Between 1944 and 1947, over twelve million Germans were forcibly displaced from Central and Eastern Europe; hundreds of thousands died as a result of violence, disease, or willful neglect. As R. M. Douglas reminds us in his searing account of the expulsions, this was the largest single case of forced migration in history—yet, the expulsions were largely forgotten in the English-speaking world. Douglas's academic blockbuster is a powerful remedy for self-serving historical amnesia among the victors of World War II. Carefully researched, compellingly written, and judiciously argued, Orderly and Humane brings wide attention on the expulsions, helping to propel an ongoing reconsideration of the importance of ethnic cleansing in shaping the postwar order in Europe.

Douglas's ample bibliography of work in at least four languages points to the substantial scholarship that already exists on the expulsions. He is right to question why this extensive, specialized research by Czech, German, Polish, and North American historians has not made much of a dent in general histories of Europe. In the course of his account, Douglas examines several factors contributing to the paucity of coverage of the expulsions in Western surveys, including the connection of some older West German scholarship with right-wing revisionist politics and attempts to relativize the Holocaust. Above all, though, the suffering and material losses of millions of Germans was something that the international public did not care to commemorate. In spite of a few principled objections before and during the expulsions, there was a widespread consensus among Allied officials and journalists that Germans should collectively be held responsible for the crimes committed in their name by the National Socialist regime. American, British, and Soviet leaders shared responsibility for the expulsions, encouraging them informally in diplomatic discussions during the war and formally in the Potsdam Agreement of 1945.

The book's title is an ironic reference to Potsdam's Article XIII, which disingenuously sanctioned “transfers” only if “effected in an orderly and humane manner” (90). Douglas devotes several chapters of compelling, if not novel, evidence to debunking claims that the expulsions were, or could have been, anything approaching orderly and humane. During the first wave of “wild expulsions” (94) in the summer of 1945, Czechs and Poles employed terror, rape, and summary executions to drive close to two million Germans into occupied Germany. Though less brutal, the “organized transfers” (95) sanctioned by the Potsdam agreement were hardly more humane. Gathered together on short notice with minimal baggage, ethnic Germans were shipped across the border to a devastated country ill-equipped to house and feed them. “Expulsions are not practicable unless they are carried out quickly,” Douglas concludes, “And if they are carried out quickly, they cannot be carried out humanely” (373).

Douglas's account of the expulsions, and much of the book's argument about Allied complicity, echoes the human rights lawyer Alfred de Zayas's impassioned work, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East (1977). But Douglas draws on a much wider range of sources, provides far more documentation, and couches his judgments in a careful scholarly apparatus. He also considers the long-term negative consequences of the expulsions for Czechoslovakia and Poland, including labor shortages and urban decay; the troubled integration of expellees in West and East Germany; and the shifting treatment of forced migration in international law. As Douglas points out, some American political scientists cited the “transfer” of Germans as a model for disentangling populations in Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Orderly and Humane should put such dubious invocations of historical precedent to rest. Through meticulous documentation and careful historical analysis, Douglas sustains his decisive conclusion: forced migration is always inhumane and inevitably creates more problems than it solves.