Despite cordial German-Georgian relations, Germany had to retreat from the country shortly after it lost in World War I. Its place was taken by Britain. By the 1940s, Germans lived in over 20 towns in Georgia and numbered at more than 24,000. As a result of anti-German policies of the Soviet government during World War II, from October 1941 to April 1942 most of Georgia’s Germans, in total 19,186 people, were deported from the republic by the Soviet authorities.