Recovered Territories
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Template:Polish borders Image:Map of Poland (1945).png
Note: although the term "recovered territories" has a clear meaning in Poland and Polish historiography, it is not a widely accepted term or concept in Germany or in English-speaking nations. See Oder-Neisse line and historical Eastern Germany for details and internationally accepted definitions.
"Recovered Territories", "Regained Territories" or "Western and Northern Territories" (Polish: Ziemie Odzyskane, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne) is the term used in Poland to describe the current-day Polish provinces of Pomerania, Silesia, Lubus Land and Warmia i Mazury which were taken from Germany and assigned ("restored", "recovered") to Poland by the Allies after World War II.
In official West German usage, according to the Potsdam Agreement, these areas were initially referred to as "German Eastern Territories Under Polish Administration" (Deutsche Ostgebiete unter polnischer Verwaltung); this term was less often used in the wake of the 1970s Ostpolitik, but remained valid.
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Brief history of Recovered Territories
Prehistory
The areas of today's Poland, including the "Recovered Territories", were first described by Tacitus in 98 AD in his book Germania. He described the many tribes living in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic, Germanic, Finnic, Venetic and Celtic peoples. At that time Pomerania, Silesia and parts of present central Poland were populated by East Germanic tribes, while the area which would later become known as Eastern Prussia and Masuria was already a Baltic region. With the ongoing tribal migrations of the Migrations period and invasions of tribes from the Asian steppes, many inhabitants of today's Poland, particularly around the Baltic Sea, moved westwards and southwards and invaded the Roman Empire, forming several Germanic kingdoms in Western Europe.
According to some theories, later Poland was almost entirely deserted at the end of this period, and around 500 AD Slavic peoples settled the area. Alternative theories popular in the middle of the 20th century claimed that Poland was the homeland of all Slavic peoples. The proportion of local and immigrant elements that formed the Polish nation of early the Middle Ages is subject to debate among historians. However, most agree that Poland was homeland to numerous Slavic tribes by the year 1000.
Beginning of Polish state
The lands of Mieszko I of Poland were described in the Dagome Iudex and came under protection of the Pope. The first Polish King, Boleslaus I of Poland, got a recognition from the Holy Roman Empire at the Congress of Gniezno in 1000, where he was named as a friend and ally of the empire that represented Christian Europe.
Later on, parts of the area were conquered by the German-speaking Teutonic Knights and substates of the Holy Roman Empire. Under feudal governments and royal houses connected to the empire, various different ruling houses held sovereignties, such as Bohemia, Austria, Sweden, Prussia and then Imperial Germany.
Poland fragmented and re-united
Image:Poland Fragmentation Period map.jpg
In 12th–13th centuries, Poland, as many other countries in Europe, was fragmented into several semi-independent duchies ruled by the Piast dukes fighting each other. When the Kingdom of Poland was reunited in 1306–1320 by king Wladyslaw the Short, not all provinces were included, leaving the duchies of Pomerania, Silesia, and Masovia independent. The Baltic coast area was part of the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights. Silesian duchies were transferred to the Crown of Bohemia, because the Bohemian kings claimed to be kings of Poland, too. Masovia was incorporated into Poland in 1526.
Expansion of Prussia-Brandenburg
Prussia annexed Pomerania piece by piece in the years: 1648, 1657, 1720, 1772, 1815. In 1742, after the Seven Years' War, Silesia, until then part of the Habsburg Empire came under the rule of King Frederick II.. Prussia, also took part in the partitions of Poland, in the years 1772, 1793, 1795 and in the political reshuffle after the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
The most contentious subject at the Congress of Vienna was the so-called Polish-Saxon Crisis. The Austrians, French, and British agreed to go to war, if necessary, to prevent a Russian and Prussian plan in which Poland would become an independent Kingdom in personal union with the Tsar of Russia. Tsar Alexander I would become the King of Poland, in return for which the Prussians would receive all of Saxony as compensation. In the end an amicable settlement was worked out, by which Russia received most of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw as the "Kingdom of Poland" (called Congress Poland), but did not receive the district of Poznan (Grand Duchy of Poznan), which was given to Prussia, nor Kraków, which became a free city.
Poland restored and shifted
- See also Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the short lived Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918)
After World War I, in 1918, a Polish state was created. Its new territory included those territories that after the partitions of Poland, were for over a century a part of Prussia (and from 1871 the German Empire), Austro-Hungary and the Russian Empire. The provinces taken from the German Empire were: Eastern Pomerania, Greater Poland, and half of Upper Silesia. At the Yalta Conference towards the end of World War II, Stalin used the puppet Polish government to demand that Poland should receive the provinces of Western Pomerania, Lubusz Land, the remainder of Silesia, the city of Danzig(Gdansk in Polish), and Warmia-Masuria, while giving the Kresy territories (east of the Curzon Line) to the Soviet Union.
Potsdam conference aftermath
Border question during WW2
In 1945 the population of the regions assigned to Poland after the Second World War consisted of ethnic-Germans and a small Polish minority. Initially Poland was promised East Prussia, Upper Silesia and the eastern part of Western Pomerania up to Kolberg. At the Potsdam conference, Poland's exact western borders were drawn on the Oder-Neisse line. The German inhabitants of these areas either fled westwards or were expelled, often violently, by Soviet forces and the local Polish administration. Today the area is predominantly Polish.
The problem with the status of areas of previously settled German communities east of the Oder-Neisse rivers was that in 1945 the concluding document of the Potsdam Conference was not a juristically binding treaty, but a memorandum. It regulated the issue of the German Eastern border, which was to be the Oder-Neisse line, but the final article of the memorandum said that the final regulations concerning Germany were subject to a separate peace treaty. This treaty was not signed until 1990 as the "Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany". This meant that for 45 years, people on both sides of the border (and of the issue) could not be sure that the settlement reached in 1945 would not be changed at some future date. A fact convenient to Stalin, because that kind of uncertainty gave the Soviet Union the means to put a constant pressure on their communist satellites, especially Poland.
Until the Treaty on the Final Settlement, the German government regarded the status of the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse rivers as that of areas under "temporarily under Polish [or Soviet] administration". To facilitate wide international acceptance of German reunification in 1990, the German political establishment recognised the "facts on the ground" and accepted the clauses in the Treaty on the Final Settlement whereby Germany renounced all claims to territory east of the Oder-Neisse line. This allowed the treaty to be negotiated quickly and for German unification to go ahead quickly, which was seen as a priority by most sections of the German political establishment of the time. Others criticized the hasty decisions made by Chancellor Kohl in foreign policy, monetary union, economics etc.. Germany signed a separate treaty with Poland confirming the two countries’ present border the following year.
Arguments over rights to "Recovered Territories"
Theory of Polish historical rights
Acquring territories West to the Oder-Neisse line was part of the process of Polish westward shifting, which went along with Soviet annexation of the land east of the Curzon line. Both changes were decided at the Potsdam conference. This included not only shifting borders, but also movement of people, monuments and tradition.
It was also implemented in the sphere of ideology: Poles were told that their six-centuries-long presence in the former Eastern Poland area had come to an end. Moreover, they were told the Polish people in those areas were backward, were no good, and were rightfully replaced by peoples of the Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. At the same time, Poles were led to erroneously believe that the newly acquired areas of modern-day Western Poland were the homeland of their forefathers and hence their rightful inheritance. Despite the fact that a Polish minority had always lived in these regions, they had been politically and ethnically Germanized since the colonization of these rural areas during the Middle Ages by advancing German kingdoms and German farmers; before the migration of Slavs into these areas after 500 AD, they had been predominantly Germanic and home to the Eastern Germanic tribes.
References
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