"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (58 page)

The most radical policy was implemented in the Zichenau administration district, in which
all
marriages were prohibited, at least until 1942.
⁵
The situation in the
Reichsgau
Wartheland was similar.
Reichsstatthalter
Greiser, deeply worried about the prospects of success of his Germanization policy, would have preferred to have no marriages at all between Poles allowed, so as to check Polish population growth.

Since 1940 the authorities had been complaining that the Poles, whether married or not, had been following Polish propaganda slogans to preserve “Polishness,” to “reproduce in great numbers,” and to “have large numbers of children without inhibition” and that pregnant Polish women were no longer registering with the welfare offices because they were afraid of (forced) abortions.
⁶
As early as November 7, 1939,
⁷
Reichsstatthalter
Greiser had summarily stated in an order of the day that marriages between Poles and marriages between Jews were provisionally banned, that marraiges between ethnic Germans must “comply with the Nuremberg Race Laws,” and that “if at all possible,” there should be no marriages between Germans and Poles.

Of course, this general ban on marriages for Poles could not be maintained in the long term without a risk of causing severe unrest among the local population. However, racial segregation remained the foremost goal of the leadership. In March 1941, the same month as the issue of the decree on the German Ethnic Classification List, Greiser issued a secret circular on March 31 that took into consideration and supplemented the segregation concept of the German Ethnic Classification List Decree. It stated that marriages between “members of the German
Volk
” and “persons of recognized German extraction” (i.e., Poles on the German Ethnic Classification List) on the one hand and “members of the Polish
Volk
” (i.e., Poles with protected subject status) on the other were essentially prohibited (but there were no “ethnic policy reservations” about marriages between Poles).
⁸
In a further decree on September 10, 1941, possibly because legal reservations had emerged about his marriage ban, Greiser on his own authority raised the minimum marriageable age for Polish men, which had been 21 under Polish law (16 in exceptional cases),
⁹
to 28, and for Polish women he set the minimum age for marriage at 25,
¹⁰
in order at least to delay marriages that could not be prevented.

Reichsstatthalter
Greiser was evidently the first to act in this independent fashion. The weak Reich Ministry of the Interior, which had seen the treatment of “non-Germans” slipping out of its hands more and more because of the single-minded activities of the departments of the RFSS/RKF
¹¹
(and the radical racial politicians in the Annexed Eastern Territories), to which it had granted authority to issue instructions
¹²
—even to the authorities of the general state administration—ultimately had no option but to acknowledge the reality of the situation. In a meeting at the Reich Ministry of the Interior on January 21, 1943, it was established that the regulations in the other Annexed Eastern Territories should be harmonized with those in the Warthegau (or Wartheland) (although they had not achieved their original aim of restricting the “great fertility of the Poles”)
¹³
and that at a later date a uniform marriageable age for Poles should be specified, “Preferably 25 or 28 years of age.”
¹⁴
This was nothing but the retroactive legalization of the arbitrary actions of the
Reichsstatthalter
in Posen (Pozna
) and was indeed subsequently implemented. A decree of January 10, 1944, by Himmler in his capacity as Reich minister of the interior,
¹⁵
based on the Decree on Protected Status of April 25, 1943, set forth a uniform marriageable age for Poles of 28 years for men and 25 years for women.

Section 8 of this Decree on Protected Status of April 25, 1943,
¹⁶
provided for drastic special regulations with regard to marriages between German state subjects and protected status subjects so as to prevent racial mingling between the Master Race and the subject races, a concept obviously based on colonial practices. The practical importance of these prohibitions principally affected the Poles in the Eastern Territories, because the institution of protected subject status was applied in administrative practice only in these regions. With the possibility of exemptions in individual instances, all marriages of protected status subjects and non-protected status subjects, in other words all marriages between (protected subject status) Poles in the Annexed Eastern Territories and other persons (Germans, stateless persons, foreigners), were prohibited. Marriages involving two protected subject status Poles were also subject to severe restriction by administrative guidelines issued by the departments of the RFSS/RKF, or even banned altogether.
¹⁷
These measures not only reflect the erroneous belief of the racial fanatics that by such means they would achieve the “choking-off of the foreign
Volkstum
”; the measures also cast a distinctive light on the simple-minded methods with which the local population was ruled. As was to be expected, the bans on marriage had no impact whatsoever on the birthrate; illegitimate births in particular rose steadily. As a result, additional measures were considered to counter the increasing Polish birthrate (e.g., obligation on the fathers’ part to pay very high maintenance; withdrawal of welfare benefits from Polish mothers),
¹⁸
and these remained unimplemented only because of the shortage of time remaining. All the same, the authorities made every effort to effectively force down the undesired rise in the Polish birthrate. As late as fall 1944, the authorities in the Warthegau found time to consider how “measures could be introduced in good time” to prevent the “particularly high growth in the Polish population” that was to be expected from the use of the population to dig entrenchments.
¹⁹

VII. Freedom of Movement and Personal Liberty

The extensive restrictions on the freedom of movement and personal liberty of the “non-German” inhabitants of the Annexed Eastern Territories were based on the same policy of segregation and discrimination. Closely linked to the regulations on the wearing of badges and the compulsory Hitler-
Gruss
mentioned above, they were also intended to draw a highly visible line between the “non-Germans” and the privileged Germans, to demonstrate the German rule day by day to the “non-Germans,” and to make absolutely clear to them their special status as nothing more than individuals living on the sufferance of the Germans, a mass of cheap labor completely dependent on the goodwill of the German authorities.

It is evident from relevant police regulations that the mildest restrictions were in force in the Kattowitz (Katowice) administrative district, to the extent that those Poles working in the municipal districts were subject to Reich police laws,
¹
which contained well-defined statutory definitions of offenses as well as certain legal guarantees. In contrast, those Poles originating from the Annexed Eastern Territories and the General Government were explicitly excluded from the application of Reich police law; thus they could be subjected to further restrictions. Other “non-German” laborers were subject to strict supervision. The “Eastern workers” from the Occupied Soviet Territories, for instance, could leave the
parish
of their workplace only with police permission,
²
whereas all non-Polish “non-German” laborers from the Baltic states, the General Government, and the Annexed Eastern Territories
³
could move freely around the rural or municipal district in which they worked but could leave this only with the permission of the police.
⁴

In contrast, the “non-Germans” in the “model district” of the Wartheland were liable to considerably more severe special legislative regulations. Not surprisingly, the Jews suffered most.
⁵
As early as November 1939, the HSSPF (higher SS and police leader) in Posen (Pozna
) had issued a general migration and relocation ban for all Jews and Poles of the Warthegau and a ban on the entry of such persons from outside “to permit the conclusive registration of persons,” under threat of “the stiffest punishment” in the event of violation.
⁶
These regulations were later relaxed somewhat. A police regulation issued by the HSSPF in Posen on June 26, 1941, as an “analogous application of the Prussian Law of Police Administration” stipulated that the permission of the local police authorities was required for any relocation within or outside the parish of residence.
⁷
For Posen, the future capital of the new Eastern Territories, particularly stringent regulations applied to ensure the creation of accommodation for Germans seeking houses and apartments.
⁸
As of November 1939, no further permits were issued to leave the city, and all relocations within the city were prohibited.
⁹
Toward the end of the war, Poles were also banned from the platforms of the Posen railway station,
¹⁰
with the aim of preventing any mass exodus.

In the Zichenau administrative district, local authorities faithfully emulated the special provisions of Reich law by frequently issuing even harsher regulations, such as the closure of certain roads and squares to Poles and Jews,
¹¹
a ban on Jews’ visiting markets, and the establishment of particular shopping hours and specific post office and other opening hours for Jews.
¹²
Undoubtedly, in the other parts of the Annexed Eastern Territories there were also restrictions on the freedom of movement of “non-Germans,” but these are difficult to substantiate because of a lack of source material.

One example of the mentality applied by the political leadership to tackle the issues of freedom of movement and (compulsory) residence is the special treatment of a particular group of “non-Germans”: Poles suffering from tuberculosis, whose number was put at 35,000 out of a total of 230,000 TB patients in the Warthegau.

As a consequence of the poor living and dietary conditions, a rapid increase in number of cases of open TB had been registered in the Warthegau since 1940, with the incidence among the German population three times higher, and among the Poles five to six times higher, than in the Altreich.
¹³
The authorities initially attempted to establish isolation facilities, but in view of the large number of Polish TB patients, these were by no means adequate.
¹⁴
Reichsstatthalter
Greiser therefore hit upon the idea of resorting to “proven” models and arbitrarily proposed the “special treatment” (killing) of these persons, similar to the “special treatment of the approximately one hundred thousand Jews that will be completed in two to three months,” because the “risk of infection is very great.”
¹⁵
Himmler had no “fundamental” objections to this proposal but demanded the issue of certificates by medical officers confirming incurability in each individual case and ordered the strictest secrecy.
¹⁶
The deputy head of the Central Office for National Health of the NSDAP, Dr. Kurt Blome, also considered Greiser’s proposal “the most practicable and simple solution,” but he doubted whether Hitler would approve, since Hitler had already rejected the euthanasia program in the Reich “for practical reasons”; maintaining secrecy about the action would be impossible and foreign states would “stir up hatred.”
¹⁷
Himmler then sided with Blome’s misgivings and ordered that incurable TB patients should be sent to an isolated area and kept there under the strictest supervision.
¹⁸