Making Borders Stick: Population Transfer and Resettlement in the Trans- Curzon Territories, 1944-1949

Abstract

"Designed in 1919-20 by the British mediator Lord Curzon as an armistice proposal between the then warring powers Poland and Soviet Russia, the Curzon Line served to identify the maximum territorial reach of Soviet political influence in Europe....[The author discusses] a program of resettlement which would target communities on both sides of the new border, a policy eventually affecting some 1.4 million individuals...." The implementation and impact of this population exchange are described.

Another Europe: remembering Habsburg Galicja

“…62 When post-Second World War planners sat down at Teheran, Yalta and later Potsdam, their aim was to 'secure eastern Europe's frontiers on the basis of practical considerations'. 63 By the war's end it became common dogma, in fact, to assert that it was the presence of large numbers of ethnolinguistic minorities within the states of East Central Europe that constituted one of the major factors that, during the interwar years, had contributed to political instability, culminating in military conflict. The apparent solution lay with 'bringing some logic to the map of Europe', and though substantial tensions existed as to the specifics, there was little fundamental disagreement among the members of the Grand Alliance as to the necessity of sorting out the 'demographic chaos in the East'.…”

Upper Silesia: Rebirth of a Regional Identity in Poland

“…In the immediate post-war years, over 3.5 million Germans were expatriated from Silesia as well as the territories of what was once East Prussia. Their place was taken by 1.5 million Poles 'repatriated' from lands in the east (Magocsi, 1993;Bialasiewicz and O'Loughlin, 2002;Kordan, 1997). A subsequent series of inter-governmental agreements for 'family reunification' allowed the remainder of those choosing to declare German nationality to emigrate in large numbers: between 1955 and 1989, it is estimated that over 1,198,000 people left for the Federal Republic of Germany under a system of 'exchanges' that provided substantial economic compensation to the Polish state for each re-patriant.…”