East Upper Silesia
solid = Reich border from 1918 and Upper Silesian districts,
dotted = Lower Silesian districts,
As Upper Silesia , the area was Upper Silesia referred that after the First World War, by virtue of the Treaty of Versailles and after a referendum and riots on 20 June 1922 by the German Reich in Poland was ceded; Against this background, the term Polish Upper Silesia is also common in historical considerations. It covered a substantial part of the Upper Silesian industrial area. It included the cities and industrial locations of Katowice , Königshütte , Laurahütte , Myslowitz , Pless , Ruda , Schwientochlowitz , Tarnowitz and parts of the district of Beuthen .
history
As a result of the uprisings in Upper Silesia, in which numerous Polish insurgents from Wojciech Korfanty's troops "did not reside in Silesia" took part, the occupation of that part of Upper Silesia, which according to Korfanty's ideas should be ceded to Poland, began. Even a large number of Polish pastors came to Upper Silesia from other countries, including America, to agitate against Germany. Pastor Josef Kubis sent a petition to the cardinal and the Prince-Bishop's Curia in Breslau and asked for help with the attacks by foreign clergy.
A plebiscite was held on March 20, 1921 . This resulted in a total of 60% majority for Germany for the voting area (ratio of votes: 700,605 for Germany, 479,359 for Poland). The voting area was divided according to the proposals of the Inter-Allied Government and Plebiscite Commission for Upper Silesia at the Paris Ambassadors' Conference on October 20, 1921 in an area ratio of 2: 1. The division came into force on June 20, 1922. Furthermore, minority issues and issues of economic cooperation in the divided region were regulated by the German-Polish Agreement on Upper Silesia of May 15, 1922 .
West Upper Silesia remained with the German Reich, the larger part of the voting area, which is larger in terms of area and population, but primarily more agrarian and sparsely populated. With East Upper Silesia, most of the Upper Silesian industrial area went to Poland. In the ceded area, a total of 60% majority voted for Poland, with many cities and industrial locations, especially Katowice and Königshütte , in some cases showing clear majorities for Germany.
With the new demarcation the uniformly grown Upper Silesian industrial area was cut through. The border separated blast furnace plants from their processing plants and vice versa. Of the 67 coal mines , 53 went to Poland as well as the majority of the zinc ore mines and the entire coal chemical industry. Half of the 22 large companies in the coal and steel industry were affected by the disruption of their acquis. This mainly affected the Oberschlesische Eisenbahnbedarfs-AG and the Oberschlesische Eisenindustrie AG , whose operations were now partly in West Germany and partly in East Upper Silesia in Poland. Of the approximately 3,000 km 2 in East Upper Silesia hard coal deposits, 2,200 km 2 went to Poland. Poland received 90% of the estimated 80 to 90 million tons of Upper Silesian coal reserves. Of a total of eight Upper Silesian ironworks with 37 blast furnaces, three with 18 blast furnaces remained with Germany.
In the Second Polish Republic , East Upper Silesia formed the Autonomous Voivodeship of Silesia together with the Polish part of Cieszyn Silesia ( Zaolzie or Olsa area was annexed by Poland in 1938 - the name was used for the entire district of Cieszyn during World War II ) .
In World War II
During the attack on Poland in September 1939, the Wehrmacht conquered Eastern Upper Silesia, which was annexed to the " Greater German Reich " in violation of international law and was thus again incorporated into Upper Silesia or the Gau Silesia , with parts of the Kielce and Cracow Voivodeships , which the occupiers also named Eastern Upper Silesia .
In the policy of Germanization in the Lesser Poland parts, the occupiers could not be based on the Schlonsak movement because the population did not identify as Silesians, but as Poles . Instead, resettlement campaigns such as Aktion Saybusch were introduced, especially in the districts of Blächstadt , Bielitz and Saybusch . The Poles were expelled to the Generalgouvernement in order to be able to settle ethnic Germans from Eastern Galicia and Buchenland . Some young men were deported to the German Reich as forced laborers . The Auschwitz concentration camp , where the Jews were exterminated, was also located in this area . Before the war, the most numerous Jewish society was in the Dombrowa coal basin ( Sosnowiec and the Bendsburg district ).
literature
- Alder Bach: Upper Silesia. From the Sudetenland to the Upper Silesian Plate. Flechsig, 1998, ISBN 3-88189-218-4 .
- Haus Oberschlesien Foundation (Ed.): Writings of the Haus Oberschlesien Foundation. Berlin 1990.
- Daniela Pelka: The German-Polish language contact in Upper Silesia using the example of the area around Oberglogau. Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89626-524-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Roos: History of the Polish Nation 1918–1978. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne / Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-17-004932-1 , p. 91.
- ^ Petition from Pastor Josef Kubis for help against the agitators ( Memento from February 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ See “German-Polish Agreement on Upper Silesia” (Upper Silesia Agreement, OSA) of May 15, 1922, in: Reichsgesetzblatt , 1922, Part II, p. 238ff.
- ^ A b Hans-Werner Retterath (Ed.): Germanization in occupied Eastern Upper Silesia during the Second World War . Münster 2018, ISBN 978-3-8309-3828-6 ( online [PDF]).