Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany

• 1. Introduction

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  Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany were carved from nearly a quarter of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic in October 1939, just one month after the invasion began. An area of 92,500 square kilometres holding roughly 10 million people was stripped from Poland and placed under direct German civil administration. What had those people been doing when the soldiers arrived? What happened to their homes, their language, their priests, their children? And how did a regime that called itself a government transform an entire society into what it explicitly described as a source of slave labour?

  The answers were written into law, decree by decree, and enforced with a brutality that was bureaucratic in its precision. The plan had a name the Nazis used openly: the Eingegliederte Ostgebiete, the incorporated Eastern territories. The goal, stated plainly by Heinrich Himmler, was to create what he called a blonde province. What followed was one of the most systematic campaigns of ethnic destruction in the history of modern Europe.

• 2. The Architecture of Annexation

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  On the 8th of October 1939, Hitler signed the decree that formally absorbed western Polish lands into the Reich. The annexation came after French prime minister Edouard Daladier rejected a German peace offer on the 7th of October and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain did the same on the 12th. The decree established two new administrative units: Reichsgau Posen in Greater Poland and Reichsgau West Prussia in Pomerelia. Each was subdivided into government regions named after German-language versions of Polish cities: Posen for Poznan, Bromberg for Bydgoszcz, Kalisch for Kalisz.

  Smaller strips of territory were folded into already-existing German provinces. East Prussia absorbed the areas around Ciechanow, Dzialdowo, Mława and other counties from the Warsaw Voivodeship. Upper Silesia extended eastward to take in Oswiecim, Bedzin, Sosnowiec and Zawiercie. On the 29th of January 1940, Reichsgau Posen was renamed Reichsgau Wartheland, after the Warta river. It was the only Gau composed entirely of annexed Polish territory.

  The annexation violated international law, specifically the Hague Convention IV of 1907. Nazi officials were aware of this. They attempted to circumvent the convention by declaring the war against Poland over before the annexation formally took effect, arguing that the convention therefore did not apply. Arthur Greiser was appointed as civil administrator of the Posen district, and Albert Forster took the same role in West Prussia. The Reich border extended eastward by roughly 150 to 200 kilometres on average compared to the 1914 line.

• 3. The Demographic Machinery

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  Before the invasion, the annexed territories held up to 10,568,000 people, around 30 percent of Poland's pre-war population. In those territories, ethnic Germans made up about 7 percent of the population in Wartheland and 66 percent in the Province of Silesia as a whole, according to figures compiled by the Nazi Bureau for Racial Policies on the 25th of November 1939. Poles constituted 85 percent of Wartheland's population and 61 percent of Danzig-West Prussia's.

  On the 7th of October 1939, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as his settlement commissioner with a new title: Reichskommissar fur die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, or Reich's commissioner for strengthening Germandom. Himmler's office issued its first major directive ordering the immediate expulsion of all Jews from the annexed territories, all Congress Poles from Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, and all Reich's enemies from Warthegau, South East Prussia and East Upper Silesia. The term Reich enemies applied to anyone with higher education, involvement in patriotic organisations, or any visible expression of Polish identity.

  A follow-up directive in early 1940 went further: it called for replacing 3.4 million Poles with German settlers, beginning with the settlement of 100,000 German families within three years. The longer-range framework, the Generalplan Ost, envisioned deporting initially 31 million, later revised to 51 million Slavs to Siberia. About 350,000 ethnic Germans arrived in Poland after Nazi propaganda persuaded them to leave the Baltic states before the Soviet takeover.

• 4. Expulsion and Extermination

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  According to historian Heinemann, about 780,000 ethnic Poles in the annexed territories lost their homes between 1939 and 1944. At least 250,000 were deported to the General Government and 310,000 were displaced into Polenlager camps within their own Gau. The Institute of National Remembrance estimates that around 923,000 people were deported or evicted from the annexed territories across that same period.

  The regional breakdown shows how concentrated the violence was. In Warthegau, 630,000 people were displaced between 1939 and 1944. In Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, 123,000 to 124,000 were displaced by the end of 1942, with 53,000 deported to the General Government and the rest subjected to racial evaluation in camps. In East Upper Silesia, 81,000 Poles were driven from their homes, replaced by 38,000 ethnic Germans primarily from Bukovina. A total of 1.5 million people across the annexed territories were expelled or deported, including those sent for slave labour or to concentration camps.

  For Jewish residents, the trajectory led directly to mass murder. Concentration and extermination camps were established within the annexed territories themselves, including Auschwitz in East Upper Silesia, Chelmno, Potulice and Soldau. More than 400,000 Jews from the annexed territories were deported to Auschwitz, Treblinka or Chelmno. Of those, more than 300,000 came from Warthegau, 85,000 from East Upper Silesia, 200,000 from the Białystok district and 30,000 from the Zichenau district. Thousands more died in the ghettos before deportation. An additional 110,000 Jews were deported to the General Government.

• 5. Engineering German Settlement

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  German colonists moved into homes from which Polish families had just been expelled, often so abruptly that they found half-eaten meals on tables and unmade beds where children had been sleeping. Members of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were assigned to oversee the evictions and ensure the Poles left behind most of their belongings for the arriving settlers.

  Estimates for the total number of ethnic Germans who settled in the annexed territories range from 404,612 to 631,500. Anna Bramwell's figure of 591,000 includes 130,000 from the Baltic states, 98,000 from Bukovina, 93,000 from Bessarabia, 72,000 from Sudetenland, 68,000 from Volhynia, 58,000 from Galicia, 38,000 from eastern Poland, 21,000 from Dobruja and 13,000 from Slovenia. Warthegau received the vast majority: 536,951 colonists, or 85.1 percent of the total placed across all four provinces.

  The demographic shift was visible in individual cities. In Poznan, the German population grew from roughly 6,000 in 1939 to 93,589 in 1944. In Lodz, from roughly 60,000 to 140,721. In Inowroclaw, from 956 to 10,713. The share of ethnic Germans in Warthegau rose from 6.6 percent in 1939 to 21.2 percent in 1943. Settlers had to pass through a racial classification process called Durchschleusung, sorted into categories from RuS I (most valuable) to RuS IV (not valuable). In January 1940, Himmler personally ordered that those classified as RuS III be allowed to settle on smaller farms of 20 hectares, compared to 50-hectare farms for RuS I and II. By the end of 1944, about a million ethnic Germans had been subjected to the Durchschleusung process.

• 6. Systematic Dehumanization

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  Luczak's description of public life in the annexed territories lists what Poles were legally barred from: cinemas, theatres, museums, hotels, cafes, restaurants, parks, playgrounds, first and second-class train compartments, public bathhouses, beaches, public phones and public benches. Poles were required to give way to Germans on sidewalks and to bow as a form of greeting. In Poznan, four young Polish women who attended an opera were sentenced to four months of penal work camp by a German court.

  Polish children had to work from age 9 in urban areas and from age 7 or 8 in rural areas; the forced labour duty extended to age 70 for men. Marriage was partially banned: Polish women could only marry at age 25 and men at age 28. Married couples were separated when sent to forced labour in Germany. The calorie ration for Polish children was set at one-fifth the level provided to German children. During winter, Germans limited heating supplies to Poles to one-quarter of what was available to Germans.

  By the Nazi regime's own records, the number of Poles from the annexed territories held in forced labour rose steadily: 827,000 on the 13th of July 1942, 896,000 on the 20th of November 1942, 934,000 on the 15th of February 1943, and a peak of 1,066,000 on the 31st of August 1943. In Katowice, a special German court sent 40 percent of defendants to Auschwitz and imposed the death penalty in 60 percent of cases. In Białystok, under the supervision of Alfred Konig, 80 percent of accused were sentenced to death and 15 percent to concentration camps.

  The ban on the Polish language applied to all institutions, offices and much of public transport. Poles who did not know German were required to hire a translator, but those positions were restricted to German authorities. Polish citizens who helped their compatriots understand German at no charge were imprisoned. In Poznan, Germans collected all Polish books and burned them. About 15 percent of Polish teachers, an estimated 8,000 people, died during the occupation.

• 7. The Destruction of the Church

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  The Catholic Church had served as a stronghold of Polish identity during 19th-century Prussian rule, which made it a specific target in the newly annexed territories. In Wartheland, Arthur Greiser issued a decree on the 13th of September 1941 rejecting the legal existence of churches as entities in that Reichsgau. Three weeks later, the majority of Catholic Polish priests in the region were sent to concentration camps.

  Out of 2,500 Catholic priests in the Warthegau region, 752 perished during the occupation. One-third survived the war in prisons and concentration camps. In Poznan, out of 800 Catholic priests in 1939, only 34 remained by 1943. By 1944, up to 1,300 churches and temples had been closed in Warthegau, with 500 converted into warehouses and two simply blown up by the Germans. Cathedrals in Poznan and Włocławek were stripped of their relics and art. In Gniezno the basilica was devastated. The diocese of Włocław saw 213 priests perish, 49.2 percent of its pre-war clergy. Chelmo diocese lost 303 priests, nearly 48 percent of its total.

  In Danzig-West Prussia, Bishop Carl Maria Splett cooperated closely with Gauleiter Albert Forster. Splett introduced 200 German Catholic priests into the Chelmo diocese after being appointed its diocesan administrator from December 1939. He banned the use of Polish in churches and, in May 1940, extended the ban to confessions. When the Vatican intervened and ordered the ban lifted, Splett defended it by arguing Polish confessions were used for nationalistic purposes. The Vatican ultimately accepted his explanation. Forster publicly praised Splett's work.

  In Wartheland, one of six bishops managed to remain active: Walenty Dymek, whose persistent protests eventually convinced the Vatican that it risked losing all of the Polish churches in the region within two to three months. In Upper Silesia, Bishop Stanisław Adamski ordered Poles to pray in German and identify as Germans, a strategy he pursued with the acceptance of the Polish Government in Exile, aimed at shielding the local population from genocide.

• 8. Aftermath and Legacy

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  After the Vistula-Oder Offensive in early 1945, Soviet forces swept through the annexed territories and the German population fled or was expelled. The territories became part of the People's Republic of Poland, and none of the Nazi-ordered territorial changes received recognition from the Allied powers.

  The population transfers Germany had imposed created a precedent the Allies applied in reverse after the war. West Germany did not extradite individuals charged with crimes in Poland, leaving many cases unresolved. Trials of captured German Nazis and collaborators did proceed in post-war Poland, but the institutional scale of what had been built across the annexed territories made full accountability impossible.

  The Mława district case study, conducted by a Polish Home Army unit from the start of the war through spring 1942, analysed the behaviour of 1,100 Germans toward the Polish population. Out of those 1,100 individuals, 9 engaged in any friendly relationship with Poles or attempted to help them. Of those 9, 3 were craftsmen, 3 were police officers, 1 was a camp guard, and 1 was an administration official. In Wartheland in 1941, German police recorded only 529 cases of friendly contact between Poles and Germans out of a German population of 786,000. What had begun as a bureaucratic partition of territory had become, in practice, the near-total erasure of a society.