APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
planning. These general trends are illustrated by the selected demographic indicators shown in Figure 6.
The impact of World War II on the Polish population was of exceptional magnitude, the total population decreasing by some 22% during the 1938-50 period. War-related deaths accounted for an estimated 12% of the prewar population of nearly 32 million. This figure may be compared with the 16% loss rate experienced by the U.S.S.R. and the 6% loss rate for Germany, the other countries which suffered most heavily.
Voluntary and forced postwar population shifts further reduced the population density. The Potsdam Conference of 1945, which placed some 40,000 square miles of former German territories under Polish administration and formalized Soviet annexation of some 70,000 square miles of former Polish lands in the east, also sanctioned the transfer to occupied Germany of the German minority from within the redrawn Polish boundaries. The arrival of the Soviet army in Poland in 1944, however, had already caused the flight of millions of Germans from areas east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. This movement continued until February 1946 when organized transfers began. The German population of the territories gained by Poland dropped from an estimated 11.9 million at the end of 1944 to 5.6 million in the summer of 1945, a net loss of over 6 million persons. Large numbers of these persons died in the last stages of the war, but probably more than 5 million had fled by the time Polish authorities assumed control in July 1945. An additional 500,000 had moved out before official transfers began. During the period of these transfers, from February 1946 to the end of 1949, an additional 2.3 million Germans left the territory of present-day Poland.
In contrast to these losses of population, agreements made in 1944 and 1945 between the Polish and Soviet governments results in an exchange of large numbers of persons which on balance added to Poland's population. Ethnic Poles and Jews in the U.S.S.R. who had been Polish citizens in September 1939 could opt for Polish citizenship and be transferred to Poland, while ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, White Russians, and Lithuanians living within the new Polish boundaries could opt for Soviet citizenship and be transferred to the U.S.S.R. Some 518,000 of the latter group chose to be repatriated to the Soviet Union, and 1,950,000 Poles returned to Poland by the end of 1947. The number of returnees to Poland included about 170,000 Jews, most of whom subsequently emigrated to Israel. In addition, some 1.5 million persons were repatriated to Poland from other European countries,
FIGURE 6. Selected population indicators, 1938 and 1945-70 (U/OU) (charts/graphs)
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
