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The Oder–Neisse line (Polish: granica na Odrze i Nysie Łużyckiej, German: Oder-Neiße-Grenze) is the border between Germany and Poland which was drawn in the aftermath of World War II. The line is formed primarily by the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers, and meets the Baltic Sea west of the seaport cities of Szczecin (German: Stettin) and Świnoujście (Swinemünde). All pre-war German territory east of the line (23.8% of the former Weimar Republic lands, most of them from Prussia) was awarded either to Poland or the Soviet Union after the war, and the vast majority of its native German population was either killed or expelled by force. The Oder–Neisse line marked the border between the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and Poland from 1950 to 1990. East Germany confirmed the border with Poland in 1950, while West Germany, after a period of refusal, finally accepted the border in 1970.[1] In 1990 the newly reunified Germany and the Republic of Poland signed a treaty recognizing it as their border.
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The lower Oder was Piast Poland's western border from 10th through 13th century.[2] German policies of expansionism, Germanisation and oppression led some to propose restoring this line, in belief that it would provide protection against Germany; the first ideas representing that line of thought emerged around the time of World War I. One of the first proposals was laid down in the Russian Empire. After the war, when Nazis gained power these areas were used to militarize and build up assets that would allow Germany wage further war, the Polish population in these territories faced continued Germanisation.[3] The policies of Nazi Germany also encouraged nationalist activities among the German minority in Poland which had so far been mostly loyal to the Polish state.[3]
Before World War II, Poland's western border with Germany had been fixed under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. It partially ran along the historic borders of Greater Poland, but with certain adjustments that were intended to reasonably reflect the ethnic compositions of small areas beyond the traditional provincial borders. However, Pomerelia and Upper Silesia had been divided, leaving areas populated by Polish minority as well as other Slavic minorities on the German side and some German minority on the Polish side. Moreover, the border left Germany divided into two portions by the Polish Corridor and the independent Free City of Danzig, which had a predominantly German urban population, but was split from Germany to help secure Poland's access to the Baltic Sea.
During the interwar period the concept of "Western thought" (myśl zachodnia) became popular among some Polish nationalists. The "Polish motherland territories" were defined by scholars like Zygmunt Wojciechowski as the areas that belonged to Piast Poland in the borders of the 10th century.[4][5][6][7] Some Polish historians called for the "return" of territories up to the river Elbe.[7] The proponents of these ideas, in pre-war Poland often described as a "group of fantasists", were organized in the National Democratic Stronnictwo Narodowe, which was also opposed to the then current government of Poland, the Sanacja.[8] The proposal to establish the border along Oder and Neisse wasn't seriously considered for a long time[3] After World War II the Polish Communists, lacking an own expertise regarding the Western border, adopted the National Democratic concept of western thought[9]
After Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Poland, the idea of revising German borders began to be seen necessary by some Polish politicians[3] A proper and secure border[3] was seen as essential, especially in the light of Nazi atrocities( during the war Nazi Germany engaged in genocide of the Polish and Jewish populations, classified as untermenschen); the changing of the western border was consider as one of the forms for punishing the Germans for their atrocities and compensating Poland.[3][10] The participation in the genocide by German minorities and their paramilitary organizations, such as the Selbstschutz, and support for Nazism among German society also connected the issue of border changes with the idea of population transfers intended to avoid such events in the future[11]
Initially the Polish government in exile envisioned territorial changes after the war which would incorporate East Prussia, Danzig (Gdańsk), Oppeln (Opole) Silesian region into post-war Poland, along with a straightening of the Pomeranian border and minor acquisition in Lauenburg (Lębork) area.[3] The border changes were to provide Poland with a safe border and strip Germans of using Western Pomerania and East Prussia as strategic asset against Polish state[12] Only with the changing situation during the war these territorial proposals were modified[3] In October 1941 the exile newspaper Dziennik Polski postulated a postwar Polish western border that would include East Prussia, Silesia up to the Lausitzer Neisse and at least both banks of the Oder-mouth.[13] While these territorial claims were regarded "megalomaniac" by the Soviet ambassador in London, in October 1941 Stalin announced the "return of East Prussia to Slavdom" after the war. On 16 December 1941 Stalin remarked in a meeting with the British Foreign minister Anthony Eden, though inconsistent in detail, that Poland should receive all German territory up to the river Oder.[13] In May 1942 General Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, sent two memoranda to the US government, sketching a postwar Polish western border along the Oder and Neisse (inconsistent about the Eastern Glatzer Neisse and the Western Lausitzer Neisse). The concept was however dropped by the government-in-exile in late 1942.[14]
In post-war Poland the Oder-Neisse line was described as the result of tough negotiations between Polish Communists and Stalin.[15] According to the modern Institute of National Remembrance however, Polish claims or aspirations did not have an independent impact on the final outcome, rather the idea of a westward shift of the Polish border after World War II was adopted synthetically by Stalin who was the final arbiter in the matter. Stalin's conception of a switch of eastern Polish land for acquisitions in the west was motivated by his political conceptions, as well as a desire to ensure enmity between Poles and Germans, so as to control both countries.[3]
It was the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who at the Tehran Conference in late 1943 brought up the subject of Poland's western frontier and its extension to the Oder River. While the Americans were not interested in discussing any border changes at that time,[16] Roosevelt agreed that in general the Polish border should be extended West to the Oder, while Polish eastern borders should be shifted westwards, he also confessed that due to elections at home he could not express his position publicly.[17] British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden wrote in his diary that "A difficulty is that the Americans are terrified of the subject which [Roosevelt advisor] Harry [Hopkins] called 'political dynamite' for their elections. But, as I told him, if we cannot get a solution, Polish-Russian relations six months from now, with Russian armies in Poland, will be infinitely worse and elections nearer."[18] Winston Churchill compared the westward shift of Poland to Soldiers taking two steps "left close" and declared in his memoirs: "If Poland trod on some German toes that could not be helped, but there must be a strong Poland."[19]
The British government formed a clear position on the issue and at the first meeting of the European Advisory Commission on January 14, 1944, recommended "that East Prussia and Danzig, and possibly other areas, will ultimately be given to Poland" as well as agreeing on a Polish "frontier on the Oder".[20][21]
In February 1945, American and British officials met in Yalta and agreed on the basics on Poland's future borders. In the east, the British agreed to the Curzon line but recognised that the US might push for Lwów to be included in post-war Poland. In the west, Poland should receive part of East Prussia, Danzig, the eastern tip of Pomerania and Upper Silesia. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that it would "make it easier for me at home" if Stalin were generous to Poland with respect to Poland's eastern frontiers.[22] Winston Churchill said a Soviet concession on that point would be admired as "a gesture of magnanimity" and declared that, with respect to Poland's post-war government, the British would "never be content with a solution which did not leave Poland a free and independent state."[23] With respect to Poland's western frontiers, Stalin noted that the Polish Prime Minister in exile, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, had been pleased when Stalin had told him Poland would be granted Stettin/Szczecin and the German territories east of the Western Neisse river.[24] Yalta was the first time that the Soviets openly declared support for a German-Polish frontier on western as opposed to eastern Neisse.[25] Churchill objected to the Western Neisse frontier saying that "it would be a pity to stuff the Polish goose so full of German food that it got indigestion."[26] He added that many British would be shocked if such large numbers of Germans were driven out of these areas, to which Stalin responded that "many Germans" had "already fled before the Red Army."[27] Poland's western frontier was ultimately left to be decided at the Potsdam Conference.
Originally, Germany was to retain Szczecin, while the Poles were to annex East Prussia with Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). The Polish government had in fact demanded this since the start of World War II in 1939, due to East Prussia's strategic position that allegedly undermined the defense of Poland. Other territorial changes proposed by the Polish government were the transfer of the Silesian region of Opole and the Pomeranian regions of Gdańsk, Bytów and Lębork, and straightening of the border somewhat in Western Pomerania.
However, Stalin decided that he wanted Königsberg as a year-round warm water port for the Soviet Navy, and he argued that the Poles should receive Szczecin instead. The pre-war Polish government-in-exile had little to say in these decisions, but insisted on retaining the city of Lwów (now L'viv) in Galicia. Stalin refused to concede, and instead proposed all of Lower Silesia with Breslau (Polish: Wrocław) be given to Poland. Many Poles from Lwów later would be moved to populate the city.
The eventual border was not the most far-reaching territorial change that was proposed. There were suggestions of including areas further west so that Poland could include the small minority population of ethnic Slavic Sorbs who lived near Cottbus and Bautzen.
The precise location of the western border was left open. The western Allies accepted in general that the Oder River would be the future western border of Poland. Still in doubt was whether the border should follow the eastern or western Neisse River, and whether Stettin, now Szczecin, the traditional seaport of Berlin[28] and a city with a dominant German population with Polish minority, should remain German or be placed in Poland (with an expulsion of the German population). The western Allies sought to place the border on the eastern Neisse at Wrocław, but Stalin refused to budge. Suggestions of a border on the Bóbr (Bober) river were also rejected by the Soviets.
Nikita Khrushchev in his memoirs said: "I had only one desire – that Poland's borders were moved as far west as possible."[29]
At Potsdam, Stalin argued for the Oder-Neisse line on the grounds that the Polish Government demanded this frontier and that there were no longer any Germans left east of this line[30] Later the Russians admitted that at least "a million Germans" (still far lower than the true number) still remained in the area at that time. Several Polish-Communist leaders appeared at the conference to advance arguments for an Oder–Western Neisse frontier. The port of Szczecin was demanded for Eastern European exports. If Szczecin was Polish, then "in view of the fact that the supply of water is found between the Oder and the Lausitzer Neisse, if the Oder's tributaries were controlled by someone else the river could be blocked."[31] Soviet forces had initially expelled Polish administrators who tried to seize control of Szczecin in May and June, and the city was governed by a German communist-appointed mayor, under the surveillance of the Soviet occupiers, until 5 July 1945.[32]
James Byrnes – who had become the American Secretary of State earlier that month – later advised the Soviets that the U.S. was prepared to concede the area east of the Oder River and the Eastern Neisse River to Polish administration, and for it not to consider it part of the Soviet occupation zone, in return for a moderation of Soviet demands for reparations from the Western occupation zones.[33] A Nysa Kłodzka boundary would have left Germany with roughly half of Silesia - including the majority of Wrocław, the former provincial capital and the largest city in the region. The Soviets insisted that the Poles would not accept this. The Polish representatives (and Stalin) were in fact willing to concede a line following the Oder-Bober-Queiss (Odra-Bóbr-Kwisa) rivers through Żagań (Sagan) and Lubań (Lauban), but even this small concession ultimately proved unnecessary, since on the next day, Byrnes told the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov that the Americans would reluctantly concede to the Western Neisse.[34]
Byrnes's concession undermined the British position, and although the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin raised objections,[35] the British eventually agreed to the American concession. In response to American and British statements that the Poles were claiming far too much German territory, Stanisław Mikołajczyk argued that "the western lands were needed as a reservoir to absorb the Polish population east of the Curzon line, Poles who returned from the West, and Polish people who lived in the overcrowded central districts of Poland."[36] The U.S. and the U.K. were also negative towards the idea of giving Poland an occupation zone in Germany. However on July 29, President Truman handed Molotov a proposal for a temporary solution whereby the U.S. accepted Polish administration of land to the Oder and eastern Neisse until a final peace conference determined the boundary. In return for this large concession, the U.S. demanded that "each of the occupation powers take its share of reparations from its own [Occupation] Zone and provide for admission of Italy into the United Nations." The Soviets stated that they were not pleased "because it denied Polish administration of the area between the two Neisse rivers."[37]
On the 29th Stalin asked Bolesław Bierut, the head of the Soviet controlled Polish government, to accept in consideration of the large American concessions. The Polish delegation decided to accept a boundary of the administration zone at "somewhere between the western Neisse and the Kwisa)." Later that day the Poles changed their mind; "Bierut, accompanied by Rola-Zymierski, returned to Stalin and argued against any compromise with the Americans. Stalin told his Polish proteges that he would defend their position at the conference."[37]
Finally, the Potsdam Conference of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, in anticipation of the final peace treaty, placed the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line formally under Polish administrative control. It was also decided that all Germans remaining in the new and old Polish territory should be expelled.
Those territories as the Regained or Recovered Territories, a term based on the fact that they have been in the past the possession of the Piast dynasty of Polish kings, Polish fiefs or included in the parts lost to Prussia during the Partitions of Poland. The term was widely exploited by Propaganda in the People's Republic of Poland[38] The creation of a picture of the new territories as an "integral part of historical Poland" in the post-war had the aim of forging Polish settlers and repatriates arriving there into a coherent community loyal to the new Communist Regime.[39] The term was in use immediately following the end of World War II when it was part of the Communist indoctrination of the Polish settlers in those territories.[39] The final agreements in effect compensated Poland with 112,000 km² of former German territories for 187,000 square kilometers of land located east of the Curzon line – Polish areas occupied by the Soviet Union. Poles and Polish Jews from Soviet Union were subject of a process called "repatriation" (settlement within the territory of post-war Poland), but many of them who were imprisoned or deported to work camps in Siberia or Kazakhstan were frequently excluded.
One reason for this version of the new border was the fact that it was the shortest possible border between Poland and Germany. It is only 472 kilometers in length, stretching from the northernmost point of the Czech Republic to one of the southernmost points of the Baltic Sea in the Oder River estuary.
Winston Churchill was not present at the end of the Conference, since the results of the British elections had made it clear that he had been defeated. Churchill later claimed that he would never have agreed to the Oder–Western Neisse line, and in his famous Iron Curtain speech declared that
"The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place."[40]
Not only were the German territorial changes of the Nazis reversed, but the border was moved westward, deep into territory which had been in 1937 part of Germany with a majority German population and a Polish minority. The new line placed almost all of Silesia, more than half of Pomerania, the eastern portion of Brandenburg, a small area of Saxony, the former Free City of Danzig and the southern two-thirds of East Prussia (Masuria and Warmia) within Poland (see Former eastern territories of Germany). The north eastern third of East Prussia was directly annexed by the Soviet Union, with the Memelland becoming part of the Lithuanian SSR and the bulk of the territory forming the new Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian SFSR.
These territorial changes were followed by large-scale population transfers, involving 14 million people altogether from the whole of Eastern Europe, including many people already shifted during the war. Nearly all remaining Germans from the territory annexed by Poland were expelled, while Polish persons who had been displaced into Germany, usually as slave laborers, returned to settle in the area. In addition to this, the Polish population originating from the eastern half of the former Second Polish Republic, now annexed by the Soviet Union, was mostly expelled and transferred to the newly acquired territories.
Most Poles supported the new border, mostly due to fear of renewed German aggression and German irredentism.[41] The border was also presented as a just consequence for the Nazi German state's initiation of World War II and the subsequent genocide against Poles and the attempt to destroy Polish statehood, as well as for the territorial losses of eastern Poland to the Soviet Union, mainly western Ukraine and Belarus. Resentment towards the expelled German population on the part of the Poles was based on the fact that the majority of that population was loyal to the Nazis during the invasion and occupation, and the active role some of them played in the persecution and mass murder of Poles and Jews. These circumstances have impeded sensitivity among Poles with respect to the expulsion committed during the aftermath of World War II.
The new order was in Stalin's interests, because it enabled the Soviet Union Communists to present themselves as the primary maintainer of Poland's new western border. It also provided the Soviet Union with territorial gains from part of East Prussia and eastern part of Second Republic of Poland.
United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes outlined the official position of the US government regarding the Oder-Neisse line in his Stuttgart Speech of 6 September 1946:
"At Potsdam specific areas which were part of Germany were provisionally assigned to the Soviet Union and to Poland, subject to the final decisions of the Peace Conference. (...) With regard to Silesia and other eastern German areas, the assignment of this territory to Poland by Russia for administrative purposes had taken place before the Potsdam meeting. The heads of government agreed that, pending the final determination of Poland's western frontier, Silesia and other eastern German areas should be under the administration of the Polish state and for such purposes should not be considered as a part of the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany. However, as the Protocol of the Potsdam Conference makes clear, the heads of government did not agree to support at the peace settlement the cession of this particular area. The Soviets and the Poles suffered greatly at the hands of Hitler's invading armies. As a result of the agreement at Yalta, Poland ceded to the Soviet Union territory east of the Curzon Line. Because of this, Poland asked for revision of her northern and western frontiers. The United States will support revision of these frontiers in Poland's favor. However, the extent of the area to be ceded to Poland must be determined when the final settlement is agreed upon."[42]
The speech was met with shock in Poland and Deputy Prime Minister Mikołajczyk immediately issued a response declaring that retention of Polish territories based on Oder-Neisse line was matter of life and death.[43]
Byrnes who accepted Western Neisse as provisional Polish border[44][45][46] in fact did not state that such a change would take place (as was read by Germans who hoped for support of their revisionist goals).[46] The purpose of the speech and associated US diplomatic activities was as propaganda aimed at Germany by Western Powers, who could blame Polish-German border and German expulsions on Moscow alone.[46]
In the late 1950s, by the time of Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, the United States largely accepted Oder Neisse line as final and didn't support German demands regarding the border, while officially declaring a need for a final settlement in a peace treaty.[47][48] In the mid-60s the US government accepted the Oder-Neisse line as binding and agreed that there will be no changes to it in the future.[49] German revisionism regarding the border began to cost West Germany sympathies among its western allies.[50] The Oder Neisse line was however never formally recognized by the United States until the revolutionary changes of 1989 and 1990.[51]
In 1959 France officially issued a statement supporting the Oder-Neisse line, which created controversy in West Germany.[52]
The East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), founded 1946, originally rejected the Oder-Neisse line.[53] Under Soviet occupation and heavy pressure by Moscow, the official phrase Friedensgrenze (border of peace) was promulgated in March–April 1947 at the Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference. The German Democratic Republic and Poland's Communist government, signed the Treaty of Zgorzelec in 1950, recognizing the Oder-Neisse line, officially designated by the Communists as the "Border of Peace and Friendship".[54][55][56]
In 1952, recognition of the Oder-Neisse line as a permanent boundary was one of Stalin's conditions for the Soviet Union to agree to a reunification of Germany (see Stalin Note). The offer was rejected by the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
In West Germany, where the majority of the 12 million displaced refugees found refuge, recognition of the Oder-Neisse Line as permanent was long regarded as unacceptable. In fact, under the Hallstein Doctrine, West Germany recognized neither the government of Communist Poland, nor the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
In 1963 the German opposition leader Willy Brandt said that "abnegation is betrayal", but it was Brandt who eventually changed West Germany's attitude with his policy of Ostpolitik. In 1970 West Germany signed treaties with the Soviet Union (Treaty of Moscow) and Poland (Treaty of Warsaw) recognizing Poland's Western border at the Oder-Neisse line as current reality, not to be changed by force. This had the effect of making family visits by the displaced eastern Germans to their lost homelands now more or less possible. Such visits were still very difficult, however, and permanent resettlement in the homeland, now Poland, remained impossible.
In 1989, another treaty was signed between Poland and East Germany, the sea border was defined, and a dispute from 1985 was settled.
In November 1990, after German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Poland signed a treaty confirming the border between them, as requested by the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany. Earlier, Germany had amended its constitution and abolished Article 23 of West Germany's Basic Law (on which reunification was based), which could have been used to claim the former German eastern territories.
The 1990 German-Polish Border Treaty finalizing the Oder-Neisse line as the Polish-German border[57] came into force on January 16, 1992, together with a second one, a Treaty of Good Neighbourship, signed in June 1991, in which the two countries, among other things, recognized basic political and cultural rights for both the German and the Polish minorities living on either side of the border. After 1990, approximately 150,000 Germans still reside in the areas transferred to Poland, mainly in the Opole (Oppeln) Voivodeship, with a smaller presence in regions such as Lower Silesia and Warmia-Masuria. There are one and a half million Poles or ethnic Poles living in Germany, including both recent immigrants and the descendants of Poles that settled in Germany many generations ago.
The border divided several German cities into two parts - Görlitz/Zgorzelec, Guben/Gubin, Frankfurt (Oder)/Słubice, Küstriner Vorland/Kostrzyn nad Odrą. The Muskau Park was also divided.
Millions visited the neighbouring country (Poland and East Germany) during the years 1971-1980. Economical crisis made the Poles less welcome since the 1976 and politically dangerous for the GDR government since 1980 strikes.
Poland joined the Schengen Area in 2007. The far-right National Democratic Party of Germany protested against "Polish invasion" in 2009, and in 2011 placed posters near the border.[58] The limitations on Poles working in Germany expired in April 2011.