such as the Province of Posen or the southern part of Upper Silesia, the majority of the population were Poles. Ethnic German Austria remained outside the empire, and so did many German-settled or mixed regions of Central and Eastern Europe. Most German settled regions of South Central and Southeastern Europe were instead included in the multi-ethnic Habsburg monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Ostflucht Starting in the late 19th century, an inner-Prussian migration took place from the very rural eastern to the prospering urban western provinces of Prussia (notably to the Ruhr area and Cologne), a phenomenon termed Ostflucht. As a consequence, these migrations increased the percentage of the Polish population in Posen and West Prussia. Driven by nationalist intentions, the Prussian state established a Settlement Commission as countermeasure, that was to settle more Germans in these regions. In total 21,886 families (154,704 people) out of planned 40,000 were settled by the end of its existence. The history of the forced expulsions of the Polish population is further explored in the Expulsion of Poles by Germany. 1914–1939 World War I By World War I, there were isolated groups of Germans as far southeast as the Bosporus (Turkey), Georgia, and Azerbaijan. After the war, Germany's and Austria-Hungary's territorial losses meant that more Germans than ever were minorities in various countries, the treatment they received varied from country to country, and they were, in places subject to resentful persecution from former enemies of Germany. Perceptions of this persecution filtered back into Germany, where reports were exploited and amplified by the Nazi party as part of their drive to national popularity as savior of the German people. The advance of allied German Empire and Habsburg monarchy forces into the Russian Empire's territory triggered actions of flight, evacuation and deportation of the population living in or near the combat zone. Russian Germans became subject to severe measures because of their ethnicity, including forced resettlement and deportation to Russia's East, ban of German language from public life (including books and newspapers), and denial of economical means (jobs and land property) based on "liquidation laws" issued since 1915; also Germans (as well as the rest of the population) were hit by "scorched earth" tactics of the retreating Russians. About 300,000 Russian Germans became subject to deportations to Siberia and the Bashkir steppe, of those 70,000-200,000 were Germans from Volhynia, 20,000 were Germans from Podolia, 10,000 were Germans from the