michael mills wrote:Peter,
That sort of mathematical manipulation is highly artificial,
That was to illustrate that even Poland stretching from Daugavpils to Stettin would have had a higher percent of Poles than Czechoslovakia had of Czechs and the USSR of Russians. I know it is artificial, but no more than giving Sudetenland without a plebiscite to the Czechs.
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Michael, as for you next post (a response to Sid):
I wonder where did you take these numbers from - do you have an exact breakdown by region (for example how many from Pomerelia, how many from Provinz Posen, etc.?) of those "up to one million ethnic Germans who left the territories given to Poland after WW1" ???
I think that the real number was smaller (but at the moment I don't have exact data for Provinz Posen and Ostoberschlesien, only for Pomerelia or West Prussia). And we must also remember, that there was a large number of ethnic Poles moving in the opposite direction (i.e. ethnic Poles emigrating to Poland from parts of West Prussia, Provinz Posen and Regierungsbezirk Oppeln which remained in Germany).
For example, if someone did not like the result of the partition of Upper Silesia, he or she could change the place of residence and move to the other side of the border - such a possibility had been arranged already before the Plebiscite, and was later carried out after the final division of the region.
I have exact numbers for what became Województwo Pomorskie (Pomerelian Voivodeship) in 1920 - read below:
The number of Germans (and ethnic Poles who preferred to live in Germany - if there were such) who emigrated from that area between June 1919 and January 1920 (that is - from the moment when it was officially announced that it was going to become part of Poland, to the moment when German military and administration retreated from the area, and Polish administration and military took it over) was around 125,000 (according to: Marek Stażewski, "Exodus: emigration of German population from Pomerelia to the Reich after WW1", Gdańsk 1998).
Please note, that emigration of those 125,000 Germans from Pomerelia took place BEFORE German police, army and administration handed over the area to Polish police, army and administration (the takeover by Polish administration was in January-February 1920). We cannot talk about any "ethnic cleansing" here - those Germans emigrated on their own, no matter whether they were officials or civilians.
At the same time when those people emigrated, at least 53,000 ethnic Poles (and ethnic Germans who preferred to live in Poland - if there were such) came to that area from neighbouring areas which remained part of Germany after WW1. So the net difference in period 1918 - 1921 in that region was 72,000 more people emigrating from Poland to Germany than people emigrating from Germany to Poland.
The total population of that area was 935,643 in 1921 (according to another source 939,000), of whom 132,187 were immigrants (not born in the region) - that included at least 53,000 born in areas which remained parts of Germany after WW1 (but who decided to move to Poland between 1919 and 1921), 30,000 born in Provinz Posen, 1,200 born in Ostoberschlesien (part of Upper Silesia which became Polish after WW1), 36,400 born in Congress Poland, 9,200 born in Austria (mostly in Galicia and Teschen Silesia), 2,100 born in the Russian Empire (apart from Congress Poland) and 500 born in Central Lithuania. The remaining part of the population - 0,8 million - were native to the region.
According to the Polish census of 1921 - which asked people about their national identity (narodowość in Polish) -, the number of people who declared German nationality in that area was 175,771 (or 18,8 percent of the total population).
In 1910 census (before demographic losses caused by World War 1 and by 72,000 people net migration loss in 1918 - 1921), the population of roughly the same region was 989,715 (acccording to another source 973,000), of whom 421,029 (or 42,5 percent of the total population) were reported as people who spoke German as their native language - that number included 20,963 people (so relatively few) who were reported in the census as so called "Bilinguals" - people with two mother tongues, including German.
Considering that emigration in 1918 - 1921 was 72,000 higher than immigration, population in 1921 should be 918 thousand. But it was 936 thousand - obviously due to natural growth (for which I don't have data, but which was most likely negative - i.e. more deaths than births - during WW1, but recovered back to positive values after the end of WW1).
However, the number of German-speakers was reported as 421,029 in 1910 and the number of people declaring German national identity was 175,771 in 1921 - the difference between these two numbers being 245,000 - of which only 125,000 can be explained by emigration of Germans in period 1918-1921. So what with the remaining 120,000 ???
Well, first of all let's start with the fact that the 1910 census was falsified - it exaggerated the number of German-speakers in some communes (this is visible especially when we resort to "high resolution" analysis of data, and compare 1910 census data to data from 1911 census of school children or to data from previous censuses - such as that of 1905).
For example in the commune of Subkowy in Kreis Dirschau the census of 1905 reported 935 Polish-speakers, 238 German-speakers and 7 others, while the census of 1910 reported - in the same commune - 273 Polish-speakers and 976 German-speakers, including "Bilinguals".
Unless entire commune suddenly switched from Polish to German as their native language (and this can't be done because native language is the one which people learn as small babies, since birth until they start talking), the 1910 figure was falsified.
To confirm that the 1905 census was correct (and the 1910 census was wrong), let's see the Polish census of 1921. In 1921 in the same commune - Subkowy in Kreis Dirschau (now County Tczew), 1262 people reported Polish nationality, 72 German nationality and 8 - other.
So here is the data for Subkowy commune (I will use terms "Poles" and "Germans" for all censuses below):
Population of Subkowy in 1905 - 935 Poles, 238 Germans, 7 others
Population of Subkowy in 1910 - 273 Poles, 976 Germans (including "Bilinguals")
Population of Subkowy in 1921 - 1262 Poles, 72 Germans, 8 others
This is how things changed in Subkowy. As you can see "German" and "Polish" were very fluent and plastic categories there.
But let's get back to the general picture, to reasons why those figures can't be compared:
The second reason why the two censuses cannot be really compared, is because they reported two different things.
The German census of 1910 reported language, while the Polish census of 1921 reported national identity. Therefore someone whose native language was reported as German in the census of 1910, could then report Polish national identity in the census of 1921 (for example).
So - to sum up - all those "missing Germans" were in fact "misreported Germans" from the 1910 census.
For the most part it was wishful thinking, since they weren't Germans.
The same people were largely reported as Polish-speakers in 1905 census, and all of them as Poles by nationality in 1921 census.
michael mills wrote:The eastern territories taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles had a substantial German minority of 40% before 1914
Parts of West Prussia given to Poland - or the "Polish Corridor" (Pomerelia) - had a German-speaking minority of 40% according to the census of 1910 (which - however - exaggerated the percentage of German speakers, as all other censuses including the census of 1905 and the census of School Children from 1911 prove). But parts of Posen and Silesia given to Poland certainly did not have so numerous Germans.
When it comes to part of Upper Silesia - on what basis do you claim 40% "Germans" there? If you count people who voted for Germany in the Plebiscite - then it could be around 40% in the area granted to Poland. But if you count ethnically German and German-speaking population - then it was by no means so many. And we must as well remember, that while up to 40% of people in Ostoberschlesien voted for Germany, also around 30% of people in Westoberschlesien - which remained part of Germany - voted for Poland. So not only were a lot of people who wanted to live in Germany granted to Poland, but also a lot of people who wanted to live in Poland were left in Germany, especially in the countryside (while those who voted for Germany in Ostoberschlesien lived especially in cities, such as Katowice). For that reason, however, population exchanges were arranged after 1921 - not everyone moved in accordance to how they had voted, but some people did.
Now when it comes to Provinz Posen:
Let's remember that not all of Provinz Posen was given to Poland - large part remained in Germany and became known as "Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen". That was the part in which German-speaking population was concentrated, being the absolute majority there. However, there were still many ethnically Polish settlements and communes in Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen (such as Kramsko/Kramzig).
Polish wrestler Leon Stanislav Pinetzki - about whom we talked in another thread - was born before WW1, but was born in that area which became Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen after WW1 (this is the reason why he didn't have Polish citizenship until 1945).
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As for the census of School Children from 1911 (based on which Eugeniusz Romer made one of his ethnic maps):
It differentiated kids according to mother tongue, and it showed a much higher percent of Polish children among the total number of children, than was the share of Poles among the total population according to the census of 1910. One reason for that was - as already mentioned - the fact that the census of 1910 was falsified. Another reason, however, was that ethnic Poles were having more children per adult than ethnic Germans - because Poles were breeding like rabbits (at that particular time period), and Germans - not any more. Germans entered the "demographic transition" a few decades earlier than Poles, but also the phase of declining birth rates a few decades earlier.
It clearly shows, that the percentage of Poles was still going to increase with each year after 1911, and the percentage of Germans was going to decline in each subsequent year - even if all other factors (such as migrations or assimilation) did not play any role.
In the Middle Ages I suppose it was the other way around - with Germans breeding faster than Poles. Otherwise I can't imagine them Germanizing such large areas, with low sub-replacement fertility rates such as these that Germans are having now.
michael mills wrote:In the years immediately after the end of the First World War, the German minority was massively reduced by large-scale ethnic cleansing, not so much by the Polish Government as by unofficial insurgent groups who used coercion to induce a flight of the German population. It is estimated that up to one million ethnic Germans left the territories given to Poland, and they were by no means all Government officials
These are unsupported claims, in my opinion.
As I wrote above - in case of Pomerelia at least -, Germans emigrated before Polish "unofficial insurgent groups" even had a chance to start existing. They emigrated when the area was still under German control, with German police, army and administration. To claim that they were forced out would be like claiming that German-Americans were ethnically cleansed from Germantown (while in reality we know well, that they fled from Germantown on their own - as they did also from all other cities to which African-Americans immigrated):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germantown,_Philadelphia
(...) Germantown was founded on October 6, 1683, by German settlers: thirteen Quaker and Mennonite families from Krefeld.[11][12] Today the founding day of Germantown is remembered as German-American Day, a holiday in the United States, observed annually on October 6.
(...)
Between 1954 and 1956 Germantown experienced an influx of lower-income African Americans, resulting in a decline in property values and triggering a "white flight" of the majority of white residents to the suburbs.[17] The demographic shift caused a slow but steady decline in central Germantown's upscale shopping district, with the last department store, a J. C. Penney branch, closing in the early 1980s.[18] The current demographics of Germantown reflects this shift. As of the 2010 US Census, Germantown proper is 77% black, 15% white [including Hispanic], 3% non-white Hispanic, and 2% Asian,[3] and East Germantown is 92% black, 3% white, 2% non-white Hispanic, and 2% Asian.[3]
Eugene Stackhouse, a retired former president of the Germantown Historical Society says that the demographic transition of Germantown into a predominantly black neighborhood was the result of the now illegal practice of blockbusting. "It was a great disgrace. Cheap houses would be sold to a black family, then the realtors would go around and tell the neighbors that the blacks are invading," said Stackhouse.[19] The practice was used to trigger panic selling.[18] (...)
Germans escaped almost as fast from a bunch of Afro-American migrants as they did from the Red Army in East Prussia in 1945 (!).
And all of that just because someone told them that - quote - "Blacks were invading". What if someone told the Germans in 1919 that "Poles were invading", and they emigrated just like those escaping few decades later from "Black invasion" in Germantown, Philadelphia?
There are words which carry the presage of defeat. Defence is such a word. What is the result of an even victorious defence? The next attempt of imposing it to that weaker, defender. The attacker, despite temporary setback, feels the master of situation.
