Revolution: The Red Army Faction (RAF) and its' First Generation

*Please note, the next entry will cover the second and third generation RAF along with an overall conclusion. I am avoiding making these blogs excessively long. Thank you.* 

When Germans speak of the German student protests, they are addressing those of the late 1960s, specifically 1968. After the murder of Benno Ohnesorg during 1967 demonstration and the assassination attempt on the SDS leader Rudi Dutscke in early spring 1968, student protests erupted. The Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction; RAF) was co-founded by journalist Ulrike Meinhof alongside the other two major leaders of the organization Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin.

During their early stages, the RAF received large amounts of sympathy from the German public. The RAF, like most other left-based organizations especially student-run ones, developed at this time in West Germany in response to their parents, who, the students felt, needed to take responsibility for their actions during the Nazi area. Lack of confrontation by their parents with their Nazi past was just one part of the student movement and protests. The RAF, like other organizations, was against the war in Vietnam, the American-imperialist, occupation of West Germany, and the capitalists in government. Groups called for revolutionary actions.

On the night of April 2, 1968, near midnight in Frankfurt am Main, two department stores were set ablaze. Then, on April 4, the police were given a confidential tip about the culprits. Soon after, the arsonists were arrested which included 27 year old student Gudrun Ensslin, 25 year old Andreas Baader, as well as 26 year old Thorward Proll and 25 year old Horst Söhnlein. On October 31, 1968 the four arsonists were sentenced to 3 years in custody. Until the appeal, on June 13, 1969, they were free to go. Baader, Ensslin, and Proll went underground again. Söhnlein was the only one who served his punishment. Baader will be apprehended on April 4, 1970 in Berlin.

Here, Meinhof joins Baader and Ensslin, on May 14, 1970, Meinhof, with the help of Irene Goergens, Ingrid Schubert, and two masked accomplices freed Andreas Baader from captivity by armed force.  One of the masked individuals is believed to be Gudrun Ensslin. Thus, history saw the “birth hour” of the RAF. In June, Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, Mahler and other RAF sympathizers fled to Jordan. In Jordan, the group trained in gorilla-fighting/gorilla-warfare. On June 5, 1970, the West Berlin newspaper “Agit 883” published an article, titled “Die RAF aufbauen” (The RAF Setsup). It is the first official explanation of the group. The article also stats the freeing of Baader as its’ conception.

On May 11, 1972, the RAF began their bomb strikes against the headquarters of the US Army in Frankfurt am Main and thus the “May Offensive” started. Thirteen people were injured and one person died in the strike. Soon further bomb strikes took place against the managements of the US Army, police, and justices. This bombing was followed by a bombing of police headquarters in Ausburg and state police in Munich on May 12, 1972, car of a federal judge on May 15, 1972, the Axel Springer building located in Hamburg on may 19, 1972, and lastly, the US forces headquarters in Heidelberg on May 24, 1972. In response, a major "manhunt" began to look for those RAF bombers. Starting in June, the leaders of the RAF began being detained. Those detained, in order, are Andreas Baader, Holger meins, Jan-Carl Raspe, Gudrun Ensslin, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Ulrike Meinhof, and lastly Irmgard Möller. As the original leaders of the RAF, known from here as the first generation RAF, were arrested and detained, the second generation of RAF members arouse and called for the freeing of the imprisoned RAF leaders.

In the fall of 1974, while the first RAF generation was incarcerated in Stuttgart-Stammheim and going through a hunger-strike in protest against the conditions of their custody especially the isolation-torture which they endured. An Allenbach poll found that every fourteenth German under 30 years of age sympathized with the RAF. Due to this new wave of sympathy, the RAF was able to recruit new members. During the first generation’s third hunger strike, which took place from September 27, 1974 to February 2, 1975, Holger Meins had died on November 4, 1974. The day following Meins’ death, a Berlin chief judge, named Günter Drenkmann, was shot. This shooting was by the second generation which developed after the arrests of the first generation leaders and others associated with them.On December 4, 1974, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre interviewed Baader in the Stammheim prison about his leadership in the RAF. At the time, the visit was highly criticized on behalf of Sartre. Some thought he favored the RAF but as the interview is reviewed today, it is believed Sartre misunderstood Baader. Please see the Spiegel article located under “sources”.

The trail for the first RAF generation began on May 21, 1975. The trail is described as being “hectic” from the start. The defendants behaved “as madman, insulting” and partially aggressive but all the while, the judges acted no better, thus fueling the idea of a police state. The prison doctor was forced to admit that the living conditions of the defendants were not adequate and could potentially cause health issues and problems.  Later, independent doctors stated the RAF leaders were unfit to stand trial. One year later, Ulrike Meinhof was found dead in her cell. Prison officials announced it was suicide but sympathizers believe police officials and government officials purposely staged Meinhof’s death to look like a suicide so that they may cover up the fact they had, in fact, murdered her. On October 18, 1977, the rest of the first generation were found dead in their cells at Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. Raspe and Baader were found shot with a pistol in the head while Ensslin was hanged from her cell window. Möller survived her suicide attempt. A day later, Hanns-Martin Schleyer was found in the trunk of a car with a note in Mühlhausen. 

Sources:
http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/deutsche-geschichte/geschichte-der-raf/

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/transcript-released-of-sartre-visit-to-raf-leader-andreas-baader-a-881395.html

Please check out my YouTube video I created to go along with my blog series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eruWT7iB6Co&list=PLCaVUhxKy8tBXeJqmYdHNdhry3r2Yzzkj

The Beginnings: Dresden and Rudi Dutschke

At one point in a blog, the theory that at the creation of "Germany" in 1871 ultimately set in motion a serious of events, accumulating to what we now know as the Cold war, was proposed. From here, let's briefly examine the presence of the former Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. As the Second World War came to a close, Soviet troops clearly occupied eastern Europe. The Soviets and communist leaders in now Soviet occupied eastern Europe used the war to benefit their communist cause for the good and the bad. The communist hatred of Nazism allowed for many "war criminals" to be brought to justice. Good but many innocent Germans suffered and died in the process and most German POW's never returned home. Soviets and eastern European countries expelled Germans to Germany as well.

When the time arrived for the Soviet Union to control East Germany, they meaning the Soviets, took a slightly different approach. The Holocaust, like in Hungary, was not a topic for discussion. In These circumstances  the Holocaust is labeled as "taboo". Instead, memorials were built to commemorate fallen Soviets, communists, and anti-fascists. These three groups fought against the capitalist West. Soviet authorities also enforced the idea that the bombing of Dresden was unnecessary as well as a war crime committed by the capitalist West on the German people. Soviet authorities hoped that playing off the feelings of betrayal felt by many Germans would rally them to support the communist system. Indeed, the city of Dresden held no military base or arsenal of weapons, and it maintained no threat to the Allies. From many, even Germans in Western Germany, the malicious bombing of Dresden remained the vivid picture of Allied brutality.

Fast forward please into the late 1960s. During this period, West German student protests were at its highest  peak. The United States was at war in Vietnam, spreading its' imperialism. Students in West Germany protested the imperial presence of America in West Germany and especially in Vietnam. This generation of children were the offspring of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Fascism, many thought, could be seen all over the West. One of these student leaders was Rudi Dutschke.

The East German government blocked Dutschke's path into the university because of his opposition to the country's militarization as well as his refusal to join the army. So, Dutschke fled East Germany to West Berlin in 1961 just before the creation of the Berlin Wall. Here, he began to study sociology and soon became the leader of the Socialist German Student Organization (SDS; Sosialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund).

Beginning in the early 1960s,

Enrollment at universities increased and fears grew among students that they had become politically powerless in the face of the Cold War. They began protesting rearmament and nuclear testing in the East and West. International crises were targeted as well, particularly those where political oppression might have been at play -- the intervention in Congo by England and France, the segregation policies in South Africa, and the dictatorship of the Iranian Shah, who had powerful backing of the United States. (A Revolutionary Who Shaped a Generation, 2)

In 1967, tensions increased breathtakingly. On June 2nd, when the Iranian Shah was on an official visit to West Berlin, a police officer shot and killed Benno Ohnesorg, a student protester. In response to Ohnesorg's killing from the overreaction  by a police officer caused the number of demonstrators to escalate at later marches. The tabloid newspaper called Bild, owned by Axel Springer, blamed the death of Ohnesorg on the students. This comment furthered agitated students.

On April 11, 1968, Rudi Duschke, who was already the face of the student movement, was shot in the head and shoulder by Josef Bachmann. Duschke was riding his bike to a pharmacy to purchase cold medicine for his son. As Duschke was rushed to the hospital, his bicycle remained laying on the street. He survived the attachk but later died from complications in late 1979. On the evening of Dutschke's attack, 2,000 activists left the Technical University, through west Berlin, and arrived at the Springer Publishing house. students blamed various Springer publications, including Bild, for the attack on Dutscke. Spiegel Online wrties that little came out of the demonstration other then a few burned cars. But it was at this demonstration that journalist Ulrike Meinhof was present.

Between 1959 and 1969, Ulrike Meinhof wrote for the German magazine "konkret". In one such article, titled Dresden, Meinhof discussed the war crimes committed there by the Allies. Follow the NSNBC source link below to find the translation of the article. The translation is by Christof Lehmann. Meinhof begins her article,

...on the 13th and 14th of February 1945, during the night between Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, the greatest air raid of the Allied Bomber Command during World War Two was flown against the German City: The Air Raid on Dresden. The City was bombed three times within 14 hours. (Ulrike Meinhof on the War Crimes committed in Dresden - As Relevant as Ever., 2) 

There was 630,000 permanent residents in the city and a total of more then 1 million human beings in the city when the city was destroyed. Over 200,000 people lost their lives that night. None of the population could imagine the city being bombed due to the fact dozens of hospitals were located there in which hundreds of thousands of refugees now resided, mostly women and children. If one really needed a military target in Dresden to bomb it it would be a large goods and troop relay railway station. The city of Dresden burned for seven days and eight nights.

Meinhof continues to explain that those English pilots who flew the air raids were not given the truth. The pilots were told Dresden contained important military targets such as a Gestapo Headquarters, a large poison gas factory, and a re-supply hub. There existed a British order that requested only residential be bombed instead of industrial centers.Such bombing continued until the end of the war in spring 1945. The bombing of Dresden was unnecessary for the simple reason the war was already lost for the Germans, which was clear after the defeat at Stalingrad, the western front was already at the Rhein, and Soviet troops were at the Oder and Neisse. Meinhof writes, "In Dresden, the anti-Hitler war degenerated into the very evil which one claimed to deplore and to fight. Into barbarism and in-humanity, for which there does not exist any justification. / Should there be a need to prove that there is no such thing as a just war - Dresden would prove it" (Ulrike Meinhof on the War Crimes committed in Dresden - As Relevant as Ever., 2).

From these events, specifically the shooting of Rudi Dutschke and Ulrike Meinhof taking part in the Springer demonstration, the student movement peaked. After a totalitarian state did not come to pass after the implication of the May 1968 German Emergency Acts, the student movement quickly unraveled "but not before it spawned the radical violence of the Red Army Faction", which Meinhof would play an important part.

Sources: 
http://nsnbc.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/ulrike-meinhof-on-the-war-crimes-committed-in-dresden-as-relevant-as-ever-2/

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-attack-on-rudi-dutschke-a-revolutionary-who-shaped-a-generation-a-546913.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-attack-on-rudi-dutschke-a-revolutionary-who-shaped-a-generation-a-546913.html

Images: 
Picture 1: Rudi Dutschke's bycycle, laying on the street.
Picture 2: Benno Ohnesorg, at the scene, laying on the ground after being shot by a police officer.
Picture 3: On the way to Ohnesorg funeral. The sign reads: Benno Ohnesorg Political Murder

LGBT History Month Part II

Welcome to Part II of my honor to LGBT History Month. We left off during the war years, where an unknown number of homosexual men were arrested and deported to concentration camps or held in prison Many died and never returned home. Gay women were often not imprisoned because it was felt by Nazi leaders that since they could still produce children, they should be spared. When the war officially ended with  Nazi Germany's surrender in May 1945, former concentration camp prisoners attempted to salvage the rest of their humanity and start a new life.

Yet, for some of these victims, that could not happen. Homosexuals could not start a new life after their release from concentration camps. Homosexuality remained a CRIME. The Allied government in Germany revoked dozens of laws and decrees after the fall of Nazi Germany but Paragraph 175 remained intact. Former homosexual concentration camp prisoners were forced to continue their "sentence" regardless of their experience in the Holocaust. Paragraph 175 remained in-effect until 1969 when the law was revised "to decriminalize homosexual relations between men over the age of 21." 

Because of continued persecution, recognition for this community's suffering under Nazi terror did not happen. Many homosexual men (and women) kept their experiences to themselves, continuing to live in fear in a "democracy". In June 1956, the West German organizatinon called Federal Reparation Law for Victims of National Socialism declared that interment in a concentration camp for homosexuality did not qualify an individual for compensation. So, survivors continued to suffer. It was not until May 1985 that West German president Richard von Weizsäcker publicly commemorated homosexual victims of Nazi terror. Finally, in 1994, four years after reunification, Germany abolished Paragraph 175 but it was not until 2002 that the German parliament pardoned those homosexuals persecuted under Nazi rule in the name of Paragraph 175. 

Due to homophobia, many homosexual survivors of the Holocaust have died without telling their stories. We, the people of 2012, have very few first hand accounts of their struggle during the Nazi period and the suffering they endured. Pierre Seel is one homosexual Holocaust survivor who has spoken up in support of equal rights for gays and lesbians. He was a French man who was deported to a concentration camp. He, unfortunately, died in 2005 leaving behind his memoir called I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror as his legacy. Homophobia still runs rampant world-wide. 

Please take a moment today, November 1st, to review the month of October and what it means to be part of the LGBT community and supporter. Without recognition and support, laws, like some in the United States, will continue to violate the civil rights and liberties of our gay brothers and sisters. Without remembering and acknowledging the suffering of the gay and homosexual community under Nazi rule, people will continue to forget their struggle as well as continue to support homophobia and hatred around the world. 

Sources: 
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hsx/

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005149

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/homosexuals/

http://www.amazon.com/Pierre-Seel-Deported-Homosexual-Memoir/dp/0465045006

Hammermeister, Kai. "Inventing History: Toward a Gay Holocasut Literature." The Germany Quarterly 70 (Winter 1997): 18-26.

McCormick, Richard W. "From 'Caligari' to Dietrich: Sexual, Social, and Cinematic Discourses in Weimar Film." Signs 18 (Spring, 1993): 640-668.

LGBT History Month Part I

In honor of of LGBT History Month, I will be introducing a brief history of LGBT topics in the gay community prior to 1933 in Germany and during the Nazi Holocaust, while Part II will discuss the gay community after the war and cover how these topics relate to today as well as some conclusions about current events.

Prior to 1933,  Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code was created under Kaiser Wihelm I. The law vaguely prohibited homosexuality. The period between the end of World War I, in 1918, and 1933, was a more "liberating" and more openly sexual time. The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) is general seen as a liberating time for women and feminism. Women were now allowed to vote and openly flaunted their femininity. Yet, as this is occurring, women were also portrayed as physical objects in the arts such as film and paintings. Lesbians and homosexual men organizations and social groups developed in larger cities such as Berlin. Some male individuals and groups felt threatened by this new wave of female freedom and open gay communities. Those male individuals and groups saw the latter as a threat to their way of life and social standing much like some groups of people feel today in 2012.

With the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler arriving in 1933, the code was revised. The revised law was issued on June 28, 1935, and put into effect on September 1st of that year, emphasized the "criminality of both men involved in 'indecency.'" Under Paragraph 175a, ten years of hard labor was imposed for "indecency", even for those under the age of 21. Homosexuality between women was left out of the law. Women are thought to be purposely left out of the law because regardless of their homosexuality, women could still produce children. Though lesbians were not systematically persecuted like gay men, they did lose their gathering places and associations.

Homosexuals were labeled as parasites and "enemies of the state" much like their Jewish neighbors, stereotyped to empower hatred among "Aryan" Germans. Even though the exact number of homosexual victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution may never be known, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested under Paragraph 175. Those arrested were imprisoned and send to hard labor. This was part of the Nazi policy of "re-education". Those in prisons and concentration camps suffered harsh conditions. An estimated 5,000 to 15,000 homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps. Homosexual prisoners were marked with a pink triangle. As Nazi territory expanded, Paragraph 175 was imposed on male populations in Austria, western Poland and western Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, and Alsace-Lorraine.In other occupied territories, the Nazi government was only concerned with the homosexuality of German men and not of the native population. Homosexuals in concentration camps were given the works and most dangerous work and, alongside poor rations and fewer breaks, many died as a result.

Please take a moment and read through these media sources and LGBT references.  

LGBT History Month Website: 

http://lgbthistorymonth.com/ 

The Human Rights Campaign's blog in regards to National Coming Out Day: 

http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/the-history-of-coming-out 

Please check this vlog by Lauren Bird of the Harry Potter Alliance: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHF0VrJb7c&list=FLbCkNgngfGHVDaOW0Jrd7JA&index=1&feature=plpp_video 

Sources: 

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: 

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005149

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hsx/

Holocaust Media

Here are two media sites regarding the Holocaust. The first is a video and the second is a timeline.

Here is the opening statement for a video about the Holocaust History Museum in Israel by Yad Vashem.

By reconstructing the events that led to the Holocaust, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem aims to bring the past to life and prevent future atrocities through greater understanding. Explore.org founder Charles Annenberg Weingarten visits and talks to one of the museum's most senior Holocaust scholars.

Follow the link below to watch:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/places/regions-places/caucasus-middle-east/israel-holocaust-history-museum-eorg/

The United States Holocaust Museum showing the course of events leading up to the Holocaust, the war period, and afterwards.  The timeline also includes the court cases involving Nazis and their crimes against humanity, genocides since the Holocaust, the evolution of countries who recognize racial hatred as a crime and/or write it into law, and ends in 2008.

For the timeline, click the following link:
http://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/exhibit.html#/timeline/

Holocaust Remembrance

I apologize for the gap in-between posts. Various reasons prevent me from creating a new post.

Looking back at the various topics discussed so far (collective guilt, the German expulsion, Sovietization, the Holocaust, etc.), it is once again important to put these topics and themes into present day context. First off, President Obama, in April, visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Seems like old news? It's not. Press coverage in recent weeks has focused on the November elections and, this past week, remembering 9/11. The NY Daily News quoted the President as he gave a speech at the museum:

"'We must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen because so many people succumbed to their darkest instincts, and because so many others stood silent,' Obama told an auditorium filled with survivors, Jewish leaders and human rights activists....'Never again' is a challenge to defend the fundamental right of free people and free nations to exist in peace and security, and that includes the state of Israel,' Obama said."

President Obama is right - we should continue our awareness about Nazi atrocities and all peoples are free and deserve to live in peace. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Even in our modern, technology based societies, atrocities still exist around the world and freedom to live in peace is challenged. Examples include Syria and the Congo, where rebels of the M23 group rape and kill while three members of the punk group Pussy Riot are sentences to 2 years in jail for "hooliganism" when in reality they were jailed for opposing Vladimir Putin and being a feminist group.

Even more surprising, and sickening, are recent events in India, as reported by Der Spiegel, regarding the use of Adolph Hitler's name and   the swastika, used by the Nazi party as their symbol and now evokes the meaning of hate promoted by the Nazis. Once again a store owner used the name "Hitler" for his business and the swastika is the logo. This store is a men's clothing store and not the first to use the name "Hitler" or the swastika. Previously, a cafe owner titled his new cafe "Hitler's Cross" while another company that produced bed linens created a bed linen line which displayed swastikas on it as part of their "Nazi Collection". In an interview with Der Spiegel, the owner of the men's clothing line admitted that he knew little  about Hitler when he chose the name for the store. The owner also has no problem with the name and has no intention of changing it. Though people should not fear a name, it is hateful and intolerant to use the name of Hitler for benefit, especially financial, and so blatantly deny the mass killings in his name. India is a rising nation, both economically and socially as well as culturally diverse, and it is extremely disappointing that such businesses are allowed to exist.A comparison in the US would be naming a street after a KKK member who slaughtered innocent people of color. Naming a business after a tyrant is, in a way, honoring that tyrant.

In other news, by spring 2013 a Holocaust museum in Brooklyn is scheduled to open.The museum is titled the Kleinman Family Holocaust Education Center and will be located on 50th Street. The museum will focus on the orthodox Jewish experiences. David Layman, who helped create the 9/11 Memorial in NYC, also helped to create and design this museum.

What we should take from this is all people, no matter where they live in the world, should have access to education and intolerance should be discouraged. We continue to see that intolerance, hatred, and gender inequality can lead to imprisonment and murder.The Nazi government and the mass killings it enforced should be an example of how governments today should NOT act. Holocaust remembrance is important and a vital part of history. If we forget it or continue to avoid those countries who kill innocent people, such events will continue to happen and never end. The Holocaust, to me, represents the ultimate hatred and cruelty of man and I hope that one day, I will see the end of genocides everywhere and governments who speak up for the rights of humankind.

Here are the links to the articles mentioned in this post. Please read them and spread them around.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-23/news/31388381_1_obama-visits-people-and-free-nations-buchenwald-concentration-camp

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-08-07/news/33069735_1_holocaust-museum-holocaust-project-holocaust-survivors

http://www.kfhec.org/

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-hitler-store-in-india-triggers-global-uproar-a-853199.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/m23-rebels-in-congo-have-committed-war-crimes-report/2012/09/11/5c7f2c06-fc1c-11e1-98c6-ec0a0a93f8eb_story.html 

Holocaust in Hungary and Sovietization

As I researched for my MA thesis, I discovered an important and under-discussed area of the Holocaust - the Holocaust in Hungary. Hungarian policy towards Nazi Germany can be summed up as the distant, and only semi-supportive ally. Hungary financially supported Nazi Germany, exported tons of good to Germany, especially oil, and even helped with the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Arrow Cross government imposed some Nazi-style laws in order to shield themselves from a Nazi occupation. Jews in Hungary lived a fabulous lifestyle when compared to those Jewish populations in Poland. Hungarian Jews had their basic human rights violated. For example, they could not vote, hold office, attend school with other Hungarians, and other violations. Though several thousand Hungarian Jews died during this time, most were able to continue on semi-comfortably. By 1944, many Hungarian Jews thought  they could survive to see the end of the war and the end of Nazi German and intolerance. But, by the summer of 1944, German troops entered Hungary. German authorities hoped they could prevent Soviet troops from entering Germany at the expanse of Hungarians. Within the course of a few months, most of the Hungarian Jewish population was destroyed. In relation to Poland, where the destruction of the Jewish population developed and occurred over several years, the murder of Hungarian Jews is overwhelmingly startling. A single priest was allowed to evacuate a group of Hungarian Jews, ultimately saving their lives. Few Hungarian Jews returned to Hungary from concentration camps after the close of the war.

As the war slowly closed and the Soviet army advanced west, Soviet troops occupied Hungary. Starting with the point of occupation, the Sovietization of Hungary began. The first glimpse of this Sovietization began with the German expulsion form Hungary. The Czech President in exile during the war, President Benes, pushed for the expulsion of Germans from the liberated Czechoslovakia and from the rest of eastern Europe. According to Benes and other governments in exile and nationalists, expulsion was a punishment Germans deserved. Hungary was included in this category but Hungarian authorities did not wish to expel all the Germans from within Hungary; they only wished to punish those Germans responsible for war crimes such as the Holocaust. Unfortunately, such wishes by the Hungarian authorities did not happen. The Red army remained in Hungary after the official German surrender. Soviet officials forced the expulsion of all Germans onto Hungary. The weak Hungarian government could not say no to Soviet officials and prevent the expulsions. Therefore, Sovietization began in Hungary. Soviet authorities remained ever present in Hungary and created a communist government. The Holocaust, ironically, was a taboo topic and not allowed to be discussed. The war was then blamed on the West and their democratic ways.

For more information, check out these authors or works:
Stephen D. Kertesz, a former Hungarian diplomat during the war, has several publications both books and journal articles.

Braham, Randolph and Scott Miller, editors. The Nazis' Last Victims: The Holocaust in Hungary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.

Browning, Christopher. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004.

Fenyo, M.D. Hitler, Horthy, and Hungary: German-Hungarian Relations 1941-1944. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.

Paikert, G.C. The Danube Swabians: German Populations in Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia and Hitler's Impact on their Patterns. Netherlands: The Hague Martinus Nijhoff, 1967.