Everybody talks about the injustices visited upon the Palestinians…but nobody seems to talk about what happened to the german inhabitants of what used to be Prussia and East Prussia! The parts of what are now western Poland were german for hundreds of years! The cities of Danzig, Steetin, Konigsberg, etc. were never Polish until the end of WWII. Basically, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their home , and had to move to west Germany. Now, more than 58 years later, isn’t it time to remove this injustice?
I have a german-American friend,his parents were refugees from Danzig, and they still have the deed to their farm outside the city. Is there any chance that Poland will give up its claim to these ares?
Not a chance. And I think the German refugees should be counted in the millions instead of the hundred thousands. Also Soviet took at big swath of Polish territory.
The ethnic cleansing of Germanic peoples from large parts of Eastern Europe post WWII was indeed shameful, and it’s right that it should be brought up, because it is often overlooked.
However, your analogy breaks down because East Prussia et al were formally annexed by international treaties, rather than being ruled as an ‘interim’ occupation. Clearly Palestinian right of return is one of many major sticking points to a resolution of the Israel/Palestine problem, and I think the Palestinian leadership, such as it is, should drop it; however, they’re unlikely to while they’re aiming for an unrealistic all-or-nothing goal, and while new Israeli settlements continue to be built in the OTs.
I’m sure Poland would be glad to offer the right of return to dispossessed Germans.
Actually, EU membership…
East Prussia was not annexed by international treaties, it was annexed by Soviet tanks. The fact that the parties involved were forced to sign a piece of paper after the fact doesn’t make it less an act of raw force. It’s the kind of thing you can get away with when you have the largest army on the planet. The fact that you’re doing it to people who should feel grateful you hadn’t just shot them all also helps.
Doesn’t Poland now belong to the EU, so that fomer East Prussians can now return to East Prussia if they wish? (Or at least to the Polish part of East Prussia, since the Russian part of East Prussia is still outside the EU).
Like a lot of things, it was done and it stayed done. After the War, the eastern Europeans (with fair reasons) could not stand to live next to the Germans, who, if not usually diehard supporters of Hitler, had not spoken out strongly against him and often benefitted materially from the conquests. Whether this was fair or not is irrelevant. It happened and will not change. The Poles lost enough from the Germans that there wil be no German “right-of-return”.
So why are you even asking this question?
Yes, I thought so too and was indicating as much. Poland has a preliminary/interim EU membership at the moment and I cannot swear to the detail of the free movement of persons there.
In fairness, I think it unlikely that Poland would recognise obsolete title deeds to Gdansk/Danzig. But land there is as cheap as stinking mackrel if you are a Nostalgic German with the ready Euros.
Sure, as soon as Belarus gives back East Poland and Ukraine gives Ruthenia back to Slovakia and… well, you see how practical it would be.
Sometimes you just have to say yep, history happened, ain’t that something, and move on.
(BTW: Königsberg is in the Russian bit of East Prussia, that was left discontiguous after the collapse of the USSR)
Poland has in fact regular membership, with a few opt-outs that will eventually expire:
- land cannot be owned by foreigners yet (on demand by Poland), but land can be owned by foreign-owned Polish corporations
- Poles do not have a right to work everywhere in the EU yet (on demand by mainly Germany), but Polish companies can contract for work everywhere in the EU
Germans cannot buy land yet (see above), and when they will be eventually allowed prices will probably have moved much toward equalization with western EU levels.
The question of restitution claims seems to be an emotive one in Poland today - the kind of topic nationalistic parties can mobilize their base with. It’s grown less and less emotive in German society as the people who were deported personally are dying out. Lately the German government has gone on record that it opposes these restitution claims (of Germans, to their former property) - this question has not been resolved yet as such a policy being formally adopted would in justice mean that the German state would be obliged to make restitution payments instead. Refugees were compensated for part of the value in the 1950s/1960s by the German state; perhaps an additional payment would bring the refugee lobby in line. I expect an agreement some time in the next few years that will formally secure indemnity for the Poles. Polish public opinion does not seem to be ready to acknowledge expelling and expropriating people on the basis of their ethnicity as an injustice, perhaps after the pressure of theoretical legal claims is off Poles will be in a position to see this dispassionately.
I think it’s safe to say that Europe has had about enough of fighting over borders by now. As such, it’s highly unlikely that the current borders in Europe will be changing anytime soon… about as likely as ** nonpolar ** becoming a moderator, in fact.
Better to amend this to “haven’t been Polish since the 1700’s.” West Prussia, so-called 'Royal Prussia", was a part of the Polish crown from 1466-1772 ( this includes Danzig ). East Prussia, ‘Ducal Prussia’, was subject to the Polish crown from 1525-1660. Pomerania, the eastern section of which was also later part of Royal and then West Prussia ( with cities like Stettin ) had been under Polish control from as early as the 11th century, though said control was intermittent.
Ethnically West Prussia had a majority Polish population, but a very large urban and coastal concentrated German minority. East Prussia was majority German, with Polish (again in the south ) and Lithuanian ( in the far east ) minorities.
Memel ( initially a free port of overwhelmingly German population, later incorporated into Lithuania and remaned Klaipeda ) and strip of East Prussia went to Lithuania after WW I. Danzig was a free port after WW I and much of West Prussia became the 'Polish Corridor" seperating East and West Prussia. Al
- Tamerlane
There is always hope 
When Poles and Germans who suffered in WW2 are long gone ,European Union will change whole concept of borders and nationalities.No one will fight over pieces of land anymore.
But if not then we are all in deep sh** again.
How about USA giving back California ,Texas back to Mexicans?
Also East Prussia does not have any religious signifigance to any of the parties involved, unlike Palestine.
Is the German government asking for it?
Better to amend this still further: The city of Konisgberg, at least, originally was founded as a German colony – well, a German-Czech colony. From the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad):
After WWII, when Stalin’s armies overran Eastern Europe, Stalin not only annexed Konigsberg to the Soviet Union, he annexed it to the Russian Federation – rather than to Lithuania or to Poland, either of which would have seemed more logical. I don’t know why – perhaps he wanted a Baltic port under firm Russian control. Anyway, Konigsberg was renamed Kaliningrad, and the city and surrounding countryside – the northern third of what was East Prussia – was emptied of Germans and colonized with Russians and now forms a discontinuous Russian enclave, separated from Russia by the territory of Latvia and Lithuania. Since the USSR broke up, there has been some tension between Russia and the Baltic states over Russian’s right of access across their territory to get from Kaliningrad to the main body of Russian territory. Stupid Stalin.
By the way, there is an organization of German refugees from East Prussia – the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen or Territorial Association of East Prussia – which demands the return of East Prussia to Germany. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsmannschaft_Ostpreussen)
Which Germany back in the 13th century? As the link points out it was a Bohemian king’s initiative. A Brandenburg colony would have more weight, not that that would mean a lot .
Some time after the unification (and the final treaty with the occupation powers), the German governement officially renounced to any claim to the polish territories beyond the Oder-Neisse line.
This issue and the issue of possible reparations are separate.
So was Memel and many other cities/towns in the region. We’re probably just having a semantics issue.
By saying a region was Polish, you could be saying either that it was ethnically Polish or it was under the political control of Poland. Cities like Kongisberg and Memel probably never had significant numbers of ethnic Pole residents - but they were under the political authority of Poland for long periods of time. Cities like Stettin and Danzig started out as Slavic settlements and were gradually Germanized, until they too were largely German in ethnicity.
Large-scaler German immigration, usually encouraged by non-German rulers, was quite common in eastern Europe with many towns in places like Bohemia and Hungary ( particularly then Hungarian Transylvania ) owing their origin to German settlers - for example the small Roumanian city of Cluj started as Klausenburg. My father is 100% Serbian, but his mother’s maiden name was Foster, which in this context almost certainly has German roots. In the pre-modern era the concept of the national state was very much theexception to the rule. Especially as even languages like German and French contained very significant regional/cultural dialects.
- Tamerlane
Thanks for the clarification, but mine was more in the line of rhetorical question.
Fortunately, as many posters have noted, most Europeans seem to be able to say “history is history, bad things were done by both sides, lets get on with our lives and not fight any more wars over borders.”
If we revived every border dispute throughout history, we’d turn the entire world into a giant “Middle East”. No thanks.