The West condemns Stalin for what guilty of no less than
The thirtieth of may is celebrated the 75th anniversary of the tragic episode in post-war Europe — the so-called Brunn death March.
Frankly, this event is not so widely covered by European media as "Stalin's deportation of peoples" or anti-Soviet myths about the war, particularly active unwinding in recent years. It and is clear: some historical facts do not fit into the modern European narrative about the fault of the USSR for everything that happened before and after the Second world war. And their discussion inevitably leads one to ask what is trying to accuse Soviet Russia, if it turns out that Stalin's policy on deportations along ethnic lines was not only commonplace for post-war Europe, but was also more humane in the background of the ethnic cleansing that created the state, now very actively accusing Moscow.
In fact, 55-km-long deadly campaign of ethnic Germans in the Czech Republic from Brno to the Austrian border, which began on may 30, 1945, is just one of the many episodes of mass deportation of peoples in the history of Europe. According to the American historian R. Douglas, specializing in that subject, the result of this policy was the move 12-14 million Germans (up to a quarter of the population of modern Germany is deported persons or their direct descendants). The exact number of victims can't call anybody — from 500 thousand to 1.5 million. We emphasize we are not talking about Nazis, not about Wehrmacht soldiers, not war criminals. Mostly women, the elderly, children, as men of German nationality, Hitler polls put under the gun and by may 1945 they either died on the frontlines or were in camps for prisoners of war.
It should be emphasized that the responsibility for these mass deportations equally borne by all the country winners. This policy is the result of universal consensus, which was defined long before the defeat of Nazism. Perhaps that is why American and European political analysts do not like to remember those events, much less how large-scale deportation of the Crimean Tatar people, because in this case Stalin did not solely blame have to admit that his policy fits into the common practice of the West.
Before the end of the war, the government of Czechoslovakia in exile, Edvard beneš had publicly announced the Sudeten Germans "fifth column" and promised them the responsibility for their betrayal. In August 1944 the Polish government in London decided that those Germans who "did not leave the Polish territory after the war, evicted from there." All these plans government supported the UK and the USA. Winston Churchill debate in Parliament on 15 December 1944 publicly endorsed mass deportation, believing that the key to resolving ethnic conflicts in the future.
Although the leadership of the Prague uprising in may 1945, signed a pledge before leaving the city, the Nazi garrison that the civilian German population is not subjected to persecution, ethnic cleansing began immediately. The Czechs began to execute German wounded soldiers in hospitals, and at the same time dealt with the civil. So, from the window threw an elderly German woman beaten to death in the street musician tour of the Prague German orchestra. Victims often become German-speaking Jews, and even the Czechs, if in their papers the place of birth was listed as the Sudetenland.
But the Czechs and poles started to "wild deportations". Initially chose those who live in wealthy homes, after all, it got the new authorities. As in the case of "death March" from Brno, to the Sudeten Germans came to the newly formed armed police or self-defense (and often they were recorded yesterday and the police were quite normal collaborated with the Nazis), were given two hours to pack, allowing to take like, ten, like 30 and 50 kilograms of personal belongings, and walked to the border. Since the lion's share was the elderly and women with children, many could not stand and fell. They finished by throwing on the roadside.
According to some estimates, in the "March of death" from Brno killed 1,700 people (there are estimates and eight thousand). The first victims were infants, because their exhausted mothers could not feed them due to the lack of milk. One of the survivors participating in this campaign, remembered with horror that the worst did not begin on the March, and in a makeshift camp on the border where women are robbed, raped, finished.
And sometimes the Germans were not even allowed to reach the border. So, on the night of 19 June in the Moravian town of Prerov by armed Czechs pulled out of the train of civilian Germans and shot each in the head. Only there killed 265 people, including 120 women and 74 children, the youngest of whom was eight months old.
Most often, these executions and torture had been public, in the crowds (so many remains). One member, awestruck, wrote to the office of the government: "Even inhuman the Germans got rid of their enemies in such a manner, hiding their sadism behind fences of concentration camps." Renowned British correspondent Frederick Voigt said that the Czechs themselves took over "racial doctrine, which is close to Hitler,