[5] From 1850, the net migration rate was negative; Pomeranians emigrated primarily to Berlin, the West German industrial regions and overseas.

Jewish and Polish populations (whose minorities lived in the region) were classified as "subhuman" by the German state during the war and subjected to repressions, slave work and executions.

[14][15] Besides the air raids conducted since 1943, World War II reached the province in early 1945 with the East Pomeranian Offensive and the Battle of Berlin, both launched and won by the Soviet Union's Red Army.

Hardenberg however, who as the Prussian chief diplomat had settled the terms of session of Swedish Pomerania with Sweden at the Congress of Vienna, had assured to leave the local constitution in place when the treaty was signed on 7 June 1815.

The so-called "regulation" was applied to 10,744 peasants until 1838, who paid their former lords 724,954 taler and handed over 255,952 hectares (2,559.52 km2; 988.24 sq mi)[36] of farmland to bail themselves out.

[37] On March 2, 1850, a law was passed[38] settling the conditions on which peasants and farmers could capitalize their property rights and feudal service duties, and thus get a long-term credit (41 to 56 years to pay back).

This was not possible before, when the jurisdiction had sanctioned the use of farmland and feudal services according not to property rights, but to social status within rural communities and estates.

[35] Otto von Bismarck inherited from his father the Farther Pomeranian estates Külz (Kulice), Jarchlin (Jarchlino) and Kniephof (Konarzewo).

In Stettin-Bredow (Szczecin-Drzetowo), at the site of the bankrupt Vulcan shipyards, the Nazis set up a short-lived "wild" concentration camp from October 1933 to March 1934, where SA maltreated their victims.

The other two thirds were living all over the province, Jewish communities numbering more than 200 people were in Stettin, Kolberg (Kołobrzeg), Lauenburg in Pomerania (Lębork), and Stolp (Słupsk).

[62] On February 12 and 13, 1940, 1,000 to 1,300 Pomeranian Jews, regardless of sex, age and health, were deported from Stettin and Schneidemühl to the Lublin-Lipowa Reservation, that had been set up following the Nisko Plan in occupied Poland.

The deportations of all Jews from the Gau were primarily planned on orders of Franz Schwede-Coburg, the notorious Gauleiter of Pomerania, in cahoots with several Nazi authorities of Schneidemühl.

The Confessing Church maintained a preachers' seminar headed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Zingst, which moved to Finkenwalde (Zdroje) in 1935 and to Köslin and Groß Schlönwitz (Słonowice) in 1940.

[76] After the failed assassination attempt of Hitler on July 20, 1944, Gestapo arrested thirteen Pomeranian nobles and one burgher, all knight estate owners.

[77] The invasion of Poland by the Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II, was in part mounted from the province's soil.

General Guderian's 19th army corps attacked from the Schlochau (Człuchów) and Preußisch Friedland (Debrzno) areas, which since 1938 belonged to the province ("Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen").

[79] According to Kozłowski & Krzywicki (1988), around 56,000 Polish POWs were located in Pomerania after the invasion, and soon Germany stripped them of their status (against international law) turning them into forced labourers; in April 1940 they were 82.417 of them in Pomerania, with the number reaching 116.330 Polish forced labourers in 1944 September[80] Because the invasion of Poland (and later the Soviet Union) was a success and the battle front moved far more east (Blitzkrieg), the province was not the site of battles in the first years of the war.

On August 17/18, the British RAF launched an attack on Peenemünde, where Wernher von Braun and his staff had developed and tested the world's first ballistic missiles.

[92] Despite these raids, the province was regarded "safe" compared to other areas of the Third Reich, and thus became a shelter for evacuees primarily from hard-hit Berlin and the West German industrial centers.

[92] The Pomeranian Wall was renovated in the summer of 1944, and in the fall all men between sixteen and sixty years of age who had not yet been drafted were enrolled into Volkssturm units.

On February 24, the Second Belorussian Front launched the East Pomeranian Offensive and despite heavy resistance primarily in the Rummelsburg (Miastko) area took eastern Farther Pomerania until March 10.

On March 1, the First Belorussian Front had launched an offensive from the Stargard and Märkisch Friedland (Mirosławiec) area and succeeded in taking northwestern Farther Pomerania within five days.

This was fueled by atrocities – rapes, pillage and executions – committed by Red Army soldiers after the Peene-bridge had been destroyed by retreating German troops.

Western Pomerania west of the Oder-Neisse line was merged with Mecklenburg to constitute the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, that in 1949 became the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Landkreis Fürstenthum comprised the earlier secular possessions of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kammin prince-bishops, and was ruled by administrators from the Pomeranian ducal house since the aftermath of the Reformation until 1650.

This region, consisting of the island of Rügen and the adjacent mainland between the Recknitz and Peene rivers, made up the Rani and Danish Principality of Rugia in the Middle Ages.

In the 1813 Treaty of Kiel, Denmark again gained nominal overlordship, yet was unable to pay her war reparations to Sweden and awarded her claim to Prussia in the 1815 Congress of Vienna along with her debts in exchange for the Duchy of Lauenburg.

The administration was led by the former Swedish general governour, prince Malte von Putbus [de], until Regierungsbezirk Stralsund was officially created in 1818.

The bulk of Slavic population in 19th century Pommern was concentrated in its easternmost counties: especially Bytów (Bütow), Lębork (Lauenburg) and Słupsk (Stolp).

[78] During the Soviet conquest of Farther Pomerania and the subsequent expulsions of Germans until 1950, 498,000 people from the part of the province east of the Oder-Neisse line died, making up for 26,4% of the former population.