Drang nach Osten

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Drang nach Osten (German for "Drive towards the East") is a term used in Germany's history that means the expansion of Germany, German culture, German language, German speaking states and German settlement, that led to the conquest of former Slavic and Baltic areas by Germany starting during the Middle Ages until the end of World War II in 1945 when the Nazi German Wehrmacht were defeated by the Red Army of the Soviet Union.

Population growth during the High Middle Ages stimulated movement of peoples from the Rhenish, Flemish and Saxon territories of the Holy Roman Empire eastwards into the less-settled Baltic region and Poland. These movements were supported by the German nobility, the Polish kings and dukes and the medieval Church, and took place largely at the expense of non-Christian Baltic ethnic groups (see Northern Crusades).

The future state of Prussia, named for one of the conquered peoples, had its roots largely in these movements. As the Middle Ages came to a close, the Teutonic Knights, who had been invited to northern Poland by Konrad of Masovia had assimilated (and forcibly converted) much of the southern Baltic coastlands. The territory of the Teutonic Knights became a Polish fiefdom in 1466. After the partition of Poland by Prussia, Austria and Russia in 1772, 1793 and 1795 Prussia gained much of Western Poland. Russia and Sweden eventually conquered the lands taken by the Knights of the Sward in Estonia and Livonia.

A definitive halt to the idea of the Drang nach Osten came during World War II, after Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941.

Nazi officials used it as grounds for the expulsion of 800,000 Poles from Warsaw to concentration camps after the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}, which caused 200,000 deaths. The city of Warsaw with millions of inhabitants was ordered to be completely demolished on Hitler's personal orders. Himmler stated that the Poles had been an obstacle to German Eastern expansion for the last 700 years, and that the aim was to remove that obstacle permanently.

Decisions made at the Potsdam conference in 1945, especially as relating to the Oder-Neisse line, rolled back the practical results of the later part of the Drang nach Osten and redesignated German territories within the approximate Germanic borders of the year 1181 AD. On the other hand, the historical Slavic lands of Sorbs (Wends, Polabian Slavs) between the Oder-Neisse line and the river Elbe remained within the territory of Germany. Germans in the historical Eastern German provinces fled or were expelled and deported into the German Democratic Republic or to West Germany.

Drang nach Osten

See also