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Volume IV · Page 952
| in his book "The Time for Decision", the fact that one did not regulate the problem of minorities by resettlement after the First World War, and I quote: |
"The minority problem could have been corrected only by courageous and radical steps providing for the orderly transfer of populations. Only in one instance, however, where Greek and Turkish minorities were involved, was such a transfer undertaken." |
| Such exchange operations have already taken
place before and the resettlements as of 1939 have a number of precedents, in
particular at the time after the Balkan wars and after the First World War; so,
for example, as resettlement of the Greek population of Asia Minor took place
in Europe in accordance with the treaty of Lausanne which ended the war between
Turkey and Greece in 1923, which affected nearly one and a half million Greeks.
Through the peace treaty of Neuilly in 1919, Bulgaria had been obliged to
accept Bulgarian resettlers from the neighboring countries. One hundred
twenty-five to two hundred thousand people were affected by this measure. When,
through the peace treaty of Versailles, various eastern provinces of Prussia
belonging to Germany had been ceded to Poland, a large number of Germans, about
one million Germans who would not decide to vote for Poland, had to leave their
homeland. Because of that they lost their property, and their rather
problematic claims for compensation were referred to the German Reich.
The League of Nations in Geneva and the Permanent Court for International Justice at The Hague had to deal continuously with complaints and grievances of the national minorities in Europe after the end of the First World War. The decisions made by these institutions could, of course, not satisfy any of the participants since they were by compromises. There was, therefore, tension between the various countries of Europe because of the minority problem, which could lead to war, and very nearly led to war in September 1938. It had to be obvious, therefore, to anybody who himself experienced or observed the developments after the war that a resettlement of the national minorities on a large scale could and had to lead to appeasement in Europe. This motive was officially publicized as the decisive factor when the first resettlements took place in 1939. Hitler expressed that in his fundamental speech of 6 October 1939 as follows, and I quote: |
"The most important task, however, is a new order of ethnographic conditions, that is to say, a resettlement of nationalities, so that at the conclusion of this development better demarcation lines will result than is the case today. However, |
