International: Lebensraum

For 1,000 years the dynamic Germans pushed the Slavic peoples eastward, across the Spree, across the Oder, out of Pomerania and Silesia, out of the flatlands of East Prussia. Now Germans—at least ten million of them—were losing their lands to Slavs.

Potsdam recognized the new Lebensraum. Yalta had given a large slice of Poland (see map) to U.S.S.R.; Potsdam made the Germans foot the bill. What Poland lost to the Russians was about half again as large in area as what she got from the Germans. But the new Polish territory ripped from Germany,...

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