The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (45 page)

The falling off of documentary evidence cannot be entirely explained by the practice of summary justice, however. As has been seen,"'
the statistics gathered by the authorities at the time led to alarm that there were more `criminal' acts in this sphere than even before. The conclusion is unavoidable that the absence of records on forbidden contact with the Poles was also a consequence of the unwillingness, for whatever reason, of ordinary citizens to denounce. While such co-operation had never been exclusively based on loyalty to the regime as such, with defeat looming nearer participation of this kind in the terror system must have appeared increasingly imprudent.

Because the treatment of the Poles in Germany reflected the fate of Germany's armed forces on the battlefront, when victories were reported on all fronts not only were many local officials inclined to be stricter, but according to the recollections of some Poles, German citizens with whom they had contact shared in the euphoria and were inclined to be harsher towards these foreigners, even in the absence of specific justification in Nazi regulations. After the war a Polish worker, for example, reported that in the early summer of 1940, following the victories in western Europe, his (female) employer on the farm in Pomerania where he and other Poles worked suddenly informed them that they could no longer draw water from the well. They were told that 'for the Poles there is enough water in the river'. A number of other Polish workers state how their treatment changed in Germany after Stalingrad. Until then, using the Polish language in public had been discouraged, though the authorities had had no choice but to tolerate its use, given that many Poles could not speak German, and a minimum of communication between workers was needed at the job site. There had been some official concern about the use of the Polish language, as indicated above, and there was even worry
about Polish-speaking priests addressing Sunday service in Polish, as there was that foreigners speaking their own languages might foment strikes or even resistance. After Stalingrad, at least some of the informal proscriptions on the use of Polish began to disappear, although Polish workers remained aware that at the very least it was inadvisable to use it in front of Nazis, especially those in the SS."

Certainly, any German employer, such as a farmer, would also take practical considerations into account before running to the authorities to report breaches of regulations, not least because there was little prospect of getting a replacement for an arrested Pole or other foreign worker. Even sullen and potentially rebellious help on the farm was better than nothing.11
In Bavaria, as early as mid-1942, a full six months before Stalingrad, justice authorities were already complaining that in order not to lose the assistance of the foreign workers, the rural population in several places were neglecting to denounce all crimes, so that in truth the foreigners reign on the farm. That has emerged especially in the neighbourhood around Donauworth.'
148 However, at the same time there were even a few official initiatives designed to mitigate at least some of the oppressive regulations concerning foreign

But if some convinced Nazis grew increasingly desperate, for many Germans war-weariness, reinforced by bombings and shortages of the bare necessities, inclined them to accept that a day of reckoning was not far off. Especially after the Allied landings in June 1944, there was a precipitous decline in the willingness of ordinary citizens to provide denunciations of 'criminal' behaviour. As some of the SD reports cited above indicate, the sense of impending doom and fear of reprisals just round the corner grew all across the district of rural Bavaria which employed Poles, and especially workers from the 'enemy states' whose armies were gaining the upper hand. Straining to keep going day after day, fearing that the foreign workers might get out of hand, and trying to keep their personal record as clean as possible, people now found it possible to overlook suspicious behaviour. As a consequence, the enforcement process ground to a halt.

In late 1944 justice authorities in Bamberg attributed the failure of citizens to take seriously the official imperatives about the danger of 'blood-mixing' to the 'guilelessness of the Germans': 'The racially foreign person in many cases lives with the German national comrade-especially in the countryside-under the same roof: the national comrade does not see in him the
member of a foreign or enemy state, but a valuable fellow worker at a time of labour shortage. Pity and charity are the products of this false point of view and German sentimentalism.'
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The historian Max Domarus, resident of Wurzburg during these stormy last years, points to specific experiences that turned people such as those in his native city and the surrounding district away from supporting the efforts of the regime. In October and November 1944 all able-bodied men, from pensioners to raw youths, were recruited to work on the 'Westwall', the border fortifications in the Saar area, where they dug tank-traps by hand. At almost the same time there was a call by Hitler to create a popular people's army of men between the ages of 16 and 6o, the 'Volkssturm', which would be thrown into battle. Not only was this a prospect few could relish, but what was even more worrying was whether or not the Allied armies would treat members of the Volkssturm as regular soldiers subject to the conventions of war, or simply look upon them as partisans who could be shot out of hand. Another factor contributing to the fall of morale in cities behind the lines, like Wurzburg, was the influx of evacuees from the front-line areas. Far from being grateful, the latter tended to disparage natives for not having contributed to the war effort for which they had sacrificed so much. There was also a return to religion. According to witnesses, the churches were once again filled to overflowing. The reputation of the NSDAP in Lower Franconia suffered discredit not only because the war was turning out badly, but also because local Nazi boss Hellmuth was both personally unpopular and known as a staunch anti-Catholic.

To make matters worse, the alarming sight of massive numbers of bombers flying over the area with impunity on their way to targets in the east or to Schweinfurt, even the occasional crash of a bomber in town or the unloading of a small number of bombs on to a target there (as on 21 July 1944), made tangible the destructive power that was imminent, even as it simultaneously fuelled the hope that somehow Wurzburg might be spared. There were wild rumours that Wurzburg would be designated a 'hospital city, and that Winston Churchill had a special place in his heart for it because he had allegedly attended the local university and befriended its beloved Bishop Ehrenfried. Under the circumstances, it is not so surprising that fewer and fewer people were willing to provide the Gestapo or Nazi organizations with the tips which made enforcing Nazi teachings of any kind possible.'
S1

To the relief of many Germans, the rampage of the foreign workers inside
Germany did not assume the proportions many had expected from early 1943 onwards.15'
According to Wendelgard von Staden's recollections, introduced above, the Poles and Russians who worked on their farm near Stuttgart did not seek revenge. Instead, they behaved as if not much had happened. No doubt this reserve can be partially explained by their apprehension about having to return to lands liberated by the Red Army and now in the Soviet sphere. To be sure, von Staden notes how, when time dragged on and they were allowed to wander about, some Russians became dangerous, especially if refused something like a bicycle they wanted to take back with them.'''
The scattered 'bands' of foreign workers in the Rhine-Ruhr area were also relatively quiet, and were far from having any political aims, as the Gestapo feared, or acting like the partisan armies in the east. Most of them had simply been bombed out, and, driven by hunger and the need for shelter, tried to survive in the ruins, either on their own or in combination with Germans who were living there illegally as well.'
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Even during the chaotic days of April and May 1945, inside Germany the Poles and eastern workers did not seek revenge on the ordinary people. Henryk Grygiel, a Polish forced labourer for three years, recounts his experiences of those months. He conveys the impression that the regime, even if only with conscripted Hitler Youth boys, managed to keep control of the situation, not least by shooting and hanging German deserters. The grip of the Nazis was replaced almost overnight, at least in the western sections of the country, by that of the Allies. Vigilante justice broke out here and there, but a full-scale massacre was avoided.'"

6. CONCLUSION

Foreign workers, regarded as a necessary evil and temporary expedient caused by acute labour shortages, came to Germany in massive numbers beginning in the winter of 1939-40. On their arrival, Polish workers and others from the east were explicitly made aware of the racist policies that had been designed to regulate their every move. Publicized for the purpose of popular `education' across Germany as well, the policies aimed at segregating 'racially foreign peoples' as far as possible. Germans were encouraged to adopt the official line on the racial inferiority of these people, but at the very least they were warned to have no truck with the new racial 'peril' within. Any forgetfulness was answered in no uncertain terms.

As its case-files on those who did `forget' indicate, the Gestapo took seriously its imperative to enforce racial policy, and, as long as there was informationwhether from official sources or the population at large-it was willing and able to press home Nazi behavioural codes. It was hardly less scrupulous in regard to the Poles than it had been with the Jews, and initially it received a great deal of information about the slightest infraction of the strict rules. As its record of arrests makes clear, the Gestapo had to devote an increasing amount of time to policing the foreigners, and after the opening of hostilities against the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 this activity consumed the great majority of all the Gestapo's work. Efforts to deal with the Communists, Socialists, and other such resistance paled in comparison. In response to the increased pressure on its limited resources from the new arrivals, the Gestapo adopted far more brutal methods than it had hitherto applied (inside Germany, that is) against the Jews or anybody else.

In spite of the draconian measures, and the strenuous efforts devoted to policing contacts across the ethnic borders out in the countryside, there were limitations on what could be achieved. Undoubtedly, one of the key factors which restricted what could be accomplished concerned the reluctance to denounce the 'criminal' deeds, a reluctance that by 1944 nearly turned to silence. It would seem that there was greater reticence to offer information concerning foreign workers than there had been earlier when it came to enforcing Nazi anti-Semitism. Curiously, it had been easier to get popular cooperation with the isolation of established residents in Germany-the Jews and those who tolerated them or showed signs of rejecting the regime's teachings-than to police the new outsiders streaming into the country. Without exaggerating that difference, enough has been said on the topic already to indicate that a major cause of the unwillingness to inform can be traced to the turn for the worse taken by the war, with the many painful and daily consequences for most Germans. But other factors were at work as well.

On the one hand, committed Nazis saw little or nothing to choose between Poles and other Slavic people and the Jews; there was a long-standing prejudice against the Poles, especially as they were perceived as having posed a threat in some way over the decades, such as in the eastern parts of Prussia and even in some parts of the Rhineland, where they settled. However, antiSlavism was not nearly as widespread as anti-Semitism. It is clear that religion played an important part in eliciting some sympathy for the Poles. Most of them who were brought to Germany were Catholic, and all of them Christian. As members of the community of the faithful that the Nazis never managed to disassemble, and unlike the Jews, who had no such refuge, they could
count on some understanding, especially from the more devoutly religious parts of the country."'
Individual priests, as shepherds of the flock, also found it easier to speak out on the 'Polish question' than they had on the question of the Jews; such messages must have influenced popular opinion. The Jews had no such spokesmen, and some religious teachings even fuelled antiSemitism.

Social status and usefulness were also a factor in popular responses to the 'Polish question'. Many Poles were rural folk, from the humbler social classes. Their efforts, especially on the farms in the countryside where they worked and were quartered, were appreciated, all the more so as German men were called up, or (from autumn 1944) marched off for work on fortifications, or conscripted into the 'People's Army'. The Jews had been predominantly from the middle classes, and there were countless ways in which one might gain psychological and/or material satisfaction from denunciations involving them. It was not as obvious how one might take advantage of Poles and other downtrodden foreigners for private purposes, especially as the war dragged on. (It also needs to be borne in mind that anti-Semitic teachings themselves had tended to find a less favourable response in areas where Jews performed useful economic tasks for which there was no non-Jewish alternative. Even some Nazis were far from pleased to see the end of Jewish cattle-merchants, for example.)

The persecution of the Jews inside Germany occurred during the heyday of the regime, when many Germans found it possible to accommodate themselves in some way to the new regulations. That the Gestapo had to take more 'illegal' or arbitrary steps to enforce racial policies against the Poles in part indicates that the enforcement process was faltering. Some of the incentives that had fuelled denunciations no longer existed, and the initial show of support for policing the foreign workers fell off sharply as the deepening crisis of the final months of the regime saw everyone scurrying for coverexcept the Gestapo, which, now devoid of its contacts, hacked away to the bitter end.