Oder–Neisse line

The Oder-Neisse line is the current border between Germany and Poland. The line consists of the rivers Oder and Neisse and was the line at which the Soviet Army stopped in late 1944 to regroup for the final assault on Berlin in April 1945.

The decision to move Poland's western boundary was agreed at the Yalta Conference shortly before the end of World War II. The intention of the Allied powers was to punish Germany for its aggression in World War II, as it was put to the people. The actual reason was Roosevelt's strong desire to appease Stalin any way he could, to gain him for the war in the Pacific. Therefore he agreed to Stalin's demand for adherence to the Curzon line. A move westwards was then dangled infront of Poland in order to compensate it for Ukrainian land it had conquered 1922, which had been re-taken by the Soviet Union in 1939. Winston Churchill described the settlement as putting Poland on rollers and moving the entire nation west. The exact location of the the Western boundaries was a subject of disagreement among the Allies at Yalta. The Oder-Neisse line was first suggested by Joseph Stalin, but was met with resistance on the part of the United States and British who were concerned at the large number of Germans which would have to be moved.

After the German surrender, Soviet armies were in control of Eastern Europe. Faced with this fait accompli, it was decided at the Potsdam Conference to put the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line under Polish administrative control until a final peace treaty would determine the exact border; it was also agreed that Germans remaining in Poland proper, should be transferred to Germany. The affected areas included Western and southern East-Prussia, most of Pomerania and nearly all of Silesia; the northern part of East Prussia was added to the Soviet Union.

Poland sent hundreds of thousands of para-military and civilian communist troops under Moskow orders, by brutally expelling and murdering the Ukrainians in the east and the Germans in the west. It took years and some towns were swept and ethnically cleansed several times. The exile Polish government in London was dimissed, as Stalin said , for being 'too friendly to Germany'. The communist Poles gained administrative control (starting in April 1945) of the territory east of the Oder-Neisse line, they continued to expel Germans living in those areas and replaced them with ethnic Poles, but for a large part with Ukrainians, Belorusan and Lithuanians, displaced by the Soviet annexation of formery Polish Ukraine (etc) lands. The city of Breslau received a large section of Ukrainians from Lemberg or Llov. As a result, many German inhabitants of those territories ended up as refugees all over East and West Germany. Poland also expelled ethnic Germans from Poland proper and Polish Corridor, where they had started to move out Germans after 1920 already.

East Germany signed a treaty with Poland in 1950 recognizing the line as a permanent border. In 1952, recognition of the Oder-Neisse line as a permanent boundary was one of the conditions for the Soviet Union to agree to a reunified Germany. The reunification was rejected by Konrad Adenauer, for several reasons.

In West Germany, recognition of the line as permanent was initially unacceptable. In fact, West Germany as part of the Hallstein Doctrine did not recognize either Poland or East Germany. Many refugees from the land east of the Oder-Neisse became active it West-German politics, calling themselves Heimatvertriebene. The West-German attitude changed with the policy of Ostpolitik led by Willy Brandt; in 1970 West Germany signed treaties with Poland and the Soviet Union recognizing the Oder-Neisse line as a factual border of Poland, thus making family visits by the displaced eastern Germans to their homelands possible. In 1991 as a prerequisite for the unification with East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany amended its constitution, the Basic Law, to remove the article concerning unification of pre-war German areas, as a further sign of recognition of the line.

Expellees and their descendants west of the Oder-Neisse line continue to maintain what they call a lawful right to their homeland, while in a document signed 50 years ago they have also recognized the plight of the different groups of people living in todays Poland, who were by force resettled there. The Heimatvertriebene are considered a fringe group by most Germans, and there is currently almost no support within Germany for reopening this issue.

Relations between Poland and Germany are good, and there are no fears within Poland that Germany would annex the land east of the Oder-Neisse line. There are however worries that descendants of the expelled Germans would attempt to buy back their land. This has led to Polish restrictions on the sale of property to foreigners (a special permission is needed and is nearly impossible to get).

The 1991 Polish-German border agreement was supposed to grant the German minority in Poland several rights such as the right to use German surnames names, their native language, schools, churches; it is alleged that fulfillment has been lacking. These matters are complicating Poland's efforts to join the European Union.