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 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 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 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,

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.

Background

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, a month after the invasion of Poland, Nazi Germany annexed an area of Nazi Germany's officials discussed the convention and tried to circumvent it by declaring the war against Poland over prior to the annexation, which in their view made the convention non-applicable. Based on laws of 21 May 1935 and 1 June 1938, 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. Frank was at the same time appointed "supreme chief administrator" for all occupied territories. provided for 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).

thumb|upright|Arthur Greiser in German occupied [[Poznań, 2 October 1939]]

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" () in Pomerelia with the government regions Bromberg, Danzig, and Marienwerder. Despite this fact, Germany used old Prussian propaganda of creating a "German living wall" in Polish territories. 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).

Planned extension of annexation plans

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 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 the Vistula river basin before the Barbarian migrations.

Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann on the other hand proposed that 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.

|colspan="4"|1 Gau or Regierungsbezirk only partially comprised annexed territory

2 the annexed parts are also referred to as "South East Prussia" ()

3 Gau Upper Silesia was created in 1941, before it was part of Gau Silesia

4 the annexed parts are also referred to as "East Upper Silesia" ()

5 named after the chief city, . This area was joined into the Warthegau on 9 November 1939;

6 not incorporated into, but administered by Gau East Prussia, attached after the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941

Demographics

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.

{| class=wikitable style="font-size: 90%; width: 100%;"

! colspan="13" style="text-align:center;"|Area and population data in 1939 for Nazi German Gaue that included annexed territories of Poland 1

!Gau/Reichsgau

!colspan="2"|East Prussia

!colspan="2"|Reichsgau Danzig / West Prussia

!colspan="2"|Reichsgau Wartheland

!colspan="2"|Province of Silesia

!colspan="2"|Total of the four provinces

!colspan="2"|Only annexed parts of these provinces

|- style="text-align:right; background:white;"

| style="text-align:center;"|Area (km2)||colspan="2"| 52,099 km2||colspan="2"| 25,705 km2||colspan="2"| 40,309 km2||colspan="2"| 46,908 km2||colspan="2"| 165,021 km2||colspan="2"| 86,295 km2

|- style="text-align:right;"

| style="text-align:center;"|Total population||colspan="2"| 3,113,000 ||colspan="2"| 2,156,000 ||colspan="2"| 4,203,000 ||colspan="2"| 7,258,000||colspan="2"| 16,729,000||colspan="2"| 9,082,000

|- style="text-align:right; background:white;"

| style="text-align:center;"|Persons per km2 ||colspan="2"| 61 per km2||colspan="2"| 84 per km2||colspan="2"| 104 per km2||colspan="2"| 155 per km2||colspan="2"| 101 per km2||colspan="2"| 105 per km2

!Ethnicity!!Total!!%!!Total!!%!!Total!!%!!Total!!%!!Total!!%!!Total!!%

|- style="text-align:right; background:white;"

| style="text-align:center;"|Germans||2,004,768||71%||817,474||38%||309,002||7%||3,813,930||66%||8,145,174||49%||597,784||7%

|- style="text-align:right;"

| style="text-align:center;"|Jews||79,198||3%||23,302||1%||322,947||8%||123,202||2%||548,649||3%||494,913||5%

|- style="text-align:right; background:white;"

| style="text-align:center;"|Poles||810,834||26%||1,310,099||61%||3,558,489||85%||2,184,329||30%||7,863,751||47%||7,817,377||86%

|- style="text-align:right;"

| style="text-align:center;"|Other||17,773 || ?% || 4,666 || ?% || 11,984 || ?% || 136,578 || ?% || 171,001|| ?% || 171,001 || ?%

|- style="text-align:left;"

| colspan="13"|1 Estimates according to Nazi German Bureau for Racial Policies, 25 November 1939.

Heinemann (2003) gives identical numbers for Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Warthegau. For East Upper Silesia, Heinemann gives numbers based on 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.

thumb|right|"[[The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", by the Polish government-in-exile addressed to the wartime allies of the then-United Nations, 1942]]

Prof. Stanisław Waszak (pl) of Poznań University cited slightly differing estimates; first published in 1947:

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;"

|+ The 1939 total population of Nazi German Gaue including annexed territories 1

! Gau

! Total population

! Poles

! Germans

! Jews

! Ukrainians

! Others

|- style="text-align:right; background:white;"

| style="text-align:left;"| Wartheland

| 4,933,600

| 4,220,200

| 324,600

| 384,500

| –

| 4,300

|- style="text-align:right;"

| style="text-align:left;"| Upper Silesia (part added after WWII started)

| 2,632,630

| 2,404,670

| 98,204

| 124,877

| 1,202

| 3,677

|- style="text-align:right; background:white;"

| style="text-align:left;"| Danzig-West Prussia

| 1,571,215

| 1,393,717

| 158,377

| 14,458

| 1,648

| 3,020

|- style="text-align:right;"

| style="text-align:left;"| East Prussia (part added after WWII started)

| 1,001,560

| 886,061

| 18,400

| 79,098

| 8,0099

| 9,902

|- style="text-align:right; background:white;"

| style="text-align:left;"| Total

| 10,139,005

| 8,904,648

| 599,576

| 602,953

| 10,949

| 20,899

| colspan="7" style="text-align:left;"|1 The Western Review, Supp. Number for Abroad, July and August, 1947, page 49; the 1947 estimates as cited by Stanisław Waszak, Demographic Picture of the German Occupation (1970). 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.

Nazi Germanization Plans

On 7 October 1939, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as his settlement commissioner, responsible for all resettlement measures in 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 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. 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 the Altreich. 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 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. 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 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.

Expulsion and genocide of Poles and Jews

thumb|[[Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany (1939–1944)|Expulsion of Polish civilians, autumn 1939]]

The Jewish and Polish population was subject to mass murder and expulsions already during the September invasion, triggering mass flight. 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. People were sometimes arrested from the street in so-called łapanki.

Heinemann further says that an additional 110,000 Jews were deported to the General Government. 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. Jastrzębski notes that adding 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.

thumb|Ghettoization of Jews, [[Litzmannstadt 1941]]

Heinemann and Łuczak as cited by Eberhardt detail the expulsions as follows: 81,000 Poles were displaced from their homes in East Upper Silesia, Additionally, Łuczak estimates that between 30,000 and 40,000 were subject to "wild" expulsions primarily in Pomerelia. 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 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.

German colonization and settlement

upright=1.3|thumb|left|[[Nazi Germany in 1940 (dark grey) after the conquest of Poland together with the USSR, showing pockets of German colonists resettled into the annexed territories of Poland from the Soviet "sphere of influence" during the "Heim ins Reich" action.The Nazi propaganda poster, superimposed with the red outline of Poland missing entirely from the original German print.]]

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 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. 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 the annexed territories,

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 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.

thumb|Arthur Greiser welcoming millionth [[Volksdeutscher resettled during "Heim ins Reich" action from the East Europe to occupied Poland – March 1944]]

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 the war, adding to a pre-war population of 700,000.

! Area

! Number of colonists

! %

| Warthegau

| style="text-align: right;"| 536,951

| style="text-align: right;"| 85.1%

| Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia

| style="text-align: right;"| 50,204

| style="text-align: right;"| 7.9%

| East Upper Silesia

| style="text-align: right;"| 36,870

| style="text-align: right;"| 5.8%

| Regierungsbezirk Zichenau

| style="text-align: right;"| 7,460

| style="text-align: right;"| 1.2%

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.

thumb|upright|left|A Nazi official assigns a Polish house in [[Warthegau to Baltic German resettlers]]

Only those Germans deemed "racially valuable" were allowed to settle. People were "evaluated" and classified in 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 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). 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.

Ethnic segregation

thumb|upright|German warning in occupied Poland 1939 – sign "No entrance for Poles!"

upright|thumb|German [[Wehrmacht soldiers remove Polish signs in Gdynia, renamed Gotenhafen, September 1939.]]

The segregation of Germans and Poles was achieved by a variety of measures limiting their social interaction.

Łuczak described the segregation:

:"Access to a variety of cinemas, theatres, museums, hotels, cafes, restaurants, parks, playgrounds, 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".

A network of outposts overseeing gathering of labour force was established by German authorities that coordinated forced labour together with German police units.

To further reduce 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. All Polish schools and cultural institutions were closed. Teaching of history, literature and geography to Poles was prohibited. Lending Polish books was a punishable offense for which one could be sentenced to concentration camps. or 8,000 died during the occupation period. Extermination of teachers and scientists was part of a Nazi plan to eliminate all Polish intelligentia during action Intelligenzaktion.

Religious discrimination

The German state's fight during the war to destroy the Polish nation covered religious life of Poles as well. Jewish Poles were hit the worst since those who had survived the first murderous actions against them in the course of the invasion were all expelled from German-annexed Poland to German-occupied Poland. Especially outspoken advocates of Judaism and all rabbis were at high risk of being murdered by the German occupiers. All synagogues were expropriated, diverted and misused, or destroyed. The same fate hit many Jewish cemeteries.

Catholic Germans of Polish ethnicity and the German state had clashed in a struggle for the unadulterated Roman Catholic faith in events like the Kulturkampf of the 19th century. Three weeks later majority of Catholic Polish priests were sent to concentration camps. Out of 6 bishops in the region, only one managed to remain – Walenty Dymek. It was Dymek who through his energetic protests finally started worrying the Vatican that it would eventually lose all of the Polish churches in the region-in no less than 2–3 months. The Vatican, concerned about the possibility of development of German National Catholic Church, intervened and as first step appointed two administrators-one for German and one for Polish population in the region, While its congregants, if considered by the Nazi occupants to be of good breed for their Germanisation plans in the Wartheland, were treated in a way to win them for the Nazi politics, their church body and confessors of faith underlay the same anticlerical regulations by Arthur Greiser as the Catholics. While the Polish authorities had always protracted their confirmation of the United Evangelical Church in Poland as religious statutory corporation, Greiser had done away with that status for all religious bodies in the Wartheland. Greiser pressed the United Evangelical Church in Poland down to a mere civic association. Greiser's orders as to civic associations allowed only inhabitants who had been living before 1 September 1939 in the area of the Wartheland, and new immigrants – usually of German native language – from Soviet-annexed states (eastern Poland, Baltic states) to join these associations and only if they were not German citizens. The United Evangelical Church in Poland congregations in the Pomeranian Voivodeship could receive the status as statutory corporations – although in a dictatorship this meant little. However, therefore the church body split, its Pomerellian congregations merged in the new old-Prussian rather provisional Ecclesiastical Region of Danzig-West Prussia in 1940. The remaining United Evangelical Church in Poland had to rename into the United Evangelical Church in the Wartheland. While all Jewish clerics, and most Catholic and Lutheran clerics of Polish native language had been removed from their functions, often even killed or enjailed, pastors of the United Evangelical Church were tolerated as long they were not convicted for speaking up against the crimes in the Wartheland.

{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; font-size: 90%; margin:0 0 0 1em;"

|+ Number of Catholic Polish priests killed within the territories annexed to the German Reich 1

! Church diocese

! Polish priests in 1939

! Perished

! Percentage

! Murdered

! Died in prisons & camps

| Chełmno

| style="text-align: right;"| 634

| style="text-align: right;"| 303

| style="text-align: right;"| 47,8 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 230

| style="text-align: right;"| 73

| Katowice

| style="text-align: right;"| 489

| style="text-align: right;"| 43

| style="text-align: right;"| 8,7 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 6

| style="text-align: right;"| 37

| Kielce

| style="text-align: right;"| 357

| style="text-align: right;"| 13

| style="text-align: right;"| 3,6 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 2

| style="text-align: right;"| 11

| Kraków

| style="text-align: right;"| 680

| style="text-align: right;"| 30

| style="text-align: right;"| 4,4 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 3

| style="text-align: right;"| 27

| Łomża

| style="text-align: right;"| 292

| style="text-align: right;"| 48

| style="text-align: right;"| 16,4 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 12

| style="text-align: right;"| 36

| Łódź

| style="text-align: right;"| 347

| style="text-align: right;"| 126

| style="text-align: right;"| 36,8 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 9

| style="text-align: right;"| 119

| Gniezno

| style="text-align: right;"| 369

| style="text-align: right;"| 180

| style="text-align: right;"| 48,8 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 17

| style="text-align: right;"| 163

| Płock

| style="text-align: right;"| 382

| style="text-align: right;"| 109

| style="text-align: right;"| 28,5 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 4

| style="text-align: right;"| 105

| Poznań

| style="text-align: right;"| 681

| style="text-align: right;"| 212

| style="text-align: right;"| 31,1 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 1

| style="text-align: right;"| 211

| Włocławek

| style="text-align: right;"| 433

| style="text-align: right;"| 213

| style="text-align: right;"| 49,2 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 32

| style="text-align: right;"| 181

| Warsaw

| style="text-align: right;"| 657

| style="text-align: right;"| 82

| style="text-align: right;"| 12,4 %

| style="text-align: right;"| 32

| style="text-align: right;"| 50

| colspan="6"|1 Statistical data according to Czesław Madajczyk (1970), Polityka.

Eventually Germans abandoned any public justification or explanations regarding arrests and expulsions. It contained several parts based solely on racial and ethnic category of the person subject to trial. Special courts were established which were granted right to pass death sentences in quick and easy way. The idea that Poles and Jews just like Germans could stand before the same court was unacceptable to German authorities.

upright|thumb|"Baltenlager" (transit camp for [[Baltic Germans), Poznań 1940]]

This began with the Volksliste, the classification of people deemed of German blood into different categories: - those Germans who had collaborated before the war; those still regarding themselves as German, but who had been neutral; partially Polonised but Germanizable; and those Germans who had been absorbed into Polish nationality. Any person classified as German who resisted was to be deported to a concentration camp. Himmler himself oversaw cases of obstinate Germans, and gave orders for concentration camps, or separation of families, or forced labor, in efforts to break down resistance.

Numerous cultural events were organised for German community. A network of public schools engaging in various forms of education was set up across the territories. Reich University of Posen was set up in Poznań replacing the former Polish one. At this university, studies of Eastern Europe were conducted, including theories on extermination of non-Germans and means to Germanize the region. Chairs for race policy and Jewish history were established Local Germans organised in Selbstschutz paramilitia units engaged in arresting Jews and Poles, the oversight of their expulsions, and murder.

Nazi Germany put the Germans in a position to economically exploit the Polish society, and provided them with privileges and a comparably high standard of living at the expense of the Poles, to ensure their loyalty. out of 786,000 Germans located in Wartheland.

Case study-Mława district

A case study of relationship of Germans towards Poles was conducted by Polish Home Army unit in Mława. From the start of the war till spring 1942 Polish Underground performed a thorough analysis of 1,100 Germans and their actions and behaviour towards Polish population. Out of those, 9 Germans engaged in friendly relationship with Poles or tried to help them (among those were 3 craftsmen, 3 policeman, 1 camp guard, 1 administration official). The group who took supported Nazis and engaged in despicable acts was much larger.