However, he also believed that the 1937 borders and territories of Nazi Germany, i.e. before the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria and the Sudetenland, were inadequate to accommodate this large increase in population.
With the largest number of ethnic Germans living in Russia, Hitler knew that he could not resettle all these people without the full cooperation of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.
Hitler's aim was to avoid having to fight on two fronts upon the invasion of Poland and best facilitate its successful capture by partition, a crucial matter in the first weeks of the Second World War.
Once these territories were free of non-Germans, the population transfers could begin with ethnic Germans settling in the homes of the expropriated Polish.
[10] The settlers were often given Polish homes where the families had been evicted so quickly that half-eaten meals remained on the tables and small children had been taken from unmade beds.
[11] Members of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were assigned the task of overseeing these evictions to ensure that the Polish left behind most of their belongings for the use of the settlers.
[14] Ethnic Germans Resettled by Nazi Germany 1939–1944 Source: Dr. Gerhard Reichling, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, Teil 1, Bonn 1995, Pages 23–27 Reichling's figures do not include parts of the more than 200,000 ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia who fled in the autumn of 1944 and who were directed into the General Government.