Generalplan Ost

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Generalplan Ost (GPO) was a Nazi plan of genocide^[1] and ethnic cleansing to be realised in the territories occupied by Germany in Eastern Europe during World War II. It was prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942. The plan was part of Hitler's own Lebensraum plan and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") state ideology.

[edit] The plan

It should be noted that nearly all the wartime documentation on Generalplan Ost was deliberately destroyed shortly before Germany's defeat in May 1945.^[2]

[edit] Development

The body responsible for the drafting of this plan was the Reich Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - RSHA). The RSHA was tasked with combating all enemies of Nazism and Nazi Germany. It was a strictly confidential document, and its contents were known only to those in the topmost level of the Nazi hierarchy.

According the testimony of Hans Ehlich, the final version of the Plan was drafted in 1940. It had been preceded by the Ostforschung, a number of studies and research projects carried out over several years by various academic centres to provide the necessary facts and figures. The preliminary versions were discussed by Himmler and his most trusted colleagues even before the outbreak of war. This was mentioned by SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski during his evidence as a prosecution witness in the trial of officials of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt).

[edit] Reconstruction

Unfortunately no copies of the plan were found after the war among the documents in German archives. Nevertheless, the fact that such a document was created and used by Nazi officials is beyond doubt. The existence of the plan was confirmed by SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Ehlich, one of the witnesses in Case VIII before the U.S Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. As a high official in the RSHA, Ehlich was the man responsible for the drafting of Generalplan Ost.

Apart from Ehlich's testimony, there are several documents which refer to this plan or are supplements to it. Although no copies of the actual document have survived, much of the essential elements of the plan have been reconstructed from related memos, abstracts and other ancillary documents. The principal document which makes it possible to recreate with a great deal of accuracy the contents of Generalplan Ost is a memorandum of April 27, 1942 entitled: Stellungnahme und Gedanken zum Generalplan Ost des Reichsführers SS (Opinion and Ideas Regarding the General Plan for the East of the Reichsführer SS). Its author was Dr. Erich Wetzel, the director of the Central Advisory Office on Questions of Racial Policy at the National Socialist Party (Leiter der Hauptstelle Beratungsstelle des Rassenpolitischen Amtes der NSDAP). This memorandum is an elaboration of Generalplan Ost.

[edit] Short-range and long-term plan

The final version of 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 (to be carried into effect gradually over a period of 25-30 years).^[3]

The Small Plan was to be put into practice as the Germans conquered the areas to the east of their pre-war borders. The individual stages of this plan would then be worked out in greater detail. In this way the plan for Poland was drawn up at the end of November, 1939. The plan envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation, expulsion into the depths of Russia, and other fates, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would be Germanized.

In ten years' time, the plan called for the extermination, expulsion, enslavement of most or all Poles and East Slavs living behind the front lines in Europe (with some small amounts being Germanised). In their place, 250 million Germans would live in an extended Lebensraum ("living space") of the 1000-Year Reich (Tausendjähriges Reich). Fifty 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.

In 1941 it was decided to destroy the Polish nation completely and the German leadership decided that in 10 to 20 years the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists. ^[4]

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. The majority of Poles should perish in the Pinsk Marshes areas according to Hitler's statements during his "Tischgespräche".

[edit] Implementation

[edit] Ethnic cleansing

See also: Expulsion of Poles by Germany and Zamość Uprising

The plan was primarily the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler. During the war the Nazis started to realise the plan by carrying out expulsions in Poland and Ukraine, and by resettling Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) from further east on previously Polish-owned properties. In 1943, the Zamość region, due to its fertile black soil, was selected 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 actually settled in the area before 1944.

Execution of Russian civilians by a shot in the back of the head, carried out with a certain grim intensity, even relish. The Germans considered the Slavs as "sub-humans".

[edit] Germanisation

See also: Kidnapping of Polish children by Germany

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" - while some ethnic Poles had signed the Volksliste for different reasons. Many of the Volksdeutsche later died on the front.

Hundreds of thousands of ^[5] 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. Those that didn't pass the tests ended in concentration camps, were murdered or served as test subjects in German medical experiments.

[edit] Mass murder of Polish elites

Main article: Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles

Activities such as September 1939 Operation Tannenberg (Unternehmen Tannenberg) and various Intelligenzaktionen entailing elimination of Polish activists and intelligentsia, such as the November 1939 Operation Sonderaktion Krakau, were also carried out in conformity with the early drafts of Generalplan Ost; tens of thousands of government officials, clergy, and members of the intelligentsia were either murdered in mass executions or sent to prisons and concentration camps (even before the war, the Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen list identified by name more than 61,000 Poles who were to be interned or shot^[6]).

The operations targeting the Polish elite and the general population continued through the entire war, culminating in the destruction of the Polish capital Warsaw in 1944 (about 1.8 million ethnic Polish civilians were killed by the Germans during the occupation).

[edit] In Belarus

Main article: Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany

At least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis and some or all their inhabitants killed. All together, 2,230,000 people were killed in Belarus during the three years of German occupation.^[7]

[edit] Siege of Leningrad

Main article: Siege of Leningrad

The total duration of the siege was 2.5 years, or about 900 days. Economic destruction and human losses in Leningrad on both sides exceeded those of the Battle of Stalingrad, or the Battle of Moscow, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of 1.5 million total Soviet casualties, 1.2 million were civilian deaths from starvation. One cemetery in Leningrad has 600 thousand civilian victims of the siege interred.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

• Aly, Götz and Heim, Susanne (2003). Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction. Phoenix. ISBN 1-84212-670-9. 
• 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 Vierteljahrshefte 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.
• Madajczyk, Czesław "Generalny Plan Wschodni: Zbiór dokumentów", Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Warszawa, 1990
• Szcześniak, Andrzej Leszek "Plan Zagłady Słowian. Generalplan Ost", Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, Radom, 2001

[edit] See also

• Germanization
• Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles
• German AB Action operation in Poland
• Occupation of Poland (1939-1945)
• Pacification operations in German-occupied Poland
• Expulsion of Poles by Germany
• Consequences of German Nazism
• Łapanka
• Hunger Plan

[edit] External links

• Documentary sources regarding Generalplan Ost
• Vertreibung - Der Generalplan Ost der Nationalsozialisten (German)
• Full text of the Generalplan Ost (German)