Generalplan Ost
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Generalplan Ost (GPO) was a Nazi plan to realize Hitler's "new order of ethnographical relations" in the territories occupied in Eastern Europe during World War II. It was prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942. No copies of the actual document have survived, and as such the plan can only be reconstructed from memos, abstracts and other ancillary documents. The plan was part of Hitler's own Lebensraum plan and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten state ideology.
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[edit] Plan
Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan for ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts, the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won. The plan envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation, expulsion into the depths of Russia, and other gruesome fates, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character.
In ten years time, the plan called for the extermination, expulsion, enslavement or Germanisation of most or all Poles and East Slavs still living behind the front line. Instead, 250 million Germans would live in an extended Lebensraum ("living space") of Tausendjaehrige Reich (1000-Year Reich). 50 years after the war, under the Große Planung, Generalplan Ost foresaw the eventual expulsion and extermination of more than 50 million Slavs beyond the Ural Mountains.
Of the Poles, by 1952 only about 3-4 million people were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland, and then only to serve as slaves for German settlers. They were to be forbidden to marry, the existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles (believed by the Nazis to be Untermenschen, that is "sub-people") would cease to exist.
[edit] Realisation
[edit] Ethnic cleansing
The main initiator of the plan was Heinrich Himmler. During the war the Nazis started to realise the plan by carrying out expulsions in Poland and Ukraine, and by resettling ethnic Germans from further east on previously Polish-owned properties. In 1943, the Zamość area, due to its fertile black soil, was chosen for further German colonisation in the Generalgouvernement (General Government) as part of Generalplan Ost. Polish farmers were expropriated and forcibly removed from their farms, the Polish population expelled amid great brutality, and the farms were then handed over to German settlers, but few Germans were settled in the area before 1944.
[edit] Germanisation
In Poland during World War II, Polish citizens of German ancestry, who often identified themselves with the Polish nation, were confronted with the dilemma of whether to sign the Volksliste, the list of Germans living in Poland. This included ethnic Germans whose families had lived in Poland proper for centuries. Often the choice was either to sign and be regarded as a traitor by the Polish, or not to sign and be treated by the Nazi occupation as a "traitor of the Germanic race." Some ethnic Poles had signed the Volksliste for different reasons.
A certain number of Polish children were also forcibly separated from their parents and, after undergoing scrutiny to ensure that they were of appropriately "Nordic" racial stock, were sent to Germany to be raised in German families. Only a very small number of the children who were taken were ever returned to their parents.
[edit] Genocide
Activities such as Operation Tannenberg (Unternehmen Tannenberg) and various Intelligenzaktionen entailing elimination of Polish intelligentsia and activists were also carried out in conformity with Generalplan Ost. Germans were known to be effective in carrying out their plans, so one should assume the Generalplan Ost would have been fulfilled as well, if Germany had won the war. Even having lost the war, within six years (1939-1945) Nazi genocidal programs killed almost all the European Jews, most Gypsies, up to 6 millions Polish civilians of all nationalities, unknown but huge number of Russians, Byelorussians and Ukrainians in the German-occupied territories. Routinely, entire populations of villages would be rounded up, herded into barns or churches and burned alive. Already, hundreds of thousands died at the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
[edit] References
- Eichholtz, Dietrich "Der `Generalplan Ost' Über eine Ausgeburt imperialistischer Denkart und Politik from Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Volume 26, 1982.
- Heiber, Helmut "Der Generalplan Ost" from Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 6, 1958.
- Madajczyk, Czesław Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939-1945, Cologne, 1988.
- Rössler, M. & Scheiermacher, S. (editors) Der `Generalplan Ost' Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Plaungs-und Vernichtungspolitik, Berlin, 1993.
- Roth, Karl-Heinz "Erster `Generalplan Ost' (April/May 1940) von Konrad Meyer from Dokumentationsstelle zur NS-Sozialpolitik, Mittelungen, Volume 1, 1985.
