Germany, Russia, and the Vacuum of Sovereignty — A Two-Part Watchman Series
Europe’s current political tensions did not begin in 2022.
They began decades earlier — with forgotten deportations, erased communities, and unresolved sovereignty.
In this two-part Watchman News series, we examine one of the least discussed chapters of modern European history: the forced removal of millions of ethnic Germans from Ukraine, Poland, and former East Prussia under Soviet rule — and how that legacy still shapes German political psychology today.
Part 1 documents the historical reality of Soviet deportations and demographic cleansing.
Part 2 (coming soon) explores how post-war Germany’s suppressed identity created a vacuum — and why that vacuum is now being misread, manipulated, and weaponized in contemporary politics.
This is not a partisan analysis.
It is a civilizational one.
Part 2 — Identity Vacuums: Germany’s Post-War Politics and Russia
(To be released.)
Part 1 — Erased Voices: The Forgotten Germans of Eastern Europe
Introduction
In the sweeping tragedies of the 20th century, some of the largest and most transformative population movements are now barely remembered outside specialist scholarship. Among them were the dispossession and forced removal of ethnic German communities from Ukraine, Poland, and other parts of Eastern Europe — peoples who had lived for generations in these lands long before modern national borders existed. Understanding what happened to these communities is not merely a matter of recounting demographic shifts; it’s a key to understanding the deep psychological and political dynamics shaping modern Europe.
Between roughly 1944 and 1950, an estimated 12 million ethnic Germans were either expelled or fled from Central and Eastern Europe after World War II, including from territories that became part of Poland and the Soviet Union. These movements represent one of the largest forced migrations in modern European history.
German Communities in Ukraine and Eastern Europe
For centuries, ethnic Germans — often called Volksdeutsche — lived in communities across Eastern Europe. In Ukraine alone, German settlements had existed since at least the 18th century, when Catherine the Great invited settlers to farm and develop lands in the Russian Empire. By 1939, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans resided in the Ukrainian SSR, particularly in regions such as Odesa, Zaporizhia, and Crimea.
These communities were integrated parts of local life — farmers, artisans, educators, and neighbors — although they retained distinctive language and cultural traditions. Yet in the turmoil of World War II and its aftermath, they became targets for systematic uprooting.
Soviet Deportations and Forced Resettlement
Long before the end of the war, Soviet authorities had initiated anti-German measures. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, German educational and cultural institutions were closed and decentralized territorial units were dismantled. Accusations of “fascist nationalism” were used to justify arrests and repressions against ethnic Germans long before any combat on the Eastern Front.
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the situation escalated dramatically. Soviet security organs such as the NKVD labeled ethnic Germans as potential “counter-revolutionary and spy elements,” and large numbers were rounded up and forcibly relocated to distant regions of the USSR, including Kazakhstan and Siberia. In some areas, tens of thousands of people were earmarked for deportation from their home regions of Ukraine to harsh settlements in Central Asia or forced into labor detachments.
These measures were not limited to the wartime period. After Soviet forces re-established control in 1943–1944, deportations resumed with increased severity as part of a broader effort to eliminate perceived internal threats. Many ethnic Germans were sent yet again to remote territories or labor camps, and familial structures were disrupted irrevocably.
Expulsion and Resettlement After World War II
The end of World War II did not end this demographic trauma. Under the terms agreed by Allied leaders at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam, post-war border changes created new state boundaries, and the ethnic German population across vast swaths of Central and Eastern Europe was uprooted. Between 1945 and 1950, most remaining ethnic Germans were expelled or fled from territories that were ceded to Poland or absorbed into the Soviet Union.
These weren’t small numbers. From pre-war eastern Europe and former German provinces, millions of Germans moved westward, often on foot or in overcrowded transport, enduring harsh winter conditions, loss of possessions, and the trauma of rejection from their ancestral towns.
The scale was staggering: historians estimate that tens of millions of people were displaced across Europe in these population transfers, with ethnic Germans comprising one of the largest single groups.
What “Erased Voices” Left Behind
For those uprooted, the consequences were lifelong. Property was seized, cultural heritage was disrupted, and many families never recovered land or community networks that had existed for generations. Some resettled in what became West or East Germany; others were dispersed into labor settlements far from their homes. Over time, the communities that once formed distinct German cultural zones in parts of Ukraine, Poland, and East Prussia simply vanished from the map as German-speaking centers.
Today, relatively few communities remain that recall those traditions — and those that do often do so quietly, their stories overshadowed by the vast migrations of the war years and the political narratives that followed.
Why This History Matters
Understanding these deportations is not an exercise in nostalgia. It is foundational to understanding how modern European political identities have been shaped by history that is too often suppressed or simplified.
The removal of ethnic Germans from Ukraine and Eastern Europe created deep social ruptures. Those ruptures echo into the present, affecting how populations remember sovereignty, identity, and even how they view modern political conflicts.
This shared but often unacknowledged history informs contemporary debates about nationalism, statehood, and psychological responses to great power politics — including why some political currents in Europe resonate with imagery and symbolism that outsiders too quickly dismiss or misinterpret.
Looking Ahead
Part 2 of this series — “Identity Vacuums: Germany’s Post-War Politics and Russia” — will explore how this suppressed history has shaped modern German political identity, how it influences perceptions of sovereignty and nationhood, and why certain political movements have found disproportionate resonance in parts of Germany today.
Flight and Expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944–1950)
Demographic Estimates of German Expulsions
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_estimates_of_the_flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans
Deportation of Ukrainian Germans (1944–1946)
Ukrainian National Memory / Deportation Project
https://deportation.org.ua/deportation-of-ukrainian-germans-in-1944-1946/
Forcible Deportations of Ukrainian Germans (1935–1941)
https://deportation.org.ua/forcible-deportations-of-the-ukrainian-germans-in-1935-1941/
Ethnic Cleansing of Germans After WWII (Overview)
Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/event/expulsion-of-Germans-after-World-War-II
Volga Germans and Soviet Deportations
Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2016-09-20/russia-deportation-of-volga-germans/
Restoring Ukraine’s Displaced Peoples: How Soviet Deportations and Russian Child Abductions Created Europe’s Demographic Crisis
Новини сторожа
https://watchman.news/2026/01/restoring-ukraines-displaced-germans-and-children/
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