To give a short answer, they were largely forcibly deported en masse to occupied Germany, often under horrific conditions, with the consent and cooperation, if begrudging, of the major Allied powers. The expulsions and their aftermath profoundly affected both the expeller and the expelled, and were important political issues in both East and West Germany, as well as particularly Poland and Czechoslovakia. From the first page of my main source, Orderly and Humane by R.M.Douglas

Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies carried out the largest forced population transfer—and perhaps the greatest single movement of peoples—in human history. With the assistance of the British, Soviet, and U.S. governments, millions of German- speaking civilians living in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the parts of eastern Germany assigned to Poland were driven out of their homes and deposited amid the ruins of the Reich, to fend for themselves as best they could. Millions more, who had fled the advancing Red Army in the final months of the war, were prevented from returning to their places of origin, and became lifelong exiles. Others again were forcibly removed from Yugoslavia and Romania, although the Allies had never sanctioned deportations from those countries. Altogether, the expulsion operation permanently displaced at least 12 million people, and perhaps as many as 14 million. Most of these were women and children under the age of sixteen; the smallest cohort of those affected were adult males. These expulsions were accomplished with and accompanied by great violence. Tens and possibly hundreds of thousands lost their lives through ill- treatment, starvation, and disease while detained in camps before their depar- ture—often, like Auschwitz I, the same concentration camps used by the Ger- mans during the Second World War. Many more perished on expulsion trains, locked in freight wagons without food, water, or heating during journeys to Ger- many that sometimes took weeks; or died by the roadside while being driven on foot to the borders. The death rate continued to mount in Germany itself, as homeless expellees succumbed to hypothermia, malnutrition, and other effects of their ordeal.

A few caveats - first, this will only look at the expulsions after WW2. Second, my main source for this answer is the excellent book Orderly and Humane: the Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War by R.M. Douglas. Third, as they are closely intertwined, my answer will also look at expellees from Czechoslovakia

The Plan

Between WW1 and the end of WW2, forced population transfers were in vogue in European capitals. To settle the aftermath of a World War whose proximate cause had been Hitler invading other countries, justified by territorial claims based on ethnic German populations outside of Germany, population transfers seemed to be a natural way to preserve peace in the future. The population transfer between Greece and Turkey after WW1 was seen as a model - the severe levels of human suffering and negative economic repercussions of that transfer were ignored. A proposal to effect a population transfer between Jews and Arabs in Palestine in 1936 was taken seriously, but shelved. And this doesn't touch the mass population transfers carried out by the Nazi and Soviet governments before and during WW2

Though the specifics were not undertaken (or really considered), the fact that there would be a population transfer, removing Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia after the war, was orthodoxy at the various peace conferences. Douglas's book goes to great lengths to show how little thought went into the specifics of the mass movement of millions of people against their will, in the bombed and blasted out ruins of wartime Europe

Once the Big Three de- cided regardless to proceed [with deportations] in 1942–43, the obvious next step was a detailed study of the practical aspects of a mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from cen- tral Europe. Remarkably, it was not until November 1943 that the British govern- ment commissioned such a survey; neither of the other principal Allies is known to have addressed the problem at all. (Douglas 74)

The biggest sticking point in the post-war peace negotiations was the future borders of Poland. With Soviet troops already occupying the country and promoting their own government, it was clear that the 1939 Soviet annexation of half of Poland would stand, and that Poland would need to be "compensated" for that loss with German territory - especially as the plan, agreed to by the Soviet and communist Polish governments, was that Poles from the annexed areas would be resettled in land taken from Germany. Making a very long story short, with the whole area occupied by Soviet troops, Stalin could essentially dictate the new border, known as the Oder-Neisse Line. The Allies then needed to decide what to do with all the Germans behind that line, which was covered by Article 13 of the final Potsdam Agreement (which hashed the postwar borders of Europe out between Stalin, Churchill, and Truman)

The three Governments having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.

The "Wild" Expulsions

But expulsions had begun long before August 1945 (when Potsdam was signed). As the Soviets advanced through Eastern Europe, many Germans fled or were evacuated before their armies. These disproportionately tended to be the most able bodied and "valuable" from a government's perspective - especially men of working and military age. The Germans who remained behind tended to be women, the sick, children, and the elderly - supposed "burdens" on society, and also a group that was largely incapable of resisting to a significant degree

While the expulsions did happen and the borders of Germany were significantly reduced, this was not a guaranteed fate. Polish and Czech (and other) governments, but also militias, resistance groups, local officials, etc were concerned that the Allies might reneg on their promises. On their own initiative, these groups began the so-called "Wild" expulsions. The goal of these expulsions was to present a fait accompli to the negotiators at the Potsdam conference. If Germans were expelled from the Sudetenland and beyond the Oder, it would be difficult to do anything but accept the new status quo at Potsdam.

Fifteen miles to the northeast, as [the big three] conferred, spectacularly overloaded trains from the German territories under Polish administration were disgorging car- goes of the dead, the dying, the diseased, and the destitute onto the platforms of Berlin’s main line railway stations. Hundreds of thousands more were arriving in the city, in no better condition, on foot. To the south, similar ragged columns were being driven across the Bohemian and Moravian frontiers by Czechoslovak troops and militia. (Douglas 89)

The numbers are highly imprecise, but something like over a million people were expelled from Czechoslovakia and Poland as part of these internationally unauthorized expulsions, and Douglas estimates that the dead reached at least six figures. Yet the supposedly "organized" expulsions fared no better

The "Organized" Expulsions

Now that Poland and Czechoslovakia had official sanction to deport their German populations, the question arose - how to do it. How to go about rounding up millions of people on very short notice, and transfer them long distances against their will? The answer in many cases was to use the existing infrastructure of the Nazis own population transfer mechanics to do so. German civilians were interned in former concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Many of the same tactics and same failures of the Nazi concentration camps were mimicked. In Czechoslovakia, with the border nearby, Germans were often force-marched long distances until they could be forced over the border. In Poland and further afield, horribly overcrowded trains were more often the preferred method. Many of the expulsions happened over the exceptionally cold winter of 1945-6, and the cold, combined with the poor condition of the expellees, the poor conditions of the expulsion, led to a huge number of deaths. Though the Allies ostensibly regulated the expulsions, requiring that train cars be kept in a certain degree of order and not overpacked, that the expellees could bring some of their belongings and money, these conditions were rarely followed

And meanwhile, chaos was mounting in Germany, where the expellees were being sent. All three Allied occupation zones were already facing a severe housing shortage - British and American bombs and then Soviet offensives had destroyed huge swathes of Germany's cities. Much of the German economy was ruined and the working age population dead, refugees, or in POW camps. And now millions of new people, usually destitute, sick, elderly, or children, were suddenly being added to this already severe crisis. I'm running out of space here, but I highly recommend Douglas' book for specific anecdotes

the eighteen- month- long period during which “organized expulsions” took place rapidly degenerated into a macabre race against time, as expelling governments sought to rid themselves of as many unwanted minorities as possible before a combination of a sufficiently large number of deaths en route, and the chaos into which the reception areas in occu- pied Germany were rapidly descending, should impel the great powers to call a halt to further transfers. (Douglas 160)

I'm running out of time and space, but I will follow up with more about the fate of expeller and expelled

I am only familiar with what happened to ethnic Germans and German citizens in Poland and Czechoslovakia following WW2, but some of what happened with the redrawing of borders following WW1 had consequences for what happened in WW2. Hungary will also briefly come up, but I am not familiar with the specifics for Hungary.

WW1

Following WW1 large parts of Europe had their borders redrawn because of the fall of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Czechoslovakia was founded and included the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, which was home to millions of ethnic Germans.^(1) Part of Upper-Silesia was allocated to Poland, which meant millions of Germans now lived in Polish territory.^(2) In order to protect these minority groups Czechoslovakia and Poland, at the behest of the League of Nations, signed multilateral treaties which protected the rights of minority groups in their countries.^(3) In the treaties Czechoslovakia and Poland declared that they would give equal rights to all ethnic groups in their country after the transfer of territory. This was also reflected in The Treaty of Versailles:

The Czecho-Slovak State accepts and agrees to embody in a Treaty with the Principal Allied and Associated Powers such provisions as may be deemed necessary by the said Powers to protect the interests of inhabitants of that State who differ from the majority of the population in race, language or religion. ^(4)

There is a similar part with regard to Poland. The Treaty of Versailles also sets out specifically under which conditions German nationals that ended up outside of Germany can obtain the nationality of the country they were residing in after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and country specific treaties.

This did not mean that ethnic Germans did not encounter any problems in their new countries. Czechoslovakia undertook a land reform program, which redistributed land from large landholders to small farmers. The German minority complained that the system redistributed land from German landholders to mostly Czechoslovakian citizens.^(5) Ethnic Germans in Poland made a complaint to the League of Nations about similar confiscations of land from and the eviction of German owners.^(6)

The presence of ethnic minorities in countries following the redrawing of Europe after WW1 caused tension in several countries, including the presence of German ethnic minorities. Edvard Benes, president of Czechoslovakia from 1935-1938 and 1945-1948 and leader of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile from 1939-1945, stated “our state [Czechoslovakia] was born with this problem [national minorities] and must either solve it at whatever cost or succumb!”^(7)

WW2

Following WW2 large portions of the ethnic German minorities that resided in Poland and Czechoslovakia were expelled to Germany. The expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary was agreed on in the Potsdam Agreement.

XII. ORDERLY TRANSFER OF GERMAN POPULATIONS. The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner. Since the influx of a large number of Germans into Germany would increase the burden already resting on the occupying authorities, they consider that the Control Council in Germany should in the first instance examine the problem, with special regard to the question of the equitable distribution of these Germans among the several zones of occupation. They are accordingly instructing their respective representatives on the Control Council to report to their Governments as soon as possible the extent to which such persons have already entered Germany from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, to submit an estimate of the time and rate at which further transfers could be carried out having regard to the present situation in Germany. The Czechoslovak Government, the Polish Provisional Government and the Control Council in Hungary are at the same time being informed of the above and are being requested meanwhile to suspend further expulsions pending an examination by the Governments concerned of the report from their representatives on the Control Council.^(8)

The inclusion of this part of the Potsdam agreement provided Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary with a legal basis for the expulsion of ethnic Germans, but as can be seen in the wording of the Article XII these countries were asked to suspend further expulsions, indicating that the respective countries were already in the process of expelling ethnic Germans.

The expulsion of ethnic Germans after the end of WW2 in both Poland and Czechoslovakia did not always take place in 'an orderly and humane manner'. For example, in Aussig/Usti nad Labem in Czechoslovakia a factory explode after which groups of citizens began attacking the German population.^(9) The Czech government used the violence against the ethnic Germans in Usti nad Labem to argue for the deportation of Germans in order for the Czech population to feel safe.^(10) German minorities were only given limited time to prepare for their expulsion^(11) and were often only allowed to bring what they could carry.^(12) There were also reports of a large number of suicides by ethnic Germans, either because of news of the arrival of the Red Army or because of notification of deportation.^(13) In Czechoslovakia, Germans were ordered to wear a white armband with the letter N for Nemec (German) on it.^(14) While most members of the German minority were expelled to Germany, a large number from Upper Silesia was deported to the Soviet Union.^(15) In Poland, some former concentration camps were turned into labor camps for (suspected) Nazis and other camps were used to house Germans that were awaiting expulsion.^(16) Of course, some Germans had already fled because of the advance of the Red Army and these people were simply not allowed to return to their homes in what was no longer Germany.

German citizens and ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe that arrived in Germany, either because they had fled or had been expelled, were referred to as Heimatvertriebene (Homeland expellees) and were distributed across the occupations zones.

And that is as far as I am comfortable answering your question as to what happened to them. Perhaps someone else can tell you a little bit more on the circumstances the Heimatvertreibene encountered upon their arrival and the political and social position of the Heimatvertriebene in both the East and West Germany.

Edit: source numbers

Hi all,

So I covered this topic in my undergraduate dissertation, which focussed on the large scale expulsion of the Volksdeutsche from what is now Poland and the Czech Republic. A large scale policy of expulsion was implemented in these areas, with no distinction made between loyal Nazis and ordinary Germans (if such a clear distinction could have been drawn at the time). Edvard Benes (the PM of Czechoslovakia) declared that the 'Germans who plunged a dagger in the back of the Czechoslovak state must be removed.' Broadly speaking, there were two periods of expulsion, the wild and the organised transfers, which are outlined in Douglas' excellent work 'Orderly and Humane,' They are summarised below.

The Wild expulsions, Broadly correlating to the period May '45 to Early '46 as the name suggests consisted of a period of chaos and brutality, with the advance of the Red Army and the retreat of the Wehrmacht, with Bryant outlining how Nazi rule had shown that raw power and violence had overcome democracy and compromise. There is significant primary evidence from the time detailing the nature of expulsions during this period that has been collated in Scheider's excellent work Documents on the Expulsion. Most of these accounts focus on the experiences of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, but there are several other examples from Poland and further afield. An excellent example of an account is from Rudolf Knauer from Hennersdorf,

'I witnessed two farmers (Josef and Stefan) being so badly beaten by Czech partisans that they were left with blood-covered faces. In addition to this to extort a confession they were threatened with being shot.'

This shows that violence was a feature of these times, but there is further evidence to show that this violence was not simply directed at fighting-age men, but women as well, for example, a report from Northern Bohemia noted that,

'On arrival at the women's section of Regensburg District Court, we five women were badly maltreated. Four soldiers beat us with rubber truncheons and whips. I was then beaten more, it must have been 25 to 30 blows.' This source backs up how violence was a ubiquitous feature of this time, but also details institutional complicity, due to the complicity of soldiers acting under orders.

There were of course other motivations. The Aussig (Usti nad Labem) archivist outlined how the Aussig massacre in which an estimated 1000 Germans were killed was prepared by the Communists in an effort to persuade the Allies that co-operation between Czechs and Germans was no longer possible. In essence, it was useful for the Communists to take advantage of the chaotic upheaval and as Douglas explained they had a vested interest in generating stories of people trying to undermine the state, with the Germans being the obvious scapegoats as a collective.

There are significantly more accounts that go into further detail on this period, but in essence, the wild expulsions were characterised as intrinsically violent, with cruel treatment, robbery and state complicity ubiquitous across both the Czech Republic and Poland.Revenge, selfish financial motivations and political opportunism define this period, in which any and all Germans could be mistreated and expelled. In fact, a report from Hoffman in Goblenz highlighted how even though his wife had to answer to the Gestapo in 1942 on anti-fascist charges, they were still seen as fair game to steal from. Not only does this show the extent to which revenge and greed permeated this period, but the chaos that accompanied it

The Organised Expulsions (1946-1948) The Allies were not content with these events, with Churchill stating that a tragedy on a prodigious scale was unfolding. Although of course Britain's stagnating economy and the associated cost of providing rations and medical care to expellees that would have accrued show that humanitarian concerns were not necessarily at the forefront of government thinking.

In contrast to the chaos of the wild expulsions, De Zayas does highlight how conditions did improve, with a significantly reduced death toll. For example, in the winter of 1946-47, the Allies were able to cancel several train movements which saved thousands of lives. In the wild expulsion period, hungry and tired expellees would have been placed in cold, squalid and cramped carriages which clearly would have significantly increased the death toll. In this respect, the organised expulsions could certainly be seen as more 'orderly and humane' than the wild expulsion period which was the criteria the Allies had set for the expulsions. Nevertheless, it would be reductive to describe this period as entirely free of cruel treatment and a trouble-free period of logistical planning. For example, violence was still a frequent occurrence, Kroboth highlights how

'On a death march to Pohrlitz, one of the men who collapsed from starvation was simply shot dead.' This account clearly shows that despite the guidelines to transfer in an orderly and humane manner, the transfers in some cases were still characterised by their brutality.

A key feature that was meant to have changed was the provision of luggage. In the organised expulsions Germans were officially supposed to be allowed 50kg of luggage to take. In reality, it varied. In some cases this was allowed, in others, luggage was stolen, with Meiniger of Althart explaining how,

'My families luggage consisted only of old things that were given to them by others, and even this meagre amount was stolen.' Clearly, pilfering was still a problem and despite the acknowledgement by De Zayas that they weren't as intrinsically brutal as the transports had been, the organised transfers did not provide consistent decent conditions, as admitted by US inspectors, and with Service further explaining how little food was ever provided, forcing the expellees to subsist on whatever they brought from home.

In sum, there was less evidence of widespread maltreatment and sadistic mob violence, such as at Hrerov where up to 70 children were murdered. During the organised expulsions it would also be inaccurate to describe them as intrinsically humane. The evidence showing mistreatment, robbery and poor transport conditions back this up, with Douglas explaining that on one of the first transports during the OE, expellees were given ten minutes to leave, and were beaten along the way. Henceforth it would be difficult to conclude that at any point they were considered to be orderly and humane.

Summary

As outlined, in brief, the Germans that lived in these areas were forced out, but due to a range of factors, widespread anger and a desire for vengeance being a key and understandable rationale, but also inefficiency and chaos, with even Jewish Germans being expelled despite being the primary victims of Nazi barbarism. The desire for plunder also played a role, with the significant destruction of the war and the tacit approval of the state it is no wonder Germans were seen as fair game to rob. It fell upon the occupying Allies to resettle them in a country many had never been part of. This was despite the Allies specifically setting up more orderly transports to avoid the problems of a destitute population arriving in a war-torn nation. Before there were significant numbers in the Sudetenland (the Czech borderlands), Poland and as far afield as Lithuania (what was Konigsberg). The relative nonexistence of Germans in these areas now speaks to how thorough these transports were, with millions affected in one of the biggest population transfers of all time.

Sources

Primary

- T. Scheider, Documents on the Expulsion

- E.Benes, Broadcast from Holborn, 1944

-F. Havel, Chief of the Ministry of Defence, The Transfer of Germans: Report of Proceedings, July 16, 1945. MNO 1151/951

-W. Churchill, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 16th July 1945. Vol. 414, Column 83-84

-V.Kaiser and O.Pustejovsky, On the Massacre of Germans at Aussig. usti-nad-labem.cz/dejiny/1945-95/ul-8-9.htm

Secondary

-A.De Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans

-RM Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War

-E.Glassheim, 'National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945,' Central European History, 33.4

-H.Service, 'Reinterpreting the Expulsion of Germans from Poland, 1945-49,' Journal of Contemporary History, 47.3

-C.Bryant, Prague in Black

These excellent answers have provided a great deal of insight into the German expellees from the period after World War II. To give a sense of the numbers, I'll cite some figures from Tony Judt:

• Some seven million ethnic Germans were expelled from territories ceded to Poland after 1945 (East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia)

• Some three million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, with an estimated 267,000 killed/dying during the expulsions (no deaths are given from the other regions, but it would also be in the six figure range). The percentage of ethnic Germans from the total population in Bohemia and Moravia dropped from 29% in 1930 to 1.8% in 1950.

• Hungary expelled some 623,000, Romania 786,000, Yugoslavia half a million, and Poland 1.3 million (from what I can tell in Judt's narrative this is from prewar Poland proper, not the newly annexed territories). Judt gives the total of ethnic German expellees at something like 13 million.

As staggering as these figures are, and as important as it is to highlight the mass abuses and ethnic cleansing that millions of German civilians faced, one thing that I want to provide is a little additional context, in terms of the fact that even this big wave of expellees was part of a vast churn of humanity moving, usually involuntarily, in Europe at the end of World War II and beyond. For instance, Judt notes that the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (which did not provide relief to ethnic German expellees) was providing assistance to some 6.8 million displaced people of various nationalities, with the Soviets handling another 7 million (again, these are in addition to German expellees). The largest group of this number were millions of prisoners of war and forced laborers from the Soviet Union (the latter numbering some two million), two million French prisoners of war, laborers and deportees, 1.6 million Poles, 700,000 Italians, 350,000 Czechs, 300,000 Dutch and 300,000 Belgians, among others. The hierarchy in terms of processing displaced peoples tended to be: processing and sending home of concentration camp inmates from Allied countries, then Allied POWs, then Allied Displaced Persons (usually forced laborers), then Axis Displaced Persons. Ethnic German expellees were to be absorbed locally. Of course repatriation of people to the USSR and areas under Soviet influence from the West proved controversial and was suspended in 1947 (with those remaining being given political refugee status).

And that was mostly in Germany and Austria. Other expulsions going on from 1945. About a million ethnic Poles were expelled from what was now western Ukraine to Poland, while about half a million ethnic Ukrainians were in turn expelled from Poland between October 1944 and June 1946 to the Ukrainian SSR (a few hundred thousand more were forcibly resettled by the Polish army in the former German territories under "Operation Vistula"). By a February 1946 agreement Czechoslovakia and Hungary "exchanged" 120,000 ethnic Hungarians and Slovaks each across their border. Yugoslavia forcibly moved 400,000 people from its south to areas vacated by the deportation of ethnic Germans. Bulgaria expelled some 160,000 ethnic Turks to Turkey.

This was all in addition to earlier deportations. The Soviets had deported maybe a million people from former territories of Eastern Poland in 1939-1941, while the Nazi authorities had deported some 750,000 ethnic Poles from western Polish territories to clear the way for ethnic German settlers, many of whom were themselves forcibly deported (120,000 Baltic Germans, 136,000 from eastern Poland, and about 200,000 from Romania and the Balkans) and who would again be forcibly deported after 1945. Judt estimates that between 1939 and 1943 Hitler and Stalin "uprooted, transplanted, expelled, deported and dispersed some 30 million people," with more to come in the years afterwards, obviously even after 1945.

Another point I'd add is that there is a lot of overlap between German expellees/deportees and German wartime refugees from eastern areas of Germany that were annexed by Poland. A lot of German civilians were killed during the 1944-1945 campaigns by the Red Army (maybe some 100,000 executed by advancing Soviet forces), or deported to labor camps in the USSR (perhaps another 250,000), and many many more left their homes ahead of the advancing Soviet forces. For instance, of the 4.5 million Germans living in Silesia, an estimated 3 million fled in advance of the Soviet forces, to Czechoslovakia or onwards to parts of Germany further west. Similarly, about 900,000 refugees managed to flee East Prussia by ship across the Baltic (often with horrific losses of life caused by Soviet submarines sinking ships, such as the Wilhelm Gustloff being sunk with maybe 7,000 killed), and about a further 250,000 to Pomerania, before that region too was evacuated. Evacuations could be incredibly chaotic: while East Prussia and Silesia had about four months of evacuations, other areas in occupied Poland had two weeks to flee before the Soviet offensive that would reach the Oder in the spring. Some regions removed women and children, but left men in place to man vital installations. Other areas held off any evacuations in the belief that a successful German defense would prevent the need. Many tens of thousands left by train, by wagon or by foot in harsh winter conditions, leading to many deaths and to destinations where local authorities were overwhelmed and unable to cope: by early January 1945, some 40,000 to 50,000 refugees were arriving in Berlin a day. Hundreds of thousands of people would eventually be caught behind Soviet lines nevertheless. After the war, some refugees would attempt to return home - and again be forced to leave in expulsions. It's not easy to draw a line between one and the other.

In any case, I mention all of this not really to dispute German expulsions, or even to engage in whataboutism - to be clear, millions of German civilians, mostly women, children and old people, were forcibly removed from their communities in ethnic cleansing and sent at great violence to live within the new borders of occupied Germany, and with no assistance from the occupying authorities. But I do want to mention these other groups and figures because I think it's important context to keep in mind. Ethnic Germans were the largest single group forcibly moved after 1945, but they were far from the only ones. Europe was, to put it bluntly, a mess with many millions removed from their homes permanently.

Sources:

Ian Kershaw. The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945

Tony Judt. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945