The land between two rivers – an exploration of the decision to make Niederschlesien a part of Poland

Three conferences attended by the Allied leadership at Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945) determined the political shape of the post-war world. The last of these, the Potsdam Conference, was a celebratory meeting of the victorious war-time allies, held on the territory of the defeated and it was also the location for decisions on retribution, the sharing of the spoils of war and the preparation for future peace. This investigates why the decision was made at Potsdam, that Niederschlesien, a province of Germany, whose population was German, and that had been part Germany for hundreds of years, should become part of Poland. The chief focus is on the part played by the British leadership and diplomats in the decision-making resting on the affirmation that although, according to the Potsdam Protocol, the future of Niederschlesien was to be settled at a future peace conference, its fate was, de facto, decided at Potsdam itself. After setting frontier issues for the conference in context via an examination of the preparations in the foreign office and the War Cabinet, and a review of discourse in the media, this thesis will examine three main approaches to the decision-making. Firstly, it will deal with the close discussions about Niederschlesien and top level decision-making by the elites around the table at Cecillienhof. Then, it will enrich the enterprise by offering a cultural history of the conference using Pierre Bourdieu’s toolbox with a view towards eliciting wider cultural influences and a consideration of the non-conscious perspective. Thirdly, on an analogous basis, the application of Daniel Kahneman’s research results, despite coming from behaviourist psychology, can add an enriching dimension to the decision-making by the conferences participants.