German occupation of the Polish territories was considerably different from the one of other European countries in terms of political policy and the brutality of its realisation. The conquered lands of Poland and Russia were considered as living space for Germans. Already in 1939 Adolf Hitler defined German policy towards conquered Poles:
National policy in the National Socialist sense should not strive to treat Poles with the intention of eventually turning them into Germans.
This policy should instead separate alien elements so as not to allow for the constant contamination of our nation’s blood, or remove them from the land and property completely so that it may be taken over by our citizens.
Source: Adolf Hitler, Zweites Buch, 1928 (not published in the time of Nazi regime), [in:] Martin Winstone, The Dark Hart of Hitler’s Europe, p. 21, I.B. Tauris, 2014.
Nazi policy towards the Polish was defined in a memorandum ‘On the treatment of the population of former Polish territories from racial and political point of view’, prepared and submitted on 25 November 1939 by Erhard Wetzel and Günther Hecht, employees of the NSDAP Office for Racial Policy:
In May 1940 Heinrich Himmler specified Nazi intentions regarding Poles in a memorandum ‘On the treatment of alien nationalities in the east’, in which he disclosed the intention to remove 80% of the inhabitants of Poland and colonise its territory with a German population.
Excerpts from a dissertation by E. Wetzel ‘Comments on the Master Plan East of the Reichsführer SS’, 1942 – a commentary and critique of the Master Plan East, prepared by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA):
The plan is to expel 80‒85% of the Poles, i.e. depending on whether the original number of Poles are 20 or 24 million, the number of Poles to be expelled are to be from 16 to 20.4 million, while 3 to 4.8 million Poles are to remain in the German settlement areas. These figures, provided by the Reich Security Main Office, contradict those provided by the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood as the percentage of Poles racially suitable to be Germanised. On the basis of what has been determined so far, among the rural populations of the Danzig-West Prussia or the Warthegau (Poznań) province the proportion is around 3%. On the basis of this figure, we would have to consider expelling from 19 to 23 million Poles. …
Source: Biuletyn GKBZHwP, vol. V, pp. 221–224.
Himmler called for:
German occupation of Polish territories was characterised by terror imposed on practically all social groups and classes. Within the first three months within the Polish territories incorporated into the German Reich approximately 40,000 Poles were executed, almost 500,000 Poles and Jews were expelled to the General-Government and thousands of others were imprisoned. All Polish social, political and economic organisations were banned.
Excerpts from the ‘Diary’ of Governor-General Hans Frank and the minutes of sessions of the Government of the General-Government concerning the increase of terror, economic plunder and German policy towards the Polish Church:
On 15 September 1939 I received instructions to take over the administration of captured eastern territories with the stipulation that I was to ruthlessly exploit them as a warzone and conquered country; I was to turn their economic, social, cultural and political structures, so to speak, into a pile of rubble. … One thing is certain: these territories shall never escape the reach of German governance.
(19 January 1940)
…You should not be surprised, gentlemen, if in the nearest future I shall tug the reins of Polish society a little harder than so far. I have to admit I often wonder whether I should not start a specific action in the form of a special penal code against those Polacks (Polacken) who do not give way to a German officer or even deliberately push him.
(19 October 1941)
Source: Biuletyn GKBZHwP, vol. II, pp. 11–14.
The German invader’s hostility was primarily directed against Polish elites, i.e. intellectuals, social and economic activists, the military and veterans of Polish struggles for independence. The persecution also included the Polish clergy, as a result of which around 20% of Polish priests were killed, including 13 bishops.
Any action against the interests of the Third Reich was punished with death, and what could be subsumed under this law was exclusively decided by officials of the German police and justice system, who sentenced people to death or an indefinite time in a concentration camp without having to justify their decisions.
Source: IPN
The bodies of 300 Polish prisoners-of-war murdered by Wehrmacht soldiers in Ciepielów, September 1939.
Source: IPN
Poles before their execution in Bydgoszcz, September 1939.
Source: IPN
Polish priests before their execution in Pomerania, 1939.
Source: NAC
Execution of the Warshaw inhabitants in Palmiry.
Source: G. Perek
Inscription inside a Gestapo prison cell in Pomorska Street, Kraków.
The system of terror was based on a network of jails, prisons and camps. A special role in the implementation of genocidal policy was played by facilities for the mass extermination of Jews and concentration camps. The Holocaust mass-extermination facilities or death camps were set up in Chełmno (Kulmhof), Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, whereas the concentration camps were set up in Sztutowo (Stutthof) in the Free City of Danzig region, Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and Lublin.
Excerpts from the ‘Diary’ of Governor-General Hans Frank and the minutes of sessions of the Government of the General-Government illustrating terror as a method of governance in the GG:
…As far as concentration camps are concerned, naturally, in the General-Government [GG] we do not want set up concentration camps in the full sense of the word. Those we suspect must be eliminated immediately. Prisoners from the GG held in the concentration camps of the Reich should be subjected to the A-B operation or destroyed on the spot.
(30 May 1940)
Source: Biuletyn GKBZHwP, vol. II, pp. 20–22, 25–26.
A special role in the realisation of Nazi genocidal policy was played by penal camps, commonly called death or extermination camps, which were divided into concentration camps and centres of mass extermination.
The function of German concentration camps underwent changes with the outbreak of war. From then on, they served not only as centres for the prevention, isolation and slave labour of opponents of the regime, but also for destruction of the inhabitants of occupied countries. People were imprisoned in these camps for an indefinite period, effectively a life sentence, without trial. German Nazi concentration camps are called indirect extermination camps because inmates were killed by means of hunger, exhausting work, being terrorised, and diseases resulting from atrocious living, sanitary and hygienic conditions, executions, pseudo-medical experiments and a very extensive system of penalties.
The Nazi death camps were centres for the mass extermination of Jews. Here thousands of people were murdered in gas chambers on the day of their arrival.
Polish territories occupied after 22 June 1941
Graphic design: Elżbieta Pietruczuk
To other widely adopted measures belonged: random street roundups of pedestrians, deportations, pacifications and collective executions. Those, who were captured, were sent to perform forced labour in Germany, to a concentration camp or were shot directly.
In the Silesia Region the ground floor of block no. 11 (Death Block) in Auschwitz was used for this purpose. Police prisoners were shot dead in the courtyard of this block.
Excerpts from testimonies concerning collective street executions in occupied Warsaw:
12 November 1943 – execution of 20 people in Nowy Świat Street:
…The German police not only evacuated the street, but also all the shops, restaurants and gates… the gatekeepers were ordered to tell all the tenants not to look out of the windows. All the street exits were cordoned off by German police with rifles ready to fire. When the area was secured, the cortege drew up under the wall of the Savoy Hotel and the firing squad together with representatives of the German police positioned themselves. The condemned were led out of the truck in sixes and made to stand on the other side of the road, in front of the wall of a burned-out house. They were blindfolded, had their hands tied behind their backs and were also tied together in pairs. Apparently, they also had something in their mouths so that they could not scream. They went to their place of execution calmly, mechanically, like mannequins, as if they were under the influence of a narcotic. Once they were arranged against wall, a salvo was fired. Those hit fell to the ground, and then followed the most tragic and horrifying sight of their bodies writhing in agony, the loud groans of pain and death rattles, the sight of their suffering. The German policemen approached those still showing signs of life. And if the victim was lying face up, with his boot the German would turn the face to the ground and pressing the gun against the back of the head, fire a shot into the victim’s skull… Immediately after the executions were finished, civilians appeared with buckets of water, soap powder and brushes, and they feverishly started to scrub and wash away the blood, bits of flesh and pieces of brain splattered on the wall. The blood was collected into the buckets, so that not a trace of the crime remained. Quite literally, after just a few minutes, the only evidence of the terrible murders was a wet wall, pavement and road… Among those killed was a railwayman, and elderly man with a beard and two boys no older than 14 or 15.
Source: Biuletyn GKBZHwP, vol. I, pp. 220–221.
On 15 August 1940 a transport from Warsaw arrived in Auschwitz concentration camp with 1,666 prisoners, 1,153 of whom had been taken from a street roundup.
In November 1939 a significant operation against the Polish intelligentsia was conducted. In the course of the action 183 university professors and academics from the Jagiellonian University and Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Kraków were arrested and subsequently sent to concentration camps.
A year later, November 1940, in Prague, the Governor-General of occupied Poland Hans Frank said:
If I had to put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not be sufficient to manufacture the paper.
The Polish people should no longer be called a cultural nation – this statement by Heinrich Himmler justified the destruction or plunder of items of Polish culture and national heritage. Entire galleries, museum collections and cultural monuments were shipped away. Likewise, most Polish libraries and archives were looted or destroyed. Many historic buildings and monuments of nature were destroyed either deliberately or as a result of military conflict. All universities and secondary schools were closed. In elementary education the teaching of history, geography and Polish was limited or banned. Polish children went to schools with only three to six classes, and the teachers were mainly German. At least 60,000 Polish children, fulfilling established racial criteria, were subjected to Germanisation. Only around 30,000 of them returned to Poland after the war.
According to estimations, as a result of the Second World War 5 – 5.8 million Polish citizens perished, approximately 14 – 17 % of the total population. Hundreds of thousands were killed during the military actions. The rest lost their lives as a result of other actions of the German invader and, to alesser extent, also the actions of the Soviet invader. Approximately 60% of Polish citizens killed during the Second World War were Jews.
Appendix no. 1