The Savage Peace

This documentary mainly concentrates on the reprisals of the Czechs against its German-speaking population following the end of WWII. The creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918/1919 from the Australia-Hungarian Empire was a country of Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Germans. Hitler used the issue of Sudetenland Germans to force the country to cede portions of the country to Germany in 1938, as France and Great Britain reneged on their commitment to protect Czechoslovakia's sovereignty. Six months later, the Germans invaded the country and created a protectorate, brutalizing its slavonic-speaking population. In 1945, after 7 years of abuse and humiliation, the revenge against Nazis and all Germans was swift, violent, and equally deadly. The film also refers to the Polish revenge of its German-speaking population as well as the Russian Army's brutality against German civilians, especially women.

As it said towards the end of the documentary, all this information is little known outside of Germany. And how apt the expression..History is written by the victor's.. truly is when you see man's inhumanity to man writ large here.

As someone born in post war Britain, it was a total shock to see how savagely rough justice was handed out, without any regard for law or due process.

It was depressing to see how war had reduced humanity to act like this in revenge, making the victorious no better than those they had vanquished. There was no moral high ground in victory here, only a hollowed out empty feeling.

Reading between the lines, what I got out of this movie was that the USA, UK and Russia decided to commit "the biggest genocide in history of humanity" as labeled by the creators by expelling the German-speaking population from Eastern European countries and reducing the size of Germany by a third.

The other point I got was that there was a reprisal against the civilian German population that was actively involved in aiding Nazis in terms of committing atrocities.

The so called documentary reached its lowest point when the creators used as a witness a former Nazi youth organization member, still enamored with the Hitler's personality.

The only truthful part of the story was the description of the atrocities committed by the Russian soldiers, but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

The underlying theme throughout this travesty is the over arching sense of entitlement in these peoples voices. "Don't they know I am German?" The same voices that followed German troops into these countries and claimed it as their living space, while the troops herded the former owners off to their deaths.

We've all heard about the horrors committed by Russian soldiers during and after World War II. The brutal mass rapes, even of Jewish women hiding in Germany. There was no sense of honor in their actions. They acted more like predators than soldiers. And disturbingly, similar behavior is still being reported today in Ukraine.

What truly shocked me in this documentary, though, were the stories that rarely get told. Civilians torturing and killing children like they were nothing more than animals. I expected to hear about things like beatings, public humiliation, or maybe the destruction of ethnic German homes. But the cruelty described here is beyond anything I could have imagined.

The testimonies from survivors are absolutely gut wrenching. Even decades later, the trauma is still raw, like it all happened just yesterday. This isn't an easy documentary to sit through. You need to brace yourself because it's heavy, disturbing, and unforgettable.