High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Plans to evacuate German population from the occupied territories in Central and Eastern Europe and from Eastern Germany were prepared by German authorities at the end of World War II. However, the evacuation in most of the areas was delayed until the last moment, when it was too late to conduct it in an orderly fashion. Most of the evacuation efforts commenced in January 1945, when Soviet forces were already rapidly advancing westward. In total about six million Germans were evacuated from the areas east of the Oder-Neisse line before the Red Army and the Soviet-controlled Polish People`s Army took control of the region.