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

In the last post I mentioned the Potsdam Agreement. This was an incredibly important element to the planning of post war Europe. As we have seen over recent days, the movement of people, plans of nations and restitution of countries has not been linear.

The Potsdam Agreement was the last of a series of three conferences that took place in the final two years of the war. We are going to look in more detail in a forthcoming post series, but this post will focus on this specific agreement.

The Potsdam Agreement specified that:

1. Redefined the borders of Central Europe
   1. approved the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the territories that had been taken over as German and would now be transferred to:
      1. Poland
      2. Russia
      3. Czechoslovakia
2. Approval of German Civilians that enabled them to be sent to:
   1. 1. internment and labour camps in Eastern Europe and
      2. used as forced labour as part of German repatriations to Countries in Eastern Europe

These expulsions were completed in 1950 when it was established that the total of people with German ancestry still living in central and Eastern Europe ranged from 700,000 to 2.7 million.