they were also “personally and directly subordinated” to the administration heads as in the Reich, they were able to establish much greater freedom of action in Poland, as a result of the still unsettled power structures.113 After the territorialization of the Einsatzgruppen on November 20, 1939, the annexed territories were likewise overlaid with a security police network, one that stood in a hybrid relationship similar to that of the general administration. Thus, each chief of a Gestapo Command Office (Stapo-Leitstelle) also became a policy adviser to the local Reichsstatthalter, and each chief of a Gestapo Office (Stapo-Stelle) became a policy adviser to the local Regierungspräsident. Their embedding in the SS apparatus, however, meaning their subordination to the IdS and the HSSPF, took priority: orders from Department IV (Amt IV) of the Reich Security Main Office took precedence over those from the general administration.114
The general understanding that the envisaged “Germanization” of the annexed provinces was to be achieved primarily through force had led to a massive expansion of powers for the general administration heads in annexed provinces compared to the powers of their counterparts in the Reich. The fact that specifically the SS and police were not weakened as a result, but instead were given considerable additional powers as well, hints at the methods through which the Nazi leadership wanted to achieve “Germanization.”
Notes
1. Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 421; Wildt, “Radikalisierung und Selbstradikalisierung,” 16; Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 10–11.
2. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 11–13; also Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 27–28. On the selection criteria for these duties, see Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 53–57.
3. Unsigned guidelines for foreign deployment of Security Police and the SD, undated (probably early August 1939), German Federal Archives, Berlin [hereafter, BArch], R 58/241, 169–75.
4. Ibid.
5. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 15.
6. Quoted in Herbert, Best, 592–93.
7. Ibid.
8. Heydrich to Daluege, July 2, 1940, quoted in Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 207.
9. Decree from Best, August 8, 1939, quoted in Herbert, Best, 239.
10. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 265.
11. Order quoted in Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 39; implementation described by Alberti, Verfolgung und Vernichtung, 248.
12. German Army High Command, leaflet on the particularities of Polish warfare, quoted in Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 40.
13. Ibid., 39.
14. Domarus, Hitler, 1238.
15. Czubinski, “Poland’s Place in Nazi Plans,” 21.
16. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland; Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg.
17. Ibid., 136, using figures from Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.
18. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 48.
19. Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 442–47.
20. According to a statement by the former head of the German Union in Posen, Dr. Kurt Lück, published on January 9, 1940, in the Ostdeutscher Beobachter (the Nazi Party mouthpiece in the Wartheland), the initial figures totaled some 1,030 “Volksdeutsche” killed and 858 missing, see Pilichowski, “Nazi Genocide,” 189. Berlin considered this to be much too low, as Lück would soon discover to his astonishment when the Foreign Office first spoke of 5,437 “Volksdeutsche” victims in its documents, which Goebbels’ propaganda machine then arbitrarily inflated tenfold to 58,000. This “Bromberg Bloody Sunday” then evolved into an important motif in Nazi propaganda, used as justification for the ever-increasing radicalization of actions against the civilian populace. On Nazi propaganda to disguise war culpability, see Czubiński, “Poland’s Place in Nazi Plans,” 43–44.
21. Horne and Kramer, Deutsche Kriegsgreuel 1914. Horne and Kramer also go more specifically into the origins of the franc-tireur mythos during the Franco-Prussian War, and are then able to demonstrate (more convincingly than Böhler, for example) how anxious presuppositions, also by younger officers in particular, were seemingly confirmed in the early days of World War I, not only by a series of misunderstandings, but also by the unique military situation, for example when the Schlieffen Plan’s required rapid troop movements led to disorientation, or when modern long-range rifles put the snipers out of view and provoked German troops into acts of vengeance in the immediate vicinity, see ibid., 139–259. On the significance of this mythos in the destruction of Leuven, see Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 6–30.
22. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 36–37.
23. Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 149.
24. See also Herbert, Best, 240; Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, 244.
25. Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 54. See also Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 447–49.
26. Quoted in Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 449.
27. Groscurth, Tagebücher, 201.
28. Jansen and Weckbecker, Der Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz, 49 and 51; for overviews of local structures, see also 165 and 167.
29. Ibid., 168.
30. Ibid., 102–4.
31. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 90–91.
32. Lahousen’s file note on meetings aboard “Führer train” on September 12, 1939, quoted in Groscurth, Tagebücher, 358.
33. Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, 20.
34. Quoted in Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 215.
35. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 92.
36. Directive from 10th Army Command, September 26, 1939, quoted in Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg, 217.
37. Umbreit, Deutsche Militärverwaltungen, 208.
38. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 117.
39. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, 1: 79.
40. Schulenberg to Foreign Office, September 20, 1939, reprinted in Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, ser. D, vol. 8, doc. 104, 82. See also Rutherford, “Race, Space, and the ‘Polish Question,’” 70–71.
41. Lahousen’s file note, September 12, 1939, quoted in Groscurth, Tagebücher, 357.
42. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, 1: 81. See also Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, 457.
43. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, 1: 82.
44. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen, 53.
45. Quoted in Wildt, Generation
