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#2 Richard 20:53 20Feb
Yeah, so the problem as I see it, is that we still don't have a good number for how many Germans died in Poland except that maybe (according to http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=260621074909720), the max is 1 million (a number that is a little too ""round"" for my liking).

Richard, you reading very carelessly. This is 1.1 in total not round million. Or do you ridicule the estimations at start? The ""a million"" is because more easy was to estimate the total and the 1946-1950 loses from obvious reasons. Nobody can know exact number of deaths during flight, there was complete chaos. Who died was just buried on spot at road. Some graves disappeared just because were provisionally marked only. I remember some graves of even Polish soldiers on an edge of forest which disappeared in time. The wooden crosses just disintegrated. You do not believe because you are too young.

In any event, if you look at the numbers provided in Demographic estimates of the German exodus from Eastern Europe, you see 1,225,000 deaths in the ""Eastern German territories"" and 263,000 in Poland for a total of 1,488,000 deaths which differs from Nitschke's estimates by about 500,000.

The 500.000 is big number, too big. I would believe in accuracy if the difference would be 100.000. But Nitschke could not count the East lost Polish teritories Kresy . Any way my goal is to separate the Flight number from Expulsion number.

If you take this downward revision of 500,000 and add it to the downward revision of 150,000 or so that the joint commission of Czech and German historians proposed, you can see how the ZgV's numbers of 2 million could be revised downards to 1 - 1.2 million which is what I believe Overmans is proposing. I don't understand the 500,000 figure yet.

 This counting I do not understand. You want see the most exact total number of deaths I suppose. What I attempt is to prevent such quacking like “Poland,…murdered millions of Germans.”. We have to assume that same individuals can be handicapped and can not read and write correctly and the info should be VERY simple.

What I'm still looking for is some indication of whether Nitschke, Haar and Overmans are widely accepted as right or if they are still the minority challenging the established majority opinion.

 In my opinion you contradict yourself. You always propagated multipoint POV. I always propagate logic and comparison. We can come closer to truth only by deduction and investigation. There will be always “minority challenging the established majority opinion” as you say. Beside not always majority is right, as you know Hitler was elected and supported by majority.

It would help if we could get some quotes that evaluate the work of these historians and puts them in context of the overall consensus of academic opinion.

If you have some idea how to do it I would try. From my experience in my professional field it is really difficult to get clue who of the researches is good and who barely satisfactory. You need to be professional yourself. Regularly scientific authors do not attack openly the opponent in scientific journals. They rather systematically attack opponent theories in extend period of time. In historical journals can be the same. Maybe you understand in this context that the academic opinion is not easy to grasp. Beside, quite often you need to know the scientists personal animosities. Some Wiki editor can be smarter then me and get multi pro and contra from popular press article on internet. Personally I do not trust popular newspapers there is too many errors and politic manipulations. I would consider “Google” type search in this point as waist of time. "