Template talk:Allied-administered Germany

Show all of Germany

The template should show all of Germany, including the part east of the Oder-Neisse line i.e the part of east Prussia that was annexed by the Soviet Union, and also the big chunk that was placed under "Polish administration" [1] at the Potsdam conference.

--Stor stark7 ^Talk 22:22, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. The territory east of the Oder-Neisse line was not part of Germany after 1945, so it is outside the scope. We're dealing with post-war Germany, so only the green part of the map on the right. The articles Nazi Germany and Free State of Prussia already point to Poland and Russia gaining territory from these states, so the areas annexed by Poland and the USSR shouldn't be mentioned again here as well. It just doesn't fit. - 52 Pickup 20:20, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just found the article Territorial changes of Germany after World War II. That is the more suitable place for discussing the annexed regions. - 52 Pickup 20:41, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this is the article "Allied-administered-Germany".

from the Potsdam Agreement:

In conformity with the agreement on Poland reached at the Crimea Conference the three Heads of Government have sought the opinion of the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity in regard to the accession of territory in the north 'end west which Poland should receive. The President of the National Council of Poland and members of the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity have been received at the Conference and have fully presented their views. The three Heads of Government reaffirm their opinion that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the peace settlement. (Peace did not happen until 1990)

The three Heads of Government agree that, pending the final determination of Poland's western frontier, the former German territories cast of a line running from the Baltic Sea immediately west of Swinamunde, and thence along the Oder River to the confluence of the western Neisse River and along the Western Neisse to the Czechoslovak frontier, including that portion of East Prussia not placed under the administration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in accordance with the understanding reached at this conference and including the area of the former free city of Danzig, shall be under the administration of the Polish State and for such purposes should not be considered as part of the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.

So parts of Germany was under the Administration of one of the Allies, Poland. It was not legally annexed. Germany did not give up its claim on the territory until 1970, and formally it was not until the peace treaty of 1990 that the territory "legaly" became Polish.

So, since this template purports to show "allied administered Germany", then the part of Germany under polish adminitration should be included, or the name of the template changed.--Stor stark7 ^Talk 18:35, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

East Germany recognised the new borders in 1950. And the area that became Polish was in no way considered by the Poles to be any longer a part of Germany - otherwise, the local Germans would not have been expelled. Even though it was not official until 1950/1970/1990, that area was to all intents and purposes lost (from Germany's point of view) and it was not governed by Poland as an occupied/administered territory of a foreign power, it was administered as part of Poland. Also, there is no article that specifically covers this territory, so there is nothing to include here. - 52 Pickup 15:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would not give East German "governments" recognition of the border much credit, as far as I understand it the territory that was East Germany was simply absorbed by the Federal Republic in 1990, making any of the communist dictatorships recognitions of little to no value. Further, you seem to be making a number of assumptions here, possibly without even realizing it.

1. You assume that German (FRG) eventual recognition of the de-facto Polish and Soviet annexation of the territory has any relevance to this template. It does not. So what if FRG tried to make friends with Poland in 1970? In 1970 the only other Allied occupation in progres was that of Berlin, so please tell me, which are the cut-off years for this template. Which time-period does it claim to represent?. The template claims to show German territories under Allied administration. At the moment it does not do so.

Legally the areas east of the Oder Neisse line were still German. The FRG used the term "former German territories temporarily under Polish and Soviet administration" (see Former eastern territories of Germany). The legal status of the areas aside, the Polish communists liked to pretend that the areas really belonged to them, so they used the term "Recovered Territories", but why do you give the Polish opinion more weight than the German public opinion?

2 "...otherwise, the local Germans would not have been expelled."

Let me quote a passage from Norman Naimarks "The Russians in Germany":

More often than not, the incoming Polish authorities were even less concerned about the safety of German women than were the Russian officers, to whom the German population turned for protection. After all the Silesian territories had been turned over by the Allies to Polish occupation, but not yet to incorporation into the new Poland. Orders went out from the Polish communists to expel Germans by whatever means necessary, to ensure incorporation as well as occupation.(31) As a result, the Polish administration of the new territories made little effort to protect local Germans from the deprivations of Polish or Russian rapists and thieves.(32) In a city like Breslau, the Germans fear of the Russians was quickly replaced by fear of the Poles. In fact, it was almost too much for the Germans to survive the Russian attacks only to have the Poles persecute them once again. "The Germans in Breslau," wrote the city’s antifascist group, "are steadily being spiritually being driven into the ground [gehen langsam seelisch zu Grunde]."(33) Even the Soviets expressed shock at the Poles’ behaviour. Polish soldiers, stated one report, "relate to German women as to free booty."(34) Note 31: Se, for example, Wladyslaw Gomulka’s speech to the plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ party, May 20-21, 1945, in which he notes: "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multi-national ones." Antony Polonsky and Boleslaw Drukier, eds., The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland (London: Routhledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 425. Note 32: See the short history of the German expulsion from Silesia, including some striking photographs, in HIA, Sander, box2, folder4. Note 33: Report from Breslau, August 15, 1945, SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/11/228, p. viii. Note 34: Biuro Informatsii SVAG, Biulleten’, no 84/88 (November 23, 1946), RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 128, d. 151, l. 81. See also Serov to Beria, March 8, 1945, GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 93, l. 336.

So, legally they were just administering the area, but they were doing their damnedest to make sure that there would be no living Germans left there, thereby de-facto making it into a ethnically pure Polish area. No multikulti envisioned for this area.

3 "that area was to all intents and purposes lost (from Germany's point of view)". Once again an assumption. I do not understand what you base that assumption on. From the official German standpoint the area was "former German territories temporarily under Polish and Soviet administration", as the Potsdam agreement stated. They could well get it back, and if an ethnic cleansing in one direction is legal, then an ethnic cleansing in the other direction will be just as legal in the future. And since both of West Germanys largest parties for years campaigned on the promise of returning the areas under temporary administration, I really do not understand your sweeping statement. Enjoy some campaign posters.

Besides, the Germans were not alone in their position:[2]

American Secretary of State James Byrnes responded to Molotov's ploy in a speech before an audience of 1,400 German dignitaries in Stuttgart on September 5 (1946) that signified a critical turning point in American policy toward the occupied country. He announced his government's intention to promote the economic rehabilitation of Germany in order to enable it to contribute to the economic recovery of Europe as a whole. He rejected the idea of splitting off the Ruhr from the rest of the country. He called for the prompt formation of a provisional government with authority to administer the entire country so that Germans could once again manage their own affairs. Most important of all, from the standpoint of German public attitudes toward the Soviet Union, Byrnes specifically refused to recognize the Oder-Neisse frontier between Germany and Poland. That boundary, which deprived Germany of a considerable portion of its prewar territory, had been unilaterally established by the Russians in 1945 in order to compensate Poland for the seventy thousand square miles of its own territory that it had been forced to cede to the Soviet Union. By throwing American Support behind the German people's demand for the restoration of that lost land, Byrnes had shrewdly smoked out the Kremlin, forcing it to choose between its client state in Poland and its prospective friends in Germany.

Narration: In 1945, the Allies had approved Poland's annexation of Germany's eastern provinces, up to the Oder and Neisse rivers. But now Byrnes suggested that the new frontier was unfair to Germany and might be changed. Interview: Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Polish army "It was a shocking statement. It made us think that our western border was being questioned by the Germans and by other Western countries. It was one of the most important things that strengthened our ties with the Soviet Union.[3]

4 "it was not governed by Poland as an occupied/administered territory of a foreign power, it was administered as part of Poland". Do you actually know anything about how the territory was governed by Poland, or are you just making another assumption? I'm not privy to information on the specifics of Polish administration so I'm not in a position to challenge you, I'm just curious about what fact-base lies behind that self assured and sweeping statement of yours.

What I do know is that the Poles treated the area as a specially administered area until 1949:

The temporary nature of this territorial allocation arising from the reservation about the peace settlement was initially respected by the Soviet Union and Poland following the conclusion of the Potsdam Conference. The Soviet-Polish Treaty of 16 August 1945, which describes the course of the Soviet-Polish boundary in East Prussia, explicitly repeats in Article 3 the reservation as to the peace treaty, referring to the Potsdam Conference. (United Nations Treaty Series 10 II no.61 p.196).[4]

5 "Also, there is no article that specifically covers this territory, so there is nothing to include here.": I find that to be a rather disturbing attitude. So we have to start with the article on the Allied administration of those particular German areas before we can consider modifying the map/template? Why does it have to be in that particular order? As far as I understand it there is no overriding structure that must be followed in the expansion of wikipedia, it just grows organically, which I for one find liberating and promotes growth.

6 ..."the local Germans would not have been expelled" Off topic but me thinks you speak to lightly of an activity that resulted in the death of up to 2,000,000, mainly women, children and the elderly (not that gender or age really matters in murder trials). [5], [6]. Why is it so hard to call it ethnic cleansing? We never hear anyone speaking about the "expulsion" of Moslem's in Bosnia, or of the "expulsion" of Armenians, and for good reason.

To sum it up, from where I'm standing you seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions, most of which I find good reason to challenge the accuracy of.--Stor stark7 ^Talk 18:43, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been working on the subdivisions that only existed for a couple of years after the end of WW2 (eg. Greater Hesse, Württemberg-Baden) and I felt such a template necessary to place these articles into a wider context, similar to {{States of Germany}} or {{States of the Weimar Republic}}. So far I have not yet found a specific article that describes the Polish-administered area - and this (never mind what you presume my assumptions to be) is the main reason why a Polish section is currently not in place. If you know of such an article, then simply put it in the template instead of this well-referenced criticism which would be used more constructively in article creation.

As for this: "I find that to be a rather disturbing attitude. So we have to start with the article on the Allied administration of those particular German areas before we can consider modifying the map/template? Why does it have to be in that particular order?" Why does it have to be in any order at all? You have to start somewhere, so I've started here. I only made this template recently and I'm still working on it, and it is definitely not in its final version. As I find or make more articles, then I add them - exactly in the same organic manner that you refer to. So I don't see the problem here.

Simply put, what maps/links/whatever would you put in the template? Is there a particular article that you want to add? If so, add it. Would you prefer to put that map at the top-left of the page in it instead? Fine, but it would look silly without an article that describes the Polish-administered area - and that map only delineates the Soviet and Polish areas but not the French, British or American ones. If you have only an idea for such an article, name it so then at least a red link can be put in. 52 Pickup 20:37, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, I'll have a go at creating a functional stub at least.--Stor stark7 ^Talk 18:03, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]