Recovered Territories

Note: although the terms "Recovered Territories", or "Regained Territories" have a clear meanings in Poland and Polish historiography, they are not widely accepted terms or concepts in Germany and the other German-speaking countries. In English-speaking countries the term is unknown. See Oder-Neisse line for details.

"Recovered Territories", "Regained Territories" or "Western and Northern Territories" (Template:Lang-pl) was a political concept used in Communist Poland to denote territories, that were held by various numerous Polish dukes and kings from 9th through 13th century. The territories are recorded dually as Pomerania, Polish Silesia, Land Lebus (Lubusz Land), and Warmia (Warmia-Masuria). Following the World War II many people from there were expelled, the territories were annexed by the Soviet Union, and then ("restored", "recovered") to Poland - sanctioned by the Allies i.e. USA, UK and USSR after World War II. In post-war Communist propaganda, the term "Recovered Territories" was coined mainly in order to encourage people, especially from former Eastern Poland (Kresy) to settle down permanently in the German areas "recovered" by Poland, which these people were reluctant to do. Kresy were seized by Soviet Union, and as the result the post war Polish territory become nearly 20% smaller (389,000 km² vs 312,683 km²). Poland gained a smaller area, with a number of destroyed Hanseatic cities, but the Recovered Territories had some mineral riches and included some rich agricultural lands, similarly to the lands lost in the East.

The same territories were initially referred to by West Germany as "German Eastern Territories Under Polish Administration" (Template:Lang-de).

Both terms were used immediately after the end of World War II but are not in wide usage today. The final border agreement between Poland and post World War II Germany was signed on 14 November 1990 and ended the German territorial claims.

Brief history of Recovered Territories

Poland's old and new borders, 1945 - "Recovered Territories" marked in yellow, "Lost Territories" marked in blue.

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 a Baltic region. As a result of the ongoing tribal migrations of the Migrations period, the Vandals and Goths who had inhabited what is today's Poland, moved westwards and southwards into 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 from the east and Venedi from Sarmatia settled the area. Alternative theories, particularly popular since the middle of the 20th century claim that Poland was the homeland of all Slavic peoples. The proportion of local and immigrant elements that formed the Polish nation of the early Middle Ages is subject to debate among historians. However, most agree that pre-1920 Poland was homeland to numerous people, often referred to as Slavic tribes by the year 1000.

Beginning of Polish state

The lands of Dagome and Ote (Mieszko I of Poland and Oda von Haldensleben), were described about 1080 in a note found in a cloister, which talks about the supposed Dagome Iudex, with which the land came under protection of the Pope. In the year 1000 AD the Polish ruler Boleslaw I of Poland, received recognition from the Holy Roman Empire at the Congress of Gniezno, where he was named as a friend and ally of the empire that represented Christian Europe.

During Christianization crusades parts of non-Christian territories were temporarily conquered by Polish or Masovian dukes, then conquered by the German-speaking Teutonic Knights. 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

Medieval Kingdom of Poland during the period of Fragmentation.

In 12th–13th centuries, Poland, as many other countries in Europe, was fragmented into several semi-independent duchies. Individual duchies were ruled by the Piast dukes, often fighting each other. When the duchies were reunited as the Kingdom of Poland in 1306–1320 by King Władysław I the Elbow-high, not all the provinces previously under Polish control were immediately included, with the duchies of Pomerania, Silesia, and Masovia remaining independent. At this time, the Baltic coast regions were ruled by the Teutonic Knights. Masovia was recovered by Poland in 1526 while many Silesian duchies had allied with the Crown of Bohemia (at that time the Bohemian kings held claims to the Polish Crown).

Expansion of Brandenburg-Prussia

Following are some partial, incomplete dates: Brandenburg-Prussia annexed Pomerania piece by piece over a few centuries (in 1648, 1657, 1720, 1772, and 1815). In 1742, during the Silesian Wars, Silesia, until then part of the Habsburg Monarchy, came under the rule of Prussian King Frederick II. the Kingdom of Prussia also took part in the Partitions of Poland (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 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 Poznań (Grand Duchy of Poznań), which was given to Prussia (Prussia only received 40% of Saxony), nor Cracow, 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, the Polish state (which was previously a kingdom) was declared restored as the Second Polish Republic. Its territory included those territories of ancient Prussia, that after the partitions of Poland were a part of the Kingdom of Prussia (and from 1871 the German Empire). The provinces taken from Germany and given to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles were: Pomerelia (West Prussia), Greater Poland (Posen), and half of Upper Silesia.

At the Yalta Conference towards the end of World War II, Joseph Stalin used the puppet Polish government to demand that Poland should receive the provinces of Western Pomerania, Lebus Land Lubusz Land, the remainder of Silesia, the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk), and southern part of East-Prussia (referred to by Poles as Warmia-Masuria). Poland had to give up its 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 conquered by the Soviet Union and assigned to Poland after the Second World War consisted of a majority of Poles, but also numerous Germans, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians. Initially Poland was promised western areas of the Second Polish Republic as well as East Prussia, Upper Silesia, and most of Pomerania. Poland claims, that at the Potsdam conference, Poland's western borders were drawn along the Oder-Neisse line. Eventually, however, much of East Prussia was kept but Russia and formed the later Kaliningrad Oblast. The German inhabitants of the areas east of the line either fled westwards or were expelled, often violently, by Soviet forces and the newly installed Communist local Polish administration. Today the area is predominantly Polish, though a small German minority still exists in many places including Olsztyn (Template:Lang-de), Masuria, and Upper Silesia.

During the Cold War some in West Germany claimed that the concluding document of the Potsdam Conference was not a juristically binding treaty, but a mere 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. A 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 West 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 of democratic West Germany and communist East Germany to go ahead quickly. Germany signed a separate treaty with Poland confirming the two countries’ present border the following year.