title: Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wroclaw During the Century of Expulsions
abstract: Following a ferocious three-month siege by the Soviet Army that began in February 1945, the centuries-old German city of Breslau, which Hitler had designated a Festung to be defended to the last man several months earlier, lay in ruins. Subsequently, rapacious pillaging and multifarious criminal activity by many Soviet troops exacerbated this catastrophic situation. Under the terms of the Potsdam Conference in August that year, the city, together with large segments of Germany’s eastern province
journal: German History