Recovered Territories - Legal Status of The Territories

Legal Status of The Territories

During the Cold War the official position in the First World was that the concluding document of the Potsdam Conference was not an international treaty, but a mere memorandum. It regulated the issue of the German eastern border, which was to be the Oder-Neisse line, but the final article of the memorandum said that the final status of the German state and therefore its territories were subject to a separate peace treaty between Germany and the Allies of World War II. During the period from 1945 to 1990 two treaties between Poland and both East and West Germany were signed concerning the German-Polish border. In 1950 the German Democratic Republic and the People's Republic of Poland signed the Treaty of Zgorzelec, recognizing the Oder-Neisse line, officially designated by the Communists as the "Border of Peace and Friendship". On 7 December 1970 the Treaty of Warsaw between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland was signed concerning the Polish western border. Both sides committed themselves to nonviolence and accepted the existing de facto border - the Oder-Neisse line. However a final treaty was not signed until 1990 as the "Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany".

Until the Treaty on the Final Settlement, the West German government regarded the status of the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse rivers as that of areas "temporarily under Polish or Soviet administration". To facilitate wide international acceptance of German reunification in 1990, the German political establishment recognized the "facts on the ground" and accepted the clauses in the Treaty on the Final Settlement whereby Germany renounced all claims to territory east of the Oder-Neisse line. This allowed the treaty to be negotiated quickly and for unification of democratic West Germany and communist East Germany to go ahead quickly.

In accordance with a duty imposed on Germany by the "Treaty on the Final Settlement", in the same year, 1990, Germany signed a separate treaty with Poland, the German-Polish Border Treaty, confirming the two countries' present borders.

The signature and ratification of the border treaty between Germany and Poland formalized in international law the recognition of the existing border and put an end to all German claims.