See id., Die Nemesis von Potsdam: Die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen, rev. and expanded new edn (Munich, 2005). De Zayas has continued to publish on the theme of the expulsions, principally for a German audience, though subsequent publications are largely reworkings of Nemesis. See id., Die deutschen Vertriebenen: Keine Täter—sondern Opfer: Hintergründe, Tatsachen, Folgen, 5th edn (Graz, 2006); id., A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 2nd edn (New York, 2006).

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in four areas specifically: in its focus on Britain and debates within Britain in official circles and in the public domain, as well as on the British perspective as seen by British personnel on the ground; in its geographical, chronological and conceptual scope by examining both Czechoslovakia and Poland, covering the interwar and postwar periods, and placing discussion of the concept of population transfer at its centre; in its use of archival sources, which for the first time goes beyond a limited selection of official documents to utilize a rich array of private papers and institutional archives, as well as a fuller range of official sources, and also in its close and comprehensive examination of the contemporary press and broadcast media; and, finally, in its interpretation, which locates a central opposition between population transfer in principle and practice, thereby giving a continuity and coherency to a subject with a long chronological and geographical reach. The concept of population transfer lies at the centre of this study and is the key to understanding British approaches and responses to the fate of the German populations of Poland and Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. It is in part a consequence of a certain reluctance to tackle within its historical context the term population transfer, and the concept that lies behind it, that Britain’s response to the expulsions has been misunderstood. The term is often dismissed as an ugly euphemism that sanitizes and obscures the violence, suffering and loss entailed in forcibly removing people from their homes. George Orwell, in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, cited it as an example of how language can be abused in the ‘defence of the indefensible’.²³ However, for historians to reject the term on the grounds that it is euphemistic somewhat misses the point. Just as terms such as ethnic cleansing or even Final Solution, both of which mask brutal processes in anodyne language, are invaluable for scholars because they reflect the mentality of the perpetrator unambiguously, so, too, population transfer gives a vivid insight into the thinking behind approaches to the so-called minority problem that Europe faced in the mid-twentieth century. But, unlike ethnic cleansing, the term population transfer is not an historical anachronism and was used widely in the 1930s and 1940s to denote a separate if sometimes vaguely defined process distinct from deportation or expulsion. Population transfer was understood to imply a process intended to be orderly and regulated, involving a minimum ²³ G. Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’, Horizon, Apr. 1946, 261.

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of human suffering or economic disruption, with international sanction and financial and logistical assistance. Even if, once put into practice, a population transfer rarely, if ever, resembled its blueprints, this does not alter the fact that it was originally conceived of as one. In the case of the British this distinction is crucial. Indeed, it is the problem of reconciling what was desirable in principle with what was feasible in practice that defines British approaches to population transfer in general and to the transfer of Germans in particular, and explains how the British responded to the expulsion of Germans and the refugee crisis it precipitated in 1945. This book is partly a study of the concept of population transfer, and partly a study of the response to a postwar refugee crisis; taken as a whole, it is a study of the relationship between the two. The organization of the book should be considered with this in mind. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with population transfer per se: the background to the concept and term; and debates about its relevance and applicability in the light of rapidly changing international developments in the era of two world wars. These first two chapters inevitably have a wider chronological and geographical reach, taking in the period from the eve of the First to the end of the Second World War, and extending beyond Continental Europe to discussion of the Asian territories of the former Ottoman Empire. Chapters 3 to 7, on the other hand, deal with the refugee crisis in central Europe and its aftermath. The chronological span narrows—the chapters cover roughly two years—as does the geographical range. The focus shifts on to and alternates between four areas: Britain, occupied Germany (the British zone and Berlin), Poland and Czechoslovakia. Although these chapters, and the material within them, are dealt with chronologically, the two or three sub-sections that make up each chapter are primarily organized by location, determined by where the main focus of activity lies. As a result, separate ‘strands’ run through each of these chapters, and a reader who is interested exclusively in, say, Czechoslovak developments can follow this ‘strand’ through the text to the end of the book. Chapter 1 argues that British adherence to the principle of population transfer predated the Second World War. The origins of the concept as well as various proposals and attempts to put population transfers into practice in the 1920s and 1930s are examined. Largely owing to the perceived success of the Greco-Turkish Exchange, on the one hand, and the recurring political crises in 1930s Europe, invariably involving German minorities, on the other, compulsory population transfer went

10

Introduction

from being regarded as an ‘Asiatic abomination’ by British policy-makers and observers of the European scene to being a rational and progressive choice of ‘last resort’ where intractable minority problems were concerned. The interwar period also shows, however, that with increasing acceptance of population transfer in principle came an awareness of the difficulties of putting this principle into practice—a point which is developed in more detail in Chapter 2 within the context of wartime debates in Britain on the issue. This chapter moves away from a traditional focus on Great Power diplomacy and exile politics, and concentrates instead on four case studies which illustrate how widespread the consensus in Britain on population transfer was during the Second World War. Three of these case studies concern national organizations which during the war examined the question of population transfers (the RIIA, the League of Nations Union and the Labour Party); the fourth is the debate surrounding a key House of Commons speech on the issue by Churchill in December 1944, which covers the views of Whitehall and parliamentary opinion. What emerges from these case studies is that despite there being near unanimity across the political spectrum on the principle of population transfer there were sharp differences of opinion over its practicality, which became more rather than less pronounced as the war progressed and the shape of the postwar settlement became clearer. In other words, there was never really any question in these wartime discussions over whether Germans would have to be transferred, only of how many and from where: a ‘difference of emphasis, not of principle’, as one public figure put it. But by the end of the war it was this ‘difference of emphasis’ that had become crucial because as a result of the proposed territorial losses that Germany faced in the east, the number of Germans to be transferred increased dramatically to a level which threatened to nullify the advantages that population transfer, in principle, was supposed to bring. Chapter 3 examines initial British responses to developments in eastcentral Europe during the transition period from war to peace between May and July 1945, when the Czechoslovak and Polish authorities began expelling German populations and creating faits accomplis on the ground in advance of any formal decision being taken at a peace conference. The first signs of public disquiet in Britain at the manner in which Germans, from Czechoslovakia in particular, were being treated are examined, as is the decisive role that the British delegation at the Potsdam Conference played in ensuring that the Great Powers discussed and then endorsed the principle of population transfer rather than leaving the Czechs and

Introduction

11

Poles to expel Germans without thought of the consequences. Several other themes emerge which are explored further in subsequent chapters, including the ‘psychological gap’ separating Britain from the Continent and the role of the media in forcing the policy agenda. Chapters 4 to 6 focus on British responses to the German refugee crisis and to expulsions from Poland and Czechoslovakia in contravention of the decision taken at the Potsdam Conference to suspend further expulsions until a plan could be worked out for ‘orderly and humane’ transfers. Chapter 4 concentrates on the initial public response to the German refugee crisis once this issue became headline news in late August 1945, as well as at the demands of critics of the expulsions thought to be causing it. The initial focus of the chapter is on developments in Berlin after the British took over their sector in July 1945, and the gloomy prognoses made by the British authorities in the light of a worsening refugee problem that they were ill-prepared to handle. The circumstances around how the story about refugees in Berlin ‘broke’ in August 1945 are then examined, as are other contemporary reports by British personnel who were serving in a variety of capacities in Berlin and who viewed the situation as urgent and requiring immediate attention. The focus then shifts to Britain and to how reports about the refugee crisis were received. The emphasis here is on two public figures who became the mainsprings of activity in Britain over the expulsions—the publisher Victor Gollancz and the clergyman George Bell—and the initiatives that they both took in September 1945 to raise awareness about the expulsions as well as to rally support behind any British government action to enforce the Potsdam decisions. Published opinion was sympathetic to the political aims of these initiatives, and by early October 1945 it was possible to discern a broad consensus of opinion in support of resolute action from the British government to deal with the refugee crisis before the situation in central Europe got out of hand. Chapter 5 examines how far the British government was willing to go, as well as the obstacles it faced, in finding solutions to the refugee crisis. On one level, this chapter can be read as a brief casestudy of Anglo-Czech and Anglo-Polish relations and how an issue like the expulsions impinged on them. The British government faced the problem of doing too little to meet the anxieties of the British authorities in occupied Germany, and of critics at home, but enough to alienate and arouse the suspicions of the expelling countries. Repeated attempts to gain assurances from the Poles that expulsions had ceased, and

12

Introduction

the controversy around conditions among German civilians in Czech concentration camps, show the limits to which the British government was willing to go in order to enforce the spirit and the letter of the Potsdam decisions as well as the impact that negative publicity had on developments. British efforts were instead largely restricted to preparing for a huge influx of refugees into the British zone: the focus of the last section of the chapter. Chapter 6 is concerned with the limits of the public rather than the official response to the refugee crisis, and picks up thematically and chronologically where Chapter 4 leaves off—in October 1945—with the intensification of the public campaign against the expulsions, loosely centred around Victor Gollancz’s ‘Save Europe Now’ movement, and climaxing with a mass rally in London against the backdrop of hysteria about the ‘flooding’ of the British zone with German refugees. The second half of the chapter discusses why public interest in these issues fell away after December 1945 and reflects on the character and wider significance of the British response to the expulsions and refugee crisis, and how this can be explained in terms of a central opposition between population transfer in principle and practice. Chapter 7 examines British involvement in the organized movement of German populations in 1946: in the case of Czechoslovakia, as an observer; in respect to Poland, as a participant. In 1946, the British Zone received upwards of 1.5 million Germans from east of the Oder-Neisse under ‘Operation Swallow’. This experience of the practice of population transfer was an unhappy one, made all the more so by the unfavourable comparisons drawn with the Czechoslovak example, and it confirmed many of the earlier misgivings about undertakings of this nature and on this scale. The essentially political motivations for continuing to accept Germans from Poland despite chronic overcrowding in the British Zone are discussed, as are the reasons for the more positive appraisal of Czechoslovak policy. The final section of the chapter is a micro-study of the role played by British liaison teams in Poland during ‘Operation Swallow’ and illustrates some of the complications arising from third-party involvement in the mechanics of population transfer.

1 Frankfurt-on-Wye/Monmouth an der Oder Population Transfer before the Second World War

Imagine that in medieval times Scottish knights penetrated southwards and settled in and around Durham. Further waves of colonists followed. Over time, the local English population was killed, enslaved or absorbed by the settlers. Northumberland, however, was never colonized by the Scots. It remained indisputably English, even though until recently it, too, was ruled by Scotland. Now imagine it is 1938. Northumberland has been returned to England following a recent war. Both Scotland and England have solid ethnographical claims to Durham and Northumberland respectively. But the Scots bitterly resent the new settlement. They feel that Durham has been artificially separated from the rest of Scotland, an intolerable situation that not only harms their country’s trade and defence, but is also an insult to national pride. The English, on the other hand, contend that the Scots are provided with adequate lines of communication across Northumberland and, in any case, Durham can be supplied by sea. Why should the overwhelmingly English population of Northumberland be sacrificed to foreign rule in order to unite Scotland geographically with its colony in Durham? The competing claims seem irreconcilable. Deadlock ensues. Is there a just solution that could satisfy both sides? This was one of a series of problems which Bernard Newman—prolific travel writer turned student of European affairs—presented to readers of Danger Spots of Europe, a best-seller originally published just after the Anschluss in 1938.¹ Newman attempted to illustrate to his British readership the complexity of Europe’s minority problems through ¹ B. Newman, Danger Spots of Europe (3rd rev. edn, Sep. 1939; 1st edn, 1938; 2nd edn, Jul. 1939), 26–46. Author of 128 books on espionage, travel and current affairs,

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quaintly parochial contexts in which Europe’s fault lines lay on the Wye and Offa’s Dyke rather than on the Oder and in the Eastern Marches.² Each fictitious problem represented one or more of Newman’s ‘danger spots’ and illustrated how the specifics of the minority problem crucially differed in each case. Newman acknowledged that the problem was considerably more complicated than his examples suggested. Yet he was surprisingly sanguine. He recognized that there was no universal cure for the problem. Frontier rectification would go some way to pacifying claims, as would ‘local economic privileges’. Even a continuation of internationally guaranteed minority treaties, which many countries were abandoning at this point, was not ruled out. However, there was a method that Newman seemed almost embarrassed to suggest: ‘One other idea must be mentioned—but I never imagined that my pen would present it: I am an inquirer, not a politician, so I would not dare to advocate it [ . . . ] [But] whether we like the idea or not, the system of transference of population is about to become a matter of European politics.’ Newman pointed out that Germany evidently wanted to bring its ethnic brethren back into the Reich. This was being achieved through territorial expansion and revision of frontiers. But there was another way of accommodating Germany’s ambitions. Rather than fitting frontiers around populations, Newman argued, why not make populations fit the frontiers? It had been done before in the 1920s with remarkable results. ‘Any Victorian statesman, could they return to the European scene today, would stare in amazement at the sight of Greece and Turkey standing side by side, friends and allies.’ Moreover, there was a world of difference between what was possible in the aftermath of war and in a time of peace: Spread over a period of years, with detailed preparation and friendly and efficient supervision, the exchange of a couple of million people is not a great problem. Our forefathers would have thought little of it two thousand years ago. Life today is more complicated, and there are hundreds of difficulties—but none of them are insuperable. The cost would be that of half a dozen battleships.

The uprooted would obviously protest, but the interests of individuals sometimes had to be subordinated to those of the wider community: Newman led a double-life as a civil servant and a regular on the popular lecture circuit as well as on the BBC. See obituary in The Times, 20 Feb. 1968; B. Newman, Speaking from Memory (1960), 36–132. ² For what follows, see Newman, Danger Spots, 42–4.

Population Transfer before the Second World War

15

‘It is far more important that hundreds of millions of people should not suffer or die, than that thousands of families should be temporarily inconvenienced.’ The populations would not be moving far, often just across the border. Cheap, clean and painless—population transfer was a simple formula for keeping the peace. Newman was aware that compulsory population transfer represented a radical departure from conventional solutions to the minority problem. That, as a self-styled liberal, he was nevertheless prepared to advocate it indicates that he also recognized that British opinion had shifted far enough by the end of the 1930s to entertain a solution which twenty years before would have been considered an abomination. As this chapter will show, Newman’s position was, in fact, quite unremarkable on the eve of the Second World War. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that although a question mark hung over the issue of compulsion, population transfer as a solution to the minority problem was already acknowledged to be sound in principle before 1939. It was over the practicality of population transfer that differences arose. Appreciating this distinction between principle and practice is essential for understanding later British debates on the question of a mass transfer of German populations during the Second World War and why they seldom revolved around whether it was desirable but instead focused on whether it was feasible. This chapter will look at the development of the idea of population transfer from the beginning of the First World War to the eve of the Second, focusing on various proposals for population transfers put forward in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as actual attempts to put them into practice. TRANSPLANTATION MASSIVE : O R I G I N S O F P O P U L AT I O N T R A N S F E R The concept of population transfer has its origins in the disintegration of multinational empires at the end of the nineteenth century. It developed as a response to the political problems arising from the application of the principle of nationality to regions with heterogeneous populations and where emerging nation-states were defined along narrow and exclusive ethno-linguistic lines. With the rise of the nation-state came the notion that homogeneity within it was a desirable goal. Minorities were regarded increasingly as a source of internal instability and, by offering a pretext for outside interference and encouraging rival nationalist

16

Population Transfer before the Second World War

claims, also a source of international friction. It was a priori desirable therefore to eliminate minorities wherever possible using a range of measures available to the state: territorial adjustment, administrative devices, forced emigration, precipitate expulsion, as well as extermination. Population transfer offered a novel means of achieving this end. The exact origins of the term ‘population transfer’, as distinct from the concept, are unclear. George Montandon, a Swiss ethnologist, is often credited, not least by himself, as having coined the term during the First World War.³ In Frontières Nationales, published in 1915, Montandon outlined a vision of a new, peaceful and stable European order comprised of ethnically homogenous nation-states. Once new frontiers had been framed along ethnographic and strategic lines, the transition to a new order would be completed by a ‘mass transplant’ of minorities into and out of the new states, with some form of indemnification for the populations affected.⁴ But Montandon was just one of many who, turning their sights towards the future shape of the postwar world, had begun toying with the idea that ethnic homogeneity could be engineered and accelerated by interstate agreement;⁵ nor was he the first—the earliest proposal for population transfer can be traced back as far as 1898.⁶ Even more significantly, it had already been experimented with embryonically just before the First World War. The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 led to major readjustments of frontiers and population displacements throughout southeastern Europe. A series of bilateral, interstate agreements followed the conflict, attempting to regulate the movement and formalize the status of those displaced. In November 1913, Bulgaria and Turkey signed the Convention of Adrianople which provided for a ‘reciprocal exchange’ of Bulgarians and Muslims within a 15 kilometre zone on either side of the new common frontier in Thrace. Soon after, Greece concluded a preliminary ³ G. Montandon, ‘La Pologne Future’, Mercure de France, 1 Feb. 1940, 314. ⁴ G. Montandon, Frontières nationales: Détermination objective de la condition primordiale nécessaire à l’obtention d’une paix durable (Lausanne, 1915), 6–13. ⁵ N. Buxton and C. Buxton, War and the Balkans (1915), 107–8; A. Sardou, L’Indépendence européenne: Études sur les conditions de paix (Paris, 1915), 48–9; M. E. Efendi [pseud.], Nationalitätsprinzip und Bevölkerungsaustausch: Eine Studie für den Friedensschluss (Dresden, 1917); I. Geiss, Der polnische Grenzstreifen 1914–1918: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Kriegszielpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Lübeck, 1960), 70–115. ⁶ M. E. Efendi [pseud.], Die Zukunft der Türkei: Ein Beitrag zur Lösung der orientalischen Frage, 2nd edn (Berlin,1898), 13–34.

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17

agreement with Turkey for the voluntary exchange of Greeks in Thrace and Smyrna for Muslims in Macedonia and Epirus. Both agreements were signed in response to, or in anticipation of, faits accomplis on the ground and their impact was limited by Turkey’s entry into the First World War in November 1914.⁷ Their significance, however, lay in the precedent they set for future action. They represented a radical and innovative formula for resolving the problem of intermixed populations and achieving the goal of ethnic homogeneity in the nation-state: the removal of minorities to the territory of their nation-state or ‘ethnic homeland’ with a minimum of human suffering and economic disruption, based on interstate agreement freely entered into by the states concerned with some degree of reciprocity in numbers and in property compensated; what came to be referred to increasingly as the ‘transfer’, ‘transference’ or ‘exchange’ of populations.⁸ Various suggestions were made at the end of the First World War that this method be carried out extensively in order to remedy the untidy distribution of populations resulting from the creation of ‘successor states’ in central and eastern Europe and to ensure harmonious relations between these states. In Britain, proposals came from figures as diverse as Halford Mackinder, the arch-conservative father of geopolitics, and Noel Buxton, Liberal-turned-Labour politician and Balkanist, for ‘an organized system of intermigration’ through ‘the exchange of populations’ arranged by ‘international commissions’ using all ‘modern powers of transport and organization’.⁹ Population transfer, however, played an insignificant role in the deliberations of the peacemakers.¹⁰ British officials barely touched on the issue in their preparations for the peace ⁷ S. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York, 1932), 19–21. ⁸ There is no standard definition of ‘population transfer’. Most, however, would include organization, interstate agreement and financial compensation as key characteristics. See A. Pallis, ‘The Exchange of Populations in the Balkans’, Nineteenth Century and After [henceforth, NCAA], 97 (Mar. 1925), 377; J. Schechtman, European Population Transfers 1939–1945 (New York, 1946), p. x; A. Rieber, ‘Repressive Population Transfer in Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe: A Historical Overview’, in id. (ed.), Forced Migration, 3. ⁹ H. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919), 209–10; N. Buxton and C. Leonard Leese, Balkan Problems and European Peace (1919), 113–14. ¹⁰ A. Sharp, ‘Britain and the Protection of Minorities at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919’, in A. C. Hepburn (ed.), Minorities in History (1978), 172–3.

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Population Transfer before the Second World War

conference and categorically ruled out coercion as a means of facilitating the migration of minorities.¹¹ Compulsory transfer was, as Edvard Beneš, the chief Czech representative at Paris, later pointed out, ‘apparently in contradiction to the idealistic tendencies governing the 1919 plans for a new Europe’.¹² Plebiscites, where they were politically expedient, and a system of minority treaties in the successor states guaranteed by the League of Nations, were the preferred methods of reconciling the existence of national minorities to the new territorial order. However, so-called ‘option clauses’ were inserted into several peace treaties. These gave each member of a national minority the opportunity of acquiring the citizenship of the ethnic homeland, if one existed, to where the individual was then required to migrate.¹³ There was one minor, yet significant, exception to a settlement that as a rule eschewed population transfer: the Greco-Bulgarian Convention on ‘reciprocal voluntary emigration’, signed at Neuilly-sur-Seine in November 1919. In July 1919, Eleftherios Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, submitted a plan for a ‘racial adjustment’ between Greece and Bulgaria to the Committee on New States and Minorities at the Paris Conference.¹⁴ Venizelos had long been an enthusiastic proponent of population transfers—one might say that he was the first statesmen to champion them—and they were slated to play an integral part in his vision of a ‘New [ . . . ] Greater Greece’ that spanned both sides of the Aegean, fulfilling the Megali Idea (‘Great Idea’) long-cherished by Greek nationalists.¹⁵ The Greco-Bulgarian convention of 1919 provided for a Mixed Commission comprised of representatives of the contracting states and neutral observers to oversee a population exchange and to evaluate and liquidate the immovable property of the 200,000 people affected, the vast majority of whom were Bulgarians.¹⁶ The population exchange remained—in theory—voluntary. Recognizing its historic ¹¹ The National Archives (TNA), Public Record Office (PRO), London, FO371/ 4353, f33/PC33, Carr memorandum, 20 Nov. 1918. ¹² E. Beneš, ‘The Organization of Postwar Europe’, Foreign Affairs, 20/2 ( Jan. 1942), 235. ¹³ T. Musgrave, Self-Determination and National Minorities (Oxford, 1997), 42–3. ¹⁴ D. H. Miller, My Diary at the Conference of Paris with Documents, xiii: New States (Minorities) [1924], 306–7. ¹⁵ For proposals as far back as 1913, see G. Streit, Der Lausanner Vertrag und der griechisch-türkische Bevölkerungsaustausch (Berlin, 1929), 20; K. Kairophylas, Eleftherios Venizelos: His Life and Work (1915), 175–83; A. Gauvain, The Greek Question (New York, 1918), 44. ¹⁶ FO371/7959, E13044/10524/44, Convention between Greece and Bulgaria, 27 Nov. 1919.

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significance,¹⁷ the American adviser on minority questions at the Paris Peace Conference remarked that it was ‘an experiment’ which would be followed with ‘great interest’,¹⁸ sentiments echoed by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, who considered ‘the scheme for the interchange of minorities of [ . . . ] great importance for the future peace in the Balkans’.¹⁹ British officials thought Venizelos’s ‘pet scheme [ . . . ] a good one’ which would help ‘to de-Balkanize the Balkans’,²⁰ and ‘offer far the best chance of a lasting settlement in [ . . . ] the storm area of Europe’.²¹ Venizelos, however, had even grander plans. The Greek delegation to the Paris Peace Conference demanded not only southern Albania and all of Thrace, including what remains today of European Turkey, but also the entire western littoral of Asia Minor.²² In support of the latter claim, Venizelos proposed a ‘wholesale and mutual transfer of population’ between Greece and Turkey.²³ It was, he claimed, ‘the only cure’ for the problem of remaining minorities and of as much benefit to Turkey as to Greece for in ‘a few years what is to remain of the Turkish State would be comprised almost exclusively of Mahommedans [sic]’.²⁴ Special clauses in the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920 provided for such an exchange of populations as well as for its wider application across the southern Balkans.²⁵ Before the results of this initiative or the ‘experiment’ with Bulgaria could even begin to be evaluated, however, they had been superseded by a quite different and considerably more radical attempt at readjusting the ethnic balance in the region. Venizelos’s ‘pet scheme’ was to become a reality but in a form and with consequences that he had neither foreseen nor desired. ¹⁷ Although not the first bilateral agreement of its kind, it was the first to be negotiated under international auspices. ¹⁸ M. Hudson, ‘The Protection of Minorities and Natives in Transferred Territories’, in E. House and C. Seymour (eds), What Really Happened at Paris (New York, 1921), 223. ¹⁹ FO371/7377, C4881/4881/7, Curzon to Hardinge, 12 Apr. 1922. ²⁰ FO371/7377, C4881/4881/7, Nicolson minute, 4 Apr. 1922. ²¹ FO371/7377, C4881/4881/7, Lindley to Curzon, 25 Mar. 1922. ²² British Documents on Foreign Affairs, pt. 2, 1st ser., xi: The Turkish Settlement and the Middle East, ed. M. Dockrill (Frederick, Md., 1991), Document 3: Summary of Memorial submitted to Peace Conference by M. Venizelos, with Commentary by British Delegation, 28 Jan. 1919, 4–5. ²³ ‘The Claims of Greece’, The Times, 15 Jan. 1919. ²⁴ Greece Before the Peace Congress of 1919: A Memorandum Dealing with the Rights of Greece, submitted by Eleutherios Venizelos, rev. trans. from French (New York, 1919), 24–5. ²⁵ FO371/7959, E10344/1052/44, Article 143 of Treaty of Sèvres [10 Aug. 1920].

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‘A M O N S T RO U S LY W I C K E D A R R A N G E M E N T ’ : T H E G R E C O - T U R K I S H E XC H A N G E O F P O P U L AT I O N S A N D I TS C O N S E QU E N C E S When international delegates met in the Swiss resort of Lausanne in November 1922 to negotiate a peace treaty with Turkey for the second time in three years, it was in very different circumstances than before. Roles were now reversed with Turkey playing the victor and Greece the vanquished. Nationalist forces under Mustapha Kemal had driven the Greek army from Asia Minor along with much of its Christian population.²⁶ The most pressing problem facing the delegates at Lausanne, therefore, was a massive refugee crisis in Greece and the fate of Christian minorities remaining in Anatolia. Within two months, a solution of sorts had been found for both. On 30 January 1923, Greece and Turkey were prevailed upon to sign to a ‘Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations’—in short, the Lausanne Convention—which sanctioned the first explicitly compulsory exchange of populations. Religious rather than ethno-linguistic criteria was used to determine who would be exchanged: ‘Turkish nationals of the Greek Orthodox religion established in Turkish territory’ for ‘Greek nationals of the Moslem religion established in Greek territory’. Only the Greek Orthodox population of Constantinople and the Muslims of Western Thrace were exempted. In addition, the Convention provided for the establishment of a Mixed Commission of four Turks, four Greeks and three neutral members empowered to oversee the exchange of populations, as well as to liquidate and evaluate property for the purposes of compensation.²⁷ The initial reaction in Britain, as elsewhere, to the compulsory nature of the exchange was universally hostile. The Times correspondent called it a ‘monstrously wicked’ arrangement which ‘all right thinking people regard as detestable’.²⁸ The agreement was invariably characterized ²⁶ M. Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922, 2nd rev. edn (1998), 248–311. ²⁷ ‘Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations’, 30 Jan. 1923, in D. Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact on Greece (2002), 257–63. ²⁸ ‘Greeks in Turkey’, The Times, 22 Jan. 1923; ‘Conventions Signed at Lausanne’, The Times, 31 Jan. 1923.

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as a ‘Turkic’ or ‘Asiatic’ abomination which, by legitimizing mass expulsion and the wholesale expropriation of private property, stood completely at odds with the basic tenets of western civilization. ‘It is an anachronism not merely of centuries but of ages’, declared the Daily Telegraph. ‘What would British opinion think if it were proposed that every Catholic should be thrust out of the Six Counties of Ulster and every Protestant out of the rest of Ireland, on the ground that by this exchange there could be a hope of peace?’²⁹ All parties to the agreement quickly attempted to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the compulsory nature of the exchange,³⁰ with Fridtjof Nansen, the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees entrusted with dealing with the humanitarian crisis in Greece, becoming a convenient scapegoat.³¹ Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary and Conference chairman, was at pains to put on record how unhappy he was with compulsion, claiming that he ‘detested having anything to do with it’, and famously dismissing it as ‘a thoroughly bad and vicious solution, for which the world would pay a heavy penalty for a hundred years to come’.³² Only days before the Convention was signed, Curzon again said he viewed ‘with abhorrence and almost with dismay the principle of compulsory exchange. One need only read the papers to realize how widely this feeling of dissatisfaction ha[s] spread’.³³ The British official who sat on the sub-committee dealing with this issue confessed: ‘I shall not be really sorry if the exchange of populations breaks down. It would inevitably produce so much suffering that I doubt whether any other development could produce more.’³⁴ Who originally came up with the formula, however, is far less important than the fact that all sides agreed to it and saw advantages in it. Notwithstanding Curzon’s hand-wringing, the British had good reason to be satisfied. Sir George Rendel, then the junior official in the Foreign Office Eastern Department who drafted the scheme for the population exchange, summed up the British position in his memoirs: ²⁹ ‘Delays at Lausanne’, Daily Telegraph, 19 Jan. 1923. ³⁰ See Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 62–7. ³¹ R. Huntford, Fridtjof Nansen and the Unmixing of Greeks and Turks in 1924 (Oslo, 1998), 11. ³² Great Britain, Foreign Office, Lausanne Conference on Near East Affairs 1922–23: Records of Proceeding and Draft Terms of Peace, Cmd. 1814 [henceforth, Lausanne] (1923), 212. ³³ Ibid. 412. ³⁴ FO800/240, 1018–19, Ryan to Henderson, 19 Dec. 1922.

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[Exchange] was an ironic term. The Greeks were already expelled. There were few Turks in Greece. But [ . . . ] if they went to Turkey [ . . . ] to take over the Greek properties, and the fugitive Greeks were given the Moslem properties in Greece might not some good come out of the evils? So I was asked to work out a scheme for an ‘exchange of populations’ on the Graeco-Bulgarian model. It was not a good scheme; but it was, I think, all that could be done to catch up with events. It was later incorporated, practically without change, in the Exchange of Populations Convention of Lausanne. Much suffering resulted from the exchange, and much ink has been spilt abusing both its conception and its consequences. But the Convention merely tried to legalize and partly remedy existing facts.³⁵

Any development that offered the prospect of stabilizing Greece and preventing the country descending into anarchy was welcome. Philip Noel-Baker, Nansen’s secretary and speech-writer, better-known later in life as a leading Labour MP, disarmament campaigner and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, considered ‘a decent solution’ of the refugee problem to be ‘really vital to the peace of this part of the world’. He warned that without one there would be ‘grave social disorder, perhaps complete bolshevism’.³⁶ This was why he considered the plan ‘brilliantly successful’ and ‘a major triumph for Nansen’.³⁷ And for all Curzon’s moral reservations about compulsion and claims that he acted as a ‘honest-broker’ in the affair, ‘refrain[ing] from pressing either side to accept the principle of exchange’, he, too, recognized its necessity.³⁸ When population exchange was first discussed, Curzon denounced compulsion, only to proceed to give all the arguments in support of it and none against it.³⁹ Even before the convention was signed, however, attention was shifting away from the terrible conditions that had necessitated a compulsory exchange towards a more hopeful glance at the benefits that it might bring. Curzon had told delegates at Lausanne that he hoped the wickedness of the agreement and the suffering that would inevitably accompany it would be ‘compensated by the removal of deep rooted ³⁵ G. Rendel, The Sword and the Olive: Recollections of Diplomacy and the Foreign Service, 1913–1954 (1957), 54; FO371/7957, E12013/10524/44, Note regarding proposed arrangements for interchange of minorities between Turkey and Greece, 2 Nov. 1922; FO371/7959, E13044/10524/44, Memorandum on Proposed Exchange of Greek and Turkish Minorities, 30 Nov. 1922. ³⁶ Churchill Archives Centre (CAC), Cambridge University, Noel-Baker papers, NBKR 4/471, Baker to Salter, 22 Oct. 1922. ³⁷ P. Noel-Baker, Nansen’s Place in History (Oslo, 1961), 13–15. ³⁸ Lausanne, 412. ³⁹ Ibid. 121.

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causes of quarrel [ . . . ] and greater future homogeneity of population’.⁴⁰ Once the League of Nations became more intimately involved in the financing and mechanics of population exchange through the work of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission, the Lausanne Convention increasingly came to be seen as having brought positive results in four key areas: ethnic homogeneity; economic development; interstate relations; and international cooperation. The influx of over a million Greeks and the exodus of the Muslim as well as the Bulgarian-speaking population altered the ethnic composition of Greece in the interwar years beyond all recognition. ‘Thanks to the exchanges of population’, the Greek representative to the League of Nations could already declare in late 1925, ‘Greece has become one of the most homogenous countries in Europe.’⁴¹ Between 1920 and 1928 minorities as a proportion of the total population of Greece fell from 19 to 6 per cent.⁴² These changes were particularly pronounced in the territories of ‘New Greece’—Macedonia and Western Thrace—acquired since the end of the Balkan Wars. Macedonia’s Orthodox Greek population increased from 43 to 89 per cent between 1912 and 1926; whereas its Moslem population in the meantime fell from 39.4 per cent to an infinitesimal 0.1 per cent.⁴³ This shifting of the ethnic balance encouraged some commentators to proclaim, somewhat prematurely, that population exchange had ‘solved’ the Macedonian Question once and for all,⁴⁴ turning ‘what was before the heel of Achilles [ . . . ] [into] the strong buttress of the State’.⁴⁵ The influx of refugees had an equally profound impact on the economy of this under-developed part of the Balkans, and soon came to be seen as an asset to rather than a burden on the war-ravaged Greek economy.⁴⁶ Visitors to Greece invariably commented on the valuable skills that Greeks from Asia Minor brought with them and parallels were often drawn with the contribution that the Huguenots had made to England some two centuries earlier.⁴⁷ ⁴⁰ Ibid. 412. ⁴¹ League of Nations Archive (LNA), Geneva, Switzerland, Politis papers, P239, File 240, ‘Les problèmes d’Orient dans les Balkans’, 28 Dec. 1925. ⁴² A. Pallis, ‘The Greek Census of 1928’, Geographical Journal, 73/6 ( Jun. 1929), 546. ⁴³ The League of Nations, Greek Refugee Settlement (Geneva, 1926), map inserts. ⁴⁴ W. Miller, Greece (1928), 285 ⁴⁵ N. Bentwich, ‘The New Ionian Migration’, Contemporary Review [henceforth, CR], 130 (Sep. 1926), 324. ⁴⁶ E. G. Mears, Greece Today: The Aftermath of the Refugee Impact (Stanford, 1929), 275–86. ⁴⁷ W. Miller, ‘Greece Since the June ‘‘Revolution’’ ’, CR 128 (Sep. 1925), 309.

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‘The incoming of the refugees’, the British Deputy Chairman of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission noted as early as November 1923, ‘has infused a new spirit into the economic life of Greece. Their mentality is higher than that of the old Greeks [ . . . ] They are already competing with the old Greeks [ . . . ] cutting into their trade [ . . . ] fixing a higher standard of activity and business methods.’⁴⁸ By removing the ethnographic grounds for Greek or Turkish irredentism, population exchange was also seen to have facilitated the ‘diplomatic revolution’ which followed the signing of Greco-Turkish bilateral accords in 1930, an event which would have beggared belief a decade before.⁴⁹ The League of Nations also gained credibility and legitimacy through its role in mediating the dispute, raising and guaranteeing international loans, and contributing personnel and expertise to resettlement; its involvement showing that the ‘scientific handling of a migration problem’ was possible with sufficient international commitment and assistance.⁵⁰ There were, of course, less sanguine views of Lausanne and its consequences. Critical assessments of the Convention pointed out that it had merely ‘accomplished facts’; the numbers subjected to the exchange were quite small compared to the total number of refugees entering Greece in the 1920s; conditions under which Greeks were transferred following the Lausanne Convention more often than not resembled the flight and expulsion of 1922; attempts by the Mixed Commission to indemnify and liquidate property were on the whole ‘a failure’; and urban refugees, harder to integrate and reconcile to their fate, remained a serious threat to the internal stability of Greece.⁵¹ There were even doubts expressed as to its permanence; the leading US-based expert of the subject finding it ‘very difficult to imagine that a movement which began with the dawn of Greek history and carried Greeks to the shores of Asia minor w[ould] now be stopped forever’.⁵² In a similar vein, the author of an important interwar study on minorities, concluded that the workings of the Mixed Commission formed ‘an awful warning to those who count on governments to carry through an operation of this kind with any sort of goodwill, or attempt at constructive cooperation’, ⁴⁸ LNA, Greek Refugee Settlement Commission, C129, Campbell to Salter, 20 Nov. 1923. ⁴⁹ C. Petrie, ‘Modern Greece’, Quarterly Review, 276 ( Jan. 1941), 123–4. ⁵⁰ The League of Nations Union, What the League Has Done (1928), 34. See also E. Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees 1922–1930 (Oxford, 2006), 330. ⁵¹ Ladas, Exchange of Minorities, 430–4, 720, 724–8. ⁵² Ibid. 733–4.

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adding that ‘such experience as we possess of the exchange of population as a means of solving the minorities problem is not [ . . . ] calculated to encourage a repetition of the experiment’.⁵³ These more critical assessments were, however, the exception. Far more common by the 1930s was the verdict given by the American Committee for Near East Relief, a voluntary organization which had been closely involved in the population exchange: Greece not only survived the tragedy of Smyrna and the staggering influx of refugees, but less than ten years after the disastrous events the country is undoubtedly stronger than it was before the World War [ . . . ] The individual has suffered unbelievably and many did not survive, but the country as a whole is more productive and more united politically. The Anatolian Greeks brought energy and experience. The departure of the Moslem Turks made a homogenous population.⁵⁴

In the 1930s the deeper and more troubling implications of the Greco-Turkish population exchange were less obvious and, indeed, less compelling than the concrete political results it had produced in interstate relations.⁵⁵ At a time when the edifice of the postwar settlement in Europe appeared increasingly unstable and the system of minority protection that underpinned it seemed to be exacerbating rather than quelling the minorities problem, observers of the European scene could look back to the Lausanne Convention, and the lasting settlement it formed part of, and see in the exchange of populations a successful model worthy of imitation elsewhere.

‘ C L E A N A N D F I N A L’ : T H E PA L E S T I N E ROY A L COMMISSION AND THE TRANSFER OF THE ARABS, 1936 – 1938 It was once more in the Near East, and within the former Ottoman Empire, that population transfer was next seriously considered as a ⁵³ C. A. Macartney, National States and National Minorities (1934), 447–8. See also views of the last Chairman of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission, in C. B. Eddy, Greece and the Refugees (1931), 227–41. ⁵⁴ J. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (New York, 1930), 171. ⁵⁵ For a recent assessment of the legacies of Lausanne, see R. Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey (Oxford, 2003).

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solution to a seemingly intractable minority problem. The proposed population exchange was notable not only because it was compulsory but also because it arose from a British initiative. The reaction to the proposal to partition Palestine into two predominately Arab and Jewish states accompanied by a compulsory population exchange illustrates the extent to which the principle of population transfer was already accepted by the British in the mid-1930s. When a renewed wave of Arab unrest broke out in the British mandate of Palestine in April 1936, the British Government responded by appointing a Royal Commission under Lord Peel to investigate its causes and to suggest ways in which Arab and Jewish grievances could be reconciled. The Peel Commission report, published in July 1937, concluded that Arab and Jewish nationalisms were irreconcilable. A partition of the mandate was offered as the only practical and lasting solution that could come close to satisfying both groups’ demands for self-determination. Separate Arab and Jewish states would have to be created with the British retaining control over an enclave centred on Jerusalem. Some 225,000 Arabs and 1,250 Jews, however, would be left on the wrong side of the frontier. Mindful that national minorities were ‘one of the most troublesome and intractable products of post-war nationalism’ and that their existence would represent ‘the most serious hindrance to the smooth and successful operation of Partition’, the Peel Commission recommended that this problem be ‘boldly faced and firmly dealt with’ so that the settlement would be ‘clean and final’.⁵⁶ The solution that the Peel Commission proposed was an exchange of populations, if necessary a compulsory one, the practicalities of which became a central factor in the overall feasibility of partition.⁵⁷ The Peel Commission pointed to the ‘instructive precedent’ offered by the Greco-Turkish exchange, which had involved numbers far larger ⁵⁶ Palestine Royal Commission, Report, Cmd. 5479 (1937), 390. ⁵⁷ The specific proposal for a compulsory exchange originated with Reginald Coupland, Professor of Colonial History at Oxford, who drafted most of the report. See T. Fraser, ‘Chatham House and the Palestinian Question, 1920–1939’, in A. Bosco and C. Navari (eds), Chatham House and British Foreign Policy 1919–45 (1990), 197. For arguments as to the centrality of population transfer to Zionist demands for a Jewish homeland, see N. Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington DC, 1992), 5–48; Y. Katz, ‘Transfer of Population as a Solution to International Disputes: Population Exchanges as a Model for Plans to Solve the Jewish-Arab Dispute in Palestine during the 1930s’, Political Geography, 11/1 (1992), 55–72.

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than those envisioned under the partition scheme.⁵⁸ While it was acknowledged that criticism of the Lausanne Convention on moral grounds had initially been severe and that the communities affected had experienced much hardship, the authors of the report, employing the by then standard surgical imagery, pointed out that: the courage of the Greek and Turkish statesman concerned has been justified by the result. Before the operation the Greek and Turkish minorities had been a constant irritant. Now the ulcer has been clean cut out, and Greco-Turkish relations, we understand, are friendlier than they have ever been before.

Such a positive appraisal of the consequences of the Greco-Turkish exchange was not uncommon at this juncture. It was one thing, however, to view with satisfaction the results of the Lausanne Convention, which had made the best of a fait accompli, but it was altogether quite different to suggest that, in the absence of any major refugee crisis in the region, a population exchange be coerced in order to bring similarly salutary effects to Palestine. The British government accepted the Peel Commission’s recommendations in toto as ‘the best and most hopeful solution of the [Palestine] deadlock’.⁵⁹ In the Commons, MPs were told that a population exchange was ‘obviously [ . . . ] most desirable’ in connection with partition, and while ‘still in a very tentative state’ was a scheme which ‘no one [ . . . ] would say [ . . . ] was a bad one’.⁶⁰ In the Lords, the government also emphasized ‘the extreme desirability of effecting a transfer of population as rapidly as may be feasible’.⁶¹ Few MPs, however, would go further than endorsing a voluntary transfer; most hoped that even this would be unnecessary.⁶² Viscount Samuel, the Liberal leader in the Lords, also took issue with the parallels the government had drawn with the ‘very satisfactory’ Greco-Turkish exchange: The circumstances are not in the least the same. Then the Greeks who lived in Asia Minor were fleeing the country. It was immediately after the disastrous ⁵⁸ For what follows, see Palestine Royal Commission, Report, 390–1. ⁵⁹ Quoted in J. Schechtman, Population Transfers in Asia (New York, 1949), 88. ⁶⁰ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 326, cols. 2250, 2357 (21 Jul. 1937). ⁶¹ Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 106, col. 623 (20 Jul. 1937); cf. PRO CO733/352/2, fo. 119, Notes for House of Lords speech, 19 Jul. 1937. ⁶² Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 326, cols. 2296, 2300–2, 2310, 2326, 2342–3 (21 Jul. 1937); CO733/352/2, fos 15–22, MPs collective letter to Ormsby Gore, 29 Jun. 1937.

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Greek campaign there [ . . . ] The Turks were sweeping down on them and the whole population fled [ . . . ] There is nothing of that kind in Palestine. There is nothing of that sort to induce 225,000 Arabs to leave the land in which they and their fathers have been settled for a thousand years.⁶³

Other peers, while agreeing in principle with a population transfer in Palestine, remained sceptical about how it would be carried out.⁶⁴ But no sooner had Parliament debated the issue than the government backpeddled furiously. When the Colonial Secretary, William OrmsbyGore, took the partition plan to League of Nations in Geneva in August 1937, he informed the Mandates Commission that the British government had not accepted the Peel Commission’s recommendation for a compulsory transfer. He tried instead to convince sceptical Commissioners that given the necessary inducements Arabs would transfer themselves voluntarily.⁶⁵ ‘I am an old man’, the chairman of the Mandates Commission is supposed to have replied, ‘but never in my life have I heard of people, especially peasants, voluntarily emigrating from the richest part of their country to the poorest.’⁶⁶ The Palestine Partition (Woodhead) Commission, sent out to the mandate in 1938 to report on the technicalities of the Peel Commission’s recommendations, came to a similar conclusion.⁶⁷ Transfer, and with it the whole partition plan, was shelved. A population transfer in Palestine in 1937–38 never got beyond the drawing board. The British government abandoned the commitment to the principle of compulsion as hastily as it had endorsed it. Parliament had, on balance, been uncomfortable with compulsion. The Foreign Office, ever sensitive to opinion in the Arab world, viewed it with horror.⁶⁸ The High Commissioner for Palestine, Arthur Wauchope, warned that it could only be enforced using large numbers of British troops and would arouse ‘intense feeling’ among Arabs in Palestine and beyond.⁶⁹ There was also something ‘un-British’ about the whole ⁶³ Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 106, cols. 636–7 (20 Jul. 1937). ⁶⁴ Ibid. cols. 661–2 (20 Jul. 1937); cf. Lord Melchett, Thy Neighbour (1936), 193–5. ⁶⁵ League of Nations Mandates Commission, Minutes of the 32nd Session, 30 July–18 August 1937, online at [accessed 6 Oct. 2006]. ⁶⁶ Quoted in J. Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality (1939), 665. ⁶⁷ Palestine Partition Commission, Report, Cmd. 5854 (1938), 235. ⁶⁸ CO733/354/1, fo. 58, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 19 Nov. 1937. ⁶⁹ CO733/354/2, fo. 134, Wauchope to CO, 30 Nov. 1937.

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affair. As a senior Foreign Official remarked in April 1938, it ‘might have been the position adopted by the Germans or the Russians, but it was unthinkable that the British should do so’.⁷⁰ None of this, however, alters the fact that the Peel Commission had initially embraced compulsion. Any reservations it had had were limited to the practicalities of the measure not the principle. The British government had been more cautious. But its caution was, again, on the grounds of practicality. Among the variety of reasons for which mass transfer, voluntary or compulsory, in Palestine was rejected, the moral or ethical argument against it was not in the foreground, if mentioned at all. Far from representing an abandonment of the principle of population transfer, the proposal for an Arab-Jewish exchange in 1937, by highlighting the practical difficulties entailed and contrasting these against the ‘ideal’ of the Greco-Turkish exchange, emphasized the desirability of the measure in principle even if at the same time it underlined the obstacles in the way of putting this into practice.

‘A W I L D G O O S E C H A S E ’ : T R A N S F E R S O F G E R M A N S O N T H E EV E O F T H E S E C O N D WO R L D WA R , 1 9 3 8 – 1 9 3 9 Experiments with population transfer so far had given it a wholly ‘eastern’ or ‘Ottoman’ character. A series of agreements between Turkey and other Balkan states during the 1930s over the repatriation of Turkish-speaking nationals reinforced this image.⁷¹ Developments in central Europe in 1938, however, were to change this perception radically. As one scholar writing in the 1950s remarked: ‘Transfer of population seems to have been in the diplomatic air in the fall of 1938.’⁷² Henceforth it never ⁷⁰ Baggallay minutes, 16 Apr. 1938, in T. Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (New York, 2000), 413. ⁷¹ For discussions over the transfer of ‘Yugoslavs of Turkish origin’ from southern parts of Serbia, see Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 494; N. Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (1998), 285–6; FO371/23886, R2765/102/192, British Legation Belgrade to FO, 8 Apr. 1939. The FO described the resulting July 1938 agreement as ‘a dead letter’ from the outset. See FO371/23743, R4099/661/67, Brown minute, 19 May 1939. For agreements between Turkey and Romania and Bulgaria in 1936 and 1937, see Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 491–6. These transfers were largely responsible for the 1.86 million increase in Turkey’s population from 1935 to 1940. ⁷² R. Koehl, RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 40.

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disappeared. Over the following twelve months, all parties to the European crisis put forward proposals for population transfers as a solution to German minority problems in Czechoslovakia, Italy and Poland. The Sudeten crisis which dominated European affairs after March 1938 saw all sides canvass proposals for a voluntary population exchange at one stage or another. These either took the form of exchanges in place of or following limited territorial concessions to Germany or exchanges to remove Sprachinseln after the Sudetenland had been attached to Germany.⁷³ It was the latter course of action that was taken in October 1938 after the Munich Conference.⁷⁴ But even before the Sudeten crisis had reached its ignominious end, transfer was already ‘in the diplomatic air’ elsewhere. Anschluss with Austria in March 1938 gave Nazi Germany a common border with Italy, and the South Tyrolese question—the status of the 250,000 German-speaking inhabitants of the former Austrian region that the Italians called Alto Adige—was once again brought into sharp relief.⁷⁵ Reassurances from Berlin that the Reich had no irredentist designs south of the Brenner did little to calm its ally, whose fears were not without foundation, given the Nazis’ zeal for German ‘self-determination’ elsewhere and the impact this was having on the self-confidence of local Nazis in South Tyrol. In order ⁷³ For a proposal by French Minister of Justice, Paul Reynaud, for the annexation of the Sudetenland plus population exchanges, see Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, ser. D, ii: Germany and Czechoslovakia, 1937–38 (1950), no. 152, Ambassador in France to the Foreign Ministry, 11 May 1938, 266–7. For similar suggestion made by Hitler to Chamberlain, see Documents on British Foreign Policy (henceforth, DBFP), 3rd ser., ii: 1938, eds E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler (1949), no. 928, Record of Anglo–French conversations, 18 Sep. 1938, 76. For a Czech scheme involving the cession of overwhelmingly German and strategically unimportant border districts accompanied by mass transfers from other areas, see D. Brandes, ‘Eine verspätete tschechische Alternative zum Münchener ‘‘Diktat’’: Edvard Beneš und die sudetendeutsche Frage, 1938–1945’, VfZ 42/2 (1994), 225. British Labour leaders suggested to Chamberlain a voluntary exchange over existing frontiers. See British Library of Political and Economic Science (BLPES), Dalton MS Diaries, xix, 17 Sep. 1938; also proposal by Herbert Morrison to London Labour Party Youth, in ‘An Exchange of Population’, The Times, 19 Sep. 1938. ⁷⁴ For provision under Article 7 for a voluntary ‘transfer of population’, see DBFP, 3rd ser., ii, no. 1224, UK Delegation to Halifax, 30 Sep. 1938, 628. For the British welcoming the tidying up of the post–Munich ethnographical map, see FO371/22992, C2378/19/18, Prague to FO, 25 Feb. 1939. For Germany and Czechoslovakia blocking the right of option, see J. W. Brügel, Tschechen und Deutsche, i: 1918–38 (Munich, 1967), 505–6. ⁷⁵ For the origins of and negotiations surrounding the Italo–German agreement, see A. Toynbee and V. Toynbee (eds), The Eve of War, 1939 (1958), 284–90; D. Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, 1919–1946 (Oxford, 1969), 239–254; K. Stuhlpfarrer, Umsiedlung Südtirol 1939–40, i (Vienna, 1985), 30–117.

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to diffuse this explosive issue Berlin agreed to an Italian proposal in January 1939 that a solution to the problem be found on the basis of a population transfer. A basic agreement was reached on 23 June 1939 but was not made public for more than three weeks. Rumours were soon circulating that the entire German-speaking population of the South Tyrol was to be deported to southern Italy or to Italian possessions in Africa.⁷⁶ There was also confusion between the Germans and Italians over whether they had agreed to the transfer of the entire German-speaking population of the South Tyrol or of Reich Germans only. In public, the voluntary, orderly and gradual nature of transfer was emphasized, as was the Lausanne precedent. Virginio Gayda, a notorious irredentist and anti-Semite, pointed out that foreign critics of the Axis ‘h[ad] evidently forgotten that the transfers en masse of populations was celebrated by the democracies as a wise act of peace in the case of the Greco-Turkish exchange of populations’.⁷⁷ Italian radio also mentioned how just ‘as Greece and Turkey in 1932 [sic] solved one of Europe’s knottiest post-war minority problems by transplanting 1.4 million people back to their native soil, so the Axis has solved the South Tyrolean problem with yet greater statesmanship and foresight’.⁷⁸ In the wake of the German-Italian agreement, considerable play was made of how cynically the self-proclaimed protector of Deutschtum had abandoned the vaunted principle of self-determination for German minorities in order to fortify the Pact of Steel.⁷⁹ Behind the scenes, however, British officials were impressed by the audacity of this ‘very formidable undertaking’.⁸⁰ There was also an interest in and a general approval of the principle upon which it was based. As a member of the Foreign Office Southern Department noted: In many ways such a transfer is an eminently sensible way of settling an awkward frontier question and the precedent might be usefully followed elsewhere. In itself the idea of moving the South Tyrolese to Austria has much to commend it, though one may legitimately fear that the method used by the authorities to compel a reluctant people would be unduly harsh.⁸¹ ⁷⁶ See FO371/23809, R5450/57/22, Hutton minute, 3 Jul. 1939. ⁷⁷ Quoted in FO371/23809, R5807/57/22, Rome to FO, 15 Jul. 1939. ⁷⁸ Quoted in Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 53. ⁷⁹ See E. Wiskemann, Undeclared War (1939), 174–6; R. Seton-Watson, From Munich to Danzig, 3rd edn. (1939), 264–6. FO371/23809, R5537/57/22, Sargent minute, 10 Jul. 1939; R5967/57/22, Draft statement on Tyrol [Jul. 1939]. ⁸⁰ FO371/23809, R5450/57/22, Noble minute, 3 Jul. 1939. ⁸¹ FO371/23809, R5562/57/22, Noble minute, 11 Jul. 1939.

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Winston Churchill, still a disaffected backbencher, expressed similar sentiments in the Daily Mirror: The migration or exchange of populations is not in itself a process necessarily to be excluded from efforts to procure European tranquillity. Where hostile races are hopelessly and equally intermingled, where no boundary can be delimited, a sorting-out movement may produce good results. Certainly the exchange of several [sic] millions of Turks and Greeks was skilfully accomplished in Thrace and Asia, and has had the best results in the after-relations of the two countries. But the population of the Tyrol is preponderantly German-speaking; and the object in this case is not a peaceful settlement of Europe, but a military and strategic step designed to further the waging of a great war by the two Axis Powers.⁸²

There was, as such, nothing wrong with the transfer in principle. It was objectionable only because of who was carrying it out and for what ends. And, although a cynical volte-face on Hitler’s part, it did suggest that he might consider solutions short of outright territorial annexation where German minorities were concerned. Given the compact nature of German settlement in the South Tyrol, it was the one place where frontier revision might have made sense. Hitler’s preference for a transfer of population instead of a transfer of territory encouraged onlookers to believe that a so-called ‘South Tyrol solution’ might appease Nazi Germany’s grievances over Danzig, the ‘Corridor’ and the alleged mistreatment of the German minority in Poland, or at least call its bluff when the principle of self-determination was next invoked in support of territorial concessions. Interwar Poland was not only far from being an ethnically homogenous nation-state, but was also a long way from being a stable and contented one.⁸³ It had a ‘Jewish Question’, a ‘Ukrainian Question’, a ‘German Question’, as well as a ‘Corridor Question’. Its answer to this shower of ‘Questions’, however, was either to ignore them or, worse, to throw at them, as one scholar has put it, ‘the whole sterile paraphernalia of discriminatory devices [ . . . ] : skewed census tabulation, boycott numerus clausus, colonization, biased land reform, prejudicial tax assessment, and violence’.⁸⁴ The treatment of minorities was one area where Poland was particularly vulnerable to outside criticism. Ironically, given ⁸² FO371/23809, R6031/57/22, ‘What of South Tyrol?’, encl. in Hill to Ingram, 24 Jul. 1939. ⁸³ According to official statistics (1931), minorities made up around one–third of Poland’s population. See J. Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (Seattle, 1974), 36. ⁸⁴ Ibid. 45.

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that their alleged mistreatment would become the pretext for hostilities that would lead to the outbreak of the Second World War, the small German population were in the most advantageous position of all of Poland’s minorities, enjoying an enhanced socio-economic position and the protection of a neighbouring nation-state neither of which could be said of the larger Jewish or Ukrainian minorities. It was Göring who first raised the possibility of a German–Polish exchange of minorities during discussions with the Polish ambassador in Berlin in 1938, when the two countries were still on friendly terms.⁸⁵ In the altered atmosphere following the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, it was very much an after-thought. As a solution short of territorial annexation, however, it had much to commend itself to proponents of the measure as equal numbers lived on either side of the German-Polish frontier and the numbers involved were, theoretically, manageable. Before July 1939, however, the British Foreign Office showed no sign of having considered it as an option in negotiations.⁸⁶ By spring 1939, the idea was nevertheless already doing the rounds in diplomatic and journalistic circles in London.⁸⁷ The agreement over the South Tyrol, as well as the rapid deterioration of German-Polish relations in August propelled the idea of a population exchange forward.⁸⁸ These suggestions took two forms. The first was a basic ‘South Tyrol solution’, which would have involved maintaining the territorial status quo with possibly an exchange of populations rather than just a unilateral transfer of Germans. The second was a more ambitious proposal, involving an exchange of population and territory, with Poland receiving East Prussia or parts of it in return for Danzig/the Corridor. In neither instance was compulsion openly mentioned. By mid-August 1939, the Foreign Office was inquiring tentatively of its vice-consul in Upper Silesia whether population exchange might offer a localized solution to German–Polish minority problems.⁸⁹ ⁸⁵ Lipski–Göring conversations of 24 Aug. and 16 Sep. 1938, in J. Lipksi, Diplomat in Berlin 1933–1939: Papers and Memoirs of Józef Lipski, Ambassador of Poland, ed. W. Je¸drzejewicz (New York, 1968), 386, 404–5. ⁸⁶ See FO371/23809, R5899/57/22, Notes for parliamentary question, 14 Jul. 1939. ⁸⁷ G. Bilainkin, Poland’s Destiny (1939), 160. ⁸⁸ Parliamentary questions from Marquess of Clydesdale and Archibald Sinclair, in Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 349, cols. 1785–6 (10 Jul. 1939); vol. 350, col. 377 (19 Jul. 1939). Letters on ‘Transfer of Population(s)’, ‘Danzig’ and ‘Polish and German Minorities’ in The Times, 27 Jul., 7, 11–12, 14, 18, 29 Aug. 1939. See also E. Wrench, I Loved Germany (1940), 250–1; C. Hatry, Light Out of Darkness (1939), 132–43. ⁸⁹ FO371/23026, C11649/54/18, Makins minute, 18 Aug. 1939.

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It was during the last frenzied efforts to avert war that a proposal for a German–Polish population exchange suddenly and very briefly gained diplomatic prominence. The initiative seems to have originated with Sir Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin. When Henderson visited the Reich Chancellery on 25 August 1939, Hitler entered into a long harangue about border ‘provocations’ and the ill-treatment of the German minority in Poland. ‘Germany was determined’, he said, ‘to abolish these Macedonian conditions on her eastern frontier.’⁹⁰ Henderson replied in general terms that the nationality problem in Europe had indeed become acute, adding that exchanges of population were ‘a very useful solution’ in this respect and that he could well understand why ‘certain countries’ had carried them out.⁹¹ Henderson was evidently manoeuvring towards a specific question. Did the Chancellor himself have in mind an exchange of populations in the German–Polish borderlands as in the Tyrol? Hitler gave no definite answer, nor would he be drawn into elaborating on the subject.⁹² Hitler’s reticence did not deter either Henderson or his French colleague, Robert Coulondre, from pursuing the matter. They both felt that a Polish proposal for a population exchange, which they believed fitted in principle with Hitler’s own views, might provide a basis for kick-starting German-Polish negotiations.⁹³ To this end, and without consulting London first, Henderson immediately pressed upon his Polish counterpart, Józef Lipski, the importance of meeting the German Foreign Minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, in order ‘to propose as the sole method of terminating minority disputes an exchange of populations on the same but much easier lines as in South Tyrol’.⁹⁴ On 26 August, the British Cabinet concluded that a population exchange ⁹⁰ DBFP, 3rd ser., vii: 1939, eds E. L. Woodward and R. Butler (1954), no. 283, Henderson to Halifax, 25 Aug. 1939, 227–9. ⁹¹ FO371/23027, C12274/54/18, Henderson to Strang, 26 Aug. 1939; Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, The French Yellow Book (1940) [hereafter, FYB], no. 259, Corbin to Bonnet, 26 Aug. 1939, 279. ⁹² FYB, no. 246, Coulondre to Bonnet, 26 Aug. 1939, 271; Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Official Documents concerning Polish-German and Polish-Soviet Relations, 1933–39 [The Polish White Book] (New York, 1940), no. 92, Minute of Count Szembek’s conversation with M. Noël, 26 Aug. 1939, 102. Accounts of the meeting indicate that Hitler ‘gave no definite answer’ or ‘replied neither yes nor no’, despite what is claimed in D. C. Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (1991), 503. ⁹³ FYB, no. 246. ⁹⁴ DBFP, 3rd ser., vii, no. 293, Henderson to FO, 25 Aug. 1939, 239.

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would be as good a platform as any to start negotiations.⁹⁵ The British ambassador in Warsaw, Sir Howard Kennard, was instructed to approach the Polish foreign ministry.⁹⁶ On 27 August 1939, Colonel Józef Beck, the Polish foreign minister, informed Kennard that he had no objection in principle to such a proposal if made through a third party.⁹⁷ Two days later, the Gazeta Polska, the Polish government organ, hinted that a ‘progressive exchange’ of populations might be a solution to Berlin’s grievances over the German minority in Poland.⁹⁸ Hitler, of course, had not the slightest intention of accepting a population exchange, ‘progressive’ or otherwise, as a substitute for territorial revision. He wanted a settlement on the lines of the Sudetenland, not of the South Tyrol, and on his own terms. The Poles, on the other hand, and it would seem the British and French also, were working on the assumption that an exchange of populations would safeguard rather than alter the territorial status quo.⁹⁹ The two approaches were, therefore, completely incompatible; a point recognized from the outset by Charles Corbin, the French ambassador in London.¹⁰⁰ Yet Hitler continued to string Henderson along right up until the outbreak of war. When asked on 29 August, this time directly, if he would consider a population exchange as a basis for the settlement of the minorities question, Hitler told Henderson that it was ‘a formula that might be found favourable’.¹⁰¹ Henderson knew that Hitler envisioned frontier rectification in connection with any population exchange,¹⁰² and continued to urge London that ‘genuine peace in [the] future between Poland and her powerful neighbour’ would only be secured if those German grievances which were ‘not of Hitler’s making but national’ ⁹⁵ PRO CAB 23/100, Cab 43 (39), 26 Aug. 1939. ⁹⁶ DBFP, 3rd ser., vii, no. 335, Halifax to Kennard, 26 Aug. 1939, 331. French activity can be followed in FYB, nos. 246, 248–9, 252, 257–9, 278, 285 and 287; also Documents Diplomatiques Franc¸ais 1932–1939 [henceforth, DDF ], 2nd ser., xix (Paris, 1986), nos. 13, 71–2. ⁹⁷ DBFP, 3rd ser., vii, no. 372, Kennard to FO, 27 Aug. 1939, 301; DDF, 2nd ser., xix, no. 71, Noël to Bonnet, 27 Aug. 1939, 75. For Polish reaction to proposal, see FYB, nos. 246, 252, 258; Polish White Book, no. 92; CAB 23/100, Cab 43 (39), 26 Aug. 1939. ⁹⁸ ‘Tension Increasing in Warsaw’, The Times, 30 Aug. 1939. ⁹⁹ See FYB, no. 252, Noël to Bonnet, 26 Aug. 1939, 273–4. ¹⁰⁰ DBFP, 3rd ser., vii, no. 353, Halifax to Phipps, 26 Aug. 1939, 289. ¹⁰¹ FYB, no. 287, Coulondre to Bonnet, 29 Aug. 1939, 296; O. Harvey, The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey 1937–1940, ed. J. Harvey (1970), 309. ¹⁰² DBFP, 3rd ser., vii, no. 455, Henderson to Halifax, 29 Aug. 1939, 353.

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were eliminated.¹⁰³ Henderson argued that Danzig be returned to Germany and the ‘German minority in Poland [ . . . ] got rid of by some exchange of populations. On no other basis can there ever be genuine and lasting peace between the two countries.’¹⁰⁴ The historian Lewis Namier, writing in 1948, dismissed the proposal for a German–Polish population exchange as ‘a wild-goose chase [ . . . ] carried on by serious men on no better clue than a vague remark of Henderson’s’.¹⁰⁵ There is indeed a faint whiff of Munich about Henderson’s position. As observers like Namier recognized at the time, as well as after the fact, the issue of Danzig and the treatment of Germans in Poland was a pretext, and a blatant one at that. What Hitler wanted with Poland by this stage was the war that he had been denied with Czechoslovakia. In so far as he was interested in population transfers, these only extended to unilateral ones imposed on Poland which would strengthen Germany’s territorial claims to areas with mixed populations. Only days before his 25 August meeting with Henderson, Hitler had told German generals that ‘Poland w[ould] be depopulated and settled with Germans’.¹⁰⁶ Transfers were therefore slated to play a role in the Hitlerian ‘New Order’ once Poland was defeated, partitioned and occupied, but not in a way that either the Polish or the western European allies had imagined or wanted. But, irrespective of Hitler’s ultimate motives, the proposal for a population exchange did have some tactical value at the time. As Kennard told Beck when he first broached the issue, a Polish offer of a population exchange, even if it came to nothing, would at least show the world that the Polish government remained open to a reasonable compromise.¹⁰⁷ Moreover, it was a guaranteed means of calling Hitler’s bluff and exposing the naked territorial ambitions that lay behind Germany’s grievances over minorities.¹⁰⁸ Henderson’s was not the only localized British initiative of its kind in late 1939. British legations in Romania and Bulgaria proposed similar solutions for the Southern Dobrudja and the Turkish minority in Bulgaria.¹⁰⁹ In both cases, British officials were searching for a quick ¹⁰³ DBFP, 3rd ser., vii, no. 537, Henderson to Halifax, 30 Aug. 1939, 409. ¹⁰⁴ Ibid. ¹⁰⁵ L. Namier, Diplomatic Prelude, 1938–1939 (1948), 333. ¹⁰⁶ FO800/270, 39/85, Hitler’s speech to Chief Commanders, 22 Aug. 1939. ¹⁰⁷ DBFP, 3rd ser., vii, no. 372, Kennard to Halifax, 27 Aug. 1939, 301–2. ¹⁰⁸ See points in editorial ‘Herr Hitler and Poland’, The Times, 29 Aug. 1939. ¹⁰⁹ FO371/23724, R10049/126/7, Brown minute, 14 Nov. 1939. FO371/23732, R11551/1118/7, Rendel to Halifax, 7 Dec. 1939.

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solution to a seemingly intractable minority problem between two nonbelligerents whose neutrality or sympathy towards the Allied cause was wavering. The Southern Dobrudja proposal, which would have handed back to Bulgaria territory lost to Romania in 1913 with a population exchange across the new frontier, was still being canvassed well into 1940 thanks to the enthusiasm which Sir Reginald Hoare, the British representative in Bucharest, had for the idea.¹¹⁰ Just as in Poland, however, tentative proposals were soon overtaken by events on the ground. The Soviet annexation of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia in summer 1940, as well as the German-imposed territorial settlement on Romania through the Vienna Award and the Craiova Treaty of August and September 1940, applied a brutal logic to the minority problems of eastern Europe, which made pre-war British proposals appear in retrospect wholly academic and, above all, timid. Although by September 1939 the British government was nowhere near advocating a comprehensive reshuffling of European minorities through population transfer, it is nevertheless remarkable how far attitudes to population transfer had travelled since the widespread condemnation of the Lausanne Convention in 1923. By 1939, population transfer had become, to all intents and purposes, the choice of last resort. As Europe lurched from one crisis to the next, and the avenues for peaceful resolution narrowed, population transfer arose with increasing frequency as a possible solution to what seemed to be the most pressing issue of the time—the minorities question. Even if distinctions were rarely, if ever, drawn between voluntary and compulsory transfer, and little thought was given to practical details involved, the idea that transfer could, in principle, have desirable political outcomes had taken root. When within weeks of the outbreak of war the British government published a selection of the diplomatic correspondence relating to the outbreak of hostilities, it included documents on the exchange of populations initiative of late August.¹¹¹ It was an indication that even if political commentators of a liberal outlook such as Bernard ¹¹⁰ Experts consulted thought the idea had no chance of working. See FO898/148, Memorandum on Dobrogea [sic], 10 Oct. 1939; Lockhart to Seton-Watson, 24 Oct. 1939; Memorandum on Possible Transfers of Population between Bulgaria and Roumania, 5 Dec. 1939; Lockhart to Nichols, 5 Dec. 1939. ¹¹¹ Great Britain, Foreign Office, Documents Concerning German–Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities Between Great Britain and Germany on September 3, 1939 [‘British War Blue Book’], Cmd. 6106 (1939), 124–5. Published 21 Sep. 1939. See also The Government Blue Book (1939), a Penguin Special published Oct. 1939.

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Newman were embarrassed at recommending population transfer as a solution to European minority problems, the British government were not. The widening of the European war and the German assault on the ethnographic balance of central and eastern Europe would soon see British opinion shift yet further away from the protection of minorities to their elimination. Population transfer, as Newman had predicted, was about to become ‘a matter of European politics’.

2 ‘Not a Difference of Principle, but a Difference of Emphasis’ Wartime Studies on Population Transfer, 1940–1945

Prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939 the notion of a European population transfer was just that: an idea which, though increasingly attractive in principle, was untried and untested in practice. By the end of the Second World War population transfers had been carried out throughout Nazi-occupied Europe and there was a clear intention among the Allies to build on this precedent and deal comprehensively with the so-called menace of German minorities. Although acceptance of the principle of population transfer, especially when applied to German populations, was widespread—almost universal—there was nevertheless a growing awareness in Britain of the risks involved, especially when the numbers affected ran into the millions rather than hundreds of thousands. As war drew to a close, and the international postwar settlement took shape, serious misgivings about mass transfers of population and territory were expressed both in official circles and the public domain, foreshadowing the subsequent response to the expulsions from Poland and Czechoslovakia and the German refugee crisis of late 1945. Within weeks of the outbreak of the Second World War, it was clear that Nazi Germany intended to deal with German minorities in a radically different manner from the interwar period. Emboldened by the lightning victory over Poland, Hitler told a specially convened session of the Reichstag on 6 October 1939: The most important task is a new order of ethnographical relations which means a resettlement of nationalities that will finally provide for the development of better lines of demarcation than is the case today [ . . . ] The whole of east and

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south-eastern Europe is to some extent filled with splinters of German nationality which cannot be maintained. Here lies a reason and a cause of continuing international tension. In an age of nationalism and racial concepts it is utopian to believe that it is possible to assimilate the members of a superior people easily. It is therefore one of the tasks of a far-seeing order of European life to carry out resettlements so as to remove at least one of the sources of conflict in Europe.¹

A decree signed the following day called back to the Reich all ethnic Germans threatened with ‘de-Germanization’.² Over the next eighteen months, around half a million Germans were brought heim ins Reich under a series of bilateral treaties providing for their ‘voluntary repatriation’.³ By January 1944, more than 750,000 ethnic Germans had been transferred.⁴ With the exception of the Banat, Transylvania and Slovakia, no corner of eastern Europe was left untouched.⁵ Even the tiny German population of Bulgaria was uprooted.⁶ The transfers served a dual purpose. On the one hand, they removed potential sources of discord with Germany’s eastern European satellites and allies, in the case of the Soviet Union helping to cement the August 1939 non-aggression pact and partition of eastern Europe. Furthermore, they formed part of a wide-ranging and brutal ethnic restructuring in the German–Polish borderlands that sought to overwhelmingly and permanently tip the demographic balance in Germany’s favour by ‘rais[ing] a wall of blood and human beings against the Slav world’.⁷ By 1 March 1940, according to Polish sources, 720,000 non-Germans had been deported from the so-called ‘incorporated eastern territories’ (Eingegliederte Ostgebiete) annexed by the Third Reich—a figure which had more than doubled by the end of the year.⁸ These deportations were ¹ D. Loeber (ed.), Diktierte Option: Die Umsiedlung der Deutsch-Balten aus Estland und Lettland 1939–1941, 2nd edn (Neumünster, 1974), 79–81. My translation. ² See 7 Oct. 1939 decree in Koehl, RKFDV, 247–9. ³ A. Bramwell, ‘The Resettlement of Ethnic Germans, 1939–41’, in id. (ed.), Refugees in the Age of Total War, 122–3. ⁴ Koehl, RKFDV, 254. ⁵ See Stuhlpfarrer, Umsiedlung Südtirol, i, 140–54; S. Döring, Die Umsiedlung der Wolhyniendeutschen in den Jahren 1939 bis 1940 (Frankfurt/Main, 2001), 67–71, 86–136; J. von Hehn, Die Umsiedlung der baltischen Deutschen (Marburg, 1982), 75–116. ⁶ A. Bohmann, Menschen und Grenzen, ii: Bevölkerung und Nationalitäten in Südosteuropa (Köln, 1969), 349–51. ⁷ W. Benz, ‘Der Generalplan Ost’, in id. (ed.), Vertreibung, 45–7. Quote is from FO371/24471, C2318/116/55, article in Politiken, 4 Feb. 1940, encl. in Copenhagen to FO, 6 Feb. 1940. ⁸ Polish Ministry of Information, The German New Order in Poland (1941), 200.

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carried out in the midst of winter, often with no warning. Deportees were transported in sealed wagons for up to a week with little or no food and dumped in the Government-General to scrape out an existence.⁹ The welfare and security of ethnic Germans ‘voluntarily’ transferred to the ‘incorporated eastern territories’, on the other hand, were looked after by Nazi agencies at every stage, right up to the handing over of keys to a formerly Polish-occupied city-centre flat in ‘Gotenhafen’ (Gdynia) or a farm plot in the Wartheland.¹⁰ Administrative pressures, as well as fear, however, compelled many Germans to ‘opt’ for the Reich. For Baltic Germans, faced with the prospect of imminent Bolshevization, the ‘choice’ was a particularly stark one. Fear of abandonment, as much as a fervour for the Reich, convinced many of the wisdom of leaving.¹¹ Yet significant numbers of them did choose to remain,¹² as did just under one-third of South Tyrolese Germans.¹³ In south-eastern Europe, the distinct lack of enthusiasm to go heim ins Reich in some areas bordered on panic.¹⁴ To the outside world, the first wave of transfers between 1939 and 1940 seemed well-organized and efficient, if brutal and high-handed.¹⁵ They were, as the CBS correspondent in Berlin, William Shirer, noted, ‘the greatest organized mass migration since the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey’.¹⁶ More significantly, Hitler appeared to be establishing a precedent. Being the first of their kind outside of the former Ottoman Empire, as well as involving what were regarded as the most troublesome of Europe’s national minorities, these movements of population suggested that mass transfers under relatively orderly conditions were possible without causing serious economic disruption or undue hardship to those transferred. Ethnic Germans seemed willing ⁹ Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Polish White Book (New York, 1941), 23–5. ¹⁰ Accounts of transfer in Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 255–363; Koehl, RKFDV, 89–110; Hehn, Umsiedlung, 117–35; Stuhlpfarrer, Umsiedlung Südtirol, 426–708. ¹¹ FO371/23610, N5099/5099/59, Collier minutes, 10 Oct. 1939; J. Hampden Jackson, The Baltic (Oxford, 1940), 28; Hehn, Umsiedlung, 96–101. ¹² J. Maier-Hultschin, ‘Hitler’s Success Among the Germans Outside the Reich’, CR 185 ( Jul. 1940), 78. ¹³ Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 58–9. ¹⁴ FO371/25035, R505/505/92, Memorandum on German and Hungarian Minorities [in Yugoslavia], 29 Nov. 1939; FO371/24429, C4668/1967/21, C. A. Macartney, ‘Report on Hungary’, Mar. 1940; W. Benn, ‘Impressions of a Balkan Journey’, CR 157 (May 1940), 530. ¹⁵ Even judges at the Eichmann trial (1961) referred to ‘an organized migration of peoples’ undertaken during winter 1939–40. See H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, rev. edn (1965), 217. ¹⁶ W. Shirer, Berlin Diary 1934–41 (1970), 223.

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to be transplanted, especially if they felt threatened in their country of origin. In initiating this process, Reich Germans seemed prepared to incorporate their co-nationals within their frontiers, so that once Germany was defeated there could therefore be no objection to the Allies completing this process, either on the grounds of principle, since the Germans had begun the process, or of practicality, because the Germans had shown that it was not impossible to carry out. ‘Hitler has burnt his boats’, a British observer commented in March 1940: ‘He is daily establishing precedents which cannot be forgotten when the reckoning comes.’¹⁷ Such reflections were still largely academic in 1940. The ‘reckoning’ was a long way off and other factors that came to determine the fate of German populations in east-central Europe in 1945, and Britain’s part in it, were yet to come into play. This chapter discusses the impact of the Second World War on British thinking on population transfer in general, and on a transfer of Germans in particular. Its main focus is on the specific debate within Britain on population transfer. As a consequence, a different set of questions are posed to those normally found in conventional diplomatic narratives which concentrate on Great Power diplomacy and exile politics. Although diplomatic developments are covered at the outset, these serve more as background for developing the framework of the British debate within and outside of official circles. What is of interest here is how the state of informed opinion across the political spectrum on the issue of population transfer developed as the war progressed. In order to look at this, four case studies have been chosen. Three of these involve national organizations which examined the question of population transfer: the Foreign Research and Press Service (FRPS), the League of Nations Union (LNU) and the Labour Party. The fourth is a close reading of a key wartime statement made in the House of Commons by Winston Churchill, and the debate in Parliament, in print and in Whitehall surrounding it. What emerges from these case studies is a more nuanced view of what constituted ‘British opinion’ on this subject, which has important implications for understanding reactions to the postwar refugee crisis in Germany. Before examining these wartime case studies, however, it is necessary to consider the diplomatic background and realities against which the domestic debate occurred. Any outline of the main factors that had a bearing on the fate of German minorities in east-central Europe after the war must begin ¹⁷ S. Gwynn, ‘Ebb and Flow’, Fortnightly, 153 (Mar. 1940), 320.

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with the attitude of Czechs and Poles, in exile and under occupation, towards the prospect of again harbouring German minorities in their midst—minorities who were perceived as having assisted in the destruction of interwar Czechoslovakia and Poland. The brutality of Nazi occupation policies, in which the involvement of German minorities was often conspicuous and from which they seemed to benefit disproportionately, ensured that a return to the status quo ante was impossible and prepared the ‘psychological ground’ for postwar measures far more radical than anything that had been entertained in the late 1930s. A further dimension was added as a result of demands, articulated from an early date, by the Polish government-in-exile (London Poles) for a revision of the pre-war German-Polish frontier, primarily in order to eliminate the problem of the ‘Polish Corridor’. Polish claims on strategic and economic grounds to Danzig, (German) Upper Silesia and East Prussia, all areas with sizeable German populations, raised the obvious question of how these Germans, who would automatically become minorities, would be disposed of.¹⁸ The Soviet Union’s entry into the war in June 1941, however, was the decisive factor in determining the scope as well as the fulfilment of wartime proposals regarding German minorities. Soviet designs on pre-war Polish territory had far-reaching consequences for the postwar settlement in east-central Europe by giving rise to the notion of ‘territorial compensation’ for Poland in the west, at Germany’s expense, in exchange for the loss of territory east of the so-called ‘Curzon Line’ to the Soviet Union. As the war drew to a close and the Great Powers urgently sought a solution to the ‘Polish Question’, compensation was extended further westwards and northwards, far beyond Poland’s initial strategic demands, to cover ever-greater swathes of overwhelmingly German-populated territory.¹⁹ Indeed, the more intransigent the ¹⁸ For Polish strategic demands, see S. M. Terry, ‘The Oder-Neisse Line Revisited: Sikorski’s Program for Poland’s Postwar Western Boundary, 1939–42’, East Central Europe, 5/1 (1978), 39–78. See also remarks by Polish exiles in Dalton MS Diaries, xi, 18 Sep., 18 Nov. 1941; FO371/23131, C19288/27/55, Leeper to Strang, 25 Nov. 1939; FO371/24479, C986/986/55, Kennard to Strang, 15 Jan. 1940; E. Raczy´nski, In Allied London (1962), 45. ¹⁹ The literature on the twists and turns of the ‘Polish Question’ is exhaustive. A. Polonsky (ed.), The Great Powers and the Polish Question 1941–45: A Documentary Study in Cold War Origins (1976) offers a concise introductory essay and a good selection of British documents. More specifically, see J. Foschepoth, ‘Grossbritannien, die Sowjetunion und die Westverschiebung Polens’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 34 (1983), 61–90.

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London Poles were over the eastern territories, the more German territory was offered as compensation. The proposed westward shift of Poland’s frontiers again raised the question of what would be done with unwanted German populations, as well as with Poles in the east. Territorial compensation, which arose directly out of the Soviet Union’s designs on pre-war Polish territory, therefore helped create a minority problem where none had previously existed. The Soviet Union, however, could be relied on to back radical solutions to minority problems, having enthusiastically cooperated with Nazi Germany’s ethnic restructuring of eastern Europe and having extensively used mass deportations to weaken or destroy politically unreliable national groups within its own frontiers. An ethnically homogeneous bloc of nation-states in eastern Europe, moreover, meshed in well with the aim of creating a security belt composed of states with governments that were loyal or favourably disposed towards Moscow: the post-Versailles cordon sanitaire turned on its head. Ethnic homogeneity offered the prospect of state viability and regional political stability, legitimacy for Communist parties that identified themselves with exclusivist nationalism, and reliance on Moscow for policing the new ethnographic and territorial settlement.²⁰ For British policy-makers, the single, overarching war aim was the complete and decisive defeat of Germany, for which the unity of the anti-Nazi coalition, and with it the Soviet Union’s massive military contribution, was paramount. As long as the war lasted, all other considerations were secondary. British postwar or peace aims were equally single-minded. Germany was to be prevented from ever waging war again. In order to ensure this, the postwar settlement with Germany had to be permanent, enforceable and command the long-term support of the British public, a large and influential section of which had rejected the last peace. The British wartime approach to postwar territorial adjustments and the future of German minorities was shaped by these not always mutually compatible war and peace aims. The previous interwar system of minority protection was generally regarded as having been a curse, particularly where German minorities were involved, and as a consequence states like Poland and Czechoslovakia were to be as ²⁰ See Soviet memorandum, 10 Jan. 1944 on postwar aims, in Volokitina et al. (eds), Sovetskii faktor, 23–42. For the British perception of Soviet strategy in eastern Europe, see M. Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 1940–45 (Basingstoke, 2000), 76–115; also G. Ross, ‘FO Attitudes to the Soviet Union, 1941–45’, JCH 16/3 (1981), 521–40. For wartime treatment of Soviet minorities, see Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 85–107.

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ethnically homogeneous as possible. Yet it was also recognized that while this goal of ethnic homogeneity was in itself desirable, the measures taken to achieve it should not create difficulties that outweighed its political and strategic advantages.²¹ It was, in part, with British sensibilities in mind that Czech and Polish wartime proposals for dealing with German minorities were self-consciously framed as ‘population transfers’. The Greco-Turkish exchange, as well as Hitler’s recall of Germans, were cited as precedents for the desirability and feasibility of a mass transfer of Germans. The Czechs became the most dogmatic of transfer advocates, particularly President Beneˇs, who in a series of wartime speeches, articles and informal briefings attempted to lay out the moral, legal and strategic case for ‘radically and finally’ solving the minorities problem.²² By comparison, Polish transfer plans were considerably less meticulous, partly owing to the uncertainty over its frontiers.²³ Whitehall initially refused to enter into discussions or give any guarantees on frontiers and minorities. With the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, however, the British position became more flexible and by renouncing the Munich Agreement in August 1942 Britain made an implicit postwar territorial commitment. In July 1942, Beneˇs, after persistent approaches to the Foreign Office on the issue, was informed that the Cabinet approved of ‘the general principle of a transfer to Germany of German minorities in Central and South-Eastern Europe after the war in cases where this seemed necessary or desirable’.²⁴ This vague statement had not been followed by anything more concrete by the time that the war ended, despite Czech attempts to draw the British into giving a more ²¹ For British postwar planning, see L. Kettenacker, Krieg zur Friedenssicherung: Die Deutschlandplanung der britischen Regierung während des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1989); V. Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 1941–47 (1982), 21–193. ²² See Beneˇs’s own account in Memoirs of Dr Eduard Benes: From Munich to New War and New Victory, trans. G. Lias (1954), 210–23. Important wartime publications by Beneˇs on minorities include: ‘The New Order in Europe’, NCAA 130 (Sep. 1941), 150–5; ‘The Organization of Postwar Europe’, Foreign Affairs, 20/2 ( Jan. 1942), 226–42; cf. RIIA/8/785, Beneˇs’s talk at Chatham House, 1 Jan. 1942. For the development of Beneˇs’s thinking on the transfer of Germans, see Brandes, ‘ ‘‘Eine verspätete tschechische Alternative’’ ’, 221–41. ²³ See, for example, The Polish Ministry of Preparatory Work Concerning the Peace Conference, Information Notes No. 6: The German Minority in Poland and the Problem of Transfer of Population [1945], 21–4. For further details on Polish planning, see Brandes, Weg zur Vertreibung, 333–63. ²⁴ FO371/30835, C6788/326/12, Extract from Cab 86 (42), 6 Jul. 1942; Hancock minute, 8 Jul. 1945; C7307/326/12, Nichols to Roberts, 22 Jul. 1942, Roberts to Nichols, 4 Aug. 1942; CAB195/1, W.M.(42) 86th Meeting, 6 Jul. 1942.

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definite commitment. Pledges to the Poles were, on the other hand, more unequivocal, if only because transfer served as a sweetener to the bitter pill of territorial compensation. At the Teheran Conference in November 1943, territorial compensation ‘up to the line of the Oder’ accompanied by mass transfer was endorsed by both the British and Soviets. The London Poles were offered a resumption of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and political guarantees in return for agreeing to these territorial arrangements. Throughout 1944, this deal, which became known as the ‘Teheran Formula’, was the subject of highlevel discussions with the principal aim of securing the endorsement of the London Poles. In February 1944 in the House of Commons, Churchill committed Britain to supporting the westward extension of Poland at Germany’s expense. As to what would be done with the Germans therein, Churchill gave the answer, again to the Commons, in December 1944: they would be thrown out. Following the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Britain ended the war committed to a substantial, though still undefined, westward territorial expansion of Poland and the complete removal of the Germans therein.

T R A N S F E R A N D T H E AC A D E M I C S : T H E F O R E I G N R E S E A RC H A N D P R E S S S E RV I C E A N D P O P U L AT I O N T R A N S F E R , 1 9 4 0 – 1 9 4 2 ‘Peace Plans, War Aims, Declarations of Rights, Denunciation of Wrongs, are piling up in the pigeon-holes of under-secretaries and paper baskets of sub-editors,’ complained a disgruntled British political commentator in May 1940.²⁵ Less than a year into the war and Britain was already awash with proposals concerning the international postwar settlement. Whether these should now be seen as the products of idle minds during the so-called ‘Bore War’ or a wise response to the adage ‘better to be too soon rather than too late’,²⁶ they reflected, as was pointed out at the time, the confident assumption that Britain would not only win the war but that it should also win the peace.²⁷ This interest in ‘peace aims’ continued, fluctuating with the fortunes ²⁵ G. Young, ‘Federalism’, CR 157 (May 1940), 513. ²⁶ Viscount Cecil, ‘What We Are Fighting For’, CR 158 (Dec. 1940), 601. ²⁷ H. Harvey, ‘War-time Research in Great Britain on International Problems of Reconstruction’, Agenda, 1/1 (1942), 164–6.

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of war. Contributions varied from ephemeral pamphlets, ‘news-letters’ and journalism to more substantial studies by private organizations promoting policy as well as by bodies engaged in pure research. These studies were often undertaken parallel to Whitehall’s own investigations and, as in all fields of activity in wartime Britain, the distinction between government or official bodies and independent institutions was often blurred. The official status of the results of wartime studies was therefore sometimes hazy, especially if the work was undertaken by quasi-governmental bodies. Such was the nature of the first organization that investigated population transfer during wartime. Its work is worth examining in detail not only for the insights it gives into thinking on the subject during the early stages of the war but also because it highlights basic continuities in British approaches to population transfer. Set up at the outbreak of war in order to prepare reviews of the foreign press and serve as an information service for government departments, the FRPS, based at Balliol College, Oxford, drew extensively on the resources and personnel of the RIIA to support a permanent staff of over 100, most of whom were academics.²⁸ In early 1940, the Foreign Office asked the FRPS to prepare a paper examining whether population transfer on a case by case basis was ‘desirable, workable and durable’. The Foreign Office wanted only ‘the facts’ from which it would draw its own conclusions as to the merits of population transfer. It did not ask for policy recommendations; it did not want moral judgements.²⁹ The academic selected to write the report—John Mabbott, a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford—was, by his own admission, an odd choice, having no expertise either in minority problems or in central and eastern European affairs.³⁰ Over the next four years, however, Mabbott helped prepare several studies that dealt with the question of population transfer, as a result of which he became, almost by default, and very much behind the scenes, perhaps the foremost authority on the subject in Britain.³¹ ²⁸ FO371/25234, W9465/110/50, PID memorandum on FRPS, 11 Aug. 1940; C. Brewin, ‘Arnold Toynbee and Chatham House’, in Bosco and Navari (eds), Chatham House, 146–9. ²⁹ RIIA/20/11, Note on a meeting held to consider Mr J. D. Mabbott’s paper on the Transplantation of Minorities, 20 May 1940. ³⁰ RIIA/20/11, J. Mabbott’s CV, 20 Jun. 1940; J. Mabbott, Oxford Memories (Oxford, 1986), 97. ³¹ These included three reports (1940, 1942 and 1944) on population transfer for FRPS and its successor, the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD); two reports (1942) on confederations in central and eastern Europe for FRPS dealing extensively

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Taking Hitler’s October 1939 Reichstag speech as his cue, Mabbott ‘accept[ed] the challenge to apply the method of transfer to the minority problems which affect the peace of Europe’.³² He divided future ‘transfers by imposition’ into three categories, the ‘most important’ of which, where ‘considerable use of transfer will be necessary in any case’, concerned the German populations of Poland and Czechoslovakia exclusively. Objections to compulsory transfer ‘on grounds of injustice and inhumanity’ would carry little weight as far as German minorities were concerned since no other country would ‘forfeit so completely as Germany has done their claim to consideration on ethnic and humanitarian grounds’. Mabbott therefore proceeded on the assumption that the principle of compulsion was sound in the German case. What instead needed to be considered were its practical implications: whether transfers of territory and population ‘would create permanent and irreparable resentment in Germany, and if so whether she can be so weakened at the end of the war that the new frontier can be held against her for several generations’. Mabbott outlined three scenarios for the German–Polish borderlands. The first restored Poland to its pre-1939 frontiers, with Danzig as a Free City or part of Germany. The transfer of 825,0000 Germans under this arrangement was ‘neither impossible nor unprecedented’, as the flight of a similar number of Germans from western Poland during the 1920s had shown. The second granted Poland its ‘maximum ethnic claim’, including Allenstein and Upper Silesia up to the Oder. This would involve the transfer of two million Germans and would present Germany with serious absorption problems. The third gave Poland all this plus East Prussia and Danzig, thereby eliminating at a stroke ‘the Corridor’ problem. This was likely to be Poland’s actual demand. However, it was ‘a desperate measure’: the numbers to be transferred (4.5 million) were equivalent to the whole population of Scotland and triple that involved in the Greco-Turkish exchange; ‘a full Expeditionary with transfers; an unpublished book (1941) on national minorities; and a talk (1941) on the postwar minority problem at the RIIA. Mabbott was also involved in drafting the preliminary report on minorities for the League of Nations Union discussed later in this chapter. ³² For what follows, see School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University College London (UCL), Seton-Watson papers, SEW/13/1/1, Mabbott, ‘Transfer of Minorities’, 14 May 1940. This version of the report, which contains several typographical errors and is not the final agreed draft, is reproduced in J. Rychlík, ‘Memorandum britského královského institutu mezinárodních vztah˚u o transferu národnostních menˇsin ˇ z r.1940’, Ceský ˇcasopis historický, 91 (1993), 612–31.

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Force’ would be needed to oversee it; the German economy would have to be completely restructured in order to accommodate the influx; and above all, Mabbott warned, ‘it would be such a blow to Germany that unless she were completely partitioned or reduced to impotence for a long period after the war, it would greatly increase the chances of war of revenge’. Czechoslovakia was simpler by comparison. Assuming that the Munich Agreement would be annulled, limited frontier rectification would be possible in areas which were strategically unimportant for Czechoslovakia and where the population was overwhelmingly German-speaking. Even so, two million Germans would still remain in Czechoslovakia. As in Poland, the flight of part of the German population offered a solution of sorts. A compulsory transfer would therefore only serve to ‘complete and regularize’ this and might even ‘save the fleeing Germans from some of the natural consequences of their methods in Prague’. Other factors, however, militated against wholesale transfer. First, there were strong economic arguments for retaining skilled Sudeten German workers. This, of course, would not resolve the problem of reconciling Sudeten Germans to their status as a minority in a Czechoslovak state. Either they would have to be granted self-government or Germany would have to be so weakened as to render the threat of pan-Germanism impotent. Second, mass transfer would be ‘a permanent wound to German pride and honour’. Even the best of frontiers would not protect Czechoslovakia from German revanchism. It was unlikely, therefore, that transfer would contribute to lasting peace and be no more than of ‘doubtful benefit’ to Czechoslovakia. Whether the German minority remained or not, Czechoslovakia’s security and independence vis-à-vis Germany could only be guaranteed by strong forces of collective security. As a strategic issue, transfer was therefore irrelevant. The report was discussed by an FRPS committee of academic specialists, or ‘team of stars’ as Mabbott dubbed them.³³ Judging from what several of them had already published, it would appear that, as far as population transfer was concerned, they were a long way from being ³³ Mabbott, Oxford Memories, 92. The FRPS committee consisted of the following (with specialization): Arnold Toynbee, Research Professor at the RIIA and Director of the FRPS (Asia Minor/Greece); Shiela Grant Duff (Czechoslovakia); John Hawgood (Germany); Robert Laffan (Yugoslavia); C. A. Macartney (Hungary); David Mitrany (SE Europe); Herbert Paton (Poland/Baltic States); Robert Seton-Watson (SE Europe); and Sir John Hope Simpson (Refugees).

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enthusiastic exponents of the measure.³⁴ Arnold Toynbee, Director of the FRPS, alone considered the ‘reshuffling of populations’, as he called it, ‘a precedent to which the utmost attention ought to be given’; but he was referring to the 1913–14 voluntary population exchanges in the Balkans and writing at the height of the Greco-Turkish crisis in 1922.³⁵ However, it was not the task of the committee to debate the principle of population transfer or its merits. What the Foreign Office wanted were the ‘facts’, not opinions, and as a result the committee’s deliberations reveal little of substance beyond arcane points of detail on how many Timocs, Vlachs or Pomaks lay on which side of a given frontier. Yet a couple of points of interest did emerge from discussions on the report,³⁶ which, it should be said, was well received and underwent only minor revision.³⁷ There were inevitably differences over the question of how Germany should be treated, while there was agreement that transfer on strategic grounds was a secondary issue in Czechoslovakia. As Robert Seton-Watson pointed out, in any case ‘no well-informed Czechs believed the complete transfer of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia was either possible or desirable’.³⁸ One member of the committee, however, was unhappy with the report from the outset. C. A. Macartney was ‘strongly in disagreement with the whole principle of transfer’ and felt that neither the difficulties it entailed had been sufficiently emphasized nor had alternative solutions been outlined.³⁹ Macartney circulated a rival report in which he dismissed population transfer as ‘the present fashionable panacea for all difficulties connected with national minorities’.⁴⁰ He saw three reasons for it being à la mode: ‘the impatience of long-term, careful work and the ³⁴ Macartney, Nation States, 430–49; D. Mitrany, Effect of the War in Southeastern Europe (New Haven, 1936), 248–54; R. Seton-Watson, Britain and the Dictators: Survey of Post-War British Policy (1938), 335. ³⁵ A. Toynbee, Western Question, 2nd edn. (1923), 141. ³⁶ RIIA/20/11, [First] meeting on Transplantation of Minorities, 20 May 1940; RIIA/20/11, Second session of adjourned meeting, 21 May 1940; SEW/13/1/1, Third session of adjourned meeting, 24 May 1940; SEW/13/1/1, [Fourth] meeting on Transfer of Populations, 1 Jun. 1940. ³⁷ SEW/13/1/1, Mabbott, ‘Transfer of Minorities’ [revised draft], 29 May 1940; SEW/13/1/1, Unsigned copy marked ‘Secret’, ‘Transfer of Minorities’[final draft], 29 May 1940. ³⁸ RIIA/20/11, Second session, 21 May 1940. ³⁹ Ibid. ⁴⁰ For what follows, see Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Macartney papers, MS. Eng. c. 3281, fos 169–83, Macartney [with marginal comments by Mabbott and suggested modifications by Toynbee], ‘Transfer of Populations’, Apr. 1940; cf. SEW/13/1/1, Macartney, ‘The Transfer of Populations as a Solution of Minority Problems’[Annex to Mabbott’s report], 29 May 1940.

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preference for speedy and specious action generally characteristic of our age’; a general lack of patience with minority problems and a ‘despair’ at finding alternative solutions; and the fact that the responsibility for decisions was passing to those of ‘mediocre intelligence and imperfect education’. Population transfer was but one possible solution to the minorities problem and definitely ‘a last resort, a desperate remedy’. What Macartney termed ‘unilateral transfers’, such as the movement of Germans from the South Tyrol, were ‘simpler and less objectionable’ than other alternatives on offer and with mutual consent it was even possible that an operation of this sort might contribute to ‘political pacification’ between two countries. Consent, however, was not always so clearly given, by either one or more of the states or the minorities concerned. Yet while Macartney concluded that exchange was ‘a very difficult and delicate weapon to handle’ and that the cases in which it could be advantageously employed were ‘very limited’, he did not reject it out of hand. There were instances ‘theoretically conceivable and practically not wholly absent in which it would be advantageous’. Macartney was even willing to countenance compulsion, which he otherwise considered ‘barbarous’ and acceptable only to those who subscribed to ‘the twin principles of Volkstum and Führertum’. Compulsion, Macartney admitted, was justified as ‘a last resort [ . . . ] if a certain State finds its minority quite intolerably disloyal and constantly used as a catspaw [sic] by the neighbouring State’. That this was an allusion to the pre-war German minorities of Poland and Czechoslovakia is clear, and is even more revealing coming as it does from such a strong opponent of population transfer. That these reports and the FRPS discussions, with their detached abstractions on the minority problem in Europe, were undertaken in May and June 1940 when the victory on which they were predicated looked distinctly remote, gives them a rather bizarre quality. That by all indications Mabbott’s report never reached the in-tray of even the most junior Foreign Office official, and therefore disappeared unread like so many of the multitude of briefing papers drawn up for the Foreign Office during the war, only adds to the other-worldliness of the exercise. While on no account should Mabbott’s report be taken as an statement or clear indication of official British policy at the time, other than what a ‘Professor’s Peace’ might look like,⁴¹ the FRPS’s research is not without significance when considering wartime discussions on ⁴¹ The phrase is from Dalton MS Diaries, xxiv, 18 Jun. 1941.

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population transfer, especially since it was the first major British study on the subject carried out under official auspices. On a general level, it can be taken as an indication of the British propensity to plan for the postwar settlement, and to begin planning early, unlike in the 1914–18 war; and that within postwar planning, population transfer was already being considered, as early as 1940, as a possible option. More specifically, the FRPS’s research gives an insight into three basic assumptions concerning a future transfer of Germans from both the perspective of 1940 and from an ‘expert’ or academic viewpoint, against which later studies can be compared. First, it was inevitable that some transfers of German population would have to be undertaken at the end of the war. Second, it was recognized, even by those strongly opposed on principle to compulsion, that such transfers would be necessary as a policy of ‘last resort’. And, third, if transfers of German populations on strategic grounds, however, were to have a lasting contribution to peace in Europe they would have to be limited in scope. Population transfer again came under the scrutiny of the ‘experts’ in 1942. A British delegation returned from Moscow in December 1941 convinced that the Soviets had made far greater strides towards deciding what they wanted from the postwar territorial settlement in Europe. The FRPS was therefore asked to prepare a series of background papers on European frontiers, including one on ‘lessons to be learnt from past exchanges of populations, particularly the Greco-Turkish exchange and the forced removal of populations by the Germans in the Baltic States and in territory now occupied by Germany’.⁴² The three papers prepared by FRPS—two on European frontiers,⁴³ which included substantial sections on population transfer, and one specifically on the transfer of German populations⁴⁴—were in large part a reworking of the 1940 investigation. This was to be expected given that Mabbott was again the rapporteur for the reports. But in a number of key respects they were different. If, by 1942, the broad outlines of what a postwar transfer of German populations might look like were far clearer than two years before, ⁴² FO371/32481, W335/81/49, Ronald minute, 2 Jan. 1942. ⁴³ FO371/30930, C2167/241/18, ‘Frontiers of European Confederations’, 20 Feb. 1942 [henceforth, FRPS Frontiers Report 1942]; FO371/31500, U420/61/72, ‘Confederations in Eastern Europe’ [revised version of FRPS Frontiers Report 1942], 1 Sep. 1942 [henceforth, FRPS Confederations Report 1942]. ⁴⁴ FO371/30930, C2167/241/18, ‘The Transfer of German Populations’, 13 Feb. 1942 [henceforth, FRPS Transfer Report 1942].

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then so, too, were the immense difficulties that it would entail. Planning was by now based on the eventuality that anywhere between three and 6.8 million Germans would be transferred, dependent as always on what territories Germany would lose as well as on the attitude of the Czechoslovak and Polish governments.⁴⁵ In this respect, the Czech position was still unclear.⁴⁶ It was ‘by no means certain’ that the Czechoslovak government would insist on a wholesale transfer.⁴⁷ Were they to do so, it would certainly represent ‘a violent and brutal expedient’ and would be economically short-sighted.⁴⁸ Transferring populations from East Prussia, Danzig and Upper Silesia, areas to which the Polish government-in-exile had now put forward claims, ‘would involve an operation unprecedented in history’.⁴⁹ Despite claims to the contrary, there were no parallels with previous transfers and evidence from previous transfers was ‘irrelevant’.⁵⁰ If there were any lessons to be learnt from previous transfers then they simply underlined how unprecedented what was being envisioned was in all aspects of the problem: the attitude of the governments concerned; selection; movement; settlement of transferees; and resettlement of vacated territories. Conditions that would prevail in postwar Germany alone would be unparalleled. Its economy would be ‘shattered’, its administrative machinery ‘largely makeshift’ and ‘unprecedented difficulties may arise from [ . . . ] non-cooperation’.⁵¹ While in 1940 the experts were not given the opportunity to consider population transfer on its merits, in 1942 they were. But those involved in preparing the reports, stopped short of advocating population transfer. The ‘balancing’ of the arguments for and against a mass transfer of Germans involved ‘a decision of policy so difficult and so serious’ that they considered ‘‘advocacy’’ ‘to be out of place’.⁵² In the absence of advocacy, however, they left an altogether different impression, one of caution that in itself represented a warning to pursue this policy with the utmost caution. This message was being put forward forcefully by Mabbott and other FRPS experts elsewhere. In a general ⁴⁵ FRPS Transfer Report 1942. ⁴⁶ For doubts among Czech exiles about population transfer, see BLPES, Mitrany papers, Human Rights/Minorities/Folder 6: Transfer of population, [Note on] Dr [Jaroslav] Stránský [Czech Minister of Justice] at FRPS, 11 Nov. 1942; FO371/30835, ˇ Osuský [Czech Minister of State], C9161/326/12, Nichols to Roberts, 21 Sep. 1942; S. ‘Czechoslovakia To-Morrow’, New Commonwealth Review, 7/2 (Oct. 1941), 92–3. ⁴⁷ FRPS Frontiers Report 1942. ⁴⁸ FRPS Confederations Report 1942. ⁴⁹ FRPS Transfer Report 1942. ⁵⁰ FO371/30930, C2167/241/18, Mabbott to Ronald, 25 Feb. 1942. ⁵¹ FRPS Transfer Report 1942. ⁵² FRPS Frontiers Report 1942.

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study of the minorities problem, commissioned independently by the RIIA and completed in June 1941, Mabbott argued that, however wellorganized population transfer might be, it was ‘fundamentally cruel and inhuman’. What seemed an ‘apparently simple method of eliminating a minority problem’ was in fact a ‘desperate remedy’, not to be taken up ‘light-heartedly’, and ‘ought not to be adopted at all unless a minority problem is so dangerous internationally or so hopelessly embittered as to make any reasonable solution impossible’.⁵³ This view was echoed by Sir John Hope Simpson, former Vice-President of the League of Nations Refugee Settlement Commission in Athens from 1926 and 1930, who had also sat on the 1940 FRPS transfer committee. In an article published in the Spectator at the end of 1941, he challenged ‘the facile assumption that the correct solution of the problem of minorities lies in wholesale exchange’. The ‘substantial success’ of the Greco-Turkish exchange, which had nevertheless involved ‘an appalling amount of misery and hardship’, was a result of ‘unique circumstances’ which could ‘only be found in the rarest of cases’. The German minorities and wartime colonists of east-central Europe were not one of them. In the case of German minorities, there was no use pretending that an orderly and gradual transfer of population could be carried out. Drawing a clear distinction between transfer and other means of forcibly removing populations, he claimed that ‘here there can be no question of exchange, optional or compulsory’, he argued. ‘The most drastic method [ . . . ] of expulsion’ would instead occur.⁵⁴ Further evidence of the experts’ scepticism is provided by an episode that occurred prior to a visit of Lord Halifax, the British ambassador to Washington and a former Foreign Secretary, to Oxford in July 1942. Halifax was due to have consultations with FRPS in order to acquaint himself with current thinking on the postwar settlement.⁵⁵ A group of FRPS members met before his arrival to consider a statement for the upcoming discussions. The draft before them suggested that Germany cede not only East Prussia, Danzig and Upper Silesia to Poland, but also Lower Silesia. The following exchange took place once members discovered that the annexation of Lower Silesia was on the agenda: Mitrany: That was a tall order. After such a loss of territory, how could Germany absorb those 5 1/2 million people, in addition to those likely to come ⁵³ RIIA/20/11a, Mabbott, ‘National Minorities’, 2–5. ⁵⁴ Sir J. H. Simpson, ‘The Exchange of Minorities’, Spectator, 5 Dec. 1941. ⁵⁵ FO371/31500, U276/61/72, Toynbee to Jebb, 9 Jul. 1942.

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from elsewhere? [ . . . ] He could not remember ever heard it suggested, even by Poles, that Lower Silesia be given to them [ . . . ] Macartney: The document speaks of leaving Germany within the Versailles frontiers—this is the Versailles frontier moved 50 miles westwards. Marshall: [an FRPS specialist on Germany] felt that it was an impossible suggestion. Mitrany: British opinion will hardly stand for such an idea. Toynbee: They will have to face it—it is important strategically. Bourdillon: [a former member of the Upper Silesian Commission and secretary of the RIIA] The Polish Committee [of FRPS] have never discussed such a proposal, and no one has thought of putting it forward. Macartney: He had never heard of it, though the Committee had had sixty meetings. Mitrany: How then could we include such an idea when, apart from opinion outside, our own experts, who were not afraid of facing issues, had never discussed it or entertained it, though they had held sixty meetings. Toynbee: Then they must discuss it at their sixty-first meeting. (After some further general discussion) Toynbee: Then we are agreed that it stays in? Mitrany: We are certainly not agreed, when even the two members of the Polish Committee present [Bourdillon and Macartney] object to it. Toynbee: Then I rule that it stays in.⁵⁶

The reference to Lower Silesia remained.⁵⁷ This episode, a record of which, alone among the many FRPS meetings of the time, Mitrany chose to preserve a copy of, is highly illustrative not least of Toynbee’s overbearing, dictatorial manner. The contrast with the 1940 discussions, when Toynbee suggested ceding territory to Germany, is interesting.⁵⁸ Even more revealing, however, is the reaction of the FRPS members. It is the incredulity and hostility with which they greeted this proposal that is significant. Transfers of territory and population on such a scale were unthinkable at this stage. What emerges from the studies undertaken by FRPS between 1940 and 1942 is not that the ‘experts’ were opposed to the principle of population transfer per se. They agreed that where it produced lasting and permanent results it might be desirable as a policy of ‘last resort’ if no other alternative existed. To some extent, it was even inevitable, as ⁵⁶ Mitrany papers, Mixed Bags/German Problem 1945 onwards, L. Silesia and Lord Halifax, 27 Jun. 1942. ⁵⁷ FO371/31500, U276/61/72, Speakers’ notes for discussion with Lord Halifax, 29 Jun. 1942. ⁵⁸ RIIA/20/11, Second session, 21 May 1940.

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in the case of pre-war German minorities and wartime colonists. It was its general application to Europe’s minority problems and its extensive use in the German case that they were sceptical of. This scepticism led them to strike a note of caution by pointing out that talk of historical precedents was largely irrelevant and that the risks involved in mass transfer, not to mention its technical difficulties, were huge. This in turn created a feeling of exasperation at the failure within political circles to take these realities into account. Mabbott told a meeting at Chatham House in September 1941: Everywhere I go I find that there is a general belief that transfer is the right solution for minority problems [ . . . ] There is no doubt the Poles will urge it [ . . . ] Benes in a recent speech [ . . . ] commended it [ . . . ] In this country it is known to have wide and influential support [ . . . ] It is hard to feel sure that the difficulties of transfer have been vividly realized by the people who now speak as if transfer were a simple and straightforward solution.⁵⁹

Mabbott, like others who had studied population transfer before him, was pointing to the crucial difference between transfer in principle and transfer in practice. If officials in Whitehall had yet to show themselves to be conscious of this distinction, it was because to date they had paid scant attention to the question of population transfer. Once they began their own investigations from late 1943 onwards, it was a distinction that was fully grasped, with all its implications for the territorial settlement in east-central Europe, thanks in part to the earlier research and sceptical assessments of the ‘experts’ on which Whitehall’s studies were based.

T R A N S F E R A N D T H E L I B E R A L S : T H E L E AG U E O F N AT I O N S U N I O N A N D ‘ T H E M I N O R I T I E S P RO B L E M ’ , 1 9 4 1 – 1 9 4 2 According to FRPS, there was ‘no settled British opinion’ on transfers of population in 1942. ‘The traditional liberal view [is] that transfer is barbarous [ . . . ] and would be contrary to the Atlantic Charter’, the brief for Halifax’s visit had stated.⁶⁰ Had Halifax been interested in gauging exactly what ‘the traditional liberal view’ was, he need have ⁵⁹ RIIA/8/760, Mabbott, ‘The Effect of the War on the Minority Situation in Europe’, Chatham House, 30 Sep. 1941. ⁶⁰ FO371/31500, U276/61/72, Speakers’ notes, 29 Jun. 1942.

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looked no further than at work then being undertaken by the League of Nations Union (LNU), the national association established in 1919 to popularize the newly-founded international authority and a body closely linked with liberal internationalism.⁶¹ A once genuinely influential body with a mass membership in the millions, the LNU, like its namesake in Geneva, was largely moribund by 1941, and had become, in the words of one of its leading activists, ‘as fine a monument as Stonehenge’.⁶² The LNU did, however, keep its machinery running throughout the war. In November 1939, it approved a short statement of policy which reaffirmed the principles which had governed the League of Nations in the interwar period, including the commitment to the protection of ‘racial, religious and linguistic minorities’.⁶³ A special committee was then established in 1941 to draw up a report on the minorities question with a view to publication. The work of the LNU’s Minorities Committee can be divided into two stages: the preliminary work of a ‘committee of experts’ which submitted a technical draft report on minority protection; and, from February 1942, a ‘lay committee’ which framed a far more straightforward and non-technical statement. From the outset, however, it was clear that its remit would be broader than simply revising the League of Nations’ apparatus for minority jurisdiction. The LNU Executive suggested that in addition the ‘transference or exchange of populations on a large [scale] should be considered’.⁶⁴ Given that population transfer came to figure so centrally in the work of the Minorities Committee, and in the discussion of its report in the Executive Committee and General Council of the LNU, it is worth considering its investigations in closer detail. The passage of ‘The Minorities Problem’ through the LNU provides valuable insights into prevailing attitudes towards population transfer at a relatively early stage in the war, which in turn require the FRPS’s generalization about ‘the traditional liberal view’ to be qualified. Among the dozen individuals who were initially consulted,⁶⁵ a consensus emerged that some form of minority protection would be needed ⁶¹ D. Birn, The League of Nations Union, 1918–1945 (Oxford, 1981), 2. ⁶² Dugdale MS Diaries (in private possession), 16 Jan. 1941. ⁶³ Birn, League, 202; LNU, World Settlement After the War (1939; rev. edn, Jan. 1941). ⁶⁴ NBKR 4/506, Meeting of the LNU Executive Committee, 20 Feb. 1941. ⁶⁵ Kathleen Courtney was chairperson. Minorities Sub-Committee members and individuals consulted at this stage included: Prof. Selig Brodetsky; Dr Hilda Clark; Lord Dickinson; Blanche Dugdale; Mabbott; Macartney; Peter Matthews; Gilbert Murray; Sir Walter Napier; Prof. Herbert Paton; and Freda White.

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at the end of the war, preferably through a system of revised treaties based on the interwar model.⁶⁶ There was agreement that there was only one group for which a strong case for population transfer could be made. German wartime ‘colonists’—ethnic Germans from the Baltic States and elsewhere who had been resettled in occupied territories—would have to be removed immediately at the end of the war, primarily for reasons of justice and partly for their own safety. At this stage, however, the Minorities Committee showed little enthusiasm for transfer as a general solution to the minority problem, and none whatsoever for the compulsory principle. Its ruthlessness as well as the widespread human suffering that it would entail were mentioned repeatedly, as were the far-reaching economic and logistical complications involved. The goal of creating a ‘clean Europe’ of ethnically homogenous states through mass transfer, quite apart from being undesirable on ideological grounds, was considered to be impractical and unsustainable. Wherever it was possible, frontier rectification was recommended as a way of reducing the number of minorities. The Committee concluded that ‘in view of the human suffering involved and the economic difficulties of the process, [it] was opposed to the adoption of transfer of populations as a general solution to minority problems, except in special cases [German colonists] or as a last resort’.⁶⁷ When the Minorities Committee report came before the Executive in November 1941 it was not well received. The Executive was terrified that it would cause ‘tremendous controversy’ among exile groups in Britain by placing so much emphasis on the minority jurisdiction of the League.⁶⁸ The Executive agreed ‘that if it were possible to get rid of minorities altogether by an exchange or transfer of populations without undue hardship, [it] would be desirable’ and therefore wanted ‘the reasons why transfer cannot provide the only solution of the problem ⁶⁶ For what follows, see BLPES, LNU archives, LNU 5/45, Meeting of the SubCommittee on Minority Questions [henceforth, MSC], 15 May 1941; Meeting of the MSC, 16 Jun. 1941; S891, Statement of the MSC, 23 Jun. 1941; S880, Answers (Brodetsky), 13 Jun. 1941; S864, Answers (Mabbott), 19 May 1941; S872, Answers (Murray), 28 May 1941; S879, Answers (Napier), 12 Jun. 1941; S877, Notes (Clark and Courtney), 9 Jun. 1941. ⁶⁷ LNU 2/19, S940, Draft Report on Minorities [amended], 27 Nov. 1941. Only two members of the MSC put forward the case for population transfer with any conviction: Blanche Dugdale, a committed Zionist; and Peter Matthews, a young academic. See LNU 5/45, Meeting of MSC, 27 Oct. 1941; S878, Note on protection of minorities (Matthews), 9 Jun. 1941; Dugdale MS Diary, 27 Oct. 1941, 29 Jan. 1942 ⁶⁸ LNU 2/19, Meeting of the Executive Committee, 4 Dec. 1941.

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[to] be stated rather more fully’,⁶⁹ and ‘by someone who believe[d] in it’.⁷⁰ The Minorities Committee, however, despite the departure from its ranks of the two members most critical of population transfers, still seemed incapable of drumming up much enthusiasm for the measure. ‘There may be some cases where this method could be successfully applied, but they are few and we are convinced that it cannot be regarded as a solution of general application’.⁷¹ The redrafted report that came before the Executive Committee in May 1942 therefore remained heavily weighted against population transfer.⁷² But for the first time the case for it was aired with substantial support and there was considerable disagreement over the wording of the relevant passages.⁷³ There was agreement that where population transfer could be carried out with a minimum of suffering it was ‘a complete solution’, if not a universal one. Differences arose over ‘the extent of its applicability, the degree of cruelty involved in the process and the measure of public advantage which would justify the hardship to individuals’. Those inclined toward a more sanguine view of population transfer pointed out that, if carried out on a voluntary basis, it was not necessarily a cruel solution and that for ‘an unhappy minority [ . . . ] might in fact be a change for the better’. But even if ‘considerable hardship’ were ‘unavoidable’, it would be ‘preferable [ . . . ] to the general suffering resulting from a war caused by the failure to secure an alternative solution to the minorities problem’. The pro-transfer camp argued that transfers ‘although undesirable if they can be avoided [ . . . ] may be worth while, and indeed necessary, if they help to establish a more permanent equilibrium’. As a result of these discussions, the passages on population transfer were radically reworked and expanded, ⁶⁹ LNU 2/19, Meeting of the Executive Committee, 29 Jan. 1942. ⁷⁰ British Library, Cecil papers, Add. MS 51141, fo. 172, Courtney to Cecil, 4 Feb. 1942. ⁷¹ LNU 5/45, S957, ‘The Minority Problem’, 4 Mar. 1942. See also LNU 5/45, Meetings of the M(S)C, 19 Feb., 26 Mar., 30 Apr. 1942; Report of discussion on the draft report on the minorities problem, 26 Mar. 1942; S957a, ‘The Minority Problem’, [Apr. 1942]; Cecil papers, Add. MS 51141, fo. 145, ‘Minorities’, 23 Feb. 1942. Mabbott and Macartney, who were both transfer sceptics and were largely responsible for the first draft of the report, were ordered by FRPS to resign from the Minorities Committee in February 1942. See Bodleian Library, Oxford University, MS Gilbert Murray 239, fo. 79, Courtney to Murray, 11 Feb. 1942; Cecil papers, Add. MS 51141, fo. 174, Courtney to Cecil, 17 Feb. 1942. ⁷² LNU 5/45, S957b, ‘The Minority Problem’, 5 May 1942. ⁷³ For what follows, see LNU 2/19, Meetings of the Executive Committee, 7 May, 21 May 1942; Amendments to Minority Report, [May 1942].

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with the case in favour of population transfer given full parity with the case against. When Lord Lytton, a former Governor of Bengal and chairman of the League’s failed mission to Manchuria, presented the final report on ‘The Minorities Problem’ to the General Council of the LNU in June 1942,⁷⁴ he dwelt on the divisions that had arisen over population transfer. ‘I have no doubt that in the Council itself a similar difference of opinion exists’.⁷⁵ Whether the rank and file of the LNU would also have agreed to disagree on population transfer is a matter of speculation. With the exception of one intervention from the rostrum, during which transfer was denounced as ‘a despotic solution’,⁷⁶ there was no discussion of the report in the Council, which was not even asked to endorse the report right away. It was instead referred initially to LNU branches for discussion and, if necessary, amendment. Though on the agenda at the subsequent Council meeting six months later, the report was not mentioned.⁷⁷ This might be taken as signifying approval of the report in general and of its presentation of the case for and against transfer in particular. It could also be interpreted as reflecting lack of interest. However, the debate within the LNU in 1944 and 1945 over frontier rectification, the Atlantic Charter and population transfer showed that this division of opinion persisted, and even intensified, as the war progressed.⁷⁸ The failure of the LNU to follow up on ‘The Minorities Problem’ could also have resulted, therefore, from the leadership’s understandable desire to brush aside a divisive issue in what was already a weakened organization. As with FRPS studies, a sense of perspective is needed when evaluating the LNU’s work on minorities. The organization was not a power in the land. It reflected the views of an increasingly narrow interest group. In striving for a general, simple exposition of the minority question, the report was woefully short on specifics. There was, crucially, no mention of frontiers or discussion of geopolitical factors. Above all, a cloud of uncertainty about the shape of the postwar world hung over the whole exercise. This only added to the impression of wooliness that pervaded ⁷⁴ LNU 5/45, The Minorities Problem [1942]. ⁷⁵ LNU 1/10a, 23rd Annual Meeting of the General Council, 19 Jun. 1942. ⁷⁶ Ibid. ⁷⁷ LNU 2/19, Agenda of the General Council, 19–21 Nov. 1942. ⁷⁸ See the meetings of the Executive Committee, including miscellaneous memoranda and correspondence of Germany’s eastern frontier, for the period between 20 January 1944 and 22 February 1945 in LNU 2/20. See also Headway, the LNU’s official publication, between February and August 1944.

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the whole report. That said, the LNU’s investigation of the minorities problem does provide interesting insights into British attitudes towards the question of population transfer during the early stages of the war, despite and, in fact, because of the particular angle from which the LNU approached the problem. First, it shows that outside official circles population transfer was being considered closely in connection with the minorities question as a possible—in the case of German colonists inevitable—and in certain respects desirable solution to the problem; and that there was an awareness of the basic issues involved which were being disseminated among a politically-informed public. Second, it highlights how in another organization differences of opinion existed on how extensively population transfer should be applied, but that, crucially, these revolved around practicality and feasibility, not the fundamental principle of population transfer itself. As Lytton had pointed out to the General Council, ‘it was not a difference of principle, but a difference of emphasis’ that arose over population transfer.⁷⁹ Put differently, it was not a question of whether or not German minorities would have to be transferred, but of how many. That this point of view emerged from an organization that would have been expected to champion non-eliminatory solutions to the minority problem is highly significant. It shows how widely accepted the principle of population transfer already was, even amongst those of a ‘traditional liberal view’, if not how widely it should be applied. When even representatives of the Anglican Church considered ‘transplanting populations’ a method ‘worth consideration’, it is hard not to view the LNU in endorsing the principle of population transfer as merely espousing what was fast becoming conventional wisdom.⁸⁰ T R A N S F E R A N D T H E L E F T: T H E L A B O U R PA RT Y A N D T H E INTERNATIONAL POSTWAR SETTLEMENT, 1943 – 1944 The British Labour Party, in accordance with ‘progressive’ opinion in the interwar years, was officially wedded to the principles of the League of Nations, including international minority protection.⁸¹ Initially, the ⁷⁹ LNU 1/10a, Meeting of the General Council, 19 Jun. 1942. ⁸⁰ W. Matthews, The Foundations of Peace (1942), 82. ⁸¹ See, for example, A. Henderson, Labour’s Foreign Policy (1933), 23–4.

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outbreak of war saw no change in this stance.⁸² But as the war progressed, Labour’s traditional adherence to minority protection was steadily eroded and it soon became possible to hear leading figures in the Labour movement argue in favour of federations and the protection of individual ‘human rights’, while at the same time proposing that Hitler ‘had shown a cure for the minority problem’ in transferring Germans to the Reich.⁸³ By the end of the war, this ‘cure’ had been endorsed by the party and the old remedies abandoned. In December 1944, the Labour Party Conference adopted a recommendation from its National Executive Committee (NEC) that population transfer be applied to the minority problems of Europe and the Middle East. Socialists, therefore, were not immune from the general wartime shift in favour of the principle of population transfer. Nor, as will become evident, were they immune from the divisions of opinion on its practical merits: ‘the difference of emphasis’ that characterized other organizations’ assessments. The Labour Party’s journey away from minority protection towards eliminatory solutions is significant because, like the LNU, it was an organization that might have been expected, on ideological grounds at least, to have supported less drastic measures. Since much of the party’s internal discussion on frontiers, minorities and transfer was related to a specific document, the International Postwar Settlement (IPWS), prepared by the International Sub-Committee of the NEC between 1943 and 1944, it is with the genesis, content and reception of this document that this section is concerned.⁸⁴ When the NEC decided in 1943 to draft a policy document on the postwar international settlement, it turned to its self-styled ‘expert’ on international affairs, Hugh Dalton. A party heavy-weight who was serving as President of the Board of Trade in the coalition government, Dalton had been Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Foreign Office during the 1929–31 Labour minority administration, opposition spokesman on foreign affairs from 1935 and then Minister of Economic Warfare between 1940 and 1942. A particularly duplicitous, cunning ⁸² C. Attlee, ‘The Peace We Are Striving For’, in Labour’s Aims in War and Peace (1940), 106; A. Greenwood, Why We Fight: Labour’s Case (1940), 215–17. ⁸³ Comments by George Gibson, TUC Vice-Chairman, at Chatham House, 29 Jan. 1942, in RIIA 8/793. ⁸⁴ For general discussion of IPWS, see T. Burridge, British Labour and Hitler’s War (1976), 114–24; J. Grantham, ‘Hugh Dalton and the International Post-war Settlement: Labour Party Foreign Policy Formation 1943–44’, Journal of Contemporary History [henceforth, JCH ], 19/4 (1979), 713–29. Both, however, only mention population transfer in passing.

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and vain politician with an overbearing and forceful personality, Dalton subsequently claimed to have almost single-handedly carried IPWS from its inception to its endorsement at Conference. Contemporaries also considered IPWS to be Dalton’s document. Given that IPWS came to represent official Labour policy and that it so recognizably bore Dalton’s imprint, it is impossible to appreciate the significance of the statements contained in the document without first considering the preconceived notions that Dalton brought to the task. This is particularly the case as far as the passages on population transfer are concerned, in connection with which two key components of his thinking are important: his pronounced Germanophobia/Slavophilia; and his pre-war stance on population transfer. Dalton had the reputation for being an ‘extremist’ on Germany.⁸⁵ ‘Hostility to the Germans was a universal feeling in wartime’, his biographer has pointed out. ‘With Dalton, however, there was another element: a fervour, even an obsession’,⁸⁶ which derived from his experiences in the First World War and manifested itself in the Second in a form of ultra-‘Vansittartism’.⁸⁷ The inverse of this antipathy was a passionate identification with Germany’s eastern neighbours which intensified as their sufferings under Nazi occupation increased. Dalton spent considerable time and energy in exile circles, nurturing contacts between Czechs and Poles, over whose relations the shadow of Teschen still hung, as well as helping to build bridges between the British Labour movement and their Polish and Czech counterparts.⁸⁸ He met regularly with General Władysław Sikorski, before the Polish Premier’s untimely death in 1943, and with Beneˇs, for whom Dalton became a self-proclaimed ‘protagonist’ during the Czech President’s 1940–41 wilderness years.⁸⁹ Dalton had always distanced himself from the Germanophilia and revisionism that characterized Labour’s foreign policy for much of ⁸⁵ Burridge, British Labour, 168. ⁸⁶ B. Pimlott, Hugh Dalton (1985), 385. ⁸⁷ A doctrine of ‘extreme and obsessive anti-Germanism’ named after Lord Vansittart (1881–1957), former Permanent Secretary at the FO and author of Black Record: Germans Past and Present (1941). See N. Rose, Vansittart: Study of A Diplomat (1978), 239–65. ⁸⁸ The British Left tended to identify with the Czechs, the Right with the Poles, whom left-wingers continued to regard as ‘semi-fascist’. See R. Lockhart, The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, ii: 1939–1965, ed. K. Young (1980), 89. ⁸⁹ Dalton’s war diaries recount numerous meetings with Czech and Polish exiles, especially in 1940–42 when he was Minister for Economic Warfare with responsibility for the Special Operations Executive. There are also several sentimental references to the honour, dignity and bravery of the Slavs. See Dalton MS Diaries, xxviii, 4 Mar., 22 Jun. 1943; xxx, 20 Mar. 1944.

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the interwar period. A visit to Poland in 1926 convinced him that frontier revision was ‘a false and futile approach’ to minority problems. He considered ‘wholesale transfers of population’ to be the only way ‘perfection’ could be ‘attainable, even approximately’ in areas with mixed nationalities. But at this juncture, he stopped short of recommending this measure. He argued instead that ‘the only practical and wise [ . . . ] policy’ was to ‘take existing frontiers for granted and to aim not towards their revision, but towards their obliteration’.⁹⁰ While paying the same lip-service to progressive opinion in Towards the Peace of Nations, a study of contemporary international relations and a spirited defence of the Versailles territorial settlement published in January 1928, he was more outspoken on transfer as a solution to minority problems. The ‘cumulatively good’ consequences of the Greco-Turkish population exchange which had been ‘successful beyond all expectations’ in bringing lasting peace in the Balkans, led him to argue that: it is difficult [ . . . ] in a continent so full of misfits, to bring population and political frontiers into even an imperfect adjustment in terms of nationalities. But, in the present state of opinion, it is less difficult and more hopeful to seek to organise migrations, so that populations shall be better adjusted to existing frontiers, than to seek to change the frontiers, so as to adjust them better to the existing distribution of population.⁹¹

To have held such a positive view of the consequences of the Lausanne Convention was, by the late 1920s, hardly unusual. Yet these remarks circa 1928 show there was a certain continuity to Dalton’s thinking on population transfer and that his views on the subject were not entirely shaped by the exigencies of the Second World War. Dalton returned to the subject in early 1940 in a Penguin Special, Hitler’s War: Before and After.⁹² He argued that a comprehensive solution to the problem of German minorities would have to be found if German aggression were to be prevented in the future. Concentrated blocs of German and Polish minorities could no longer be allowed to live as islands in a sea of majorities. East Prussia would have to become Polish. But there would be ‘give and take’ on both sides. Dalton referred approvingly to the August 1939 proposal for a German-Polish ⁹⁰ H. Dalton, ‘Some Impressions of Poland’, CR 130 (Nov. 1926), 563–72. ⁹¹ H. Dalton, Towards the Peace of Nations: A Study in International Politics (1928), 35–7, 274–5. ⁹² For what follows, see H. Dalton, Hitler’s War: Before and After (1940), 138–50.

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population exchange and suggested that an ‘organised movement of population’ be carried out at the end of the war under the auspices of ‘an impartial arbitrator’. He saw similar measures in the Sudetenland as ‘an indispensable condition of future tranquillity’. Although in Hitler’s War Dalton went far beyond any official statement that the Labour Party had made, and in proposing the annexation of East Prussia and mass population exchanges exceeded anything a government spokesmen would have dared to say on the subject, his suggestions, when compared to later proposals for dealing with German minorities, seem moderate in retrospect. In private, however, Dalton was considerably less circumspect. Although he had not referred to the question of Poland’s eastern territories in the book, he was already a convinced proponent of territorial compensation. Only a day after the Soviets had invaded eastern Poland, Dalton suggested to Rab Butler, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, that after the war Poland’s eastern frontier might be ‘a good deal further west’, in return for which the Poles should have East Prussia ‘to colonise’.⁹³ A month later, again on the theme of compensation, he found himself agreeing with a Conservative colleague that ‘the transfer of population, now that Hitler had taken it up officially, should be carried much further in any new postwar settlement’.⁹⁴ He also pressed these views on to the Polish leadership, often against its better instincts. In May 1942, Dalton suggested to General Sikorksi that after the war Poland take the ‘whole East Prussian coast and Danzig’. When Sikorski raised doubts about the Soviet proposal to extend Poland’s frontiers even further west to the Oder because of the difficulties absorbing so many Germans would involve, Dalton simply suggested that he ‘drive them out’.⁹⁵ Dalton was, moreover, in the ‘heartiest agreement’ with Beneˇs’s stance on population transfer.⁹⁶ By the time he came to draft IPWS, Dalton’s views on postwar population transfer were therefore firmly established. In May 1943, he reminded Noel-Baker, who also sat on the NEC, that he had ‘long argued [ . . . ] that we should not try to make frontiers fit the perverse distribution of racial populations, assumed to be immobile. The repatriation of the Greek minority from Turkey and, more recent ⁹³ Dalton MS Diaries, xxi, 18 Sep. 1939. ⁹⁴ Dalton MS Diaries, xxi, 12 Oct. 1939. ⁹⁵ H. Dalton, The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1940–45 [henceforth, Dalton Diaries], ed. B. Pimlott (1986), 441 (21 May 1942). ⁹⁶ Dalton MS Diaries, xxix, 26 Aug. 1943.

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and incredibly more brutal, the movements ordered by Hitler, show what can be done’.⁹⁷ By early November 1943, Dalton had completed a draft of IPWS in the form of a conversational memorandum, raw and characteristically plain-spoken; a ‘mind cleaner’ as he called it.⁹⁸ The passages on frontiers and national minorities were quintessentially Daltonesque in tone and phrasing: One of the maladies of the inter-war period was a constant fretting over frontiers, which the Peace Treaties in some measure encouraged by helping keep ‘national minorities’ self-conscious. This time we must seek to discourage all agitations for frontier revision while at the same time making the frontiers themselves less and less important as economic barriers. The German ‘national minorities’ were one of the plagues of Europe in the inter-war period, especially after 1933. This time, the frontiers having been drawn, having regard to geographical and economic convenience, all national minorities should be encouraged to join the national States to which they belong. In particular, all Germans left outside the post-war frontiers of Germany should be encouraged to ‘go home to the Reich’. It will indeed be in their interests to do so, and in good time, for their victims will be on their tracks. Such movements of population will be a small affair compared with the gigantic ‘general post’ which Hitler has set going all over Europe, and to the vast post-war problem of the repatriation of prisoners and exiles. The transfer of population between Turkey and Greece was an outstanding success. This is a precedent to be followed. It settled this question once and for all, with no hang-over. So would it be in other cases. (If two families don’t get on, there is a better chance of peace if they are put to live in separate houses, than if they have to share the same house, the same kitchen and the same lavatory.) Frontiers in Europe or elsewhere must be settled at the Peace Conference in the light of the many conditions which cannot now be exactly foreseen. It would be a mistake for the Labour Party to come out in favour of any programme of out-and-dried boundaries at this stage. But we must seek, when settling the frontiers, to give ‘freedom from fear’ to Germany’s neighbours, e.g. Czechoslovakia and Poland, victims of German menace and encirclement in recent years.⁹⁹

Although Dalton’s support for population transfers is unequivocal, there are several ambiguities and omissions in this passage. The suggestion that German and other national minorities ‘should be encouraged to join the national States to which they belong [emphasis added]’ is ambiguous. ⁹⁷ BLPES, Dalton 7/10, ‘Post-war Aims of the British Labour Party’, encl. in Dalton to Noel-Baker, 18 May 1943. ⁹⁸ Dalton 7/10, Dalton to Noel-Baker, 18 May 1943. ⁹⁹ Dalton 7/10, ‘Post-war Settlement’, 12 Nov. 1943.

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Were these movements of population to be compulsory or voluntary? Although the reference to the ‘outstanding success’ of the Greco-Turkish ‘precedent’ might suggest the former, it remains unclear. The number of Germans who would be involved is also uncertain. In this respect, it is important to note that the references to frontiers are vague and contradictory, perhaps wisely so, given that the Labour leadership did not want to give hostages to fortune, not least to critics in the Party. On the one hand, Dalton argues that frontiers should be drawn on economic and geographic rather than strategic and ethnographic grounds. On the other hand, the reference to Czech and Polish ‘ ‘‘freedom from fear’’ [ . . . ] menace and encirclement’, implies that strategic considerations would indeed have to take precedence when determining Germany’s frontiers. This vagueness and equivocation on frontiers amounted to asking for a carte blanche as far as the numbers involved in future population transfers were concerned. The draft was ‘extremely well-received’ by the International SubCommittee, much to Dalton’s surprise.¹⁰⁰ Most of its members were prepared to endorse the principle of population transfer, which led Dalton to write in his diary: The more I think, and speak, on this point, the more firmly am I persuaded that, amid the immense inevitable movements for repatriation and resettlement of prisoners-of-war, slave labourers and exiles, the deliberate transfer of some few millions of German minorities back behind the new German frontiers would be a relatively small addition to our problem. This, moreover, would be the unique moment for carrying out this movement, and, once it was done, it would take the sting out of Labour agitations for frontier revision.¹⁰¹

The only critic on the NEC was Philip Noel-Baker. While he accepted that population transfers might be ‘desirable’ in some cases, and might even have beneficial political consequences in the long-term, he pointed out that no amount of transfer could make Europe ‘ethnologically perfect’.¹⁰² He warned of ‘the danger of over-interpretation of the Greco-Turkish exchange’, reminding Dalton that its success was based on three factors: that it was ‘a real exchange of populations’ in which ‘very large numbers of people passed in each direction’; that a sizable population of Greeks had remained in Constantinople and ‘if they had been moved, the whole thing would probably have collapsed’; ¹⁰⁰ Dalton Diaries, 672 (16 Nov. 1943). ¹⁰¹ Ibid. 673 (16 Nov. 1943). ¹⁰² For what follows, see BLPES, Fabian J88/4, fos 29–34, ‘Notes on Mr. Dalton’s Outline Sketch by Philip Noel-Baker, M.P.’, undated.

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and that ‘large scale financial help was given by means of foreign loans’. Noel-Baker’s direct experience of the Greco-Turkish exchange, as Nansen’s assistant during the preliminary negotiations in Athens and Ankara at the end of 1922 and then as a League official who visited Greece on several occasions in the mid-1920s, lent a certain credibility to his observations. Noel-Baker implied that these three preconditions for a successful population exchange would not necessarily be in place at the end of the war. The scope for population transfer along Greco-Turkish lines would therefore be limited and, as such, other alternatives would have to be considered. Noel-Baker argued that the reintroduction of a series of revamped Minority Treaties should not be ruled out. While acknowledging that in the interwar period they had been imperfect, he suggested that their deficiencies could be eliminated. Later versions of Dalton’s draft shed much of the provocative language of the original.¹⁰³ Gone was the mention of the ‘plague’ of German minorities. References to frontiers were further watered down. The implicit recognition of Czech and Polish need for strategic frontiers disappeared. Instead reference was made to the hatred which Nazi occupation had generated, the depths of which was difficult either for the British or the Americans to understand and which made the presence of German minorities untenable. The call for Germans to ‘go home to the Reich’ remained, but with the important caveat: ‘unless they prefer to become loyal subjects of the State in which they find themselves’. The essence of the passages on population transfer, however, remained intact. Transfer as a solution to long-standing minority problems would have to be a key component in the postwar settlement. Indeed, conditions in the immediate postwar period would provide a ‘unique’ opportunity to carry these measures out and would form ‘one of the foundations of better international relations in a latter phase’. The International Postwar Settlement was released in late April 1944 and had a mixed reception in the left-wing press.¹⁰⁴ ‘It abdicates socialism for ‘‘racism’’ ’, one paper remarked, ‘and if acted upon spells ¹⁰³ For this paragraph, see later versions of the draft in Dalton 7/10, ‘International Post-war Settlement’, 11 Jan. 1944; Fabian J88/4, fos 10–14, ‘International Post-war Settlement’ [Mar. 1944]. ¹⁰⁴ ‘Transport House in the Jungle’, Tribune, 28 Apr. 1944; ‘Labour’s ‘‘Peace’’ ’, New Leader, 29 Apr. 1944; ‘Labour and Europe’, NSN, 29 Apr. 1944; E. Hughes, ‘Making Germany Pay Again!’, Forward, 20 May 1944.

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certain disaster for British Labour’.¹⁰⁵ Opinion among the non-socialist press was that it ‘swallow[ed] Vansittartism with only a gulp’, contained ‘little [ . . . ] with which a Conservative government might not agree’ and the passages on minorities and population transfer were ‘altogether too light-hearted’.¹⁰⁶ The Labour Party had to wait to deliver its verdict because the Party Conference was postponed from May to December. Dalton would have liked the whole process to have been wrapped up as early as possible, as he feared that otherwise ‘all the silly proGerman factions in the D[istrict] L[abour] P[arties] would [ . . . ] have plenty of time to get their counter-campaign going’.¹⁰⁷ During the long hiatus before the Party Conference this is precisely what happened as alternative proposals for the postwar settlement were put forward by the Labour movement, all of which tackled questions concerning the treatment of Germany, frontiers and population transfer.¹⁰⁸ Their arguments were echoed in the Commons during the major foreign affairs debates of 1944 by a group of Labour MPs who took issue with the government’s statements on the Atlantic Charter, unconditional surrender and territorial compensation for Poland.¹⁰⁹ They also received editorial backing from part of the left-wing press,¹¹⁰ as well as an airing at a series of informal conferences held during 1944.¹¹¹ ¹⁰⁵ ‘We Challenge These Three Men’, New Leader, 27 May 1944. ¹⁰⁶ ‘Labour’s Foreign Policy’, Observer, 30 Apr. 1944; ‘Labour’s Foreign Policy’, The Economist, 29 Apr. 1944; ‘Labour and the Peace’, The Times, 24 Apr. 1944. ¹⁰⁷ Dalton MS Diaries, xxx, 5 Apr. 1944. ¹⁰⁸ In February 1944, Our Settlement With Germany by Noel Brailsford was published as a Penguin Special; see pp. 76–99. See also ‘Reflections on Frontiers’, NSN, 22 Jan. 1944; Fabian J61/7, Summary of private discussions by H. N. Brailsford, 19–20 Feb. 1944; ‘The Peace, the Poles and East Prussia’, Left News, Feb. 1944, 2735–7. In July 1944, the Parliamentary Peace Aims Group of twenty-five Labour MPs published a counterblast ‘to combat the whole spirit’ of Dalton’s document. See Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Stokes papers (RRS), Box 18, Labour and the Post-War Settlement (1944). In November 1944, the Fabian Society published Leonard Woolf, The International Postwar Settlement (1944). See also Charters of the Peace: A Commentary on the Atlantic Charter and the Declarations of Moscow, Cairo and Teheran (1944) by William Arnold-Forster, who sat on the Labour Party’s Advisory Committee on International Affairs. ¹⁰⁹ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 397, cols. 735–41 (22 Feb. 1944), cols. 890–6, 901–2 (23 Feb. 1944); vol. 400, cols. 873–9 (24 May 1944), cols. 1015–17; vol. 401, cols. 1713–14 (12 Jul. 1944); vol. 402, col. 23 (18 Jul. 1944), cols. 1521, 1527–30, 1538–9 (2 Aug. 1944); vol. 403, cols. 629–33 (29 Sep. 1944), cols. 1726–7 (11 Oct. 1944). ¹¹⁰ NSN, 19 Feb., 4 Mar., 25 Mar., 27 Jul., 19 Aug. 1944. Forward, 26 Feb., 29 Apr. 1944. New Leader, 4 Mar., 5 Aug. 1944. Tribune, 21 Jan., 25 Feb. 1944; Socialist Commentary, Feb. 1944, 162–6; Apr. 1944, 202–4; Jun. 1944, 242–6; Sep. 1944, 306. ¹¹¹ The Fabian Society organized a national conference and several local ones around the theme of the ‘International Post-War Settlement’. See Fabian News, 55/9

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The Left viewed Polish claims to the restoration of the pre-war eastern territories as illegitimate. Equally, they had little sympathy for Polish designs in the west and viewed the idea of territorial compensation with horror. Annexation of German territory which, critics argued, Poland had no justifiable ethnographic claim to, would saddle Poland with a ‘heritage of hate’ and, in that customary phrase, ‘sow the seeds of a new war’. The argument that Poland be granted territory at Germany’s expense on strategic grounds was therefore considered to be ultimately self-defeating. Frontiers could not protect Poland from aggression, only economic reform, collective security and German disarmament would. Transferring the predominately German population from these areas would be ‘a gross and stupid injustice’, which would only increase the chances of a war of revenge, as well as lead to ‘economic catastrophe’ in Germany.¹¹² ‘Transfers of population on such a scale will prove to be technically as difficult as they are morally repugnant’, the New Statesman remarked.¹¹³ In some quarters it was acknowledged that there were instances where transfer was necessary and justifiable if carried out with ‘a minimum of hardship and loss’ and in ‘an orderly way with a minimum of murder’.¹¹⁴ German wartime colonists, as always, were one example. There was even a willingness to countenance limited territorial annexations and population transfers in Upper Silesia and ‘the Corridor’. Leonard Woolf, however, summed up the prevailing view on the Left towards the mass population transfers which the Labour Party was being asked to endorse in IPWS and which the British government was understood to be sympathetic towards: All the proposals for large scale ‘transfers’ of population which are being so freely canvassed as a panacea for international problems should be considered with the greatest caution [ . . . ] They spring from the same kind of political philosophy as that of the Nazis—namely that anything can be accomplished by grandiose and violent measures. The whole conception is false. In politics—and particularly in international politics—grandiose schemes which can only be realised by ruthless violence and which disregard the rights and happiness of large numbers of helpless ordinary people (Oct. 1944), 55/10 (Nov. 1944). The ‘Victory for Socialism Group’ held a ‘rebel’ Labour Party Conference in Birmingham in protest against Dalton’s ‘pathetic document’. See New Leader, 2 Sep., 16 Sep. 1944. ¹¹² Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 397, col. 891 (23 Feb. 1944). ¹¹³ ‘Russia and Her Neighbours’, NSN, 19 Feb. 1944. ¹¹⁴ Brailsford, Our Settlement, 97–8.

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are incompatible with prosperity and peace and therefore with civilisation.¹¹⁵

In the final analysis, the socialist credentials of the Labour Party were appealed to. It would be a travesty of Labour values to punish innocent German workers and peasants for the misdeeds of the Nazis. As the Glasgow Forward wrote: ‘If the Labour Party is going to underwrite [ . . . ] proposals for the dismemberment of Germany involving [ . . . ] the forcible transfer of millions of people [ . . . ] it had better cease the pretence of paying lip service to international socialism’.¹¹⁶ These criticisms of territorial compensation and population transfer were made with East Prussia, Upper Silesia and Danzig in mind.¹¹⁷ Interestingly, there was almost no mention of the Sudeten Germans, despite the attempts of Wenzel Jaksch, the London-based leader of the Sudeten German Social Democrats, to raise awareness of this issue on the Left.¹¹⁸ When Czech transfer proposals were mentioned, they were not taken that seriously, as if they were a passing fad which the Czechs would outgrow once the war was over.¹¹⁹ Yet the ‘narrow’ focus on East Prussia, Danzig and Upper Silesia raised an important point for the future. If this was the reaction when ‘only’ these areas were at stake, what would it be when even greater areas of territory were offered or demanded by the Poles as territorial compensation, and the Sudeten Germans were also added to the equation? ¹¹⁵ Woolf, International Post-War Settlement, 16–17. ¹¹⁶ ‘Laski or Churchill?’, Forward, 16 Dec. 1944. ¹¹⁷ Leonard Woolf, however, wrote of ‘the uprooting of 10 million Germans from territory which has been in German occupation for centuries’ and so must have been referring to the possibility of more extensive annexations in Poland’s favour, as well as perhaps the Sudeten Germans. But he was writing later in the year. See Woolf, International Post-War Settlement, 16. ¹¹⁸ An anti-Nazi who had remained loyal to the Prague government, Jaksch for a short while at the beginning of the war was an FO protégé and somewhat of a cause célèbre on the Left. Bitter disagreements with Beneˇs on the future status of Sudeten Germans in a reconstituted Czechoslovakia, as well as splits within his own exile group, left him increasingly marginalized. Following the Czech-Soviet declaration of December 1943, Jaksch embarked on an energetic lobbying campaign within the Labour movement against Czech transfer policy, which was largely unsuccessful owing to the hostility towards Sudeten Germans in general and his leadership in particular. Questions were raised in the Commons on his behalf by sympathetic MPs. Jaksch nevertheless grossly exaggerated his influence in left-wing circles and beyond, and this is reflected in historical treatments of his wartime activities. See the disproportionate amount of space dedicated to Jaksch, in Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung, 468–9 [index]. For an overview of Jaksch’s activities in wartime exile, see M. Bachstein, Wenzel Jaksch und die sudetendeutsche Demokratie (Munich, 1974), 175–284. ¹¹⁹ See Brailsford, Our Settlement, 95.

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When determining whether these views were shared by the rest of the Labour Party it is important not to confuse volume and frequency with influence. Parliamentary critics such as Dick Stokes were mostly on the margins of the Party,¹²⁰ while commentators like the veteran socialist, Noel Brailsford, were regarded as being hopelessly out of touch with the prevailing anti-German mood in Britain and occupied Europe.¹²¹ Moreover, these views were at odds with those of the Labour Party leadership. Attlee, like Dalton, took a dim view of Germany and the Germans,¹²² towards whom Britain had been ‘too tender last time’; a mistake that would not be repeated.¹²³ As chairman of the Cabinet’s Armistice and Postwar (APW) Committee, Attlee had an interdepartmental Whitehall report on the transfer of German populations shelved in June 1944 on the grounds that it ‘smacked of appeasement and undue consideration for German feelings and interests’.¹²⁴ The December 1944 Conference, of course, provided the final verdict on IPWS. A potentially divisive resolution was moved by George Strauss, MP for Lambeth North, which called on Conference to affirm its commitment to a postwar settlement based on the principles of the Atlantic Charter, and to reject ‘devices’ such as the mass transfers of population,¹²⁵ but it failed to arouse much passion and was defeated by a large majority on a show of hands.¹²⁶ Of the six resolutions relating to IPWS, Strauss’s was the only one rejected by Conference which overwhelmingly approved Dalton’s document.¹²⁷ The relative ease with which IPWS passed through the NEC and Conference represented a major personal achievement for Dalton. The ¹²⁰ Burridge, British Labour, 30–1, 41, 55–6. For Stokes’ unconventional views on Poland and Czechoslovakia, see RRS/25, ‘Peace Aims’, Catholic Herald, 5 Jan. 1940 [reprint]; ‘Poland’, [Ipswich] Forward, Jun. 1944 [reprint]; Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 397, col. 895 (23 Feb. 1944); R. R. Stokes, ‘The Rights of Nations’, in A. Baker (ed.), A Christian Basis for the Post-War World (1942), 19–20. ¹²¹ Brailsford considered his book ‘so much ahead of public opinion that [ . . . ] it might well not have been written’. See F. Leventhal, The Last Dissenter: H. N. Brailsford and His World (Oxford, 1985), 281. Arnold-Forster, meanwhile, was unable to get his work endorsed by the Labour Party and had to publish it as a private contribution. See Dalton Diaries, 652–3 (19 Oct. 1943). ¹²² Burridge, British Labour, 125–38. ¹²³ Dalton Diaries, 544 (5 Jan. 1943). ¹²⁴ Attlee’s views in FO371/46814, C7001/95/18, Troutbeck minute, 16 Aug. 1945; Burridge, British Labour, 128–9. ¹²⁵ Labour Party Annual Report 1944, 135–6. ¹²⁶ Dalton MS Diaries, xxxi, 12 Dec. 1944. ¹²⁷ Labour Party Annual Report 1944, 140.

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endorsement of population transfer was also a minor triumph given that it seemed to represent a radical departure from traditional Party policy.¹²⁸ It is important, however, not to exaggerate Dalton’s achievement, as he was largely preaching to the converted in much of the document.¹²⁹ The endorsement of population transfer was also far less radical than it seemed. What the party had approved was not the same as what Dalton had initially drafted. Although subsequent assessments of IPWS, echoing Dalton’s own appraisal, have claimed that ‘the published document was in its essentials virtually unchanged from his original drafts’,¹³⁰ this is patently not the case as far as the passages on population transfer are concerned which are a heavily diluted version of Dalton’s original ‘mind-cleaner’ and weaker than any statement on transfer that Dalton had made since the late 1930s, either in private or in print.¹³¹ The party had merely endorsed the recommendation that population transfer be considered as a solution to minority problems in Europe and elsewhere. Moreover, references to transfers of Germans remained unclear, contradictory and ambiguous in regard to the issues of compulsion, frontiers and numbers involved. On the whole, the Labour Party’s position on population transfer therefore did not differ measurably from the prevailing consensus which saw the principle as sound but was considerably less certain about the extent to which it should be applied beyond the removal of German ‘colonists’ settled during the war.

TRANSFER AND WHITEHALL, WESTMINSTER A N D W I N S TO N C H U RC H I L L , 1 9 4 4 – 1 9 4 5 On the same day that the Labour Party Conference was drawing to a close, Winston Churchill was scheduled to deliver a statement to the House of Commons on Poland. An adjournment debate had ¹²⁸ Grantham, nevertheless, argues that one of the reasons for Dalton’s success was that his draft statement ‘made no radical departure from the traditional principles of party foreign policy’. See Grantham, ‘Hugh Dalton’, 725. ¹²⁹ Burridge, British Labour, 123. ¹³⁰ Grantham, ‘Hugh Dalton’, 725. ¹³¹ Pimlott claims that Noel-Baker ensured the mass transfer of Germans was reduced from ‘an actual commitment’ to ‘a strong hint’ (Hugh Dalton, 389). Although no source is given for his claim nor is there any evidence for it in either the Dalton or Noel-Baker papers, it is nevertheless a fair guess given Noel-Baker’s criticism of Dalton’s first draft.

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been triggered by a motion tabled by Tory right-wingers sympathetic to the London Poles. It could not have come at a worse time for the British government. Never harmonious at the best of times, Russo-Polish relations had recently taken a sharp turn for the worse. The Polish Prime Minister, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, had resigned, having failed to carry his cabinet behind the so-called ‘Teheran Formula’ on Poland’s frontiers, which the British, through a mixture of persuasion and bullying, had persuaded Mikołajczyk to agree to at the Moscow Conference of October 1944. With his replacement, Tomasz Arciszewski, espousing a far more intransigent line, the prospects for a Polish-Soviet accord looked bleak. The British government, now committed to a formula which the majority of Polish exiles in London had rejected, was left ‘effectively without a policy’.¹³² Moscow meanwhile looked set to recognize its own protégés as the provisional government of Poland. The Polish National (or Lublin) Committee, set up in July 1944 in Soviet-occupied Poland, had already signed a protocol for the voluntary exchange of populations with the Soviet Union and was claiming the Oder-western Neisse as Poland’s western frontier. It was to minimize the damage done to Britain’s relations with its allies, as well as to lend a suitable tone to the proceedings, that Churchill was brought in to open the debate.¹³³ On 15 December 1944, the Commons ‘had nothing about it of the air of expectancy usually associated with ‘‘Churchill days’’ ’.¹³⁴ The Chamber was barely half-full, as was the public gallery.¹³⁵ MPs—mostly Tories—were treated to none of the tub-thumping bravado of earlier Churchill performances. The Prime Minister delivered a succinct fortyfive minute statement, ‘solemn’, ‘sombre’ and ‘depressing’ in tone,¹³⁶ which brought home ‘the grim, bare bones of the Polish problem’.¹³⁷ The keynote was realism. With little new or positive to report, much of the speech was spent reiterating earlier statements: Mikołajczyk ¹³² Polonsky (ed.), Great Powers, 37. ¹³³ ‘Cabinet’s Tory Critics Not Satisfied’, News Chronicle [henceforth, NC], 16 Dec. 1944. ¹³⁴ ‘Premier Announces Plan for Poland’, Daily Telegraph, 16 Dec. 1944. ¹³⁵ Ibid. ¹³⁶ J. Chuter Ede, Labour and the Wartime Coalition: From the Diary of James Chuter Ede, 1941–1945, ed. K. Jefferys (1987), 201; Raczy´nski, In Allied London, 252–3; ‘Delays That Are Dangerous’, Sunday Times, 17 Dec. 1944; ‘Poland’, NC, 16 Dec. 1944. ¹³⁷ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 406, col. 1478 (15 Dec. 1944). See also BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC), Transcripts ( T ) 179, M. Lloyd George, ‘The Week in Westminster’, Home Service (HS), 16 Dec. 1945, 1915 GMT.

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was praised; intransigent Poles berated; disappointment at America’s foot-dragging expressed; and dark foreboding of a divided postwar world hinted at. But there was one point that was new. Repeating the British government’s commitment to the Curzon Line and territorial compensation in the west, Churchill for the first time declared his support for ‘the total expulsion of the Germans’ from these areas. He then went on to say, in what has become an oft-quoted passage: Expulsion is the method which [ . . . ] will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no more mixture of populations to cause endless trouble, as has been the case in Alsace-Lorraine. A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by the prospect of [ . . . ] large transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions than they ever were before. The disentanglement of populations which took place between Greece and Turkey after the war [ . . . ] was in many ways, a success, and has produced friendly relations between Greece and Turkey ever since. That disentanglement, which at first seemed impossible of achievement, and about which it was said that it would strip Turkish life in Anatolia of so many necessary services, and that the extra population could never be assimilated or sustained by Greece having regard to its own area and population [ . . . ] solved problems which had been the causes of immense friction, of wars and rumours of wars. Nor do I see why there should not be room in Germany for the German populations of East Prussia and other territories [ . . . ] I cannot see any doubt whatever that the Great Powers, if they can agree, can effect the transference of population.¹³⁸

It is now almost mandatory to quote Churchill and other Allied figures, such as Franklin Roosevelt,¹³⁹ Sumner Welles¹⁴⁰ or Henry Morgenthau, Jr,¹⁴¹ who referred approvingly to the Lausanne Convention of January 1923 as a precedent for a mass transfer of Germans. Historians, in seeking to explain how it was that the British and Americans reconciled themselves to a policy of mass transfer, have seized upon these remarks as proof that Allied diplomats and politicians saw in the Greco-Turkish exchange ‘a fascinating model for the feasibility of radical ethnic unmixing’, as one German scholar has put it.¹⁴² An over-optimistic assessment of Lausanne in turn fed a ‘utopian’ and ‘sanguine belief ’ among the western Allies that mass transfer could be a smooth and surgical operation, carried out in an orderly manner without ¹³⁸ ¹³⁹ ¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴¹ ¹⁴²

Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 406, cols. 1484, 1486 (15 Dec. 1944). R. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), 710. S. Welles, The Time for Decision (New York, 1944), 20, 354–6. H. Morgenthau, Jr, Germany Is Our Problem (New York, 1945), 159–61. K. Henke, ‘Der Weg nach Potsdam’, in Benz (ed.), Vertreibung, 60.

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sacrificing humanitarian principles.¹⁴³ Lausanne, another historian has argued, gave statesmen like Churchill ‘the confidence’ to deal with the German minority problem ‘once and for all’.¹⁴⁴ There are enough scattered Churchillian allusions to the GrecoTurkish exchange to make a case that the British Prime Minister was speaking from conviction.¹⁴⁵ Yet this enthusiasm for the Greco-Turkish model, and by extension for proposed mass population transfers, was not only at odds with ‘expert’ opinion, as we have already seen in this chapter, but also with the views of Churchill’s own officials in Whitehall. This is a crucial distinction to make not least because Churchill’s remarks are still invariably taken as short-hand not only for British policy but also for general British thinking on the subject. It is only by carefully analysing Churchill’s statement to the Commons on 15 December 1944 that its real meaning and significance can be understood. Behind the self-confident language of the statement, selfassured in its espousal of mass transfers as a proven solution to Europe’s minority problems, there lay considerable doubts about their practicality amongst government officials and informed opinion across the political spectrum. In November 1943, a special committee comprised of representatives from several Whitehall departments was set up under the chairmanship of the German Department of the Foreign Office in order to prepare a detailed report, essentially a feasibility study, on the transfer of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia.¹⁴⁶ This so-called Interdepartmental Committee on the Transfer of German Populations (ICTGP) worked on the assumption that it was ‘prima facie desirable’ that German minorities be transferred.¹⁴⁷ It looked at questions such as Germany’s capacity to absorb transferred populations, the conditions needed to ensure that transfers caused minimal suffering to migrants as well as minimal economic disruption to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, the contribution in terms of personnel and finance that the Allies would ¹⁴³ De Zayas, Nemesis, 11–12, 103. ¹⁴⁴ Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 110. ¹⁴⁵ W. Churchill, The World Crisis: The Aftermath (1929), 438; FO371/23809, R6031/57/22, ‘What of South Tyrol?’, 24 Jul. 1939; PRO PREM3/355/15, Meeting held at 10 Downing St, 16 Feb. 1944; PRO DO35/2002, Churchill to Smuts, 30 Oct. 1944. Comments to Stalin during Third Plenary Meeting at Yalta, 7 Feb. 1945, in M. Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston Churchill, 1941–1945 (1986), 1189. ¹⁴⁶ For the work of the ICTGP, see Kettenacker, Krieg zur Friedenssicherung, 451–9; Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung, 243–73. ¹⁴⁷ FO371/39092, C8654/220/18, Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Transfer of German Populations [henceforth, ICTGP Report], 12 May 1944.

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need to make, and the possibility of settling transferred populations outside of Germany. Even by Whitehall standards, its report, running at over fifty pages, was long and it is doubtful that ministers on the APW Committee which discussed it in July 1944 got even as far as the executive summary on this complex subject. But it did not take much reading to grasp its essence. That it was ‘not particularly warmly received’ by the APW Committee, which was chaired by Attlee, should give some idea of its general conclusions.¹⁴⁸ The report of the ICTGP followed the line traced by FRPS. Subsequent developments had, in fact, confirmed the validity of many of FRPS’s earlier conclusions. The ICTGP had begun its work calculating that ‘anywhere between three and six millions’ would be transferred,¹⁴⁹ a figure that the FRPS had reckoned would be unworkable in practice. By the time the ICTGP had finished its report it estimated that ‘at worst’ over ten million would have to be transferred.¹⁵⁰ It warned of the severe short-term effects on both the expelling and receiving states that this would entail. In Germany’s case it ‘was not too much to say that the addition of the heavy extra burden [ . . . ] which transfers would impose [ . . . ] would prove insoluble and lead to a complete German collapse’.¹⁵¹ All the Whitehall departments consulted found something amiss with the practicalities of population transfer; concerns which were reflected in the final report.¹⁵² Officials within the Foreign Office were particularly apprehensive. That is not to say that the Foreign Office was opposed to population transfer on principle. On the contrary, the principle was ‘a very proper one’ and ‘entirely reasonable’.¹⁵³ There could be no return to the status quo ante with its ‘special privileges’ for minorities. Nor could states with German minorities be expected to tolerate them again. ‘There will be no peace for the new Czech State unless the German minority are swept right out of it’, remarked a senior official in 1940;¹⁵⁴ a sentiment that, to a greater or lesser extent, was shared by all ranks in the Foreign Office. The deportation of Poles carried out by Germans of course added an extra dimension early on in the war. ‘The process may have to be reversed’, noted another member of the Foreign Office, again in 1940, ‘and once populations are being shifted on a large scale ¹⁴⁸ ¹⁴⁹ ¹⁵⁰ ¹⁵³ ¹⁵⁴

FO371/39092, C8654/220/18, O’Neill to Hollins, 19 Oct. 1944. FO371/34462, C14581/279/18, Troutbeck to Boyd Shannon, 22 Nov. 1943. ICTGP Report, 12 May 1944. ¹⁵¹ Ibid. ¹⁵² Ibid. FO371/24957, R780/174/22, Noble and Nichols minutes, 18 Jan. 1940. FO371/24289, C10776/2/12, Strang minute, 17 Oct. 1940.

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there may be something to be said for extending the process’.¹⁵⁵ How far and to whom this process should be extended, however, was the crux of the issue which lay at the root of the Foreign Office’s apprehension in 1944, as it had in all investigations of the issue undertaken during the war. Oliver Harvey, Assistant Undersecretary of State at the Foreign Office and former Private Secretary to Anthony Eden, illustrates this dilemma well. He believed, along with Eden, that the interwar minority treaties had been a ‘curse’ and that ‘next time there should be no minorities’ who would have to ‘opt between exchange and absorption, having no special privileges’.¹⁵⁶ At a time when the idea of federations was popular in the Foreign Office, he favoured exchanges of German populations ‘to produce compact national units’.¹⁵⁷ Beyond this, he noted that ‘we have Hitler’s authority for mass deportation and it may be a solution’.¹⁵⁸ He thought the Czechs had strong grounds for transferring Germans and also believed in extending the principle to Palestine.¹⁵⁹ But when asked by Eden what he thought of giving East Prussia to Poland and transferring the German population, he admitted that he was ‘rather sceptical. It would mean [ . . . ] a mass movement of population which had been there since the 13th century [ . . . ] it was a very big surgical operation’.¹⁶⁰ That was in 1941. By the beginning of 1944 he was becoming even ‘more disturbed’ about territorial compensation.¹⁶¹ ‘The more I look at it, the less I like the idea’, he wrote in his diary. ‘We should be wrong to allow annexations of purely German territory [ . . . ] I doubt if American and British opinion would countenance serious truncation [ . . . ] even if it did at the moment of peace, it would cease to do so 10 years after. We should be giving the Germans just the ammunition they want for their ‘‘Poor Germany’’ campaign’.¹⁶² He also told his colleagues in the Foreign Office that population transfers on the scale being studied by the ICTGP would ‘not fail to stimulate antiPolish and pro-German feeling in this country’.¹⁶³ These same concerns about their reception were shared elsewhere in the Foreign Office. The ¹⁵⁵ FO371/24470, C1762/116/55, Makins minute, 18 Feb. 1940. ¹⁵⁶ O. Harvey, The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey, ed. J. Harvey (1978), 45 (22 Sep. 1941). ¹⁵⁷ British Library, Oliver Harvey diaries, Add. MS 56398, 19 Nov. 1941. ¹⁵⁸ Harvey, War Diaries, 55 (25 Oct. 1941). ¹⁵⁹ Ibid. 194 (30 Nov. 1942). ¹⁶⁰ Ibid. 45 (22 Sep. 1941). ¹⁶¹ Ibid. 333 (21 Feb. 1944). ¹⁶² Ibid. 330–1 (10 Feb. 1944). ¹⁶³ FO371/39092, C6391/220/18, Harvey minute, 19 May 1944.

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secretary of the ICTGP, an official in the German Department, warned that population transfers should not ‘be carried through so brutally as to cause a strong movement of public sympathy for Germany’.¹⁶⁴ The chairman of the ICTGP similarly pointed out at the outset of the Committee’s work in October 1943: This is going to be a very important question and if German populations are transferred in such a way as to cause acute suffering to the migrants and impossible economic difficulties to Germany, there may well be a violent reaction in this country. This is all the more likely if large parts of Germany are occupied by our troops who will be witnesses of the situation. It is just the kind of thing that might create a wave of pro-German feeling and anti-Polish opinion here which might be very embarrassing.¹⁶⁵

Again in February 1944, he warned that ‘if we are too ruthless we run the danger of stoking a wave of sentimental pro-Germanism [ . . . ] as happened last time’.¹⁶⁶ Among policy-makers, the lessons of ‘last time’ loomed large. The post-First World War settlement had foundered, according to an April 1943 Cabinet paper on the future of Germany, because it had lacked long-term public support. The interwar period had shown that if one aspect of the settlement was seen to lack ‘moral force’ then public opinion became progressively disillusioned even with those parts that had originally seemed justified.¹⁶⁷ Such was the risk of mass population transfers. Hence, Harvey’s ten-year warning. But what of the ‘fascinating model for the feasibility of radical ethnic unmixing’ that the Greco-Turkish exchange offered? Should this not have gone some way to assuaging fears or inspiring ‘confidence’ as it supposedly had in Churchill’s case? In this respect, too, Whitehall was downbeat. Earlier studies by the FRPS had found that evidence from so-called precedents was ‘irrelevant’ in determining the feasibility of a transfer of Germans,¹⁶⁸ while a Foreign Office memorandum which Eden presented to the Cabinet in July 1942 stated explicitly that there was ‘no recent historical precedent for the transfer of populations on so large a scale [ . . . ] Germany and Greece are not comparable’.¹⁶⁹ The ¹⁶⁴ FO371/34460, C11913/279/18, O’Neill minute, 12 Oct. 1943. ¹⁶⁵ FO371/34460, C11913/279/18, Troutbeck minute, 20 Oct. 1943. ¹⁶⁶ FO371/39091, C2261/220/18, Troutbeck minute, 23 Feb. 1944. ¹⁶⁷ CAB66/35, WP (43) 144, Selborne memorandum, 8 Apr. 1943. See also R. B. McCallum, Public Opinion and the Last Peace (1944), 1–22; D. Thomson, ‘The Public and the Peace’, Spectator, 22 Sep. 1944. ¹⁶⁸ FO371/30930, C2167/241/18, Mabbott note, 25 Feb. 1942. ¹⁶⁹ FO371/30834, C6671/326/12, Eden memorandum, 2 Jul. 1942.

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ICTGP followed this line of interpretation. In the whole of its report, the Greco-Turkish exchange was only mentioned twice, in passing. Its authors were well aware of the omission: Readers of this report may feel some surprise that so little reference is made to the precedents provided by previous transfers of population. [ . . . ] The Committee [ . . . ] has not found them of very much assistance. The reason is that transfers on the scale now in question are in fact without precedent, either in the Greek-Turkish or Greek-Bulgarian exchanges [ . . . ] or in the various would-be permanent transfers carried out by the Germans [ . . . ] They afford no decisive evidence of the feasibility or otherwise of the transfers here discussed.¹⁷⁰

So much, then, for the Greco-Turkish model. The absence of an instructive precedent only added towards the unease felt in the Foreign Office at the scale of the proposed population transfers. If carried through without full recognition of the practical obstacles involved, a mass transfer of Germans might result in ‘half-measures’, leaving Europe with ‘the worst of both worlds’. The ICTGP report concluded that ‘if, therefore it is felt that transfers on the scale contemplated in this Report are impossible, and simultaneously that the German population of all areas ceded to Poland must be transferred, then the only solution [ . . . ] would appear to be that smaller areas should be ceded to Poland’.¹⁷¹ The implication of the report was that transfers on such a scale were impossible; therefore, the westward expansion of Poland had to be limited. This appeared to be completely at odds with the message that Churchill was trying to communicate in his December 1944 speech. Given Foreign Office ambivalence over the practicalities of mass population transfers, it is worth contrasting Churchill’s gusto with the reticence of his Foreign Secretary during the 15 December 1944 debate. Eden took a much more cautious line, being ‘careful, almost impartial’ in his reply and admitting that transfer was a difficult, though not insurmountable task.¹⁷² He did not cite the Greco-Turkish exchange. Revealingly, the background notes and brief prepared for him by the Foreign Office made no mention of population transfers at all, let alone successful precedents;¹⁷³ nor did the short note which the Prime ¹⁷⁰ FO371/39092, C8654/220/18, ICTGP Report, 12 May 1944. ¹⁷¹ Ibid. ¹⁷² Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 406, cols. 1574–5 (15 Dec. 1944); ‘The Debate on Poland’, Time and Tide, 23 Dec. 1944. ¹⁷³ FO371/39421, C17980/8/55, Millard minute, 10 Dec. 1944; Allen minute, 13 Dec. 1944; ‘Mediation by HMG between the Polish and Soviet Governments’,

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Minister asked Foreign Office officials to draw up for him the afternoon before the debate.¹⁷⁴ ‘Mr Eden picked his way skilfully and carefully through the minefield. He didn’t explode any mines, but he didn’t clear away any either’, was Megan Lloyd George’s assessment on the BBC. ‘When the Debate ended, we were still in ‘‘No Man’s Land’’ ’.¹⁷⁵ Edward Raczy´nski, the Polish ambassador in London, was right in sensing that Eden was ‘obviously relieved that the situation which held the floor in Mikołajczyk’s time [had] fallen through’.¹⁷⁶ Mikołajczyk’s resignation had got the Foreign Office out of an ‘impossible situation’ by relieving it of commitments on the Polish western frontier which it sensed British public opinion would never approve.¹⁷⁷ Eden, like Harvey, felt uneasy about handing over East Prussia,¹⁷⁸ and considered a Polish western frontier on the Oder to be ‘sheer madness’.¹⁷⁹ It is reasonable to conclude therefore that the Foreign Office wanted to avoid making an explicit and binding statement on population transfer, or at least one which minimized the immense difficulties involved, partly so as not to encourage Poles in their more ambitious designs on German territory. Eden and his Minister of State, Richard Law, had already fended off several attempts in the Commons over the course of 1944 to draw the government into making a policy statement on population transfer.¹⁸⁰ One is left to draw the conclusion that Churchill, in sending exactly the opposite message of his Foreign Secretary, was acting on his own initiative, irrespective of the views of his officials. It would not have been the first time. Only two months earlier in Moscow, Churchill had seemed prepared, to the horror of Foreign Office officials present, to agree to Polish demands on Stettin. Eden’s objections, on the grounds that this would have a deleterious impact on Germany and British opinion, put undated. Further background notes for Eden in FO371/39420, C17578, C17579, C17580, C17581/55/8. ¹⁷⁴ FO371/39421, C17805/55/8, Allen minute, 14 Dec. 1944; CAC, Chartwell papers, CHAR9/203A, fos 33–8, FO brief for PM, 14 Dec. 1944. ¹⁷⁵ BBC WAC, T179, M. Lloyd George, ‘The Week in Westminster’, HS, 16 Dec. 1945, 1915 GMT. ¹⁷⁶ Raczy´nski, In Allied London, 253. ¹⁷⁷ Harvey, War Diaries, 366–7 (26 Nov. 1944). ¹⁷⁸ Sussex University, Martin papers, KM 30/3, Note of conversation with Eden, 5 Apr. 1944. ¹⁷⁹ Conversation on 6 Nov. 1944, in Raczy´nski, In Allied London, 241. ¹⁸⁰ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 397, col. 936 (23 Feb. 1944); vol. 400, cols. 1016–17, 1037–55 (25 May 1944); vol. 401, cols. 1713–14 (2 Aug. 1944); vol. 403, cols. 1726–7 (11 Oct. 1944); FO371/39091, C3184/220/18, FO minute, 4 Mar. 1944.

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paid to this.¹⁸¹ Churchill’s speech to the Commons, however, coming as it did from the Prime Minister, must be of course taken as a statement of British policy. But whether it was representative either of official thinking or of informed opinion in the country at large is, however, quite a different matter. Yet even if one accepts that that these views were not shared by his officials, this still leaves the significance of Churchill’s remarks unexplained. Not only was this the most forthright statement to date by an Allied politician on population transfer, it was the first time that the transfer of Germans had been publicly and unequivocally endorsed by any British or American politician. The significance of Churchill’s remarks lie just as much in the timing of the speech and its intended audience as in its content. On one level, Churchill’s speech was a half-warning, half-encouragement to the Poles—unequivocal support for the removal of German populations from the west in return for relinquishing eastern Poland—which formed part of a package that represented the only and best offer they would get with a full British guarantee, even with a personal pledge on the part of the Prime Minister. The debate was also an opportunity to show Moscow that the British government thought Soviet policy on Polish frontiers was ‘fully justified’ and that Britain’s position on this issue was independent of any line that might be taken by President Roosevelt, who having had his eye on the Polish-American vote for the November elections, had yet to come out unequivocally in support of the Curzon Line and territorial compensation.¹⁸² The debate was, therefore, an opportunity to bring the hesitant Americans into line by forcing them to make an equally frank statement on frontiers and population transfers. Dominion sensibilities were also a factor. Jan Smuts, the South African Prime Minister, had strongly cautioned Churchill against creating a ‘new Alsace Lorraine’ east of the Oder and ‘loading the future of Europe with hatreds and curses which time could not cure’.¹⁸³ In his 15 December speech, Churchill employed almost the same arguments as those he had used to assuage Smuts’s fears six weeks before.¹⁸⁴ One writer has speculated that Churchill’s remarks were a response to Allied military setbacks in Europe, arguing that ¹⁸¹ Harvey, War Diaries, 361 (15 Oct. 1944), 364 (4 Nov. 1944). ¹⁸² PREM3/355/14, Minute for Churchill, 4 Dec. 1944; cf. FO to Moscow, 3 Dec. 1944. ¹⁸³ PREM3/355/15, Smuts to Churchill, 8 Mar. 1944; DO35/2002, Smuts to Churchill, 29 Oct. 1944. ¹⁸⁴ DO35/2002, Churchill to Smuts, 30 Oct. 1944.

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Churchill got ‘carried away’ with ‘the rhetoric of a rousing wartime speech’.¹⁸⁵ The speech was supposedly a morale-boaster, compensating for the Arnhem debacle six weeks earlier. But the speech was neither ‘rousing’ nor did Churchill get ‘carried away’; on the contrary, he worked, as always, from a well-rehearsed script.¹⁸⁶ And for all the ‘bitter disappointment’¹⁸⁷ over Operation Market Garden, on top of other Allied setbacks, as far as the ‘military’ situation in Europe in December 1944 was concerned, it was the sight of British tanks on the streets of Athens crushing ELAS rebels that roused public opinion.¹⁸⁸ The tone and substance of Churchill’s remarks on population transfer do need to be understood within a domestic as well as a diplomatic context. But Churchill’s references to population transfer and the Greco-Turkish exchange had a lot less to do with military setbacks or with anger at the Germans for their steely resistance than with the very issue of population transfer and territorial annexation, and how the domestic debate around these points was developing in 1944. The case against population transfer was being well-ventilated by mid-1944. Criticism, however, came not only from within the Labour movement. In February 1944, The Times ran a blistering attack on population transfer, demolishing what it saw as the myth of the Greco-Turkish precedent.¹⁸⁹ Under the influence of its assistant editor and principal leader writer, E. H. Carr, who was largely responsible for shaping the foreign policy orientation of the paper,¹⁹⁰ The Times consistently opposed territorial compensation and mass population transfers.¹⁹¹ A Professor of International Politics and former Director of Foreign Publicity at the Ministry of Information, Carr had little time for nationalism in ¹⁸⁵ De Zayas, Nemesis, 82–3. ¹⁸⁶ See CHAR9/165, fos 146–75, Typescript of House of Commons speech, 15 Dec. 1944. ¹⁸⁷ CHAR 20/172, fo. 120, Smuts to Churchill, 4 Oct. 1944. ¹⁸⁸ A. Foster, ‘The Politicians, Public Opinion and the Press: The Storm over British Military Intervention in Greece in Dec. 1944’, JCH 19/3 (1984), 453–94. ¹⁸⁹ ‘Transfers of Population’, The Times, 16 Feb. 1944. The article was written by David Mitrany, formerly of FRPS. See Mitrany papers, Human Rights/Minorities/Folder 1, ‘Transfers of Population’, The Times, 16 Feb. 1944, signed ‘D. Mitrany’; ‘Transfer of Populations’ [draft], 26 Jan. 1944, signed ‘D. M.’. The Times piece was a more forceful reprise of a scholarly article which Mitrany had co-authored. See A. Fisher and D. Mitrany, ‘Some Notes on the Transfer of Populations’, Political Quarterly, 14 (1943), 363–71. ¹⁹⁰ D. McLachlan, In the Chair: Barrington-Ward of The Times, 1927–1948 (1971), 221. ¹⁹¹ The Times: ‘Interpreting the Charter’, 20 Mar. 1944; ‘Unity in Poland’, 29 Jul. 1944; ‘Frontiers of Peace’, 20 Sep. 1944.

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general, and none for its small-state variety.¹⁹² He regarded territorial annexation accompanied by population transfer as ‘the most explicit exaltation of the nation over the individual [ . . . ] the mass sacrifice of human beings to the idol of nationalism’,¹⁹³ and for some time had wanted the argument against population transfer aired ‘in a form where any come-back is difficult’.¹⁹⁴ The Observer, although approaching the subject from a more anti-Soviet perspective, took a similar line. The paper had been instrumental in blowing the lid on Anglo-Russian negotiations over Poland in January in a series of ‘leaks’ which openly flouted an informal D-Notice preventing reporting of the subject.¹⁹⁵ On 27 February 1944, the paper published an article which cast doubt on the efficacy of compensating Poland in the west. While not completely ruling out the need for population transfer, the article argued that it should be recognized as a formidable undertaking for which trite comparisons with the Greco-Turkish exchange were singularly unhelpful and ultimately dangerous.¹⁹⁶ While the Observer and The Times were publications with relatively low circulations, they were considered to represent ‘very widely-held views’ on the question of transfers of territory and population.¹⁹⁷ Nor could the editorial stance of The Times, given its ‘unchallenged position on the breakfast tables of the British policy-making elite’, be ignored.¹⁹⁸ However, the debate on population transfer was in no way one-sided. Among the innumerable and long since forgotten pamphlets, booklets and articles with titles such as ‘What to do with Germany?’ or ‘The shape of post-war Europe’ that appeared like a rash in 1943 and 1944, the positive case for population transfer could invariably be found. At its most extreme, a small minority aped the pseudo-scientific racial theories of the Nazis to justify Polish demands to vast tracts of German territory and the expulsion or forced assimilation of its inhabitants.¹⁹⁹ But most were content to argue for population transfer on ‘strategic’ ¹⁹² J. Haslam, The Vices of Integrity: E. H. Carr, 1892–1982 (1999), 92–110; E. Carr, The Conditions of Peace (New York, 1942), 39–69. ¹⁹³ E. Carr, Nationalism and After (1945), 34. ¹⁹⁴ Mitrany papers, Human Rights/Minorities/Folder 1, Carr to Fisher, 31 Aug. 1943. ¹⁹⁵ R. Cockett, David Astor and The Observer (1991), 116–19. ¹⁹⁶ ‘Germany’s Eastern Frontiers’, Observer, 27 Feb. 1944. ¹⁹⁷ FO371/39091, C2261/220/18, Roberts minute, 9 Mar. 1944. ¹⁹⁸ C. Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie (Cambridge, 1998), 73. ¹⁹⁹ See G. Gayre, Teuton and Slav on the Polish Frontier (1944).

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grounds, for reasons of ‘justice’ or as an inevitable by-product of the need to liquidate East Prussia and the Polish Corridor. Indeed, it was in connection with East Prussia—‘a sally-port of Germanism’,²⁰⁰ ‘a stronghold of the militarist tradition’,²⁰¹ ‘a spearhead aimed at the very heart of Poland’²⁰²—that the idea of population transfer gained currency and became most compelling. As Bob Boothby, one of the more colourful of Conservative MPs, argued during the 15 December 1944 debate: East Prussia, which remains today what it has been for the last two centuries, the focal point of the infection of Prussian militarism, should be excised from the German body politic by a surgical operation; and the German population [ . . . ] should be [ . . . ] expelled. It is rough but, by God, they deserve it.²⁰³

In the Commons, these arguments were heard more often than not from Tory MPs. Although the Conservative Party did not have anything comparable to IPWS from which it is possible to judge its collective stance on transfer, a short memorandum on future policy towards Germany was issued in May 1943 by a ‘Post-war Policy Group’ of around thirty Tory MPs and peers. This called for the separation of East Prussia from Germany and an Allied-organized ‘transference of peoples’ from there and the ‘invaded territories’.²⁰⁴ The Liberal Party also came out in favour of limited territorial annexations at Germany’s expense and transfers of German minorities. Its report on ‘Germany After the War’, published in May 1944, ‘deprecate[d] any attempt to deprive Germany of territories of which the inhabitants [were] overwhelmingly German’, but acknowledged that in some cases ‘strategic and economic reasons’ would have to prevail. Countries with German ‘colonists’ should be free to decide if they desired the ‘total elimination of the minorities’. Those transferred should be allowed to bring their movable goods and given ‘adequate compensation’ for immovable property left behind.²⁰⁵ In the final analysis, the Liberals, in common with all other groups that had ²⁰⁰ R. Machray, East Prussia: Menace to Poland and Peace (1943), 10. ²⁰¹ P. Matthews, ‘Should Germany Be Broken Up?’, CR 164 (Dec. 1943), 336. ²⁰² W. Max-Muller, Poland’s Access to the Sea [1944], 21. ²⁰³ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 406, col. 1554 (15 Dec. 1944). ²⁰⁴ ‘Future Control of Germany’, The Times, 17 May 1943; A. Weymouth (ed.), Germany: Disease and Treatment: Based on the Memoranda of the Post-war Policy Group [1945], 7–8, 118–21; id., Journal of the War Years, ii: 1941–45 (Worcester, 1948), 361–9. ²⁰⁵ Liberal Party, Germany After the War: Proposals of a Liberal Party Committee under the Chairmanship of the Rt. Hon. Earl of Perth (1944), 15–17.

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examined this question, saw population transfer as a necessary evil. ‘I admit that the transfer of population is cruel’, wrote a leading figure in the Liberal Party to a German exile in July 1943, ‘but it may be less cruel than any other alternative’.²⁰⁶ The debate on population transfer had its first airing in Parliament in March 1944 when a proponent of the measure—Earl Mansfield, a Tory peer—tabled a motion on the subject.²⁰⁷ Speakers favouring population transfer predominated during the debate and came from all political parties, underlying the cross-party consensus that existed on this issue. The sceptics’ case, however, was sufficiently well-put for a member of the Foreign Office to warn afterwards that it was ‘pretty clear’ that the transfer of the German populations would be ‘unpopular with many sections of opinion’. He recommended that ‘if such a policy is adopted it will be very important that steps should be taken to explain to the press and the public its necessity, its advantages and its practicality’.²⁰⁸ Whatever steps were subsequently taken, they were not particularly effective. In the months leading up to Churchill’s December 1944 speech, it was increasingly apparent that informed opinion, across the political spectrum, was still extremely uneasy with proposals to compensate Poland with purely German territory and sceptical about whether the accompanying large-scale population transfers could be carried out. Even the Spectator, a leading right-wing periodical which prided itself on its ‘realistic’ take on foreign affairs, remarked that: a frontier on the Oder [ . . . ] would involve the annexation of German territories which no sane Pole dreams of [ . . . ] That East Prussia should become Polish is by now a matter of general agreement. But the distinction between the transfer of a population of little over two millions, most of whom will have fled their homes in any case, and a population of ten millions or more is so considerable as to constitute a difference not only in volume but in kind.²⁰⁹

Moreover, there were signs that this was not only the view of elite opinion. A poll taken by the British Institute of Public Opinion in September 1944, although it did not deal directly with transfer, gives ²⁰⁶ BLPES, McFadyean papers, Box 16, McFadyean to Merton, 23 July 1943; also A. McFadyean, ‘What to do with Germany?’, CR 164 (Aug. 1943), 76. Further Liberal views in Sir W. Layton, How To Deal With Germany: A Plan For European Peace [1944], 44–7; Earl of Perth [Sir Eric Drummond] in Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 130, cols. 1107–12 (8 Mar. 1944). ²⁰⁷ Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 130, cols. 1097–134 (8 Mar. 1944). ²⁰⁸ FO371/39091, C3184/220/18, O’Neill minute, 13 Mar. 1944. ²⁰⁹ ‘Moscow Harvest’, Spectator, 27 Oct. 1944.

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a rare glimpse of popular attitudes towards the related question of territorial annexation and the treatment of Germany. Members of the public were asked if they approved or disapproved of ‘giving East Prussia and parts of East Germany to Poland’. Only a slim majority—53 per cent—said they approved, far less than the 80 per cent who supported a ‘hard peace’ on Germany.²¹⁰ Given these doubts over the feasibility and practicality of mass transfers of territory and population it is not inconceivable that Churchill’s speech of 15 December 1944 was a conscious attempt to sell this policy to a sceptical British public, as he was to his other foreign audiences. But if Churchill were selling a policy, the question is: was anyone buying it? The Commons listened to Churchill’s speech in ‘awful, ugly, apprehensive, cold silence’.²¹¹ Only three of twenty speakers came out unequivocally in support of the Prime Minister in a debate which was ‘tense with feeling’.²¹² The focus of much of the criticism was the supposed betrayal of Poland and the sell-out to the Soviet Union on Poland’s eastern frontier, but the ‘considerable uneasiness’ about the settlement advocated by the British government extended to ‘doubts [ . . . ] about the difficulties and probable effects of the vast population transfers which [the] proposed settlement would involve and the fear that the consequent suffering and dislocation would sow the seeds of future wars’.²¹³ One of the lobby correspondents noted that ‘there was a cheer when [Churchill] referred to the possibility of Poland gaining the great city and port of Danzig. But when he argued the case of transference of populations it clearly went against the grain of some of his supporters’.²¹⁴ Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, a future Cabinet minister and one of a minority of Labour MPs attending the debate, came closest to expressing the prevailing crossparty consensus on the issue. Belonging neither to the usual suspects on the Left nor to the pro-London Pole/anti-Soviet camp on the Right, he inhabited the middle-ground and spoke with ‘the utmost moderation’:²¹⁵ ²¹⁰ The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971, i: 1935–1948 (New York, 1972), 463–4. For the growing clamour for a ‘hard peace’, see Weekly Reports, Nos. 207–20, 21 Sep.–21 Dec. 1944, in Great Britain, Ministry of Information, Home Intelligence Reports on Opinion and Morale, 1940–44 (Brighton, 1979). ²¹¹ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 406, col. 1540 (15 Dec. 1944). ²¹² ‘Labour Gives A Warning’, Daily Herald [henceforth, DH ], 16 Dec. 1944. ²¹³ FO371/39419, C17417/8/55, FO to Moscow, 16 Dec. 1944. ²¹⁴ ‘Premier Announces Plan for Poland’, Daily Telegraph, 16 Dec. 1944. ²¹⁵ ‘The Debate on Poland’, Time and Tide, 23 Dec. 1944.

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After the transferences of population which the Germans have effected [ . . . ] the ruthless way in which they have torn people up from their homes [ . . . ] even [ . . . ] their own people [ . . . ] I do not think they will have any right to complain about any forcible changes of population we may desire to make. That is not to say that we can play about with territories which have been German [ . . . ] It may be that we have to take away from Germany that part which rendered the Corridor necessary, but I do not think we should encourage the Poles, still less force the Poles to have German territory which is not absolutely necessary for the purposes we have in mind. If we encourage too wide an extension of Poland in the west at the expense of Germany, we are sowing the seed of grave danger for the future of the world.²¹⁶

The press reaction was also wary,²¹⁷ and the speech encouraged several national organizations to issue statements which rejected transfers of territory and population against the wishes of local populations.²¹⁸ It also became, for that weekend at least, the primary topic of anguished conversation in the drawing rooms of the great and good.²¹⁹ When Parliament rose for a month’s recess on 21 December 1944 after a turbulent week with debates on Poland and Greece, the Manchester Guardian summarized the mood among MPs: The Labour and Liberal members have gone away in a mood of manifest disquiet about Greece. Nor is that all. All week it has been evident that they, and the Tories too, have not got over the shock of Mr. Churchill’s speech in the Polish debate. There are, of course, half a dozen schools of thought about the proposed new frontiers for Poland. There are Tories who hate the whole thing; there are many in all parties who regret the Soviet Union should be pressing for this or any solution in advance of the peace; there are others who defend the Curzon Line [ . . . ] There are few, however, who do not look with misgiving on the suggested new Polish frontiers in the west and north and the wholesale transference of populations it would involve [ . . . ] A strong opinion ²¹⁶ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 406, cols. 1562–3 (15 Dec. 1944). ²¹⁷ ‘Poland’, NC, 16 Dec. 1944; ‘Frustration’, The Times, 16 Dec. 1944; ‘Big Decisions’, MG, 16 Dec. 1944; ‘Michael Foot’s Column’, DH, 18 Dec. 1944; J. Wilkes, ‘Lords and Commons’, Tribune, 22 Dec. 1944; ‘Poland’, New Leader, 23 Dec. 1944; ‘The Next War Begins?’, Forward, 23 Dec. 1944; ‘Sibylline Books’, The Economist, 23 Dec. 1944; ‘Power Politics and the Big Three’, NSN, 23 Dec. 1944; ‘Unconditional Surrender and Why’, Plebs, Jan. 1945. ²¹⁸ ‘Liberals State Policy on Greece and Poland’, NC, 21 Dec. 1944; BLPES, National Peace Council (NPC) archives, NPC 1/6, NC4860, NC4936, Minutes of Council meetings, 22 Jan. and 27 Mar. 1945; NPC 2/7, NC4820, Minutes of the Executive Committee, 11 Jan. 1945; ILP, Final Agenda of Resolution and Amendments: 53rd Annual Conference, 31 March–2 April 1945, 19. ²¹⁹ For reactions to Churchill’s speech, see Dugdale MS Diaries, 15–16 Dec. 1944.

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will develop transcending party boundaries over large-scale transfer of territory and populations.²²⁰

If the intention had been to sell mass transfers of territory and population to a sceptical British public then few had bought it, whatever their political persuasion. As George Orwell, a man of the Left who nevertheless often spoke for the nation, remarked in February 1945: ‘This enormous crime cannot actually be carried through, though it might be started, with confusion, suffering and the sowing of irreconcilable hatreds as the result [ . . . ] The British people should be made to understand, with as much concrete detail as possible, what kind of policies their statesmen are committing them to’.²²¹ For Mikołajczyk, the debate proved what he had long been arguing and why he had always been wary of taking up the Allies’ seemingly magnanimous offers of territorial compensation. British opinion was ‘conscious of the immense transfer problems that the proposed frontier arrangements would involve’, and Churchill, despite his popularity, would never succeed in making ‘so drastic a plan’ acceptable to British and American opinion.²²² A ‘strong opinion’ was also developing in government circles where the idea was to get the British government out of rather than into commitments on frontiers and transfers. At a series of War Cabinet meetings in January 1945, Eden expressed the Foreign Office’s continuing unease at the extent of territorial compensation in the west.²²³ Churchill, like Eden, was against a Polish frontier on the western Neisse. He said it was ‘no small matter’ to arrange for the removal of five to six million Germans from the territories which the British government were prepared ²²⁰ ‘An Uneasy Recess’, MG, 22 Dec. 1944. ²²¹ ‘As I Please’, Tribune, 2 Feb. 1945, in G. Orwell, The Complete Works of George Orwell, xvii: I Belong to the Left, 1945, ed. P. Davidson (1998), 38. For the ‘profound impression’ it made in the USA and subsequent State Department statement, see FO371/38560, A4756/34/45, American News Summary, 16 Dec. 1944, Ministry of Information minute, 18 Dec. 1944; PREM3/355/14, misc. correspondence, 17–20 Dec. 1944; Great Britain, Washington Embassy, Washington Despatches 1941–1945: Weekly Political Reports from the British Embassy, ed. H. Nicholas (1981), 483–4 (24 Dec. 1944). For the cool Polish reception, see ‘Polish Premier’s New Proposals’, Sunday Times, 17 Dec. 1944; ‘Poles Say Premier’s Speech Is Unfair’, Observer, 17 Dec. 1944. ²²² Schoenfeld to Secretary of State, 21 Dec. 1944, in United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1944, iii: The British Commonwealth and Europe (Washington DC, 1965), 1350. ²²³ CAB66/61/3, WP (45) 48, Eden memorandum on Poland’s Western Frontier, 23 Jan. 1945.

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to see Poland acquire. Any more would be ‘quite unmanageable’.²²⁴ The contrast with his ‘confidence’ in the Commons a month earlier is notable. The British delegation therefore went to Yalta in early February 1945 committed to supporting the Curzon Line in the east and opposing the western Neisse in the west. By the time the Big Three met, however, events on the ground in eastern Germany were developing at a pace which would have important implications for subsequent diplomatic negotiations. It had long been predicted that when the reckoning came Germans would flee en masse from disputed territories in central and eastern Europe. This had been seen as a solution, in part, to some of the practical problems associated with mass population transfer. The Germans would transfer themselves, so to speak. By January 1945, hundreds of thousands of German civilians, along with POWs, forced labourers and concentration camp inmates, were fleeing by land and sea as the Soviets rapidly advanced through East Prussia and Silesia. The flight of German civilians served to strengthen Polish claims to German-populated territory. When Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta objected to the Soviet-backed demand of the Lublin Poles for the Oderwestern Neisse frontier on the grounds that it would entail removing too many Germans, Stalin brushed their concerns aside. ‘They had all run away’, he said.²²⁵ This claim was used again over the following months and was treated with scepticism. The Foreign Office remained convinced that the task of moving and resettling the Germans would ‘prove no light one’.²²⁶ Churchill nevertheless seized on Stalin’s remark. Briefing a meeting of ministers outside the War Cabinet before the parliamentary debate on Yalta, he claimed that although ‘people spoke of the great difficulties of ‘‘transfer of population’’ [ . . . ] this problem would be much easier in practice than had been supposed’ because, and here Churchill echoed Stalin’s words, all the Germans in Russianoccupied territory had ‘run away already’.²²⁷ ‘So much for the alleged difficulty of ‘‘transfer of population’’ ’, Dalton noted gleefully in his diary.²²⁸ The claim was also used by Churchill during the debate ²²⁴ CAB65/51/10, WM (45) 10 (1), Poland: Discussion on Frontiers, 26 Jan. 1945. ²²⁵ Quoted in Gilbert, Road to Victory, 1189. ²²⁶ CHAR 9/206B, fos 177–8, FO to Colville, 26 Feb. 1945. For earlier assessments, see FO371/46810, C419/95/18, O’Neill minute, 31 Jan. 1945; Troutbeck minute, 1 Feb. 1945; Marshall minute, 12 Feb. 1945. ²²⁷ Quoted in Dalton Diaries, 837 (23 Feb. 1945). ²²⁸ Dalton Diaries, 844 (12 Mar. 1945).

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in the Commons,²²⁹ as well as in allaying fears expressed by the Dominions.²³⁰ But flight caused as many problems as it solved. Even those who welcomed it acknowledged, as Dalton did, that ‘this vast convulsive movement was leading to a crisis, even more serious than might otherwise have been anticipated, within the shrinking borders of the Reich’ which could only result in ‘catastrophic famine’.²³¹ Amongst some Allied leaders the realization that they were storing up a humanitarian disaster touched a raw nerve. Just as the Yalta Conference was sitting, Smuts wrote to a British friend: There must be millions of Germans in flight before the Russian armies—in weather conditions and sufferings of all sorts of which we can form no conception. I don’t think history has ever seen horror on such a scale—women and children and old and sick trudging over the snowfields from east to west, hungry, ill clad and dying in their thousands on the roads [ . . . ] Is there no pity in heaven or on earth? The face of destiny is veiled in utter darkness and we pray into a void from which comes no response.²³²

Smuts was notoriously sentimental about the Germans. The same could not be said, however, for Churchill. Yet reports of the mass flight of Germans caught him in reflective mood aboard ship docked off Malta en route to the Crimea. He wrote to his wife on 1 February 1945: I am free to confess to you that my heart is saddened by the tales of the masses of German women and children flying along the roads everywhere in 40-mile long columns to the West before the advancing Armies. I am clearly convinced that they deserve it; but that does not remove it from one’s gaze. The misery of the whole world appals me and I fear increasingly that new struggles may arise out of those we are successfully ending.²³³

Although Churchill’s comments might not represent anything more than the momentary pangs of shared humanity, they nevertheless underline a key point in this discussion of Churchill’s attitude to population ²²⁹ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 408, cols. 1267–1345 (27 Feb. 1945), cols. 1416–1528 (28 Feb. 1945), cols. 1579–1676 (1 Mar. 1945). ²³⁰ See correspondence between Churchill and Peter Fraser (NZ PM), in CHAR 20/212, fos 3–6, NZ Govt to DO (PM for PM), 20 Feb. 1945; fos 8–9, DO to NZ Govt (PM for PM), 24 Feb. 1945. ²³¹ Dalton Diaries, 844 (12 Mar. 1945). ²³² Smuts to M. Gillett, 10 Mar. 1945, in W. Hancock, Smuts, ii: The Field of Force 1919–50 (Cambridge, 1968), 419–20. ²³³ Quoted in W. Churchill and C. Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. M. Soames (1998), 512.

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transfer and its relation to British thinking on the subject in general: the distinction between what is said in private and in public, and the different audiences for whom a particular statement is intended; in sum, the rhetoric of population transfer. When large scale annexations of territory and populations needed to be sold to the British public, the London Poles, the Dominions or Washington, there was boundless ‘confidence’ in measures or parallels which played down the difficulties involved. In 1944, it was the Greco-Turkish model. In early 1945, it was the flight of German civilians. But the ‘confidence’ lasted only as long as was tactically necessary. By January 1945, Churchill was acknowledging in Cabinet the immense difficulties involved in a mass transfer of Germans. By February 1945, he was admitting that there were limits to the ‘success’ of the Greco-Turkish model. By March 1945, the flight of Germans notwithstanding, he was telling the London Poles, much to their surprise, to moderate their claims in the west.²³⁴ Behind the confidence and the bluster was the realization that the British public had serious misgivings about transfer of population and territory. At Yalta, Churchill told Stalin that ‘he was conscious of a large body of opinion in Great Britain which was frankly shocked at the idea of moving millions of people by force. He himself was not shocked, but it was certainly a view which would come very much to the fore in Great Britain’. There was, therefore, ‘the moral question’, Churchill explained to Stalin, ‘which he had to settle with his people’. If the speech of 15 December 1944 had, in part, been Churchill’s attempt to ‘settle’ this, he had not succeeded in doing so.²³⁵ What difference, then, did the war make? Acceptance of the principle of population transfer did not arise directly from the war. What the war did, however, was make the principle that bit more compelling. Even the most sceptical observer now recognized that the brutal ethnic restructuring of the German-Polish borderlands, involving transfers of German populations and the resettlement of ‘colonists’, had to be reversed. Consequently, there was never any question whether Germans would have to be transferred but only how many and from where. It was over the application of the principle that discussion and differences of opinion arose. But even among those who took a more sanguine view of the practicalities of mass population transfer, it was ²³⁴ Comments on 12 Mar. 1945 to Jan Stanczyk, former minister in Polish government-in-exile, in Raczy´nski, In Allied London, 277–8. ²³⁵ Quoted in Gilbert, Road to Victory, 1189.

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acknowledged that there was a limit to the numbers of Germans that could be transferred, and that if this limit were exceeded, the very reasons—on the grounds of justice, security or power politics—that made population transfer so compelling in principle would lose their force in practice. By the end of the war, this limit had long since been exceeded.

3 From Prague to Potsdam Expulsions from Czechoslovakia and Poland, May–July 1945 May to July 1945 was a period of flux and uncertainty as far as the future status of Germans in east-central Europe was concerned. In the absence of a formal decision on the part of the Great Powers, and acting without their approval, the Czech and Polish authorities took advantage of the situation and began expelling their German populations. These expulsions were meant to create faits accomplis on the ground in advance of any decisions taken by the Big Three at their first postwar meeting in mid-July 1945. At the Potsdam Conference between 17 July and 2 August 1945, two issues which had dominated Czech and Polish postwar planning were discussed and finally settled: the Polish western frontier was provisionally fixed on the Oder-western Neisse and formal approval was given to the mass transfer of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. This chapter examines initial British responses to developments in Czechoslovakia and Poland during this transition period as well as the British role in the diplomacy that led to the Potsdam decisions. The period is crucial for understanding not only the immediate background to the Potsdam decision on the transfer of Germans but also later British responses to the treatment of the German population of east-central Europe. On the eve of his departure for Moscow in February 1945, a tired and worried-looking Edvard Beneš spoke with Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman. It was one of his last interviews on British soil after five years of exile in London. Martin began the interview somewhat indelicately: ‘I have been trying to imagine myself in your position, this cannot be the home-coming you hoped for.’¹ At this, Beneš ¹ For this paragraph, see Sussex University, New Statesman Archive, SxMs60, Editorial correspondence c.1944–48, 30/6, Notes on meeting with Beneš, 26 Feb. 1945; ‘London

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suddenly became animated. It was possible to work with Czechoslovak Communists, he insisted. They could be tamed; Stalin could be trusted. It was a familiar pitch. Plans for the Sudeten Germans were also read from the same script which Beneš had been delivering on countless occasions since 1940, and most recently at the numerous pre-departure cocktail parties and luncheons held in his honour. Two million Sudeten Germans would be transferred to the Reich, ‘gradually over a short period’; Eger, Asch and other border districts might be exchanged for an equal amount of unspecified, sparsely populated ‘mountainous areas’; and the 800,000 Germans who remained would become Czechs, with no special privileges. A month later, after ten days of consultations with the Soviets and Czechoslovak Communists in Moscow, Beneš was interviewed by another British journalist, Ralph Parker, the Moscow correspondent of The Times. Although his plans for the Sudeten Germans remained more or less the same, there were some subtle, telling differences. Beneš no longer referred to the possibility of territorial exchange. His tone had also changed. He sounded more defiant than optimistic. He contrasted the full support for the transfer of the Germans which he had received from the Soviets with the caution of the British, who, he said, had accepted the idea at first but then got ‘cold feet’ once the question of transfers from Silesia and East Prussia arose. Beneš was clearly worried about Polish demands and how these might jeopardize his own plans. He thought that Polish claims to the Oder-eastern Neisse were ‘silly’. The Sudeten Germans, he explained, were a ‘special category’. They had ‘started the war’. ‘We are offering the Allies a way of reducing our German population below the danger point in a humane and orderly manner’, he told Parker. ‘The alternative would not be humane. It would be a pity if we were penalized for being civilized.’² This became a common complaint over the next eighteen months as the Czechoslovak government sought to solve its ‘German problem’ on terms that were acceptable both to domestic opinion in Czechoslovakia and to the occupying powers in Germany. So-called ‘moderates’ like Beneš believed they had made a considerable effort to Diary’, NSN, 3 Mar. 1945; also conversation with Beneš in Dalton MS Diaries, xxxii, 13 Feb. 1945. ² News International Archive and Record Office (NIARO), London, RBW/1/ Barrington Ward RM 1945–1947, Conversation with President Beneš, 29 Mar. 1945.

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resolve the problem in a manner that was acceptable to British and American sensibilities. Czech wartime planning had emphasized the gradual and orderly manner in which the German population would be removed. The whole operation was to be a ‘population transfer’ not a precipitate expulsion. The western allies had been fully consulted all along. As Beneš told the writer Compton Mackenzie in May 1944: I have discussed this transfer in detail with Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden. The British War Cabinet has accepted this transfer, and they have already officially notified me that they are in favour of it [ . . . ] The Labour Party has accepted the idea. I have discussed this proposed transfer with many people in Britain, and although some are against it, my impression is that the majority accept it as a necessity.³

Towards the end of the war, however, the Czechs began to detect a certain ambivalence in British and Americans responses to their postwar plans for the Sudeten Germans.⁴ This stood in contrast to the firm guarantees given to the Poles of international support for the wholesale removal of Germans from postwar Polish territory. The recent focus on the Polish Question had also highlighted practical problems arising from population transfers hitherto ignored or underestimated. Increasing doubts about the practicality of mass transfers threatened to undermine much of the painstaking groundwork that the Czechs had laid during the war in convincing the British and American governments and publics that transfer was a safe and sane policy. When evaluating British responses to the expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland between May and July 1945, three points should be kept in mind. First, throughout this period, the official British line on population transfer remained unchanged: it was seen as an international problem that did not only affect countries with German populations and that no unilateral action should be taken until this question had been fully discussed and international agreement on it ³ C. Mackenzie, Dr Beneš (1946), 293. ⁴ For the November 1944 Czechoslovak memorandum on the German minority and the non-committal British and Americans response, see FO1079/42, Memorandum of the Czechoslovak government, encl. in Ripka to Winant, 25 Nov. 1944; FO371/47085, N569/207/12, Nichols to Eden, 18 Jan. 1945; FO371/47120, N1975/650/18, Eden to Nichols, 23 Feb. 1945.

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reached. Second, rapidly unfolding events on the ground, however, were pre-empting the decisions that this peace conference would ultimately make. This meant that even if British policy remained unchanged, the realities upon which decisions would be based had not. And third, British knowledge of these developments was restricted to a limited area. This had the effect of distorting perceptions of the scale and nature of the problem which in turn had implications not only for decision-making at the conference but also for later official and public responses in the post-Potsdam period. Czechoslovakia was the only place in east-central Europe in summer 1945 where the western Allies had more than the vaguest idea of what was going on internally. In contrast, the Soviet zone of Germany was completely off limits to western personnel and the British and Americans did not take control of their sectors of Berlin until early July. Poland, even deeper within Soviet-occupied Europe, had a government that was hostile to the western powers and was in a state of near civil war. There were no British diplomatic or military representatives in Poland until mid-July; only one journalist accredited to a British newspaper was in the entire country in August. Compared to its neighbours, and judged by the standards of the time, Czechoslovakia, or at least the western part of it, was an open and relatively well-ordered country which for several related reasons provided the only window on the expulsion of the Germans during this period. The Americans occupied a slice of western Bohemia, which had a substantial German-speaking population. The British re-established diplomatic representation in Czechoslovakia at an early date. By July, there was even a British consulate in western Bohemia. The foreign press was given freedom of movement. There was no official censorship. Sudeten Germans also had an energetic lobbyist in London who attempted to draw attention to measures being taken against the German population. And finally, the Czechoslovak government, or the parts of it that were sympathetic to the western Allies, wanted to give an impression of transparency to the ‘social revolution’ that the country was undergoing. It is for these reasons that nearly all the initial attention the British directed towards the expulsion of the Germans was focused on Czechoslovakia. It is for these reasons also that the primary focus of this chapter is on Czechoslovak developments. Poland is not overlooked, but is dealt with primarily within the context of the Potsdam Conference.

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‘ PE N A L I Z E D F O R B E I N G C I V I L I Z E D ’ ? E X P U L S I O N S F RO M C Z E C H O S LOVA K IA , M AY – J U LY 1 9 4 5 On 5 May 1945, with units of the US Third Army advancing towards Pilsen in western Bohemia and the Red Army still 100 kilometres east of Prague, Czech resistance in the city broke out. The response of the occupying forces, which included 11,000 SS troops backed up by heavy weaponry, was swift and savage. On 9 May 1945 Soviet troops finally entered the city. The tables were now turned. Mobs descended on the city’s remaining German population.⁵ Prague during the uprising was filled with tens of thousands of Displaced Persons (DPs), refugees, assorted desperadoes and POWs, including 3,000 British prisoners.⁶ Seeing ‘bodies on lamp posts disembowelled’ and mutilated corpses of civilians and soldiers littering the streets of the suburbs, these British prisoners ‘took it for granted it was the Czechs that were doing it’.⁷ The wartime head of the Polish and Czech sections of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Colonel Harold Perkins, was also witness to the events of early May 1945. A man ‘larger than life in every dimension’,⁸ Perkins claimed to have the distinction of being the first Allied representative to enter Prague from the west. Intending to team up with SOE agents, he slipped into Prague on the night of 9/10 May disguised as a Czech, arriving only hours after the entry of the first Soviet troops. ‘Scenes in Prague were a bit wild’, Perkins reported afterwards, ‘both Czechs and Russians gave vent to considerable fury.’⁹ He saw an SS man ‘caught, strung up by his legs to a lamp post and ignited’, as well as ‘two German women being driven in front of a howling mob of about 100 Czechs [ . . . ] staggering along and just one mass of blood from head to foot’.¹⁰ He described his reaction to this spectacle in a private letter written a fortnight after the event: ⁵ Accounts of the rising in D. Brandes, Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat, ii (Munich, 1975), 113–46; C. MacDonald and J. Kaplan, Prague in the Shadow of the Swastika: A History of the German Occupation, 1939–1945 (Prague, 1995), 161–96. ⁶ PRO WO171/4661, HS/WD/BLA/214/1/E, Report from 22 Liaison HQ, 5–21 May 1945. ⁷ Imperial War Museum (IWM), Sound 12363, Joseph Burtt-Smith, Reel 5, 5 Nov. 1991. ⁸ Quoted in S. Dorril, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations (2000), 250. ⁹ PRO HS4/51, ‘MP’ to ‘CD’, Report no. 1, 16 May 1945. ¹⁰ HS4/51, Perkins to Lt. Col. Boughey [21 May 1945].

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I itched to join in and tell that crowd exactly what I thought of them [ . . . ] I’m sorry, but I cannot get worked up against ordinary human beings to the extent of sub human treatment—especially towards women. In my opinion it is just the sort of mentality which made these people butcher those women, that we have been fighting for the past years and we shall do no good at trying to rebuild this world if the same tactics are employed.¹¹

The episode, and Perkins’ response to it, is illustrative of the asymmetry between British and Czech understandings of how the German population of Czechoslovakia should be dealt with after the war. Perkins was a military man who was proud to have ‘fought against the Boche’.¹² He had identified strongly with the Continental resistance against the Nazis.¹³ He was not a deskbound, civilian journalist in London. Yet his reaction to this act of retribution, the ferocity of which was hardly unique in Czechoslovakia and was being repeated all over liberated Europe as wartime scores were settled and ‘collaborators’ punished, is revealing of a psychological gap born of differing experiences of war and occupation that separated Britain from its European allies, the existence of which in the case of Czechoslovakia would become even more obvious once the mass expulsion of Germans got underway.¹⁴ British observers like Perkins, while sympathizing with the aim of a Czechoslovak state without Germans, found the manner in which the Czechs were going about achieving it counterproductive and at times abhorrent. Czechs, for their part, saw these criticisms of the means as reflecting underlying doubts about the ends. Anxiety that these doubts would come to the surface sooner rather than later, and that an ‘historic opportunity’ to resolve the nationality question in Czechoslovakia would be lost, meant that any criticism, however mild, of the way in which Germans were being handled met with Czech suspicion and defensiveness. What foreign observers of postwar Czechoslovakia soon grasped, if they had not done so already, was that the Czechoslovak government was serious in its resolve to deal with its German problem once and for all. In his last broadcast from London, Beneš had spoken of the necessity of preparing for ‘a final solution of the problem of the Germans and Magyars’.¹⁵ The permanent removal of national minorities from Czechoslovakia was the one policy that had overwhelming support ¹¹ Ibid. ¹² Ibid. ¹³ P. Howarth, Undercover, paperback edn (2000), 37–8. ¹⁴ For discussion of the wider European context, see I. Deak, J. Gross and T. Judt (eds), The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, 2000). ¹⁵ CAC, Newsome papers, NERI 6/3, E. Beneš, ‘Returning Home’, BBC Czechoslovak Programme, 17 Feb. 1945.

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among Czechs and Slovaks and which united an otherwise divided country. The British ambassador, Philip Nichols, was pointing out a commonplace when he informed London in June 1945 how ‘[the German minority issue] pervades the atmosphere here [ . . . ] This question circumscribes and clouds the thought of almost every Czech [ . . . ] The hatred of the Germans is in fact almost pathological [ . . . ] It is almost impossible to have any conversation with a Czech without the German question cropping up’.¹⁶ Czechs abroad had underestimated the depth of this feeling at home towards the Germans and on returning home the postwar Czechoslovak government adjusted its policies accordingly.¹⁷ The rhetoric of the Czechoslovak leadership also shifted with even ‘moderates’ like Beneš sounding zealous, almost inflammatory. On his return to Prague on 16 May 1945, the Czechoslovak President told a vast crowd on the Old Town Square that they would have ‘to adopt an uncompromising attitude’ to national minorities. ‘We must cleanse our country from everything German, culturally, economically and politically’.¹⁸ Communist leaders were already demanding that workers be armed in order to march into the Sudetenland.¹⁹ Armed bands of Czechs were soon operating in the borderlands, with or without the authority of central government, initiating the first stage of anti-German measures—the so-called ‘wild transfer’ (Divoký odsun)—which lasted until August 1945. This was characterized, at least in the early period in May and June, by short notice eviction, internment, expulsion, expropritation and forced labour service, including a number of massacres and ‘death marches’. In addition, a host of discriminatory administrative measures were applied that paved the way for the mass removal of the German population. Treatment depended greatly on location (American, Soviet or Czech-occupied zone) and status (‘local’ Sudeten Germans, post-Munich settlers, Reich German refugees from Silesia, Wehrmacht or SS POWs), but in German-populated Czechoslovakia by June 1945 a system of discrimination and exclusion was in place ¹⁶ FO371/46810, C3447/95/18, Prague to FO, 25 Jun. 1945. For almost identical comments made by Alfred Klieforth (US chargé d’affaires, Prague) to the State Dept., 28 Jun. 1945, see W. Ullmann, The United States in Prague, 1945–1948 (New York, 1978), 63. ¹⁷ Comments by Ivo Duchacek, Ripka’s former private secretary and a liaison officer with US Third Army in Pilsen, during meeting with FO Northern Dept., 4 Jun. 1945, in FO371/47087, N6570/207/12, Allen minute, 5 Jun. 1945. ¹⁸ ‘The President’s First Speech in Freed Prague’, Central European Observer [henceforth, CEO], 1 Jun. 1945. ¹⁹ HS4/51, Summary of Perkins’ activities and despatches to date, 16 May 1945.

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overseen by local National Committees which were often a law unto themselves.²⁰ By mid-June 1945, the British Embassy in Prague was not short of reliable sources of information about the situation in Czechoslovakia. The presence on the ground of men like Perkins, as well as British liaison officers with the US and Czechoslovak forces, the occasional traveller, returning POWs or war correspondents who had entered with the US Third Army, meant the British were able from an early date to form a reasonably good idea not only of the mood in Czechoslovakia towards the German population but also of some of the specific measures being taken against them.²¹ The American occupation of part of western Bohemia, of course, made a huge difference in this respect and a large proportion of British intelligence concerned American-Czech tensions over the treatment of the Sudeten German population in this area.²² The Czechs complained bitterly and incessantly about American leniency. The Americans were supposedly feeding the Sudeten Germans too generously at the expense of Czechs. They were allowing ‘guilty’ Germans to shelter, both literally and figuratively, behind the Stars and Stripes. They were failing to differentiate between Czechs and Germans and openly fraternizing with Sudeten women. They were preventing Czechs from taking direct ²⁰ Stanˇek, Verfolgung, 27–176. ²¹ Perkins returned to Prague on 25 May 1945 as a ‘stop gap’ chargé d’affaires and part-time spy to prepare the ground for Nichols, who arrived on 2 June 1945. See FO371/47806, N5688/207/12, Sargent minute, 18 May 1945; HS4/51, Perkins to Boughley, 26 May 1945. By 3 June 1945, the British Embassy was already sending political despatches to London. See FO371/47087, N6396/207/12, Nichols to FO, 3 Jun. 1945. By early July 1945, Perkins was reporting on the situation in the US zone, having set up a consulate in Pilsen on 27 June 1945. See FO371/47089, N8411/207/12, Prague to FO: Information summary for 3–9 Jul. 1945. ²² For reports available to the FO, see FO371/47087, N6274/207/12, Visit to Liberated Czechoslovakia, 25 May 1945, encl. in PID to Nichols and Allen, 30 May 1945; N6451/207/12, Notes on the Situation in Czechoslovakia, 2 Jun. 1945, encl. in Thwaites to Allen, 2 Jun. 1945; N6570/207/12, Allen minute, 5 Jun. 1945; N6665/207/12, [Information from 22 Liaison HQ report encl. in] Nichols to FO, 10 Jun. 1945; FO371/47088, N7124/207/12, Nichols to Eden, 9 Jun. 1945, encl. 22 Liaison HQ: Report on Czechoslovakia, 4 Jun. 1945; FO371/47089, N8156/207/12, Nichols to Eden, 2 Jul. 1945, encl. 22 Liaison HQ: Report on Czechoslovakia, 24 Jun. 1945; N8456/207/12, Nichols to Eden, 6 Jul. 1945, encl. 22 Liaison HQ: Report on Czechoslovakia, 1 Jul. 1945; FO817/17, 134/1/45, Perkins to Nichols, 4 Jul. 1945; 134/2/45, Perkins to Barker, 3 Jul. 1945; FO371/47090, N9298/207/12, Extracts from censored lttr from Parker to Barrington Ward, editor of The Times, 9 Jul. 1945; FO371/47091, N9512/207/12, Perkins to Nichols, 15 Jul. 1945; N9514/207/12, Perkins to Nichols, 20 Jul. 1945, encl. in Nichols to Eden, 23 Jul. 1945; N9587/207/12, Nichols to Eden, 23 Jul. 1945, encl. 22 Liaison HQ: Report on Czechoslovakia, 19 Jul. 1945.

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action to deal with the German problem. These differences had still not been resolved by the end of July 1945, when Ralph Parker, who was touring the country as a special correspondent for The Times, noted that: American stock is low here, a fact that is reflected in the popularity of the Communist party in the American ‘zone’, compared to its position in the Russian ‘zone’. A lack of tact in dealing with women (the Czech says GI Joe is girl-crazy), complete political naivete [sic] in their handling of problems arising of Czech–German antagonism, and the general bumptiousness of their people, no doubt due to nothing other than the amount of vitamins they consume, has apparently exploded the popularity Americans used to have here.²³

British personnel on the ground, like Parker, tended to sympathize with the Czechs. But there were limits to this. As Harold Perkins, on loan from the security services to the Foreign Office, informed his former boss in the SOE in early July 1945: In the Czech areas [of the American occupied zone] the Americans are very popular, in the Sudeten areas the Czechs don’t like the Americans because they say that they are sheltering the German minority from the punishment they so richly deserve. The Americans say that they are not going to allow the Czechs to loot and generally practice barbarism on the Sudetens, in fact they will not allow them to practice methods against which the world has been fighting for five years. There is something to be said on both sides. Personally, I would be more inclined to favour the Czechs if I thought that their activities in that area would be properly controlled. As things are today small bands of Czech gentlemen wearing multi-coloured armlets move about the country constituting a law unto themselves. In my new capacity as local British representative, both sides pour out their troubles to my receptive ears.²⁴

On the whole, the British viewed American difficulties with a mixture of amusement, disdain and condescension. One British liaison officer with the US Third Army found his American colleagues not only ignorant of Czech–German relations and the local language (US interpreters apparently found the Egerlander dialect incomprehensible) but, at first, and even amongst senior US officers, oblivious as to the very existence of the Sudeten Germans as a separate national group.²⁵ The ‘considerable difficulty’ which British liaison officers attached to ²³ NIARO, BNS/3, Ralph Parker’s Czechoslovak Diary, 27 Jul. 1945. ²⁴ HS4/7, Perkins to CD, 2 Jul. 1945. ²⁵ See FO371/47087, N6451/207/12, Notes on the Situation in Czechoslovakia, 2 Jun. 1945.

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the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade in western Bohemia had first reported as arising from ‘the rather kind-hearted attitude of the Americans towards Sudeten Germans’ in early June 1945 continued into the month with the Americans still being unable to distinguish between Sudeten Germans and Czechs and engaging in a ‘considerable amount of fraternisation [ . . . ] which leads to much unrest on the part of the Czechoslovak troops’.²⁶ The problems the Americans were experiencing served as a double warning to the British. Intervening to slow down the expulsion of Germans or prevent excesses was a sure way of making an enemy of the Czechs and given that so far it was a purely American problem it was probably best left that way. The instinctive Foreign Office response on learning of the situation in the Czech borderlands was ‘to turn a blind eye’ and to avoid being too ‘grandmotherly’ about it.²⁷ Such a position was only tenable, however, as long as expulsions were on a small scale from and into Soviet-occupied territory, that is, when out of sight and out of mind.²⁸ Negative publicity in Britain, however, had the potential to complicate the situation and make this distance more difficult to maintain. In May 1945, Wenzel Jaksch, the London-based leader of the Sudeten German Social Democrats, launched a publicity campaign in Britain which would last well into 1946. The previous year, Jaksch had attempted unsuccessfully to turn liberal and left-wing opinion against Czech transfer plans. ‘This time we have truly done everything we can and more,’²⁹ Jaksch wrote to his counterpart in Swedish exile, Ernst Paul, after the first round of appeals were sent to western statesmen, socialist politicians and trade unionists, asking that they help exert a restraining influence on the Czechoslovak government.³⁰ Jaksch’s position, as far as it can be pieced together from hastily mimeographed information sheets and special English-language editions of Der Sozialdemokrat that he distributed widely, was in keeping with his image as ‘an excellent man of integrity and moderate discretion’ which he had assiduously ²⁶ WO171/4661, HS/WD/BLA/214/1/F, War Diary of 22 Liaison HQ, 4 Jun.,10 Jun. 1945. ²⁷ FO371/47086, N5955/207/12, Allen minute, 25 May 1945. ²⁸ See FO371/47086, N5955/207/12, O’Neill minute, 27 May 1945. ²⁹ Seliger-Archiv (SA), Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn, NL Ernst Paul,1438, 18 Jun. 1945. ³⁰ Sudetendeutsches Archiv (SdA), Munich, NL Jaksch, B1/53, tel. to Truman, 1 Jun. 1945; B1/12d, letters to Attlee and Bevin, 4 Jun. 1945; F8, tel. [to European socialist leaders and US trade unionists] [1] Jun. 1945.

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cultivated in British circles.³¹ His initial aim was to bring attention to the discriminatory measures that had been enacted in Czechoslovakia and to highlight the conditions under which Germans were then living. His special pleading was, of course, on behalf of ‘anti-Nazis’. However, Jaksch soon took it upon himself to speak for all ‘ordinary’ Germans in Czechoslovakia, Social Democrats or not, and began to recognize from the communications he was receiving from Czechoslovakia that even anti-Nazis there believed they had no future in a Czech and Slovak national state.³² The results of this first wave of publicity were mixed but far from discouraging. The farthest Jaksch got on an official level was an audience with a clerk of the same junior rank whom he always met whenever he approached the Foreign Office, which showed that, six years after arriving in Britain, the door at the Foreign Office was still open to this ‘worthy little man’ but it was far from the corridors of power.³³ This Foreign Office official, however, noted that Jaksch, despite his sadness at developments in Czechoslovakia, was ‘not entirely pessimistic’.³⁴ Jaksch’s mood can not but have been influenced by the first stirrings in the British press and parliament over Czechoslovak policy towards the Sudeten Germans. Jaksch had mentioned during the Foreign Office interview that he ‘might be obliged to try and secure some publicity for his point of view’.³⁵ Evidently, he had already made moves in this direction. During final sittings of the Commons before the General Election and the summer recess, several questions were tabled regarding Czechoslovak policy towards its German population, asking whether expulsions were being carried out and, if so, what the British government’s attitude to them was. Although these received non-committal responses, it was enough, from Jaksch’s perspective at least, that the ³¹ Quotation from FO371/46814, C7001/95/12, O’Neill minutes, 15 Aug. 1945. See also ‘Indiscriminate measures of the Czechoslovak government against the Sudeten population’, 10 Jun. 1945, in FO371/47154, N7121/4440/12; ‘Information regarding the position in the Sudeten territory June-July 1945’, 15 Jul. 1945, in FO371/47091, N9519/207/12; ‘Evidence on the Reign of Racialism in Czecho-Slovakia’, special edn. of Der Sozialdemokrat, Jul. 1945; also Der Sozialdemokrat, 31 May, 30 Jun. 1945. ³² See examples in SA, NL EP, 1120, Berichte nos. 1–3, 19–25 Jun. 1945. ³³ Earlier description of Jaksch in FO371/24291, C1823/534/12, Leeper to Makin, 20 Feb. 1940. Jaksch continued his ‘periodical visits’ to the FO even after the Potsdam Conference. See FO371/46812, C5594/95/18, Allen minute, 9 Sep. 1945. ³⁴ FO371/47154, N7121/4440/12, Allen to Nichols, 20 Jun. 1945. ³⁵ Ibid.

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subject was being raised.³⁶ Direct appeals to the British and Czechoslovak governments on behalf of Jaksch were also made by MPs, as well as by voluntary organizations like the Quakers.³⁷ Jaksch was also given space in the national press to air his grievances. Both the New Statesman and The Times published letters from Jaksch and other Sudeten German Social Democrats,³⁸ based on the appeal which Jaksch had been distributing widely in early June 1945,³⁹ which led to the publication of lengthy correspondence on the matter.⁴⁰ The Manchester Guardian together with the Observer and a handful of mostly non-Communist left-wing publications took a sharply critical editorial line against Czech policy that summer.⁴¹ To what extent Jaksch’s ‘feverish activity’ was alone responsible for this increased press and parliamentary interest is hard to determine with any certainty.⁴² Jaksch grossly overestimated his influence in left-wing and liberal circles.⁴³ He boasted to Ernst Paul of having on this occasion set the British press ‘in motion’ and wrote ³⁶ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 411, cols. 1632–3, 1686–7 (13 Jun. 1945), col. 1791 (14 Jun. 1945). ³⁷ FO371/47088, N6922/207/12, Sorensen to Eden, 8 Jun. 1945; SdA, NL Jaksch, B1/143, Vojtíšek to Sorensen, 18 Jun. 1945; FO371/47089, N8327/207/12, Friends Peace Committee to Eden, 4 Jun. 1945; FO371/47088, N7452/207/12, Catchpool to Eden, 20 Jun. 1945. ³⁸ ‘Sudeten Germans’, NSN, 9 Jun. 1945; ‘Future of Minorities in Czechoslovakia’, The Times, 14 Jun. 1945. ³⁹ ‘Peace Through Terror: An Appeal to all Friends of Justice in the Free World by the Parliamentary Delegation of Sudeten Labour’ [May 1945], in Der Sozialdemokrat, 31 May 1945, 1087. See also LNU 2/21, S1253; Forward, 23 Jun. 1945; Left News, Jul. 1945, 3249–50. ⁴⁰ ‘Sudeten Germans’, NSN, 16, 23 and 30 Jun. 1945. ‘Sudeten Germans and Other Things’, MG, 6, 11, 17, 26 and 28 Jul. 1945, and 8 Aug. 1945. See also Chapter 4 for a discussion of Victor Gollancz’s correspondence with Kingsley Martin on this theme. ⁴¹ ‘Munich: The Last Act’, Observer, 10 Jun. 1945; ‘Benes Faces British Move on Deportations’, Observer, 17 Jun. 1945; ‘Czechs Claim Border Areas in Germany’, Observer, 24 Jun. 1945; ‘Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans’, MG, 9 Jun. 1945; ‘The Sudetenland’, MG, 18 Jun. 1945; ‘Treatment of Germans’, MG, 6 Jul. 1945. ‘Mass Expulsions of Germans’, NSN, 21 Jul. 1945; ‘The Responsibility for Munich’, Socialist Commentary, Aug. 1945, 150–5; Old Liberal, ‘The Case of the Sudeten Germans’, CR 168 (Aug. 1945), 79–82. ⁴² Quotation from SA, NL EP,1438, Jaksch to Paul, 10 Aug. 1945. ⁴³ Post-Potsdam, some junior ministers in the new Labour government did, however, put in a word for Jaksch. See FO371/46814, C7001/95/18, Ellen Wilkinson (Education Minister) to McNeil, 9 Aug. 1945; FO371/51104, WR3094/1/48, Philip Noel-Baker (Minister of State) to Rendel, 16 Aug. 1945; FO371/46814, C7120/95/18, Noel-Baker to Allen, 27 Aug. 1945; Cecil papers, Add. MS 51109, fo. 165, Irene Noel-Baker to Lord Cecil, 25 Aug. 1945.

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of his great satisfaction on seeing that his efforts had found ‘such a resounding echo’.⁴⁴ The Czechs, for their part, tended to see Jaksch’s tentacles enveloping the British body politic whenever there was any adverse criticism of Czechoslovakia. There is no doubt, however, that, deliberately or not, these critics were articulating Jaksch’s agenda and in doing so confirmed the Czechoslovak government’s worst fears about the fickle and short-sighted British. It is important to note that British critics of Czech policy did not question the necessity of population transfer nor deny the Czechs the right to carry it out. There was no objection to the principle of transferring part of the German population or those elements of it that were ‘disloyal’. Criticism of Czech policy instead centred on the practicalities: who was being expelled and how this was being carried out. The chief accusation was that the expulsions were indiscriminate; no distinction was being made between Nazis and non-Nazis, between ‘disloyal’ and ‘loyal’ elements. The Sudeten German democratic opposition was meeting the same fate, it was said, as Nazis who evaded justice by being expelled into the Reich. In their treatment of the German population, the Czechs were imitating Nazi methods and practising a form of ‘Hitlerite racialism in reverse’, as the Tribune called it.⁴⁵ Czech policy was ‘reminiscent of Hitler’s pan-Germanism’, according to the Manchester Guardian, ‘[and] unworthy of the country of Masaryk’.⁴⁶ It would only result in Czechoslovakia squandering the reserve of good-will built up since Munich. It did not make sense economically and, moreover, it was not a decision Czechoslovakia alone could take. It was up to the occupying powers to decide how soon and how many Sudeten Germans could be taken into Germany. Just as British criticisms did not go unnoticed in Prague, the hypersensitivity of the Czechs was not overlooked in London. This is clearly illustrated by Czech reactions to a series of reports by Jon Kimche, a British national of Swiss origin, who was the London-based European affairs correspondent for the British news agency, Reuters.⁴⁷ In midJune 1945, Kimche filed two reports for Reuters which were highly critical of Czech policy towards the Sudeten Germans and which suggested that there were serious splits in the Czechoslovak government ⁴⁴ SA, NL EP, 1438, Jaksch to Paul, 18 Jun. 1945. ⁴⁵ ‘Racialism in Reverse’, Tribune, 15 Jun. 1945. ⁴⁶ ‘The Sudetenland’, MG, 18 Jun. 1945. ⁴⁷ Kimche was also ‘Military Correspondent’ for the Evening Standard and wrote under the pseudonym ‘Liberator’ in the Observer.

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over the whole policy of expulsion.⁴⁸ These infuriated the Czechoslovak government. A ‘clearly annoyed’ Vladimír Clementis, the Deputy Foreign Minister, confronted Nichols on 18 June 1945 with a copy of one of Kimche’s reports and demanded an explanation.⁴⁹ The Czechoslovak government then took the unusual step of issuing a démenti the following day, claiming that the Reuters reports were ‘entirely fictitious’ and ‘without foundation’.⁵⁰ Accusations were levelled elsewhere that Kimche’s ‘anti-Czech writings’ were timed to coincide with a British press campaign orchestrated by Jaksch.⁵¹ When another critical report by Kimche appeared later in June, a formal complaint was made directly to Reuters. The Czechoslovak government accused Kimche of peddling ‘inventions, untruths and half-truths calculated to discredit and prejudge the Czechoslovak case and the good name of Czechoslovakia’.⁵² Kimche, however, was not the best man to spoil a fight over. He was a highly respected correspondent who was soon to become the news agency’s second biggest seller.⁵³ Moreover, Kimche’s sources were watertight in this instance. He had relied on Radio Prague reports or statements of fact.⁵⁴ No connection between Kimche and Jaksch could be proven. Most of his contacts were, in fact, London-based Czechs.⁵⁵ Reuters was under no doubt, therefore, that Kimche had been libelled.⁵⁶ The Czechoslovak government backed down. Kimche, nevertheless, was subsequently asked by Reuters to keep in mind how ‘extraordinarily sensitive’ the Czechs were and ‘to pay a certain regard to ‘‘feelings’’ ’ when reporting on the country.⁵⁷ Kimche was, in any case, soon given a different brief.⁵⁸ This was a minor affair as it turned out, and one that quickly blew over, yet instructive nevertheless. That so ⁴⁸ FO371/47088, N7605/207/12, Kimche’s reports for Reuters, 9 Jun. and 16 Jun. 1945. ⁴⁹ FO371/47088, N7605/207/12, Nichols to Ridsdale, 19 Jun. 1945. ⁵⁰ FO371/47088, N7605/207/12, ‘Untrue English Reports’, Zˇemˇedelské noviny, 19 Jun. 1945. ⁵¹ FO371/47088, N7605/207/12, Weekly Information Summary, 18–25 Jun. 1945; ‘The Old and the New’, New Times, 15 Jun. 1945, 18–19. ⁵² Reuters Archive (RA), London, Box K4/Jon Kimche, Cisar to Chancellor, 12 Jul. 1945. ⁵³ RA, K4/Jon Kimche, ‘JPG’ to ‘WAC’, 23 May 1946; Chancellor to Ridsdale, 11 Jul. 1945. ⁵⁴ RA, K4/Jon Kimche, Kimche’s 23 Jun. 1945 message (with notes by Acting News Manager). ⁵⁵ FO371/47088, N7605/207/12, Ridsdale to Nichols, 29 Jun. 1945. ⁵⁶ RA, K4/Jon Kimche, Chancellor to Cisar, 18 Jul. 1945. ⁵⁷ RA, K4/Jon Kimche, Chancellor to Kimche, 23 Jul. 1945. ⁵⁸ Kimche was sent to cover the Middle East in autumn 1945.

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much attention was paid to this and other relatively minor criticism emanating from Britain might seem exaggerated, but it was characteristic of the Czech mood.⁵⁹ Respect for this sensitivity was a point which correspondents like Ralph Parker were at pains to communicate home. Parker noted in his diary how Kimche’s reports had ‘revived Munich memories’ in Czechoslovakia,⁶⁰ and warned his editor, Hugh Barrington Ward of The Times, how easily a leading article or two in the Manchester Guardian [sic], written by some well-meaning person who has no idea whatsoever of the feeling of the people here can do immense harm to our cause. I don’t think that it is always realized at editorial desks, especially those of the Liberal press, how seriously every word they write is read in Central Europe today, and how sensitive people are after six years of German occupation.⁶¹

This sensitivity extended to the activities of journalists inside as well as outside the country. When British correspondents began filing copy from Czechoslovakia in July 1945, their despatches were, without exception, sympathetic to the position of the government in Prague and uncritical as far as the Sudeten question was concerned.⁶² This was partly genuine understanding and partly practical common sense. Although there was, theoretically, no censorship of foreign correspondents, who were free to move around Czechoslovakia at will, they were heavily reliant on the authorities for facilities and assistance and obstacles could easily be put in the way of the uncooperative.⁶³ ‘The Czechs reserve the right to ask persistently unfriendly correspondents to leave, but otherwise they can have a free hand and access to go anywhere’, noted a visiting BBC correspondent.⁶⁴ But the meaning ⁵⁹ See also ‘Reuters’ Resentment of Prague Reflection on Reliability’, World’s Press News, 19 Jul. 1945. ⁶⁰ NIARO, BNS/3, Parker Diary, 16 Jul. 1945. ⁶¹ NIARO, RBW/1/Barrington Ward RM 1945–1947, Parker to Barrington Ward, 9 Jul. 1945. ⁶² There were no British correspondents in Czechoslovakia in June 1945. By the end of the Potsdam Conference, six had either passed through as ‘special correspondents’ or were in residence. See BBC WAC, E15/148, Confidential Memo. on Correspondents in Prague by Leonard Miall, 1 Aug. 1945. ⁶³ RA, Reel 0065, Bettany to Chancellor, 30 Jul. 1945. For the situation facing press correspondents in summer 1945, see FO371/47164, N6506/6506/12, Prague to FO, 4 Jun. 1945; N7414/6506/12, FO to Prague, 20 Jun. 1945; N7583/6506/12, Prague to FO, 23 Jun. 1945. ⁶⁴ BBC WAC, E15/148, L. Miall: Facilities in Czechoslovakia, 1 Aug. 1945.

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of ‘unfriendly’ was broadly interpreted. Peter Smollett of the Daily Express, for example, ran afoul of the authorities for a report on the Sudetenland. On 20 July 1945, his paper published a despatch of his in which he described accompanying a group of 500 Germans being expelled into Saxony. The article was sympathetic to the Czech position and dismissive of the German predicament. There was no mention of any maltreatment of Germans. Smollett ended by quoting a Czech guard saying: ‘It’s a hateful business driving the Germans out. None of us likes to see it.’⁶⁵ Yet even this was not acceptable for the Czech authorities who complained about Smollett’s ‘too sweeping comments’.⁶⁶ Even sympathetic observers, therefore, had to tread carefully. Knowing what was and what was not acceptable to the Czech authorities, however, was not made easier by the mixed messages coming from on high. Whether or not Kimche was correct in claiming that there were serious splits within the Czechoslovak government, statements by leading Czechoslovak politicians gave the impression that there was at least a divergence of approach, if not of opinion, over the Sudeten problem. This in turn added to the confusion about what was really happening to Czechoslovakia’s Germans. For example, there was a softening of Beneš’s rhetoric from June 1945 onwards. During a public speech in Pilsen on 15 June 1945, he again stressed that Czechoslovakia had to be cleared of ‘treacherous’ German and Magyar elements, but he pointed out that it was an enormous task which the Czechs and Slovaks could not accomplish alone: ‘We must reach agreement on this subject with the Soviet Union, with Great Britain, and with the United States. I have no doubt that such an agreement will be reached’. In the meantime, Beneš asked for reason, calm and patience.⁶⁷ Beneš henceforth claimed that no expulsions were being carried out, as did others in his entourage.⁶⁸ On 11 July 1945, he told Allen Bettany, Reuters correspondent in Prague, that 200,000 ‘Nazis’ had fled Czechoslovakia voluntarily and only in ‘isolated cases’ had Sudeten Germans been expelled owing to the ‘high feeling’ among the Czech population at the end of the war.⁶⁹ However, ⁶⁵ ‘Revenge for Lidice is Mass Expulsion’, Daily Express [henceforth, DE], 20 Jul. 1945. ⁶⁶ RA, Reel 0065, Bettany to Chancellor, 30 Jul. 1945. ⁶⁷ FO371/47088, N7280/207/12, Prague to FO, 17 Jun. 1945. ⁶⁸ Ripka interview in ‘Czechs Refuse to Give Up Teschen’, Observer, 22 Jul. 1945. ⁶⁹ FO371/46811, C4799/95/18, Beneš interview, 11 Jul. 1945, encl. in Nichols to Warner, 23 Jul. 1945.

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Beneš’s remarks were at odds with statements made by leading Czechoslovak Communists who claimed expulsions were continuing with the full cooperation of the Soviets.⁷⁰ The British Embassy did little to help clear up the picture.⁷¹ Nichols did not doubt that Germans were being ‘victimized’, but in his despatches to London he claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that it was ‘very difficult for us to gauge the truth’ about developments in Sudeten areas because ‘reliable information [ . . . ] is not easy to come by’ and ‘we have no means at present of making investigations on our own’. He pointed out that in any case the central government did not have a proper ‘grip’ on the situation in the border regions and the Communist-dominated National Committees were a law unto themselves. Towering above the groundswell of virulently anti-German feeling among the Czech population at large and the ‘intransigents’ in government, Nichols cast ‘the more experienced and objective Beneš’, as indeed the Czechoslovak President portrayed himself, in the role of an arbiter, as a moderating force. However, Nichols was warning almost from the moment he arrived in Prague that Beneš would not be able to hold this position indefinitely. This was why a positive announcement by the Big Three on the question of a transfer of the Germans was imperative. He warned the Foreign Office in mid-July 1945, on the eve of a visit to London by Hubert Ripka, the Czechoslovak Minister for Foreign Trade and a leading figure within Beneš’s circle: As you will have realised from my reports, there will be grave disappointment, if not indeed trouble, if the Big Three do not reach some decision on this burning topic at Potsdam. It is on the agenda all right, but will they reach it? I sincerely hope so. The trouble would probably take the form of the Czechs taking the law into their own hands and sending the Germans away without prior authority from the ACC [Allied Control Council]. They have almost certainly squared the Russians on this point.⁷²

Ripka predictably raised the issue while in London. The ‘biggest factor’ in Czechoslovakia, he told Foreign Office officials, was the Sudeten German problem. The Czech people wanted expulsion on ‘a considerable scale’. ⁷⁰ Clementis speech, 13 Jun. 1945, in FO371/47088, N7488/207/12, Nichols to Eden, 14 Jun. 1945; Fierlinger speech, 12 Jul. 1945, in FO371/46811, C4317/95/18, Prague to FO, 12 Jul. 1945. ⁷¹ For what follows, see three despatches sent from the British Embassy on 25 June 1945: FO371/47090, N8648/207/12, Nichols to Warner; FO371/46810, C3447/95/18, C3448/95/18, Prague to FO. ⁷² FO817/14, ii, 27/48/45, Note from Nichols to Sargent, 14 Jul. 1945.

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Since the Russians backed this, it was essential that the British and Americans should not appear to be opposed to such a solution. In connection with this, he mentioned the ‘unfortunate remarks’ about Jaksch in the British press. Moreover, if the British and Americans prevaricated, then the Czechoslovak government could not be responsible for the consequences. ‘Unless the British and American governments made a definite statement soon’, he warned, ‘there was a danger that the people might take the law into their own hands.’⁷³ This warning was repeated, with slightly more sinister overtones, in an interview he gave to the Observer published on 22 July: We must beg our British friends to understand the situation and to help us solve this problem. The hatred and the distrust of the Germans is so intense that it will be better, even for the Germans themselves, to leave the country. Otherwise—I must state this quite frankly and emphatically—we do not know what may happen to the Sudeten Germans.⁷⁴

In a BBC interview on 26 July 1945, Beneš said much the same, claiming that while Czech democrats were opposed to excesses against the Sudeten German population, these would only stop once the Allies agreed to the principle that the Sudeten Germans be transferred and a plan for their removal could be worked out.⁷⁵ The Czechs were understandably anxious that the question of the transfer of the Sudeten Germans would be on the agenda at the upcoming meeting of the Big Three in Berlin and would be given sympathetic consideration alongside transfers arising from Polish claims to German territory. Exacerbating this anxiety was the attitude of the other powers to Czechoslovak claims. By late June 1945, it seemed that the entire policy of international support for transfers from Czechoslovakia was unravelling. Little faith could be placed in American support. Events in western Bohemia had clearly shown the fault lines with the Americans over this issue. But far more worryingly, there were signs that even the Soviet leadership, or elements within it, were wavering and becoming ‘soft’. During consultations in Moscow in March 1945, the Soviet leadership, and specifically Molotov, had seemed far cooler towards the idea of transfer than before. Observers noticed a touch of ambivalence ⁷³ Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart ii, 470–2 (18 Jul. 1945); cf. FO934/3, 13(5), Shuckburgh note, 19 Jul. 1945. ⁷⁴ ‘Czechs Refuse to Give Up Teschen’, Observer, 22 Jul. 1945. ⁷⁵ FO371/47154, N10207/4440/12, Beneš interview with Leonard Miall, 26 Jul. 1945.

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in the Soviet Foreign Minister’s remarks.⁷⁶ When a Czechoslovak delegation visited Moscow again in late June 1945, however, Stalin gave his unequivocal support for the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. ‘We won’t disturb you’, he told his Czechoslovak guests, ‘Throw them out. Now they will learn themselves what it means to rule over someone.’⁷⁷ What went unreported at the time, however, and ignored by historians since, is the attitude of others in Stalin’s entourage. In the unpublished diary which Ralph Parker, who had been invited by Clementis to accompany the delegation back to Czechoslovakia, kept of his visit, he noted the following exchange with the Czechoslovak Deputy Foreign Minister: C[lementis] told me that one of the things that had interested him most in Moscow was an apparent shade of difference between Stalin and Vyshinsky about the treatment of Germans. One of these two, he did not say which, said when the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans was being discussed that care should be taken not to add unnecessarily to the already heavy sufferings of the German people. The other [ . . . ] it could, of course, only have been Stalin, apparently did not share this view. However, the Czechs appear to have been somewhat concerned by what they called ‘a certain tender-heartedness’ towards the Germans, detected in Moscow.⁷⁸

Stalin’s word, of course, was final. But these comments are nevertheless helpful as a corrective to the view that Soviet thinking on this subject was monolithic. They also reflect the doubts that even Czechoslovak Communists and fellow travellers could have about the dependability of their steadfast ally on this subject. Indeed, there were also signs of ‘a certain tender-heartedness’ developing on the ground. There were reports that in northern Bohemia, the Sudeten German population feared the future withdrawal of Soviet troops because they had been protecting them from expulsion.⁷⁹ The Soviet authorities in Germany were becoming increasingly concerned at the problems arising from the influx of expellees.⁸⁰ By July 1945, there was some uncertainty as to ⁷⁶ E. Taborsky, President Edvard Beneš: Between East and West, 1938–1948 (Stanford, 1981), 204; cf. record of Molotov-Beneš meeting on 21 March 1945, in Volokitina et al. (eds), Vostochnaia Evropa, 174–6. ⁷⁷ Quoted in Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 109. ⁷⁸ NIARO, BNS/3, Parker Diary, 2 Jul. 1945. ⁷⁹ SA, NL EP, 1120, ‘Tschechische Ausrottungspolitik in Sudetenland (Bericht einer in England eingetroffenen Augenzeugin)’, undated. ⁸⁰ A. Noskova, ‘Migration of the Germans after the Second World War’, in Rieber (ed.), Forced Migration, 107–10.

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whether Sudeten Germans were still being accepted into the Soviet zone of Germany. A member of the British Embassy staff who visited Karlovy Vary in the middle of the month reported that movement into the Soviet zone had come to a ‘virtual standstill’.⁸¹ Throughout early summer 1945, the British government had maintained almost complete silence on the issue of the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. Despite claims to the contrary published in the Observer on 17 June 1945, and repeated elsewhere, the British never made a démarche to the Czechs. There is no evidence that the British were ever close to considering one, not even a ‘friendly’ warning, as was later the case in the post-Potsdam period.⁸² Yet if the message coming from the British was not explicitly negative, neither was it categorically positive. All that the Czechs heard from the British on an official level was the request to wait patiently until the conference of the Big Three met, when the whole question of population transfers would be dealt with carefully and sensibly.⁸³ Hence, there was neither admonishment nor encouragement of Czech policy. In the absence of a clear and unequivocal message on an official level, the Czechs picked up instead on criticisms expressed in the public domain. These criticisms combined with the silence and ‘distance’ on an official level fed existing doubts about Britain’s underlying commitment to a transfer of Germans. As William Barker, First ⁸¹ FO817/19, 192/1/45, Notes on trip to Karlovy Vary, 17 Jul. 1945. ⁸² ‘Benes Faces British Move on Deportations’, Observer, 17 Jun. 1945; ‘US and Britain Block Sudetens’ Exodus’, The New York Times, 17 Jun. 1945; ‘Czechs Stop Moving Germans Out’, DE, 18 Jun. 1945. Denial of these claims in ‘No Protest to the Czechs’, DH, 18 Jun. 1945; ‘No Mass Removal of Germans from Czechoslovakia Yet’, Daily Worker, 19 Jun. 1945. Also discussed in Wiskemann, Germany’s Eastern Neighbours, 111. There is no trace of an official protest or informal warning in the FO papers, Prague Embassy files (FO817) included. The idea that the British made one has nevertheless somehow stuck. See, for example, E. Glassheim, ‘The Mechanics of Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia, 1945–1947’, in Ther and Siljak (eds), Redrawing Nations, 213, which states that ‘Britain filed a complaint in mid-June over treatment of Czechoslovakia’s Germans’. ⁸³ See summary of Nichols’s first meeting with Beneš on 4 June 1945, in FO800/873, Prague to FO, 5 Jun. 1945. Comments by Sargent to Duchacek on 4 June 1945, in FO371/47087, N6570/207/12, Allen minute, 5 Jun. 1945. Czech official note to each of the Big Three calling attention to the Czechoslovak memorandum of November 1944 and for this ‘most burning of all problems’ to be settled at their forthcoming meeting, in FO817/14, ii, 27/41/45, Clementis to Nichols, 3 Jul. 1945; FO371/46810, C3675/95/18, Prague to FO, 5 Jul. 1945. Substance of the anodyne British reply of 14 July 1945, in DBPO, 1st ser., i: The Conference at Potsdam, July–August 1945 [henceforth, DBPO i], eds R. Butler and M. E. Pelly (1984), no. 59 (iii), FO to Terminal, 16 Jul. 1945, 104.

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Secretary at the British Embassy in Prague, warned at the end of June 1945: Their present anxiety to rush the matter is based on [ . . . ] a fear that Britain and America may grow progressively more tender-hearted and ‘humanitarian’ if time is allowed to go by (Cf. Parl[iamentary] questions, Jaksch, Manchester Guardian etc.) and seek to prevent the transfer solution altogether. If they had firm assurances that transfer would be permitted on defined lines they would, I believe, welcome the slow method. All of which goes to emphasis the desirability of the Big Three’s considering the question and reaching clear-cut considerations.⁸⁴

This paranoia that the tide might suddenly turn produced some overblown, if highly illustrative, expressions of concern on the part of the Czech leadership. Over halfway through the Potsdam Conference, at a point when the Big Three had just begun considering the question of a transfer of Germans, news came that the British Labour Party had won the General Election by a landslide. Much of the world reacted with astonishment at how ungratefully the British electorate had disposed of its great war leader. Pro-British Polish groups around Mikołajczyk were ‘bewildered and distressed’.⁸⁵ Czechoslovak Communists, on the other hand, like their Polish comrades, might have been expected to have been jubilant at Churchill’s exit.⁸⁶ For Clementis, however, the result was a disappointment and for peculiarly Czechoslovak reasons. He told the American ambassador, Lawrence Steinhardt, that he was worried that a Labour government would not necessarily work in Czechoslovak interests. He was not concerned about the Labour Party’s traditional anti-Communism or that its distrust of the Soviet Union might jeopardize Anglo-Czechoslovak relations. This did not seem to bother him in the least. What Clementis was worried about were the close contacts that he believed the Labour Party had with the Sudeten German Social Democrats whom they ‘protected’.⁸⁷ It was an assertion that would have gratified Jaksch and horrified the Labour leadership. It also showed a gross misreading of British opinion. It was one which, nonetheless, encapsulates the deep sense of insecurity that the Czechs felt over the international context in which a decision surrounding ⁸⁴ FO817/14, i, 27/24/45, Barker minute, 29 Jun. 1945. ⁸⁵ DBPO i, no. 452 (i), Warsaw to FO, 28 Jul. 1945, 976. ⁸⁶ Ibid. ⁸⁷ W. Ullmann, ‘Some Aspects of American-Czechoslovak Relations 1945–1947’, East European Quarterly, 10/1 (1976), 72; FRUS 1945, ii, Steinhardt to Byrnes, 27 Jul. 1945, 1265.

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the expulsion of the Germans was being taken and that obstacles still stood in the way of a speedy and satisfactory solution; ones which the enigmatic British might still prove capable of putting in place.⁸⁸

‘ O R D E R LY A N D H U M A N E ’ : T H E P OTS D A M C O N F E R E N C E , J U LY – AU G U S T 1 9 4 5 Czech anxiety at the prospect of being left out of the picture was acute. Had they known how little attention was actually being paid to Czechoslovakia once the Big Three met at Potsdam on 17 July 1945, the impact would have been traumatic. The British came to Potsdam ready to talk about Germany. Instead delegates spent the better part of two weeks talking about Poland. Czechoslovakia was barely mentioned. Yet the conference did produce concrete results as far as the future of German populations in east-central Europe was concerned. The Polish western frontier was fixed provisionally on the Oder-western Neisse and the transfer of German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary was formally agreed upon in principle. If, as a result, the Czechs got most of what they wanted out of the Conference then ironically they had the British to thank for their stroke of good fortune. One specific question dominated Polish affairs at Potsdam: the delimitation of the country’s western frontier. The details of the deadlock surrounding this issue and the Soviet-American reparations for recognition deal that emerged in the last days of the Conference have already been well-covered by historians, as has Britain’s role as a second-rung power in the negotiations.⁸⁹ All that needs to be restated here is that the British position on the Polish western frontier had, if anything, hardened with the end of the war. Concern at the impact that excessive territorial annexations would have on the feeding and fuelling of the British zone, as well as the related problems of resettling and assimilating millions more refugees into rump Germany, meant that the British ⁸⁸ Parker also noted the ‘concern that a Labour government might be ‘‘soft’’ towards the Germans’. NIARO, BNS/3, Parker Diary, 27 Jul. 1945. ⁸⁹ A lively account based on FRUS which takes a dim view of the British delegation is C. Mee, Meeting at Potsdam (New York, 1975). D. Dilks, The Conference at Potsdam, 1945 (Hull, 1996) gives a brief general overview using DBPO. Neither covers discussions on transfer. For negotiations on reparations, see A. Cairncross, The Price of War: British Policy on German Reparations 1941–1949 (Oxford, 1986), 86–99.

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delegation went to Potsdam determined, as before, to gain agreement to a ‘reasonable’ Polish western frontier ‘not exceed[ing] the free city of Danzig, East Prussia south and west of Koenigsberg, Oppeln Silesia and the most eastern portion of Pomerania’.⁹⁰ If the British failed to achieve this, then it was not through a lack of trying and owed more to their powerlessness in the face of realities on the ground. The Polish authorities had had de facto control over territories east of the Oderwestern Neisse since March 1945 and the Soviet proposal for a Polish western frontier tabled at Potsdam was in the manner of a fait accompli. It was, moreover, impossible owing to the lack of reliable information coming from within the country for the British to determine what was happening in the so-called ‘Regained Territories’ and therefore to assess how well-founded were some of the more outlandish claims put forward by the Poles and Soviets in support of a Oder-western Neisse frontier.⁹¹ Population transfer, in contrast, was almost an afterthought. Treatment of the subject was perfunctory to the say the least. Had it not been for the British, however, it would not have been formally raised at all. Only the British delegation had included it on the pre-conference list of subjects for discussion.⁹² It was Churchill who first raised the subject during a plenary session halfway through the conference.⁹³ And it was on the basis of a British draft that the sub-committee on population transfer began its work.⁹⁴ Why did the British choose to take the initiative? There were strong arguments against doing so. It was a problem which principally affected the American and Soviet zones. It was also risky for the British government to associate itself with such a controversial measure. The Foreign Office background paper for the conference warned that ‘large scale transfer is quite likely to be attacked from various quarters, not least in powerful organs of the British press [ . . . ] Do we in ⁹⁰ DBPO i, no. 115, Brief for UK Delegation: Poland’s Western Frontiers, [12] Jul. 1945, 219–23. ⁹¹ Robert Hankey, chargé d’affaires in Warsaw, arrived on 14 July 1945, and Victor Cavendish-Bentinck [henceforth, C-B], the ambassador, on 20 August 1945. In early August, there was still no British-accredited correspondent in Poland. ⁹² FO934/2, 8(2), List of Subjects Submitted for Discussion, 17 Jul. 1945. ⁹³ DBPO i, no. 271, Record of Ninth Plenary Meeting, 25 Jul. 1945, 690–1. ⁹⁴ FO934/5, 43(8), Harrison to Troutbeck, 1 Aug. 1945; DBPO i, Annex to no. 59, Transfer of German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary [9 Jul. 1945], 104; cf. FO934/5, 43(2), Harrison minute and enclosures, 27 Jul. 1945; DBPO i, no. 603, Protocol of the proceedings of the Berlin Conference, 2 Aug. 1945, 1275.

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these circumstances wish to incur the ‘‘odium’’ of having taken the initiative in raising this question? Would it be better simply to have concurred?’⁹⁵ Yet there were also good reasons why it was in British interests that the subject was tackled and why, if necessary, the British should risk incurring the ‘odium’ of taking the initiative. There were, of course, Czech sensibilities to consider. Failure to deliver on this score threatened to have far reaching implications for British standing in Czechoslovakia. It was also impossible to avoid some general responsibility for what happened to the German populations of Poland and Czechoslovakia since, in the longer term, the British zone would almost certainly have to take in its share of expelled Germans. Crucially, there was the concern, extending from lower rungs of the Foreign Office up to the Foreign Secretary, that if the problem was ignored it ‘might get out of hand, with possibly disastrous results’.⁹⁶ And lastly, since neither the Soviets nor the Americans seemed willing to raise the issue, if the British did not take the initiative then no one else would.⁹⁷ In preparation for the second Foreign Secretaries’ meeting at Potsdam on 19 July 1945, Eden was advised by the Foreign Office to broach the subject in order to find out the attitude of the American and Soviet governments, as well as to ascertain how their authorities in Germany planned to deal with any influx of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland. The recommended line was that transfers ‘should be effected in as orderly and humane a manner as possible and that the actual procedure should be worked out by the Allied Control Council in Germany in consultation with the Governments concerned, due regard being paid to the capacity of Germany to absorb them’.⁹⁸ It was not until the ninth plenary meeting on 25 July 1945, however, that the subject was first raised and then by Churchill, not Eden. On 23 July 1945 Churchill had picked up a copy of the Daily Express with Peter Smollett’s article on the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. After reading it, Churchill dashed off a note to Eden: ‘I ⁹⁵ DBPO i, no. 59, Harrison minute, 9 Jul. 1945, 101. ⁹⁶ DBPO i, no. 59, Cadogan minute, 10 Jul. 1945; Eden minute, 12 Jul. 1945, 102. ⁹⁷ The British originally assumed the Americans would raise the issue. The Americans were not prepared to do so and expected that the British would take the lead. See FO934/6, Washington to FO, 7 Jul. 1945. ⁹⁸ DBPO i, no. 188 (vi), Transfer of German Populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia, 18 Jul. 1945, 401; cf. no. 189, Second Meeting of Foreign Secretaries, 19 Jul. 1945, 402–8.

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am much disturbed by what I read in the papers about the expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia. Ought this topic not to be raised? Of course there must be an exodus, but it should be conducted with due regard to the repercussions in other countries’.⁹⁹ Churchill also separately requested a report on the numbers involved, conditions under which the expulsions were being carried out and information about what zones they were being expelled into.¹⁰⁰ A short memorandum written for him that same day stated that there were ‘no official reports’ of Germans being expelled from Czechoslovakia and it was ‘unlikely’ that Beneš would allow this to occur before the decision of the Potsdam Conference became known. The Germans described in the newspaper article, according to the memorandum, were most probably ‘notorious Henleinists’ and Reich Germans.¹⁰¹ Churchill, however, was convinced that ‘the matter should be raised at our Conference’.¹⁰² On 25 July, he brought it up in the plenary session.¹⁰³ Eden followed by making a formal request on behalf of Beneš. Churchill even suggested that, if necessary, the Czechoslovak President, whom he pointed out was ‘an old friend of his as well as of Premier Stalin’s’, be invited to the Conference to discuss the matter.¹⁰⁴ This episode shows that before chancing upon Smollett’s article Churchill cannot have read any of the briefs or background papers on the transfer of German populations: he seemed unaware that the subject was even on the agenda of the conference. Although such behaviour was fully in keeping with Churchill’s work practices—something which did not go unnoticed at the time—it is nevertheless revealing that a florid newspaper article from the popular press not a civil service brief triggered interest in the subject and led to it being raised in the ⁹⁹ DBPO i, no. 247, Minute from Churchill to Eden, 23 Jul. 1945, 599–600. ¹⁰⁰ FO934/3, 13(3), Rowan (Berlin) minute for Dixon, 23 Jul. 1945. ¹⁰¹ DBPO i, no. 247 (i), Memorandum [by Harrison], 23 Jul. 1945, 600, which refers incorrectly to ‘a despatch to the ‘‘Daily Express’’ from Alan Moorehead from Liberec of July 16th’ and then gives extracts. These extracts are actually from Smollett’s article published on 20 July 1945; cf. ‘Revenge for Lidice is Mass Expulsion’, DE, 20 Jul. 1945. Moreover, there is no evidence that Moorehead, the celebrated Australian-born Daily Express war correspondent, was in Czechoslovakia in July 1945. See A. Moorehead, A Late Education: Episodes in a Life (2000), 170–1; T. Pocock, Alan Moorehead (1990), 203–5. ¹⁰² FO934/3, 13(5), Rowan to Henderson (FO), 24 Jul. 1945. ¹⁰³ Introducing the subject, Churchill stuck closely to the memorandum he had received the day before. See DBPO i, no. 271, Record of Ninth Plenary Meeting, 25 Jul. 1945, 690; cf. no. 247 (i), Memorandum by Harrison, 23 Jul. 1945, 600. ¹⁰⁴ DBPO i, no. 271, Ninth Plenary, 25 Jul. 1945, 691.

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plenary session on 25 July. ¹⁰⁵ The irony, of course, was that the Czechs had initially complained about the article. Not for the last time did supposedly adverse publicity assist the Czechs in pushing forward their transfer policy.¹⁰⁶ Wrangles with the Soviets began as soon as Churchill raised the issue. Stalin wondered if ‘it was not already too late to consider this question’, repeating the claim he made at Yalta that few Germans were left in the east. He now added that ‘many’, then changing this to ‘most’, of the Germans had left Czechoslovakia, ‘having been evicted at short notice’.¹⁰⁷ In other words, it was not necessary to discuss this question because it had already resolved itself. Stalin was nevertheless willing to allow the delegates to discuss this matter and work out an agreed statement if the British insisted. Subsequent disagreement revolved around the exact wording of two sections of the relevant passage in the final communiqué: the reference to the ‘equitable’ distribution of Germans among the zones of occupation; and the request to Czechoslovak and Polish governments for a temporary halt to expulsions. Negotiations in the sub-committee that drafted a statement were ‘very sticky’ on the first point. The Soviet representative, Arkady Sobelev, was ‘obstinate as a mule’, insisting on the word ‘equal’ instead of ‘equitable’. The distinction was important: ‘equal’ implied a four-way split with each of the zones taking the same number of Germans; ‘equitable’ was a more flexible term which took into account other factors such as the capacity of the zones to absorb the extra Germans, important in the case of the densely-populated and heavily bombdamaged British zone.¹⁰⁸ Sobelev eventually gave way on this, but there was still ‘a great struggle’ over the second point: the request to temporarily halt expulsions. Deadlock in the sub-committee meant the question was referred back for discussion in the plenary session.¹⁰⁹ There were again objections from Stalin,¹¹⁰ who nevertheless relented ¹⁰⁵ According to Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Undersecretary of State at the FO, Churchill ‘ha[d] refused to do any work or read anything’ since leaving London. A. Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945, ed. D. Dilks (1971), 765. Similar complaints by the secretary of the British delegation in Sir William Hayter, A Double Life (1974), 75–6; Eden’s diary, 17 Jul. 1945, in R. R. James, Anthony Eden (1986), 307. ¹⁰⁶ See section on Czech concentration camps in Chapter 5. ¹⁰⁷ DBPO i, no. 271, Ninth Plenary, 25 Jul. 1945, 690–1. ¹⁰⁸ FO934/5, 43(2), Harrison minute for Cadogan, 28 Jul. 1945. ¹⁰⁹ FO934/5, 43(4), Harrison minute, 30 Jul. 1945. ¹¹⁰ DBPO i, no. 495, Record of Eleventh Plenary Meeting, 31 Jul. 1945, 1086.

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and ‘grudgingly accepted’ its inclusion on Anglo-American lines in the communiqué.¹¹¹ He said, however, that ‘he did not expect any considerable results’ from this initiative.¹¹² References to the ‘Orderly Transfer of German Populations’ were included as Article 12 of the Protocol of the proceedings of the Potsdam Conference.¹¹³ As far as the Polish western frontier and the fate of German populations in east-central Europe were concerned, the results of the Potsdam Conference were viewed with the range of mixed feelings and air of resignation that might be expected of decisions that had been reached in response to de facto arrangements on the ground. The frontier at the Oder-western Neisse was considered, as it always had been by the British, as being too far west. There was some consolation in having extracted from the Poles assurances on free and fair elections, freedom of speech, assembly and of the press, upon which the British could make their future recognition of Polish sovereignty over the Oder-Neisse territories conditional. Endorsement of the principle of population transfer was also a response to faits accomplis. The British representative on the sub-committee that discussed the transfer of Germans had mixed feelings about the outcome of the conference: We made it clear [to the Soviet representative] that we did not like the idea of mass transfers [ . . . ] As, however, we could not prevent them, we wished to ensure that they were carried out in as orderly a manner as possible in a way which did not throw an intolerable burden on the occupying authorities in Germany.¹¹⁴

There were shades of Curzon at Lausanne in this—‘a bad and vicious solution’ perhaps but necessary nonetheless and hopefully salutary in the long-run. Senior British officials, however, were ‘content’ with Article 12 and had good reason to be.¹¹⁵ It had been a minor achievement, one might even say a British victory,¹¹⁶ that the future of the German populations in Poland and Czechoslovakia had been discussed at all, and an even greater one that the Soviets agreed to the conditions which ¹¹¹ P. Dixon, Double Diploma: The Life of Sir Pierson Dixon: Don and Diplomat (1968), 173. ¹¹² DBPO i, no. 495, Eleventh Plenary, 31 Jul. 1945, 1086. ¹¹³ DBPO i, no. 603, Protocol of the Proceedings of the Berlin Conference, 2 Aug. 1945, 1275. ¹¹⁴ FO934/5/43(8), Harrison to Troutbeck, 1 Aug. 1945. ¹¹⁵ Ibid. ¹¹⁶ Pierson Dixon, Principal Private Secretary to Eden and then Bevin between 1943 and 1947, portrays it as such in Double Diploma, 169.

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the western Allies insisted upon: the ‘humane and orderly’ caveat; the ‘equitable’ distribution between the zones of occupation; and the request to the Czech and Polish governments for a temporary suspension. The last of these points was particularly important as the British authorities in Germany had pointed out that ‘any serious influx’ of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland was ‘out of the question’ in the near future because the British zone could not cater for a ‘single extra mouth’ over the coming winter.¹¹⁷ In this respect, Article 12 gave some breathing space. It also represented a sort of insurance policy. Although the British had few illusions that the Czechs and Poles would automatically abide by the will of the Big Three, at least Article 12 theoretically gave them some future leverage on developments over which they had had little or no control to date. The question, of course, was whether having Article 12 as leverage would in practice make much difference and not be, as Stalin had said, ‘a mere shot in the dark’.¹¹⁸ Having taken the initiative on this issue, the British government now ran the risk of having the worst of both worlds: acknowledging responsibility for mass population transfers without having the power to act and in the process pleasing nobody, neither the expelling governments nor, as would emerge in the months after Potsdam, critics of expulsion at home. ¹¹⁷ DBPO i, no. 154, Record of a Meeting held at Berlin, 15 Jul. 1945, 307; no. 166, Harrison to Troutbeck, 16 Jul. 1945, 335. ¹¹⁸ DBPO i, no. 495, Eleventh Plenary, 31 Jul. 1945, 1086. See also Bevin’s remarks to the Cabinet as to the ‘very serious problems’ involved, and Attlee’s admission that they ‘could not do more [ . . . ] on this [than] asking Governments to hold their hands’, in CAB195/3 i, CM18(45), 7 Aug. 1945.

4 ‘In Germany Now’ The German Refugee Crisis, July–October 1945

After the end of the Potsdam Conference in early August 1945, reports began reaching Britain about the desperate conditions of German refugees in and around Berlin, many of whom had been expelled and, it was believed, were still being expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia. By mid-September 1945, the so-called refugee crisis in Germany was headline news in Britain and had already spawned a handful of initiatives from public figures who sought to ameliorate the crisis through material and political means. Published opinion was almost unanimous in rejecting continuing expulsions in contravention of Article 12 of the Potsdam Protocol until organized transfers were possible. This chapter looks at how and why the German refugee crisis and the expulsions that were aggravating it came to feature so prominently in Britain from September 1945 as well as at initial attempts to raise public awareness about conditions among the refugees and to organize a campaign that included demands for a halt to all expulsions of German populations. Several million Allied Displaced Persons (DPs) were on the move throughout Germany in the summer of 1945. Every conceivable nationality was moving in every conceivable direction, seeking to return home, avoiding returning home or fleeing home. These wandering millions represented a gigantic logistical challenge for the occupying powers. Former forced labourers, concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war, all had to be registered, disinfected, fed, clothed, segregated, housed and supervised.¹ Most of all, DPs needed ¹ M. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees from the First World War Through the Cold War, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, 2002), 296–313.

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resettling, sometimes without their consent.² Rates of repatriation were staggering. By August 1945, more than a million DPs had been returned from the British zone alone. One and three-quarters of a million remained.³ German refugees were therefore just one among many categories of homeless Europeans in summer 1945. Unlike DPs, however, who were Allied nationals, German refugees were not primarily the responsibility of the occupying powers but of the local German authorities under Allied supervision. Moreover, compared to DPs, German refugees were not even considered to constitute a problem, at least in the British zone. Major-General Gerald Templer, Director of Civil Affairs and Military Government in the British zone, informed a conference of senior British officers towards the end of June 1945 that ‘there was in fact no [German] refugee problem in the British Zone. It was true that there were refugees and that a few may be on the roads, but generally they were all being housed and fed and were largely employed on useful work.’⁴ However, the British had not as yet reached Berlin. When they entered the city a fortnight later to assume command of their sector, this optimistic assessment had to be radically revised. Berlin was pivotal in shaping British perceptions of the expulsions. The city holds a special place not only in the wider narrative of the expulsion of the Germans but in any analysis of British reactions to it. As a transport hub, it was a magnet for hundreds of thousands of German refugees who hoped that in the former capital they would find some central organization that would care for them. On a diplomatic level, it was at the Cecilienhof in Potsdam on the outskirts of the city that the decision to transfer German populations was taken, and in the Kammergericht building in the American sector that the Allied Control Authority worked on implementing the practical aspects of this decision. As an internationally controlled outpost within Sovietoccupied territory, it was, with Vienna, unique in affording the western powers a rare glimpse behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, already a much-used phrase in summer 1945. Moreover, if Berlin offered the western Allies a window in on Soviet-occupied Europe, it also provided them with a front-row seat from which to observe the refugee crisis precipitated by ² On forced repatriation, see N. Bethell, The Last Secret: Forcible Repatriation to Russia, 1944–47 (1995); M. Elliott, Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America’s Role in Their Repatriation (Urbana, 1982). ³ FO1049/75, 156/16/45, Steel to FO, 11 Aug. 1945. ⁴ FO1052/322, fo. 36, Conference at 21 Army Group, 21 Jun. 1945.

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the mass expulsions from the east. Berlin gave the British their initial, and for a time their only, hands-on experience of the expulsions. The pitiful scenes on Berlin’s railway stations and in its transit camps, once they received widespread publicity from late August 1945 onwards, shaped British perceptions of the expulsions, and long after conditions among refugees in the city had improved, remained the central motif for the critics of the expulsions. For the British, the Berlin of August and September 1945 became synonymous with the expulsions and it is only by examining how the German refugee crisis unfolded there that the timing and nature of British reactions to the expulsions, in both the official and public domains, can be fully appreciated. ‘A C I T Y O F RU I N S A N D R E F U G E E S ’ : B E R L I N , J U LY – AU G U S T 1 9 4 5 When the Americans and British arrived in Berlin on 3–4 July 1945, they entered a city that as a result of relentless Allied bombing, particularly towards the end of the war, and bitter street fighting during the last weeks of hostilities, had been reduced to a devastated hulk, which the Soviets, in the course of their two-month long solo occupation of the city, had proceeded to strip bare of what little of value remained.⁵ Even for those who had just come from bombed-out west German cities, Berlin was an awesome spectacle for which ‘no superlative [was] too strong’.⁶ ‘I have never seen widespread ruin to equal that of the centre of Berlin,’ Richard Dimbleby told the Home Service in the first postwar BBC broadcast from the city ‘Whole buildings—complete German ministries—have dissolved into the dust.’⁷ Norman Clark of the News Chronicle recalled almost fifty years later how ‘Berlin was devastated in a way that London never knew’.⁸ ‘In London there are the tidy remains of ruins among the buildings, in Berlin there are the untidy remains of buildings among the ruins’, was how another British correspondent compared the two cities.⁹ The most basic utilities had ceased to function. The city, as James Chambers, a young ⁵ A. Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (1998), 607–17; D. Clay Large, Berlin: A Modern History (2001), 374–9. ⁶ R. Brett-Smith, Berlin ’45 (1966), p. ix. ⁷ BBC WAC, T116, News Talk: ‘Berlin Today’, HS, 3 Jul. 1945, 9.10 p.m. ⁸ IWM, Sound 12368, Norman Clark, Reel 5, 12 Nov. 1991. ⁹ ‘Life in Berlin’, The Times, 21 Dec. 1945.

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clerk with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, remembered it, was: in a dreadful state, it really was [. . .] There was no gas, no electricity [. . .] The water was undrinkable, you had to boil everything [. . .] It was just chaos [. . .] There were still lots of bodies buried under the rubble. That’s the one thing I remember vividly [. . .] Forty-five summer was a very hot one and invariably the day used to end with a thunderstorm. After it rained the smell was terrible, it used to get everywhere, you could almost taste it in your food.¹⁰

Well into September, visitors would complain that in ‘a light breeze [. . .] a sickening stench of death’ wafted from beneath the city’s rubble.¹¹ The Mayor of Berlin, Dr Arthur Werner, estimated that there were anywhere between sixty and one hundred thousand bodies entombed in the ruins.¹² The public health implications of this were alarming, and not only for the German civilian population. During the Potsdam Conference, for example, the head of British security succumbed to a mysterious illness with malaria-like symptoms caused by the flies which plagued the city.¹³ As the experience of this unfortunate British officer showed, and as observers of the German scene would point out with mantra-like frequency over the coming months: disease was inherently democratic; it knew no frontiers; it did not discriminate on national grounds. As if this shattered city did not have enough problems to contend with, thousands of refugees were arriving every day during July 1945. On assuming control of Wedding in the north of the city, the British district commander discovered that the resident population of 200,000 had swollen by 14,000 in just ten days.¹⁴ In the space of one week in mid-July, 4–5,000 refugees from Poland passed through Charlottenburg, west of the city centre.¹⁵ On any one day in late July, 4,000 refugees from the east were in the northern suburb of Reinickendorf.¹⁶ By early August, the Tiergarten’s Lehrter Bahnhof, one of several Berlin railway termini, was receiving 1,200 refugees ¹⁰ IWM, Sound 11329, Reels 1–2, James Chambers, 31 Aug. 1990. ¹¹ M. Strickland, ‘Germany’s Zero Hour’, Catholic Times, 28 Sep. 1945. ¹² G. Bilainkin, Second Diary of a Diplomatic Correspondent (1947), 205 (20 Aug. 1945). ¹³ IWM, Sound 17973, Edward Norton, Reel 5, 6 Mar. 1998. ¹⁴ FO1012/133, Wedding: Outline report on present conditions, 12 Jul. 1945. ¹⁵ FO1012/126, Charlottenburg: Weekly Situation Report No. 2, 24 Jul. 1945. ¹⁶ FO1012/66, Minutes of meeting of VBK commanders, 23 Jul. 1945.

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from the east per day.¹⁷ According to the German-run Berlin Office of Social Welfare, 537,000 refugees passed through the city in July. August saw a slight decrease to 494,000. This still meant 17,000 were entering daily.¹⁸ These figures only represented those registered. How many slipped into and out of the city on back roads or under the cover of darkness was anybody’s guess.¹⁹ There can be no clearer indication of how ill-prepared the British authorities were for this influx than their failure to take the most basic precautions against the spread of epidemic disease during the first month of the occupation. Typhus fever control programmes were normally a top priority in 1945. This louse-borne scourge, which thrives in the filth and proximity of war and its aftermath, had killed between two to three million people during the First World War.²⁰ Europe in 1945 offered ideal conditions for the spread of this disease. However, this time round the Anglo-Americans had come armed with an awesome weapon in the form of the insecticide Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). ‘DDT marches with the troops,’ remarked a commentator at the time, just as the louse had for centuries.²¹ It had saved Naples from a typhus epidemic in 1944. Its use among Europe’s displaced was mandatory and routine. It is therefore astounding to learn that for almost a whole month there was no DDT or equipment with which to dust louse-infested refugees in the British sector of Berlin.²² There were other signs that the British authorities were unprepared for the sheer scale of the refugee problem when they entered the city. Stocks of typhoid vaccine, for example, were near to exhaustion by the end of July 1945, just as a city-wide epidemic was breaking out.²³ Camp capacity, which could mean anything from a former barracks to a patch of ground outside a railway station, was insufficient to deal with the number of refugees. As a result, it ¹⁷ FO1012/132, General Report on Mil. Gov. Berlin, 12 Aug. 1945. ¹⁸ FO1012/26, Chief Office for Social Welfare, Dept. for Expelled and Displaced Persons, Berlin, Report on the situation regarding expelled and displaced persons, 15 Sep. 1945. ¹⁹ FO1012/132, General Report on Mil. Gov. in Berlin, 22 Jul. 1945. ²⁰ W. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (1979), 204. ²¹ Quoted in K. Mellanby, The DDT Story (Farnham, 1992), 21. ²² FO1012/66, Minutes of a Meeting [of VBK Commanders], 23 Jul. 1945; FO1012/134, Public Health Section reports, 26 Jul., 2 Aug. 1945. See also acknowledgement of the first deliveries (30 July 1945) of DDT and equipment in Wilmersdorf district, in FO1012/122, fos 2–5. ²³ FO1012/132, General Report on Mil. Gov. Berlin, 4 Aug. 1945.

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became impossible to register and process refugees comprehensively, as well as to provide facilities for their most basic needs. British public health officers, for example, were complaining in late July of the ‘large amount of contamination’ being caused by refugees ‘defecating in the open’.²⁴ The immediate problem of controlling and handling the influx was partly administrative and, as such, was symptomatic of a lack of cooperation and coordination that resulted from tri- and then quadripartite control of the city. Before the western Allies arrived in Berlin, the Soviet authorities had ordered anyone not a Berlin resident prior to 1941 to leave. No ration cards were subsequently issued to non-Berliners. A further order by Marshal Zhukov on 27 July 1945 barred any non-resident from entering Berlin and instructed the Red Army to set up cordons on approaches to the city and to turn back anyone without a permit.²⁵ German workers were placed in a 40 kilometre circle around the city to prevent entry.²⁶ Yet the Soviet authorities proved either incapable of controlling mass infiltration or unwilling to do so. ‘No efforts appear to have been made to prevent them travelling to Berlin,’ wrote the head of the DP Branch of British Military Government in a special report on refugees of 8 August. ‘If the Russians continue to allow these trains to enter Berlin from points over which only they have control, the problem will get out of hand, and until this matter is taken up with them little more can be done.’²⁷ Once refugees reached the city, there was no effective way of keeping them out of the British sector. All that the western Allies could do was plead with the Soviets on the Kommandatura, the Allied body which governed the city, to enforce Zhukov’s order and divert transports away from Berlin. Tripartite arrangements for supplying the city further exacerbated the refugee crisis. The Soviets had agreed, after lengthy discussions and much delay, to provision all sectors of Berlin until the western Allies had brought in stocks from their own zones. However, this arrangement never functioned properly (owing in part to the fact that the Soviets had ²⁴ FO1012/134, Public Health Report, 19 Jul. 1945. ²⁵ FO1052/314, fo. 55, Extract from Weekly Political Intelligence Summary No. 303, 1 Aug. 1945. ²⁶ FO1050/1666, G. Clutton-Brock, ‘Welfare’: Appendix ‘B’ to MGBA Education Report No. 5, 23 Aug. 1945. ²⁷ FO1032/842, fo. 1a, Special Report on ‘Refugees’ by S/Ldr Whittick, DP Section, Mil. Gov. Berlin, 8 Aug. 1945.

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torn up one of the tracks to Berlin) and, as a consequence, the western sectors of the city were left desperately short of food, unable to feed the resident population, let alone the refugees. British policy, or rather a lack of one, added to the confusion. German refugees were divided into three categories: returning Berliners; inhabitants of Poland or Polish-administered territory (what would later be called ‘expellees’); and former residents of western Germany who had been evacuated to the eastern parts of the Reich during the war and were now making their way home (later classed as ‘evacuees’).²⁸ Initially, the latter category of refugee was issued with passes for onward travel to the western zones. Some British district commanders even permitted all classes of refugee who so wished to proceed westwards.²⁹ By early August 1945, this practice had been stamped out and the British and American zonal frontiers were closed to inward traffic for fear of a massive influx into the bomb-damaged cities, or ‘Black Areas’, of western Germany.³⁰ Henceforth, refugees in the British sector were stuck in limbo: neither allowed to remain permanently in the city, nor to proceed eastwards or westwards.³¹ Instead, they piled up in the sector’s hastily improvised transit camps. The sector-by-sector breakdown of refugees for the last two weeks of September 1945, the first time such figures were available, shows the consequences of this ‘illogical middle course’, as one British commander later called the policy.³² Although the number of refugee arrivals and departures city-wide were more or less equal, four-times the number of refugees remained in the British than in the American and double that of the Russian sector, even though the latter had received an equal number of refugees and had a larger resident population.³³ As a result, the machinery put in place as an interim emergency measure to cope with the refugee influx, and the limited resources which supported it, were strained to the limit. The situation in the district of Wedding typified the problem facing the British. The procedure for handling refugees was the same there as ²⁸ FO1012/132, General Report on Mil. Gov., 12 Aug. 1945. There were some 10 million ‘evacuees’ at the end of the war. See Survey of International Affairs 1939–46, Four-Power Control in Germany and Austria, 1945–1946, i: M. Balfour, Germany (1956), 117. ²⁹ FO1012/133, Wedding: Weekly Report, 6 Aug. 1945. ³⁰ FO1012/132, General Report on Mil. Gov., 12 Aug. 1945. ³¹ FO1012/133, Wedding: Weekly Report, 6 Aug. 1945. ³² FO1012/139, Minutes of Second Meeting of the Refugee Cttee, Mil. Gov. Berlin, 2 Nov. 1945. ³³ FO1012/26, Berlin Magistrat: Report on refugee situation for 16–22 Sep.1945.

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for the rest of the sector. Refugees were given between twenty-four and forty-eight hours to move on. A night’s lodging in an empty factory and a daily ration of 100 grams of bread and three-quarters of a litre of soup were provided. Refugees received a little coffee and bread but no other food for their onward journey. As the British district commander noted, on leaving the camps the refugees were ‘dependent on charity or they must starve’.³⁴ Wilmersdorf, one of the least hard-pressed districts in the British sector, was processing an average of 350 refugees per day through its transit camps in mid-August 1945. Here, too, refugees were only supposed to stay for up to forty-eight hours, but often—in the case of the old, the sick, the pregnant, who represented a large proportion of the influx—considerably longer. For these extra mouths, the district was allotted an additional 250 ration cards per month.³⁵ It did not require a statistician to work out that the arithmetic of feeding refugees added up to nothing less than mass starvation. It was clear to the British authorities in Berlin, or at least to the lower echelons of Military Government that dealt directly with the refugee crisis on a daily basis, that a time-bomb was ticking away. A city-wide dysentery epidemic that had broken out in July was followed by typhoid which was attributed to refugees from the east.³⁶ And 90 per cent of paratyphoid cases in Charlottenburg in mid-August originated from outside the district.³⁷ In early August 1945, British public health officers predicted that a typhus epidemic was ‘probable’ given the citywide shortage of hot water and soap, as well as the overcrowding and infestation caused by incoming refugees,³⁸ 40 per cent of whom were lousy.³⁹ In the Charlottenburg district, no fats had been distributed for the month of August, hunger oedema was on the increase and infant mortality, twenty times higher than the year before, had assumed ‘serious proportions’.⁴⁰ By September, it was running at 40 per cent.⁴¹ ³⁴ FO1012/133, Wedding: Weekly Report, 6 Aug. 1945. ³⁵ FO1012/593, fo. 6a, Wilmersdorf: Fortnightly Report [up] to 19 Aug. 1945. ³⁶ FO1012/132, General Report on Mil. Gov. Berlin, 4 Aug. 1945. ³⁷ FO1012/126, Charlottenburg: Weekly Situation Report No. 5, 21 Aug. 1945. ³⁸ FO1012/134, Public Health Weekly Report, 9 Aug. 1945. ³⁹ FO1012/134, Public Health Weekly Report, 2 Aug. 1945. See also WO177/213, War Diary of Medical Branch, HQ Berlin Area, 14 Aug. 1945. ⁴⁰ FO1012/126, Charlottenburg: Weekly Situation Report No. 3, 31 Jul. 1945; No. 4, 7 Aug. 1945; Charlottenburg: Fortnightly Situation Report No. 6, 4 Sep. 1945. ⁴¹ FO1012/126, Charlottenburg: Fortnightly Situation Report No. 7, 18 Sep. 1945.

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At a district level, British commanders were crying out for a coherent, firm and enforceable policy to deal with the growing refugee crisis.⁴² Officers with responsibility for refugees recommended that at the very least the western zones be opened up.⁴³ As an officer in the DP Section of British Military Government pointed out on 22 August: ‘Time is not now on our side and the problem is enormous. There is, I think, no migration comparable in size.’⁴⁴ This increasingly desperate state of affairs at first escaped the attention of the British media. Twenty-five British press correspondents had entered the city with the Americans on 3 July 1945,⁴⁵ as part of the largest contingent of Allied war correspondents ever assembled.⁴⁶ Hundreds more from all over the world joined them to cover the Potsdam Conference. By the beginning of August, a press camp with space for a hundred correspondents had been set up in a hotel in the British sector.⁴⁷ There was, therefore, no shortage of journalists in the city. Nor were there any restrictions on their movement between the western sectors.⁴⁸ Even the Russian sector, unlike the Russian zone, was, in theory, and sometimes in practice, open to foreign correspondents.⁴⁹ Yet it was not until nearly a week after the end of the Potsdam Conference that the first report on the city’s refugee crisis appeared in the British press. Early dispatches from Berlin were instead characterized by a certain frivolity. Prurient accounts of ‘fratting’, the morals and fashions of rapacious Fräuleins and the city’s supposedly raucous night-life were the mainstay of Berlin reporting, especially during the Potsdam Conference, when bored and frustrated journalists, starved of information about the proceedings, had little of substance to report.⁵⁰ It was as if the refugee crisis did not exist. In an entire month of broadcasts for the BBC, for example, Richard Dimbleby did not once ⁴² FO1012/593, fo. 7a, Wilmersdorf: Fortnightly Report to 2 Sep. 1945. ⁴³ FO1049/205, S/Ldr Whittick, Mil. Gov. Berlin: Report on Refugee Situation as at 21 Aug. 1945. ⁴⁴ FO1052/314, fo. 64, S/Ldr Milward, ‘German Refugees’, 22 Aug. 1945. ⁴⁵ WO171/8334, War Diary of No. 5 PRS, 3 Jul. 1945. ⁴⁶ ‘Allied Correspondents Now File From Berlin’, World’s Press News, 5 Jul. 1945. ⁴⁷ FO1056/512, Lt. Col. Warrener, Progress Report on 5 PRS Press Camp Berlin, 2 Aug. 1945. ⁴⁸ FO1056/538, Meeting held in PR Div., USEFT, Berlin, 8 Aug. 1945. ⁴⁹ See H. Brandon, Special Relationships: A Foreign Correspondent’s Memoirs from Roosevelt to Reagan (1989), 25. ⁵⁰ W. Byford-Jones, Berlin Twilight (1947), 11; A. Macnaghten, Berlin—1945 (Ascot, 1987), 14; Bilainkin, Second Diary, 137 (20. Jul. 1945), 139 (23 Jul. 1945); Brandon, Special Relationships, 26.

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mention the refugees.⁵¹ Yet on arriving in Berlin, the refugee problem was one of the first things that struck other journalists after having first registered the extent of destruction in the city.⁵² That military censorship on outgoing news from the city was not lifted until 7 September offers a possible explanation as to why the refugee crisis was not covered till so late.⁵³ Particularly during the Potsdam Conference, items which reflected badly on Anglo-Soviet relations were unwelcome; the Chief British Field Press Censor describing his position ‘as rather like living on top of a powder magazine’.⁵⁴ The forcible repatriation of Soviet citizens, for instance, was one of the potentially explosive subjects which military censors persuaded correspondents not to file home on.⁵⁵ However, there is no evidence of there being any direct order to suppress or soft-peddle refugee-related stories.⁵⁶ If there was any ‘censorship’, it was just as likely to have been self-imposed, originating with the correspondents themselves or their news editors, rather than the military authorities. The newly elected Labour MP, Dick Crossman, for example, returned from a visit to Germany in September convinced that for many weeks the facts about the expulsions had been ‘withheld or played down’, because ‘conscientious journalists’ had been wary of prioritizing German suffering and criticizing the Soviets.⁵⁷ And in another instance, the poet Stephen Spender travelled back to Britain from Germany in August with an unnamed pressman ‘who complained [. . .] that he had many excellent stories which his paper refused to publish, about the desperate conditions in Berlin’.⁵⁸ There was also ⁵¹ BBC WAC, T116, Dimbleby broadcasts, July–August 1945. ‘In Conquered Germany’, Listener, 12 Jul. 1945. Dimbleby sent 144 dispatches from Berlin, of which only nine were rejected or ‘crowded out’. See L. Miall (ed.), Richard Dimbleby: Broadcaster (1966), 53. See also an account of a month in Germany by another BBC correspondent, L. Fraser, ‘The German People and their Conquerors’, Listener, 26 Jul. 1945. ⁵² See Bilainkin, Second Diary, 161–3 (7 Aug. 1945). ⁵³ FO1049/135, 428/13/45, Secretariat, Berlin to PR/ISC, Bunde, 7 Sep. 1945. ⁵⁴ Macnaghten, Berlin, 16. ⁵⁵ FO1049/135, 428/10/45, Maj. Gen. Bishop, Chief PR/ISC, Bunde to Chief of Staff, Berlin, 26 Aug. 1945, encl. 428/11/45, ‘Russian Officer in Amazing Incident’, undated. ⁵⁶ There is no proof of any censorship in any of the relevant files in the PRO, including the records of the Public Relations Branch of the Control Commission (FO1056) responsible for censoring outgoing news. ⁵⁷ R. Crossman, ‘Why Germany Matters’, NSN, 22 Sep. 1945. ⁵⁸ S. Spender, European Witness (1946), 144. In Spender’s diary of his two visits to Germany between July and October 1945, on which European Witness is based, there is again a reference to the complaints of the unnamed journalist. See id., Journals 1939–1983, ed. J. Goldsmith (1985), 72 (10 Sep. 1945).

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the case of a Fleet Street correspondent, possibly Spender’s pressman, who resigned because his editors doctored a dispatch of his on refugees.⁵⁹ On 8 August, however, several papers finally published a report on the ‘gigantic refugee problem’ by the Reuters Berlin correspondent, Henry Buckley. Quoting German officials, Buckley stated that twelve to fourteen million Germans were, or soon would be, on the move and that, as a consequence, the decision at Potsdam to suspend further expulsions ‘may have come in time to avert a major catastrophe’.⁶⁰ Robert Cooper, The Times correspondent in Berlin, was less sanguine in a dispatch published two days later. ‘Reports of travellers from such cities as Stettin and Breslau leave no doubt that large-scale expulsions are being made by local commanders’ and it was ‘likely that the process had already gone too far for the introduction of the word ‘‘humane’’ to have much effect’. Action was therefore needed ‘if these more or less uncontrolled masses are not to be overtaken by winter [. . .] [and] unless the flow from the east is stemmed there is grave danger that the whole situation will get out of hand’.⁶¹ As August progressed, dispatches became more alarmist, if still hard-nosed and matter-of-fact. ‘It is the turn of the Germans now’, the Daily Express reported with barely concealed glee on 20 August 1945. ‘The great conquering race that transported millions of slaves from all over Europe [. . .] is now being transported itself. The conditions are just as tough. Maybe even tougher [. . .] But the Poles and Czechs [. . .] have done a thorough job.’ The expulsions continued unchecked despite the Potsdam decision. The German authorities in Berlin were overwhelmed. ‘ ‘‘Germany cannot support them’’ ’, a British officer was quoted as saying. ‘ ‘‘They will die by the thousand this winter.’’ ’ ‘Truly retribution has come to the Germans’, the Daily Express pronounced.⁶² Edward Howe of the Daily Sketch also concluded in a dispatch published two days later that Germans were still being expelled. Eight million had been evicted from Poland alone, he claimed. Of these, one million were in Berlin, the rest in surrounding districts, where ‘what is happening [. . .] only the Russians can tell us’. ‘These migrating hordes are potential plague and disease carriers,’ Howe warned. ‘While I was in one camp yesterday a horse trap carried away a typhus case two yards ⁵⁹ See below p. 135. ⁶⁰ ‘Refugees in Berlin’, The Times, 8 Aug. 1945; ‘Six Million Germans on Move’, Daily Mirror, 8 Aug. 1945; ‘Millions on the Move’, Yorkshire Post, 8 Aug. 1945; ‘German Refugee Problem’, Glasgow Herald, 8 Aug. 1945. ⁶¹ ‘Mass Transfers of Germans’, The Times, 10 Aug. 1945. ⁶² W. Troughton, ‘Despair Hordes Swamp Berlin’, DE, 20 Aug. 1945.

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from my car.’ While individual acts of brutality by Germany’s former victims were ‘understandable’, Howe regarded the precipitous expulsion of millions as ‘economic madness’ which created ‘an unnecessary problem’.⁶³ These early reports were fairly restrained accounts compared to a pair of lengthy dispatches which appeared in two of London’s leading morning papers on 24 August 1945. Norman Clark of the News Chronicle and Charles Bray of the Daily Herald visited the Stettiner Bahnhof in the Russian sector on 23 August 1945 and filed what were the most disturbing reports of the refugee crisis to date and which, more than any other journalistic accounts of the time, subsequently shaped British perceptions of the expulsions. ‘Here in Berlin we are living under this shadow, not just of hunger and want, but of death, and epidemics on a scale that the world has not seen in recorded history,’ wrote a clearly unsettled Clark, who had been in the city less than a week.⁶⁴ Germans were still being expelled from Poland at a moment’s notice, creating ‘a human tragedy of the greatest magnitude [. . .] almost already out of hand’. The Allies meanwhile were rendering no assistance to the beleaguered German authorities who lacked the resources to feed and shelter the refugees. If nothing was done, most of the thirteen million homeless Germans would, in Clark’s opinion, die before the winter: Whether or not all this happened before at the hands of the Germans in Poland, Russia, Belgium, the Balkans or Czechoslovakia, these excesses, wreaked only on the women and the children of Germany, on families of the modest means of shopkeepers or small farmers, cannot be allowed to continue. The Allied Control Council must intervene and enforce order at once.

An equally indignant Bray began his dispatch:⁶⁵ Today I have seen thousands of German civilians—old men and women and children of all ages—reduced to the depths of misery and suffering that the Nazis inflicted on others during their beastly reign [. . .] I didn’t like it. It gave me no satisfaction, although for years I have hoped that the Germans would reap from the seeds they had sown. I saw at the Stettiner Station miserable remnants of humanity, with death already shining out of their eyes—with that awful, wide-eyed stare. Four were dead already, another five or six were lying ⁶³ E. Howe, ‘Homeless Millions’, Daily Sketch, 22 Aug. 1945. ⁶⁴ For what follows, see N. Clark, ‘25,000 Seek Food Every Day’, NC, 24 Aug. 1945. See also WO171/8334, War Diary of No. 5 PRS, 18 Aug. 1945. ⁶⁵ For what follows, see C. Bray, ‘Retribution’, DH, 24 Aug. 1945.

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alongside them, given up as hopeless by the doctor, and just being allowed to die. The rest sat or lay about, whimpering, crying or just waiting, hanging on to the slenderest hope that something, somehow, sometime would be done for them. They are past helping themselves.

Bray also wrote of how the local authorities were completely overwhelmed. He admitted that it was ‘not a nice story to tell, but it must be told’ and, like Clark, issued a stark warning: This is the aftermath of war, raising problems more difficult to solve than almost any that existed during it. But if we are to prove to the German race, that our methods, our civilisation, our creed were right and theirs wrong, and if we are to keep faith with those who died, were maimed and suffered intolerable hardship, then these problems have got to be solved and have got to be solved quickly.

Both Clark and Bray left the reader with a searing, emotionally charged image which symbolized the abyss into which the Herrenvolk had fallen. In Bray’s dispatch, it was a woman, ‘emaciated, with dark rings under her eyes and sores breaking out all over her face’, who was castigating herself because she was unable to feed her ‘two whimpering babies’. ‘I watched her trying desperately to force milk from her milkless breasts—a pitiful effort that only left her crying at her failure.’ Clark, for his part, described Polish DPs boarding the stationary trains and robbing the refugees before the very eyes of the assembled journalists, leaving the reader to imagine what had happened to a young German girl, ‘her hair bedraggled, her clothes and stockings torn’, who was being led away from the station. The plight of the refugees was evidently taking an emotional toll on some British press correspondents. As a member of a British relief team wrote in a letter home on the same day that Bray and Clark visited the Stettiner Bahnhof: There is no doubt that an appalling slaughter is going on [. . .] Correspondents describe the scenes on the railway station as being Belsen all over again [. . .] carts taking the dead from the platform and so on. I have never seen a hardboiled pressman so near to tears as . . . [name deleted], who came to ask our advice as to whether one particularly exhausted family could be regarded as Displaced Persons [and therefore be treated preferentially].⁶⁶ ⁶⁶ Friends Library, London, Temp MSS 876, FAU/1947/3/4/NWE General, FAU: Report on Berlin, August–September 1945; Letter from FAU member, Berlin, 23 Aug. 1945.

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In response to later accusations that emotions and/or the pursuit of the sensational had coloured reporting on refugees, Henry Buckley was adamant that the danger lay not in over- but in under-playing the seriousness of the problem: Not long after we had reached Berlin reporters who covered the story of the German refugees found facts of a disquieting nature. There was an obvious temptation to a journalist without integrity either to suppress the story or to change its character by emphasising only what one might call the satisfactory aspects of the case. Yet I think that this story was truthfully and honestly reported by the British press.⁶⁷

One reporter ‘paid dearly for his sincerity’. A story which he filed on the refugee crisis was deemed ‘unsuitable’ by his editors in London and was changed to give it a very different slant. The correspondent protested and resigned. ‘No mean sacrifice’, Buckley pointed out, ‘for he had been well over ten years with that particular paper, was very happy there, and had a satisfactory salary.’⁶⁸ Even journalists who had nothing but contempt for the Germans found the scenes at Berlin’s railway stations and transit camps unsettling. George Bilainkin, who spent two weeks in Berlin in August 1945 representing the Daily Mail, had ‘every sympathy’ with the Czechs and Poles for wanting to expel the Germans. Yet as he confessed in the diary he kept of his visit, ‘[the] picture of elderly women, and young girls, with children almost dying on [the] railway stations of Berlin after long journeys from their former homes, provides [a] test of political convictions. Humanitarian, not soft-hearted, considerations rise unwillingly to the surface’.⁶⁹ It would appear that a good number of British officers were also moved by ‘humanitarian considerations’. ‘I wondered what had been my most moving experience,’ Richard Brett-Smith wrote at the end of a memoir which recounted eight months spent as a subaltern in the city ⁶⁷ H. Buckley, ‘Guest Feature’, British Zone Review [henceforth, BZR], 8 Dec. 1945. ⁶⁸ Ibid. cf. Bilainkin, Second Diary, 192 (17 Aug. 1945). The reporter was William Troughton. The Daily Express had published a report full of Schadenfreude on Berlin on 20 August under his by-line and he had subsequently attempted to distance himself from it in public. See ‘Personal Pars About Press People’, World’s Press News, 27 Sep. 1945. ⁶⁹ Bilainkin, Second Diary, 181 (14 Aug. 1945). An arch-Vansittartist, Bilainkin in his diary makes much of the fact that he refuses to shake hands with Germans.

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from July 1945. ‘I thought of two: seeing the refugees from the East arriving at the railway stations more dead than alive, and an evening in the Volksoper in the Kantstrasse.’⁷⁰ Berlin’s railway stations soon became a spectacle for off-duty British personnel. In his memoir, Brett-Smith, mimicking a junior British official with ‘a background in Hatch End or Pinner’, recalls how a fellow might choose to while away his leisure time in the city: On your days off [. . .] you might like to stroll round the ruins taking snaps (don’t miss Hitler’s bunker) [. . .] or go out to the Country Club for tea and a dance. The music was lovely [. . .] Remind me to introduce you to the brunette who sings [. . .] It was a bit grim going to Spandau Gaol [. . .] or spending an afternoon at one of the stations where the refugees from the East arrived, but terribly interesting. Some of them could hardly move in their cattle-trucks, poor things. One felt sorry for them, but what could one do?⁷¹

For Squadron Leader F. W. Whittick, Commanding Officer of the DP and Refugees Branch of Military Government, who was at the stations every day because it was his job to be there rather than for voyeuristic reasons, there was indeed little that could be done, save for dispensing sympathy in liberal quantities. But even this was sometimes better than nothing. While accompanying Whittick to a refugee camp, Bilainkin noticed how the children had [a] warm welcome for Whittick. Perhaps they knew he would take out from his pocket [a] bar of chocolate and hand out pieces [. . .] Whittick stopped to listen for a while to complaints, to requests, to inquiries; his face did not seek to hide his agonised feelings, despair. But it was all supremely comforting to [the] wretched refugees, and his voice soothed.⁷²

There were some military personnel who, appalled by the refugee crisis, were willing to go to great lengths to bring to light the condition of refugees and, like Troughton of the Daily Express, put themselves on the line in the process. Two British officers in Berlin made a concerted effort to publicize the refugee situation and the Soviet perfidy that they believed lay behind it. Stephen Terrell, a young parachute major with a ‘distinguished’ six year war record in North Africa and northwestern Europe, attached to the Seventh Armoured Division in Berlin, was asked in August 1945 by his intelligence department to make a ⁷⁰ Brett-Smith, Berlin, 174. ⁷¹ Ibid. 69. ⁷² Bilainkin, Second Diary, 185–6 (15 Aug. 1945).

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special report on conditions in the city.⁷³ In his thirty-page report, he wrote that: the greatest horror in modern history is at the time of writing taking place in the Eastern areas of Germany. Approximately 19 [sic] million German people have been ejected [from the east]. These entire populations are dying by the thousand on the roads from starvation, dysentery and exhaustion. Even a cursory visit to the hospitals in Berlin, where some of these people have dragged themselves, is an experience which would make the sights in the Concentration Camps appear normal.⁷⁴

Persuaded by his superiors that there was ‘quite a considerable competition for the unenviable title of ‘‘the greatest horror in modern history’’ ’, Terrell admitted that ‘‘one of the greatest horrors’’ would be more accurate, though with the caveat that ‘history and the disclosure of the full facts alone’ would tell whether his original assessment was correct.⁷⁵ Together with a mass of German-sourced documents collected by Captain A. C. Kanaar, a British surgeon posted to Berlin in early July 1945 after a five-week spell as a Medical Officer at Belsen, Terrell’s report was forwarded to the British press, government and key individuals.⁷⁶ ‘If we are called to account for having communicated with the press’, Kanaar wrote to recipients of the reports, ‘we should welcome a Court Martial as the best means of publicising what we stand for. Neither of us has spent six years in the army to see a tyranny established which is as bad as the Nazis.’⁷⁷ For civilian personnel with the British Element of the Control Commission for Germany (CCG) who were unhappy with how the refugee crisis in Berlin was being handled, resignation was an option. Guy Clutton-Brock, attached to the Education and Religious Affairs Branch of the CCG in Berlin and responsible for German welfare issues, ⁷³ FO371/46934, C5623/3086/18, Cudlipp (DH editor) to FO, 7 Sep. 1945. ⁷⁴ FO371/46934, C5623/3086/18, Terrell, ‘Berlin Survey’, 22 Aug. 1945. ⁷⁵ FO371/46934, C5623/3086/18, Terrell, ‘Epilogue’, 3 Sep. 1945. ⁷⁶ McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, Russell papers, Box 1.33/Series 550/ RA1/1, Kanaar to signatories of ‘Save Europe Now’ appeal [Sep. 1945]; Russell RA1/2, Kanaar, Notes on enclosed reports [Sep. 1945]; Lambeth Palace Library, Fisher papers, ix, fos 79–136, Kanaar to Garbett [sic], 11 Sep. 1945; Westminster Diocesan Archives, Griffin papers, GR3/1/1, Rev. R. Annoyl to Archbishop of Westminster, 19 Sep. 1945; FO371/46934, C5623/3086/18, Cudlipp to FO, 7 Sep. 1945; FO371/46861, C6451/217/18, Kanaar to Bevin, 11 Sep. 1945; D. Walker, ‘ ‘‘At night we could hear the cries of the women’’ ’, Daily Mirror, 4 Oct. 1945; ‘Amazing Documents by Two British Officers’, Sunday Chronicle, 7 Oct. 1945. ⁷⁷ Russell RA1/2, Kanaar, Notes on enclosed reports [Sep. 1945].

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felt ‘no good to man or beast’ in his post.⁷⁸ He warned his superiors that the entire emphasis of occupation would have to be shifted from ‘control’ to ‘relief ’ if disaster were to be averted. British soldiers, as he and others pointed out, would not object. ‘90% of the troops would welcome the chance to do something more useful than make ornamental pavements and plant flowers’.⁷⁹ ‘We shall be judged on our intentions and the extent to which we do all we can’, Clutton-Brock warned.⁸⁰ The refugee crisis was a case in point. A quadripartite policy on the resettlement of German refugees was essential, but short of this even small remedies would make ‘some slight impression on the problem’: the return of evacuees to the British zone; adequate preparation of camps; assistance and equipment for German authorities dealing with refugees; even the possibility of overseas emigration would have to be considered.⁸¹ ‘I think there is a slow waking up to [the problem],’ Clutton-Brock wrote to an acquaintance in London in mid-August, ‘but one fears that full recognition will only come when it is perhaps too late.’⁸² By early September 1945, Clutton-Brock had already had enough and resigned. ‘I pondered much on it,’ he wrote to George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, ‘but it seemed to me clear that one had to keep and preserve some personal integrity.’⁸³ He had lasted six weeks in the job. Clutton-Brock’s frustration was shared by the members of a twelveperson strong Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) engaged in civilian relief work in Berlin under the auspices of the British Red Cross (BRC). The team had been originally sent out to the city on 14 August to work with DPs. However, there were very few DPs left.⁸⁴ The German Red Cross approached the team with an appeal for them to help with refugees instead. Since German welfare remained the sole responsibility of local organizations, Military Government was unable to agree to the request.⁸⁵ The FAU instead embarked on a comprehensive investigation of civilian ⁷⁸ Lambeth Palace Library, Bell papers, lii, fos 121–2, Clutton-Brock to Deedes, 19 Aug. 1945. ⁷⁹ Warwick University, Modern Records Centre, Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/SEN/ 3/11, SOII Religious Affairs and Welfare [Clutton-Brock] to SMGO, 31 Aug. 1945. ⁸⁰ Ibid. ⁸¹ Ibid.; FO1050/1666, Clutton-Brock, Report on Welfare: Appendix ‘B’ to MGBA Education Report No. 5, 23 Aug. 1945. ⁸² Bell lii, fos 121–2, Clutton-Brock to Deedes, 19 Aug. 1945. ⁸³ Bell lii, fos 141–4, Clutton-Brock to Bell, 10 Sep. 1945. ⁸⁴ FAU/1947/3/4/FAU: Northwest Fortnightly Report No. 16, 28 Aug. 1945. ⁸⁵ FAU/1947/3/4/FAU: Northwest Fortnightly Report No. 17, 10 Sep. 1945.

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conditions in the British sector.⁸⁶ As far as refugees were concerned, the FAU were in an excellent position from which to observe the problem: day and night an endless stream of refugees passed by their billets in the suburb of Ruhleben along the main thoroughfare towards Spandau.⁸⁷ Team members visited refugee camps and railway stations, including those in the Russian sector, interviewed refugees and German Red Cross workers and quickly formed a detailed picture of the situation. ‘I think it would be fair to say that by August there was still the feeling that this was not a British Army responsibility,’ a member of the FAU later recalled: ‘It was not their job to look after German refugees unless they were rioting or something like that. So really it was the responsibility of the German local authorities . . . somehow to find food and lodging for these people, to have doctors and nurses available. And the whole situation was catastrophic really. This made a tremendous impression on us immediately.’⁸⁸ The team felt that it was imperative that a short report on the refugee crisis be sent without delay to their headquarters in London.⁸⁹ Within a week, a succinct yet comprehensive account had been prepared which accorded in every respect with other investigations carried out at the time. Its recommendations also echoed those made by other British personnel in the city: the release of emergency supplies for Berlin; the opening up of the western zones to refugees; and above all, a Four-Power plan on refugee movement and resettlement. With what had already become a common-place warning by the end of August 1945, the report concluded that ‘only immediate and planned action by the Allies can avert a tragedy on the greatest scale which will poison international relations for many years to come’.⁹⁰ Twenty copies were sent to the FO, MPs, the press and leading clergymen.⁹¹ It was later quoted extensively in the press and parliament. ‘This was such a colossal problem that anything we could do in a material sense was infinitesimal,’ Helen Adamson, one of the members of the team, recalled on returning to Britain a year later: All of us out there were concerned, Military Government officers, soldiers [. . .] One released prisoner of war I spoke to was not returning home to England ⁸⁶ FAU/1947/3/4/FAU: Northwest Fortnightly Report No. 16, 28 Aug. 1945. ⁸⁷ FAU/1947/3/4/Publicity, ‘Berlin, August 1945’, 1 Sep. 1945. ⁸⁸ John Adamson, taped interview with the author, 17 Nov. 2001. ⁸⁹ Ibid. ⁹⁰ FAU/1947/3/4/Publicity, ‘Berlin, August 1945’, 1 Sep. 1945. ⁹¹ See, for example, FO371/51525, UR3582/286/854, T. Burns (Inf. Officer, FAU) to Brig. Gabbett (FO Relief Dept), 28 Sep. 1945, encl. ‘Report on Berlin (with supplement on Vienna)’, Sep. 1945.

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until he had ‘seen this business through’. The difficulty was to persuade our people at home of the urgency of this problem and we decided the best thing we could do was to concentrate on publicising the facts.⁹²

As the author of the report, John Adamson, pointed out some fifty years later: ‘Our aim was to confirm and add detail to the reports that were beginning to appear in British newspapers on the subject. We hoped to support those who believed that, whatever suffering the Nazis had caused in Europe, urgent action should be taken to avoid another major tragedy in the coming winter.’⁹³ The FAU’s report reached Friends House in London in early September 1945. By then, a campaign in Britain was already underway to bring home to the public the seriousness of the German refugee crisis and the pressing need for remedial action. The experience and impressions of British personnel on the ground in Berlin continued to form the basis of subsequent efforts in Britain at publicizing the refugee crisis, ensuring that the perception of Berlin as a city in ruins changed to one of ‘a city of ruins and refugees’.⁹⁴

T H E N EW M O R A L I T Y: V I C TO R G O L L A N C Z A N D ‘ S AV E E U RO PE N OW ’ , AU G U S T – O C TO B E R 1 9 4 5 The Potsdam Conference was initially hailed as a success in Britain: German militarism had been dealt a firm blow; the façade of Allied unity maintained. The decisions on population transfers and the new Polish western frontiers were largely overlooked. Potsdam, however, was itself soon overshadowed by events in the Far East heralding what was already being called the ‘Atomic Age’. Revelations about Japanese wartime atrocities and the perilous condition of Allied PoWs released from Japanese captivity crowded the foreign news. Demands for rapid demobilization and, above all, postwar housing and rationing dominated the domestic agenda. A full fortnight passed before the first ⁹² H. Adamson papers (in private possession), ‘Berlin: August 1945 to June 1946’, Jul. 1946. ⁹³ J. Adamson papers (in private possession), ‘FAU Berlin, August 1945–June 1946’, Dec. 1995. ⁹⁴ John Adamson recalled that ‘if we wanted to describe Berlin briefly when we went home on leave, we would say ‘‘Berlin is a city of ruins and refugees’’. This was our first impression and it was a very vivid impression.’ Taped interview with the author, 17 Nov. 2001.

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substantial comment on the expulsion of the Germans was made. In the House of Commons on 16 August 1945, Churchill, in his new role as Leader of the Opposition, famously remarked that it was ‘not impossible that a tragedy on a prodigious scale [wa]s unfolding itself behind the iron curtain’.⁹⁵ At the time, these remarks seemed somewhat disingenuous. Even Churchill’s supporters noted that it was ‘not easily reconcilable’ with his earlier defence of territorial compensation and population transfer.⁹⁶ Yet it was an isolated remark, and even though Churchill later returned to this theme, he was not a consistent critic of the expulsion of the Germans. It fell to others to press home the seriousness of the German refugee crisis, and to one man in particular—the publisher and author Victor Gollancz. A pioneer in commercial publishing in the interwar period, Gollancz’s eponymous company revolutionized the industry with innovative approaches to production, economy and design. His marketing policies in particular were ground-breaking. Vast, unprecedented sums were spent on what at the time were seen by his contemporaries as brash and vulgar advertising.⁹⁷ His politics were equally forthright, and he used his highly profitable company as a vehicle for his radical causes, including the hugely successful Left Book Club.⁹⁸ An early anti-appeaser and closet Churchillite, he also became, despite his fellow-travelling credentials, a savage critic of Soviet policy following the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Himself Jewish, he was instrumental from an early date in bringing attention to the plight of European Jews. As war drew to a close, he focused increasingly on the question of morality and redemption in international relations, most controversially with respect to the postwar treatment of Germany and the notion of ‘collective guilt’. In What Buchenwald Really Means —published in April 1945—he reminded readers of the distinction between ‘Germans’ and ‘Nazis’, and that it was testament to the thousands who, he claimed, had heroically resisted the Third Reich that there were many German Gentiles among the camp survivors. More controversially, he drew a moral equivalence between the passivity of millions of ‘ordinary’ Germans, cowed into silence under a repressive regime, and the failure of the British, who enjoyed ⁹⁵ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 413, col. 84 (16 Aug. 1945). ⁹⁶ A. Forbes, ‘Behind the Political Scene’, Sunday Dispatch, 19 Aug. 1945. ⁹⁷ S. Hodges, Gollancz: The Story of a Publishing House, 1928–1978 (1978), 25–49. ⁹⁸ S. Samuel, ‘The Left Book Club’, JCH 1/2 (1966), 65–86.

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free speech, to rescue the Jews.⁹⁹ Gollancz could hardly have expected these ideas to have had a enthusiastic reception. Anti-German feeling was running high following the revelations about Nazi extermination camps and the countrywide screening of footage on the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.¹⁰⁰ In any case, unpopular causes had a peculiar attraction for Gollancz. He had a ‘particular passion for the moral underdog’, according to his biographer, and enjoyed the ‘sheer [. . .] drama and excitement of being seen to take up an unpopular cause’.¹⁰¹ The expulsion of the Germans became his first postwar cause célèbre, to which he brought a formidable arsenal: his forceful personality or mana, as he called it; his considerable financial means; his publishing firm; his gift for marketing and publicity; his extensive contacts in progressive circles; and above all, a messianic zeal and boundless energy. Although Gollancz does not seem to have shown much interest in the question of population transfer during the war, once reports about expulsions from Czechoslovakia reached Britain in June 1945, he became an unequivocal and outspoken critic of the manner in which this policy was being handled.¹⁰² In a letter-cum-article written in mid-June 1945 to his long-standing collaborator Kingsley Martin, the editor of the New Statesman, Gollancz outlined a moral critique of postwar Europe which he would come to refine and espouse with increasing frequency in the coming months and to which the expulsion of the Germans was central.¹⁰³ Recalling how he had marched together with other comrades in support of ‘plucky’ Czechoslovakia ⁹⁹ V. Gollancz, What Buchenwald Really Means (1945). ¹⁰⁰ See Mass-Observation, Harvester/Tom Harrison Mass-Observation Archive: File Report Series [1937–1949] (Brighton, 1983): Card 278/File 2228, Special Pre-Peace News Questionnaire, 18 Apr. 1945; Card 279/File 2248, Reaction to German Atrocities, 5 May 1945. Well into August 1945, however, 1,000 copies of the pamphlet were being sold per day. See ‘ ‘‘Buchenwald’’ Still Sells’, New Leader, 18 Aug. 1945. ¹⁰¹ R. Edwards, Victor Gollancz: A Biography (1987), 401. ¹⁰² Gollancz signed a ‘Manifesto’ by British and European socialists condemning territorial compensation for Poland, and the Left News, a monthly publication of the Left Book Club, edited by Gollancz, published a series of articles, mostly critical, on the transfer of territory and populations. See Left News, Feb. 1944, 2735–7, 2750–2; Mar. 1944, 2780–5, 2792–5; Apr. 1944, 2805–7; May 1944, 2823; Jun. 1944, 2873–8. He was, however, in favour of a voluntary transfer of Arabs from a future Jewish state, where necessary; views which accorded with official Labour Party policy. See V. Gollancz, ‘Nowhere to Lay Their Heads’: The Jewish Tragedy in Europe and Its Solution (1945), 28–9; Labour Party, The International Post-War Settlement (1944), 7. ¹⁰³ For what follows, see Martin papers, 12/3, Gollancz to Martin, 18 Jun. 1945.

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in the late 1930s, Gollancz deplored the ‘basest chauvinism’ that the Czechs, once ‘decent and tolerant [. . .] almost a model of a liberal democracy’, were showing towards the Sudeten Germans in the aftermath of war. The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans was but one symptom of a malaise that Gollancz believed had spread throughout postwar Europe, where the ‘Nazi spirit’ seemed to have infected the victors. Gollancz wondered whether even though Britain and its allies had won the war physically, they had lost it morally. Guarded reports from Soviet-occupied Europe made even ‘friends’ of that country ‘profoundly uneasy’ and demanded from them an honest and unequivocal response: What is profoundly shocking is that all this wickedness—this racialism and ruthlessness and inhumanity—is defended, in the name of toughness and realism, by some who call themselves liberals and socialists [. . .] If we are going to choose this moment of all others for throwing the essence of our faith onto to the scrapheap of history, we may as well reconcile ourselves without more ado to Hitler’s ‘thousand years’ of Anti-Christ.

The British, irrespective of their political persuasion, had a special obligation to show vision, courage and moral leadership in this field: Britain has had a singularly fortunate history: and as a result of it there is in this island the possibility, greater perhaps than in any other country of comparable influence, not merely to maintain for the benefit of man everywhere the basic principles of social and political morality, but to give them a wider application and deeper meaning. But we shall lose that possibility beyond recall if, now that the world’s fate is balanced on a razor’s edge, we acquiesce in policies that treat a man as if he were a cipher—or if, still worse, we defend them.

In a second letter, Gollancz dismissed Martin’s claim that he was over-reacting, seeing Martin’s position as being indicative of the flawed morality of so-called liberals and socialists. He accused Martin of not taking ‘this Sudeten German business [. . .] this piece of horrible cruelty’ very seriously. ‘How on earth can we on some subsequent occasion protest against similar acts from the Right’, he asked, ‘if we take this attitude now?’ He threw aside Martin’s objection that ‘easy’ moral indignation was not necessarily the most effective response: It is certainly true that moral indignation often does no good: but it seems to me that there are also occasions when to express the moral indignation one

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feels is not merely the only decent thing to do, but also the only thing that can produce a practical result.¹⁰⁴

A truncated version of Gollancz’s original letter eventually appeared in the Manchester Guardian on 6 July.¹⁰⁵ The public response to the letter was more reassuring that Martin’s lukewarm reception. The mass of congratulatory correspondence that Gollancz received thanked him for expressing in print what many were thinking in private but were unable to articulate or unable to get published. He was also praised for having the courage to speak out when he was bound to come in for criticism as well as for the principled Christian and/or socialist stand that he was taking.¹⁰⁶ Even before the Berlin refugee story broke at the end of August 1945, Gollancz had, therefore, already become a self-ordained minister of moral values in the postwar world. On 27 August 1945, the News Chronicle then published what one admirer would subsequently call Gollancz’s ‘historically famous’ letter on the German refugee crisis.¹⁰⁷ After quoting at length from Troughton’s spiked Daily Express dispatch from Berlin, Gollancz remarked that he had recently written to another unnamed publication (New Statesman) about ‘a similar piece of devilry’ only to be ‘rebuked by the editor [. . .] for exhibiting ‘‘useless moral indignation’’ ’.¹⁰⁸ ‘But isn’t it precisely moral indignation that is wanted today?’, Gollancz asked. ‘Isn’t the world going to hell for the lack of it?’ Referring again to the ‘new morality’ that had sprung up in Europe, which regarded mercy and pity as ‘irrelevant’ and ‘positively disgraceful’ and national self-interest as the highest virtue, Gollancz argued that only ‘an act of genuine repentance’ could save Europe from ‘utter destruction’ and from ‘the evil [that] has already gone deep’. If the Labour government took a ‘new path’ and turned its back on narrow self-interest it ‘may prove itself the greatest the world has ever known’, by acting ‘always for the international good’ and stimulating a ‘moral re-education’ of Europe. It could start by showing its determination to feed Europe that winter, not for reasons of enlightened self-interest but because it was ‘right’ to help starving neighbours regardless of nationality, remembering that ‘the only thing that matters [. . .] is that ¹⁰⁴ Martin 12/3, Gollancz to Martin, 28 Jun. 1945. For Martin’s comments, see New Statesman Archive, 3/G, Martin to Gollancz, 25 Jun. 1945. ¹⁰⁵ V. Gollancz, ‘Sudeten Germans and Other Things’, MG, 6 Jul. 1945. ¹⁰⁶ Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/PR/2/1–40. ¹⁰⁷ Quote from MSS.157/3/PR/4/75, Fitzroy to Gollancz, [21 Sep.] 1945. ¹⁰⁸ For what follows, see V. Gollancz, ‘In Germany Now’, NC, 27 Aug. 1945.

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a man is a man first, and a German, a Czech, or a Pole, a long way afterwards’. The ‘fan-mail’ Gollancz received after this letter was published surpassed even that of the previous month. ‘Why are you not a member of the Government?’, one admirer asked of Gollancz, who was clearly delighted by the suggestion, having long harboured political ambitions.¹⁰⁹ Gollancz was again congratulated for his moral courage and leadership, but above all for articulating the concerns of ‘a great many tired and silent people’, who felt muted despair and a sense of helplessness when confronted with the immense problems of the postwar world.¹¹⁰ ‘Your views are not exactly popular these days’, wrote another devotee, ‘but popular opinion is fickle and ten years from now [. . .] you will be vindicated.’¹¹¹ Sir William Beveridge wrote that he agreed ‘completely’ with the contents of the letter. ‘Demanding unconditional surrender means becoming responsible for the State of Germany,’ he wrote, noting that unlike last time Britain ‘ought not to allow the small nations to pursue vengeance, when, by our strength, they have been put in a position to do so.’¹¹² Gollancz’s thoughts, however, were already turning to practical schemes. ‘My feeling is that there must be some impressive demonstration of a different spirit’, Gollancz replied to Beveridge, ‘and this is the only country that can give it.’¹¹³ Irrespective of whether Gollancz had already decided to take his moral crusade directly to the British public, the approbation certainly convinced him that in doing so he would be preaching to a receptive and loyal congregation, even if it was, as Gollancz acknowledged, a minority. Within days of the publication of his ‘In Germany Now’ letter, Gollancz had arranged a meeting in London with officials of the National Peace Council to discuss the outline of a campaign to rouse British public opinion from its moral slumber. They agreed that ‘some really powerful expression of opinion’ was needed to encourage the British government in concert with its allies, and if need be alone, to pull Europe back from the brink of disaster that winter.¹¹⁴ They chose the time-honoured method of a letter to the press signed by eminent figures. But their ¹⁰⁹ 1945. ¹¹⁰ ¹¹¹ ¹¹² ¹¹³ ¹¹⁴

MSS.157/3/PR/4/109–10, Hillier to Gollancz, 30 Aug. 1945, and reply, 3 Sep. MSS.157/3/PR/4/278, Thompson to Gollancz, 27 Aug. 1945. MSS.157/3/PR/4/194, Phillips to Gollancz, 10 Sep. 1945. MSS.157/3/PR/4/19, Beveridge to Gollancz, 28 Aug. 1945. MSS.157/3/PR/4/20, Gollancz to Beveridge, 31 Aug. 1945. Bell lvii, fos 170–1, Bailey to Bell, 31 Aug. 1945.

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practical suggestion—a cut in British rations to ‘save’ Europe—was less conventional. Whether or not this was Gollancz’s innovation, it had all the characteristics of a style that had made him so successful in publishing. It was daring, disarming and, most of all, eye-catching. The appeal, drafted by Gollancz, called attention to Bray’s and Clark’s dispatches from Berlin and the prospect of mass starvation among German refugees.¹¹⁵ ‘If we call attention to this vast tragedy it is certainly not because we fail to realise how grievously our allies are suffering, nor because we would wish any preference to be given to ex-enemy nationals. Nothing is more urgent than the speediest relief of Europe as a whole.’ If mass starvation could only be prevented by some cut in British rations, then the government should not be afraid of asking the British people to make this sacrifice. ‘It is not in accordance with the traditions of this country to allow children—even the children of ex-enemies to starve,’ the appeal continued, ‘[and] our fellow country-men would be willing to make some voluntary sacrifice in this cause.’ All those who shared this concern were asked to send a postcard to ‘Save Europe Now’ indicating their willingness to have their rations cut. Gollancz managed to secure the signatures of several individuals of note.¹¹⁶ He could also count on the editors of the Daily Herald and the News Chronicle, whose editors he knew personally.¹¹⁷ Gollancz sensed that there was a possibility of ‘a surprising response’ which might herald the beginning of ‘a very big movement outside of the [Labour] Party’ and ‘a moral recovery’.¹¹⁸ Of its political impact, he was equally optimistic: ‘I am perfectly certain that the effect of letters in the press is very considerable. Every Government is always watching to see what way the wind is blowing.’¹¹⁹ The appeal was issued to the local and national press on 9 September 1945. It was also distributed to national organizations.¹²⁰ Over the next ¹¹⁵ For what follows, see draft appeal letter 7 Sep. 1945, in Bell lvii, fos 175–6. ¹¹⁶ The appeal was signed by Gollancz; Rev. Henry Carter, Chairman of the National Peace Council; Dr Sidney Berry, leader of the English Congregational Church; George Bell, Bishop of Chichester; A. Lindsay, Master of Balliol College; Gilbert Murray, an Oxford classicist; Eleanor Rathbone, Independent MP; and Bertrand Russell, the philosopher. ¹¹⁷ Bell lvii, fos 170–1, Bailey to Bell, 31 Aug. 1945; ‘Europeans All’, NC, 27 Aug. 1945. ¹¹⁸ MSS.157/3/PR/4/20, Gollancz to Beveridge, 31 Aug. 1945; MSS.157/3/PR/4/111, Gollancz to Hall, 3 Sep. 1945. ¹¹⁹ MSS.157/3/PR/4/206, Gollancz to [woman in Oxford], 28 Aug. 1945. ¹²⁰ Warwick University, Modern Records Centre, TUC papers, MSS.292/906.92/3, Bailey to national organizations, 10 Sep. 1945.

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week, it appeared in over a dozen newspapers and periodicals.¹²¹ The immediate response was encouraging. On 17 September alone, 5,000 cards were received by first post. Within just over a week, 20,000 people had responded, and Gollancz had a ‘small army of workers’ dealing with all the correspondence, as well as sending out an eight-page pamphlet containing Bray’s and Clark’s Berlin dispatches and a circular letter to each respondent asking them to collect further signatures.¹²² It was clear from the responses that any scheme would have to be voluntary in nature and this encouraged Gollancz to outline a ‘more immediate practical scheme’ to capitalize on the response. A second appeal was therefore published in the name of the original signatories. The British government was called upon to sponsor a voluntary scheme of ration cuts either through a government department, the Red Cross or a special relief organization. It was suggested that people could send clothing and food to various local depots or cut out ‘points’ (coupons with which consumers could purchase rationed goods) and forward them to a central collecting centre, from where they could be used in Germany or elsewhere. ‘Such an effort can, no doubt, do only a little to mitigate so vast a tragedy,’ the signatories of the appeal admitted. ‘But it will be something to have saved even a few from the agony of death by starvation.’¹²³ While Gollancz might have been pleased with the initial response from individual members of the general public, less encouraging was the reaction of published opinion to this ‘sentimental nonsense’ which would ‘only stimulate resentment and bickering’.¹²⁴ ‘If we have aid to spare, let it go to those countries whose people were sent to Germany’s extermination camps. Not to the relatives of the men—and ¹²¹ Yorkshire Observer, 10 Sep. 1945; Birmingham Gazette, 10 Sep. 1945; MG, 11 Sep. 1945; NC, 12 Sep. 1945; DH, 13 Sep. 1945; Spectator, 14 Sep. 1945, 245; Friend, 14 Sep. 1945; Oxford Times, 14 Sep. 1945; NSN, 15 Sep. 1945; Left News, Sep. 1945, 3279–80; Baptist Times, 20 Sep. 1945. A similar appeal with local signatories in Yorkshire Post, 14 Sep. 1945. ¹²² MSS.157/3/PR/4/262, Gollancz to Steier, 17 Sep. 1945; ‘The Food Volunteers’, MG, 26 Sep. 1945. The pamphlet was published as Europe and Germany: Today and Tomorrow [1945]. ¹²³ ‘Plan to Save Hungry’, DH, 21 Sep. 1945; ‘Tragedy Over Europe’, NC, 21 Sep. 1945; ‘Starvation in Europe’, MG, 21 Sep. 1945; ‘Should Rations Be Cut?’, Yorkshire Post, 26 Sep. 1945; ‘Save Europe Now!’, Tribune, 28 Sep. 1945; ‘What Can We do for Europe?’, Forward, 6 Oct. 1945; ‘You Can Help Save Them’, Common Wealth Review, Oct. 1945, 7; ‘Birmingham Support for Ration Cut’, Birmingham Gazette, 4 Oct. 1945. Of the original signatories only Bell did not sign. ¹²⁴ ‘Let’s Talk it Over’, People, 16 Sep. 1945; ‘Comment’, Observer, 16 Sep. 1945.

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the women—who staffed them,’ thundered one of the more hostile editorials.¹²⁵ Even publications sympathetic to the spirit of the appeal had to admit that it would be no more than ‘a drop in the ocean’ and could only ‘scratch the surface’ of European relief, being principally symbolic in value and a vent for a minority who wanted to salve their consciences.¹²⁶ The Yorkshire Post, one of several papers which reprinted correspondence on the subject, concluded from the ‘flood of letters’ it received that the issue had ‘served rather to ventilate the grievances of householders in Britain than to discuss what shall be done to aid Central Europe’.¹²⁷ It was not so much the level of the response to the two appeals, but that they had helped to draw attention to the plight of Europe in general and of expelled Germans in particular that mattered. Not that publicity was lacking by mid-September. Whereas earlier in the summer correspondents were being sent cables from London telling them to stop sending any more stories about Germany in ruins,¹²⁸ Fleet Street was now crying out for despatches on conditions in Berlin.¹²⁹ By midSeptember, Germany had come ‘crashing back into the limelight’,¹³⁰ and the refugee crisis was ‘crowding the pages of the daily press’.¹³¹ Coverage was not limited to the ‘quality’ press or the upper-end of the mass-circulation market,¹³² and although the Beaverbrook press remained almost completely silent on the issue, other right-wing papers, such as the Daily Mail, covered the story.¹³³ In addition, the BBC broadcast an extended report on the Lehrter Bahnhof in Berlin on the evening news in mid-September.¹³⁴ Moreover, the graphic and dramatic ¹²⁵ ‘Kindness to Germany’, Sunday Dispatch, 23 Sep. 1945. ¹²⁶ ‘Deportees’, NC, 21 Sep. 1945; ‘Food for Europe’, Yorkshire Post, 18 Sep. 1945. ¹²⁷ ‘Rations for Europe’, Yorkshire Post, 26 Sep. 1945. See also ‘Our Rations for the Germans?’, DH, 17 Sep. 1945; ‘They Want to Share Food with Germans’, DH, 19 Sep. 1945; ‘Starvation in Europe’, MG, 14 Sep., 1 Oct., 4 Oct. 1945; ‘Should Rations Be Cut?’, Yorkshire Post, 19–20 Sep., 22 Sep., 24–5 Sep. 1945; ‘German Famine Threat’, NC, 25 Sep. 1945; ‘Should We Let Germany Starve?’, Picture Post, 29 Sep. 1945; ‘Starvation in Europe’, Oxford Times, 21 Sep., 28 Sep., 5 Oct., 12 Oct. 1945. ¹²⁸ See memoir of Daily Telegraph correspondent, A. Mann, Comeback: Germany 1945–52 (1980), 72. ¹²⁹ RA, Buckley 1/8980280/2LN, Mason (Chief News Ed.) to Buckley, 7 Sep. 1945. ¹³⁰ ‘Fear of Famine Grips Germany’, News Review, 20 Sep. 1945. ¹³¹ ‘ ‘‘Illustrated’’ Scoops Berlin’s Misery’, World’s Press News, 20 Sep. 1945. ¹³² See also series of three special reports by Derek Walker in Daily Mirror, 2–4 Oct. 1945. ¹³³ R. Churchill, ‘I Toured Germany in Her Misery’, Daily Mail, 4 Oct. 1945. ¹³⁴ BBC WAC, HNB138, F. Gillard, ‘Topical Talk: ‘‘The Lehrter Railway Station’’ ’, HS, 11 September 1945, 1813 BST.

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nature of the refugee crisis was ideal copy for pictorial magazines. The Picture Post ran two consecutive stories on the ‘Chaos In Europe’.¹³⁵ Illustrated on 22 September led with a picture story entitled ‘Berlin’, its main page panoramic shot of the Stettiner Bahnhof with thousands of refugees perched on the top of a train being perhaps the most arresting image from this period.¹³⁶ Comment in the form of editorials and from correspondents themselves became increasingly indignant and alarmist. The Times correspondent remarked on visiting a hospital filled with semi-starved women and children expelled from Danzig that ‘it is surely not enough to say that the Germans brought these miseries upon themselves: brutalities and cynicism against which the war was fought are still rife in Europe, and we are beginning to witness human suffering that almost equals anything inflicted by the Nazis’.¹³⁷ Even public intellectuals sympathetic to the Soviet Union, like the hugely successful writer and broadcaster J. B. Priestley, joined in the chorus. En route to Moscow on ‘a cultural tour’, Priestley visited camps and hostels in Berlin for German refugee children. ‘What I have seen and heard from responsible relief workers on the spot shocks my conscience,’ he told a reporter: and it would upset the conscience of anyone in England could they [. . .] see for themselves. These children are guiltless—yet they are [. . .] paying the heaviest part of the price for Germany’s guilt [. . .] I believe that if the people of England could see the privations these children are exposed to there would be many who would willingly give up part of their rations [. . .] The tots of Germany are in the same plight as the children of Holland and France, Poland, the Balkans and Greece. But how can we, with any right, discriminate against them? If we do, we will be nurturing the seeds of hate again—for if they live through their sufferings they will never forget. Whatever happens to the German people this winter—and the prospect is a stark one of epidemics and death—the world conscience must see to it that the children of Germany do not starve.¹³⁸

Although Fleet Street might not have expressed these concerns in so many words or have shared Gollancz’s self-sacrificial motives for ¹³⁵ L. May and H. Magee, ‘Chaos in Europe’, Picture Post, 8 Sep. 1945; ‘Can UNRRA Relieve the Chaos in Europe?’, Picture Post, 15 Sep. 1945. The proprietor of the Picture Post, Edward Hulton, condemned the expulsions elsewhere in his publishing empire. See E. Hulton, ‘Thinking Aloud’, World Review, Sep. 1945, 4, 8. ¹³⁶ B. Fisher, W. Gordon and L. McCombe, ‘Berlin’, Illustrated, 22 Sep. 1945. ¹³⁷ ‘Flow of Refugees’, The Times, 11 Sep. 1945. ¹³⁸ ‘Plea for German Children’, NC, 12 Sep. 1945.

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assisting German refugees, a consensus was emerging: that the continued expulsion of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia and the presence of so many pestilent and starving refugees in the Soviet zone, who at any moment might break out westwards, was a matter of immediate concern that required resolute action for reasons of national self-interest, not sentimentality towards the Germans. This point was forcibly put in a Daily Mirror editorial on 5 October 1945 appropriately entitled ‘Feed the Brutes?’: The problem is not only one of great difficulty. Its potential consequences for evil cannot be exaggerated. Therefore it must be faced and solved. In saying this we suggest no sympathy for the German people, or for the victims of those mass evacuations which have caused this nightmare of suffering, disease and death; those pitiful ambling Belsens which move along the highways of Eastern Germany [. . .] It is not any feeling of compassion which prompts us to emphasise the necessity of dealing with the situation. It is the practical matter that makes action imperative. This European problem must be solved [. . .] The longer Europe is allowed to sink into the bog, the longer it will take to raise up—the longer the occupation will have to go on.¹³⁹

Even the Sunday Chronicle, a right-wing, avowedly Hun-bashing member of the Kemsley Group, which on receiving Kanaar and Terrell’s reports led with an indignant front-page piece condemning it as ‘pity the poor Germans’ campaign of organized sympathy, acknowledged that ‘it is for the sake of Europe and ourselves, for the safety of our occupying troops [. . .] that Germany must be prevented from becoming a plague spot and a danger to the world’.¹⁴⁰ As Kingsley Martin, with uncharacteristic foresight, had written of the expulsions early in September: ‘No one in this country, whatever their party, thinks this anything but a tragic and deplorable policy.’¹⁴¹ If at the beginning of September this was still somewhat of an exaggeration, by early October it was not. If Gollancz had seen the appeal for a ration cut partly as the best means of attracting public attention (hostile or not) to the plight of the German refugees, he also realized that ‘relief’ was but a small part of a large-scale solution that was only possible at a political level. Before the second appeal was published, Gollancz was already exploring avenues beyond the purview of the original group of signatories, hoping to use ¹³⁹ ‘Feed the Brutes?’, Daily Mirror, 5 Oct. 1945. ¹⁴⁰ ‘Amazing Documents’, Sunday Chronicle, 7 Oct. 1945. ¹⁴¹ ‘London Diary’, NSN, 1 Sep. 1945.

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the response to the Save Europe Now (SEN) appeal as a springboard to wider political action. On behalf of a small group of MPs, ‘gravely disturbed by the expulsion, with great inhumanity and in contravention of the Potsdam declaration, of millions of Germans’, Gollancz organized an exhaustive mailshot in late September to all Liberal and Labour MPs, religious leaders, trade unionists, representatives of science and the professions and the press, inviting them to attend a meeting on 8 October in London to discuss and pass a resolution on the expulsion of the Germans, as well as to ‘reaffirm the principles of humanity for which this country has always stood’.¹⁴² The two-part resolution, which Gollancz drafted with a group of Labour MPs, included an appeal to the British government ‘to negotiate with the Russian, Polish and Czechoslovak Governments with a view to stopping the expulsion of Germans from their homes in Eastern Europe forthwith and throughout the winter, and to develop an agreed inter-allied policy’ in addition to implementing an ‘immediate common policy’ with the Americans and French on receiving into their zones as many of those already expelled as could be housed and fed. The second part of the resolution called on the British government to endorse a voluntary scheme of ration cuts.¹⁴³ For a gathering of the ‘chattering classes’, the turn-out at Conway Hall on 8 October was impressive. The venue was ‘full to overflowing’. Guests even had to be turned away.¹⁴⁴ More than forty backbench MPs attended, mostly young men from the new Labour intake, including two future Labour Party leaders, as well as a couple of newspaper editors and proprietors, a smattering of bishops and a good many ‘longhaired highbrows’ from the literati.¹⁴⁵ The speakers emphasized the pressing need to halt further expulsions; the threat the refugee crisis posed for the British zone; the Herculean task faced by the British authorities there; the ¹⁴² Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/SEN/1/3, Circular from Gollancz, 27 Sep. 1945. The group of MPs included three youngish and ambitious newly elected Labour MPs: Dick Crossman, Raymond Blackburn, and Michael Foot. For their views on the refugee crisis, see R. Blackburn, ‘Millions of Germans May Die This Winter’, News of the World, 16 Sep. 1945; R. Crossman, ‘Why Germany Matters’, NSN, 22 Sep. 1945; ‘Michael Foot Column’, DH, 4 Sep. 1945. The other two MPs were Dick Stokes (Labour) and Eleanor Rathbone (Independent). ¹⁴³ MSS.157/3/SEN/1/6, Conway Hall resolution, 8 Oct. 1945. ¹⁴⁴ MSS.157/3/SEN/1/119, Gollancz to Lord Farringdon,. 15 Oct. 1945. ¹⁴⁵ FO371/46885, C6952/671/18, [Selected attendance list of ] Meeting at Conway Hall, 8 Oct. 1945; V. Bonham Carter, Champion Redoubtable: The Diaries and Letters of Violet Bonham Carter, 1914–45, ed. M. Pottle (1998), 364–5.

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disastrous economic consequences of present policies in central Europe; and the responsibility the British shared for these problems.¹⁴⁶ Violet Bonham Carter, a close friend of Churchill and President of the Liberal Party, ended the meeting with an appeal to the ‘Dunkirk spirit’.¹⁴⁷ ‘This is perhaps our greatest most critical and testing hour, as a nation, since 1940. Now, as then, we [. . .] stand alone for certain values [. . .] which to us are above all things precious.’ The British people once again had to prove their ‘faith’ not with speeches but with ‘united action and if necessary by individual sacrifice’. They should not underestimate their power to influence the government and therefore their ‘personal responsibility’ for what was happening in Europe: It is not only the Atomic Bomb, but Famine and Disease which know no frontiers. And they are on the march today. And we are here to remind ourselves, and others, that Humanity also knows no frontiers [. . .] I speak as a Liberal, and this is Liberalism as I understand it. But it is surely also Christianity.

In the first instance, Bonham Carter asked ‘our Russian Czech and Polish Allies’ to ‘ ‘‘Stop the Mass Expulsions’’ ’. ‘If they go on throughout the winter’, she warned, ‘they must become mass exterminations’. She called on the government to take the practical steps suggested in the resolution: In urging this course upon the government do let us have the courage to urge it for the right reason. Do not let us explain shamefacedly that we are really only bothering about German diseases because we are afraid of catching them ourselves. One of the diseases for which the whole world is suffering today is a general debasement of human values and standards. Human beings the whole world over seem to feel uncomfortably obliged to explain even their own humanity [. . .] In this hall to-night we all know what is right. Because it is right it is also the right thing to do. Let us go forward fearlessly and do it—even though in doing it we act alone.

With this rousing call to action, the resolutions were passed unanimously on a show of hands.¹⁴⁸ ¹⁴⁶ The five speakers were: Dick Crossman, Labour MP; Gerald Gardiner, formerly FAU senior representative in Germany; Barbara Ward, foreign editor of The Economist and a household name owing to her appearances on the BBC’s ‘Brains Trust’; George Bell, who had already done much to rally the British churches around this issue; and Violet Bonham Carter. For extracts of speeches, see Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/SEN/1/ 5iii–vi. ¹⁴⁷ For what follows, see Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS Bonham Carter 355, fos 88–101, Notes for Conway Hall speech, 8 October 1945. ¹⁴⁸ FO371/46885, C6952/671/18, Gollancz to Bevin, 9 October 1945.

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The Conway Hall meeting was only the start of a longer campaign that fed into a wider debate about postwar relief and reconstruction in central Europe. It was Gollancz’s activities in September 1945, however, that helped set the tone and lay the groundwork for this debate. He helped foster the realization that the German refugee crisis, and the expulsions that were causing it, was one of the most urgent questions of postwar European reconstruction that required immediate attention at the highest political level. If the press was on the whole sceptical of his plans for European relief, it nevertheless backed the political aims. A voluntary cut in rations to ‘save Europe now’ might have been seen as a fool-hardy gimmick, but the demand for a halt to further expulsions appeared eminently reasonable. Indeed, by early October 1945, it seemed like plain common sense.

‘ N OT H I N G TO G I V E BU T O B S T I N AT E C O M PA S S I O N ’ : T H E B R I T I S H C H U RC H E S A N D T H E E X P U L S I O N S , AU G U S T – O C TO B E R 1 9 4 5 While Gollancz was attempting to mobilize parliamentary and extraparliamentary opinion against the continuing expulsion of the Germans, another well-known public figure, George Bell, was independently pursuing similar ends within the Christian Churches. As the Bishop of Chichester, he performed for the clergy a role analogous to Gollancz’s with the laity. Bell was instrumental from an early date in cultivating within Church circles an awareness of the consequences of mass expulsion and helping to channel the deep unease felt about developments in central Europe into a more coherent expression of opinion. The parallels between the two men, however, did not end there. Both attracted love and loathing in equal measure, sometimes seeming to revel in championing unpopular causes which they knew would bring notoriety. Both professed a simple brand of Christian morality, even if Gollancz’s was somewhat more mystical and eclectic. Bell, for his part, had been a ceaseless critic of those aspects of the British war effort, such as strategic bombing, the blockade and the policy of unconditional surrender, which he believed were undermining the foundations of Christian civilization as well as the moral legitimacy of Britain’s cause. His high-mindedness had won him few allies in Church and State and earned him a reputation for being unpatriotic and a ‘political bishop’.

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His wartime record also scuppered any chances of preferment when the position of Archbishop of Canterbury became vacant in October 1944.¹⁴⁹ On the other hand, it did earn him a degree of respect even from those who otherwise violently disagreed with him. He was ‘honest, sincere, courageous, misguided’ in the words of one;¹⁵⁰ a conflicting view of Bell best summed up by Lord Woolton, a minister in the wartime coalition government, who declared before a Lords debate on strategic bombing in February 1944: ‘George, I believe that you are going to make a speech [. . .] there isn’t a soul in this House who doesn’t wish you wouldn’t make the speech [. . .] but [. . .] there isn’t a soul who doesn’t know that the only reason you make it is because you believe it is your duty to make it as a Christian priest.’¹⁵¹ The same might be said for his interventions on the expulsions. Bell believed that the injustices being inflicted on innocent and defenceless German civilians demanded from Christians a compassionate response, made no less important because the object of this compassion were Britain’s former enemies. On the contrary, it was all the more important because they were former enemies and only along the path of forgiveness could true and lasting reconciliation emerge. How Britain, and the British Churches in particular, responded to the challenge of the refugee crisis was therefore seen by Bell not only as a test of individual faith but also an opportunity to reaffirm the primacy of the moral values that he had spent the war defending. The close relationship Bell had maintained with the German Confessional Church also inevitably shaped his views on the postwar treatment of Germany.¹⁵² He never failed to point out, just as Gollancz had, that he believed there was a clear distinction between ‘Germans’ and ‘Nazis’, a conviction based in part on his knowledge of the Church struggle in Germany.¹⁵³ But his attitude towards postwar Germany was not only dictated by Christian duty or an overly generous assessment of the German opposition to Hitler. He also showed a strong awareness of the strategic consequences of the peace. In common with many others who shared neither his high-mindedness nor his faith in ‘the other Germany’, ¹⁴⁹ R. Jasper, George Bell, Bishop of Chichester (Oxford, 1967), 256–87. ¹⁵⁰ Bilainkin, Second Diary, 20 (7 Feb. 1945). ¹⁵¹ Quoted in Jasper, George Bell, 277. ¹⁵² See E. Robertson, Unshakeable Friend: George Bell and the German Churches (1995). ¹⁵³ See ‘Germany and the Hitlerite State’ (Lords speech, 10 Apr. 1943), in G. Bell, The Church and Humanity, 1939–46 (1946), 95–109.

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Bell thought that a punitive postwar settlement would spell disaster for European reconstruction and that mass transfers of German territory and population would lead to ‘a perpetual state of resentment’.¹⁵⁴ Not surprisingly, he was horrified by the Potsdam declaration. ‘With its tremendous list of deportations [it] chills one greatly,’ he wrote to a leading Dutch clergyman. ‘What a time this is for the Church and yet how difficult it is for Churchmen to get together and find a way.’¹⁵⁵ A week after the Potsdam Conference, Bell received his first eyewitness report on the refugee crisis in Germany from Hans Böhm, an antiNazi pastor of pre-war acquaintance, whom Bell described as ‘one of the bravest leaders of the Confessional Church’.¹⁵⁶ It recounted the ‘indescribable misery’ of several million destitute German ‘fugitives’ driven out of Poland and milling around aimlessly in the Soviet zone. Many refugees had already died and a ‘terrible famine’ threatened ‘far exceed[ing] what even the worst pessimists feared abroad’.¹⁵⁷ The report was passed on to the Foreign Office and Bell managed to get it published later that month.¹⁵⁸ But he was convinced that the situation in eastern Germany necessitated a more vocal, public remonstration by the Church. ‘I cannot help thinking that we should make our anxiety known to the government,’ he told Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, on 11 August 1945. ‘What is happening now in so many parts of central Europe, and what is being done by some of the victors, cannot be reconciled with Christianity.’ He urged Fisher ‘to voice the anxiety of the Church in the clearest way’ in a major debate that week in the House of Lords.¹⁵⁹ Fisher did raise the matter in the Lords but was guarded in his criticism; careful to confine his comments to the manner in which the expulsions were being carried out and not to challenge the very principle of population transfer, comment on the efficacy of the provisional German-Polish frontier or openly criticize the stance of the British government or, for that matter, of the ¹⁵⁴ ‘The Peace Settlement’ (Lords speech, 10 Oct. 1944), in Bell, Church and Humanity,154–5. ¹⁵⁵ Bell cv, fos 85–7, Bell to ’t Hooft, 10 Aug. 1945. ¹⁵⁶ Bell xliv, fo. 11, Castle to Bell, 8 Aug. 1945; Fisher ix, fo. 64, Note by Bell, 11 Aug. 1945. ¹⁵⁷ Bell xliv, fos 20–1, Dr Boehm, ‘On the Ecclesiastical Situation in Germany’, undated. ¹⁵⁸ FO371/46808, C4889/94/18, Bell to Cadogan, 11 Aug. 1945; ‘The Church in Germany’, Spectator, 17 Aug. 1945. ¹⁵⁹ Fisher ix, fo. 63, Bell to Fisher, 11 Aug. 1945.

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expelling governments.¹⁶⁰ Bell was far less circumspect when he made his own intervention on the subject a week later during a debate on the United Nations Charter. He denounced the Polish western frontier and accused the western Allies of double-standards for condemning deportations while the war was on as ‘crimes against humanity’ but condoning similar acts such as the expulsion of the Germans, which was ‘hardly consistent with fundamental human rights’, once the war was over.¹⁶¹ The frequent reports on conditions in eastern Germany which Bell received from sources on the spot continued to underscore the seriousness and urgency of the problem. One of these sources was Guy Clutton-Brock. In fatalistic terms, he outlined for Bell the ‘appalling’ refugee crisis in Berlin and the choice that lay ahead for the British: It is clear that millions will die this winter [. . .] There is no need to comment on it. No one can prevent it. What seems to me important however is that England should do the best it can, however small. If we succeed in saving a few lives, and if the German people know we have done our best, it will greatly add to the peace of the world.¹⁶²

A source who had a profound impact on Bell was Pastor Heinrich Grüber, another anti-Nazi clergyman known to Bell through their prewar work with so-called ‘non-Aryan Christians’. Grüber, who spent three years in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, was made responsible for welfare services in Berlin by the Soviet authorities at the end of the war.¹⁶³ ‘Without exaggeration I can say that though I have seen much misery and distress in my life,’ Grüber wrote of conditions in the city, ‘the things which I am witnessing now are beyond comparison and worse than anything that I have experienced before.’ He painted a grim picture of conditions in eastern Germany with tens of thousands of homeless and destitute refugees trudging along the roads westwards or ‘lying about, starving in the woods’, overwhelmed local authorities, mass rapes, the spread of infectious diseases and the prevalence of VD.¹⁶⁴ A second letter dated 7 August 1945 had an even ¹⁶⁰ Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 137, cols. 62–3 (16 Aug. 1945). ¹⁶¹ Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 137, cols.144–5 (22 Aug. 1945). ¹⁶² Bell lii, fos 116–19, Clutton-Brock to Bell, 8 Aug. 1945. ¹⁶³ H. Grüber, Erinnerungen aus sieben Jahrzehnten (Köln, 1968), 146–99, 235–44, 267–77. ¹⁶⁴ Bell xliv, fo. 120, Grüber to Freudenberg, 19 Jul. 1945.

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more desperate, ‘almost hysterical’ tone, as one associate of Bell later remarked.¹⁶⁵ Grüber wrote that: what we see in the streets and squares of Germany we cannot describe in words [. . .] I did bear [sic] the tortures of the concentration camps but what now happens before our eyes, that is beyond everything ever happened in form or extent. I am thinking of those taking their lives out of despair. Thousands of corpses are driven into the sea by [the] Elbe and Oder. Thousands of corpses are hanging in the woods and in the neighbourhood of Berlin, no one cuts them off [sic], thousands and tens of thousands dying in the country roads by [sic] hunger and exhaustion.¹⁶⁶

On receiving this news, Bell requested an audience with Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Undersecretary of State at the Foreign Office.¹⁶⁷ Given a copy of Grüber’s letter at their meeting on 3 September, Cadogan ‘in no way denied the seriousness of the situation, and the probability that unless something could be done, millions would perish during the winter’.¹⁶⁸ Cadogan admitted that attempts to suspend expulsions had failed, that nothing could be done about conditions in the Russian zone and that the expulsions were going to make Britain’s job in Germany even more difficult. Bell recommended appointing someone to make a ‘drive’ to organize relief in Germany.¹⁶⁹ Sir Arthur Salter—an Independent MP for Oxford University and an expert on financial reconstruction—was mentioned as a suitable candidate.¹⁷⁰ Cadogan seemed receptive to the idea, but little else came of the meeting. Convinced that the greatest possible pressure needed to be brought to bear on the British government if prompt and resolute action were to be taken, Bell sounded out Church leaders on the possibility of organizing a high-level deputation to the Prime Minister.¹⁷¹ Encouraged by the response, Bell seized the initiative and, without consulting Fisher first, wrote directly to Attlee on 4 September asking if he would receive an interdenominational delegation to discuss the refugee crisis ¹⁶⁵ E. Rupp, ‘I seek my brethren’: Bishop Bell and the German Churches (1975), 23. ¹⁶⁶ Bell xliv, fo. 121, Grüber to Bell, 7 Aug. 1945. ¹⁶⁷ Bell lii, fo. 217, Bell to Cadogan, 30 Aug. 1945. ¹⁶⁸ Bell lii, fo. 2, Bell to Fisher, 4 Sep. 1945. ¹⁶⁹ FO371/46808, C5357/94/18, Cadogan minute, 3 Sep. 1945. ¹⁷⁰ Salter had published a series of articles in which he argued that if millions starved and froze that winter it would not be the inevitable consequence of wartime destruction and world-wide shortages but because of organizational and psychological factors. See A. Salter, ‘The Rebuilding of Europe’, Observer, 26 Aug., 2 Sep. 1945. ¹⁷¹ Bell lii, fo. 2, Bell to Fisher, 4 Sep. 1945.

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in Germany.¹⁷² Within just over a week, Bell had assembled a twentyperson delegation representing all the Christian Churches.¹⁷³ Briefed by Salter beforehand,¹⁷⁴ and led by the Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, it was received by Attlee and Philip Noel-Baker, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, on 13 September 1945.¹⁷⁵ The delegation expressed concern that the ‘grave crisis’ which Europe would inevitably face that winter was being unnecessarily aggravated by the expulsion of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Echoing Churchill’s recent speech in the Commons, they warned of ‘a tragedy on an unparalleled scale’ unless prompt and effective action was taken. The delegation claimed not to have come with any ‘clear-cut scheme’ nor with the intention of lecturing the government on what it already knew: the British government was no doubt alive to the situation and as alarmed as the Church leadership was. It was not in a spirit of criticism that the delegation had come, but of solidarity. The delegation wanted to show that the Christian Churches were ‘most deeply concerned’ and ‘anxious to support the government in the steps which they may propose to take to relieve the sufferings of Europe’. ‘You may have your critics in helping Germany,’ the Archbishop of York assured Attlee, ‘but you will find behind you a great mass of Christian and educated opinion.’¹⁷⁶ After quoting at length from a gruesome report on the refugee crisis which Grüber had recently prepared for the Commission of German Churches in the Soviet zone, Bell outlined a series of practical measures that the British could take, drawing on suggestions made by Grüber and Salter as well as adding some of his own. These included using surplus transport to move food, coal and relocate German expellees; exploiting ¹⁷² Bell lii, fo. 5, Bell to Attlee, 4 Sep. 1945. Bell attributed the swiftness of this move to the urgency of the situation. It is possible, however, that he wanted to bypass Fisher and present him with a fait accompli. See Bell lii, fo. 2, Bell to Fisher, 4 Sep. 1945. ¹⁷³ For organization of the delegation, see Bell lii, fos 1–65. ¹⁷⁴ 1945. ¹⁷⁵ Members of the delegation were: Archbishop of York, Bishops of Birmingham, Chelmsford, Rochester, Southwark, Stepney, Sheffield and Chichester, and Deans of St Paul’s and Westminster (Church of England); Archbishop of Westminster, and Bishops Myer and Mathew (Roman Catholic); Rev W. Armstrong (Free Church Federal Council), Rev. W. Noble (Methodist), M. Aubrey, J. Rushbrooke (Baptist), F. Chalmers Rogers (Congregational Union), and Very Rev. A. Harcus (Presbyterian); Rev. J. Moffett (Church of Scotland). Fisher did not attend, contrary to claims made in E. Carpenter, Archbishop Fisher: His Life and Times (Norwich, 1991), 162–3; Garbett acted as his representative. ¹⁷⁶ Bell lii, fos 78–96, Confidential verbatim report of delegation, 16 Sep. 1945.

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the vast food reserves of the Americas; relocating refugees throughout Germany including the western zones; removing inter-zonal restrictions on German social welfare organizations; providing resources and facilities to agencies dealing with refugees; and improving Anglo-American cooperation on relief. In its work with DPs, Bell argued, the Allies had shown what could be done. The resources were there; all that was lacking was leadership. Although Bell acknowledged that it was right for Germany’s victims to remain the top priority, he added that it was ‘[n]either consistent with humanity [n]or our ideals, [n]or for the permanent welfare of Europe as a whole, that millions, of any nationality, be they German or other, should be doomed to face such misery, and freeze, and starve, and die this winter if steps can be taken to prevent it’.¹⁷⁷ Attlee made no attempt to minimize the gravity of the situation in Europe: the immense numbers of DPs; the destruction of housing; the world-wide shortage of food and transportation; the relief of liberated countries in addition to Britain’s own needs; as well as the twin problem of administering a divided Germany and feeding a British zone not self-sufficient in food; all these factors complicated the situation. Seen in context, the suffering of German refugees, although ‘a very terrible thing’, was ‘only one of the facts’ confronting in Europe, and it was one largely beyond British control as ‘the people [. . .] driven out’ were not in the British zone. Attlee explained that the British government had done all it could ‘to restrain the disorderly transfer of German populations’, and had ‘made the strongest representations to our Allies’, though admittedly with mixed results. And there was no use suggesting the British Army do more. They were doing all they could and had ‘a very, very heavy task before them’. Without ‘wish[ing] to depreciate in the slightest the gravity of the position [or] [. . .] want[ing] to throw blame on anybody’, Attlee asked for a sense of perspective and for the delegation to remember who was primarily responsible for this mess: ‘You cannot ravage a Continent like this [. . .] without paying the penalty, and that is what is happening now in Europe.’¹⁷⁸ In spite of Attlee’s gloomy prognosis and admission that the government was powerless to do much about conditions in Europe, Bell nevertheless found the Prime Minister’s candour encouraging and felt ¹⁷⁷ Bell lii, fos 74–6, Statement by Bishop of Chichester, 13 Sep. 1945; Bell xliv, fo. 122, [Note by] Grüber for the Commission of German Churches, 20 Aug. 1945. ¹⁷⁸ Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/SEN/1, Verbatim record of 13 September 1945 Church delegation.

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the meeting had been a success overall. Attlee had spoken in a ‘very friendly way’, receiving the delegation ‘with real sympathy’ and seeming ‘genuinely pleased’ they had come.¹⁷⁹ ‘There is no doubt that the attitude of the British Government is one of deep concern, and [has] a great wish to do everything that is possible to avert catastrophe,’ Bell wrote afterwards.¹⁸⁰ Moreover, it emerged from the meeting that the government was actually thankful for the public attention that the expulsions were receiving and ‘would welcome as much publicity as possible with a view to strengthening [its] hand [. . .] in taking action’.¹⁸¹ Attlee had, in fact, mentioned that ‘the more public opinion back[ed] up our representations the better’.¹⁸² Noel-Baker, for his part, had hinted that eastern Europeans were ‘rather susceptible to public opinion in other countries’, which made ‘an expression of public opinion a most important factor’.¹⁸³ Noel-Baker drove this point home after the meeting, urging upon Bell the importance of publicity.¹⁸⁴ Seeing these remarks as a green light for further action, Bell immediately tabled a resolution on the expulsions for an upcoming meeting of the Convocation of Canterbury.¹⁸⁵ The resolution ‘deplore[d] the expulsion of German families [. . .] as a violation of the principles of humanity that the Allies [. . .] pledged to uphold’ and called on the British government to continue making representations to the expelling governments ‘to end these miseries’, to do all it could to help those who already had entered the British zone and to accept continued restrictions on imports and exports in order to feed Europe. It also appealed to all Churchmen to support the government in these endeavours.¹⁸⁶ A similarly worded resolution was moved by the Bishop of Sheffield in the Convocation of York. When these bodies met between 10 and 12 October 1945—for the first time since 1936—the expulsions were the principal subject of debate and the resolutions were passed by both Convocations.¹⁸⁷ ¹⁷⁹ Bell xliv, fo. 140, Bell to Grüber, 28 Sep. 1945; lvii, fo. 9, Bell to Fisher, 15 Sep. 1945. ¹⁸⁰ Bell xliv, fo. 140, Bell to Grüber, 28 Sep. 1945. ¹⁸¹ Bell lvii, fo. 9, Bell to Fisher, 15 Sep. 1945. ¹⁸² Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/SEN/1, Verbatim record of 13 September 1945 Church delegation. ¹⁸³ Ibid. ¹⁸⁴ Bell lii, fo. 97, Bell to Salter, 22 Sep. 1945. ¹⁸⁵ Bell lvii, fo. 8, Bell to Dashwood, 15 Sep. 1945. ¹⁸⁶ Bell lvii, fo. 10, Resolution for Convocation of Canterbury, undated. ¹⁸⁷ Chronicle of Convocation: Sessions of October 10, 11 and 12, 1945 (1945), 160–7, 187–96; York Journal of Convocation: Sessions of 11 and 12 October 1945 (York, 1945), 8, 54–8; ‘Convocation of Canterbury’, Church Times, 12 Oct. 1945.

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Bell had the opportunity to witness the refugee crisis first hand when, in late October 1945, he made a two-week tour of the British zone and Berlin in order to meet the newly formed Council of the German Evangelical Church. ‘Wherever I went’, he remarked on his return, ‘the tragic character of the expulsions came out.’¹⁸⁸ His interpreter recalled a ‘grim visit’ made to the Lehrter Bahnhof in Berlin: [The] platforms and lines [were] covered with thousands of human beings, mostly very old and very young, and teenage girls with bleeding bandaged feet. I remember I found a bar of Dairy Milk chocolate and produced it, but Guy Clutton-Brock, who was conducting us, said. ‘Put that away or people will be killed fighting for it’. And I remember Bell going slightly ahead of us, not able to speak German to them, but stopping and smiling and patting children, and turning again to ask for facts and information—nothing to give but [. . .] obstinate compassion.¹⁸⁹

The visit to Germany confirmed for Bell the pressing need for effective action before winter set in and on his return he continued to speak out on the expulsions.¹⁹⁰ As these resolutions of the Convocations of Canterbury and York and the interdenominational delegation showed, although Bell might have been instrumental in mobilizing fellow clergymen, he was in no way the only senior Anglican, nor were Anglicans the only Christian denomination, prepared to demonstrate publicly their deep unease over conditions in central Europe. Garbett subsequently chaired a mass SEN rally at the Albert Hall in November 1945. The British Council of Churches, of which Fisher was president, passed a resolution on 4 October 1945 calling for the implementation of Article 12 of the Potsdam Protocol and for concerted British assistance in the relief of Europe.¹⁹¹ The Catholic press was also loud in its condemnation of the actions of the ‘godless’ regimes in Prague and Warsaw, although its attempts to absolve ordinary Catholic Poles from any responsibility for the expulsions led to some remarkable feats of sophistry.¹⁹² Bernard Griffin, the Archbishop of Westminster, joined the Church delegation to Attlee in condemning ¹⁸⁸ Bell xlv, fos 336–44, Bishop of Chichester’s visit to Germany, 18–30 October 1945. ¹⁸⁹ Rupp, ‘I seek my brethren’, 28. ¹⁹⁰ See Chapter 6. ¹⁹¹ FO371/51467, UR3703/1617/851, British Council of Churches to Bevin, 5 Oct. 1945. ¹⁹² The expulsions were said to be from ‘countries east of Germany’ and from Czechoslovakia. See ‘6,000,000 Catholics Among Starving Expelled Evacuees’, Universe, 7 Sep. 1945. For further discussion of British Catholics, see Chapter 6.

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the expulsion of ‘simple Christian peasants at short notice against all ideas of humane treatment’, a policy he believed would be ‘the cause of very bitter strife in years to come’.¹⁹³ Soon after, he returned from a trip to Germany replete with tales of woe from German Catholic bishops about the inhumanity of the expulsions and the influx of refugees.¹⁹⁴ As a Foreign Office official remarked prior to the visit of the Church delegation to Attlee: ‘There will no doubt be enough suffering to keep an army of Bishops busy all the winter.’¹⁹⁵ And indeed to the end of 1945, from the pulpit,¹⁹⁶ in the religious press,¹⁹⁷ at public meetings¹⁹⁸ or in parliament,¹⁹⁹ the British Churches were at the forefront of those condemning the expulsions and demanding a humane solution to the refugee crisis.²⁰⁰ ‘It is your responsibility, your minimum Christian obligation [. . .] and everybody’s who professes to be obedient to the Christian Gospel [to support SEN]’, readers of the Evangelical Record were told in September 1945. ‘Christian compassion, at any rate, does not deal in political bargains.’²⁰¹ If there is one factor that is crucial in explaining the shift in perception between late June 1945, when Major-General Templer remarked that German refugees did not constitute a problem for the British, and late September 1945 with the British press warning of refugee melt-down, then it was Berlin. Berlin turned a refugee question into a refugee ¹⁹³ Bell lii, fos 78–96, Confidential verbatim report, 16 Sep. 1945. ¹⁹⁴ Griffin GR3/1/1, Minutes of Conference at Klementium Seminary Bad Driburg, 28 Sep. 1945. ¹⁹⁵ FO371/46808, C5357/94/18, Selby minute, 11 Sep. 1945. ¹⁹⁶ See York Minster Library, Garbett papers, Coll 1973/1/O, York Diocesan Leaflet No. 2: The Archbishop’s Letter, Sep. 1945; A. Morehead, ‘The Man from Berlin is Hopping Mad’, DE, 4 Oct. 1945. ¹⁹⁷ See editorials from September to December 1945 in religious weeklies. Church Times (Anglican): ‘Summary’, 14 Sep. 1945; ‘Government in Europe’, 21 Sep. 1945; ‘Life in Liberated Silesia’, 23 Nov. 1945. Tablet (Catholic): ‘Want and Fear’, 1 Sep. 1945; ‘The Human Misery of Europe’, 22 Sep. 1945; ‘The Deportations’, 3 Nov. 1945; ‘The Needs of Europe’, 1 Dec. 1945. Catholic Times (Catholic): ‘The Coming Winter’, 21 Sep. 1945; ‘Notes of the Week’, 12 Oct., 2 Nov. 1945; ‘Is the Pound of Flesh Symbol of Christianity?’, 23 Nov. 1945. ¹⁹⁸ ‘Catholic Women Discuss Post-War Reconstruction’, Catholic Times, 12 Oct. 1945. ¹⁹⁹ See Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 138, cols. 341–98 (5 Dec. 1945). ²⁰⁰ See also the active assistance the churches gave in ‘spreading the word’ about SEN, in Griffin GR1/27b, Gollancz to Griffin, 1 Nov. 1945; Gollancz circular [to Roman Catholic priests], 1 Nov. 1945; Griffin’s Asst. Private Secretary to Peggy Duff, 8 Nov. 1945. ²⁰¹ Agro, ‘The Watch Tower’, Record, 28 Sep. 1945.

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problem for the British. And it was the experience of British personnel on the ground in Berlin that again shifted this perception from that of a refugee problem to a refugee crisis, the urgency of which, following the publication of the first press reports on refugees in late August 1945, quickly filtered through to Britain and led almost immediately to the beginnings of a concerted campaign to alleviate conditions among German refugees and to halt further expulsions. Whether motivated by humanitarian, economic or political considerations, the growing body of opinion troubled by the moral as well as the practical implications of the expulsions and the refugee crisis spoke, in one respect, as if with a single voice. Soldiers, civilian administrators, relief workers and journalists in Berlin as well as columnists, editors, parliamentarians and churchmen in Britain, were all calling for resolute action and leadership from the British government to deal with the refugee crisis caused by the expulsions; and to do so before it was too late and before Britain found itself presiding over not just a refugee crisis but a refugee catastrophe of unknown proportions in the centre of Europe.

5 ‘A Thankless Task’ Official Responses to the Expulsions, August–December 1945 Public alarm over conditions in central Europe was accompanied by intensified efforts by British government agencies to confront the causes and consequences of the German refugee crisis. Having decided to tackle rather than ignore the problem, the British government had to face the dilemma of doing too little to meet the anxieties of the British authorities in occupied Germany, as well as of critics at home, but just enough to alienate the expelling countries and arouse Soviet suspicions. There was the danger, as a member of the Foreign Office German Department put it, of a ‘mountain giving birth to a mouse’.¹ This chapter examines how far the British government was willing to go, as well as the obstacles it faced, in finding solutions to the refugee crisis that balanced these competing demands while at the same time safeguarding British interests. Still smarting from his humiliation at the polls, and with Parliament in recess, Winston Churchill retreated to Lake Como in early September 1945 for a spot of painting and relaxation. He was in splendid isolation there and began to think the election defeat might have been ‘a blessing in disguise’ after all. ‘This is the first time for very many years I have been completely out of the world,’ he wrote to his wife. ‘The Japanese War being finished and complete peace and victory achieved, I feel a great sense of relief which grows steadily, others having to face the hideous problems of the aftermath. On their shoulders and consciences weighs the responsibility for what is happening in Germany and Central Europe.’² But he was unable to ignore the troubles of the world for ¹ FO371/46808, C5357/94/18, Troutbeck minute, 15 Sep. 1945. ² Churchill and Churchill, Speaking for Themselves, 535.

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long. By the end of the month, he was wading through a backlog of newspapers from England. ‘I regard the future as full of darkness and menace’, he wrote again to his wife. ‘Horrible things must be happening to millions of Germans hunted out of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia [ . . . ] There will be no lack of topics to discuss when we all come together again.’³ Whether Churchill’s conscience should have been as free as he claimed is a moot point. More than any other western leader he was associated with the policies of territorial annexation and compulsory population transfer that had partly caused these ‘hideous problems’. But it was a statement of fact rather than opinion that the responsibility for coping with ‘the aftermath’ now lay with others. The Attlee administration faced, and in part set itself, a formidable set of challenges: the implementation of an ambitious programme of social and economic reform, as well as the redefinition of Britain’s role as a great power within a bipolar new world order. The challenge was not made any easier by the price tag that had come with total victory. Never before had Britain been burdened with so many overseas commitments; never before had its financial position been so precarious or so reliant on the largesse of an outside power, as the abrupt termination of Lend-Lease and the subsequent negotiations on an American loan showed all too painfully.⁴ Given the panoply of problems which the British government faced towards the end of 1945, a sense of proportion is needed when considering the official response to the expulsion of the Germans after August 1945. Yet, as Chapter 4 has shown, there was a palpable sense of alarm in Britain, as well as on the ground in Germany, that the expulsions and the refugee crisis they were causing were leading central Europe, and Britain with it, towards an abyss. These concerns were also shared by British officials, not least because of the far-reaching implications that the refugee crisis had for the administration of the British zone in Germany. Two tendencies characterized official thinking on the expulsions. One view which pre-dated Potsdam and remained prevalent until the end of August 1945 was that the expulsions were a ‘Russian

³ CAC, Spencer-Churchill papers, CSCT2/34/87–9, WSC to C. Churchill, 24 Sep. 1945. ⁴ For an overview of 1945–51 governments, see K. Jefferys, The Attlee Government 1945–51 (1992). For the economy, the termination of Lend-Lease and the American loan, see A. Cairncross, Years of Recovery: British Economic Policy, 1945–51 (1985), 1–16, 88–120.

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problem’. Having aided and abetted the expelling governments, the Soviets, if they so wished, could stem the flow of refugees by directly intervening or by sealing their zonal frontiers. If the Soviets chose not to take action, then they would only be reaping what they had sown. Over the course of August, however, there was a growing realization that while the Soviets were facing the initial blow, it would only be a matter of time before the trickle of refugees entering the British zone became a flood, bringing in its wake pestilence and anarchy. This was a reality that the British sector in Berlin was facing sooner rather than later. Yet an uncontrolled influx of refugees would not only put the British authorities in Germany in an impossible situation. The British government itself would also be placed in an embarrassing position domestically if judged incapable of fulfilling its commitments in Germany without having to demand further sacrifices from the British taxpayer or, at the other extreme, presiding over Germany’s complete collapse. By late August 1945, officials in London were therefore in favour of taking more resolute action to prevent the refugee crisis in Germany getting out of hand before it was too late. The problem, however, was what type of action this should be, as well as what could realistically be achieved. As far as the Foreign Office saw it, the problem by early September 1945 was threefold. First, how to enforce the Potsdam decision on the suspension of expulsions. Second, how to ameliorate conditions among refugees in the Soviet zone and Berlin and to a lesser extent among the remaining German populations of Poland and Czechoslovakia. And, third, how to distribute and resettle those already expelled. Beyond Band-Aid solutions in the British zone, there was little optimism that British initiatives would have any measurable impact. ‘The situation undoubtedly is very terrible, but we are really powerless to do anything very much about it,’ remarked the head of the Foreign Office German Department prior to the visit of the Church delegation to Attlee in September 1945: ‘In fact I fear that the situation [ . . . ] is practically irremediable.’⁵ This chapter will ask how ‘irremediable’ the situation really was in the light of action taken by British government agencies in respect to Poland, Czechoslovakia and the British zone in the first months after the Potsdam Conference. Was the British government ‘really powerless to do anything very much’, and, if so, what were the constraints on British action and the limits to which the British were willing to go? ⁵ FO371/46812, C5753/95/18, Troutbeck minute, 8 Sep. 1945.

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‘MEANINGLESS ASSURANCES’: EXPULSIONS F RO M P O L A N D , AU G U S T – D E C E M B E R 1 9 4 5 The Polish response to the first British enquiry on 2 August 1945 about the expulsion of Germans set the tone for subsequent Anglo-Polish exchanges on this subject; it could be argued that it established a pattern that continued right up until the last official transport of Germans from Poland arrived in the British zone in December 1946. The Polish Foreign Ministry assured Robert Hankey, the British chargé d’affaires in Warsaw, that further expulsions would be postponed, only to add that in order ‘to effect reconstruction immediately in Stettin and Oppeln’ it would nevertheless be necessary ‘to expel Germans from those areas’.⁶ It thereafter proved difficult, as it had before the Potsdam Conference, to determine with any certainty if Germans were still being expelled and, as a result, to know if there were strong enough grounds on which to lodge a complaint. That huge numbers of Germans had been expelled before Potsdam was now beyond doubt.⁷ Evidence that the Poles were continuing to do so after Potsdam remained contradictory and inconclusive as far as the Foreign Office was concerned.⁸ Over the next four months, the British played a cat and mouse game in which they sought ‘assurances’ that expulsions had ceased for which they only had the Polish government’s word to go on. Accounts of refugees streaming into Berlin were in themselves evidence that expulsions had continued, at least until very recently. For this reason alone, Bray’s and Clark’s despatches of 24 August 1945 were instrumental not only in focusing public attention on the refugee crisis but also in alerting the British government to the problem and through them senior British officials in Berlin who still seemed reluctant to admit that there was a refugee problem in the city.⁹ Sir William Strang, political adviser to Field-Marshall Montgomery, expressed surprise when Ernest Bevin produced a copy of Clark’s News Chronicle ⁶ FRUS 1945, ii, Lane to Byrnes, 2 Aug. 1945, 1266; FO371/46811, C4422/95/18, Warsaw to FO, 2 Aug. 1945. ⁷ FO371/47650, N10844/96/55, Notes on journey by road from Ostend to Warsaw, 5 Aug. 1945; N11312/96/55, C-B to Sargent, 26 Aug. 1945. ⁸ FO371/46812, C5257/95/18, PID Germany Weekly Background Notes, 15 Aug. 1945; Polish Broadcasts on Expulsion of Germans, 17 Aug. 1945; C5045/95/18, Selby minute, 26 Aug. 1945. ⁹ See weekly summaries, in FO1049/172.

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article during a meeting in the Foreign Office on 27 August, claiming that the conditions described ‘were certainly not visible to the casual observer in Berlin’.¹⁰ Sent back with a copy of the article and told to investigate,¹¹ Strang quickly and assiduously did his homework for the Foreign Secretary and found Clark’s article to be ‘in the main justified’.¹² Bevin had meanwhile used a meeting on 27 August with the new Polish ambassador, Henryk Strasburger, to have a ‘very frank’ exchange about reports that Germans from Poland were being ‘ruthlessly driven into the other zones of Germany’ as a result of which ‘great difficulty was being caused’ for the occupying powers. Strasburger was asked to look into this.¹³ When over a week passed with no response, approaches were made to Zygmunt Modzelewski, the Polish Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, who assured the British ambassador in Warsaw, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, that there had been no expulsions for three weeks: itself an admission that they had continued for at least a fortnight after Potsdam. Modzelewski then mentioned that the westward movement of Germans was in fact continuing, citing an agreement with the Americans under which Polish DPs in western Germany were being exchanged for Germans in Poland.¹⁴ Further enquiries revealed that no such agreement existed,¹⁵ and that Modzelewski, known for being ‘brazen in his efforts to blackmail and in his lies’, had simply invented it.¹⁶ The worsening situation in Berlin, however, necessitated a more expeditious and resolute response than could be reached through these ¹⁰ FO371/46812, C5257/95/18, Burrows minute, 28 Aug. 1945; FO371/46813, C6993/95/18, O’Neill minute, 29 Aug. 1945. Strang had been in Berlin only a fortnight. See DBPO, 1st ser., v: Germany and Western Europe, 11 August–31 December 1945 [henceforth, DBPO v], eds M. E. Pelly and H. J. Yasamee (1990), note 1, p. 2. During the Potsdam Conference, Strang’s only impression of Berlin came from a walkabout outside the Reichstag. His Military Assistant, however, was told by the head of Wilmersdorf Mil. Gov. about the scale of the refugee problem there and actually visited a soup kitchen for refugees. His report was forwarded to London via Strang. See FO371/46934, C4792/3086/18, Strang to Bevin, 8 Aug. 1945. As a British civilian relief worker in Berlin pointed out: ‘The [refugee] camps were to some extent hidden away, but you could not hide hundreds of thousands of refugees on the streets [ . . . ] you couldn’t avoid these people.’ See J. Adamson, taped interview with author, 17 Nov. 2001. ¹¹ FO371/46812, C5257/95/18, Burrows minute, 28 Aug. 1945. ¹² FO1049/227, 222/30/45, Strang memo. for Chief of Staff, 29 Aug. 1945; Rees memo. for Pink, 29 Aug. 1945. ¹³ FO371/47706, N11042/211/55, FO to Warsaw, 29 Aug. 1945. ¹⁴ FO371/46812, C5542/95/18, Warsaw to FO, 9 Sep. 1945. ¹⁵ FO371/46812, C5735/95/18, Berlin to FO, 14 Sep. 1945; C5834/95/18, Berlin to FO, 17 Sep. 1945; FRUS 1945, ii, Murphy to Byrnes, 21 Sep. 1945, 1279. ¹⁶ FO371/56673, N9045/9045/55, Report on Leading Personalities in Poland, 1946.

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channels.¹⁷ Evidently less ‘casual’ in his observations by this point, Strang’s weekly summaries from Berlin began referring to the ‘melancholy spectacle’ at the Stettiner Bahnhof, as well as to the spectre of disease.¹⁸ Disease was also very much at the forefront of Bevin’s mind. Introducing a paper on the subject to the Cabinet on 6 September, Bevin pointed out that there was ‘a real danger of epidemics during the forthcoming winter’.¹⁹ He said that steps had therefore been taken to impress on expelling governments ‘the undesirability of accentuating the problems of Central Europe by further forced transfers of population’. He emphasized that ‘the point would continue to be pressed’.²⁰ The Foreign Office had, in fact, already decided to up the pressure on the Poles by enlisting the support of the other occupying powers.²¹ On 9 September, an aide mémoire was sent to the US State Department requesting that joint ‘urgent’ representations to the Poles ‘to follow not only the letter but the spirit of the [Potsdam] request’.²² A similar note sent to Molotov pointed out that the British public was showing ‘considerable interest in this question as a result of a number of press reports’ and that this would ‘no doubt increase as the facts of the situation bec[a]me further known’. Molotov was reminded that as most of these Germans were heading into Soviet zone first, it was a question of even greater concern for the Soviets.²³ The first meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) soon provided the British with an opportunity to raise the issue at the highest diplomatic level.²⁴ Although neither Germany nor the expulsions ¹⁷ See series of reports from Berlin to the FO underlining the seriousness of the refugee crisis which arrived in London on 2 Sep. 1945: FO371/46990, C5333/5333/18, tels. 43, 45–6, 1 Sep. 1945; C53444/5333/18, tel. 47, 1 Sep. 1945; FO371/46812, C5437/95/18, tel. 150, 2 Sep. 1945. ¹⁸ FO1049/75,156/24/45, Steel to FO: Political Summary No. 4, 7 Sep. 1945. ¹⁹ CAB129/3, CP (45) 148, Defence Against Disease, 5 Sep. 1945. ²⁰ CAB128/1, Cabinet 29 (45), 6 Sep. 1945. ²¹ FO371/46812, C5437/95/18, Troutbeck minute, 4 Sep. 1945. ²² FO371/46990, C5916/5333/18, Aide-Mémoire to the State Dept., 9 Sep. 1945. ²³ FO371/46990, C5694/5333/18, Kerr to Molotov, 7 Sep. 1945. See also FO371/ 46812, C5548/95/18, Holman to Bidault, 7 Sep. 1945. ²⁴ The first CFM met at Lancaster House in London on 11 September 1945 to discuss peace treaties with Italy and other minor Axis powers. Accounts of the London conference in A. Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary 1945–1951 (1983), 129–37; P. Ward, The Threat of Peace: James F. Byrnes an the Council of Foreign Ministers, 1945–1946 (Kent, 1979), 18–49; V. Pechatnov, ‘ ‘‘The Allies are Pressing on you to Break your Will . . . ’’: Foreign Policy Correspondence Between Stalin and Molotov and Other Politburo Members, September 1945–December 1946’, The Cold War

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were on the agenda, and these issues were not raised during the first meetings, a Foreign Office brief circulated before the conference had recommended that the Soviets in particular be pressed on the need to expedite a transfer plan through the ACC and for joint Four-Power representations to the Poles. Public opinion, the FO brief pointed out, was ‘beginning to show great concern about this question, now that the deplorable conditions of the transferred persons [were] getting known’.²⁵ Public concern intensified as the conference got underway. Government ministers began receiving ‘innumerable’ letters from individuals and organizations urging resolute action on the expulsions.²⁶ There was a widespread assumption in the press that something would be done at the conference to ‘put a stop to this appalling tragedy’.²⁷ There was growing unease in the Foreign Office that ‘there may therefore be some criticism if no mention is made of the matter in the final communiqué’.²⁸ Senior officials in the Foreign Office now threw their weight behind supporting action. ‘In view of the publicity which the transfer of German populations is receiving and the certainty that it will be taken up when Parliament meets,’ remarked Oliver Harvey, Assistant Undersecretary of State, on 20 September. ‘I think it is most important that [Britain] should have gone on record as having raised the matter.’²⁹ At the very point when Bevin might have raised the issue—on the morning of 21 or 22 September 1945—the conference, which had been had troubled from the outset, reached an impasse. Consequently, the expulsions were not discussed. The idea of a FourPower request to the Polish government, however, was not completely abandoned. ‘As you will no doubt have observed during your stay in London,’ Bevin wrote to Molotov while the conference was still sitting, ‘public opinion here is taking an increasing interest in this International History Project Working Paper Series, No. 26 (Washington, DC, 1999), 1–15. ²⁵ FO371/46812, C5713/95/18, UK Delegation to the CFM: Brief on Transfer of German Populations, undated. ²⁶ Examples of such letters in FO371/46812, C5609/95/18, C5921/95/18. The latter file is minuted: ‘one of the innumerable letters we receive on this question’. ²⁷ ‘Mass Expulsions’, The Economist, 15 Sep. 1945. See also ‘Famine in Germany’, NC, 13 Sep. 1945; ‘The Expelled’, MG, 1 Sep. 1945; ‘Postscripts to Potsdam’, NSN, 8 Sep. 1945; ‘London Diary’, Birmingham Gazette, 12 Sep. 1945; ‘London Diary’, Yorkshire Observer, 12 Sep. 1945; ‘Our Own Times’, Leader Magazine, 15 Sep. 1945. ²⁸ FO371/46812, C5713/95/18, Troutbeck memorandum, 20 Sep. 1945. ²⁹ FO371/46812, C5713/95/18, Harvey, Cadogan and Bevin minutes, 20–21 Sep. 1945.

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question [of the expulsions].’ He asked the Soviet Union to join Britain in communicating to the Poles the ACC’s ‘anxiety’ over continuing expulsions and request that all expulsions stop forthwith.³⁰ Molotov pleaded ignorance but promised to look into the matter.³¹ Nothing more was heard from him. Throughout October 1945, successive British requests for assurances from the Poles that expulsions had ceased were met with the same combination of mendacity and evasion as before.³² The low-point came during Anglo-Polish talks in London in early November 1945 when Wincenty Rzymowski, the titular Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs, did not even bother to respond to Bevin’s complaint that Germans were ‘still flooding in from the East’ as a result of the Poles’ ‘indirect methods’ of expulsion.³³ Rzymowski had either run out of excuses or no longer thought them necessary. By this stage, however, the Foreign Office had to all intents and purposes given up on this course of action; the lack of enthusiasm shown by the other occupying powers for British initiatives being the principal reason. Nearly a fortnight passed before there was any response to the first British Four-Power initiative of early September 1945.³⁴ And when the US State Department finally authorized its ambassador in Warsaw, Arthur Bliss Lane, to make representations, he seemed to be in no hurry to act.³⁵ On 2 October 1945, the Foreign Office tried to revive the idea of a quadripartite initiative, reminding Cavendish-Bentinck that his French, Soviet and American counterparts ‘should not [be] discourage[d]’ from joining in making representations.³⁶ By mid-October, however—six weeks after the initial British request—it was clear that the British would be acting alone if they chose to continue to pursue the Poles on this.³⁷ Admittedly, the Foreign Office felt let down. Although hardly surprising of the Soviets, it was considered ‘rather discouraging’ of the French and ‘distinctly disappointing’ of the Americans not to have followed the British lead.³⁸ When, in early December 1945, the State Department suggested taking ³⁰ FO371/46812, C5713/95/18, Bevin to Molotov, 29 Sep. 1945. ³¹ FO371/46812, C5713/95/18, Molotov to Bevin, 1 Oct. 1945. ³² FO371/46813, C6603/95/18, Sargent minute, 1 Oct. 1945; FO371/46990, C8089/5333/18, Sargent minute, 12 Nov. 1945; Troutbeck to C-B, 16 Nov. 1945. ³³ FO800/490, Pol/45/5, FO to Warsaw, 11 Nov. 1945. ³⁴ FO371/46990, C5694/5333/18, Selby minute, 18 Sep. 1945. ³⁵ FO371/46812, C5946/95/18, Washington to FO, 18 (received 19) Sep. 1945. ³⁶ FO371/46813, C6603/95/18, FO to Warsaw, 2 Oct. 1945. ³⁷ FO371/46813, C6955/95/18, Hankey to FO, 15 Oct. 1945. ³⁸ FO371/46813, C6955/95/18, O’Neill minute, 17 Oct. 1945.

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action along the lines of earlier British proposals, a Foreign Office official remarked acidly that it was three months too late.³⁹ This picture of Britain willing to act yet abandoned by its allies is incomplete without considering the views of the British Embassy in Warsaw. Without their Soviet counterpart—who, like Molotov, feigned ignorance of the situation—the British and American ambassadors were not prepared to take any action for fear of being labelled ‘Fascist’ and ‘pro-German’.⁴⁰ The Polish press would exploit any indication that the British were ‘likely to be soft with Germany and even to build up Germany again’.⁴¹ Given that Poland was united in its determination to be rid of its minorities and that the slightest interest in the welfare of Germans was regarded as an anti-Polish act, Cavendish-Bentinck had no intention of championing the Germans at the expense of Polish goodwill, irrespective of his opinion of the Communist-dominated Polish provisional government.⁴² He had little sympathy for the plight of the Germans in any case.⁴³ British diplomats in Warsaw therefore tried to encourage a sense of perspective in London regarding the treatment of the Germans, pointing out that tough though it was, compared to what the Poles had experienced under Nazi occupation, it was relatively ‘mild’.⁴⁴ But they did more than just downplay the issue. Although never as outspoken in public as Lane, Cavendish-Bentinck nonetheless in private professed a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ attitude towards Polish treatment of the Germans.⁴⁵ He later told Lane in December 1945, at the point when the State Department was calling for representations to the Poles, that he intended ‘like Nelson at [the] bombardment of Copenhagen to hold his telescope to his blind eye’.⁴⁶ It is significant that when Bevin met Modzelewski on 18 December 1945 the expulsion of the Germans was not discussed and the Poles were not asked to give any assurances that they had ceased.⁴⁷ The Foreign Office had long since realized that without the backing of the other occupying powers and given the discouraging noises coming from the ³⁹ FO371/46990, C9188/5333/18, O’Neill minute, 6 Dec. 1945. ⁴⁰ FRUS 1945, ii, Lane to Byrnes, 21 and 22 Sep. 1945, 1278–80. ⁴¹ FO371/46813, C6955/95/18, Hankey to FO, 15 Oct. 1945. ⁴² FO688/30/4, 9/96/45, C-B to Warner, 13 Nov. 1945. ⁴³ See comments in FO371/47650, N11312/96/55, C-B to Sargent, 26 Aug. 1945. ⁴⁴ FO371/46990, C8089/5333/18, Warsaw to FO, 5 Nov. 1945. ⁴⁵ See ‘Lane Rebukes Germans’, The New York Times, 10 Oct. 1945. ⁴⁶ FRUS 1945, ii, Lane to Byrnes, 12 Dec. 1945, 1323. ⁴⁷ FO371/47708, N17368/211/55, Note for meeting with Modzelewski, 18 Dec. 1945.

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Warsaw Embassy, very little would be achieved, and a lot might be lost, by continuing to press the Poles over this issue. Further enquiries would only elicit another ‘meaningless assurance’ and give the Poles the impression that the British government was out to criticize them on every issue.⁴⁸ By the beginning of November 1945, there was already talk of a ‘crisis’ in Anglo-Polish relations over a range of bilateral issues: the future of the Polish army in the west; the treatment of Polish DPs in the British zone; Poland’s outstanding financial debts to Britain; and the political composition of the Polish provisional government.⁴⁹ There seemed no point in adding the expulsion of the Germans to the list. Abandonment of further representations did not, however, imply British satisfaction with Polish conduct. It was merely an acknowledgment that they had run out of realistic options. By mid-October, there were even suggestions in the Foreign Office that the Pope be used as an intermediary. The idea was immediately scotched, yet it showed how desperately British officials were casting around for alternatives.⁵⁰ Publicity or the threat of it was another option open to the British government. Prior to the visit of the Church delegation to Downing Street in September 1945, Attlee was advised by the Foreign Office that there was ‘every advantage’ in giving publicity to the issue as ‘it would show the Russians and the Poles that our public is exercised over the question and it would show our own public that we are doing our best to diminish the impending disaster’.⁵¹ Attlee and Noel-Baker both emphasized to the Church delegation the importance of maximum publicity. Foreign Office correspondence with other powers invariably drew attention to the amount of publicity that the expulsions were receiving in Britain. ‘Publicity’ and the ‘public concern’ it reflected and generated became a useful pretext to proceed diplomatically. The British government could point out that it was acting not out of any ill-will towards expelling governments but partly because of domestic pressure. Bell was told ‘privately’ by a source, presumably in the Foreign Office, that the Church delegation was welcome in so far as it ‘strengthen[ed] the government’s hand in its dealings with the Czechs and Poles’.⁵² Publicity, moreover, was not only given official encouragement, it was ⁴⁸ FO371/46813, C6926/95/18, O’Neill minute, 16 Oct. 1945. ⁴⁹ ‘British-Polish Relations’, The Economist, 3 Nov. 1945. ⁵⁰ FO371/46814, C7314/95/18, O’Neill minute, 16 Oct. 1945; misc. minutes, 16–20 Oct. 1945. ⁵¹ FO371/46812, C5805/95/18, FO note for the PM, 13 Sep. 1945. ⁵² Fisher ix, fo. 72, Bell to Fisher, 5 Sep. 1945.

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also generated by the Foreign Office.⁵³ Particularly after the Foreign Office had abandoned making representations to the Poles, publicity almost appeared to be a substitute for official action. As Bevin noted in November 1945 on receiving a report on appalling conditions in Silesia: ‘I have no objection to the Press having access to the facts. I can’t make myself responsible for [the] expulsion[s].’⁵⁴ In Poland, however, publicity was more often than not counterproductive. By early December 1945, the British Embassy in Warsaw was warning that the ‘fundamental dullness’ which had recently characterized the Polish press had given way to ‘a virulent and consistent anti-British campaign’.⁵⁵ ‘The British have been seriously criticized here’, Lane informed the State Department, ‘on the ground that they have been more mindful of the well-being of the Germans than the Poles. The Polish press, encouraged by the Soviet Gov[ernmen]t, has emphasized British softness towards the Germans.’⁵⁶ The handful of British visitors to Poland returned home warning of this resentment felt at the ‘undue tenderness’ towards the Germans.⁵⁷ ‘I have often been asked why Britain is so soft-hearted and sentimental about these Germans’, remarked the Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, John Mack.⁵⁸ The novelist Storm Jameson, while in Warsaw as a delegate to a ‘cultural conference’, struck up a friendship with the young Polish writer and future Nobel Laureate, Czesław Miłosz, who complained with ‘extreme bitterness’ about ‘‘‘all this fuss you are making about the Germans we have turned out of the new provinces [ . . . ] What looks to you like an innocent farmer looks to us like the face and hands of a murderer.’’ ’⁵⁹ Staff at the British Embassy were concerned about the anti-British propaganda generated by the publicity over the treatment of Germans. The British Military Attaché told Jameson that he was ‘angry when people are friendly with the Germans, and fuss about ⁵³ See, for instance, report on Stettin leaked by FO, in FO371/47650, N11630/96/55, C-B to Bevin, 23 Aug. 1945; Bevin minute, undated; Allen minute, 11 Sep. 1945; cf. ‘Stettin’, MG, 18 Sep. 1945. ⁵⁴ FO371/46990, C6497/5333/18, Bevin minute, [Nov. 1945]. ⁵⁵ DBPO, 1st ser., vi: Eastern Europe, August 1945–April 1946 [henceforth, DBPO vi], eds M. E. Pelly, H. J. Yasamee and K. A. Hamilton (1991), no. 52 ii (a), Warsaw Chancery to Nth. Dpt., 8 Dec. 1945, 205; FO371/47708, N17050/211/55, Warsaw to FO, 13 Dec. 1945; N17368/211/55, Memo. on anti-British propaganda, 11 Dec. 1945. ⁵⁶ FRUS 1945, ii, Lane to Byrnes, 4 Dec. 1945, 1319. ⁵⁷ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 416, col. 624 (19 Nov. 1945). ⁵⁸ FO371/47772, N6446/2535/55, J. Mack, ‘My Visit to Poland’, Polpress, 19 Oct. 1945; id., ‘Lest We Forget’, News of the World, 28 Oct. 1945. ⁵⁹ S. Jameson, Autobiography of Storm Jameson: Journey from the North, ii (1970), 161.

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the expulsions’.⁶⁰ Cavendish-Bentinck, too, was clearly irritated by the publicity that the expulsions received. Although he might have told the Foreign Office in October 1945 that ‘the threat of publicity is our best weapon’ in dealing with the provisional government, this did not extend to actual publicity over the treatment of the Germans.⁶¹ In his annual review, he remarked that: ‘[The] constant outcry [ . . . ] about the sufferings of the German migrants [ . . . ] was used by the Polish official press to persuade its readers that the British were really on the German side, by which they were successful in starting up a certain amount of active ill will.’⁶² Between August and October 1945, the British government attempted to use the ‘leverage’ provided by Article 12 of the Potsdam Protocol in order to gain assurances that Poland had stopped expelling Germans. A combination of a lack of international support, ill-will on the part of the Polish provisional government and the caution of British diplomatic representatives on the ground, ensured that these failed to produce any discernible results. Stalin’s warning at Potsdam ‘not [to] expect any considerable results’ from Article 12 of the agreement would seem to have rung true.⁶³ But the failure of these initiatives does not alter the fact that the British government had been prepared to act and, as at Potsdam, take the lead on this issue. When subsequently called to account by its own public, the British government could therefore state in all honesty that it had done everything within its power and within reason. It had placed clear limits, however, on how far it was willing to go to ensure that Poland complied with the Potsdam decisions. It was unwilling to take more vigorous action without the support of the other occupying powers. When acting alone it drew the line at ‘protesting’ at Polish noncompliance. It confined itself to ‘urging’ the Poles to comply with the Potsdam decision. It even abandoned this limited course of action once it realized the damage this might do to Anglo-Polish relations in general. Ultimately, the British government had to reconcile itself to partial compliance with Potsdam but only after repeated attempts to bring the Poles ⁶⁰ CAC, MISC12/JMON2, Margaret Storm ( Jameson) Chapman, Diary of Trip to Poland, 17 Sep. 1945. ⁶¹ FO371/47609, N13388/6/55, Warsaw to FO, 3 Oct. 1945. The threat of publicity was, however, successfully used to clear obstacles in the way of a tour of Silesia by two embassy officials. See FO371/47609, N13210/6/55, C-B to Warner, 25 Sep. 1945. ⁶² FO371/56596, N3192/1064/55, Annual Report 1945, 28 Feb. 1946. ⁶³ DBPO i, no. 495, Record of Eleventh Plenary Meeting, 31 Jul. 1945, 1086.

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to heel, an experience which left a residue of mutual bitterness and distrust on both sides. Polish mendacity and evasion over the expulsions convinced British officials that if and when an organized movement of Germans from Poland to the British zone was carried out the Polish authorities would cheat and deceive them at every available opportunity.

T H E U S E S O F P U B L I C I T Y: E R I C G E DY E A N D T H E C O N T ROV E R S Y OV E R C Z E C H C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S It is one of the ironies of the post-Potsdam period that negative publicity had least impact where British officials felt it was most needed—in Poland—and most impact where it was least wanted, in Czechoslovakia. The British government would have been glad to have left the Czechs to their own devices after Potsdam. Adverse publicity, however, made it impossible to resume the position of benign indifference held before the conference. An exposé in a mass circulation British daily in October 1945 by a well-regarded journalist turned the spotlight on conditions in concentration camps where large numbers of German civilians awaiting removal were being held. The ensuing controversy illustrated once again the asymmetry between British and Czech understandings of how the German population of Czechoslovakia should be treated. The Czechs continued to exhibit an almost pathological sensitivity to any outside criticism of their handling of the German problem, while British critics failed to appreciate that raising questions about the means was taken by the Czechs as evidence of having doubts about the ends, all of which was fed by Czech anxiety about British backtracking. Controversy over conditions in the camps raised questions about the extent to which British officials on the ground and in London would go in bringing the governments of east-central Europe to task over their treatment of Germans as well as about the role publicity played in forcing issues such as this one on to the agenda, and about who the beneficiaries of this publicity ultimately were. The Czechs were viewed by British officials as being positively angelic compared to the Poles in their handling of the Germans, not least because of the spirit of cooperation with which Prague had responded to the Potsdam decisions. The Czechs, too, were asked to give

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assurances after the Potsdam Conference that they were enforcing the moratorium on expulsions. But whereas Polish assurances met with profound scepticism, those given by the Czechs were taken at face value.⁶⁴ Three factors helped to shape this optimistic assessment. First, Czech actions were inevitably judged against those of the Poles, and given that the Poles were openly breaking both the spirit and the letter of the Potsdam Agreement, it would have been hard for the Czechs not to have emerged the better from the comparison. Hence, Czech good conduct was always relative to the poor conduct of the Poles. Second, in Philip Nichols, the British ambassador in Prague, Beneš had an indispensable ally who never wavered in his belief that the Czechoslovak President and other non-Communists had good intentions in their handling of the German problem. This confidence and trust in Beneš was reflected in the dispatches Nichols sent to London which in turn shaped Foreign Office perceptions of Czech conduct. And, third, the actual geography of the refugee flow added to the perception that the number of Germans leaving Czechoslovakia had been reduced to a trickle after the Potsdam Conference.⁶⁵ An additional factor working to Czech advantage was the absence of negative press and radio reports from Czechoslovakia during August and for much of September 1945. Early August 1945 saw a series of reports from British correspondents who had visited the country in July or recently established themselves there, all of which portrayed a country that in contrast to the heady months of May and June had been brought under control and where the only threat to the subdued calm that reigned in the borderlands seemed to come from the Germans themselves.⁶⁶ Several British papers ran reports on ‘Werewolf ’ sabotage ⁶⁴ Czech reaction to Potsdam and assurances in FO371/46811, C4445/95/18, Prague to FO, 2 Aug. 1945; C4980/95/18, Clementis to Nichols, 16 Aug. 1945; C4779/95/18, Prague to FO, 16 Aug. 1945; C4829/95/18, Prague to FO, 17 Aug. 1945. British views in FO371/46812, C5789/95/18, Draft brief for Secretary of State on Czechoslovak transfer of population, 5 Sep. 1945. ⁶⁵ Whereas most refugees from east of the Oder-Neisse passed through Berlin, and under the gaze of the British, Germans from Czechoslovakia were mostly expelled into the Soviet zones of Germany and Austria. The statistical breakdown of refugees passing through Berlin and for those crossing into the British zone bears this out and created the impression that the flow of Germans from Czechoslovakia had been reduced to a trickle. See FO1012/26, Berlin Magistrat, Reports on refugee situation, 15 Sep., 29 Sep., 6 Oct. 1945. ⁶⁶ ‘Czech Border Incidents’, The Times, 28 Jul. 1945; ‘The Sudeten Germans’, The Times, 7 Aug. 1945; J. Schrich, ‘In Sudetenland To-Day’, MG, 15 Aug. 1945;

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in early August 1945 which reinforced the image of Germans as an irreconcilable ‘fifth column’ that had to be removed without delay.⁶⁷ The sympathies of British visiting correspondents clearly lay with the Czech authorities and they could be relied on to take an uncritical view of policy towards the Germans.⁶⁸ Had they been looking for stories that sensationalized the treatment of the German population, however, the obstacles in their way would have been phenomenal. Trouble-makers were not welcome, especially at the British Embassy. The BBC correspondent, Leonard Miall, found that Nichols, once he was assured that Miall was not planning on transmitting ‘lurid and inflammatory material on the ticklish German situation, was most friendly’.⁶⁹ Suspicion of foreign correspondents with an unhealthy interest in the German question had major implications for what could be reported. Without the support of the British Embassy and the cooperation of the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry, it would have been almost impossible for a British correspondent to have operated in Czechoslovakia. It is significant that the only British correspondent who had ‘strong views about the treatment of Germans’ and published them was accredited to an American news agency and attached to the US Third Army.⁷⁰ Published opinion in Britain was in any case focused elsewhere: on the epicentre of the refugee crisis—Berlin—where the vast majority of ‘Czechs and Germans’, NSN, 11 Aug. 1945; Reuters telex from Bettany, ‘2,000,000 Sullen Germans Leaving Sudetenland’, 29 Jul. 1945, in SdA, NL Jaksch, N7. The few exceptions dwelt on events pre-Potsdam or outside Czechoslovakia. See oft-cited report on Brno expulsions by Rhona Churchill, ‘ ‘‘Out in 10 minutes’’ order to Germans’, Daily Mail, 6 Aug. 1945; also brief BBC item about Brno, again pre-Potsdam, in BBC WAC, HNB 136, Light Programme (LP), 19 Aug. 1945, 12.30 p.m. ⁶⁷ See coverage of the Aussig incident in DH, 1 Aug. 1945; MG, 2–3 Aug. 1945; The Times, 3 Aug. 1945; NC, 2–4, 6 Aug. 1945; BBC WAC, T338, HS, 2 Aug. 1945, 1815 BST. ⁶⁸ Views of Parker of The Times and Miall of the BBC in NIARO, BNS/3, Czechoslovak Diary, esp. 19–21 Jul. 1945. Miall’s dispatches in BBC WAC, T338, HS, ‘News Talk: German Werewolves in Czechoslovakia’, 2 Aug. 1945, 1815; HS, ‘News Talk’, 8 Aug. 1945, 1815; [BBC Overseas Services], ‘European Scene’, 21–24 Aug. 1945; and ‘In Czechoslovakia Today’, Listener, 16 Aug. 1945. Polish-born Stefan Litauer of the NC, largely responsible for headlining the sabotage incidents, became First Counsellor of the Polish Embassy in Washington in late 1945. See obituary in The Times, 24 Apr. 1959; A. J. Cummings, ‘Spotlight’, NC, 23 Nov. 1945. ⁶⁹ BBC WAC, E15/148, Facilities in Czechoslovakia, 1 Aug. 1945. ⁷⁰ This was Rhona Churchill. See ‘ ‘‘Out in 10 minutes’’ ’, Daily Mail, 6 Aug. 1945; ‘I toured Germany’, Daily Mail, 4 Oct. 1945; also BBC WAC, E15/148, Confidential Memorandum, 1 Aug. 1945. Quote is from Bilainkin, Second Diary, 290 (8 Oct. 1945).

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refugees were from east of the Oder-Neisse. Its emphasis, therefore, was also on Polish rather than Czech perfidy. The ‘godless’ Beneš regime of ‘new secular Puritans’, ‘floating on the tide of totalitarian fortune’ and intent on leading the country into an era of ‘post-Christian barbarism’, was nevertheless the target of savage criticism in the Roman Catholic and parts of the Anglican press.⁷¹ The editorial line of a number of left-of-centre publications also continued to be openly critical of Czech policy. This criticism centred on accusations that in its treatment of national minorities postwar Czechoslovakia was betraying the ideals of its founding-father, Tomáš Masaryk. As the editor of the Manchester Guardian, A. P. Wadsworth, tried to explain to the historian, A. J. P. Taylor (who was complaining about the paper’s anti-Czech bias, specifically in its reporting of the execution of Josef Pfitzner, the former mayor of Prague), the Czechs were being judged by standards of their own making:⁷² I don’t think we are treating the Czechs unfairly—only as the adult Westerners they have always claimed to be. Perhaps that is a mistake, but I think the mild protest about the public execution [of Pfitzner] was not unhelpful to them. No one objects to their shooting or beheading the man only to the barbarous method of it [ . . . ] Possibly the figure of the expelled [given by the Manchester Guardian] was too high [ . . . ] But it is not the number but the method [ . . . ] It is a nasty business. The only thing to be said about it is that it makes things worse for the Russians in managing their zone. As a means of killing off Germans it is admirable.⁷³

The distinction that Wadsworth drew between ‘the method’ and ‘the number’ is an important one: as in the pre-Potsdam period critics of Czech policy were not questioning the necessity of population transfer only the manner in which it was being carried out and upon whom. But Wadsworth also raised an equally important point about expectations. Opinion polls taken during the war showed the Czechs to be the second most popular national group among Britain’s allies and the idea that the Czechs were ‘the torchbearers of democracy’ in Europe deepened as the war went on. Czechs were regarded in Britain as ‘a progressive democratic people’, from ‘the most civilized country outside Scandinavia’, ‘clever, ⁷¹ ‘The Watch Tower’, Record, 21 Sep. 1945; ‘Notes of the Week’, Catholic Times, 29 Jun. 1945. ⁷² John Rylands Library, Manchester University, Guardian Archive (GA), B/T19/26, Taylor to Wadsworth, 9 Sep. 1945; ‘Execution in Prague’, MG, 8 Sep. 1945. ⁷³ GA, B/T19/56, Wadsworth to Taylor, 13 Sep. 1945.

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cultured and educated people, very like Britishers, and far less ‘‘foreign’’ ’ than most foreigners’.⁷⁴ Hence, Wadsworth’s and other progressive critics were arguing that if the Czechs wanted to be treated like ‘adult Westerners’, then they should act ‘far less ‘‘foreign’’ ’: calmly, constructively and in a civilized manner like the ‘Britishers’ they were reputed to be. The difference between the hands-off approach of the British government and the ‘constructive’ criticism of a segment of British opinion was clearly illustrated when Zdenˇek Fierlinger accompanied by the Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, visited London for three days in early September 1945. The fellow-travelling Czechoslovak Prime Minister had recently become disillusioned with Soviet conduct in Czechoslovakia and Masaryk intimated before the visit that if Bevin was conciliatory when meeting Fierlinger it was possible that his ‘extreme pro-Soviet attitude might moderate’.⁷⁵ The Foreign Office, however, had no intention of bothering Fierlinger with questions on the Germans in Czechoslovakia and advised Bevin not to broach the subject: We do not want to attract unnecessary odium by adopting a more discouraging attitude over this question than the other Powers concerned. Nor do we wish to drive the Czechoslovaks into precipitate action in defiance of our wishes. As far as they are in a position to control their executive authorities in the Sudetenland, they have so far, according to such reports as we have, made an honest effort to hold up expulsions since the Potsdam appeal, which is more than can be said in the case of the Poles. The Czechoslovaks may not always consider it to be in their interests to exercise such restraint.⁷⁶

Even if far from perfect, then, the Czech record on the expulsions was exemplary compared to the Poles. Were Fierlinger to bring the subject up, Bevin was advised to express appreciation for the ‘spirit’ with which the Czechs had accepted the Potsdam decision to suspend further expulsions.⁷⁷ When, predictably, Fierlinger raised the issue during their meeting on 5 September and emphasized the need to expedite the transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia, Bevin pointed to the immense difficulties facing the British zone and stressed the importance of Sudeten Germans remaining in Czechoslovakia until Germany could ⁷⁴ Mass-Observation, File Report Series, Card 228/File 1664, Report on Feeling About the Czechs, 23 Apr. 1943. ⁷⁵ US Dept. of State, Confidential US State Department Central Files: Great Britain Foreign Affairs 1945–49 (Frederick, 1985), Reel 4, 741.60F/8–3045, Steinhardt to Byrnes, 30 Aug. 1945. ⁷⁶ FO371/46812, C5789/95/18, Draft brief for Secretary of State, 5 Sep. 1945. ⁷⁷ Ibid.

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assimilate them. But so as not to seem too discouraging Bevin said that this did not apply to the tens of thousands of Reich Germans in Czechoslovakia. ‘I should not complain’, he said, ‘if [you] turn them out.’⁷⁸ Fierlinger might have returned with the impression that opinion in Britain was generally sympathetic to the Czech position on transfer had it not been for a disastrous press conference the following day. He was subjected to a barrage of hostile questioning and heckled mercilessly by Fleet Street’s diplomatic correspondents. Asked about how many Germans had been or were still being expelled, Fierlinger was ‘vague’ and ‘evasive’, ‘avoiding straightforward answers’; his responses ‘very laboured’ and ‘unconvincing’.⁷⁹ It was as if in the absence of a Polish or Soviet representative the hapless Czech premier was being made responsible for the expulsion of the Germans from the whole of eastcentral Europe. On his return to Czechoslovakia, Fierlinger tried to gloss over the experience and sound defiant. In his weekly radio broadcast, he said that he had left Britain with the ‘distinct impression’ that the British government would give ‘all necessary help’ in connection with the transfer of Germans. The transfer of the Germans would conform to international standards of humanity but the Czech government would ‘systematically and step by step prepare and effect the transfer, cost what it may’. He also referred to ‘the spreading of false rumours in the West from doubtful sources’, which he claimed to have tried to set straight.⁸⁰ One issue that Fierlinger was not asked about during his visit to London but which would come to dominate British discussion of the German question in Czechoslovakia concerned conditions in the numerous camps which had sprung up throughout Czechoslovakia to house ‘collaborators’ and political prisoners, Germans evicted from their homes, forced labourers, refugees from Silesia and other assorted human flotsam. Between 100–150,000 people were housed in these camps at any one time in 1945. By the end of the year there was a central administration overseeing three types of camp: internment; assembly; and labour. Initially, however, the organization and oversight ⁷⁸ FO371/47092, N11851/207/12, FO to Prague, 9 Sep. 1945. ⁷⁹ ‘Summary’, Church Times, 14 Sep. 1945; ‘London Notes’, Yorkshire Post, 7 Sep. 1945; ‘Expulsion by Czechs’, The Times, 7 Sep. 1945; V. Bartlett, ‘Czech Premier Explains Transfers’, NC, 7 Sep. 1945; ‘Czech Premier Questioned’, MG, 7 Sep. 1945; GA, B/T19/56, Wadsworth to Taylor, 13 Sep. 1945; BBC WAC, HNB 138, HS, 6 Sep. 1945, 9 p.m. ⁸⁰ FO371/47093, N12521/207/12, Fierlinger broadcast, 8 Sep. 1945.

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of the camp network was poor with inevitable consequences for the health, safety and survival rate of the inmates.⁸¹ Czech officials were quite candid about the existence of these camps.⁸² Occasionally, foreign journalists were even shown round them.⁸³ There were almost no adverse reports, or at least none that were published.⁸⁴ Nichols considered the camp in northern Bohemia he inspected in early August to be ‘clean and orderly’, and that any excesses in the camps and elsewhere were few and the fault of ‘young and irresponsible Czechs’.⁸⁵ Nichols was soon, however, given a quite different account when in mid-August, Walter Menzel, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) representative in Prague, brought to his attention the ‘disgraceful conditions’ in camps for German civilians in Slovakia, the details of which were ‘so bad’ that Nichols decided that ‘the only thing to do was to ask for an interview with the President’.⁸⁶ Nichols told Beneš that he did not want to see Czechoslovakia alienating British public opinion which would be shocked if it found out. A contrite Beneš promised an investigation. Nichols was soon after warned off pursuing the matter by the Foreign Office, who were alarmed that Britain might get ‘the reputation of being unnecessarily soft-hearted about the Germans’ and risk placing Beneš in an awkward position vis-à-vis the Communists.⁸⁷ The issue of conditions in the camps, however, would not go away. Damaging revelations were to come from a respected British journalist who was not a natural enemy of Czechoslovakia. The circumstances surrounding this exposé and the fall-out from its publication, including the reaction in Britain and Czechoslovakia and Prague’s attempts at damage limitation, provide interesting insights into the different British and Czech understanding of the Sudeten German problem as well as into the more general ⁸¹ See T. Stanˇek, ‘1945–Das Jahr der Verfolgung’, in Brandes et al. (eds), Erzwungene Trennung, 133–42; id., Tábory v ˇceských zemích 1945–1948 (Opava, 1996), 251–5. ⁸² FO371/46810, C3119/95/18, Prague to FO, 12 Jun. 1945; C3273/95/18, Prague to FO, 20 Jun. 1945. ⁸³ For a report on a visit to camps by a group of foreign correspondents, including Bettany, see FO371/47090, N9238/207/12, Weekly Information Summary, 17–23 Jul. 1945; SdA, NL Jaksch, N4, Journalists in Labour Camps, 18 Jul. 1945. ⁸⁴ The exception is Rhona Churchill, ‘ ‘‘Out in 10 minutes’’ ’, Daily Mail, 6 Aug. 1945. A report from the Exchange Telegraph that ‘many thousands’ of Germans from Brno were in ‘concentration camps [ . . . ] on a starvation diet’ appeared as a brief news item on the BBC. See BBC WAC, HNB 136, LP, 19 Aug. 1945, 12.30 p.m. ⁸⁵ FO371/47091, N9675/207/12, Prague to FO, 4 Aug. 1945. ⁸⁶ FO371/47154, N10643/4440/12, Nichols to Sargent, 11 Aug. 1945. ⁸⁷ FO371/47154, N10643/4440/12, Sargent to Nichols, 24 Aug. 1945.

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British response to the treatment of Germans, the refugee crisis and the expulsions. Eric Gedye was perhaps the most celebrated British correspondent between the wars, whose daring exploits helped to popularize the romantic image of the foreign correspondent who courted danger in pursuit of the ultimate ‘scoop’. He covered several of the most important central European developments of the interwar period, from the occupation of the Ruhr to the Anschluss and to the Munich crisis. As an early and steadfast critic of the Nazis and appeasement, Gedye was eventually expelled from Vienna in 1938 and narrowly missed arrest by the Gestapo when the Germans entered Prague the following year. The publication of Fallen Bastions in 1939, his transatlantic best-seller and anti-appeasement classic, led to his dismissal from the pro-Chamberlain Daily Telegraph but sealed his reputation as one of Britain’s foremost students of Central European affairs. Returning to Vienna in August 1945 as central Europe correspondent for the Daily Herald after wartime service in the Middle East, it was natural that Gedye would revisit the country whose plight he had done so much to publicize in the run up to the Second World War.⁸⁸ Entering Czechoslovakia in September 1945, Gedye, like other journalists before him, found conditions in the border regions to be ordered and placid.⁸⁹ Initially, he noticed nothing untoward in the treatment of the Germans. The restrictions placed on them—armbands, curfew, ‘Jewish rations’—he considered both correct and just. ‘If the Germans I had seen looked thin and undernourished’, he later wrote, ‘it was because the Czechs had put them on the same cruel starvation rations as they had allowed the Jews prior to extermination. I did not put any black mark against the Czechs for that.’ Soon, however, Gedye began to suspect that there was a darker side to the new Czechoslovakia. From pre-war contacts he learnt of the excesses perpetrated against the Germans. Echoing the consternation, and condescension, expressed by others in Britain who had stood by liberal, multinational Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, he felt he ‘could neither believe that the Czechs, whom I knew as a decent and sober little race, could have been guilty of such frightful atrocities, despite the provocation of six years of Nazi tyranny. ⁸⁸ Obituary in The Times, 24 Mar. 1970. G. E. R. Gedye, Fallen Bastions: The Central European Tragedy (1939) went to several editions. The American edition was published as Betrayal in Central Europe (New York, 1939). ⁸⁹ For this paragraph, see IWM, Gedye papers, GERG20, ‘Curtain Raiser’ (1953), 274–7.

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Nor, having regard to my knowledge of the absolute reliability of my sources could I disbelieve them.’ Nothing, however, had prepared Gedye for what he discovered at a former Jewish sports club in Hagibor in Prague, where German ‘internees’ were housed in conditions that belied the relative calm and order in the city’s streets and the surrounding provinces.⁹⁰ Posing as a Swiss Red Cross worker, Gedye, a fluent German speaker, was able to enter what he called an ‘inferno for inoffensive German men, women and babies’. In wooden huts, Gedye found inmates crammed together, regardless of age or gender. Sanitation was non-existent. There were no medical facilities. Typhoid was raging. The children—‘dreadful, wizened, dark-skinned, monkey-like creatures’—were in an advanced state of emaciation. None of the inmates had ever seen a Red Cross representative. Those strong enough to make the effort bombarded Gedye with desperate pleas for help. There was no pretence that the camp was holding dangerous political prisoners: the compound was not even protected by barbed wire and was loosely guarded, not, as Gedye pointed out, in order to keep the inmates in but ‘to prevent any ordinary Czech citizen getting in to see the horrors perpetrated’. ‘The horror of the dying skeletons of babies with their swollen heads and distended stomachs’, Gedye later recalled, ‘stayed with me for days and days.’ Knowing that what he had witnessed would be ‘strong meat’ even for a popular newspaper like the Daily Herald, he expected his despatch to be spiked. The Daily Herald nevertheless published Gedye’s report on its front page on 9 October 1945, under the headline ‘This is an outrage to humanity’, only a day after it printed an innocuous interview with Beneš.⁹¹ ‘Despite the inevitable expurgations more than enough appeared’, Gedye later recalled, ‘to cause a widespread sensation and to embarrass the Czechoslovak Government’.⁹² The article made for grizzly reading. Gedye was adamant that the camp ‘was not a Belsen. Nobody was actually tortured there, nobody murdered, no bodies lay around unburied’, but he had ‘no hesitation in qualifying it as a ‘‘horror camp’’ ’, nor in borrowing his imagery from Richard Dimbleby’s historic Belsen broadcast of April 1945.⁹³ Although ⁹⁰ For what follows, see GERG20, ‘Curtain Raiser’, 277–80. ⁹¹ G. Gedye, ‘This is an Outrage to Humanity’, DH, 9 Oct. 1945; id., ‘President Benes Reveals A Secret’, DH, 8 Oct. 1945. ⁹² GERG20, ‘Curtain Raiser’, 280. ⁹³ Cf. Belsen broadcast in J. Dimbleby, Richard Dimbleby: A Biography (1975), 190–4.

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he exonerated the Czech authorities of any direct responsibility, his tirade against ‘a certain bunch of chauvinists with a mentality closely akin to that of the Nazis’ was clearly made with local Communists in mind.⁹⁴ The article caused a ripple in Britain which then generated a wave of counter-criticism in Czechoslovakia. Further accounts of the camps and Czech ‘excesses’ appeared which, as Harold Nicolson noted in his diary, ‘ma[d]e the blood run cold’.⁹⁵ There were demands that a deputation be sent to investigate conditions in the camps.⁹⁶ The Czechoslovak press responded in kind. Articles justifying the Czechoslovak standpoint on the transfer and reflecting Czechoslovak sensitivity to any outside criticism featured prominently in October.⁹⁷ British criticism was regarded in some quarters as ‘proof that Britain would still be capable of perpetrating another Munich’.⁹⁸ The initial response of the Czechoslovak government was indignant. Clementis descended on the British Embassy on 16 October with a copy of the offending article in hand. Nichols, who claimed not to have seen it, was forced to read it then and there. When asked to comment, he could only say that Gedye was a responsible journalist who would not have written such an article ‘unless he had chapter and verse’.⁹⁹ Clementis pointed out that Gedye’s despatch and those of other foreign journalists who claimed to be reporting from Czechoslovakia were invariably filed either from Vienna or Budapest and always lacked confirmatory details.¹⁰⁰ Nichols later told Gedye that ‘it upset the Czechoslovak Government very much. They told the British Foreign Office that you invented it from start to finish. They approached me and offered such conclusive evidence that you had never been near any camp in the Sudeten areas and that I had to report to the Foreign Office to that effect.’¹⁰¹ To protect his sources, Gedye had hinted that the camp was in the Sudetenland.¹⁰² Clementis, therefore, had a point. Nichols, of course, knew from his August meeting with Menzel and from the scores of letters that the Embassy had been receiving that something was seriously ⁹⁴ ‘This is an Outrage’, DH, 9 Oct. 1945. ⁹⁵ Balliol Library, Oxford, Nicolson MS Diaries, 7 Nov. 1945. ⁹⁶ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 414, cols. 2414–15 (26 Oct. 1945); vol. 415, col. 2285 (14 Nov. 1945); vol. 416, col. 1495 (28 Nov. 1945). ⁹⁷ FO371/47093, N14244/207/12, Weekly information summary, 12–18 Oct. 1945; FO817/21, 416/14/45, Summary of article in Svobodné Noviny, 17 Oct. 1945. ⁹⁸ FO371/47095, N16270/207/12, Weekly Information Summary, 16–22 Nov. 1945. ⁹⁹ FO817/21, 416/7/45, Nichols minute, 16 Oct. 1945. ¹⁰⁰ Ibid. ¹⁰¹ GERG20, ‘Curtain Raiser’, 281. ¹⁰² Ibid. 280.

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amiss in the camps.¹⁰³ Even if the exact details of Gedye’s article could not be corroborated, the gist of it could. Although Nichols had been instructed by the Foreign Office back in August not to press this issue lest Britain got ‘the reputation of being unnecessarily soft-hearted about the Germans’, when Clementis mentioned that he would be glad to have any reports on the subject that the British Embassy received, Nichols promptly handed him a short memorandum on grim conditions in a camp for Sudeten German POWs prepared by the British Vice Consul in Pilsen which he had intended to give to Masaryk.¹⁰⁴ A few days later he forwarded a summary of an even more damning report on starvation and overcrowding among Czech ‘collaborators’ and German civilians in a Pilsen prison.¹⁰⁵ Although Nichols had on occasion raised the subject of conditions among Germans with the Czechoslovak leadership, most recently with Masaryk on 6 October, he had so far trodden very carefully around this issue. To pursue Clementis on the subject was a clear change of tack and, at first sight, risky. Although relations between the British Embassy and Clementis, who had spent the war in London and was well liked in British official circles, were cordial, he was nonetheless first and foremost a Communist who would no doubt have made political capital out of British ‘tender-heartedness’ at the expense of non-Communists, if it could be shown that the British Embassy was intervening on behalf of the Sudeten Germans. But Nichols, in shifting course, was largely responding to a cue from Beneš who himself had made a tactical shift on the German question. During a meeting with the President on 12 October, three days after Gedye’s article was published and four days before Clementis descended on the British Embassy, Nichols noticed ‘a considerable change’ in Beneš’s attitude to the German question.¹⁰⁶ Nichols had always considered Beneš to be ‘sympathetic on this subject’ but now found him willing to go to even greater lengths to prove this: On the subject of the treatment of the Germans here [ . . . ] [Beneš] said he will do his best, but this time he went so far as to urge me to go on rubbing in ¹⁰³ See sundry letters in FO871/21. ¹⁰⁴ FO817/21, 416/7/45, Nichols minute, 16 Oct. 1945; Nichols to Masaryk [for Clementis], 9 Oct. 1945; 416/1/45, Perkins to Shuckburgh, 1 Oct. 1945; Nichols minute, 8 Oct. 1945. ¹⁰⁵ FO817/21, 416/4/45, Nichols to Clementis, 20 Oct. 1945; 416/2/45, Perkins to Nichols, 9 Oct. 1945. ¹⁰⁶ FO371/47093, N14093/207/12, Nichols to Warner, 12 Oct. 1945.

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the subject with both Masaryk and Clementis. Beneš at least now realises that Czechoslovakia cannot afford to lose the goodwill of the English and Americans over this; he is obviously perturbed and is going to make a public speech on the subject this weekend.¹⁰⁷

At a rally in Mˇelník on 14 October, Beneš repeated the familiar refrain that ‘our Germans must go to the Reich, and go they will’.¹⁰⁸ He brushed aside the negative economic consequences of this as well as criticisms in the foreign press that Czechoslovakia was compromising its ‘national tradition and [ . . . ] hitherto unstained moral reputation [and] imitating the Nazis in their cruel, uncivilized methods’. Beneš nevertheless warned that: our entire procedure [ . . . ] must be humane, decent, correct, morally justified, precisely planned, and in firm agreement with all our allies. Not even here must our nation stain its reputation for having a democratic and humane regime [ . . . ] All subordinate authorities who offend against this will be very decidedly called to order. In no case will the Government permit the good reputation of the Republic to be ruined by irresponsible elements.

Beneš called on ‘friendly countries’—Britain and the United States—not to be taken in by ‘tendentious German propaganda’. In a veiled aside to journalists like Gedye, Beneš asked that ‘occasional correspondents [ . . . ] possessed of very good will’ refrain from generalizing on the basis of individual cases. However, Beneš again urged moderation: Our procedure must not give occasion for any justified criticism and thus compromise in the sight of other nations our whole great and justifiable action with regard to our Germans. The Czechoslovak people [ . . . ] [are] fundamentally [ . . . ] against everything that is reminiscent of Nazism, and must therefore really prove it [ . . . ] even in the transfer of the Germans from Czechoslovakia to the Reich.

The rhetoric of public speeches by other leading figures in government was also softening by mid-October to the point where Nichols considered the Czech authorities had had a ‘complete change of heart’.¹⁰⁹ ¹⁰⁷ Ibid. ¹⁰⁸ For what follows, see FO817/21, 416/14/45, Beneš speech at Mˇelník, 14 Oct. 1945. ¹⁰⁹ International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) Archive, Geneva, Box 234, G3/70/II, Memorandum on an interview with the British ambassador, 17 Oct. 1945.

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Both Fierlinger and Nosek, the Communist Minister of the Interior responsible for internment camps, stressed that the Czechoslovak government was committed to the humane treatment of its Germans and better administration of the camps.¹¹⁰ In order to minimize the damage to Czechoslovakia’s reputation that Gedye’s exposé could cause, the Czechs countered publicity with publicity. More sophisticated in its handling of the media than the Polish provisional government, which at times seemed to wallow in the negative publicity it received, the Czechoslovak government put its own ‘spin’ on the story. Almost as soon as the story broke, the Czechoslovak Ministry of Information was inviting foreign observers to inspect the camps and determine for themselves whether Czechoslovakia hid a network of ‘horror camps’ and ‘Czech Belsens’.¹¹¹ Tom Williamson, a Labour MP, went ‘to special pains to glean information which would substantiate the charges in certain sections of the British press, and by some individuals of inhuman treatment [and] slave camps. I can definitely say that I found none’.¹¹² Dennis Bardens of the Sunday Dispatch made several unannounced visits to camps and found them to be clean, well-provisioned and well-run. ‘There is not the faintest analogy to be drawn between what has happened to a few Germans in Czechoslovakia, and what Germans have done to the Czechs’, he reported.¹¹³ Bettany of Reuters made three ‘surprise’ visits to camps in October and noticed a ‘decided improvement’ from his last visits in July. He quoted an ICRC representative as saying that the camps’ administration was ‘almost perfect’.¹¹⁴ Visiting a camp outside Prague, Bettany was greeted by: the spectacle of over one hundred young children, boys and girls, rosy cheeked and happily performing physical jerks under the direction of a burly, long-haired Czech [ . . . ] The agreeable sight of so many children cheerfully throwing their arms about and jumping at the word of command was in pleasing contrast to ¹¹⁰ FO371/47093, N12521/207/12, Fierlinger broadcast, 8 Sep. 1945; N14244/207/ 12, Weekly information summary, 12–18 Oct. 1945. ¹¹¹ D. Raymond, ‘I Find No ‘‘Horror Camp’’ Here’, Reynolds News, 4 Nov. 1945, in Bell lvii, fo. 37. For the prompt Czechoslovak Ministry of Information response, see ICRC, Box 1160, G97, ICRC Prague to ICRC Geneva, 12 Oct. 1945. ¹¹² Manchester Labour History Archive (MLHA), Labour Party archives, International Sub-Committee Minutes and Documents 1945, T. Williamson, ‘Czechoslovakia’, undated. ¹¹³ D. Bardens, ‘Czechs and Germans’, Spectator, 14 Dec. 1945. ¹¹⁴ A. Bettany, ‘Detention Camps Not Rest Homes’, Globe and Mail, 30 Oct. 1945, in Bell lvii, fo. 36.

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the horror stories which have appeared from time to time in the press, mostly from correspondents who had never seen anything for themselves.¹¹⁵

In contrast to these eyewitness reports, the more alarmist accounts by deskbound journalists in London were based on second- or third-hand sources and exclusively Sudeten German in origin.¹¹⁶ But British visitors to the camps were themselves not above suspicion. Bardens, for instance, was later appointed a public relations officer for the Czechoslovak government.¹¹⁷ Printed versions of events often contrasted with more damning reports given to the British Embassy or published later on.¹¹⁸ In Bettany’s unpublished memoirs, he admits that the camp with the ‘rosy-cheeked’ children was ‘the only one where the conditions seemed as nearly ideal as they should be’.¹¹⁹ A comparison of Storm Jameson’s three separate accounts of a visit to Hagibor in November 1945—a report for the British Embassy, an article she published on her return to Britain, and her memoirs—reveals a similar pattern of detail later recalled but omitted at the time.¹²⁰ Were these British observers deliberately playing down conditions in the camps? Or were their reports a reflection of the type of camps they visited (camps like Hagibor, for example, were generally off-limits)? It is clear that these British observers, like other journalists before them, accentuated the positive and wanted to give the Czechs, and in most cases non-Communist Czechs, the benefit of the doubt. When criticism was levelled, care was taken to exonerate central government of any responsibility and lay the blame on local, invariably Communist, authorities. In the more critical accounts, there was always a kindly and concerned Czech, often a guard or commandant, pleading ¹¹⁵ A Bettany, ‘The German and Hungarian Minorities in Czechoslovakia’, London Quarterly of World Affairs, 11/4 ( Jan. 1946), 298–300. ¹¹⁶ See admission that Sudeten sources had not seen the camps themselves in H. N. Brailsford, ‘Plight of the Sudetens’, NSN, 20 Oct. 1945. Compare references to Sudeten German RAF officer in Stokes’s speeches, in Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 414, cols. 360–1 (10 Oct. 1945); vol. 415, cols. 988–9 (5 Nov. 1945); with FO371/46901, C6695/1429/18, ‘Flight Officer A Reitzner RAF—Observations in the Sudeten Territory’, undated. For the extent to which some journalists relied on Jaksch for information, compare F. A. Voigt, ‘Orderly and Humane’, NCAA 138 (Nov. 1945), 200–5; with ‘Deportation Drama from Czechoslovakia’, special edn of Der Sozialdemokrat, Oct. 1945. ¹¹⁷ FO371/47167, N16586/7395/12, Nichols to Nth. Dpt., 24 Nov. 1945; minutes, 4–14 Dec. 1945. ¹¹⁸ FO871/21, 416/19/45, Report on Schöbritz internment camp, 22 Oct. 1945. ¹¹⁹ RA, 1/012601/LN933, Bettany, ‘Foreign Correspondent’, 108–9. ¹²⁰ Jameson, Autobiography, ii. 189–95; FO817/21, 416/43/45, ‘Report on Hagibor internment camp—seen on Nov. 16’; ‘The New Czechoslovakia’, Fortnightly, 165 (Feb. 1946), 78.

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with the journalist, sometimes with tears in his eyes, to bring the frightful conditions to the attention of the relevant authorities.¹²¹ What impact did the controversy over the camps have? Evidence about improvements in the camps after October 1945 is contradictory.¹²² But if it was difficult to determine with any certainty whether conditions in the camps had improved, and even more so to know what impact foreign criticism had had, it was much easier to work out what the stated intentions of the Czechoslovak government were as far as their commitment to improving conditions in the camps was concerned. And in this respect, as Nichols would later concede, the right kind of publicity, or at least the threat of publicity, had had a positive impact on the Czechoslovak leadership.¹²³ Most Czechs did not want to lose the good-will of the western powers nor be seen by the American and British publics as being no better than the Nazis. ‘Many thinking Czechs admit that the situation [in the camps] is one which does no credit to their country,’ Nichols reminded the Foreign Office in late November 1945.¹²⁴ Statements by politicians of all parties convinced Nichols that the Czechs were ‘anxious to deal with their Germans in a manner satisfactory to Western opinion’.¹²⁵ It was because of this self-awareness among ‘thinking Czechs’ that Nichols regarded a protest to the Czechoslovak government about the treatment of the Germans as unnecessary and counterproductive. Their response to the controversy over the camps merely confirmed for him how correct the British approach had so far been. As he informed the Foreign Office in late November 1945: No useful purpose would be served by our continually rubbing it in to the Czechs that they should improve matters. They know all the facts and are ¹²¹ Reference to prison chaplain and doctor in FO817/21, 416/2/45, Perkins to Nichols, 9 Oct. 1945; camp guard in Gedye, DH, 9 Oct. 1945; camp staff and compassionate friend in Jameson, Autobiography, ii. 189–95; factory manager in FO817/21, 416/14/45, S. Grant Duff, ‘Journey through the Czechoslovak frontier districts: October 10–12, 1945’. ¹²² For reports of a ‘considerable improvement’ since August, see FO817/21, 416/8/45, Nichols minute on meeting with Menzel, 17 Oct. 1945; 416/16/45, Nichols to Warner, 25 Oct. 1945; ICRC, Box 1160, G97, ICRC Prague to ICRC Geneva, 5 Dec. 1945. While visiting London in January 1946, Pˇremysl Pitter of the Czech Ministry of Social Welfare claimed that it was ‘completely untrue’ that conditions had improved. See Bell lvii, fo. 83, Catchpool to Bell, 31 Jan. 1946. See Chapter 7 for further discussion of the controversy over the camps in 1946. ¹²³ FO371/55393, C4355/12/18, Nichols to Bevin, 17 Apr. 1946. ¹²⁴ FO371/47096, N16797/207/12, Nichols to Bevin, 28 Nov. 1945. ¹²⁵ FO371/47093, N14244/207/12, Weekly Information Summary, 12–18 Oct. 1945.

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doing their best. Both Masaryk and the Prime Minister have, independently, mentioned this subject to me today. Both have consciences which are far from clear and our object should be to help these consciences actively prick their owners.¹²⁶

The controversy over the camps, therefore, brought no change in the official British response to Czechoslovak policy towards its Germans. Nichols might have spoken ‘ad nauseum’ to Czechs on the subject that autumn but that was because of a Czech obsession with the subject rather than his own burning desire to discuss it.¹²⁷ And if he did use these occasions to speak of conditions among the Germans it was never more than a ‘friendly word’ to Beneš, and if mentioned to others in the Czech leadership never anything that would compromise the President. But even this informal ‘pricking of consciences’ was more than Nichols was comfortable with. ‘I have done my best to try and get conditions in the camps improved [ . . . ] but I made myself a nuisance in doing so,’ Nichols informed the Foreign Office at the end of October 1945.¹²⁸ More often than not when the subject of the Germans was raised he used the opportunity to restate both his personal opinion on and his government’s commitment to a transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia.¹²⁹ The only discernible impact the controversy over the camps had was on informed opinion in Britain, as a result of which the real beneficiary of publicity was not the inmate in an internment camp but Czech transfer policy. British visitors to Czechoslovakia as well as the British Embassy pointed out that poor conditions in the camps, that is, among those Germans awaiting removal from the country, were a consequence of the moratorium on expulsions with which the Czechoslovak government was faithfully complying. Camps originally set up temporarily had become semi-permanent and were ill-equipped for winter conditions. Poor conditions were therefore seen not to be a result of any malice on the part of the Czech authorities but of overcrowding caused by the postponement of transfers and the general postwar shortages of food and medicines. The Czechs, in other words, were being unfairly punished for their adherence to the Potsdam declaration and German civilians were also suffering as a consequence. ‘It is this ¹²⁶ FO817/21, 416/33/45, Nichols to Troutbeck, 24 Nov. 1945. ¹²⁷ FO371/47093, N14093/207/12, Nichols to Warner, 12 Oct. 1945. ¹²⁸ FO817/21, 416/16/45, Nichols to Warner, 25 Oct. 1945. ¹²⁹ See FO817/20, 244/17/45, Précis of speech at Anglo-American Club, Brno, 10 Dec. 1945.

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suspension—and not continued expulsion—which is causing the gravest misery among the great mass of the Sudeten Germans today’, wrote the journalist and Czech-watcher Shiela Grant Duff, after a visit to the camps. ‘If we are to alleviate the lot of these people, we have got to speed up, and not try and prevent, their transfer.’¹³⁰ Jameson also noted that: well-meaning English people who make speeches demanding the eviction must be stopped are doing a bitter ill-service to [ . . . ] [those] waiting to be deported. Their goodwill, averted from the naughty Czechs, could be useful if it tackled the much harder job of preparing places for these unhappy people in Germany. Their life in internment camps, waiting until they can be sent away, is no life.¹³¹

The realization that the demand for a suspension of expulsion on humanitarian grounds might in practice actually be compounding the humanitarian crisis would have important implications for those agitating for resolute action in response to the crisis in central Europe. Conditions in the camps and among the German population at large gave the Czechs a certain leverage over British opinion, not, as might have been expected, the other way round. Covert blackmail had always figured in the Czechs’ handling of the British in the run up to Potsdam. Ripka was again warning soon after the conference that the postponement of the transfer of the Germans be as ‘short as possible: otherwise, nobody here can be responsible for the consequences’.¹³² Subsequent attempts by Czechs to foist camp inmates onto the British certainly have the whiff of blackmail about them. These included a visit to London by the Czechoslovak Minister of Social Welfare and an intervention by Masaryk on his behalf requesting that the British zone take in 10,000 women and children from camps where there was supposedly 100 per cent infant mortality.¹³³ British officials in London saw it for what it was: a ‘monstrous’ attempt to ‘exploit British charitable feelings [ . . . ] to take some Germans now in Czechoslovakia off [their] hands’.¹³⁴ ¹³⁰ ‘Plight of the Sudetens’, NSN, 27 Oct. 1945. See also ‘The New Czechoslovakia’, MG, 26 Oct. 1945; FO817/21, 416/14/45, ‘Journey through the Czechoslovak frontier districts: 10–12 October 1945’. ¹³¹ Jameson, ‘New Czechoslovakia’, 78. ¹³² ‘Revision of Czech Frontiers’, The Times, 8 Aug. 1945. See Chapter 3 for similar warning. ¹³³ This ‘deplorable case’ (FO371/55624, C1986/144/18, Noel-Baker to Hynd, 12 Mar. 1946) can be followed in FO371/55624, C1470, C1827, C1986, C3815/144/18. ¹³⁴ FO371/55624, C1470/144/18, O’Neill minutes, 4 Feb. 1946.

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The conduct of the Czechoslovak government after August 1945—its adherence to the ‘spirit’ of the Potsdam agreement and in its response to the controversy over the camps—merely confirmed for British officials that Czechs could be relied on to act responsibly as long as their basic concerns about the timing of and the western powers’ commitment to a transfer of Germans were met. From a Czech perspective, the hullabaloo over the camps when set in the wider context of the agitation over conditions in central Europe simply reinforced the image of a British public of ‘unteachable sentimentalists’ who were a dangerous background influence on British policy.¹³⁵ Yet the Czechs, just as they had prior to Potsdam, underestimated how useful publicity could be. When the British journalist George Bilainkin left Czechoslovakia in mid-November 1945, he asked Beneš how he could be of most help on his return to Britain. Beneš replied: ‘Please make people understand that we here cannot live together with the Germans.’¹³⁶ To a great extent, the publicity surrounding internment camps in Czechoslovakia succeeded where an endless stream of pamphlets, memoranda and press conferences could not. Gedye’s revelations might have further tarnished the image of the Czechs as a nation of liberal humanitarians, but the controversy over the camps helped make the British understand that the Czechs wanted to be rid of all Germans.

B R E A K I N G T H E WAV E S : T H E B R I T I S H ZO N E , S E P T E M B E R – N OV E M B E R 1 9 4 5 Whether German civilians would have been better off under the care of the western allies rather than in Czechoslovakia is highly debatable given conditions in occupied Germany on the eve of winter 1945. In one respect, however, the British zone was fortunate. While the refugee crisis in Berlin at the beginning of September 1945 was undeniably desperate, the position in the British zone, according to senior officers there, ‘was not as serious as had been thought at first’.¹³⁷ The Germany-wide, as opposed to simply the Berlin refugee problem, remained principally ¹³⁵ Quotation from O. Voˇcadlo, ‘Czechoslovakia and Her Present Troubles’, National Review, 126 (Apr. 1946), 307. ¹³⁶ Bilainkin, Second Diary, 380 (16 Nov. 1945). ¹³⁷ FO1052/315, fo. 36a, Minutes of Meeting on Movement of Refugees, 4 Sep. 1945.

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one for the Soviet and to a lesser extent the American zones. This position could not, however, hold indefinitely. As the Prisoner of War and Displaced Persons (PWDP) Division, which dealt with German refugees, warned in mid-September 1945: There is inside Europe a tidal wave of nomad peoples, but we cannot yet assess the size, direction or composition of the wave, nor, consequently, where or how heavily it may strike Germany, still less what its impact on our zone may be. Although we have some warning of its approach and size, and of its extent in point of time, it is more likely that we shall not, and that it will only be when the wave breaks that we shall be able to assess its strength. It may be irresistible in so far as it may be sudden and in great strength on a wide front, or it may be insidious, in that peoples may seep through into Germany and into our Zone in so many places that we shall not be able to keep it out, even if we want to.¹³⁸

The PWDP Division was certain on one point, however. ‘The problem is with us now. It is not merely a subject for complacent study but a reality that may face us next week.’¹³⁹ But it was a reality which Military Government in Germany as a whole had still not fully woken up to. At a conference on refugees on 8 October 1945 there was talk of the need to ‘grasp the nettle firmly’ and for ‘energetic planning and action’, as if to imply that to date the British approach had been inchoate and complacent.¹⁴⁰ The overriding issue on the minds of the occupier and the occupied in the British zone of Germany on the eve of winter 1945 was the acute food shortage. Pre-war Germany had, of course, never supplied more than 85 per cent of its own food. The area covered by the British zone had been even less self-sufficient, relying heavily on imports from eastern parts of Germany. The de facto postwar division of Germany, however, meant that the British zone was effectively left to fend for itself. After a disappointing August harvest, which, had it been successful, would still only have guaranteed a minimum of 1,200 calories per day for German civilians over the coming year, the British zone braced itself for a grim and hungry winter.¹⁴¹ ‘The Battle of Winter’ was the name given by Field Marshal Montgomery, the Military Governor, to this test of ¹³⁸ DBPO v, no. 26 (v), Memo. on Population Movements in Europe 1945/46, 18 Sep. 1945, 126. ¹³⁹ Ibid. ¹⁴⁰ FO1052/315, fo. 104, Minutes of Conference on Refugees and Returning Evacuees, 8 Oct. 1945. ¹⁴¹ DBPO v, no. 1, Strang to Bevin, 11 Aug. 1945, 2; no. 12 (ii), Steel to FO, 25 Aug. 1945, 58.

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survival which faced the British zone. His political adviser, Sir William Strang, explained in greater detail what this meant: [It is] the struggle of the German population of the British zone under the stimulus and with the assistance of the occupying forces, to secure the primary means of sustaining life, namely food, shelter and fuel, during the coming months on a scale sufficient to prevent widespread mortality from starvation and exposure and, if possible disease.¹⁴²

Preparations for the ‘Battle of Winter’ were already underway in August 1945 and would have a knock-on effect on planning for the refugee crisis. An ‘essential minimum’ of 1,550 calories per day was set for the zone, for which two million tons of wheat would have to be imported from North America.¹⁴³ In anticipation of winter epidemics, mobile medical teams or ‘flying squads’ were formed, Wehrmacht stores released, scarce medical supplies and equipment stockpiled, the German pharmaceutical industry revised, all available space—schools, air-raid shelters—used to double emergency hospital bed capacity and a levy on blankets from the German population imposed.¹⁴⁴ Particular emphasis was placed on Berlin; partly because it was the worst of Germany’s black spots and ran the risk of becoming an ‘Allied Buchenwald’ if energetic measures were not taken; and partly because of the question of international prestige in a city under Four-Power control.¹⁴⁵ Larger quantities of food began arriving in the British sector. By early September 1945, a fifteen-day stockpile had been built up; in mid-August, the British sector had had only two days’ supply.¹⁴⁶ There was also progress on the public health front. All Berliners in the British sector were inoculated against typhoid.¹⁴⁷ By October, infant mortality was half that of August.¹⁴⁸ Although British proposals to evacuate a million Berliners before the onset of winter were abandoned, a plan to rehouse ¹⁴² DBPO v, no. 60, Strang to Bevin, 27 Oct. 1945, 289. ¹⁴³ DBPO v, no. 12 (vi), Lt. Col. Lowe: Report on visit to the British zone and Berlin [21–31 Aug. 1945], 59. ¹⁴⁴ FO1032/695, fo. 6a, Mil. Gov. Instruction on Winter Epidemics, 17 Sep. 1945; ‘Flying Squads to Quell Disease in Germany’, MG, 20 Oct. 1945. ¹⁴⁵ This remark, with which Mil. Gov. concurred, was made by a Dutch observer. See FO371/46806, C5589/78/18, Noel-Baker minute for Bevin, 6 Sep. 1945; DBPO v, no. 60 (i), Memorandum by the Minister of State, 5 Oct. 1945, 292–3. ¹⁴⁶ ‘News from Berlin’, BZR, 13 Oct. 1945. ¹⁴⁷ FO1012/122, fo. 30a, Public Health, Mil. Gov., Berlin to Wilmersdorf VBK, 24 Aug. 1945. ¹⁴⁸ FAU/1947/3/4/NWE General: Memoranda, Surveys, Reports, Report on visit to Berlin by Dr Audrey Ellis, 10–21 Dec. 1945.

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50,000 Berlin children temporarily in the British zone was drawn up.¹⁴⁹ Under ‘Operation Stork’, 25,000 children were eventually transported in October and November 1945.¹⁵⁰ Emergency programmes such as ‘Stork’ helped to create the impression that a fundamentally decent and humane British administration was in place in Germany which, although faced with seemingly insuperable obstacles, was endeavouring with energetic determination to make the best of a bad situation.¹⁵¹ Robin Whitworth, a senior official in the FAU, concluded after an extensive autumn tour of the British zone and Berlin that ‘the army ha[d] made astonishing progress in reorganising essential services and in getting well on the way towards ensuring 1,500 calories a day as the standard’.¹⁵² Yet his praise was qualified with the caveat—‘provided the whole plan is not upset by an uncontrollable influx of refugees from the East [ . . . ] There seems to be no margin for such contingencies.’¹⁵³ By October 1945, it was estimated that an influx of four million refugees, which by then was a reasonably conservative estimate, would reduce existing daily rations by 400 calories per head.¹⁵⁴ A refugee influx, therefore, threatened to reverse what modest gains had been made in the British zone to date. Staying one step ahead of this influx became the abiding theme in the attempts by the British authorities to cope with the refugee crisis in Germany that autumn and winter. Official statements were remarkably candid about conditions in the British zone and often fatalistic about the task that lay ahead.¹⁵⁵ There was thought to be no advantage in glossing over events in the zone. As a Control Commission report on public relations in August 1945 pointed out: ‘A stark picture of misery in Europe looms ahead. There is nothing in sight which looks promising, or optimistic, about the British ¹⁴⁹ DBPO v, no. 3 (ii), Chief of Staff Secretariat minute, 12 Aug. 1945, Brief for C-in-C, 16 Aug. 1945, 14. ¹⁵⁰ ‘From Berlin to a Quiet Rural Life’, BZR, 10 Nov. 1945. ¹⁵¹ DBPO v, no. 75, Strang to Bevin, 14 Nov. 1945, 366; BBC WAC, T311, N. MacDonald, ‘News Talk’, HS, 26 Oct. 1945, 6.15 pm. ¹⁵² FAU/1947/3/4/NWE General: Memoranda, Surveys, Reports, R. Whitworth, Notes of visit to Germany (British Zone), Oct.–Nov. 1945. ¹⁵³ Ibid. ¹⁵⁴ DBPO v, no. 48, Minutes of Military Government Conference, 12 Oct. 1945, 222. ¹⁵⁵ BBC WAC, T36, Cpt. Bellenger [Financial Secretary to the WO], ‘A Visit to the British Occupational Forces in Germany’, LP, 25 Sep. 1945, 6.20–6.30 p.m.; ‘F. M. Montgomery on Germany’, The Times, 3 Oct. 1945; ‘Quo Vadis?’, BZR, 27 Oct. 1945; FO1052/312, fo. 1a, Press Release: Refugees from the East, [20] Oct. 1945.

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zone [ . . . ] Since the predominant feeling of the British public is still ‘‘To hell with the Germans; let’s put our house in order first!’’, anything which paints a bright picture is out.’¹⁵⁶ Whitworth also argued that it was best not to hide these realities from the British public. Conditions in Germany, he said, were ‘almost impossible to imagine [ . . . ] from England’s comparatively gilded cage’. If disaster came many daily papers would: splash it as a headline story; the British public will have its usual humanitarian reaction, and by Easter they will be filled with pity for the Germans and wish to do everything possible to help them. Then it will be too late, and unbalanced pity of love for the Germans will be as undesirable as unbalanced hate now. It is therefore important that the British public should be made to realise the position in human terms now rather than in the Spring.¹⁵⁷

Educating the British public about realities on the ground was precisely what the British authorities in Germany had been trying to do since September. It was hoped that the public could be made to appreciate the enormity of the task in Germany, be prepared for the worst when it came and understand that British interests were imperilled if Germany sank into the mire. But as September progressed there was growing concern that the ‘constructive side of the picture’ was not being reported to the detriment of the British authorities.¹⁵⁸ The type of publicity that the refugee crisis generated was not always what was expected or desired, especially if the British authorities were the object of direct or implied criticism. As a British officer in the Legal Division of the Control Commission in Berlin confessed to Eleanor Rathbone, reports on Berlin refugees by the likes of Bray and Clark made him ‘hot under the collar’: The horrors of the Stettiner Bahnhof on the 24 August last were fully appreciated by the requisite authorities [ . . . ] and no one can dispute what happened there, although as the incident took place in the Russian Sector, there was little that the British authorities could do about it. I do feel, however, that it is monstrous for the British press to attack the British Element of the Control Commission for what is happening to refugees in Germany, as the British are the only people who are doing anything to help them [ . . . ] It is a gross misrepresentation of ¹⁵⁶ FO1056/501, Maj. Twist to Information Section, PR Branch, 20 Aug. 1945. ¹⁵⁷ FAU/1947/3/4/NWE, General Whitworth, Notes of visit, Oct.–Nov. 1945. ¹⁵⁸ FO1056/495, Memorandum on Press Comments, 21 Sep. 1945; FO1056/510, fo. 22, Memorandum on Newspaper Comments, 22 Sep. 1945.

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the facts to say that nothing is being done to look after refugees in Berlin or in the British zone.¹⁵⁹

Strang in his dispatches to the Foreign Office also referred to the resentment expressed in Military Government circles at suggestions in the British press that they were ‘indifferent’ to the plight of the refugees who were left to ‘starve and die’. ‘While it would be ingenuous to describe [the refugees] as welcome’, he pointed out, ‘extraordinary efforts have been made by Military Government to cope with this influx.’¹⁶⁰ What did these ‘extraordinary efforts’ amount to? As the Legal Officer in Berlin quoted above pointed out, there was nothing that could be done for refugees in the Soviet zone. It did not take too much intelligent guess-work, however, to realize what was going on there. A fairly detailed picture of conditions in the Soviet zone was constructed from refugees who arrived in the British zone full of tales of pestilence and famine.¹⁶¹ Moreover, Soviet officials were sometimes remarkably candid about conditions in their zone. General Vasily Sokolovsky, the Soviet representative on the Coordinating Committee of the Allied Control Council (ACC), told Strang in September that only in Dresden and Berlin were the population receiving official rations, the remainder had ‘to fend for itself’.¹⁶² For the handful of British personnel privileged with a glimpse behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, the effects of Soviet-style rationing on the resident population, and particularly on destitute refugees from the east, was all too apparent.¹⁶³ The Soviet authorities, as Strang pointed out, could be ‘counted on to be callous’ towards the fate of refugees.¹⁶⁴ Kit Steel, Chief of the Political Division of the British Control Commission, was even more blunt: Having been forced at Potsdam to agree to a formula attenuating their demand for immediate large scale transfers of Germans [ . . . ] they are rendering this ¹⁵⁹ Russell RA1/2, [Anonymous British officer] to Rathbone, 17 Sep. 1945. ¹⁶⁰ FO371/46969, C6738/4757/18, Strang to FO: Political Summary No. 7, 2 Oct. 1945. ¹⁶¹ See, for example, IWM, Docs Misc. 170, Report from Göttingen Det. 336 Field Security Section, 21 Sep. 1945. ¹⁶² FO371/46812, C5437/95/18, Strang to FO, 2 Sep. 1945. ¹⁶³ See FO371/46861, C9060/217/18, Report on conditions in Soviet zone and Polish administered Germany, 15–22 September 1945, encl. in Steel to Troutbeck, 21 Nov. 1945; DBPO v, no. 9 (ii), Report on conditions in Soviet-occupied Germany, 9 Aug. 1945, 47. ¹⁶⁴ FO371/46812, C5437/95/18, Strang to FO, 2 Sep. 1945.

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null and void by proceeding with the export of Germans from these countries and spilling them into either Berlin and their own zone of Germany where they may die for all the Russians care.¹⁶⁵

It seemed pointless, therefore, to appeal to the Soviets on humanitarian grounds. The Control Council was in any case ‘not yet a robust enough organisation to take questions of this kind’ and so neither Strang nor Lieutenant-General Brian Robertson, the Deputy Military Governor of the British zone, thought that raising the matter formally would serve any useful purpose.¹⁶⁶ If conditions in the Soviet zone were as bad as imagined, then at some point refugees from the east would almost certainly seek to enter western Germany and the British zone had therefore to make preparations for this mass influx. German welfare organizations, which came to be viewed as ‘the keystones to the whole problem of relief [ . . . ] and refugees’, were soon resuscitated.¹⁶⁷ Without some form of British assistance, however, these German organizations could not cope.¹⁶⁸ By November 1945, British voluntary societies, under the aegis of the Red Cross, had several relief teams working on German welfare, including refugees.¹⁶⁹ These relief teams functioned as an extra sets of eyes and ears on the ground for Military Government, chivvying incompetent, complacent or beleaguered German officials as well as giving advice and sometimes direct assistance.¹⁷⁰ Other measures, such as attempts to establish more effective frontier controls at the porous zonal boundaries, were purely preventative. A cordon sanitaire was created on the frontier with ¹⁶⁵ FO1049/227, 222/30/45, Steel minute, 29 Aug. 1945. ¹⁶⁶ FO1049/227, 222/31/45, Strang to Steel, 31 Aug. 1945; FO371/46812, C5437/ 95/18, Strang to FO, 2 Sep. 1945. ¹⁶⁷ FO1032/842, fo. 12a, Chief PWDP Div. to Secretariat, Main HQ, 27 Aug. 1945; fo. 37a, Resuscitation of German Welfare Organisations, 13 Sep. 1945; fo. 95a, Reactivation and Control of Private German Welfare Societies, 22 Nov. 1945. ¹⁶⁸ FAU1947/3/4/Memoranda from BRCS, Civilian Relief in Germany during the Autumn and Winter 1945–46: Appreciation of the Situation on 14 Sep. 1945; FO1032/842, fo. 29a, Chief PWDP Div. to Secretariat, Main HQ, 13 Sep. 1945. ¹⁶⁹ Of the thirty civilian relief teams in the British zone, seventeen were earmarked for work with German refugees and another twenty-three had been requested. See British Red Cross (BRC) Archive, London, ACC1594/7, Diary of visit to Germany, Austria and Italy,18 Nov. 1945. ¹⁷⁰ For the British military’s view on the indispensability of civilian relief teams, see FO1012/87, DP and Refugee Section, Mil. Gov. Berlin: Monthly Report, Nov. 1945; BRC, ACC1594/8, Diary of Lady Limerick’s Tour of Germany and Sweden, 12 Oct. 1946; P. G. Cambray and G. G. B. Briggs, Red Cross and St. John: The Official Record of the Humanitarian Services of the War Organisation of the British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John of Jerusalem, 1939–1947 (1949), 513.

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the Soviet zone along which mobile ‘dusting teams’ operated with liberal quantities of DDT from British stocks. Standardized procedures were established to ensure that on crossing into the British zone all refugees were registered, deloused, medically examined and fed before being dispersed. Larger, more permanent camps better suited to winter conditions were constructed. Administrative measures such as the refusal to issue ration cards and restrictions on travel were also enacted.¹⁷¹ Berlin remained the focus of the British effort, partly because the refugee problem there was still acute and partly because it was a showcase city. The number of refugees entering Berlin had slackened off by midSeptember 1945, owing to the imposition of more effective cordons around the city. The refugee population in the British sector stood at 10,000. Total capacity in the sector’s seven camps was 12,000.¹⁷² But restrictions on westward movement meant that there was a rapid build-up in the camps to the extent that the Public Health branch of the British sector was warning by late September 1945 that: the problem, which has always caused great anxiety, has now become increasingly dangerous [ . . . ] The camps established in the British area were adequate for the refugees passing through, but at the present time some 3,200 refugees are being held in one camp under very bad conditions [ . . . ] Some 400 are sick. It is hoped permission can be obtained to move these people from Berlin. This matter [ . . . ] is likely to increase. The matter is urgent.¹⁷³

Similar warnings came from local districts. In the Wilmersdorf refugee transit camps conditions were ‘extremely bad’ and had become ‘Public Headache No. 1’ by the end of September.¹⁷⁴ By October, the problem of feeding and accommodating refugees in Charlottenburg had become ‘acute’. The British military commandant there warned that if an organized evacuation was not carried out shortly the situation ‘may well become out of hand’.¹⁷⁵ The evacuation of refugees from Berlin to the British zone (‘Operation Jericho’) began soon after. As with any measure taken to alleviate the refugee crisis, however, this ‘solution’ soon created its own set of additional problems. The rumour of a mass evacuation to the British zone precipitated a massive influx of ¹⁷¹ FO1052/315, fo. 36a, Minutes of Meeting on Movement of Refugees, 4 Sep. 1945. ¹⁷² FO1049/205, 131/9/45, Manpower Div: Refugees—the position as it affects Berlin, 21 Sep. 1945. ¹⁷³ FO1012/134, Public Health Report, 21 Sep. 1945. See also FO1012/26, Berlin Magistrate: Report on refugee situation, 16–22 Sep. 1945. ¹⁷⁴ FO1012/593, Fortnightly Report to 30 Sep. 1945. ¹⁷⁵ FO1012/126, Fortnightly Situation Report No. 8, 2 Oct. 1945.

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refugees from other sectors that completely offset the numbers being evacuated.¹⁷⁶ Moreover, no sooner had ‘Operation Jericho’ begun, than it was suspended in order to carry out ‘Operation Stork’, yet another example of how one ‘solution’ could have a deleterious, knock-on effect on another.¹⁷⁷ By mid-October the control over the influx of refugees into the city and between sectors had completely broken down. The resident population in the refugee camps in the British sector was fast approaching the hundred-thousand mark.¹⁷⁸ There had already been warnings of imminent disaster when it had stood at 60,000. The British commander in Charlottenburg again warned that unless the ‘indiscriminate flow’ of refugees was restricted and evacuation resumed before winter arrived, the British sector would face ‘a human catastrophe of unknown limits’.¹⁷⁹ Instead of making the refugee problem disappear, attempts at resolving the refugee crisis in Berlin shifted it elsewhere. If refugees could not reach the British zone via Berlin, they could attempt to cross into it illegally over the ‘Green Frontier’. In August 1945, the PWDP Division had reported ‘no evidence of any mass unauthorized movement into the [British] zone’.¹⁸⁰ By mid-September 1945, however, one thousand refugees were entering per day.¹⁸¹ This had risen to between eight to ten thousand by mid-October,¹⁸² and by early November it had doubled to a staggering fifteen to sixteen thousand per day.¹⁸³ Most were wartime ‘evacuees’ returning to the British zone, some were refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia, others residents of the Soviet zone.¹⁸⁴ Irrespective of their origin, together they represented a gigantic movement of population. The huge wave which the PWDP Division had predicted in ¹⁷⁶ FO1032/2298, fo. 9b, Report on handling of German refugees in Berlin, 13 Oct. 1945. ¹⁷⁷ FO1012/93, Mil. Gov. Berlin Monthly Report, Oct. 1945: Appendix H, Public Health, 6 Nov. 1945; Appendix M, DPs and Refugee Section, 31 Oct. 1945. ¹⁷⁸ FO1012/26, Berlin Magistrat: Report on Refugees, 21–27 Oct. 1945. ¹⁷⁹ FO1012/87, Lt. Col. Parkin to MGBTB Executive for DDMG, 19 Oct. 1945. ¹⁸⁰ FO1052/23, PWDP Div. Progress Report, 31 Jul.–31 Aug. 1945. ¹⁸¹ Information from Steel in FO371/46814, C7005/95/18, O’Neill brief for McNeil, 10 Oct. 1945. ¹⁸² FO1052/23, PWDP Div. Fortnightly Progress Report, 27 Sep.–11 Oct. 1945. ¹⁸³ FO1052/316, fo. 13a, Refugees Coming in from Russian Zone, 3 Nov. [1945]. ¹⁸⁴ Out of just over 30,000 Germans who passed through a camp on the zonal frontier in one week in late Nov. 1945, 78 per cent were classed ‘evacuees’, mostly from the Soviet zone, and 11 to 12 per cent were ‘refugees’ from east of the Oder-Neisse or Czechoslovakia. See Leicestershire Record Office (LRO), International Voluntary Service (IVS) archive, DE3986/J20, Analysis of Friedland Camp, 22 Nov. 1945.

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September was breaking. The following excerpt from a private letter by a British relief worker at Friedland on the ‘International Corner’, where three zones of occupation met, gives a vivid impression of the scale of the problem and the prevailing conditions: On Monday morning I went on ambulance duty [ . . . ] and it was a sight I will never forget. At 9am a shot goes off and the bar across the road at the Russian frontier goes up to let ambulance buses rumble across no-mans-land [ . . . ] In the distance in their wake can be seen a serpent like mass writhing along until it takes on an identity and the column passes the British post in close formation. Alas the pace is too hard and the luggage too heavy and many fall by the wayside before 1/2 a mile is covered. To see old grannies gamely dragging a ‘cartie’ of luggage and her only assistants being youngsters of three or four makes us break all our rules not to carry baggage [ . . . ] It is certainly obvious that the British zone is a minor heaven to most of the people—though they may not think the same some days hence.¹⁸⁵

Some refugees were given passes by the Soviets, other slipped across the porous frontier. Often refugees were simply let through without the necessary documentation.¹⁸⁶ Senior British officials realized that it was ‘physically impossible’ to prevent refugees from entering the British zone and that all who arrived at the zonal frontier had to be taken in.¹⁸⁷ The frontiers were thinly patrolled; there was no barbed wire separating ‘east’ from ‘west’ and the end of one field and the beginning of the next was often all that indicated the zonal frontier. Even if the influx was unwelcome, it was preferable to impose some order on it by processing refugees through camps than having them enter undetected, and therefore unregistered and undusted. The alternative—leaving hundreds of thousands of refugees on the other side of the frontier under the ‘care’ of the Soviets—would have been a public relations disaster. It would have been ‘wrong’, according to Lieutenant-General Robertson, to turn refugees back.¹⁸⁸ ‘The Russians are making no provision for these refugees; it is not practical politics to prevent their passing the line into our Zone’, senior British officials told Philip Noel-Baker, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, during a tour of the zone in mid-September 1945. ‘[Even] if we tried to enforce such a policy, the troops would ¹⁸⁵ IVS, DE3986/J33, F[inlay] M[cLaren] to A. McLaren, 18 Nov. 1945. ¹⁸⁶ See account in B. Häring, Embattled Witness: Memories of a Time of War (1977), 113–15. ¹⁸⁷ FO1052/315, fo. 104, Conference on Refugees and Returning Evacuees, 8 Oct. 1945. ¹⁸⁸ DBPO v, no. 60 (i), Memorandum by the Minister of State, 5 Oct. 1945, 292–3.

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not carry it out.’¹⁸⁹ The course of action that the British authorities pursued—accepting all-comers while continuing to uphold an official policy of non-acceptance—acknowledged the realities of the situation without inviting, as in Berlin, an even greater deluge. Irrespective of interim measures imposed at a zonal or sector level, a long-term solution to the refugee crisis was understood only to be possible through international agreement higher up in the ACC that delivered an overall plan for dealing with German population movements as a whole, not just in part. The fate of refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia also could not be dealt with in isolation from other population movements including the resettlement of wartime evacuees or the repatriation of DPs, particularly Polish ones. The Control Council originally estimated that it would take two months to carry out the task assigned to it under Article 12 of Potsdam to ‘examine [ . . . ] the question of [ . . . ] equitable distribution [ . . . ] and to submit an estimate of the time and rate at which further transfers could be carried out’.¹⁹⁰ Towards the end of August 1945, the question was remitted to the Political Directorate as ‘the most urgent of the many problems they ha[d] to consider’.¹⁹¹ Weeks of ‘bitter wrangling’ were foreseen before any agreement over the absorptive capacity of the zones could be reached, during which the Czechs and Poles were expected to carry on expelling Germans regardless.¹⁹² When the provisional two month deadline passed, there was still no sign of even a preliminary agreement, at which point Kit Steel, who sat on the Political Directorate, remarked that he doubted whether the Control Council would ever produce an agreed report.¹⁹³ The problem, according to British officials in Berlin, was Soviet obstructionism. At meetings of the Political Directorate in early September, the Soviet representative, Arkady Sobelev, lived up to his reputation which he had earned at Potsdam for being ‘as obstinate as a mule’, by claiming that he was still awaiting instructions from his government and as such was unwilling to discuss or even to consider the terms of reference for a committee to study the transfer of German ¹⁸⁹ Ibid. ¹⁹⁰ FO371/46811, C4422/95/18, Williams minute, 3 Aug. 1945; Potsdam Article 12, in DBPO i, no. 603, p. 1275. ¹⁹¹ FO371/46812, C5060/95/18, Berlin to FO, 24 Aug. 1945. ¹⁹² FO1049/194, Pink minute for Strang, 22 Aug. 1945. The Poles thought in terms of weeks rather than months; the Czechs hoped the transfers would be completed within a year. See FO371/46811, C4422/95/18, Warsaw to FO, 2 Aug. 1945; C4980/95/18, Clementis to Nichols, 16 Aug. 1945; C4779/95/18, Prague to FO, 16 Aug. 1945. ¹⁹³ FO371/46814, C7005/95/18, O’Neill brief for McNeil, 10 Oct. 1945.

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populations. Strang suspected that the Soviets were ‘stalling’ in order that all Germans would be expelled from Czechoslovakia and Poland before the Control Council could come to a decision.¹⁹⁴ When General Sokolovsky was asked by Strang and Robertson at a meeting of the Co-ordinating Committee in mid-September ‘what help he could give to arrest movements out of Poland and to bring movements within the Soviet zone under control’, his reply was ‘wholly unhelpful’.¹⁹⁵ ‘Purely obstructive’ was how one member of the Foreign Office summed up the Soviet attitude on the ACC.¹⁹⁶ By the beginning of November 1945, logistically the British authorities were in a far better position to confront the refugee crisis than they had been two months previously. Psychologically, the British were also much better prepared. It was at last acknowledged from the top down that the British zone had a refugee problem that had to be faced energetically. Yet as the example of Berlin shows, attempts to alleviate the refugee crisis often created as many problems as they solved. And for all the practical remedies put in place on the ground, the situation was ultimately out of the hands of those dealing directly with the refugee crisis, the outcome of which was determined by political decisions made in Berlin. But until the ACC reached agreement on transfers of German populations, it was left to the hard-pressed British zonal authorities to improvise solutions on the ground. Without knowing what the exact outcome of these political decisions would be, managing the refugee crisis became a matter not only of improvisation but of prediction. As the head of the PWDP Division pointed out to his colleagues at the beginning of November 1945, coping with the refugee crisis was not going to be an easy task and placed a heavy burden of responsibility on British officers: Dispersing them in the cold of winter without many of them dying en route [ . . . ] will be difficult [ . . . ] To keep them fed in this already near starving Zone through the winter looks at the moment a grimly small hope [ . . . ] It is a colossal job and every break-down in it will be laid at our door by the world’s press, so let’s try and keep ahead of events wherever possible.¹⁹⁷ ¹⁹⁴ FO371/46812, C5636/95/18, Strang to FO, 12 Sep. 1945. ¹⁹⁵ FO1049/205, 131/4/45, Strang to FO, 12 Sep. 1945. ¹⁹⁶ FO371/46813, C6926/95/18, Selby minute, 14 Oct. 1945. For American attempts, see FRUS 1945, ii, Murphy to Byrnes, 9 Oct. 1945, 1287–8; FO371/46813, C6926/95/18, Strang to Sargent, 6 Oct. 1945; DBPO v, no. 42, Strang to Harvey, 5 Oct. 1945, 189. ¹⁹⁷ FO1052/316, fo. 13a, Refugees from Russian Zone, 3 Nov. [1945].

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Up to that point, the British authorities had been able to ‘keep ahead of events’. The worst of the refugee crisis, however, was far from over. November 1945 would see a series of ‘expulsion scares’ that shook public confidence in the handling of the refugee crisis. On 10 October 1945, the day after Parliament reconvened, Con O’Neill of the Foreign Office German Department did a stock-take of the situation since the Potsdam Conference. He painted a depressing picture of the diplomatic initiatives that the British had taken so far to enforce the Potsdam decisions and the options that now lay ahead. Progress in the Control Council had been ‘very unsatisfactory’ owing to Soviet ‘obstruction’. Approaches to the Poles, who had allowed expulsions to continue ‘unchecked’, had met ‘with very little success’. The Czechs offered the only faint glimmer of hope. Their actions had been, in that timeless civil service phrase, ‘not too unsatisfactory’—hardly a ringing endorsement, but relative to Polish conduct as always. For the British government, the expulsions remained a ‘cause for great anxiety, not only on the grounds of the human suffering involved, but also because of the great danger to the health and feeding of Europe’. While it was ‘primarily a Russian problem’, it was still one for which it was ‘impossible [ . . . ] to decline to accept all responsibility’. Any course of action that might help alleviate the problem, however, ‘bristle[d] with complications’. Yet O’Neill advised Hector McNeil, the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for whom the brief was written, that ‘no attempt should be made to minimize the gravity of the situation’ when discussing the matter in the Commons: We have received sufficient reports to make it clear that the truth is probably a good deal worse than anything that has been published in the British press so far. And yet what has been published has been sufficient to cause great concern and anxiety here [ . . . ] What is happening in Eastern Germany is probably as terrible as any European catastrophe for centuries; and no doubt the facts will probably become better known in this country.¹⁹⁸

As O’Neill’s brief and the official responses covered in this chapter show, the British government was alive to the refugee crisis and the expulsions. O’Neill’s brief also indicates, however, that its efforts in this direction had, at best, mixed results. But what, on balance, had the British government been prepared to do? It had acted in support ¹⁹⁸ FO371/46814, C7005/95/18, O’Neill brief for McNeil, 10 Oct. 1945.

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of the Potsdam decision to halt the expulsions where it thought this had been contravened, but only up to a point. The British government was not prepared to isolate itself diplomatically over this issue nor to incur the wrath of an expelling government. It was unwilling to intervene on behalf of populations awaiting expulsion, as the example of Czechoslovakia shows. On balance, therefore, the British government accepted partial compliance with the Potsdam decision as the best and only guarantee it was going to get. Yet the British government had displayed, as it had at Potsdam, a willingness to take the initiative. When, as we shall see in Chapter 6, British critics of the expulsions asked what was being done, the British government could therefore respond with all honesty, as it had since August 1945, that it was doing all it reasonably could, within, that is, the narrow limits that it had set itself.

6 Crisis! What Crisis? Refugee Rumours and Scares, October 1945–January 1946

Chapter 4 showed how following the publication of reports on the Berlin refugee crisis in late August 1945, the publisher Victor Gollancz began orchestrating a campaign to raise public awareness about conditions in central Europe and to organize relief to save its population from starvation. One of the political aims of Save Europe Now (SEN), the organization which emerged from this initiative, was the suspension of expulsions, a point which informed opinion across the political spectrum agreed was urgent. In October 1945, the campaign against the expulsions intensified as part of a wider movement, partly though not exclusively connected with SEN, to encourage the British government to take more resolute action to avert catastrophe in central Europe. The refugee crisis in Germany also remained headline news and the press fed a growing hysteria about a ‘flooding’ of the British zone. By January 1946, however, the sense of urgency that had surrounded discussion of the expulsions and the refugee crisis had died down and these issues henceforth featured far less prominently, if at all. This chapter discusses the rise and fall in the importance of the expulsions and the refugee crisis as factors in the public debate about conditions in Europe at the end of 1945. On 1 November 1945, the Evening Standard published a cartoon on the German refugee crisis by David Low, widely regarded as the finest practitioner of his art who could ‘sum up a situation in a few penstrokes more concisely than most leader-writers’.¹ The cartoon showed a rather nondescript late middle-aged, middle-class couple sitting down to breakfast.² A frumpy-looking wife is pouring tea. A bald and besuited ¹ ‘Low’s War Cartoons’, Spectator, 12 Dec. 1941. ² ‘Why Should We Fuss About the Germans?’, Evening Standard, 1 Nov. 1945.

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husband is eating while reading a newspaper propped up on the table between the teapot and the toast rack with the headline ‘Winter in Central Europe’. Around them are shadowy, hunched and forlorn figures representing Europe’s wandering millions. A skeletal figure with the face of death and a banner around it saying ‘Disease Knows No Frontiers’ is leaning menacingly over the back of the husband’s chair. The couple, however, are oblivious to the scene around them. The shadows are invisible and ghost-like. ‘Why should we fuss about the Germans?’, the caption under the cartoon reads. ‘They deserve it, don’t they?’ The cartoon appeared less than a week after a major Commons debate on conditions in central Europe and at the height of public hysteria about the German refugee crisis. Low’s dig at the small-minded vindictiveness and the potentially fatal consequences of the smug and self-satisfied postwar outlook of Middle England sparked off an indignant response from the Londoners at whom it was directed.³ But Low was only expressing what many others had already said in words. Concern about conditions in central Europe, Low was implying, had nothing much to do with concern for pesky Continentals, Germans included. Low’s couple are just too dim-witted and short-sighted to see that the common denominator in dealing with the crisis in central Europe was self-interest. The Channel, a barrier to invading armies, could not prevent the spread of germs bred by Low’s hunched and ragged shadows: the unknown millions of German refugees, a reservoir of disease, milling around central Europe and supposedly ready to swamp the British zone at any moment. The expulsions and the refugee crisis were issues that formed part of a broader, longer-term debate about the relief, reconstruction and the revival of postwar Germany and Europe. Between October and December 1945, however, they dominated it. Extensive media coverage continued and for weeks the refugee crisis was the principal ‘human interest story’ in the more popular illustrated magazines.⁴ These issues were debated extensively in both Houses of Parliament.⁵ Discussion centred around three events which themselves defined the public response ³ ‘Shall We Feed the Germans?’, Evening Standard, 5 Nov. 1945. ⁴ See Illustrated London News, 13 Oct., 10 Nov., 17 Nov. 1945; Sphere, 10 Nov., 17 Nov. 1945; Sunday Pictorial, 21 Oct., 28 Oct. 1945. See also newsreels: IWM Film archive, WPN236, [Dope sheet for] World Pictorial News, 12 Nov. 1945; N. Pronay, ‘Defeated Germany in British Newsreels: 1944–45’, in K. R. M. Short and Stephan Dolezel, Hitler’s Fall: The Newsreel Witness (1988), 45–9. ⁵ See the following principal debates: Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 414, cols. 360–70 (10 Oct. 1945), 2351–454 (26 Oct. 1945), vol. 415, cols. 986–1018 (5 Nov. 1945),

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to the expulsions and the refugee crisis: a Commons debate on conditions in Europe on 26 October; the ‘expulsion scare’ that gripped Fleet Street between 3 and 6 November; and the SEN mass rally in the Albert Hall on 26 November. Almost as soon as parliament reconvened on 9 October 1945, a shortened version of the first part of the Conway Hall resolution was put down as a notice of motion on ‘the situation in Europe’ by MPs involved in the meeting.⁶ The motion went: This House feels deep concern over the possibility that millions of men, women and children in Europe may die of starvation and cold during the coming winter, with the result that disease and economic and social chaos may spread over Europe. This House therefore urges His Majesty’s Government to take all possible steps to prevent this disaster, especially—first, by using their utmost influence with those Governments who have been expelling vast numbers of Germans from their homes in Eastern Europe, to ensure that this expulsion should be discontinued at least until the winter is over, and if then resumed, should be carried out in an orderly manner as suggested in the Potsdam Declaration, and by agreement with all the four Governments in control of Germany.⁷

Whips were soon reporting that MPs were taking a ‘very substantial interest’ in it, and by 26 October an ‘impressive list’ of 150 backbench MPs of all parties had added their names, among them two Conservative former Cabinet ministers, the leaders of the Liberal Party and Independent Labour Party, a Labour former minister in the coalition government, and Attlee’s Parliamentary Private Secretary.⁸ On 23 October, Cabinet met in full to discuss the line to be taken during the debate.⁹ It was partly in recognition of the strength of feeling on this issue and the importance of the upcoming debate that Attlee also offered to meet a delegation to discuss the political as 2570–615 (16 Nov. 1945), vol. 416, cols. 2800–14 (7 Dec. 1945); Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 138, cols. 341–98 (5 Dec. 1945). ⁶ ‘MP’s Fear of Winter Outlook in Europe’, The Times, 10 Oct. 1945. Rathbone and Salter (both Independents) were the mainsprings of the motion co-signed by six Labour members: Blackburn; Crossman; Stokes; Lt. Col. Rees Williams (formerly Chief Legal officer in Berlin); Lt. Ben Levy; and Maj. Woodrow Wyatt. ⁷ FO371/51492, UR4107/3233/51, Notice of Motion on the European Situation, Oct. 1945. ⁸ FO371/51492, UR4107/3233/51, McNeil minute for Lawford, 16 Oct. 1945; ‘London Notes’, Yorkshire Post, 19 Oct. 1945; ‘Economic State of Europe’, The Times, 26 Oct. 1945. ⁹ For a record of the Cabinet meeting, see CAB128/1, CM45 (45), 23 Oct. 1945.

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opposed to the relief side of motion.¹⁰ Believing that the government’s position might be ‘materially affected’ by a ‘sufficiently weighty’ deputation, Gollancz hastily assembled twenty dignitaries who spent an hour at Downing Street on 25 October.¹¹ ‘[It] was one of the most varied and representative bodies that has waited on a Prime Minister’, the News Chronicle reported somewhat over-enthusiastically. ‘Political ‘‘arch-enemies’’ [ . . . ] sat with each other to put the case before Mr. Attlee’.¹² The Prime Minister, however, added nothing to what he, or any other government minister, had already said in person or in writing. He more or less repeated the same points he had made to the Church delegation six weeks before, namely that ‘every possible step to stop the deportations [ . . . ] had already been and was being done’, that Britain’s resources and influence were limited, and that the extent of Soviet culpability and responsibility should not be forgotten.¹³ The deputation left Downing Street deeply disappointed.¹⁴ The 26 October debate itself offered up few practical suggestions beyond urging the government to continue making representations to its eastern European allies to stop further expulsions. Contributions to the debate, a great many of them maiden speeches from the backbenches, were more significant for their tone than content.¹⁵ This was the Commons in sombre, high-minded mood and any differences among MPs on both sides of the House or between the front- and backbenches were largely ones of emphasis.¹⁶ By stressing that the House was speaking as one on this issue of national importance, MPs were ¹⁰ During the Cabinet meeting mention was made of the ‘tense feeling in the House of Commons’ over this motion, the ‘guts’ of which, as Bevin pointed out, was the first part dealing with the expulsions. See CAB195/3 ii, CM45(45), 23 Oct. 1945. ¹¹ Griffin GR1/27b, Gollancz to Griffin, 23 Oct. 1945. The delegation was led by Sir William Beveridge and included: Bob Boothby; Noel Brailsford; Lord Noel-Buxton; Rev. Henry Carter; the Bishop of Coventry; Dick Crossman; Gerald Gardiner; Gollancz; Quintin Hogg MP; T. Horabin MP; Bishops Matthew and Myers (representing the Archbishop of Westminster); Eleanor Rathbone; Countess Russell; Earl Selborne; Bishop of Southwark, Dick Stokes; the Archdeacon of Westminster; and Rees Williams. ¹² ‘Saving Starving Europe’, NC, 26 Oct. 1945. ¹³ DBPO v, no. 57, Record of a Meeting, 25 Oct. 1945, 273–8. Cf. Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/SEN/1, Verbatim record of 13 September 1945 Church delegation; Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 414, cols. 241, 247–8, 366–70 (10 Oct. 1945), 1816 (22 Oct. 1945), 2009 (24 Oct. 1945). ¹⁴ Russell RA1/1, Gollancz to Russell, 31 Oct. 1945; Beveridge papers, Box 93 II b 45 pt. iii, Beveridge to J. Morrison, 5 Nov. 1945. ¹⁵ Hansard, HC (series 5), vol. 414, cols. 2351–454 (26 Oct. 1945). ¹⁶ See any regional or national daily for 27 Oct. 1945, and Sunday national on 28 Oct. 1945.

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not only following the tradition of parliamentary bipartisanship on foreign affairs, they were also echoing the broad consensus of informed opinion on this issue which had developed outside of Parliament since the beginning of September 1945. Moral-idealistic arguments for taking action, informed by Christian, liberal humanist or socialist notions of a brotherhood of man, were well-represented on both sides of the House, and invariably included an appeal not only to individual Christian or socialist duty—humanity for humanity’s sake—but also to national honour. Had Britain sacrificed so much in war in order to ensure that the principles of justice, decency and humanity prevailed, only to see this squandered in peace? Who else but Britain, by showing vision and courage, could provide the moral leadership—a ‘beacon of light’—to Europe emerging from the darkness of Nazi occupation. Practical politics also demanded that the victors retain the moral high-ground. How could the new legal standards of international morality and justice underpinning the trials of Nazi war criminals command any authority unless universally observed by the victors as well?¹⁷ Even those who detested the Germans and would otherwise have been glad to see them rot could join in the call for resolute action on the grounds of enlightened self-interest. To cries of ‘shame’ from Labour members, the Tory MP for Thanet, Edward Carson, struck the ‘only one jarring note’ in the entire debate, professing ‘not [to] care two rows of pins what happen[ed] to the German people, men, women and children’.¹⁸ He had nevertheless put his name to the motion paper: I do care from another point of view [ . . . ] We do care for our own troops in Germany now and we do care for the Allied countries who fought with us during the war. If this mass deportation and this mass starvation in Germany should lead to disease, an epidemic may start in the East of Europe and spread like wildfire to the West, to Berlin and further westwards, and may affect our troops.¹⁹

And why should it stop at the Rhine? That the Channel was no barrier to disease, which ‘knew no frontiers’, ‘needed no passport’ and was potentially more destructive than the atom bomb, was almost a platitude by ¹⁷ Questions raised in ‘On Trial’, Observer, 21 Oct. 1945; ‘War Crimes and International Law’, Fortnightly, 164 (Oct. 1945), 233. ¹⁸ See ‘Our Rations Take Priority’, NC, 27 Oct. 1945; N. Newsome, ‘Money and Misery Agitate MPs’, News of the World, 28 Oct. 1945. ¹⁹ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 414, cols. 2423–4 (26 Oct. 1945).

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this time.²⁰ It pointed to the common denominator in dealing with the crisis in central Europe: national self-interest not sentimentality towards Germans demanded that action be taken. Even before the 26 October debate, Gollancz was already thinking ahead to the next stage of the campaign: a mass meeting in the Albert Hall which would express its ‘abhorrence’ at the expulsions and appeal to the Soviets to use their influence on the Czechs and Poles to stop them. ‘It is just possible’, Gollancz told the Archbishop of Canterbury, who he invited to chair the meeting, ‘that, coming as a climax to the other activities [ . . . ] in particular the debate in the House of Commons, such a meeting might be decisive, and thus prevent [ . . . ] the greatest calamity in European history—the death by starvation of many millions [and] the poisoning of international relations for many decades.’²¹ Preparations for this rally on ‘Starvation in Europe’ were made against a background of incessant rumours about a tidal wave of refugees breaking into the British zone and the sense that the British authorities in Germany had lost control of the situation on the ground. The ‘Expulsion Scare’, as The Economist christened the hysteria which gripped Fleet Street between 4 and 6 November over the rumoured eviction of hundreds of thousands of German refugees from the Soviet into the British zone, had its origins in the confusion surrounding a radio announcement.²² On 2 November, Soviet-controlled Berlin Radio broadcast an order stating that all Germans who had moved to Brandenburg province from western Germany since 1 September 1939 should leave by 5 November 1945.²³ The British-controlled German-language paper Der Berliner published the announcement and the BBC broadcast the gist of the order in the morning news on 3 November.²⁴ The head of the British PWDP Division then apparently ‘panicked’ and issued a statement at a press conference the same day confirming the contents of the announcement and warning of the dire consequences that a ‘swamping’ of the British zone would bring. ²⁰ The 1918–19 influenza pandemic which killed more civilians worldwide in four months of peace than combatants in four years of war was only a generation away. See R. Collier, The Plague of the Spanish Lady (1974), 305–6. ²¹ Fisher ix, fo. 177, Gollancz to Fisher, 17 Oct. 1945. ²² ‘Homes for Displaced Germans’, The Economist, 10 Nov. 1945. ²³ FO371/46815, C7978/95/18, Bercomb to Troopers, 4 Nov. 1945. ²⁴ BBC WAC, HNB 143, HS, 3 Nov. 1945, 7 a.m. and 8 a.m.; LP, 3 Nov. 1945, 9 a.m.

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Several Sunday papers covered the story on 4 November.²⁵ The next morning—5 November—every Fleet Street paper, with the exception of The Times and the Daily Worker, splashed the story based on a report from a British United Press correspondent on its front page beneath a suitably sensationalist headline.²⁶ The order now apparently referred to the whole of the Russian zone, not just Brandenburg province. There was talk of an ‘invasion’ within forty-eight hours of anywhere between 500,000 to a million ‘homeless and hungry’ German refugees and ‘Wehrmacht cripples’, who were lying in wait in woods, paths and ditches, in some areas in a concentration of five to six miles deep, without shelter or food, ready to make a break for the zonal frontier. Some were already crossing over. As 5 November drew to a close, however, the evening papers and the BBC were already reporting that there had been a ‘misunderstanding’ over the most recent expulsion rumour.²⁷ On 6 November, the entire British morning press led with the news that the Soviet order had been withdrawn following forty-eight hours of ‘non-stop’ British representations.²⁸ By midday, the BBC was reporting that the matter had been cleared up.²⁹ ‘Nearly the whole press here [has] made a tremendous hullabaloo about the alleged expulsion order’, the editor of the Daily Worker, Bill Rust, informed his correspondent in Germany, Ivor Montagu, ‘although today they are piping down and realising that they have been sold a pup’.³⁰ The Russians issued a statement claiming that the order had referred only to non-Germans who had been resident in western Germany before the outbreak of the ²⁵ ‘1,000,000 Expelled from Russian Zone’, Observer, 4 Nov. 1945; ‘Russia Dumps 200,000 Germans in British Zone’, People, 4 Nov. 1945; ‘New Refugee Bombshell’, Sunday Chronicle, 4 Nov. 1945; ‘200,000 more Germans Expelled by Russia’, Sunday Express, 4 Nov. 1945; ‘200,000 Germans on the Move’, Sunday Graphic, 4 Nov. 1945; ‘Russia Tells 200,000 to Pack Up and Move’, Sunday Pictorial, 4 Nov. 1945. ²⁶ Main front-page stories in the Daily Express, Daily Herald, News Chronicle, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch and Daily Telegraph for 5 Nov. 1945. Also ‘New Flood of Refugees’, MG, 5 Nov. 1945; ‘New ‘‘Invasion’’ of British Zone Threatened’, Scotsman, 5 Nov. 1945. ²⁷ ‘Refugees’, Star, 5 Nov. 1945; ‘Hungry Refugees’, Evening News, 5 Nov. 1945; BBC WAC, HNB 143, HS, 5 Nov. 1945, 9, 10, 11, 11.50 p.m. ²⁸ Main front-page story in Birmingham Post, Daily Express, Daily Herald, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch, Daily Telegraph, Daily Worker, News Chronicle and Yorkshire Post for 6 Nov. 1945. Also ‘ ‘‘Standstill Order’’ ’, Glasgow Herald, 6 Nov. 1945; ‘Refugees in Russian Zone’, MG, 6 Nov. 1945; ‘Germans in Russian Zone’, Scotsman, 6 Nov. 1945; ‘Orderly Evacuation’, The Times, 6 Nov. 1945. ²⁹ BBC WAC, HNB 143, LP, 6 Nov. 1945, 12.30 p.m. ³⁰ MLHA, Communist Party (CP) archive, CP/IND/MONT/10/5, Rust to Montagu, 6 Nov. 1945.

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war; in effect, an infinitesimal number of DPs, who, moreover, would not have to leave immediately. The misunderstanding had apparently arisen from a ‘garbled translation’ and the director of the Refugee Administration for the Soviet zone was quoted as saying that there was ‘not the slightest intention’ of expelling large number of Germans then or in the future.³¹ It was never resolved conclusively whether the affair was the result of a genuine misunderstanding or whether the Soviets’ bluff had been called. ‘[The] facts of the whole thing are comic and rather tragic’, Montagu wrote once the affair had died down. ‘[The] British officer responsible for [the] whole scare [ . . . ] to this day [ . . . ] hasn’t the least idea of the real facts or what he really did.’³² For Norman MacDonald of the BBC, the scare was more than just a ‘storm in a tea-cup’; it was indicative of mutual distrust. The British authorities had jumped too hastily to negative conclusions about Soviet motives and intentions; the Soviets had encouraged the misunderstanding ‘by continuing to surround their zone of Germany with an iron curtain of censorship’.³³ The Economist also considered ‘the incident [ . . . ] hardly [ . . . ] worth mentioning if it were not a grotesque interlude in a very serious matter’, namely the continuing expulsions from the east and ‘how to deal with the surplus population [ . . . ] crammed into Germany’.³⁴ In the short-term, the scare seemed to underline how seriously the situation in Germany was deteriorating and that the British authorities were struggling to ‘keep up with events’. The government’s handling of the issue, meanwhile, did little to inspire confidence and allay these fears. A debate on the adjournment which, by coincidence, took place on the evening of the ‘Expulsion Scare’, ended in near humiliation for the minister responsible. The motion, tabled by Stokes, referred to, of all things, an earlier and still unresolved expulsion rumour which stated that the Soviets had agreed to the immediate removal of 4.5 million Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.³⁵ In contrast to the ‘eloquence and sincerity’ of the speeches from the back-benches during a two-hour ³¹ ‘Refugee Director’s Statement’, The Times, 6 Nov. 1945. ³² CP/IND/MONT/10/5, Montagu to Rust, 10 Nov. 1945. ³³ BBC WAC, HNB 143, LP, 6 Nov. 1945, 12.30 p.m.; HS, 6 Nov. 1945, 1, 6, 7, 9 p.m. ³⁴ ‘Homes for Displaced Germans’, The Economist, 10 Nov. 1945. ³⁵ Hansard, HC (series 5), vol. 415, cols. 986–91, 1013–1018 (5 Nov. 1945); cf. vol. 414, col. 2009 (24 Oct. 1945).

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debate which was ‘impassioned’, ‘sad and moving’ and ‘as sincere [ . . . ] as any held [ . . . ] for a long time’, the performance of Hector McNeil, the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was shambolic.³⁶ Arriving without forewarning of the debate, McNeil had to ask the House’s forgiveness for being so ill-prepared. Speaking without a brief, he only added more layers of obfuscation. ‘I have explained [ . . . ] how confused is the situation. I am sure no one [ . . . ] would expect to us to have reliable and accurate reports of the situation,’ McNeil explained. ‘Indeed, if we could have reliable and accurate reports, the situation would not exist.’³⁷ For organizers of SEN outside of parliament, these refugee rumours and scares underlined how much was riding on the Albert Hall meeting. ‘It is not too much to say that the presence of each additional person may mean the saving of an additional life’, a mass circular for the meeting stated. ‘The fate of Europe may be decided this winter: do please make every effort to attend, so that from perhaps the most important meeting ever held in London the voice of British public opinion may ring throughout the world’.³⁸ On the evening of 26 November the Albert Hall was packed, as were two overflow meetings a half-mile away at Holy Trinity, Brompton. An enthusiastic audience passed the same five-point resolution as at the Conway Hall meeting. It ‘pledge[d] wholehearted support to His Majesty’s Government in all its efforts to concert policy with other Powers for checking the continued mass expulsions of Germans from their homes in the East, by which the peril [of starvation and disease] is being so gravely aggravated’.³⁹ The ten speakers outlined a range of schemes for ‘saving’ Europe from voluntary ration cuts to sponsoring German children.⁴⁰ Dick Stokes spoke of the German refugees as ‘a crawling Belsen’ and called for representations to the Russian, Polish ³⁶ D. Walker-Smith, ‘Background to Politics’, Sunday Express, 11 Nov. 1945; ‘Britain’s Sacrifice is Helping Refugees’, DE, 6 Nov. 1945; A. Forbes, ‘Behind the Political Scene’, Sunday Dispatch, 11 Nov. 1945; D. Walker-Smith, ‘Background to Politics’, Sunday Express, 11 Nov. 1945; ‘Impressions of Parliament’, Punch, 14 Nov. 1945; BBC WAC, HNB 142, HS, 27 Oct. 1945, 7 a.m. ³⁷ Hansard, HC (series 5), vol. 415, col. 1013–18 (5 Nov. 1945). ³⁸ Griffin GR1/27b, Gollancz circular, 30 Oct. 1945. ³⁹ Liverpool University, Rathbone papers, RP/XIV/3/84, Resolution [of Albert Hall meeting]. ⁴⁰ The Archbishop of York (Cyril Garbett) chaired the meeting. The other speakers were: Gollancz; Salter; Rathbone; Rees-Williams; Foot; Boothby; Clement Davies, Liberal MP and leader; and Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Champion de Crespigny. For a brief report on the meeting, see ‘Mass Meeting Urge Aid for Europe Now’, NC, 27 Nov. 1945; BBC WAC, HNB145, HS, 27 Nov. 1945, 7 a.m.

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and Czechoslovak governments to stop all expulsions until at least the following summer.⁴¹ Gollancz rounded off the meeting and ‘left his audience in no doubt’, his biographer points out, ‘that they were participating in a moral crusade’.⁴² The location of the overflow meeting—the nave and crypt of a church—was therefore apt. As Stokes later recalled: ‘When I got to the [Holy Trinity] Church Bob Boothby was in the pulpit talking away in his enormous and beautiful voice and all that was required to make him a Bishop was a cassock and surplice! He looked as if he had been there all his life.’⁴³ The rally was the climax of the first stage of a longer-term SEN campaign. A ‘travelling circus’ of Albert Hall speakers performed at follow-up meetings all around the country.⁴⁴ In January 1946, a Memorial signed by two thousand ‘distinguished men and women’ headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury was submitted to the Prime Minister, urging the government not to raise general rations in the country while there was still the threat of famine on the Continent.⁴⁵ Throughout 1946, SEN lobbied for the adoption of its eight-point programme of European relief and reconstruction, and in December 1946, the British government finally agreed to the most symbolic demand of all—the lifting of restrictions on sending food parcels abroad.⁴⁶ Between 1946 and 1948, 35,000 SEN parcels were sent to the Continent, half of them to Germany, each possessing a ‘spiritual and psychological importance [ . . . ] far greater than their caloric value’, according to SEN’s secretary.⁴⁷ SEN also campaigned energetically for the repatriation of POWs held back in Britain for labour.⁴⁸ Absent from subsequent SEN agendas and resolutions, however, was the very issue which had triggered the SEN campaign in the first place and had been its principal demand in all the resolutions to date. The expulsion of the Germans and the German refugee crisis disappeared from the SEN agenda completely. Moreover, there was also hardly any discussion of these issues once Parliament reconvened after the Christmas recess, nor was there much mention of them in the press. What had exercised a ⁴¹ Stokes papers, RRS/2, Albert Hall, 26 Nov. 1945. ⁴² Edwards, Victor Gollancz, 417. ⁴³ RRS/18, [Note on] ‘Save Europe Now’ [1950]. ⁴⁴ Russell RA1/1, Gollancz to Lady Russell, 29 Nov. 1945. ⁴⁵ Russell RA1/2, Memorial to the PM presented on 3 Jan. 1946. ⁴⁶ For the 1946 SEN campaign, see PRO PREM 8/220; also Peggy Duff, Left, Left, Left: A Personal Account of Six Protest Campaigns, 1945–65 (1971), 17–20. ⁴⁷ Save Europe Now, 1945–1948: Three Years’ Work (1948), 5. ⁴⁸ Duff, Left, 163.

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sizeable section of public and published opinion for more than three months, and which had been the original catalyst for agitation over conditions in central Europe, disappeared from the political landscape as quickly as it had appeared. It would seem that at the very point that the campaign against the expulsions and the refugee crisis reached its peak, it disintegrated. How did this occur? ‘There is nothing so depressing’, Gollancz once told a veteran of one of his many campaigns, ‘as a movement which has attained its aims.’⁴⁹ As far as the expulsions and the German refugee crisis were concerned, it seemed that SEN’s demands had largely been met by December 1945. Speaking to the Commons on 23 November 1945, Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, for once had positive news for MPs on ‘the vexed problem of the transfer of German populations’, an issue which had ‘agitated this House and country’. Although Bevin did not want to speak ‘with any cheerfulness of what is one of the most desperate problems in Europe’, he felt ‘justified in holding out some hope [ . . . ] that our efforts have had some success’. Expulsions had ‘diminished considerably in volume’. Moreover, ‘real progress’ had also been made at an inter-state level in the Allied Control Council for Germany, where on 20 November 1945, representatives of the occupying powers had finally approved a plan for organizing the distribution and reception of 6.5 million Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia over the next nine months. Bevin told MPs that he was ‘hopeful’ that when the westward movement of Germans resumed as the result of this agreement they would ‘proceed in the orderly and humane fashion designed at Potsdam’.⁵⁰ Signs elsewhere that the situation on the ground was improving also contributed to the perception that progress was being made. Improvements in the British zone, particularly in Berlin, lessened the sense of crisis that had been so acute over the previous two months. By December 1945, after concerted efforts were made to clear the backlog of refugees, improve temporary facilities and enforce the cordon around the city more effectively, the British sector of Berlin to all intents and purposes no longer had a refugee problem.⁵¹ By the end of the year, earlier predictions of mass epidemics had come to be seen as grossly inflated.⁵² The British public, however, had been so well-drilled, partly ⁴⁹ Duff, Left, 20. ⁵⁰ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 416, col. 763–4 (23 Nov. 1945). ⁵¹ FO1012/93, Mil. Gov. Berlin: Monthly Reports, Nov. 1945, Dec. 1945. ⁵² British Medical Journal, 8 Dec. 1945, cited in British Red Cross Society Quarterly Review, 33 (Apr. 1946), 104.

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by the British authorities in Germany, to expect a dark and unrelenting picture that it took time for this realization to trickle through. ‘I feel that some of the reports and stories of breakdown and absolute starvation, which are being used to arouse public opinion in England, do not allow for a certain improvement’, warned a senior Quaker member after a visit to Germany.⁵³ Once the winter turned out to be mercifully mild and the mass deaths from starvation, disease and exposure did not occur, there was predictably a backlash. ‘One remembers the prophecies of last autumn that thousands, possibly millions of Germans would now be dead from hunger. They aren’t. Don’t believe any tales of mass misery among the Germans,’ wrote Edwin Tetlow in the Daily Mail, a paper which had done its fair share of prophesizing catastrophe.⁵⁴ Crucially for the direction that the SEN was to take, Gollancz himself also perceived the situation as having improved at least as far as expulsions were concerned. Prior to the Albert Hall meeting, Gollancz had rushed out a pamphlet containing photographs of emaciated German expellee children in Berlin in support of an appeal to the British public not to accept increased rations over the Christmas period.⁵⁵ It was a typical piece of in-your-face Gollancz publicity. It was withdrawn, however, after the New Year. ‘I am inclined to think it a mistake to sell Is It Nothing to You?’, Gollancz wrote in January 1946. ‘The photographs were of children deported from their homes in the East, and things have improved in that direction.’⁵⁶ Similarly, Lady Russell, who convened a SEN meeting in Cambridge in February 1946 dropped the paragraph on the expulsions from the resolution, having assumed that ‘it would not come up as these expulsions are said to be now carried out in accordance with the Potsdam agreement’.⁵⁷ Despite the fact that the influx of ‘expellees’ from Poland in 1946 had a decidedly adverse effect on the food, housing, public health and economic situation in the British zone, SEN did not exploit this obvious connection and call for a slowing down or suspension of further movements of population.⁵⁸ Although Gollancz continued to make references to the expulsion of ⁵³ Friends Library, RS/1992/70/Germany: General Policy and Misc. 1944–46, Report from W. Hughes, 5 Dec. 1945. ⁵⁴ E. Tetlow, ‘Rations are small, but eyes are bright’, Daily Mail, 15 Feb. 1946. ⁵⁵ V. Gollancz, Is it Nothing to You? (1945). ⁵⁶ Russell RA1/2, Gollancz to Miss Hall, 29 Jan. 1946. ⁵⁷ Russell RA1/2, [Note by Lady Russell for Cambridge SEN meeting on] Albert Hall Resolution [Feb. 1946]. ⁵⁸ See, for example, Russell RA1/1, Note of Private Conference at Conway Hall on 13 Mar. and of [SEN] Executive Meeting on 19 Mar. [1946].

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Germans in his own publications, these related to the situation as it had existed in 1945, not to what was happening at the time of writing in 1946 and 1947.⁵⁹ Once the perception had taken hold that the German populations of Czechoslovakia and Poland were being dealt with in accordance with the Potsdam decisions—in other words, that, in the first instance, the expulsions were suspended, and then when the movement of Germans resumed it was being carried out in an ‘orderly and humane manner’—there was nothing left to campaign about on this specific issue. Critics of the expulsions had never demanded that the Potsdam decision be reversed. No one had openly called for the abandonment of the principle of population transfer which the conference had endorsed. On the contrary, the main criticism was that Article 12 of the Potsdam Protocol was not being enforced stringently enough. What was found to be at fault was the method not the principle at stake. As Bell himself recognized, most thought population transfers ‘justifiable’ as long as they were ‘humane, and to the utmost possible extent free from hardship’.⁶⁰ The Archbishop of Canterbury was one of those happy to accept the principle of population transfer. ‘I would not go so far as to say that no German should under any conditions be deported from Czechoslovakia, or [ . . . ] from Poland,’ he told the Convocation of Canterbury in October 1945: One is bound to admit that there is sometimes a case for re-ordering of population [ . . . ] We can all contemplate a situation where the removal of a hostile minority might in the end be for the good [ . . . ] of all the peoples concerned. But there is nobody here who would not regard with utmost horror the way in which and the scale on which these deportations have been made, without the slightest attempt to see that they are made in accordance with the natural instincts of humanity.⁶¹

Such sentiments fully accorded with the broad political consensus on population transfer that had developed since before the Second World War: the difference of emphasis, not of principle discussed in ⁵⁹ See Our Threatened Values, Gollancz’s cri de couer, published in summer 1946, esp. 41–5, 95–106; also a 132-page account published in Jan. 1947 of his six-week long visit to the British zone (Oct.–Nov. 1946), in which expellees from Poland are mentioned briefly; In Darkest Germany (1947), 55–7, 76–7, 106. Cf. his Germany Revisited (1947), 11–13. ⁶⁰ Bell lvii, fo. 82, Bell to Maier-Hultschin, 31 Jan. 1946. ⁶¹ Chronicle of Convocation: October 10, 11 and 12 1945, 167. See his similar comments in Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 413, col. 63 (16 Aug. 1945).

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Chapter 2. When this is seen in terms of the concrete demands of those agitating over conditions in central Europe, their aims emerge as very limited indeed. Demanding a population transfer as opposed to a precipitous expulsion was entirely consistent with the position of the British government and of its diplomacy to date. Without Gollancz’s commitment, energy and influence, attempts at reviving the earlier spirit of protest against the continuing removal of German populations from east-central Europe met with little response, even from those who had previously championed the cause. Dick Stokes, who continued to wage a one man campaign in the Commons throughout 1946, was an exception;⁶² as was George Bell, who tried unsuccessfully to interest the Lords in a motion on the subject in January 1946,⁶³ an experience which left him ‘more and more disturbed about the decline in the public conscience’.⁶⁴ More marginal figures took up the cause instead. Inspired by the example of Emily Hobhouse’s agitation against conditions in Transvaal concentration camps during the Second Boer War, Kurt Hahn—German-born educationalist and headmaster of Gordonstoun School—had been trying since September 1945 to set up a ‘small and influential’ committee of enquiry into conditions among the German populations of east-central Europe.⁶⁵ Six months on and he was still unable to gain any support for the initiative: the Archbishop of Canterbury doubted ‘what an additional committee in this country would do’,⁶⁶ given that ‘so much has been said already ’;⁶⁷ even Bell admitted ‘we should [not] get public attention just now for the deportations’, and was ‘a little inclined to think that at the present moment, in view of the food crisis, we had better give ⁶² For Stokes’s activity in the Commons, see Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 418, cols. 858–9 (30 Jan. 1946); vol. 420, cols. 499–500 (7 Mar. 1946); vol. 422, cols. 177–9 (1 May 1946), col. 1045 (8 May 1946); vol. 426, cols. 604–5 (29 Jul. 1946); vol. 428, cols. 614–15 (30 Oct. 1946); vol. 432, cols. 1831–2 (5 Feb. 1947). Also FO371/55780, C6234/1115/18, Stokes to McNeil, 31 May 1946, encl. memo. on Visit to Camps in Germany, 6–14 Apr. 1946. See Chapter 7 for Stokes’s agitation over ‘slave camps’ in Czechoslovakia. ⁶³ Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 139, cols. 68–90 (30 Jan. 1946). In preparing for his speech, Bell was greatly assisted by Wenzel Jaksch. See Bell lvii, fo. 53, Bell to Voigt, 23 Jan. 1946; fo. 55, Jaksch to Bell, 24 Jan. 1946; fo. 81, Bell to Jaksch, 31 Jan. 1946. ⁶⁴ Bell ccix, fo. 148, Bell to Hahn, 31 Jan. 1946. ⁶⁵ Bell ccix, fo. 138, Hahn to Bell, 9 Sep. 1945; Fisher ix, fos 256–7, Garbett to Fisher, 24 Dec. 1945; Bell lvii, fo. 96, Hahn to Bell, 9 Mar. 1946; Keele University, Lindsay papers, [Hahn] to ‘Sir Joseph’, 13 Jan. 1946. ⁶⁶ Fisher ix, fo. 258, Fisher to Garbett, 1 Jan. 1946. ⁶⁷ Bell lvii, fo. 72, Fisher to Bell, 28 Feb. 1946.

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the food question the first place’.⁶⁸ It was the worsening food crisis, not the deportation of Germans and the refugee problem—both of which were perceived as having improved—that dominated the debate over Germany throughout 1946.⁶⁹ Widespread concern about conditions in central Europe had brought together those with wildly divergent views who were attracted to the issue for quite different reasons. Irrespective then of how conditions on the ground were perceived as having improved, this coalition of interests had a limited shelf life as it was beset by so many irreconcilable political contradictions. The very strength of the public response to this issue, therefore, became its weakness. The Soviet factor was a case in point. Although no one seemed to doubt that the Soviets were the key to the problem, there seemed to be considerably less agreement about how best to approach them. For the political Right and Roman Catholics, the expulsions and the refugee crisis underlined the Soviet Union’s innate barbarity and inherent evil, as well as the short-sightedness of British wartime policy towards the ‘rightful’ Polish government-in-exile.⁷⁰ Left-wingers, on the other hand, had no intention of allowing this issue to be hijacked by the Right as a pretext for a showdown with the Soviet Union. Many on the Left were wary of demonizing Moscow, despite already experiencing a form of ‘spiritual agony’ in the light of developments in eastern Europe which would eventually transform Labour’s foreign policy outlook.⁷¹ Most British socialists were suitably appalled by Soviet actions, leaving it to the Communists to whitewash Moscow, play down the scale of the crisis and pour scorn on bourgeois sentimentalists and ‘the flood of humanitarian propaganda’.⁷² However, British socialists saw it as their duty not just to condemn but also to explain in terms of fear and insecurity the Soviet Union’s unilateralism in eastern Europe and ⁶⁸ Bell lvii, fo. 95, Bell to Hahn, 6 Mar. 1946. ⁶⁹ See Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 419, cols. 547–664 (14 Feb. 1946); vol. 422, cols. 1350–447 (10 May 1946); vol. 423, cols. 1490–578 (31 May 1946); vol. 424, cols. 2168–284 (3 Jul. 1946); vol. 426, cols. 525–640 (29 Jul. 1946), vol. 432, cols. 1775–916 (5 Feb. 1947); vol. 433, cols. 2431–525 (28 Feb. 1947). ⁷⁰ See ‘The Deportations’, Tablet, 3 Nov. 1945; ‘Notes and Comments’, Universe, 19 Oct. 1945; Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/SEN/1/8, Rose to Gollancz, 29 Sep. 1945. ⁷¹ J. Schneer, Labour’s Conscience: The Labour Left 1945–51 (Boston, 1988), 30–42. ⁷² See reports by Ivor Montagu in Daily Worker, 9, 10, 11, 24 Oct. 1945; and ‘Mass Deportations’, The Times, 11 Nov. 1945, his letter complaining about ‘coloured and exaggerated accounts [ . . . ] by certain irresponsibles’. See also ‘Notes of the Month’, Labour Monthly, Dec. 1945, 57.

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its determination, as well as that of its allies, to clear eastern Europe of its German population.⁷³ Gollancz, too, was yet to make the leap in public, whatever his private thoughts on the Soviet Union. When confronted with the potentially embarrassing prospect of having the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was emerging as a vociferous critic of the Soviets, chair SEN’s inaugural meeting at Conway Hall, Gollancz baulked at taking the risk.⁷⁴ In a letter intended for publication before the meeting, Russell called on British socialists to make up their minds about the Soviet Union in the light of recent developments in eastern Europe, expulsions included. He equated the Left’s attitude with the Right’s appeasement of Nazi Germany and argued for ‘speaking out’ now while the situation was still ‘fluid’.⁷⁵ For Gollancz, however, the health of the movement was just as, if not more, important than the message. Fearing that Russell’s presence would give the meeting the air of an ‘anti-Bolshevik crusade’ and wreck SEN at the outset, Russell was discreetly side-lined, but not before Gollancz had taken the step of redrafting Russell’s original letter, omitting the more bellicose references and inserting woolly phrases on ‘friendship’ with the Soviet Union.⁷⁶ The Soviet factor created a ‘horrible dilemma’, as Gollancz tried to explain: ‘If we fail to protest against Soviet goings-on a situation will arise when somebody or other will eventually say ‘‘It must stop’’ and then God help us. On the other hand, given the Russian mentality, protesting may create a war atmosphere.’⁷⁷ The solution to this ‘horrible dilemma’ was, in effect, to turn on the smaller states of east-central Europe and through them to criticize the Soviet Union by proxy. But the British were consequently open to charges of hypocrisy and grandstanding as well as to bitter recriminations from Poles and Czechs about pro-German sentimentality. ‘I don’t understand your people’, the later Nobel Laureate, Czesław Miłosz told a British visitor to Poland in late 1945. ‘You have hearts, yes, but do you think with them?’⁷⁸ ‘What moral right have you to defend the Germans?’, asked another Pole, ⁷³ See Crossman in Hansard, HC (series 5), vol. 415, cols. 996–7 (5 Nov. 1945); also ‘The Atom and the Cattle Truck’, Tribune, 2 Nov. 1945. ⁷⁴ R. Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (1975), 517–30. ⁷⁵ Gollancz papers, MSS.157/3/SEN/1/10, Russell to NSN, 28 Sep. 1945. ⁷⁶ For correspondence between Gollancz and Lady Russell on this subject, see MSS.157/3/SEN/1/9–16. See also New Statesman Archive, Box 4/R, Martin to Russell, 1 Oct. 1945; Russell’s outspoken letters to The Times, 23 and 31 Oct. 1945; and Hansard, HL (series 5) vol. 138, cols. 376–80 (5 Dec. 1945). ⁷⁷ MSS.157/3/SEN/1/11, Gollancz to Russell, 1 Oct. 1945. ⁷⁸ Quoted in Jameson, Autobiography ii (1970), 161.

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Juljan Hochfeld, in ‘An Open Letter’ to the Labour Party published in May 1946: Are you really feeling sorry for the Germans, or is it just a question of common ordinary interest? [ . . . ] I know you don’t like horror stories of German brutalities, but do understand that we have lived through and suffered from it. Does not your imagination have anything to say when you think that the Germans have tortured well over ten percent of Polish citizens to death in the most horrible manner? [ . . . ] We have only contempt for [Germans], and we would like to rid ourselves of them as quickly as possible [ . . . ] Not hatred of the Germans, but all too bitter experience, which the western democracies have not had to the extent that Poland and Russia have [ . . . ] Who has any right to condemn us for our attitude? Where is the one ‘without sin’, who would do otherwise in our situation? And isn’t ‘moral indignation’ against us [ . . . ] one more instance of that common hypocrisy, which conceals interests which are [ . . . ] of a somewhat short-sighted nature? Isn’t this the essence of the various charges made against us in connection with the Germans?⁷⁹

These critiques are not only indicative of how British reactions to the expulsions were interpreted in east-central Europe, but also highlight the ‘psychological gap’ separating Britain from the Continent which arose from different experiences of war and occupation. As the writer and historian Elizabeth Wiskemann tried to explain to a British audience in November 1945: Six years of war have otherwise widened the psychological distance between Britain and the rest of Europe. This is inevitable [ . . . ] The Continent today, because Britain was never occupied by the Nazis, imagines that British daily life has hardly been affected by the war. And the British, for the very same reason, have still no conception of the cost, moral and physical, of a Nazi occupation [ . . . ] To see the Germans in Germany today will only mislead you because you can never believe how differently the same people behaved when they were the victors; you cannot grasp the depth of German duplicity without having in some way experienced it.⁸⁰

Conversely, the journalist Rennie Smith addressed a Czech audience on the similar need to appreciate and span this ‘psychological distance’: In Britain, we didn’t have a German Government clamped down on us for seven years. We didn’t have an absentee Government and another bogus one ⁷⁹ Ruskin College, Oxford, Middleton papers, MID/175, J. Hochfeld, ‘An Open Letter from a Polish Socialist to a Friend of the Labour Party’, May 1946. ⁸⁰ E. Wiskemann, ‘Eastern Europe and Western Diplomats’, Fortnightly, 164 (Nov. 1945), 310.

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on the spot for seven years. We didn’t have the job of getting rid of a German Government. These contrasts and profound differences between Czech and British experiences of the war period are worth dwelling on, because they do much to explain the deep differences which exist between our two peoples in the peace.⁸¹

Few in Britain, however, with the exception of a tiny minority who had been to postwar Poland or Czechoslovakia, at first fully grasped how determined the Poles and Czechs were to get rid of their German populations regardless of what the Great Powers thought or of the economic and political consequences. From across the Channel, it was difficult to appreciate how genuinely popular the expulsion of the Germans was in what were otherwise deeply divided countries, or to comprehend the bitterness with which these countries reacted to British criticism. These points escaped even the most astute of political commentators. One of the New Year predictions that George Orwell, a critic of the expulsions,⁸² made for Tribune was that the Czechs over the course of 1946 would acknowledge their mistakes and readmit some of the Germans already expelled.⁸³ From the vantage point of London this might have seemed an eminently sensible suggestion on economic grounds. What it displayed, however, was a complete lack of understanding of the Czech postwar mentality: a clear example of the ‘psychological gap’ separating Britain from the Continent. British critics of the expulsions never adequately explained how a moratorium on expulsions would in itself alleviate the problems facing the German populations remaining in Poland and Czechoslovakia or the refugees in the Soviet zone. For self-styled ‘realists’, who dismissed the idea that the British government had ‘some particular moral power’ which allowed it to do things other governments could not, the activities of those such as Gollancz and SEN had far more sinister implications, in that by engaging in Gladstonian ‘declamatory moral indignation’ they risked increasing the cruelty done to the victim by antagonizing the perpetrator.⁸⁴ Intent as they were on getting rid of their Germans, if prevented from doing so, the Poles and Czechs would make life so difficult that the Germans would come to see expulsion as a blessing. From this perspective, the call for a continued suspension of ⁸¹ Bodleian Library, Oxford, Rennie Smith papers, Ms. Eng. hist. c. 467, fos 33–54, ‘London Letter’, 10 Nov. 1945. ⁸² G. Orwell, ‘Revenge in Sour’, Tribune, 9 Nov. 1945. ⁸³ G. Orwell, ‘Old George’s Almanac’, Tribune, 28 Dec. 1945. ⁸⁴ See Winterton in Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 414, cols. 2370–1 (26 Oct. 1945).

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expulsions on humanitarian grounds was ultimately counter-productive. Conditions among those remaining were as bad, if not worse, than among those already expelled. Germans would be homeless and hungry wherever they were; at least in the western zones they could avoid deliberate mistreatment. Critics of the expulsions also never realized that they were pushing against an open door as far their own government was concerned. Once the seriousness of the refugee crisis in Berlin was finally grasped at the beginning of September 1945, the speed of the official response outstripped the public response. By mid-October 1945, when the public campaign was building steam, the British government had exhausted its diplomatic options and all but given up on making any further approaches to the expelling governments, concentrating instead on managing the refugee problem in the British zone. Subsequent appeals were therefore only asking the British government to do what it had already done. Organizationally, Gollancz might have been thinking ahead to the next stage but one, but tactically he was invariably one step behind. Irrespective of whether this was due to the rapidly changing shape of events on the ground, the time it took to organize a campaign on the lines of SEN or that Parliament was in recess until early October, it ultimately weakened the case of those agitating against the expulsions for it left them open to accusations that they were exaggerating the problem. The real significance of the public response to the expulsions and the German refugee crisis lay not in how successfully the behaviour of central Europeans had been modified but in how the issue impacted on the way the British perceived themselves. The expulsions and the German refugee crisis allowed the British to hold a mirror up to themselves and, on the whole, the British liked what they saw. What shines through accounts from this period is that the British felt good about the way the country had responded to the crisis in central Europe. An air almost of self-congratulation pervaded discussion of this issue. Bevin was cheered wildly when he told the Commons on 26 October that he wished other countries were having the same debate.⁸⁵ As a contributor to the BBC’s Week in Westminster remarked, the debate ‘made you feel proud of the assembly’.⁸⁶ The Daily Herald felt it ‘did honour to the ⁸⁵ ‘Our Rations Take Priority’, NC, 27 Oct.1945. ⁸⁶ BBC WAC, T50, Lord Brabazon of Tara, ‘The Week in Westminster’, HS, 27 Oct. 1945, 7.45–8 p.m.

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British nation’.⁸⁷ Gollancz and others connected with SEN often spoke about rousing the British public from its moral slumber. Theirs was, in part, a regenerative crusade. The German refugee crisis allowed the British to speak out on and reaffirm their commitment to ‘traditional British values’ and show that six years of war had not left the country morally browbeaten. Whether this had any appeal to foreigners or Britain’s allies was, in the final analysis, less important than any appeal it had domestically. One of the criticisms about Gollancz’s scheme for voluntary ration cuts launched at the same time as the protest against the expulsions was that it would benefit the senders spiritually more than it would the recipients materially. The same might be said of the protest against the expulsions. Voluntary rations cuts required at least some personal sacrifice, one reason why they proved to be unpopular; protesting against the expulsions, on the other hand, did not. ⁸⁷ ‘Europe’s Agony’, Daily Herald, 27 Oct. 1945.

7 ‘Useless Mouths’ Transfers from Czechoslovakia and Poland, 1946–1947

Public pressure over the expulsions and the German refugee crisis reached its peak in November 1945 and declined thereafter. As shown in Chapter 6, this was principally owing to the perception that the expelling governments were adhering to the Potsdam decisions and rested on a distinction—often implicit—being drawn between expulsion and transfer. Mass movements of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia, however, continued into 1946 even if public attention in Britain was not sustained at the level of 1945. Three million Germans from east-central Europe entered western Germany between January and December 1946. These were relatively well-organized movements of population regulated by bilateral agreements with minimum conditions and standard procedures set for the transportation and reception of refugees. In some respects, they came close to resembling the blueprints for mass population transfer sketched out during the war; in others, they seemed to fulfil many of the wartime doubts about the practicality of mass transfers. Even if the level of public scrutiny and debate in Britain was considerably less than the previous year, the events of 1945—cattle trucks, scenes on Berlin stations, ‘horror camps’ in Czechoslovakia—were never far in the background. This chapter looks at British assessments of the transfer of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia to the American zone and ‘Operation Swallow’, the transfer of 1.5 million Germans from Poland to the British zone, in the light of the public reaction of 1945, as well as earlier wartime debates on population transfer. It also examines some of the political and logistical complications arising from the ‘practice’ of population transfer. ***

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On a bombed-out site on Oxford Street in June 1946, John Hynd, the Minister for Germany, opened ‘Germany Under Control’, an exhibition on the British zone.¹ The organizers, the Control Office for Germany and Austria (COGA), the Whitehall department set up in October 1945 to oversee British zones of occupation, hoped it would enlighten the British public as to the ‘moral and physical reconstruction’ being undertaken by the British Element of the Control Commission in Germany. Visitors paid 6d for the pleasure of finding out in an entertaining but educational sort of way how wisely their taxes were being spent on keeping the British zone afloat and the former enemy from starvation. Wandering through the various displays of pictures, panoramas and models in the main exhibition hall, visitors would at some point come across the section on DPs and refugees. There they would find an interactive display made of wood, plaster and glass which tried to show as best as it could with the aid of a very simplified and brightly coloured contoured map how ‘The Allies Deal with the German Minority Problem’. With just a push of a button, silhouetted male and female figures under the glass representing German minorities in central and eastern Europe would light up together with the frontiers of 1939 and of Nazi-occupied Europe. After a short while, the lights would go out and the figures each representing 250,000 Germans would disappear. Concentric circles following the new German frontiers would then light up one by one, each circle closer and closer to the centre of occupied Germany. As the last circle lit up in the middle of Germany it illuminated silhouetted figures huddled together. In a rather artless sort of way ‘The Allies Deal with the German Minority Problem’ was trying to illustrate the essence of the problem the British authorities in Germany were facing: how to cram several million additional people into a reduced and already overcrowded space, house and feed them as well as make them economically productive and politically quiescent. A more accurate display would have resembled a pinball machine with lights going out then coming on again at unpredictable intervals and places or not relighting at all or not even going out for long periods in the first place, with figures in the uniform ¹ For this paragraph, see FO1052/312, fol. 12c, Control Exhibition: Refugee Policy Section, Attachment No. 1, undated; FO1039/671, ‘Germany Under Control’, undated; FO1052/312, fol. 45a, Maj. Jones, Refugee Section to Exec 1, 22 May 1946, encl. fol. 45b, Resume of German Refugee Situation, undated; FO946/1, Lt. Gen. Templer to Permanent Secretary, COGA, 27 Dec. 1945; FO946/1, Hynd to Attlee, 10 Apr. 1946; ‘Exhibition of Germany Under Control’, The Times, 7 Jun. 1946.

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of different nationalities gesticulating at each other in Berlin and with all the male silhouettes replaced by crouched and bent up elderly figures. Not something that would have inspired confidence in how the British authorities were ‘dealing’ with the German minority problem, but a more realistic reflection of the problems they were facing.

O U R M A N I N K A R LOV Y VA RY: T H E T R A N S F E R O F T H E G E R M A N S F RO M C Z E C H O S LOVA K I A , 1946 Although the transfer of the Sudeten Germans in 1946 was not, strictly speaking, a British affair, it remains an important factor in understanding British responses to the transfer of the Germans from east-central Europe more generally. In November 1945, when it was decided that the American zone would receive the bulk of Sudeten Germans, there was still every reason to believe this was an issue that would continue to arouse a lively interest in the British press and parliament, irrespective of what Britain’s specific commitments were. The fate of the German populations of Czechoslovakia and Poland had always been intertwined and comparisons continued to be made between how they were being dealt with. The transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia into the American zone soon became a benchmark against which parallel movements from Poland were evaluated. This section looks at how the transfer of the Sudeten Germans was perceived by British personnel and visitors in Czechoslovakia, especially in the light of the criticism of Czech actions in 1945. Some 300 Czech and foreign journalists gathered in Mariánské Láznˇe in western Bohemia on 25 January 1946 to watch the first transport of Sudeten Germans leave Czechoslovakia for the American zone in accordance with a bilateral agreement on population transfer.² In a highly partial account of the day written for the Central European Observer, the Agence Presse Français correspondent, Jean Danés, made much of the fuss being wasted on the Germans for the benefit of AngloAmerican sentimentalists. At one point, Danés spotted a sick-looking man standing conspicuously among a group of Germans. The man appeared ‘excited and indignant’. He had just cut in half a loaf of bread ² For what follows, see J. Danés, ‘What Three Hundred Journalists Saw’, CEO, 15 Mar. 1946, 89.

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from the train to make sure it was ‘not too stale’, only to discover to his great horror that it was white bread, a much sought-after commodity. ‘At the hotel they are making me eat black bread!’, the man cried out. This ‘thin and pale little man’ with such an interest in the welfare of Germans was the British Consul at Karlovy Vary. Soon after his arrival in Prague in June 1945, the British ambassador, Philip Nichols, had asked for ‘a political reporting officer’ in the border regions of northern Bohemia, which until the end of November 1945 was under Soviet occupation. Aware of the profound changes that the Czech borderlands were undergoing, as well as of his own ignorance of developments there, Nichols regarded the post as one of ‘great importance’, requiring someone of ‘political experience and impartial judgement’.³ This representative would not only act as Britain’s eyes and ears in the region, but would also allow Nichols to distance himself personally from the publicity surrounding the transfer of the Sudeten Germans. Mr. O. Bamborough,⁴ a non-diplomat with pre-war business links with Czechoslovakia, was chosen for the post. He replaced Harold Perkins in Plzeˇn in late October, relocating to Karlovy Vary the following month to open the new consulate.⁵ It became Bamborough’s ‘special function’ to see that the Czechs were carrying out their obligations regarding orderly and humane transfer;⁶ and given ‘the lively interest’ that the House of Commons was showing in the matter, Bamborough was told that the more possibilities he had to see the transfers the better.⁷ It was for this reason that Bamborough was in Mariánské Láznˇe on 24 January 1946, the day before Danés spotted him, looking over the train that would take the first contingent of 1,200 Sudeten Germans to the American zone.⁸ The train, which had just been passed by American inspectors, was comprised of forty goods wagons, each with a stove and fuel; one wagon for thirty people and their luggage. Each person was to be allowed to take 50 kilograms and rations for seven days. A reserve supply of food for a further three days was kept on the train in case of emergency. There were Red Cross facilities, as well as German nurses ³ FO371/47090, N8648/207/12, Nichols to Warner, 25 Jun. 1945; FO371/47089, N8289/207/12, Henderson minute, 10 Jul. 1945; FO369/3106, K15165/6686/212, Prague to FO, 23 Aug. 1945. ⁴ Bamborough’s forename is not given in any of the available records. ⁵ HS4/7, tel. 2113, Perkins to CD, 24 Oct. 1945. ⁶ FO371/55393, C4355/12/18, Nichols to Bevin, 15 Apr. 1946. ⁷ FO817/21, 416/41/45, Shuckburgh to Bamborough, 12 Dec. 1945. ⁸ For this paragraph, see FO371/55391, C1566/12/18, Bamborough to Prague, 26 Jan. 1946, Prague to FO, 31 Jan. 1946.

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on hand. Bamborough also toured a ‘transfer camp’ for the departing Germans finding it ‘clean and well-organised’. The general attitude among the Germans was one of ‘resignation’; among the younger generation there was a mood resembling that of ‘a large-scale pic-nic’. Asked by the camp commandant what he thought of the arrangements, Bamborough said it was better than he had anticipated. Czech officials, according to Bamborough, ‘went about their tasks without even an air of triumph at the turn the wheel of fate ha[d] taken’. Their conduct was ‘above reproach’ and the experience left a ‘deep impression’ on Bamborough. While it was obvious that the Czechs had made a special effort in order to impress the foreign observers, Bamborough was confident that in the coming months the Czechs would continue as they had begun. The experience convinced him that the Czechs would not fail to live up to their pledges on humane transfer.⁹ Under the ACC transfer plan of November 1945, the American zone had been allocated 1.75 million or 70 per cent of the Germans to be transferred from Czechoslovakia. as well as all of the 500,000 Swabians from Hungary. An agreement was signed in early January 1946 between US and Czech representatives in Berlin which set out the timetable and conditions for the transfer as well as where the responsibilities for the movement and reception of the transferred populations lay. The Americans insisted on quite stringent conditions for accepting Sudeten Germans into their zone. Although the transfer was scheduled to begin in late January 1946, in its initial stage it was, as Nichols pointed out, ‘little more than a token movement designed to satisfy Czechoslovak public opinion’.¹⁰ Had the transfer continued at that rate it would have taken nearly thirty years to complete. What Bamborough saw in Mariánské Láznˇe on 24–25 January 1946 was therefore only the tip of the iceberg. Over the next two months, as the number of transports increased, Bamborough toured the Karlovy Vary district as a roving inspector. Sometimes he was taken on ‘conducted tours’ by Czech officials; only with express permission was he allowed to visit internment camps for ‘political’ prisoners. However, he quickly obtained the confidence of local officials and was able to visit assembly centres and observe entrainment without giving prior notice, an arrangement which, as his ⁹ For additional press accounts, see ‘Shift of Sudeten Germans’, Christian Science Monitor, 31 Jan. 1946; ‘Transfer of Sudeten Germans’, The Times, 27 Jan. 1946. ¹⁰ FO371/55390, C1038/12/18, Prague to FO, 23 Jan. 1946, encl. summary of minutes of meeting between Czech and US representatives, 8–9 Jan. 1946; C551/12/18, Prague to FO, 14 Jan. 1946.

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employers noted, reflected to his credit.¹¹ Some Czech officials even encouraged him to make these unannounced visits. He might act on a tip-off from a Czech or a German source and investigate a camp if he suspected anything untoward. He was usually able to mingle with the inmates and listen to their complaints. The view from the Foreign Office was that he was an excellent appointment, despite, though one might suspect because, he was an ‘outside contract man’.¹² His reports were the primary source of information that the British Embassy in Prague had on the transfer from Czechoslovakia and with which they kept the Foreign Office abreast of developments. It was on Bamborough’s reports, therefore, that official assessments of the transfer from Czechoslovakia largely rested.¹³ By the beginning of April 1946 several trains were leaving the Karlovy Vary district every week and the transfer of the Sudeten Germans, according to Bamborough, was ‘continuing smoothly’.¹⁴ Bamborough was able to conclude in the first comprehensive summary of transfers from Czechoslovakia to date that he was satisfied that the Czech[s] [ . . . ] are performing their duties humanely and decently [ . . . ] Whatever excesses may have occurred during the first revolutionary days of the liberation, the conduct of the Czechs responsible for the transfer has been exemplary [ . . . ] This also applies to those camps for other categories of Germans, which I have visited [ . . . ] The Czechs regard the exodus as an historic event [ . . . ] and as an occasion for sober satisfaction; I have not heard a single gibe directed at the departing Germans. It would be idle to suggest that life in the Assembly centres resembles that in a holiday resort or that the train journeys involved in these are luxury trips, especially during the winter months. The rations supplied, however, are of good quality [ . . . ] The most conclusive proof that the Czechs are endeavouring to observe their Government’s instruction on the transfer of the Germans is to be found in the continued acceptance by the American authorities of trainload after trainload of Sudete [sic] Germans.¹⁵

The report was so positive and glowing that it could have been written by the Czech authorities themselves. That ‘a personal affection’ for the locals ¹¹ FO371/56007, N4827/96/12, Nichols to Bevin, 3 Apr. 1946. ¹² FO366/1981, XM7K/12/11, Henderson minute, 15 Apr. 1946. ¹³ FO371/55392, C2608/12/18, Bamborough to Prague, 18 Feb. 1946, 22 Feb. 1946; C3217/12/18, 25 Feb. 1946, 29 Feb. 1946; FO371/55393, C4175/12/18, 1 Apr. 1946; C4355/12/18, 6 Apr. 1946; FO371/55394, C5007/12/18, 19 Apr. 1946. ¹⁴ FO371/56007, N4827/96/12, Nichols to Bevin, 3 Apr. 1946. ¹⁵ FO371/55393, C4355/12/18, Memorandum on the Transfer of Sudete [sic] Germans from the Karlovy Vary Area to the American Zone of Germany during Feb. and Mar. 1946, 6 Apr. 1946.

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might have clouded Bamborough’s judgement crossed the minds of some members of the Foreign Office.¹⁶ Indeed, there were other signs that he might have ‘gone native’ in Karlovy Vary.¹⁷ Yet, before passing judgement on Bamborough’s reports, it is worth comparing them against the accounts of other British visitors who came to Czechoslovakia in 1946 in various capacities and witnessed the transfer of the Sudeten Germans either intentionally or by accident, some of whom did not necessarily have ‘a personal affection’ for the Czechs and instead were actively seeking to uncover systematic abuse by the Czechs of the German population. Reports by other British observers on the transfer of the Sudeten Germans were overwhelmingly positive. ‘We had all heard accounts of these transfers before we came’, reported the British All-Party Parliamentary Delegation to Czechoslovakia in July 1945 after inspecting a train-load of German transferees near Mariánské Láznˇe and making a ‘surprise visit’ to a transit camp: We have no doubt that in the early months [in 1945] there was much discomfort and suffering. Today we believe that the work is carried out humanely. The whole transaction is full of sadness, but looking back a little in time, we could not help comparing what we saw with the brutality imposed upon conquered peoples by the Nazis.¹⁸

‘The mechanics of camps and transportation are now above reproach’, added a member of the delegation on returning to Britain.¹⁹ Francesca Wilson, who was touring Czechoslovakia in late summer 1946 under UNRRA auspices, also visited a transit camp unannounced.²⁰ The camp in the Karlovy Vary district was ‘clean, adequately equipped and sanitary’, she wrote in a report published by the Manchester Guardian. ‘The disorders and brutalities of the first days are a thing of the past and are regretted by all good Czechs,’ Wilson wrote. ‘Now the transfer of population [ . . . ] is an orderly, efficient and humane operation.’²¹ The Picture Post also sent a photographer and reporter to the Karlovy Vary district that summer. They were free to go where they pleased and speak ¹⁶ FO371/55393, C4355/12/18, minute, 21 Apr. 1946; also FO371/55392, C2608/ 12/18, Franklin minute, 12 Mar. 1946. ¹⁷ See FO371/55393, C4175/12/18, Bamborough to Prague, 1 Apr. 1946. ¹⁸ FO371/56037, N12419/389/12, Report on Czechoslovakia by the British All-Party Parliamentary Delegation [Jul. 1946]. ¹⁹ K. Lindsay, ‘Czechoslovakia Now’, Spectator, 26 Jul. 1946. ²⁰ Wilson describes her work for UNRRA in Aftermath: France, Germany, Austria, 1945 and 1946 (1947). ²¹ F. Wilson, ‘Czechoslovakia’s Germans’, MG, 12 Sep. 1946.

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with whom they liked. They claimed that nothing was staged for their benefit. ‘A whole people is being deported. I went to see it happen. I will tell you what I saw,’ the reporter told readers of the Picture Post: And if it doesn’t quite square with what you imagined or what you’ve heard, then I can say it isn’t as I imagined or heard either [ . . . ] You have probably looked through the pictures before you started to read this: ‘They have missed something in these pictures. They have missed the heartbreak, the desolation that such a mass-expulsion must mean’. We were anxious not to miss such as feeling. We imagined it would be there. But we didn’t find it.

The whole operation ‘look[ed] more like the end of a village gardenparty than part of a great transfer of population’.²² Unlike these other visitors, Rhoda Dawson, an UNRRA welfare officer who accompanied Polish DPs being repatriated by train from western Germany, witnessed the transfer by chance during one of her interminable stops at some anonymous location in Czechoslovakia in August 1946: There appear to be German refugees on the train, with Czech guards [ . . . ] We couldn’t help feel sorry for the Germans, in such stern charge. Another German refugee train passed, and has backed on to ours, so now we are at the end of an enormous line of cars [ . . . ] The Czechs are very young, very stern with the Germans and armed to the teeth. Now it’s blowing up for rain. Czechoslovakia looks contented, friendly, clean, busy and smug.²³

Weeks later, her train stopped in Ústí in northern Bohemia for two nights to await the embarkation of Sudeten Germans for the onward journey. As she got off the train, Dawson saw men working on the roof, tearing off some of the old tar paper coverings and repairing them. ‘Severe as they are with their evacuees they do at least make the trains dry for them’, was her verdict on the treatment of the Sudeten Germans.²⁴ This might have made a fitting epitaph for the transfer of the Germans from Czechoslovakia were it not for the late arrival of another British visitor who, believing that his predecessors had been duped, had no intention of having the wool pulled over his eyes by the ²² A. Lloyd and R. Kleboe, ‘A People Moves Out’, Picture Post, 17 Aug. 1946. ²³ IWM, Doc 95/26/1, R. Dawson, ‘The Stagnant Pool: Work Among Displaced Persons in Germany 1945–1947’, 171–4. ²⁴ Ibid. 212. Other reports by British visitors which are also generally optimistic in their assessment of the transfer include: BBC WAC, T185, J. Gollan, ‘Seen From Scotland: Impressions of Czechoslovakia’, Scottish Home Service, 27 Aug. 1946, 9–9.30 p.m.; R. Smith, ‘Sudeten Germans Out of Czechoslovakia’, Scotsman, 5 Nov. 1946.

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Czech authorities. His visit rekindled the whole controversy over Czech concentration camps from the year before. During one of his frequent interventions in the Commons in October 1945 on the expulsion of the Germans, Dick Stokes was asked what steps he had taken to verify various allegations he was making about the treatment of Germans in Czechoslovakia. ‘I cannot take any more steps’, he replied, ‘because I can’t go to Prague.’²⁵ Many foreign journalists and observers had of course already visited Czechoslovakia at this point. The Central European Observer therefore challenged Stokes in rather a mealy-mouthed way to ‘seize the opportunity of going to Prague instead of relying on distorted news from an informant who obviously belongs to the clique which is seeking to intrigue against the Czechoslovak State from abroad’;²⁶ a challenge which Stokes readily accepted.²⁷ This ‘informant’ was, of course, Wenzel Jaksch. Stokes’s long-standing connections with Sudeten German exiles were well-known and he made no secret of them.²⁸ On several occasions, he had stated their case in the Commons. Unlike other British sympathizers who had melted away over the course of 1946, Stokes was to remain an enthusiastic advocate of Jaksch’s cause.²⁹ At a time when one Labour member after the other was being, as Jaksch put it, ‘deceived by the clever Prague propaganda’, Stokes remained steadfast and ‘treu’.³⁰ Jaksch and his cohorts placed high hopes on Stokes’s visit to Czechoslovakia which had to be delayed until September 1946. In June 1946, Jaksch launched yet another propaganda drive in Britain and the United States.³¹ In a memorandum provocatively entitled Mass Transfer Becomes Slave Trading, Jaksch outlined his case for ‘nothing less ²⁵ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 415, cols 988–9 (10 Oct. 1945). ²⁶ ‘Mr Stokes Should Go to Prague’, CEO, 30 Nov. 1945. ²⁷ RRS/1, Stokes to Editor, CEO, 10 Dec. 1945. ²⁸ RRS/1, Stokes to editor, CEO, 21 Dec. 1945. ²⁹ For representations on Jaksch’s behalf, see RRS/19, Stokes to Jaksch, 24 Mar. 1946, and misc. Reitzner-Stokes correspondence, May to Aug. 1946; FO371/55395, C7718/12/18, Stokes to Bevin, 28 Jun. 1946, encl. ‘Good Democrats in Dire Peril’, 25 Jun. 1946; FO371/55780, C6234/1115/18, Stokes to McNeil, 31 May 1946, encl. memo. on meeting with Gen. Clay, 13 Apr. 1946. ³⁰ Quote from RRS/19, Jaksch to Stokes, 12 May 1946. Another group that championed Sudeten Socialists was the Independent Labour Party (ILP). See ILP, Annual Report 1947, 8; ‘The Story of a Great Wrong’, New Leader, 6 Oct. 1945; SA, NL WJ, J32, Brockway to Jaksch, 8 Oct. 1945. ³¹ See American Friends of Democratic Sudetens, Tragedy of a People (New York, 1946).

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than a total revision of the transfer policy’, if the ‘economic, physical and moral ruin’ not only of Sudeten Germans but of the whole of Europe was to be avoided.³² ‘The pretence of orderly and humane transfer can not be maintained’, Jaksch argued, ‘since the use of galleys there was no such disregard of human beings.’ In the short term, Jaksch actually demanded the speeding up of the transfers in order to rescue Sudeten Germans as quickly as possible from their Czech tormentors. Even a week spent in a transit camp, Jaksch claimed, was ‘a week closer to death’. All over the country there were ‘Czech’ or ‘Democratic Belsens’ into which hundreds of thousands of German ‘innocents’ were herded. Red Cross inspections of these camps were ‘a mockery’: Before the announced visit women and children are removed, sheets are spread over the rotten straw, meat soups are cooked and pieces of sausage distributed. They must not be eaten on pain of death, but are collected after the visit. The mortuaries and mass graves behind the camp are shown to no visitors. The films on Nazi concentration camps [ . . . ] remind the expelled Sudeten Germans with appalling uniformity of their own treatment.

Elsewhere in Czechoslovakia there was ‘sweated labour’ and ‘outright slave labour without pay’. One of the most pressing short-term needs, he argued, was a full and independent investigation of conditions in the camps and among German civilians at large, something which Jaksch hoped Stokes’s visit would lead to.³³ Jaksch poured scorn on those international observers who had visited Czechoslovakia so far and ‘swallowed up’ official propaganda: Almost every foreign guest is being shepherded to the ruins of Lidice, that landmark of Nazi barbarism, while in the Sudetenland thousands of new Lidices are being created at the same time. Anyone who has the least chance of planting an article in a foreign paper, of course praising the expulsion policy, can have a cheap stay in the finest hotels of Prague, plenty of food off the ration, pleasure trips into the countryside, and many glasses of the famous Pilsner beer.³⁴

Before his departure for Czechoslovakia, Stokes was briefed by Jaksch and provided with a list of ‘reliable’ contacts.³⁵ ‘When you arrive at the ³² For what follows, see RRS/19, ‘Mass Transfer Becomes Slave Trading: The Need for a British Initiative to Secure ‘‘Orderly and Humane’’ Transfer of Population’, encl. in Jaksch to Stokes, 20 Jun. 1946. ³³ Bell lvii, fo. 89, Jaksch to Bell, 17 Feb. 1946. ³⁴ RRS/19, ‘Mass Transfer Becomes Slave Trading’. ³⁵ RRS/19, Stokes to Jaksch, 21 Jun. 1946, Stokes to Jaksch, 10 Jul. 1946, Reitzner to Stokes, 18 Jul. 1946.

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residence of the European Mephisto, Prague, you must bear in mind that the Czech authorities are well aware that we have been in touch with you’, Stokes was warned in characteristically paranoid fashion by another Sudeten German exile. ‘You might even have to encounter Czech agents, perhaps of Sudeten origin, who will try to make Mephisto Beneˇs look like an angel.’³⁶ Stokes, for his part, made no secret of the fact that he was visiting Czechoslovakia on behalf of his Sudeten Social Democrat ‘friends’, primarily in order to investigate ‘slave detention camps’ and ‘short notice expulsion’.³⁷ During his nine-day visit to Czechoslovakia in September 1946, Stokes was wined and dined by his Czech hosts, enjoyed the full cooperation of the Czech authorities and had complete freedom of movement. He was able to visit several camps, both ‘assembly centres’ for German transferees and ‘internment camps’ for political prisoners, on a number of occasions unannounced. He witnessed the process of transfer first-hand and met the Czech officials responsible. He found the experience ‘interesting if somewhat shocking’.³⁸ But the shock went both ways; conditions were in some respects better, in other respects worse than he had expected. As a member of the British Embassy remarked with obvious glee: ‘Mr Stokes does not seem to have found so scandalous a situation as he was undoubtedly expecting when he came here.’³⁹ Stokes visited an ‘assembly centre’ at Teplice in northern Bohemia just as a transport was due to leave for the Soviet zone. He found the overall organization to be ‘splendid’, provisions ‘adequate’, arrangements for the sick ‘proper’ and the baggage allowance ‘liberally interpreted’.⁴⁰ ‘The arrangements are good and very different from the terrible reports received in 1945,’ Stokes remarked. ‘Those responsible are to be congratulated.’⁴¹ Overall, he felt it was ‘a tremendous improvement on what was happening last year, and though expulsions can never be humane, under the circumstances the conditions attaching to this movement of some 3 1/2 million people from their homes are reasonably good’.⁴² No higher praise could have been expected from ³⁶ RRS/19, Reitzner to Stokes, 18 Jul. 1946. ³⁷ RRS/17, Memorandum on ‘Czechoslovakia’ [Sep. 1946]; RRS/19, Stokes to Reitzner, 30 Jul. 1946; RRS/2, Stokes to Fischl, Press Attaché, Czechoslovak Embassy London, 7 Aug. 1946. ³⁸ RRS/2, Stokes to Fischl, 21 Sep. 1946. ³⁹ FO371/56011, N13283/96/12, Shuckburgh to Warr, 7 Oct. 1946. ⁴⁰ RRS/17, Memorandum 20: Visits to Transfer and Internee Camps and POW Repatriation Train, 13 Sep. 1946. ⁴¹ Ibid. ⁴² RRS/17 Memorandum on ‘Czechoslovakia’.

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someone who considered transfer in principle to be ‘inhumane [and] anti-socialist’.⁴³ In other categories of camp, however, Stokes found an altogether different situation. He made two unannounced visits to the notorious Hagibor camp for ‘political detainees’ on the outskirts of Prague which Gedye and Jameson had visited the year before. ‘Call it by whatever name you like this Camp is nothing more or less than a modern Slave Camp,’ Stokes wrote in his report which described the signs of starvation and the ‘slave market’ that he had seen on a pre-dawn visit. He could find no explanation for why many of the prisoners were there; they included, in fact, not only Germans but an array of nationalities from all over central and eastern Europe.⁴⁴ Stokes brought conditions in the internment camps and the cases of several individuals immediately to the attention of Dr Novák, the official responsible for running them, and to Fierlinger, who was by now Deputy Prime Minister.⁴⁵ He also sent a long account on his visit, which included descriptions of the ‘slave camps’, to the British press. That Stokes did this without giving the Czech authorities sufficient time to investigate and reply seems to indicate that, despite his claims to the contrary, it was his intention all along to shame the Czechoslovak government publicly. A shortened version of the report was published as a letter to the Manchester Guardian almost a year to the day that Gedye’s despatch appeared in the Daily Herald.⁴⁶ Stokes claimed that that there were ‘51 camps in Czechoslovakia [ . . . ] where literally hundreds of thousands of people are languishing away, detained, untried and starving’. He wondered whether Beneˇs to whom Britain had given ‘succour in his hour of need’ knew that these ‘dreadful things [were] happening under his very nose’.⁴⁷ The Czech response to Stokes’s allegations followed a similar pattern to the year before. There were indignant articles in the press about British hypocrisy, alongside an official commission of investigation, followed by a public rebuttal.⁴⁸ At the end of November ⁴³ RRS/17, Memorandum 20. ⁴⁴ Ibid. ⁴⁵ RRS/17, Memorandum of conversation with Dr Novak at the Ministry of the Interior, 14 Sep. 1946; Diary of visit to Germany and Czechoslovakia, 14 Sep. 1946. For further distribution of reports, see RRS/2, Stokes to Fischl, 30 Sep. 1946, encl. memoranda; Stokes to Fierlinger, 7 Oct. 1946, encl. memoranda; Stokes to Maj. Bieri, ICRC, London Delegation, 28 Oct. 1946; also FO371/56011, N12829/96/12, Stokes to Bevin, 22 Oct. 1946, enclosures. ⁴⁶ RRS/10, MG to Stokes, 7 Oct. 1946; Stokes to MG, 11 Oct. 1946. ⁴⁷ ‘Camps in Czechoslovakia’, MG, 10 Oct. 1946. ⁴⁸ Rudé Právo, 21 Nov. 1946, and Svobodné Noviny, 26 Nov. 1946, in RRS/2, Prchala to Stokes, 30 Nov. 1946; Fischl to Stokes, 23 Oct. 1946.

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1946, Fierlinger called an ‘elaborate’ press conference, at which Stokes’s claims were dismissed as ‘unfounded’.⁴⁹ According to Fierlinger, rations in the camps were the same as for the rest of the population. Fierlinger also pointed out the distinction between different types of camp. He stated that there were only nine internment camps left with 2,000 inmates awaiting trial. These would in any case be closed by the end of the year. Fierlinger invited journalists and the International Red Cross to visit the camps for themselves. Of the individuals Stokes had mentioned, all had been subsequently released. Fierlinger said he did not doubt Stokes’s good intentions; he only wished the Czechoslovak government had been given the opportunity to reply to the charges first. Stokes’s criticisms of the Czech internment camps were uncompromising. The language he used to describe them was at times inflammatory, the parallels he drew inappropriate. But in publicizing what he believed were ‘hideous crimes [ . . . ] against humanity’,⁵⁰ he was only following a trail which British observers had blazed before him. And like them, Stokes claimed to be acting on purely humanitarian grounds. If Stokes was motivated by political animus of any sort, then it was against Communists rather than the Czech nation or Czechoslovak state. ‘I am sure that decent minded Czechs are thoroughly ashamed of what their communist brethren are doing,’ he wrote privately to a British editor in December 1946.⁵¹ He was genuinely aggrieved by accusations that he had an anti-Czech bias, not least because he left Czechoslovakia with a genuine affection for the country and its people. Stokes insisted that his ‘sole aim in ventilating the dreadful conditions’ was ‘to relieve human suffering’; it was ‘in no way meant to be an attack on [the Czechoslovak] Government’;⁵² an echo of other British critics the year before and evidence that a ‘psychological gap’ separating the ‘well-meaning’ British from their wartime allies in eastern Europe remained. What is often overlooked because of these loud protestations about conditions in internment camps is Stokes’s assessment of the actual transfers themselves. When looking at this subject, it is important to ⁴⁹ For what follows, see FO371/56012, N15098/96/12, Nichols to Attlee, 12 Nov. 1946; ‘Czech Prison Camps: Reply to Mr Stokes’, MG, 20 Nov. 1946; RRS/2, Prague Radio account of Fierlinger’s press conference, encl. in Fischl to Stokes, 25 Nov. 1946, and Dr Haas, Ministry of Interior: Reply to two memoranda and an article written by Mr R. Stokes MP, 30 Nov. 1946. ⁵⁰ RRS/2, Stokes to Fischl, 21 Sep. 1946. ⁵¹ RRS/2, Stokes to McDermott, Patriot, 2 Dec. 1946. ⁵² RRS/2, Stokes to Palacek, 23 Oct. 1946.

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keep the following points in mind. Stokes held the very principle of a transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia to be wrong.⁵³ He also refused to accept that in practice it was being carried out in an ‘orderly and humane manner’ in accordance with the Potsdam agreement, emphatically rejecting Czech claims that it was being undertaken ‘in a better condition’ than the Greco-Turkish exchange.⁵⁴ But Stokes had a singular interpretation of the Potsdam agreement and its historical precedents: the authors of Potsdam had in mind the very humane treatment handed out to the persons who were transferred between Greece and Turkey after the last War when everyone was allowed to take all their furniture with them, and every possible care was taken to provide comfortable travel facilities.⁵⁵

If Stokes’s comfort criteria had been taken as standard then on no account would any travel in Czechoslovakia have been ‘humane’ in 1946. The standards he set for ‘humane and orderly’ were simply impossible to meet under postwar conditions and represented, therefore, an a priori rejection of Czech claims to be abiding by the terms of the Potsdam agreement. This position was, however, music to Jaksch’s ears. Stokes’s opposition to the transfer of the Germans—in principle and in practice—naturally earned him Jaksch’s enduring gratitude as well as the dubious distinction of entering the pantheon of British heroes who had ‘passed the test of character’ and come to the aid of Sudeten Germans in their hour of peril.⁵⁶ What escaped the notice of Sudeten Germans, however, was that Stokes in his full report, as well as in the version that appeared in the press, had made a clear distinction between what he had seen in the internment camps and what he had witnessed of the process of transfer.⁵⁷ The fact is that Stokes’s assessment of the transfer itself did not differ in any of its essential details from those of the British Consul in Karlovy Vary, the British Embassy in Prague, a British parliamentary delegation, British journalists and other British visitors whom Jaksch scornfully dismissed as being willing victims of ‘whitewash-propaganda’.⁵⁸ All these British eyewitnesses were either ⁵³ RRS/17, Memorandum 20. ⁵⁴ RRS/17, Memorandum 25: Meeting with Dr Kuchera, 9 Sep. 1946. ⁵⁵ RRS/2, Stokes to Fischl, 21 Sep. 1946. ⁵⁶ W. Jaksch, Europe’s Road to Potsdam (New York, 1963), 432; ‘Auflockerung im Westen’, Der Sozialdemokrat, 31 Dec. 1946, 1269–71; RRS/19, Jaksch to Stokes, 27 Nov. 1946, 1 Mar. 1947. ⁵⁷ Stokes reiterated this distinction in correspondence following the publication of his letter on ‘slave camps’. See letters to MG: A. Goldstein [French press correspondent], ‘Czechoslovak Camps’, 22 Oct. 1946; Stokes, ‘Czechoslovakia’s Camps’, 31 Oct. 1946. ⁵⁸ RRS/19, ‘Mass Transfer Becomes Slave Trading’.

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remarkably stupid, unobservant or deceitful, the victims or accomplices in an elaborate system of deception, or Jaksch was engaging in the type of atrocity propaganda that had given German nationalists, and particularly the Sudeten variety, a bad name in the interwar period. Jaksch and the Sudeten Germans, with their paranoid fantasies about ‘Mephisto Beneˇs’ and their leaden worldview in which bystanders were divided into ‘fictionists’ and ‘Beneˇsophiles’ on one side of the battlefield and ‘friends of humanity’ on the other, plumped not surprisingly for the first explanation. Stokes, however, did not. Returning to Britain, he dismissed Jaksch’s suggestion that a parliamentary committee investigate the camps.⁵⁹ If Stokes’s visit confirmed the generally positive assessment of how the transfer of Germans was being handled by the Czechs, it was also a reminder of how extraordinarily prickly they still could be when called to account. ‘[T]he Czech nation is very sensitive and jealously guards its good reputation,’ Fierlinger had said during a press conference about Stokes’s allegations.⁶⁰ Protecting Czechoslovakia’s ‘good name’ was of course a recurrent theme stretching back to Beneˇs’s Plˇzen speech of June 1945 when he appealed for calm, patience and cooperation with the major powers in seeking a solution to the Sudeten German problem and later put in even more unequivocal terms at Mˇelník in October 1945. In March 1946, in an address to the National Assembly, Masaryk had also returned to this theme: ‘The whole world is watching us today [ . . . ] I am not exaggerating. We have a good name as a civilized people. We are going to keep that good name.’⁶¹ Nichols believed that constructive criticism, by touching this nerve, had played an important role in the outcome of the transfers. ‘There can [ . . . ] be little doubt’, he had informed the Foreign Office in April 1946, ‘that the critical attitude adopted by part of the British and American press towards transfers in general has indirectly contributed towards ensuring that the movements are efficiently and humanely organised.’⁶² After the transfer of the Germans was completed, Nichols concluded that: the Czechoslovak Government were helped in bringing home to their own people the need for decent behaviour by the close and critical attention given ⁵⁹ RRS/19, Jaksch to Stokes, 15 Nov. 1946; Stokes to Jaksch, 25 Nov. 1946; RRS/2, Jaksch to Stokes, 15 Dec. 1946. ⁶⁰ RRS/2, Fischl to RRS, 25 Nov. 1946, encl. Prague Radio account of Fierlinger’s press conference. ⁶¹ FO371/55392, C2820/12/18, Nichols to Troutbeck, 9 Mar. 1946. ⁶² FO371/55393, C4355/12/18, Nichols to Bevin, 17 Apr. 1946.

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to these transfers in the Parliaments and press of western countries. The Czechs realised [ . . . ] that they were being watched by a world audience, and that their reputation as a civilised nation was at stake. In order to have this effect it was essential that western criticism should be directed towards the methods and not towards the principles of the transfer, and for the most part this was the case.⁶³

The Czech President even seemed to welcome this criticism. In January 1946, Beneˇs told the Reuters correspondent, Allen Bettany, that ‘he was always glad to see critical articles written by foreign correspondents’ as it ‘helped [ . . . ] strengthen his hands’ with the Communists.⁶⁴ On 24 October 1946, Václav Nosek, the Czech Minister of the Interior, announced to the National Assembly that the transfer of the Germans was complete. Of the 2.5 million Germans provided for under the Potsdam Agreement, some 2,165,135 had been transferred; the Russians had taken their full quota of 750,000; the Americans were a few hundred thousand short of theirs. Nosek explained that 300,000 Germans had been retained in ‘essential industries’. The 820,000 Germans not accounted for in these figures had either been killed in the war, fled in 1945 or were POWs.⁶⁵ At a large public rally in Prague to celebrate Independence Day on 28 October, one of the main themes was again the completion of the transfer of the Germans and the final goal of a national state of Czechs and Slovaks.⁶⁶ Beneˇs said that with hindsight ‘nemesis rightly overtook these despoilers of our republic’. The transfer had been carried out ‘without spite and hatred, but also without remorse, only with a feeling of justice come fully into its own’.⁶⁷ On 29 October, the last official transport left Karlovy Vary. A special celebratory lunch was organised for 250 guests. Bamborough was the only non-Czech present. Nosek and several other cabinet ministers spoke. Bamborough noted how ‘very sober’, ‘subdued’ and ‘objective and historical in content’ all the speeches were. All of those present seemed impressed by the historic importance of the event. ‘There was obvious satisfaction at the departure of the Germans’, Bamborough observed, ‘but no rejoicing’.⁶⁸ ⁶³ FO371/56070, N15858/7398/12, Nichols to Attlee, 30 Nov. 1946. ⁶⁴ FO817/28, 135/2/46, Asst Press Attache minute, 16 Jan. 1946, Nichols minute, 18 Jan. 1946; cf. comments by Beneˇs to Nichols, in FO371/47093, N14093/207/12, Nichols to Warner, 12 Oct. 1945. This point is also discussed in Chapter 5. ⁶⁵ FO371/56005, N14035/94/12, Weekly Information Summary, 1 Nov. 1946. ⁶⁶ Ibid. ⁶⁷ FO371/56012, N14135/96/12, Beneˇs address, 28 Oct. 1946. ⁶⁸ FO371/56070, N15858/7398/12, Bamborough to Barker, 4 Nov. 1946.

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In Bamborough’s final report on the transfer, he stood by the conclusions he had made in April 1946: After the initial difficulties and confusion had been overcome, the Czechs responsible for this large-scale transfer made every endeavour to carry out the instructions of their government, to work in the spirit of the Potsdam Agreement, and to conduct the transfer in a humane manner.⁶⁹

Nichols, also surveying the transfers, acknowledged that he had always been sceptical that the Czechs would be able to complete this process in such a short space of time. It was, therefore, a ‘remarkable achievement’ that they had done so, especially considering that until the summer the transfers were only to the American zone, and in the winter these were only on a token scale. But also remarkable was the manner in which it had been carried out: The uprooting and deporting of over 2 million persons from the farms and villages where they and their ancestors have lived for hundreds of years is bound to cause a large measure of unavoidable suffering and misery to those concerned, nor can it be regarded as other than a bitter and ironic comment on conditions existing in the 20th century. But granted the necessity for the transfer, a necessity which I myself fully recognise and endorse [ . . . ] I think [ . . . ] after initial difficulties, this movement of population, in spite of the size and speed of the operation, was carried out with a minimum of pain and hardship to the transferees. In appraising the conduct of the Czechs in the matter, who tried [ . . . ] to conduct the transfers in a humane fashion, we must bear in mind the acute sufferings which the Germans imposed on the Czech people, as well as the far more cruel and ruthless deportations practised by the Germans and Russians elsewhere.⁷⁰

The overcrowding in the American zone that the transfer of the Sudeten Germans caused and the absence of able-bodied men among the transferees was, of course, easy to ignore when viewed from the Czech side of the frontier.⁷¹ What was harder to overlook, however, was the economic impact of the loss of the German population, the immense long-term problems of resettlement, and the acute short-term labour shortage.⁷² Christopher Warr, a member of the Foreign Office who ⁶⁹ FO371/56070, N15858/7398/12, Transfer of the Germans from the Karlovy Vary Area, Nov. 1946. ⁷⁰ FO371/56070, N15858/7398/12, Nichols to Attlee, 30 Nov. 1946. ⁷¹ For problems in the US zone, see RRS/17, Memorandum 13: [Interview with] Mr. Rovin US Military Governor, 7 Sep. 1945. ⁷² FO371/56013, N15571/96/12, Pincock, Min. of Food: Report on Czechoslovakia, 9–15 Nov. 1946.

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toured the border regions in late October 1946, was taken aback by the picture of sheer desolation that lay along the roadsides: Houses are shut up, weeds grow in gardens and orchards, fields are left unharvested, abandoned agricultural implements lie about, and the derelict whole is inhabited only by a few stray animals. There is a striking contrast between this scene and a similar village, just over the border in Germany, where all houses are apparently filled to bursting point.⁷³

For the Czechs it was a price worth paying. Warr in the course of his tour visited the fortress town of Terezín which had partly been used by the Nazis as a ‘model’ concentration camp for Jews and also for political prisoners. The visit dispelled any doubts Warr might have had about the economic wisdom of Czech transfer policy. ‘In the face of these facts [about the camp] it is difficult to avoid sympathy with the Czechs in their perhaps precipitate but wholly natural determination to be rid of their Germans at all costs and as soon as possible’.⁷⁴ British visitors to Czechoslovakia in 1946 who witnessed the transfer of the Sudeten Germans first-hand shared the assessment of the ‘pale and thin little man’ in Karlovy Vary that the Czechs had made ‘every endeavour to work in the spirit of the Potsdam Agreement, and to conduct the transfer in a humane manner’. Even those like Stokes who came seeking to unearth dark secrets returned home acknowledging that the process of transfer was ‘reasonably good’ and that those responsible should be congratulated for their restraint. As in 1945, the print media and informed opinion showed a general interest in the fate of the Sudeten Germans. Whenever there was criticism, care was taken, as before, not to blame central government, but local, Communist officials. British diplomats also retained their confidence in the determination of the Czech leadership to remove the Sudeten Germans in an orderly and humane manner. On the Czech side, an undiminished sensitivity to outside criticism was matched by a desire that this process appear transparent. It was the interplay between foreign scrutiny and the Czech obsession with their self-image that helped ensure a positive reception of the transfer of the Sudeten Germans abroad and enabled Czechoslovakia, in the words of Jan Masaryk, to defend its ‘good name as a civilized people’ after the battering this had taken in 1945. ⁷³ FO371/56013, N15241/96/12, Report on Visit to Czechoslovak Border Region, 11 Nov. 1946. ⁷⁴ Ibid.

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‘ O PE R AT I O N S WA L LOW ’ : T H E T R A N S F E R O F T H E G E R M A N S F RO M P O L A N D , 1 9 4 6 – 1 9 4 7 Colourful codenames were invariably chosen by the British authorities in Germany for large-scale refugee movements—‘Eagle’, ‘Honeybee’, ‘Homing Pigeon’, ‘Wasp’ or ‘Stork’. The one given to the transfer of 1.5 million Germans from Poland was no exception. ‘Swallow’, however, was an unfortunate choice of bird given the circumstances surrounding this mass migration. Swallows always return from where they have migrated, die Schwalben would not.⁷⁵ British personnel who worked with these ‘Swallows’ found the choice of codename puzzling. For some it was ‘particularly insensitive’ and ‘pretty sick’.⁷⁶ One British relief worker was unsure whether it was not ‘an attempt to romanticize this trek of broken-hearted old people, patient mothers and numbed children [ . . . ] as the flight of swallows to a distant land’ or whether it had a ‘more cynical significance—that an already reduced German land must swallow several millions of economically useless people’.⁷⁷ Intentionally or not, it was ‘swallow’ as a verb rather than ‘swallow’ as a noun that became the more apt part of speech as an overcrowded and underfed British zone attempted during the course of 1946 to digest hundreds of thousands of destitute and economically unproductive expellees or ‘useless mouths’. From the perspective of the British zone, Operation Swallow was the story of a population movement that should never have happened and which the British authorities tried to find any pretext to stop. ‘If only the people at Potsdam had known what they were doing’, a British relief worker wrote in his diary on learning that Westphalia had been assigned 500,000 expellees from Poland.⁷⁸ This sentiment echoed throughout the British zone in the summer of 1946. Operation Swallow nevertheless continued apace for six months through to September 1946, bringing nearly one million more Germans into the British zone. This section ⁷⁵ The name apparently confused the expellees, according to Wiskemann, Germany’s Eastern Neighbours, 115. ⁷⁶ David Sainty, member of relief team IVS109, taped interview with the author, 2–3 Aug. 2001. ⁷⁷ Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad (COBSRA) papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Box 4, ‘Operation Swallow’, HQ 5 News Letter No. 9, May 1947. ⁷⁸ G. McClelland, Embers of War: Letters From a Quaker Relief Worker in War-Torn Germany (1997), 128.

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explores this discrepancy between British interests in Germany and the continued influx of refugees asking why the British continued with Operation Swallow throughout 1946 as well as the reasons for its eventual suspension. In order to do so, it is necessary to look beyond the parochial concerns of the British zone and take into account the political factors which had necessitated transfer in the first place and would continue to be the principal reason for continuing Operation Swallow against the better judgement of the British authorities. By mid-December 1945, preliminary negotiations on a transfer of Germans from Poland were already underway in Berlin.⁷⁹ On 14 February 1946 an Anglo-Polish agreement was signed, the preamble of which stipulated that the transfer and resettlement of Germans from Poland would be carried out in ‘a humane and orderly manner’.⁸⁰ From Stettin in the north, 1,000 Germans would be sent by sea and 1,500 by rail per day; from Kohlfurt, between Görlitz and Liegnitz in the south, 3,000 per day in two trains, rising to 5,500 when capacity allowed. A daily total of 8,000 Germans would therefore be moved. Germans were to be allowed to take ‘as much as they c[ould] carry in their hands’ and a maximum of 500 Reichmarks. The Polish authorities would provide two or three days’ rations for the journey, as well as one day’s reserve supply. The first transports would be restricted to those ‘in good health’. No one requiring hospitalization would be moved, without prior arrangement with the British authorities. Pregnant women within six weeks of parturition would also not be accepted into the British zone. The separation of families was strictly forbidden. Two small ‘British Repatriation Teams’⁸¹ stationed in Stettin and Kohlfurt would inspect the transports and ensure all expellees were dusted with DDT. The operation was to begin as soon as clearance for the liaison teams was received from the Soviets and they were in place in Stettin and Kohlfurt. ⁷⁹ For the negotiations, see FO1052/470, fo. 9, Maj. Ford, Memorandum on a meeting with Wolksi (Polish Minister of Repatriation) and others, 19 Dec. 1946; fos 12–18, Ford, CRX Berlin to Brig. Kenchington, Chief PWDP Div. Berlin, 27 Dec. 1945; fos 23–5, Chief PWDP Berlin to Hankey, 8 Jan. 1946 [incl. an account of a two day conference with the Poles, 4–5 Jan. 1946]; fos 47–9, Minutes of meeting held at HQ PWDP Div. Bunde on 5 Feb. 1946 to consider the plan for acceptance of expellees from New Poland to the British Zone, 7 Feb. 1946. ⁸⁰ For what follows, see FO1052/470, fos 123–6, Agreement between British and Polish representatives [of ] CRX on the transfer of German population from Poland [14 Feb. 1946]; also fos 106–8, PWDP Div, Technical Instructions No. 5: Acceptance of Expellees from New Poland, 18 Feb. 1946. ⁸¹ These were variously referred to as ‘Repatriation Teams’, ‘Military Missions’ and, most commonly, ‘Liaison Teams’, which is the term used henceforth.

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Operation Swallow’s problems derived in large part from the Anglo-Polish agreement. As a member of the Foreign Office German Department stated bluntly on seeing its contents: ‘These people will come with almost no baggage [and] no money into a country with no food.’⁸² The agreement stipulated that the transfer of Germans be carried out in a ‘humane and orderly manner’ without giving a clear indication of what this meant in practice and without stipulating the conditions by which this could be guaranteed.⁸³ Its weakness therefore lay not necessarily in what it said, but in what it omitted. This was in contrast to the series of agreements the Americans concluded with the Czechs and Hungarians in 1946.⁸⁴ The timing and scheduling of the operation was also problematic. The British authorities had initially not wanted to take any expellees until at least spring 1946,⁸⁵ while the Foreign Office German Department had considered the ACC November 1945 plan buried and transfers ‘quite impracticable’ until summer 1946.⁸⁶ Yet the British authorities instead of, as the Americans had, taking advantage of a provision in the ACC November 1945 plan that allowed for changes to the scheduled monthly quotas of expellees ‘on account of weather or transportation’, now agreed to commence Operation Swallow in the midst of winter at a point when they were already facing a renewed food crisis.⁸⁷ This was where political factors came in. The Warsaw Embassy stressed the urgency with which this issue was viewed in Poland. The Polish provisional government argued that the ‘Regained Territories’⁸⁸ needed to be cleared of Germans for the immediate resettlement of ⁸² FO371/55392, C2207/12/18, Franklin minute, 2 Mar. 1946. ⁸³ FO1052/470, fos 47–9, Minutes of meeting on 5 Feb. 1946 to consider plan for acceptance of expellees from New Poland, 7 Feb. 1946. ⁸⁴ See FO371/55390, C1038/12/18, Prague to FO, 23 Jan. 1946, encl. summary of minutes of meeting on 8–9 Jan. between Czech and US representatives; FO371/55397, C10843/12/18, copy of US–Hungarian agreement, 22 Aug. 1946; FO371/55398, C14992/12/18, British Military Mission, Hungary: Memorandum on the Deportation of Swabians, 21 Nov. 1946. ⁸⁵ FO1052/470, fos 2–3, Col. Thicknesse, PWDP Berlin to Ford, 14 Dec. 1945; fo. 9, Memorandum by Ford of meeting with Wolski, 19 Dec. 1945. ⁸⁶ FO371/55390, C1036/12/18, Brief on Bishop of Chichester’s motion in the Lords on 30 Jan. [1946], 25 Jan. 1946. ⁸⁷ For an outline of this plan, see DBPO v, no. 77, Strang to Bevin, 17 Nov. 1945, 370–2. ⁸⁸ Translation of term (Ziemie Odzyskane) used by Polish authorities to refer to the former German territories east of the Oder-western Neisse. Also referred to in English as the ‘Oder-Neisse Territories’, ‘Polish Western Territories’, ‘Western Poland’, ‘New Poland’, ‘Eastern Germany’, and, if British officials were feeling particularly upset, the legalistic ‘Polish Administered Territories’.

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millions of Polish refugees from the Soviet Union and Polish repatriates from western Europe. Until resettlement was completed, so they argued, the ‘free and unfettered elections’ which the Polish provisional government were pledged to hold could and would not be held, nor would the economic revival of the ‘Regained Territories’ and their integration into the fabric of new Poland be possible. The British ambassador in Warsaw, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, moreover, warned that the ‘general hate’ in the Communist-dominated Polish provisional government towards Britain would deepen if there were further delays.⁸⁹ Irrespective of the political or even the logistical reasons for commencing transfer, the fact was that the British were woefully behind schedule and technically at fault. By February 1946, instead of having taken 20 per cent of their total allocation of Germans from Poland, they had received almost none. British representatives on the ACC admitted to having run out of further excuses. ‘Unless you can signal a firm date for starting within next two days’, the Control Office in London was warned on 13 February 1946, ‘we fear it is possible that Poles will despatch trains from starting points without our agreement [ . . . ] Feelings are high enough here to make it possible that they may do so without informing us the trains have started.’⁹⁰ The following day the Anglo-Polish agreement was signed. Operation Swallow ran into trouble right from the start. When the first trains reached the British zone at the end of February 1946, the condition of the expellees and the conditions under which they had been transported stretched even the loosest interpretation of the term ‘humane’. As expellees began to arrive in ever greater numbers during March 1946, the British authorities documented a catalogue of violations of both the spirit and the letter of the Potsdam and Anglo-Polish agreements on orderly and humane transfer.⁹¹ To the ⁸⁹ FO371/46816, C9232/95/18, C-B to FO, 6 Dec. 1945. See also FO1049/412, 85/4/46, Troutbeck minute for Sir A. Street, COGA, 1 Jan. 1946, encl. copy Warsaw to FO, 20 Dec. 1945; 85/5/46, Warsaw to FO (rptd Berlin), 4 Jan. 1946; FO1052/470, fos 2–3, Thicknesse to Ford, 14 Dec. 1945; fo. 9, Memorandum by Ford of meeting with Wolski, 19 Dec. 1945; FO371/56536, N744/413/55, Gomulka’s speech to National Council of the Homeland, 31 Dec. 1945. ⁹⁰ FO1052/470, fo. 75, Bercomb to Confolk, 13 Feb. 1946. ⁹¹ For a series of reports between 28 February and 6 April 1946, see FO1052/312, fo. 26; FO1052/323, fos 5b–c, 7a–d, 8b–c, 18a–d, 22b–e, 50e–g; FO1010/26, fos 32a, 38; FO1052/470, fos 177–9, 351. For a vivid account of the arrival of a transport, see FRS/1992/70, Germany: General Policy and Misc. 1944–46, E. Cleever: German Snapshot, Vlotho an der Weser, Mar. 1946.

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‘considerable embarrassment’ of the British authorities, the press once more were also beginning to pick up on the story.⁹² Questions were raised in Parliament.⁹³ There threatened to be a repeat of the response of September 1945. For the British authorities the two main areas of immediate concern were how ‘Swallows’ were being treated and who was being transferred. Less than a month after its start, the British authorities had more than enough evidence to justify a protest to the Polish government on ‘humane conditions’ as well as for ‘breaches of agreement’. The Poles, by mainly transferring ‘useless mouths’ and withholding the fit working men, were breaking the Potsdam agreement by not handing over ‘a fair sample of the German minority’.⁹⁴ The British authorities had the pretext for slowing down or even suspending Operation Swallow which they had been looking for almost from the start.⁹⁵ The British Embassy in Warsaw, however, once again thwarted tougher action being taken through diplomatic channels. When approached by the Foreign Office, Cavendish-Bentinck was just as reluctant as he had been in October 1945 to make a fuss over the alleged ill-treatment of German expellees and just as unwilling to do anything more than make the most informal inquiries on this issue.⁹⁶ ‘Pray do not ask us to act as guardians for Germans [and] decrease our popularity with the Polish public’, he had asked the Foreign Office in response to calls in Parliament in early February for an official delegation to investigate conditions among Germans in Poland.⁹⁷ Cavendish-Bentinck warned London in April 1946, as he had in 1945, that ‘one of the few themes for anti-British propaganda put out by the Polish government which ha[d] ⁹² See ‘Expulsion of Germans Still Not Humane’, MG, 12 Mar. 1946; ‘Operation Swallow’, ‘Deportation of Germans’, ‘Cargo of Human Hopelessness’ and ‘Removal of Germans from Poland’, MG, 18 Apr. 1946; FO1052/470, fo. 198, Maj. Ralphs to Brig. Kenchington, 23 Mar. 1946; FO945/67, Permanent Sec. COGA minute, 15 Mar. 1946. ⁹³ Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 420, cols 1085–6 (13 Mar. 1946); vol. 422, cols 177–8 (1 May 1946), 1044–5 (8 May 1946), 1397–8 (10 May 1946). ⁹⁴ For calls from all levels of Mil. Gov. for approaches to be made to the Poles, see FO1052/323, fos 7a–d, 21a, 22a–e; FO1052/470, fos 239–41. See also IVS, DE3986/J22, Report on [Relief ] Team-Leaders’ Meeting [with Gen. Templer present], Vlotho, 13 Mar. 1946. ⁹⁵ FO371/55392, C3375/12/18, FO to Washington, 9 Mar. 1946; FO1052/470, fo. 148, Bercomb to Troopers, 10 Mar. 1946. ⁹⁶ FO371/55393, C3565/12/18, Strang to Warsaw (repeated FO), 28 Mar. 1946, Strang to WO (repeated FO), 29 Mar. 1946; C4035/12/18, Wilberforce, COGA to Troutbeck, 4 Apr. 1946; C3565/12/18, FO to Warsaw, 10 Apr. 1946. ⁹⁷ FO371/55391, C1797/12/18, C–B to Warner, 5 Feb. 1946.

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some effect’ was that the British were ‘too kind to the Germans and treat Polish repatriates no better.’⁹⁸ The Polish provisional government was already making enough political capital out of Churchill’s March 1946 Fulton speech.⁹⁹ Cavendish-Bentinck not only insisted on having ‘indisputable proof ’ before agreeing to take any further steps,¹⁰⁰ but preempted the Foreign Office by making his own ‘personal and unheralded examination’ of the situation.¹⁰¹ He found nothing to complain about in a camp for ‘Swallows’ he visited a few miles outside of Stettin. There was a high proportion of old, weak and sick Germans owing to the fact that the Nazis had ‘scrapped the bottom of the barrel’ to fill the military ranks in 1944. Many able-bodied males had fled the Soviet advance in 1945 and those remaining not required for essential services had been sent as labour to the Soviet Union. Cavendish-Bentinck argued that the condition of ‘Swallows’ on arrival in the British zone reflected ‘the extremely unpleasant time they have had during the past two years, and [was] not the result of direct maltreatment by the Polish authorities from the time they were ordered to leave their previous residence’.¹⁰² He was backed up by an equally positive account of the same camp which appeared in The Times a week later.¹⁰³ Cavendish-Bentinck told the Foreign Office that he would not be on strong grounds in accusing the Polish government of breaching the agreement on ‘orderly and humane’ transfer and asked that representations not be made to the Polish government.¹⁰⁴ These reassuring reports from Stettin gave the Foreign Office the impression that Poles were ‘cleaning up their act’,¹⁰⁵ as did comments ⁹⁸ FO371/55393, C4210/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 13 Apr. 1946. See also FO371/ 56438, N5470/34/55, Weekly Summary, 16 Apr. 1946. For examples of this theme in Polish propaganda, see FO371/55393, C3638/12/18, Radio Warsaw, 26 Mar. 1946; FO1052/323, fo. 53l-m, translation of article in Trybuna Dolno´slaska, 4 Mar. 1946. ⁹⁹ Churchill criticized the ‘wrongful inroads’ made on German territory. For the speech and reactions, see FO371/56536, N3489/413/55, ‘Sinews of Peace’, 5 Mar. 1946; Warsaw Radio, 8 Mar. 1946; FO371/56436, N3555/34/55, Weekly Summary, 12 Mar. 1946; FO371/56615, N1796/1796/55, M. Cavanagh, ‘Poland’s Reign of Fear and Poverty’, Glasgow Herald, 6 Jun. 1946; FO371/56597, N6773/1064/55, Report on Visits to Poznan on 3–6 May 1946. Gilbert, Never Despair, 180–220. ¹⁰⁰ FO371/55393, C4210/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 13 Apr. 1946. ¹⁰¹ FO371/55393, C4310/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 16 Apr. 1946. ¹⁰² Ibid. ¹⁰³ ‘Germans From West Poland’, The Times, 24 Apr. 1946. ¹⁰⁴ FO371/55393, C4310/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 16 Apr. 1946. ¹⁰⁵ FO371/55393, C4310/12/18, Trooper to Bercomb, 18 Apr. 1946; C4491/12/18, FO to Warsaw, tel. 914, 8 May 1946.

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by the head of the British liaison team in Kohlfurt, widely reported in the Polish press at the time, which praised the Poles for their handling of Operation Swallow.¹⁰⁶ The discovery that these comments had been grossly distorted by the Poles came only after the decision not to proceed with a protest had been taken.¹⁰⁷ Nor was the Foreign Office aware at this point that The Times ‘special correspondent’, a naturalized British subject of Polish origin, was a Polish government stooge.¹⁰⁸ The Foreign Office, however, was not yet prepared ‘to close the door on further representations’.¹⁰⁹ Cavendish-Bentinck was told to ‘emphasize informally’ that both the British and Polish governments were ‘likely to come under strong criticism from world opinion about these transfers’ unless ‘all practicable steps to ensure best possible treatment and transfer arrangements’ were made.¹¹⁰ Some members of the Foreign Office had wanted to take a tougher line, confident that public opinion would support it.¹¹¹ The British Embassy in Warsaw, however, would not. Cavendish-Bentinck was still holding up his telescope to his blind eye like Nelson at Trafalgar. ‘The attitude of the Embassy [ . . . ] [was] that there was no reason why they should care what happened to the Germans,’ concluded the officer commanding the Stettin liaison team after discussions with members of the embassy staff about the Foreign Office’s original request for a formal protest.¹¹² Any reserves of goodwill that the Poles had retained over the subject of the Germans was near depleted by the way in which Operation Swallow had begun. ‘We are always being told what an essentially Christian people the Poles are,’ remarked John Troutbeck, head of the Foreign Office German Department, in April 1946. ‘Could they not for once behave like Christians?’¹¹³ ¹⁰⁶ FO371/55393, C4210/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 13 Apr. 1946, encl. C4211/12/18, translation of article with statement by Col. Growse. ¹⁰⁷ FO371/55394, C5219/12/18, Berlin to Warsaw, 11 May 1946 (repeated FO, 13 May 1946). ¹⁰⁸ Joel Cang represented the MG, Observer and Jewish Chronicle in Warsaw. See FO371/56402, N6073/13/55, C-B to Hankey, 1 May 1946. For his links with the Polish Govt. and untrustworthiness, see FO371/56405, N14220/13/55, Sargent minute, 21 Oct. 1946, Nash minute, 23 Oct. 1946. ¹⁰⁹ FO371/55394, C5245/12/18, Hankey to Savery, 15 May 1946. ¹¹⁰ F0371/55393, C4491/12/18, FO to Warsaw, tel. 915, 8 May 1946; FO371/55 394, C5258/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 12 May 1946. ¹¹¹ FO371/55393, C4310/12/18, Franklin minute, 18 Apr. 1946. ¹¹² FO1052/324, fo. 75, Lt. Col. Beddington to Director PWDP Bunde: Weekly Report No. 5, 7 Jun. 1946. ¹¹³ FO371/55393, C4310/12/18, Troutbeck marginal comment [19 Apr. 1946].

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Approaches through more discreet channels in Berlin, however, made a protest through the Warsaw Embassy unnecessary.¹¹⁴ After a series of representations had been made through the Polish Military Mission to the ACC there were noticeable improvements in Operation Swallow.¹¹⁵ Formal allegations of inhumane treatment were dropped and the British acknowledged that the Poles were ‘trying to carry out the terms of the agreement from the humanitarian point of view as far as the present disorganized state of Poland allow[ed]’.¹¹⁶ The Poles promised that the proportion of able-bodied male ‘Swallows’ would rise in the future.¹¹⁷ Both sides agreed ‘not to hark back to past complaints’.¹¹⁸ The Poles had been given the benefit of the doubt. They remained, however, on probation. ‘We consider the Poles have improved conditions slightly in the last few weeks,’ a senior officer in the PWDP Division in the British zone noted at the end April 1946. ‘They may be doing their best, but this is [still] not good enough.’¹¹⁹ From May 1946 onwards Operation Swallow entered its most intensive as well as its most trouble-free phase lasting over three months and reaching its peak in the first half of July, when well over 9,000 ‘Swallows’ were arriving in the British zone per day.¹²⁰ Although there continued to be reports of inhumane treatment and of expellees arriving in poor conditions it was with nothing like the frequency of earlier months.¹²¹ The problem for the British authorities after May 1946 was not so much how ‘Swallows’ were being transported but simply who was arriving in ¹¹⁴ FO1052/323, fo. 24, Kenchington to CRX Berlin, 23 Mar. 1946; fo. 29, Kenchington to Col. Prawin, Chief of Polish Military Mission, Berlin, 27 Mar. 1946; FO1052/470, fo. 373, Prawin to Kenchington, 8 Apr. 1946; FO1052/323, fo. 70, Kenchington to Todd, 13 Apr. 1946; fo. 104, Report on interviews re: ‘Swallow’ with Polish Authorities, 30 Apr. 1946; FO371/55394, C5515/12/18, Franklin minute, 7 May 1946. ¹¹⁵ FO1052/323, fo. 90, Bercomb to Troopers, 25 Apr. 1946. ¹¹⁶ FO1052/324, fo. 1, Bercomb to Troopers, 1 May 1946. ¹¹⁷ Ibid. ¹¹⁸ FO1052/323, fo. 104, Report on interviews with Polish Authorities, 30 Apr. 1946. ¹¹⁹ FO1052/323, fo. 91, Chief PWDP Bunde to PWDP Berlin, 26 Apr. 1946. ¹²⁰ FO1051/498, Breakdown of German Expellees received from Poland: 2–15 May, 16–31 May, 1–15 Jun., 1–15 Jul. 1946. For improvements in conditions, see FO1052/324, fo. 18, Maj. Tobin to HQ Mil. Gov., Brunswick: Third Report on Swallows, 30 Apr. 1946. ¹²¹ For the continuing poor treatment of expellees, see FO1052/324, fo. 25, Mil. Gov. Westfalen to PWDP Div., 13 May 1946; fo. 9, Lt. Col. Beddington, BLT Stettin to Director PWDP Bunde, 27 Apr. 1946; fos 19b–e, Report by Liaison Team Kohlfurt up to 3 May 1946; FO1052/471, fo. 234, Col. Donnelly, Public Health, N. Rhine Region to PH Branch, IA&C Div, ZEO Bunde, 9 Aug. 1946.

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the British zone. It was the category of German, or as was often the case non-German, being transferred under Operation Swallow which was problematic. Jews, some from as far afield as Russia, began arriving as ‘Swallows’ in ever-increasing numbers from May 1946 onwards, and following the Kielce pogrom of July 1946 the British authorities braced themselves for a deluge.¹²² Swallow transports were sometimes found to be 100 per cent Jewish,¹²³ and there were suspicions that Jewish organizations were providing ‘forged papers on a vast scale’.¹²⁴ Although there are no figures for the total number of non-German Jewish ‘Swallows’, in August 1946 there were 2,000 at one camp alone in the British zone. The problem was on such a scale that the Deputy Military Governor believed that the only way of solving it was to completely suspend Operation Swallow.¹²⁵ Polish local authorities also began loading the inmates of lunatic asylums, hospitals, orphanages and old people’s homes onto Swallow transports.¹²⁶ Although they accounted for only a small proportion of the overall number of expellees, they represented the thin end of the wedge. Of the total number of expellees received into the British zone by 15 June 1946, only 17.7% were adult males and of these around 60% were fit for work.¹²⁷ The arrival of 750,000 economically unproductive expellees without the most basic items necessary for survival only worsened the critical food, housing and public health crisis. By July 1946, one would have been hard-pressed to find any officer or relief worker in the British zone who would not have welcomed an indefinite suspension of ‘this barbarous movement’.¹²⁸ As it was, on 15 July 1946 ¹²² FO1052/474, fo. 214, Boothby to James, 14 Jul. 1946; FO688/34, 28/62/46, British Vice-Consulate Stettin to British Embassy Warsaw, 25 Jun. 1946; FO688/45, 216/4/46, Vice-Consulate Stettin: General Report, 12 Jun. 1946; FO371/56597, N10613/1064/55, Extract from Stettin General Report [21 Jul. 1946]. ¹²³ FO1052/324, fo. 77b, Report on Train No. 165, 18 May 1946; FO1052/474, fo. 198, Report on Jewish Train No. 338, 10 Jul. 1946. ¹²⁴ FO1052/474, fo. 223, Boothby to Ford, 11 Jul. 1946. ¹²⁵ FO1052/471, fo. 215, Maj. Gen. Erskine, Office of the DMG, Berlin to Jenkins, Permanent Secretary, COGA, 2 Aug. 1946. ¹²⁶ See, for example, FO1052/475, fo. 10, Train No. 471, 23 Aug. 1946. ¹²⁷ FO371/55395, C6802/12/18, Concomb to Confolk, 29 Jun. 1946. ‘Fitness’, in the context of the British zone in 1946, meant men under fifty who could do any kind of work and over fifty who could do light work; women under forty-five who could do any kind of ‘women’s work’ and over forty-five who could do lighter ‘women’s work’; and all children unless suffering from serious disease. See FO1051/498, Bercomb to Troopers, 11 May 1946. ¹²⁸ Comment made in Beveridge papers, Box 420, XI/52, Notes by Brig. Lingham, Aug. 1946. For sentiments among British relief workers, see FRS, 1992/70,

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the British authorities, without first consulting the ACC, cut the intake of expellees to 5,000 per day.¹²⁹ As a senior officer with responsibility for refugees in the British zone explained to a colleague in Berlin: I fear we have perhaps been a little naughty but [ . . . ] there is in the Zone such a very strong sense of the extreme urgency of a decision to close down or almost completely curtail ‘Swallow’ that we are inclined to take immediate action without consulting you. We do feel that it is not fully realised outside the Zone: (i) the dire straits we are in as regards dispersal, housing etc; (ii) the constant feeling that every day without pause this awful flow of people is going on and still goes on while agreement and discussion in the C[ombined] R[epatriation] [E]X[ecutive], Control Office etc. is delaying its stoppage [ . . . ] It is so urgent that one has to act first and argue afterwards.¹³⁰

The formal request to the Control Office for a complete suspension of Operation Swallow stated that: feeding and housing in the British zone have become such acute problems that we are rapidly approaching a point when we must stop further intakes under the existing arrangements or at any rate suspend Operation Swallow for the moment. The state in which Germans are reaching our Zone from Polish administered territories is such that they can not make any contribution to their own upkeep or to any reconstruction of Germany by reason of their deplorable physical and economic conditions, and of the extremely low percentage of potential workers amongst them only eleven per cent are working male adults.¹³¹

The influx of expellees had become ‘an intolerable burden’ on the British zone and ‘in these circumstances the transfer of Germans in the humane conditions for which the [Potsdam] agreement provides has become impossible and we are obliged to suspend it indefinitely’.¹³² It was largely on the grounds of the negative reaction in Poland that the Control Office in London was unable to authorize a complete suspension of Operation Swallow. A compromise formula, however, emerged from the consultations between the German and Northern Germany: General Policy and Misc. 1944–46, Minutes submitted to Second Regional Conference to be held 6–8 September 1946; IVS, DE3986/J20, D. Childs, RS109/IVS News Letter—October 1946 [covering period from Apr. 1946]. ¹²⁹ FO1052/471, fo. 173, Kenchington to PWDP Berlin, undated; fo. 189, Kenchington to Chief Polish Military Mission, Berlin, undated. ¹³⁰ FO1052/471, fo. 229, Col. Jerram, PWDP Lemgo to Lt. Col. Vaughan Hughes, PWDP Berlin, 15 Aug. 1946. ¹³¹ FO371/55395, C8105/12/18, Bercomb to Confolk, 14 Jul. 1946. ¹³² Ibid.

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Departments of the Foreign Office, the Control Office and the British authorities in Germany.¹³³ Instead of a suspension, the British zone would continue to accept a ‘small flow’ of expellees ‘as an earnest of [ . . . ] good faith’.¹³⁴ On 27 August 1945, the Polish Military Mission was informed that ‘as a result of the danger to public health arising from the extreme shortage of housing and of food’, the British authorities were ‘compelled on humanitarian grounds’ to review the rate at which they were able to accept refugees.¹³⁵ A personal message from the British Military Governor, Air Marshall Sir Sholto Douglas, was also conveyed to the Polish government explaining the decision and stressing that the Potsdam decision on population transfer was not being called in question.¹³⁶ From 5 September 1946, Operation Swallow was completely suspended for a week. When it resumed, only two trains per week were accepted into the British zone.¹³⁷ At a stroke, the influx of refugees was cut from thirty to three thousand per week. Yet this could not solve the underlying problems facing the British zone which Operation Swallow had exacerbated in the first place. The difficulty remained what to do with those who had already arrived in such numbers and at such a pace over the summer, most of whom were destitute and many of whom remained in refugee camps.¹³⁸ These problems would not disappear overnight and they subsequently determined the degree of willingness the British authorities showed in continuing to receive expellees into their zone after September 1946. Ironically, it was the very ‘success’ of Operation Swallow, in so far as its organization and execution were concerned, that caused these problems. One million Germans were transferred from Poland to the ¹³³ For the discussion around this, see FO371/55395, C8105/12/18, various FO minutes, 19–23 Jul. 1946; C8525/12/18, Confolk to Bercomb [draft tel.], 23 Jul. 1946; various FO minutes, 26 Jul.–1 Aug. 1946. FO371/55396, C9291/12/18, Confolk to Bercomb, 6 Aug. 1946; FO to Warsaw, 9 Aug. 1946; C9412/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 10 Aug. 1946; Franklin minutes, 13 Aug. 1946; C9810/12/18, Bercomb to Confolk, 19 Aug. 1946; Dean to Wilberforce, 27 Aug. 1946. See also FO945/67, fo. 53a, ORC (46) 74, 27 Jul. 1946: Cabinet Overseas Reconstruction Committee—The Problem of the German Refugee Populations in the British Zone, Memorandum by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 26 Jul. 1946. ¹³⁴ FO371/55395, C8525/12/18, Confolk to Bercomb [draft tel.], 23 Jul. 1946. ¹³⁵ FO371/55396, C9810/12/18, Berlin to COGA: Argus 615, 27 Aug. 1946. ¹³⁶ FO371/55396, C10151/12/18, Berlin to FO, 26 Aug. 1946; C10152/12/18, Berlin to Warsaw, 26 Aug. 1946; FO to Warsaw, 27 Aug. 1946. ¹³⁷ FO1052/471, fo. 259, PWDP Lemgo to Hanreg, Steinreg and Bercomb, 7 Sep. 1946. ¹³⁸ FO1013/2103, HQ Mil. Gov. North Rhine–Westfalen: Monthly Report ending 30 Sep. 1946.

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British zone by the end of August 1946. That this was managed with very little loss of life was all the more surprising given that a large proportion of ‘Swallows’ were aged and sick.¹³⁹ This was a huge logistical and technical accomplishment. For all the problems that the British had with Operation Swallow, and with the Poles’ conduct of it, it did not break down and did not descend into chaos. On the contrary, the procedures put in place were running most efficiently and smoothly at the very point when the British authorities decided they wanted Operation Swallow drastically slowed down. Put differently, mechanisms were in place to ensure that the actual transfer of Germans would be orderly but the very orderliness of this process meant that the British zone could not cope with the numbers and as a result the conditions of resettlement could not be humane. As long as the political reasons for continuing Operation Swallow were still in force, the British were obliged to square this circle. On two occasions—in April and in August—the wishes of the British authorities to suspend Operation Swallow were over-ruled primarily because of the impact this would have in Poland. External political considerations remained at least as important as social and economic factors in the British zone. As long as they did, the British zone would keep receiving expellees. The final phases of Operation Swallow from September to December 1946 and then from January to July 1947 underscore the primacy of the political factor in the decision to continue transfers of population from Poland. During the first period the British kept the Operation Swallow running at a minimum while refusing all Polish requests to increase the number of transports. During the latter period, the British sat waiting to fulfil their formal obligations irrespective of the political ramifications. The September reduction in Swallow coincided with James Byrnes’s Stuttgart speech in which the US Secretary of State cast doubt on the permanency of the Polish western frontier, as Churchill had before him, and as Bevin would in the Commons on 22 October 1946.¹⁴⁰ The Poles drew a direct connection between its timing and the September ¹³⁹ The highest number of deaths in a fortnightly period up to the end of Aug. 1946 was seventeen, which was 0.00023% of the total number of expellees for that period, or 1 in 4300. See FO1051/498, Breakdown of German Expellees, 16–31 May 1946. ¹⁴⁰ For text of speech, see Documents on American Foreign Relations, iii, eds. R. Dennett and R. Turner (Princeton, 1948), 210–18. For Bevin’s references to the Polish western frontier, see Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 427, cols 1517–18 (22 Oct. 1946). For

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reduction in Operation Swallow, and it made them even more determined to pre-empt any formal decision on the Polish western frontier by ‘strengthening this wall of millions of Polish settlers along the Oder and Neisse’.¹⁴¹ A proposal to increase the number of Swallow transports from two to six or seven per week soon followed,¹⁴² with the hint that if the British speeded the process up they might well see an increase in able-bodied males.¹⁴³ But the British authorities had already been warned that they were unlikely to witness such a miracle.¹⁴⁴ Statistics for October 1946 showed no increase in the proportion of male expellees, while overall levels of ‘fitness’ plummeted to depths not seen since spring 1946.¹⁴⁵ There was therefore no incentive for the British authorities in Germany to reverse the decision.¹⁴⁶ Political reasons for resuming Operation Swallow at an increased rate, however, remained and were, as before, championed by the British Embassy in Warsaw. Cavendish-Bentinck asked that the reduction in Swallow be reconsidered, otherwise there was ‘a real risk that our action in this matter [would] be misunderstood by Polish opinion’.¹⁴⁷ Cavendish-Bentinck endorsed a Polish proposal to increase the Swallow transports significantly in November and December so that the whole operation could be wound up before the worst of the winter. Cavendish-Bentinck pointed out to the Foreign Office that this would spare the expellees ‘considerable hardship’.¹⁴⁸ As if to emphasize this point, in mid-October Cavendish-Bentinck revisited the camp near Stettin which he had inspected in April.¹⁴⁹ With only one train a week now leaving, compared to one a day before, admission that ‘we made a mistake in accepting the Oder–Neisse line at Potsdam’, see FO800/490, Pol/46/8, Bevin minute for P.M., 18 Jul. 1946. ¹⁴¹ FO371/55397, C11157/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 16 Sep. 1946; C11397/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 18 Sep. 1946. Quotation from Gomulka, in ‘Reply to Mr. Byrnes’, Polish Facts and Figures, 12 Sep. 1946, 1–2. See also FO371/55398, C13075/12/18, Press summary, 6 Oct. 1946; and comments by Polish P.M., Eduard Osóbka–Morawski, in FRUS 1946, vi, Lane to Byrnes, 3 Oct. 1946, 500. ¹⁴² FO371/55397, C11950/12/18, Polish Govt. note, 30 Sep. 1946. ¹⁴³ Comments by Wolski (31 Aug. 1946) in FO371/55397, C10484/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 2 Sep. 1946. ¹⁴⁴ See FO1010/26, fo. 67b, Boothby to James, 12 Aug 1946. ¹⁴⁵ FO1051/498, Breakdown of German Expellees, 15–31 Oct. 1946. ¹⁴⁶ FO1049/516, 417/98/46, Chief PWDP Berlin to Pol. Div. Berlin, 11 Oct. 1946; FO371/55397, C12690/12/18, Pol. Div. Berlin to FO, 16 Oct. 1946. ¹⁴⁷ FO371/55397, C11950/12/18, C-B to Bevin, 2 Oct. 1946. ¹⁴⁸ FO371/55398, C12987/12/18, Warsaw to FO, 24 Oct. 1946. ¹⁴⁹ For what follows, see FO371/55398, C12966/12/18, C-B to Hankey, 16 Oct. 1946.

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there was a backlog of thousands of Germans there and in camps in the interior of Pomerania living ‘in conditions which would not be so bad if they were there for a short while, but which cannot be described as humane if they have to remain for long’. Conditions in Stettin had ‘greatly deteriorated’. Recently, there had even been cases of typhus. ‘Since I have been promoted to be Ambassador I have smelt many nasty smells’, Cavendish-Bentinck informed the Foreign Office, ‘but nothing to equal that immense and over-powering stench of this camp.’ The implication was that if conditions, as in Stettin, were bad now, then they would be far worse if Operation Swallow dragged on.¹⁵⁰ The British authorities in Germany, however, were unconvinced. ‘This is not so much a genuine humanitarian offer’, remarked the head of the PWDP Division, ‘but an attempt to push as many Germans into our zone as possible before Swallow stops and before a final session [sic] is reached on Polish-administered Germany.’¹⁵¹ Given that Cavendish-Bentinck had never shown much interest in the welfare of Germans in Poland, it is a cruel twist of irony that on this occasion his prophesy proved correct. In December 1946, Swallow transports began arriving in the British zone in conditions that worryingly resembled the bad old days of August 1945. An overcrowded train with 1,885 expellees arrived in Marienthal from Kohlfurt on 15 December 1946 with 109 cases of frostbite, fifteen of them requiring amputation.¹⁵² No accommodation had been provided at the assembly point near Görlitz in Lower Silesia and the expellees had had to wait out in the open in the rain for four days until transportation became available. They were then crammed into unheated box wagons in bitterly cold weather for the onward leg to the British zone, which took four days. Rations given were ‘well below the starvation rate’.¹⁵³ Two elderly expellees died en route, two on arrival. The commandant of Marienthal transit camp reported that the physical appearance of these expellees ¹⁵⁰ The timing of the two reports is significant. C-B’s report on the Stettin camp was sent by diplomatic bag on 16 October and received in the FO on 28 October. The new Polish proposal for Operation Swallow was sent by telegram on 24 October and received in the Foreign Office on 26 October. ¹⁵¹ Kenchington’s views reported in FO1049/516, 417/106/46, Young minute, 2 Nov. 1946. ¹⁵² For reports on this train, see FO1052/472, fos 64–5, Maj. Tobin: Report on Swallow Train No. 513 ex Kohlfurt, 18 Dec. 1946; fos 62–3, Dr. Loebell, Marienthal Refugee Camp Doctor: Second Report on Swallow Train No. 513, 17 Dec. 1946. ¹⁵³ FO1052/472, fos 64–5, Report on Swallow Train No. 513, 18 Dec. 1946.

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‘was below the not very high usual standard’ and their mental condition the lowest he had seen since the start of Operation Swallow.¹⁵⁴ A formal protest was made to the Polish Military Mission in Berlin.¹⁵⁵ But the next train from Kohlfurt arrived a week later in an even worse condition.¹⁵⁶ None of the box wagons were heated. The expellees had been on the train for five days and nights since assembling in Wrocław. Sixteen elderly people had died en route from Kohlfurt. There were fifty-three cases of frostbite, some requiring amputation. Live births had occurred as the train crossed the Soviet zone, and several women in the later stages of pregnancy were found on board. Rations given to the ‘Swallows’ were ‘unbelievably low’, their physical condition ‘extremely poor’. To the British major inspecting the train, the expellees appeared ‘to have been living an existence of cowed servitude and gave more the impression of whipped curs than human beings’. A further thirty-one expellees later died as a direct result of the conditions in which they were transported.¹⁵⁷ Operation Swallow came to a grinding halt. The British authorities in Germany demanded its immediate suspension.¹⁵⁸ The Control Office authorized a temporary suspension reviewed at fortnightly intervals.¹⁵⁹ The decision, just as with those of July and September, was nonnegotiable. ‘Any disposition [by the Poles] [ . . . ] to resist this measure will be met by full publicity for the conditions in which they have been carrying out repatriation in recent weeks,’ Strang told the Foreign Office. ‘Temperature in Berlin today is zero Fahrenheit [minus 18 degrees Celsius] and I cannot imagine what it is in Warsaw.’¹⁶⁰ Even after the Poles had been informed of this decision, however, another train was sent from Kohlfurt. It was heated and provisioned but there were still seven fatalities.¹⁶¹ After 3 January 1947, no further ‘Swallows’ were accepted into the British zone. The Polish authorities nevertheless ¹⁵⁴ Ibid. ¹⁵⁵ FO1052/475, fo. 35, Ford to Chief of Polish Repatriation Mission, Berlin, 18 Dec. 1946. ¹⁵⁶ For what follows, see FO1052/472, fos 77–8, Maj. Tobin: Report on Train No. 514, 27 Dec. 1946. ¹⁵⁷ Figures in FO1052/472, fo. 118, PWDP Lemgo to Confolk, 25 Jan. 1947. ¹⁵⁸ FO1052/472, fo. 47, Bercomb to Confolk, 20 Dec. 1946. ¹⁵⁹ FO1052/472, fo. 49, Confolk to Bercomb, 21 Dec. 1946; fo. 52, Brownjohn to Head of Polish Military Mission, 23 Dec. 1946. ¹⁶⁰ FO371/55398, C15763/12/18, Strang to FO, 20 Dec. 1946. ¹⁶¹ FO1052/472, fos 109–10, DMG brief for discussion with Chancellor [of the Duchy of Lancaster] [23 Dec. 1947].

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continued to load up transports. On 6 January 1947, a train filled with expellees arrived in Stettin that was, according to the British officer there, ‘unfit for cattle let alone human beings’.¹⁶² A backlog of expellees awaiting movement rapidly built up in assembly centres. By the end of January 1947, conditions in the Stettin camp were ‘getting steadily worse’, overcrowding was acute and there was a dramatic increase in mortality.¹⁶³ By March 1947, the British Vice-Consul reported that typhoid fever had broken out at the camp.¹⁶⁴ As the condition of future ‘Swallows’ declined, so too did any enthusiasm on the part of the British authorities for a resumption of the operation. At the end of January 1947, in the face of ‘abundantly clear’ evidence that Operation Swallow, if resumed, would continue to be carried out inhumanely, the Control Office backed the original proposal for a definite suspension until spring 1947.¹⁶⁵ Public opinion was ‘profoundly shocked’ by the incidents in December 1946, and the ‘shower of queries and allegations’ in Parliament undoubtedly played a part in the Control Office’s decision.¹⁶⁶ Developments in Poland, however, had also greatly changed the political context of Operation Swallow. Following the victory of the Communist-dominated single list in the fraudulent January 1947 general elections, the political and logistical arguments customarily given in support of continuing Swallow subsequently lost their force.¹⁶⁷ A Polish offer of 50,000 ‘Swallows’ as ¹⁶² FO1052/472, fo. 60, 508 R/Det. Lubeck to Concomb, 6 Jan. 1947; FO1052/475, fo. 51, Steinreg PWDP to 508 R/Det. Lubeck, 7 Jan. 1947. ¹⁶³ FO1052/475, fos 90–1, Cpt. Garner, Stettin to PWDP Lemgo, 1 Feb. 1947; FO1052/353, fo. 59, PWDP Lemgo to PWDP Berlin for CRX, 30 Jan 1947. ¹⁶⁴ FO1049/794, 83/50/47, Danzig Consulate General to FO Nth. Dept., 28 Mar. 1947. ¹⁶⁵ FO1052/472, fo. 125, Confolk to Bercomb, 27 Jan. 1947; fo. 149, Bercomb to Confolk [4 Feb. 1947]. ¹⁶⁶ Quotations from FO1052/472, fo. 119, Confolk to PWDP Lemgo, 25 Jan. 1947; fo. 125, Confolk to Bercomb, 27 Jan. 1946. For questions and comments in Parliament, see Hansard, HC (series 5) vol. 432, cols. 57–8 (22 Jan. 1947); cols. 205–6 (29 Jan. 1947); vol. 432, col. 1900 (5 Feb. 1947); vol. 433, cols. 350–2, 356 (12 Feb. 1947). See also ‘Germans Frozen to Death in Train’, MG, 21 Dec. 1946; ‘16 Corpses in Train’, MG, 28 Dec. 1945; [letters from] C. Ebor [Archbishop of York], ‘Trains from Poland’, The Times, 31 Jan., 5 Feb., 8 Feb. 1947; FO371/64221, C37/37/18, Stokes (for SEN) to Bevin, 23–4 Dec. 1946. See also petition to Attlee, referred to in FO371/64222, C3137/37/18, Rowan (Private Sec. to P.M.) to Dorothy Buxton, 9 Feb. 1947. ¹⁶⁷ For appeals by the Warsaw Embassy for the resumption of Swallow, or at least for not ending it, see FO1049/794, 83/52/47, Warsaw to FO, 30 Apr. 1947; FO371/64224, C7992/37/18, Warsaw to FO, 2 Jun. 1947; FO1052/472, fo. 217, Thicknesse to Col. Pulverman, PWDP Lemgo, 9 Jun. 1947; FO1049/794, 83/67/47, Warsaw to FO, 5 Jul. 1947.

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a one-off ‘final installment’ was turned down.¹⁶⁸ On 26 July 1947, the Poles were informed that the British zone had fulfilled its obligations and that Operation Swallow was therefore completed.¹⁶⁹ Just as the trains that arrived in Marienthal in December 1946 were not representative of the hundreds of earlier Swallow transports neither was the undignified squabbling that marked the end of Operation Swallow characteristic of the spirit in which the operation had been carried out in its earlier stages. The bitterness with which Swallow was wound up in summer 1947 was symptomatic more of deteriorating international relations than Polish conduct during Operation Swallow. Throughout 1946, neither the British, despite frustration at the ‘class’ of expellee, nor the Poles, despite resentment at British solicitude towards the Germans, fully exploited their differences. The haggling over the remaining thirty or three hundred thousand Germans in 1947 obscures the fact that over a million of them were transferred under Operation Swallow, mostly between April and August 1946. Mortality rates remained relatively low and even if the condition of expellees was poor, they were often in no worse a state than the indigenous population of the British zone or, indeed, Polish refugees from east of the River Bug. In any case, the principal issue for the British had never really been about how ‘Swallows’ were being transferred. It was who these ‘Swallows’ were that was more important. The British justification for closing down Operation Swallow was therefore just a little disingenuous. They were perfectly content to use humanitarian arguments to slow down or halt the transfer. They were considerably less receptive to the same arguments when employed in order to speed transfers up. ¹⁶⁸ FO1049/794, 83/68/47, Warsaw to FO, 11 Jul. 1947; 83/70/47, FO to Warsaw, 22 Jul. 1947. For other earlier Polish approaches, see FO1049/794, 83/42/47, Prawin to Lt. Gen. Sir B. Robertson, DMG, 21 Mar. 1947; 83/44/47, Memorandum of interview with Head of Polish Military Mission, 9 Apr. 1947; 83/47/47, Prawin to Robertson, 11 Apr. 1947; Prawin’s comments, in 83/58/47, Berlin to FO, 16 May 1947. ¹⁶⁹ FO1049/794, 83/74/47, DMG to Chief of Polish Military Mission, 26 Jul. 1947; 83/71/47, Berlin to FO, 25 Jul. 1947. By late January 1947, 1,155,887 expellees had been officially transferred under Operation Swallow. Adding the 210,710 who had entered the British zone unofficially and 100,000 Germans originally from Poland in the American zone who the British had agreed to take, left a shortfall of around thirty thousand. Since two thousand Germans from Poland were infiltrating the British zone over the ‘green border’ each week in February 1947, it was possible technically to fulfill the obligation to take 1.5 million Germans without even having to restart Operation Swallow. See FO1052/472, fo. 136, PWDP Lemgo to PWDP Berlin, 1 Feb. 1947; fo. 186, Chief Pol. Div. Berlin to DCOS Pol. Div., 9 Mar. 1947, fo. 188, Bercomb to Confolk, 12 Mar. 1947.

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G I N A N D D D T: B R I T I S H L I A I S O N T E A M S A N D T H E M E C H A N I C S O F P O P U L AT I O N TRANSFER Operation Swallow was regarded principally as a German-Polish affair. With the exception of a transit camp commandant and his refugee detachment, the occasional inspector from PWDP Division or the assistance of a relief team from one of the voluntary societies, the British were content to supervise the process from above rather than take a hands-on role on the ground. The two British liaison teams stationed in Poland, however, were the exception to this rule. Between them they oversaw the transportation of nearly 1.2 million expellees to the British zone and became cornerstones of the regulatory mechanism of Operation Swallow. Their experiences provide valuable insights into the hands-on involvement of a ‘third-party’ in a population transfer. Indeed, their participation on the ground might be seen as the one factor that gave Operation Swallow this appearance. This section examines the role that the British liaison teams played in Operation Swallow and asks what contribution they made to ensuring that it was carried out in accordance with the Potsdam decisions. It was the Soviets who insisted on having British military personnel stationed in Poland to oversee Operation Swallow.¹⁷⁰ They feared that if expellees were checked and cleared on the British-Soviet zonal frontier, then they would be landed with whomsoever was rejected. To avoid this, two British liaison teams were sent to points near the Polish western frontier as ‘a safeguard against the despatch of unacceptable refugees’.¹⁷¹ Each team was comprised of around ten men, including a commanding officer, a medical officer and an interpreter. They were responsible for organizing a ‘check centre’ where each batch of expellees would be inspected and passed on to the British zone and where debarred cases—the sick, the incurable, the insane—would be removed from the train. They were also supposed to make ‘every endeavour [ . . . ] to ensure that families [were] not split and ¹⁷⁰ FO1052/470, fos 47–9, Minutes of meeting held at PWDP Bunde on 5 Feb. 1946. For origins of Soviet decision, see FO1049/412, 85/8/46, Kenchington to Chief of Polish Mission, Berlin, 30 Jan. 1946. ¹⁷¹ FO1010/26, fo. 28, Expellees from New Poland: Operation Swallow, 14 Feb. 1946.

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[were] dispatched as a unit’.¹⁷² Once passed by the liaison teams, the British zonal authorities had to accept transports of expellees ‘without question’.¹⁷³ Conditions varied between the two locations. Although war-damaged Stettin had a strong Soviet presence and a reputation as the ‘Dodge City’ in the Polish ‘Wild West’, it was nevertheless a regional centre with basic amenities and communications.¹⁷⁴ A forty-man British team was already stationed there dealing with Polish DPs,¹⁷⁵ and the city also had a British Vice-Consul.¹⁷⁶ Kohlfurt, on the other hand, was an isolated railway junction attached to a settlement of around 2,000 inhabitants.¹⁷⁷ Towards the end of Operation Swallow, when few trains were leaving, relations with the Poles had deteriorated, supplies were disrupted and the weather was bitterly cold, the utter boredom and frustration of the liaison teams was palpable.¹⁷⁸ Members of the teams spent two to three months at a time, officers sometimes longer, stationed 250 kilometres behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ with little contact with the outside world. The work was intended to be largely supervisory.¹⁷⁹ Both teams eventually had a German staff for carrying out the hands-on work, from ¹⁷² FO1052/470, fos 106–8, PWDP Div: Technical Instructions No. 5, 18 Feb. 1946. ¹⁷³ FO1052/470, fos 123–6, Agreement between British and Polish CRX representatives, 14 Feb. 1946. ¹⁷⁴ For an account of firefights in Stettin, see FO1052/323, fo. 86, Lt. Col. Beddington, Stettin, to Director PWDP Bunde, 18 Apr. 1946. For conditions in Stettin, see FO371/56596, N2710/1064/55, HM Consul Danzig: [Report on] visit to Stettin [10–13 Feb. 1946]; FO688/45, 216/1/46, Vice-Consulate Stettin: General Report No. 1, 4 Apr. 1946; FO371/56597, N5250/1064/55, C-B to Bevin, 17 Apr. 1946. ¹⁷⁵ FO1052/470, fos 127–30, Tour of Lt. Col. Carroll, 1 Mar. 1946. ¹⁷⁶ For general reports from Stettin, see FO688/45. The first report is dated 4 Apr. 1946. ¹⁷⁷ When the team arrived in Feb. 1946, the town had been renamed Kaławsk and was initially referred to as such in British reports. Sometime in late May 1946, its name was again changed to We¸gliniec, as it stands today. ‘A method of pronouncing this name is being studied’, wrote the commanding officer of the team, ‘and in the meantime it is proposed to call the place Kohlfurt’. It remained so for the duration of Operation Swallow. See FO1052/324, fo. 69, Maj. Boothby, Kohlfurt to Lt. Col. James, Hannover, 1 Jun. 1946. ¹⁷⁸ For problems with communications and supplies in Kohlfurt, see FO1052/323, fos 41, 58d; FO1052/470, fo. 281; FO1010/26, fo. 38; FO1052/474, fos 45–6. For Stettin, see FO1052/324, fo. 9. For the later period, see FO1052/475, fos 90–1; FO1052/472, fo. 40. ¹⁷⁹ For this paragraph, see FO1052/470, fos 127–30, Tour of Lt. Col. Carroll, 1 Mar. 1946; FO1052/323, fo. 36e, Cpt. Muir, SMO Stettin to Carroll, 7 Mar. 1946; FO1052/324, fos 19b–e, Report by Liaison Team Kohlfurt up to 3 May 1946; FO1010/26, fo. 38, Extracts from letters and reports from Kohlfurt, 27 Mar. 1946.

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medical inspections to dusting to recording complaints. Although their functions were broadly the same—to ‘check’ and pass the ‘Swallows’—as was the procedure at both stations, there were variations between what the two teams did because of their location and the origin and organization of the transports they were inspecting. At Stettin, the procedure involved documentation, dusting with DDT and medical examination, ‘customs’ and feeding, all of which took place at a ‘staging camp’—some blocks of flats surrounded by barbed wire—fifteen minutes from the station. The procedure at Kohlfurt was more unpredictable because here the ‘Swallows’ were assembled and entrained 150 kilometres away in Wrocław. Both teams were armed with power dusters and it was one of their main tasks to ensure that all ‘Swallows’ were dusted with DDT. At the height of Operation Swallow, the Kohlfurt team were processing four trains a day, working 13 hour shifts and were using three tons of DDT every fortnight. The work of a liaison team was not, however, limited to ‘checking’ and ‘dusting’. The extent to which the teams took a more hands-on role depended on how literally the commanding officer interpreted his duties. As a rule, these were resourceful men who made up their job description as each new challenge arose. Initially, this might have involved improving the efficiency and organization at the stations and camps,¹⁸⁰ as well as sometimes ensuring that the most basic preparations were made for housing, feeding and processing which had been neglected by the local authorities.¹⁸¹ It could also involve travelling some distance from base to inspect local camps that housed ‘Swallows’.¹⁸² Commanding officers at Kohlfurt were forever chivvying local officials, the Governor of Silesia or bureaucrats in the Ministry of Repatriation in Wrocław about overcrowding, the lack of able-bodied ‘Swallows’, the mistreatment of expellees or the activities of some overzealous customs official.¹⁸³ Several factors, however, hampered the ¹⁸⁰ FO1010/26, fo. 38, Extracts from letters and reports from Kohlfurt, 27 Mar. 1946. ¹⁸¹ FO1052/323, fos 36b–d, Cpt. Thompson, Stettin to Carroll, 5 Mar. 1946. ¹⁸² FO1052/474, fo. 144–5, Report [on] Bunzlau Assembly Point, 13 Jun. 1946; fo. 196, Report on inspection of the collecting point at Gorlitz on 7 Jul. 1946 by Maj. Boothby. ¹⁸³ FO1052/323, fos 58c–f, Growse to Governor of Lower Silesia, Wrocław, 1 Mar. 1946; FO1052/474, fos 1–2, 9, Growse to Cpt. Pawlowski, 6 Apr. 1946; FO1052/323, fos 99c–d, Growse to Governor, 22 Apr. 1946; FO1052/324, fo. 38, Boothby to

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teams’ effectiveness. The problem of illegal ‘Swallows’ was on such a scale that many inevitably got through. Large numbers of people simply did not have proper documentation in any case and, running on a tight schedule, the teams’ were compelled to make split second judgments.¹⁸⁴ In the more extreme cases, the only sanction the teams had at their disposal was to refuse to allow whole transports or groups of individuals to proceed. But even this sanction was ultimately constrained by other factors. Humanitarian considerations, or put simply, compassion, often got in the way. The commanding officer at Kohlfurt, Major Boothby, confessed that removing Polish Jews from trains was ‘an unpleasant duty [ . . . ] as their sufferings over past years were only too apparent’,¹⁸⁵ and though he would do everything to prevent them leaving he would only do so ‘within the British interpretation of the meaning of the word Humanity’.¹⁸⁶ Compassion also lay behind decisions to accept unauthorized transports of the sick, infirm and demented,¹⁸⁷ as well as to admit so-called ‘extras’ into the British zone. These were Germans who began arriving under their own steam at Kohlfurt and Stettin once word got out that Operation Swallow had begun, causing serious overcrowding in the transit camps in Stettin and acute problems in Kohlfurt where there was no accommodation. In mid-May 1946, up to a thousand ‘extras’ were arriving in Kohlfurt daily.¹⁸⁸ By the end of May, 1500 ‘homeless and half-starved’ Germans were encamped at the station.¹⁸⁹ No attempt at first was made by the Polish authorities to feed and house them or to control the flow.¹⁹⁰ The British had the right to turn these ‘extras’ away, but found it impossible to do so. ‘No Englishmen could do such a thing,’ the officer commanding the liaison team remarked,¹⁹¹ and the ‘extras’ were added to trains arriving from Wrocław already full, further reducing each expellee’s rations for the onward journey. Governor, 17 May 1946; protest to the Governor on 28 May 1946 reported in FO1052/324, fo. 69, Boothby to James, 1 Jun. 1946; FO1052/474, fo. 40, Deaths and birth on trains 147 and 153, 12 May 1946; fo. 143, Boothby to Governor, 14 Jun. 1946. ¹⁸⁴ FO1010/26, fo. 38, Extracts from letters and reports from Kohlfurt, 27 Mar. 1946. ¹⁸⁵ FO1052/474, fo. 135, Boothby to James, 15 Jun. 1946. ¹⁸⁶ FO1052/474, fo. 214, Boothby to James, 14 Jul. 1946. ¹⁸⁷ FO1052/323, fo. 88, 709 (R) Mil. Gov. to Concomb, 23 Apr. 1946; FO1052/475, fo. 3, Report by Beddington on Operation ‘Swallow’, 24 Aug. 1946. ¹⁸⁸ FO1052/324, fo. 43, Boothby to James, 19 May 1946. ¹⁸⁹ FO1052/324, fo. 53, Hanreg to Concomb, 30 May 1946. ¹⁹⁰ Ibid. ¹⁹¹ FO1052/324, fos 52g–j, Boothby to James, 25 May 1946.

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The humanitarian dilemma facing the teams is illustrated at its most extreme by Trains 513 and 514 of December 1946 which eventually brought a halt to Operation Swallow. The commanding officer at Kohlfurt, Captain Maghee, was faced with an almost impossible choice when a virtually unheated train arrived from Wrocław in freezing temperatures.¹⁹² He did not have to accept the train. It was not only unheated, but was insufficiently rationed and there were sick and dead on board. Sending it on to the British zone in such conditions would be, he pointed out, ‘a gross case of inhumanity’. But the alternative of sending it back ‘into a cold wilderness where there were most unlikely to be any quick and warm reception arrangements’ was worse. Faced with choosing between the lesser of two evils—twenty hours to the British zone, or up to three days back into the interior of Poland—Maghee did what little he could to improve heating arrangements and medical supervision on the train and then sent it packing to the British zone. As this and other incidents showed, there was plenty of cause for friction between the teams and the Polish authorities. Until August 1946, however, when Operation Swallow was in any case being wound down, relations remained friendly. ‘This is in some degree an achievement,’ wrote Lieutenant Colonel Growse before leaving Kohlfurt in May 1946, ‘as official dealings with them consist entirely of requests for the eradication of faults on their part of the organisation and of passing on complaints made by the Germans.’¹⁹³ One of the reasons for this cordiality was pragmatic—the practical necessity of ensuring the survival and continuation of the teams’ mission. Another reason for the generally friendly relations was a genuine understanding of the Polish position that arose from being on the spot in contrast to being on the receiving end in the British zone where everything that was wrong seemed the result of Polish perfidy and uncooperativeness. ‘The Poles here do try to play,’ Growse remarked in March 1946. ‘But it’s not easy.’¹⁹⁴ The food situation was a case in point. Growse pointed out that ‘food is very scarce here for everybody, the countryside has been stripped completely bare, and there’s not a beast in the field nor a horse in the stable. [ . . . ] It is not entirely parsimony, or even vengefulness, therefore which causes the ¹⁹² For what follows, see FO1052/475, fo. 38, Ford to PWDP Berlin, 19 Dec. 1946. ¹⁹³ FO1052/324, fos 19b–e, Report by Liaison Team Kohlfurt up to 3 May 1946. ¹⁹⁴ FO1052/323, fos 41b–c, Growse to Carroll, 16 Mar. 1946.

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Poles to give short rations: It’s dire necessity.’¹⁹⁵ Commanding officers were also able to differentiate between the Polish agencies involved and apportion blame and responsibility accordingly.¹⁹⁶ Polish shortcomings were generally put down to unruly or incompetent subordinates.¹⁹⁷ Like members of the Warsaw Embassy before him, Lieutenant Colonel Beddington, commanding officer at Stettin for much of 1946, tried to encourage a sense of perspective in his colleagues in the British zone: The Polish attitude towards the German expellees [ . . . ] is based on the German attitude towards the Poles during the occupation. Many Poles have told me how they were moved without warning and were not even allowed to take any of their possessions at all [ . . . ] They were moved in over crowded cattle trains [ . . . ] It is estimated that 14% of the population died during the war. In view of this they do not see why the Germans should be treated better than they were. In spite of this conditions have improved and the authorities will do their best to carry out any requests which are reasonable. Some Poles even show kindness to the Germans. But some of them have asked why we prefer the Germans to the Poles and they also do not understand the campaign in the British press, which appears to be pro-German and anti-Polish.¹⁹⁸

Tolerance, however, had its limits. When the Poles overstepped the boundaries of ‘fair play’, out came sympathy for the underdog.¹⁹⁹ Yet even when reporting maltreatment there was always understanding for the underlying reasons that had necessitated the removal of the Germans. ‘There will always be trouble until the last German has left’, Growse remarked on another occasion, ‘for the hatred of the Pole for the German is a terrible thing, and must inevitably find occasional vent.’²⁰⁰ The problem of balancing official duty, personal compassion and cordial relations with the hosts reached almost farcical proportions at the height of Operation Swallow. On 21 June 1946, the 500,000th ¹⁹⁵ FO1010/26, fo. 38, Extracts from Letters and Reports from Kohlfurt, 27 Mar. 1946. ¹⁹⁶ See, for example, FO1052/353, fo. 50, Cpt. Garner, BLT Stettin to HQ 312 Mil. Gov. Schleswig–Holstein, 14 Jan. 1947. ¹⁹⁷ FO1052/324, fos 75a–b, Stettin: Weekly Report No. 5, 7 Jun. 1946. ¹⁹⁸ FO1052/324, fo. 21, Beddington to Director PWDP Bunde, 4 Apr. 1946. ¹⁹⁹ See incident at ‘Customs Control’, in FO1010/26, fo. 38, Extracts from letters and reports from Kohlfurt, 27 Mar. 1946. ²⁰⁰ FO1052/324, fos 19b–e, Report by Liaison Team Kohlfurt up to 3 May 1946.

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‘Swallow’ passed through Kohlfurt. A small child was selected to play out the role and rewarded with a chocolate bar. That evening, a small dinner was organized by the Poles to mark the historic event.²⁰¹ But the real celebrations came three days later. A Polish general, the Governor of Silesia, assorted Polish officials, a film unit and newspaper reporters were all due to descend on the small railway junction and the liaison team. Their visit was planned to coincide with the passing of the 300th Swallow train. Unfortunately this was a hospital train and, moreover, one for which prior permission to proceed had not been received from the British authorities in Germany. With the media circus about to descend, the officer commanding the team, Major Boothby, toyed with the idea of blocking the train but with great reluctance eventually decided to allow it through. As he explained to the receiving authorities in the British zone: From the point of view of humanity I have decided to accept this train, and with it responsibility for this action [ . . . ] To refuse this train, quite apart from the sufferings of the patients, already en route, would be to destroy the regard for this Mission and the operation of the scheme which has been built up so patiently over many months. Everybody who counts among the Poles in the operation of this scheme will be here tomorrow.²⁰²

The problems, however, did not stop there. The bigwig general missed the official reception after his car broke down on the way to Kohlfurt. The planned military parade was then cancelled, not, as the British Zone Review explained, ‘because of the pressure of work’, but for reasons that were rather more awkward for everyone involved.²⁰³ Just as the official reception was in full swing, the ‘hospital’ train arrived, containing not ‘patients’ but inmates from several asylums and institutions in the region. Boothby initially refused to allow it to proceed. Only after hours of negotiation, involving the General Commissioners of both Łodz and Wrocław, as well as an in-depth discussion on what constituted a ‘hospital’ in the Polish language, did Boothby relent. ‘The arrival of this train placed us in an embarrassing situation, to put it mildly,’ Boothby reported. ‘Our duty was to make an example and turn it back. Humanity forbade this.’²⁰⁴ The incident soured relations with the Poles. Boothby personally found all the publicity to be in ²⁰¹ ²⁰² ²⁰³ ²⁰⁴

FO1052/474, fo. 172, Boothby to James, 22 Jun. 1946. FO1052/474, fo. 159, Boothby to Tobin, 24 Jun. 1946. ‘Rhine Army News’, BZR, 20 Jul. 1946. FO1052/474, fos 160–1, Boothby to James, 25 Jun. 1946.

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bad taste. ‘Our difficulties and embarrassments will be appreciated no doubt’, Boothby reported on the eve of the event, ‘and allowances made for vile pictures and for the expression of sentiments with which we are not necessarily in agreement.’²⁰⁵ Each member of the liaison team was left with a memento of the occasion: a commemorative certificate of appreciation in Polish signed by the Governor of Silesia.²⁰⁶ One doubts whether Boothby, who found the whole episode ‘utterly deplorable’, was smiling in the obligatory photographs.²⁰⁷ A Friends Relief Service (FRS) worker who passed through Kohlfurt six weeks later noticed that relations between Boothby’s team and the local Poles were chilly.²⁰⁸ This episode underlined not only the powerlessness of the liaison teams, it also showed how easily their presence could be manipulated for political ends. This was a problem that had already been highlighted at the start of Operation Swallow when both teams made the mistake of talking, knowingly or inadvertently, to local journalists. On two occasions the commanding officers were quoted as praising Polish conduct of Operation Swallow in glowing terms or denouncing the ‘downright lies’ of the British press.²⁰⁹ On both occasions, these were found to have been a rehash and ‘perversion’ of what the commanding officer had actually said and to have omitted all points of criticism and complaint. In Growse’s case the pressure of circumstances had made him ignore a bar on giving interviews. He thought it would have been ‘churlish’ not to have given one and refusal would have been misunderstood by the Poles.²¹⁰ But the Poles milked these opportunities for all their worth, holding them up as evidence of ‘the irreproachable behaviour of the Polish authorities’,²¹¹ and as ²⁰⁵ FO1052/474, fo. 163, Boothby to James, 24 Jun. 1946. ²⁰⁶ ‘Rhine Army News’, BZR, 20 Jul. 1946. ²⁰⁷ FO1052/474, fos 160–1, Boothby to James, 25 Jun. 1946. ²⁰⁸ IWM, Doc 93/27/1, Leverson circular letter, 4 Aug. 1946. ²⁰⁹ For Cpt. Thomson’s statement which appeared in the Kurier Szczeci´nski on 23 Mar. 1946, see FO1052/471, fo. 21, Prawin to Kenchington, 16 Apr. 1946, encl. extract from the article; FO1052/323, fo. 84, Bercomb to 508 R/Det., 20 Apr. 1946; FO371/55394, C4889/12/18, Warsaw to Berlin, 4 May 1946; FO1052/324, fo. 16, 508 Mil Gov Det to Concomb, 9 May 1946. For Growse’s statement which appeared in the Polish press on 13 Apr. 1946, see FO371/55393, C4211/12/18, Translation of article of interview with [Lt.] Col. Growse [13 Apr. 1946]; FO1052/471, fo. 56, Extract of report from Growse re: press report [30 Apr. 1946]; FO371/55394, C5219/12/18, Berlin to Warsaw, 11 May 1946. ²¹⁰ FO1052/471, fol. 56, Extract of report from Growse [30 Apr. 1946]. ²¹¹ FO1052/471, fol. 21, Extract from Kurier Szczecinski, 23 Mar. 1946.

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a ‘categorical denial’ of the ‘insulting statements’ about the Polish treatment of the Germans made by the British press and the British authorities in Germany.²¹² Boothby afterwards fought off persistent attempts from Polish journalists to get him to discuss Operation Swallow.²¹³ After the incident with the official delegation in June 1946, he was quoted by the Polish Press Agency as saying in an ‘interview’ that Polish-British cooperation had contributed to their ‘overcoming of all difficulties’.²¹⁴ In these cases the presence of the liaison teams had merely caused the British authorities in Germany a great deal of embarrassment. However, when things began to go terribly wrong with Operation Swallow they became a political liability. The Polish authorities used the presence of the liaison teams to shift the responsibility onto the British for the inhumane conditions in which the expellees were transported in December 1946.²¹⁵ This naturally raised questions about who was really benefiting from having the liaison teams stationed in Poland. Of all the parties involved either indirectly or directly with Operation Swallow, it seemed that the British benefited least. The Soviets avoided having large numbers of rejects—non-Germans, the sick and infirm—dispersed into their zone. ‘Swallows’ enjoyed a degree of protection since the liaison teams had a deterrent value.²¹⁶ There was less overt maltreatment when the British were around.²¹⁷ They also ensured conditions for ‘Swallows’ in the camps were of a certain standard.²¹⁸ But their presence could not guarantee that the right ‘class’ ²¹² See, for example, New Poland, May 1946, 3, 15; FO371/56500, N3236/187/55, Polish Facts and Figures, 17 Apr. 1946. ²¹³ FO1052/474, fos 173–6, Boothby: Account of a Visit to Lodj and Warsaw on 16/19 Jun. 1946. ²¹⁴ ‘1,200,000 Germans in Poland’, Polish Facts and Figures, 5 Jul. 1946. ²¹⁵ See letters from K. Dunin-Keplicz [Press Attaché, Polish Embassy London], ‘Trains from Poland’, The Times, 1 Feb., 6 Feb. 1947; ‘Responsibility for German Casualties’, Polish Facts and Figures, 25 Jan. 1947. ²¹⁶ Expellees were visibly relieved to see that British personnel were present at Kohlfurt or Stettin. See FO1052/323, fos 73c–d, Beddington to Director PWDP Bunde, 6 Apr. 1946. ²¹⁷ FO1052/323, fos 5b–c, Lt. Weldon, Comd. Poppendorf Refugee Camp to HQ Mil. Gov., 8 Corps Dist, 7 Mar. 1946; fos 8b–c, Report on ‘Swallow’ Reception Camps near Lübeck by Maj. Highland, Secretariat Liaison Section, 19 Mar. 1946. ²¹⁸ For instance, Cpt. Garner made sure that the camps in Stettin were liberally sprayed with DDT on a daily basis. Typhus soon broke out after he was ordered to stop doing this. See FO1052/475, fols 90–1, Report on Operation ‘Swallow’ for 1–31 Jan. 1947.

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of expellee came through or that minimum conditions were met, all issues of concern for the British authorities. On the contrary, it often meant the British were landed with people they neither wanted nor were required to take. The deputy chief of the PWDP Division in the British zone thought that ‘the teams can really do nothing practical towards stopping [unauthorized transports] and the presence of teams gives additional opportunity for our critics (not only Polish ones) to lay blame for any horror on the British doorstep’.²¹⁹ His counterpart in the Political Division in Berlin delivered an equally unfavourable judgement: ‘Experience has shown that they are powerless to prevent Germans from being transferred under inhumane conditions and their presence only serves as an excuse for the Poles to claim that the British authorities have approved the conditions under which the Germans have been expelled.’²²⁰ Once it became obvious that the ultimate beneficiaries, in this sense, were the Poles, further restrictions were placed on the liaison teams’ activities and then they were withdrawn.²²¹ The experience of stationing two liaison teams in Poland in 1946–47 showed that the presence of a third party during a population transfer did not automatically ensure better treatment of the transferees, nor did it guarantee good conduct on the part of the authorities transferring the populations. In certain circumstances, it might have even encouraged the opposite. The only sanction liaison teams had at their disposal was to refuse to permit whole transports or groups of individuals to proceed. Their room for manoeuvre, however, was severely constrained by practical considerations including humanitarian imperatives and the need for cordial relations with their Polish hosts. The ultimate sanction was withdrawal or the threat of withdrawal. That sanction, however, lay in Berlin and not in Stettin or Kohlfurt. Even when this happened it did not lead to better conditions of transfer, but to the end of Operation Swallow altogether. Hence, the ultimate sanction, as far the teams’ operations on the ground were concerned, was no sanction at all. ²¹⁹ FO1049/794, 83/41/47, Thicknesse, D/Chief PWDP to DCOS (Pol), 22 Mar. 1947. ²²⁰ FO1052/472, fo. 147, Pink, D/Chief Pol. Div. Berlin to PWDP Berlin, 8 Feb. 1947; FO1052/475, fo. 94, Chief PWDP Berlin to Political Div. Berlin, 25 Feb. 1947. ²²¹ FO1052/472, fo. 143, Kenchington to CRX Berlin, 4 Feb. 1947; fo. 165, PWDP Concomb to PWDP Steinreg [Feb. 1947].

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That the Poles were doing ‘a very unpleasant job unpleasantly’ was a widely held notion among British officials in 1946.²²² In this respect, throughout Operation Swallow the Poles had the disadvantage of being compared with the Czechs and, to a lesser extent, the Hungarians, in their handling of the Germans. ‘If one had to award marks out of a hundred to the three countries for good order and humanity’, a member of the Foreign Office German Department remarked in March 1946, ‘I should give Hungary 40, Czechoslovakia 30 and Poland 5.’²²³ The Poles continued to score badly. The reasons for this had nothing to do with deficiencies in Polish ‘national character’ and everything to do with political and material conditions in the country, as well as the logistics of transferring millions of people hundreds of kilometres from Poland to the British zone. Unlike Poland, Czechoslovakia did not to have to resettle three million refugees from territories annexed by the Soviet Union, nor did it have question marks hanging over the areas from which its Germans were being transferred. Czechoslovakia was not, even after the elections of May 1946, completely dominated by the Communists, nor was it, after December 1945, under Soviet occupation. Given the real and immediate problems of the British zone, however, the finer points of why the Poles were doing a ‘very unpleasant job unpleasantly’ passed most observers by. Seen from the perspective of the British zone or London, the mitigating factors were unimportant. ‘We have been taken for a ride on this transfer from Poland,’²²⁴ was the verdict of the German Department in September 1946, a complaint that reflected the sentiments of British personnel working at all levels of Military Government in Germany. For those on the ground the experience was all the more distasteful. ‘This is about the beastliest work the British Army has ever been told to assist,’ an officer unloading ‘useless mouths’ off a ship at Travemünde told a journalist in April 1946.²²⁵ For whereas the British were bystanders in the transfer from Czechoslovakia, Operation Swallow forced them to get their hands dirty. Operation Swallow brought home the grim, bare bones of the problem of putting into practice the transfer of millions of civilians. It ²²² ²²³ ²²⁴ ²²⁵

FO371/56652, N13730/5641/55, Reddaway minute, 21 Oct. 1946. FO371/55624, C3160/144/18, O’Neill minute, 28 Mar. 1946. FO371/55397, C10484/12/18, Franklin minute, 3 Sep. 1946. ‘Cargo of Human Hopelessness’, MG, 18 Apr. 1946.

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showed that transfer was an idea more appealing in principle and far more bearable in practice when done by others and observed from afar without any of the messy incidentals or ‘beastliness’ that it entailed. ‘The cruelty of it all, the utter senselessness,’ reflected a British relief worker after six months working on Operation Swallow. ‘Would that the nations’ leaders were there to meet a train! Could they [then] still move millions of people because it seems to be a solution? Surely the world is tired of refugees.’²²⁶ ²²⁶ IVS, DE3986/J20, D. Childs, RS109/IVSP News Letter, Oct. 1946.

Conclusion In April 1956, just months before Elizabeth Wiskemann enraged expellees in the Federal Republic with the publication of Germany’s Eastern Neighbours, the infamous KGB chief, General Ivan Serov, who had been responsible for deporting millions of Poles and Balts in the 1940s, was sent to London to organize security arrangements in preparation for the historic visit of Khrushchev and Bulganin. Serov’s image did not fit comfortably with that of a more humane post-Stalinist regime which the Soviet leaders were coming to London to showcase and there was outrage at Moscow’s tactlessness in sending him. Serov further incensed his critics when, responding during a press conference to questions about deportations in the Baltic States, he remarked that the British had also acted heavy-handedly with their ‘fascists’ during the war. Although the comparison between the deportation of tens of thousands of civilians in sealed cattle trucks and the internment of a handful of political extremists like Oswald Mosley was patently absurd, one British newspaper nevertheless cautioned its readers to think again before dismissing Serov’s comments completely out of hand. The Observer pointed out that: although the gulf between our political practices and those of Serov [. . .] is wide, it may not be as enormous as we think. In the latter stages of the last war our Government formally approved the mass deportation of eight million German citizens from those areas which our Russian allies wished to incorporate or to give to their Polish friends. This occurred with scarcely a word of protest in Britain [. . .] All this is no excuse for Serov, who apparently still regards mass deportations as a normal administrative measure. But we ought not to forget our failures to live up to our own higher standards.¹

In claiming that there had been ‘scarcely a word of protest in Britain’, the Observer was following a more widespread tendency, then and since, ¹ ‘Comment’, Observer, 1 Apr. 1956.

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to downplay or even ignore the British response to the expulsion of the Germans. The key to understanding British approaches and responses to the expulsion of the Germans at the end of the Second World War is the notion of population transfer. Irrespective of how this term or the concept that lies behind it is viewed today, in mid-twentieth-century Europe population transfer did represent a separate, if loosely defined, process that supposedly offered a means of eliminating the problem of intermixed populations in the nation-state, and the instability they were seen as causing, while at the same time paying respect to humanitarian sensibilities and international law. In Britain, even before the Second World War, there was substantial agreement within and outside official circles that the principle of population transfer in general, and a transfer of German minorities in particular, was fundamentally sound. Those who might have been expected to champion less radical solutions to minority problems also came to consider transfer as the choice of ‘last resort’. Those hostile to the principle of compulsory population transfer acknowledged that there were instances where it was justified, as in cases when minorities had been intolerably disloyal to the host state. Consequently, there was never any question of whether German minorities would have to be transferred once hostilities ceased, only of how many. But near unanimity on the principle of population transfer did not translate into a broad consensus over its practicality. Differences over where and how far mass transfers of Germans would be feasible did not progressively resolve themselves over the course of the Second World War into either greater or lesser certainty over the practical merits of population transfer. On the contrary, the more extensive the proposed transfers were, the less compelling the original reasons for advancing the principle became. These uncertainties about the practicalities of mass population transfers were brought into stark relief by the German refugee crisis and the expulsions of late 1945. The failure to reconcile a conviction that transfer was justified in principle with increasing doubts about its practicality resulted in the ambivalence which seemed to mark British responses to the expulsion of the Germans. This ambivalence did not escape the notice of the expelling countries and the Soviet Union. British misgivings about how German populations were being treated were taken for second thoughts about the very principle of population transfer and Britain’s commitment to a mass transfer of Germans. Britain’s allies, however, were mistaken. Although the public response to the expulsions

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was at times strong and harshly critical of the expelling countries, the underlying principle of population transfer was never questioned. Criticism was directed instead at the manner in which German populations were being treated. Critics of the expulsions, therefore, took an almost identical position to that of the British government. Both wanted the Potsdam decisions implemented: suspension of expulsions followed by gradual, orderly and humane transfers. The public response to the expulsions therefore represented a reaffirmation of the validity of the principle of population transfer rather than a rejection of it. Just as the expelling countries at the time mistook British criticism of the means for doubts about the very principle of population transfer, so, too, later assessments of the British response to the expulsions have mistaken support for the principle as representing acceptance of the way in which it was being carried out. While the claim that ‘scarcely a word of protest’ was raised against the principle of transferring Germans might be a broadly accurate description of the situation up to the Potsdam Conference, it completely misrepresents the mood of the response to developments in central Europe over the following months. Critics of the expulsions were motivated by a range of practical concerns—sentimentality towards the Germans not necessarily being one of them—but there was a broad consensus that the refugee crisis and the expulsions were closely linked problems which needed to be dealt with energetically, if necessary by publicly criticizing the expelling countries, or else there would be catastrophic consequences for Europe. To claim there was ‘scarcely word of protest’ also implies there was a naiveté and wilful blindness on the part of the British towards this issue when exactly the opposite was the case. The British knew the risks involved in shifting millions of people across a war-torn continent, which is why they had insisted in the first place on minimum conditions for this to be carried out. As the relatively well-organized movements of German refugees in 1946 showed, when these conditions were met, and as long as the political will for them to work was there, population transfers—or something resembling them—were not only theoretically possible under postwar conditions but also feasible in practice. The transfers of 1946 nevertheless also highlighted how wide a gap still separated population transfer as a clean theoretical solution from its messy practical application. Transfer might no longer have been seen as the ‘monstrously wicked arrangement’ that it was in 1923, but neither was it the cheap and painless surgical operation that it had seemed on the eve of the Second World War.

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The year 1947, however, saw the end of Britain’s mid-century flirtation with population transfer. The experience of receiving 1.5 million ‘expellees’ into an overcrowded and underfed zone of occupation cured the British of any lingering enthusiasm for such undertakings. With the onset of the Cold War, whatever political capital that might have been made out of sanctioning another round of population transfers in central and eastern Europe was in any case drastically devalued as most of the region came under Communist control. At the Paris Peace Conference (July–October 1946), which dealt with the lesser Axis powers, emerging Cold War realities were already clearly on display. The British and Americans scuppered a Soviet-backed Czechoslovak proposal for a compulsory population exchange with Hungary, thereby signalling that they regarded population transfer as at most a limited solution to the minorities problem, in contrast to the Czechoslovaks for whom it was a complete and, indeed, final solution. The western Allies were not prepared to allow a Potsdam Mark Two—this time affecting ethnic Hungarians—with the Soviets walking away again with the credit. Even in the case of German minorities, population transfer ultimately represented only a partial solution. Not only were proposals to extend Article 12 of the Potsdam Protocol to cover German minorities in south-eastern Europe blocked during the course of 1947, but even in those states originally stipulated in the agreement the wholesale removal of German population was not completed. That the British government proved equally reluctant to impose population transfers in territories over which it had much more direct control shows not only that it regarded transfer as a limited solution but also as a strictly Continental European one. Neither in the Indian subcontinent (1947) nor in Palestine (1948) was the legal or logistical apparatus for population transfers put in place prior to British withdrawal, although in both cases flight and expulsion followed partition, generating de facto population exchanges on the ground. British abandonment of population transfer also has to be seen within the wider context of changing attitudes towards minority rights. Irrespective of pre-war claims that population transfer was a new and radical measure, it nevertheless represented a development of, rather than the complete rejection of, interwar ideas on the treatment of minorities. Population transfer adopted the same view of ‘community rights’ promoted by the interwar minorities treaties regime, but turned it on its head, by relocating these minorities in order to create more homogeneous nation-states. But population transfer had always sat a little

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uneasily with what might be termed ‘the liberal conscience’ that had previously favoured the minorities treaties regime. Invariably framed as the choice of last resort, population transfer always had about it the feeling of being the least bad option and a necessary evil. When it became evident, therefore, that population transfers could not be carried out in a relatively painless way, British opinion walked away from the measure quite rapidly, as it had from the earlier experiment with minority protection. Any subsequent uneasiness that ‘the liberal conscience’ then felt at having commended population transfers was partially assuaged by the politics of the Cold War and an emerging narrative which placed the blame squarely on the Soviets and their protégés. Just as importantly, the very idea of ‘community rights’ for minorities, from which the notion of population transfer descended, was superseded in the 1950s by the discovery of a new cause in the form of universal human rights. Although this clearly had anti-Communist origins, it also heralded a more profound shift towards engagement with a more individualistic notion of rights and away from the freedom to be an ethnic or linguistic group which had loomed so large as an issue in the 1920s and 1930s. The point of departure, therefore, was not a pre-war one away from minority treaties to population transfer, but this postwar change in favour of individual human rights. The implications this had for the afterlife of population transfer were far-reaching. The rhetoric and legal framework of human rights, which henceforth became a salient feature of the postwar settlement, helped militate against the revival of grand schemes for internationally sanctioned population transfers that had characterized Europe’s mid-century crisis and for which, however briefly, the British state and political classes had been some of the chief proponents.

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Index Adamson, Helen 139 Adamson, John 140 Adenauer, Konrad 1 Adrianople, Convention of 16 Agence Presse Franc¸ais 229 Allied Control Council 110, 117, 123, 133, 170, 171 and German refugee crisis 198, 203–4 and Operation Swallow 248, 252, 254 transfer plan (Nov. 1945) 217, 231, 247 Alsace-Lorraine 75 American Committee for Near East Relief 25 Anschluss 13, 30, 183 Arciszewski, Tomasz 74 Armistice and Postwar Committee 72, 77 Atlantic Charter 54, 60, 69, 72 atomic bomb 140, 152, 211 Attlee, Clement and the Church delegation 157–8, 161–2, 166, 173 on preventing expulsions 121 n. 118 problems facing administration 165 views on crisis in central Europe 159–60, 210 wartime attitude to Germany and population transfers 72, 77 Austria 30, 31, 177 n. 65, 228 Baker, Philip; see Noel-Baker, Philip Balkans 17, 19, 29, 50, 64, 133, 149 wars in (1912–13) 16, 23 Baltic States, German minorities in 41, 52, 58 Bamborough, O. 230–3, 242–3 Banat 40 Bardens, Dennis 188–9 Barker, William 113 Barrington Ward, Hugh 108 Beck, J´ozef 35–6 Beddington, Lt. Col. 267 Bell, George 138, 157, 220

Church delegation to Attlee 157–8, 173 criticism of war methods 153–4 and German churches 154–5 on population transfer 219 and Potsdam Conference 155–6 and Save Europe Now 136 n. 116, 147 n. 123, 152 n. 146 views on crisis in central Europe 158–9 visit to Germany 161 Belsen 134, 137, 142, 184, 215 Beneˇs, Edvard 2, 63, 71 n. 118, 118, 177, 179, 182, 184, 191, 193, 237, 238, 241–2 appeals for restraint 109–11, 186–7 calls for expulsion of Germans 99–100 on population transfer 18, 45, 56, 65 on transfer of Sudeten Germans 94–6 Berlin, refugee crisis in British perception of expulsions shaped by 123–4, 162–3, 178 Charlottenburg 125, 129, 200–1 concerned soldiers 136–7 evacuation of children; see Operation Stork focus of British relief effort 195–6, 197–8, 200 first press reports 130–4, 167–8 as headline news 148–9 improvements 217 influx and condition of refugees 125–6, 127–30, 156, 157, 166, 167, 177 n. 65, 178, 199, 200–1 knock-on effects 201, 203, 204 Lehrter Bahnhof 125, 148, 161 overcrowding in refugee camps 200–1 relief team in 138–40 scenes at railway stations 133–6, 161, 169, 197, 227 Soviet presence in city 124, 127, 128, 130, 133, 139, 156, 197

312 Berlin, refugee crisis in (cont.) Stettiner Bahnhof 133–4, 149, 169, 197 threat of disease in 126–7, 169, 211 Tiergarten 125 wartime destruction 124–5 Wedding 125, 128 Der Berliner 212 Bettany, Allen 109, 188–9, 242 Beveridge, William 145, 210 n. 11 Bevin, Ernest 174, 210 n. 10 assurances from Poles on expulsions 167–8, 171, 172 meeting with Fierlinger 180–1 on Polish western frontier 256 on Potsdam decision 121 n. 118 Soviets approached over expulsions 170–1 statements in Parliament 217, 225 on threat of disease 169 Bilainkin, George 135–6, 193 Blackburn, Raymond 151 n. 142 Boer War 220 B¨ohm, Hans 155 Bonham Carter, Violet 152 Bonn 1 Boothby, Bob 85, 210 n. 11, 215 n. 40, 216 Boothby, Major 265, 268–70 Bourdillon, F. B. 55 Brandenburg 212–13 Bray, Charles 133–4, 146–7, 167, 197 Breslau 132; see also Wrocław Brett-Smith, Richard 135–6 Britain General Election (1945) 104, 114 as nation of sentimentalists 174, 193, 221, 222, 229 national self-interest 144, 180, 208, 211 postwar challenges facing 140, 165 psychological gap between Continent and 68, 99, 223–4 public opinion in 78–9, 86–7, 89, 92, 197; see also Save Europe Now wartime priorities 44–5 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 13–14 n. 1, 81, 152 n. 146, 225 and ‘expulsion scare’ 212–14 reports from Berlin 124, 130, 131 n. 51, 148

Index reports from Czechoslovakia 108, 111, 178,182 n. 84 British Liaison Teams effectiveness of 264–6 powerlessness of 268–71 presence exploited by Poles 250–1, 269–70, 271 relations with Poles 266–7, 269 role of 246, 262–4 British United Press 213 British Zone Review 268 Buckley, Henry 132, 135 Bulganin, Nikolai 274 Bulgaria 16, 18–19, 22, 23, 29 n. 71, 36–7, 40, 80 Butler, Rab 65 Buxton, Noel 17, 210 n. 11 Byrnes, James 256 Cadogan, Alexander 119 n. 105, 157 Cang, Joel 251 n. 108 Carr, E. H. 83 Carson, Edward 211 Cavendish-Bentinck, Victor 116 n. 91, 168, 171–2, 175, 248–51, 257–8; see also Warsaw, British Embassy in Central European Observer 229, 235 Chambers, James 124–5 Chatham House 56; see also Royal Institute of International Affairs children, German evacuation of; see ‘Operation Stork’ in Czech camps 188–9, 192, 236 suffering of 91, 133, 135, 136, 146, 149, 161, 184, 192, 211, 218, 245 Churches attitude to population transfer 61, 219 British Council of 161 Catholic 161–2, 179, 221 Convocation of Canterbury (1945) 160–1, 219 Convocation of York (1945) 160–1 delegation to Attlee 157–60, 166, 173, 210 German 154–5, 158, 161 see also Bell, George Churchill, Rhona 178 n. 66 n. 70, 182 n. 84 Churchill, Winston 1, 90, 96, 114, 152

Index criticism of expulsions and Polish western frontier 141, 158, 250, 256 Commons statement (Dec. 1944) 42, 46, 73–6, 79–83, 86–9 dismay at aftermath of war 91, 164–5 on Greco-Turkish population exchange 32, 76, 79, 92 population transfers: difficulties acknowledged 92 at Potsdam Conference 117–19 Clark, Norman 124, 133–4, 146–7, 167–8, 197 Clementis, Vladimír 107, 112, 114, 185–7 Clutton-Brock, Guy 137–8, 156 Cold War 4, 277–8 CBS (Columbia Broadcasting Service) 41 conferences Lausanne (1922–3) 20–2 London (1945) 169 Moscow (1944) 74, 81 Munich (1938) 1, 30, 36, 45, 49, 106, 183 Paris (1919) 17–19 Paris (1946) 277 Potsdam (1945); see Potsdam Conference Teheran (1943) 46 Yalta (1945) 46, 90, 91, 92, 119 Conservative Party 65, 74, 85–6, 88, 211 Constantinople 20, 67 Control Commission for Germany (British Element) 137, 196–8, 228 Control Office for Germany and Austria 228, 242, 254, 255, 259, 260 Cooper, Robert 132 Corbin, Charles 35 Coulondre, Robert 34 Craiova, Treaty of (1940) 37 Crossman, Richard 131, 151 n. 142, 152 n. 146, 209 n. 6, 210 n. 11 Curzon, George 19, 21, 120 Czechoslovakia American occupation of 101–3

313 anxiety over western Allied policy 95–6, 106, 110–11, 113–15, 187 betrayal of Masarykian ideals 142–3, 179–80 British All-Party Parliamentary Delegation to 233 camps in 181–3, 184–6, 188–93, 235–40 conditions in 97 expulsion of Germans from: comparisons with Poland 176–7, 180, 205, 229, 247, 272 fears of ‘another Munich’ 108, 185 and Potsdam Conference 115, 117–19 Prague uprising 98 prewar German minority in 30, 48, 49, 51, 77 sensitivity to foreign criticism 99, 106–9, 178, 185–8, 241–2 unity over German question 99–100, 193, 224 wartime transfer plans 43, 45, 50, 53, 71, 94–5 ‘wild transfers’ from 100–1 see also Beneˇs, Edvard Daily Express 109, 117, 118 n. 101, 132, 135 n. 68, 136, 144 Daily Herald 133, 146, 183–4, 225, 238 Daily Mail 135, 148, 218 Daily Mirror 32, 150 Daily Sketch 132–3 Daily Telegraph 21, 148 n. 128, 183 Daily Worker 213 Dalton, Hugh attitude to Germans 63, 72 danger of postwar refugee crisis 91 personality 62–3 and population transfer 64–6, 90 and the IPWS 66–9, 72–3 Dan´es, Jean 229–30 Danger Spots of Europe 13–15 Danzig 32–3, 36, 43, 48, 53–4, 65, 71, 87, 116, 149 Davies, Clement 215 n. 40 Dawson, Rhoda 234 DDT 126, 200, 246, 264, 270 n. 218 Dimbleby, Richard 124, 130–1, 184

314 disease Channel no barrier to 208, 211–12 influenza pandemic (1918–19) 212 n. 20 prevention of 126, 195 threat of 125, 126, 129, 132, 133, 149, 150, 152, 156, 169, 195, 209, 215, 217–18, 253 n. 127 Displaced Persons 98, 159, 214, 228 Polish 134, 168, 173, 234, 263 repatriation 122–3, 138, 203, 234 Dobrudja 36–7 Douglas, Sholto 255 Dugdale, Blanche 57 n. 65, 58 n. 67 East Prussia 90 and German expansionism 85 Polish annexation of 33, 43, 48, 53–4, 64–5, 71, 75, 78, 81, 86–7, 90, 95, 116 The Economist 212–14 Eden, Anthony 78–81, 89–90, 96, 117–18 epidemics; see disease Epirus 17 ethnic cleansing 5, 8 Evening Standard 106 n. 47, 207 expellees, German postwar political impact 1, 2, 4 Fabian Society 69 n. 108, 69–70 n. 111 Fierlinger, Zdenˇek 180–1, 188, 238–9, 241 Fisher, Geoffrey 155, 157, 158 n. 172 n. 175, 161 Foot, Michael 151 n. 142, 215 n. 40 Foreign Office, British 62, 65, 102, 104, 110, 155, 157, 162, 168, 175, 185, 190, 191, 198, 204, 232, 233, 241, 249, 250, 251, 257, 258, 259 and Operation Swallow 247, 251, 254–5, 272 and Potsdam Conference 116–17 pressure on Poles 169–71, 172 prewar views on transfers 21, 28, 31, 33 reluctance to criticize Czechs 103, 177, 180, 182, 186 stock-take post-Potsdam 164, 165–6, 205

Index wartime views on transfers 45, 47, 50, 51, 76, 77–8, 79, 80–2, 86, 89, 90 Foreign Research and Press Service 42, 46–56, 59 n. 71, 60, 77, 79, 83 n. 189 Forward 71 France 149 Friedland 202 Friends Ambulance Unit 138–40, 152 n. 146, 196 Friends Relief Service 269 Gaitskell, Hugh 2 Garbett, Cyril 158, 161, 215 Gardiner, Gerald 152 n. 146, 210 n. 11 Gedye, Eric 183–5, 187, 238 Germany, British zone of occupation 117, 151, 161, 165, 166, 180, 217, 218, 225 ‘Battle of Winter’ 194–5 candid official statements about 196–7, 217–18 DPs 122–3, 173 ‘expulsion scare’ 212–14 food situation 159, 194–5 ‘Germany Under Control’ exhibition (1946) 228–9 influx of refugees into 166, 177 n. 65, 194, 196, 199–204, 204–5, 208 problem absorbing refugees 115, 119, 121, 245, 253–6 refugee problem underestimated 123, 193 return of wartime evacuees 128, 138, 201, 203 transfer of Germans from Poland into; see Operation Swallow Germany, Soviet zone of occupation condition of refugees in 150, 155, 157–8, 166, 198–9, 202, 224 influx of refugees into 112–13, 177 n. 65, 204 off limits 97, 130, 214 refugee crisis most acute in 116, 166, 169, 179, 194, 205, 210 transfers from Czechoslovakia into 237, 242 Germany, US zone of occupation influx of refugees into 116, 128, 151, 194, 261 n. 169

Index transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia into 229, 230, 231, 232, 242, 243, 247 Gollancz, Victor criticism of Soviet Union 222 cross-party delegation to Attlee 210 moral critique of postwar Europe 142–5 personality 141–2, 218, 220 and Save Europe Now 145–7, 150–1, 207, 212, 215 n. 40, 216–19, 224–6 G¨oring, Hermann 33 G¨orlitz 246, 258 Grant Duff, Shiela 49 n. 33, 192 Greece 14, 16, 18–25, 31, 66, 75, 79, 88, 149, 240 Greek Refugee Settlement Commission 23–4 Griffin, Bernard 161 Growse, Lt. Col. 266–7, 269 Gr¨uber, Heinrich 156–8 Hagibor 184, 189, 238 Hahn, Kurt 220 Halifax, first earl of (Edward Wood) 54, 56 Hankey, Robert 116, 167 Harvey, Oliver 78–9, 81, 170 Henderson, Nevile 34–6 Hitler, Adolf 106, 136, 143, 154 and German-Polish population exchange 32, 34–6 precedent established for future transfers 41–2, 45, 62, 65, 66, 78 recall of ethnic Germans 39–40 Hitler’s War: Before and After 64–5 Hoare, Reginald 37 Hobhouse, Emily 220 Hochfeld, Juljan 223 Howe, Edward 132–3 Hungary 94, 115, 214, 231, 272, 277 Illustrated 149 Independent Labour Party 209, 235 n. 30 Interdepartmental Committee on the Transfer of German Populations 72, 76–80 International Postwar Settlement 62–3, 65–71, 72–3, 85; see also Dalton, Hugh; Labour Party

315 ‘Iron Curtain’ 123, 141, 198, 214, 263 Italy 169 n. 24 German minority in; see South Tyrol Jaksch, Wenzel Czech suspicion of 106–7, 111, 114 publicity campaign in Britain 71, 103–6, 235–6 as source for British critics 189 n. 116, 220 n. 3, 235–6 worldview 240–1 Jameson, Storm 174, 189, 192, 238 Japan, defeat of 140, 164 Jews extermination of 141–2, 183, 244 ‘Final Solution’ 8 ‘Jewish rations’ 183 and Palestine 26, 29, 142 n. 102 in Poland 32–3, 253, 265 Kanaar, A. C. 137, 150 Karlovy Vary 113, 229–30, 240, 242, 244 Kemal, Mustapha 20 Kennard, Howard 35–6 Khrushchev, Nikita 274 Kimche, Jon 106–9 Kohlfurt 246, 258–9 British liaison team in 251, 263, 264–6, 268–70, 271 K¨onigsberg 116 Labour Party 2, 17, 22, 42, 131, 144, 174, 188, 209, 223 Conference (1944) 72–3 and criticism of Soviet Union 221–2 and Czech treatment of Germans 106, 114, 188, 235 and German refugee crisis 146, 151, 209, 211 and IPWS 67–73 and population transfer 30 n. 73, 61–2, 70–1, 73, 83, 87–8, 96, 141 n. 102 Lane, Arthur Bliss 171–2, 174 Lausanne, Convention of (1923) compulsory formula 21–2 consequences of 22–5 initial reaction to 20–1, 37 as putative model for subsequent transfer schemes 14, 25, 26–8,

316 Lausanne, Convention of (1923) (cont.) 29, 31, 45, 48, 52, 54, 64, 75, 76, 67–8, 79–80, 83–4, 92, 240 Law, Richard 81 League of Nations 18, 21, 23–4, 28, 54, 57, 61 League of Nations Union 42, 48 n. 31, 56–62 Left Book Club 141, 142 n. 102 Liberal Party 17, 27, 85–6, 88, 151–2, 209, 215 n. 40 Liegnitz 246 Lipski, J´ozef 34 Lloyd George, Megan 81 Low, David 207–8 Lytton, Victor 60–1 Mabbott, John 47–9, 52–4, 56, 57 n. 65, 59 n. 71 Macartney, C. A. 49 n. 33, 50–1, 55, 57 n. 65, 57 n. 71 MacDonald, Norman 214 Macedonia 17, 23, 34 Mack, John 174 Mackinder, Halford 17 Maghee, Cpt. 266 Manchester Guardian 88, 105–6, 108, 114, 144, 179, 233, 238 Mansfield, seventh earl of (Mungo Murray) 86 Mari´ansk´e L´aznˇe 229–31, 233 Marienthal 258, 261 Martin, Kingsley 95, 142–4, 150, 165 Masaryk, Jan 180, 186–7, 191–2, 241, 244 Masaryk, Tom´aˇs 106, 179 Matthews, Peter 57 n. 65, 58 n. 67 McNeil, Hector 205, 215 Mˇelník 187, 241 Menzel, Walter 182, 185, 190 n. 122 Miall, Leonard 178 Mikołajczyk, Stanisław 74, 81, 89, 114 Miłosz, Czesław 174, 222 minorities problem of 14, 18, 25, 38, 44, 57–8, 61–2, 68, 77, 78, 277–8 protection of 8, 13–14, 15–16, 18, 25, 26, 31, 37–8, 44–5, 47–8, 50–1, 54, 56–61, 62, 64, 66, 68–73, 76, 275, 277 Mitrany, David 49 n. 33, 54–5, 83 n. 109

Index Modzelewski, Zygmunt 168, 172 Molotov, Vyacheslav 111, 141, 169–72 Montagu, Ivor 213–4 Montandon, George 16 Montgomery, Bernard 167, 194 Morgenthau, Henry Jr. 75 Morrison, Herbert 30 n. 73 Moscow 44, 52, 82, 95, 111–12, 149, 221 Mosley, Oswald 274 Namier, Lewis 36 Nansen, Fridtjof 21–2, 68 Naples 126 National Peace Council 145–6 Newman, Bernard 13–15, 38 New Statesman and Nation 70, 95, 105, 142, 144 News Chronicle 124, 133, 144, 146 167, 210 Nichols, Philip 100, 101 n. 21, 107, 113 n. 43, 178, 230, 231 confidence in Beneˇs 110, 177, 187, 190–1 and controversy over camps 182, 185–6 final assessment of transfers 241–2, 243 Nicolson, Harold 185 Noel-Baker, Philip 22, 67–8, 73 n. 131, 158, 160, 173, 202 Nosek, V´aclav 188, 242 Observer 84, 105, 106 n. 47, 111, 113, 251 n. 100, 274 Oder-Neisse; see frontiers, Polish Operation Jericho 200–1 Operation Stork 196, 201, 245 Operation Swallow assessment of 254–5, 259–60, 272–3, 276–7 conclusion of 261 deaths on final transports 258–9, 266 origin of codename 245 preliminary negotiations 246–7 primacy of politics 256–8 problems with first phase 248–52 suspension of 254–5, 259–60 transport of ‘useless mouths’ 252–3 see also British Liaison Teams Oppeln 116, 167

Index Ormsby-Gore, William 28 Orwell, George 8, 89, 224 Palestine 25–9, 78 Parker, Ralph 95, 102, 108, 112, 115 n. 88, 178 n. 68 Parliament 153, 164, 170, 215, 216, 229, 240, 241, 242 House of Commons 27, 42, 46, 69, 71 n. 118, 73–4, 76, 81, 82, 85, 87, 88, 90–1, 104, 105, 139, 141, 151, 158, 205, 208–9, 210–12, 217, 220, 225, 230, 235, 249, 256, 260 House of Lords 27–8, 86, 154, 155, 162, 220 Paul, Ernst 103, 105 Peel, William 26–9 Perkins, Harold 98–9, 101–2, 230 Pethick-Lawrence, Frederick 87 Pfitzner, Josef 179 Picture Post 149, 233–4 Pilsen 98, 101 n. 21, 109, 186, 230 Pitter, Pˇremysl 190 n. 122 Poland anti-British sentiment in 174, 222–3, 249–50 comparisons with Czechoslovakia 95, 97 176–7, 180, 205, 229, 247, 272 ‘Curzon Line’ 43, 75, 82, 88, 90 frontiers of 43–4, 46, 48–9, 54–5, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70–1, 73–5, 78, 80, 82, 84–90, 94, 95, 140, 155–6, 256–7; see also Danzig; East Prussia; Silesia German ‘New Order’ in 40–1 ‘Polish Corridor’ 32–3, 43, 48, 70, 85, 88 population exchange with Germany proposed 33–6 Potsdam discussions 115–16, 120–1 prewar minorities in 30, 32–3 ‘Regained Territories’ 1, 116, 247–8, 257 n. 140 transfer of Germans from; see Operation Swallow unity over expulsion issue 172, 224 see also Kohlfurt; Potsdam Protocol (Article 12), Polish contravention of; Stettin; Warsaw

317 population exchanges Bulgaria and Greece 18, 19, 22, 80 Bulgaria and Romania 36–7 Bulgaria and Turkey 16, 29 n. 71, 36–7 Czechoslovakia and Germany 30 Czechoslovakia and Hungary 277 Germany and Italy 30–2 Germany and Poland 33–5. 64–5 Greece and Turkey 16–17, 18–19; see also Lausanne, Convention of (1923) Palestine 25–9, 142 n. 102, 277 Poland and Soviet Union 74 Romania and Turkey 29 n. 71 Turkey and Yugoslavia 29 n. 71 see also Hitler, Adolf: recall of ethnic Germans population transfer abandonment of 277–8 concept of 8–9 definition of 17 Post-War Policy Group 85; see also Conservative Party Potsdam Conference (1945) British assessments of 120–1, 140 Czech expectations 110–11, 113–15 Polish frontiers 115–16 news during 130–2 population transfers discussed 119–20 transfer issue raised by British 116–19 Potsdam Protocol (Article 12) 240, 242, 277 Czech compliance with 176–8, 180–1, 191–2, 193, 243 implementation of 161, 166, 175, 198–9, 203–4, 209, 217–19, 262 moratorium on expulsions and ‘Orderly Transfer of Germans’ stipulated 120–1 Polish contravention of 122, 167–73, 175–6, 248–9, 254 Prague 179, 183, 88, 235, 236 Beneˇs speech in (May 1945) 100 British Embassy in 101, 110, 113, 114, 178, 185–6, 189, 191, 232, 237, 240 Independence Day rally in (Oct. 1946) 242

318 Prague (cont.) uprising in 98 see also Hagibor Priestley, J. B. 149 Raczy´nski, Edward 81 Rathbone, Eleanor 146 n. 116, 151 n. 142, 197, 209 n. 6, 210 n. 11, 215 n. 40 Record 162 Red Cross 230, 236 British 138, 147, 199 German 139 International 182, 188, 239 Swiss 139 refugees German; see Berlin, refugee crisis in; Germany, British zone of occupation; Germany, Soviet zone of occupation Greek 20, 21–2, 23, 24, 25 Polish 248, 261 see also Displaced Persons Reichstag 1, 39, 48, 168 n. 19 relief, civilian British relief workers 134, 149, 163, 168 n. 10, 202, 245, 253, 262, 269, 273 European-wide 146, 147, 148, 150, 153, 159, 161, 208, 210, 216 for Germany 138, 157, 159, 199 Rendel, George 21 Reuters 106–7, 109, 132, 188, 242 Ribbentrop, Joachim 34, 141 Ripka, Hubert 110, 192 Robertson, Brian 199, 202, 204 Romania 29 n. 71, 36–7 Roosevelt, Franklin 75, 82, 90 Royal Institute of International Affairs 1–2, 47–8, 54–5 Russell, Bertrand 146 n. 116, 222 Russell, Patricia 210 n. 11, 218 Russia; see Soviet Union Rust, Bill 213 Rzymowski, Wincenty 171 Salter, Arthur 157–8, 209 n. 6, 215 n. 40 Samuel, Herbert 27 Save Europe Now Albert Hall rally (Nov. 1945) 161, 209, 215–16

Index appeal for voluntary ration cut 146–7, 150, 226 Conway Hall meeting (Oct. 1945) 151–3, 209, 222 initial reaction to 147–8, 162 longer-term campaign of 216 origins of 145–6 political aims of 150–1, 207, 216–20, 224–6 see also Gollancz, Victor Serov, Ivan 274 Seton-Watson, Robert 49 n. 33, 50 S`evres, Treaty of (1920) 19 Shirer, William 41 Sikorski, Władysław 63, 65 Silesia 90, 95, 100, 174, 175, n. 61, 181, 264, 268–9 Lower 54–5, 258 Oppeln 116 Upper 33, 43, 48, 53–5, 70–1 Simpson, John Hope 49 n. 33, 54 Slovakia; see Czechoslovakia Smith, Rennie 223 Smollett, Peter 109, 117–8 Smuts, Jan 82, 91 Smyrna 17, 25 Sobelev, Arkady 119, 203 Sokolovsky, Vasily 198, 204 South Tyrol 30–5, 41, 51 Soviet Union 37, 40, 45, 98, 114, 248, 250, 253 British criticism of 131, 136, 141, 143, 164, 210, 214, 221–2 and deportation 29, 44, 243 domination of eastern Europe 97, 123, 143 obstructionism on the Allied Control Council 198–9, 203–4, 205 and Operation Swallow 246, 259, 262, 263, 270, 272 and Polish frontiers 46, 65, 74, 82, 87, 88, 90 postwar planning 43–4, 52 and the Potsdam Conference 115, 116, 117, 119–20 power to intervene over expulsions 166, 169, 170–1, 172 presence in Czechoslovakia 102, 103, 180, 230, 272 repatriation to 131 support for Czech policy 95, 110, 111–12

Index Der Sozialdemokrat 103 SOE (Special Operations Executive) 98, 102 SS (Schutzstaffel) 98, 100 Stalin, Josef 90, 92, 95, 112, 118–19, 121, 175 Steel, Kit 198, 203 Steinhardt, Lawrence 114 Stettin British liaison team in 246, 251, 263, 264, 267, 271 camps in 250–1, 257–8, 260, 265, 270 n. 218 expulsions from 132, 167, 174 n. 53 Polish claims to 81 Stokes, Richard contact with Sudeten German Social Democrats 189 n. 116, 235, 236–7 and controversy over Czech camps 237–9, 241 criticism of IPWS 72 cross-party delegation to Attlee 210 n. 11 in Parliament 189 n. 116, 209 n. 6, 214, 220, 235 and Save Europe Now 151 n. 142, 215–16 and transfers from Czechoslovakia 239–41, 244 Strang, William 167–9, 195, 198–9, 204, 259 Strasburger, Henryk 168 Strauss, George 72 Sudeten Germans; see Czechoslovakia; Jaksch, Wenzel Sudetenland 30, 35, 65, 100, 109, 180, 185, 236 Sunday Chronicle 150 Sunday Dispatch 188 Taylor, A. J. P. 179 ‘Teheran formula’ 46, 74 Templer, Gerald 123, 162 Teplice 237 Terezín 244 Terrell, Stephen 136–7, 150 Tetlow, Edwin 218 Thrace 16–17, 19, 32 Western 20, 23

319 The Times 1, 20, 83–4, 95, 102, 105, 108, 132, 149, 178 n. 68, 213, 251 Toynbee, Arnold 49 n. 33, 50, 55 Transylvania 40 Tribune 106, 224 Troughton, William 135 n. 68, 136, 144 Troutbeck, John 251 Turkey 14, 16–17, 19, 22, 29, 31, 41, 65–6, 75, 240 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration 233–4 United States 19, 109, 235, 256 distance from European problems 68, 165 enforcing Potsdam decision 169, 171–2 at Potsdam Conference 115, 117 public opinion in 78, 89 Third Army 98, 101, 102, 178 wartime policy 89 n. 221, 75, 82 see also Czechoslovakia, US occupation of; Germany, US zone of occupation Ustí 234 Vansittartism 63, 69, 135 n. 69 Venizelos, Eleftherios 18–19 Versailles, Treaty of (1919) 44, 55, 64; see also conferences, Paris (1919) Vertriebene; see expellees, German Vienna 123, 183, 185 Vienna Award (1940) 37 Vyshinsky, Andrei 112 Wadsworth, A. P. 179–80 Ward, Barbara 152 n. 146 Warr, Christopher 243–4 Warsaw 174, 259 British Embassy in 116 n. 91, 172–3, 174, 247, 249, 251, 252, 257, 260 n. 167, 267 Wartheland 41 Wauchope, Arthur 28 Week in Westminster 225 Welles, Sumner 75 Werner, Arthur 125

320 Whittick, F. W. 136 Whitworth, Robin 196–7 Williamson, Tom 188 Wilson, Francesca 233 Wiskemann, Elizabeth 1–3, 223, 274 Woolf, Leonard 70–1 Woolton, first earl of (Frederick Maquis) 154

Index Wrocław 259, 264–6, 268; see also Breslau Yorkshire Post 148 Yugoslavia 5 Zhukov, Georgi 127