Talk:Former eastern territories of Germany

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Archives Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 (discussion over title change)

Contents 1 Post World War II recognition of jurisdiction/sovereignty 2 Terminology 3 Indigenous populations were evicted 4 The point being... 5 Population numbers would be really helpful 6 German camps for displaced persons 7 Demographics 8 Numbers 9 Stettin/Szczecin 10 Usage in articles

[edit] Post World War II recognition of jurisdiction/sovereignty

The intro says:

when international recognition that Germany had any right to jurisdiction over any of these territories was withdrawn

but the Potsdam Agreement says that the border between Germany and Poland was a matter to be subject to a final peace treaty. This seems to leave open the door that Germany might be able to assert a right to at least some of the territories. I think the above clause needs to be rewritten. Perhaps this was the subject of debate that has now been archived. If so, please point me at the right place to read.

--Richard 17:15, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

see Talk:Former eastern territories of Germany/Archive 3#Jurisdiction and sovereignty --::Philip Baird Shearer 18:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

It is not OR to point out the destiction between jurisdiction and soverignty, it is an explanation of what the words mean! I can't think of a better example of the withdrawal of international recognition than the Treaty of Versailles! --Philip Baird Shearer 18:30, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Did you mean Treaty of Versailles or the Potsdam Agreement? Assuming that you meant the Potsdam Agreement, I can see your argument but it requires more explanation than is appropriate for an introductory paragraph.

In the Potsdam Agreement, the Allies state:

supreme authority in Germany is exercised, on instructions from their respective Governments, by the Commanders-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the French Republic, each in his own zone of occupation, and also jointly, in matters affecting Germany as a whole, in their capacity as members of the Control Council.

In essence, Germany lost all jurisdiction over all its territory, not just the eastern territories.

Sovereignty was likely to be lost subject to the final settlement of the border.

Your original text says either too much or not enough. That is why I have replaced it with a more straightforward explanation that does not require someone to parse the difference between "jurisdiciton" and "sovereignty".

--Richard 18:50, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I give up. I'm closer to 3RR than I have been in almost a year. The "Rasul v. Bush" case doesn't cut it for me as an appropriate citation. I've made my case. Ignore it if you will. --Richard 18:53, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for the borderline incivility that accompanied the above edit (I wrote "obstinacy wins"). That is at least a bit uncivil and bordering on a personal attack and so it was unwarranted. I will come back later to discuss why I think the current text is not the best to use in this context (i.e. why the intro could be better written) but I don't have time or patience to do it justice right now and I'm very close to 3RR anyway so let's just let it go for a day or so before discussing it further. --Richard 19:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The text is correct as was. See the sections of the Postam Agreement quoted in the article. The areas are put under Soviet and Polish administration specifically separated from the rest of Germany.--Philip Baird Shearer 18:56, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I've read the Potsdam Agreement more closely this morning. Your point is a fine one. For decades afterward, the Germans claimed that it was "temporary administration" and rejected the Oder-Neisse line. Naturally, the Poles and the Soviets disagreed quite vehemently and this dispute is really (IMO) the primary reason for this article's existence. The Potsdam Agreement was deliberately not clear and so the wording of the intro is imprecise in suggesting that the recognition of right to jurisdiction was withdrawn ("forever" is the implication that is inappropriate). Adding a "subject to a final peace treaty" would help but the real problem is that the whole wording requires sophisticated reading that the average reader will not be equipped to do.

That's it for now, I'll come back and revisit this later today or tomorrow.

--Richard 19:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I dissagree with you that the primary reason for the article is the post World War II settlement. For me it is more useful for articles about the time before Potsdam -- It just depends on one's usage.

The wording in the sentence you are reviewing was worked out some time ago because it balances the POV of several editors who have strong national points of view on the issue. I think you are reading into the sentence "forever" it is not there. I think you will have a hard time explaining to some of the Polish contributers that the boder changes were "subject to a final peace treaty" and that by implication the Polish governemt was not soverign over a lot of its own territory until 1990. Also the next sentence covers the peace treaty and of course all these matters are now covered in considerable detail in the article. --Philip Baird Shearer 19:47, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology

I'm not sure I follow all of the above discussion, but clearly the word "jurisdiction" would be a misnomer — and a politically motivated euphemism — when referring to the post-WWII transfers of territory.

Merriam Webster’s definitions of "jurisdiction" include: "The limits or territory within which authority may be exercised." It gives "control" and "power" as related words.

Dictionary.com gives as "top Web results for ju·ris·dic·tion" —

1. the right, power, or authority to administer justice by hearing and determining controversies.

2. power; authority; control: He has jurisdiction over all American soldiers in the area.

3. the extent or range of judicial, law enforcement, or other authority: This case comes under the jurisdiction of the local police.

4. the territory over which authority is exercised: All islands to the northwest are his jurisdiction.

Answers.com lists four meanings:

1. Law. The right and power to interpret and apply the law: courts having jurisdiction in this district.

2. Authority or control: islands under U.S. jurisdiction; a bureau with jurisdiction over Native American affairs.

3. The extent of authority or control: a family matter beyond the school's jurisdiction.

4. The territorial range of authority or control.

It's clear from these definitions, and from general English usage, that "jurisdiction" denotes political or legal control. The Oder-Neisse territories, by contrast, were not merely controlled by Germany, they were integral parts of Germany and were universally recognized as such after Versailles and its attendant plebiscites.

I except from the following paragraph 1) Masuria (southern East Prussia) and 2) Upper Silesia: In 1919, the Poles had no thought of acquiring the German territories that would be given to Poland in 1945. The Versailles Treaty, which re-established the Polish state, defined Poland's western border (subject to a plebescite) but not Poland's eastern border.

The Poles of that era focused on claims in the east, including the heavily Polish cities and regions of Wilno (Vilnius) and L'wów (L'viv, a.k.a. Lemberg). For this reason, led by Piłsudski — who hailed from Wilno — they fought and won a war with Soviet Russia in 1920-21, and established their frontier well east of the Curzon Line, which had been suggested at Versailles as a border. (The Curzon Line is generally equivalent to Poland's eastern border today.)

When Stalin made his deal with Hitler in 1939, one incentive for him was to regain the territory of Poland east of the Curzon Line — an area which also was home to substantial populations of Lithuanians, Belorussians and Ukrainians. The Soviet Union's reconquest of this region never was questioned at Tehran, Yalta or Potsdam, being a fait accompli from which as a matter of Realpolitik there could be no turning back. This, despite the fact that it had been accomplished under terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

It was to compensate post-WWII Poland for loss of this territory that annexation of the wholly German Oder-Neisse territories was officially justified, not only by the Soviet Union, but also by Britain and the U.S. No argument ever was made at the Big Three conferences that these areas were inhabited by Poles and thus should belong to Poland. Rather, there was long discussion of what to do with the 10 million Germans who had lived there before the war (and before the Nazis) — of whom about half remained or had returned after the Nazi capitulation.

The final communique of the Yalta Conference said only that Poland should "receive substantial accessions of territory in the north and west." Just how "substantial" they would be was not delineated until Potsdam, and even then the new German-Polish border was not agreed upon de jure. Instead, its final determination was left up to a future peace conference, which as the Cold War developed never was held. Legally speaking, the matter was settled only in 1990, although politically, de facto, it had long been accepted.

The word accessions was a euphemism for annexations, but there was no attempt at Yalta or Potsdam to deny that these areas were and had been integral parts of Germany/Prussia for a very long time, and had long been inhabited by Germans. Although it never was said in so many words, these annexations were to be Germany's punishment for the unprecedented and unimaginable crimes against humanity committed in her name during the Nazi era and World War II.

Thus, to say that Germany lost jurisdiction over these territories is a euphemistic smokescreen. Germany lost these territories, pure and simple, and their indigenous populations were evicted.

Sca 02:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

It is not a smoke screen. As the article points out, the wording of the Potsdam Agreement was:

The three Heads of Government agree that, pending the final determination of Poland's western frontier, the former German territories cast of a line running from the Baltic Sea immediately west of Swinamunde, and thence along the Oder River to the confluence of the western Neisse River and along the Western Neisse to the Czechoslovak frontier, including that portion of East Prussia not placed under the administration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in accordance with the understanding reached at this conference and including the area of the former free city of Danzig, shall be under the administration of the Polish State and for such purposes should not be considered as part of the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.

The Soviets and the Poles only gained administration of the territory. The transfer of the territory was dependent on the peace treaty, which when the Allies wrote the Potsdam Agreement, would have been expected to follow in less than 45 months not the 45 years! Of course "facts on the ground" are important when assessing territorial claims, and if there had been no transfer of Germans from those territories, then the decisions made in 1990 could easily have been different. But there is a fundamental difference under international law between jurisdiction and sovereignty. Fore example the status of the British military bases on Cyprus [1] and bases such as the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base although in day to day administration of such areas, as the us US Supreme Court has highlighted in Rasul v. Bush [2], there is little practical difference. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Philip... the sovereignty and ultimately the jurisdiction also were disputed officially by West Germany until 1970. I.E. It took them that long to accept that they had really lost the territories forever. (Hey, Palestinians still want "the right of return" 40 years later.) The "facts on the ground" were probably deemed irreversible by 1970 and yet it took another 20 years to sign the Final Settlement. I don't feel that the explanation in the intro and the weird reference are appropriate for getting these ideas across. --Richard 15:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Indigenous populations were evicted

[SPLIT OUT See start of the last section for the rest of the message]

Thus, to say that Germany lost jurisdiction over these territories is a euphemistic smokescreen. Germany lost these territories, pure and simple, and their indigenous populations were evicted.

Sca 02:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Nah, I don't think you mean "indigenous". This usually means aboriginal tribes like the Native Americans, Australian aborigines, etc. Almost all those Germans were settlers who moved there in the 1500-1600 years prior.

Here's a good discussion of the definition of "indigenous". Now the "Old Prussians" are getting closer to being indigenous but I would wager that "indigenous" has little meaning in Europe where tribes migrated back and forth for centuries.

--Richard 02:38, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

That is certainly wrong on several counts - most of the German settlement of these areas was in the last millenium, especially from about 1200 on, in the wake of the Teutonic knights and more peaceful movements (often invited in fact). Much of it was in the Modern period, reinforcing existing German populations. "Tribal migrations" were relatively infrequent in Europe - rather more so than for most parts of north America from the little I know of the subject. They were pretty much over by 800, apart from the Magyars. Probably much earlier than that in the places the article is talking about. Johnbod 03:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I think Richard may be confusing "indigenous" with "aborginal." My (Webster's) dictionary defines it as

1. existing, growing or produced naturally in a region or country; belonging (to) as a native

2. innate; inherne\\ent; inborn — syn> see NATIVE.

There is no confusion: Indigenous means (to quote the OED): "Born or produced naturally in a land or region; native or belonging naturally to (the soil, region, etc.). (Used primarily of aboriginal inhabitants or natural products.)"

The distinction is rhetorical only. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The point is, the Germans who lived in Sileisa, Pomerania, (Danzig,) and East Prussia were rooted there for generations; they were not "occupiers" who had been imported during the war by the Nazi regime. The German settlement and development of these areas went back to the 12th and 13th centuries. They were just as much part of Germany as East Anglia is part of England.

The difficulty many English-speakers who aren't familiar with the details of German history have is, they confuse prewar, pre-Nazi "eastern Germany" with wartime, Nazi annexations (the so-called Wartheland, etc.). Breslau, the capital of Sileisa; Stettin, the capital of Pomerania; Danzig; and Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia had been German cities for centuries — twice as long as, for example, New York has been (Anglo-) American. Sca 05:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Sca 05:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

No English speaker in this discussion has shown any such confusion. You do not, I note, do anything so silly as to make the same claim for Posen, or for the countryside of East Prussia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I don't understand PMAnderson's point about Posen or the "countryside of East Prussia". Can someone explain this to me? --Richard 06:18, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

In many places you had essentially German cites surrounded by essentially "indigenous" (slavic/baltic) rural areas, or rural areas with German landowners & "indigenous" populations. Calcutta, Singapore, Southern Ireland, and Kenya are alternative points of comparison here. Johnbod 12:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

(response to SCA)

Well, we're both right. Look at this quote from the Indigenous peoples article

The term indigenous peoples has no universal, standard or fixed definition, but can be used about any ethnic group who inhabit the geographic region with which they have the earliest historical connection. However several widely-accepted formulations, which define the term "Indigenous peoples" in stricter terms, have been put forward by important internationally-recognised organizations, such as the United Nations, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank. Indigenous peoples in this article is used in such a narrower sense.

Drawing on these, a contemporary working definition of "indigenous peoples" for certain purposes has criteria which would seek to include cultural groups (and their descendants) who have an historical continuity or association with a given region, or parts of a region, and who formerly or currently inhabit the region either:

• before its subsequent colonization or annexation; or
• alongside other cultural groups during the formation of a nation-state; or
• independently or largely isolated from the influence of the claimed governance by a nation-state,

And who furthermore:

have maintained at least in part their distinct linguistic, cultural and social / organizational characteristics, and in doing so remain differentiated in some degree from the surrounding populations and dominant culture of the nation-state.

To the above, a criterion is usually added to also include:

peoples who are self-identified as indigenous, and those recognised as such by other groups.

So, if you read the above, I think we can agree that ethnic Germans in Central Europe (i.e. Poland/Czechoslovakia) and Eastern Europe fit the above description.

Nevertheless, "indigenous" does really come closer to meaning "aboriginal" than you may think. Your Webster's dictionary is not giving you a good definition or you are interpreting the definition incorrectly.

Look at Indigenous peoples and Indigenous peoples of Europe. According to these articles, there are (as I said) few indigenous peoples of Europe. After all, even the Celts (Gauls) came from Asia according to one hypothesis and all the other "barbarian" tribes that invaded Europe came from Asia.

Quoted from Indigenous peoples of Europe...

Europe's present-day indigenous populations are relatively few, mainly confined to northern and far-eastern reaches of this Eurasian peninsula. Whilst there are numerous ethnic minorities distributed within European countries, few of these still maintain traditional subsistence cultures and are recognized as indigenous peoples, per se.

Notable indigenous populations include the Basques of Northern Spain and Southern France, Sami people of northern Scandinavia, the Nenets and other Samoyedic peoples of the northern Russian Federation, and the Komi peoples of the western Urals.

Huh? Why aren't ethnic Germans included in this list? Well, you know, their kind of indigenousness is different from that of the Basque, Sami, Nenets, Samoyeds and Komi peoples.

Let's not quibble about this any longer. You know what I mean and I know what you mean and we basically agree. I just wanted to point out that using the word "indigenous" in the way you used it is not going to be universally understood the way you would want it to be understood.

--Richard 06:18, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Response to PMAnderson: We are not editing this article for those people who already know a bit about this topic and are discussing it here. We are creating this article for people who don't know anything about it, and so will be confused by it. and I believe Sca did say East Prussia in the first line of his statement, perhaps you should read it over a few times before slamming him for what he says. East Prussia was as Polish or Russian in 1944 as New York is Dutch today. or would you rather us to use the term New Amsterdam?

--Jadger 06:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The point being...

Okay, we've had an enlightening semantic discussion of "indigenous." I accept that some authorities define it more narrowly than meaning I intended, although I think "aboriginal" is nearer such a narrow meaning, i.e. the Urvolk. I still think "indigenous" also can connote established residency not of recent vintage or sudden influx. Related German adjectives would be ansässig (resident) and sesshaft (established, settled).

The area of modern Poland (and modern Germany east of the Elbe) has been inhabited (and uninhabited) alternately by Germanic and Slavic peoples during successive epochs over the last two millennia. Neither group is "aboriginal," but both have been in my meaning "indigenous" to various regions therein at various times.

As an aside, I suspect the notion of "aboriginal peoples" is a questionable one in anthropology, since all peoples came from somewhere at some point. The native Americans, i.e. American Indians, are thought to have come from Asia via Siberia millenia ago; does that mean they're not "aboriginal" to the Americas?

The point I've been trying to make all along is quite simple: The territories transferred from (pre-1937) Germany to Poland and the Soviet Union after WWII, including the erstwhile Free City of Danzig, were inhabited prewar by some 10 million people, the overwhelming majority (in the high 90s percentagewise) of whom were German and who had been born and raised there, as had their parents, grandparents, etc. The territories, as I've noted elsewhere, were Germany. They now became Poland and the USSR. The resident population — what remained of it — was expelled, evicted, "transferred" to what remained of Germany, and the expellees never were allowed to return to their native turf (Heimat).

The present discussion is not about whether it was right or wrong. It is about what happened. Obviously, what happened had causes. But none of that changes what actually occurred on the ground.

I am a liberal and a pacifist, and no apologist for the German cause, if one may use such a neutral term, in WWII. What I've been battling against here on Wikipedia is the mendacious tendency of some parties to perpetuate the "recovered territories" propaganda myth in an bid to whitewash or obscure what actually happened — and the tendency of others in the West to naively accept it. Poland did not "recover" the territories in any normally understood sense of the word, anymore than Mexico today would stand to "recover" California if it were handed back to her by a superpower and all the (Anglo-) Americans expelled. And Germany did not have mere "jurisdiction" over the territories; it included the territories and their people.

I continue to believe that the Expulsion of the Germans remains a largely untold story in the West, and think it should be told along with all the other horrors of the WWII era. I was glad to see that a recently published work by an American historian, Benjamin Lieberman, on ethnic cleansing includes a fair-minded, accurate account of the expulsions. (See Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2006; ISBN 1-56663-646-9.)

Sca 19:55, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Population numbers would be really helpful

The story that SCA tells above is definitely not told in Expulsion of Germans after World War II , German exodus from Eastern Europe or Demographic estimates of the German exodus from Eastern Europe, at least not the "full story" that he tells above.

Here's the critical point, as I see it... 12.5 million Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe. The great bulk of these were expelled from the former eastern territories of Germany. 10,000,000 Germans lived there, 7,400,000 were expelled and 1,225,000 died. (Yes, yes, these numbers can be debated but let's use them for now).

The question is... what percentage of the total population of eastern Germany in 1945 does this 10 million represent? Are we saying that the population was 10 million Germans and no Polish people? More than 85% of the Germans were killed or expelled. Who was left to "welcome" the incoming Poles? Was the territory a wide swath of "ghost towns"?

I'm embarassed to say that I never really thought about this until today but I now think that it's an important part of the story. It's one thing to expel 20-30% of the population in an area. It's another thing entirely to expel 70-80%. (I'm not talking about morality here. Expelling 20-30% is just as bad as expelling 70-80%. I'm just trying to get a gestalt of what life was like in these areas at the time.) -Richard 20:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Other than in passing I do not think that this is a subject for this article. This is one for Expulsion of Germans after World War II --Philip Baird Shearer 22:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

In this article, I think it warrants a sentence or two at most. In the other expulsion-related articles, maybe a paragraph or two. The point is that the proportion of Germans to Poles is a key bit of information necessary to understand what the situation was. I think it may also defuse some of the polemic (or at least we can hope it might)

--Richard 23:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German camps for displaced persons

And, while we're at it... we talk about 12.5 million Germans being expelled. Where did they go? Did they all wind up in refugee camps in BRD/DDR? How many wound up in the BRD and how many in the DDR? How were the expellees resettled in BRD and DDR?

Where is the Wikipedia article that describes those camps and the plight of displaced persons in Germany. It almost seems that we only care about their expulsion and not about their ultimate fate. For one thing, I would like to know how many died in the after they reached the refugee camps in Germany because it affects the way we might view the charge that 1-2 million Germans died as a result of the expulsions.

--Richard 20:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it is difficult and perhaps to early to give the real encyclopedic answers to your questions. In Northern Germany people moved westward by ships across the Baltic Sea, by train and they rode horseback or walked. Many villages travelled in groups, came westward into villages which were already abandoned by their former inhabitants, and so on. So, some went from the very east to the very west, but even more moved in steps. For this reason there are villages in Western Pommerania, in which special religions from Eastern Prussia gathered and formed majorities of inhabitants, since the real inhabitants were gone westward. Religion is even today a tool to measure these movements, since the Prussians let many religious refugees settle in the East in the 17th and 18th century.

In the Russian occupation zone there was another approach than in the British zone. The Russians integrated the refugees from the eastern territories through the land reform. In many places up to 50 % of the "Neusiedlerstellen" in the "Bodenreform" was given to people from east of the Oder river. The land reform was a political goal of the Russians and their German poltical allies and a necessaty to fight hunger as well. The western zones had more camps and food brought into their zones. I believe, that the Germans still need some more time after reunification to work out these issues with the necessary neutral approach. But Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern both doubbelt their inhabitants after 1945.--Kresspahl 22:48, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

At last in de:Zweiter Weltkrieg it is stated that 2-3 Million Sudeten germans, Silesians, pomeranians, and germans from Poland and East Prussia died after the german capitulation which would reduce your number to about 9.5 Million beeing expelled but i think the number is higher like about 14 Million. It is stated in de:Vertreibung#Die Flucht und Vertreibung der Deutschen .281944 bis 1948.29 that about 12 Million Sudeten and East germans fled and settled in West Germany, the GDR and Austria until 1950. This shift caused for example that Mecklenburg doubled its population and many regions that had been mainly catholic had now majorities of protestants or other confessions. I will try to find a better source which splits up percentages how many people settled where if i can find the time --Panth 01:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Demographic estimates of the German exodus from Eastern Europe has some numbers about the number expelled and the number that died. For decades, the German perspective asserted 12.5 million expelled or fled, 2 million died. These come from the Statistisches Bundesamt (Federal Department of Statistics) of the FRG. More recently, historians (German and Polish) have revised the number of deaths downward to 1.1 million. We know where the expellees came from but we don't know where they went. 10 million were expelled from the former eastern territories of Germany but where did they go? How many went to the DDR, how many to the FRG and how many went to other places (like Western Europe, U.S. or the U.S.S.R.)?

--Richard 01:30, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Demographic estimates of the German exodus from Eastern Europe has some numbers about the number expelled and the number that died. For decades, the German perspective asserted 12.5 million expelled or fled, 2 million died. These come from the Statistisches Bundesamt (Federal Department of Statistics) of the FRG. More recently, historians (German and Polish) have revised the number of deaths downward to 1.1 million. We know where the expellees came from but we don't know where they went. 10 million were expelled from the former eastern territories of Germany but where did they go? How many went to the DDR, how many to the FRG and how many went to other places (like Western Europe, U.S. or the U.S.S.R.)?

--Richard 01:30, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Demographics

There are special articles on statistics for German cities with graphs like the example for Lübeck in de:Einwohnerentwicklung von Lübeck or de:Einwohnerentwicklung von Rostock, other cities in de:Kategorie:Einwohnerentwicklung deutscher Städte. For Stettin/Szczecin you will find the remarkable figures in pl:Szczecin, they went down from 382.000 (1939) to 26.000!, -all Germans out-(1945), climbing Polish to 108.000 (1946) and reached 388.000 inhabitants in 1980 again.--Kresspahl 15:55, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting. Unfortunately, we cannot attribute the entire drop in population to expulsion of the Germans per se. As has been pointed out many times on Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II, the drop in population could be war deaths, bombing, etc. Also, some of the "bounceback" from 1945 to 1946 could be returnees of Germans who had been evacuated, fled or expelled. We don't know how many of those are Germans and how many are Poles. Thus, these statistics are interesting but not of sufficient granularity to tell the story.

I also note that the numbers in the English Szczecin article are quite different for 1945. This discrepancy between the Polish and English Wikipedias should be resolved by someone who can communicate with the editors of the Polish article.

Assuming for the time being that the numbers in the Polish article are right, we could probably say (of Stettin/Szczecin) that over 90% of the population left Stettin between 1940 and 1945 and that after 1945, population growth slowly restored the population although by 1950, the population was predominantly Polish whereas it had been predominantly German in 1940. Attributing the cause of the population drop cannot be done with these numbers alone.

--Richard 16:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

The airraids and the rate of destruction in Housing areas have to be considered too. But it would be nice to have graphs with the figures/curves from lets say Stettin, Rostock and Lübeck and Kiel on one sheet for the time from early Weimar to lets say 2000. In the East, the people were not really free to move until 1990. And the last count before the 1930ies is important, because it is without the WW2-industries in these cities which were the reason for a considerable rise of the population in the 30ies. And then the same for Breslau/Leipzig/Hannover.--Kresspahl 17:01, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see historical demographics of Poland for city population numbers for cities claimed both by Poland and Germany - and particulary note the source (which should give you numbers for all German cities if somebody wants to add that data to Wiki).-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers

1. There were very few Poles who were permanent residents of the territories of pre-1937 Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line. The Free City of Danzig was 96 to 97 percent German, and the percentages in Pomerania and Silesia within the 1920-37 German borders would have been similar, according to the research I've done on this topic over the years. It's my understanding that, in Pomerania and East Prussia, Polish people were employed seasonally as ag workers.

2. The exceptions to the above were:

a. Upper Silesia, which in the League plebiscite voted about 60 percent for Germany and 40 percent for Poland, and which subsequently was partitioned between the two countries, leaving minorities (and discontent) on both sides. In defining the territories above, I do not of course include that part of U. Silesia that was assigned to Poland after the plebiscite.

b. Masuria, i.e. southern East Prussia — also termed the "Allenstein District" by the Allies. (Allenstein is today Olsztyn.) This area was inhabited by a mixture of Germans and Masurians, the latter being ethnic Poles who had long been integrated into Prussia, who were Protestant (Lutheran), who were considered culturally Germanized, and who often were bilingual. A plebiscite there in 1920 produced 97.8 percent (362,209 votes) for Germany and 2.2 percent (7,980 votes) for Poland.

3. The aggregate number of people involved in the annexations and expulsions in the territories defined above depends on how one looks at it. Overall, about 10 million Germans lived there prewar. About half were either killed in the war or had fled by the time of Potsdam (actually, even more had fled, but some returned, temporarily). After the large-scale expulsions came to an end, by 1949, the number of ethnic Germans remaining in newly defined Poland probably was around 1 million, although estimates vary. The largest group was in Upper Silesia, around Opole (Ger.: Oppeln), where a small German minority remains today.

4. Documented estimates of the number of German civilians killed — in the Oder-Neisse territories — in the last phase of the war and in the expulsions range from 1.5 million to 2 million. By "documented" I mean based on prewar census data, wartime ration-card data, and postwar census data.

5. A significant number of the ethnic Germans remaining in postwar Poland was allowed to emigrate to West Germany in the '70s and '80s as a result of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik and his renunciation, in 1970, of German territorial claims east of the Oder-Neisse. (One of their descendants played on last year's German World Cup team.)

6. The total number of ethnic Germans subjected to wartime violence and postwar expulsions in Eastern Europe (not including the Volga Germans of the Soviet Union) was at least 16 million. Those who suffered the most violent treatment were the Germans of the Oder-Neisse territories, the Germans resident within 1919-39 borders of Poland, and the "Sudeten" Germans of Czechoslovakia. All three groups were subjected to vengeful actions by the Soviets, Poles and Czechs, motivated of course by Germany's aggression and horrendous savagery against their countries in 1938-45.

Sca 23:00, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I inserted a cleaned up version of some of the above numbers and User:Philip Baird Shearer deleted it with the edit summary ("more than a couple of sentences"). There's a disconnect here. I meant to say that the description of "ghost towns" is worth a sentence or two. I agree that the details of the expulsions belong in the expulsions-related articles.

Perhaps a longer discussion is useful to characterize the nature of the expulsions followed by repopulation. This shift from 90%+ German population to 90%+ Polish populaton is arguably the single most important phenomenon in the history of the area.

If the Polish Wikipedia's article on Szceczin is correct, 95% of the 1940 (German) population was gone by 1945. Is this sort of steep population drop followed by a slow regrowth characteristic of this entire area?

--Richard 16:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Of some places. The regrowth wasn't always slow - the Poles had their own refugees from territory incorporated in the Soviet Union at the same time (or shortly after). The people of Wroclaw (former Breslau) right in the south of Poland, have Russian accents, Poles from Warsaw will tell you. Johnbod 16:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Johnbod 16:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stettin/Szczecin

"By 1945" is misleading. Stettin was wholly populated by Germans until the end of the war, though of course many had fled as the Red Army conquered the area. On the other hand, many German refugees and expellees, including a number who came by ship from points further east, fled to Stettin initially as the Soviets advanced.

I don't know how many Germans remained in Stettin by the time of Potsdam (July-August 1945), but it was still a German-populated place at that time. It was only after the "western limit of Polish administration," as some of the officialese from the Potsdam Accords put it, had been defined to include Stettin and a triangle of land around it west of the Oder (also including Swinemünde, which had also been a destination for German ship evacuations) that Stettin officially became Szczecin and the remaining Germans were expelled en masse. (Swinemünde became Świnoujście.)

Somewhere I read that there was for a brief time a postwar German mayor of Stettin, installed by the Soviet-sponsored, Communist German officials who were to form the DDR, and that this German mayor formally (and under compunction) handed the city over to the new Polish mayor sometime late in 1945, but I don't have reference for this.

Footnote: Swinemünde in German means "mouth of the Swine (pronounced Svee' nah, not like the English "swine"), and refers to the Swine River — in Polish Świna, which I believe is pronounced Shvee' nuh. I'm not entirely sure how Świnoujście is pronounced, but it also means "mouth of the Świna.”

Sca 17:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Usage in articles

The Federation of Expellees article has this as its first sentence:

The Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) (German for "Federation of the Expelled" or "Federation of Expellees") is a non-profit organization formed to represent the interests of Germans displaced from their homes in historical eastern Germany and other parts of Eastern Europe by the expulsion of Germans after World War II.

I removed the double redirect from Historical eastern Germany to Former eastern territories of Germany but I did not replace the actual text as I wanted to discuss this first. What would would be the best phrasing to use in the above sentence? I'm inclined to say "displaced from their homes in what was then eastern Germany". Any other opinions? --Richard 15:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you should discuss that on the talk page of the article you are considering editing. But in passing, see the Churchill quote in this article. --Philip Baird Shearer 16:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)