"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (276 page)

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12.
Sec. 16 of the Decree of February 19, 1940, on Polish Jurisdiction in the General Government.

13.
There is evidence for such camps in the Radom district (instruction dated February 3, 1942, by the district governor; letter of May 20, 1942, from the
Kreishauptmann
of Kielce with
subsequent
approval of such a camp by the
Kreishauptmann
[ZS, Ordner 365b]); in the Warsaw district (proclamations of December 5, 1940, and October 1941 by the
Kreishauptmann
of Łowicz); the latter contains the passage, “After several threats of punishment, I arrested three hundred farmers and sent them … to a work camp … for not having delivered their quotas. I will not hesitate to evacuate whole villages, if need be” (Main Commission Warsaw, poster collection V, 33 t/1–3); a further proclamation of March 20, 1942, announced that a mill had been burned down because the Polish miller had ground wheat without permission (t/5) (see also the proclamations of October 1941 by the
Kreishauptmann
of Sokolow regarding the threat of internment, and the internment of a total of fifty-three farmers at the “Treblinka work training camp” [46 t/10, 13; 56 t/15]); such a camp also existed in the Lublin district (proclamation of November 3, 1942, by the
Kreishauptmann
of Przemy
l [39 t/1]). See also note 20 to the part 2, section 3, excursus.

Conclusion

1.
The General Government budget and all sections of the Reich budget were managed in this way: not, as would have been consistent, centrally, but separately for each department. The detachment of officials occurred via the Reich; the governor general had only formal powers of appointment
after
the official had been detached. The General Government was increasingly treated as a territory of the Reich (see the discussion between Hitler and Rosenberg, Lammers, Keitel, and Göring on July 16, 1941, Nuremberg doc. L-221).

2.
Cf. the governor general’s decree on legislation in the General Government of January 18, 1940 (Weh,
Das Recht des GG
[1943], A 170 n. 6), which named the
Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement
the official record of legislative acts of the governor general (see also sec. 10 of the First Decree on the Development of the Administration of October 26, 1939 [A 120]). For legislative acts of the governor general, see the individual regulations in Weh,
Das Recht des GG,
A 170 n. 546. Regarding the publication of official proclamations in the
Amtlicher Anzeiger des GG,
see the decrees of July 23 and October 18, 1940 (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 223, 321; also in Weh,
Das Recht des GG,
A 170).

3.
Governor General Frank had always made this painfully clear: “The idea that it is possible to make important political decisions and wage an ideological war at the same time is erroneous … I must postpone the question of what I will do from the
völkisch
-ideological standpoint until after the war. The resettlement maneuvers in the Wartheland remain with us as a horrific memory of one of the most serious violations of this principle. To change this policy would require an enormous effort.” “So they shouldn’t come with reproaches that we are coddling the Poles if they are doing exactly the same thing in the Reich” (press meeting in Kraków on April 14, 1942, “Diensttagebuch,” 1942, I, 297, excerpts in Doc. Occ. 6:437 ff., 443).

4.
See note 3.

5.
See full details in Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine
(1956), 1:152 ff., with further references; also the memoranda of June 22 and August 25, 1941, from the Union of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUNR) to Governor General Frank (reproduced in ibid., 1:150 ff.; 2:386 ff.). See further the secret position paper of September 5, 1942, by Dr. Markull, Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, submitted to Reich Minister Rosenberg (reproduced in ibid., 2:293 ff.)

6.
See Bormann’s note on a meeting between Hitler and Rosenberg, Lammers, Keitel, and Göring at the Führer’s headquarters on July 16, 1941. Among other things, Hitler stated that the partisan war behind the front ordered by the Russians had one advantage: “It gives us the possibility of exterminating whatever is against us.”

7.
See also the position paper by Markull (see note 5 above, 2:293 ff.), with numerous examples (“District commissars who choose to forbid ethnic Germans to go to church or who confiscate church money from the Ukrainians are just as out of place as those who make a sport of shooting prisoners they have brought in personally”). The terror, which was above all directed against “Jews and Communists,” was justified by the atrocities of the NKWD against the Ukrainians before the retreat of the Soviets in 1941 (cf. the eyewitness accounts of June 1941 by German war reporters in Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine,
2:262–72). For details, see the so-called Commissar Decree of May 6, 1941 (elimination of all “political dignitaries” and “political leaders”) (Nuremberg doc. PS-884); the Hostage Decree of October 1, 1941, under which hostages were to be taken as a precautionary measure “in nationalist, democratic, middle-class, and Communist circles” (reproduced in Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine,
1:70); the so-called Communist Decree of September 16, 1941, according to which fifty to one hundred “Communists” were to be shot for every German soldier killed in the rear (1:69); and finally the decree on the “ruthless struggle against bandits” of December 16, 1941 (quoted from Kordt,
Wahn und Wirklichkeit
[1947], 104).

8.
See Hitler’s statements on the policy toward the Soviet Russians (quoted in Picker,
Hitlers Tischgeschpräche
[1951], 52, 72 ff., 115 f.). See also the
Mitteilungsblatt des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes,
no. 6, of July 10, 1942 (administration of this area “with a colonial approach and by colonial methods”) (BA R 58/225, 75 f.). The administrative principles are summarized in the Markull memorandum of September 5, 1942 (see note 5, 2:293 ff.).

9.
The Markull memorandum (see note 5, 2:293 ff.) quotes statements by a Kreisleiter, Krütz, claiming that Kiev should be depopulated by a plague. It would be best if the superfluous section of the population were to die of hunger. Markull remarked in reply that these principles were already a reality.

10.
Cf. the Markull memorandum (note 5 above), which quotes everyday statements by German administration officials in the Ukraine; they indicate that the Soviet Russians were treated like a colonial people, comparable to the blacks in Africa (e.g., “when all is said and done, we’re among Negroes here” [a statement from a discussion at the Culture Department of the Reich Ukraine Commissariat in April 1942, ibid., 2:297]; “the population is just dirty and lazy,” a point of view in the winter of 1941; “anyone who shows any intelligence here will be shot immediately” [
Gebietskommissar Kreisleiter
Becher, Galicia]).

11.
See notes 5–8 in part 1, section 2, introduction, I (“Objectives and Outlines of the Implementation of National Socialist Policy”)

12.
Report by Dr. F. Siebert, “Zur Polenpolitik im GG,” of May 4, 1959 (BA Ostdok. 13 GG I b/3).

13.
See Hitler in the table talk of July 27, 1942, quoted by Picker,
Hitlers Tischgeschpräche
(1968), 257 f.

14.
Cf. Hitler’s ideas on the “pacification of the huge territory,” which was best brought about by “shooting anybody who looks at all suspicious” (Hitler at a discussion on July 16, 1941, Nuremberg doc. L-221). “The people of the East” must “feel” that the German soldier (or the German generally) was “the master” (circular by the commander in chief of the army [undated], quoted in the report of the commander in chief of the Italian Expeditionary Corps, G. Messe, October 1942, quoted in Ilnytzkyi,
Deutschland und die Ukraine,
1:71 f.). See also Bormann’s notes on a discussion with Hitler, Rosenberg, and Gauleiter E. Koch, who was also Reich commissar for the Ukraine, on May 19, 1942 (BA R 58/1005, 3f.). Regarding the powerlessness of the government vis-à-vis the superiority of leading forces close to the Reich government, see the Markull memorandum (note 5 above).

15.
See Fraenkel,
Der Doppelstaat
(1974), 29, 51, 81 ff., with respect to the Anglo-American concept of law. At about the same time as the Reich Labor Court was stating: “In the first half of 1933 the structure of the National Socialist state could not yet be regarded as securely established … so long as the Communist threat was not removed, the … dangerous situation persisted and made political measures necessary that went beyond their previous judicial limits” (decision of October 17, 1934,
JW
[1935]: 379), the American Supreme Court had to decide whether a constitutional body could claim exceptional circumstances may make the use of exceptional measures necessary, no actions that go beyond constitutional powers could be justified by such an argument; exceptional circumstances did not create or extend the constitutional powers (
Schlechter vs. United States,
295 US 495, 528; decision of May 27, 1935).

16.
Regarding the establishment of constitutional jurisdiction, see the overview in M. Hirsch, “Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit und Verfassungsgerichte in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland sowie in anderen Staaten,” in W. Däubler and G. Küsel, eds.,
Verfassungssgericht und Politik
(Hamburg, 1979), paperback, edition ro-ro-ro (this is a series of the editors’ house) aktuell, 4439.

Glossary of Traditional German Legal Terms and National Socialist Legal Terminology

This glossary is designed to acquaint the reader with the principal traditional German legal terminology, the formal National Socialist legal terminology, and other terms adopted into the legal language of the time. To a great extent the Nazi terms do not correspond to the traditional German legal terminology, nor do they correspond to legal terms in other languages. For example, the Nazi term
Rechtstaat
(legal state) corresponds neither to that concept in traditional German law nor to the concept of rule of law as it is understood today. Most of the Nazi terms were coinages, new creations, or a misuse of older terms. They often were couched in excessively bureaucratic language and founded on a “racial” basis. When no English-language term corresponding to the German notion exists, the translation is rendered according to the literal meaning of the word. Abbreviations such as RG, RMJ, and the like are explained in the list of abbreviations following the table of contents.

Adlerbrief.
Honorary Prussian citizenship

Ahnenerbe
. Ancestral Heritage (the National Socialist Society for Research in the Spiritual Roots of Germany’s Ancestral Heritage)

Ahnenpaß
. Certificate of Ancestry (proving pure “Aryan” descent)

Akademie für Deutsches Recht.
Academy of German Law (an academic institution under Nazi Party administration that worked for legal reform outside the Reich Ministry of Justice and to which most leading German professors of law belonged)

Aktion Erntefest
. Operation Harvest Festival (SS code name for the mass shootings of some 40,000 Jews in the Lublin District in November 1943)

Alldeutscher Verband
. Pan-German League (nationalistic and anti-Semitic association formed during the
Kaiserreich
)

Allgemeines Recht.
General (written) law (applicable to all citizens—as contrary to special law; common law is not synonymous, because it contains also the unwritten rules of law)