Among forced population transfers in the twentieth century, the expulsion of the German population from East Central Europe at the end of World War II was remarkable. More than twelve million Germans were expelled from the eastern parts of the German Reich and some eastern European states. These refugees arrived in a defeated, occupied, destroyed, and divided country. Initially, the percentage of expelled persons in the Soviet Occupation Zone was much higher than in the western zones. With almost 4.5 million individuals, the expellees made up twenty-four percent of the total population in the Soviet Occupation Zone in 1949. By contrast, western Germany had eight million expellees, who comprised roughly sixteen percent of the total population.