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, stretching to within 35 miles of Berlin, included coal and iron in German Silesia, the transportation centers of Breslau and Kuestrin and some 200 miles of Baltic seacoast, with the great port of Danzig and Berlin's seaport, Stettin. In industrial value, at least, Poland was the gainer; what Russia had taken from her was largely agricultural.

Of German territory the Russians took for themselves the northern third of East Prussia, including that most Prussian city and key Baltic port, Koenigsberg. Already ensconced in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (whose annexation by Russia is now virtually recognized by the other great powers), Russia now dominates the Baltic.

The communique, signed by at least two powers which once looked with stern disapproval on Hitler's forcible transfers of populations, promised "orderly and humane" migrations. But the disorderly, miserable flight of millions of Germans from the east continued (see FOREIGN NEWS).

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