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The history of Germans in Poland dates back almost a millennium. Poland was at one point Europe's most multiethnic state during the medieval period. Its territory covered an immense plain with no natural boundaries, with a thinly scattered population of many ethnic groups, including the Poles themselves, Germans in the cities of West Prussia ...
In the 16th century, after the Counter-Reformation was launched and the Thirty Years War broke out in the German lands, Poland became a Roman Catholic stronghold. In 1683, the Polish army commanded by Polish king John III Sobieski helped to relieve the siege of Vienna and along with the Holy Roman Empire, ended the growing expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe.
Following the partitions, the Prussian authorities started the policy of settling German speaking ethnic groups in these areas. Frederick the Great, in an effort to populate his sparsely populated kingdom, settled around 300,000 colonists in all provinces of Prussia, most of which were of a German ethnic background, and aimed at a removal of the Polish nobility, which he treated with contempt.
The historic German-Polish contact zone, which extended through Upper Silesia, and then roughly along the German-Polish border of 1937 and, in addition, through southern East Prussia, was dissolved in the wake of the Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II. [36]
Bloody Sunday (German: Bromberger Blutsonntag; Polish: Krwawa niedziela) was a sequence of violent events that took place in Bydgoszcz (German: Bromberg), a Polish city with a sizable German minority, between 3 and 4 September 1939, during the German invasion of Poland.
In the course of the Ostsiedlung in the medieval period, Germans had settled in the region, especially in the western parts. Beginning in the 18th century there were several attempts at German colonisation, the first by the Prussian ruler Frederick the Great, who settled around 300,000 colonists in the Eastern provinces of Prussia, and simultaneously aimed to reduce Polish ownership of land.
Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the occupation of Poland by German forces, the Nazi regime attempted to destroy Polish culture. [97] As part of that policy, the Nazis confiscated Polish national heritage assets and much private property.
Unlike Danzig, Gdynia was in the direct possession of Poland and soon became the so-called "Polish outside window". Due to a German-Polish customs war between 1925 and 1934, Poland became focused on international trade; for example, a new railway line was built to connect Silesia with the coast and the new tariffs made it cheaper to send goods ...