Curzon Line

For other uses, see Curzon.
Curzon Line
Historical demarcation line of World War II
Lighter blue line: Curzon Line "B" as proposed in 1919.
Darker blue line: "Curzon" Line "A" as drawn by Lewis Namier in 1919.
Pink areas: Pre–World War II provinces of Germany transferred to Poland after the war.
Grey area: Pre–World War II Polish territory east of the Curzon Line annexed by the Soviet Union after the war.

The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. Based on a suggestion by Herbert James Paton, it was first proposed in 1919 by Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, to the Supreme War Council as a diplomatic basis for a future border agreement.[1][2][3]

The line became a major geopolitical factor during World War II, when the USSR invaded eastern Poland, resulting in the split of Poland's territory between the USSR and Nazi Germany roughly along the Curzon Line in accordance with final rounds of secret negotiations surrounding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the Allies did not agree that Poland's future eastern border should be changed from the pre-war status quo in 1939 until the Tehran Conference. Churchill's position changed after the Soviet victory at the Battle of Kursk.[4]

Following a private agreement at the Tehran Conference, confirmed at the 1945 Yalta Conference, the Allied leaders Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Stalin issued a statement affirming the use of the Curzon Line, with some five-to-eight-kilometre variations, as the eastern border between Poland and the Soviet Union.[5] When Churchill proposed to annex parts of Eastern Galicia, including the city of Lviv, to Poland's territory (following Line B), Stalin argued that the Soviet Union could not demand less territory for itself than the British Government had reconfirmed previously several times. The Allied arrangement involved compensation for this loss via the incorporation of formerly German areas (the so-called Recovered Territories) into Poland. As a result, the current border between Poland and the countries of Belarus and Ukraine is an approximation of the Curzon Line.

Territorial evolution of Poland
in the 20th century
Pre-World War II
World War II
Post World War II
Areas
Demarcation lines
Adjacent countries
  1. ^ Sarah Meiklejohn Terry (1983). Poland's Place in Europe: General Sikorski and the Origin of the Oder-Neisse Line, 1939-1943. Princeton University Press. p. 121. ISBN 9781400857173.
  2. ^ Eberhardt, Piotr (2012). "The Curzon line as the eastern boundary of Poland. The origins and the political background". Geographia Polonica. 85 (1): 5–21. doi:10.7163/GPol.2012.1.1.
  3. ^ R. F. Leslie, Antony Polonsky (1983). The History of Poland Since 1863. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-27501-9.
  4. ^ Rees, Laurence (2009). World War Two Behind Closed Doors, BBC Books, pp. 122, 220
  5. ^ "Modern History Sourcebook: The Yalta Conference, Feb. 1945". Fordham University. Retrieved 2010-02-05.