-Caveat Lector- http://members.bellatlantic.net/~rrkraft/pommern.html
Pommern - Pommerania The Truth about the Annihilation of an 800 Year old State and its People (as much as it may be unpopular with many) Pommern (Pommerania) was the land (in effect a "state" in US terms) in northeast Germany along the Baltic Sea. Its borders ran from near Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) on the east to another German state named Mecklenburg on the west. Pommerania was German for close to 800 years (see below for history).....up until the brutal and generally ignored ethnic cleansing of the Germans there at the close of World War II. By ethnic cleansing I mean the organized and state sanctioned, forced migration of Germans by Soviet Russian and Polish troops. This forced migration was effected through mass murder, rape and pillage. Similar to the actions of others in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Russian and Polish troops entered Pommeranian towns, rounded up the men, killed some, sent some to forced labor camps, raped innumerable women, etc., and sent all the rest fleeing to the West with nothing more than the clothes on their back. My father's side of my family was among these innocent victims. Much has been said and documented in regard to the genocidal barbarism of the Nazi forces, but little is known of the fate of 15 million German civilians who found themselves at the mercy of Soviet troops on the wrongside of the postwar borders. Inhabitants of 800 year old German communities were either expelled or murdered. With this in mind I would like to recommend a very informational book regarding the subject; "A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950" by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas. After WWII, Pommern was divided into two sections, "Vorpommern" west of the Oder River and "Hinterpommern" east of the Oder River. Hinterpommern was annexed by Poland at the close of WW II with no democratic vote, no referndum, no choice for the people who lived there. It was a pure land grab by those in power in the USSR and Poland and, to ensure they kept it, Polish people (primarily from the eastern part of Poland annexed by the USSR) were forcibly resettled into the German (Pommeranian) towns. Towns' names were changed to Polish, German monuments and markings destroyed, the German language forbidden. Only the small remnant of Vorpommern became part of East Germany and remains in united Germany today. Note: The point of this history section is solely to highlight little known or often overlooked facts. This section simply serves that purpose and no other. Other notes and links: Maps of Pommern Pommern Coat of Arms Old History: The land of Pomerania was originally settled by the Pomeranii, a heathen tribe living along the Baltic shores who were both marauding the Poles and preventing them from having passage to the sea. Their rulers were known as the Greifen dukes and had been targets of Christian missionaries for some time. German monks, especially the Cistercian order, had been knocking at the Pomeranian door for some time, beginning in 1140, to amplify the existence and control of the Catholic church on these people. Pommerania was first attached to the Holy Roman (German) Empire in 1181. The German nation, such as it was in 1181, accepted the Greifen dukes as princes of the Holy Roman Empire and put the lands under their protection - in exchange for Germany to send settlers into the sparsely settled new land to ease its own burgeoning population growth. In 1226 (just 45 years later), Pommerania became the leading-off area for the Northern Crusades. It was in 1226 that the first 6 Germans, as knights of the Teutonic Order (aka Teutonic Knights, Deutscher Ritterorden, Deutscher Orden), crossed the Vistula River, the one flowing northward to Danzig, to partake in their new Crusade to convert to Christianity the heathens along the Baltic. It was a Crusade for their personal forces and their western allies in all the Crusades of England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and others that would not end until the defeat of the western powers at the hands of the eastern powers of Poland, Lithuania, the Czechs and tribes of the Russian people at the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) on July 15 of 1410. But this is another story (and I recommend the book by Myron Gruenwald, entitled One Cubit of Stature). >From 1181 until 1945, Pomerania would be part of the 1st Reich of Charles the Great and Friedrich I (Barbarossa); the 2nd Reich of Bismarck and King Willhelm II; and the 3rd Reich of the National Socialists. Pommerania was an integral part of what one would call Germany and remained so for centuries, until the end of World War II. March 1945: The invasion of Pommern by the Soviet and Polish armies and the flight of the Germans: English Deutsch Myron Grunwald's History of Pommerania Gunthard Stüb's Pommern - Das Land am Meer Universität Rostock's Page (English & German) about Mecklenburg and Vorpommern Bund der Vertriebenen ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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