Question Last Flight of the Luftwaffe - Courland Evacuation VE-Day 1945

[Notebook]

Another event I knew nothing of:

At 4:10 onward he narrates, The German Navy evacuated up to 900,000 German civilians.

Were these an indigenous population, or settlement during occupation?

 

[Urwumpe]

At 4:10 onward he narrates, The German Navy evacuated up to 900,000 German civilians.

Were these an indigenous population, or settlement during occupation?

Both. For example, East Prussia was German territory for centuries (And actually the origin of Prussia), starting in the 13th century. In total, 2 million people got evacuated there during the end of the war. About 600,000 remained, many of those migrated to the two German states later. There are still about 150,000 citizens in Poland with German ancestry.


About 1.8 million people got resettled by the Nazis between 1939 and 1944, but about one million went to the two parts of Poland in Nazi German administration.