Coat of arms of Royal Prussia. From 1772 coat of arms of West Prussia – Source Wikipedia

The Klaipeda region was a mandated territory of the League of Nations in 1920 as laid out in the Treaty of Versailles and was  unified with Lithuania during the period of 1923-1939.

Between 1944 and 1948 there was a steady move to expel all Germans from central and eastern Europe into Germany and Austria, both of which was under the control of the allied forces at this time.

The term German defined as:

• Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche)
• German Citizens (Reichsdeutsche)

Since 1945 a small area of Lithuania Minor has been retained in the border of Lithuania and Poland, with the majority of the territory being part of the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, which became part of the Soviet Union until December 1991.