This book focuses on how Britain perceived the mass movement of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of British archival material, it examines why the British came to regard the forcible removal of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia as a necessity, and evaluates the British response, both in official circles and in the public domain, to developments in central Europe once mass expulsion became a reality in 1945. Central to this study is the concept of ‘population transfer’: the contemporary idea that awkwar ... More

This book focuses on how Britain perceived the mass movement of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of British archival material, it examines why the British came to regard the forcible removal of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia as a necessity, and evaluates the British response, both in official circles and in the public domain, to developments in central Europe once mass expulsion became a reality in 1945. Central to this study is the concept of ‘population transfer’: the contemporary idea that awkward minority problems could be solved rationally and constructively by removing the population concerned in an orderly and gradual manner, while avoiding unnecessary human suffering and economic disruption. The book demonstrates that while most British observers accepted the principle of population transfer, most were also consistently uneasy with the results of putting that principle into practice. This clash of ‘principle’ with ‘practice’ revealed much not only about the limitations of Britain's role, but also the hierarchy of British priorities in immediate post-war Europe.