Territorial Evolution of Poland - 1945

1945

On Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day: May 8, 1945) World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.

After World War II, there were extensive changes to the territorial extent of Poland, following the decision taken at the Teheran Conference of 1943 at the insistence of the Soviet Union. The Polish territories east of the Curzon Line, which the Soviet Union had occupied in 1939 along with the Bialystok region, were permanently annexed. While a large portion of this area was predominately populated by Ukrainians and Belarussians, most of their Polish inhabitants were expelled. Today these territories are part of Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania.

Poland received former German territory east of the Oder-Neisse line, consisting of the southern two thirds of East Prussia and most of Pomerania, Neumark (East Brandenburg), and Silesia. The German population was expelled before these formerly occupied territories were repopulated mainly with Poles from central Poland and those expelled from the eastern regions. Early expulsions in Poland were undertaken by the occupying Soviet and Polish Communist military authorities even before the Potsdam Conference ("wild expulsions"). To ensure territorial incorporation into Poland, Polish Communists ordered that Germans were to be expelled: "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multinational ones." A citation from the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party, May 20–21, 1945. Germans were defined as either Reichsdeutsche, people enlisted in first or second Volksliste groups, and those of the third group, who held German citizenship. People of Slavic descent (autochthones, almost exclusively in Upper Silesia and Masuria) could apply for "verification", as Poles and were allowed to stay.

Winston Churchill was not present at the end of the Yalta Conference as the results of the British election had made it clear 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. —Winston Churchill

• USSR and Nazi Germany carve up Poland in 1939 approximately along the Curzon Line

• Poland's borders after World War II. Blue line: Curzon Line of 8 December 1919. Pink areas: Parts of Germany in 1937 borders. Grey area: Territory annexed by Poland between 1919 and 1923 and held until 1939, which after World War II was annexed by the Soviet Union.

• Planned and actual divisions of Europe, according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with later adjustments

• Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact showing the new German-Soviet border Sept 28 1939