The Expulsion of Poles by Germany was a prolonged anti-Polish campaign of ethnic cleansing by violent and terror-inspiring means lasting nearly a century. It began with the concept of Pan-Germanism developed in early 19th century and continued in the racial policy of Nazi Germany asserting the superiority of the "Aryan race" in all of Europe. The removal of Poles by Germany from ethnically Polish lands stemmed from historic ideas of expansionist nationalism in the concept of Master race. It was implemented in stages by different German governments and ended only with the defeat of Nazism in World War II.[1]
The partitions of Poland had ended the existence of a sovereign Polish state in the 18th century. With the rise of German nationalism in mid 19th century, Poles faced increasing discrimination on formerly Polish lands. The first mass deportation of 30,000 Poles from territories controlled by the German Empire took place in 1885. While the ideas of expelling Poles can be found in German political discourse of the 19th century, these ideas matured into full-scale plans during the First World War, calling for the removal of Polish population from Polish territories first annexed by the Russian Empire during partitions and then by Germany.[2] Before and after the 1939 invasion of Poland the Nazis exploited these ideas when creating their Lebensraum concept of territorial aggression.[2] Large scale expulsions of Poles occurred during World War II, when Nazi Germany started the Generalplan Ost campaign of ethnic cleansing in all Polish areas occupied by, and formally annexed to Nazi Germany. Although the Nazis were not able to fully implement Generalplan Ost due to the war's turn, up to 2 million Poles were affected by wartime expulsions with additional millions displaced or killed.
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The Polish people had constituted one of the largest minorities in the German Empire since its creation in 1871. It was as a result of the earlier acquisitions made by Prussia, the very state that initiated the Unification of Germany. The Kingdom of Prussia, with its capital in Berlin after 1451, acquired historic lands with significant Polish population in a series of military operations,[2] and, in the second half of the 18th century, had seized western territories of the Polish Kingdom by taking part in the Partitions of Poland and the Silesian Wars with Austria.
The idea of pan-Germanism, demanding the unification of all Germans in one state, including the German diaspora East of the imperial border, grew out of Romantic nationalism. Some pan-Germanists believed that Germans were ethnically superior to other peoples — including Slavs, whom they viewed as inferior to the German "race" and culture. The Nazi concept of Lebensraum in turn demanded "living space" for German people, claiming overpopulation of Germany and alleged negative traits of heavy urbanisation in contrast to agricultural settlement. The desired territories were to be taken particularly from Poland. Both pan-Germanism and Lebensraum theory viewed Poles as an obstacle to German hegemony and prosperity as well as future expansion of the German state.[2]
In the territories annexed during the Partitions of Poland, German authorities sought to limit the number of ethnic Poles by their forced Germanisation and by new wave of settlement by German colonists at their expense.[2] Beginning with the Kulturkampf, laws were enacted to restrict Polish culture, religion, language and property. Bismarck initiated the Prussian deportations of 1885-1890, which affected some 30,000 Poles and Jews living in Germany who did not have German citizenship. This is described by E.J. Feuchtwanger as one the precedents to modern policies of ethnic cleansing.[3] In 1887 Bernhard von Bülow, the future Chancellor of the German Empire, advocated expelling Poles by force from territories which were Polish-inhabited and slated to become part of Germany.[4]
Already in 1908 Germany legalized eviction of Poles from their properties under pressure from pan-German nationalist groups who hoped this law would be used to reduce the number of Poles in the East by force.[2]
In August 1914 the German imperial army bombed and burned down the city of Kalisz, chasing out tens of thousands of its Polish citizens. However, during World War One, Germany had a frantic need for extra manpower in the East, and hoped to tap into the reservoir of military volunteers among the Poles by making promisses of a future independent Polish state. Their initiative (led by Bethmann) failed miserably, producing only "a dribble of volunteers" in 1916, but it was a commitment very hard to retract. Aside from that, successful attacks by the Russian army, such as the 'Brusilov offensive', forced Germany to consider a quasi independent buffer state between the two empires, hopefully set up only in the former Russian Poland and linked to Germany by its own military means.[5] The idea of reconstituting Congress Poland for the Poles after the war, was a cynical ploy stemmed from a desire to push the Russia's frontiers further East with the least amount of German effort.[6]
In reality, Germany planned to annex about 30,000 km² from former Congress Poland for German colonisation.[2] Most of the Polish population of those territories (about 2,000,000 people) was to be expelled into a small Polish puppet state.[2] The remaining population was to be used as agricultural labour for new German colonists.[2]
With the occupation of Poland following the German invasion of the country, Nazi policies were enacted upon its Polish population on an unprecedented scale. According to Nazi ideology Poles, as Untermensch, were seen as fit only for slavery and for further elimination in order to make room for the Germans. Adolf Hitler had plans for extensive colonisation of territories in the east of the Third Reich. Poland, itself, would – according to well documented German plans – have been cleared of Polish people altogether, as 20 million or so would have been expelled eventually. Up to 3 or 4 million Polish citizens (all peasants) believed be descendants of German colonists and migrants and therefore considered "racially valuable" would be Germanised and dispersed among the German population.[7] Nazi leadership hoped that through expulsions to Siberia, famine, mass executions, and slave labour of any survivors, the Polish nation would be eventually completely destroyed.[8]
World War II expulsions took place within two specific territories: one area annexed to Reich in 1939 and 1941, and another, the General Government, precursor to further expansion of German administrative settlement area. Eventually, as Adolf Hitler explained in March 1941, the General Government would be cleared of Poles, the region would be turned into a "purely German area" within 15–20 years and in place of 15 million Poles, 4–5 million Germans would live there, and the area would become "as German as the Rhineland.[9]
The Nazi plan to ethnically cleanse the territories occupied by Germany in Eastern Europe during World War II, was called the Generalplan Ost (GPO). Germanisation began with the classification of people suitable as defined on the Nazi Volksliste.[10] About 1.7 million Poles were deemed Germanizable, including between one and two hundred thousand children who were taken from their parents.[11] For the rest, expulsion was carried out.
These expulsions were carried out so abruptly that ethnic Germans being resettled there were given homes with half-eaten meals on tables and unmade beds where small children had been sleeping at the time of expulsion.[12] Members of Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were assigned the task of overseeing such evictions to ensure that the Poles left behind most of their belongings for the use of the settlers.[13]
According to Czesław Łuczak, Germans expelled the following numbers of Poles from territories annexed to the Reich in the period of 1939–1944:
| Name of territory | Number of displaced Poles |
|---|---|
| Warthegau region | 630,000 |
| Silesia | 81,000 |
| Pomerelia | 124,000 |
| Białystok | 28,000 |
| Ciechanów | 25,000 |
| So called "Wild expulsions" of 1939 (Pomerelia mostly) | 30,000 – 40,000 |
| Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany (total) | 918,000 – 928,000 |
| Zamość region | 100,000 – 110,000 |
| General Government (Proving grounds) | 171,000 |
| Warsaw (after Warsaw uprising) | 500,000 |
| Grand total, on all occupied Polish territories | 1,689,000 – 1,709,000 |
Combined with "wild expulsions", in four years 923,000 Poles were ethnically cleansed from territories Germany annexed into the Reich.[15]
On the territories of the German protoctorate called General Government there were two main areas of expulsions committed by the German state. The protectorate itself was seen as temporary measure, and served as a concentration camp for Poles to perform hard labour furthering German industry and war effort. Eventually it was to be cleared of Poles also.
116,000 Poles were expelled from the Zamość region as part of Nazi plans for establishment of German colonies in the conquered territories. Zamość itself was to be renamed Himmlerstadt, later changed to Pflugstadt (Plough City), that was to symbolise the German "Plow" that was to "plough" the East. Additionally almost 30,000 children were kidnapped by German authorities from their parents for potential Germanisation.[15] This led to massive resistance (see Zamość Uprising).
In October 1940, 115 thousand Poles were expelled from their homes in central Warsaw to make room for the Jewish Ghetto, constructed there by German authorities. After the failure of the Warsaw Uprising, 500,000 people were expelled from the city alone as punishment by German authorities.[15]
It is estimated that between 1.6 and 2 million people[16] were expelled from their homes during the German occupation of Poland. Only the Nazi German organized expulsions affected directly 1,710,000 Poles.[15] New verified estimates by Polish historians give the number of 2.478 million people expelled.[17] Additionally, 2.5 to 3 million Poles were taken from Poland to Germany as slave labourers to support the Nazi war effort.[8] These numbers do not include people arrested by the Germans and sent to Nazi concentration camps.[16]
In many instances, Poles were given between 15 minutes and 1 hour to collect their personal belongings (usually no more than 15 kilograms per person) before they were removed their homes and transported east (see: deportations) On top of that about 5 million Poles were sent to German concentration camps. A total of about 6 million Polish citizens were killed during the war.[18][19] All these actions resulted in significant changes in Polish demographics at the end of the war.[18]