WI: The Ruhr Poles are exchanged for the German Expellees after the World War II

Is it possible for the Ruhr Poles to be exchanged for the German Expellees after the World War II and be returned to their original land?
 
Is it possible for the Ruhr Poles to be exchanged for the German Expellees after the World War II and be returned to their original land?

Who are / were the Ruhr Poles? Were they recently forced laborers, or Polish immigrants to Germany from past generations?

If they were recently forced laborers and also had industrial skills that the Polish communists wanted, I would not be suprised if the Polish government could ask for them to be repatriated (even if they as individuals were not particularly enthusiastic about returning to Poland).
 
Who are / were the Ruhr Poles? Were they recently forced laborers, or Polish immigrants to Germany from past generations?

If they were recently forced laborers and also had industrial skills that the Polish communists wanted, I would not be suprised if the Polish government could ask for them to be repatriated (even if they as individuals were not particularly enthusiastic about returning to Poland).

The Slavic(Polish) Population of Silesia and Posen that migrated to Ruhr due to the Policies of Prussia including those recent ones would be exchanged to the expelled Germans and settle them back to Silesia and Posen, is this possible?
 
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Germans from Silesia and Posen would have been expelled anyway, with Ruhr Poles returning to Poland or without them, so there would have been no exchange. I also doubt if Polish comunist government had any way to force any Poles from the west to return home - including immigrates, war refugees, forced labour, POWs or soldiers of Polish Armed Forces in the West. While western governments (especially British) were not exactly enthusiastic about thousands of Poles remaining there I never heard about any case of actually forcing any Pole to return to communist Poland. AFAIK all of those who returned did it willingly.
 

Cook

Banned
Is it possible for the Ruhr Poles to be exchanged for the German Expellees after the World War II and be returned to their original land?
Not unless they voluntarily chose to go. What would be the point of forcably expelling them?
 
It would be seen as one final push to get rid of all Slavs in Germany and Western Europe. How would the propaganda go with that? Come to think of it, what about instead of deporting their Poles to execution by the Soviets, what if those freed from the camps or working in the Western Allied armies went to the Ruhr? The French might see it as an excellent way to fill the area with more Catholics who are fiercely anti-German, all the better to detach them at some point. Stalin might not even mind, given that he was promised half of everything that came out of the Ruhr, anyways.
 
Since expelling the Ruhrpolen would mean an absolute gutting of the mining and steelworking industry branches, that's a resounding "no". Hello, Realpolitik. Apart from that, I don't understand the OP in the first place.
 
I doubt many of them would have felt home in Poland. They were usually not even speaking Polish - the descendants of the worker that immigrated in the late 19th century were almost fully "Germanized". IIRC today under 5% of all People in the Ruhrgebiet are decendants of the Ruhrpolen, so it would not have made a big impact on Germany if tehy had left after 45.
 
Not unless they voluntarily chose to go. What would be the point of forcably expelling them?

To create ethnically homogenous as possible Nation-States, which is waht resulted after WWII with all the germans expelled from areas not in Germany and many other minorities forcefully moved in other places as well.

In the case of Germany itself, the British authiorities did expell 10,000 Dutchmen from Germany who'd been living their previously.
 

ingemann

Banned
Seeing as most of the so called Ruhr Poles had lived in Germany for generations, most had intermarried with Germans, most spoke only German and any disagrements they had with the former regime was political rather than national (as they were Social Democrats), they would be as supportive of their deportation to Poland, as Jews in New York would be if it was suggested that they should be send "home" to Poland.
 
I also doubt if Polish comunist government had any way to force any Poles from the west to return home - including immigrates, war refugees, forced labour, POWs or soldiers of Polish Armed Forces in the West.

It depends on where they were located and how "Polish" they were. Forced laborers, POWS and refugees in eastern Germany could well have been sent home.

Likewise, the western allies were willing to send Soviets home. I would not be surprised that even in western Germany, Poles wo were clearly Polish could have been pressured to return home "voluntarily" (poor conditions in resettlement camps, inability to obtain ration cards etc)
 
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