The provinces east of the Oder and Neisse rivers ( the Oder-Neisse line ) were transferred to Poland, Lithuania, and Russia ( Kaliningrad oblast ); the 6. 7 million Germans living in Poland and the 2. 5 million in Czechoslovakia were forced to move west, although most had already left when the war ended.

The Allied resolution on the " orderly transfer " of German population became the legitimation of the expulsion of Germans from the certain parts of Central Europe, if they had not already fled from the advancing Red Army.

The Germans demanded the " independence " of Poland and Lithuania, which they already occupied, while the Bolsheviks demanded " peace without annexations or indemnities " — in other words, a settlement under which the revolutionary government that succeeded the Russian Empire would give neither territory nor money.

Indeed the Germans had already been negotiating with a separatist government in Ukraine and on February 9, 1918, the German government recognized the separate government in Ukraine and signed a separate peace with that government.

Even the expulsion of Germans from central and eastern Europe after World War II was apparently sanctioned in article 13 of the Potsdam communiqué, although research has shown that both the British and the American delegations at Potsdam strongly objected to the size of the population transfer that had already taken place and was accelerating in the summer of 1945.

The Germans fiercely defended the area for two reasons: it served as a staging area for the Ardennes Offensive ( what became the Battle of the Bulge ) that was already in preparation, and the mountains commanded access to the Schwammenauel Dam at the head of the Rur Lake ( Rurstausee ) which, if opened, would flood low-lying areas downstream and deny any crossing of the river.

As American troops tried to retreat across this bridge to Vossenack, great parts of the Kall Valley were already cut off by the Germans.

He also had intelligence that Almásy was already working with the Germans.

On September 19, the Germans surrounded it and erected a blockade, as already established and ongoing at Metz.

Although French troops continued to fight the Germans, Flemish historians Valaers and Van Goethem wrote that Leopold III had become " The scapegoat of Reynaud " because the French Prime Minister was likely already aware that the Battle of France was lost.

Bradley had incorrectly assumed, based on Ultra decoding transcripts, that most of the Germans had already escaped encirclement, and he feared a German counterattack as well as possible friendly fire casualties.

The women forced to work in the concentration camp brothels came from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Soldier's brothels ( Wehrmachtsbordell ) were usually organized in already established whorehouses or in hotels confiscated by the Germans.

R V Jones had already concluded the Germans used code names which were too descriptive.

Earlier in 1974 the Americans had asked the Germans to redesign the existing Leopard 2 prototypes, considered by them too lightly armoured, and had suggested adoption of Burlington for this purpose, of which type the Germans had already been informed in March 1970 ; the Germans however in response in 1974 initiated a new armour development programme of their own.

Haakon, having already lost a substantial portion of his Swedish realm to the Germans, would go to great and costly lengths to assure his son's election as the new King of Denmark.

After landing, they learned the Germans had already occupied Hungary, so the men decided to call off the mission as too dangerous.

Both teams already were qualified for advance to the next round, and the East Germans won 1 – 0.

On 3 September Lyons was liberated, but the Germans had already escaped.

After a brief fire-fight the paratroopers captured a number of Germans from the 21st Panzer Division and then made their way to the bridge, which they discovered had been demolished already.

The songs reflected the two nations ' concerns in the 19th century when they were confronted with the already fervent national-ethnic activism of the Hungarians and the Germans, their fellow ethnic groups in the Habsburg Monarchy.

In June 1942, Ignacy Schwarzbart, one of two Jewish representatives on the Polish National Council of the Polish Government-in-exile, held a press conference with WJC officials in London, where it was stated that an estimated one million Jews had already been murdered by the Germans.

Velimirović attended Ljotić's funeral in 1945 and spoke very positively of him even though it was already known that Ljotić was collaborating with the Germans.

However, the peasants that tried to move to the cities, found all the better positions already occupied by Jews and Germans.

The subsequent news story alerted the Germans who strengthened their patrols along the river.

This action finally alerted the Germans to the allied activity and, thereafter, Force K was shadowed by enemy aircraft.

The rest of the inhabitants decided to abandon the village and were escorted by the Germans who arrived at Kuty, alerted by the glow of fire and the sound of gunfire.

The German defenders were also hampered by the fact that they had no reliable intelligence as to where the actual assault would be launched ; although German forces along the Rhine had been alerted as to the general possibility of an Allied airborne attack, it was only when British engineers began to set up smoke generators opposite Emmerich and began laying a long smokescreen that the Germans knew where the assault would come.

British actions prior to the assault, however, alerted the Germans to prepare to repel an invasion.

The most important consequence of the unsuccessful raid was that the Germans were now alerted to a determined Allied interest in their heavy water production.

The early detonation alerted all Germans in the vicinity that the long-expected attack was now imminent.

He concluded that selective service would not only prevent the disorganization of essential war industries but would avoid the undesirable moral effects of the British reliance on enlistment only -- `` where the feeling of the people was whipped into a frenzy by girls pinning white feathers on reluctant young men, orators preaching hate of the Germans, and newspapers exaggerating enemy outrages to make men enlist out of motives of revenge and retaliation ''.

While the earlier settlers were primarily of British ancestry, the newer settlers also consisted of Germans, Irish, and African-Americans.

However, documents released by the Cameroonians, in parity with that of the British and Germans, clearly places Bakassi under Cameroonian Territory as a consequence of colonial era Anglo-German agreements.

Sir Edward Grey replied through the American ambassador that the incident could be grouped together with the Germans ' sinking of the SS Arabic, their attack on a stranded British submarine on the neutral Dutch coast, and their attack on the steamship Ruel, and suggested that they be placed before a tribunal composed of US Navy officers.

Later, however, the British would have spectacular success defeating the Italians and Germans at the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa, and in the D-Day invasion of Normandy with the help of American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand forces.

Together, Plunkett and Casement presented a plan which involved a German expeditionary force landing on the west coast of Ireland, while a rising in Dublin diverted the British forces so that the Germans, with the help of local Volunteers, could secure the line of the River Shannon.

In France, Italy and Russia, where large budgets continued to allow major development, both monoplanes and all metal structures were common by the end of the 1920s however those countries overspent themselves and were overtaken in the ' 30s by those powers that hadn't been spending heavily, namely the British, the Americans and the Germans.

The Allied soldiers who died driving the Germans from Tuscany are buried in cemeteries outside the city ( Americans about nine kilometres south of the city, British and Commonwealth soldiers a few kilometres east of the centre on the right bank of the Arno ).

In 1944, the retreating Germans blew up the bridges along the Arno linking the district of Oltrarno to the rest of the city, making it difficult for the British troops to cross.

Ghent was occupied by the Germans in both World Wars but escaped severe destruction and was liberated by the British 7th Desert Rats Armoured Division on September 6, 1944.

The term " Hun " from this speech was later used for the Germans by British propaganda during World War I.

Despite British assistance, by the end of May, the Germans had overrun most of the country.

Paris fell to the Germans on 14 June 1940, and the French leaders surrendered on 24 June 1940 after the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk.

The Germans were more firmly established than the British in the region.

In November 1937, Ribbentrop was placed in a highly embarrassing situation when his forceful advocacy of the return of the former German colonies led to the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos offering to open talks on returning the former German colonies, in return for which the Germans would make binding commitments to respect their borders in Central and Eastern Europe.

Furthermore, the Germans had broken the British diplomatic codes and were reading the messages between the Foreign Office in London to and from the Embassy in Warsaw.

As part of the fierce diplomatic competition in Ankara in the spring and summer of 1939 between von Papen on the one hand, and on the other the French Ambassador, René Massigli, and the British Ambassador, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, to win the allegiance of Turkey to either the Axis or the Allies, Ribbentrop suffered a major reversal in July 1939 when Massigli was able to arrange for major French arms shipments to Turkey on credit, to replace the weapons the Germans refused to deliver to the Turks.

Though the French and the Italians were serious about Mussolini's peace plan, which called for an immediate ceasefire and a four-power conference à la Munich to consider Poland's borders, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax stated that unless the Germans withdrew from Poland immediately, then Britain would not attend the proposed conference.

Ribbentrop argued that the Soviets and Germans shared a common enemy in the form of the British Empire, and as such, it was in the best interests of the Kremlin to enter the war on the Axis side.

By 1840, to protect the interests of the various nationals doing business in Zanzibar, consul offices had been opened by the British, French, Germans and Americans.

It was not until 1942 that the Germans started to develop bombing policy in which civilians were the primary target, although The Blitz on London and many other British cities involved indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.

In terms of fighter aircraft production, the British exceeded their production plans by 43 percent, while the Germans remained 40 percent behind target by the summer 1940.

The tripartite military talks, started in mid-August, hit a sticking point regarding passage of Soviet troops through Poland if Germans attacked, and the parties waited as British and French officials overseas pressured Polish officials to agree to such terms.

* 1939 – Venlo Incident: Two British agents of SIS are captured by the Germans.

It was debatable whether British ships were as vulnerable to enemy air attack as the Germans hoped.