the contrary: after the Wehrmacht had already decided on a mode of warfare that adhered at most “in spirit” to the international laws of war, the subsequent occupation regime further perpetuated the reign of terror.
The main agent of the oppressive measures was to be the upcoming civil administration, which developed from the civil administration teams that were brought along by the Army Higher Commands (Armeeoberkommandos) during the attack on Poland. The war’s early days, however, saw some decisive shifts in power. For example, the Wehrmacht found itself confronted in the north by Albert Forster, Danzig’s Gauleiter (Gau leader, the head of a Nazi Party regional subdivision), who had begun expanding his sphere of influence on his own initiative with the launch of the German invasion, so that by September 2 he had already taken over the municipal administration of nearby Dirschau (today Tczew). He was unconcerned by the fact that this was actually the job of the civil administration staff attached to the Fourth Army, which was assigned to the region. Just two days later, he contacted Col. Wagner and demanded that he be installed as the area’s Chief of Civil Administration (Chef der Zivilverwaltung, or CdZ), in place of the current chief, SS Senior Leader Fritz Herrmann—a demand that was ultimately pushed through by Hitler, prevailing over the Army High Command. Meanwhile, although a less prominent role was played by Arthur Greiser (who would later become the Wartheland’s Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter, or Reich governor), he too was not the Wehrmacht’s intended choice for CdZ in his region but was instead brought into play by the Reich Interior Ministry.67 These circumstances can certainly be taken as further evidence of the vague and improvised nature of the political leadership’s planning efforts.68 But more important, the appointments of these “Alte Kämpfer” (“old fighters” from the party’s early period) demonstrated the readiness of Hitler and the party leadership to install a control apparatus in the occupied territories that was entirely oriented to Nazi principles.
Thus, the military administration established on September 25 was for Hitler only an interim solution, one to which he attached “not much significance.”69 Just a short time later, he signed his “decree on the subdivision and administration of the eastern territories,” which would dissolve military administration on November 1, 1939, while providing for the transition to a civil administration. Only two days after claiming at the Reichstag that he was striving primarily for the “creation of an unconditionally guaranteed peace and a feeling of security” in Europe, he had sealed the annexation of large parts of Poland’s territory and handed them over to his close confidants, along with the task of “Germanizing” these areas.70
It is characteristic of the dynamics within the top political leadership that for them, even these three weeks soon became too long; Hitler therefore issued a new decree moving the start of civil administration to October 26, bringing it forward by one week. In their view, the war was still far from over, despite the capitulation of the Polish army. The upcoming annexation of western Poland and its transformation into a “German Lebensraum” demanded a stronger focus on those who were seen as a threat to the German project of total domination, or who otherwise had no place in this German dystopia for ideological reasons. And although the Wehrmacht had proved open to the ethnic cleansing policy during military hostilities, it was nonetheless seen as “too soft and lenient” for the further continuation of this campaign.71
The same was also true of the Reich Interior Ministry’s planners, who likewise lagged behind the Nazi leadership in their radicalness. Certainly, the ministry’s memorandum of October 2, on the “responsibilities of the civil administration in the occupied territories,” showed no qualms about pursuing the “reconstruction and strengthening of Germandom” by calling for a “complete and final Germanization.”72 This thinking was still, however, very much rooted in Prussian Germanization policy, as shown by the addendum that only the “areas separated from the Empire in 1918” were meant.73 Thus, while the ministry was still pondering how a “special status for Germandom” could be achieved in the policy sphere, and how the dispossession of major Polish landowners could be expedited through the use of Polish legal frameworks, Hitler’s inner circle had already forged a few steps ahead. The Polish elite was now either murdered or expelled, and with the founding of Göring’s Main Trustee Office for the East (Haupttreuhandstelle Ost) along with the installation of Himmler’s Land Office (Bodenamt), the Polish populace was simply robbed of its property.74
New Borders
The Reich Interior Ministry also proved conservative in defining the new borders, an issue that had been forced onto the agenda by Forster’s push for the civilian administration’s early installation.75 Hitler seemed little impressed by an ethnographic map showing western Poland’s ethnic composition, which Wilhelm Stuckart, a state secretary at the Reich Interior Ministry, presented during a meeting; after all, the Nazi regime’s “Lebensraum” policy was primarily aimed at expansion onto non-German-occupied territories, which were to be transformed into “German settlement land.”76 How very much the “Lebensraum” idea was tied to the expansive demands of the regime’s imperialist eastern policy was then shown by a blue line drawn far to the east, with which Hitler in one imperial gesture took the agriculturally most productive regions of Poland as well as four-fifths of its industry, including its entire coal production, and added them to the Reich.77
Further development of this plan was assigned to a commission under Ministerial Director Ernst Vollert, head of Department VI at the Reich Interior Ministry, which covered ethnonationality and border demarcation (Abteilung VI: Volkstum und Grenzziehung).78 Vollert had just recently returned to Berlin, having fallen out with Forster after just fourteen days as his deputy; Vollert had been a replacement for Fritz Hermann, who had been demoted to deputy when Forster took his role as CdZ.79 This brief personal experience might very well have strengthened Vollert’s skepticism about such large-scale annexation plans. In any case, his position paper, “Vorschlag zur territorialen Begrenzung von Westpreussen” (Proposal on the territorial demarcation of West Prussia), dated October 6, 1939, undershot even the demands once put forward by imperial and Prussian hardliners and argued instead for a correction of Hitler’s preliminary decision.80 Certainly, Vollert likewise considered the “chief task” to consist of making “this old German land as quickly as possible back into a German land again,” and he also did not shrink from suggesting the “resettling of a considerable portion of this Polish populace”—meaning up to 4,861,000 people, according to his own figures. But Vollert had underestimated the expansive power of the “Lebensraum” vision when he thereby called for Germany’s limitation to the borders of 1914 and labeled it “inexpedient” to extend the future province by incorporating the counties of Lipno, Nieszawa, Rypin, and Włocławek, and thus “to add purely Polish, meaning formerly Russian areas,” to it.81
Just as futile as Vollert’s position paper was another one prepared by the Reich Interior Ministry’s own think tank, the Dahlem Publication Office (Publikationsstelle Dahlem), on the same question. In order to strengthen the persuasiveness of its own stance, it had dispatched the young Dr. Theodor Schieder, head of the East Prussia Provincial Office for Postwar History (Landesstelle Ostpreussen für Nachkriegsgeschichte), to the city of Breslau (today Wrocław), where his meeting partners on September 28, 1939, included the local university professors Walter Kuhn and Hermann Aubin.82 “Academia cannot simply wait until it is asked, it must also speak up,” was what Aubin had written on September 18, 1939, to Albert Brackmann, director-general of the Prussian State Archives, under whom the Publication Office was also placed.83 The meeting in Breslau was to develop a common position on the German handling of Poland, which intermediaries would then bring into the political decision-making process.84 And in fact, there did seem to be a strong desire for advice within policymaking circles, as Aubin learned when he was told on October 4 that a short position paper was immediately desired by “several senior Reich offices”—probably referring to Vollert’s department at the Reich Interior Ministry.85 Schieder’s resulting position paper demonstrated only a minor break with Berlin’s past intentions, reflecting demands that had already
