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This video will cover the often overlooked history of the German minority that lived in Poland's western lands after the end of WW1. The Polish state and the Polish Germans rarly got along well and tensions increased continously. At a certain point, the fate of the German minority had a strong effect on the relationship between Germany and Poland, who would often argue in front of the international stage. In the video, we're going to take a closer look at how the German minority came to be, how it dealt with their role in the new Polish state and what role they played in the buildup to WW2.

Literature:
- Blanke, Richard: Orphans of Versailles. The Germans in Western Poland 1918 - 1939, Lexington KY 1993.
- Blanke, Richard: The German Minority in Inter-War Poland and German Foreign Policy - Some Reconsiderations, in: Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990), Nr. 1, pp. 87-102.
- Borodziej, Wlodzimierz: Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich 2010.
- Chu, Winson: The German minority in interwar Poland, Cambridge 2012.
- Hauser, Przemysław: Die deutsche Minderheit in den Wojewodschaften Posen und Pommerellen 1919-1939, in: Jaworski, Rudolf & Wojciechowski, Marian (Ed.): Deutsche und Polen zwischen den Kriegen Minderheitenstatus und „Volkstumskampf" im Grenzgebiet. Amtliche Berichterstattung aus beiden Ländern 1920-1939, Munich et al. 1997, pp. 273-282.
- Henschel, Christhardt & Stach, Stephan: Nationalisierung und Pragmatismus. Staatliche Institutionen und Minderheiten in Polen 1918-1939, in: Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 62 (2013), Nr. 2, pp. 164-186.
- Kimmich, Christoph M.: Germany and the League of Nations, Chicago & London 1976.
- Kotowski, Albert: Polens Politik gegenüber seiner deutschen Minderheit 1919 - 1939, Wiesbaden 1998.
- Nordblom, Pia, "Pant, Eduard" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 20 (2001), S. 39-40.
- Rauschning, Hermann: Die Entdeutschung Westpreußens und Posens. Zehn Jahre polnischer Politik, Berlin 1930.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:06 Incogni
2:20 The Treaty of Versailles
5:45 The Great Exodus
10:00 Polish Minority Policies
17:07 The Polish Germans and the League of Nations
20:21 The Rise of National Socialism
25:29 1939
30:23 Outro