Oder–Neisse line

Stalin's political goals as well as his desire to foment enmity between Poles and Germans influenced his idea of a swap of western for eastern territory, thus ensuring control over both countries.

Later, when the Nazis gained power, the German territory to the east of the line was militarised by Germany with a view to a future war, and the Polish population faced Germanisation.

About half of what was Farther Pomerania remained plurality Kashubian or Polish until 18th and 19th century, with surviving majority Slavic pockets extending as far west as Dievenow.

[11] In 1905, Arnošt Muka observed that "there remained in that land an old Slav national grouping with types and means of settlement, customs and habits unchanged through to this day in the character and outlook of the inhabitants”.

[11] The situation was similar in the Western part of Silesia, where Polish and Silesian languages remained dominant by the end of 18th century in areas such as Ohlau, Groß Wartenberg and Namslau.

The plebiscite took place among severe ethnic tensions, as German authorities and Freikorps clashed and persecuted the local Polish population, and the Poles organised massive strikes and protests.

[12] The plebiscite allowed both permanent inhabitants of the area but also people born in the region to vote, regardless of their current location or time spent living in Silesia.

While the postulate of the Polish delegation gained acceptance of the rest of the conference, it was met with vehement protest from David Lloyd George, whose opposition led to border changes in favour of Germany.

[21] Initially the Polish government in exile envisioned territorial changes after the war which would incorporate East Prussia, Danzig (Gdańsk) and the Oppeln (Opole) Silesian region into post-war Poland, along with a straightening of the Pomeranian border and minor acquisition in the Lauenburg (Lębork) area.

[3] In October 1941 the exile newspaper Dziennik Polski postulated a postwar Polish western border that would include East Prussia, Silesia up to the Lausitzer Neisse and at least both banks of the Oder's mouth.

On 16 December 1941 Stalin remarked in a meeting with the British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, though inconsistent in detail, that Poland should receive all German territory up to the river Oder.

[25] British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden wrote in his diary that "A difficulty is that the Americans are terrified of the subject which [Roosevelt advisor] Harry [Hopkins] called 'political dynamite' for their elections.

"[27] The British government formed a clear position on the issue and at the first meeting of the European Advisory Commission on 14 January 1944, recommended "that East Prussia and Danzig, and possibly other areas, will ultimately be given to Poland" as well as agreeing on a Polish "frontier on the Oder".

The Polish government had in fact demanded this since the start of World War II in 1939, because of East Prussia's strategic position that allegedly undermined the defense of Poland.

[citation needed] However, Stalin decided that he wanted Königsberg as a year-round warm water port for the Soviet Navy, and he argued that the Poles should receive Stettin instead.

"[38] Not satisfied with the Oder-Neisse line, the Polish communists initially wanted to own the entire island of Usedom and push the border west to the Randow river; however they were refused by Stalin.

[42] An Eastern Neisse boundary would have left Germany with roughly half of Silesia – including the majority of Wrocław (Breslau), the former provincial capital and the largest city in the region.

However, on 29 July, President Truman handed Molotov a proposal for a temporary solution whereby the U.S. accepted Polish administration of land as far as the Oder and eastern Neisse until a final peace conference determined the boundary.

Churchill later claimed that he would never have agreed to the Oder–Western Neisse line, and in his famous Iron Curtain speech declared that The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place.

Nearly all remaining Germans from the territory annexed by Poland were expelled, while Polish persons who had been displaced into Germany, usually as slave laborers, returned to settle in the area.

[49] The border was also presented as a just consequence for the Nazi German state's initiation of World War II and the subsequent genocide against Poles and the attempt to destroy Polish statehood, as well as for the territorial losses of eastern Poland to the Soviet Union, mainly western Ukraine and Belarus.

The heads of government agreed that, pending the final determination of Poland's western frontier, Silesia and other eastern German areas should be under the administration of the Polish state and for such purposes should not be considered as a part of the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.

[50]The speech was met with shock in Poland and Deputy Prime Minister Mikołajczyk immediately issued a response declaring that retention of Polish territories based on the Oder–Neisse line was matter of life and death.

[51] Byrnes, who accepted Western Neisse as provisional Polish border,[52][53][54] in fact did not state that such a change would take place (as was read by Germans who hoped for support to regain the lost territories).

[54] The purpose of the speech and associated US diplomatic activities was as propaganda aimed at Germany by Western Powers, who could blame the Polish-German border and German expulsions on Moscow alone.

[60] The creation of a picture of the new territories as an "integral part of historical Poland" in the post-war era had the aim of forging Polish settlers and repatriates arriving there into a coherent community loyal to the new Communist regime.

[75] As a result, the CDU, the CSU, the FDP and the SPD all issued statements opposing the Oder–Neisse line and supporting Heimatrecht ("right to one's homeland", i.e. that the expellees be allowed to return to their former homes).

[77] Ahonen wrote that Adenauer "saw his life's work in anchoring the Federal Republic irrevocably to the anti-Communist West and no burning interest in East European problems—or even German reunification.

[81] Gomułka felt sincerely threatened by the revanchist statements put out by the Adenauer government, and believed the alliance with the Soviet Union was the only thing stopping the threat of a new German invasion.

[citation needed] In March 1990, the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl caused a storm, when he suggested that a reunified Germany would not accept the Oder–Neisse line, and implied that the Federal Republic might wish to restore the frontier of 1937, by force if necessary.