Poland: Ethnic Separation in Extremis and EU Expansion

Abstract

It would be difficult to miss the impact of ethnic separation on Poland. Roughly 5 million Germans fled fearing reprisals as the Second World War came to an end, before the Western Allies authorized the transfer of many remaining Germans. Soviet repatriation policies moved Poles to replace them as well as Ukrainians and others eastwards to ‘homelands’ many had never even seen. The major internationally sanctioned mass movements include the population transfer affecting over 3 million Germans going to Germany, the move of about 482,000 Ukrainians to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), and over 1.4 million Poles to Poland from areas lost to the USSR. Linked to the idea of separation for peace, the roughly 5 million affected forms a significant proportion of those permanently leaving their homes. The post-war unmixing was also intertwined with the wartime annihilation of 3 million Polish Jews and Hitler’s intent to bring a similar fate to the Poles.