At the end ofWorld War II,Poland underwent major changes to the location of its international border. In 1945, after the defeat ofNazi Germany, theOder–Neisse line became its western border,[1] resulting in gaining theRecovered Territories from Germany. TheCurzon Line became its eastern border, resulting in the loss of theEastern Borderlands to theSoviet Union.[2]
These decisions were in accordance with the decisions made first by the Allies at theTehran Conference of 1943 where the Soviet Union demanded the recognition of the line proposed byBritish Foreign SecretaryLord Curzon in 1920.[3]
The same Soviet stance was repeated byJoseph Stalin again at theYalta Conference withFranklin D. Roosevelt andWinston Churchill in February 1945, but much more forcefully in the face of the looming German defeat.[4] The new borders were ratified at thePotsdam Conference of August 1945 exactly as proposed by Stalin who already controlled the whole ofEast-Central Europe.[4]Harry Truman remembered:
I remember at Potsdam, we got to discussing a matter in eastern Poland, and it was remarked by the Prime Minister of Great Britain that the Pope would not be happy over the arrangement of that Catholic end of Poland. And the Generalissimo, the Prime Minister of Russia leaned on the table, and he pulled his mustache like that, and looked over to Mr. Churchill and said: Mr. Churchill, Mr. Prime Minister, how many divisions did you say the Pope had?[5]
Large territories of Polish Second Republicwere ceded to the Soviet Union by the Moscow-backed Polish government, and today form part ofLithuania,Belarus andUkraine. Poland was instead given theFree State of Danzig and the German areas east of the riversOder andNeisse (seeRecovered Territories), pending a final peace conference with Germany. Since a peace conference never took place, the lands were effectively ceded by Germany.[6][need quotation to verify]
Thepopulation transfer of both Polish and Germans 1945–46 included many millions of people.[7][8] The Polish territory in 1919–39 covered an area of 386,418 square kilometres (149,197 square miles).[9] But from 1947, Poland's territory was reduced to 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 square miles), so the country lost 73,739 square kilometres (28,471 square miles) of land. This difference amounts almost to the size of theCzech Republic, although Poland ended up with a much longer coastline on theBaltic Sea compared to its 1939 borders.
The prewareastern Polish territories ofKresy, which the Red Army had overrun during the Nazi-Sovietinvasion of Poland in 1939 (excluding theBiałystok region) were permanently ceded to the USSR by the new Polish communist government, andmost of their Polish inhabitants expelled. As a result of thePotsdam Agreement to whichPoland's government-in-exile was not invited, Poland lost 179,000 square kilometres (69,000 square miles) (45%) of prewar territories in the east, including over 12 million citizens of whom 4.3 million were Polish-speakers. Today, these territories are part of sovereignBelarus,Ukraine, andLithuania.[10]
In turn, postwar Poland was assigned considerably smaller territories to the west including the prewarFree City of Danzig and theformer territory of Germany east of theOder–Neisse line, consisting of the southern portion ofEast Prussia and most ofPomerania,Neumark (East Brandenburg), and GermanSilesia. Poland also received the town of Swinemünde (nowŚwinoujście) on the island ofUsedom and the city of Stettin (nowSzczecin) on the western bank of theOder river in accordance with thePotsdam Agreement. Therefore, these transferred territories did not then form part of theSoviet occupation zone of Germany or the subsequent state ofEast Germany.[citation needed]
The German population who had stayed at or had returned to their homeswere forcibly expelled before theseRecovered Territories (official term) were repopulated by Poles expelled from the eastern regions and those from central Poland. The borders of Poland resembled the borders of the German-Russian gains in World War 2, with the exception of the city of Bialystok. This is called the Curzon line. The small area ofTrans-Olza, which had been annexed by Poland in late 1938, was returned toCzechoslovakia on Stalin's orders.[citation needed]
{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)