Territorial Changes of Germany and Expulsion of Ethnic Germans

Adolf Hitler in Warszawa during the expansion of the German Reich

The unconditional surrender of the Greater German Reich

Zones of occupation – Germany's new borders

Sprung in die Freiheit –The Leap into Freedom

West German Bundesgrenzschutz/Federal Border Guard

The German territory east of the Oder-Neisse line (Pomerania, Neumark, Silesia and East Prussia) was attached to Poland and the Soviet Union. The northern portion of East Prussia with the ancient capital of Königsberg became the newly-formed Kaliningrad Oblast, a part of the Russian SFSR, with a small portion, Memelland, joined to the Lithuanian SSR. All territory annexed by the German Reich during World War II was returned or annexed by the Soviet Union. Following Germany's defeat an estimated 1.6 million ethnic Germans were deported from the Sudetenland and the rest of Czechoslovakia to the American zone. An estimated 800,000 were deported to the Soviet zone. According to researcher Stefan Banasiak, 3,109,900 Germans were expelled to the Soviet and British occupation zones in Germany from Poland and former eastern territories of Germany ceded by Poland. An unknown number left without formal registration or was expelled to USSR by Soviet military authorities. It is estimated by Professor Dr. Arfon Rees and Dr. Steffen Prauser that over 12 million Germans fled or were expelled from east-central Europe during the last year of the war and in its aftermath. People from all over Eastern Europe quickly moved in to replace the former German population in a process parallel to the expulsions. In Yugoslavia, the remaining Germans were not expelled; according to historian Anna Bramwell ethnic German villages were turned into internment camps where over 50,000 perished. German expellee organizations who did not accept the post-war territorial and population changes were dismissed as far-right revanchists. Top image: Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler salutes the 8th Army of the Wehrmacht in Warszawa on October 5 1939 during the German-Soviet joint invasion of Poland. Germany expanded significantly between 1938 and 1939 as a result of the German Reich's annexations and conquests. The incorporated area of western Poland, which was deemed to be a part of the Reich, was to be ruthlessly Germanized. Photo by Kriegsberichter Lt. Eric Borchert. Credit: Mikołaj Kaczmarek. Entscheidende Stunden. FU. Second image: Re-enacting of the signing of the unconditional surrender by the representatives of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht at the Pionier-Schule in Berlin-Karlshorst on May 8 1945. A day earlier, on May 7 1945, Wehrmacht Chief of Staff Generaloberst Alfred Jodl had signed the German surrender with the Allies in Reims in France, but it was not recognized by the Soviets. From left: Chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen Stumpff, Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, and Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine Generaladmiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg. Photo by Soviet photog. Georgy Petrusov. Credit: Facundo Filipe. FU. Third image: the Allied zones of occupation in post-war Germany. The provincial boundaries are those of Weimar Germany. Actual poster shown in Allied-occupied Germany after the war. PD. Fourth image: this photo taken by the West German photog. Peter Leibing became known as The Leap into Freedom and became an iconic image of the Cold War. East German border guard Hans Conrad Schumann was sent to the corner of Ruppiner Straße and Bernauer Straße to guard the Berlin Wall on its third day of construction. At 16.00 hrs on August 15 1961, Schumann leapt over the barbed wire that marked the border between the communist East and the free West. Credit: Paul Kerestes. FU. Bottom image: new Bundesgrenzschutz troops take their oath at Graf-Bernadotte-Platz in Kassel on May 15 1963. The BGS was established on March 16 1951 after the Cold War had begun to control and guard Germany's border and was organized along paramilitary lines. Occupation authorities judged the borders could be better policed by the Germans themselves. The first BGS inspector was the former Wehrmacht general and KC holder Anton Grasser. In the 1950s, Grasser was involved in organizing an illegal underground army set up by Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans in the event of a Soviet invasion of West Germany. Source: historian Klaus Wiegrefe. Credit: Julius Backman. FU.