Bierut Decrees


Bierut Decrees Bierut-Dekrete is a term used in German historiography referring to a series of decrees, laws and regulations enacted by the Provisional Government of National Unity between 1945 and 1946 concerning the flight and expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland and the property issues arising from them.
The "Bierut Decrees" are named after Bolesław Bierut, installed by the occupying Soviet forces as the leader of communist government of Poland between 1944 and his death in Moscow in 1956. Bierut functioned as head of the Provisional National Council, a Soviet influenced quasi-parliament, from 1944 to 1947.
The term presents a conscious echo of the Beneš decrees which have been seen by critics as providing a blue print for the ethnic cleansing of German and Hungarian minorities from Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1948.

Background

Following defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, political leaders from the allied powers met at Potsdam between July 17 and August 2 in order to progress agreement on the post-war settlement. Russian plans for Germany and Poland involved reducing Germany and annexation of the eastern part of the prewar Poland into the outlying republics of the Soviet Union. The Soviet acquisitions roughly corresponded to the partition along the Curzon line. On the western side of Poland the border was to be moved westward at the expense of Germany, to a new frontier following the Rivers Oder and Neisse. By the time of the Potsdam conference, Poland and eastern Germany were already occupied by Russian troops. A puppet government, loyal to Moscow, was well advanced with the systematic consolidation of control over Poland as defined according to the new de facto frontiers. The westward relocation of Poland became part of the agreed approach of the Potsdam conference.
In the west of Poland, this left large numbers of German speaking people who found that their homes were now in Poland. In reality the population of military age German males was already badly depleted by losses on the Russian front, and knowledge of the approach of the Red Army from the east, together with the break down in relations between ethnic Germans and other communities as the war drew to its end, had already led many Germans in the east of the country to flee towards the west during 1944 and 1945, so that much property was already abandoned by them and in many cases expropriated on a local basis, giving aspects of the "Bierut Decrees" basically a retrospective character.

The law on abandoned and deserted property

Most of the territory transferred to Poland from the prewar Germany in 1945 came from areas that had been part of the historic state of Prussia and subsequently of Germany, some of them since the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This was the case with most of Pomerania, Silesia and the eastern part of Brandenburg, including major cities in postwar Poland such as Szczecin/Stettin and Wrocław/Breslau. Danzig/Gdańsk was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the second partition of Poland of 1793, and was a free city for about 20 years before World War II. New laws were enacted by the Provisional Government of National Unity regarding German speaking people who were living within Poland’s new frontiers.

Decrees of Provisional Government of National Unity

Following the shifting of borders between the two countries, on 6 May 1945 the new Polish general law on abandoned and deserted property was signed, affecting the Germans in several paragraphs. The law specified two categories of assets distinct from each other. The property, which before the invasion of Poland was owned by the Germans as well as by the defectors from Poland living in Germany, was classified as abandoned. Meanwhile, the assets requisitioned and/or acquired by the Germans after the invasion were classified as deserted when the new laws came into effect.Dziennik Ustaw, 1945 nr 17 poz. 96 i 97, . PDF file from The law was signed by Bolesław Bierut, Edward Osóbka-Morawski, Hilary Minc and four other ministers. The subsequent decree of 8 March 1946 on formerly German property went a step further and nationalized all German assets, with the exception of property taken over by the Soviet Union already. By the same token, all laws enacted by the German occupation administration were declared legally void and invalid. The law was signed by Bolesław Bierut, Edward Osóbka-Morawski, and twenty ministers.Dz.U. 1946 nr 13 poz. 87, . As a result of the new law, the German nationals who found themselves residing in Poland without active citizenship became transients; therefore, there was no need for additional law to exclude them from Poland.

Exclusion of hostile elements from the Polish state

The decree and law of 1945 along with the further decree of 13 September 1946 on the exclusion of hostile elements from the Polish state concerned the ethnic German minority who had lived in Poland as defined by the frontiers agreed between 1923 and 1939. In these cases the expulsion of the German portion of the population and the expropriation of their property with impunity was effected legally.

Principal enactments

;28 February 1945 decree concerning the exclusion of elements hostile to the Polish state
;6 May 1945 amendment concerning the exclusion of elements hostile to the Polish state
;6 May 1945 law concerning abandoned assets

;3 January 1946 nationalisation law, concerning the acquisition into state ownership of the principal branches of the national economy
;8 March 1946 decree concerning abandoned and formerly German assets
;24 March 1946 regulation for identification of formerly German-owned movable assets
In order to make possible the acquisition of property comprising formerly German owned movable assets, I instruct that these movable assets in the recovered regions be listed:
13 September 1946 decree concerning the exclusion of persons of German nationality from the Polish state