1.
Oder
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The Oder is a river in Central Europe. It rises in the Czech Republic and flows through western Poland, the river ultimately flows into the Szczecin Lagoon north of Szczecin and then into three branches that empty into the Gulf of Pomerania of the Baltic Sea. Ptolemy knew the modern Oder as the Συήβος – a name derived from the Suebi. While he also refers to an outlet in the area as the Οὐιαδούα Ouiadoua, the name Suebos may be preserved in the modern name of the Świna river – an outlet from the Szczecin Lagoon to the Baltic. In the Old Church Slavonic language, the name of the river is Vjodr, the Oder is 854 kilometres long,112 km in the Czech Republic,742 km in Poland and is the second longest river in Poland. It drains a basin of 118,861 square kilometres,106,056 km2 of which are in Poland,7,217 km2 in the Czech Republic, channels connect it to the Havel, Spree, Vistula system and Kłodnica. It flows through Silesian, Opole, Lower Silesian, Lubusz, and West Pomeranian voivodeships of Poland, the main branch empties into the Szczecin Lagoon near Police, Poland. The Szczecin Lagoon is bordered on the north by the islands of Usedom, between these two islands, there is only a narrow channel going to the Bay of Pomerania, which forms a part of the Baltic Sea. The largest city on the Oder is Wrocław, in Lower Silesia, the Oder is navigable over a large part of its total length, as far upstream as the town of Koźle, where the river connects to the Gliwice Canal. The upstream part of the river is canalized and permits larger barges to navigate between the sites around the Wrocław area. Further downstream the river is flowing, passing the towns of Eisenhüttenstadt. Downstream of Frankfurt the river Warta forms a connection with Poznań. At Hohensaaten the Oder–Havel Canal connects with the Berlin waterways again, near its mouth the Oder reaches the city of Szczecin, a major maritime port. The river finally reaches the Baltic Sea through the Szczecin Lagoon, the river in Germania Magna was known to the Romans as the Viadrus or Viadua in Classical Latin, as it was a branch of the Amber Road from the Baltic Sea to the Roman Empire. In German language it was and is called the Oder, written in older records as Odera or Oddera in Medieval Latin documents and it was mentioned in the Dagome iudex, which described territory of the Duchy of Poland under Mieszko I of Poland ca. 990, as a part of western frontier. Before Slavs settled along its banks, Oder was an important trade route, a document of the Bishopric of Prague mentions Zlasane, Trebovyane, Poborane, and Dedositze in Silesia. In the 13th century, the first dams were built to protect agricultural lands, the Finow Canal, built for the first time in 1605, connects Oder and Havel
2.
Territorial evolution of Germany
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The territorial changes of Germany include all changes in the borders and territory of Germany from its formation in 1871 to the present. Modern Germany was formed in 1871 when Otto von Bismarck unified most of the German states, with the exception of Austria. After the First World War Germany lost about 10% of its territory to its neighbours and this republic included territories to the east of todays German borders. The period of Nazi rule from the 1930s through the end of the Second World War brought significant territorial losses for the country, Nazi Germany initially expanded the countrys territory dramatically and conquered most of Europe, though not all areas were added to Germany proper. The Nazis fortunes changed after the failure of the invasion of Soviet Union, the Nazi regime eventually collapsed, and the Allies occupied Germany. The former eastern territories of Germany were ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union, in the west, the Saar area formed a French-controlled protectorate with limited autonomy, but its own citizenship laws. With the onset of the Cold War, the part of Germany was unified as the Trizone. Western-occupied West Berlin declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 but was denied by the occupying powers, the Soviet zone, including the Soviet sector of Berlin, became the communist German Democratic Republic in October the same year. Effective 1 January 1957 the Saar Protectorate declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany, part of the motivation behind the territorial changes is based on historical events in Germany and Western Europe. Migrations that took place more than a millennium led to pockets of Germans living throughout Central. The existence of these enclaves was sometimes used by German nationalists, such as the Nazis, the territorial changes of Germany after World War II can be interpreted in the context of the evolution of global nationalism and European nationalism. The latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century saw the rise of nationalism in Europe, previously, a country consisted largely of whatever peoples lived on the land that was under the dominion of a particular ruler. As principalities and kingdoms grew through conquest and marriage, a ruler could wind up with different ethnicities under his dominion. The concept of nationalism was based on the idea of a people who shared a bond through race, religion, language. Furthermore, nationalism asserted that people had a right to its own state. Many interior conflicts were a result of more or less pressurising citizens of alternative ethnicities and/or other native languages to assimilate to the ethnicity dominant in the state, switzerland was the bright exception showing that patriotism only needs civic pride and legal equality, not a common native language. Much conflict would arise when one nation asserted territorial rights to land outside its borders on the basis of a bond with the people living on the land. Yet another source of conflict was the desire of some nations to expel people from territory within its borders because people did not share a bond with the majority of people of that nation
3.
Treaty of Versailles
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The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers and it was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I signed separate treaties, although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919 and this article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, in 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently, although it is often referred to as the Versailles Conference, only the actual signing of the treaty took place at the historic palace. Most of the negotiations were in Paris, with the Big Four meetings taking place generally at the Quai dOrsay, the First World War was fought across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Countries beyond the war zones were also affected by the disruption of trade, finance. In 1917, two revolutions occurred within the Russian Empire, which led to the collapse of the Imperial Government, the American war aim was to detach the war from nationalistic disputes and ambitions after the Bolshevik disclosure of secret treaties between the Allies. The existence of these treaties tended to discredit Allied claims that Germany was the power with aggressive ambitions. On 8 January 1918, United States President Woodrow Wilson issued a statement that became known as the Fourteen Points and this speech outlined a policy of free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination. After the Central Powers launched Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front and this treaty ended the war between Russia and the Central powers and annexed 1,300,000 square miles of territory and 62 million people. During the autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse, desertion rates within the German army began to increase, and civilian strikes drastically reduced war production. On the Western Front, the Allied forces launched the Hundred Days Offensive, sailors of the Imperial German Navy at Kiel mutinied, which prompted uprisings in Germany, which became known as the German Revolution. The German government tried to obtain a settlement based on the Fourteen Points. Following negotiations, the Allied powers and Germany signed an armistice, the terms of the armistice called for an immediate evacuation of German troops from occupied Belgium, France, and Luxembourg within fifteen days. In addition, it established that Allied forces would occupy the Rhineland, in late 1918, Allied troops entered Germany and began the occupation. Both the German Empire and Great Britain were dependent on imports of food and raw materials, primarily from the Americas, the Blockade of Germany was a naval operation conducted by the Allied Powers to stop the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs reaching the Central Powers
4.
Silesian Uprisings
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In the latter-day history of Poland after World War II, the insurrections were celebrated as centrepieces of national pride. Much of Silesia had belonged to the Polish Crown in medieval times, frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia from Maria Theresa of Austria in 1742 in the War of Austrian Succession, after which it became a part of Prussia and in 1871 the German Empire. Although the province had by now become overwhelmingly German speaking, a large Polish minority remained in Upper Silesia, Upper Silesia was bountiful in mineral resources and heavy industry, with mines and iron and steel mills. The Silesian mines were responsible for almost a quarter of Germanys annual output of coal,81 percent of its zinc and 34 percent of its lead, the area in Upper Silesia east of the Oder was dominated by ethnic Poles, most of whom were working class. Most spoke a dialect of Polish, but many felt they were a Slavic group of their own called Silesians. In contrast, most of the middle and upper classes – the landowners, businessmen, factory owners, local government, police. There was a division along religious lines. The German Silesians were almost all Protestant, while the Polish Silesians were invariably Roman Catholic, in the German census of 1900, 65% of the population of the eastern part of Silesia was recorded as Polish speaking, which decreased to 57% in 1910. This was partly a result of forced Germanization, but was due to the creation of a bilingual category. The Treaty of Versailles had ordered a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should be a part of Germany or Poland. Thus the plebiscite took place in all of Upper Silesia, including the predominantly Polish-speaking areas in the east, the Upper Silesian plebiscite was to be conducted on March 20,1921. In the meantime, the German administration and police remained in place, meanwhile, propaganda and strong arm tactics by both sides led to increasing unrest. The German authorities warned that those voting for Poland might forfeit their jobs, pro-Polish activists argued that, under Polish rule, Silesian Poles would no longer be discriminated against. Poland also promised to honour their German state social benefits, such as the old age pensions, however, many German Army veterans joined the Freikorps, a paramilitary organization whose troops fought any pro-Polish activists. The pro-Poland side employed the Polish Military Organisation – a secret military organisation, eventually, the deteriorating situation resulted in Upper Silesian Uprisings conducted by Poles in 1919 and 1920. The right to vote was granted to all aged 20 and older who either had been born in or lived in the plebiscite area, a result was the mass migration of both Germans and Poles. The German newcomers accounted for 179,910, the Polish newcomers numbering over 10,000, without these new voters, the pro-German vote would have had a majority of 58,336 instead of the final 228,246. The plebiscite took place as arranged on March 20, two days after the signing of the Treaty of Riga, which ended the Polish–Soviet War of 1919/1920, a total of 707,605 votes were cast for Germany and 479,359 for Poland
5.
Polish Corridor
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The Free City of Danzig was separate from both Poland and Germany. A similar territory, also referred to as a corridor, had been connected to the Polish Crown as part of Royal Prussia during the period 1466–1772. Internationally the term was used in the English language already as early as March 1919 and whatever its origins, the equivalent German term is Polnischer Korridor. Polish names include korytarz polski and korytarz gdański, however, reference to the region as a corridor came to be regarded as offensive by interwar Polish diplomats. Among the harshest critics of the corridor was Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck. The word corridor is an idea, as this land has been Polish for centuries. Poles would commonly refer to the region as Pomorze Gdańskie or simply Pomorze, or as województwo pomorskie, in the 10th century, Pomerelia was settled by Slavic Pomeranians, ancestors of the Kashubians, who were subdued by Boleslaw I of Poland. In the 11th century, they created an independent duchy, in 1116/1121, Pomerania was again conquered by Poland. In 1138, following the death of Duke Bolesław III, Poland was fragmented into several semi-independent principalities, the Samborides, principes in Pomerelia, gradually evolved into independent dukes, who ruled the duchy until 1294. Before Pomerelia regained independence in 1227, their dukes were vassals of Poland, since 1308, following succession wars between Poland and Brandenburg, Pomerelia was subjugated by the Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. In 1466, with the second Peace of Thorn, Pomerelia became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as a part of autonomous Royal Prussia. After the First Partition of Poland in 1772 it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia and named West Prussia, and became a constituent part of the new German Empire in 1871. Thus the Polish Corridor was not a new creation, the territory assigned to Poland had been an integral part of Poland prior to 1772. After the First World War, Poland was to be re-established as an independent state, since a Polish state had not existed since the Congress of Vienna, the future republics territory had to be defined. Giving Poland access to the sea was one of the proposed by United States President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points of 1918. The following arguments were behind the creation of the corridor, Ethnic situation was one of the reasons for returning the area to the restored Poland, the majority of the population in the area was Polish. The Prussian census of 1910 showed that there were 528,000 Poles in the region compared with 385,000 Germans, … It is only fair that the claim of the river-basin should prevail against that of the seaboard. The Poles held the view that without direct access to the Baltic Sea, around 60. 5% of Polish import trade and 55. 1% of exports went through the area
6.
Remilitarization of the Rhineland
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The remilitarization of the Rhineland by the German Army took place on 7 March 1936 when German military forces entered the Rhineland. If a violation in any manner whatsoever of this Article took place, the Locarno Treaties, signed in October 1925 by Germany, France, Italy and Britain, stated that the Rhineland should continue its demilitarized status permanently. Locarno was regarded as important as it was a voluntary German acceptance of the Rhinelands demilitarized status as opposed to the diktat of Versailles, the Versailles Treaty also stipulated that the Allied military forces would withdraw from the Rhineland in 1935, although they actually withdrew in 1930. Henderson persuaded the skeptical French Premier, Aristide Briand, to accept the proposal that all Allied occupation forces would evacuate the Rhineland by June 1930, the last British soldiers left in late 1929 and the last French soldiers left in June 1930. It was the fear that the French would take this step that had deterred successive Weimar governments from attempting any overt breaches of Part V and VI of Versailles, which had disarmed Germany. Once the last French soldiers left the Rhineland in June 1930, it could no longer play its collateral role, the Maginot Line in its turn lessened the importance of the Rhinelands demilitarized status from a French security viewpoint. An additional problem in Franco-Soviet relations was the Russian debt issue, the question of the Russian debt repudiation and compensation for French businesses affected by Soviet nationalisation policies were to poison Franco-Soviet relations until the early 1930s. The centerpiece of interwar French diplomacy had been the cordon sanitaire in Eastern Europe, to this end, France had signed treaties of alliance with Poland in 1921, Czechoslovakia in 1924, Romania in 1926 and Yugoslavia in 1927. The cordon sanitaire states were intended as a replacement for Imperial Russia as Frances chief eastern ally. The states of the cordon sanitaire emerged as an area of French political, military, economic and cultural influence. As regards Germany, it had always been assumed by the states of the cordon sanitaire that if Germany should attack any of them, France would respond by beginning an offensive into western Germany. Amongst British decision-makers, the idea of the commitment of sending a large army to fight on the European mainland against Germany was never explicitly rejected. The memory of the losses taken in the Great War had led many to see the continental commitment of 1914 as a serious mistake. At most, Britain was willing to make only limited security commitments in Western Europe, in 1925, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Austen Chamberlain had famously stated in public at the Locarno conference that the Polish Corridor was not worth the bones of a single British grenadier. As such, Chamberlain declared that Britain would not guarantee the German-Polish border on the grounds that the Polish Corridor should be returned to Germany, one of the main British aims at Locarno was to create a situation where Germany could pursue territorial revisionism in Eastern Europe peacefully. The British viewpoint was that if Franco-German relations improved, France would gradually abandon the cordon sanitaire, in March 1933, the German Defence Minister, General Werner von Blomberg had plans drawn up for remilitarization. General Ludwig Becks memo of March 1935 on the need for Germany to secure Lebensraum in Eastern Europe had accepted that remilitarization should take place as soon it was diplomatically possible. In general, it was believed by German military, diplomatic, the change of regime in Germany in 1933 did cause alarm in London, but there was considerable uncertainty about what Hitler’s long term intentions were
7.
Anschluss
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Anschluss is the term used to describe the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938. German spelling, until the German orthography reform of 1996, was Anschluß, the idea of an Anschluss began after the Unification of Germany excluded Austria and the Austrian Germans from the Prussian-dominated German nation-state in 1871. Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938, there had been several years of pressure from supporters in Austria and Germany for the Heim ins Reich movement. Earlier, Nazi Germany had provided support for the Austrian National Socialist Party in its bid to seize power from Austrias Fatherland Front government. Infuriated, on 11 March, Adolf Hitler threatened invasion of Austria, and demanded Chancellor von Schuschniggs resignation, Hitlers plan was for Seyss-Inquart to call immediately for German troops to rush to Austrias aid, restoring order and giving the invasion an air of legitimacy. In the face of threat, Schuschnigg informed Seyss-Inquart that the plebiscite would be cancelled. Nevertheless, the German Führer underestimated his opposition, Schuschnigg did resign on the evening of 11 March, but President Wilhelm Miklas refused to appoint Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. At 8,45 pm, Hitler, tired of waiting, around 10 pm, a forged telegram was sent in Seyss-Inquarts name asking for German troops, since he was not yet Chancellor and was unable to do so himself. Seyss-Inquart was not installed as Chancellor until after midnight, when Miklas resigned himself to the inevitable, clearly it was Hitler, and not Schuschnigg, who was terrified by the potential results of the scheduled plebiscite, and that was the best indication of where Austrians loyalty lay. The newly installed Nazis, within two days, transferred power to Germany, and Wehrmacht troops entered Austria to enforce the Anschluss, Austrian citizens of Jewish origin were not allowed to vote. No military confrontation took place, and even the strongest voices against the annexation, particularly Fascist Italy, France, the loudest verbal protest was voiced by the government of Mexico. Although Austria had never been a part of the German Empire, Austria was predominantly ethnically German, prior to annexing Austria in 1938, Nazi Germany had remilitarized the Rhineland, and the Saar region was returned to Germany after 15 years of occupation through a plebiscite. In March 1939, Hitler then dismantled Czechoslovakia by recognising the independence of Slovakia and that same year, Memelland was returned from Lithuania. With the Anschluss, the Republic of Austria ceased to exist as an independent state, at the end of World War II, a Provisional Austrian Government under Karl Renner was set up by conservatives, social democrats and communists on 27 April 1945. It cancelled the Anschluss the same day and was recognized by the Allies in the following months. In 1955 the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, the idea of grouping all Germans into a nation-state country had been the subject of debate in the 19th century from the ending of the Holy Roman Empire until the ending of the German Confederation. Austria had wanted a Großdeutsche Lösung, whereby the German states would be united under the leadership of the Austrian Germans and this solution would include all the German states, but Prussia would have to take second place. This controversy, called dualism, dominated Prusso-Austrian diplomacy and the politics of the German states, by 1871, the decision was to form a kleindeutsch German Empire based on Prussia and excluding Austria
8.
Munich Agreement
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The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. Today, it is regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Germany. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of the Sudetenland in the face of demands made by Adolf Hitler. The agreement was signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Sudetenland was of immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia, as most of its border defenses, and banks were situated there, as well as heavy industrial districts. Part of the borderland was invaded and annexed by Poland, the phrase Munich Betrayal is also used because the military alliance Czechoslovakia had with France and Britain proved useless and also known because of the phrase About us, without us. This phrase is most hurtful for people of Czechoslovakia, Today the document is typically referred to simply as the Munich Pact. In Germany the Sudeten crisis led to the so-called Oster Conspiracy, from 1918 to 1938, after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, more than 3 million ethnic Germans were living in the Czech part of the newly created state of Czechoslovakia. Sudeten German pro-Nazi leader Konrad Henlein founded the Sudeten German Party that served as the branch of the Nazi Party for the Sudetenland. By 1935, the SdP was the second largest political party in Czechoslovakia as German votes concentrated on this party while Czech, on 24 April, the SdP issued a series of demands upon the government of Czechoslovakia, that were known as the Carlsbad Program. Among the demands, Henlein demanded autonomy for Germans living in Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovakian government responded by saying that it was willing to provide more minority rights to the German minority but it refused to grant them autonomy. As the previous appeasement of Hitler had shown, the governments of both France and Britain were intent on avoiding war, the French government did not wish to face Germany alone and took its lead from the British government of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain considered the Sudeten German grievances justified and believed Hitlers intentions were limited, both Britain and France, therefore, advised Czechoslovakia to concede to Germanys demands. Beneš resisted and on 19 May initiated a partial mobilization in response to possible German invasion, while recognizing that this would still be insufficient for a full-scale naval war with Britain, Hitler hoped it would be a sufficient deterrent. Ten days later, Hitler signed a directive for war against Czechoslovakia. On 22 May, Juliusz Łukasiewicz, the Polish ambassador to France, told the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet that if France moved against Germany in defense of Czechoslovakia, Łukasiewicz also told Bonnet that Poland would oppose any attempt by Soviet forces to defend Czechoslovakia from Germany. Daladier told Jakob Surits, the Soviet ambassador to France, Not only can we not count on Polish support but we have no faith that Poland will not strike us in the back. Hitlers adjutant, Fritz Wiedemann, recalled after the war that he was shocked by Hitlers new plans to attack Britain. In the meantime, the British government demanded that Beneš request a mediator, Not wishing to sever his governments ties with Western Europe, Beneš reluctantly accepted
9.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
10.
German Question
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The German Question was a debate in the 19th century, especially during the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve the unification of Germany. From 1815–1866, about 37 independent German-speaking states existed within the German Confederation, the Großdeutsche Lösung favored unifying all German-speaking peoples under one state, and was promoted by the Austrian Empire and its supporters. The Kleindeutsche Lösung sought only to unify the northern German states and did not include Austria, the solutions are also referred to by the names of the states they proposed to create, Kleindeutschland and Großdeutschland. Both movements were part of a growing German nationalism, there is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit. Despite its later name affix of the German Nation, the Holy Roman Empire had never been a nation state, instead its rulers over the centuries had to cope with a continuous loss of authority to its constituent Imperial States. The many small city-states splintered, meanwhile, in the 18th century the Holy Roman Empire consisted of over 1800 separate territories governed by distinct authorities. This German dualism phenomenon at first culminated in the War of the Austrian Succession and outlasted the French Revolution, facing the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the ruling House of Habsburg proclaimed the Austrian Empire in the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy instead, retaining the imperial title. While a number of factors swayed allegiances in the debate, the most prominent was religion, the Großdeutsche Lösung would have implied a dominant position for Catholic Austria, the largest and most powerful German state of the early 19th century. As a result, Catholics and Austria-friendly states usually favored Großdeutschland, a unification of Germany led by Prussia would mean the domination of the new state by the Protestant House of Hohenzollern, a more palatable option to Protestant northern German states. Another complicating factor was the Austrian Empires inclusion of a number of non-Germans, such as Hungarians, Romanians, Croats. The Austrians were reluctant to enter a unified Germany if it meant giving up their non-German speaking territories, in 1848, German liberals and nationalists united in revolution, forming the Frankfurt Parliament. The Greater German movement within this National Assembly demanded the unification of all German-populated lands into one nation, in general, the left favored a republican Großdeutsche Lösung, whereas the liberal center favored the Kleindeutsche Lösung with a constitutional monarchy. Those supporting the Großdeutsche position argued that since the Habsburgs had ruled the Holy Roman Empire for 400 years, however, Austria posed a problem because the Habsburgs ruled large chunks of non-German-speaking territory. The largest such area was the Kingdom of Hungary, which included large Slovak, Romanian. The Czech politician František Palacký explicitly rejected the mandate to the Frankfurt assembly. Thus, some members of the assembly and namely Prussia promoted the Kleindeutsche Lösung and they argued that Prussia, as the only Great Power with a predominantly German-speaking population, should lead the unified Germany. Yet, the constitution provided for the possibility for Austria to join without its non-German possessions later
11.
Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
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The rest of Nazi occupied Poland was renamed as the General Government district. The annexation was part of the partition of Poland by Nazi Germany. Some smaller territories were incorporated directly into the existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia, while the bulk of the land was used to create new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia, of those, Reichsgau Wartheland was the largest and the only one comprising solely the annexed territory. The official term used by the Nazi authorities for these areas was the incorporated Eastern territories and they planned for a complete Germanization of the annexed territories, considering them part of their lebensraum. The local Polish population was to be enslaved, exterminated. The Polish elite especially became subject to murder, and an estimated 780,000 Poles were subject to expulsion. The remaining Polish population was segregated from the German population. These included forced labour and their exclusion from all political and many aspects of society. After Vistula-Oder offensive in early 1945, the Soviet Union took control over the territories, the ethnic German population either fled the Red Army or were later expelled and the territories became part of the Peoples Republic of Poland. Already in the fall of 1933 Adolf Hitler revealed to his closest associates his intentions to annex western Poland into an envisioned Greater Germany. After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Third Reich, the remainder of the Polish territory was either annexed by the Soviet Union or made into the German-controlled General Government occupation zone. A tiny portion of pre-war Poland was annexed by Nazi Slovakia, since 1935, Nazi Germany was divided into provinces which had replaced the former German states and Prussian provinces. Of the territories annexed, some were attached to the already existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia, while from others new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia, Wartheland was the only Gau constituted solely from annexed territory, Danzig-West Prussia comprised also former German areas and the former Free City of Danzig. The occupied General Government remained outside the Third Reich, Nazi Germanys officials discussed the convention and tried to circumvent it by declaring the war against Poland over prior to the annexation, which in their view made the convention non-applicable. Based on laws of 21 May 1935 and 1 June 1938, Hitler appointed Arthur Greiser to become the CdZ of the Posen military district, and Danzigs Gauleiter Albert Forster to become the CdZ of the West Prussian military district. Frank was at the time appointed supreme chief administrator for all occupied territories. A decree issued by Hitler on 8 October 1939, provided for the annexation of western Polish areas, a separate by-law stipulated the inclusion of the area around Suwalki. These government regions were named after the German language names of their cities, Hohensalza, Posen, Kalisch, Bromberg, Danzig
12.
Tehran Conference
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The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943. It was held in the Soviet Unions embassy in Tehran, Iran and it was the first of the World War II conferences of the Big Three Allied leaders. It closely followed the Cairo Conference which had taken place on 22–26 November 1943, although the three leaders arrived with differing objectives, the main outcome of the Tehran Conference was the Western Allies commitment to open a second front against Nazi Germany. The conference also addressed the Allies relations with Turkey and Iran, operations in Yugoslavia and against Japan, a separate protocol signed at the conference pledged the Big Three to recognize Irans independence. As soon as the German-Soviet war broke out in June 1941, Churchill offered assistance to the Soviets, and an agreement to this effect was signed on 12 July 1941. Delegations had traveled between London and Moscow to arrange the implementation of this support and when the United States joined the war in December 1941, a Combined Chiefs of Staff committee was created to coordinate British and American operations as well as their support to the Soviet Union. There was the question of opening a second front to alleviate the German pressure on the Soviet Red Army on the Eastern Front, the question of mutual assistance. Also, neither the United States nor Britain were prepared to give Stalin a free hand in Eastern Europe and, lastly, communications regarding these matters between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin took place by telegrams and via emissaries—but it was evident that direct negotiations were urgently needed. Stalin was reluctant to leave Moscow and was unwilling to risk journeys by air, while Roosevelt was physically disabled, in order to arrange this urgently needed meeting, Roosevelt tried to persuade Stalin to travel to Cairo. Stalin turned down this offer and also offers to meet in Baghdad or Basra, the conference was to convene at 16,00 on 28 November 1943. Stalin arrived well before, followed by Roosevelt, brought in his wheelchair from his accommodation adjacent to the venue, Roosevelt, who had traveled 7,000 miles to attend and whose health was already deteriorating, was met by Stalin. This was the first time that they had met, Churchill, walking with his general staff from their accommodations nearby, arrived half an hour later. The U. S. and Great Britain wanted to secure the cooperation of the Soviet Union in defeating Germany, Stalin pressed for a revision of Poland’s eastern border with the Soviet Union to match the line set by British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon in 1920. In order to compensate Poland for the loss of territory. This decision was not formally ratified, however, until the Potsdam Conference of 1945, the leaders then turned to the conditions under which the Western Allies would open a new front by invading northern France, as Stalin had pressed them to do since 1941. It was agreed Overlord would occur by May 1944, Stalin agreed to support it by launching a concurrent major offensive on Germanys eastern front to divert German forces from northern France, Iran and Turkey were discussed in detail. In addition, the Soviet Union was required to support to Turkey if that country entered the war. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed that it would also be most desirable if Turkey entered on the Allies side before the year was out, despite accepting the above arrangements, Stalin dominated the conference
13.
Yalta Conference
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The conference convened in the Livadia Palace near Yalta in Crimea, USSR. The goal of conference was to shape a post-war peace that represented not just a collective security order, the meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. Within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, to a degree, it has remained controversial. Yalta was the second of three wartime conferences among the Big Three and it had been preceded by the Tehran Conference in 1943, and was followed by the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, which was attended by Stalin, Churchill and Harry S. Truman, Roosevelts successor. All three leaders were attempting to establish an agenda for governing post-war Germany and they wanted to keep peace between post-world war countries. On the Eastern Front, the front line at the end of December 1943 remained in the Soviet Union but, by August 1944, Soviet forces were inside Poland, by the time of the Conference, Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukovs forces were 65 km from Berlin. Stalins position at the conference was one which he felt was so strong that he could dictate terms. According to U. S. delegation member and future Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, t was not a question of what we would let the Russians do, moreover, Roosevelt hoped for a commitment from Stalin to participate in the United Nations. Stalin, insisting that his doctors opposed any long trips, rejected Roosevelts suggestion to meet at the Mediterranean and he offered instead to meet at the Black Sea resort of Yalta, in the Crimea. Stalins fear of flying also was a factor in this decision. Each leader had an agenda for the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt wanted Soviet support in the U. S, Poland was the first item on the Soviet agenda. Stalin stated that For the Soviet government, the question of Poland was one of honor, in addition, Stalin stated regarding history that because the Russians had greatly sinned against Poland, the Soviet government was trying to atone for those sins. Stalin concluded that Poland must be strong and that the Soviet Union is interested in the creation of a mighty, free, Roosevelt wanted the USSR to enter the Pacific War with the Allies. Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would enter the Pacific War three months after the defeat of Germany, Stalin pledged to Truman to keep the nationality of the Korean Peninsula intact as Soviet Union entered the war against Japan. At the time, the Red Army had occupied Poland completely, the Declaration of Liberated Europe did little to dispel the sphere of influence agreements that had been incorporated into armistice agreements. They also agreed to give France a zone of occupation, carved out of the U. S. also, the Big Three agreed that all original governments would be restored to the invaded countries and that all civilians would be repatriated. The Declaration of Liberated Europe is a declaration that was created by Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and it was a promise that allowed the people of Europe to create democratic institutions of their own choice. The declaration pledged, the earliest possible establishment through free elections governments responsive to the will of the people and this is similar to the statements of the Atlantic Charter, which says, the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live
14.
Potsdam Conference
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The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 17 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, the three powers were represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and, later, Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. The goals of the conference included the establishment of post-war order, peace treaty issues. In the five months since the Yalta Conference, a number of changes had taken place which would affect the relationships between the leaders. Firstly, the Soviet Union was occupying Central and Eastern Europe, by July, the Red Army effectively controlled the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and fearing a Stalinist take-over, refugees were fleeing from these countries. Stalin had set up a communist government in Poland and he insisted that his control of Eastern Europe was a defensive measure against possible future attacks and claimed that it was a legitimate sphere of Soviet influence. Secondly, Britain had a new Prime Minister, a general election was held in the UK on 5 July, the results of which became known during the conference, with a Labour Party majority, Labour leader Clement Attlee became the new Prime Minister. During the war and in the name of Allied unity, Roosevelt had brushed off warnings of a potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship in part of Europe, while inexperienced in foreign affairs, Truman had closely followed the allied progress of the war. With the end of the war, the priority of allied unity was replaced with a new challenge, the two leading powers continued to sustain a cordial relationship to the public but suspicions and distrust lingered between them. As the suspicion grew between the two rising powers, Stalin proposed that America will use their advantage and success in order to entices other nations into expanding their U. S. policies. Truman became much more suspicious of communist moves than Roosevelt had been, Truman and his advisers saw Soviet actions in Eastern Europe as aggressive expansionism which was incompatible with the agreements Stalin had committed to at Yalta the previous February. However, the Potsdam Conference marks the first and only time Truman would ever meet Stalin in person, at the end of the conference, the three Heads of Government agreed on the following actions. All other issues were to be answered by the peace conference to be called as soon as possible. Allied Chiefs of Staff at the Potsdam Conference decided to temporarily partition Vietnam at the 16th parallel for the purposes of operational convenience. It was agreed that British forces would take the surrender of Japanese forces in Saigon for the half of Indochina. The Allies issued a statement of aims of their occupation of Germany, Germany and Austria were to be divided respectively into four occupation zones, and similarly each capital, Berlin and Vienna, was to be divided into four zones. It was agreed that the Nazi war criminals would be put to trial, all German annexations in Europe were to be reversed, including Sudetenland, Alsace-Lorraine, Austria, and the westernmost parts of Poland. Germanys eastern border was to be shifted westwards to the Oder–Neisse line, the territories east of the new border comprised East Prussia, Silesia, West Prussia, and two thirds of Pomerania
15.
Treaty of Zgorzelec
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The Treaty of Zgorzelec between the Republic of Poland and East Germany was signed on 6 July 1950 in Polish Zgorzelec, since 1945 the eastern part of the divided city of Görlitz. The agreement was signed under Soviet pressure by Otto Grotewohl, prime minister of the government of the GDR. It recognized the Oder-Neisse line implemented by the 1945 Potsdam Agreement as the border between the two states, thereby the East German government also accepted the division of Küstrin, Frankfurt, Guben and Görlitz. The treaty was worded as a declaration and was not recognised as an international treaty by West Germany insisting on its exclusive mandate. So although the treaty was binding on the two states, it was not seen by many members of the international community as such. Reunited Germany accepted the Polish annexations with the German–Polish Border Treaty, the community centre in which the treaty was signed is one of Zgorzelecs main sights and is found in a park beside the road bridge border crossing. Built in typical style, it was originally opened as Upper Lusatian memorial hall. Görlitzer Vertrag at the German-Polish Association
16.
Heligoland
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Heligoland is a small German archipelago in the North Sea. The islands were at one time Danish and later British possessions, the islands are located in the Heligoland Bight in the southeastern corner of the North Sea. They are the only German islands not in the vicinity of the mainland. They lie approximately 69 kilometres by sea from Cuxhaven at the mouth of the River Elbe, in addition to German, the local population, who are ethnic Frisians, speak the Heligolandic dialect of the North Frisian language called Halunder. Heligoland used to be called Heyligeland, or holy land, possibly due to the long association with the god Forseti. Heligoland is located 46 kilometres off the German coastline and consists of two islands, the populated triangular 1 km2 main island to the west, and the Düne to the east, Heligoland generally refers to the former island. Düne is somewhat smaller at 0.7 km2, lower and it is not permanently inhabited, but is today the location of Heligolands airport. The main island is divided into the Unterland at sea level, the Oberland consisting of the plateau visible in the photographs. The Mittelland came into being in 1947 as a result of explosions detonated by the British Royal Navy, the main island also features small beaches in the north and the south and drops to the sea 50 metres high in the north, west and southwest. In the latter, the continues to drop underwater to a depth of 56 metres below sea level. Heligolands most famous landmark is the Lange Anna, a standing rock column,47 metres high. The two islands were connected until 1720, when the connection was destroyed by a storm flood. The highest point is on the island, reaching 61 metres above sea level. Although culturally closer to North Frisia in the German district of Nordfriesland, the main island has a good harbour and is frequented mostly by sailing yachts. The climate of Heligoland is typical of a climate, being almost free of pollen. Since there is no land mass in the vicinity, temperatures drop below −5 °C even in the winter. At times, winter temperatures can be higher than in Hamburg by up to 10 °C because cold winds from Russia are weakened. While spring tends to be cool, autumn on Heligoland is often longer and warmer than on the mainland, and statistically
17.
Saar Protectorate
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The Saar Protectorate was a short-lived protectorate partitioned from Germany after its defeat in World War II, it was administered by the French Fourth Republic. On rejoining West Germany in 1957, it became the smallest area state and it is named after the Saar River. The region around the Saar River and its tributary valleys is a folded, mineral-rich, ethnically German, economically important. From 1920 to 1935, as a result of World War I, near the end of World War II it was heavily bombed by the Allies as part of their strategic bombing campaigns. Geographically, the post–World War II protectorate corresponded to the current German state of Saarland, cold War pressures for a stronger Germany allowed renewed industrialization, and the French returned control of the region to the government of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957. The region had previously occupied by France during the Napoleonic Wars. Under the Treaty of Versailles, the Saar was occupied initially by combat units from the United Kingdom and this was sanctioned by a 15-year League of Nations mandate which stationed League of Nations troops from Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom in the Saar until 1935. The Saars coal industry, the dominant industry in the region at the time, was nationalized, others favoured the third option of a continued British–French occupation government. After political agitation and maneuvering by Chancellor Adolf Hitler for the re-union of the Saarland with the German Reich it was reincorporated in 1935 and its area was not redivided among the Prussian Rhine Province and the Bavarian Palatinate, but united with the latter as the Gau of Saar-Palatinate. In 1942 it was renamed Westmark of the Reich and this renaming intended its territorial enlargement by parts of German-occupied French Lorraine which, however, did not materialise. In July 1945, two months after World War II had ended in Europe, the Allied forces were redeploying from the areas they had conquered into their zones of occupation. On 10 July 1945, US forces left the Saar and French troops established their occupational administration, although French officials deported a total of 1,820 people from the Saar in 1946 and 1947, most of these individuals ultimately were allowed to return. Unlike the Soviets, the French expulsions did not amount to ethnic cleansing, however, native Sarrois returning from Nazi-imposed removals and war-related relocations were allowed to return to the areas under French control. France aimed at winning over the Saar population for a future annexation, the principal reason for the French desire for economic control of the Saar was the large coal deposits. France was offered compensation for the return of the Saar to Germany, with effect of 20 July 1946,109 municipalities of the Prussian Rhine Province within the French zone were added to the Saar Protectorate. By 18 December 1946 customs controls were established between the Saar and allied occupied Germany. On 16 July 1947 the Saar mark replaced the Reichsmark as legal tender in the Saar Protectorate, while only French franc banknotes circulated from 1954 on, Saar franc coins, designed similar to French coins, were issued too. On 15 December 1947 the Saar was constituted by its constitution as the Saarland, on 23 March 1948 the customs union with France was confirmed, taking effect on 1 April
18.
Selfkant
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Selfkant is a municipality in the Heinsberg district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the most westerly municipality in Germany since 1919 — before and its border with the Netherlands is 27 kilometres long, while the border with the rest of Germany is only 6 kilometres long. The most important domain in Selfkant in the Middle Ages was the castle and village of Millen, the residence of the lords of Millen, in 1499 these were joined by the duke of Jülich and Millen became the seat of an Amtmann. The places Tüddern, Wehr, Süsterseel and Hillensberg belonged to the Amt Born, from 1794 to 1815 Selfkant was part of the French canton Sittard. After the Congress of Vienna it became part of the Prussian Rhine province, the border with the Netherlands which was then fixed continued to exist until shortly after the Second World War. The Dutch government appointed a country landdrost to head the board of the Tüddern office. The governing board appointed by the Germans was sent home because it was contrary to the Dutch constitution, however, as a transitional measure for ex-German territories, the German governing board retained an advisory role. At that time much was invested in things as houses. Parts of the area became Dutchified, and the Dutch influence is still present, in the Dutch period, the N274 road was built to provide a direct link between Roermond and Heerlen. Even after 1963 the road remained a narrow strip or corridor of Dutch territory with no junctions with German roads, and no passport was needed to use it. On 25 February 2002 the road was returned to Germany and in the course of 2004 connections were made with several roads, from the existing office of Tüddern the old municipalities of Havert, Hillensberg, Höngen, Millen, Süsterseel, Tüddern and Wehr were formed. Two months later, on 21 October 1963, the first municipal elections under German authority were held. The seven municipalities, with the municipality of Saeffelen from the Amt Waldfeucht, were added to the municipality Selfkant on 1 July 1969, with 233 inhabitants per km² Selfkant is considered a rural municipality. Because of the price of land the municipality is nowadays very much in demand with young families. A lot of Dutch cross the border to build their own houses there, roughly one quarter to one half of the inhabitants are Dutch. At the mayoral election of 2003 a Dutch inhabitant put himself forward as candidate, many residents are also stationed, work, or are family members of employees at the NATO Air Base in Geilenkirchen. Tüddern alone has over 30 American families with the Gem, many Canadians at the NATO base also live in Selfkant. English is quite prominent as a language to Dutch and German in the whole area
19.
Former eastern territories of Germany
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The former eastern territories of Germany are those provinces or regions east of the current eastern border of Germany which were lost by Germany after World War I and then World War II. All territories lost in both World Wars account for 33% of the former German Empire, while land ceded by Germany after World War II constituted roughly 25% of its pre-war Weimar territory. The post-war border between Germany and Poland along the Oder–Neisse line was recognized by East Germany in 1950 by the Treaty of Zgorzelec. In 1952, recognition of the Oder–Neisse line as a permanent boundary was one of Stalins conditions for the Soviet Union to agree to a reunification of Germany, the offer was rejected by West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. In 1970, West Germany recognised the line as a de facto boundary in the Treaty of Warsaw, with this repeal the post-1990 boundaries of Germany are closed to further expansion. In German there is only one term, Ostdeutschland, meaning East Germany or Eastern Germany. The rather ambiguous German term never gained prevailing use for the GDR as did the English term, since Ostdeutschland has been used to denote the post-war and the respective five states of the reunited Germany. At the time of the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, prussian territory east of the Oder-Neisse line included West Prussia and Posen, also Silesia, East Brandenburg, and Pomerania. Later, these territories would come to be called in Germany Ostgebiete des deutschen Reiches, the territories ceded to Poland in 1919 were those with an apparent Polish majority, such as the Province of Posen, the east-southern part of Upper Silesia and the Polish Corridor. The city of Danzig with the delta of the Vistula river at the Baltic Sea, was made the Free City of Danzig under the League of Nations, however, as distinct from other lost Czechoslovakian domains, it was not attached to Sudetengau but to Prussia. By late 1938, Lithuania had lost control over the situation in the Memel Territory, between the two world wars, many in Germany claimed that the territory ceded to Poland in 1919–1922 should be returned to Germany. This claim was one of the justifications for the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Third Reich annexed the former German lands, comprising the Polish Corridor, West Prussia, the Province of Posen, and parts of eastern Upper Silesia. The council of the Free City of Danzig voted to become a part of Germany again, although Poles and Jews were deprived of their voting rights, in addition to taking territories lost in 1919, Germany also took additional land that had never been German. These territories had an area of 94,000 km2 and a population of 10,000,000 people, the remainder of Polish territory was annexed by the Soviet Union or made into the German-controlled General Government occupation zone. The open question was whether the border should follow the Eastern or Lusatian Neisse rivers, and whether Stettin, originally, Germany was to retain Stettin while the Poles were to annex East Prussia with Königsberg. Eventually, however, Stalin decided that he wanted Königsberg as a warm water port for the Soviet Navy. The wartime Polish government in exile had little to say in these decisions, at the Yalta Conference, it was agreed to split Germany into four occupation zones after the war, with a quadripartite occupation of Berlin as well, prior unification of Germany. The status of Poland was discussed, but was complicated by the fact that Poland was at this time under the control of the Red Army and this effectively excluded the Polish government-in-exile that had evacuated in 1939
20.
Territorial evolution of Poland
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The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the ninth largest in Europe. The first 20th-century incarnation of Poland, the Second Polish Republic, occupied 389,720 km2, while, since 1945, the Poles are the most numerous of the West Slavs and occupy what some believe to be the original homeland of the Slavic peoples. While other groups migrated, the Polanie remained in situ along the Vistula, there is no other European nation centred to such an extent on one river. The establishment of a Polish state is identified with the adoption of Christianity by Mieszko I in 966 CE. In 1025 CE, Poland became a kingdom, in 1569, Poland cemented a long association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin, forming the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous countries in 16th-, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had many characteristics that made it unique among states of that era. This system was a precursor to the concepts of broader democracy. The two comprising states of the Commonwealth were formally equal, although in reality Poland was a dominant partner in the union, in the late 18th century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth began to collapse. Its neighbouring states were able to dismember the Commonwealth. In 1795, Polands territory was partitioned among the Kingdom of Prussia, the Russian Empire. 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 Peoples Republic of Poland within the Eastern Bloc, during the Revolutions of 1989, communist rule was overthrown and Poland became what is constitutionally known as the Third Polish Republic. Poland is a state made up of sixteen voivodeships. Poland is a member of the European Union, NATO, Poland currently has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and one of the most populous members of the European Union. Formidable foreign enemies and internal fragmentation eroded this initial structure in the 13th century, beginning with the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, the Jagiellon dynasty ruled the Polish–Lithuanian union. The Lublin Union of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as a player in European politics. In 1525, during the Protestant Reformation, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Hohenzollern, secularized the orders Prussian territory, becoming Albert and his duchy, which had its capital in Königsberg, was established as a fief of the Crown of Poland. Mieszko I of Poland was the first historical ruler of the Polans and he was responsible for the introduction and subsequent spread of Christianity in Poland
21.
Territorial changes of the Baltic states
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Territorial changes of the Baltic states refers to the redrawing of borders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after 1940. After a two-front independence war fought against both Bolshevist Russian and Baltic German nationalist forces, the countries concluded peace and border treaties with Soviet Russia in 1920 and this has been the source of political tensions after they regained their independence with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some of the disputes remain unresolved, in addition, some territories that were not controlled by the independent Baltic republics were also annexed during the Soviet era. Most notable case is Vilnius taken from Poland by the USSR to become the capital of Lithuania, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union the issue of these territories was raised by the Estonian and Latvian governments. Lithuania has never raised the question of its borders and has border treaties with all its neighbors. Only marginal political groups use the issue of borders in their political rhetoric and this is a list of actual territorial changes that happened when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were incorporated into the Soviet Union and became the Baltic Soviet Socialist Republics. All the boundaries established by these changes exist up to modern days, the Russian-Estonian boundary that used to run in the middle of Lake Peipus did not change, while the boundary south of Lake Peipus was also moved westwards. Overall, about 2000 km² of land changed hands, including Ivangorod, the town of Pechory, and areas in and around Izborsk, Lavry, and Rotovo, and the Kolpina Island in southern Lake Peipus. In the late 1944, a territory in northeastern Latvian SSR of about 1,300 square kilometers was ceded to Russian SFSR and this area includes towns of Pytalovo and four rural districts. All these areas during the interwar constituted the eastern part of the Abrene district of Latvia and they were added to Pskov Oblast of Russian SFSR. Russian-Latvian boundary in the southeastern Latvia did not change, after the annexation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union in 1940, a new eastern boundary of Lithuania was delimited. Lithuania, however, continued to claim the 1920 border as official, in 1940, when Lithuania was incorporated into the Soviet Union, a new boundary was drawn, enlarging the de facto Lithuanian territory, though not to the full extent of the republics claim. The notable gain was the city of Vilnius, which again became Lithuanias capital, the control of the Vilnius region was partitioned between the Lithuanian SSR, the Belarusian SSR and Nazi Germany. Main cities that were recognised by Soviets as a part of Lithuania by the 1920 treaty but were not added to Lithuanian SSR include Hrodna, Lida, Smarhon, Pastavy, Ašmiany, Brasłaŭ, Suwałki. In Latvia and Estonia, territories which had not belonged to the Governorate of Estonia, unlike Soviet Socialist Republics, however, imperial gubernyas were not based on ethnicity, so this historical reasoning is not accepted by Latvians and Estonians. In Lithuanias case, the detaching did not have any historical foundation and they saw a significant migration of Russian-speaking people. In some of the territories became part of Poland Lithuanian language schools existed. The territories were not returned to the Baltic states after they gained independence and remain parts of Russia, Belarus and it was assumed that the Russian-Latvian border treaty would be signed in year 2005
22.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
23.
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919)
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The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed on 10 September 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand and by the Republic of German-Austria on the other. The treaty signing ceremony took place at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, already on 21 October 1918,208 German-speaking delegates of the Austrian Imperial Council had convened in a provisional national assembly of German-Austria at the Lower Austrian Landtag. While the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Army culminated at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, in the course of the Aster Revolution on 31 October, the newly established Democratic Republic of Hungary under Minister President Mihály Károlyi declared the real union with Austria terminated. With the Armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918, the fate of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was sealed, moreover, South Tyrol and Trentino were occupied by Italian forces and Yugoslav troops entered the former Duchy of Carinthia, leading to violent fights. An Austrian Constitutional Assembly election was held on 16 February 1919, the Assembly re-elected Karl Renner state chancellor and enacted the Habsburg Law concerning the banishment of the House of Lorraine. When Chancellor Renner arrived at Saint-Germain in May 1919, he, upon an Allied ultimatum, Renner signed the treaty on 10 September. The Treaty of Trianon in June 1920 between Hungary and the Allies completed the disposition of the former Dual Monarchy, the treaty declared that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was to be dissolved. According to article 177, the Austrian side accepted responsibility for causing the war along with the Central Powers, the treaty included war reparations of large sums of money, directed towards the Allies. The Austrian Silesia province upon the Polish–Czechoslovak War of January 1919 was split between Czech Silesia and Polish Cieszyn Silesia incorporated into Silesian Voivodeship and these cessions concerned a large German-speaking population in German Bohemia and Sudetenland. The former Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, made up of the territory the Habsburg Monarchy had annexed in the 1772 First Partition of Poland, the adjacent Bukovina in the east passed to the Kingdom of Romania. Also Bosnia and Herzegovina was given to it, austria-Hungarys only overseas possession, its concession in Tianjin, was turned over to China. Burgenland, i. e. the predominantly German-speaking western parts of the Hungarian counties of Moson, Sopron, the affiliation of the Southern Carinthian territory with its Slovene-speaking share of population was to be decided in a Carinthian Plebiscite. Accordingly, the new republics initial self-chosen name of German-Austria had to be changed to Austria, many Austrians would come to find this term harsh, due to Austrias later economic weakness, which was caused by loss of land. The economic weakness of Austria would later lead to support for the idea of Anschluss with Nazi Germany, conscription was abolished and the Austrian Army was limited to a force of 30,000 volunteers. There were numerous provisions dealing with Danubian navigation, the transfer of railways, for a time, the countrys very unity was called into question. Unlike its former Hungarian partner, Austria had never been a nation in the sense of the word. While the Austrian state had existed in one form or another for over 700 years, it had no unifying force other than loyalty to the Habsburgs
24.
Peace of Riga
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The Peace of Riga, also known as the Treaty of Riga, Polish, Traktat Ryski was signed in Riga on 18 March 1921, between Poland, Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine. The treaty ended the Polish–Soviet War, the Soviet-Polish borders established by the treaty remained in force until the Second World War. They were later redrawn during the Yalta Conference and Potsdam Conference, World War I removed former imperial borders across Europe. The Polish-Soviet War ensued, culminating in the Polish victory in the Battle of Warsaw, Peace talks began in Minsk on 17 August 1920, but as the Polish counter-offensive drew near, the talks were moved to Riga, and resumed on 21 September. The Soviets proposed two solutions, the first on 21 September and the second on the 28th, the Polish delegation made a counter-offer on 2 October. Three days later the Soviets offered amendments to the Polish offer, an armistice was signed on 12 October and went into effect on 18 October 1920. The chief negotiators were Jan Dąbski for Poland and Adolph Joffe for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Soviet side insisted, successfully, on excluding non-communist Ukrainian representatives from the negotiations. Due to their military setbacks, the Soviet delegation offered Poland substantial territorial concessions in the border areas. However, to observers, it looked like the Polish side was conducting the Riga talks as if Poland had lost the war. The Polish delegation was dominated by members of the National Democrat movement and this decision was also motivated by political objectives. The National Democrats base of support was among Poles in central. In the east of the country and in the disputed borderlands, so a border too far to the east was not just against the National Democrats ideological objective of minimising the minority population of Poland, but would also be an electoral disadvantage to them. War-weary public opinion in Poland also favoured an end to the negotiations, pressured by the National Democrat ideologue, Stanisław Grabski, the 100 km of extra territory was rejected, a victory for the nationalist doctrine and a stark defeat for Piłsudskis federalism. Regardless, the negotiations dragged on for months due to Soviet reluctance to sign. As a result of this situation, Lenin ordered the Soviet plenipotentiaries to finalise the treaty with Poland. The Peace of Riga was signed on 18 March 1921, partitioning the disputed territories in Belarus, the Treaty consisted of 26 articles. Poland was to receive compensation for its economic input into the Russian Empire during the Partitions of Poland. Under Article 14 Poland was also to receive railway materials with a value of 29 million gold roubles, Russia was to surrender works of art and other Polish national treasures acquired from Polish territories after 1772
25.
Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union
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Most of these territories remained within the Soviet Union in 1945 as a consequence of European-wide territorial rearrangements configured during the Tehran Conference of 1943. Poland was compensated for this loss with the prewar German eastern territories much of which had been devastated during the war. Communist Poland described the territories as the Recovered Territories, the post-World War II territory of Poland was significantly smaller than the pre-1939 land areas, shrinking by some 77,000 square kilometres. Early in the morning of August 24,1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a 10-year non-aggression pact, in the North, Finland, Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its political rearrangement—the areas east of the Narev, Vistula, much of this rural territory had its own significant local non-Polish majority. Lithuania, adjacent to East Prussia, would be in the German sphere of influence, according to the secret protocol, Lithuania would retrieve its historical capital Vilnius, subjugated during the inter-war period by Poland. The Polish–Soviet border, as of 1939, had determined in 1921 at the Treaty of Riga peace talks. The total area, including the area given to Lithuania, was 201,015 square kilometres, with a population of 13.299 million, of which 5.274 million were ethnic Poles and 1.109 million were Jews. An additional 138,000 ethnic Poles and 198,000 Jews fled the German occupied zone, Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly acquired areas. The Soviets organized staged elections, the result of which was to become a legitimization of Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as a crime against revolution and counter-revolutionary activity, and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish citizens. During the initial Soviet invasion of Poland, between 230,000 to 450,000 Poles were taken as prisoner, some of whom were executed. NKVD officers conducted lengthy interrogations of the prisoners in camps that were, in effect and this became known as the Katyn massacre. During 1939–19411.450 million of the people inhabiting the region were deported by the Soviet regime, of whom 63. 1% were Poles, previously it was believed that about 1. Territories around Wilno annexed by Poland in 1920, were transferred to Lithuania on the basis of Lithuania-Soviet Union agreement, Other northern territories were attached to Belastok Voblast, Hrodna Voblast, Navahrudak Voblast, Pinsk Voblast and Vileyka Voblast in Byelorussian SSR. The territories to the south were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR, Drohobych Oblast, Lviv Oblast, Rivne Oblast, Stanislav Oblast, Tarnopil Oblast and these areas were conquered by Nazi Germany in 1941 during Operation Barbarossa. During 1943–1944 ethnic cleansing took place in Ukraine which brought about an estimated 100,000 deaths. The Polish and Jewish language population of the regions in 1939 totaled about 6.7 million, during the war, an estimated 2 million persons perished. These numbers are included with Polish war losses,2 million became refugees to Poland or the West,1.5 million were in the territories returned to Poland in 1945 and 1.2 million remained in the USSR
26.
Kresy
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Administratively, the territory of Kresy was composed of voivodeships of Lwów, Nowogródek, Polesie, Stanisławów, Tarnopol, Wilno, Wołyń, and the Białystok. Today, these territories are divided between Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and south-eastern Lithuania, with major cities as Lviv, Vilnius. Following the failure of German Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet gains were ratified by the Western Allies at the Tehran conference, the Yalta conference, when the Soviet Union broke up, the former Kresy remained a significant part of the former Soviet republics as they gained independence. Education was not compulsory in the Russian Empire, the Polish word kresy is the plural form of the word kres. According to Zbigniew Gołąb, it is a borrowing from German word Kreis. Samuel Linde in his Dictionary of the Polish Language gives a different etymology of the term, according to him, kresy meant the borderline between Poland and the Crimean Khanate, in the area of the lower Dnieper. The word kresy was probably used for the first time in literature by Wincenty Pol in his poems Mohort, Pol claimed that it was the line from the Dniester to the Dnieper River, the Tatar borderland. At the beginning of the 20th century, the meaning of the term expanded to include the lands of the eastern provinces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the Second Polish Republic, the borderlands were equated with the land to the east of Curzon line, Polish expansion eastwards dates back to the earliest days of Poland. In 1018, King Bolesław I Chrobry invaded Kievan Rus, capturing Kiev, in 1340, Red Ruthenia came under Polish control, which opened these lands for Polish colonization and polonization. After the Union of Lublin of 1569, more Polish settlers moved to the borderlands of the vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Most of them came from the Polish provinces of Mazovia and Lesser Poland and they gradually moved eastwards, inhabiting sparsely populated areas, dominated by local peoples. Furthermore, the classes of the Kresy accepted Polish culture and language. The year 1772 marked the first partition of the Commonwealth, by 1795, the whole eastern half of the country was annexed by the Russian Empire, and these lands came to be called the Stolen Lands. Even though Poles were in the minority in areas, the Stolen Lands were important part of Polish culture, with such colleges as Wilno University. The years 1918–1921 were especially turbulent for the Kresy, as it was the time of the rebirth of the Polish state, at that time, Poland was fighting three wars to establish its eastern borders, with Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and Lithuania. This area later formed the provinces of the Second Polish Republic. The Polish government carried out a policy of Polonization in these territories
27.
Kresy Zachodnie
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Kresy Zachodnie is a term used by Poles, mostly in a historical context, to refer to the western parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that in the partitions were annexed by Prussia. This name refers specifically to the regions of Eastern Pomerania, Great Poland, Warmia and this term, styled after Kresy Wschodnie, was first used by Jan Chryzostom Zachariasiewicz in his novel Na kresach published in 1860, but it did not enter common usage. The 19th century history of regions was quite different from the rest of the former Commonwealth. There were uprisings in 1806,1846, and 1848 but the battle between the Polish majority and large German minority was for economic domination in these provinces. After World War I, most of this became part of the Second Polish Republic as a result of the Greater Poland and Silesian Uprisings. During the interwar period interbellum most inhabitants of this supported the politics of Narodowa Demokracja political movement. Polish leader Józef Piłsudski was treated with considerable reserve or with open enmity and this despite the fact that the 1919-1939 western Kresy had a higher percentage of ethnic Poles than the eastern Kresy. Former eastern territories of Germany Greater Poland Uprising Kulturkampf German Eastern Marches Society Settlement Commission Western Institute
28.
Recovered Territories
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The rationale for the term Recovered was the Piast Concept that these territories were once part of the traditional Polish homeland. They had been part of, or fiefs of, a Polish state during the medieval Piast dynasty, several different West Slavic tribes inhabited most of the area of present-day Poland from the 6th century. His realm roughly included all of the area of what would later be named the Recovered Territories, except for the Warmian-Masurian part of Old Prussia and eastern Lusatia. Mieszkos son and successor, Duke Bolesław I Chrobry, upon the 1018 Peace of Bautzen expanded the part of the realm. On Bolesławs death in 1138, Poland for almost 200 years was subjected to fragmentation, being ruled by Bolesławs sons and by their successors, who were often in conflict with each other. Władysław I the Elbow-high, crowned king of Poland in 1320, achieved partial reunification, in the course of the 12th to 14th centuries, Germanic, Dutch and Flemish settlers moved into East Central and Eastern Europe in a migration process known as the Ostsiedlung. In Greater Poland and in Eastern Pomerania, German settlers formed a minority, despite the loss of several provinces, medieval lawyers of the Kingdom of Poland created a specific claim to all formerly Polish provinces that were not reunited with the rest of the country in 1320. They built on the theory of the Corona Regni Poloniae, according to which the state, because of that no monarch could effectively renounce Crown claims to any of the territories that were historically and/or ethnically Polish. Those claims were reserved for the state, which in theory still covered all of the territories that were part of, or dependent on, some of the territories reunited with Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries. However all Polish monarchs until the end of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795 had to promise to do everything possible to reunite the rest of those territories with the Crown, Mieszkos son Bolesław I established a bishopric in the Kołobrzeg area in 1000–1005/07, before the area was lost again. Despite further attempts by Polish dukes to control the Pomeranian tribes. Successful Christian missions ensued in 1124 and 1128, however, by the time of Bolesławs death in 1138, over the following centuries the area was largely Germanized, although a small Slavic or Polish minority remained.7 million inhabitants. After the death of the last Samboride in 1294, the region was ruled by kings of Poland for a short period, after the Teutonic takeover in 1308 the region became part of the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights. A small area in the west of Pomerelia, the Lauenburg and Bütow Land was granted to the rulers of Pomerania, the medieval Lubusz Land on both sides of the Oder River up to the Spree in the west, including Lubusz itself, also formed part of Mieszkos realm. Poland lost Lubusz when the Silesian duke Bolesław II Rogatka sold it to the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg in 1248, Brandenburg also acquired the castellany of Santok from Duke Przemysł I of Greater Poland and made it the nucleus of their Neumark region. The Bishopric of Lebus remained a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Gniezno until 1424, the present-day Polish Lubusz Voivodeship comprises most of the former Brandenburgian Neumark territory east of the Oder. After World War I, those parts of the former Province of Posen, Piast dukes continued to rule Silesia following the 12th-century fragmentation of Poland. The Silesian Piasts retained power in most of the region until the early 16th century, the first German colonists arrived in the late 12th century, and large-scale German settlement started in the early 13th century during the reign of Henry I
29.
Zaolzie
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Zaolzie is the Polish name for an area now in the Czech Republic which was disputed between interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia. The name means lands beyond the Olza River, it is also called Śląsk zaolziański, equivalent terms in other languages include Zaolší in Czech and Olsa-Gebiet in German. The Zaolzie region was created in 1920, when Cieszyn Silesia was divided between Czechoslovakia and Poland, Zaolzie forms the eastern part of the Czech portion of Cieszyn Silesia. The division did not satisfy any side, and persisting conflict over the region led to its annexation by Poland in October 1938, after German invasion of Poland in 1939, the area became a part of Nazi Germany until 1945. After the war, the 1920 borders were restored, historically, the largest specified ethnic group inhabiting this area were those identifying as Poles. Under Austrian rule, Cieszyn Silesia was initially divided into three, and later into four districts, one of them, Frýdek, had a mostly Czech population, the other three were mostly inhabited by Poles. During the 19th century the number of ethnic Germans grew, another significant ethnic group were the Jews, but almost the entire Jewish population was exterminated during World War II. In addition to the Polish, Czech and German national orientations there was another group living in the area, the Ślązakowcy, the term Zaolzie is used predominantly in Poland and also commonly by the Polish minority living in the territory. In Czech it is referred to as České Těšínsko/Českotěšínsko, or as Těšínsko or Těšínské Slezsko. The Czech equivalent of Zaolzie is rarely used, the term of Zaolzie is also used by some foreign scholars, e. g. American ethnolinguist Kevin Hannan. The term Zaolzie denotes the territory of the districts of Český Těšín and Fryštát. It makes up the part of the Czech portion of Cieszyn Silesia. However, Polish historian Józef Szymeczek notes that the term is often used for the whole Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia. Since the 1960 reform of administrative divisions of Czechoslovakia, Zaolzie has consisted of Karviná District, after the Migration Period the area was settled by Slavs, which were later organized into the Golensizi tribe. The tribe had a large and important gord situated in contemporary Chotěbuz, after the fall of Great Moravia in 907 the area could have been under the influence of Bohemian rulers. In the late 10th century Poland, ruled by Bolesław I Chrobry, began to contend for the region, from 950 to 1060 it was under the rule of the Duchy of Bohemia, and from 1060 it was part of Poland. The castellany was then a part of Duchy of Silesia, in 1172 it became a part of Duchy of Racibórz, and from 1202 of Duchy of Opole and Racibórz. In order to strengthen the border Władysław of Opole decided to found Orlová monastery in 1268, upon the death of Elizabeth Lucretia, its last ruler from the Polish Piast dynasty in 1653, it passed directly to the Czech kings from the Habsburg dynasty
30.
Curzon Line
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The history of the Curzon Line, with minor variations, goes back to the period following World War I. It was drawn for the first time by the Supreme War Council as the line between the newly emerging states, the Second Polish Republic, and the Soviet Union. The line became a major factor during World War II. The western powers entered into negotiations with the Soviet Union following Operation Barbarossa, the Allied arrangement involved compensation for this loss via the incorporation of formerly German-held areas into Poland. As a result, the current border between the countries of Belarus, Ukraine and Poland is an approximation of the Curzon Line, at the end of World War I, Poland reclaimed its sovereignty in a military campaign following the disintegration of the occupying forces of three neighbouring empires. The Supreme War Council tasked the Commission on Polish Affairs with recommending Polands eastern border, the Allies forwarded it as an armistice line several times during the war, most notably in a note from the British government to the Soviets signed by Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon of Kedleston. Both parties disregarded the line when the situation lay in their favour. Instead, the final Peace of Riga provided Poland with almost 135,000 square kilometres of land that was, on average and its 1920 northern extension into Lithuania divided the area disputed between Poland and Lithuania. There were two versions of the portion of the line, A and B. Version B allocated Lwów to Poland, article 87 of the Versailles Treaty stipulated that The boundaries of Poland not laid down in the present Treaty will be subsequently determined by the Principal Allied and Associated Powers. The Commission issued its recommendation on 22 April, its proposed Russo-Polish borders were close to those of the 19th-century Congress Poland, the Supreme Council continued to debate the issue for several months. At the same time, the announcement stated the Council was not, the announcement had no immediate impact, although the Allies recommended its consideration in an August 1919 proposal to Poland, which was ignored. Polish forces pushed eastward, taking Kiev in May 1920, following a strong Soviet counteroffensive, Prime Minister Władysław Grabski sought Allied assistance in July. Under pressure, he agreed to a Polish withdrawal to the 1919 version of the line and, in Galicia, an armistice near the current line of battle. On 11 July 1920 Curzon signed a telegram sent to the Bolshevik government proposing that a ceasefire be established along the line, curzons July 1920 proposal differed from the 19 December announcement in two significant ways. The July 1920 note specifically addressed the Polish-Lithuanian dispute by mentioning a line running from Grodno to Vilnius and thence north to Daugavpils and it also mentioned Galicia, where earlier discussions had resulted in the alternatives of Line A and Line B. The note endorsed Line A, which included Lwów and its oil fields within Russia. This portion of the line did not correspond to the current line of battle in Galicia, as per Grabskis agreement, on 17 July, the Soviets responded to the note with a refusal
31.
Usedom
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Usedom is a Baltic Sea island in Pomerania, since 1945 split between Germany and Poland. It is the second biggest Pomeranian island after Rügen and before neighbouring Wolin and it is situated north of the Stettin Lagoon estuary of the River Oder. About 80% of the island belongs to the German district of Vorpommern-Greifswald in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the eastern part and the largest city on the island, Świnoujście, are part of the Polish West Pomeranian Voivodeship. The islands total area is 445 square kilometres, with an annual average of 1906 sunshine hours, Usedom is the sunniest region of both Germany and Poland, and it is also the sunniest island in the Baltic Sea. The island is a popular tourist destination since the Gründerzeit in the 19th century. Notable seaside resorts include Zinnowitz and the Amber Spas in the west, the island is separated to the east from the neighbouring island of Wolin by the Świna strait, which is the main route connecting Szczecin Bay with the Pomeranian Bay, a part of the Baltic Sea. The strait between the island and the mainland is called the Peenestrom, it is a extension of the valley of the Peene river. The island is flat, partly covered by marshes. The largest town on the island is Świnoujście, which has a population of 41,500, another town, Usedom, gives its name to the island. The largest town in the German part is Heringsdorf, the hinterland is called Achterland, referring to the Achterwasser lagoon. It is characterized by forests, lagoon landscapes, and hills, as well as calm villages such as Loddin. Main economic activities include tourism, health and life sciences, retail, agriculture, fishing, animal husbandry, food processing, and timber production. Settled since the Stone Age, the area was inhabited by Germanic Rugians, before the Polabian Slavs moved in during the fifth, sixth. Around the island, Wendish/Scandinavian trade centres such as Vineta/Jomsborg and Menzlin were established, in 1128 the Slavic Pomeranian Duke Wartislaw I was converted to Christianity through the efforts of Otto of Bamberg. In 1155 the Premonstratensians established a monastery in Grobe, generally known as Usedom Abbey, in the meantime, a Cistercian nunnery was founded in Krummin and soon almost the whole island was in the possession of one or the other of the ecclesiastical orders. During the Reformation, ownership passed to the Slavic dukes of Pomerania, during the Thirty Years War, on June 26,1630, the Swedish Army under King Gustavus Adolphus landed in the village of Peenemünde, located on the Peenestrom strait. Usedom was annexed by Sweden after the war for almost a century, in 1740 Frederick the Great of Prussia developed a seaport in Swinemünde. The small village of Peenemünde came to prominence again during World War II, the Luftwaffe tested missiles and rockets, including the V-1 and V-2 nearby
32.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
33.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
34.
Aftermath of World War II
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Western Europe and Japan were rebuilt through the American Marshall Plan whereas Eastern Europe fell in the Soviet sphere of influence and rejected the plan. Europe was divided into a US-led Western Bloc and a Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, internationally, alliances with the two blocs gradually shifted, with some nations trying to stay out of the Cold War through the Non-Aligned Movement. As a consequence of the war, the Allies created the United Nations, members of the United Nations agreed to outlaw wars of aggression in an attempt to avoid a third world war. The devastated great powers of Western Europe formed the European Coal and Steel Community and this effort primarily began as an attempt to avoid another war between Germany and France by economic cooperation and integration, and a common market for important natural resources. Also related to this was Israel gaining independence from its previous status as part of Mandatory Palestine in the immediately following the war. Independence for the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa came more slowly, the aftermath of World War II also saw the rise of the Peoples Republic of China, as the Chinese Communists emerged victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949. At the end of the war, millions of people were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, the Soviet Union, too, had been heavily affected. In response, in 1947, U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall devised the European Recovery Program, under the plan, during 1948–1952 the United States government allocated US$13 billion for the reconstruction of Western Europe. By the end of the war, the economy of the United Kingdom was exhausted, more than a quarter of its national wealth had been spent. Until the introduction in 1941 of Lend-Lease aid from the US, lend-lease came just before its reserves were exhausted. Britain put 55% of its labor force into war production. In spring 1945, the Labour Party withdrew from the coalition government. Following a landslide victory, Labour held more than 60% of the seats in the House of Commons, britains war debt was described by some in the American administration as a millstone round the neck of the British economy. Although there were suggestions for a conference to tackle the issue. The abrupt withdrawal of American Lend Lease support to Britain on 2 September 1945 dealt a blow to the plans of the new government. It was only with the completion of the Anglo-American loan by the United States to Great Britain on 15 July 1946 that some measure of stability was restored. Although the loan was agreed on terms, its conditions included what proved to be damaging fiscal conditions for Sterling. From 1946-1948, the UK introduced bread rationing which it never did during the war, the Soviet Union suffered enormous losses in the war against Germany
35.
Baltic Sea
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The Baltic Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, enclosed by Scandinavia, Finland, the Baltic countries, and the North European Plain. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Bay of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga, the sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. The Baltic Sea is connected by waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea Canal. Traffic history Historically, the Kingdom of Denmark collected Sound Dues from ships at the border between the ocean and the land-locked Baltic Sea and they were collected in the Øresund at Kronborg castle near Helsingør, in the Great Belt at Nyborg. In the Little Belt, the site of intake was moved to Fredericia, the narrowest part of Little Belt is the Middelfart Sund near Middelfart. Oceanography Geographers widely agree that the physical border of the Baltic is a line drawn through the southern Danish islands, Drogden-Sill. The Drogden Sill is situated north of Køge Bugt and connects Dragør in the south of Copenhagen to Malmö, it is used by the Øresund Bridge, including the Drogden Tunnel. By this definition, the Danish Straits are part of the entrance, but the Bay of Mecklenburg, another usual border is the line between Falsterbo, Sweden and Stevns Klint, Denmark, as this is the southern border of Øresund. Its also the border between the shallow southern Øresund and notably deeper water, hydrography and biology Drogden Sill sets a limit to Øresund and Darss Sill, and a limit to the Belt Sea. The shallow sills are obstacles to the flow of salt water from the Kattegat into the basins around Bornholm. The Kattegat and the southwestern Baltic Sea are well oxygenated and have a rich biology, the remainder of the Sea is brackish, poor in oxygen and in species. While Tacitus called it Mare Suebicum after the Germanic people called the Suebi, the origin of the latter name is speculative. Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is so named because it stretches through the land as a belt and he might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island mentioned in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Pliny mentions an island named Baltia with reference to accounts of Pytheas and it is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia in On the Ocean by Pytheas. Baltia also might be derived from belt and mean near belt of sea, meanwhile, others have suggested that the name of the island originates from the Proto-Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, fair. This root and its meaning were retained in both Lithuanian and Latvian. On this basis, a related hypothesis holds that the name originated from this Indo-European root via a Baltic language such as Lithuanian, yet another explanation is that the name originally meant enclosed sea, bay as opposed to open sea. Some Swedish historians believe the name derives from the god Balder of Nordic mythology, in the Middle Ages the sea was known by variety of names
36.
Szczecin
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Szczecin is the capital city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea, it is a major seaport, as of June 2011, the population was 407,811. Szczecin is located on the Oder, south of the Szczecin Lagoon, the city is situated along the southwestern shore of Dąbie Lake, on both sides of the Oder and on several large islands between the western and eastern branches of the river. The citys recorded history began in the 8th century as a Slavic Pomeranian stronghold, in the 12th century, when Szczecin had become one of Pomeranias main urban centres, it lost its independence to Piast Poland, the Duchy of Saxony, the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark. At the same time, the House of Griffins established themselves as rulers, the population was Christianized. The native Slavic population was subjected to discrimination and Germanization in the following centuries, between 1237 and 1243, the town was rebuilt, granted extensive autonomy rights and eventually joined the Hanseatic League. After the Treaty of Stettin in 1630, the town came under the control of the Swedish Empire, in the late-19th century Stettin became an industrial town, vastly increasing in size and population, and served as a major port for Berlin. During the Nazi era, opposition groups and minorities were persecuted and treated as enemies, by the end of World War II Stettins status was in doubt, and the Soviet occupation authorities at first appointed officials from the citys almost entirely German pre-war population. In July 1945, however, Polish authorities were permitted to take power, Stettin was renamed Szczecin and became part of the newly established the Polish Peoples Republic, and from 1989 the Republic of Poland. From 1999 onwards, Szczecin has served as the site of the headquarters of NATOs Multinational Corps Northeast, the names Szczecin and Stettin are of Slavic origin, though the exact etymology is the subject of ongoing research. Other medieval names for the town are Burstaborg and Burstenburgh and these names, which literally mean brush burgh, are likely derived from the translation of the citys Slavic name. The recorded history of Szczecin began in the century, when West Slavs settled Pomerania. Since the 9th century, the stronghold was fortified and expanded toward the Oder bank, Mieszko I of Poland took control of Pomerania between 960 and 967, and the region with the city of Szczecin became part of Poland in 967. Subsequent Polish rulers, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Liutician federation all aimed to control the territory, after the decline of the neighbouring regional centre Wolin in the 12th century, the city became one of the more important and powerful seaports of the Baltic Sea. In a campaign in the winter of 1121–1122, Bolesław III Wrymouth, the inhabitants were Christianized by two missions of Bishop Otto of Bamberg in 1124 and 1128. At this time, the first Christian church of Saints Peter, Polish minted coins were commonly used in trade in this period. The population of the city at that time is estimated to be at around 5, Polish rule ended with Boleslaws death in 1138. There, a Polish contingent supplied by Mieszko III the Old joined the crusaders, however, the citizens had placed crosses around the fortifications, indicating they already had been Christianised
