Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was a German politician who was the 4th Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, a leading member of the German Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. He is primarily known for being a principal architect of the Holocaust.
Sicherheitsdienst, full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and the Gestapo was considered its sister organization through the integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office, as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision".
Lebensraum is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918), as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion. The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, the ultimate goal of which was to establish a Greater German Reich. Lebensraum was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II, and it would continue this policy until the end of the conflict.
Bloody Sunday was a sequence of violent events that took place in Bydgoszcz, a Polish city with a sizable German minority, between 3 and 4 September 1939, during the German invasion of Poland.
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.
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939, was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union, which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact. One of the aims of the invasion was to divide Polish territory at the end of the operation; Poland was to cease to exist as a country and all Poles were to be exterminated. The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. The invasion is also known in Poland as the September campaign or 1939 defensive war and known in Germany as the Poland campaign.
The Venlo incident was a covert operation carried out by the German Nazi Party's Sicherheitsdienst (SD) on 9 November 1939, which resulted in the capture of two British Secret Intelligence Service agents five metres (16 ft) from the German border, on the outskirts of the Dutch city of Venlo.
The Gleiwitz incident was a false flag attack on the radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz staged by Nazi Germany on the night of 31 August 1939. Along with some two dozen similar incidents, the attack was manufactured by Germany as a casus belli to justify the invasion of Poland. Prior to the invasion, Adolf Hitler gave a radio address condemning the acts and announcing German plans to attack Poland, which began the next morning. Despite the German government using the attack as a justification to go to war with Poland, the Gleiwitz assailants were not Polish but were German SS officers wearing Polish uniforms.
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).
Operation Tannenberg was a codename for one of the anti-Polish extermination actions by Nazi Germany. The shootings were conducted with the use of a proscription list targeting Poland’s elite, compiled by the Gestapo in the two years before the invasion of Poland.
SS-Verfügungstruppe was formed in 1934 as combat troops for the Nazi Party (NSDAP). On 17 August 1938 Adolf Hitler decreed that the SS-VT was neither a part of the Ordnungspolizei nor the Wehrmacht, but military-trained men at the disposal of the Führer. In time of war, the SS-VT were to be placed at the disposal of the army.
The Ordnungspolizei were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly on power after regional police jurisdiction was removed in favour of the central Nazi government. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, the commander (Reichsführer-SS) of the Schutzstaffel (SS), was appointed Chief of the German Police in the Interior Ministry. The top and upper leadership positions of the Orpo were filled by police officers who belonged to or had joined the SS. Owing to their green uniforms, Orpo members were also referred to as Grüne Polizei. The force was established as a centralised organisation based in Berlin uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed police that had been previously organised on a state-by-state basis.
Alfred Helmut Naujocks, alias Hans Müller, Alfred Bonsen, and Rudolf Möbert, was a German SS functionary during the Third Reich. He took part in the staged Gleiwitz incident, a false flag operation intended to provide the justification for the attack on Poland by Nazi Germany, which ultimately culminated in starting World War II.
Franciszek Honiok was a Polish man who is famous for having been the first known victim of World War II, on the evening of 31 August 1939.
Pacification actions were one of many punitive measures designed by Nazi Germany to inflict terror on the civilian population of occupied Polish villages and towns with the use of military and police force. They were an integral part of the war of aggression against the Polish nation waged by Germany since September 1, 1939. The projected goal of pacification operations was to prevent and suppress the Polish resistance movement in World War II nevertheless, among the victims were children as young as 1.5 years old, women, fathers attempting to save their families, farmers rushing to rescue livestock from burning buildings, patients, victims already wounded, and hostages of many ethnicities including Poles and Jews.
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).
History of Pomerania between 1933 and 1945 covers the period of one decade of the long history of Pomerania, lasting from the Adolf Hitler's rise to power until the end of World War II in Europe. In 1933, the German Province of Pomerania like all of Germany came under control of the Nazi regime. During the following years, the Nazis led by Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg manifested their power through the process known as Gleichschaltung and repressed their opponents. Meanwhile, the Pomeranian Voivodeship was part of the Second Polish Republic, led by Józef Piłsudski. With respect to Polish Pomerania, Nazi diplomacy – as part of their initial attempts to subordinate Poland into Anti-Comintern Pact – aimed at incorporation of the Free City of Danzig into the Third Reich and an extra-territorial transit route through Polish territory, which was rejected by the Polish government, that feared economic blackmail by Nazi Germany, and reduction to puppet status.
Jabłonków incident refers to the events of the night of 25–26 August 1939, along the Polish-Slovak border, when a group of German Abwehr agents attacked a rail station in Mosty. The main purpose of the attack was to capture the Jablunkov Pass, with its strategic railway tunnel, until the arrival of the German armed forces. The attackers were repelled by units of the Polish Army, and the incident is regarded as a prelude to the German invasion of Poland. The Jabłonków incident has been named the first commando operation of the Second World War.
Heinz Jost was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He was involved in espionage matters as the Sicherheitsdienst or (SD) section chief of office VI of the Reich Security Main Office. Jost was responsible for genocide in eastern Europe as commander of Einsatzgruppe A from March–September 1942.
The 1 September 1939 Reichstag speech is a speech made by Adolf Hitler at an Extraordinary Session of the German Reichstag on the day of the German invasion of Poland. The speech served as public declaration of war against Poland and thus of the commencement of World War II.
