alleged threat of “franc-tireurs,” a word known to Germans from two earlier wars. In an astounding parallel to the radicalization of German warfare seen during World War I, a more brutal approach by the Einsatzgruppen was ordered by Himmler on September 3, the day of the massacres in Bromberg.21 He stated that “Polish insurgents caught in the act or with a weapon” were henceforth “to be shot on the spot,” and that an insurgent was anyone who “attacked the lives of German occupation personnel or of Volksdeutsche, or threatened vital facilities or goods in the occupied territories.”22 A day later, the Wehrmacht followed suit by issuing its first “criminal order,” which stated that “Polish civilians” suspected of having shot at German soldiers were no longer to be handed over as before to the Security Police for “clarifying the question of perpetration,” but were instead to be shot by one’s own troops; this also applied to civilians who were only “located at the houses and farmsteads from which our troops had been fired on.”23
This first radicalization of German warfare had fatal consequences for the civilian populace. Although Polish soldiers—as long as they were not Jewish—retained at least the most basic rights upon capture, more and more of the civilian populace was now finding itself subject to German aggression. Not entirely settled, however, is the exact relationship between the Polish quashing of the ethnic German uprising in Bromberg and the explosion of violence from the German side, which began on the same day.24 Nonetheless, it can be assumed that the outrage over the alleged crimes committed against the “Volksdeutsche” in Bromberg and, more generally, the anger at the allegedly unlawful warfare conducted by Polish “irregulars” behind the German front line were a pair of factors that mutually reinforced one another while also contributing to the unfettering of violence on the German side—even though both were the result of the regime’s own ideological production and had little to do with reality.25
Unlike later events in the Soviet Union, this radicalization in Poland was marked by sometimes intense conflicts between the Wehrmacht and the SS. In the eyes of the SS, the Wehrmacht was endangering the political goals pursued by the Reich in Poland. As Heydrich informed his departmental heads on September 7, the “leading social class . . . must be rendered harmless as much as possible” and could “certainly not remain in Poland, but instead must be brought to German concentration camps.”26 Here, the ostensibly conscientious Wehrmacht was seen only as an obstacle, as reflected in the writings of military counterintelligence officer Helmuth Groscurth, who complained a day later that Heydrich “continues inciting against the army in the most outrageous way.”27
The Wehrmacht complained not only about the conduct of the SS Einsatzgruppen, but also the actions of the so-called Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, or Ethnic German “Self-Defense” Force. The potential of these militia formations had been immediately recognized by the SS leadership, which had also initiated some of them and supplied them with weapons. They were all put under SS command on September 9 and ultimately subordinated to the Ordnungspolizei (a Main Office of the SS) on September 26, 1939, under the chief of the Ordnungspolizei Kurt Daluege and his local commanders on location.28 Despite what their name might suggest, the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz units were not primarily meant to provide “defense” for the local Germans but instead to act as a “complement to the Einsatzgruppen.” Unlike the Einsatzgruppen, the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz soon grew to include more than a hundred thousand members, thereby extending the reach of the SS into every locale.29 Such units supported the SS through their local knowledge, particularly in assisting with the selection process applied to the resident populace, as well as the arrest of allegedly “anti-German elements”; they would soon help with the deportations as well and ultimately took part in the executions.30
Various voices in the Wehrmacht protested this continual expansion of the SS sphere of action, but to no avail.31 During a discussion aboard the “Führer train” on September 12, 1939, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of military intelligence, reported to Colonel General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, that “extensive executions by firing squad were planned in Poland, and that especially the nobility and clergy were to be eradicated.” Keitel was not surprised, for Hitler had apparently already informed him of the radicalization of warfare against the civilian population, as well as the associated population policy goals. Canaris learned that “this matter was already decided by the Führer . . . that if the Wehrmacht wanted nothing to do with this, it must also accept that the SS and Gestapo would make an appearance here.”32 A marginal note on the minutes of this conversation includes an expression that would appear more and more often, one that described the German policy goal in Poland: “political cleansing of the soil” (“politische Flurbereinigung”).33
Conflicts also arose over the brutal treatment of the Jewish populace, especially after the mass murders committed in Bendzin (today Będzin) by the Einsatzgruppe z.b.V. (Einsatzgruppe zur besonderen Verwendung; Einsatzgruppe on special assignment) under SS Senior Group Leader Udo von Woyrsch. It would soon turn out, however, that the Army High Command was criticizing more Woyrsch’s methods than the general direction of SS policy and itself issued an order dated September 12, 1939, for Jews “to be deported over the San river,” the demarcation line between German and Soviet occupied Poland.34 It thereby pivoted toward the policy defined by the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) on September 11, when Heydrich met with SS Brigade Leader Bruno Streckenbach, Kraków’s Commander of the Security Police and SD (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or BdS), to discuss the expulsion of the Jews across the San.35 In the end, the Wehrmacht even ordered its soldiers to shoot anyone coming back, “also outside of the bridges.”36 Hans Umbreit’s assessment that the Wehrmacht’s treatment of the Jews “bordered on criminality” is therefore too mild.37 Indeed, it had taken less than two weeks for the Wehrmacht leadership to also agree with the ethnic cleansing policy pushed by the Nazi regime’s top leadership. Aimed not only at alleged irregulars and the Polish elite, but also the Jewish populace, this was not simply a “political cleansing of the soil,” as it was still described on the same day in the meeting notes of another military intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Erwin von Lahousen.
The matters still needing discussion, as communicated by the Wehrmacht to Himmler and Hitler in the following weeks, were thus limited to delineating this division of labor and arranging an orderly exit of the German military. When Wagner received confirmation from Heydrich on September 19 of something that he already knew, namely that the Einsatzgruppen had in fact received orders to take action against the civilian population, he asked only that implementation be delayed until a German civil administration was established, so that the Wehrmacht no longer had to carry any responsibility for it.38 The resolution was recorded as follows in the notes of Franz Halder, the army’s chief of staff:
b) Cleansing of the soil: Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, nobility.
c) Army’s demands: cleansing after the army’s withdrawal, and after handover to a stable civil administration. Early December.39
It was probably for similar reasons that Walther von Brauchitsch, the army’s commander in chief, sought a meeting the next day with Hitler, who immediately updated him on the war plans. There had been an important development: a telegram had arrived from Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, who reported that the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov had “intimated” he was no longer interested in the “original inclination toward allowing a rump Poland to exist” and had asked for negotiations on its partitioning.40
This initiative from the Soviet Union had an immediate impact on German war planning. During the meeting aboard the “Führer train” on September 12, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had explained to Keitel that three choices existed at the time: partition Poland once again; allow for an “independent rump Poland”; or pursue the establishment of a Ukrainian state and the realignment of Lithuania’s borders.41 After Moscow’s change of heart, Brauchitsch was faced with a
