Allied Border Settlement

The leaders of the “Big Three” – the United Kingdom, the United States, and the USSR – who met in Potsdam in July and August 1945, made a series of significant decisions shaping the future of Europe. Among the most important were those concerning the redrawing of post-war borders on the continent. One of these related to the course of the Polish–German frontier. It was agreed that the territories of the former Potsdam Conference participants’ decisions, previously belonging to the Third Reich and lying east of the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers, were to be transferred to Poland. Numerous border adjustments were carried out later that same year. Further minor modifications followed in 1949, which also brought changes to the political situation on Europe’s map.

In May, the American, British, and French occupation zones in Germany were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), while in September the Soviets transformed their zone into the German Democratic Republic (GDR). With Germany’s division into two states, Poland began to border one of them. A key issue therefore became the formalisation of the common border through an international agreement. The Polish authorities strongly pushed for this, aware that swift action was necessary, as the border could otherwise become a bargaining chip used by the Soviets in political manoeuvring with other Eastern Bloc states.

Zgorzelec/Görlitz

On 6 July 1950, representatives of Poland and the German Democratic Republic met in Zgorzelec, Lower Silesia. Poland was represented by Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz and Stefan Wierbłowski, Secretary-General at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  The German delegation from Berlin included Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl and Foreign Minister Georg Dertinger. The choice of location was not incidental. The Polish town of Zgorzelec had, prior to 1945, formed part of the German city of Görlitz. Following the Potsdam arrangements, Görlitz was divided by a border, creating two separate towns in two different states. After the signing of the Polish–German agreement, the signatories symbolically crossed the border bridge from Poland into the GDR.

Signed, but so what?

The agreement signed by Poland and the GDR was not, however, accepted by the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The then Chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, stated:

“[The] communist government imposed on German society in the Soviet occupation zone designated the Oder–Neisse line in one of its treaties with the Polish government as the final guaranteed border between Germany and Poland. The government of the Federal Republic does not recognise this provision. […] All arrangements concluded in Zgorzelec are null and void in their entirety. Decisions on the fate of the former eastern German territories, under Polish and Soviet administration, will be taken at the time of the conclusion of a peace treaty with all of Germany. The Federal Government of Germany, as the representative of the entire German nation, will never reconcile itself to the loss of these purely German territories, and in future peace negotiations it will advocate a just resolution of this issue between a truly democratic Poland and a democratic, unified Germany.”

Changes came only in the 1970s. On 7 December 1970, the Treaty between the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was signed in Warsaw, under which the western German state also recognised Poland’s western border. The final acceptance of the common border took place in November 1990, after German reunification.

Piotr Bosko

Translated from Polish by Małgorzata Giełzakowska