Territorial changes of Germany after World War II

The former eastern territories of Germany (german: Ehemalige deutsche Ostgebiete) refer in present-day Germany to those territories east of the current eastern border of Germany i.e. Oder–Neisse line which historically had been considered German and which were annexed by Poland and Soviet Union after World War II, these territories were also the lands where Germans used to be only or main ethnicity. So in contrast to the lands awarded to the restored Polish state by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, the German territories lost with the Potsdam Agreement after World War II on 1 August 1945 were either almost exclusively inhabited by Germans before 1945 (bulk of East Prussia, bulk of Lower Silesia, Farther Pomerania, and parts of Western Pomerania, Lusatia, and Neumark awarded to Poland), mixed German-Polish with a German majority ( Danzig, Posen-West Prussia Border March, Lauenburg and Bütow Land, the southern and western rim of East Prussia, Ermland, West Upper Silesia, and the part of Lower Silesia east of the Oder), or mixed German-Czech with a German majority (Glatz District). The German population of the territories that had not fled in 1945 fled or was expelled to Germany forming the majority of the Germans expelled from Eastern Europe, with their possessions being expropriated.

Territories acquired by Poland after World War II were officially called there the Recovered Territories. These territories had been ruled as part of Poland by the Piast dynasty in the High Middle Ages with the exception of East Prussia which originally was inhabited by Old Prussians and came under Polish suzerainty in the Late Middle Ages. The northern half of historic East Prussia was, however, made part of the Soviet Union, with the former Klaipeda Region reattached to the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the rest being annexed by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as the Kaliningrad Oblast, now forming a Russian exclave.

The post-war border between Germany and Poland along the Oder–Neisse line was defined in August 1945 by the Potsdam Agreement of the leaders of the three Allied Powers, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States; and was formally recognized by East Germany in 1950, by the Treaty of Zgorzelec, under pressure from Stalin. 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 West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The then official West German government position on the status of former eastern territories of Germany east of the Oder and Neisse rivers was that the areas were "temporarily under Polish r Sovietadministration", because the border regulation at the Potsdam Conference had been taken as preliminary provisions to be revisited at a final peace conference, which, also due to the Cold War had been indefinitely postponed; however by 1970, West Germany recognised the Oder-Neisse line as the western boundary of Poland by the Treaty of Warsaw; and in 1973, the Federal Constitutional Court acknowledged the capability of East Germany to negotiate the Treaty of Zgorzelec as an international agreement binding as a legal definition of its boundaries. In signing the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, both West Germany and East Germany recognised the existing boundaries of post-war Europe, including the Oder-Neisse line, as valid in international law.

In 1990, as part of the reunification of Germany, both German countries accepted clauses in the peace treaty with the four countries representing the Allies (Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany) to replace the Potsdam Agreement before and end the aftermath of World War II in Germany whereby Germany renounced all claims to territory outside East and West Germany. As the result of this treaty, Germany's recognition of the Oder–Neisse line as the border was formalised by the re-united Germany in the German–Polish Border Treaty on 14 November 1990 and by the repeal of Article 23 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany under which German states outside the Federal Republic could formerly have declared their accession. Germany went from a territory of 468,787 km² before the annexation of Austria (1937) to 357,022 km² after the reunification of Germany (1990).

The territories

Farther Pomerania and parts of Western Pomerania

Farther Pomerania comprised the eastern part of the Prussian Province of Pomerania. It stretched roughly from the Oder River in the West to Pomerelia in the East. It roughly correspond to today's Polish West Pomeranian Voivodeship. Along with Farther Pomerania a small area of Western Pomerania including Stettin (today ''Szczecin'') and Swinemünde (today ''Świnoujście'') was transferred to Poland in 1945.

The Pomeranian parts of the former eastern territories of Germany had been under Polish rule several times from the late 10th century on, when Mieszko I acquired at least significant parts of them. Mieszko's son Bolesław I established a bishopric in the Kołobrzeg area in 1000–1005–07, before the area was lost by Poland again to pagan Slavic tribes.

The Duchy of Pomerania was established as a vassal state of Poland in 1121, which it remained until the fragmentation of Poland after the death of Polish ruler Bolesław III Wrymouth in 1138. Afterwards the Dukes of Pomerania were independent, and later were vassals of the Duchy of Saxony from 1164 to 1181, of the Holy Roman Empire from 1181 to 1185, of Denmark from 1185 to 1227 and finally, from 1227 on, staying with the Holy Roman Empire (including periods of vassalage to the Margraves of Brandenburg). By the end of the Middle Ages, by influx of Germanic settlers, the assimilation of the Slavic population, the introduction of German town law, the influence of Germanic customs and the trade of the Hanse the area had been largely Germanized.

Following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Farther Pomerania became part of Brandenburg-Prussia. In 1772 the Lauenburg and Bütow Land and the former Starostwo of Draheim were annexed by the King in Prussia and integrated into the Province of Pomerania of the Kingdom of Prussia, though not into the Holy Roman Empire, and did not become part of Germany until being included in the German Confederation in 1815. After the Napoleonic Wars, Swedish Pomerania was merged into the Prussian province in 1815, both now constituting the Province of Pomerania. In 1938, the northern part of the dissolved Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia became part of the province.

At the turn of the 20th century, the total population of the province of almost 1.7 million inhabitants had a Polish-speaking minority of less than 1 %.

East Brandenburg (Neumark)

The medieval Lubusz Land, on both sides of the Oder River up to the Spree in the west, including Lubusz ( Lebus) itself, also formed part of Mieszko's realm. Poland lost Lubusz when the Silesian duke Bolesław II Rogatka sold it to the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg in 1249. Brandenburg also acquired the castellany of Santok from Duke Przemysł I of Greater Poland and made it the nucleus of its Neumark ("New March") region. The Bishopric of Lebus remained a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Gniezno

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