Cornfield, Daniel B. and Hodson, Randy (2002). This brave soldier ensured our artillery could keep firing, and was thereby instrumental in defeating the enemy. With rise of nationalism, the eastern Hohenzollern-ruled territories with a predominantly Polish population (especially the formerly Polish territories of Posen and West Prussia) increasingly became a target of aggressive Germanisation efforts, German settlement, anti-Catholic campaigns (Kulturkampf), as well as disfranchisement and expropriations of Poles, and finally annexed following the North German Confederation Treaty (1866). [10] New forms of agriculture, technology, and law brought in by the German settlers, took root in the region, also to the profit of the Slavic population. Following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Farther Pomerania became part of Brandenburg-Prussia. The conference agreed to reorganise the Provisionary Polish Government, which had been set up by the Red Army, by the inclusion of some politicians of the Polish government-in-exile, and to transform it into the Provisional Government of National Unity, with an unfulfilled promise to hold democratic and fair elections. The majority of the remaining German-speaking population in the territory of former Czechoslovakia and east of the OderNeisse line (roughly 10 million in the Ostgebiete alone), that had not already been evacuated, was expelled by the new Czech and Polish administrations. At the time of German Unification in 1871, the Kingdom of Prussia was the largest and dominant part of the North German Confederation, the predecessor of the newly formed German Empire. In 1938, the northern part of the dissolved Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia became part of the province. Nevertheless, it may be the best protection we can count on. On the other hand, the remaining parts of the lands ruled by the House of Hohenzollern which were not included in the Holy Roman Empire, namely the German-speaking Prussian nucleus (East Prussia), and the newly acquired predominantly Polish- or Kashubian-speaking territorial share of the collapsed and dismembered Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Grand Duchy of Posen and West Prussia), continued as external to the Confederation (a failed attempt to include these lands in the German Empire (184849) was undertaken by the Frankfurt Parliament), as did the Austrian-held partition of Poland (the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria), Transleithania, as well as the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland and the French region of Alsace. The first German colonists arrived in he late 12th century, and large-scale German settlement started in the early 13th century during the reign of Henry I. [4] Germany's recognition of the OderNeisse line as the border was formalised by the re-united Germany in the GermanPolish Border Treaty on 14 November 1990; and by the repeal of Article 23 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany under which German states outside the Federal Republic could formerly have declared their accession. Some of the territories, such as Pomerelia and Masovia, reunited with Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries. If you spot a mistake then you are welcome to fix it. The latter later emancipated, taking advantage of the Russo-Swedish Deluge, and merged with the Electorate of Brandenburg to form Brandenburg-Prussia, shortly thereafter becoming a kingdom. Briefly under the rule of the House of Jagiellon in personal union with the Kingdom of Hungary until the Battle of Mohacs, the Bohemian Lands were afterwards ruled in personal union with the Kingdom of Hungary and the Archduchy of Austria by the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors, finally ceasing de facto (but not de jure) to exist as a separate realm and becoming a part of the Habsburg monarchy, in the aftermath of crushing the Bohemian Revolt in the Battle of White Mountain. [2] These territories had been ruled as part of Poland by the Piast dynasty in the High Middle Ages with the exception of East Prussia which originally was inhabited by Old Prussians and came under Polish suzerainty in the Late Middle Ages. The northern half of historic East Prussia was, however, made part of the Soviet Union, with the former Klaipeda Region reattached to the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the rest being annexed by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as the Kaliningrad Oblast, now forming a Russian exclave. For the parts of modern Germany that formerly made up East Germany, see, Farther Pomerania and parts of Western Pomerania, Silesia, Kodzko Land and Eastern Lusatia, East Prussia, including Warmia, and the Klaipda Region, Early history, Kingdom of Poland, Teutonic Order State, Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, Partitions of Poland, Kingdom of Prussia, Duchy of Warsaw, Austrian Empire, Grand Duchy of Posen and German Confederation, North German Confederation, German Empire and Austria-Hungary, Weimar Republic, Second Polish Republic, First Czechoslovak Republic, Free City of Danzig and Klaipda Region, Division of Germany's eastern provinces after 1918, Second World War and the German occupation of Poland, 19391945, West German politics in the early post-World-War-II years, German reunification, GermanPolish Border Treaty and present status, Poland received several cities and counties of West Prussia located east of the, Interwar Silesian Voivodeship was formed from Prussian, All in all, the post-Prussian part of Poland had ca. Private Wojtek has proven himself a uniquely valuable member of our supply lines. The US government strongly protested to the unilateral implementation of a Polish government in these areas. Perhaps the Soviet Union is only looking for an easy land grab and forcing us into their sphere of influence. In 1990, as part of the reunification of Germany, West Germany accepted clauses in the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany whereby Germany renounced all claims to territory east of the OderNeisse line. [51], In the early history of West Germany, refugee organizations were an important political factor, demanding that Germany never renounce the land that was deemed still part of Germany. After another century, the bulk of the region was severed from the rest of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, when the Habsburg monarchy lost the Silesian Wars to the Kingdom of Prussia under Frederick the Great, thus being forced to cede most of it (excluding Austrian Silesia) in the Treaties of Breslau and Berlin. The open questions were whether the border should follow the Eastern or Lusatian Neisse rivers and whether Stettin, the traditional seaport of Berlin, should remain in Germany or be included in Poland. Originally, Germany was to retain Stettin, and the Poles were to annex East Prussia with Knigsberg. It recognized the Oder-Neisse line specified by the 1945 Potsdam Agreement as the border between the two states. Despite our effort to resolve the dispute with Poland peacefully, they have refused to cede their eastern territories and forced us into a position where the only option for claiming them is through war. Ecclesiastically, the Diocese of Wrocaw covering Silesia remained, however, a suffragan of the Polish Archdiocese of Gniezno until becoming exempt in 1821. Originally inhabited mainly by the pagan Old Prussians, the regions were conquered and incorporated into the state of the Teutonic Knights in the 13th and 14th centuries. In German, only one corresponding term Ostdeutschland exists, meaning both East Germany and Eastern Germany. Polonization proceeded rapidly, despite the still uncertain border. The term has sometimes been confused with the name East Germany, a political term, used to be the common colloquial English name for the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and mirrored the common colloquial English term for the other German state of West Germany. Farther Pomerania comprised the eastern part of the Prussian Province of Pomerania. Germany went from a territory of 468,787km2[5] in 1937 to 357,022km2[6] after the reunification of Germany (1990).[7]. Poland has chosen the hard path, for us, but even more so for themselves. The defeat of Germany and the imposed terms of peace left a sense of injustice among the population. Territories acquired by Poland after World War II were officially called there the Recovered Territories. In the course of the Partitions of Poland, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire acquired vast territorial shares of the demised Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By late 1938, Lithuania had lost control over the situation in the Memel Territory, which had been annexed by Lithuania in the Klaipda putsch. [11] By the late 14th century, 130 towns and 1300 villages had adopted German law. The remainder of Polish territory was annexed by the Soviet Union (see MolotovRibbentrop Pact) or made into the German-controlled General Government occupation zone. The Senate of the Free City of Danzig, elected by the Volkstag already also dominated by the Nazi Party at that time, voted to become a part of Germany again, but Poles and Jews were deprived of their voting rights and all non-Nazi political parties were banned. Lutheran Diocese of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, This page was last edited on 3 June 2022, at 05:04. Despite making the most generous offer we possibly could, attempting an agreement where Poland would cede its eastern territory for a promise of a future share of Germany, [From.GetLeader] has rejected our diplomatic efforts. As previously agreed upon, after the annexation of eastern Germany territories by the Soviet Union, some of these will be come under Polish control as recompense for the past transfer of eastern Poland to the Soviet Union. The passage of time resulted in fewer people being left who have firsthand experience of living in these regions under German jurisdiction. [48] Meanwhile, a blatantly fraudulent referendum was held on three different questions; the third of these was whether the Polish people were in favor of he new western border. Masuria and the southern part of Pomesania and Pogesania stayed part of the rump Teutonic state (called thereafter Monastic Prussia or Teutonic Prussia) which became a German fief of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, finally secularised in 1525 to become the Ducal Prussia. However, after the Silesian Uprisings, the area was divided in accord with the GermanPolish Convention regarding Upper Silesia. We will be easy prey if we remain neutral, and have fought too hard to see another partition of Poland. [citation needed], With the rapid advance of the Red Army in the winter of 19441945, German authorities desperately evacuated many Germans westwards. Under the Teutonic Order, the region's towns were founded, woodlands were cleared and marshlands made arable to be settled by colonists, predominantly from German-speaking areas but also from neighboring Polish and Lithuanian lands. The conference agreed that the Polish eastern border would follow the Curzon Line and that Poland would receive substantial territorial compensation in the west from Germany, but the exact border was to be determined later. By the end of the Middle Ages, by influx of Germanic settlers, the assimilation of the Slavic population, the introduction of German town law, the influence of Germanic customs and the trade of the Hanse the area had been largely Germanized. The rather ambiguous German term never gained as widespread use for the GDR during its existence, as did the English designation, or the derived demonym Ossi (Eastie), and only following the German reunification has it started to be commonly used to denote both the historic post-war German Democratic Republic, and its counterpart five successor states in the current reunited Germany. However, in areas such as Upper Silesia, no clear division between the mostly bilingual population was possible. The Third Reich annexed the Polish lands included the former Prussian Partition, comprising Pomerelia (the "Polish Corridor"), Chemno Land, Greater Poland proper, Kuyavia, czyca Land, Sieradz Land, Northern Masovia, as well as the parts of Upper Silesia located in Poland, including the former Czechoslovak part of Cieszyn Silesia annexed by Poland in 1938. ;[3] however by 1970, West Germany recognised the Oder-Neisse line as the western boundary of Poland by the Treaty of Warsaw; and in 1973, the Federal Constitutional Court acknowledged the capability of East Germany to negotiate the Treaty of Zgorzelec as an international agreement binding as a legal definition of its boundaries. [43][44], At the same time, Poles from central Poland, expelled Poles from former eastern Poland, Polish returnees from internment and forced labour, Ukrainians forcibly resettled in Operation Vistula, and Jewish Holocaust survivors were settled in German territories gained by Poland, whereas the north of former East Prussia (Kaliningrad Oblast gained by the USSR) was turned into a military zone and subsequently settled with Russians. After the war, the so-called "German question" was an important factor of post-war German and European history and politics. Two decrees by Adolf Hitler (8 and 12 October 1939) divided the annexed areas of Poland into administrative units: The territories had an area of 94,000km2 and a population of 10,000,000. Apparently, provided we cede the claimed territory, they are willing to let us join them in an alliance.

Between 1949 and 1970 the government of West Germany referred to these territories as "former German territories temporarily under Polish and Soviet administration". During the Napoleonic era the Greater Polish territories and the Chemno Land formed part of the Duchy of Warsaw following the Treaties of Tilsit, and Danzig was granted a status of a Free City. When focusing on the period before World War II, "eastern Germany" is used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe (East Elbia), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt,[14][15][16][17][18] but because of the border changes in the 20th century, after World War II the term "East Germany" and eastern Germany in English has meant the territory of the German Democratic Republic. In Greater Poland and in Eastern Pomerania (Pomerelia), German settlers always remained a minority. Fully German-speaking areas such as Lower Silesia and Farther Pomerania suffered expulsion of its entire indigenous population in 194546. This is a community maintained wiki. The Bishopric of Lebus remained a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Gniezno until 1424, when it passed under the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg. The wartime Polish government-in-exile had little say in the decisions. The Status of Germany in International Law: Deutschland uber Deutschland? Article 23 of the Basic Law was repealed, closing off the possibility for any further states to apply for membership of the Federal Republic; while Article 146 was amended to state explicitly that the territory of the newly unified republic comprised the entirety of the German people; "This Basic Law, which since the achievement of the unity and freedom of Germany applies to the entire German people, shall cease to apply on the day on which a constitution freely adopted by the German people takes effect". In 1771 Lauenburg and Btow Land was annexed by the King in Prussia and integrated into the Province of Pomerania of the Kingdom of Prussia. However, because people and institutions in the states traditionally considered as Middle Germany, like the three southern new states Saxony-Anhalt, the Free State of Saxony and the Free State of Thuringia, still use the term Middle Germany when referring to their area and its institutions, the term Ostdeutschland is still ambiguous.[19]. Several independent duchies formed, and eventually some attached themselves to the Kingdom of Bohemia, an Electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, while the Kodzko Land became a constituent part of the Kingdom itself. In a foolish act of imagined self-preservation, [From.GetLeader] today announced that [From.GetName] will refrain from any diplomatic action that may be seen as threatening to their powerful neighbors. From the 10th century to the 12th century, Silesia, Lusatia, as well as the Kodzko Land, were contested between Bohemia and Poland. because in the words of Winston Churchill, Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. The historically Polish and strategically vital for Poland but predominantly German-speaking city of Danzig formed henceforth with its surrounding areas the Free City of Danzig, a self-governing territory supervised by the League of Nations, albeit bound in some aspects by an imposed union with Poland. The validity of the Treaty of Zgorzelec was explicitly confirmed in a judgement of the Federal Constitutional Court of 1973 on the Basic Treaty between East and West Germany. 47550/06 by, Szef NPD: chcemy Niemiec w historycznych granicach, 22 wrzenia 2006, gazeta.pl, Emotions prevail in relations between Germans, Czechs, Poles poll, Speech to the German expellees, Day of the Homeland, Berlin, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. German craftsmen and miners also started settling mountainous areas. [From.GetName] Refuses to Join [Root.GetFactionName], PDXCON Wadysaw I the Elbow-high, who was crowned king of Poland in 1320, achieved a partial reunification, but the Silesian and Masovian duchies remained independent Piast holdings. This Basic Law thus applies to the entire German people. Hence, so long as these Allied Powers remained committed to the Potsdam protocols, without German agreement to an OderNeisse line boundary there could be no Peace Treaty and no German Reunification. The territories retroceded to Poland in 1919 were those with a Polish majority, such as Greater Poland, as well as Pomerelia, historically the part of Poland providing its access to the sea. [46], Polish population transfers from the Soviet Union only amounted for 1.5 million people, while more than 8 million Germans lost their homes in the German Eastern Territories.[47]. Mieszko's son Bolesaw I established a bishopric in the Koobrzeg area in 1000100507, before the area was lost by Poland again to pagan Slavic tribes. Because of the lack of settlers from Germany itself, the colonists were primarily ethnic Germans relocated from other parts of Eastern Europe. A clean sweep will be made. The former eastern territories of Germany (German: Ehemalige deutsche Ostgebiete) refer in present-day Germany to those territories (provinces or regions) east of the current eastern border of Germany (the OderNeisse line) which historically had been considered German and which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after World War II. However, as distinct from other lost Czechoslovakian domains, it was not attached to Sudetengau (the administrative region covering the Sudetenland) but to Prussia (Upper Silesia). They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner. [38], The problem with the status of these territories was that the Potsdam Agreement was not a legally binding treaty, but a memorandum between the USSR, the US and the UK (to which neither France, nor Germany or Poland were party). The first Polish settlers in contrast experienced complete alienation from their new surroundings, perceived as fully foreign and German. Throughout the war, the annexed Polish territories were subject to German colonisation. The then official West German government position on the status of former eastern territories of Germany east of the Oder and Neisse rivers was that the areas were "temporarily under Polish [or Soviet] administration", because the border regulation at the Potsdam Conference had been taken as preliminary provisions to be revisited at a final peace conference, which, also due to the Cold War had been indefinitely postponed. Brandenburg also acquired the castellany of Santok from Duke Przemys I of Greater Poland and made it the nucleus of its Neumark ("New March") region. Rather than taking over German place names, new Polish place names were determined by decree, reverting to a Slavic name or inventing a new name for places founded by German speakers. [34], Under Stalin's pressure, the Potsdam Conference, held from 17 July until 2 August 1945, placed all of the areas east of the OderNeisse line, whether recognised by the international community as part of Germany until 1939 or occupied by Germany during World War II, under the jurisdiction of other countries, pending a final Peace Conference.[35][36][37]. This was confirmed in the 1990 rewording of the preamble; "Germans have achieved the unity and freedom of Germany in free self-determination. [45], In the 1970s, West Germany adopted Ostpolitik in foreign relations, which strove to normalise relations with its neighbours by recognising the realities of the European order of the time,[52] and abandoning elements of the Hallstein Doctrine. The area became predominantly German during the Ostsiedlung, either almost exclusively (Sambia, Natangia, and Bartia together forming the central part of the region), mixed German-Lithuanian (the North-Eastern part called Lithuania Minor including Sudovia, Nadrovia and Scalovia), or mixed German-Polish (Masurians, Warmiacy) comprising the southern (Sasna and Galindia, together forming Masuria) and western (Warmia, Pomesania, and Pogesania, the latter two together forming Powile) rim of the region. [33], After World War II, several memoranda of the US State Department warned against awarding Poland such extensive lands, apprehensive of creation of new long-standing tension in the area. His realm bordered the German state, and control over the borderlands would shift back and forth between the two polities over the centuries to come. In October 1938 Hlun Area (Hlunsko in Czech, Hultschiner Lndchen in German) of Moravian-Silesian Region, which had been ceded to Czechoslovakia under the Treaty of Versailles, was annexed by the Third Reich as a part of areas lost by Czechoslovakia under the Munich agreement. Although in the post-war period earlier German sources often cited the number of evacuated and expelled Germans as 16 million and the death toll as between 1.7[41] and 2.5 million,[42] those numbers are today considered by some historians to be exaggerated and the death toll more likely in a range between 400,000 and 600,000. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the district of Biaystok, which included the Biaystok, Bielsk Podlaski, Grajewo, oma, Sokka, Volkovysk and Grodno counties, was "attached to" but not incorporated into East Prussia, and Eastern Galicia (District of Galicia), which included the cities of Lww, Stanislaww and Tarnopol, was made part of the General Government. The Duchy of Pomerania was established as a vassal state of Poland in 1121, which it remained until the fragmentation of Poland after the death of Polish ruler Bolesaw III Wrymouth in 1138.

Even during the heat of combat, small arms fire brushing the hair on his head, arms and legs, he did not drop a single crate of munitions. The Congress of Vienna established as a replacement for the dissolved Holy Roman Empire the German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund), an association of 39 German-speaking states in Central Europe under the nominal leadership of the Austrian Empire. In the interwar period, the German administration, both Weimar and Nazi, conducted a massive campaign of renaming of thousands of placenames, to remove traces of Polish, Lithuanian and Old Prussian origin. Being promised a share of Germany in case of a successful war and our protection, they agreed to cede their eastern territories peacefully. Having reasserted their claims on our eastern territories, the Soviet Union has now put pressure on us to cede this land to them, suggesting that this is the only way to avoid another invasion and possible annexation or partition.Ordinarily, giving in to such threats easily would be out of the question, but the Soviet Union is far from our only concern. 2019, https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Polish_events&oldid=44308, Articles with potentially outdated infoboxes, Play Along with Farther Pomerania a small area of Western Pomerania including Stettin (today Szczecin) and Swinemnde (today winoujcie) was transferred to Poland in 1945. [citation needed], Some organisations in Germany continue to claim the territories for Germany or property there for German citizens. However, after the Congress of Vienna, the Polish duchy was again partitioned between Russia and Prussia. After Germanic tribes had left the area in the Migration Period, Lechitic tribes began to settle Silesia, while Lusatia was settled by the Milceni and the Polabian Slavs, and the Kodzko Land by Bohemians. Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia, Silesian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, List of placenames in the Province of Pomerania, Prince-Episcopal Delegation for Brandenburg and Pomerania, Apostolic Administration of the Free City of Danzig, Apostolic Administration of Kamie (Cammin), Lubusz (Lebus) and the Prelature of Pia (Schneidemhl), Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany, Lutheran Diocese of Pomerania-Greater Poland, Post-WWII settlement of Poles and Ukrainians, Polish-East German Maritime Border Agreement, Convention on the International Commission on the Protection of the Oder against Pollution, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Former_eastern_territories_of_Germany&oldid=1091257684, Articles with German-language sources (de), Articles containing explicitly cited English-language text, Articles with Polish-language sources (pl), Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, Articles that may contain original research from June 2021, All articles that may contain original research, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2013, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Katowice District (Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz), or. The status of Poland was discussed but this was complicated by the fact that Poland was then controlled by the Red Army. After a first plebiscite, Upper Silesia was to stay part of Germany's territory. The precise location of the border was left open, and the western Allies also accepted in general the principles of the Oder River being the future western border of Poland and of population transfer being the way to prevent future border disputes. Having given us our due, they seem to hope we'll have as little contact as possible. In the following years, Prussia superseded Austria in the role of the primary driving force of the restoration of German unity and secured this position by abolishing the German Confederation in the Peace of Prague.

In particular, the State Department acknowledged that Polish claims to Lower Silesia had no ethnic or historic justification. [32], The Yalta Conference agreed to split Germany into four occupation zones after the war, with a quadripartite occupation of Berlin as well, prior to the reunification of Germany. Duke Mieszko I of the Polans, from his stronghold in the Gniezno area, united various neighboring tribes in the second half of the 10th century, formed the first Polish state and became the first historically recorded Piast duke. Subsequently, it entered into an alliance with Austria and Russia, invading Polish territories of Royal Prussia in the First Partition of Poland (1772), with Warmia being made part of the newly formed province of East Prussia in 1773. In Pomerania, Brandenburg, East Prussia, Lusatia, Kodzko Land and Lower Silesia, the former West Slav (Bohemians, Polabian Slavs and Poles) or Baltic population became minorities in the course of the following centuries, but substantial numbers of them remained in areas such as Upper Silesia. After the Soviet Union claimed their right to eastern Poland, we assumed another attack as impending.

The Lubusz Land was part of the Lands of the Bohemian (Czech) Crown from 1373 to 1415. In the latter case, the Germans who arrived during the Middle Ages became mostly Polonized, in particular with the advent of the industrial revolution which created employment and business opportunities, attracting numerous Poles to the area. [56], Eastern territories lost by Germany after World War II, This article is about former territory east of the OderNeisse Line. [45], However, contrary to the official declaration that the former German inhabitants of the Recovered Territories had to be removed quickly to house Poles displaced by the Soviet annexation, the new Polish lands initially faced a severe population shortage. Offering to take Poland under our wing and guide them to future conquest in the west in exchange for territory in the east turned out to be a successful approach. [49] The terms referred to the "defined and existing border" from the Baltic Sea west of winoujcie - however without mentioning Szczecin - along the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers to the Czechoslovak border.[50]. In the Potsdam Agreement the description of the territories transferred is "The former German territories east of the OderNeisse line", and permutations on this description are the most commonly used to describe any former territories of interwar Germany east of the OderNeisse line. However, we can probably abandon any hopes of forming a stronger bond with the nation in the future. In the 12th to the 14th centuries, German settlers, most of whom spoke Low German, moved into Central and Eastern Europe in a migration process known as the Ostsiedlung, and the Hanseatic League dominated the shores of the Baltic Sea. In 1990 Germany officially recognized its present eastern border at the time of its reunification in the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, ending any residual claims to sovereignty that Germany may have had over any territory east of the OderNeisse line.