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Lower Silesia remained German until after the Second World War, when it became part of Poland. Breslau, the principal Silesian city, became Wrocław. [20] Today, according to the Polish-German good-neighbor treaty, the two countries are obliged to assume joint responsibility for goods representing cultural heritage. [21] [clarification needed]
The Austrians wanted to incorporate Congress Poland into their territory of Galicia, so even before the war they allowed nationalist organisations to form there (for example, Związek Strzelecki). The Russians recognized the Polish right to autonomy and allowed formation of the Polish National Committee , which supported the Russian side.
The fortress Ordensburg Marienburg in Malbork, founded in 1274, the world's largest brick castle and the Teutonic Order's headquarters on the river Nogat.. The medieval German Ostsiedlung (literally Settling eastwards), also known as the German eastward expansion or East colonization refers to the expansion of German culture, language, states, and settlements to vast regions of Northeastern ...
Poland regained its independence as the Second Polish Republic in 1918 after World War I, but lost it in World War II through occupation by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Poland lost over six million citizens in World War II, emerging several years later as the socialist People's Republic of Poland within the Eastern Bloc , under strong ...
Ethnic German citizens from pre-war Poland, who collaborated with the German occupiers, were considered "traitors of the nation" and sentenced to forced labor. [72] In territories that belonged to Poland before the war, Germans were treated even more harshly than in the former German territories. [73]
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.
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.
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.