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During World War II, expulsions were initiated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. The Germans deported 2.478 million Polish citizens from the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, [30] murdered 1.8 to 2.77 million ethnic Poles, [31] another 2.7 to 3 million Polish Jews and resettled 1.3 million ethnic Germans in their place. [32]
Refugees moving westwards in 1945. During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania (Hinterpommern), which were annexed by ...
Part of German evacuation from Central and Eastern Europe during World War II East Prussia (red) was separated from Germany and Prussia proper (blue) by the Polish corridor in the inter-war era. The area, divided between the Soviet Union and Poland in 1945, is 340 km east of the present-day Polish–German border.
The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses primarily the period from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II.Following the German–Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September.
Polish Matczak family among Poles expelled in 1939 from Sieradz in central Poland. The Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany during World War II was a massive operation consisting of the forced resettlement of over 1.7 million Poles from the territories of German-occupied Poland, with the aim of their Germanization (see Lebensraum) between 1939 and 1944.
In all, about three million Poles died as a result of the German occupation, more than 10% of the pre-war population. When this is added to the three million Polish Jews who were killed as a matter of policy by the Germans, Poland lost about 22% of its population, the highest proportion of any European country in World War II. [111] [112]
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]
The Polish population transfers in 1944–1946 from the eastern half of prewar Poland (also known as the expulsions of Poles from the Kresy macroregion), [1] were the forced migrations of Poles toward the end and in the aftermath of World War II. These were the result of a Soviet Union policy that had been ratified by the main Allies of World ...