page_title: Former eastern territories of Germany
section_title: Expulsion of Germans and resettlement
hierarchical_section_title: Former eastern territories of Germany / Post World War II / Expulsion of Germans and resettlement
caption_attribution_description: English: Marking new Polish-German border on Oder River in 1945 Polski: Ludowe Wojsko Polskie, wbijanie słupów granicznych nad Odrą w 1945 r. Deutsch: Markierung der neuen Deutsch-Polnischen Grenze an der Oder im Jahr 1945
context_page_description: The former eastern territories of Germany are those provinces or regions east of the current eastern border of Germany which were lost by Germany after World War I and then World War II; having been parts of the German Empire from 1871, and previously, of Prussia and Austria. They include provinces that historically had been considered 'German', and others that only became 'German' in 1871.
  The territories lost by Germany following World War I included areas with predominantly ethnically Polish population, especially the Province of Posen, most of the province of West Prussia, and East Upper Silesia reintegrated with Poland, following the country's independence, as well as the Lithuanian-populated Klaipėda Region, which became part of Lithuania. Further territories lost after World War II include East Prussia, Farther Pomerania, Neumark, West Upper Silesia, and almost all of Lower Silesia. The territories lost in both World Wars account for 33% of the pre-1914 German Empire, while land ceded by Germany after World War II constituted roughly 25% of its pre-war Weimar territory.
context_section_description: With the rapid advance of the Red Army in the winter of 1944–1945, German authorities desperately evacuated many Germans westwards. The majority of the remaining German-speaking population in the territory of former Czechoslovakia and east of the Oder–Neisse line (roughly 10 million in the ostgebiete alone), that had not already been evacuated, was expelled by the new Czech and Polish administrations. Although in the post-war period earlier German sources often cited the number of evacuated and expelled Germans at 16 million and the death toll at between 1.7 and 2.5 million, today, the numbers are considered by some historians to be exaggerated and the death toll more likely in a range between 400,000 and 600,000. Some present-day estimates place the numbers of German refugees at 14 million of which about half a million died during the evacuations and expulsions.
  At the same time, Poles from central Poland, expelled Poles from former eastern Poland, Polish returnees from internment and forced labour, Ukrainians forcibly resettled in Operation Vistula, and Jewish Holocaust survivors were settled in German territories gained by Poland, whereas the north of former East Prussia (Kaliningrad Oblast gained by the USSR) was turned into a military zone and subsequently settled with Russians.
caption: Marking the new Polish-German border in 1945.
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