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You're quite right about that, but it is true that the post-WW borders of Germany viz. Poland were a little ridiculous, and the Allies after WWII undertook a de
by Amezarak 2y ago
You're quite right about that, but it is true that the post-WW borders of Germany viz. Poland were a little ridiculous, and the Allies after WWII undertook a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing after the war against territories that had had major German populations for centuries in an effort to create ethnically homogeneous states.
- alkyon 2y agoIt's worth remebering though that this was Stalin's plan to enlarge the Soviet Union (incidently also approved by the Western powers in the Yalta Agreement) at the cost of German territory. The expulsion of some millions of Poles from the territories of some newly created Soviet republics that now belong to Western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania is just as well a striking example of campaign of ethnic cleansing against the territories that had major Polish population for centuries. Morover, the Western Poland was subject to Prussian ethnic cleansing policies for more than a century, not to mention the war itself.
- hnbad 2y agoThe national myth of Germany actually obscures one of the biggest successful efforts in "restructuring" the Allies engaged in: the complete elimination of Prussia. Not only were parts of Eastern Prussia reassigned to other countries but also Prussian provinces within Germany were dissolved and remodeled into the German Bundesländer. Today "Prussia" as a cohesive identity largely only exists as something for Bavarians to differentiate themselves from. Well into WW1 German national identity was defined more by Prussia than anything else but the Allies completely eliminated it. Denazification was largely a farce and appeals by influential people were mostly rubberstamped but Deprussification is the secret success story.