Territorial evolution of Poland

Main article: History of Poland

Over the past millennium, the territory of Poland varied greatly. At one time, in the 16th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the second largest state in Europe, after Russia. At other times, there was no separate Polish state at all. Poland regained its independence in 1918, after more than a century of rule by its partitioners and had its borders redrawn yet again after its liberation from Nazi Germany at the end of Second World War.

History

In the period following the emergence of Poland in the 10th century, the Polish nation was led by a series of rulers of the Piast dynasty, who converted the Poles to Christianity, created a sizeable Central European state and integrated Poland into European culture. Formidable foreign enemies and internal fragmentation eroded this initial structure in the thirteenth century, but consolidation in the 1300s laid the base for the dominant Polish Kingdom that was to follow.

Border changes in history of Poland

Beginning with the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, the Jagiellon dynasty (1385–1569) formed the Polish-Lithuanian Union. The Lublin Union of 1569, established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as an influential player in European politics and a vital cultural entity.

By the 18th century the nobles' democracy (see: Liberum veto) had gradually declined into anarchy, making the once powerful Commonwealth vulnerable to foreign intervention. Eventually the country was partitioned by the countries bordering it (Russia, Austria and Germany) and erased from the map in 1795. Although the majority of the szlachta were reconciled to the end of the Commonwealth in 1795, the idea of Polish independence was kept alive by events inside and outside of Poland throughout the 19th century.

Poland's location in the very center of Europe became especially significant in a period when both Prussia and Russia were intensely involved in European rivalries and alliances and modern nation states were established over the entire continent. Poland regained its independence in 1918, but the Second Polish Republic was destroyed by Germany and Soviet Union by the Invasion of Poland at the beginning of the Second World War. Nevertheless the Polish government in exile never surrendered and managed to contribute significantly to the Allied victory. Nazi Germany's forces were forced to retreat from Poland as the Soviet Union Red Army advanced westwards, which led to the creation of People's Republic of Poland, a Soviet satellite state. By the late 1980s a Polish reform movement, Solidarity, was able to enforce a peaceful transition from communist state to democracy, which resulted in the creation of the modern Polish state.

Partitions of Poland

Main article: Partitions of Poland

Partitions of Poland

In 1772, 1793 and 1795, Prussia, Russia and Habsburg Austria engaged in three separate partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, dividing up the Commonwealth lands among themselves and thus ending the existence of the sovereign Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Three partitions took place:

• August 5, 1772.
• January 23, 1793.
• October 24, 1795.

After the Napoleonic Wars, when Napoleon Bonaparte restored a Polish state in the form of the Duchy of Warsaw, the three states that partitioned Poland decided to create out of the territories they annexed somewhat autonomous (at least in theory) regions, which were:

• Grand Duchy of Posen
• Republic of Kraków
• Kingdom of Poland (better known as Congress Poland)

In all cases assurances were made towards the recognition of the Polish language, respect for Polish culture and the rights of Poles. In all cases these promises were quickly broken and the regions annexed.

Territorial changes after World War I

Treaty of Versailles

Main article: Treaty of Versailles

The provisions of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I obliged Germany to transfer some territory to other countries. The provisions relevant to the territory of Poland included:

• Most of the Prussian province of Posen. This territory had already been taken over by local Polish insurgents during the Great Poland Uprising of 1918-1919
• 70% of West Prussia was given to Poland to provide free access to the sea, along with a 10% German minority, creating the Polish corridor. (area of both the corridor and the former province of Posen: 53 800 km², 4,224,000 inhabitants (1931), including 510 km² and 26,000 inhabitants from Upper Silesia).
• The east part of Upper Silesia, to Poland (area 3 214 km², 965,000 inhabitants), after disputed plebiscite 60 % voted for Germany and circa 40 % for Poland, as a result the area was divided.
• The area of Działdowo (Soldau) in East Prussia (492 km²),
• From the eastern part of West Prussia and the southern part of East Prussia Warmia and Masuria, a small area to Poland,
• Danzig (Gdańsk) with the delta of Vistula river at the Baltic Sea was made the Freie Stadt Danzig (Free City of Danzig) under the League of Nations. (area 1 893 km², 408,000 inhabitants (1929)).

Silesian uprisings

Main article: Silesian uprisings

The Silesian Uprisings (Polish: Powstania śląskie) were a series of three armed uprisings (1919–1921) of the Polish people in the Upper Silesia region against Weimar Republic in order to join the region (where in some parts Poles constituted a majority) from Germany and join it with the new Polish state, which had been established following World War I (1914–1918).

World War II

See also: Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany

Poland's old and new borders, 1945

In 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland and partitioned it pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

After invading Poland in 1939, Germany annexed the lands it was forced to give to a reformed Poland in 1919–1922 by the Treaty of Versailles, including the "Polish Corridor", West Prussia, the Province of Posen, and parts of eastern Upper Silesia. The council of the Free City of Danzig voted to become a part of Germany again, although Poles and Jews were deprived of their voting rights and all non-Nazi political parties were banned. Parts of Poland that had not been part of Wilhelmine Germany were also incorporated into the Reich.

Two decrees by Adolf Hitler (October 8 and October 12, 1939) provided for the division of the annexed areas of Poland into the following administrative units:

• Reichsgau Wartheland (initially Reichsgau Posen), which included the entire Poznań Voivodeship, most of the Łódź Voivodeship, five counties of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, and one county of the Warszawa Voivodeship;
• Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia (initially Reichsgau West Prussia), which consisted of the remaining area of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and the Free City of Danzig;
• Ciechanów District (Regierungsbezirk Zichenau), consisting of the five northern counties of Warszawa Voivodeship (Płock, Płońsk, Sierpc, Ciechanów, and Mława), which became a part of East Prussia;
• Katowice District (Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz), or unofficially East Upper Silesia (Ost-Oberschlesien), which included Sosnowiec, Będzin, Chrzanów, and Zawiercie Counties, and parts of Olkusz and Żywiec Counties.

These territories had an area of 94,000 km² and a population of 10,000,000 people. The remainder of the Polish territory was annexed by the Soviet Union (see Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) or made into the German-controlled General Government occupation zone. Eastern areas of Poland became part of either Soviet Belarus (with such cities as Białystok, Łomża, Baranowicze and Brest) or Soviet Ukraine (with the cities of Lwów, Tarnopol, Lutsk, Rowne and Stanisławów). The city of Wilno with adjacent area was annexed by Lithuania.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the district of Białystok, which included the Białystok, Bielsk Podlaski, Grajewo, Łomża, Sokółka, Volkovysk, and Grodno Counties, was "attached to" (not incorporated into) East Prussia.

Territorial changes after World War II

Main article: Territorial changes of Poland after World War II

After World War II, there were extensive changes to the territorial extent of Poland.

In 1945, Poland's borders were redrawn, following the decision taken at the Teheran Conference of 1943 at the insistence of the Soviet Union. The eastern Polish territories which the Soviet Union had occupied in 1939 (minus 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 in turn, 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 "occupied territories" were repopulated mainly with Poles from central Poland and those expelled from the eastern regions. People of Slavic descent ("autochtones", almost exclusively in Upper Silesia and Masuria) could apply for "verification" as Poles and were allowed to stay.

Polish resistance fighters were incarcerated or deported to Siberia by Stalin in line with decisions forced upon Churchill and Roosevelt.

German territories were occupied by Poland and the native population was subject to ecthnic cleansing as th eGerman inhibatited territories (blue) were occupied by Poland in 1945

The fact that Western leaders turned a blind eye to the atrocties in the expulsion of the German population led to many protests in the United States, including by Army Generals, but the US politicians maintained that realpolitik made it impossible to do anything else.

On February 6, 1945, the Soviet NKVD ordered the mobilization of all German men (17 to 50 years old) in the Soviet-controlled territories, many of whom were then transported to the Soviet Union for forced labor. In the East German territories, which the Soviet authorities had put under Polish administration, the Soviets did not always distinguish between Poles and Germans and often mistreated them alike.

In 1945, the former eastern territories of Germany (most of Silesia, Pomerania, East Brandenburg, and East-Prussia) were occupied by Polish and Russian military forces. Early expulsions in Poland were undertaken by the 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 1st or 2nd Volksliste groups, and those of the 3rd group, who held German citizenship.

The early expulsions were often more brutal than the organized population transfer that came afterwards. Sources suggest that the expulsions in Poland were not as brutal as those in Czechoslovakia. However, one source, Russians in Germany states that, according to a Soviet soldier: "Polish soldiers relate to German women as to free booty".

The Soviet Union transferred territories to the east of the Oder-Neisse Line to Poland in July 1945. Subsequent to this, most Germans were expelled to the territories west of the Oder-Neisse Line. The approximate totals of those evacuated, migrated, or expelled from East Prussia between 1944–1950 are: 1.4 million to Western Germany, 609,000 to Eastern Germany; from West Prussia: 230,000 to Western Germany, 61,000 to Eastern Germany; from the former German area East of the Oder-Neisse: 3.2 million to Western Germany, 2 million to Eastern Germany.

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."[ref=http://web.archive.org/web/20080126100226/www.historyguide.org/europe/churchill.html]

In 1951 Poland and the Soviet Union exchanged 480km²; this was one of the largest territorial exchanges in post-Second World War Europe (see Polish-Soviet border adjustment treaty). Poland has also exchanged small amounts of territories with other countries; those exchanges or adjustments were limited to few square kilometers or less:

• 1945, Germany
• 1949, Germany
• 1951, Germany
• 1951, Czechoslovakia
• 1958, Czechoslovakia
• 1975, Czechoslovakia
• 2002, Slovakia

See also

• Borders of Poland
• Geography of Poland
• Treaty of Warsaw (1970)

References

• Arthur Bliss Lane. I saw Poland betrayed: An American Ambassador Reports to the American People. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1948.

External links

• Commonwealth of Diverse Cultures: Poland's Heritage