the nationality of all inhabitants of the czech provinces and ...

The Break up of Czechoslovakia and the Genesis
of the Transfer
German units moved progressively
through the city, with the SS driving
Czech citizens against the barricades
with their tanks. In the Pankrác district
of the city they forced their way into
shelters in cellars and shot 37 people
they found there, including 10 children
aged between 6 and 15, and 13 women,
two of whom were pregnant. These
horrific events incited part of the
population of Prague to “retaliate against
the retaliation”, to take revenge on
members of the Gestapo and the SS and
some soldiers, and also to deal with
captured German civilians in a brutal
way. And so the final act in Czech-
German coexistence is characterised
above all by these deaths. On top of all
this the first transports of Czech
prisoners from the liberated
concentration camps started arriving.
And with them a new horror – how
many of those prisoners would never
return, and the appearance of those who
191
Chapter IV
did – often only living skeletons, with a
horrific tale to tell of what they had to
undergo in the concentration camps. The
hate that had been freshly nourished in
this way, and the exaggerated Czech
euphoria after liberation (in several cases
concealing attempts by those who had
collaborated with the Nazis to reestablish
themselves in the post-war
state) then gave rise to the flight of
Germans from the Reich and from the
Sudetenland, but also to their “wild” or
“uncontrolled” transfer, with a number of
deplorable or inexcusable excesses, on
more than one occasion explicitly brutal
ones. This was brought to an end by the
Potsdam conference between Great
Britain, the USSR, and the USA, which
at the same time reacted to demands
from the Czechs, the Poles, and others,
and gave its approval to, and indeed de
facto decided on, the orderly transfer of
the Germans from these countries –
including Czechoslovakia.