"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (209 page)

26.
This is reflected again in the reports by the district president of Hohensalza; see reports of February 18, 1941 (p. 7), and October 20, 1941 (p. 2) (University Library of Warsaw).

Part One. Section 3. Introduction. I. Immediate Aims

1.
Hitler in a discussion with Wilhelm Keitel on October 17, 1939 (reproduced in
Doc. Occ
. 6:27 ff., 30); cf. also Hitler’s discussion with Hans Frank and Baldur von Schirach on October 2, 1940 (minutes, ZS, Ordner 325 a, G.J. no. 83, copy).

2.
Discussion between Hitler and Keitel on October 7, 1939 (
Doc. Occ
. 6:27 ff., 30); for more details see Jan T. Gross,
Polish Society under German Occupation
(1979), 43 ff., 47 ff.

3.
See comments by Frank at a meeting on December 14, 1942 (“Diensttagebuch 1942,” III, 482 ff., 484; ZS, Versch. 104, 484 ff., copy), in which he complains of contradictory directions in the Polish policy: “One could say that all Poles engaged in work here should be kept, but those who are not should be exterminated…. The extermination of millions of human beings [, however, is] bound up with certain conditions we cannot currently fulfill.” Frank wanted to “extract what can still be extracted”; cf. also Frank’s comments to leading Party members in the General Government on February 11, 1944:

It will be not help if I kill 100,000 Poles; this is of no use to the Führer. It will only be of use if I put 100,000 Poles to work…. It should not be regarded as a sign of softness toward the Poles if one tries to ensure that they remain capable of working and willing to work. It should not be regarded as a sign of weakness if we do all that without recourse to the utmost brutality. I am not so stupid that I don’t know that someone who has a revolver can shoot someone else…. We must get to a point where 14 million Poles are working for Germany…. That, and that alone, is now the order of the day.

The policy of “keeping everyone happy” … with all the means at our disposal … has certain consequences that we National Socialists do not find to our liking at present. We should not apply the principles that are valid for Posen [Pozna
], Danzig [Gda
sk], and Upper Silesia to our own area. The Führer has said expressly that the first task is to return the territorities incorporated into the Reich to German nationhood, but that the General Government is the official Reich protectorate of Polish nationhood. This must be repeated, over and over again, especially in Party circles, because one frequently encounters the misapprehension that the General Government is a sort of extension of Warthegau. [There is an] enormous difference between the two…. In Warthegau the Pole is a subject, who in due course will be deported or removed in some other fashion…. We must ensure that the Poles and other non-Germans are kept quiet. You know as well as I how the security situation develops when compulsory settlement such as that in Lublin is undertaken. (“Diensttagebuch 1944,” I, February 11, 1944, 304 ff.; BA R 52 II/213)

Cf. also a speech by Reich Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner, December 15, 1940, in Kraków (“Diensttagebuch 1940,” III, 1132 ff.; BA R 52 II/179).

4.
Accordingly, there were plans to issue food ration cards only to those Poles who worked in the service of Germans; they would be withheld from all other Poles, along with accommodation, power, and heating. As far as is known, it was the SS and police leader (SSPF) of Lublin who first put forward this suggestion at a police conference on June 18, 1942. Frank proposed to this same meeting that from September 1, 1942, onward, ration cards and dwellings would be provided only to Poles who could produce an endorsement from an agency of the German authorities. This would also help track down work-shy elements (“Diensttagebuch 1942,” III 325 ff., 329 ff.; quoted from copy, IfZ). The same proposal was put forward by
Generalleutnant
Max Schindler of the Wehrmacht’s armaments inspectorate on the grounds that workers were constantly leaving their places of work and engaging in stockpiling. Frank countered that such regulations had already been tried in certain districts and an extension to the rest of the General Government was planned (367 f.).

5.
“Diensttagebuch,” November 21, 1941, 1075 f. (quoted from copy in IfZ, Sign. FB-105).

6.
“Diensttagebuch,” February 11, 1944, BA R 52 II/213; for a detailed account of the wholly negative policy of the Nazis in the General Government, see Gross,
Polish Society under German Occupation
, 47 ff.

7.
“Diensttagebuch,” ed. Präg and Jacobmeyer, introduction, 9.

8.
Nuremberg doc., EC-344. Though it is true that Frank later spoke out against the use of the term
colony
to refer to the General Government, saying it was neither a colony nor an occupied territory (winding up speech at an economic conference held on August 3, 1943; “Diensttagebuch 1943,” III, 703 ff.; 707 f.), this statement was something of a tactical ploy.

9.
“Diensttagebuch 1939,” I, 10; quoted from copy in IfZ.

10.
“Diensttagebuch 1940” I, 280 ff., BA R 52 II/176.

11.
Report by SS-
Sturmbannführer
Dr. Herbert Strickner, “The Polish Policy to Date and Proposals for Its Relaxation or Reorientation,” October 19, 1944, which was requested by the chief of the Security Police and the SD on October 16, 1944 (IfZ, MA-641, 2094 ff.).

12.
Reproduced in
Dokumente der deutschen Politik 1942–1944
, vol. 7, II, 673; in this sense see also Governor General H. Frank, March 15, 1940, in Kattowitz (Katowice), quoted from F. Klein, “Zur Stellung des Generalgouvernements” (1941), 234; for more details, cf. H. Frank speaking to Party leaders from the General Government on February 11 1944 (“Diensttagebuch 1944,” I, February 11, 1944, BA R 52/213).

13.
Report of July 1, 1940, Bd. I (BA R 52 II/247).

14.
Frank in a speech April 9, 1940 (“Diensttagebuch 1940,” I, 280 ff.; BA R 52 II/170); also, “It is self-evident that we must compare this judiciary for the natives of Poland to that of native peoples in other parts of the world” (“Diensttagebuch,” May 25, 1940, 525–28; BA R 52 II/177; also reproduced in
Doc. Occ
. 6:108 n).

15.
Thus
Ministerialdirigent
Emmerich, head of the (Central) Department of Economics in the General Government, stated at a meeting on 12 July 1940: “If one imagined that Poland is, so to speak, a colony, then one would arrive at a trade balance that would resemble that of a colonial structure. In the business that is Poland we must start by investing something” (“Diensttagebuch 1940,” III, 657; BA R 52 II/178).

16.
This is apparent from a telegram sent on August 19, 1941, by the Department of Internal Administration of the General Government to the president of the department, Eberhard Westerkamp, at that time in Berlin, in which State Secretary Joseph Bühler grants permission to hold a lecture and the setting of a date is requested (Main Commission Warsaw, Archive, Regierung des GG, HA Innere Verwaltung II/45); the lecture was probably held in early or mid-October 1941.

17.
Speech in Kraków on December 15, 1940, in which it was also said: “That which has been debated for years, for a lifetime even, is here being put into practice” (“Diensttagebuch 1940,” IV, 1132 ff., BA R 52 II/179).

18.
Frank at a working conference of political leaders responsible for the question of the General Government within the NSDAP on December 14, 1942 (“Diensttagebuch 1942,” 1311; quoted from copy in IfZ). Conversation between Frank and officials of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, January 20, 1943 (“Diensttagebuch 1943,” 37; quoted from copy in IfZ).

Part One. Section 3. Introduction. II. Ultimate Aims

1.
For further details see “Diensttagebuch,” ed. Präg and Jacobmeyer, introduction, 7 f.

2.
Cf. statement issued by RSHA Abteilung 3 in October 1944 on the question of changing the Polish policy in the Annexed Eastern Territories and the General Government; a change of policy in the General Government was made dependent on whether the General Government would be designated a German settlement (in which case there would be no change) or not (in which case a change was possible) (BA R 58/1002, 157 ff.).

3.
Discussion between Hitler and Governor General Frank on February 6, 1944 (“Diensttagebuch 1944,” February 6, 1944).

4.
Frank speaking to Party leaders of the General Government on February 11, 1944 (“Diensttagebuch 1944,” I, BA R 52 II/213), and at a meeting of departmental heads on April 12 1940 (“Diensttagebuch 1940,” I, 134 ff., 136; quoted from copy in IfZ).

5.
Cf. statement of the Central Office of the Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, in “Himmler zu den Aufgaben des Ostens,” from the periodical
Deutsche Arbeit
, quoted from the
Krakauer Zeitung
, August 7, 1942.

6.
For further details, see Broszat,
Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik
(1961), 164 ff.

7.
Cf. diary entries 1939–45 of Dr. Troschke, the former head of the Department of Economics in the office of the
Kreishauptmann
in Rzeszów, who was later active in the district administration of Galicia (Bl. 190 ff., 192). According to these notes (produced after 1945), a meeting took place in spring 1944 in Lemberg (L’viv) between representatives of the SD from Berlin and the district administration, at which the resettlement and economic integration of
Volksdeutsche
streaming back from Russia were discussed. The representative of the district administration turned down integration on the grounds that the immigrants were farmers, not workers; the manpower already available was entirely sufficient; and most of the immigrants in question were old and frail. The SD representative is reported to have said: “Regarding what has just been said about the particularly high proportion of frail and elderly people, may I inform you in strict confidence of the attitude of SS Central Office…. That we will make short work of these people” (BA Ostdok. 13 GG 1 a/10). (The actual words used were “Mit denen verfahren wir kurz.” This is the only known written evidence of plans for mass murder of sections of the German population deemed “useless”).

8.
Cf. minutes of a discussion held on February 4, 1942, in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories “on the question of Germanization” (Nuremberg doc., NO-2525). The term
Ostraum
[which stood for the Eastern lands claimed by the Nazis—Trans.] can be construed here as including the General Government. For more details, see the “General Plan for the East” of the RFSS (reproduced in
VjhZ
[1958]: 281 ff.; [1960]: 119) and the stated position and reflections (
Geheime Reichssache
—secret Reich document) of Wetzel, the
Referent
in the Race Policy Office of the NSDAP, April 27, 1942 (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
, doc. I-777); letter from RFSS to the chief of the Central Office of Racial Affairs and Settlement of the SS (Greifelt), June 12, 1942 (doc. I-325); according to this, 80–85% of the Poles were to be resettled and no more than 3–4.8 million were to remain in the “German settlement area.”