Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 .
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 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 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]
On 1 September 1939, Poland was invaded by Germany, thus initiating World War II. The Third Reich established concentration camps in German-occupied Poland, the biggest located in Auschwitz . During the war, Poland suffered circa 6 million casualties and it also suffered huge material losses because Germany sought to commit genocide against its ...
The Polish population increased disproportionately in the 1920s and 1930s and was estimated at 20% shortly before the start of World War II in 1939. [37] The Catholic priest Franciszek Rogaczewski estimated that Poles made up about 20% of the population of the Free City of Danzig in 1936. [10]
Map showing Poland's borders pre-1938 and post-1945. The Eastern Borderlands is in gray while the Recovered Territories are in pink.. The Recovered Territories or Regained Lands (Polish: Ziemie Odzyskane), also known as the Western Borderlands (Polish: Kresy Zachodnie), and previously as the Western and Northern Territories (Polish: Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne), Postulated Territories ...
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 ...