Читать книгу Ideology and the Rationality of Domination - Gerhard Wolf - Страница 16
ОглавлениеProjecting the “Lebensraum” Dystopia onto Poland
IN CONTRAST TO the invasions of Austria, the Sudetenland, the Memel territory, and finally the Czech rump state, the attack on Poland was seen by the Nazi leadership as the first step in the final battle to acquire a life-or-death necessity for the German “Volk”: new “Lebensraum” in the east. In the short time from the invasion’s start on September 1, 1939, to the taking of Warsaw on September 28, to the capitulation of the last Polish units on October 6, German goals underwent a dramatic radicalization. Despite countless discussions throughout World War I, the German Empire had not been able to bring itself to do what Nazi Germany had launched in just a few short weeks, namely the expulsion or murder of persons considered “undesirable” on political or racial grounds, the systematic registration of resident “Volksdeutsche,” and finally the resettlement of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. In what would become the annexed western Polish territories, an entire population was subjected to a comprehensive selection process for the first time, wherein the first step was to register those who in any case must be rendered “harmless” or given the right to preferential treatment as potential members of the “Volksgemeinschaft” that was to be installed here.
The Genesis of the “Lebensraum” Policy during the War
Just a few weeks after Hitler had instructed the German army’s commander in chief to draw up an operational plan for waging war against Poland, the SS Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) also began its preparations, as it had done in earlier military campaigns. As in the invasions of Austria, the Sudetenland, and the Czech rump state, the Wehrmacht was to be followed by SS units in Poland as well, in order to help police the rearward territory and take action against political opponents.
Under the code name “Operation Tannenberg,” preparations at SD headquarters included the compilation of a proscription list known as the Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen (Special prosecution book for Poland).1 The overall coordination of this effort was taken over in early June by Werner Best, the head of the Gestapo’s Department I (administration and personnel) and Department III (counterintelligence), who was second only to Reinhard Heydrich as the most important figure in the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei). In the end, there were seven Einsatzgruppen encompassing sixteen Einsatzkommandos (deployment groups and deployment commandos, respectively), altogether comprising some 4,250 persons, of which 2,250 came from the Ordnungspolizei (“order” police, or uniformed law enforcement officers) and the rest primarily from the Gestapo and the Kriminalpolizei (criminal police, or plainclothes investigators), while the SD mainly supplied the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos.2
Of particular interest are the instructions these men brought with them into the war zone, for they allow conclusions to be drawn about the kind of warfare that Germany was intending to wage, and thus about its envisaged war goals. The foreign-deployment guidelines for the Security Police and the SD were issued at the end of August, after consultations between Heydrich and Colonel Eduard Wagner, the responsible officer in the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, or OKH); here, the Einsatzgruppen were tasked in very general terms with the “combating of all anti-Reich and anti-German elements rearwards of the fighting troops.”3 Expressions like “völkische Flurbereinigung” (“ethnic cleansing of the soil”), which became so common just a few weeks later, are entirely missing here, as are any mentions of the Jewish populace. Instead, it was explicitly written that “mistreatment or killings of apprehended persons are strictly forbidden.”4 These guidelines contain no hint of the mass murders that these same units would commit just a few weeks later. It cannot be ruled out, however, that these written instructions may have served as cover for the SS, with a supplementary “killing order” issued orally by Himmler and Heydrich.5
In the latest research, this interpretation is most forcefully argued by Alexander B. Rossino. One piece of evidence is the testimony on a meeting with Einsatzgruppen leaders on August 18, 1939, who were apparently informed by Heydrich about further alleged atrocities committed against the ethnic Germans, leading him to expect heavy resistance from paramilitary Polish groups; in order to suppress them, “everything was permissible, meaning executions as well as arrests,” according to Lothar Beutel, leader of Einsatzgruppe IV.6 Another attendee of that meeting, however, the liaison chief of Einsatzgruppe IV, Dr. Ernst Gehrke, denied having received a “general liquidation order,” but added that “back then it was not the usual way, expressing such things so openly.”7 No further clarity on Rossino’s contentions is provided by a message from Heydrich to the chief of the Ordnungspolizei Kurt Daluege on July 2, 1940, in which he makes retrospective mention of the murders in Poland. Certainly, Heydrich does write that the “instructions for police deployment were extraordinarily radical (e.g., liquidation order for many Polish leadership groups, going into the thousands)”—this is not in doubt.8 But the real question is when these instructions were actually issued, whether before the war or after it was already in progress—on this point, the message offers no clue. Although Rossino’s interpretation cannot be entirely discounted on the basis of the surviving documents, I think it nonetheless fails to adequately consider the processual character that shaped the development of violence during these weeks. In this view, killing campaigns are primarily seen as the end product of a well-defined process of decision and command, one that is ascribed to the headquarters, with little attention paid to events on the periphery or to the personal initiative of agents on the ground; as a result, a more complex model of interaction between the hub and the periphery is no longer considered.
In my view, it seems much more likely that Heydrich initially refrained from issuing wholesale killing orders to those gathered on August 18, especially since he could not yet be sure at that point whether such a thing was actually enforceable against the will of the Wehrmacht. Instead, one can assume that it was more about readying these men for a deployment that was clearly unlike those that had come before. And it certainly cannot be ruled out that the prohibition against killing, as specified in the guidelines, was explicitly qualified with potential exceptions. Speaking in favor of this was an order issued on August 18 by Best to the SS units stationed on occupied Czech territory, in which he expanded the circle of those considered enemies. Every person who politically opposed the German occupation was now to be treated as an “enemy of the state,” including all communists and left-wing social democrats, as well as all Jews.9 Although one can hardly assume that any greater deference was ordered in regard to the Polish populace, this still does not mean that a general killing order necessarily existed for the deployment in Poland.10
But it was not only the SS units that were caught up in this radicalization process. The Wehrmacht too had long since begun unshackling itself from the “constraints” of international war conventions. After an order had already been issued as early as February 16, 1939, specifying the separation of war prisoners according to “racial” criteria (which was actually implemented after September 1 with the systematic selection of Jewish prisoners), the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, or OKH) as well as individual commanders began preparing their soldiers for the war against Poland on an ideological level.11 Thus, in a handbook from the Wehrmacht High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) dated July 1, 1939, the Polish populace was vilified as “fanatically hate-filled” and was also accused of “destroying and poisoning food stockpiles.” It was because of this that any “accommodating treatment” would in fact be “construed as weakness.”12 For the Army High Command, it was just a short leap to then declare on August 9, 1939, that the rules of the Hague Conventions were to be obeyed at most “in spirit.”13 To ensure that the individual commanders in chief also understood what the upcoming war was about and how it was to be waged, Hitler invited them to a meeting on August 22. His speech to them must have cleared up any last doubts among the Wehrmacht leadership about the character of the impending war: “Poland’s destruction at the fore. Goal is the elimination of all living forces, not the reaching of a certain line . . . shut the heart against pity. Brutal actions . . . Any newly reemerging living Polish force is to be immediately exterminated again.”14
The German leadership thus wanted a war that was aimed not only at the extinguishing of Poland’s armed forces, but also at already laying the groundwork for a German-dominated Eastern Europe, whose borders—at least for now—had been defined by the pact with the Soviet Union. But beyond that, vagueness dominated in Berlin. There was certainly no hint of any “detailed plans of expansion and conquest” that Antoni Czubinski claims to have found, nor anything else that resembled a plan, however coherent, about the future war aims.15 There was consensus on only two aspects: the annexation of large parts of western Poland beyond the borders of 1918 and the homogenization of the populace there.
* * *
Thus, although the SS Einsatzgruppen probably did not have a wholesale killing order when they crossed Poland’s borders on the early morning of September 1, they were nonetheless committed to waging a war that violated all rules of international law. And the Wehrmacht had set out on a similar course. As already demonstrated decades ago by Polish historians, and also proved more recently by two impressive studies, the Wehrmacht was certainly not just a bystander in the mass murders committed by the SS and police units during the war against Poland.16
One of the first major war crimes occurred in the city of Bydgoszcz, known in German as Bromberg. The shooting of retreating Polish soldiers by ethnic Germans, in which forty to fifty soldiers were killed, had led to Polish retaliatory attacks on September 3, in which anywhere from one hundred to three hundred people were killed.17 During the Wehrmacht’s conquest of the city soon thereafter, a war crime was already committed by a unit from Einsatzgruppe IV, which executed more than fifty defenders of city hall, mostly youths.18 Further attacks on German personnel were answered with ever more radical terror measures, until the local Wehrmacht commander apparently gave free rein to the head of Einsatzkommando 1, which ultimately led to a mass execution on September 12 in a forest outside Bromberg, involving an estimated nine hundred Polish civilians previously arrested during roundups.19 Of course, German propaganda focused instead on the alleged Polish atrocities, fabricating what it called the “Bromberger Blutsonntag” (“Bromberg Bloody Sunday”), during which allegedly fifty-eight thousand “Volksdeutsche” had been brutally murdered.20
Bromberg’s explosion of violence under German orders was embedded in a general escalation of German warfare, which was primarily justified by the alleged threat of “franc-tireurs,” a word known to Germans from two earlier wars. In an astounding parallel to the radicalization of German warfare seen during World War I, a more brutal approach by the Einsatzgruppen was ordered by Himmler on September 3, the day of the massacres in Bromberg.21 He stated that “Polish insurgents caught in the act or with a weapon” were henceforth “to be shot on the spot,” and that an insurgent was anyone who “attacked the lives of German occupation personnel or of Volksdeutsche, or threatened vital facilities or goods in the occupied territories.”22 A day later, the Wehrmacht followed suit by issuing its first “criminal order,” which stated that “Polish civilians” suspected of having shot at German soldiers were no longer to be handed over as before to the Security Police for “clarifying the question of perpetration,” but were instead to be shot by one’s own troops; this also applied to civilians who were only “located at the houses and farmsteads from which our troops had been fired on.”23
This first radicalization of German warfare had fatal consequences for the civilian populace. Although Polish soldiers—as long as they were not Jewish—retained at least the most basic rights upon capture, more and more of the civilian populace was now finding itself subject to German aggression. Not entirely settled, however, is the exact relationship between the Polish quashing of the ethnic German uprising in Bromberg and the explosion of violence from the German side, which began on the same day.24 Nonetheless, it can be assumed that the outrage over the alleged crimes committed against the “Volksdeutsche” in Bromberg and, more generally, the anger at the allegedly unlawful warfare conducted by Polish “irregulars” behind the German front line were a pair of factors that mutually reinforced one another while also contributing to the unfettering of violence on the German side—even though both were the result of the regime’s own ideological production and had little to do with reality.25
Unlike later events in the Soviet Union, this radicalization in Poland was marked by sometimes intense conflicts between the Wehrmacht and the SS. In the eyes of the SS, the Wehrmacht was endangering the political goals pursued by the Reich in Poland. As Heydrich informed his departmental heads on September 7, the “leading social class . . . must be rendered harmless as much as possible” and could “certainly not remain in Poland, but instead must be brought to German concentration camps.”26 Here, the ostensibly conscientious Wehrmacht was seen only as an obstacle, as reflected in the writings of military counterintelligence officer Helmuth Groscurth, who complained a day later that Heydrich “continues inciting against the army in the most outrageous way.”27
The Wehrmacht complained not only about the conduct of the SS Einsatzgruppen, but also the actions of the so-called Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, or Ethnic German “Self-Defense” Force. The potential of these militia formations had been immediately recognized by the SS leadership, which had also initiated some of them and supplied them with weapons. They were all put under SS command on September 9 and ultimately subordinated to the Ordnungspolizei (a Main Office of the SS) on September 26, 1939, under the chief of the Ordnungspolizei Kurt Daluege and his local commanders on location.28 Despite what their name might suggest, the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz units were not primarily meant to provide “defense” for the local Germans but instead to act as a “complement to the Einsatzgruppen.” Unlike the Einsatzgruppen, the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz soon grew to include more than a hundred thousand members, thereby extending the reach of the SS into every locale.29 Such units supported the SS through their local knowledge, particularly in assisting with the selection process applied to the resident populace, as well as the arrest of allegedly “anti-German elements”; they would soon help with the deportations as well and ultimately took part in the executions.30
Various voices in the Wehrmacht protested this continual expansion of the SS sphere of action, but to no avail.31 During a discussion aboard the “Führer train” on September 12, 1939, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of military intelligence, reported to Colonel General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, that “extensive executions by firing squad were planned in Poland, and that especially the nobility and clergy were to be eradicated.” Keitel was not surprised, for Hitler had apparently already informed him of the radicalization of warfare against the civilian population, as well as the associated population policy goals. Canaris learned that “this matter was already decided by the Führer . . . that if the Wehrmacht wanted nothing to do with this, it must also accept that the SS and Gestapo would make an appearance here.”32 A marginal note on the minutes of this conversation includes an expression that would appear more and more often, one that described the German policy goal in Poland: “political cleansing of the soil” (“politische Flurbereinigung”).33
Conflicts also arose over the brutal treatment of the Jewish populace, especially after the mass murders committed in Bendzin (today Będzin) by the Einsatzgruppe z.b.V. (Einsatzgruppe zur besonderen Verwendung; Einsatzgruppe on special assignment) under SS Senior Group Leader Udo von Woyrsch. It would soon turn out, however, that the Army High Command was criticizing more Woyrsch’s methods than the general direction of SS policy and itself issued an order dated September 12, 1939, for Jews “to be deported over the San river,” the demarcation line between German and Soviet occupied Poland.34 It thereby pivoted toward the policy defined by the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) on September 11, when Heydrich met with SS Brigade Leader Bruno Streckenbach, Kraków’s Commander of the Security Police and SD (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or BdS), to discuss the expulsion of the Jews across the San.35 In the end, the Wehrmacht even ordered its soldiers to shoot anyone coming back, “also outside of the bridges.”36 Hans Umbreit’s assessment that the Wehrmacht’s treatment of the Jews “bordered on criminality” is therefore too mild.37 Indeed, it had taken less than two weeks for the Wehrmacht leadership to also agree with the ethnic cleansing policy pushed by the Nazi regime’s top leadership. Aimed not only at alleged irregulars and the Polish elite, but also the Jewish populace, this was not simply a “political cleansing of the soil,” as it was still described on the same day in the meeting notes of another military intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Erwin von Lahousen.
The matters still needing discussion, as communicated by the Wehrmacht to Himmler and Hitler in the following weeks, were thus limited to delineating this division of labor and arranging an orderly exit of the German military. When Wagner received confirmation from Heydrich on September 19 of something that he already knew, namely that the Einsatzgruppen had in fact received orders to take action against the civilian population, he asked only that implementation be delayed until a German civil administration was established, so that the Wehrmacht no longer had to carry any responsibility for it.38 The resolution was recorded as follows in the notes of Franz Halder, the army’s chief of staff:
b) Cleansing of the soil: Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, nobility.
c) Army’s demands: cleansing after the army’s withdrawal, and after handover to a stable civil administration. Early December.39
It was probably for similar reasons that Walther von Brauchitsch, the army’s commander in chief, sought a meeting the next day with Hitler, who immediately updated him on the war plans. There had been an important development: a telegram had arrived from Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, who reported that the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov had “intimated” he was no longer interested in the “original inclination toward allowing a rump Poland to exist” and had asked for negotiations on its partitioning.40
This initiative from the Soviet Union had an immediate impact on German war planning. During the meeting aboard the “Führer train” on September 12, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had explained to Keitel that three choices existed at the time: partition Poland once again; allow for an “independent rump Poland”; or pursue the establishment of a Ukrainian state and the realignment of Lithuania’s borders.41 After Moscow’s change of heart, Brauchitsch was faced with a new permutation, one that strove toward “resettlement on a large scale.”42 All those who had moved to the formerly German territories after 1918 were to be deported, with the Jewish Poles destined for induction into ghettos, although this was “not yet clarified in the particulars.”43 To replace all these people, Germans were to be brought in for resettlement.44 Hitler had thereby outlined for the first time the upcoming program of forced population transfers, a concept that had already appeared in similar form among the radical nationalists and during the discussions of a Polish “border strip” during World War I but would now be undertaken by the Nazis. Like Wagner on the previous day, Brauchitsch seemed to have cared only about delaying the policy’s full implementation until after the military administration wound up. And this was precisely the assurance he received. According to Hitler, the Wehrmacht would not be burdened with this “cleansing” (“Bereinigung”).45 That same night, Wagner drafted an order in which the Wehrmacht disempowered itself by authorizing the police and SS units to carry out “certain ethnopolitical assignments on behalf of the Führer and according to his instructions” and also to establish drumhead courts-martial.46
* * *
The SS knew how to exploit its newly expanded opportunities. On September 21, it was once again up to Himmler and Heydrich to extrapolate a population policy program from Germany’s broader war objectives in Poland. As Heydrich announced to his departmental chiefs and gathered Einsatzgruppen leaders, the Polish territories in the German sphere of interest were to be divided: while “the former German provinces” were to be absorbed into the Reich, central Poland would see the establishment of “a Gau with a foreign-language populace” (a Gau was a geographic administrative subdivision)—not as a Polish rump state, but “as practically a no man’s land” under German control. In one big push, he then sketched a comprehensive program of ethnic cleansing, one that for the first time included the Reich’s own territory while also taking the “solution to the Polish problem” and tying it to a racial deportation policy.47 Thirty thousand German Sinti and all German Jews were to be deported “with freight trains” from the (expanded) Reich to central Poland, with the latter group to be ghettoized in larger municipalities alongside Jewish Poles. For at least a portion of the Jewish Poles, however, a further deportation across the demarcation line had apparently been “authorized by the Führer.”48 The “end goal,” as Heydrich put it in a letter to the Einsatzgruppen on the same day, was to be kept strictly confidential.49 It consisted of deporting all Jews to a “Jewish state under German administration,” as he wrote a day later to Brauchitsch.50 As for the remaining Polish populace, the surviving “Polish leadership class” was to be eliminated first; “in addition, lists of the middle class: teachers, clergy, nobility, legionnaires, returning officers, etc.” were to be compiled, so that they could be “arrested and deported to the leftover area.”51 On the other hand, the “primitive Poles” were to be “incorporated into the labor process as migrant workers and will be gradually relocated from the German Gaus into the foreign-language Gau.”52 Thus, while Phillip T. Rutherford is entirely correct in writing that Heydrich had thereby presented “the first detailed description of Nazi plans for a racial ‘New Order’ in newly conquered territory,” Heydrich’s designs were certainly not limited to that.53 In this meeting focused on pragmatic concerns, which was primarily meant to give immediate operational instructions to the Einsatzgruppen in Poland, Heydrich also addressed the organizational structure of the forced expulsion measures. Here, he was able to announce a further victory in reporting that Himmler had been installed as the Settlement Commissioner for the East (Siedlungskommissar für den Osten), which would make the SS complex a decisive actor in Nazi population policy.54
Germany’s war goals were further radicalized by developments in late September. As Hitler told Birger Dahlerus (a Swedish informal mediator between Germany and the United Kingdom) after the arrival of Schulenburg’s telegram, England would have to resign itself to the fact that “Poland could no longer be resurrected.” The only possible goal left was to ensure “order in the east” through a “reasonable regional arrangement of the nationalities.” For this, however, an “ethnonational cleansing of the soil” (“volksmäßige Flurbereinigung”) would be necessary—and this seems to be the first time the term was used—which would also involve the settling of Germans in the ostensibly thinly populated regions of western Poland.55
Although it is unclear from the transcript exactly what Germans Hitler was thinking about here, it was probably the ethnic Germans living in the Polish territories earmarked for the Soviet Union.56 That same night, however, this particular aspect would also become more concrete. According to the testimony of Dr. Erhard Kroeger, leader of the German minority organization in Latvia and later an SS senior leader, he was summoned by Himmler, who revealed to him at the Hotel Casino in Zoppot (today Sopot), which served for a few days as Hitler’s headquarters, that the Baltic states were now to be entirely left to the Soviet Union. To Kroeger’s surprise, the initial intention was not to evacuate all ethnic Germans from the region, but only those who belonged to the Nazi movement or had dangerously “exposed themselves in ethnopolitics.”57 Appalled, Kroeger urged Himmler not to let the remaining people “fall into the hands of the Bolshevists” and asked that he appeal to Hitler for the resettlement of all the ethnic Germans.58 The next day, Himmler communicated Hitler’s approval to him.59 A resettlement program had thus taken shape that just a few weeks later would discharge the first load of Baltic “Germans” at the port of Gdingen (today Gdynia).
It was probably only with the determination of Eastern Europe’s final partitioning between Germany and the Soviet Union, as laid out in the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty of September 28, that the decision to implement a large deportation program and the destruction of Poland had been finalized in Berlin. On the very next day, Hitler spoke to Alfred Rosenberg about wanting to divide Poland into “three strips,” with the western one annexed to the Reich as a “broad belt for Germanization and colonization,” thereby making room for “good Germans from around the world.” In contrast, the Jewish populace, along with all “somehow unreliable elements,” were to be deported to the eastern strip, while a space remained between for an unspecified “Polish statehood.”60 Heydrich chose blunter words in a briefing of his departmental heads, calling the eastern strip a “nature preserve or ‘Reich ghetto’” that was now to be established in the region around Lublin, after the modification of the demarcation line.61
It is against this backdrop that one must interpret Hitler’s well-known speech to the Reichstag on October 6, 1939, which was promulgated as a “speech for peace.”62 In a continuation of the argumentation that he had already tested on Dahlerus, Hitler claimed that his only concern was the “pacification of the entire region” through “a new ordering of the ethnographic circumstances.”63 Michael Wildt has pointed out that Hitler was seeking justification in terms of the rightful self-determination of peoples, a concept that had been used to justify the dismantling of Eastern Europe’s multiethnic empires after World War I.64 Hitler’s speech could be paraphrased as arguing that if an equitable and peaceful international order could be achieved only when each territory’s populace was ethnically homogeneous and thus had a right to its own state, an impossibility in an ethnically variegated Europe, then political leaders had to create the desired situation retroactively. For Hitler, this “new ordering of the ethnographic circumstances” meant nothing other than a “resettling of nationalities.” Such an effort could not be “restricted to this region,” and also had to include the retrieval of “unsustainable fragments of Germandom” from all of Eastern Europe, because it was “unrealistic to believe that one could readily assimilate these members of a high-grade Volk.”65 This passage is of central importance because it implied a deportation program that went far beyond Poland, while also offering legitimation for Germany’s expansion. It also makes clear that the envisioned “ordering of the entire Lebensraum according to nationalities” was aimed not only at an ethnic homogenization, but also at an ethnic hierarchization.66
Perpetuating the Reign of Terror: The Establishment of the German Occupation Regime
If Hitler had hoped that his speech of October 6 could convince the United Kingdom and France to accept a separate peace, then he was mistaken. In any case, the conclusion of war hostilities brought no relief to Poland. On the contrary: after the Wehrmacht had already decided on a mode of warfare that adhered at most “in spirit” to the international laws of war, the subsequent occupation regime further perpetuated the reign of terror.
The main agent of the oppressive measures was to be the upcoming civil administration, which developed from the civil administration teams that were brought along by the Army Higher Commands (Armeeoberkommandos) during the attack on Poland. The war’s early days, however, saw some decisive shifts in power. For example, the Wehrmacht found itself confronted in the north by Albert Forster, Danzig’s Gauleiter (Gau leader, the head of a Nazi Party regional subdivision), who had begun expanding his sphere of influence on his own initiative with the launch of the German invasion, so that by September 2 he had already taken over the municipal administration of nearby Dirschau (today Tczew). He was unconcerned by the fact that this was actually the job of the civil administration staff attached to the Fourth Army, which was assigned to the region. Just two days later, he contacted Col. Wagner and demanded that he be installed as the area’s Chief of Civil Administration (Chef der Zivilverwaltung, or CdZ), in place of the current chief, SS Senior Leader Fritz Herrmann—a demand that was ultimately pushed through by Hitler, prevailing over the Army High Command. Meanwhile, although a less prominent role was played by Arthur Greiser (who would later become the Wartheland’s Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter, or Reich governor), he too was not the Wehrmacht’s intended choice for CdZ in his region but was instead brought into play by the Reich Interior Ministry.67 These circumstances can certainly be taken as further evidence of the vague and improvised nature of the political leadership’s planning efforts.68 But more important, the appointments of these “Alte Kämpfer” (“old fighters” from the party’s early period) demonstrated the readiness of Hitler and the party leadership to install a control apparatus in the occupied territories that was entirely oriented to Nazi principles.
Thus, the military administration established on September 25 was for Hitler only an interim solution, one to which he attached “not much significance.”69 Just a short time later, he signed his “decree on the subdivision and administration of the eastern territories,” which would dissolve military administration on November 1, 1939, while providing for the transition to a civil administration. Only two days after claiming at the Reichstag that he was striving primarily for the “creation of an unconditionally guaranteed peace and a feeling of security” in Europe, he had sealed the annexation of large parts of Poland’s territory and handed them over to his close confidants, along with the task of “Germanizing” these areas.70
It is characteristic of the dynamics within the top political leadership that for them, even these three weeks soon became too long; Hitler therefore issued a new decree moving the start of civil administration to October 26, bringing it forward by one week. In their view, the war was still far from over, despite the capitulation of the Polish army. The upcoming annexation of western Poland and its transformation into a “German Lebensraum” demanded a stronger focus on those who were seen as a threat to the German project of total domination, or who otherwise had no place in this German dystopia for ideological reasons. And although the Wehrmacht had proved open to the ethnic cleansing policy during military hostilities, it was nonetheless seen as “too soft and lenient” for the further continuation of this campaign.71
The same was also true of the Reich Interior Ministry’s planners, who likewise lagged behind the Nazi leadership in their radicalness. Certainly, the ministry’s memorandum of October 2, on the “responsibilities of the civil administration in the occupied territories,” showed no qualms about pursuing the “reconstruction and strengthening of Germandom” by calling for a “complete and final Germanization.”72 This thinking was still, however, very much rooted in Prussian Germanization policy, as shown by the addendum that only the “areas separated from the Empire in 1918” were meant.73 Thus, while the ministry was still pondering how a “special status for Germandom” could be achieved in the policy sphere, and how the dispossession of major Polish landowners could be expedited through the use of Polish legal frameworks, Hitler’s inner circle had already forged a few steps ahead. The Polish elite was now either murdered or expelled, and with the founding of Göring’s Main Trustee Office for the East (Haupttreuhandstelle Ost) along with the installation of Himmler’s Land Office (Bodenamt), the Polish populace was simply robbed of its property.74
New Borders
The Reich Interior Ministry also proved conservative in defining the new borders, an issue that had been forced onto the agenda by Forster’s push for the civilian administration’s early installation.75 Hitler seemed little impressed by an ethnographic map showing western Poland’s ethnic composition, which Wilhelm Stuckart, a state secretary at the Reich Interior Ministry, presented during a meeting; after all, the Nazi regime’s “Lebensraum” policy was primarily aimed at expansion onto non-German-occupied territories, which were to be transformed into “German settlement land.”76 How very much the “Lebensraum” idea was tied to the expansive demands of the regime’s imperialist eastern policy was then shown by a blue line drawn far to the east, with which Hitler in one imperial gesture took the agriculturally most productive regions of Poland as well as four-fifths of its industry, including its entire coal production, and added them to the Reich.77
Further development of this plan was assigned to a commission under Ministerial Director Ernst Vollert, head of Department VI at the Reich Interior Ministry, which covered ethnonationality and border demarcation (Abteilung VI: Volkstum und Grenzziehung).78 Vollert had just recently returned to Berlin, having fallen out with Forster after just fourteen days as his deputy; Vollert had been a replacement for Fritz Hermann, who had been demoted to deputy when Forster took his role as CdZ.79 This brief personal experience might very well have strengthened Vollert’s skepticism about such large-scale annexation plans. In any case, his position paper, “Vorschlag zur territorialen Begrenzung von Westpreussen” (Proposal on the territorial demarcation of West Prussia), dated October 6, 1939, undershot even the demands once put forward by imperial and Prussian hardliners and argued instead for a correction of Hitler’s preliminary decision.80 Certainly, Vollert likewise considered the “chief task” to consist of making “this old German land as quickly as possible back into a German land again,” and he also did not shrink from suggesting the “resettling of a considerable portion of this Polish populace”—meaning up to 4,861,000 people, according to his own figures. But Vollert had underestimated the expansive power of the “Lebensraum” vision when he thereby called for Germany’s limitation to the borders of 1914 and labeled it “inexpedient” to extend the future province by incorporating the counties of Lipno, Nieszawa, Rypin, and Włocławek, and thus “to add purely Polish, meaning formerly Russian areas,” to it.81
Just as futile as Vollert’s position paper was another one prepared by the Reich Interior Ministry’s own think tank, the Dahlem Publication Office (Publikationsstelle Dahlem), on the same question. In order to strengthen the persuasiveness of its own stance, it had dispatched the young Dr. Theodor Schieder, head of the East Prussia Provincial Office for Postwar History (Landesstelle Ostpreussen für Nachkriegsgeschichte), to the city of Breslau (today Wrocław), where his meeting partners on September 28, 1939, included the local university professors Walter Kuhn and Hermann Aubin.82 “Academia cannot simply wait until it is asked, it must also speak up,” was what Aubin had written on September 18, 1939, to Albert Brackmann, director-general of the Prussian State Archives, under whom the Publication Office was also placed.83 The meeting in Breslau was to develop a common position on the German handling of Poland, which intermediaries would then bring into the political decision-making process.84 And in fact, there did seem to be a strong desire for advice within policymaking circles, as Aubin learned when he was told on October 4 that a short position paper was immediately desired by “several senior Reich offices”—probably referring to Vollert’s department at the Reich Interior Ministry.85 Schieder’s resulting position paper demonstrated only a minor break with Berlin’s past intentions, reflecting demands that had already been articulated by the Pan-Germans and also during the border strip discussion of World War I.86 His position on the proposed border demarcation was similar. Schieder saw as a “first requirement . . . the clear delimitation between Polishdom and Germandom,” and although he did mention the old border of 1914, he nonetheless argued for the border not to be extended further eastwards still, but on the contrary, to cede some former German territory by drawing it further west along what was called the “Plate Line” (“Plate’sche Linie”), which was a dividing line between German-speaking and Polish-speaking Prussians as established by the census of 1910.87 Of course, voicing such opinions was no way to win influence in the shaping of “Lebensraum” policy in the Nazi state. In any case, Hitler left both Vollert’s and Schieder’s position papers far behind in his Reichstag speech of October 6. As even Johannes Papritz, director of the Dahlem Publication Office, was forced to realize, the Nazi leadership did not need scholarly policy advice in order to arrive at radical decisions. A cover letter he had already prepared for Schieder’s position paper was now notated with the comment: “Not sent, because obsolete!”88
A day later, the territories were officially annexed: Hitler’s “decree on the subdivision and administration of the eastern territories,” dated October 8, 1939, reestablished the provinces of West Prussia and Posen (later renamed Danzig–West Prussia and the Wartheland), and appended the governmental regions of Kattowitz and Zichenau to Silesia and East Prussia respectively.89 And as demonstrated by the remaining squabbles over the exact course of the border, the Nazi leadership chose to ignore not only Vollert’s warnings in regard to Danzig–West Prussia, but also the similarly reasoned arguments against an expansionary solution in the border demarcation of Silesia and the Wartheland. Economically important areas from the former Russian partition were added to the province of Silesia against the will of its Oberpräsident Josef Wagner, while the industrial city of Lodsch (today Łódź) was added to the Wartheland in early November for the same reasons, even though both areas contained exclusively, or at least primarily, Polish-speaking populations.90
Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germandom
Despite what Hitler had claimed at the Reichstag on October 6, when he misled the world about Germany’s willingness to make peace, he not only subsequently ordered the annexation of western Poland and the establishment of a civilian administration, but he was also already raising the second pillar of the German occupation regime by entrusting Himmler with the “ordering of the entire Lebensraum according to nationalities” (as it had been described in his speech). His “decree on the strengthening of Germandom,” dated October 7, 1939, expanded on this passage and tasked Himmler with “the settling of ethnonational groups [Volksgruppen] in such a way that better boundaries between them can be achieved”—meaning that the concept of the “Germanization of the soil” was now to be put into political practice.91 That Germanization was to happen primarily at the expense of the ostensibly non-German populace was now a matter of course, as was the attendant recklessness that had been inconceivable to Vollert just a day earlier.
The idea of installing Himmler as a “settlement commissioner” was certainly not a new one but instead first arose in previously debated plans for resettling the ethnic Germans of South Tyrol. Italy’s significance as Germany’s most important ally had prompted Hitler, in advance of the Munich Agreement, to finally iron out a major stumbling block in their bilateral relationship, and so he promised Mussolini that these ethnic Germans would be transferred from Italy to the Reich. Ideological demands were once again subordinated to strategic considerations; in Hitler’s view, politics was ultimately not about “sentiments, but only hard-heartedness,” and here the “claptrap about South Tyrol” was harming Germany.92 Just as Berlin had duped the ethnic Germans in Poland by signing the German-Polish Non-aggression Pact, the ethnic Germans in South Tyrol now learned that when push came to shove, relying on the “protection” of Germany would cost them their existence.93
What made such pragmatism even easier for the Nazis was that not only political factors but also economic ones seemed to necessitate it. The boom generated by Germany’s rearmament had already led to the first labor shortages in the agricultural sector by 1933.94 In the following years, it gave rise to increasingly acute crises in the rest of the economy as well, ultimately provoking ever more direct control of the labor market.95 The intensified recruitment of foreign labor, particularly from Poland, was straining Germany’s foreign exchange balance and posed—at least in the opinion of the SS and police—great risks, which allegedly could be best resolved through the targeted engagement of ethnic Germans from abroad.
It was in early 1937, at this intersection of “security-related” and economic concerns, that Himmler established a Four-Year-Plan Office (Dienststelle Vierjahresplan) under SS Senior Leader Ulrich Greifelt, in order to stimulate, “primarily in the area of agricultural labor deployment, . . . measures for the increased acquisition of agricultural workers”; the office was placed under Himmler’s Personal Staff of the Reichsführer of the SS (Persönlicher Stab Reichsführer-SS).96 Then, when Hitler entrusted Himmler with the resettlement of the “Volksdeutsche” from South Tyrol (at first informally), it was certainly not by accident that Himmler—after initially considering the Ethnic German Liaison Office (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, or VoMi)—passed the assignment down to Greifelt on July 23, 1939, especially since the war was imminent at that point, which meant that further shortfalls were to be expected in the labor market.97 In the ensuing tussle with the Reich Chancellery and the affected ministries, Himmler tried to translate Hitler’s assignment into the widest possible mandate; he ultimately achieved his designation as Reich commissioner in the final draft text of August 17, with the agreement of Hans Heinrich Lammers (head of the Reich Chancellery), as well as a great deal of latitude with the ministerial bureaucracy.98
The war delayed promulgation of this decree at first, only to catapult the resettlement of the South Tyroleans into an entirely new context. After the Nazi leadership had come to the decision that large parts of western Poland were to be annexed and “Germanized,” and—at around the same time, but initially without any causal relationship—Hitler had also decided to resettle the ethnic Germans from the Baltics, it was only a short leap to the realization that these undertakings complemented one another and thus needed to be coordinated. Much as the resettlement of the “Volksdeutsche” from Russia had already appeared in the memoranda of the Prussian Interior Ministry even before World War I, when the discussion had focused on increasing the number of “German” farmworkers while also boosting the “German” populace in Prussia’s eastern borderlands and then focused also on the “Germanization” of a “border strip” that was to be annexed in the future, this time too, the decision to annex the western Polish territories flowed seamlessly into deliberations about how they could be settled with “Germans,” which ultimately pointed to the ethnic Germans beyond the Reich’s borders. The South Tyroleans were now no longer to be settled in the Reich itself or perhaps somewhere like Moravia, but instead in a newly established “Beskidengau” (named after the Beskids, in the Carpathians) south of Kattowitz.99 Meanwhile, the Baltic Germans were destined for Danzig–West Prussia and the Wartheland.100
Thus, when Hitler signed the “decree on the strengthening of Germandom” on October 7, it was only logical that Himmler be commissioned with the task. Himmler had already set up an agency of his own that was handling the resettlement of the South Tyroleans under Greifelt, and he also possessed the necessary tools (including coercive ones) for the planned program of resettlement, expulsion, and mass murder. Although still unspecific at the start of the war, these measures were now concretely outlined in the decree: first, the “bringing back” of the “Germans” abroad who qualified for “homecoming” into the Reich; second, their settling in Poland and with this the “arranging of new German settlement areas”; and third, the “eliminating of the harmful influences of . . . population segments alien to the Volk.” Himmler was thereby authorized to issue any “general directives” needed to achieve these measures.101
The assignments that resulted from the authorization were delegated by Himmler to the SS apparatus. Greifelt’s Coordination Office for Immigration and Return Migration (Leitstelle für Ein- und Rückwanderung), established for the resettlement of the South Tyroleans and subordinated to Himmler’s Personal Staff, was designated as the coordinating authority, which was then transformed on October 17 into the Agency of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germandom (Dienststelle des Reichskommissars für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, hereafter the Agency of the RKFDV]), which functioned as the RKFDV headquarters.102 Although this Reich Commissioner title was not mentioned in Hitler’s decree, it did appear in the draft decree on the resettlement of the South Tyroleans, which was apparently justification enough for Himmler to now bestow it on himself and probably also the reason behind the lack of protest from other Reich bodies. Based in Berlin, the Agency of the RKFDV originally saw the establishment of three departments, namely, Planning (Planung), Land Office (Bodenamt), and Immigrant Allocation (Einwandererverteilung), but the last was soon renamed Human Deployment (Menscheneinsatz), which again underlines the importance that Himmler ascribed to the exploitation of labor. Himmler delegated the practical implementation of population policy to VoMi, which at this point was not yet exclusively in the SS orbit, but instead stood at least formally under Rudolf Hess, and delegated as well to the Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, or RuSHA) and the Reich Security Main Office, both of the SS. Heydrich had already established on October 11, 1939, the EWZ for the Northeast (Einwandererzentralstelle Nordost, or Central Immigration Office for the Northeast), which, at the behest of Himmler as the RKFDV, was to conduct the systematic selection of “Volksdeutsche” to be resettled from the Baltics.103 In order to ensure optimal cooperation with the other SS bodies, and also to establish a regional contact person for this area of responsibility, Himmler additionally named the Higher SS and Police Leaders (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer, or HSSPF) to be his RKFDV appointees, each of whom soon established multiple branch offices that were structured similarly to the RKFDV headquarters in Berlin.104
The decree of October 7 would decisively bolster Himmler’s power and become a key gateway for the expansion of SS influence. Himmler soon ignored one of the decree’s most important restrictions, namely the prohibition against establishing his own agencies, but he also used it to justify his issuing of general directives to offices that were not part of the SS complex, but whose activities—at least in his opinion—touched on the “strengthening of Germandom.” In annexed Poland, there was hardly any area that could have been excluded from the strengthening of Germandom.
Establishing the Civilian Administration
By the time the military administration was replaced by a civilian one on October 26, 1939, several important factors had already been established that would later allow for the intensifying of repressive measures in order to “Germanize” the occupied territories as quickly as possible. But the structure and responsibilities of the civil administration organs were still unclear. Due to the haste of this changeover, the Reich Interior Ministry was only able to furnish the civil administration with the necessary provisions after it had already been established.
The Reich Interior Ministry was primarily interested in significantly strengthening its own administration heads (i.e., Reichsstatthalters and Oberpräsidents) and in fact argued for keeping the CdZ structure, but without the military commander on top. As early as February 14, 1935, in the first regulations issued to a CdZ by the Reichswehr (later renamed the Wehrmacht), the entire civil administration was subordinated to the head of the administration, including—unlike the administration heads in the Reich, for example—the offices of specialized ministerial authorities such as finance and justice. Instructions from Berlin’s central ministries had to be issued through him, and he could also issue his own direct orders to the various local offices in his territory.105
In this, the Reich Interior Ministry was colliding with other ministries that were affected: they demanded the emulation of ordinary Reich conditions after the departure of the military—as had happened in the Sudetenland—meaning direct control of their own regional offices. For the Reich Interior Ministry, however, this collision was simply one more reason to hold fast to its own vision. In fact, according to its plans, the proposed centralization of administration was also to serve as a test case, preparing the way for later changes in the Reich itself. With the support of the Nazi Party, the Reich Interior Ministry was ultimately able to win this confrontation.106
More than a week went by before Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick was able to sign the implementing provision “for the subdivision and administration of the eastern territories” on November 2, 1939, thereby filling in the details of Hitler’s decree of October 8. Here, the Reich Interior Ministry’s strategic goal was very clear, namely, to strengthen the Reichsstatthalters specifically and the heads of general administration more broadly. Besides placing the Reichsstatthalters directly under Hitler (an innovation introduced with the annexation of the Sudetenland), the offices of specialized ministerial authorities on the provincial and county levels were placed directly under the administrative heads and not under the relevant ministries as was otherwise customary in the Reich. Furthermore, each Reichsstatthalter and his subordinated Regierungspräsidents (governmental region presidents) was given more control over the respective administrative levels assigned to them.107
But the support of the Nazi Party came at a price. As Hess let Stuckart know, “political leadership and political administration are to be conducted in personal union [by the same person].”108 The party was of the same mind, wanting to implement in the annexed eastern territories the structural changes that did not yet seem achievable in the Reich itself, so that they might ultimately be applied there as well. The achievement of this goal did in fact promise great potential: if every state office were linked to a corresponding party office, then the party would secure the direct right to propose and veto candidates for every administration post, thus completing its seizure of power at every level. Working in tandem with each Gauleiter, who was simultaneously the local head of administration, namely the Reichsstatthalter or Oberpräsident, the party launched a running battle over the appointment of each Landrat (rural councilor, the head of a rural county), during which the Reich Interior Ministry soon realized how very much the strengthening of the Reichsstatthalters—which it had itself pursued—was ultimately diminishing its own control over such affairs. In order to strengthen their grip on the state administration, the Gauleiters, in their role as administration heads, systematically torpedoed the Reich Interior Ministry’s nominations and installed trusted allies instead. In the Wartheland, around half the Landrat posts were filled with candidates from the party apparatus, while in Danzig–West Prussia the figure reached 88 percent, and in many counties the same person held both offices, that of Landrat and that of Kreisleiter (county leader, the head of a Nazi Party county-level branch).109
This considerable strengthening of the “frontier Gauleiters” (“Grenzgauleiter”)—to borrow a contemporary term—happened largely at the expense of the Reich-level ministries in Berlin, along with their subordinated offices and other self-administering bodies (i.e., communal-level administrations) in the provinces.110 On the other hand, it was highly symptomatic of the envisaged policy that the thereby strengthened Reichsstatthalters and Oberpräsidents nonetheless had to accept diminishment in one particular area, in comparison with the situation in the Reich itself, namely in their relationship to the policing apparatus and the entire SS complex. With the rampages of the Einsatzgruppen, Himmler had created a power base that reached into every village through the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, which soon included, for example, 80 percent of the male “Volksdeutsche” populace in Danzig–West Prussia.111 Himmler’s position was further strengthened with his installation as RKFDV, for it allowed him to extend his activities beyond the security sphere and to even make use of other agencies.
The massive presence of the various SS formations had led, even before the establishment of the military administration, to the expansion of the SS administrative structure, especially with the appointment of HSSPFs: these were “Himmler’s regional representatives,” to whom were subordinated Inspectors of the Security Police (Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei, or IdS) and Inspectors of the Order Police (Inspekteur der Ordnungspolizei, the regional representatives of the SS Reich Security Main Office and SS Order Police Main Office), analogous to the inspectors inside the Reich itself.112 Although they were also “personally and directly subordinated” to the administration heads as in the Reich, they were able to establish much greater freedom of action in Poland, as a result of the still unsettled power structures.113 After the territorialization of the Einsatzgruppen on November 20, 1939, the annexed territories were likewise overlaid with a security police network, one that stood in a hybrid relationship similar to that of the general administration. Thus, each chief of a Gestapo Command Office (Stapo-Leitstelle) also became a policy adviser to the local Reichsstatthalter, and each chief of a Gestapo Office (Stapo-Stelle) became a policy adviser to the local Regierungspräsident. Their embedding in the SS apparatus, however, meaning their subordination to the IdS and the HSSPF, took priority: orders from Department IV (Amt IV) of the Reich Security Main Office took precedence over those from the general administration.114
The general understanding that the envisaged “Germanization” of the annexed provinces was to be achieved primarily through force had led to a massive expansion of powers for the general administration heads in annexed provinces compared to the powers of their counterparts in the Reich. The fact that specifically the SS and police were not weakened as a result, but instead were given considerable additional powers as well, hints at the methods through which the Nazi leadership wanted to achieve “Germanization.”
Notes
1. Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 421; Wildt, “Radikalisierung und Selbstradikalisierung,” 16; Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 10–11.
2. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 11–13; also Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 27–28. On the selection criteria for these duties, see Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 53–57.
3. Unsigned guidelines for foreign deployment of Security Police and the SD, undated (probably early August 1939), German Federal Archives, Berlin [hereafter, BArch], R 58/241, 169–75.
4. Ibid.
5. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 15.
6. Quoted in Herbert, Best, 592–93.
7. Ibid.
8. Heydrich to Daluege, July 2, 1940, quoted in Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 207.
9. Decree from Best, August 8, 1939, quoted in Herbert, Best, 239.
10. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 265.
11. Order quoted in Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 39; implementation described by Alberti, Verfolgung und Vernichtung, 248.
12. German Army High Command, leaflet on the particularities of Polish warfare, quoted in Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 40.
13. Ibid., 39.
14. Domarus, Hitler, 1238.
15. Czubinski, “Poland’s Place in Nazi Plans,” 21.
16. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland; Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg.
17. Ibid., 136, using figures from Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.
18. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 48.
19. Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 442–47.
20. According to a statement by the former head of the German Union in Posen, Dr. Kurt Lück, published on January 9, 1940, in the Ostdeutscher Beobachter (the Nazi Party mouthpiece in the Wartheland), the initial figures totaled some 1,030 “Volksdeutsche” killed and 858 missing, see Pilichowski, “Nazi Genocide,” 189. Berlin considered this to be much too low, as Lück would soon discover to his astonishment when the Foreign Office first spoke of 5,437 “Volksdeutsche” victims in its documents, which Goebbels’ propaganda machine then arbitrarily inflated tenfold to 58,000. This “Bromberg Bloody Sunday” then evolved into an important motif in Nazi propaganda, used as justification for the ever-increasing radicalization of actions against the civilian populace. On Nazi propaganda to disguise war culpability, see Czubiński, “Poland’s Place in Nazi Plans,” 43–44.
21. Horne and Kramer, Deutsche Kriegsgreuel 1914. Horne and Kramer also go more specifically into the origins of the franc-tireur mythos during the Franco-Prussian War, and are then able to demonstrate (more convincingly than Böhler, for example) how anxious presuppositions, also by younger officers in particular, were seemingly confirmed in the early days of World War I, not only by a series of misunderstandings, but also by the unique military situation, for example when the Schlieffen Plan’s required rapid troop movements led to disorientation, or when modern long-range rifles put the snipers out of view and provoked German troops into acts of vengeance in the immediate vicinity, see ibid., 139–259. On the significance of this mythos in the destruction of Leuven, see Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 6–30.
22. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 36–37.
23. Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 149.
24. See also Herbert, Best, 240; Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, 244.
25. Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 54. See also Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 447–49.
26. Quoted in Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 449.
27. Groscurth, Tagebücher, 201.
28. Jansen and Weckbecker, Der Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz, 49 and 51; for overviews of local structures, see also 165 and 167.
29. Ibid., 168.
30. Ibid., 102–4.
31. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 90–91.
32. Lahousen’s file note on meetings aboard “Führer train” on September 12, 1939, quoted in Groscurth, Tagebücher, 358.
33. Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, 20.
34. Quoted in Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 215.
35. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 92.
36. Directive from 10th Army Command, September 26, 1939, quoted in Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 217.
37. Umbreit, Deutsche Militärverwaltungen, 208.
38. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 117.
39. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, 1: 79.
40. Schulenberg to Foreign Office, September 20, 1939, reprinted in Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, ser. D, vol. 8, doc. 104, 82. See also Rutherford, “Race, Space, and the ‘Polish Question,’” 70–71.
41. Lahousen’s file note, September 12, 1939, quoted in Groscurth, Tagebücher, 357.
42. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, 1: 81. See also Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 457.
43. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, 1: 82.
44. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 53.
45. Quoted in Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 458.
46. Commander in chief of the army to commanders in chief and military commanders, September 21, 1939, quoted in Mallmann, Böhler, and Matthäus, Einsatzgruppen, 146. See also Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 54.
47. Minutes of departmental head meeting with Einsatzgruppe leaders under Heydrich on September 21, 1939, BArch R 58/825, 26–30; see also Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 59; Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 457–58.
48. Minutes of departmental head meeting with Einsatzgruppe leaders under Heydrich on September 21, 1939, BArch R 58/825, 26–30.
49. Quoted in Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 459.
50. Quoted in Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 61.
51. Minutes of departmental head meeting with Einsatzgruppe leaders under Heydrich on September 21, 1939, BArch R 58/825, 26–30.
52. Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 458. See also minutes of departmental head meeting with Einsatzgruppe leaders under Heydrich on September 21, 1939, BArch R 58/825, 26–30.
53. Rutherford, “Race, Space, and the Polish Question,” 72.
54. Minutes of departmental head meeting with Einsatzgruppe leaders under Heydrich on September 21, 1939, BArch R 58/825, 26–30.
55. Notes of envoy Schmidt at the Foreign Office, September 26, 1939, reprinted in Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, ser. D, vol. 8, doc. 138, 109–12.
56. Weizsäcker’s memo on upcoming negotiations with Moscow on the same day, September 26, 1939, reprinted in Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, ser. D, vol. 8, doc. 137, 107.
57. Kroeger, Auszug aus der alten Heimat, 51.
58. Ibid., 50.
59. Himmler did in fact have to fight for this assignment: Hitler had first assigned it to VoMi, before Himmler managed to persuade him (Koehl, RKFDV, 49).
60. Rosenberg, Politisches Tagebuch, 80.
61. Minutes of departmental head meeting with Einsatzgruppe leaders under Heydrich on September 29, 1939, BArch R 58/825, 36–37. Partially reprinted in Pätzold, Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung, 240.
62. Hitler to the Reichstag on October 6, 1939, quoted in Verhandlungen des Reichstages, 460: 51–63. On the speech’s contemporary reception, see Wildt, “Neue Ordnung,” 130.
63. Hitler to the Reichstag on October 6, 1939, quoted in Verhandlungen des Reichstages, 460: 56.
64. Wildt, “Neue Ordnung,” 133–34.
65. Hitler to the Reichstag on October 6, 1939, quoted in Verhandlungen des Reichstages, 460: 51–63, here 56.
66. Ibid., 61.
67. Lammers to Pfundtner, September 7, 1939, Special Archive at the State Military Archives of Russia, Moscow, 720–5/2793, 1; Schenk, Hitlers Mann, 138; Epstein, Model Nazi, 124–26; Umbreit, “Auf dem Weg,” 32–34; Rutherford, Prelude, 3; Rieß, Anfänge der Vernichtung, 244.
68. Umbreit, “Auf dem Weg,” 11.
69. Ibid., 36.
70. Hitler to the Reichstag on October 6, 1939, quoted in Verhandlungen des Reichstages, 460: 62. See also memo for State Secretary Pfundtner, October 7, 1939, BArch R 1501/5401, 41.
71. Goebbels’s diary entry for October 13, 1939, quoted in Alberti, Verfolgung und Vernichtung, 46.
72. Unsigned memo from Reich Interior Ministry on “responsibilities of the civil administration in the Polish territories,” October 2, 1939, BArch R 1501/5401, 24–29.
73. Ibid.
74. Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands, 548–52 and 564–73; Majer, Fremdvölkische, 395–404; on the Main Trustee Office for the East, see especially Rosenkötter, Treuhandpolitik, 81–88.
75. Umbreit, “Auf dem Weg,” 39.
76. December 1, 1961, discussion between Dr. Hopf (of the German Federal Archives) and Ministerial Director Dr. Georg Hubrich, former head of the Reich Interior Ministry’s Subdepartment I East, German Federal Archives, Bayreuth Branch, Ost-Dok. 13/157, 2–19, on questions about territories annexed during the war. It was apparently in spring 1935, at Stuckart’s prompting, that Hubrich was brought into the Reich Interior Ministry, where he advanced in just a year to become group leader for the subject area of citizenship and race. Starting April 1, 1941, he became head of Subdepartment I East and acting head of Subdepartment I Sta R, Citizenship and Race, see Jasch, “Preußisches Kultusministerium.”
77. Report from Wilhelm Keppler, a state secretary at the Foreign Office, quoted in Volkmann, “Zwischen Ideologie und Pragmatismus,” 423. On the economic importance of this region, see Röhr, “Zur Rolle der Schwerindustrie,” 10; Röhr, “Zur Wirtschaftspolitik,” 223–24; Schwaneberg, “Economic Exploitation,” 87–89; Kaczmarek, “Zwischen Altreich und Besatzungsgebiet,” 348–49.
78. With its purpose achieved, the department was disbanded soon thereafter, see Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus, 324.
79. Umbreit, “Auf dem Weg,” 33; also Schenk, Hitlers Mann, 138.
80. Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus, 328.
81. Vollert, “Proposal for the territorial border of West Prussia,” undated (probably October 6, 1939), BArch R 1501/5401, 31–40.
82. On Schieder, see Aly, “Daß uns Blut zu Gold.”
83. Aubin to Brackmann, September 18, 1939, BArch R 153/291, unpaged. See also Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards, 147.
84. Ebbinghaus and Roth, “Vorläufer des Generalplans Ost”; Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus, 330–32; Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards, 147–48.
85. Pappritz to Aubin, October 4, 1939, quoted in Ebbinghaus and Roth, “Vorläufer des Generalplans Ost,” 69.
86. This is also why Ingo Haar is mistaken in believing that Schieder’s planning scenario, because it envisaged large-scale deportations of certain local population segments and their replacement by ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, “did not stand in the tradition of the Prussia’s Poland policy” (Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus, 332). See also Ebbinghaus and Roth, “Vorläufer des Generalplans Ost,” 76.
87. Schieder position paper, undated (probably October 7, 1939), BArch R 153/291, unpaged (emphasis in original). On the October 7 dating, see Ebbinghaus and Roth, “Vorläufer des Generalplans Ost,” 70.
88. Note on message to Aubin drafted on October 7, 1939, quoted in Ebbinghaus and Roth, “Vorläufer des Generalplans Ost,” 92.
89. Hitler’s decree on the subdivision and administration of the eastern territories, October 8, 1939, reprinted in Pospieszalski, Hitlerowskie “prawo” okupacyjne, 84–88. In line with the earlier Prussian names, the two provinces were initially called West Prussia and Posen; only later were they renamed Danzig–West Prussia and the Wartheland, see Reichsgesetzblatt Teil I (1940), 251.
90. The city’s name was Łódź before the German invasion and after liberation; Lodsch from September 1939 to March 1940; Litzmannstadt as of April 1940. On the annexation of Łódź, and for more precise details on the Wartheland’s territorial extent and its administrative structure in general, see Marczewski, Hitlerowska koncepcja, 112–16. The German ideological claim to Łódź was further justified by archaeological finds that allegedly indicated an early Germanic settlement; see Furber, “Near as Far,” 557.
91. Decree on the strengthening of Germandom, signed by Hitler, Göring, Lammers, and Keitel, October 7, 1939, BArch R 43 II/1412, 575–77. Reprinted in Pospieszalski, Hitlerowskie “prawo” okupacyjne, 176–78; and Moll, Führer-Erlasse, 100–102. As Philip Morgan rightly notes, assignments like Himmler’s were “a good example of standard fascist practice: creating ‘shadow’ fascist bodies” with powers that were inadequately separated from those of the state administration, and which began competing with the latter (Morgan, Fascism in Europe, 133–38).
92. Quoted in Jäckel, Hitlers Herrschaft, 34. Hitler had already become open to relinquishing South Tyrol by late 1922, as reflected in an article in the Münchner Post on his speech of November 11, in which he also abandoned its German populace (Jäckel and Kuhn, Hitler, 728). See also Gottfried Feder’s officially approved commentary on the Nazi Party program, in which the party platform’s first point, namely, the demand to unify all “Germans” into a “Greater Germany,” also listed South Tyrol alongside the Sudetenland and Austria—but only until 1928. In the fifth edition, published in 1929, South Tyrol was no longer mentioned (Broszat, National-Sozialismus, 32–33). The clearest rejection of the claim to South Tyrol, with lengthy argumentation, is ultimately found in Hitler, Hitlers Zweites Buch, 189–215.
93. Aly, Endlösung, 64. On South Tyrol, see Stuhlpfarrer, Umsiedlung Südtirol, 1: 30–86.
94. August, “Entwicklung des Arbeitsmarkts,” 306–8.
95. Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 291.
96. SS Senior Assault Unit Leader Rudolf Creutz to HSSPF Hildebrandt, March 1, 1940, archived in BArch BDCSSO file on Rudolf Creutz; thanks to Götz Aly for this document. See also undated presentation by Greifelt (probably January 1939), Bavarian State Archives, Nuremberg NO 5591, reprinted in Loeber, Diktierte Option, 4–7.
97. On the rivalry between SS Senior Group Leader Werner Lorenz and Himmler, see Stuhlpfarrer, Umsiedlung Südtirol, 1: 245–46.
98. Ibid., 1: 249–50.
99. Unsigned memo on meeting at office of HSSPF Southeast Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, November 27, 1939, Nuremberg NO 5055, reprinted in Długoborski, Polozenie ludności, 139; see also Aly, Endlösung, 64; Umbreit, “Auf dem Weg,” 125; Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 434–37.
100. Himmler to Lorenz, Heydrich, Forster, Greiser, et al., October 11, 1939, Nuremberg NO 4613.
101. Decree on the strengthening of Germandom, signed by Hitler, Göring, Lammers, and Keitel, October 7, 1939, BArch R 43 II/1412, 575–77. Reprinted in Pospieszalski, Hitlerowskie “prawo” okupacyjne, 176–78; Moll, Führer-Erlasse, 100–102.
102. Himmler’s first directive as RKFDV, undated (probably signed on October 17, 1939), Nuremberg NO 3078. On this dating, see Koehl, RKFDV, 56. See also Stuhlpfarrer, Umsiedlung Südtirol, 1: 251.
103. Chief of the Security Police and the SD to top-level Reich authorities, BArch R 43 II/1412, 55; Heydrich to top-level Reich authorities, October 13, 1939, BArch R 3001/20043, 1. See also Koehl, RKFDV, 54; Koehl, Black Corps, 187–88; Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, 189–92; Leniger, Nationalsozialistische Volkstumsarbeit, 148–51. On the RKFDV, see Stiller, “Reichskommissar.” On the EWZ, see Strippel, NS-Volkstumspolitik.
104. Himmler’s first directive as RKFDV, undated (probably signed on October 17, 1939), Nuremberg NO 3078.
105. Umbreit, “Auf dem Weg,” 6. Umbreit does not explore the remarkable parallels between this instituting of the CdZ (which did not significantly change thereafter) and the Reich Interior Ministry’s plans for the future structuring of the occupation administration in Poland.
106. See Hess to Lammers, October 25, 1939, quoted in Stelbrink, Preußischer Landrat, 167.
107. Here, see particularly Frick’s “second directive for implementing the decree of the Führer and Chancellor on the subdivision and administration of the eastern territories,” November 2, 1939, reprinted in Pospieszalski, Hitlerowskie “prawo” okupacyjne, 89–92; also Frick’s decree of December 27, 1939, reprinted in ibid., 92–95. Exceptions were made for the territories annexed to the provinces of Silesia and East Prussia. See also the legislation on the structuring of the administration in the Reichsgau of the Sudetenland, April 14, 1939, reprinted in Pospieszalski, Hitlerowskie “prawo” okupacyjne, 84–86.
108. Sommer to Stuckart, October 11, 1939, BArch R 1501/5401, 73.
109. Stelbrink, Preußischer Landrat, 103–11; also Pohl, “Reichsgaue Danzig-Westpreußen und Wartheland,” 4–5. Pohl also explores the claim, repeatedly found in the relevant research, that a large proportion of the personnel were shunted to Poland for disciplinary actions or other transgressions, or else were particularly motivated by ideology, and he highlights this especially for the Wartheland, see ibid., 7. On this topic in the General Government, see Lehnstaedt, “‘Ostnieten’ oder ‘Vernichtungsexperten.’”
110. Kaczmarek, “Zwischen Altreich und Besatzungsgebiet,” 351; on their enhanced standing, see 351–55.
111. Jansen and Weckbecker, Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, 61 and 67.
112. Witte et al., Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, 49.
113. Frick’s “second directive for implementing the decree of the Führer and Chancellor on the subdivision and administration of the eastern territories,” November 2, 1939, reprinted in Pospieszalski, Hitlerowskie “prawo” okupacyjne, 89–92. See also the appointments of HSSPFs within the Reich itself on August 25, 1939, in Birn, Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer, 13.
114. Himmler’s decree on the organization of the Gestapo in the eastern territories, November 7, 1939, reprinted in Pospieszalski, Hitlerowskie “prawo” okupacyjne, 101–3.
