Table of contents

The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: “a major achievement” (New Republic). Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless. In this authoritative and objective account, historian R.M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of the World War II.

"The Last Revolutionaries" tells a story of unwavering political devotion: it follows the lives of German communists across the tumultuous twentieth century. Before 1945, German communists were political outcasts in the Weimar Republic and courageous resisters in Nazi Germany; they also suffered Stalin's Great Purges and struggled through emigration in countries hostile to communism. After World War II, they became leaders of East Germany, where they ran a dictatorial regime until they were swept out of power by the people's revolution of 1989. In a compelling collective biography, Catherine Epstein conveys the hopes, fears, dreams, and disappointments of a generation that lived their political commitment. Focusing on eight individuals, "The Last Revolutionaries" shows how political ideology drove people's lives. Some of these communists, including the East German leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, enjoyed great personal success. But others, including the purge victims Franz Dahlem and Karl Schirdewan, experienced devastating losses. And, as the book demonstrates, female and Jewish communists faced their own sets of difficulties in the movement to which they had given their all. Drawing on previously inaccessible sources as well as extensive personal interviews, Epstein offers an unparalleled portrait of the most enduring and influential generation of Central European communists. In the service of their party, these communists experienced solidarity and betrayal, power and persecution, sacrifice and reward, triumph and defeat. At once sordid and poignant, theirs is the story of European communism--from the heroic excitement of its youth, to the bureaucratic authoritarianism of its middle age, to the sorry debacle of its death.

September 1, 1939, promised to be another beautiful late summer day. Hank slowly walked to his aunt's house for one of her treats anxiously awaiting her call to come in. Already the smell of boiling chocolate wafted through the open kitchen window. "I hope she puts lemon sauce on it," he thought.

A magisterial history of the artists and writers who left Weimar when the Nazis came to power In 1933 thousands of intellectuals, artists, writers, militants and other opponents of the Nazi regime fled Germany. They were, in the words of Heinrich Mann, “the best of Germany,” refusing to remain citizens in this new state that legalized terror and brutality. Exiled across the world, they continued the fight against Nazism in prose, poetry, painting, architecture, film and theater. Weimar in Exile follows these lives, from the rise of national socialism to their return to a ruined homeland, retracing their stories, struggles, setbacks and rare victories. The dignity in exile of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Hanns Eisler, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Ernst Toller, Stefan Zweig and many others provides a counterpoint to the story of Germany under the Nazis.

Literature in Exile of East and Central Europe is a collection of articles discussing authors whose homelands range from the former Soviet Union to the former Yugoslavia. For the purposes of this book, East and Central Europe comprise Russia, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Romania, and former Yugoslavia. These writers were exiled as a result of unbearable political climates - be it nations of the Communist block, including former Yugoslavia torn by its civil wars, or in the case of Poland, its partitioning by neighboring powers in the nineteenth century. No other book has collected such a variety of discussions from this geopolitical region, featuring authors who chose exile over the extinguishment of their individuality. Organized by theme and geography, this book will be of interest to a wide group of readers: from the topic of exile to research in Slavic (Czech, Polish, Russian, and post-Yugoslav), Romanian, German, and comparative literature. Literature in Exile of East and Central Europe is a valuable supplement to courses in Eastern and Central European history, as well as a primary text for courses in East and Central European literature.