Oststaat-Plan

The Oststaat-Plan (German: [ˈɔststɑːt plˈɑːn], "Eastern State Plan") was a proposal drawn up after World War I by Adolf von Batocki. Its aim was to preserve German control over Prussia’s eastern provinces in the face of Polish territorial claims following Poland’s renewed independence and the 1918 Greater Poland Uprising. The plan ultimately collapsed because the German government did not back it.

After the war, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the principle of national self-determination alarmed powers like Germany, which held sway over Greater Poland. Germany had agreed to an armistice on November 11, 1918, and had earlier signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Bolshevik Russia, which acknowledged a future Polish state. Until the Treaty of Versailles took full effect in January 1920, many border and sovereignty questions remained open. Wilson’s vision for an independent Poland did not initially specify universally accepted boundaries. Most of the Polish lands annexed by Prussia in the late 1700s were still part of a larger Germany at the war’s end, with the rest of the former Kingdom of Poland under Austria-Hungary. The German-held portion included Greater Poland, whose capital and industrial hub was Poznań (Posen). Over 60% of the population there was Polish and sought inclusion in the new Polish state. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to recognize Poland’s independence—regained after a national revolt against the occupying Central Powers—and surrender all claims to Polish territory. Parts of Upper Silesia, the Province of Posen (already under Polish control after the uprising), and Pomerelia were to go to Poland. Southern East Prussia’s fate would be decided by plebiscite, while the Soldau area of East Prussia, straddling the rail line from Warsaw to Danzig, was transferred to Poland outright.

Three days before the Versailles treaty was signed, on June 25, 1919, Prussian Interior Minister Wolfgang Heine sent a memorandum to the Reich Chancellery noting that “the idea of an independent East German republic” was frequently discussed in eastern political circles.