Final solution
136-459: Eastern Territories may refer to: Nazi Germany [ edit ] Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany , the "incorporated eastern territories" ( Eingegliederte Ostgebieten ) Reichskommissariat Ostland , the civilian occupation regime in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), in the northeastern part of Poland and in the western part of
272-567: A casus belli for the conquest and colonisation of Polish territories as living-space and defensive-border for Imperial Germany , the Septemberprogramm derived from a foreign policy initially proposed by General Erich Ludendorff in 1914. Twenty-five years later, Nazi foreign policy resumed the cultural goal of the pursuit and realisation of German living-space at the expense of non-German peoples in Eastern Europe with
408-454: A " Weltanschauung " during his speech at the 1933 Nuremberg rally , Hitler stated: "Already in the word ' Weltanschauung ' lies the solemn proclamation of a decision that all acts are based upon a certain point of view and a visible tendency. Such a view can be true or false: it is the starting point for every opinion on the appearance and events of life, and is therefore a binding and obligating law for every act. The more such an opinion covers
544-462: A German professor Fritz Fischer reported the results of his investigations into German war aims. These were indeed a "blueprint for aggression", or, as the professor called them, "a grasp at world power": Belgium under German control, the French iron-fields annexed to Germany, and, what is more, Poland and Ukraine to be cleared of their inhabitants and resettled with Germans. These plans were not merely
680-412: A child or infant was left without care and incidents and infant deaths soared. The supply of dairy and fat products for Polish children were just one-fifth of that for German children. Likewise, the winter brought many deaths, as Germans limited the available heating supplies to 1/4 of that available to Germans. A strict ban on collecting coal left by trucks and supply wagons on the streets by non-Germans
816-494: A joint Polish-German scholarly publication on the aspect of population changes during the war. Eberhardt estimates that the total influx from the Altreich was about 500,000 people. Duiker and Spielvogel note that up to two million Germans had been settled in pre-war Poland by 1942. Eberhardt gives a total of two million Germans present in the area of all pre-war Poland by the end of the war, 1.3 million of whom moved in during
952-727: A member of the Artaman League , an anti-Slav, anti-urban, and anti-Semitic organisation of "blood and soil" ideology—developed the Völkisch ideas that advocated Lebensraum , for the realisation of which he said that the: Increase [of] our peasant population is the only effective defense against the influx of the Slav working-class masses from the East. As six hundred years ago, the German peasant's destiny must be to preserve and increase
1088-595: A month after the invasion of Poland , Nazi Germany annexed an area of 92,500 square kilometres (35,700 sq mi) (23.7% of pre-war Poland ) with a population of about 10,000,000 people (30% of the pre-war Polish population). The remainder of the Polish territory was either annexed by the Soviet Union (201,000 km or 51.6% of pre-war Poland as per the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact ) or made into
1224-579: A near-term complete Germanization of the annexed territories, measures there differed from those implemented in the General Government. Germans and the remaining Poles and Jews were strictly segregated. In case of the Jews, this was achieved by ghettoization . The German administration classified people based on political and racial criteria with Poles and Jews being considered " untermenschen " (subhumans) as opposed to Germans who according to
1360-842: A society. In 1901, Ratzel extended his thesis in his essay titled " Lebensraum ". Ratzel pointed to historical precedent in the Middle Ages, when the social and economic pressures of rapid population growth in the German states had led to a steady colonization of Germanic peoples in Eastern Europe. During the First World War , the Allied naval blockade of the Central Powers caused food shortages in Germany, and resources from German colonies in Africa were unable to slip past
1496-472: A thousand years. On 3 February 1933, at his initial meeting with the generals and admirals of Nazi Germany , Adolf Hitler said that the conquest of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe and its "ruthless Germanisation " were the ultimate geopolitical objectives of Reich foreign policy. The USSR was the country to provide sufficient Lebensraum for the Germans, because it possessed much agricultural land, and
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#17327648808011632-661: Is also given by the Institute of National Remembrance . Heinemann and Łuczak as cited by Eberhardt detail the expulsions as follows: 81,000 Poles were displaced from their homes in East Upper Silesia, 22,000 of whom were deported to the General Government. They were replaced with 38,000 ethnic Germans primarily from Bukovina . From the Zichenau and Suwałki areas of South East Prussia , 25,000 to 28,000 Poles were "evacuated", an additional 25,000 to 28,000 from
1768-617: Is credited to Karl Ernst Haushofer and his Institute of Geopolitics, in Munich, especially the ultra-nationalist interpretation of it, which was used as a justification for the desire to avenge Germany's military defeat at the end of the First World War (1914–18) and the desire to reverse the dictates of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which reduced Germany geographically, economically, and militarily. The politician Adolf Hitler said that
1904-543: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany 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
2040-605: Is to say, resettlement of nationalities". On 20 October 1939, Hitler told General Wilhelm Keitel that the war would be a difficult "racial struggle" and that the General Government was to "purify the Reich territory from Jews and Polacks, too." Likewise, in October 1939, Nazi propaganda instructed Germans to view Poles, Jews, and Gypsies as Untermenschen . Nazi Germany's pursuit of its bio-geo-political ambitions
2176-550: The Septemberprogramm was unsuccessful due to its infeasibility, with too few soldiers to realise the plans during a two-front war. Politically, the Programm allowed the Imperial Government to learn the opinions of the nationalist, economic, and military elites of the German ruling class who financed and facilitated geopolitics. Nationally, the annexation and ethnic cleansing of Poland for German Lebensraum
2312-774: The Wehrmacht delegated civil administrative powers to Chiefs of Civil Administration (CdZ). Hitler appointed Arthur Greiser to become the CdZ of the Posen military district, and Danzig 's Gauleiter Albert Forster to become the CdZ of the West Prussian military district. On 3 October 1939, the military districts centered on and named " Lodz " and " Krakau " were set up under command of major generals Gerd von Rundstedt and Wilhelm List , and Hitler appointed Hans Frank and Arthur Seyß-Inquart as civil heads, respectively. Thus
2448-591: The "eternal Jewish threat" ( Der ewige Jude , 1937). Emphasis was put on the need for rearmament and the pseudoscience of superior races in the pursuit of " blood and soil " ( Blut und Boden ). During the twenty-one-year inter-war period between the First (1914–18) and the Second (1939–45) World War, Lebensraum for Germany was the principal tenet of the extremist nationalism that characterised German party politics. The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, demanded not only
2584-800: The Baltic governorates , Belarus , Ukraine , and the Caucasus region. Despite such an extensive geopolitical victory, tactical defeat in the Western Front, strategic over-extension, and factional division in government compelled Imperial Germany to abandon the Eastern European Lebensraum gained with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in favour of the peace-terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), and yielded those Russian lands to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine. As
2720-681: The Crimea , and were stationed, in smaller numbers, in Transcaucasia . Even the unoccupied "rump" Russia appeared—with the conclusion of the German–Soviet Supplementary Treaty, on 28 August 1918—to be in firm, though indirect, dependency on the Reich . Thus, Hitler's long-range aim, fixed in the 1920s, of erecting a German Eastern Imperium on the ruins of the Soviet Union was not simply a vision emanating from an abstract wish. In
2856-546: The Durchschleusung process in which they were assigned to the categories RuS I ("most valuable") to IV ("not valuable"). Only RuS I to III were allowed to settle, those who found themselves in RuSIV were either classified as "A"-cases and brought to the Altreich for "non-selfdetermined work and re-education", or classified as "S"-cases who were either sent back to their original Eastern European homelands or "evacuated" to
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#17327648808012992-603: The Kingdom of Bulgaria ). In March 1918, in an effort to reform and modernise the Russian Empire (1721–1917) into a soviet republic , the Bolshevik government agreed to the strategically onerous territorial cessions stipulated in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (33% of arable land, 30% of industry, and 90% of the coal mines of Russia). As a result, Russia yielded to Germany much of the arable land of European Russia ,
3128-668: The Nazi geopolitics of "inevitable expansion" would reverse overpopulation, provide natural resources, and uphold German national honor. In Mein Kampf (1925; My Struggle ), Hitler presented his conception of Lebensraum as the philosophic basis for the Greater Germanic Reich that was destined to colonize Eastern Europe—especially Ukraine in the Soviet Union —and so resolve the problems of overpopulation, and that
3264-675: The Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941 Before the Nazi German invasion in September 1939 and the subsequent annexation in October, the territories held up to 10,568,000 people or some 30% of pre-1939 Poland 's population. Due to flights, war losses, natural migration and the lack of contemporary reliable data, demographics especially in the border regions can only be estimated. Heinemann (2003) gives identical numbers for Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Warthegau . For East Upper Silesia , Heinemann gives numbers based on
3400-676: The Nordic people . This combination of biopolitical and geo-political agenda of the Nazi Reich became the basis for its Germanization policies, the mission of what it regarded as the "purification of the Volksgemeinschaft ", as well as its state-sponsored genocidal apparatus. On 6 October 1939, Hitler told the Reichstag that after the fall of Poland the most important matter was "a new order of ethnographic relations, that
3536-1097: The Polish decrees (8 March 1940), the Nazis ensured that the racial inferiority of the Poles was legally recognized in the German Reich, and regulated the working and living conditions of Polish laborers ( Zivilarbeiter ). The Polish decrees also established that any Pole "who has sexual relations with a German man or woman, or approaches them in any other improper manner, will be punished by death." The Gestapo were vigilant of sexual relations between Germans and Poles, and pursued anyone suspected of race defilement ( Rassenschande ); likewise, there were proscriptions of sexual relations between Germans and other ethnic groups brought in from Eastern Europe. "Hitler's ideas of Lebensraum , also elaborated in Mein Kampf , meant that his desire to expand German power and control to
3672-495: The Prussian government had already allocated 200,000,000 ℳ︁ for purposes of German colonization of Polish portions of eastern Prussia. These funds were intended to support the creation of settlements by acquiring Polish estates. By 1907, Prussian Chancellor Bülow was promoting bills that explicitly called for the forced sale of Polish estates. A bill in late 1907 asked for another $ 100,000,000 for expropriations. In 1903,
3808-694: The SS planned and executed the war-time resettlement and extermination process in the annexed territories. In October 1939, Himmler ordered the immediate expulsion of all Jews from the annexed territories, all "Congress Poles" from Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , and all "Reich's enemies" from the Warthegau, South East Prussia and East Upper Silesia. The term "Reich enemies" was applied to all Poles with higher education, engaged in pre-war in any patriotic organisations or initiatives and generally those who manifested Polish patriotism. Those expelled were to be deported to
3944-845: The September Campaign (1 September – 6 October 1939) that began the Second World War in Europe. In Germany and the Two World Wars , the German historian Andreas Hillgruber said that the territorial gains of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) were the imperial prototype for Adolf Hitler's Greater German Empire in Eastern Europe: At the moment of the November 1918 ceasefire in the West, newspaper maps of
4080-667: The Vistula river basin before the Barbarian migrations . In late 1939 a sixteen-man commission was also active to chart the boundaries of a projected Reichsgau Beskidenland (named after the Beskid mountain range ), which would have encompassed the areas lying west of Kraków up to the San river to the east of it. Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann on the other hand proposed that
4216-460: The eastward expansion of German territories . In the worldview of Adolf Hitler , the idea of restoring the 1914 borders of the German Reich ( Imperial Germany , 1871–1918) was absurd, because those national borders did not provide sufficient Lebensraum for the German population; only a foreign policy for the geopolitical conquest of the proper amount of Lebensraum would justify
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4352-470: The invasion of Poland (1939), the propaganda of the Nazi Party in Germany used popular feelings of wounded national identity aroused in the aftermath of the First World War to promote policies of Lebensraum . Studies of the homeland focused on the lost colonies after the establishment of the Second Polish Republic , which was ratified by the Treaty of Versailles ( Volk ohne Raum ), as well as
4488-426: The 19th century, the term Lebensraum was used by the German geographer and biologist Oscar Peschel in his 1860 review of Charles Darwin 's Origins of Species (1859). In 1897, the geographer and ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel in his book Politische Geographie applied the word Lebensraum ("living space") to describe physical geography as a factor that influences human activities in developing into
4624-717: The Allies at Versailles . Ratzel said that the development of a people into a society was primarily influenced by their geographic situation (habitat) and that a society that successfully adapted to one geographic territory would naturally and logically expand the boundaries of their nation into another territory. Yet, to resolve German overpopulation , Ratzel pointed out that Imperial Germany (1871–1918) required overseas colonies to which surplus Germans ought to emigrate. Friedrich Ratzel's metaphoric concept of society as an organism—which grows and shrinks in logical relation to its Lebensraum (habitat)—proved especially influential upon
4760-649: The Altreich and the annexed territories as well as the Nazi-Soviet population exchanges . For his new office, Himmler chose the title Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums ("Reich's commissioner for strengthening Germandom", RKF). The RKF staff ( Stabshauptamt RKF ) through the Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VOMI) and the 'Main Department of Race and Settlement' ( Rasse- und Siedlungs-Hauptamt , RuSHA ) of
4896-562: The Altreich. "Racially valuable" Poles were to be exempted from deportation and " racially valuable " ethnic Germans were also to be settled. Himmler said he wanted to "create a blonde province here". Responsible for "racial evaluation" were 'Central Bureau for Immigration' ( Einwandererzentralstelle , EWZ) and 'Central Bureau for Resettlement' ( Umwandererzentralstelle , UWZ) of the SS' RuSHA. The annexed territories were to be Germanised in rural areas within 5 years and in urban areas within 10 years,
5032-614: The Baltic States prior to the Soviet Union's take-over, and subjected to Germanization . In addition, other Germanic settlers such as Dutch, Danes and Swedes were envisioned to settle these lands. A small Dutch artisan colony was already established in Poznań in 1941. The Jewish and Polish population was subject to mass murder and expulsions already during the September invasion , triggering mass flight. The Jewish population
5168-651: The Bialystock area attached in 1941. In Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , 123,000 to 124,000 were displaced until the end of 1942, 53,000 of whom were deported to the General Government, the others were forced into camps where they were "racially evaluated". In the Warthegau , 630,000 were displaced between 1939 and 1944. Additionally, Łuczak estimates that between 30,000 and 40,000 were subject to "wild" expulsions primarily in Pomerelia . Poles due be deported to
5304-695: The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic The occupied eastern territories ( besetzten Ostgebiete ) in the Soviet Union under the nominal administration of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories Post-war Germany [ edit ] Former eastern territories of Germany ( Ehemalige deutsche Ostgebiete ) Poland [ edit ] Kresy , former eastern territories of Poland annexed by
5440-485: The East ' ) was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum necessary for its survival and that most of the populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently (either through mass deportation to Siberia , extermination, or enslavement), including Polish , Ukrainian , Russian , Czech , and other Slavic nations considered non- Aryan . The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in
5576-489: The East ". Based upon Johan Rudolf Kjellén's geopolitical interpretation of Friedrich Ratzel's human-geography term, the Nazi regime (1933–45) established Lebensraum as the racist rationale of the foreign policy by which they began the Second World War , on 1 September 1939, in an effort to realise the Greater Germanic Reich at the expense of the societies of Eastern Europe. Some Prussian politicians were increasingly thinking in terms of Lebensraum by 1907. In 1902,
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5712-438: The Eastern sphere, established in 1918, this goal had a concrete point of departure. The German Eastern Imperium had already been—if only for a short time—a reality. The Septemberprogramm (1914) documents " Lebensraum in the East" as philosophically integral to Germanic culture throughout the history of Germany; and that Lebensraum is not a racialist philosophy particular to the 20th century. As military strategy,
5848-424: The European states had to accede to his geopolitical demands. The Nazi Party's usages of the term Lebensraum were explicitly racial, to justify the mystical right of the racially superior Germanic peoples ( Herrenvolk ) to fulfill their cultural destiny at the expense of racially inferior peoples ( Untermenschen ), such as the Slavs of Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and the other non–Germanic peoples of "
5984-414: The General Government in 15 years In practice, the war-time population shift in the annexed territories did not take on its planned extent, either in regard to the number of expelled Poles and the resettled Germans, or in regard to the origin of the settled Germans which was the Soviet Union. Plans for a resettlement of Germans from Nazi Germany were upheld in the Generalplan Ost but postponed to after
6120-401: The General Government or to the Altreich for forced labour . The remaining Polish population was strictly segregated from the German population and subject to a variety of repressive measures. These included forced labour and their exclusion from all political and many cultural aspects of society. At the same time, the local German minority was granted several privileges, and their number
6256-518: The General Government were first put in camps where they were subject to racial evaluation ( Durchschleusung ) by the UWZ similar to the Durchschleusung of ethnic Germans ( see below ). Those deemed "capable of re- Germanization " ( wiedereindeutschungsfähig ) were not deported to the General Government, but instead to the Altreich. Those that resisted Germanization were to be put in concentration camps, or executed; their children might be taken for Germanization and adoption. A total of 1.5 million people
6392-466: The General Government would in the near future be turned into 3–5 Reichsgaue or Reichsobergaue , including the Galician district . Leaving such discussions open for the conclusion of the war, Hitler never officially adopted or implemented any of these suggestions, instead retaining the status quo of using the areas as a labor reservoir. the annexed parts are also referred to as "South East Prussia" ( German : Südostpreußen ) Gau Upper Silesia
6528-493: The General Government, 310,000 were displaced or forced into Polenlager camps within the respective Gau , and the others were subject to forced labour either within the annexed territories or in the Altreich. Heinemann says that according to Madajczyk, 987,217 were displaced in the annexed territories and the Zamość region, including Jews. People were sometimes arrested from the street in so-called łapanki . Heinemann further says that an additional 110,000 Jews were deported to
6664-427: The General Government. This directive was superseded by another RKF-directive of early 1940, ordering the immediate expulsion of the remaining Jews and the replacement of 3.4 million Poles with Germans settlers in the long run. This RKF scenario envisioned, as a first step, the settlement of 100,000 German families within the next three years. In this early stage, planners believed the settlers would be relocated from
6800-613: The General Government. Another more than 400,000 Jews were later deported to Auschwitz, Treblinka or Chelmno (Kulmhof) concentration camps , and thousands had died in the ghettos . Of the deported Jews, more than 300,000 were from Warthegau , 2,000 from Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , 85,000 from East Upper Silesia , 30,000 from the Zichenau district and 200,000 from the Białystok district both in South East Prussia. Eberhardt cites numbers provided by Jastrzębski, 1968, who says that according to RKF documents, 365,000 were deported between 1939 and 1944. Jastrzębski notes that adding
6936-456: The General Government. Initially, people classified as RuS III were to be deported to the Altreich for forced labour, yet since January 1940 were allowed to settle on smaller farms (20 hectare compared to 50 hectare farms for RuS I and II). This change was based on a personal order by Himmler and led to a more restrictive categorization by the classifying officials. About a million ethnic Germans had been subjected to Durchschleusung by
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#17327648808017072-408: The German Reich. According to Esch, because of the lack of settlers from the Altreich, the colonists were primarily ethnic Germans from areas further East. These ethnic Germans were resettled during colonisation action " Heim ins Reich " in homes from which the Poles had been expelled, often so abruptly that they found half-eaten meals on tables and unmade beds where small children had been sleeping at
7208-456: The German empire's alliance with Austria-Hungary during World War I. In his works such as Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch , Hitler viewed the Slavs as lacking the capability to form a state. Although Hitler openly spoke about the need for living space in the 1920s, he never publicly spoke about it during his first years in power. It was not until 1937, with the German rearmament program well under way, that he began again to publicly speak about
7344-475: The German people's patrimony in their holy mother earth battle against the Slav race. In Mein Kampf (1925), Hitler dedicated a full chapter—titled "Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy"—to outlining the need for the new "living space" for Germany. He claimed that achieving Lebensraum required political will, and that the Nazi movement ought to strive to expand population area for the German people and acquire new sources of food. Lebensraum became
7480-492: The German policy was to create lowly educated slaves out of Poles for basic work. While in General Government all Poles from age of 14 to 65 were subject to forced labour on behalf of Nazi German state, in annexed territories children had to work from the age of 9 (and in rural areas from the age of 7–8), additionally the duty to perform slave labour for Germans was extended to the age of 70 for men in annexed territories. A network of outposts overseeing gathering of labour force
7616-436: The German reliance on food imports by sea during the First World War, believing it to be a contributing factor to Germany's defeat in the war. He believed that only through Lebensraum could Germany shift "its dependence for food... to its own imperial hinterland". Hitler's bio-geo-political doctrine of Lebensraum consisted of two components existing in tension: the materialist endeavour to expand Germanic territories and
7752-556: The German-controlled General Government occupation zone (95,500 km or 24.5% of pre-war Poland). A tiny portion of pre-war Poland (700 km ) was annexed by Slovakia . Since 1935, Nazi Germany was divided into provinces ( Gaue ) which had replaced the former German states and Prussian provinces . Of the territories annexed, some were attached to the already existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia (later Upper Silesia ), while from others new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland were constituted. Wartheland
7888-531: The Germanisation of Eastern Europe would be complete when "in the East dwell only men with truly German [and] Germanic blood". In the secret memorandum Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East (25 May 1940), Himmler outlined the future of the Eastern European peoples: (i) division of native ethnic groups found in the new living-space; (ii) limited, formal education of four years of elementary school (to teach them only how to write their names and to count to five hundred); and (iii) obedience of
8024-577: The Nazi census of December 1939, that claimed they were 2.43 million people, of whom ~1.08 million were ethnic Germans , ~930,000 Poles , and ~90,000 Jews . Heinemann and Encyclopaedia Judaica also give a higher estimate regarding the Jewish population, whose number they put between 560,000 and 586,628 people. Eberhardt (2006) confirms the number given by the Bureau for Racial Policy by saying about 600,000 people were Germans. Prof. Stanisław Waszak ( pl ) of Poznań University cited slightly differing estimates; first published in 1947: Census data
8160-985: The Nazi racial ideology were the ubermenschen " herrenvolk " (master race). This classification had not only ideological meaning but was expressed in all aspects of practical daily life and treatment of the population. Three main goals were formulated by German authorities in regards to Polish population: Gradual biological eradication of Polish nation, expulsion out of the annexed areas and use of Poles as forced labour, and changing remaining Poles into obedient low-skilled workers by draconian means. Many Polish owned buildings and enterprises were confiscated, and all jewelry , furniture , money, clothing were subject to forced confiscation. All executive positions which were formerly occupied by Poles and Jews were given to Germans. Poles were forbidden to own rural and industrial enterprises, transport firms, building firms, workshops. The Nazis seized tens of thousands of Polish enterprises, from large industrial firms to small shops, without payment to
8296-403: The Next War ), General von Bernhardi developed Friedrich Ratzel's Lebensraum concept as a racial struggle for living space, explicitly identified Eastern Europe as the source of a new, national habitat for the German people, and said that the next war would be expressly for acquiring Lebensraum —all in fulfillment of the "biological necessity" to protect German racial supremacy. Vanquishing
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#17327648808018432-494: The Poles who remained were those with high birth rate, while those with few children were no longer present. Stripping Poles of all cultural activity by the Germans and leaving them to spend all time outside of work in homes, led to conditions favourable to sex and a rising birth rate. One practice that had terrible effects on Polish women was the refusal for female slave workers to travel home for birth. Pregnancies by Polish women-workers were subject to abortion, and in case of birth,
8568-461: The Polish population, a German official Krumey ( de ) from occupied Łódź demanded that Polish women be kept at work until reaching 8.5 months of pregnancy . The aim was to help in miscarriage and provoke ‘accidents’ that would result in failed birth. Nevertheless, German officials remained extremely worried about Polish birth rate and various other ideas floated among German leadership how to not only reduce pregnancy, but to prevent it. Among
8704-478: The Prussian authorities tried a Polish countess for "presenting a false heir" for an estate near Wróblewo . The case, tried in Berlin , generated crowds of people and police. Observers expressed concern that Prussian "race partiality" would result in a guilty verdict. In September 1914, when the German victory in the First World War appeared feasible, the German government introduced the Septemberprogramm as an official war aim ( Kriegsziel ), which
8840-419: The Slavic and the Latin races was deemed necessary because "without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy, budding elements" of the German race—thus, the war for Lebensraum was a necessary means of defending Germany against cultural stagnation and the racial degeneracy of miscegenation . In the national politics of Weimar Germany , the geopolitical usage of Lebensraum
8976-451: The Slavs is based on a sub-race with a few drops of our blood, the blood of a leading race; the Slav is unable to control himself and create order." In that vein, Himmler published the pamphlet Der Untermensch , which featured photographs of ideal racial types, Aryans, contrasted with the barbarian races, descended from Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan , to the massacres committed in the Soviet Union dominated by Jewish Bolshevism. With
9112-484: The Soviet Union in 1945 Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Eastern Territories . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eastern_Territories&oldid=1120243595 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
9248-401: The Swedish political scientist and conservative politician Johan Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922), who interpreted that biological metaphor as a geopolitical natural-law. In the political monograph Schweden (1917; Sweden ), Kjellén coined the terms geopolitik (the conditions and problems of a state that arise from its geographic territory), œcopolitik (the economic factors that affect
9384-431: The United States' territorial expansion and saw the destruction of Native American peoples and their cultures that took place during the United States' westward expansion as a template for German expansion. He believed that in order to transform the German nation into a world superpower , Germany had to expand their geopolitical presence and act only in the interest of the German people. Hitler had also viewed with dismay
9520-435: The annexation of western Polish areas and the Free City of Danzig . A separate by-law stipulated the inclusion of the area around Suwalki (the Suwalki triangle ). The first two paragraphs of the decree established " Reichsgau Posen " in Greater Poland with the government regions ( Regierungsbezirk ) Hohensalza , Posen , and Kalisch, as well as " Reichsgau West Prussia " ( German : Westpreußen ) in Pomerelia with
9656-503: The annexed territories, and details the areas of colonists' origin as follows: 93,000 were from Bessarabia , 21,000 from Dobruja , 98,000 from Bukovina , 68,000 from Volhynia , 58,000 from Galicia , 130,000 from the Baltic states , 38,000 from eastern Poland , 72,000 from Sudetenland , and 13,000 from Slovenia . Additionally some 400,000 German officials, technical staff, and clerks were sent to those areas in order to administer them, according to "Atlas Ziem Polski", citing
9792-570: The blockade; this caused support to rise during the war for a Lebensraum that would expand Germany eastward into Russia to gain control of their resources to prevent such a situation from occurring in the future. In the period between the First and the Second World Wars, German nationalists adopted the term Lebensraum in their political demands for the re-establishment of the German colonial empire , which had been dismembered by
9928-428: The border of Reich was extended eastwards by some 150–200 km on average. Despite this fact, Germany used old Prussian propaganda of creating a "German living wall" in Polish territories. On 29 January 1940, Reichsgau Posen was renamed " Reichsgau Wartheland " (Warthegau). Reichsgau West Prussia was renamed "Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia". The remaining annexed areas were not made separate provinces but included in
10064-443: The children were taken by SS Lebensborn . Polish slave labourers naturally were forbidden to marry. The harsh nature of the German occupation however reduced the birth rate. In Poznań, at the end of the war, the birth rate was near zero; in Łódź and Inowrocław there were more deaths than births. In comparison, the birth rate of Germans rose until the end of the war. From 1939's birth rate survival of 850 live births per 1000 births,
10200-585: The colonial and commercial policy of the pre–War period and shift to the soil policy of the future. But when we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the border States subject to her. The ideologies found at the root of Hitler's implementation of Lebensraum modeled that of German colonialism of the New Imperialism period as well as the American ideology of manifest destiny . Hitler had great admiration for
10336-407: The conquest of Lebensraum as a major ideological goal of his party, Hitler wrote in " Mein Kampf ": And so, we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre–War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the East. At long last, we break off
10472-472: The declining German birth rate (since the 1880s) and contradicted the popular belief that the "German race" was a vigorous and growing people. Despite each slogan (political and racial) being contradicted by the reality of such demographic facts, the nationalists' demands for Lebensraum proved to be ideologically valid politics in Weimar Germany. In the lead-up to Anschluss (1938) and
10608-497: The destruction of the Soviet Union would have led to the exploitation of millions of peoples as slave labor in the occupied territories and the eventual re-population of the areas with Germans. Nazi Germany's initiation of Operation Barbarossa was motivated by the racial theories and bio-political doctrines of the NSDAP , which were fervently anti-Slavic , anti-communist and anti-semitic . The Nazi party's doctrine of Lebensraum
10744-475: The determination either to seal off these alien racial elements, so that the blood of its own Folk will not be corrupted again, or it must, without further ado, remove them and hand over the vacated territory to its own National Comrades. The conquest of living space for Germany was the foremost foreign-policy goal of the Nazis towards establishing the Greater Germanic Reich that was to last
10880-713: The east with the intention of colonising this territory with German settlers would involve the expulsion, enslavement and death of the Slavs who lived there.. If the awful counterfactual of a Nazi victory had come to pass... Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians would surely have shared the fate of the Poles and been eliminated culturally and ethnically as distinct peoples and nations. Genocidal actions against those peoples would have been completed." — Historian Norman Naimark As official policy, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler said that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with any alien races; and that
11016-558: The end of 1944. RuS I and II were assigned to between 60% and 70% of the Baltic Germans and 44% of the Volhynian Germans, while many ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union were put in the lower categories. The segregation of Germans and Poles was achieved by a variety of measures limiting their social interaction. Łuczak described the segregation: Nazi Germany viewed Poles as subhuman, and such views were spread in
11152-449: The entirety of occupied Poland was divided into four military districts (West Prussia, Posen, Lodz, and Krakau). Frank was at the same time appointed "supreme chief administrator" for all occupied territories. After Hitler's peace offer was rejected by French prime minister Édouard Daladier on October 7 (rejected by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain on October 12) a decree was issued by Hitler on 8 October 1939, provided for
11288-642: The establishment of German Lebensraum allowed the Nazis to unilaterally launch a war of aggression ( blitzkrieg ) against the countries of Eastern Europe, ideologically justified as historical recuperation of the Oium (lands) that the Slavs had conquered from the native Ostrogoths . Nazi propaganda depicted Eastern Europe as historically Germanic territories, promoting the myth that these regions were stolen from Aryan races by Hunnic and Avar tribes. Hitler viewed Slavs as primitive subhumans, and he detested
11424-508: The existing provinces of East Prussia and Upper Silesia per § 4 of Hitler's decree. Arthur Greiser was made Gauleiter of Reichsgau Posen, and Albert Forster of Reichsgau West Prussia. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the district of Białystok , which included the Białystok , Bielsk Podlaski , Grajewo , Łomża , Sokółka , Volkovysk , and Grodno Counties,
11560-415: The geographic reversion of Germany's post-war borders (to recuperate territory lost by the Treaty of Versailles), but also the German conquest and colonisation of Eastern Europe (whether or not those lands were German before 1918). To that end, Hitler said that flouting the Treaty of Versailles was required for Germany to obtain needed Lebensraum in Eastern Europe. During the 1920s, Heinrich Himmler —as
11696-511: The government regions Bromberg , Danzig , and Marienwerder . These government regions were named after the German language names of their chief cities: Hohensalza ( Inowrocław ), Posen ( Poznań ), Kalisch ( Kalisz ), Bromberg ( Bydgoszcz ), Danzig ( Gdańsk ), and Marienwerder ( Kwidzyn ). The annexed territories were twice as large as former Prussian conquests in the Partitions of Poland , also contained twice as many people. Compared to 1914,
11832-703: The impulsive nature of Hitlerism. In 1941, in a speech to the Eastern Front Battle Group Nord, Himmler said that the war against the Soviet Union was a war of ideologies and races, between Nazism and Jewish Bolshevism and between the Germanic (Nordic) peoples and the Untermenschen peoples of the East. Moreover, in one of the secret Posen speeches to the SS-Gruppenführer at Posen, Himmler said: "the mixed race of
11968-472: The inhabitants of German-occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria. In the same memorandum, Himmler advocated the kidnapping of children who appeared to be Nordic because it would "remove the danger that this subhuman people ( Untermenschenvolk ) of the East through such children might acquire a leader class from such people of good blood, which would be dangerous for us because they would be our equals." According to Himmler,
12104-601: The media. For example, in October 1939, Nazi propaganda was issued instructing Germans to view Poles, Jews and Gypsies as subhumans. Occasionally, signs were posted in public places reading: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs". When Germans wanted to silence Poles and Jews, they used such expressions, as "stop barking" or "shut your snouts". Part of the population was classified as Volksdeutsche , mostly German ethnic minority. Some Poles were classified as such as well, either by their own free will or by force which included death threats. Because Nazi Germany envisioned
12240-594: The military situation showed German troops in Finland, holding a line from the Finnish fjords near Narva , down through Pskov – Orsha – Mogilev and the area south of Kursk , to the Don east of Rostov . Germany had thus secured Ukraine. The Russian recognition of Ukraine's separation, exacted at Brest–Litovsk, represented the key element in German efforts to keep Russia perpetually subservient. In addition, German troops held
12376-589: The mystical quest to revive what the Nazis viewed as the "idealized German medieval past". The explicit embrace of these contradictions was evident in the promulgation of Nazi slogans such as " Blut und Boden " (blood and soil). National Socialism was presented by its ideologues as an organic world-view (" Weltanschauung ") that subordinated all aspects of life—physical bodies, soul, mind, culture, government, religion, education, economy, etc.—into an "organic totality" existing within Lebensraum . Defining Nazism as
12512-443: The name of Lebensraum during and following World War II . Entire populations were ravaged by starvation; any agricultural surplus was used to feed Germany. The Jewish population was to be exterminated outright . Hitler's strategic program for Greater Germany was based on the belief in the power of Lebensraum , especially when pursued by a racially superior society. People deemed to be part of non-Aryan races, within
12648-592: The natural law of organic life, the better its conscious utility can be applied for the sake of the people's life." In the unpublished sequel to Mein Kampf , the Zweites Buch (1928, Second Book ), Hitler further presents the ideology of Nazi Lebensraum , in accordance with the then-future foreign policy of the Nazi Party. To further German population growth, Hitler rejected the ideas of birth control and emigration, arguing that such practices weakened
12784-491: The necessary sacrifices entailed by war. Hitler thought that history was dominated by a merciless struggle for survival among the different races of mankind; and that the races who possessed a great national territory were innately stronger than those races who possessed a small national territory—which the Germanic Aryan race could take by what he viewed as their natural right . Such official racist perspectives for
12920-456: The need for living space. The bio-geo-political nature of Nazi Weltanschauung was the core ideological force that instigated Nazi Germany to launch its violent project in pursuit of a new global order . This scheme aimed to dissolve the contradictions between the Nazi conceptualizations of "race" and "space" through the creation of a Germanic Lebensraum and achievement of world domination by
13056-459: The numbers retrieved from documents of local authorities yields a higher total of 414,820 deported, and estimates a total of about 450,000 including unplanned and undocumented expulsions. Eberhardt notes that on top of these numbers, many had fled, and cites numbers provided by Czesław Łuczak (1979), who estimates that between 918,000 and 928,000 were deported or evicted from the annexed territories between 1939 and 1944. A similar estimate (923,000)
13192-475: The orders of Germans. Despite Nazi Germany's official racism, the extermination of Eastern European native populations was not always necessary because the racial policy of Nazi Germany regarded some Eastern European peoples as being of Aryan-Nordic stock, especially the local leaders. On March 4, 1941, Himmler introduced the German People's List ( Deutsche Volksliste ), which intended to segregate
13328-430: The owners. Higher taxes and obligatory contributions were enforced on Polish population. Polish workers were stripped from any right to holidays or leave from work. Payment for overtime hours in work was abolished in general, only after working 61 hours in week were Poles allowed to receive a 10% higher compensation in pay (Germans were paid 100%). All employed Poles were given the lowest possible pay for their work. Overall
13464-430: The people and culture of Germany, and that military conquest was the only means for obtaining Lebensraum : The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or Teutonising , as in the case of the national bourgeoisie , but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in
13600-531: 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 . Lebensraum
13736-439: The power of the state), and demopolitik (the social problems that arise from the racial composition of the state) to explain the political particulars to be considered for the successful administration and governing of a state. Moreover, he had a great intellectual influence upon the politics of Imperial Germany, especially with Staten som livsform (1916; The State as a Life-form ), an earlier political-science book read by
13872-434: The principal foreign-policy goal of the Nazi Party and the government of Nazi Germany (1933–45). Hitler rejected the restoration of the pre-war borders of Germany as an inadequate half-measure towards reducing purported national overpopulation. From that perspective, he opined that the nature of national borders is always unfinished and momentary, and that their redrawing must continue as Germany's political goal. Identifying
14008-525: The proposals were: garrisoning the population in labour camps, making the age of allowing marriage much higher, creating labour battalions out of the Polish population, introducing a child tax, performing abortions, an extended forced work duty during Polish lifetimes, combined with relocation to work camps, and finally sterilization of Polish women. Doubts about the ability to perform mass sterilization hindered this idea, however, as 55% of available doctors in certain parts of annexed territories were Poles and it
14144-434: The rate fell to 680 per 1000 births in 1944. A ban on the use of the Polish language was implemented in all institutions and offices in annexed territories, as well in certain public places like public transport in the cities. Lebensraum Parties Lebensraum ( German pronunciation: [ˈleːbənsˌʁaʊm] , living space ) is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism ,
14280-427: The report), sending married Poles to slave labour in Reich. An original idea was proposed by Karl Zieger, who believed those measures to be futile. Instead, he postulated that whole Polish villages should be moved and scattered into the Reich itself. The Nazis fell into a trap of perception—the seemingly high birth rate of Poles was a result of expelling all Poles from higher classes into the General Government; as such
14416-596: The society of Imperial Germany, for whom the concept of geopolitik acquired an ideological definition unlike the original, human-geography definition. Kjellén's geopolitical interpretation of the Lebensraum concept was adopted, expanded, and adapted to the politics of Germany by publicists of imperialism such as the militarist General Friedrich von Bernhardi (1849–1930) and the political geographer and proponent of geopolitics Karl Haushofer (1869–1946). In Deutschland und der Nächste Krieg (1911; Germany and
14552-418: The subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our Folk. Therefore, the non-Germanic peoples of the annexed foreign territories would never be Germanised: The völkisch State, conversely, must under no conditions annex Poles with the intention of wanting to make Germans out of them some day. On the contrary, it must muster
14688-534: The subsequent repopulation of the border strip with ethnic-German colonists; likewise, the colonisations of Lithuania and Ukraine. However, military over-extension lost the war for Imperial Germany, and the Septemberprogramm went unrealised. In April 1915, Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg authorised the Polish Border Strip plans in order to take advantage of the extensive territories in Eastern Europe that Germany had conquered and held since early in
14824-691: The territory of Lebensraum expansion, were subjected to expulsion or destruction. The eugenics of Lebensraum assumed it to be the right of the German Aryan master race ( Herrenvolk ) to remove the indigenous people in the name of their own living space. They took inspiration for this concept from outside Germany. Hitler and Nazi officials took a particular interest in manifest destiny , and attempted to replicate it in occupied Europe. Nazi Germany also supported other Axis Powers ' expansionist ideologies such as Fascist Italy 's spazio vitale and Imperial Japan 's hakkō ichiu . In
14960-495: The time of expulsion. Members of Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were assigned the task of overseeing such evictions to ensure that the Poles left behind most of their belongings for the use of the settlers. Eberhardt cites estimates for the ethnic German influx provided by Szobak, Łuczak, and a collective report, ranging from 404,612 (Szobak) to 631,500 (Łuczak). Anna Bramwell says 591,000 ethnic Germans moved into
15096-400: The time. Volk ohne Raum ( People Without Space ), for instance, by Hans Grimm sold much better than Mein Kampf when it was published in 1925. For that matter, plans for acquiring new territory were much aired in Germany during the First World War. It used to be thought that these were the plans of a few crack-pot theorisers or of extremist organisations. Now we know better. In 1961,
15232-450: The war against Poland over prior to the annexation, which in their view made the convention non-applicable. On 8 and 13 September 1939, the German military district in the area of Posen , commanded by general Alfred von Vollard-Bockelberg [ de ] , and West Prussia , commanded by general Walter Heitz , were established in conquered Greater Poland and Pomerelia , respectively. Based on laws of 21 May 1935 and 1 June 1938,
15368-578: The war, adding to a pre-war population of 700,000. The increase of German population was most visible in the towns: in Poznań, the German population increased from ~6,000 in 1939 to 93,589 in 1944; in Łódź , from ~60,000 to 140,721; and in Inowrocław , from 956 to 10,713. In Warthegau , where most Germans were settled, the share of the German population increased from 6.6% in 1939 to 21.2% in 1943. Only those Germans deemed "racially valuable" were allowed to settle. People were "evaluated" and classified in
15504-855: The war. The decisive campaigns of Imperial Germany almost realised Lebensraum in the East, especially when Bolshevik Russia unilaterally withdrew as a combatant in the "Great War" among the European great powers —the Triple Entente (the Russian Empire , the French Third Republic , and the United Kingdom ) and the Central Powers (the German Empire , Austria-Hungary , the Ottoman Empire , and
15640-555: The war. This plan envisioned the elimination of all Jews and, in the long run, the deportation of initially 31 million, later 51 million Slavs to Siberia from a large area designated for German settlement. The removal of Poles consisted of such actions as ethnic cleansing , mass executions, organised famine and eradication of national groups by scattering them in isolated pockets for labour. About 350,000 ethnic Germans were settled in Poland after Nazi propaganda persuaded them to leave
15776-616: The work of the German General Staff. They were endorsed by the German Foreign Office and by the "Good German", Bethmann–Hollweg. In the national politics of the Weimar Republic (1919–33), the German eugenicists took up the nationalist political slogan of Volk ohne Raum , and matched it with the racial slogan Volk ohne Jugend (a People without Youth), a cultural proposition that ignored
15912-417: Was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II , and it would continue this policy until the end of the conflict . Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power , Lebensraum became an ideological principle of Nazism and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe . The Nazi policy Generalplan Ost ( lit. ' Master Plan for
16048-546: Was an official and a popular subject of "nationalism-as-national-security" endorsed by German society, including the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP). In The Origins of the Second World War , the British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote: It is equally obvious that Lebensraum always appeared as one element in these blueprints. This was not an original idea of Hitler's. It was commonplace at
16184-516: Was attached to (not incorporated into) East Prussia . Other Polish territories, first annexed by Soviet Union and then by Germany, was incorporated into Reichskommissariat Ostland (in the north), Reichskommissariat Ukraine (in the south) and the General Government ( Distrikt Galizien in the utmost south). The Nazi government intended to continue its incorporation of pre-war Polish territory into Germany. The rump General Government region of occupied Poland already under complete German civil control
16320-611: Was carried out through fanatical perpetration of a racist war of annihilation ( Vernichtungskrieg ) which inflicted industrial-scale terrorism against entire populations. These policies resulted in the genocide of numerous ethnic groups in German-occupied territories, including the Jews, Poles, Russians , Romani people , etc. and also contributed to the failure of German war aims. Nazi policies in German-occupied territories were marked by spontaneous adaptation, on-the-fly modifications, and bureaucratic competition, underscoring
16456-519: Was central to its programme of waging a racial war against Russia, a geopolitical agenda advanced by Hitler since the 1920s. During the final months of the Second World War , Nazi Germany intensified its anti-Semitic , anti-Slavic , and anti-communist propaganda. Hitler fanatically reiterated the core ideological tenets of Nazism, such as his goal of expanding German territories eastwards in pursuit of Lebensraum . He continued to advocate
16592-496: Was compiled by Nazi Germany in Danzig-West Prussia on 3 December, and in Warthegau and Upper Silesia on 17 December. A number of Poles tried to present themselves as Germans ( Volksdeutsche ) hoping to avoid the anti-Polish atrocities or were classified as Germans to meet quotas. On October 7, 1939, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as his settlement commissioner, responsible for all resettlement measures in
16728-528: Was created in 1941, before it was part of Gau Silesia the annexed parts are also referred to as "East Upper Silesia" ( German : Ostoberschlesien ) named after the chief city, Polish : Łódź . This area was joined into the Warthegau on 9 November 1939; on 12 April 1940 Łódź's name was rendered Litzmannstadt , thus the Regierungsbezirk's name was changed accordingly. not incorporated into, but administered by Gau East Prussia, attached after
16864-471: Was established by German authorities that coordinated forced labour together with German police units. To reduce the biological growth of the Polish people, a partial ban of marriage was introduced; Polish women were allowed to marry only at the age of 25 and men at the age of 28. Married couples were separated when subjected to forced labour in Germany , and calorie intake was lowered for Poles. The forced labour working hours for both parents often meant that
17000-415: Was expelled or deported, including those deported for slave labor in Germany or concentration camps. Eberhardt says a total of 1.053 million people were deported for forced labour from the annexed territories. Throughout the war, the annexed Polish territories were subject to German colonization. The goal of Germany was to assimilate the territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into
17136-403: Was gradually deported to concentration and extermination camps , the most infamous of which, Auschwitz , was located in annexed East Upper Silesia . The local Polish population was to be gradually enslaved, exterminated and eventually replaced by German settlers. The Polish elite especially became subject to mass murder, and an estimated 780,000 Poles were subject to expulsion , either to
17272-506: Was inhabited by Slavic Untermenschen ruled by Jewish Bolshevism . The racism of Hitler's Lebensraum philosophy allowed only the Germanisation of the soil and the land, but not of the native peoples, who were to be destroyed, by slave labour and starvation. Anti-Slavism was a central component of the NSDAP 's racist ideology, and a driving force behind Nazi Germany 's irredentist schemes to seize " Lebensraum " through
17408-532: Was introduced. Within Germany, OST-Arbeiters could be aborted, even against their will and contrary to the usual Nazi law against abortions. Only if the parents appeared to be of "good blood" was the child to be born, and if deemed satisfactory, was removed to a Lebensborn institution. Children who failed were sent to the Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte , where they routinely died within a few months for lack of food. To further reduce
17544-664: Was merely seen as a transitional form of government, before the area's complete future integration into the Greater German Reich ( Grossdeutsches Reich ). The German bureaucrats subsequently discussed various proposals for the dismemberment of the remaining territories. Hans Frank advocated for the transformation of some or all of his province into a " Vandalengau ", in honor of the East Germanic Vandal tribes who in Ancient Times had dwelt in
17680-470: 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 . Some smaller territories were incorporated directly into the existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia , while the bulk of the land was used to create new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland . Of those, Reichsgau Wartheland
17816-479: Was secretly ordered by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1909–17), whereby, upon achieving battlefield victory, Germany would annex territories from western Poland to form the Polish Border Strip ( Polnischer Grenzstreifen , c. 30,000 km ). Lebensraum would be realised by way of ethnic cleansing , the forcible removal of the native Slavic and Jewish populations, and
17952-729: Was steadily raised by the settlement of ethnic Germans , including those displaced by the Nazi-Soviet population transfers . After the Vistula–Oder Offensive in early 1945, the Soviet Union took control over the territories. The ethnic German population either fled the Red Army or were later expelled and the territories became part of the People's Republic of Poland . Already in the fall of 1933 Adolf Hitler revealed to his closest associates his intentions to annex western Poland into an envisioned Greater Germany . In October 1939,
18088-411: Was the largest and the only one comprising solely the annexed territory. The official term used by the Nazi authorities for these areas was the "incorporated Eastern territories" ( German : Eingegliederte Ostgebiete ). They planned for a complete Germanization of the annexed territories, considering them part of their lebensraum . The local Jewish population was forced to live in ghettos , and
18224-475: Was the only Gau constituted solely from annexed territory, Danzig-West Prussia comprised also former German areas and the former Free City of Danzig . The occupied General Government remained outside Nazi Germany . The annexation violated international law (in particular, the Hague Convention IV 1907 ). Nazi Germany's officials discussed the convention and tried to circumvent it by declaring
18360-429: Was thought they would sabotage the action. The German state organization SD performed its own study on the problem. Among the things it concluded was the fact that the number of Poles was wrongly estimated in initial years; however, both the birth rate and survival of German children was higher than that of the Poles. The proposed solution to Polish problem was mass sterilization of lower classes (named "primitives" by
18496-442: Was to be resettled but when that proved impossible exterminated . Nazi Concentration camps and extermination camps were set up within the annexed territories including Auschwitz (consisting of several subcamps), Chelmno (Kulmhof) , Potulice (Potulitz) and Soldau . According to Heinemann, about 780,000 ethnic Poles in the annexed territories lost their homes between 1939 and 1944. Of these, at least 250,000 were deported to
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