with the decision to evacuate the ethnic Germans, one can already see the inadequate state of preparation that typified Nazi projects, as shown, for example, in Hitler’s promise to the leader of the German minority organization in Latvia, Erhard Kroeger, that all members of the German minority would be resettled, an action that was then carried out virtually overnight. But even here, Hitler’s sudden decision can hardly have come as a surprise, in view of a policy proposal that had repeatedly surfaced over the decades, namely, to transfer Russia’s “Volga Germans” to Germany’s eastern provinces. In any case, the project progressed apace, so that by February 1940, two hundred thousand ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe had already been resettled in the annexed territories—a vanguard for the almost one million “Volksdeutsche” who were still to follow, celebrated by Nazi propaganda as “returners” (“Rückkehrer”).48
* * *
The arrival and departure point for this forced population exchange was to be Gdynia, the most important Polish port city, formerly named Gdingen in German and now renamed Gotenhafen by the Nazis. On the same day that Himmler was appointed (Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, or RKFDV; Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germandom), early rumors were already making the rounds that the city would soon be the first target for the settlement of ethnic Germans from the Baltics. Groscurth made this note in his diary: “Latvia: directive from the Führer: evacuate Germans regardless of situation. Organization of reception in Gotenhafen, which will be cleared of Poles for this.”49 These rumors were confirmed shortly thereafter by Heydrich on October 9, when he communicated to Ribbentrop that he considered a “substantial removal of the Polish populace from the city to be necessary.”50
The reason for choosing Gdynia in particular cannot be conclusively ascertained. Certainly, it would seem natural to settle the inhabitants of Baltic port cities in yet another port city. But it seems likely that the choice was also influenced by Gdynia’s symbolic significance in the German-Polish conflict. The place had long been an insignificant fishing village, until the Sejm (the parliament of the reestablished Polish state) resolved on September 23, 1922, that a deepwater port would be built there—within sight of Danzig—to host Poland’s battle fleet and merchant marine and also to free the Upper Silesian mining areas from their dependence on German seaports, soon achieved with the construction of the Coal Trunk Line (Magistrala Węglowa).51 By 1932, when Gdynia had caught up with the neighboring port of Danzig, it had long since become vital to Poland’s foreign trade, and as the “pride of the Second Polish Republic,” it came to symbolize Poland’s success and will to survive.52 Therefore, it might have been not only for pragmatic reasons that Gdynia had been selected: by choosing it in particular for launching the Germanization of the territories to be annexed, the occupiers were also making a symbolic statement. In any case, two days after Heydrich’s message to Ribbentrop, Himmler also argued in favor of Gotenhafen, and ordered that members of the Polish elite were “to be expelled first of all.”53
This dictate, that the first to be expelled should be those residents considered undesirable for political and ideological reasons, would have actually required a precise surveying of Gotenhafen’s inhabitants, as had already been launched in other occupied locales.54 But when Forster’s agencies took over the organization of resettlement efforts in mid-October, there was no longer enough time for a survey. On October 14, a set of selection criteria was presented by Wilhelm Huth and Wilhelm Löbsack, the former being Forster’s deputy (later a Regierungspräsident and the head of Department I at the Reichsstatthalter’s offices), and the latter his ethnonationality officer (Volkstumsreferent).55 These criteria demonstrated the pressure under which the authorities in Danzig–West Prussia were working, thereby contradicting Włodzimierz Jastrzębski’s assessment of the deportations as a “carefully prepared evacuation measure.”56 Huth did not even bother to specify which groups were cleared for deportation and instead only stipulated those who could remain in the city: “Volksdeutsche” and—with some exceptions—Kashubians. In the process, he put down on paper what may well have been the first definition of the “Volksdeutsche” (singular: Volksdeutscher) in the annexed territories: “To be considered a Volksdeutscher is anyone who has belonged to one of the German organizations in Poland, or who as a nonorganized person has acknowledged German as his language, sent his children to a German school or raised them German, and can provide an impeccable ethnic German guarantor.”57
The inhabitants of Gotenhafen and the adjacent locality of Adlershorst (today Orłowo) who had been labeled Kashubian by the Germans were to be spared if they had been born in the city. “The other Kashubians would be treated the same as the Poles, insofar as their dwellings are required for the Baltic Germans.”58 In this case, the German occupiers were not so interested in how much a dwelling’s residents might be suitable for Germanization, but instead whether the dwelling itself was needed.
The emphasis on the housing question demonstrates how much the first deportation actions were shaped by the imperative to accommodate the incoming “Volksdeutsche”—a circumstance that would soon be repeated in the Wartheland. Tens of thousands were expected, and if they were to be accommodated here, then most of the roughly eighty thousand residents of Gotenhafen had to be expelled. A more nuanced survey, as had recently been begun in the rest of the province—dividing the local populace into “Volksdeutsche,” autochthonous Poles, Poles that had migrated here in the interwar period, politically dangerous Poles, and finally Jews—was deemed unworkable here. Huth clearly felt it necessary to emphasize this in particular: “There exists no directive . . . according to which the populace born in West Prussia is to remain there.” In view of the associated risk from the ethnonationalist perspective, Huth nonetheless sounded a note of caution: “But special attention must be given to the facts of whether there are German speakers among them and if these have raised their children German. If yes, then these cases are to be handled as borderline cases, in the sense that such are not to be treated as Poles.”59 According to Huth’s instructions, the local municipal administration was solely responsible for the implementation of these measures—a provision that was intended to shut out the Immigration Central Office of the SS (Einwandererzentralstelle, or EWZ).60
That same day, Gotenhafen’s police chief, SS Senior Assault Unit Leader Manfred Körnich, delegated the relevant responsibilities.61 The Security Police were to select the “Volksdeutsche,” register them, and provide them with identity documents—and to do so in accordance with the Gauleiter’s guidelines. In his orders to the municipal police, however, Körnich inserted one more selection criterion. Although the housing needs of the immigrants had become virtually overnight the top priority dominating all others, it still needed to be balanced against economic necessities, and so he ordered that officers should identify not only the “Volksdeutsche,” but also the Poles who worked in vital operations, in order to exempt them from deportations as well. Just a few days later, and after the first transport had already left the city, Körnich’s instructions were further refined. Whereas the Gestapo-selected “Volksdeutsche”—along with some eighty long-established Kashubian fisher families and around five thousand skilled workers—were to be exempted from deportation, “all welfare benefit recipients” were to be rounded up, thereby adding social selection criteria to the ethnic and economic ones.62
The city lost around thirty-six thousand residents in total. Besides the 13,171 persons who were deported to Radom, Kielce, Lublin, and Siedlce in the General Government from October 18 to 26, another twenty-three thousand took matters into their own hands and simply fled—mostly to Posen and its vicinity.63 The project could not have been judged a great success. First, not even half the city’s residents had been expelled, and most of those had ended up not in the General Government, but in other parts of the annexed territories.64 Second, even these first deportations had put the Reich Security Main Office into conflict with the German army’s Chief Commander of the East (Oberbefehlshaber Ost), who gave his consent only “grudgingly,” for he feared the loss of “irreplaceable workers.”65
