This book is the result of a collaborative venture which involved six authors from different cultural backgrounds, languages and historiographical traditions from all over Europe. As such, it presented a notable challenge for all involved – a chal- lenge of which the authors were aware from the very beginning of the project. In addition, the topic itself presented a major challenge. Forced movements of popu- lations are arguably one of the most dramatic and significant events during and after the Second World War, but the authors of this book realized during their research that the subject has been treated very unevenly so far. Some aspects of the subject were well defined; in other cases, however, the historiography was ‘peri- pheral’ insofar as it was in languages that are not widely read. Moreover, some aspects of the subject had not been dealt with by historians at all.