Early history, Kingdom of Poland, Teutonic Order State, Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire , whose conversion to Christianity and recognition by the
Papacy, marked the beginning of Polish statehood in 966 AD As various
Germanic tribes had left present-day Poland and East Germany,
West Slavic tribes moved to these places from the 6th century onward. 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. 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. Mieszko's son and successor, king
Bolesław I Chrobry, upon the 1018
Peace of Bautzen expanded the southern part of the realm but lost control over the lands of Western
Pomerania on the Baltic coast. After pagan revolts and a Bohemian invasion in the 1030s, Duke
Casimir I the Restorer (reigned 1040–1058) again united most of the former Piast realm, including
Silesia and
Lubusz Land, on both sides of the middle Oder River but without Western Pomerania, which returned to of the Polish state only under
Bolesław III Wrymouth from 1116 to 1121, when the noble
House of Griffins established the
Duchy of Pomerania. On Bolesław's death in 1138, Poland was for almost 200 years was
subjected to fragmentation and ruled by Bolesław's sons and by their successors, who were often in conflict with one another.
Władysław 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. 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 Pomerania,
Brandenburg,
East Prussia,
Lusatia,
Kłodzko 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. In
Greater Poland and in Eastern Pomerania (
Pomerelia), German settlers always remained a minority. Some of the territories, such as Pomerelia and Masovia, reunited with Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries. Silesia, Lubusz Land and Lusatia (as parts of the
Lands of the Bohemian Crown) and the
Duchy of Pomerania became more firmly incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire.
Partitions of Poland, Kingdom of Prussia, Duchy of Warsaw, Austrian Empire, Grand Duchy of Posen and German Confederation In the course of the
Partitions of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Kingdom of Prussia and the
Austrian Empire acquired vast territorial shares of the demised
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the
Napoleonic era the Greater Polish territories and the
Chełmno Land formed part of the
Duchy of Warsaw following the
Treaties of Tilsit, and
Danzig was granted a status of a
Free City. However, after the
Congress of Vienna, the Polish duchy was again partitioned between Russia and Prussia. 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. Its boundaries largely followed the ones of its predecessor, the Holy Roman Empire, defining the territory of Germany for much of the 19th century and confirming
Pomerania, East Brandenburg and
Silesia as its parts. 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 (1848–49) 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.
North German Confederation, German Empire, and Austria–Hungary 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. Austria was in turn transformed into poly-ethnic
Austria-Hungary, abstained from further German unification efforts and abandoned forced Germanization. Thus, the planned
German unification was to be accomplished in the
Lesser German solution version. 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). 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.
Weimar Republic, Second Polish Republic, First Czechoslovak Republic, Free City of Danzig, and Klaipėda Region The
Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which ended the war, restored the independence of Poland, known as the
Second Polish Republic, and Germany was compelled to cede territories to it, most of which were taken by Prussia in the three
Partitions of Poland and had been part of the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire for the 100 years of the non-existence of Polish state. 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. Restoration of
Pomerelia to Poland meant the loss of Germany's territorial contiguousness to East Prussia making it an
exclave. Most of the eastern territories with a predominantly or almost exclusively German population (East Brandenburg, East Prussia, Hither and Farther Pomerania, and the bulk of
Silesia) remained with Germany. 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. However, in areas such as Upper Silesia, no clear division between the mostly bilingual population was possible. After a first plebiscite, Upper Silesia was to stay part of Germany's territory. However, after the
Silesian Uprisings, the area was divided in accord with the
German–Polish Convention regarding Upper Silesia. The parts of the former province of Posen and of
West Prussia that were not restored as part of the Second Polish Republic were administered as
Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen (the German Province of Posen–West Prussia) until 1939.
Division of Germany's eastern provinces after 1918 Nazi Germany The defeat of Germany and the imposed terms of peace left a sense of injustice among the population. The subsequent
interwar economic crisis acted as a fertile ground for
irredentist claims that the territory ceded to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania in 1919–1922 should be returned to Germany, which paved the way for the
Nazi takeover of the government. In October 1938,
Hlučín Region 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. However, as distinct from other lost Czechoslovak domains, it was not attached to
Sudetengau (the administrative region covering the
Sudetenland) but to Prussia (Upper Silesia). By late 1938,
Lithuania had lost control over the situation in the
Memel Territory, which had been annexed by Lithuania in the
Klaipėda putsch. In the early hours of 23 March 1939, after a political ultimatum caused a Lithuanian delegation to travel to Berlin, Lithuanian Foreign Minister
Juozas Urbšys and German Foreign Minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the
Treaty of the Cession of the Memel Territory to Germany in exchange for a Lithuanian Free Zone in the port of Memel that used the facilities erected in the previous years. 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.
Second World War and the German occupation of Poland, 1939–1945 Germany
invaded Poland without a declaration of war on 1 September 1939, heralding the start of the
Second World War. The Third Reich at first annexed the lands of the
Second Polish Republic up to the
Congress of Vienna borders (1815–1918). After Hitler's call for an international peace conference on Poland's borders in his
6 October 1939 Reichstag speech was rejected by both
Édouard Daladier and
Neville Chamberlain, another stripe of Polish lands was annexed. All annexed territories comprised
Pomerelia (the "
Polish Corridor"),
Chełmno Land,
Greater Poland proper,
Kuyavia,
Łęczyca 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. 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. Two decrees by
Adolf Hitler (8 and 12 October 1939) divided the annexed areas of Poland into administrative units: •
Reichsgau Wartheland (initially
Reichsgau Posen), which included the entire
Poznań Voivodeship, most of the
Łódź Voivodeship, five counties of the
Pomeranian Voivodeship, and one county of the
Warszawa Voivodeship; •
Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia (initially Reichsgau West Prussia), which consisted of the remaining area of the
Pomeranian Voivodeship and the
Free City of Danzig; •
Ciechanów District (
Regierungsbezirk Zichenau), consisting of the five northern counties of
Warszawa Voivodeship (
Płock,
Płońsk,
Sierpc,
Ciechanów, and
Mława), which became a part of East Prussia; • Katowice District (Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz), or
East Upper Silesia (
Ost-Oberschlesien), which included
Sosnowiec,
Będzin,
Chrzanów, and
Zawiercie Counties, and parts of
Olkusz and
Żywiec Counties. The territories had an area of 94,000 km and a population of 10,000,000. Throughout the war, the annexed Polish territories were subject to German colonisation. Because of the lack of settlers from Germany itself, the colonists were primarily ethnic Germans relocated from other parts of Eastern Europe. The ethnic Germans were then resettled in homes from which the Poles had been expelled. The remainder of Polish territory was annexed by the
Soviet Union (see
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) or made into the German-controlled
General Government occupation zone. After the
German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the
district of Białystok, which included the
Białystok,
Bielsk Podlaski,
Grajewo,
Łomża,
Sokółka,
Volkovysk and
Grodno counties, was "attached to" but not incorporated into East Prussia, and
Eastern Galicia (
District of Galicia), which included the cities of
Lwów,
Stanislawów and
Tarnopol, was made part of the General Government. Germany1941.png|Map of Reichsgaue in 1941 Generalgouvernement_with_2nd_Polish_Republic%2C_"Lebensraum_im_Osten"%2C_and_current_borders.jpg|1941 Map of Generalgouvernement (yellow) in comparison to Second Polish Republic (dark grey, blue, yellow), today's borders (white), 1918 German-Polish border (black), and in blue areas annexed by Nazi Germany in addition to the
Congress of Vienna borders (1815–1918) EAC_Zonenprotokoll_1.png|Planning of occupation zone borders in Germany, 1944
Yalta Conference The final decision to move
Poland's boundary westward was made by the
United States, the
United Kingdom and the
Soviet Union at the
Yalta Conference in February 1945, shortly before the end of the war. 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. 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
all of East Prussia with
Königsberg. Eventually, however, Stalin decided to keep Königsberg for strategic grounds (it would also be a year-round warm-water port for the
Soviet Navy) and argued that the Poles should receive Stettin instead. The wartime
Polish government-in-exile had little say in the decisions.
Potsdam Agreement, 1945 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. In particular, the State Department acknowledged that Polish claims to Lower Silesia had no ethnic or historic justification. Under Stalin's pressure, the
Potsdam Conference, held from 17 July until 2 August 1945, placed all of the areas east of the Oder–Neisse 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. The Allies also agreed that: because in the words of
Winston Churchill 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). It regulated the issue of the eastern German border, which was confirmed as being along the Oder–Neisse line, but the final article of the memorandum said that the final decisions concerning Germany, and hence the detailed alignment of Germany's eastern boundaries, would be subject to a separate peace treaty; at which the three Allied signatories committed themselves to respect the terms of the Potsdam memorandum. Hence, so long as these Allied Powers remained committed to the Potsdam protocols, without German agreement to an Oder–Neisse line boundary there could be no Peace Treaty and no German Reunification. The debate affected
Cold War politics and diplomacy and played an important role in the negotiations leading up to the reunification of Germany in 1990.
Expulsion of Germans and resettlement is in gray while the
Recovered Territories are in pink. With the rapid advance of the
Red Army in the winter of 1944–1945, German authorities desperately evacuated many Germans westwards. The majority of the remaining German-speaking population in the territory of former
Czechoslovakia and east of the Oder–Neisse line (roughly 10 million in the Ostgebiete alone), that had not already been evacuated, was
expelled by the new Czech and Polish administrations. 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 and 2.5 million, 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. Some present-day estimates place the numbers of German refugees at 14 million, of whom about half a million died during the evacuations and expulsions. 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. The first Polish settlers in contrast experienced complete alienation from their new surroundings, perceived as fully foreign and German. 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. 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.
Polonization and the Treaty of Zgorzelec Drawing from interwar demands by
Polish nationalists (albeit far more limited), Poland's sweeping territorial gains of German land were presented as inspired by the Piast vision of an ethnically homogeneous state within the borders of medieval Piast Poland. Fully German-speaking areas such as Lower Silesia and
Farther Pomerania suffered expulsion of its entire indigenous population in 1945–46. Polonization proceeded rapidly, despite the still uncertain border. 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. In order to establish the Piast vision in the consciousness of the population and to convince them of the historical justice of the annexation of the former German territories, the 'Recovered Territories' were covered with a network of designations connected with the
Piast dynasty, even if the buildings themselves had no reference to the Piast rulers. Meanwhile, a
blatantly fraudulent referendum was held on three different questions; the third of these was whether the Polish people were in favor of the new western border. According to the official results, over 90% voted "yes" despite Poland having lost substantial territories in the east (the
Kresy lands) as well. The process was finalized in 1950 by the Treaty of Zgorzelec, an agreement signed under
Soviet pressure by
Otto Grotewohl, prime minister of the provisional government of the GDR (East Germany) and Polish premier
Józef Cyrankiewicz. It recognized the
Oder–Neisse line specified by the 1945
Potsdam Agreement as the border between the two states. The terms referred to the "defined and existing border" from the
Baltic Sea west of
Świnoujście – however without mentioning
Szczecin – along the Oder and
Lusatian Neisse rivers to the
Czechoslovak border.
West German politics in the early post-World-War-II years After the war, the so-called "German question", named after the
19th-century debate on German reunification, was an important factor of post-war German and European history and politics. Between 1949 and 1970 the
government of West Germany referred to these territories as "former German territories temporarily under Polish and Soviet administration". This terminology was used in relation to territories of eastern Germany within the 1937 Germany border, and was based on the terminology used in the Potsdam Agreement. It was used only by the
Federal Republic of Germany; but the Polish and Soviet governments objected to the obvious implication that these territories should someday revert to Germany. The Polish government preferred to use the phrase
Recovered Territories, asserting a sort of continuity because parts of these territories had centuries previously been ruled by ethnic Poles. Until 1973, the Federal Republic took a strict line in claiming an
exclusive mandate for all of Germany. Under the
Hallstein Doctrine, the Federal Republic broke diplomatic relations with states that maintained diplomatic relations with the GDR, except for the Soviet Union. Therefore, the government of West Germany and the Bundestag declared in 1950 the Treaty of Zgorzelec ″null and void″. 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. However, contrary to the official claims, the bulk of the expelleés would likely have no real intention of returning to their homeland. As part of this new approach, West Germany concluded friendship treaties with the Soviet Union (
Treaty of Moscow (1970)), Poland (
Treaty of Warsaw (1970)), East Germany (
Basic Treaty (1972)) and Czechoslovakia (
Treaty of Prague (1973)); and participated in the Helsinki Final Act (
1975). 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. Nevertheless, West Germany continued its long-term objective of achieving a reunification of East Germany, West Germany and Berlin; and maintained that its formal recognition of the post-war boundaries of Germany would need to be confirmed by a united Germany in the context of a Final Settlement of the Second World War. Some West German commentators continued to maintain that neither the Treaty of Zgorzelec nor the Treaty of Warsaw should be considered as binding on a future united Germany; albeit that these reservations were intended for domestic political consumption, and the arguments advanced in support of them had no substance in international law. The
Holy See immediately acknowledged the new reality following the Treaty of Warsaw, and created new Polish dioceses in the territories with the
papal bulls
Episcoporum Poloniae coetus and
Vratislaviensis – Berolinensis et aliarium.
German reunification and German–Polish Border Treaty ) Sudetenland. Historically, these coats of arms did not all exist at the same time. In addition,
Posen is not included. 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 and the
German–Polish Border Treaty, ending any residual claims to sovereignty that Germany may have had over any territory east of the Oder–Neisse line. Over time, the "German question" has been muted by a number of related phenomena: • The passage of time resulted in fewer people being left who have firsthand experience of living in these regions under German jurisdiction. • In the
Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, Germany renounced all claims to territory east of the Oder–Neisse line. Germany's recognition of the border was repeated in the
German–Polish Border Treaty on 14 November 1990. The first of those treaties was made by both German states and ratified in 1991 by a united Germany. The second was already signed by the united Germany. • The
expansion of the
European Union eastwards in 2004 enabled any German wishing to live and work in Poland, and thus east of the Oder–Neisse line, to do so without requiring a permit. German expellees and refugees became free to visit their former homes and set up residence, though some restrictions remained on the purchase of land and buildings. However, these areas are now overwhelming Polish and knowledge of the
Polish language is generally required to integrate among the locals. • Poland entered the
Schengen Area on 21 December 2007, removing all border controls on its border with Germany. Under Article 1 of the Treaty on Final Settlement, the new united Germany committed itself to renouncing any further territorial claims beyond the boundaries of East Germany, West Germany and Berlin; "The united Germany has no territorial claims whatsoever against other states and shall not assert any in the future." Furthermore, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic was required to be amended to state explicitly that full German unification had now been achieved, such that the new German state comprised the entirety of Germany, and that all constitutional mechanisms should be removed by which any territories outside those boundaries could otherwise subsequently be admitted; these new constitutional articles being bound by treaty not to be revoked. 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". This was confirmed in the 1990 rewording of the preamble; "Germans ... have achieved the unity and freedom of Germany in free self-determination. This Basic Law thus applies to the entire German people." In the course of the
German reunification, Chancellor
Helmut Kohl initially caused international outcry by making no reference in his
10 Points to the acceptance of the border as definitive, but later reaffirmed reluctantly the acceptance of the territorial changes made after World War II, creating some outrage among the
Federation of Expellees, while some Poles were concerned about a possible revival of their 1939 trauma through a "second German invasion", this time with the Germans buying back their land, which was cheaply available at the time. This happened on a smaller scale than many Poles expected, and the
Baltic Sea coast of Poland has become a popular German tourist destination. The so-called "homesickness-tourism" which was often perceived as quite aggressive well into the 1990s now tends to be viewed as a good-natured nostalgia tour rather than an expression of anger and desire for the return of the lost territories.
Recent controversies Claims by the Prussian Trust Some organisations in Germany continue to claim the territories for Germany or property there for German citizens. The
Prussian Trust (or the
Prussian Claims Society), founded in 2000, that probably has less than a hundred members, re-opened the old dispute when in December 2006 it submitted 23 individual claims against the Polish government to the
European Court of Human Rights asking for compensation or return of property appropriated from its members at the end of World War II. An expert report jointly commissioned by the German and Polish governments from specialists in international law have confirmed that the proposed complaints by the Prussian Trust had little hope of success. But the German government cannot prevent such requests being made and the Polish government has felt that the submissions warranted a comment by
Anna Fotyga, the Polish Minister of the Foreign Affairs to "express [her] deepest concern upon receiving the information about a claim against Poland submitted by the Prussian Trust to the European Court of Human Rights". On 9 October 2008 the European Court of Human Rights declared the case of
Preussische Treuhand v. Poland inadmissible, because the
European Convention on Human Rights does not impose any obligations on the Contracting States to return property which was transferred to them before they ratified the convention.
Controversies caused by right-wing German political parties After the
National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), described as a
neo-Nazi organisation, won six seats in the parliament of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in September 2006, the leader of the party,
Udo Voigt, declared that his party demands Germany in "historical borders" and questioned the current border treaties. After World War II, the
Gau of
Pomerania was divided roughly with the
western portion, now part of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, and the
eastern portion (including
Szczecin) now part of Poland. In 2023, the head of the far-right
AfD in Germany,
Alice Weidel, sparked outrage when saying that the AfD was the most popular party in "Central Germany", which referred to the states in the former
GDR. This was interpreted by some Polish commentators that Weidel thought the former eastern territories were the real "Eastern Germany". The AfD also set up a parliamentary working group on
expellees and runs a
facebook group for "Expellees, Returnees and German Minorities" (VAdM). ==See also==