MARCHLANDS OF EUROPE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 894, 21 September 1956, Page 13

MARCHLANDS OF EUROPE

GERMANY’S EASTERN NEIGHBOURS, by Elizabeth Wiskemann; Oxford University erat Geoffrey Cumberlege, English price [N 1945 the nations of Eastern Europe set about expelling any German minorities that had not returned to the Reich in the train of the defeated German armies. This book describes two of the largest migrations; the removal of the Sudeten minority from the borders of Bohemia, thereby strengthening Czechoslavakia as a national entity; and, in addition to the expulsion of the minorities from Poland, the eviction of the indigenous population from the OderNeisse lands of Eastern Germany, and the settlement and incorporation within the Polish State of these "Recovered Territories." The Sudeten question may be considered as permanently settled, but not the question of the Oder-Neisse lands. The Allies were agreed in principle that Poland should have territory in the west to compensate, in part, for the savagery of the German occupation and destruction, in part, for the Russian annexation of land to the east of the old Curzon Line. But none of the Western Powers will accept this present western boundary, protesting that a definite line can only be drawn at the final peace conference. No West German: politiciea can afford, as yet, to admit the territorial changes as final. The acquisition of these territories has considerably strengthened the Polish economy; for these lands include the

valuable agricultural districts of Lower Silesia, some areas of light industry, and the ports of Stettin and Danzig; and now the whole of the Silesian coalfield, with perhaps the greatest reserves in Europe, comes within the economy The Poles have actively resettled farmers and some of ‘their surplus agricultural population in the west, and the Silesian area is to be developed with regard to the whole industrial development of Eastern Europe, The westward extension of Poland has, for the Czechs, broken the German ‘encirclement of Bohemia. The West German authorities had to resettle some nine million refugees from the east. Drawing upon first-hand experience the author vividly describes the economic and sociological aspects of this resettlement. The general recovery and expansion of the German economy has been a great -factor in easing the task; but it has proved harder to resettle those refugees from rural areas, many of whom had been landowners, than those refugees from professional and industrial classes. The German-Polish conflict is an old one, and it has taken many forms; appearing, for example. as tensions between groups and classes, such as German entrepreneurs- Polish labourers, German | landowners- Polish peasants, German Protestant- Polish Catholies, German educators-Polish nationalists. And one cannot foresee the end of this conflict, to which the division Commun-ist-non-Communist will add rancour. The same areas and the same forces are still involved. Thus, the Oder-Neisse question is of_importance to the future peace of Europe. Miss Wiskemann’s book is a

particularly valuable addition to the limited number of books, in English, which discuss current events in Central

Europe.

S. H.

Franklin