Polish Policy with Regard to Persons Applying for Permission to Emigrate to Germany in the Years 1950–1984
Polish Policy with Regard to Persons Applying for Permission to Emigrate to Germany in the Years 1950–1984

Summary/Abstract: According to official statistics, the organized transfer of the German population out of Poland in the years 1946 - 1949 affected 2,612,000 persons.1 During the same period there were also mass population transfers from Poland to the USSR of persons of Belorussian and Ukrainian descent. Nevertheless, despite the migrations that were directly caused by the war, and then by the decisions of the Allied powers, post-war Poland did not become an ethically homogenous State, although national minorities constituted a significantly smaller part of the population than under the II Republic. The largest and politically the most problematic ethnic group were the Germans, and in the first years after the war, the authorities tried to get rid of them. At the turn of 1949/1950, the transfer programme was halted in connection with the worsening international political situation and the realization of ambitious economic plans. The slowing down of the migration process was directly related to the consolidation of Communist power, but the authorities' decision to seal the borders was not based only on ideological and political factors; no doubt, they took the country's demographic situation into consideration. They also had to deal with the difficult task of managing the depopulated and ruined territories that Poland had taken over on the basis of the Potsdam Agreement (territories later referred to as the Recovered Territories or the Western and Northern Territories).

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