ODF History in English

The Forgotten Genocide - The Story of the Ethnic Germans. A documentary by Ann Morrison

2011-12-29T12:14:52Z

Memories of a painful secret held for over fifty years are now finally being brought to light. THE FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE: The Expulsion after WWII, is an in-depth, feature length documentary that examines the sufferings put upon Ethnic Germans living behind the Iron Curtain. Through interviews with survivors, the memory of this sad period in human history is preserved, and hopefully provides peace to the almost 15 million souls lost.

First-hand accounts are given by unbelievably strong, determinedly positive people as they speak of their experiences. They talk about their lives before the genocide, the armies invading their homes and killing and kidnapping their family, their neighbors, themselves. They described the impossible conditions of their imprisonment-the cold, the starvation, the forced labor, the brutality, and the death. All unexplained, all unjustified.

Though these stories are hard to hear, they should not remain unspoken, and nobody could tell them better than the ones who lived through it. While working on the project, Ann was often met with surprise or confusion when she explained the nature of it, she also found people -in growing amounts- who knew about the tragedy that took place and wanted others to know as well. Ann met with people from all over the country, began communicating with people internationally, and the project grew into the documentary DVD.

The DVD includes an historical overview and commentary by several noted historians.
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History: The Assault on East Prussia (complete documentary)

2011-02-10T16:23:23Z

Video-documentary
time: 49.30 minutes
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History: Dresden on Fire and resurrection of the Frauenkirche

2011-02-13T16:20:21Z

PowerPoint-Presentation
time: 18.00 minutes
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History: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947

2006-08-14T16:18:18Z

In the aftermath of World War II, Prussia--a centuries-old state pivotal to Europe's development--ceased to exist. In their eagerness to erase all traces of the Third Reich from the earth, the Allies believed that Prussia, the very embodiment of German militarism, had to be abolished.

But as Christopher Clark reveals in this pioneering history, Prussia's legacy is far more complex. Though now a fading memory in Europe's heartland, the true story of Prussia offers a remarkable glimpse into the dynamic rise of modern Europe.
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History: Anglo-American Responsibility for the Expulsion of the Germans, 1944-48

2000-02-14T16:15:48Z

ALFRED DE ZAYAS
merican and British historians have not given the enforced flight and expulsion of fifteen million Germans and the end of World War II the attention that this important and tragic phenomenon deserves. In itself this deliberate avoidance of a legitimate field of historical research and publication merits our attention today, considering that the flight and expulsion of the Germans constitutes the largest mass transfer of population in history, a veritable demographic revolution in central Europe, and a form of genocide in the course of which more than two million human beings perished.
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History: How three million Germans died after VE Day

2007-04-14T16:13:35Z

Nigel Jones reviews After the Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift by Giles MacDonogh

Giles MacDonogh is a bon viveur and a historian of wine and gastronomy, but in this book, pursuing his other consuming interest - German history - he serves a dish to turn the strongest of stomachs. It makes particularly uncomfortable reading for those who compare the disastrous occupation of Iraq unfavourably to the post-war settlement of Germany and Austria.

MacDonogh argues that the months that followed May 1945 brought no peace to the shattered skeleton of Hitler's Reich, but suffering even worse than the destruction wrought by the war. After the atrocities that the Nazis had visited on Europe, some degree of justified vengeance by their victims was inevitable, but the appalling bestialities that MacDonogh documents so soberly went far beyond that. The first 200 pages of his brave book are an almost unbearable chronicle of human suffering.
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History: Polish-speaking Germans and the Ethnic Cleansing of Germany East of Oder-Neisse

2000-02-14T16:09:10Z

PDF-File 3.758 KB

History: Raped by Red Army soldiers, they talk for the first time

2009-04-10T16:07:03Z

The women were in their 20s when they were raped by Red Army soldiers invading Germany at the end of World War II. Sixty years later, close to two million women are talking about their ordeal for the very first time.

"The Americans retreated from the East German town of Halle and the Russians marched in. When that happened my female friends all fled, but I couldn�t run because my leg was injured. So the Russians attacked me. And they raped me."

It was the end of July 1945, when 19-year-old Ruth Schumacher was raped by four Russian soldiers.
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History: 'They raped every German female from eight to 80'

2002-02-14T16:04:49Z

Antony Beevor, author of the acclaimed new book about the fall of Berlin, on a massive war crime committed by the victorious Red Army.

"Red Army soldiers don't believe in 'individual liaisons' with German women," wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia. "Nine, ten, twelve men at a time - they rape them on a collective basis."

The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour.
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History: Charter of the German Expellees

1950-08-14T16:01:33Z

Conscious of their responsibility before God and men, conscious of their affiliation to the Western Christian community, conscious of their German origin, and realizing the common task of all nations of Europe, the elected representatives of millions of expellees, after careful deliberation and after having searched their conscience, have resolved to make public a so-lemn declaration to the German people and to the entire world, defining both the duties and the rights which the German expellees consider their basic law and an indispensable pre-condition for the establishment of a free and united Europe.
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