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163-674: Volksdeutsche ( ethnic Germans ) topped the list as a category. They comprised people without German citizenship but of German ancestry living outside Germany (unlike German expatriates ). Though Volksdeutsche did not hold German citizenship, the strengthening and development of ethnic German communities throughout east-central Europe formed an integral part of the Nazi vision for the creation of Greater Germany ( Großdeutschland ). In some areas, such as Romania, Croatia, and Yugoslavia/Serbia, ethnic Germans were legally recognised in legislation as privileged groups. In 1931, prior to its rise to power,

326-590: A Baltic German is able to avenge her family's deaths, but commits suicide after, unable to live with meaning in the Soviet Union. Flüchtlinge depicted the sufferings of Volga German refugees in Manchuria, and how a heroic blond leader saved them; it was the first movie to win the state prize. Frisians in Peril depicted the suffering of a village of Volga Germans in the Soviet Union; it also depicted

489-551: A 1938 memorandum of the German Reich Chancellery . That document defined Volksdeutsche as "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". After 1945, the Nazi citizenship laws of 1935 ( Reichsbürgergesetz  [ de ] ) - and the associated regulations that referred to the National Socialist concepts of blood and race in connection with

652-668: A German 'race' or 'Volk', to refer to foreign nationals of some German ethnicity living in countries newly occupied by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Prior to World War II , more than 10 million ethnic Germans lived in Central and Eastern Europe. They constituted an important minority far into Russia . Because of widespread assimilation some people whom the Nazis called Volksdeutsche could no longer speak German and in fact were culturally regionalized as Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks, etc. In 1931, prior to its rise to power,

815-619: A better social status. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle organised large-scale looting of property and redistributed goods to the Volksdeutsche. They were given apartments, workshops, farms, furniture, and clothing confiscated from Jews and Poles. In turn, hundreds of thousands of the Volksdeutsche joined the German forces, either willingly or under compulsion. During World War II , the Polish citizens of German ancestry that identified with

978-783: A collection valued at over 50 million Reichsmarks. Despite the military defeat of the Polish Army in September 1939, the Polish government itself never surrendered, instead evacuating West, where it formed the Polish government in Exile . The government in exile was represented in the occupied Poland by the Government Delegation for Poland, headed by the Government Delegate for Poland . The main role of

1141-496: A comparatively low number of deportations and in the majority of East Upper Silesians (both Silesian West-Slavs as well as ethnic Poles ) being eligible for German citizenship, although their rights are alleged to have been limited compared to those of other German citizens. The German occupation authorities encouraged Poles to register with the Volksliste, and in many instances even compelled them to do so. In occupied Poland,

1304-401: A concentrated effort to destroy Polish culture . To that end, numerous cultural and educational institutions were closed or destroyed, from schools and universities, through monuments and libraries, to laboratories and museums. Many employees of said institutions were arrested and executed as part of wider persecutions of the Polish intellectual elite. Schooling of Polish children was curtailed to

1467-553: A day and with little compensation. The labourers, Jews, Poles and others, were employed in SS-owned enterprises (such as the German Armament Works, Deutsche Ausrustungswerke, DAW), but also in many private German firms – such as Messerschmitt , Junkers , Siemens , and IG Farben . Forced labourers were subject to harsh discriminatory measures. Announced on 8 March 1940 was the Polish decrees which were used as

1630-461: A few years of elementary education, as outlined by Himmler's May 1940 memorandum: "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. ... I do not think that reading is desirable". The extermination of the Polish elites was the first stage of the Nazis' plan to destroy

1793-532: A legal basis for foreign labourers in Germany. The decrees required Poles to wear identifying purple P's on their clothing, made them subject to a curfew, and banned them from using public transportation as well as many German "cultural life" centres and "places of amusement" (this included churches and restaurants). Sexual relations between Germans and Poles were forbidden as Rassenschande (race defilement) under penalty of death. To keep them segregated from

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1956-478: A period of 30 years, approximately 12.5 million Germans would be resettled in the Slavic areas, including Poland; with some versions of the plan requiring the resettlement of at least 100 million Germans over a century. The Slavic inhabitants of those lands would be eliminated as the result of genocidal policies; and the survivors would be resettled further east, in less hospitable areas of Eurasia , beyond

2119-558: A plurality of the population in all territories annexed by the Soviet Union. By the end of the invasion, the Soviet Union had taken over 51.6% of the territory of Poland (about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000 sq mi)), with over 13,200,000 people. The ethnic composition of these areas was as follows: 38% Poles (~5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians, and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees, mostly Jews (198,000), who fled from areas occupied by Germany. All territory invaded by

2282-415: A result, tens of thousands of people found "guilty" of being educated (members of the intelligentsia, from clergymen to government officials, doctors, teachers and journalists) or wealthy (landowners, business owners, and so on) were either executed on spot, sometimes in mass executions , or imprisoned, some destined for the concentration camps. Some of the mass executions were reprisal actions for actions of

2445-444: A result, the two governments never officially declared war on each other. The Soviets therefore did not classify Polish military prisoners as prisoners of war but as rebels against the new legal government of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia. The Soviets killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war . Some, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński , who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were executed during

2608-573: A second round of colonisation with the goal of Germanisation after 1832. Prussia passed laws to encourage Germanisation of the Prussian Partition including the provinces of Posen and West Prussia in the late 19th century. The Prussian Settlement Commission relocated 154,000 colonists, including locals. The reconstitution of Poland following the Treaty of Versailles (1919) made ethnic German minorities of some Prussian provinces of

2771-781: A special Germanization program. Polish women deported to Germany as forced labourers and who bore children were a common victim of this policy, with their infants regularly taken. If the child passed the battery of racial, physical and psychological tests, they were sent on to Germany for "Germanization". At least 4,454 children were given new German names, forbidden to use the Polish language, and reeducated in Nazi institutions. Few were ever reunited with their original families. Those deemed as unsuitable for Germanization for being "not Aryan enough" were sent to orphanages or even to concentration camps like Auschwitz, where many were murdered, often by intracardiac injections of phenol . For Polish forced laborers, in some cases if an examination of

2934-460: Is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs.", or Nur für Deutsche ("Only for Germans"), commonly found on many public utilities and places such as trams, parks, cafes, cinemas, theaters, and others. The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children who possessed Nordic racial characteristics. An estimated total of 50,000 children, majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands, but some separated from their parents, were taken into

3097-1070: Is seduced and abandoned by a Czech, and such a relationship leads to her drowning herself. Before and during World War II , some ethnic Germans gathered around local Nazi organizations (sponsored financially by the German Foreign Office ), actively supported the Nazis in countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. During the social and economic tensions of the Great Depression , some had begun to feel aggrieved with their minority status. They participated in espionage, sabotage and other Fifth column means in their countries of origin, trained and commanded by Abwehr . In November 1938 Nazi Germany organized German paramilitary units made out German minority members in Polish Pomerania that were to engage in diversion, sabotage as well as political murder and ethnic cleansing upon German invasion of Poland. Reich intelligence

3260-468: 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". Ethnic Germans living outside Germany shed their identity as Auslandsdeutsche (Germans abroad), and morphed into the Volksdeutsche in a process of self-radicalisation. This process gave

3423-661: The Allies . Particularly in Polish Pomerania and Polish Silesia, many of the people who were forced to sign the Volksliste played crucial roles in the anti-Nazi underground, which was noted in a memo to the Polish Government in Exile which stated "In Wielkopolska there's bitter hatred of the Volksdeutsche while in Silesia and Polish Pomerania it's the opposite, the secret organization depends in large measure on

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3586-479: The Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Majdanek concentration camps . By 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had already reached two million. The Nazi plans also called for Poland's 3.3 million Jews to be exterminated ; the non-Jewish majority's extermination was planned for the long term and initiated through the mass murder of its political, religious, and intellectual elites at first, which

3749-914: The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland , Juliusz Bursche . In the territories annexed to Nazi Germany, in particular with regards to the westernmost incorporated territories—the so-called Wartheland — the Nazis aimed for a complete "Germanization", i.e. full cultural, political, economic and social assimilation. The Polish language was forbidden to be taught even in elementary schools; landmarks from streets to cities were renamed en masse ( Łódź became Litzmannstadt, and so on). All manner of Polish enterprises, up to small shops, were taken over, with prior owners rarely compensated. Signs posted in public places prohibited non-Germans from entering these places warning: "Entrance

3912-538: The General Government there were 120,000 Volksdeutsche. Volksdeutsche of Polish ethnic origins were treated by the Poles with special contempt. Because of actions by some Volksdeutsche and particularly the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany , after the end of the war, the Polish authorities tried many Volksdeutsche for high treason. In the postwar period, many other ethnic Germans were expelled to

4075-464: The German Empire citizens of the Polish nation state . Ethnic German inhabitants of provinces of the dissolved Austro-Hungarian Empire , such as Bukovina Germans , Danube Swabians , Sudeten Germans and Transylvanian Saxons , became citizens of newly established Slavic or Magyar nation-states and of Romania. Tensions between the new administration and the ethnic German minority arose in

4238-763: The German Quarter in Moscow (which also included Dutch, British and other western or northern European settlers whom the Russians came to indiscriminately refer to as "Germans"). They were only gradually allowed in other cities, so as to prevent the spread of alien ideas to the general population. In his youth, Peter the Great spent much time in the 'German' quarter. When he became Tsar, he brought more German experts (and other foreigners) into Russia, and particularly into government service, in his attempts to westernise

4401-747: The Polish Corridor . The Austrian Germans also found themselves not allowed to join Germany as German Austria was strictly forbidden to join Germany as well as the name "German Austria" was forbidden so the name was changed back to just "Austria" and the First Austrian Republic was created in 1919. During the Nazi years, the German Nazis used the term "Volksdeutsche", by which they meant racially German since they believed in

4564-725: The Polish Government in Exile , advised Poles to sign up to the Volksliste in order to avoid atrocities and mass murder that happened in other parts of the country. In occupied Poland, Volksdeutscher enjoyed privileges and were subject to conscription, or draft, into the German army . In occupied Pomerania , the Gauleiter of the Danzig-West Prussia region Albert Forster ordered a list of people considered of German ethnicity to be made in 1941. Due to insignificant voluntary registrations by February 1942, Forster made signing

4727-610: The Polish Workers' Party (Polish Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR), though significantly less numerous than the Home Army. In February 1942, when AK was formed, it numbered about 100,000 members. In the beginning of 1943, it had reached a strength of about 200,000. In the summer of 1944, when Operation Tempest begun AK reached its highest membership numbers. Estimates of AK membership in the first half of 1944 and summer that year vary, with about 400,000 being common. With

4890-476: The Polish language as their mother tongue, and most of the Polish native speakers were Roman Catholics . With regards to the remainder, 15% were Ukrainians, 8.5% Jews, 4.7% Belarusians, and 2.2% Germans. Germans intended to exploit the fact that the Second Polish Republic was an ethnically diverse territory, and their policy aimed to " divide and conquer " the ethnically diverse population of

5053-493: The Polish resistance movement . Around six million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of the occupation , half of whom were ethnic Poles and the other half of whom were Polish Jews . Over 90% of the deaths were non-military losses, because most civilians were deliberately targeted in various actions which were launched by the Germans and Soviets. Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945,

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5216-785: The Polish–Ukrainian War and the Ukrainian–Soviet War . There were large groups of prewar Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside their traditional ethnic or cultural groups. Their enthusiasm however faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions were aimed at all groups equally, regardless of their political stance. British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore states that Soviet terror in

5379-1051: The Potsdam Agreement from 1945 to 1948 towards the end and after the war. Those who became ethnic Germans, by registering in the Deutsche Volksliste and Reichsdeutsche, retained German citizenship during the years of Allied military occupation. Citizenship was further retained after the establishment of East Germany and West Germany in 1949, and later in the reunified Germany. In 1953 the Federal Republic of Germany – by its Federal Expellee Law – naturalised many more East European nationals of German ethnicity, who were neither German citizens nor had enrolled in any 'Volksliste', but had been stranded as refugees in West Germany and fled or were expelled due to their German or alleged German ethnicity. An estimated 12 million people fled or were expelled from

5542-656: The Sikorski-Mayski Agreement ; but the Soviets broke them off again in 1943 after the Polish government demanded an independent examination of the recently discovered Katyn burial pits. The Soviets then lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of

5705-540: The Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 28, 1941, and from the beginning of 1942 those Soviet Germans who were deemed suitable for hard work (men aged from 15 to 55 and women from 16 to 45) were mobilised for forced labour into Working columns where they lived in a prison-like environment, and sometimes, together with regular inmates, were put in prison camps. Hundreds of thousands died or became incapacitated due to

5868-656: The Ural Mountains , such as Siberia . At the plan's fulfillment, no Slavs or Jews would remain in Central and Eastern Europe. Generalplan Ost , essentially a grand plan to commit ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts, the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), covered actions which would be undertaken during the war, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), covered actions which would be undertaken after

6031-464: The Volksdeutsche " (the memo referred to those of Category III, not I and II). In the turmoil of the postwar years, the Communist government did not consider this sufficient mitigation. It prosecuted many double-agent Volksdeutsche and sentenced some to death. The secret protocols of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact created domestic problems for Hitler. Supporting the Soviet invasion became one of

6194-466: The Volksliste mandatory and empowered local authorities to use force and threats to implement the decree. Consequently, the number of signatories rose to almost a million, or about 55% of the 1944 population. The special case of Polish Pomerania , where terror against civilians was particularly intense, and where, unlike in rest of occupied Poland, signing of the list was mandatory for many people,

6357-679: The Volyn massacre . In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated 25 May 1940, Heinrich Himmler , head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), wrote: "We need to divide the East's different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible". Almost immediately after the invasion, Germans began forcibly conscripting laborers. Jews were drafted to repair war damage as early as October, with women and children 12 or older required to work; shifts could take half

6520-624: The Zichenau Region . The nationality policy in East Upper Silesia was different from the one applied in other Polish areas included in the Reich. The motivation for the difference was the different local economic conditions and the necessity to keep qualified manpower essential to Silesian heavy industry. In some historical analyses, it has also been noticed, although less explicitly, that nationality policy of local German elites

6683-618: The massacre of Lwów professors . The Nazis also persecuted the Catholic Church in Poland and other, smaller religions. Nazi policy towards the Catholic Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where they set about systematically dismantling the Church – arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen and nuns were murdered or sent to concentration and labor camps. Already in 1939, 80% of

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6846-499: The willing Polish citizens into four groups of people with ethnic Germanic heritage. Group One included so-called ethnic Germans who had taken an active part in the struggle for the Germanization of Poland. Group Two included those ethnic Germans who had not taken such an active part, but had "preserved" their German characteristics. Group Three included individuals of alleged German stock who had become "Polonized", but whom it

7009-560: The "securing" of German national interests. Nazi plunder included private and public art collections, artefacts, precious metals, books, and personal possessions. Hitler and Göring in particular were interested in acquiring looted art treasures from occupied Europe, the former planning to use the stolen art to fill the galleries of the planned Führermuseum (Leader's Museum), and the latter for his personal collection. Göring, having stripped almost all of occupied Poland of its artworks within six months of Germany's invasion, ultimately grew

7172-649: The Becker brothers became an integral part of the Nazi Holocaust machine. In September 1939 in German occupied Poland , an armed ethnic German militia called Selbstschutz (Self-Defence) was created. It organised the mass murder of Polish elites in Operation Tannenberg . At the beginning of 1940, the Selbstschutz organization was disbanded, and its members transferred to various units of

7335-654: The Catholic clergy of the Warthegau region had been deported to concentration camps. Primate of Poland, Cardinal August Hlond , submitted an official account of the persecutions of the Polish Church to the Vatican. In his final observations for Pope Pius XII , Hlond wrote: "Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the... territories of Poland which have been incorporated into

7498-568: The Conference of Potsdam considered the "transfer" of "German populations" from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary an effort to be undertaken (see article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement ), although they asked a halt because of the inflicted burden for the Allies to feed and house the destitute expellees and to share that burden among the Allies. France, which was not represented in Potsdam, rejected

7661-787: The DVL, opting for deportation to the General Government over Germanisation. Their children were often taken for Germanisation while they were deported. In some parts of German-occupied Polish Silesia, the Volksliste was compulsory, and both the Polish government in-Exile and Bishop of Katowice, Stanisław Adamski , condoned signing it "to mask and save the Polish element in upper Silesia." Ethnic Poles from German-occupied Polish Silesia were also subject to pressure from Nazi authorities to sign category III or IV. In many cases people were imprisoned, tortured and their close ones threatened if they refused to sign; deportation to concentration camps

7824-474: The General-Government area. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Germany for forced labour in industry and agriculture, where many thousands died. Poles were also conscripted for labour in Poland, and were held in labour camps all over the country, again with a high death rate. There was a general shortage of food, fuel for heating and medical supplies, and there was a high death rate among

7987-422: The German colony of Shonfeld, Romas were burned in farms. During the winter of 1941/1942, German Selbstschutz units participated in the shooting, together with Ukrainian People's Militia and Romanian gendarmes , of some 18,000 Jews . In the camp of Bogdanovka , tens of thousands of Jews were subject to mass shootings, barn burnings and killing by hand grenades. Heinrich Himmler was sufficiently impressed by

8150-631: The German invasion and occupation of Polish territory, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens, including teenagers, became labourers in Germany, few by choice. Historian Jan Gross estimates that "no more than 15 per cent" of Polish workers volunteered to go to work in Germany. A total of 2.3 million Polish citizens, including 300,000 POWs, were deported to Germany as forced laborers. They tended to have to work longer hours for lower wages than their German counterparts. A network of Nazi concentration camps were established on German-controlled territories, many of them in occupied Poland, including one of

8313-490: The German invasion of the Soviet Union, the expulsions slowed down, as more and more trains were diverted for military logistics, rather than being made available for population transfers. Nonetheless, in late 1942 and 1943, large-scale expulsions also took place in the General Government, affecting at least 110,000 Poles in the Zamość – Lublin region. Tens of thousands of the expelled, with no place to go, were simply imprisoned in

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8476-417: The German population, they were often housed in segregated barracks behind barbed wire. Nonetheless, many Polish women were sexually enslaved in German camp and military brothels . Labor shortages in the German war economy became critical especially after German defeat in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943. This led to the increased use of prisoners as forced labourers in German industries. Following

8639-584: The Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including 3,000,000 Jews in what was described during the Nuremberg trials as a deliberate and systematic genocide. In August 2009, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total. In September 1939, Poland

8802-446: The Germans that, with the government change, they could close down their Baltic consulates by September 1. The Soviet annexations in Romania caused further strain. While Germany had given the Soviets Bessarabia in the secret protocols, it had not given them North Bukovina . Germany wanted guarantees of the safety of property of ethnic Germans, security for the 125,000 Volksdeutsche in Bessarabia and North Bukovina, and reassurance that

8965-422: The Germans. They were aided by some regular German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of members of the German minority in Poland, the Volksdeutsche . The Nazi regime 's policy of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites was known as Operation Tannenberg . This included not only those resisting actively, but also those simply capable of doing so by the virtue of their social status . As

9128-438: The Great (reigned 1740–1786) settled around 300,000 colonists in the eastern provinces of Prussia, acquired in the First Partition of Poland of 1772, with the intention of replacing the Polish nobility. He treated the Poles with contempt and likened the "slovenly Polish trash" in newly occupied West Prussia to Iroquois , the historic Native American confederacy based in what is now the state of New York. Prussia encouraged

9291-430: The Interior of the Reich (Frick) and of Heinrich Himmler in his function as Kommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums (Commissioner for the strengthening of Germanhood). Thus, Himmler's plan was finally implemented a year and a half after the ad hoc categorisation processes had begun in Poland. On 3 April 1941 it was expanded to all western Polish areas ( Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , East Upper Silesia , and

9454-515: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. They moved Lithuania into the Soviet sphere of influence and shifted the border in Poland to the east, giving Germany more territory. By this arrangement, often described as a fourth partition of Poland , the Soviet Union secured almost all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Western Bug and San. This amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres of land, inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens. The Red Army had originally sowed confusion among

9617-423: The Nazi Party established the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP (Foreign Organisation of the German National Socialist Workers Party), whose task was to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the German minorities living outside Germany. In 1936, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic German Welfare Office), commonly known as VoMi, was set up under the direction of Himmler as RKFDV of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) as

9780-417: The Nazi party established the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP/AO (Foreign Organisation of the Nazi Party), whose task it was to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the ethnic German minorities viewed as Volksdeutsche in Nazi ideology. In 1936, the government set up the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic Germans' Liaison Office), commonly known as VoMi, under the jurisdiction of the SS as the liaison bureau. It

9943-399: The Nazi policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing , and profited from the expulsion and murder of their non-German neighbors throughout Eastern Europe. For example, in Ukraine the Volksdeutsche directly participated in the Holocaust and were involved in deportation of local farmers and their families; Volksdeutsche figures like Arthur Boss from Odessa ( Blobel 's right-hand man) or

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10106-424: The Nazi regime attempted to destroy Polish culture. As part of that policy, the Nazis confiscated Polish national heritage assets and much private property. Acting on the legal decrees of 19 October and 16 December ( Verordnung über die Beschlagnahme Kunstgegeständen im Generalgouvernement ), several German agencies began the process of looting Polish museums and other collections, ostensibly considered necessary for

10269-415: The Nazi regime the nucleus around which the new Volksgemeinschaft was established across the German borders. Volksdeutsche were further divided into "racial" groups—minorities within a state minority—based on special cultural, social, and historic criteria elaborated by the Nazis. According to the historian Doris Bergen , Adolf Hitler coined the definition of Volksdeutsche which appeared in

10432-403: The Nazi-conquered former Yugoslavia joined the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, the majority conscripted involuntarily as judged by the Nuremberg Trials . Yet "[a]fter the initial rush of Volksdeutsche to join, voluntary enlistments tapered off, and the new unit did not reach division size. Therefore, in August 1941, the SS discarded the voluntary approach, and after a favourable judgement from

10595-417: The Nazis. Occupation of Poland (1939%E2%80%931945) The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II (1939–1945) began with the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and

10758-540: The Polish nation and its culture. The disappearance of the Poles' leadership was seen as necessary to the establishment of the Germans as the Poles' sole leaders. Proscription lists ( Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen ), prepared before the war started, identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite and intelligentsia leaders who were deemed unfriendly to Germany. Already during the 1939 German invasion, dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen ) were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting

10921-477: The Polish nation faced the dilemma whether to register in the Deutsche Volksliste. Many families had lived in Poland for centuries and more-recent immigrants had arrived over 30 years before the war. They faced the choice of registering and being regarded as traitors by the Poles, or not signing and being treated by the Nazi occupation as traitors to the Germanic race . Polish Silesian Catholic Church authorities, led by bishop Stanisław Adamski and with agreement from

11084-402: The Polish nation, were confronted with the dilemma of whether to sign the Volksliste . This group included ethnic Germans whose families had lived in Poland proper for centuries, and Germans (who became citizens of Poland after 1920) from the part of Germany that had been transferred to Poland after World War I . Many such ethnic Germans had married Poles and remained defiant. Often the choice

11247-414: The Polish population as a result. Finally, thousands of Poles were killed as reprisals for resistance attacks on German forces or for other reasons. In all, about three million Poles died as a result of the German occupation, more than 10% of the pre-war population. When this is added to the three million Polish Jews who were killed as a matter of policy by the Germans, Poland lost about 22% of its population,

11410-481: The Polish resistance, with German officials adhering to the collective guilt principle and holding entire communities responsible for the actions of unidentified perpetrators. One of the most infamous German operations was the Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion ( AB-Aktion in short, German for Special Pacification ), a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia, including many university professors, teachers and priests. In

11573-402: The Red Army was annexed to the Soviet Union (after a rigged election ), and split between the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR , with the exception of the Wilno area taken from Poland, which was transferred to sovereign Lithuania for several months and subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union in the form of the Lithuanian SSR on 3 August 1940. Following the German invasion of

11736-505: The Reich as labourers. A "racial assessment" was also performed with regard to the ethnic German returnee with often disappointing results. In 2006, German historian Götz Aly said the Nazi policy was based on French Republic selection criteria that were used after the First World War to expel ethnic Germans from Alsace. From the beginning of the German occupation of Poland , a number of categorisation schemes were developed at

11899-433: The Reich were a danger to it. Persons who had been assigned to one of these categories but who denied their ties to Germany were dealt with very harshly and ordered to concentration camps. Men who had "a particularly bad political record"—had supported persecutions or boycotts of ethnic Germans—were to be sent to concentration camps immediately; their children were to be removed for Germanisation, and their wives either sent to

12062-623: The Reich. A significant proportion of them were in Eastern Europe – i.e., Poland , Ukraine , the Baltic states , and Romania , Hungary and Slovakia , where many were located in villages along the Danube and in Russia . The Nazi goal of expansion assigned the Volksdeutsche a special role in German plans, to bring them back to German citizenship and to elevate them to power over

12225-518: The Reich." By October 1943, around 90 percent (1,290,000) of Silesians signed the DVL. The total number of registrants for the DVL is estimated to be approximately 2.7 million, with 1 million in classes I and II and the remaining 1.7 million in classes III and IV. In the General Government there were 120,000 Volksdeutsche. Deutsche Volksliste, late 1942 After Germany occupied Yugoslavia , they partitioned it into various parts including Croatia and Serbia, where ethnic Germans became legalised members of

12388-512: The Reich...". The smaller Evangelical churches of Poland also suffered. The entirety of the Protestant clergy of the Cieszyn region of Silesia were arrested and deported to concentration camps at Mauthausen, Buchenwald , Dachau and Oranienburg. Protestant clergy leaders who perished in those purges included charity activist Karol Kulisz , theology professor Edmund Bursche , and Bishop of

12551-833: The SS court in Belgrade, imposed a mandatory military obligation on all Volksdeutsche in Serbia-Banat, the first of its kind for non-Reich Germans." In the former Yugoslavia a majority of ethnic Germans became members of the Schwäbisch-Deutscher Kulturbund (Swabian German Cultural Association), and reprisals on this group by Tito's partisans resulted in many immediate revenge killings in 1944 and incarceration of approximately 150,000 ethnic Germans in 1945. Most ethnic Germans fled or were expelled from European countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary) under

12714-789: The SS, Gestapo and the German police. Throughout the invasion of Poland , some ethnic German minority groups assisted Nazi Germany in the war effort: they committed sabotage, diverted regular forces and committed numerous atrocities against civilian population. After Germany occupied western Poland, it established a central registration bureau, called the German People's List ( Deutsche Volksliste , DVL), whereby Poles of German ethnicity were registered as Volksdeutsche . The German occupants encouraged such registration, in many cases forcing it or subjecting Poles of German ethnicity to terror assaults if they refused. Those who joined this group were given benefits including better food, as well as

12877-451: The Soviet Union in 1941, most of the Polish territories annexed by the Soviets were attached to the enlarged General Government. The end of the war saw the USSR occupy all of Poland and most of eastern Germany. The Soviets gained recognition of their pre-1941 annexations of Polish territory; as compensation, substantial portions of eastern Germany were ceded to Poland, whose borders were significantly shifted westwards . For months prior to

13040-472: The Soviet Union (USSR), both of which intended to eradicate Poland's culture and subjugate its people. In the summer-autumn of 1941, the lands which were annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR (" Operation Barbarossa "). After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and crossed into Poland from

13203-524: The Soviet Union and non-German-speaking Central Europe, many of them being 'Volksdeutsche'. Most left the Soviet -occupied territories of Central and Eastern Europe; they comprised the largest migration of any European people in modern history. The then three Allies had agreed to the expulsions during negotiations in the midst of war. The western powers hoped to avoid ethnic Germans being an issue again in Central and Eastern Europe. The three Allies at

13366-466: The Soviets had argued. The agreement covered protected migration to Germany within two and a half months of Volksdeutsche, and similar migration to the Soviet Union of ethnic Russians, Baltic and "White Russian" "nationals" from German-held territories. In many cases, the resulting population transfers resulted in resettlement of Volksdeutsche on land previously held by ethnic Poles or Jews in now German-occupied territories. The agreement formally defined

13529-632: The Third Reich, "other" ethnic Germans, Poles of German extraction (Poles with some German ancestry), and Poles who were related to Germans by marriage. Himmler's solution to the confusing and competing categorisation schemes was the Deutsche Volksliste (DVL), a uniform categorisation scheme that could be applied universally. The Racial Office of the Nazi Party had produced a registry called the Deutsche Volksliste in 1939, but this

13692-525: The Volksbund fled from the region. They were called 'Svabo' by their Serbian, Hungarian, Croatian, and Romanian neighbors. Most of the Danube Swabians who were not members in the so-called Volksbund were expelled to Allied-occupied Germany and Allied-occupied Austria in 1946-1948, following the Potsdam Agreement . After Romania acquired parts of Soviet Ukraine, the Germans there came under

13855-713: The Volksdeutsche communities and the work of the Selbstschutz to order that these methods be copied in Ukraine. In the former Yugoslavia, the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen was formed with about 50,000 ethnic Germans from the Banat region of Serbia . It was conspicuous in its operations against the Yugoslav Partisans and civilian population. About 100,000 ethnic Germans from

14018-539: The Volksdeutsche, while the Soviets requested 50 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ for their property claims in German-occupied territories. The two nations reached general agreement on German shipments of 10.5-cm flak cannons, gold, machinery and other items. On 10 January 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the German–Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement to settle all of the open disputes which

14181-611: The Volksliste were subject to a "rehabilitation" process, as of 1950 1,104,100 former German nationals and Volksliste members lived in Poland. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, some Volksdeutsche were tried by the Polish authorities for high treason. Even now, in Poland, the word Volksdeutsch is regarded as an insult, synonymous with a traitor. Volksdeutsche In Nazi German terminology, Volksdeutsche ( German pronunciation: [ˈfɔlksˌdɔʏtʃə] ) were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship." The term

14344-592: The Waffen-SS, they would be forced into conscription in any case. According to head of recruitment for the Waffen SS, Gottlob Berger , no one in Germany or elsewhere cared for what happened with the ethnic Germans anyway, making forced recruitment easy to force upon ethnic German communities. Among the indigenous populations in the Nazi-occupied lands, Volksdeutsche became a term of ignominy. During

14507-483: The authority of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle , which deployed SS personnel to several settlements. They eventually contained German mayors, farms, schools and ethnic German paramilitary groups functioning as police called Selbstschutz ("Self-protection"). German colonists and Selbstschutz forces engaged in extensive acts of ethnic cleansing , massacring Jewish and Roma populations. In

14670-495: The beginning of World War II in 1939, German newspapers and leaders had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland. British ambassador Sir H. Kennard sent four statements in August 1939 to Viscount Halifax regarding Hitler's claims about the treatment Germans were receiving in Poland; he came to

14833-752: The border between Germany and the Soviet Union areas between the Igorka River and the Baltic Sea . After the Russian Revolution of 1917 , the government granted the Volga Germans an autonomous republic. Joseph Stalin abolished the Volga German ASSR after Operation Barbarossa , the German invasion of the USSR. Most of Soviet Germans in the USSR were deported to Siberia , Kazakhstan , and Central Asia by Decree of

14996-540: The campaign itself. On 24 September, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec , near Zamość. The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack , on 28 September. Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre . The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following

15159-565: The camps as well, if they had also supported the actions, or removed for Germanisation. Persons of categories III and IV were sent to Germany as labourers and subject to conscription into the Wehrmacht . Himmler had the plan prepared and then ordered it to be administered by Wilhelm Frick 's Interior Ministry. The Deutsche Volksliste was mandated in March 1941 by decrees of the Minister of

15322-718: The civilian branch of the Underground State was to preserve the continuity of the Polish state as a whole, including its institutions. These institutions included the police, the courts , and schools . By the final years of the war, the civilian structure of the Underground State included an underground parliament, administration, judiciary ( courts and police ), secondary and higher-level education, and supported various cultural activities such as publishing of newspapers and books, underground theatres, lectures, exhibitions, concerts and safeguarded various works of art. It also dealt with providing social services , including to

15485-462: The clergy, but also noblemen and intellectuals. The Soviets also executed about 65,000 Poles. Soldiers of the Red Army and their officers behaved like conquerors, looting and stealing Polish treasures. When Stalin was told about it, he answered: "If there is no ill will, they [the soldiers] can be pardoned". The Soviet Union had ceased to recognize the Polish state at the start of the invasion. As

15648-409: The concept of volksdeutsch - were rescinded in Germany. For Adolf Hitler and the other ethnic Germans of his time, the term " Volksdeutsche " also carried overtones of blood and race not captured in the common English translation "ethnic Germans". According to German estimates in the 1930s, about 30 million Volksdeutsche and Auslandsdeutsche (German citizens residing abroad) lived outside

15811-609: The conclusion all the claims by Hitler and the Nazis were exaggerations or false claims. From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfilment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germans in Central and Eastern Europe. The goal of the occupation was to turn the former territory of Poland into ethnically German "living space", by deporting and exterminating

15974-704: The conquered territories by a policy of Germanising certain classes of the conquered people, mainly those among the Czechs, Poles, and Slovenes who had German ancestors. Thus, the Nazis encouraged the Polish offspring of Germans, or Poles who had family connections with Germans, to join the 'Volksliste', often applying pressure to compel registration. Those who joined enjoyed a privileged status and received special benefits. Registrants were given better food, apartments, farms, workshops, furniture, and clothing—much of it having been confiscated from Jews and Poles who were deported or sent to Nazi concentration camps . Determining who

16137-479: The course of the war, over two million of whom were ethnic Poles (the remainder being mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians ). The vast majority of those killed were civilians, mostly killed by the actions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Aside from being sent to Nazi concentration camps, most ethnic Poles died through shelling and bombing campaigns, mass executions, forced starvation, revenge murder, ill health, and slave labour. Along with Auschwitz II-Birkenau ,

16300-489: The decision of the Three of Potsdam and did not absorb expellees in its zone of occupation. The three Allies had to accept the reality on the ground, since expulsions of Volksdeutsche and Central and Eastern European nationals of German or alleged German ethnicity who never had enrolled as Volksdeutsche, were going on already. Local authorities forced most of the remaining ethnic Germans to leave between 1945 and 1950. Remnants of

16463-625: The destitute Jewish population (through the council to Aid Jews, or Żegota ). Through the Directorate of Civil Resistance (1941–1943) the civil arm was also involved in lesser acts of resistance, such as minor sabotage , although in 1943 this department was merged with the Directorate of Covert Resistance , forming the Directorate of Underground Resistance , subordinate to the Armia Krajowa (AK) (Polish Home Army). In response to

16626-515: The early years of the Second World War (i.e., before the US entered the war), a small number of Americans of German origin returned to Germany; generally they were immigrants or children of immigrants, rather than descendants of migrations more distant in time. Some of these enlisted and fought in the German army. Ethnic Germans throughout Europe benefited financially during World War II from

16789-557: The empire. He also brought in German engineers to supervise the construction of the new city of Saint Petersburg . Catherine the Great , herself ethnically German, invited Germanic farmers to immigrate and settle in Russian lands along the Volga River . She guaranteed them the right to retain their language, religion and culture. Also in other areas with an ethnic German minority people of other than German descent assimilated with

16952-614: The ethnic German community survive in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. A significant ethnic German community has continued in Siebenbürgen ( Transylvania ) in Romania and in Oberschlesien ( Upper Silesia ) but most of it migrated to West Germany throughout the 1980s. There are also remnant German populations near Mukachevo in western Ukraine. The term Volksdeutsche is generally avoided today due to its usage by

17115-726: The ethnic German culture and formed then a part of the minority. Examples are people of Baltic and Scandinavian descent, who assimilated into the minority of the Baltic Germans . Jews of Posen province , Galicia , Bukovina and Bohemia , with their Yiddish culture derived in part from their German heritage, often mingled into the ethnic German culture, thus forming part of the various ethnic German minorities. But anti-Semitic Nazis later rejected Jewish ethnic Germans and all Jewish German citizens as 'racially' German. Ethnic Germans were also sent in organised colonisation attempts aiming at Germanisation of conquered Polish areas. Frederick

17278-454: The ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000). Areas occupied by the USSR were annexed to Soviet territory, with the exception of the Wilno area, which was transferred to Lithuania, although it

17441-415: The film Heimkehr drew on such putative events as the rescue of Volksdeutsche by the arrival of German tanks. Heimkehr' s introduction explicitly states that hundreds of thousands of Poles of German ethnicity suffered as the characters in the film did. Menschen im Sturm reprised Heimkehr' s effort to justify the invasion of Slavonia , using many of the same atrocities. In The Red Terror ,

17604-645: The first gassing experiment in September 1941. According to Polish historian Franciszek Piper , approximately 140,000–150,000 Poles went through Auschwitz, with about half of them perishing there due to executions, medical experiments, or due to starvation and disease. About 100,000 Poles were imprisoned in Majdanek camp, with similar fatality rate. About 30,000 Poles died at Mauthausen , 20,000 at Sachsenhausen and Gross-Rosen each, 17,000 at Neuengamme and Ravensbrueck each, 10,000 at Dachau , and tens of thousands perished in other camps and prisons. Following

17767-561: The former territory of Poland. Those plans began to be implemented almost immediately after German troops took control of Poland. As early as October 1939, many Poles were expelled from the annexed lands in order to make room for German colonizers. Only those Poles who had been selected for Germanization, approximately 1.7 million including thousands of children who had been taken from their parents, were permitted to remain, and if they resisted it, they were to be sent to concentration camps, because "German blood must not be utilized in

17930-757: The ghettos with Poles living on the "Aryan Side" and the Jews living on the "Jewish Side", despite the risk of death many Poles risked their lives by forging "Aryan Papers" for Jews to make them appear as non-Jewish Poles so they could live on the Aryan side and avoid Nazi persecution. Another law implemented by the Germans was that Poles were forbidden from buying from Jewish shops in which, if they did, they were subject to execution. Jewish children were also distributed among safe houses and church networks. Jewish children were often placed in church orphanages and convents. Some three million gentile Polish citizens perished during

18093-635: The harsh conditions. A significant portion of Volksdeutsche in Hungary joined the SS , which was a pattern repeated also in Romania (with 54,000 locals serving in the SS by the end of 1943). The majority of 200,000 Volksdeutsche from the area of Danube who served with the SS were from Hungary. As early as 1942, some 18,000 Hungarian Germans joined the SS. they have been called Danube Swabians . After World War II, approximately 185,000 Volksdeutsche in

18256-553: The highest proportion of any European country in World War II. Poland had a large Jewish population, and according to Davies, more Jews were both killed and rescued in Poland, than in any other nation, the rescue figure usually being put at between 100,000 and 150,000. Thousands of Poles have been honoured as Righteous Among the Nations – constituting the largest national contingent. When AK Home Army Intelligence discovered

18419-698: The imminent arrival of the Soviet army, the AK launched the Warsaw Uprising against the German army on 1 August 1944. The uprising, receiving little assistance from the nearby Soviet forces, eventually failed, significantly reducing the Home Army's power and position. About 200,000 Poles, most of them civilians, lost their lives in the Uprising. The Polish civilian population suffered under German occupation in many ways. Large numbers were expelled from land intended for German colonisation, and forced to resettle in

18582-512: The interest of a foreign nation". By the end of 1940, at least 325,000 Poles from annexed lands were forced to abandon most of their property and forcibly resettled in the General Government district. There were numerous fatalities among the very young and very old, many of whom either perished en route or perished in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice , Smukal , and Toruń . The expulsions continued in 1941, with another 45,000 Poles forced to move eastwards, but following

18745-535: The interest of a foreign nation," and such people were sent to concentration camps. Persons ineligible for the List were classified as stateless, and all Poles from the occupied territory, that is from the Government General of Poland, as distinct from the incorporated territory, were classified as non-protected. According to the 1931 Polish census , out of a prewar population of 35 million, 66% spoke

18908-412: The invasion of Poland in 1939, most of the approximately 3.5 million Polish Jews were rounded up and put into newly established ghettos by Nazi Germany. The ghetto system was unsustainable, as by the end of 1941 the Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for food deliveries and no chance to earn their own keep. At 20 January 1942 Wannsee Conference , held near Berlin, new plans were outlined for

19071-458: The largest and most infamous, Auschwitz (Oświęcim). Those camps were officially designed as labor camps, and many displayed the motto Arbeit macht frei ("Work brings freedom"). Only high-ranking officials knew that one of the purposes of some of the camps, known as extermination camps (or death camps), was mass murder of the undesirable minorities; officially the prisoners were used in enterprises such as production of synthetic rubber , as

19234-431: The liaison bureau for ethnic Germans and was headed by SS- Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz . According to the testimony of Kuno Wirsich: The aim of the German People's List was that those people who were of German descent and of German ethnic descent were to be ascertained and were to be Germanised. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it annexed the western part of the country (taking East Upper Silesia , creating

19397-551: The local level, leading to confusion. For example, in October 1939, the governor of the Warthegau , Gauleiter Arthur Greiser , established a central bureau for the registration of Volksdeutsche , the Deutsche Volksliste ( DVL: German Peoples List), also known as the Volksliste . At the beginning of 1940, distinctions were introduced to divide those registered in the DVL into four categories: ethnic Germans active on behalf of

19560-524: The locals by claiming that they were arriving to save Poland from the Nazis. Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. Polish and Jewish citizens may at first have preferred a Soviet regime to a German one, but the Soviets soon proved as hostile and destructive towards the Polish people and their culture as the Nazis. They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. During

19723-435: The main six extermination camps in occupied Poland were used predominantly to exterminate Jews. Stutthof concentration camp was used for mass extermination of Poles. A number of civilian labour camps ( Gemeinschaftslager ) for Poles ( Polenlager ) were established inside Polish territory. Many Poles died in German camps. The first non-German prisoners at Auschwitz were Poles who were the majority of inmates there until 1942 when

19886-500: The most ideologically difficult aspects of the countries' relationship. The secret protocols caused Hitler to hurriedly evacuate ethnic German families, who had lived in the Baltic countries for centuries and now classified as Volksdeutsche, while officially condoning the invasions. When the three Baltic countries, not knowing about the secret protocols, sent letters protesting the Soviet invasions to Berlin, Ribbentrop returned them. In August 1940, Soviet Foreign minister Molotov told

20049-537: The murder of a young woman for an affair with a Russian—in accordance with Nazi principle of Rassenschande —as an ancient German custom. Sexual contact between what the Nazis viewed as different 'races' followed by remorse and guilt was also featured in Die goldene Stadt , where the Sudeten German heroine faces not persecution but the allure of the big city; when she succumbs, in defiance of blood and soil , she

20212-658: The native populations in those areas. The Nazis detailed such goals in Generalplan Ost . In some areas, such as in Poland, Nazi authorities compiled specific lists and registered people as ethnic Germans in the " Deutsche Volksliste ". In the sixteenth century Vasili III invited small numbers of craftsmen, traders and professionals to settle in Russia from areas that would later become Germany so that Muscovy could exploit their skills. These settlers (many of whom intended to stay only temporarily) were generally confined to

20375-658: The new entities of the Reichsgaue of Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland , the Zichenau Region (or South East Prussia), and the General Government , the latter for the administration of the rest of its own occupied part of the country . The plan for Poland, as set forth in Generalplan Ost , was to "purify" the newly annexed regions in order to create a Germanised buffer against Polish and Slavic influence. This entailed deporting Poles from these westernmost areas to those under General Government control, and settling

20538-498: The non-German population, or relegating it to the status of slave laborers. The goal of the German state under Nazi leadership during the war was the complete destruction of the Polish people and nation. The fate of the Polish people, as well as the fate of many other Slavs , was outlined in the genocidal Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) and the closely related Generalsiedlungsplan (General Plan for Settlement). Over

20701-731: The occupation, Poles formed one of the largest underground movements in Europe. Resistance to the Nazi German occupation began almost at once. The Armia Krajowa, loyal to the Polish government in exile in London and a military arm of the Polish Underground State, was formed from a number of smaller groups in 1942. There was also the Armia Ludowa (AL) (Polish People's Army), backed by the Soviet Union and controlled by

20864-558: The occupied Polish territory, to prevent any unified resistance from forming. One of the attempts to divide the Polish nation was a creation of a new ethnicity called " Goralenvolk ". Some minorities, like Kashubians , were forcefully enrolled into the Deutsche Volksliste, as a measure to compensate for the losses in the Wehrmacht (unlike Poles, Deutsche Volksliste members were eligible for military conscription). In addition, Germans encouraged Ukrainians and Poles to kill each other during

21027-414: The occupied eastern Polish lands was as cruel and tragic as the Nazis' in the west. Soviet authorities brutally treated those who might oppose their rule, deporting by 10 November 1940 around 10% of total population of Kresy, with 30% of those deported dead by 1941. They arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles during 1939–1941, including former officials, officers, and natural "enemies of the people" like

21190-435: The parents suggested that the child might not be " racially valuable ", the mother was forced to have an abortion . Infants who did not pass muster would be removed to a state orphanage ( Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte ), where many were murdered through calculated malnourishment, neglect, and unhygienic conditions. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the occupation of Poland by German forces,

21353-408: The population of the territories that came under the control of Germany, in contrast the areas annexed by the Soviet Union contained a diverse array of peoples, the population being split into bilingual provinces, some of which had large ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities, many of whom welcomed the Soviets due in part to communist agitation by Soviet emissaries. Nonetheless Poles still comprised

21516-485: The population. Poles were deported in large numbers to work as forced labour in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, and many died in Germany. By the end of the initial invasion of Poland (the "Polish Defensive War"), the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of Poland's territory (~200,000 km ), with over 13,700,000 people. The estimates vary; Prof. Elżbieta Trela-Mazur gives the following numbers in regards to

21679-402: The possibility of sexual exploitation, and so of children; Himmler praised it as a chance to win back blood and benefit the women as well. Himmler declared that no drop of "German blood" would be lost or left behind to mingle with an "alien race". "German blood" was regarded as so valuable that any "German" person would necessarily be of value to any country; therefore, all Germans not supporting

21842-417: The region with ethnic Germans from other places including from the General Government area, from within the pre-war German borders and from various areas that came under the control of Soviet Russia (Baltic States, eastern Polish territories, Volhynia, Galicia, Bukovina, Bessarabia and Dobrudscha). To further its objective of Germanisation, Nazi Germany endeavoured to increase the number of ' Volksdeutsche ' in

22005-432: The rest of Central and Eastern Europe . Sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski argues that both occupying powers were hostile to the existence of Poland's sovereignty , people , and the culture and aimed to destroy them. Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, most visibly in the four Gestapo–NKVD conferences , where the occupiers discussed their plans to deal with

22168-566: The ruling nationality groups, and so they introduced the 'Volksliste' there. Registered ethnic Germans in Category 1 and 2 living in the Soviet Union were re-settled through Yugoslavia back to Germany. At the end of the war, the files of the Deutsche Volksliste were generally found extant in the service registration departments of the respective local authorities. The bulk of these documents are today in Polish archives. In Poland members of

22331-494: The same size and inhabited by about 11.5 million, was placed under a German administration called the General Government (in German: Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete ), with its capital at Kraków . A German lawyer and prominent Nazi, Hans Frank , was appointed Governor-General of this occupied area on 12 October 1939. Most of the administration outside strictly local level

22494-560: The service of a foreign nation. After Germany lost the war, the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials and Poland's Supreme National Tribunal concluded that the aim of German policies in Poland – the extermination of Poles and Jews – had "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term." The German People's List ( Deutsche Volksliste ) classified

22657-540: The spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities of German-occupied Poland. Several thousands were executed outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry , and inside the city at the Pawiak prison. Most of the remainder were sent to various German concentration camps . Mass arrests and shootings of Polish intellectuals and academics included Sonderaktion Krakau and

22820-441: The status of Volksdeutscher conferred many privileges but also made one subject to conscription into the German military. Polish response to the institution of the Deutsche Volksliste was mixed. Being accepted into Class III could mean keeping one's property, but it might also mean being sent to the Reich as a labourer or being conscripted into the Wehrmacht. Polish citizens of German ancestry, who often identified themselves with

22983-417: The systematic killing of the Jews began. The first killing by poison gas at Auschwitz involved 300 Poles and 700 Soviet prisoners of war . Many Poles and other Central and Eastern Europeans were also sent to concentration camps in Germany: over 35,000 to Dachau, 33,000 to the camp for women at Ravensbrück , 30,000 to Mauthausen and 20,000 to Sachsenhausen. The population in the General Government's territory

23146-663: The total genocide of the Jews, known as the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question ". The extermination program was codenamed Operation Reinhard . Three secret extermination camps set up specifically for Operation Reinhard; Treblinka , Belzec and Sobibor . In addition to the Reinhard camps, mass killing facilities such as gas chambers using Zyklon B were added to the Majdanek concentration camp in March 1942 and at Auschwitz and Chełmno . Nazi Germany engaged in

23309-612: The train tracks carrying Romanian oil would be left alone. In October 1940, Germany and the Soviet Union negotiated about the Volksdeutsche in Soviet-occupied territories and their property. Instead of permitting full indemnification, the Soviets put restrictions on the wealth that the Volksdeutsche could take with them and limited the totals that the Soviets would apply to the Reich's clearing accounts. The parties discussed total compensation of between 200 million  ℛ︁ℳ︁ and 350 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ for

23472-464: The true fate of transports leaving the Jewish Ghetto, the council to Aid Jews ( Zegota ) was established in late 1942, in cooperation with church groups. The organisation saved thousands. Emphasis was placed on protecting children, as it was nearly impossible to intervene directly against the heavily guarded transports. The Germans implemented several different laws to separate Poles and Jews in

23635-526: The war was won. The plan envisaged that different percentages of the various conquered nations would undergo Germanization, be expelled and deported to the depths of Russia, and suffer other gruesome fates, including purposeful starvation and murder , the net effect of which would ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character. Over a longer period of time, only about 3–4 million Poles, all of whom were considered suitable for Germanization, would be allowed to reside in

23798-406: The west and forced to leave everything. In post-war Poland, the word Volksdeutsche is regarded as an insult, synonymous with "traitor". In some cases, individuals consulted the Polish resistance first, before signing the Volksliste. There were Volksdeutsche who played important roles in intelligence activities of the Polish resistance, and were at times the primary source of information for

23961-426: Was soon attached to the USSR once Lithuania became a Soviet republic . Initially the Soviet occupation gained support among some members of the linguistic minorities who had chafed under the nationalist policies of the Second Polish Republic. Much of the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the unification with the Soviet Ukraine because twenty years earlier their attempt at self-determination failed during both

24124-440: Was actively recruiting ethnic Germans and the Nazi secret service " SicherheitsDienst " (SD) was forming them as early as October 1938 into armed unit that were to serve Nazi Germany. Historian Matthias Fiedler typified ethnic German collaborationists as former "nobodies" whose major occupation was the expropriation of Jewish property. Heinrich Himmler remarked that whatever objections ethnic Germans might have against serving in

24287-411: Was also common. In some cases, individuals consulted with the Polish resistance first, before registering with the Volksliste. These Volksdeutsche played an important role in the intelligence activities of the Polish resistance and were at times the primary source of information for the Allies. However, in the eyes of the postwar Communist government, having aided the non-Communist Polish resistance

24450-568: Was also deliberately different. Apparently, Gauleiter Josef Wagner , as well as his successor, Fritz Bracht , saw the necessity to exclude Silesian people from qualification made only on the basis of race criteria which were emphasised by Heinrich Himmler when he was a Reich commissar for strengthening the Germanhood. Fritz Bracht used also political criteria, which made the situation similar to Pomerelia (former West Prussia , annexed to Danzig-West Prussia ) and areas annexed by Germany in Western Europe (such as Alsace-Lorraine ). This resulted in

24613-421: Was an ethnic German was not easy in regions that had Poles, ethnic Germans, and individuals of German ancestry who had been Polonised . There were many in western Poland who claimed German ancestry and resisted deportation to the General Government on the basis of it. Similar ambiguities occurred in all other eastern areas, such as Bohemia and Moravia , Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and Serbia. Even Himmler

24776-696: Was believed, could be won back to Germany. This group also included persons of non-German descent married to Germans or members of non-Polish groups who were considered desirable for their political attitude and racial characteristics. Group Four consisted of persons of German stock who had become politically merged with the Poles. After registration in the List, individuals from Groups One and Two automatically became German citizens. Those from Group Three acquired German citizenship subject to revocation. Those from Group Four received German citizenship through naturalization proceedings; resistance to Germanization constituted treason because "German blood must not be utilized in

24939-462: Was either to sign and be regarded as a traitor by the Poles, or not to sign and be treated by the German occupation as a traitor to the Germanic 'race'. Poles who registered as Germans were treated by other Poles with special contempt, and the fact of them having signed the Volksliste constituted high treason according to the Polish underground law . Poles who preferred to stay with their friends and relatives sometimes resisted Nazi pressures to apply for

25102-486: Was headed by SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz. According to the historian Valdis Lumans, Nazi propaganda used the existence of ethnic Germans who they called Volksdeutsche in foreign lands before and during the war, to help justify the aggression of Nazi Germany. The annexation of Poland was presented as necessary to protect the ethnic German minorities there. Massacres of ethnic Germans, such as Bloody Sunday , or alleged atrocities, were used in such propaganda, and

25265-461: Was impressed by this and said that such resistance must be evidence of their Nordic qualities. Furthermore, Nazi officials in charge of the various annexed territories from Poland did not want to see too many economically valuable local nationals sent eastwards, so they, too, desired some form of criteria that would allow them to avoid deporting any skilled Poles with German ancestry. Poles who were considered to be suitable for Germanisation were sent to

25428-448: Was initially about 12 million in an area of 94,000 square kilometres (36,000 sq mi), but this increased as about 860,000 Poles and Jews were expelled from the German-annexed areas and "resettled" in the General Government. Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements thought likely to resist (e.g. Operation Tannenberg). From 1941, disease and hunger also began to reduce

25591-541: Was invaded and occupied by two powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, acting in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . Germany acquired 48.4% of the former Polish territory. Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler , with Stalin 's agreement (8 and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed by Germany . The size of these annexed territories was approximately 92,500 square kilometres (35,700 sq mi) with approximately 10.5 million inhabitants. The remaining block of territory, of about

25754-435: Was meant to make the formation of any organized top-down resistance more difficult. Further, the populace of occupied territories was to be relegated to the role of an unskilled labour-force for German-controlled industry and agriculture. This was in spite of racial theory that falsely regarded most Polish leaders as actually being of "German blood", and partly because of it, on the grounds that German blood must not be used in

25917-500: Was not considered a mitigating factor; therefore, many of these double-agent Volksdeutsche were prosecuted after the war. According to Robert Koehl, "By the introduction of the registration procedure known as the German National List (DVL) some 900,000 more 'Germans' were discovered, most of them semi-Polish minorities such as the Kassubians, the Masurians, and the local Upper Silesians whom the Germans called 'Wasserpolen'. A few thousand 're-Germanizeables' ...had also been shipped back to

26080-536: Was only one of the precursors of Himmler's final version. The Deutsche Volksliste consisted of four categories: Those members of the population rated in the highest category were tapped for citizenship and concomitant compulsory military service in the German Armed Forces. At first, only Category I were considered for membership in the SS (Schutzstaffel). Similarly, women recruited for labour in Germany as nannies were required to be classified as Category I or II, because of their close contact with German children and

26243-415: Was recognised by the Polish Underground State and other anti-Nazi resistance movements, which tried to explain the situation to other Poles in underground publications. The Deutsche Volksliste categorised non-Jewish Poles of German ethnicity into one of four categories: Volksdeutsche of statuses 1 and 2 in the Polish areas annexed by Germany numbered 1 million, and Nos. 3 and 4 numbered 1.7 million. In

26406-446: Was replaced by German officials. Non-German population on the occupied lands were subject to forced resettlement , Germanization , economic exploitation , and slow but progressive extermination. A small strip of land, about 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) with 200,000 inhabitants that had been part of Czechoslovakia before 1938, was ceded by Germany to its ally, Slovakia . Poles comprised an overwhelming majority

26569-452: Was the case of a plant owned by IG Farben, whose laborers came from Auschwitz III camp, or Monowitz . Laborers from concentration camps were literally worked to death. in what was known as extermination through labor . Auschwitz received the first contingent of 728 Poles on 14 June 1940, transferred from an overcrowded prison at Tarnów . Within a year the Polish inmate population was in thousands, and begun to be exterminated, including in

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