The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (39 page)

By the time of the second of these forced evacuations it is already obvious that much was known about them. One Wurzburg citizen even wrote to the Gestapo to ask if he could pick up a rucksack from one of the deported Jews, as he was badly in need of one
.17 In spite of this knowledge, though, probably neither the Jews nor most other people in Lower Franconia had adequate information concerning what was going on in the east.9"
Taking photographs of the deportations was not permitted, but several taken on behalf of the Gestapo show the sad procession of Jews marching off in orderly fashion down one of Wiirzburg's main streets and carrying their few permitted goods; one picture shows on the opposite side of the wide street, near a park, many citizens who were quietly watching.99

In the smaller cities and villages of Lower Franconia the opportunities for hiding Jews who wanted to go underground were not present to the extent that they were in large cities such as Berlin. In order for Jews to live illegally, they had to be able to count on a network of people who would help by giving shelter-even for a day or two. Small towns, where everybody knows everybody else, made going underground difficult. One study estimates that some 1,402 Jews emerged from the destruction of Berlin at the war's end, but in no other large German city was the figure larger than fifty. It concludes that, of the Jewish population in 1933, about i per cent (5,000 persons) survived in Germany with help from non-Jews.")')
No Jews were able to go underground in Lower Franconia.")'

7. CONCLUSION

The Gestapo brought enormous pressure to bear in order to enforce the official teachings on race, especially in matters pertaining to the Jews living in the country. The evidence in the case-files suggests that the local Gestapo tended to interpret its mandate in the broadest possible terms, and did not simply wait for orders from Berlin or elsewhere. Josef Gerum, for a time chief of the Gestapo in Wurzburg, actually had to be restrained by his superiors on more than one occasion when his enthusiasm in the pursuit of `opponents', even inside the Nazi movement, threatened to get out of hand.""
Suspects who were summoned to local Gestapo posts could readily be mistreated, sometimes to such an extent that they were driven to suicide. The brutalities of the Gestapo itself (especially evident in the recent documentary film on Klaus Barbie, Hotel Terminus, by Marcel Ophuls), contributed to the atmosphere of foreboding in which compliance appeared more and more advisable.

The Gestapo's reputation for brutality no doubt assisted the police in the accomplishment of its tasks, but brutality alone, as is shown in the next chapter, does not provide a satisfactory explanation for its effective functioning. While the Gestapo certainly intensified the pressure to attain compliance with Nazi anti-Semitism, for example, it could not on its own enforce even the more rudimentary racial policies designed to isolate the Jews. From the case-files it appears that many individuals, especially members of official and semi-official organizations and associations, members of the Nazi Party, and others in positions of authority (such as medical doctors, nurses, welfare officials), collaborated with the Gestapo in the endeavour to enforce racial policy. When it came to separating the Jews from other persons in Germany, a great deal of such volunteered information was forthcoming. Much of this assistance was not required by law or by orders from above. While Gestapo officials intensified their efforts to bring pressure to bear, to achieve National Socialist ends, the Gestapo's operations would have been seriously hampered without the provision from non-official sources of information on suspected deviations from the new behavioural norms.

The last three chapters have resisted any attempt to assess whether or not Nazi racial policies were popular; they have looked instead at what was required to enforce them. In attempting to understand the routine operations
of the Nazi system the question of the popularity of the regime is to a very large extent beside the point, and undue preoccupation with whether or not a given policy was popular can lead down blind alleys. Successful enforcement of Nazi racial policies depended on the actions of enough citizens, operating out of an endless variety of motives, who contributed to the isolation of the Jews by offering information to the Gestapo or other authorities of Party or state. The other side of the coin, the 'astonishingly rare""'
remarks about the Nazi terror, and especially the few occasions on which people broke their silence on the persecution of the Jews in the country, provide additional, silent testimony as to the effectiveness of the enforcement of racial policy.

notes, in a book on 'racially foreign people' (Fremdvolkische) in the legal and administrative practice of the Third Reich, that the very first piece of anti-Jewish legislation-the law to 'restore' the civil service of early 1933-was to apply to people with 'non-Aryan', rather than simply Jewish, origins. From the very outset, she argues, given the lack of precision of 'Aryan' and 'non-Aryan' (neither was defined), the racism of the regime could spread beyond the Jews to include many others who were considered 'undesirable'. Inside Germany there was a massive sterilization programme aimed at those suffering from 'hereditary diseases', as well as a euthanasia programme and efforts designed to solve the 'gypsy problem'; even the few blacks born in the Rhineland as a result of relationships with the French occupation troops in 1923 were not overlooked.'
It is in this context that one should understand the experiences of foreign workers, especially all those from the east, in wartime Germany.

At about the time of the deportation of the remaining Jews in the autumn of 1941, the Nazi regime, driven by the exigencies of labour shortages, wasin its own terms-creating a new racial problem as it imported ever-increasing numbers of foreign workers. Even in the later years of peace, but especially by the first winter of the war, new 'racially foreign' peoples were being coaxed or coerced into coming to Germany to work. Close to six million civilian workers and two million prisoners of war were working in Germany by August 1944. Given that the Nazi doctrines on race condemned most of these people to a status of racial inferiority, there was a determination to keep them separate from the German people, and above all to prevent any 'racial mixing'.

This chapter investigates additional aspects of the enforcement of racial policy by focusing on the relationships between the German people and those from Poland, numerically one of the largest groups, consigned to an especially despised place in Nazi thinking. As will become clear, while the enforcement of racial policy with respect to the Poles initially showed signs of success, fairly soon it began to falter. Many factors were at work, but the overriding difficulty faced by the Gestapo was the failure to elicit sufficient co-operation from the population. The chapter draws upon Gestapo case-files on foreign workers, as well as those on Germans accused of being out of step with Nazi teachings, and utilizes local reports of the SD in order to depict the responses of Germans to the strident entreaties of Nazi authorities to avoid all contact (Umgang) with foreigners.

I. NAZI POLICY AND THE POLISH PEOPLE

No sooner had the regime cured the massive unemployment it faced when Hitler assumed power than labour shortages began to appear, and these were exacerbated with the rapid expansion of the armed forces in the 1930s. In an effort to cope with the problem, increased numbers of foreign workers were permitted into the country. Polish agricultural workers provided the single biggest contingent before the outbreak of war.

There had been a long tradition of hostile relations between the Germans and the Poles. 'Polnische Wirtschaft' (roughly, 'economics, Polish style') was a term of abuse and derision, and suggested disorganization, clumsiness, and stupidity?
Even before 1914 there was a consistent anti-Polish stance in government; Poles were treated with prejudice, and from time to time expelled
from the country.;
Anti-Polish sentiment even touched people of the stature of Max Weber.4
Germany also had a long tradition of importing foreign labourers, well before 1914, and many of them were Poles. During the First World War, when the labour shortfall was greater than ever, not only were prisoners of war compelled to work, but in addition each year, except 1917/18, there were never fewer than 300,000 Poles employed in Germany, mostly in agriculture.'

The efforts of the Gestapo in racial affairs, far from diminishing with the isolation, emigration, and/or deportation of the Jews to the east, actually had to be stepped up dramatically. Even before the outbreak of war in 1939, the large number of foreign workers in the country and their relations both to their employers and to the people at large had to be policed. In 1938 nearly 100,000 Poles worked in Germany, mostly in agriculture. When mistreated, overworked, or underpaid, these people were capable of causing local commotions that could only be resolved when the police intervened and the Poles were sent home; later on, after their country was defeated in war, Poles working in Germany were more open to exploitation than ever.

An indication of the kinds of things in store for the Poles, whether inside Germany or in the occupied territories, can be seen in a memorandum of the Racial Political Office of the Nazi Party, written by Dr E. Wetzel and Dr G. Hecht in November 1939. The aims were 'first, the complete and final Germanization of the [ethnic] groups of appropriate composition; second, the removal of all foreign elements not to be Germanized; third, a new settlement by Germans. The long-tertn goal must be the complete destruction of the Polish people.''
To bring about the 'solution' to the Polish question, the nation was to be deprived of leaders; the intelligentsia was also to be wiped out, and the workers on the land, 'racially the worst part of the Polish people', were to be kept in a state of slavery, educated sufficiently to be able to carry out the orders of their masters."
'Racially useful' children were to be sent back to
the fatherland for Germanization. (This was already a prelude to the notorious stealing of children carried out by the SS organization Lebensborn.9
At the same time, efforts were to be made to save those who could pass Germanization tests, and there began a massive resettlement programme that would involve moving millions of Poles from their homes; a figure of 5.3 million is mentioned in the text.'()
It might be expeditious, according to the memorandum, to treat Jews and Poles in the same way, or to play them off against one another, as the case demanded.,"

The 'General Plan East' envisaged several genocides. Formulated on Himmler's inspiration in late 1940 or early 1941, it advocated the following `solution to the Polish question': 8o to 85 per cent of all Poles would be removed from the German settlement area, and the 20 million or so 'racial undesirables' would be pushed out over a thirty-year period, perhaps to Siberia.'
Z The reason given for not 'solving the Pole question' on the model of the 'final solution' to the Jewish question was that neighbouring peoples might become concerned about their own future. Such 'political dangers' had to be avoided, and forced resettlement was the only real alternative. The Poles would be joined in Siberia or elsewhere by 5o per cent of the Czech population, 65 per cent of the Ukrainian population, 75 per cent of the 'white Ruthenians': and eventually the Russian question itself would have to be faced.'
3 According to another memorandum from Himmler (May 1941), Germany would have to rid itself of other ethnic groups, even long-settled peoples, such as the Kaschubians.14
These 'negative' population policies were to be matched by a 'positive' effort at resettling Germans in the east, where, together with those capable of being 'Germanized', they would give birth to the 'thousand-year Reich'.
's

As bloodthirsty and genocidal in scope as Nazi theories were, in the short term the acute labour shortage in Germany could only be met by importing at least some of the despised foreigners. Other possible avenues were eschewed. In particular, political considerations and ideological reservations hindered the Nazi leadership from making up the shortfall by forcing longer hours on the existing workforce or having even more women work, or declaring a
`total war', in which all resources would be fully mobilized.1
' Hitler felt it was important that Germans should not be asked to sacrifice too much. As Timothy Mason has pointed out, great care was taken on the home front, so that the experiences of the First World War would not be repeated.
1 In order for Germans to enjoy at least some 'butter'-consumer goods and reasonable living conditions-along with the `guns', foreign labour would be exploited even inside Germany.18