Most of the ethnically-German part of the population of these provinces, alongside most of the German minority population in what was Poland before the Second World War (), either fled before the to central and western Germany or were forcibly resettled later. It should be noted here that German citizens of Polish descent and ethically-Polish residents of these regions and other parts of Germany faced systematic discrimination, internment in concentration camps, property-confiscations, forced-resettlement and expulsion under the Nazi administration.