German Nazi crimes in Poland 1939–45 – crimes during World War II, committed as a result of the intentional and planned activity of NSDAP - the German national socialist party, the state institution and bodies, organizations of the Third Reich and their officers.

Those crimes, committed within the Nazi program of genocide, were considered by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (1946) to be crimes against peace (war crimes). Pursuant to that judgment, Nazi crimes include in particular: planning, preparing, beginning and waging a war of aggression, murdering prisoners of war and civilians, mass killings of men, women and children, genocide in camps, slave exploitation, displacements and pacifications, demolishing and burning cities, villages and residential areas, appropriating property and destroying national treasures, deprivation of the national identity and Germanization, persecution for political, racial and national reasons.

The purpose of the attack of the Third Reich on Poland was the liquidation of the Polish state and destruction of the Polish nation. The Polish nation, which was considered to be of a little value, was to be deprived of its national and state leadership and subject to systematic forced denationalization and destruction. For that purpose, German diplomats undertook secret and open actions aimed at overturning the results of the peace treaty of Versailles of 1919. The final outcome of those efforts was the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, whilst German armed forces (Reichswehra, then Wehrmacht) maintained close secret cooperation with the Red Army.

The plan for the invasion (“Fall Weiss”) and extermination of the Polish nation was prepared by the authorities and central institutions of Nazi Germany long before the aggression of the Third Reich. During World War II, the culmination of those plans was the Master Plan East, which involved the expulsion of about 80–85% of the surviving Poles and transforming the Polish land into a German colonization territory. In many cases, the conducted activities of German armed forces in the Polish territory involved violating the laws and customs of war. The concept of total war, carried out as early as in 1939, involved destroying not only the military forces of the enemy, but all its powers, particularly civilians.

Pursuant to the decrees of A. Hitler of 8 and 25 September 1939 on the military administration in the occupied Polish territories, the executive power was initially exercised by general G. von Rundstedt, commander-in-chief of land forces in the West. The military officers at which civil administration staffs were established reported to him (German occupation in Poland 1939–45). Pursuant to Hitler’s decree of 8 X 1939, the following territories were annexed to Germany: Pomerania, Silesia, Greater Poland, most territories of Łódź Province, parts of the provinces of Warsaw, Kielce, Cracow and Białystok.

The annexed territories comprised the area of about 92 thousand square meters with about 9.5 million people. The chiefs of civil administration became: A. Forster in Reich District Danzig West Prussia, A. Greiser in the so-called Land of Warta River, E. Koch in East Prussia and Białystok District (from 1941). On the remaining territories of Poland under the German occupation, the General Government (GG) was established. In the territories annexed to the Reich, the Reich law was applied in all fields. All posts were taken over by Germans, German became the official language, nearly the entire Polish state immovable property and a significant part of the movable property was seized, it was made impossible to lead any social, cultural or religious life, the Polish school system was liquidated completely and the freedom of movement was restricted.

The occupational policy in the territory of GG in relation to about 12-15 million people formed itself depending on the general Eastern policy and the military situation of the Third Reich. The occupant destroyed Polish intellectuals, used brutal terror, created extremely hard material and provisional condition in cities which contributed to high mortality, prepared the plans for annexing GG to the Reich. GG was used as a reserve of slave labor force for the Reich. One of the means of terror and extermination of Poles were lawless murders: executions. Most of the executions, particularly secret ones, were not preceded with any court judgments, even police or military summary courts, but were carried out pursuant to a decision of the police authorities and the civil administration.

In the main, the victims were the representatives of intellectuals, political activists and members of underground organizations. Einsatzgruppen, marching into Poland with the Wehrmacht, arrested and murdered thousands of representatives of the Polish elite. Many secret executions took place in the first months of the occupation in Silesia and Pomerania (for example, in the forests in Piaśnica near Wejherowo), in Greater Poland. After that, the areas of intensified open and secret executions were, among others, Warsaw and its surrounding areas, the Lublin, Zamość and Radom Land, the Nowy Sącz Land, the areas of Ciechanów and Zakopane, Lwiv, Vilnius, Stanisławów, Równe. The pacifications actions in villages involved executions, expulsions and arresting, buildings were burned and property was seized. The first pacifications were carried out by the Wehrmacht in September 1939. After that, the SS, police troops and the Wehrmacht pacified, among others, the villages in the Kielce Land during the liquidation of the unit of Henryk Dobrzański (“Hubal”).

Many crimes were committed by the Nazi during the displacement operation in the Zamość Land. The largest massacres of the inhabitants of villages took place in: Aleksandrów — where 446 inhabitants were murdered, Krasowo-Częstki — 257, Lipniak-Majorat — 370, Łężek — 187, Michniów — 203, Różanice — ok. 200, Skłoby — 215, Smoliców — ok. 200, Sochy — 183, Szczecyn — 368, Złoczew — about 200. The key role in the fulfillment of the Nazi policy of destruction of the Polish society was played by the system of Nazi camps. The places of tortures and murders were also prisons, particularly: Pawiak in Warsaw, the Lublin Castle, the Montelupich prison in Cracow, Radogoszcz in Łódź, Fort VII in Poznań. In the period of the occupation, the Nazi persecuted and murdered the Jewish people (Jews - the Holocaust). The fate of the Romani and Sinti (Gypsies) was similar. The Nazi murdered mentally ill and elderly people (the so-called euthanasia).

A particularly cruel crime was taking children considered to be racially valuable from their parents. From among 200 thousand Polish children taken from their parents for the purpose of their Germanization, it was managed to find merely 30 thousand after the end of the military activities (children kidnapping). About 750 thousand Poles from Silesia, Greater Poland and Pomerania were displaced. In the years 1940–41, the Poles from the areas of Radom, Dębica and Lublin were displaced. In the Zamość Land, around 100 thousand people from 297 villages were displaced, including about 30 thousand children, of which only 4.5 thousand survived. Thousands of those expelled from the Zamość Land were sent to the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Majdanek. In total, Nazi occupants displaced 2478 thousand Poles. Another manifestation of the terror of the occupant towards the Poles in cities were the so-called roundups. People caught in street roundups were sent to forced labor in the Reich, to camps and prisons; in total, 2841 thousand Poles were taken abroad for slave labor.

Apart from that, about 300 thousand Polish prisoners of war, deprived of their prisoner of war status, worked for the Reich. The intention of the Nazi was to destroy the Polish national identity, they humiliated the national dignity of Poles, forced the people from the areas annexed in the Reich to sign the German People’s List (Deutsche Volksliste; Volksdeutsche). The criminal activity of the occupant also comprised depriving certain children, considered to be racially valuable, of their national identity and subjecting them to Germanization, restricting religious practices and persecuting clergymen, seizure and destruction of cultural assets, liquidation of the centers of intellectual and artistic life. The Polish territory was transformed by the Nazi into an international cemetery, since most of the European Jews were murdered in the extermination camps situated in Poland. In prisoner-of-war camps, over 800 thousand Soviet, about 30 thousand Italian and several thousand French and British prisoners of war lost their lives.

As a result of the Nazi occupation, Poland bore enormous losses in the scope of its citizens, national property and cultural heritage. The basis for prosecuting and punishing Nazi criminals are the statutes of the international law. The process of prosecuting and punishing Nazi criminals was initiated by the activity of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. The Institute of National Remembrance is responsible for examining and prosecuting, as well as collecting documents concerning Nazi crimes.

Bibliography

• A. Eisenbach Hitlerowska polityka zagłady Żydów [Nazi Policy of Extermination of Jews], Warsaw 1961;
• Z. Kubicki Zbrodnie wojenne w świetle prawa polskiego [War Crimes in the Light of the Polish Law], Warsaw 1962;
• K. Sosnowski „Ohne Mitleid”. Dziecko w systemie hitlerowskim [“Ohne Mitleid”. A Child in the Nazi system], Warsaw 1962;
• W. Bartoszewski Warszawski pierścień śmierci 1939–1944 [Warsaw Death Ring 1939–1944], Warsaw 1970;
• Cz. Madajczyk Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce [Policy of the Third Reich in Occupied Poland], vol. 1–2, Warsaw 1970;
• C. Łuczak Polityka ludnościowa i ekonomiczna hitlerowskich Niemiec w okupowanej Polsce [Demographic and Economic Policy of Nazi Germany in Occupied Poland], Poznań 1979;
• Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939–1945. Informator encyklopedyczny [Nazi Camps in Polish Territories 1939-1945: An Encyclopedia], Warsaw 1979;
• Zamojszczyzna — Sonderlaboratorium SS. Zbiór dokumentów...[SS-Sonderlaboratorium Zamość. A collection of documents...], vol. 1–2, Warsaw 1979;
• A. Bolewski, H. Pierzchała Losy polskich pracowników nauki w latach 1939–1945. Straty osobowe [The Fate of Polish Academics 1939-1945. Human losses], Wrocław 1989.

The content of this entry has been prepared on the basis of the source materials provided by the Polish Scientific Publishers (PWN)