In reading about the Nazi gold train that has been in the news recently I noticed that the last place that it had been seen was Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad. I decided to look it up and wikipedia says that the Germans who lived there mainly fled or were forcibly deported. There are many areas in countries that became Eastern Bloc countries that had sizable German minorities, or even majorities, including former Prussia, Silesia, the Sudetenland, and areas of Hungary. (I am not wondering about Alsace, or any other areas that might have changed hands with Western Europe as most of the territorial gains (or regains) made after the war were made by Eastern Bloc countries) . Do those countries still have people who identify as Germanic, or has the result of the last 70 years, part of it under strict centralized autocracies, been enough to reduce or remove those minorities?
Massive ethnic cleansing around the end of World War II.
Before: civilians trying to flee the oncoming Soviets. Keegan's The Second World War mentions, just in January 1945, 450,000 evacuated through Pillau and 900,000 walking to Danzig. "It seems possible that a million Germans died in the flight from the east in the early months of 1945", but there are smaller estimates elsewhere.
After: The Potsdam Agreement, article 12, includes "The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner." In the winter of 1945, some 14 million were uprooted from east of modern German and shipped to Germany, with hundreds of thousands or millions dying. "By 1946 the historic German population of Europe east of the Elbe had been reduced from 17 million to 2,600,000." He uses the phrase "often conducted with criminal brutality".
Also please let me know if some of the place names that I used were incorrect or have a better modern alternative. History can be tricky with names.
As mentioned in another post, most of the German population either escaped on their own during the winter of 1944/1945 or were expelled after the war.
By the early 1950s, the Polish communist government claimed that only a few thousands Germans remained. That was a gross underestimation.
A small number (probably counted in the above statistic) of undoubtedly German people were allowed to remain due to family ties to Poles or because they were considered "essential employees"
Much bigger was the "autochtonous" Slavic (in theory) population of Upper Silesia and Masuria. These people were Germanized to various degree, but retained their own identity. Many of them considered themselves Polish and suffered repressions under the Nazi rule. On the other hands, it's conceivable that some of them actually felt German but used their real or imagined Slavic roots to stay in their homeland.
This become clear during the 1970s, where relations between Poland and West Germany improved and ethnic Germans were allowed to emigrate. Suddenly, thousands of Germans who didn't exist in official government statistics appeared and left for a greener, capitalist pasture.
As for the current situation, in the 2011 census, 148,000 people in Poland declared German as their ethnicity (74,000 considers themselves "primary German", 48,000 considers themselves "only German", 64,000 consider themselves "also Polish"). There are living mostly in the Opole (German Oppeln) voivodeship. They have some political representation and many areas there employ bilingual signs.