sentences:  Some of those marches to the geographical centres of Germany and Austria lasted for weeks, causing thousands of deaths along the road.Statistics dealing with the evacuations are incomplete and there is uncertainty that estimates are accurate due to the atmosphere of the Cold War period, when various governments manipulated them in order to fit ideological narratives.According to a recent estimate in Germany up to six million Germans may have fled or had been evacuated from the areas east of the Oder-Neisse line before the Red Army and the Soviet-controlled Polish People's Army took hold of the entire territory of postwar Poland.