The German Government had plans for the extensive colonisation of territories of occupied Poland, which were annexed directly into Nazi Germany in 1939. Eventually these plans grew bigger to include parts of the General Government. The region was to become a "purely German area" within 15–20 years, as explained by Adolf Hitler in March 1941. By that time the General Government was to be cleared of 15 million Polish nationals, and resettled by 4–5 million ethnic Germans.[1]
Expulsion from Reichsgau Wartheland. Poles are led to trains under German army escort, as part of the ethnic cleansing of western Poland annexed to the German Reich following the invasion.Expulsion of Poles from Czerniejewo in 1939
Following the German invasion of the country, Nazi expansionist policies were enacted upon its Polish population on an unprecedented scale. In accordance with Nazi ideology the Poles were considered Untermenschen, deemed for slavery[citation needed] and their further extermination, in order to make room for the Germans re-settled from across Europe. Furthermore, Hitler intended to extensively colonize all territories lying to the east of the Third Reich. These were worked out by the RSHA department of the SS in Generalplan Ost (GPO, "[the] General Plan for the East"), which foresaw the deportation of 45 million "non-Germanizable" people from Central & Eastern Europe to West Siberia; of whom 31 million were "racially undesirable": including 100% of Jews, Poles (85%), Belarusians (75%) and Ukrainians (65%). Poland itself would have been cleared of all Polish people eventually, as 20 million or so were going to be expelled further east. The remaining 3 to 4 million Polish peasants believed to be the Polonized "descendants" of German colonists and migrants (Walddeutsche, Prussian settlers, etc.) – and therefore considered "racially valuable" – would be Germanized and dispersed among the ethnic German population living on formerly Polish soil.[1] The Nazi leadership hoped that through expulsions to Siberia, famine, mass executions and slave labour, the Polish nation would eventually be completely destroyed.[2] Experiments in mass sterilization in concentration camps may also have been intended for use on the populations.[3]
The World War II expulsions took place within two specific political entities established by the Nazis, divided from each other by a closed border: one area outright annexed to the Reich in 1939–1941, and another called the General Government, a precursor to the further expansion of the German administrative settlement area. Eventually, as Adolf Hitler explained in March 1941, the General Government would be cleared of all Poles and the region turned into a "purely German area" within 15–20 years, and in place of 15 million Poles, 4–5 million Germans would live there. The area was to become "as German as the Rhineland".[4]
There was a special institution set up in November 1939 in German-occupied Poznań to coordinate the expulsion.[5] Initially named the Special Staff for the Resettlement of Poles and Jews (Sonderstab für die Aussiedlung von Polen und Juden), it was soon renamed to Office for the Resettlement of Poles and Jews (Amt für Umsiedlung der Polen und Juden), and eventually renamed to Central Bureau for Resettlement (UWZ, Umwandererzentralstelle) in 1940.[5] The main seats of the UWZ were located in Poznań and Gdynia, with an additional major branch located in Łódź and minor branches located in various other towns, including Kępno, Wieluń, Sieradz and Zamość.[6] The UWZ also supervised the network of resettlement camps for Poles.[7] In the resettlement camps, Poles were subjected to brutal searches and racial selection, families were often broken up and children were taken from their parents.[8] Poor conditions, low food rations, lack of medical care and brutal treatment resulted in high mortality in the resettlement camps for Poles, which was in contrast to the conditions in the camps for German colonists, managed by Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, the main agency responsible for coordinating German settlement in occupied Poland.[9] Poles were then deported to new destinations in overcrowded freight trains that lacked any sanitary facilities.[8]
By 1945 one million German Volksdeutsche from several Eastern European countries and regions such as the Soviet Union, Bessarabia, Romania and the Baltic States had been successfully resettled into Poland during the action called "Heim ins Reich". The deportation orders specifically required that enough Poles be removed to provide for every settler—that, for instance, if twenty German "master bakers" were sent, twenty Polish bakeries had to have their owners removed.[10] The expulsions of Poles were conducted by two German organisations: the Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the Resettlement Department of the "Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of Germandom" (RKFDV, Reichskomissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums), a title held by Heinrich Himmler. The new Germans were put in villages and towns already cleared of their native Polish inhabitants under the banner of Lebensraum.
Expulsions from Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany
The first lands that were subject to mass expulsions, Germanization and extermination (see Intelligenzaktion) were the regions annexed directly to Germany in 1939, i.e. Greater Poland, Kuyavia, Pomerania, western and northern Mazovia, Silesia and Dąbrowa Basin.[11] The expulsions were accompanied by economic exploitation, looting, and confiscation of Polish enterprises and farms covering millions of hectares.[12] The houses and property were handed over to ethnic Germans, especially future members of the occupation administration, entrepreneurs, craftsmen, former Wehrmacht soldiers and colonists from Central and Eastern Europe, while Poles were mostly deported either to the General Government or to forced labour.[13]
Germanization began with the classification of which people were "racially suitable", as defined by the Nazi Volksliste.[14] About 1.7 million Poles were deemed Germanizable, including between one and two hundred thousand Polish children who were taken away from their parents.[15] For the remainder expulsion was carried out, often in cattle cars in freezing weather, causing the deaths of many, especially children.[16] They were carried out on short notice, often at night, and the people were allowed only a few belongings.[16] Ethnic Germans being resettled there were often given Polish homes with half-eaten meals on tables, and unmade beds, where small children had been sleeping at the time of their evictions.[17] Members of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were assigned the task of overseeing the evictions to ensure that the Poles left behind most of their belongings for the use of the settlers.[18] This could also mean the separation of entire families, with able-bodied adults being sent to work in Germany while the rest were sent to the General Government.[16] The expulsion also affected tens of thousands of Polish Jews and Romani people.[19]
Some villages were destroyed to make place for proving grounds of the German military and the Waffen-SS.[20] Poles expelled from those villages had nothing to return to after the war and had to settle in new locations.[19]
Together with so-called "wild expulsions", in four years of Nazi occupation 923,000 Poles were ethnically cleansed from the territories annexed by Germany into the Reich.[21] According to research conducted by Czesław Łuczak, the Germans expelled the following numbers of Poles from areas annexed into the Reich as well as all others in the period of 1939–1944:[22]
Map of General Government – green; expanded upon Nazi German attack on the Soviet Union – light green. Curzon Line – red. Reichsgau Wartheland – between blue borders of 1939 western Poland, and green General Government.SS Obergruppenfuhrer Arthur Greiser welcomes the one milionth ethnic German resettled from Eastern Europe in the annexed territories of occupied Poland, March 1944.
Expulsion Warrant from Sosnowiec 1942 with stamp Pole
Greater Poland
Between 1939 and 1940, Nazi expulsions from German-occupied Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) affected 680,000 Poles.[24] From the city of Poznań in Reichsgau Wartheland alone, the Germans expelled 70,000 Poles to the General Government.[25] The deportations conducted under the leadership of SS-ObergruppenführerWilhelm Koppe, were supervised by SS-StandartenführerErnst Damzog, who was also in charge of the daily operation of the Chełmno extermination camp.[26] By 1945, half a million German Volksdeutsche from Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, Volhynia,[25]Bessarabia, Romania as well as the Baltic Germans, had been resettled into this area during the action called "Heim ins Reich".
Action Saybusch, 24 September 1940. Expelled Poles await transport at a railway crossing (in this photo, some members of the 129 families deported from the village of Dolna Sól).
In Silesia, the Germans operated a network of forced labour camps for expelled Poles from the region, which were known as Polenlager.
In 1940 and 1941 the Germans evicted 17,000 Polish and Jewish residents from the western districts of the city of Oświęcim; from all places located directly adjacent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and also from the villages of Broszkowice, Babice, Brzezinka, Rajsko, Pławy, Harmęże, Bór, and Budy.[28] The expulsion of Polish civilians was a step towards establishing the "Camp Interest Zone" meant to isolate the camp from the outside world, and to expand economic activity designed to meet the needs of the SS. Ethnic German and Volksdeutsche settlers were being shipped in instead.
The years 1940 to 1944 marked the expulsion of 50,000 Poles from the Żywiec area including 18,000–20,000 Poles during the Action Saybusch operation conducted by the Wehrmacht and Ordnungspolizei in late 1940.[29] The first of these actions took place on 22 September 1940.[30]Aktion Saybusch lasted from September to December 1940, with some 3,200 Volksdeutsche brought in Heim ins Reich (Home into the Empire) from Romanian Bukovina. Until the end of the Second World War a third of the Polish population was expelled from this region out of a total of 50,000 inhabitants. Poles were forcibly removed from the region and replaced with about 4,000 Volksdeutsche settlers from Eastern Galicia and Volhynia who were given new latifundia.
The Łódź area was attached by the Germans to occupied Greater Poland (Wielkopolska), renamed Reichsgau Wartheland. The first expulsions from the city of Łódź (renamed Litzmannstadt) took place in 1939. The Nazis, helped by the local Volksdeutsche, expelled Polish families from the osiedle "Montwiłła" Mireckiego first.[31] Until 1940, all 5,000 residents of this subdivision were expelled. Between 1939 and 1945, from the entire Łódź area ("Regierungsbezirk Litzmannstadt") including Łódź itself, Sieradz, Pabianice and other settlements,[32] 444,000 persons of Polish ethnicity were expelled – almost 25% of its population.
The territory of the German district called the General Government was the second main area of expulsions after the German-annexed more western provinces of Poland. The entity itself was seen only as a temporary measure by the Germans, and served as a large concentration area for Poles to perform hard labour to further Germany's industry and war effort. Eventually it was to be cleared of Poles as well.
Zamość
Expulsion of Poles from villages in the Zamość Region by the SS in December 1942
116,000 Poles were expelled from the region of Zamość, as part of the Nazi plan to establish German colonies further east in the conquered territories. Zamość itself was to be renamed Himmlerstadt ("Himmler City"), later changed to Pflugstadt (Plough City), that was to symbolise the German "Plough" that was to "plough" the East. Additionally, almost 30,000 children were kidnapped by the German authorities from their parents in that area for their further Germanization.[21] The action led to a massive operation by the Polish underground resistance movement led primarily by the Armia Krajowa and Bataliony Chłopskie, known as the Zamość Uprising.
Warsaw
Among the expulsions from the metropolitan centres of Poland, the largest took place in its capital. In October 1940, 115,000 Poles were expelled from their homes in central Warsaw to make room for the Jewish Ghetto constructed by the authorities. After the failure of the Warsaw Uprising, half a million people were expelled from the city as punishment, with 35% of the buildings systematically leveled block by block.[21]
1 2 Wardzyńska, Maria (2017). Wysiedlenia ludności polskiej z okupowanych ziem polskich włączonych do III Rzeszy w latach 1939-1945 (in Polish). Warszawa: IPN. p.35. ISBN978-83-8098-174-4.
↑ Witold Sienkiewicz, Grzegorz Hryciuk, "Zwangsumsiedlung, Flucht und Vertreibung 1939 - 1959: Atlas zur Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas", Bonn 2009, ISBN978-83-7427-391-6.
↑ "Zwangsumsiedlung, Flucht und Vertreibung 1939 - 1959: Atlas zur Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas", Witold Sienkiewicz, Grzegorz Hryciuk, Bonn 2009, ISBN978-83-7427-391-6
↑ Jeremiasz Krzesiński "Deportacje dzieci pabianickich na roboty przymusowe do Niemiec w latach 1941-1945" ISBN83-87749-96-6
Further reading
Piotr Setkiewicz, "The expulsion of Polish civilians from the area around the Auschwitz camp, 1940-1941." Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
(Polish, German) Witold Sienkiewicz, Grzegorz Hryciuk, Zwangsumsiedlung, Flucht und Vertreibung 1939 - 1959: Atlas zur Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas. Bonn, 2009. ISBN978-83-7427-391-6
(Polish) Bogdan Chrzanowski, "Wypędzenia z Pomorza." Biuletyn IPN No. 5/2004, May 2004.
(Polish) Maria Rutowska, Wysiedlenia ludności polskiej z Kraju Warty do Generalnego Gubernatorstwa 1939-1941. Instytut Zachodni, Poznań 2003, ISBN83-87688-42-8
(Polish) Czesław Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa i ekonomiczna hitlerowskich Niemiec w okupowanej Polsce. Wyd. Poznańskie, Poznań, 1979. ISBN83-210-0010-X
(Polish) Czesław Łuczak, Położenie ludności polskiej w Kraju Warty 1939 - 1945. Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1987
Deportacje Polaków z północno-zachodnich ziem II Rzeczypospolitej 1940-1941. Źródła do historii Polski. Praca zbiorowa. Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 2001. ISBN83-88794-45-0
Ryszard Dyliński, Marian Flejsierowicz, Stanisław Kubiak, Wysiedlenie i poniewierka. Wspomnienia Polaków wysiedlonych przez okupanta hitlerowskiego z ziem polskich "wcielonych" do Rzeszy 1939-1945. Wyd. Poznańskie, Poznań, 1985. ISBN83-210-0529-2
"Wysiedlenia, wypędzenia i ucieczki 1939-1945." Atlas ziem Polski. Demart, 2008. ISBN978-83-7427-391-6
Czesław Madajczyk, Generalny Plan Wschodni: Zbiór dokumentów. Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Warszawa, 1990
In Nazi German terminology, Volksdeutsche were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship." The term is the nominalised plural of volksdeutsch, with Volksdeutsche denoting a singular female, and Volksdeutscher, a singular male. The words Volk and völkisch conveyed the meanings of "folk".
The Heim ins Reich was a foreign policy pursued by Adolf Hitler before and during World War II, beginning in 1936 [see Nazi Four Year Plan; Grams, 2021]. The aim of Hitler's initiative was to convince all Volksdeutsche who were living outside Nazi Germany that they should strive to bring these regions "home" into Greater Germany, but also relocate from territories that were not under German control, following the conquest of Poland, in accordance with the Nazi–Soviet pact. The Heim ins Reich manifesto targeted areas ceded in Versailles to the newly reborn state of Poland, various lands of immigration, as well as other areas that were inhabited by significant ethnic German populations, such as the Sudetenland, Danzig, and the southeastern and northeastern regions of Europe after 6 October 1939.
Following the Invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic was annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under the German civil administration. The rest of Nazi-occupied Poland was renamed as the General Government district. The annexation was part of the "fourth partition of Poland" by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, outlined months before the invasion, in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
The Reichsgau Wartheland was a Nazi German Reichsgau formed from parts of Polish territory annexed in 1939 during World War II. It comprised the region of Greater Poland and adjacent areas. Parts of Warthegau matched the similarly named pre-Versailles Prussian province of Posen. The name was initially derived from the capital city, Posen (Poznań), and later from the main river, Warthe (Warta).
Ostrów Wielkopolski is a city in west-central Poland with 70,982 inhabitants (2021), situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship; the seat of Ostrów Wielkopolski County. It is the fifth-largest city in the voivodeship after Poznań, Kalisz, Piła and Konin.
Arthur Karl Greiser was a Nazi German politician, SS-Obergruppenführer, Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of the German-occupied territory of Wartheland. He was one of the persons primarily responsible for organizing the Holocaust in occupied Poland and numerous other crimes against humanity. He was arrested by the Americans in 1945, and was tried, convicted and executed by hanging in Poland in 1946 for his crimes, most notably genocide.
Mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people took place across most countries involved in World War II. The Second World War caused the movement of the largest number of people in the shortest period of time in history. A number of these phenomena were categorised as violations of fundamental human values and norms by the Nuremberg Tribunal after the war ended. The mass movement of people – most of them refugees – had either been caused by the hostilities, or enforced by the former Axis and the Allied powers based on ideologies of race and ethnicity, culminating in the postwar border changes enacted by international settlements. The refugee crisis created across formerly occupied territories in World War II provided the context for much of the new international refugee and global human rights architecture existing today.
Mogilno is a town in central Poland, seat of the Mogilno County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship.
The German–Soviet population transfers were population transfers of ethnic Germans, ethnic Poles, and some ethnic East Slavs that took place from 1939 to 1941. These transfers were part of the German Heim ins Reich policy in accordance with the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Krobia is a town situated in the western part of Poland, in Greater Poland Voivodeship. Center of small folklore region of Biskupizna.
Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II, included the genocide of millions of Polish people, especially the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles. These mass killings were enacted by the Nazis with further plans that were justified by their racial theories, which regarded Poles and other Slavs, and especially Jews, as racially inferior Untermenschen.
Złoczew is a town in Sieradz County, Łódź Voivodeship, Poland, with 3,340 inhabitants (2020). The city is 23 kilometres south of Sieradz and 23 kilometres north of Wieluń.
The Deutsche Volksliste, a Nazi Party institution, aimed to classify inhabitants of Nazi-occupied territories (1939–1945) into categories of desirability according to criteria systematised by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The institution originated in occupied western Poland. Similar schemes were subsequently developed in occupied France (1940–1944) and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (1941–1944).
The expulsion of Poles by Germany was a prolonged anti-Polish campaign of ethnic cleansing by violent and terror-inspiring means lasting nearly half a century. It began with the concept of Pan-Germanism developed in the early 19th century and culminated in the racial policy of Nazi Germany that asserted the superiority of the Aryan race. The removal of Poles by Germany stemmed from historic ideas of expansionist nationalism. It was implemented at different levels and different stages by successive German governments. It ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
Włoszakowice is a village in Leszno County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Włoszakowice. It lies approximately 17 kilometres (11 mi) north-west of Leszno and 64 km (40 mi) south-west of the regional capital Poznań.
Krerowo is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Kleszczewo, within Poznań County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately 23 km (14 mi) south-east of the regional capital Poznań.
The Intelligenzaktion, or the Intelligentsia mass shootings, was a series of mass murders which was committed against the Polish intelligentsia early in the Second World War (1939–45) by Nazi Germany. The Germans conducted the operations in accordance with their plan to Germanize the western regions of occupied Poland, before their territorial annexation to the German Reich.
The Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz was an ethnic-German self-protection militia, a paramilitary organization comprising ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) mobilized from among the German minority in Poland.
Greater Poland, often known by its Polish name Wielkopolska, is a Polish historical region of west-central Poland. Its chief and largest city is Poznań followed by Kalisz, the oldest city in Poland.
The ethnic cleansing of Zamojszczyzna by Nazi Germany during World War II was carried out as part of a greater plan of forcible removal of the entire Polish populations from targeted regions of occupied Poland in preparation for the state-sponsored settlement of the ethnic German Volksdeutsche. The operation of mass expulsions from Zamojszczyzna region around the city of Zamość was carried out between November 1942 and March 1943 on direct order from Heinrich Himmler. It was preplanned by both Globocnik from Action Reinhard and Himmler, as the first stage of the eventual murderous ethnic cleansing ahead of projected Germanization of the entire General Government territory.
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