In the autumn of 1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the evacuation of the German population from east-central and south-east Europe. The reason was the advance of the Soviet troops to the west. Can this evacuation, as happened mainly in German memory after 1945, be simply understood as a humanitarian measure in the interest of the civilian population threatened by war? Or weren't the objectives of the National Socialist war policy behind it? This book presents the results of a German-Slovak research project. Using the example of the Germans in Slovakia, backgrounds, processes and relationships of the evacuation in the years 1944-1945 are examined, which until now have mostly only been assigned to the complex of flight and displacement. A special focus is on the general development in the region, where, as a result of hostilities, the Slovak civilians fled in parallel. One of the central results of the present study is that National Socialist politics also had a significant influence on what was happening. The evacuation policy of the German Wehrmacht and persecution measures against Jews, Roma and political opponents are also taken into account. At the end of the volume there is an outlook on the consequences for those affected and the historical-political classification of the evacuation in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Series edited by: Vorstand des Collegium Carolinum