German Loss of Land/Ethnic Cleansing

Between 1918-1945 Germany lost a lot of Land, 1/3 to be exact. These lands were historically inhabited and owned by Germans, until the World Wars. Especially after WW2, the Germans lost a lot of land. 15 Million+ Germans were forcefully removed from their homes or killed by the Soviets and forced to move to the new German states of East and West Germany. Historic German cities like Konigsberg, Stettin, Danzig, Breslau, Elbing, Oppeln, Allenstein and more were emptied of their German populations and destroyed to make way for ugly Soviet Apartments and Factories. This has demoralized Modern Germany and is a contributing factor to it's consistently low birth rate and willingness to open itself to anyone who wants in. The Holocaust was terrible, but an eye for an eye makes the world go blind.

German loss of land:


Germans Before 1945 and After:

That's sad but we can't change it. Should we invade Poland and say all poles should leave historical German land? Then we wouldn't be better than the soviets in 1945. I think we should think European. Every European civilization has now its own country no matter if it's founded on its historical territory. A unification of Germany and Austria and the German unity is complete (for me). I think we should cooperate with our European neighbors instead of fighting them about territorial differences

Historyislove wrote:That's sad but we can't change it. Should we invade Poland and say all poles should leave historical German land? Then we wouldn't be better than the soviets in 1945. I think we should think European. Every European civilization has now its own country no matter if it's founded on its historical territory. A unification of Germany and Austria and the German unity is complete (for me). I think we should cooperate with our European neighbors instead of fighting them about territorial differences

I'm not saying that it should be returned, it's a little too late for that, I'm just here to talk about it.

Well my grandparents are from east Prussia, Silesia and Sudetenland and had to leave their home. It was quite a hard time they had to live in a barn for the first years and had to help the farmers. They nearly lost everything. One of my ancestors had a noodle factory in Silesia, another one a conditionary in Sudetenland and another one a big hotel in east prussia. They all started at 0. sadly one of my grandparents wasn't able to finnish school because of WW2 and had to work hard to get his family fed

Interestingly enough:



The lands are still pretty divided. Yes, this image was from a while ago but the borders that the election matches are roughly 140 years old, so...

Cold War Communist wrote:Interestingly enough:



The lands are still pretty divided. Yes, this image was from a while ago but the borders that the election matches are roughly 140 years old, so...

I remember seeing that on Reddit a while ago, might have something to do with the fact that those lands were repopulated by the Poles kicked out of Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine. Or it is just a coincidence.

That's a very old coincidence to see, haha. It goes back to what you were saying about a loss of land. They may not be "ethnically" German, but it appears that culturally, ideologically, the divide has not gone away.

Cold War Communist wrote:That's a very old coincidence to see, haha. It goes back to what you were saying about a loss of land. They may not be "ethnically" German, but it appears that culturally, ideologically, the divide has not gone away.

That's why I figured that it may be their history that makes them vote like that. Generally, it seems when a people group are uprooted, they tend to vote together and stick together. This happened in Germany, when the refugees came in they started Organisations and generally voted in a block. (At least from what I remember, it's been a while).

It was definitely unfortunate. Not that anything can or should be done now, though. The reality of the situation is that the Germans were conquered twice, and their lands and peoples replaced by Poles, and others. Nowadays the people in former East Prussia are largely Polish, their culture is Polish, and their lands are under Polish jurisdiction, and so they have become Polish by right. But, we can remember.

The Holocaust was unfortunate but history would never talk about how Poles were killing ethnic Germans prior to WW2, especially being that used to be German lands.

The German refugee problem post-WWII was the biggest refugee crisis until the current Syrian crisis. My Opa wrote his master's paper on the topic, can be found here