Polish corridor

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Polish Corridor and Danzig (1939)
Loss of territory to Poland after the Treaty of Versailles: parts of West Prussia ( corridor ) and Posen

The Polish Corridor (also known at the time as the Danzig Corridor or Vistula Corridor , in Polish Korytarz polski ) was a formerly Prussian strip of land between Pomerania in the west and the lower reaches of the Vistula in the east. Germany had him after the First World War in Poland cede. From 1920 until the attack on Poland in September 1939, it separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The corridor was not a politico-historical entity; between the stretch of coast allocated to Poland and the German-Russian border from 1914 lay apart from most of the previous province of West Prussia , parts of historical Greater Poland that had belonged to the province of Posen . The western strips of Poznan and West Prussia that remained with the German Reich were combined to form the Grenzmark Province of Poznan-West Prussia .

Politically, after the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 until the first partition of Poland-Lithuania in 1772 , the area belonged to the Polish Crown as a Prussian Royal Share and from 1920 to 1939 as the Pomeranian Voivodeship to the Second Polish Republic .

The formation of the “Polish Corridor”, which geographically was a “fragmentation corridor” through the German Reich , was part of the 14-point program of North American President Woodrow Wilson in the negotiations for the Versailles Peace Treaty . The democratically elected German delegates were not admitted to these negotiations ; they were forced to sign the treaty under considerable external pressure. The takeover of the territories by Poland took place when the treaty came into force on January 20, 1920.

In the Versailles Treaty it was agreed that Poland must ensure unhindered rail, ship, post, telephone and telegraph traffic through the corridor.

history

East and West Prussia, 1896

Older territorial history

The history of the Polish Corridor area is closely related to the history of Pomerellen . At the northern tip of the corridor area, on the Baltic Sea , there were human settlements early on. In 1877 an extensive burial site from the beginning of the Iron Age was found between Großendorf ( Władysławowo ) and Schwarzau ( Swarzewo ) . The East Germanic face urns are characteristic of this culture , known as the Großendorfer culture . More recent finds were made in 1913 and 1932 in the area of ​​today's Hallerowo .

In the second half of the 10th century Pomerellen was incorporated into the Polish state under Duke Mieszko I. At the end of the 12th century a duchy was established in Pomerellen. After the male line of the Pomerellian dukes died out in 1294, the area was divided between two German feudal states, the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Teutonic Order , after disputes over inheritance through the Treaty of Soldin 1309, overriding the rights of the Polish crown . The possession of the Teutonic Order in Pomerellen was confirmed in the Treaty of Kalisch 1343 by the Polish king and estates.

After the end of the Thirteen Years' War and the Second Peace of Thornton on October 19, 1466, the secessionist Pomerellian estates, as Polish-Prussians and the autonomous Prussian Confederation against violence and injustice, voluntarily submitted to the patronage of the Crown of Poland, i.e. the Polish King personally. By the First Partition of Poland-Lithuania 1772 Polish Prussia was King . Frederick II of Prussia annexed and as a province of West Prussia his Kingdom of Prussia annexed. The province of West Prussia existed until 1919/20.

Traditionally, the area of ​​the Pomeranian Voivodeship was populated with mixed ethnicities : Germans, Poles, Kashubians and a few Yiddish speakers lived here . The use of Yiddish, almost exclusively by Jews , had declined sharply in favor of German by 1918. The area was also mixed in terms of denomination and religion, with Catholics mostly speaking Polish or Kashubian as their mother tongue (98%, only just under 2% of Catholics had German as their mother tongue), while Union Protestants predominantly spoke German (90%, almost 10% against) Polish), while Jews (1931 census just under 3,500) were ethnically divided into three groups, 50% with Yiddish, 27% with Polish and 19% with German as their mother tongue, both of the former groups immigrating from Austria and Russian, especially since 1920 Partitions of Poland .

In post-war Poland, the territory of the “Polish Corridor”, which was taken from the Free State of Prussia (cf. Weimar Republic ) after the First World War, was called : Danzig Pomerania , East Pomerania , Vistula Pomerania or Our Pomerania .

Reasons for the separation from the German Reich

American President Woodrow Wilson (1912)

According to the 14-point program , in which the American President Woodrow Wilson summarized the US war goals in January 1918, an independent Polish state with its own access to the sea was to be established, as Polish politicians, especially Roman Dmowski , have been doing since the beginning of the war had asked of the Entente . On October 8, 1918, in Washington , Dmowski presented President Wilson with a memorandum, which was also presented to the Special Commission of the Peace Conference dealing with Polish affairs on February 25, 1919 and which outlined Poland's territorial demands on Germany. With the project of its own access to the Baltic Sea, Poland , which had emerged after 123 years of foreign rule, was to be made more economically independent than it could have been as a purely landlocked state . The counter-proposal of the German delegation in Versailles , instead granting Poland free ports in Gdynia and other places , was rejected. The realization of the corridor leading through German territory collided in part with the right of self-determination of the peoples on which Wilson had based his 14 points; because the population in the territory annexed by Prussia in 1772, west of the lower Vistula to the Baltic Sea coast, was ethnically very mixed in 1918 as well. In the German historiography of the 1920s to 1940s, this led to the political myth that the American president had insufficient geography knowledge and therefore had turned away from his negotiating partners, namely the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and the head of the Polish peace delegation, Dmowski, duped during the Paris peace talks. Historians today assume that Wilson was broadly familiar with ethnographic realities. Wilson outlined the various motivations for his political action at the time in speeches to the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate and in 37 public speeches that he gave in the western United States after his second return from Paris.

Second Polish Republic

On July 11, 1920 the areas belonging to the corridor were ceded to the Second Polish Republic and formed the Pomeranian Voivodeship . In addition to the larger cities of Graudenz and Thorn (seat of the voivode ), this included a total of fourteen districts. The area of ​​assignment also included the Baltic Sea coast from the Piasnitz river via the Hela peninsula , the Putziger Wiek to Sopot (the latter already belonged to the Free City of Danzig ). After Polish plans to fully integrate the port city of Danzig into Poland could not be implemented, and this continued to be a "free city", only partially under Polish control, Poland began to build its own port in the recreational and fishing town of Gdynia ( Polish Gdynia ), which in 1921 only had about 1300 inhabitants. Gdynia was removed from the Polish state scheduled one of the largest commercial, emigration, war and fishing ports of the Baltic Sea with more than 112 000 inhabitants (1937), and by a railway track across the corridor with the industrial area in also separated Polish part Upper Silesia to Katowice (Kattowitz) connected. This made them independent of the connection through the area of ​​the Free City of Danzig, which German railway workers could strike at any time. Built for the export of Upper Silesian coal, this railway line was also called the coal main line . The only seaport on Polish territory at the time also included military installations .

The competition between Danzig and Gdynia led to a dispute that was exacerbated by the German-Polish trade war . The Gdansk side argued that, after the port of Gdynia was built, Poland no longer needed Gdansk as a port. In August 1933, Danzig and Poland signed a first agreement that guaranteed both ports an equal share of Polish sea trade.

Weimar Republic

Isolation of East Prussia from the Vistula

The Polish corridor was an area without clear ethnic dividing lines, in which a linguistically and culturally mixed population lived. Its loss was generally felt in Germany as unjust and a violation of the right to self-determination, because the formation of the corridor was not preceded by a referendum. The population of the corridor was predominantly Slavic, but there were also predominantly German-speaking areas, including the cities of Thorn and Graudenz . In addition, the German side argued that the pure language statistics would not adequately reflect the population's feeling of belonging.

The treaty revision of the border demarcation that separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany was a primary goal of every government of the Weimar Republic . For this reason, the Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann , who was always ready to come to an agreement , never responded to the various Polish proposals to conclude an "East Locarno" analogous to the Locarno Treaties , with which the eastern border of the Reich could be declared inviolable and guaranteed under international law.

Domestically, the corridor was regularly the subject of nationalist propaganda . In August 1930, for example, the Reich Minister for the Occupied Territories in the first Brüning cabinet , Gottfried Treviranus ( Conservative People's Party ), caused an international crisis when he spoke and prophesied of the "unhealed wound in the eastern flank, this stunted lung of the Reich" during an election speech "Poland's future would not be secure without changing its borders, which was seen as a threat of war in the neighboring country.

time of the nationalsocialism

Only after the National Socialists came to power did the situation seem to ease with the conclusion of the German-Polish non-aggression pact of 1934. However, the possibility of regaining the corridor through war was secretly pursued by the National Socialist Reich government , as the Hoßbach transcript shows.

After the conclusion of the Munich Agreement , the Nazi regime took official steps for the first time on the question of the corridor and the status of Danzig. On October 24, 1938, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, on behalf of Adolf Hitler , demanded the return of Danzig to the German Reich and permission to build an extra-territorial motorway that was to connect East Prussia and the rest of the Reich. In return, Poland's economic interests would be taken into account in Gdansk and the state borders would be mutually guaranteed. Poland rejected this request because it not only considered the return of Gdańsk to be unacceptable for domestic political reasons, but above all because it feared that it would become dependent on Germany by joining the Anti-Comintern Pact . In March 1939 at the latest, after the breach of the Munich Agreement due to the " smashing of the rest of the Czech Republic " and the reintegration of the Memel region , Polish politicians lost confidence in German negotiation offers and looked for allies in a coming conflict. Germany, however, did not respond to the Polish counter-proposals. The dispute over the corridor formed the backdrop for the fake attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter on August 31, 1939. The German attack on the Westerplatte near Danzig on the following day with the subsequent declarations of war by Great Britain (due to the British security guarantee to Poland on March 31 1939) and France to Germany on September 3, 1939 mark the beginning of the Second World War . Admittedly, Hitler had already explained in a meeting with leading military officials on May 23, 1939 that Danzig was not the object at issue, but that it was "about the expansion of living space in the east".

Second World War and consequences

At the beginning of the Second World War , after the attack on Poland from the areas of the corridor and the Free City of Danzig , the Nazi state formed the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia in autumn 1939 and began to expel over 100,000 Polish residents.

Towards the end of the war, the Red Army occupied the region in the spring of 1945 . Soon afterwards, with the approval of the Soviet Union , the People's Republic of Poland submitted the corridor area together with all parts of the Reich area east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. Insofar as the German residents had not fled, they were subsequently expelled by the Polish administrative authorities .

Crossing the corridor

"Island" East Prussia (1926)

Train traffic

As early as 1919, when Poland actually took possession of the corridor, corridor trains ran between East Prussia and Western Pomerania and the rest of Germany. These trains ran on Polish territory with Polish locomotives and Polish personnel.

In Article 89 of the Versailles Treaty, the German Empire guaranteed unhindered passage between East Prussia and the rest of Germany. The right of passage for the railroad was first specified in a provisional agreement at the end of 1920, which was replaced by a final agreement on April 21, 1921.

Military ticket in East Prussia traffic 1938

The agreement initially set seven routes for transit trains between East Prussia and the rest of Germany; from 1922 there were eight, but not all of them were used. In return, Poland was given the right to set up transit traffic on two routes between Pomerania and Mazovia through East Prussia, but only used this for a short time.

In 1930 five routes were used:

  • Berlin - Stettin - Stolp - Groß Boschpol - Danzig - Tczew (Dirschau) - Marienburg - Koenigsberg
  • Berlin - Schneidemühl - Firchau - Chojnice (Konitz) - Tczew (Dirschau) - Marienburg - Königsberg
  • Berlin - Schneidemühl - Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) - Toruń (Thorn) - German Eylau - Allenstein - Insterburg
  • Berlin - Neu Bentschen - Poznań (Posen) - Toruń (Thorn) - German Eylau - Allenstein - Insterburg
  • Wroclaw - Poznań - Toruń (Thorn) - German Eylau - Allenstein - Insterburg

The most important route of the "privileged through traffic" ran on the route of the old Prussian Eastern Railway via Schneidemühl and Dirschau ; In 1934, a total of six daily train pairs ran there, supplemented by other seasonal trains. One or two pairs of trains drove on the other routes. The Deutsche Reichsbahn had to pay the Polish State Railways (PKP) a contractually agreed fee for the passage . A distinction was made between “privileged trains” and “privileged train parts”. "Privileged trains" only ran on the Eastern Railway; On all other routes there were “privileged train parts”, as the trains could also be used for traffic to and from Poland and Gdansk. In these trains, only the “privileged parts of the train” were sealed and exempted from customs and passport control in the border stations. In the case of the "privileged trains" on the Eastern Railway, some of the trains were able to use the stops at the stations in Konitz and Dirschau to enter and leave Poland; at both stations there was one after getting off or before boarding joint German-Polish passport and customs control. For the other trains on the Eastern Railway, the stops in Poland were only used as operating stops for changing locomotives. The trains between Konitz and Marienburg were hauled exclusively by PKP locomotives.

At the beginning of 1936 the Reichsbahn fell into arrears with its payments for the use of the corridor routes due to the shortage of foreign currency in the German Reich; thereupon the PKP stopped operating most of the corridor trains on February 7, 1936. Only the train pair D 1/2 between Berlin and Eydtkuhnen that a sleeper of CIWL between Paris and Riga as coaches led, wrong on. A new transit agreement was not concluded until the summer of 1936 . In order to save the costs for the comparatively long routes via Poznan and Bromberg , only the connections via Firchau – Dirschau – Marienburg and via Groß Boschpol – Danzig – Marienburg were used, the latter, however, only by a single pair of trains. The trains to Deutsch Eylau, Allenstein and Insterburg now also ran regularly via Marienburg. For the traffic between Silesia and East Prussia the trains from Berlin to East Prussia were provided in Küstrin through coaches from Breslau . In the years that followed, the Reichsbahn repeatedly had to restrict the number of through trains due to the shortage of foreign currency. In 1939, a total of nine daily and two seasonal D trains ran in the summer schedule, as well as around 20 pairs of freight trains.

Since there were no passport or customs controls on the train journey from Berlin to Königsberg , passengers in the corridor trains were exempt from applying for a Polish visa , which was subject to a fee . Nevertheless, due to the large number of regulations to be observed - for example, it was initially forbidden to open the compartment windows - as well as the controls before and after the seal, not only for time and psychological reasons, was often perceived as a burden.

Road traffic

Five transit roads have been designated for road traffic through the corridor:

A transit visa for 1.60 RM had to be obtained from a Polish consulate to use the transit  roads. For this purpose, a road toll of 5 zł for cars and 3 zł for motorcycles was levied at the border  . A toll of 0.30 zł was levied for the use of the Vistula Bridge near Tczew (Dirschau) . You were allowed to take 1000 RM with you (240 RM as a letter of credit for trips to Gdansk).

Shipping

As an alternative to corridor traffic, from 1922 the German Reich financed the East Prussian sea service established as a regular ship connection between Swinoujscie and Pillau or Sopot .

Air traffic

From 1925/1926 there was a flight connection of Deruluft (from 1937 of Deutsche Lufthansa ) between Berlin and Königsberg with a stopover in Danzig . The flights initially took place three times a week. The route initially led in a northerly direction via Bergen (today Góry (Białogard) ) and Stolp (today Słupsk ) to Lauenburg in Pomerania (today Lębork ), from there to fly over the corridor at its narrowest point to Gdansk. Junkers G 24 aircraft were used on the route .

From 1927 the line Berlin - Danzig - Königsberg via Riga and Reval (today Tallinn ) to Moscow and Leningrad (today Saint Petersburg ) was extended; this route Berlin - Moscow / Leningrad was called East Express from 1930 .

Population development

Language relations in the province of West Prussia after the 1910 census.
Legend of the pie charts:
  • German speaking
  • Polish speaking
  • Kashubian language
  • Other or multilingual
    • Language map of Germany
    Andree’s Handatlas 1881 (Eastern section)
    Polish language around 1900
    S. Orgelbranda Encyklopedja Powszechna. Addition from 1912

    In 1910, almost 990,000 people lived in the area that would later become the Polish corridor. In accordance with the territorial principle of citizenship - apart from settled foreigners who the state could refuse to stay - all residents - regardless of their linguistic or cultural identity - were German until 1920. With the restitution of the Polish state, there was also Polish citizenship again. According to the territorial principle, the inhabitants of the corridor area would now all be Poles. Not everyone wanted to change their citizenship with the affiliation of the area, so every resident - regardless of linguistic or cultural identity - could opt to remain German (cf. Article 297b of the Versailles Treaty). Those who opted, one speaks of optants , remained German, but now abroad (i.e. foreign German ), and were thus subject to Polish foreigners legislation. If someone had opted to remain German, Germany did not make retention of citizenship subject to conditions such as preferred German language use and the like. There are different statements in the literature about the German-speaking population:

    • In 1974 the dtv lexicon on history and politics in the 20th century estimated that the German population in the Polish corridor was "at least 50%" in 1919.
    • The American historian Richard Blanke, on the other hand, in his work published in 1998 comes to the conclusion that in 1910 ethnic Germans were in the minority with 42.5% in the later assigned territory.

    After the separation from Germany in 1920 and the transfer of the area to Poland, the proportion of ethnic Germans in the total population decreased significantly. In 1939 it was only ten percent. This can be attributed to several reasons.

    Thousands of ethnically Germans left the area in the last six months before it was ceded to Poland, when the resolutions of the Versailles Treaty were already known but not yet come into force. The reasons were emotional factors, such as the loss of the privileged position previously assumed, the reluctance to fit into a Polish state, the “noticeably hateful atmosphere” and the “anti-German administrative and restructuring measures of the Polish state and its” expected by many with a certain justification Authorities ”. For example, the future Polish Minister of Education Stanisław Grabski had declared in Poznan in October 1919: "The foreign element will have to look around to see if it is better off elsewhere."

    Another tens of thousands of ethnic Germans left the area after the annexation to Poland due to repressive measures by the Polish state: In return for previous discrimination and attempts to Germanize the ethnic Polish population in and through the Prussian state, the Polish government tried to displace ethnic Germans who are now - as far as they had not become Germans abroad - belonged to the minority of German-speaking Poles . In places, the Polish policy of “ de-Germanization ” ( odniemczenie ) mimicked the Prussian policy towards Poland before 1914. Many ethnic Germans were expelled, especially members of the military and civil servants who were considered to be representatives of the previous oppression. The same applied to Germans abroad, who were expelled from the country many times in 1925. There were also expropriations and evictions. Some of the German-speaking schools that were guaranteed in principle were closed. At the same time, the influx and settlement of Polish families from other areas of Poland, but above all Polish families from abroad, including a third of the Ruhr Poles previously resident in Germany , who pushed into the country after Poland regained independence, were promoted by the Polish state .

    Due to the anti-Semitism in Poland , which became manifest in all social classes especially after the Polish-Soviet war , many Jews emigrated from the corridor to Germany in the interwar period , who, apart from a few settled foreigners, like all people resident in the area were German until 1920 and therefore enjoyed easier immigration rules in Germany.

    Share of the German-speaking population in the districts of the Polish corridor
    1910
    circle population German speakers proportion of
    Strasburg 62,142 21.097 34.0%
    Briesen 49.506 24.007 48.5%
    Thorn ( city + country ) 105,544 58,266 55.2%
    Culm 50,069 23,345 46.6%
    Schwetz 87,712 42,233 47.1%
    Graudenz 89,063 62,892 70.6%
    Dirschau 64,321 28,046 43.6%
    Neustadt 71,560 24,528 34.3%
    Karthaus 66,190 14,170 21.4%
    Berent 52,980 20,804 39.3%
    Prussian Stargard 65,427 17,165 26.2%
    Konitz 74.963 30,326 40.5%
    Tuchel 33,951 11,268 33.2%
     
    Soldau 33,951 9.210 37.7%
    Löbau 59,037 12,122 20.5%
    Zempelburg 30,541 21,554 70.6%
    all in all 989.715 421.029 42.5%
    1921
    circle population German speakers proportion of
    Brodnica (Strasburg) 61,180 9,599 15.7%
    Wąbrzeźno (Briesen) 47,100 14,678 31.1%
    Toruń ( Toruń , City and Country) 79,247 16,175 20.4%
    Chełmno (Culm) 46,823 12,872 27.5%
    Świecie (Schwetz) 83,138 20,178 24.3%
    Grudziądz (Graudenz) 77,031 21,401 27.8%
    Tczew (Dirschau) 62.905 7,854 12.5%
    Wejherowo (New Town) 71,692 7,857 11.0%
    Kartuzy (Karthaus) 64,631 5,037 7.8%
    Kościerzyna (Berent) 49,935 9,290 18.6%
    Starograd (Prussian Stargard) 62,400 5,946 9.5%
    Chojnice (Konitz) 71,018 13,129 18.5%
    Tuchola (Tuchel) 34,445 5,660 16.4%
    Parts of districts that have largely remained in Germany:
    Działdowo (Soldau) 23,290 8,187 34.5%
    Lubawa (Löbau) 59,765 4,478 7.6%
    Sępólno (Zempelburg) 27,876 13,430 48.2%
     

    In the Pomeranian Voivodeship, which was completely in the narrower corridor, 1,884,400 people lived in 1939, after territorial expansions in the southwest and southeast, in 1931 in the area as before 1817 there were 1,080,138 people according to the census. Of these, 89.74% declared Polish or (subsumed under the former) Kashubian, 9.75 German and 0.16% Yiddish as the third largest language group. German and Yiddish speakers mostly lived in cities and made up the majority of the employees in this region in industry and commerce. The ethnically Polish and Kashubian population was predominantly Roman Catholic , while the ethnically German population consisted largely of Protestants . Especially in Toruń (Thorn) the population was ethnically, linguistically and religiously mixed. There was the ethnically German population, v. a. Protestants and Jews in the majority in 1920. Jews, predominantly ethnically German, made up the majority in Zempelburg .

    In the years 1945 to 1947 Poland expelled all Germans abroad and most of the ethnically German Poles from the area of ​​the former Polish corridor, which since then has been completely inhabited by Poles and Kashubians.

    literature

    • Helmuth Fechner: Germany and Poland. Holzner Verlag, Würzburg 1964.
    • Leszek Belzyt: Linguistic minorities in the Prussian state 1815-1914. Marburg 1998, ISBN 3-87969-267-X .
    • Richard Blanke: Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland 1918-1939. University of Kentucky Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8131-1803-4 .
    • Hugo Rasmus: Pomeranian / West Prussia 1919–1939. Munich / Berlin 1989.
    • Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg: Between the Polish estates and the Prussian authoritarian state - From Royal Prussia to West Prussia (1756-1806). Oldenbourg, Munich 1995, p. 21 ff. ( Restricted preview ).
    • Albert S. Kotowski : Poland's policy towards its German minority 1918–1939. Wiesbaden 1998.

    Web links

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ Martin Schwind : Textbook of General Geography. Volume VIII: General geography of states. de Gruyter, Berlin 1972, pp. 38-39.
    2. ^ Shortly after the signing of the Versailles Treaty on June 28, 1919 by the German delegates, Wilson expressed in the broad American public: “We tried to be just to Germany, and when we had heard her arguments and examined every portion of the counter proposals that she made, we wrote the Treaty in its final form and said, 'Sign here' ”, cf. Wodrow Wilson's Case for the League of Nations. Compiled with his approval by Hamilton Foley. Princeton University Press / Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, Princeton / London 1923, p. 29.
    3. ↑ a b c cf. Drugi powszechny spis ludności z dn. 9.XII.1931 r: Mieszkania i gospodarstwa domowe. Ludność. Stosunki zawodowe: Województwo pomorskie / Le deuxième recensement général de la population du 9 decembre 1931: Logements et ménages, population, professions: Voïévodie de Pomorze , Główny Urząd. Sándor Statystyczny Rzeczypemj62., Ed ), Warsaw: Główny Urząd Statystyczny , 1938, Tablica 10. Ludność według wyznania i płci oraz języka ojczystego / Population d'après la confession et le sexe, ainsi que d'après la langue maternelle.
    4. ↑ Paul Roth : The emergence of the Polish state - A political and international legal investigation. Liebmann, Berlin 1926, pp. 70 ff. And Appendix 9, in particular pp. 133-142.
    5. ^ Hagen Schulze : Weimar. Germany 1917–1933 (= The Germans and their Nation; Vol. 4). Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1994, p. 195 f.
    6. ^ Woodrow Wilson: Woodrow Wilson's Case for the League of Nations. Compiled with hith approval by Hamilton Foley. Princeton University Press / Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, Princeton / London 1923.
    7. ^ Christian Holtje: The Weimar Republic and the Ostlocarno problem 1919–1934. Revision or guarantee of the German eastern border from 1919. Holzner Verlag, Würzburg 1958, passim.
    8. ^ Hermann Graml : Between Stresemann and Hitler. The foreign policy of the presidential cabinets Brüning, Papen and Schleicher. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2001, p. 52 ff.
    9. ^ Stefan Kley: Hitler, Ribbentrop and the unleashing of the Second World War. Schöningh, Paderborn 1996, ISBN 3-506-77496-4 , pp. 204-206 (zugl .: Stuttgart, Univ., Diss., 1994/95).
    10. ^ Peter Oliver Loew : Danzig. Biography of a city. Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-60587-1 , p. 218 f.
    11. ^ Gerhard L. Weinberg: Germany, Hitler and World War II. Essays in modern German and world history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, ISBN 0-521-47407-8 , pp. 121-128.
    12. ^ Sidney Aster: The Making of the Second World War. London 1973.
    13. ↑ Wolfgang Michalka: Ribbentrop and German world politics, 1933-1940. Foreign policy concepts and decision-making processes in the Third Reich. W. Fink, Munich 1980, ISBN 978-3-7705-1400-7 , p. 275.
    14. ↑ Detlef Brandes , Holm Sundhaussen , Stefan Troebst (eds.): Lexicon of expulsions. Deportation, Forced Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78407-4 , p. 109 f.
    15. ^ Andreas Geißler, Konrad Koschinski: 130 years of the East Railway Berlin - Königsberg - Baltic States. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89218-048-2 , p. 87.
    16. ^ Andreas Geißler, Konrad Koschinski: 130 years of the East Railway Berlin - Königsberg - Baltic States. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89218-048-2 , p. 88.
    17. ^ Andreas Geißler, Konrad Koschinski: 130 years of the East Railway Berlin - Königsberg - Baltic States. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89218-048-2 , p. 91 ff.
    18. ↑ For the psychological stress caused by the sealing of the trains, see, for example, the relevant sections in Marion Gräfin Dönhoff's book Names that nobody mentions anymore ; Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag , Munich 1965.
    19. ↑ According to Baedeker's car guide German Reich 1939 (always the status from 1939)
    20. ↑ a b Kurt Schneege: About the postal history of Königsberg. Hobby sites
    21. ↑ F. Nickel The beacon system for air traffic. In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung. No. 52, December 9, 1931, pp. 765-768. Quoted from night flight routes , until 1931. on the Swedish website Justus2.se by Bo Justusson
    22. ↑ See Leszek Belzyt: Linguistic minorities in the Prussian state 1815–1914. The Prussian language statistics in progress and commentary. Herder Institute, Marburg 1998, ISBN 3-87969-267-X .
    23. ↑ Germans previously living in Germany who came to live abroad through the annexation of their residential area, were not officially revoked their citizenship.
    24. ↑ a b Carola Stern, Thilo Vogelsang, Erhard Klöss, Albert Graff (eds.): Dtv-Lexicon on history and politics in the 20th century. dtv, Munich 1974, p. 647.
    25. ↑ Richard Blanke: Orphans of Versailles. The Germans in Western Poland 1918-1939. University Press of Kentucky, 1998, p. 244.
    26. ↑ Historia Wąbrzeźna - Tom 1 (German History of the City of Wąbrzeźno - Volume 1). ed. v. Municipal office in Wąbrzeźno, 2005, ISBN 83-87605-85-9 , p. 179 ff.
    27. ↑ Thomas Kees: "Polish Abominations". The Third Reich's propaganda campaign against Poland . Saarland University, Master's thesis, Saarbrücken 1994, p. 14 , urn : nbn: de: bsz: 291-scidok-952 .
    28. ^ A b Włodzimierz Borodziej, Hans Lemberg: Migrations: Labor migration, emigration, expulsion, resettlement. In: Ursula AJ Becher, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Robert Maier (eds.): Germany and Poland in the twentieth century. Analyzes - sources - didactic advice. Hahnsche Buchhandlung Verlag, Hanover 2001, p. 53 f.
    29. ↑ God's Playground. A History of Poland. Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005.
    30. ^ Gotthold Rhode : History of Poland. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1980, p. 482.
    31. ^ Helmuth Fechner: Germany and Poland. Holzner Verlag, Würzburg 1964, p. 159.
    32. ^ Hans Roos: History of the Polish Nation 1918 to 1978. Verlag Kohlhammer, 1979, p. 134.
    33. ^ A b Richard Blanke: Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland 1918–1939. University of Kentucky Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8131-1803-4 , p. 244; Appendix B. German Population of Western Poland by Province and Country ( books.google.com ).
    34. ↑ Among the 84,622 Uniate Protestants in 1931 90% German and 9.7% Polish as their mother tongue, among the 5,931 Lutherans the mother tongue was 68% German and 31% Polish, among the 4,052 Reformed 81% German and 18% Polish . See Drugi powszechny spis ludności z dn. 9.XII.1931 r: Mieszkania i gospodarstwa domowe. Ludność. Stosunki zawodowe: Województwo pomorskie / Le deuxième recensement général de la population du 9 decembre 1931: Logements et ménages, population, professions: Voïévodie de Pomorze , Główny Urząd. Sándor Statystyczny Rzeczypemj62., Ed ), Warsaw: Główny Urząd Statystyczny , 1938, Tablica 10. Ludność według wyznania i płci oraz języka ojczystego / Population d'après la confession et le sexe, ainsi que d'après la langue maternelle.
    35. ↑ Olczak Elzbieta: Atlas historii Polski: mapy i komentarze. Demart, 2004, ISBN 83-89239-89-2 .