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During World War II, expulsions were initiated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. The Germans deported 2.478 million Polish citizens from the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, [30] murdered 1.8 to 2.77 million ethnic Poles, [31] another 2.7 to 3 million Polish Jews and resettled 1.3 million ethnic Germans in their place. [32]
Refugees moving westwards in 1945. During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania (Hinterpommern), which were annexed by ...
The German state's fight during the war to destroy the Polish nation covered religious life of Poles as well. Jewish Poles were hit the worst since those who had survived the first murderous actions against them in the course of the invasion were all expelled from German-annexed Poland to German-occupied Poland.
In addition to former German citizens, their descendants and family members (usually from the marriage of an autochthon and non-autochthon) and other Polish citizens also emigrated to Germany after World War II in numbers difficult to estimate. During the 1980s, about 300,000 Poles left Poland (usually illegally) and settled in Western Germany.
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 all, about three million Poles died as a result of the German occupation, more than 10% of the pre-war population. When this is added to the three million Polish Jews who were killed as a matter of policy by the Germans, Poland lost about 22% of its population, the highest proportion of any European country in World War II. [111] [112]
Polish Matczak family among Poles expelled in 1939 from Sieradz in central Poland. The Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany during World War II was a massive operation consisting of the forced resettlement of over 1.7 million Poles from the territories of German-occupied Poland, with the aim of their Germanization (see Lebensraum) between 1939 and 1944.
The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses primarily the period from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II.Following the German–Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September.