ABSTRACT
Many of the surviving refugees made it across the border of postwar Germany; some found temporary havens in Silesia, Pomerania, and other German territories; others were overtaken in flight by the Red Army. Within a few years of the war's end, an incredible 15 million Reichdeutsch and ethnic German civilians would be thrown out of Poland, the Baltic States, Memel, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and the eastern areas of Germany. Encouraged by Soviet forces, domestic extremists, and the new national governments, these expulsions and the treatment of Reichdeutsch and ethnic. The expulsions by the Poles from Germany's former eastern territories and Poland proper were the largest, amounting to 8 million Re ichdeutsch and ethnic Germans. In compensation for taking Poland's eastern marshes and other areas in the east, the Soviets gave the Poles the former free city of Danzig, German East Prussia, Eastern Pomerania, Eastern Brandenburg, and Silesia.
