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The Schieder commission was a post-World War II German commission of the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims, headed by Theodor Schieder, which in the early 1960s published a five volume work on the population transfer of Germans from central and Eastern Europe.

The commission goals included gathering information on the expulsions, seen by the commission members as the greatest tragedy in German history; providing supporting materials for possible revision of post-war settlements; and countering information about atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.

In 1953, Hans Lukaschek, Minister supervising the commission, presented an interim report of the commission for the Oder-Neisse territory, estimating 2.167 million deaths out of twelve million expellees. The estimates of deaths due to expulsions have been criticized by subequent researchers, who state that confirmed deaths result in a number between 500,000 and 600,000.

In the immediate post war period the commission was regarded as composed of very accomplished historians. Later, however, the Nazi past of the involved people came under scrutiny and motivations of the commission members were challenged.

The Shieder commission
The commission was created in 1951 by Hans Lukaschek, the Minister for the Expelled. The head of the commission, Theodor Schieder was in turn supervised by Theodor Oberländer, the head of the Ministry. Other notable members of the commission included


 * Werner Conze
 * Hans Rothfels
 * Adolf Diestelkamp
 * Martin Broszat
 * Hans-Ulrich Wehler

Rothfels was the one who had originally proposed Schieder as head of the editorial staff, having been his teacher and a key intellectual influence during the Nazi period. Younger historians, such as Martin Broszat (who researched Yugoslavia) and Hans-Ulrich Wehler (who helped research Romania), who were later to break with the tradition of Schieder and Conze, served as research assistants (see also Historikerstreit).

In the immediate post war period the commission was regarded as composed of very accomplished historians.

Methodology
The commissioned gathered and used a large number of primary sources and Schieder also wanted the volumes produced to also include supposed political context of the events. Two out of the five volumes, about Romania, prepared by Wehler, and the one on Yugoslavia prepared by Broszat, included some form of analysis of collaboration by the local Germans during the war, Nazi plans and the atrocities of German occupation. At the center of the project were documents prepared by expellee organizations, German government, testimonies dictated in response to questions from officials of regional expellee interest groups, and personal diaries initially written as retrospective for the author or family. Together the volumes contained 4,300 densely printed pages.

While the commission was aware that first person accounts of the expulsions were often unreliable, the members believed it was necessary to utilize these in their work, as they did not trust either Nazi era sources, nor those published by post war communist governments. The use of personal testimonies was part of the "modern history" approach developed earlier by Rothfels and applied in practice by the commission. Both Rothfels and Schieder were concerned with the accuracy of these accounts. . As a result Rothfels insisted that the relevant documents were subjected to "historical standards of measurement" that characterized other historical research. Schieder insisted if an account failed to pass official "testing procedures" set up by the commission, then the account would be completely excluded. As a result, the commission claimed that their methods "transform(ed) subjective memory into unassailable fact".

Commission's conclusions
In 1953, Hans Lukaschek presented an interim report of the commission for the Oder-Neisse territory, estimating 2.167 million deaths out of twelve million expellees, including 500,000 Wehrmacht and as many aerial warfare casualties. In 1958, the commission issued its final report, estimating a total of some 2.225 million deaths.

The five volumes produced by the commission were entitled Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa (Documents on the Expulsions of Germans from East-Central Europe). The first volume dealt with former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line, the second with Hungary, the third with Romania, the fourth with Czechoslovakia and the fifth with Yugoslavia. Additional three volumes included the documents used in the work of the commission.

The estimates of deaths due to expulsions have been criticized by subequent researchers. For example according to the German demographer Rüdiger Overmans it is only possible to establish the deaths of 500,000 individuals and there is nothing in German historiography which could explain the other 1.5 million supposed deaths. A 1969-1974 study by the German Federal Archives found 630,000 deaths, including 400,000 in the Oder-Neisse territory after excluding 600,000 Soviet Volksdeutsche deported within the Soviet Union.

Overmans and Ingo Haar state that confirmed deaths result in a number between 500,000 and 600,000. Both believe that further research is needed to determine the fate of the estimated additional 1.5 million civilians listed as missing However, according to Overmans the 600,000 deaths found by the German Federal Archives are as close to the truth as can be established with present data. Haar has said that all reasonable estimates of deaths from expulsions lie between around 500,000 to 600,000.

According to Overmans the difference between the more than two million missing persons estimated by the Schieder commission and the some 500,000 deaths that so far could be verified included people who never existed or were never born (due to lower wartime fertility), German Jews who had been murdered by the German state, and individuals who were deported to the Soviet Union. He also stated that the commission's 2.225 million number relied on improper statistical methodology and incomplete data, particularly in regard to the expellees who arrived in East Germany after the war.

Controversies over the Nazi past

 * Hans Lukaschek ...


 * Theodor Oberländer ...


 * Theodor Schieder and Nazi...

After World War II Schieder was "deNazified" and kept publicly quiet about his past. As a result, despite his Nazi membership, and his enthusiastic support for Nazi policies in Eastern Europe, Schieder's career took off in post War Germany. He was appointed to a chair in modern history at the University of Cologne in 1947, and in the 1950s edited one of the most known historical journals in the Federal Republic of Germany.


 * Werner Conze