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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 expulsion of Poles by Germany was a prolonged anti-Polish campaign of ethnic cleansing by violent and terror-inspiring means lasting nearly half a century. It began with the concept of Pan-Germanism developed in the early 19th century and culminated in the racial policy of Nazi Germany that asserted the superiority of the Aryan race.
While Generalplan Ost's settlement ambitions did not come into full effect due to the war's turn, millions of Germans, mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, were settled by the Nazis to replace Poles removed or killed during the occupation. Germany deported millions of Poles either to other territories, to concentration camps or as slave workers.
The powers represented divided Europe into spheres of influence and Poland was placed within the Soviet sphere. The Poles were also disappointed by a lack of progress regarding the resumption of Polish-Soviet diplomatic ties, an urgent issue, because the Soviet armies were moving toward Poland's 1939 frontiers. [207]
The Polish population transfers in 1944–1946 from the eastern half of prewar Poland (also known as the expulsions of Poles from the Kresy macroregion), [1] were the forced migrations of Poles toward the end and in the aftermath of World War II. These were the result of a Soviet Union policy that had been ratified by the main Allies of World ...
The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference: Winston Churchill (UK), Franklin D. Roosevelt (USA), and Joseph Stalin (USSR). Western betrayal is the view that the United Kingdom, France and the United States failed to meet their legal, diplomatic, military and moral obligations to the Czechoslovakians and Poles before, during and after World War II.
However some historians in Poland now believe that Polish war losses were at least two million ethnic Poles and three million Jews as a result of the war. [173] Another assessment, Poles as Victims of the Nazi Era, prepared by USHMM, lists 1.8 to 1.9 million ethnic Polish dead in addition to three million Polish Jews. [10]
The policy was designed to crush the Poles' will to fight and put the uprising to an end without having to commit to heavy city fighting. [98] With time, the Germans realized that atrocities only stiffened resistance and that some political solution should be found, as the thousands of men at the disposal of the German commander were unable to ...