Meanwhile, Germany’s security agencies had begun arming members of German minorities and bringing them together into paramilitary units known as K-organizations (engaged in Kampf or “combat”) and S-organizations (engaged in sabotage). Although the Polish Interior Ministry still believed it could put away any fears about Germans in Poland forming military groups, the K- and S-organizations in Upper Silesia already had 4,474 members, and the K-organizations in Poznań Voivodeship had 2,324 men under arms in seventy-two localities.150 When the Wehrmacht attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, this fifth column sprang into action by blowing up bridges, blockading streets, occupying industrial zones, and even taking over an entire city before the Wehrmacht’s arrival, as was the case in Katowice, the biggest city in Upper Silesia and known in German as Kattowitz.151
Notes
1. Quoted in Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 85.
2. Ibid., 90.
3. Kolb, “Polenbild und Polenfreundschaft,” 113.
4. For example, see the many Pole-friendly references at the 1832 Hambach Festival in Majewski, “Sage nie,” and Asmus, Hambacher Fest. For an overview of the many supportive organizations in Baden, which was particularly liberal at the time, see Brudzyńska-Němec, Polenvereine.
5. M. Müller, “Deutsche und polnische Nation,” 74; see also ibid., 71–72, as well as Kolb, “Polenbild und Polenfreundschaft,” 111–13. On “pan-nationalism,” see Koselleck et al., “Volk, Nation,” 7: 404.
6. Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 101–2.
7. Lukowski and Zawadski, Concise History, 142–44; Schmidt-Rösler, Polen, 82–83.
8. Trzeciakowski, “Polnische Frage,” 63–64.
9. Quoted in Wippermann, Ordensstaat, 144–45. Müller and Schönemann, Polen-Debatte, explores the events more comprehensively.
10. Sauer, “Problem,” 422–23.
11. On this, see also Ther, “Beyond the Nation,” 53–54.
12. Hoensch, Geschichte Polens, 231.
13. Zoltowski to the Reichstag on April 1, quoted in Verhandlungen des Reichstages, 1: 97.
14. Ibid., 1: 98. On the rediscovery of the medieval German eastward colonization, see Wippermann, Der deutsche Drang, esp. 82–116; Kopp, “Arguing the Case,” 151.
15. Sauer, “Problem,” 431.
16. Wehler, “Deutsch-polnische Beziehungen,” 204.
17. Trzeciakowski, Kulturkampf, 119.
18. Hoensch, Geschichte Polens, 232. For the effects on Silesia, see Matuschek, “Polnisch der Oberschlesier,” part 1, 110–11, and part 2, 194. For the importance of language in emergent nationalism, see particularly Anderson, Erfindung, 72–87, and Hobsbawm, Nationen, 60–83; for Germany, see, for example, Puschner, Völkische Bewegung, 27–48. For a concise overview of research on the role of language in the assertion of nationalist worldviews, see Day and Thompson, Theorizing Nationalism, 90–92.
19. On this, see Leuschner, “Sprache.”
20. Trzeciakowski, Kulturkampf, 52–53; Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 134; Lindemann, “Preußisch-deutsche Reichsgründung,” 30.
21. Trzeciakowski, Kulturkampf, 57–59.
22. Einhart, Deutsche Geschichte, 286.
23. Trzeciakowski, Kulturkampf, 6.
24. Here, Kopp points to an interesting simultaneity, for this escalation of inner colonization policy coincided with the overseas expansion of the German Empire. The existence of a causal relationship, however, is debatable (“Arguing the Case,” 149).
25. Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 143.
26. Neubach, Ausweisungen, 32.
27. Lindemann, “Preußisch-deutsche Reichsgründung,” 35.
28. Ibid.; see also Wehler, “Von den ‘Reichsfeinden,’” 187.
29. See, for example, the contemporary argument in Hasse, Das deutsche Reich, 56–58.
30. Wehler, Das deutsche Kaiserreich, 116.
31. Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 148.
32. Hagen, “National Solidarity,” 42–43.
33. Berghahn, Kaiserreich, 186; see also Davies, God’s Playground, 130; Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 141–42 and 152–53.
34. Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 153.
35. Eley, Reshaping, 41–48; Walkenhorst, Nation—Volk—Rasse, 68–69.
36. Alldeutscher Verband, Zwanzig Jahre, 13–22.
37. Ibid., 114–25.
38. Walkenhorst, Nation—Volk—Rasse, 264. Hansemann’s support appears in the January 1900 issue of Die Ostmark, cited in Oldenburg, Der deutsche Ostmarkenverein, 136.
39. The relevant legislation was passed by Prussia’s House of Lords on June 28, 1904, specifying that the construction of residential buildings in the provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, and Posen, as well as parts of Silesia, Brandenburg, and Pomerania, required permission from the local Regierungspräsident—which, of course, was not granted to Polish applicants. More comprehensively in Hofmann, “Ansiedlungsgesetz.”
40. Tims, Germanizing Prussian Poland, 152–55; Wehler, “Von den ‘Reichsfeinden,’” 188.
41. From page 62 of the August 1907 issue, quoted in Oldenburg, Der deutsche Ostmarkenverein, 137.
42. Wehler, “Von den ‘Reichsfeinden,’” 191. See also Walkenhorst, Nation—Volk—Rasse, 273–74.
43. Hasse, Das Deutsche Reich, 57.
44. Davies, God’s Playground, 135. The events are examined more comprehensively in Kulczycki, School Strikes. The Alldeutscher Verband even called for Polish children to be released from compulsory education, arguing that strike participants should be “permanently excluded from school attendance” (Alldeutscher Verband, Zwanzig Jahre, 299).
45. Laak, Über alles, 86.
46. Boysen, “Geist des Grenzlands,” 109.
47. Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 166.
48. Oldenburg, Der deutsche Ostmarkenverein, 140.
49. Quoted in Walkenhorst, Nation—Volk—Rasse, 222.
50. Frymann, Wenn ich der Kaiser.
51. Quoted
