Poland's Situation Under The Nazis

The invasion of the Nazis was not going to have a positive effect on the Polish population and Hitler wasted no time in demonstrating that. In August 1939 the Einsatzgruppen comprising of 2700 men was set up to destroy anti-German elements behind the front line. The targets included the leadership class and the Jews. Thousands of doctors, teachers and lawyers were executed purely because that was their role in society. Under the Nazi-Soviet pact Germany conquered 17 million Poles and 2 million Jews. Even after Poland had surrended the Einsatzgruppen continued to massacre the population. The Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of German Nationhood was set-up to control the settling of Germans in Poland. The army officials did not approve of the killings but did not speak up as Hitler was with the SS. In November, the army was granted amnesty and freed from all administrative roles.

The territories not incorporated into the German state were to be dumping grounds for Poles, Jews, Gypsises and anyone else who opposed the Nazis. Here they could be under tight control and made to do a honest day's work which they had supposedly never done before. Centre to the plan for the rest of Poland was Germanisation. 200000 ethnic Germans were settled in the conquered territory. Himmler envisages an Eastern Europe of pure German blood. This was not to threaten the Polish's peoples laws but their existence. Those Jews and Poles displaced from the incorporated territory were shifted on trains to the General Government. They were given little warning and those who resisted were often promptly shot. By the end of 1940 this mass deportation programme had resulted in the deportation of some 300000 poles and Jews. Those who remained were persecuted harshly.


The General Government


Hans Frank took control of the General Government in October 1939. Although, Frank appeared to have supreme power in reality he had not enough men under his command and the SS often worked independently. The SS had special police power allowing to kill and imprison enemies of the Reich without trial and they were to have a key role in the solution to the 'Jewish Problem'. There was a fresh purge in May 1940 which managed to eliminate the members of the leadership class that had survived 1939. The Poles were subjected to compulsory public labour and some were even deported to work in Germany which suffered a great shortage of labour by 1940. The figure of foreign workers in Germany had reached 3 million by late 1941.


The Polish Jew- How did it effect them?


Hitler made clear that the Poles and Jews were both sub-human but the distinction was that the Jews posed a threat to a pure Germany. Some 2 million Jews lived in the conquered territories. It is important to note that the Poles themselves were strongly anti-semitic. Hitler could not pursue a mass Jewish massacre because he was not ready for the USSR if they decided to take action and America might have also joined the war. However, there fate was still grim. Synagogues and Jewish property were destroyed. The people were publicly humiliated and the SS choose to shoot thousands without any direct order.