ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the ways in which the residual post-1949 German minorities in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic and Poland have influenced the German government in its dealings with its two neighbours in East Central Europe. As for the minority populations themselves, in many ways, the situation of Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland between 1945 and the late 1980s was very similar. After the completion of the expulsion of ethnic Germans in 1948, the strategy with regard to remaining non-Czechs and non-Slovaks was to assimilate as far as possible all remaining elements within society into a single Czechoslovak nation, within which the Czechs would constitute the Leitkultur. Naturally enough, the relationship between the Czech Republic's German minority and wider Czech society, is, in part, governed by the wider pattern of relations between the two peoples during the twentieth century. In general, the situation of the German minority in Poland has significantly improved since the end of communism.
