South Prussia (Südpreußen) is the name of one of the thirty European states of Germany.
Baltic Resettlement[]
Baltic Germans look at their new home - "Südpreußen" November 1946.
As a result of several agreements between the Allies, the Baltic Germans were resettled into Germany, replacing the once Polish areas with Germans. The London-Lübeck Treaty of 1945 resolved that at the war's end, all ethnic Germans should be removed to Germany so as to protect them from the former Axis and her allied nations, as well as to replace the already decided removal of all Polish citizens from the agreed-to borders of Germany.
Baltic Germans look at his new home - "Südpreußen" November 1946.
The treaty stipulated:
- Some 13,700 Baltic Germans were to be resettled from Estonia by early 1946.
- Around 51,000 Baltic Germans were to be resettled from Latvia by early 1946.
After the removal of most Germans from the Baltic States, the Soviet Union's armies, which occupied the lands, began a process of ethnically cleansing the area of their former allies the Germans, and another larger effort, called "Heim ins Reich" began across all of the now Soviet-occupied Europe:
- About 7,000 to be resettled from Estonia by late March 1947
- Approximately 10,500 to be resettled from Latvia by late March 1947
Many Germans who were born in the Baltic regions, after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, occasionally visit their old homes there as tourists. The majority of the Baltic Germans now live in Posen and West Prussia.