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The 1919 Treaty of Versailles had called for a plebiscite in Upper Silesia in 1921 to determine whether the territory should be a part of Germany or Poland. [ 118 ] The plebiscite took place on March 20, 1921, two days after the signing of the Treaty of Riga , which ended the Polish–Soviet War .
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 main Allies of World War II, 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 ...
The Second Polish Republic was established in 1918 and existed as an independent state until 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. Millions of Polish citizens of different faiths or identities perished under Nazi occupation between 1939 and 1945 through planned genocide and ...
The territory of Germany before 1938 is shown in blue. There were many areas annexed by Nazi Germany both immediately before and throughout the course of World War II. Territories that were part of Germany before the annexations were known as the "Altreich" (Old Reich). [1]
Faced with an ultimatum from both Poland and Germany, Czechoslovakia gave up the area, which was annexed by Poland on October 2, 1938. [71] In early 1939, Germany invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, which, in March 1939, then ceased to exist. Germany had demanded that Poland join the Anti-Comintern Pact as a satellite state of Germany. [72]
Lower standards of living. Poland was a much poorer country than Germany. [22] Former Nazi politician and later opponent Hermann Rauschning wrote that 10% of Germans were unwilling to remain in Poland regardless of their treatment, and another 10% were workers from other parts of the German Empire with no roots in the region. [22]
The annexation was part of the "fourth partition of Poland" by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, outlined months before the invasion, in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. [ 2 ] Some smaller territories were incorporated directly into the existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia , while the bulk of the land was used to create new Reichsgaue Danzig ...
The imposed Second Peace of Thorn (1466) split Prussia into the western Royal Prussia, becoming a province of Poland, and the eastern part, called the Duchy of Prussia from 1525, a feudal fief of the Crown of Poland up to 1657. The union of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701