Silesia was Germany’s richest lost province, anchored by heavy industry and Breslau.

Evidence

By the advent of the twentieth century, Upper Silesia featured the second-largest industrial region in continental Europe after the Ruhrgebiet in western Germany. Northwest of Upper Silesia, Lower Silesia was primarily agricultural, often referred to as the German breadbasket. Although technically situated in Lower Silesia, Prussia’s second-greatest metropolis, Breslau, was an entity unto itself: Far larger than any other city in the region, the provincial capital dominated Silesia’s cultural, social, and political life and exerted significant inl uence in Berlin and beyond. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 236

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Silesia was the most productive and populous of Germany’s lost eastern provinces. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 218