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During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia and the former German provinces of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia, which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories was proposed by Winston Churchill, in conjunction with the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments in London at least since 1942. Polish prime minister Tomasz Arciszewski supported the annexation of German territory, but opposed the idea of expulsion, wanting instead to naturalize the Germans as Polish citizens and to assimilate them.
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The Germanisation of the Province of Posen was a policy of the Kulturkampf measures enacted by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, whose goal was to Germanize Polish-speaking areas in the Prussian Province of Posen by eradicating and discrimination of Polish language and culture, as well as to reduce the influence of the "ultramontanist" Roman Catholic clergy in those regions.
The Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany during World War II was a massive operation consisting of the forced resettlement of over 1.7 million Poles from the territories of German-occupied Poland, with the aim of their Germanization between 1939 and 1944.
Zakerzonia is an informal name for the territories of Poland to the west of the Curzon Line which used to have sizeable Ukrainian populations, including significant Lemko, Boyko populations, before the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939, and were claimed as ethnically Ukrainian territories by Ukrainian nationalists in the aftermath of World War II. However, before 1939, the areas of Zakerzonia were mostly inhabited by Poles, who constituted about 70% of the population of this area. Ukrainians lived in a minority in Zakerzonia, constituting about 20% of the area's population.
References
- 1 2 3 Keith Bullivant, Geoffrey J. Giles, Walter Pape, Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identity and Cultural Differences , Rodopi (1999), p. 28-29.
- 1 2 Hein Erich Goemans, War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War , Princeton University Press (2000), p. 104-105.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Immanuel Geiss Tzw. polski pas graniczny 1914-1918. Warszawa (1964).
- ↑ Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe’s First World War Jochen Böhler, Wlodzimierz Borodziej, Joachim von Puttkamer page 119 Germans in the East 1914-1918: Fantasies of Forced Movement
- ↑ Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I Jesse Kauffman - 2015 The ethnic cleansing foreseen by the border strip's champions
- ↑ Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict Richard Fogarty, Andrew Jarboe I.B.Tauris, 2014 this idea developed into one of annexing a Polish border strip, or frontier strip ... by ethnically cleansing the area of nationalist Poles and colonising the region with Germans from das Altreich
- ↑ Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 Through the Present R. Nelson, page 80 "The Archive for Inner Colonization, the German East, and World War"
- ↑ Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878-1938 Cambridge University Press (2006), p. 70.
- ↑ Aleksander Kraushar, Warszawa podczas okupacji niemieckiej 1915-1918 , Lwów (1921), p. 39.
- ↑ Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, Indiana University Press 2013, page 55
- ↑ Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich, 1991 Michael Burleigh, p. 21
- ↑ Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany: 1840-1945. Princeton University Press (1982), p. 449.
- ↑ hatterzone of Empires Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands Edited by Omer Bartov and Eric D Weitz 2013 p. 55
