Talk:Oder–Neisse line

Historical Border Section needs rewritten

First off, that source cited to back up that claim in the first sentence doesn't say that at all. The citation says page 398, but the google book it links to is only 372 pages long, including the index at the back. The paperback edition listed on book-selling websites (ie amazon) is listed at 408 pages. How did this important information not make it into the actual book but get thrown in on the back pages?

Second point (still about first sentence): claiming 10th-13th centuries is using a lot of weaseling, Mieszko I only conquered Silesia in 990, and the Polish state was fragmented since at least 1138. The statement used makes it seem like it possessed the lands for more than two centuries than it actually did, and that Poland was a recognizable unitary state, which it wasn't. In fact, for much of this period Poland was a vassal of the Empire.

2nd and 3rd sentences are weasel worded and not cited.

4th sentence, again a problem of a source not stating what is claimed in the article. As for the difference between what is stated in said source and this article, the source states that, after the Nazi rise to power, major investments were made in infrastructure and construction to ensure that the regions were seen as integral parts of the German state, and that this improved infrastructure was later used during the war. It says nothing of the region being militarized. As for the Germanization, it says it was a continuation of the previous policy. Not to mention that this source states even more damning things that make this revanchist historical excuse look even more absurd. This source states that Polish plans were to also annex lands all the way up to Berlin, and incorporate the Sorbs into their nation. It also states that claims of Poles living on the Oder since time immemorial was pure propaganda (page 9).

5th sentence has nothing to do with this article.

2nd paragraph is just atrocious, makes it sound like the treaty of Versailles decided things ad hoc, but much of the post WWI border was decided by plebiscite.

Now, some problems by way of omission that I see with this section: 1) It skips from 990 to 1914, no mention of anything that happened in the almost 900 years between those two dates. Seems odd that a section titled historical border between Poland and Germany would not have any description of any of the historical changes in the border preceding 1914. 2) It is decidedly one sided, bordering on non-NPOV.

And that's just this section, I'm not even going to touch on the rest of this abortion of an article yet.

--142.166.216.112 (talk) 04:12, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

My edits, March 7, 2018

My edits in my major re-write went along the following lines.

1. Adenauer was not a "staunch opponent" of Denazification. He was certainly no unrestricted proponent of it. He was a staunch non-Nazi in his own person. Whatever the details about Adenauer's ideas on Denazification, "staunch opponent" is too simple.
2. Oberländer (sic) was not member of Adenauer's party (then), but a coalition party (a self-described party "also of former Nazis, but not of remaining Nazis"). Hence to say that he "became minister under Adenauer" is true but incomplete. It's in the nature of coalitions that coalition partners need not support each other's aims 100%, as the present situation in Germany makes clear. - And the statement that he wanted to reduce the Polish populace by the millions is unsourced and smells of contemporary propaganda. What he actually was in the Second World War was a convinced Nazi who did think Germany should be the leadership nation, and who sent reports back that Poles and especially Ukrainians were not so bad after all, and should (among other things) be given some autonomy for the better good of Germany and to receive their friendliness against the Soviets. So, again, these things are not as easy as contemporary propaganda would have it.
3. Stuttgart speech details ("maybe Poland will regain something of her territories in the East, then possibly Germany also may regain some parts of what was once hers in Poland's west") irrelevant here.
4. Germany claimed (de jure correctly) that the Territories were "only occupied." She did not claim they were illegally occupied.
5. Snide conclusions at the inter-war German position on Versailles ("now you want back to Versailles, which you always said was so harsh") are irrelevant here. This isn't a propaganda contest.
6. The point about the Oder-Neisse line is that many rejected it who did consider every demand *beyond* the 1937 borders as immoral belligerous nationalism. In end-1950s Germany, if you said that Silesia is German you were mainstream. If you said that Posen is German you were one of the incorrigible ones. That is the precise thing that is of interest here. That some few men *were* such incorrigible ones is irrelevant to the topic. We could perhaps put it into the section about Polish fears of a German invasion, but I decided to cut it entirely.
7. Calling the "expellee lobby" (BdV) as Nazi organisation is a well-known taunt, not a fact.
8. "Adenauer feared the power" rhymes, but what Adenauer said in this and that Cabinet meeting about what would happen if he upset this and that part of the population - I don't think that belongs in the article.
9. The article hitherto said that Adenauer may have believed Germany had a genuine right to claim her lands in the east, and "by contrast", another scholar says that he thought this was impossible to achieve. I am not a scholar. But as any man does I know something about logic, and logic tells me that this is not a contrast at all. It is quite possible, and even probable, that both were true: Adenauer did think Germany had a right to claim; and he did think that the claims would certainly be ineffective. Hence to develop this supposed contrast in detail is irrelevant.
10. The fact that the GDR and Poland settled some minor dispute concerning the sea border in 1989 is entirely irrelevant, especially in a section on West Germany. It may be relevant even in such a section (it certainly is for the whole article) to mention that East Germany recognized to Oder-Neisse line in 1950, but the settlement of a minor technical dispute among ideological allies that had agreed on the principal thing 39 years back anyway? Seriously?
11. I am certain that Kohl did not suggest in 1990 to go to war to regain the Eastern Territories, as the article hitherto suggested. He did, as far as I know, put the question on the table (which caused enough heat to begin with), and it may be true that he attempted to trade the Eastern Territories claim in exchange for a renouncement of monetary claims as the article said, but if he had suggested war he would have a) been stoned on sight in Germany and b) would have been a politician with no sense of Realpolitik at all (rather than this being his specific strength, as it was), seeing that he had to negotiate with the victorious Allied of the Second World War to get the reunification allowed. I left most of that out as not so really important. If someone sources the "we'll accede them to Poland but Poland must renounce monetary claims" and wants to put that back in, untainted by this "if necessary by force" nonsense, go for it.

I also thought that these changes would settle the issues noted 2014 with the "undue weight" flag, so I removed it.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:493A:3631:689B:C016 (talk) 14:59, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Who's writing this stuff?

Who is equating "legal" with "provisional" in the following?: "Soon after the agreement was signed, both the US and Soviet Union accepted the border as de facto the legal border of Poland, for instance in U.S. Secretary James Byrnes's Stuttgart Speech the Western Neisse was accepted as the provisional Polish border."

Enthousiastic / enthusiastic?

I made an edit to change "enthousiastic" to "enthusiastic", but it was reverted. Should it have been? I'm not aware of the former as an alternative spelling for the latter. Localdenizen (talk) 05:50, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Bonn's position on Berlin

In 1949, one of the reasons that Bonn only re-affirmed Berlin as the German capital was because they believed it soon enough wouldn't be as close to the border as it now was under the imposed 1945 settlement. Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 10:55, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Borders

Many German people who lived in nearby towns were held in the camps and died due to lack of food and medical care. They were forced from their homes and many were young children, not only soldiers. 216.126.34.73 (talk) 23:27, 12 January 2023 (UTC)