East Germany annexed by Poland.

Event occures somwhere from 1945 and 1948, all Soviet-occupied German territories (except Kaliningrad) are given to Poland. (Non-communists) ethnic Germans are expulsed westward and replaced by Polish colonists, may who have lost their homes during WW2.

US governement at the time officially approves of these actions.


What would be the effects?
 
West Germany would more or less collapse under the influx of yet another giant wave of refugees (not enough housing, food, etc to go around), and Britain would be annoyed at the US because they just increased the workload of its occupation forces by a sizable margin.

- Kelenas
 
It took quite a while to repopulate the new 'Polish' territories (which should have remained German, except for East Prussia.) Even moving the Germano-Polish border to the Spree River would have caused a population crisis in Poland. And think of depopulating the areas that the German refugees from the east had just been forced into. And Truman signing on to the genocide?
 

Markus

Banned
This is ASB. :rolleyes:

One could say this is what actually happened. East Germany -the part between the 1938 Polish border and the river Oder was in fact annexed and settled by Poland, while what used to be central Germany became known as East Germany. But giving that to Poland is ASB indeed.


West Germany would more or less collapse under the influx of yet another giant wave of refugees (not enough housing, food, etc to go around), and Britain would be annoyed at the US because they just increased the workload of its occupation forces by a sizable margin.

- Kelenas

The latter is why the USA would not approve of this. They already had their hands full too. But say it happened for some ASB-ish reason. The logical thing to do would have been an economic unification of the three western zones right away and taking steps to get the German economy going again; very little decontruction of the heavy industry and a trizone in 46 instead in 48.

As far as the numbers of refugess are concerned; the GDR had ~16.5 million subjects, currently the state of Northrhine-Westfalia has almost 18 million inhabitants.
 
German revanchism is going to be very strong if this happens, leading to Poland receiving a can of German Whoop-Ass the second the Soviets collapse, which would probably be sooner without the somewhat-functional East German economy in their block.
 
They barely had enough people to settle the West, who are they going to bring to settle East Germany?

Also, does this include Berlin? Are they going to throw it down just because the Soviet Union lets Poland annex the east?

o_o

Also, iirc West Germany kept its claims over former German territory up until East and West reunited again. Certainly in this case it'd be a flashing point for conflict between the U.S.-U.K. bloc and the Soviet bloc.
 
Why would either the US or the Soviets do that?

The US after some months were about to bring back West Germany on its feet, which still required supplies. Now they should accept another 20 million refugees added to a bad supply situation (early 1945-1948) or added to an already difficult task to rebiuld West Germany (late 1945 to 1948)?

And the Soviets would loose 20 million people, many of those well educated and adept in using what remains of East Germany's industrial capacity. Probably most of that would be lost for the Soviets - there'S not enough Poles to settle East Germany and not enough men to keep the factories going. They'd get a quite empty land. Not to speak of the negative propaganda effect: you can bet that Germany will become a reliable ally of the US and deeply anti-communist.
 

Typo

Banned
Event occures somwhere from 1945 and 1948, all Soviet-occupied German territories (except Kaliningrad) are given to Poland. (Non-communists) ethnic Germans are expulsed westward and replaced by Polish colonists, may who have lost their homes during WW2.

US governement at the time officially approves of these actions.


What would be the effects?
This doesn't make sense

How are there going to be enough Poles to settle those territories?
 
Stalin was "Creative" in his geography and I'm sure the loss of East Germany would probably be even more of the sort of massive realignments of nations.

This would probably mean another shuffle of Czechs being relocated northward, as well as Hungarians getting part of Slovakia while having the back of their country cut off by the Romanians.

It would also mean a massive headache for the Soviet Union for decades to come. Germany might not be militantly revanchist for its 1930s border today--probably because it has learned something from the disastrous reign of the Nazis--but taking Berlin would be a dire step beyond any such forgiveness.

Such a situation could well augur a disastrous third world war.
 

Cook

Banned
Poland was moved Westwards after WW2 already, with ethnic Germans expelled.

This would more than double than and give the impression that Poland was tap dancing towards the Atlantic.
 
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