The mass evacuation of ethnic Germans in Eastern and Central Europe during and after the Second World War came in three overlapping phases. The first was the organized evacuation of ethnic Germans by the Nazi government in the face of the Red Army’s advance from mid-1944 to early 1945.26 The second was the disorganized flight of ethnic Germans immediately following the defeat of the German military. The third phase, which is our focus, was the organized expulsion that followed the Potsdam Agreement signed by the victors in the summer of 1945.
