What is Oder-Neisse line?
[[File:Oder-neisse-line border.gif|thumb|The Oder-Neisse line, marked along with the territorial losses of Germany compared to the borders of the [[Weimar Republic]].]] The '''Oder-Neisse line''' (named after the [[Oder]] and [[Lusatian Neisse|Neisse]] rivers) is the [[border]] between [[Germany]] and [[Poland]] since the end of the [[World War II|Second World War]]. As a result of the defeat Germany lost a part of its [[territory]] to Poland. Previously, the German Empire had to cede the former [[Prussia]]n provinces of Posen and Westpreußen, as well as parts of upper Silesia, to the newly founded Polish state after the [[World War I|First World War]] in 1919. In earlier centuries these territories were part of the [[:en:Polish–Lithuanian_Commonwealth|Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth]]. They were annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia, as a result of the [[:en:Partitions_of_Poland|tripartite partition]] of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by the [[:en:Kingdom_of_Prussia|Kingdom Prussia]], the [[Holy Roman Empire]] and the [[Russian Empire]]. Most of the ethnically-German part of the population of these provinces, alongside most of the German minority population in what was Poland before the Second World War ([[:en:Polish_census_of_1931|741,000 people]]), either fled before the [[:en:Red_Army|Red Army]] to central and western Germany or were forcibly resettled later. It should be noted here that German citizens of Polish descent and ethically-Polish residents of these regions and other parts of Germany faced systematic discrimination, internment in concentration camps, property-confiscations, forced-resettlement and expulsion under the Nazi administration. {{multistub|Geo|Europe}} {{authority control}} [[Category:Geography of Germany]] [[Category:1945 establishments in Germany]] [[Category:Geography of Poland]] [[Category:1940s establishments in Poland]] [[Category:World War II]]