Historically, Gliwice was ethnically diverse, initially inhabited by Poles, later it had a German majority as a result of German colonization, with a significant autochthonous Polish minority. In the Upper Silesian Plebiscite in 1921, 78.9 percent of voters opted for Germany (however 15.1 percent of the vote in Gliwice was cast by non-residents, who are believed to overwhelmingly vote for Germany across the region). However, in 1945 most of Germans were expelled or fled themselves, and the city was repopulated with Poles, mostly displaced from former Eastern Poland, annexed by the Soviet Union. Many of these new inhabitants were academics from the Lwów Polytechnic who created the Silesian University of Technology.