During and after World War II, millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe were uprooted and deported from their ancestral homelands in an unprecedented series of ethnic cleansings. The expulsion of minorities created more homogenous states than had previously existed in the region but caused massive social and psychological problems that lasted for generations. These nine case studies, written by Russian, German and Austrian scholars and based on archival findings, should shed new light on deportations and resettlement in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Germany. The introduction...

This book explores the Eurasian borderlands as contested 'shatter zones' which have generated some of the world's most significant conflicts. Analyzing the struggles of Habsburg, Russian, Ottoman, Iranian and Qing empires, Alfred J. Rieber surveys the period from the rise of the great multicultural, conquest empires in the late medieval/early modern period to their collapse in the early twentieth century. He charts how these empires expanded along moving, military frontiers, competing with one another in war, diplomacy and cultural practices, while the subjugated peoples of the borderlands...