Slav versus German
the greatest misery and human suffering, it is hard not to be struck by the difference between this harsh reality and the blithe words of Western statesmen, which in the light of the difference between the eastern and western branches of the Neisse.
Of course, it is probable that the postwar expulsions were unavoidable. Given the behaviour of German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia before the war, it is inconceivable that these countries would have tolerated their continued existence. Two blacks do not make a white, but the Poles and Czechs had about as good an excuse for their actions as history can give. In the case of Czechoslovakia the expulsions were carried out a good deal more brutally than in Poland. especially before Potsdam, with the young thugs of the National Guard being allowed to perpetrate individual acts of violence which culminated in the massacre at Usti on July 30. 1945. The Germans in Poland seem to have suffered more from famine and the usual ills attending the populations or areas where there has been heavy fighting than from violence on the part of those whom they had oppressed.
u $ s (It trial recovery has been made possible by the flood of labour from the con- / quered eastern territories.
Asiw Czechoslovakia has mo- mentarily lost. Poland per- manently gained, from their expulsion of minori- * ties ancl (in the case of voices in Western Germany
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