Expellee leaders fabricated survey results to manufacture support for revisionism

Evidence

Aware of the political languor of its constituency, the leadership feared for the public viability of its objectives and so had strong incentive to “turn” results for its own purposes. As late as 1967, the Ostforscher Bolko Freiherr von Richthofen was adamant that 70 percent of Silesian youth wanted Heimkehr , and “the overwhelming majority of Silesians who haven’t organized fully” still “completely endorse the line of the [ Landsmannschaft ] organization and its freely elected circles of leadership.” 101 That same year, Walter Rumbar, the head of the Silesian Landsmannschaft ’s Bavarian chapter, invented a “purely factual” piece of Meinungsforschung , asking 5,845 members: “Does Silesia still appear to you as your Heimat ? Or do you consider your current place of residence your Heimat ?” After 99.2 percent in his captive audience afi rmed that Silesia remained their only Heimat , “they” then somehow chanted their united “support” for “every suitable effort to reunify Silesia to Germany in a peaceful manner.” 102 In the end, such statistical “proof” of a strong desire for Heimkehr cannot serve as a reliable indicator of expellee thought; it merely demonstrates how expellee “spokespeople” sought to invest the numbers with the results that they wanted to believe. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 598

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: captive-audience polling as a technique for manufacturing the appearance of a mandate, comparing Rumbar’s 99.2-percent survey to echo-chamber finder polls.
• XREF: connects to: Rank-and-file expellee publications routinely diluted or ignored the official revanchist line — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 212; Expellee leadership’s political memory sway over ordinary expellees is exaggerated — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 201