Province of Pomerania (1815–1945) in the context of "Allied occupation of Germany"

The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II, from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Unlike occupied Japan, Nazi Germany was stripped of its sovereignty and its government was entirely dissolved. After Germany formally surrendered on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, the four countries representing the Allies (the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and France) asserted joint authority and sovereignty through the Allied Control Council (ACC).

Germany after the war was a devastated country – roughly 80 percent of its infrastructure was in need of repair or reconstruction – which helped the idea that Germany was entering a new phase of history ("zero hour"). At first, Allied-occupied Germany was defined as all territories of Germany before the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria. The Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945 defined the new eastern German border by giving Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line (eastern parts of Pomerania, Neumark, Posen-West Prussia, East-Prussia and most of Silesia) and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into four occupation zones, each administered by one of the Allies.

The Frontier March of Posen–West Prussia (German: Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen; Polish: Marchia Graniczna Poznańsko-Zachodniopruska) was a province of Prussia that existed from 1920 (de facto) and 1922 (de jure) until its dissolution in 1938. It comprised most of the former territory of West Prussia and parts of the Province of Posen that had remained within Germany following the territorial losses to the Second Polish Republic after the Greater Poland Uprising, and confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles. The province was created in 1922 as part of the Free State of Prussia within Weimar Germany, incorporating three remaining non-contiguous territories of the former provinces of Posen and West Prussia.

Schneidemühl (present-day Piła) served as the provincial capital. From 1934 onwards, the province came under the de facto administration of the Province of Brandenburg, and on 1 October 1938, the territory was officially dissolved by Nazi Germany. Its lands were subsequently incorporated into the neighbouring provinces of Pomerania, Brandenburg and Silesia. Following the end of World War II and the redrawing of borders, the entire area of the former province was incorporated into Poland, lying east of the Oder–Neisse line.

During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Reichsdeutsche (German citizens) and Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans living outside the Nazi state) fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg (Neumark) and Pomerania (Farther Pomerania), which were annexed by the Provisional Government of National Unity of Poland and by the Soviet Union.

The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories had been proposed by Winston Churchill, in conjunction with the Polish and Czechoslovak governments-in-exile in London since at least 1942. Tomasz Arciszewski, the Polish prime minister in-exile, supported the annexation of German territory but opposed the idea of expulsion, wanting instead to naturalize the Germans as Polish citizens and to assimilate them. Joseph Stalin, in concert with other Communist leaders, planned to expel all ethnic Germans from east of the Oder and from lands which from May 1945 fell inside the Soviet occupation zones. In 1941, his government had already transported Germans from Crimea to Central Asia.

The Province of Pomerania was a province of Brandenburg-Prussia, the later Kingdom of Prussia. After the Thirty Years' War, the province consisted of Farther Pomerania. Subsequently, the Lauenburg and Bütow Land, Draheim, and Swedish Pomerania south of the Peene river were joined into the province. The province was succeeded by the Province of Pomerania set up in 1815.

The name Pomerania comes from Slavic po more meaning the land at a sea.

East Low German (German: ostniederdeutsche Dialekte, ostniederdeutsche Mundarten, Ostniederdeutsch) is a group of Low German dialects spoken in north-eastern Germany as well as by minorities in northern Poland and southern Brazil. Together with West Low German dialects, it forms a dialect continuum of the Low German language. Before 1945, the dialect was spoken along the entire then-German-settled Baltic Coast from Mecklenburg, through Pomerania, West Prussia into certain villages of the East Prussian Klaipėda Region.

East Pomeranian, Central Pomeranian and West Pomeranian should not be confused with the West Slavic Pomeranian language (German: Pomoranisch).