Talk:Volksdeutsche
"Prior to World War II well above ten million ethnic Germans lived in Central and Eastern Europe (outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland)."
This seems to suggest that there are also Volksdeutsche living in Austria and Switzerland. Why do you exclude them from the count? Perhaps I am missing the difference between Volksdeutsche and Deutsche.--branko
- The difference is apparently between Volksduetsche and Reichsdeutsche. I will check if the article mentions it.
Again a possible ambiguity: "treated by the German occupation as a person of Slavic lower class". This means that there are several Slavic classes, and that the occupator saw non-signers as a member of one of those classes. Could it be instead that the author meant that the Germans saw Slavs as people of a lower class than themselves? In that case the sentence should run something like "treated by the German occupation as a Slavic person (which the Germans considered to be of a lower class)".--branko
- Sounds good.
The opening paragarph perplexes me utterly. To break it down:
- Volksdeutsche is a term for ethnic Germans, living outside and east of Germany. This is in contrast to Reichsdeutsche (literally "Germans of the realm").
Okay, so Volksdeutsche are ethnic Germans living in Eastern Europe outside of Germany proper.
- Volksdeutsche only referrs to ethnic Germans from eastern European countries, which have been expelled and deported.
But they don't live in eastern European countries, because they've been expelled and deported. (One can parse it as the countries having been expelled, which makes even less sense.)
- Austria or Switzerland or other western countries were not a part of the German Reich in the 20th century and are not included. While they have German language speakers, they did not expell or deport ethnic Germans as the Soviet lead countries did.
So where are the Volksdeutsche? They're not in Germany by definition. They're not in the west, because they haven't been expelled and thus don't meet the definition. And they can't be in the east, because they've by definition been expelled!
I can only make sense out of this by assuming that the explusions from Eastern European countries occurred after a period of time in which the term Volksdeutsche was used for people who did live in Eastern Europe. Of course, this means that having been expelled can't be part of the definition... at least of that time. Are we supposed to refer to as Volksdeutsche only those who would be expelled? Kind of time-travelley. Or, is this opening paragraph just completely wrong? --Brion 10:52 Aug 15, 2002 (PDT)