Schieder commission

Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population transfer of Germans from East-Central Europe that had occurred after World War II. Created by the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims, the commission headed by Theodor Schieder (thus known as the Schieder commission) consisted primarily of well-known historians, however with a Nazi past. Therefore, while in the immediate post war period the commission was regarded as composed of very accomplished historians; later, the assessment of its members, changed. Subsequently, the modern historians are debating to what degree the findings of the commission can be seen as reliable, and to what degree they were influenced by Nazi and nationalist point of view.

Motivated by the Lebensraum ideology, some of the historians themselves had played an active role in these war crimes. Due to its relative frankness, the final summary volume was suppressed for political reasons and was never finished.

The Schieder Commission did not inform readers regarding the implementation of the earlier Lebensraum concept: from 1938/1939 Nazi Germany had expanded its territory far into the east, annexing parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland (Sudetenland, Warthegau). This was intended as only a first step towards establishing the so-called A-A line from Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan (both located in Russia) as Germany's new eastern border. Parts of Poland were "Germanized" by force, the local Polish majority population being subject to mass executions and murder as well as expelled into other parts of Poland. The Jews were systematically killed. In some cases German historians were involved in determining the fate of villages based on racial criteria. Ethnically German minorities from further east and settlers from within Nazi Reich were invited to settle in the annexed areas. Thousands of children from the occupied territories were kidnapped and examined according to racial criteria. Those who were eventually considered "Aryan" were given German names and thoroughly Germanized, but most were sent to orphanages, died from malnutrition or were killed in Auschwitz.

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