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Note: although the term "recovered territories" has a clear meaning in Poland and Polish historiography, it is not a widely accepted term or concept in Germany or in English-speaking nations. See Oder-Neisse line for details.

"Recovered Territories", "Regained Territories" or "Western and Northern Territories" (Template:Lang-pl) was a political concept used in Communist Poland to denote the Polish provinces of Pomerania, Silesia, Lubusz Land, and Warmia-Masuria which were taken from Germany and assigned ("restored", "recovered") to Poland by the Allies after World War II. In post-war propaganda, the term was coined mainly in order to encourage people, especially from former Eastern Poland (Kresy) to settle down permanently in the newly acquired post-German areas, which these people were very reluctant to do.

In West German usage the same territories were initially referred to as "German Eastern Territories Under Polish Administration" (Deutsche Ostgebiete unter polnischer Verwaltung).

Both terms were used immediately after the end of the war but are not in wide usage today.

Brief history of Recovered Territories

Prehistory

The areas of today's Poland, including the "Recovered Territories", were first described by Tacitus in 98 AD in his book Germania. He described the many tribes living in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic, Germanic, Finnic, Venetic and Celtic peoples. At that time Pomerania, Silesia and parts of present central Poland were populated by East Germanic tribes, while the area which would later become known as Eastern Prussia and Masuria was already a Baltic region. With the ongoing tribal migrations of the Migrations period and invasions of tribes from the Asian steppes, many inhabitants of today's Poland, particularly around the Baltic Sea, moved westwards and southwards and invaded the Roman Empire, forming several Germanic kingdoms in Western Europe.

According to some theories, later Poland was almost entirely deserted at the end of this period, and around 500 AD Slavic peoples from the east (Venedi from Sarmatia) settled the area. Alternative theories popular in the middle of the 20th century claimed that Poland was the homeland of all Slavic peoples. The proportion of local and immigrant elements that formed the Polish nation of early the Middle Ages is subject to debate among historians. However, most agree that Poland was homeland to numerous Slavic tribes by the year 1000.

Beginning of Polish state

The lands of Mieszko I of Poland were described in the Dagome Iudex and came under protection of the Pope. The first Polish king, Boleslaw I of Poland, received recognition from the Holy Roman Empire at the Congress of Gniezno in 1000, where he was named as a friend and ally of the empire that represented Christian Europe.

Later on, parts of the area were conquered by the German-speaking Teutonic Knights and substates of the Holy Roman Empire. Under feudal governments and royal houses connected to the empire, various different ruling houses held sovereignties, such as Bohemia, Austria, Sweden, Prussia, and then Imperial Germany.

Poland fragmented and re-united

In 12th–13th centuries, Poland, as many other countries in Europe, was fragmented into several semi-independent duchies ruled by the Piast dukes fighting each other. When the Kingdom of Poland was reunited in 1306–1320 by King Władysław the Short, not all provinces gained at some time(s) by Poland were included, leaving the duchies of Pomerania, Silesia, and Masovia independent. The Baltic coast area was part of the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights. Silesian duchies were transferred to the Crown of Bohemia, (at that time the Bohemian kings claimed to be kings of Poland, too). Masovia was incorporated into Poland in 1526. During the High Middle Ages, the western Polish lands were increasingly colonized by German settlers invited by Slavic rulers, the cities, even in central Poland, becoming increasingly Germanised.

Expansion of Brandenburg-Prussia

Brandenburg-Prussia annexed Pomerania piece by piece over a few centuries (in 1648, 1657, 1720, 1772, and 1815). In 1742, during the Silesian Wars, Silesia, until then part of the Habsburg Monarchy, came under the rule of King Frederick II. the Kingdom of Prussia also took part in the Partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795) and in the political reshuffle after the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

The most contentious subject at the Congress of Vienna was the so-called Polish-Saxon Crisis. The Austrians, French, and British agreed to go to war, if necessary, to prevent a Russian and Prussian plan in which Poland would become an independent kingdom in personal union with the Tsar of Russia. Tsar Alexander I would become King of Poland, in return for which the Prussians would receive all of Saxony as compensation. In the end an amicable settlement was worked out, by which Russia received most of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw as the "Kingdom of Poland" (called Congress Poland), but did not receive the district of Poznań (Grand Duchy of Poznań), which was given to Prussia, nor Kraków, which became a free city.

Poland restored and shifted

See also Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the short lived Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918)

After World War I, in 1918, the Polish state was restored as the Second Polish Republic. Its territory included those territories that after the partitions of Poland, were for over a century a part of Prussia (and from 1871 the German Empire), Austro-Hungary, and the Russian Empire. The provinces Germany returned to Poland were: Pomerelia (West Prussia), Greater Poland (Posen), and half of Upper Silesia. At the Yalta Conference towards the end of World War II, Joseph Stalin used the puppet Polish government to demand that Poland should receive the provinces of Western Pomerania, Lubusz Land, the remainder of Silesia, the city of Danzig (Gdańsk), and Warmia-Masuria, while giving the Kresy territories (east of the Curzon Line) to the Soviet Union.

Potsdam conference aftermath

Border question during WW2

In 1945 the population of the regions assigned to Poland after the Second World War consisted of a majority of ethnic Germans and a small Polish minority, which was often culturally Germanised. Initially Poland was promised East Prussia, Upper Silesia, and the eastern part of Western Pomerania up to Kolberg. At the Potsdam conference, Poland's exact western borders were drawn, however, along the Oder-Neisse line. The German inhabitants of the areas east of the line either fled westwards or were expelled, often violently, by Soviet forces and the local Polish administration. Today the area is predominantly Polish, though a German minority still exists in Olsztyn, Masuria, and Upper Silesia.

The problem with the status of areas of previously settled German communities east of the Oder-Neisse rivers was that in 1945 the concluding document of the Potsdam Conference was not a juristically binding treaty, but a mere memorandum. It regulated the issue of the German Eastern border, which was to be the Oder-Neisse line, but the final article of the memorandum said that the final regulations concerning Germany were subject to a separate peace treaty. This treaty was not signed until 1990 as the "Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany". This meant that for 45 years, people on both sides of the border (and of the issue) could not be sure that the settlement reached in 1945 would not be changed at some future date. A fact convenient to Stalin, because that kind of uncertainty gave the Soviet Union the means to put a constant pressure on their communist satellites, especially Poland.

Until the Treaty on the Final Settlement, the German government regarded the status of the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse rivers as that of areas under "temporarily under Polish administration". To facilitate wide international acceptance of German reunification in 1990, the German political establishment recognised the "facts on the ground" and accepted the clauses in the Treaty on the Final Settlement whereby Germany renounced all claims to territory east of the Oder-Neisse line. This allowed the treaty to be negotiated quickly and for German unification of democratic West Germany and communist East Germany to go ahead quickly, which was seen as a priority by most sections of the German political establishment of the time. Others criticized the hasty decisions made by Chancellor Kohl in foreign policy, monetary union, economics etc. Germany signed a separate treaty with Poland confirming the two countries’ present border the following year.

References

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• History of Poland (1945–1989)
• Polish borders
• Aftermath of World War II
• Special territories