116-782: Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany took place during the occupation of Poland and the Ukrainian SSR , USSR , by Nazi Germany during the Second World War . By September 1941, the German-occupied territory of Ukraine was divided between two new German administrative units, the District of Galicia of the Nazi General Government and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine . Some Ukrainians chose to resist and fight
232-795: A collection valued at over 50 million Reichsmarks. Despite the military defeat of the Polish Army in September 1939, the Polish government itself never surrendered, instead evacuating West, where it formed the Polish government in Exile . The government in exile was represented in the occupied Poland by the Government Delegation for Poland, headed by the Government Delegate for Poland . The main role of
348-602: A completely different basis." Ukrainian nationalist partisan leader Taras Bulba-Borovets gathered a force of 3,000 in summer 1941 to help the Wehrmacht fight the Red Army. In September 1942, Borovets entered into negotiations with the Soviet partisans of Dmitry Medvedev . They tried to attract him to the struggle against the Germans but could not reach an agreement. Borovets refused to obey
464-401: A concentrated effort to destroy Polish culture . To that end, numerous cultural and educational institutions were closed or destroyed, from schools and universities, through monuments and libraries, to laboratories and museums. Many employees of said institutions were arrested and executed as part of wider persecutions of the Polish intellectual elite. Schooling of Polish children was curtailed to
580-539: A day and with little compensation. The labourers, Jews, Poles and others, were employed in SS-owned enterprises (such as the German Armament Works, Deutsche Ausrustungswerke, DAW), but also in many private German firms – such as Messerschmitt , Junkers , Siemens , and IG Farben . Forced labourers were subject to harsh discriminatory measures. Announced on 8 March 1940 was the Polish decrees which were used as
696-454: A few years of elementary education, as outlined by Himmler's May 1940 memorandum: "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. ... I do not think that reading is desirable". The extermination of the Polish elites was the first stage of the Nazis' plan to destroy
812-527: A legal basis for foreign labourers in Germany. The decrees required Poles to wear identifying purple P's on their clothing, made them subject to a curfew, and banned them from using public transportation as well as many German "cultural life" centres and "places of amusement" (this included churches and restaurants). Sexual relations between Germans and Poles were forbidden as Rassenschande (race defilement) under penalty of death. To keep them segregated from
928-474: A period of 30 years, approximately 12.5 million Germans would be resettled in the Slavic areas, including Poland; with some versions of the plan requiring the resettlement of at least 100 million Germans over a century. The Slavic inhabitants of those lands would be eliminated as the result of genocidal policies; and the survivors would be resettled further east, in less hospitable areas of Eurasia , beyond
1044-613: A plurality of the population in all territories annexed by the Soviet Union. By the end of the invasion, the Soviet Union had taken over 51.6% of the territory of Poland (about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000 sq mi)), with over 13,200,000 people. The ethnic composition of these areas was as follows: 38% Poles (~5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians, and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees, mostly Jews (198,000), who fled from areas occupied by Germany. All territory invaded by
1160-415: A result, tens of thousands of people found "guilty" of being educated (members of the intelligentsia, from clergymen to government officials, doctors, teachers and journalists) or wealthy (landowners, business owners, and so on) were either executed on spot, sometimes in mass executions , or imprisoned, some destined for the concentration camps. Some of the mass executions were reprisal actions for actions of
1276-444: A result, the two governments never officially declared war on each other. The Soviets therefore did not classify Polish military prisoners as prisoners of war but as rebels against the new legal government of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia. The Soviets killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war . Some, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński , who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were executed during
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#17330942930141392-828: A special Germanization program. Polish women deported to Germany as forced labourers and who bore children were a common victim of this policy, with their infants regularly taken. If the child passed the battery of racial, physical and psychological tests, they were sent on to Germany for "Germanization". At least 4,454 children were given new German names, forbidden to use the Polish language, and reeducated in Nazi institutions. Few were ever reunited with their original families. Those deemed as unsuitable for Germanization for being "not Aryan enough" were sent to orphanages or even to concentration camps like Auschwitz, where many were murdered, often by intracardiac injections of phenol . For Polish forced laborers, in some cases if an examination of
1508-460: Is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs.", or Nur für Deutsche ("Only for Germans"), commonly found on many public utilities and places such as trams, parks, cafes, cinemas, theaters, and others. The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children who possessed Nordic racial characteristics. An estimated total of 50,000 children, majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands, but some separated from their parents, were taken into
1624-553: Is never said, because it's inconvenient for precisely everyone, is that more Ukrainian Communists collaborated with the Germans, than did Ukrainian nationalists." Snyder also points out that very many of those who collaborated with the German occupation also collaborated with the Soviet policies in the 1930s. The elimination of Jews during the Holocaust in Ukraine started within a few days of
1740-474: The Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Majdanek concentration camps . By 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had already reached two million. The Nazi plans also called for Poland's 3.3 million Jews to be exterminated ; the non-Jewish majority's extermination was planned for the long term and initiated through the mass murder of its political, religious, and intellectual elites at first, which
1856-706: The District of Galicia , Otto Wächter , and the local Ukrainian administration officially declared the creation of the SS Division Galicia . Volunteers signed for service as of 3 June 1943 and numbered 80,000. On 27 July 1944, the division was formed into the Waffen-SS as 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian) . Sol Litman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center states that there are many proven and documented incidents of atrocities and massacres committed by
1972-893: The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland , Juliusz Bursche . In the territories annexed to Nazi Germany, in particular with regards to the westernmost incorporated territories—the so-called Wartheland — the Nazis aimed for a complete "Germanization", i.e. full cultural, political, economic and social assimilation. The Polish language was forbidden to be taught even in elementary schools; landmarks from streets to cities were renamed en masse ( Łódź became Litzmannstadt, and so on). All manner of Polish enterprises, up to small shops, were taken over, with prior owners rarely compensated. Signs posted in public places prohibited non-Germans from entering these places warning: "Entrance
2088-507: The Khatyn massacre , with the participation of the 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion . According to Paul R. Magocsi, " Ukrainian auxiliary police and militia, or simply "Ukrainians" (a generic term that in fact included persons of non-Ukrainian as well as Ukrainian national background) participated in the overall process as policemen and camp guards ". On 28 April 1943, the German Governor of
2204-645: The Nazi occupation of Poland . Occupation of Poland (1939%E2%80%931945) The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II (1939–1945) began with the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the occupation, the territory of Poland
2320-598: The Polish Workers' Party (Polish Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR), though significantly less numerous than the Home Army. In February 1942, when AK was formed, it numbered about 100,000 members. In the beginning of 1943, it had reached a strength of about 200,000. In the summer of 1944, when Operation Tempest begun AK reached its highest membership numbers. Estimates of AK membership in the first half of 1944 and summer that year vary, with about 400,000 being common. With
2436-466: The Polish language as their mother tongue, and most of the Polish native speakers were Roman Catholics . With regards to the remainder, 15% were Ukrainians, 8.5% Jews, 4.7% Belarusians, and 2.2% Germans. Germans intended to exploit the fact that the Second Polish Republic was an ethnically diverse territory, and their policy aimed to " divide and conquer " the ethnically diverse population of
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#17330942930142552-727: The Polish–Ukrainian War and the Ukrainian–Soviet War . There were large groups of prewar Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside their traditional ethnic or cultural groups. Their enthusiasm however faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions were aimed at all groups equally, regardless of their political stance. British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore states that Soviet terror in
2668-629: The Sikorski-Mayski Agreement ; but the Soviets broke them off again in 1943 after the Polish government demanded an independent examination of the recently discovered Katyn burial pits. The Soviets then lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of
2784-579: The Stroop Report ) and the Białystok Ghetto Uprising among other ghetto insurgencies. The men who were dispatched to death camps and Jewish ghettos as guards were never fully trusted and so were always overseen by Volksdeutsche . Occasionally, along with the prisoners they were guarding, they would kill their commanders in the process of attempting to defect. In May 2006, the Ukrainian newspaper Ukraine Christian News commented, "Carrying out
2900-540: The Ukrainian People's Militia . As late as 1945, Ukrainian militants were still rounding up and murdering Jews. While some of the collaborators were civilians, others were given a choice to enlist for paramilitary service beginning in September 1941 from the Soviet prisoner-of-war camps because of ongoing close relations with the Ukrainian Hilfsverwaltung . In total, over 5,000 native Ukrainian soldiers of
3016-630: The Ural Mountains , such as Siberia . At the plan's fulfillment, no Slavs or Jews would remain in Central and Eastern Europe. Generalplan Ost , essentially a grand plan to commit ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts, the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), covered actions which would be undertaken during the war, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), covered actions which would be undertaken after
3132-664: The Volyn massacre . In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated 25 May 1940, Heinrich Himmler , head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), wrote: "We need to divide the East's different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible". Almost immediately after the invasion, Germans began forcibly conscripting laborers. Jews were drafted to repair war damage as early as October, with women and children 12 or older required to work; shifts could take half
3248-607: The massacre of Lwów professors . The Nazis also persecuted the Catholic Church in Poland and other, smaller religions. Nazi policy towards the Catholic Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where they set about systematically dismantling the Church – arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen and nuns were murdered or sent to concentration and labor camps. Already in 1939, 80% of
3364-492: The willing Polish citizens into four groups of people with ethnic Germanic heritage. Group One included so-called ethnic Germans who had taken an active part in the struggle for the Germanization of Poland. Group Two included those ethnic Germans who had not taken such an active part, but had "preserved" their German characteristics. Group Three included individuals of alleged German stock who had become "Polonized", but whom it
3480-560: The "securing" of German national interests. Nazi plunder included private and public art collections, artefacts, precious metals, books, and personal possessions. Hitler and Göring in particular were interested in acquiring looted art treasures from occupied Europe, the former planning to use the stolen art to fill the galleries of the planned Führermuseum (Leader's Museum), and the latter for his personal collection. Göring, having stripped almost all of occupied Poland of its artworks within six months of Germany's invasion, ultimately grew
3596-530: The 50th Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft Battalion participated in the large anti-guerrilla action « Operation Winterzauber » (Winter magic) in Belarus , cooperating with several Latvian and the 2nd Lithuanian battalion . Schuma-battalions burned down villages suspected of supporting Soviet partisans . On March 22, 1943, all inhabitants of the village of Khatyn in Belarus were burned alive by the Nazis in what became known as
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3712-632: The Catholic clergy of the Warthegau region had been deported to concentration camps. Primate of Poland, Cardinal August Hlond , submitted an official account of the persecutions of the Polish Church to the Vatican. In his final observations for Pope Pius XII , Hlond wrote: "Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the... territories of Poland which have been incorporated into
3828-618: The City): "All elements that reside in our land, whether they are Jews or Poles, must be eradicated . We are at this very moment resolving the Jewish question , and this resolution is part of the plan for the Reich's total reorganization of Europe.", "The empty space that will be created, must immediately and irrevocable be filled by the real owners and masters of this land, the Ukrainian people". Reinforced by religious prejudice, antisemitism turned violent in
3944-466: The General-Government area. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Germany for forced labour in industry and agriculture, where many thousands died. Poles were also conscripted for labour in Poland, and were held in labour camps all over the country, again with a high death rate. There was a general shortage of food, fuel for heating and medical supplies, and there was a high death rate among
4060-631: The German invasion and occupation of Polish territory, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens, including teenagers, became labourers in Germany, few by choice. Historian Jan Gross estimates that "no more than 15 per cent" of Polish workers volunteered to go to work in Germany. A total of 2.3 million Polish citizens, including 300,000 POWs, were deported to Germany as forced laborers. They tended to have to work longer hours for lower wages than their German counterparts. A network of Nazi concentration camps were established on German-controlled territories, many of them in occupied Poland, including one of
4176-547: The German invasion of the Soviet Union, the expulsions slowed down, as more and more trains were diverted for military logistics, rather than being made available for population transfers. Nonetheless, in late 1942 and 1943, large-scale expulsions also took place in the General Government, affecting at least 110,000 Poles in the Zamość – Lublin region. Tens of thousands of the expelled, with no place to go, were simply imprisoned in
4292-556: The German occupation forces and either joined the Red Army or the irregular partisan units conducting guerrilla warfare against the Germans. Most Ukrainians, especially in western Ukraine , had little to no loyalty toward the Soviet Union, which had been repressively occupying eastern Ukraine in the interwar years and had overseen a famine in the early 1930s called the Holodomor that killed millions of Ukrainians. Some who worked with or for
4408-417: The German population, they were often housed in segregated barracks behind barbed wire. Nonetheless, many Polish women were sexually enslaved in German camp and military brothels . Labor shortages in the German war economy became critical especially after German defeat in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943. This led to the increased use of prisoners as forced labourers in German industries. Following
4524-671: The Germans and Soviets. Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945, the Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including 3,000,000 Jews in what was described during the Nuremberg trials as a deliberate and systematic genocide. In August 2009, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total. In September 1939, Poland
4640-632: The Germans, Borovets was arrested by the Gestapo in Warsaw and incarcerated in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In the autumn of 1944, the Nazis, looking for Ukrainian support in a war they were by then losing, freed Borovets. He was forced to change his nom de guerre to Kononenko and under this name he led the formation of a Ukrainian special forces detachment of around 50 men under the Waffen-SS . This detachment
4756-477: The Germans. They were aided by some regular German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of members of the German minority in Poland, the Volksdeutsche . The Nazi regime 's policy of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites was known as Operation Tannenberg . This included not only those resisting actively, but also those simply capable of doing so by the virtue of their social status . As
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4872-581: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. They moved Lithuania into the Soviet sphere of influence and shifted the border in Poland to the east, giving Germany more territory. By this arrangement, often described as a fourth partition of Poland , the Soviet Union secured almost all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Western Bug and San. This amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres of land, inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens. The Red Army had originally sowed confusion among
4988-897: The Nationalist Military Detachments (VVN), the Brotherhoods of Ukrainian Nationalists (DUN), the SS Division Galicia , the Ukrainian Liberation Army (UVV) and the Ukrainian National Army ( Ukrainische Nationalarmee , UNA). By the end of 1942, in Reichskommissariat Ukraine alone, the SS employed 238,000 native Ukrainian police and 15,000 Germans, a ratio of 1 to 16. The 109th, 114th, 115th, 116th, 117th, 118th , 201st Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft-battalions participated in anti-partisan operations in Ukraine and Belarus . In February and March 1943,
5104-567: The Nazi Germany did so in various ways including participating in the local administration, in German-supervised auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft , in the German military, or as guards in the concentration camps . Stalin and Hitler both demanded territory from their immediate neighbour, Poland. The Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 brought together Ukrainians of the USSR and Ukrainians of what
5220-649: The Nazi administration had other ideas, particularly the Lebensraum programme and the total ' Aryanisation ' of the population. It played the Slavic nations against one another. OUN initially carried out attacks on Polish villages to try to exterminate Polish populations or expel Polish enclaves from what the OUN fighters perceived as Ukrainian territory. This culminated in the mass killings of Polish families in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia . According to Timothy Snyder , "something that
5336-424: The Nazi regime attempted to destroy Polish culture. As part of that policy, the Nazis confiscated Polish national heritage assets and much private property. Acting on the legal decrees of 19 October and 16 December ( Verordnung über die Beschlagnahme Kunstgegeständen im Generalgouvernement ), several German agencies began the process of looting Polish museums and other collections, ostensibly considered necessary for
5452-477: The Nazis against the Allied forces Ukrainian nationalists hoped that enthusiastic collaboration would enable them to re-establish an independent state. Many were involved in a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity , including the Holocaust in Ukraine , and the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia . Ukrainians, including ethnic minorities like Russians, Tatars and others, who collaborated with
5568-540: The Polish nation and its culture. The disappearance of the Poles' leadership was seen as necessary to the establishment of the Germans as the Poles' sole leaders. Proscription lists ( Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen ), prepared before the war started, identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite and intelligentsia leaders who were deemed unfriendly to Germany. Already during the 1939 German invasion, dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen ) were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting
5684-414: The Polish population as a result. Finally, thousands of Poles were killed as reprisals for resistance attacks on German forces or for other reasons. In all, about three million Poles died as a result of the German occupation, more than 10% of the pre-war population. When this is added to the three million Polish Jews who were killed as a matter of policy by the Germans, Poland lost about 22% of its population,
5800-481: The Polish resistance, with German officials adhering to the collective guilt principle and holding entire communities responsible for the actions of unidentified perpetrators. One of the most infamous German operations was the Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion ( AB-Aktion in short, German for Special Pacification ), a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia, including many university professors, teachers and priests. In
5916-405: The Red Army signed up for training with the SS at a special Trawniki training camp to assist with the Final Solution . Another 1,000 defected during field operations. Trawniki men took a major part in the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jews during Operation Reinhard . They served at all extermination camps and played an important role in the annihilation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (see
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#17330942930146032-402: The Red Army was annexed to the Soviet Union (after a rigged election ), and split between the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR , with the exception of the Wilno area taken from Poland, which was transferred to sovereign Lithuania for several months and subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union in the form of the Lithuanian SSR on 3 August 1940. Following the German invasion of
6148-399: The Reich...". The smaller Evangelical churches of Poland also suffered. The entirety of the Protestant clergy of the Cieszyn region of Silesia were arrested and deported to concentration camps at Mauthausen, Buchenwald , Dachau and Oranienburg. Protestant clergy leaders who perished in those purges included charity activist Karol Kulisz , theology professor Edmund Bursche , and Bishop of
6264-418: The SS commander gave an enraged crowd, which had seen bodies of men murdered by NKVD and laid out in the town square, 24 hours to act as they wished against Polish Jews , who were forced to clean the dead bodies and to dance and then were killed by beating with axes, pipes etc. The same type of mass murders took place in Brzezany . During Lviv pogroms , 7,000 Jews were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists, led by
6380-451: The Soviet Union in 1941, most of the Polish territories annexed by the Soviets were attached to the enlarged General Government. The end of the war saw the USSR occupy all of Poland and most of eastern Germany. The Soviets gained recognition of their pre-1941 annexations of Polish territory; as compensation, substantial portions of eastern Germany were ceded to Poland, whose borders were significantly shifted westwards . For months prior to
6496-499: The Soviet command structure and feared German retaliation against Ukrainian civilians. Still, until the spring of 1943 neutrality was maintained between the Borovets detachments and the Soviet partisans. Parallel to the negotiations with the Soviets, Borovets continued to try to reach an agreement with the Germans. In November 1942, he met with Obersturmbannführer Puts, the head of the security service of Volhynia and Podolia general district. In November 1943, during negotiations with
6612-452: The Third Reich, such as the Ukrainian National Army . However, it was too late, and the committee and the army were disbanded at the end of the war. Pavlo Shandruk became the head of the National Committee, while Volodymyr Kubijovyč , the head of the Ukrainian Central Committee [ pl ; ru ; uk ] , became his deputy. The Central Committee was the officially recognized Ukrainian community and quasi-political organization under
6728-421: The USSR and crossed into Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe . Sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski argues that both occupying powers were hostile to the existence of Poland's sovereignty , people , and the culture and aimed to destroy them. Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, most visibly in the four Gestapo–NKVD conferences , where
6844-438: The USSR and the prewar territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union . By September the occupied territory was divided between two new German administrative units: to the southwest, the District of Galicia of the Nazi General Government , and the northeast, Reichskommissariat Ukraine , which stretched all the way to Donbas by 1943. Reinhard Heydrich noted in a report dated July 9, 1941 "a fundamental difference between
6960-534: The actual loyalty of these groups. However, in the newly annexed portions of western Ukraine, there was little to no loyalty towards The Soviet Union, whose Red Army had seized Ukraine during the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939. Nationalists in western Ukraine hoped that their efforts would enable them to re-establish an independent state later on. For example, on the eve of Operation' Barbarossa, as many as 4,000 Ukrainians, operating under Wehrmacht orders, sought to cause disruption behind Soviet lines. After
7076-442: The beginning of World War II in 1939, German newspapers and leaders had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland. British ambassador Sir H. Kennard sent four statements in August 1939 to Viscount Halifax regarding Hitler's claims about the treatment Germans were receiving in Poland; he came to
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#17330942930147192-508: The beginning of the Nazi occupation. The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police , which formed mid August 1941, assisted by Einsatzgruppen C, and Police battalions rounded up Jews and undesirables for the Babi Yar massacre, as well as other later massacres in cities and towns of modern-day Ukraine, such as Kolky , Stepan , Lviv , Lutsk , and Zhytomyr . During this period, on 1 September 1941, the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian newspaper Volhyn wrote, in an article titled Zavoiovuimo misto" (Let's Conquer
7308-403: The book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) the political theoretician Hannah Arendt said that Obersturmbannführer was not a rank of significance, because Eichmann whiled away the war time awaiting promotion to the rank of Standartenführer . That "people like Eichmann, who had risen from the ranks, were never permitted to advance beyond a lieutenant colonel [i.e. Obersturmbannführer ] except at
7424-437: The campaign itself. On 24 September, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec , near Zamość. The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack , on 28 September. Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre . The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following
7540-471: The capture of Lviv , a highly-contentious and strategically important city with a significant Ukrainian minority, OUN leaders proclaimed a new Ukrainian State on June 30, 1941, and encouraged loyalty to the new regime in the hope that the Germans would support it. In 1939, during the German-Polish War, the OUN was "a faithful German auxiliary". Despite an initial warm reaction to the idea of an independent Ukraine (see Ukrainian national government (1941) ),
7656-650: The civilian branch of the Underground State was to preserve the continuity of the Polish state as a whole, including its institutions. These institutions included the police, the courts , and schools . By the final years of the war, the civilian structure of the Underground State included an underground parliament, administration, judiciary ( courts and police ), secondary and higher-level education, and supported various cultural activities such as publishing of newspapers and books, underground theatres, lectures, exhibitions, concerts and safeguarded various works of art. It also dealt with providing social services , including to
7772-406: The clergy, but also noblemen and intellectuals. The Soviets also executed about 65,000 Poles. Soldiers of the Red Army and their officers behaved like conquerors, looting and stealing Polish treasures. When Stalin was told about it, he answered: "If there is no ill will, they [the soldiers] can be pardoned". The Soviet Union had ceased to recognize the Polish state at the start of the invasion. As
7888-496: The conclusion all the claims by Hitler and the Nazis were exaggerations or false claims. From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfilment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germans in Central and Eastern Europe. The goal of the occupation was to turn the former territory of Poland into ethnically German "living space", by deporting and exterminating
8004-479: The course of the war, over two million of whom were ethnic Poles (the remainder being mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians ). The vast majority of those killed were civilians, mostly killed by the actions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Aside from being sent to Nazi concentration camps, most ethnic Poles died through shelling and bombing campaigns, mass executions, forced starvation, revenge murder, ill health, and slave labour. Along with Auschwitz II-Birkenau ,
8120-444: The destitute Jewish population (through the council to Aid Jews, or Żegota ). Through the Directorate of Civil Resistance (1941–1943) the civil arm was also involved in lesser acts of resistance, such as minor sabotage , although in 1943 this department was merged with the Directorate of Covert Resistance , forming the Directorate of Underground Resistance , subordinate to the Armia Krajowa (AK) (Polish Home Army). In response to
8236-403: The ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000). Areas occupied by the USSR were annexed to Soviet territory, with the exception of the Wilno area, which was transferred to Lithuania, although it
8352-589: The first days of the German attack on the Soviet Union. Some Ukrainians derived nationalist resentment from the belief that the Jews had worked for Polish landlords. The NKVD prisoner massacres by the Soviet secret police while they retreated eastward were blamed on Jews. The antisemitic canard of Jewish Bolshevism provided justification for the revenge killings by the ultranationalist Ukrainian People's Militia , which accompanied German Einsatzgruppen moving east. In Boryslav (prewar Borysław, Poland, population 41,500),
8468-640: The first gassing experiment in September 1941. According to Polish historian Franciszek Piper , approximately 140,000–150,000 Poles went through Auschwitz, with about half of them perishing there due to executions, medical experiments, or due to starvation and disease. About 100,000 Poles were imprisoned in Majdanek camp, with similar fatality rate. About 30,000 Poles died at Mauthausen , 20,000 at Sachsenhausen and Gross-Rosen each, 17,000 at Neuengamme and Ravensbrueck each, 10,000 at Dachau , and tens of thousands perished in other camps and prisons. Following
8584-472: The former Polish and Russian [Soviet] territories. In the former Polish region, the Soviet regime was seen as enemy rule... Hence the German troops were greeted by the Polish as well as the White Ruthenian population [meaning Ukrainian and Belarusian] for the most part, at least, as liberators or with friendly neutrality... The situation in the current occupied White Ruthenian areas of the [pre-1939] USSR has
8700-561: The former territory of Poland. Those plans began to be implemented almost immediately after German troops took control of Poland. As early as October 1939, many Poles were expelled from the annexed lands in order to make room for German colonizers. Only those Poles who had been selected for Germanization, approximately 1.7 million including thousands of children who had been taken from their parents, were permitted to remain, and if they resisted it, they were to be sent to concentration camps, because "German blood must not be utilized in
8816-702: The ghettos with Poles living on the "Aryan Side" and the Jews living on the "Jewish Side", despite the risk of death many Poles risked their lives by forging "Aryan Papers" for Jews to make them appear as non-Jewish Poles so they could live on the Aryan side and avoid Nazi persecution. Another law implemented by the Germans was that Poles were forbidden from buying from Jewish shops in which, if they did, they were subject to execution. Jewish children were also distributed among safe houses and church networks. Jewish children were often placed in church orphanages and convents. Some three million gentile Polish citizens perished during
8932-542: The highest proportion of any European country in World War II. Poland had a large Jewish population, and according to Davies, more Jews were both killed and rescued in Poland, than in any other nation, the rescue figure usually being put at between 100,000 and 150,000. Thousands of Poles have been honoured as Righteous Among the Nations – constituting the largest national contingent. When AK Home Army Intelligence discovered
9048-683: The imminent arrival of the Soviet army, the AK launched the Warsaw Uprising against the German army on 1 August 1944. The uprising, receiving little assistance from the nearby Soviet forces, eventually failed, significantly reducing the Home Army's power and position. About 200,000 Poles, most of them civilians, lost their lives in the Uprising. The Polish civilian population suffered under German occupation in many ways. Large numbers were expelled from land intended for German colonisation, and forced to resettle in
9164-512: The interest of a foreign nation". By the end of 1940, at least 325,000 Poles from annexed lands were forced to abandon most of their property and forcibly resettled in the General Government district. There were numerous fatalities among the very young and very old, many of whom either perished en route or perished in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice , Smukal , and Toruń . The expulsions continued in 1941, with another 45,000 Poles forced to move eastwards, but following
9280-523: The interest of a foreign nation," and such people were sent to concentration camps. Persons ineligible for the List were classified as stateless, and all Poles from the occupied territory, that is from the Government General of Poland, as distinct from the incorporated territory, were classified as non-protected. According to the 1931 Polish census , out of a prewar population of 35 million, 66% spoke
9396-456: The invasion of Poland in 1939, most of the approximately 3.5 million Polish Jews were rounded up and put into newly established ghettos by Nazi Germany. The ghetto system was unsustainable, as by the end of 1941 the Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for food deliveries and no chance to earn their own keep. At 20 January 1942 Wannsee Conference , held near Berlin, new plans were outlined for
9512-458: The largest and most infamous, Auschwitz (Oświęcim). Those camps were officially designed as labor camps, and many displayed the motto Arbeit macht frei ("Work brings freedom"). Only high-ranking officials knew that one of the purposes of some of the camps, known as extermination camps (or death camps), was mass murder of the undesirable minorities; officially the prisoners were used in enterprises such as production of synthetic rubber , as
9628-524: The locals by claiming that they were arriving to save Poland from the Nazis. Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. Polish and Jewish citizens may at first have preferred a Soviet regime to a German one, but the Soviets soon proved as hostile and destructive towards the Polish people and their culture as the Nazis. They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. During
9744-435: The main six extermination camps in occupied Poland were used predominantly to exterminate Jews. Stutthof concentration camp was used for mass extermination of Poles. A number of civilian labour camps ( Gemeinschaftslager ) for Poles ( Polenlager ) were established inside Polish territory. Many Poles died in German camps. The first non-German prisoners at Auschwitz were Poles who were the majority of inmates there until 1942 when
9860-479: The massacre was the Einsatzgruppe C, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion and units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln . The participation of Ukrainian collaborators in these events, now documented and proven, is a matter of painful public debate in Ukraine". In total, the Germans enlisted 250,000 native Ukrainians for duty in five separate formations including
9976-494: The non-German population, or relegating it to the status of slave laborers. The goal of the German state under Nazi leadership during the war was the complete destruction of the Polish people and nation. The fate of the Polish people, as well as the fate of many other Slavs , was outlined in the genocidal Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) and the closely related Generalsiedlungsplan (General Plan for Settlement). Over
10092-701: The occupation, Poles formed one of the largest underground movements in Europe. Resistance to the Nazi German occupation began almost at once. The Armia Krajowa, loyal to the Polish government in exile in London and a military arm of the Polish Underground State, was formed from a number of smaller groups in 1942. There was also the Armia Ludowa (AL) (Polish People's Army), backed by the Soviet Union and controlled by
10208-563: The occupied Polish territory, to prevent any unified resistance from forming. One of the attempts to divide the Polish nation was a creation of a new ethnicity called " Goralenvolk ". Some minorities, like Kashubians , were forcefully enrolled into the Deutsche Volksliste, as a measure to compensate for the losses in the Wehrmacht (unlike Poles, Deutsche Volksliste members were eligible for military conscription). In addition, Germans encouraged Ukrainians and Poles to kill each other during
10324-414: The occupied eastern Polish lands was as cruel and tragic as the Nazis' in the west. Soviet authorities brutally treated those who might oppose their rule, deporting by 10 November 1940 around 10% of total population of Kresy, with 30% of those deported dead by 1941. They arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles during 1939–1941, including former officials, officers, and natural "enemies of the people" like
10440-442: The occupiers discussed their plans to deal with the Polish resistance movement . Around six million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of the occupation , half of whom were ethnic Poles and the other half of whom were Polish Jews . Over 90% of the deaths were non-military losses, because most civilians were deliberately targeted in various actions which were launched by
10556-483: The parents suggested that the child might not be " racially valuable ", the mother was forced to have an abortion . Infants who did not pass muster would be removed to a state orphanage ( Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte ), where many were murdered through calculated malnourishment, neglect, and unhygienic conditions. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the occupation of Poland by German forces,
10672-408: The population of the territories that came under the control of Germany, in contrast the areas annexed by the Soviet Union contained a diverse array of peoples, the population being split into bilingual provinces, some of which had large ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities, many of whom welcomed the Soviets due in part to communist agitation by Soviet emissaries. Nonetheless Poles still comprised
10788-480: The population. Poles were deported in large numbers to work as forced labour in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, and many died in Germany. By the end of the initial invasion of Poland (the "Polish Defensive War"), the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of Poland's territory (~200,000 km ), with over 13,700,000 people. The estimates vary; Prof. Elżbieta Trela-Mazur gives the following numbers in regards to
10904-459: The rank insignia. Various Waffen-SS units composed of foreign recruits were considered distinct from the German SS, and thus they were not permitted to wear SS runes on their collar tabs but had their divisional insignia instead. Their ranks were also prepended with "Waffen" instead of "SS", as in, Waffen-Obersturmbannführer. In 1940, Adolf Eichmann was promoted to Obersturmbannführer , and
11020-543: The same size and inhabited by about 11.5 million, was placed under a German administration called the General Government (in German: Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete ), with its capital at Kraków . A German lawyer and prominent Nazi, Hans Frank , was appointed Governor-General of this occupied area on 12 October 1939. Most of the administration outside strictly local level
11136-539: The service of a foreign nation. After Germany lost the war, the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials and Poland's Supreme National Tribunal concluded that the aim of German policies in Poland – the extermination of Poles and Jews – had "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term." The German People's List ( Deutsche Volksliste ) classified
11252-531: The spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities of German-occupied Poland. Several thousands were executed outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry , and inside the city at the Pawiak prison. Most of the remainder were sent to various German concentration camps . Mass arrests and shootings of Polish intellectuals and academics included Sonderaktion Krakau and
11368-417: The systematic killing of the Jews began. The first killing by poison gas at Auschwitz involved 300 Poles and 700 Soviet prisoners of war . Many Poles and other Central and Eastern Europeans were also sent to concentration camps in Germany: over 35,000 to Dachau, 33,000 to the camp for women at Ravensbrück , 30,000 to Mauthausen and 20,000 to Sachsenhausen. The population in the General Government's territory
11484-694: The total genocide of the Jews, known as the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question ". The extermination program was codenamed Operation Reinhard . Three secret extermination camps set up specifically for Operation Reinhard; Treblinka , Belzec and Sobibor . In addition to the Reinhard camps, mass killing facilities such as gas chambers using Zyklon B were added to the Majdanek concentration camp in March 1942 and at Auschwitz and Chełmno . Nazi Germany engaged in
11600-457: The true fate of transports leaving the Jewish Ghetto, the council to Aid Jews ( Zegota ) was established in late 1942, in cooperation with church groups. The organisation saved thousands. Emphasis was placed on protecting children, as it was nearly impossible to intervene directly against the heavily guarded transports. The Germans implemented several different laws to separate Poles and Jews in
11716-470: The two years following the annexation, they arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 150,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians. Obersturmbannf%C3%BChrer Obersturmbannführer (Senior Assault-unit Leader; [ˈoːbɐʃtʊʁmbanfyːʁɐ] ; short: Ostubaf ) was a paramilitary rank in the German Nazi Party ( NSDAP ) which
11832-539: The unit against Poles and Jews during World War II. Official SS records show that the 4, 5, 6 and 7 SS-Freiwilligen regiments were under Ordnungspolizei command during the accusations. See 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of SS, the 1st Galician: Atrocities and war crimes . In March 1945, the Ukrainian National Committee was set up after a series of negotiations with the Germans. The Committee represented and had command over all Ukrainian units fighting for
11948-526: The war was won. The plan envisaged that different percentages of the various conquered nations would undergo Germanization, be expelled and deported to the depths of Russia, and suffer other gruesome fates, including purposeful starvation and murder , the net effect of which would ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character. Over a longer period of time, only about 3–4 million Poles, all of whom were considered suitable for Germanization, would be allowed to reside in
12064-483: Was soon attached to the USSR once Lithuania became a Soviet republic . Initially the Soviet occupation gained support among some members of the linguistic minorities who had chafed under the nationalist policies of the Second Polish Republic. Much of the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the unification with the Soviet Ukraine because twenty years earlier their attempt at self-determination failed during both
12180-453: Was an SS rank . The Obersturmbannführer rank insignia was composed of four silver pips and a black stripe on a silver background, all elements are centered in the left wing of the collar of the tunic of an SS or of an SA uniform. The rank also was worn on the shoulder boards of an Oberstleutnant and was the highest rank in the SS and the SA to display SS unit insignia on the collar wing opposite
12296-744: Was believed, could be won back to Germany. This group also included persons of non-German descent married to Germans or members of non-Polish groups who were considered desirable for their political attitude and racial characteristics. Group Four consisted of persons of German stock who had become politically merged with the Poles. After registration in the List, individuals from Groups One and Two automatically became German citizens. Those from Group Three acquired German citizenship subject to revocation. Those from Group Four received German citizenship through naturalization proceedings; resistance to Germanization constituted treason because "German blood must not be utilized in
12412-416: Was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR), both of which intended to eradicate Poland's culture and subjugate its people. In the summer-autumn of 1941, the lands which were annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR (" Operation Barbarossa "). After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of
12528-505: Was initially about 12 million in an area of 94,000 square kilometres (36,000 sq mi), but this increased as about 860,000 Poles and Jews were expelled from the German-annexed areas and "resettled" in the General Government. Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements thought likely to resist (e.g. Operation Tannenberg). From 1941, disease and hunger also began to reduce
12644-606: Was invaded and occupied by two powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, acting in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . Germany acquired 48.4% of the former Polish territory. Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler , with Stalin 's agreement (8 and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed by Germany . The size of these annexed territories was approximately 92,500 square kilometres (35,700 sq mi) with approximately 10.5 million inhabitants. The remaining block of territory, of about
12760-634: Was listed as such in the minutes of the Wannsee Conference held in January 1942. In 1961, during the Eichmann trial for Lt. Col. Eichmann's crimes against humanity, the chief prosecutor, Gideon Hausner , drew attention to the executive significance and command responsibility of the rank of Obersturmbannführer , in response to Eichmann's claim that he was merely a clerk obeying orders; Hausner asked, "Were you an Obersturmbannführer or an office girl?" In
12876-435: Was meant to make the formation of any organized top-down resistance more difficult. Further, the populace of occupied territories was to be relegated to the role of an unskilled labour-force for German-controlled industry and agriculture. This was in spite of racial theory that falsely regarded most Polish leaders as actually being of "German blood", and partly because of it, on the grounds that German blood must not be used in
12992-446: Was replaced by German officials. Non-German population on the occupied lands were subject to forced resettlement , Germanization , economic exploitation , and slow but progressive extermination. A small strip of land, about 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) with 200,000 inhabitants that had been part of Czechoslovakia before 1938, was ceded by Germany to its ally, Slovakia . Poles comprised an overwhelming majority
13108-452: Was the case of a plant owned by IG Farben, whose laborers came from Auschwitz III camp, or Monowitz . Laborers from concentration camps were literally worked to death. in what was known as extermination through labor . Auschwitz received the first contingent of 728 Poles on 14 June 1940, transferred from an overcrowded prison at Tarnów . Within a year the Polish inmate population was in thousands, and begun to be exterminated, including in
13224-495: Was then Eastern Poland ( Kresy ), under a single Soviet banner. In the territories of Poland invaded by Nazi Germany , the size of the Ukrainian minority became negligible and was gathered mostly around UCC ( УЦК [ uk ] ), formed in Kraków . Less than two years later, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The German Operation Barbarossa began on June 22, 1941. Operation Barbarossa brought together native Ukrainians of
13340-678: Was to be dropped in the rear of the Red Army for guerrilla warfare. Those plans never came to fruition. At the end of the war Hitler's Ukrainian nationalist allies demanded transfers away from the Eastern Front so that they could surrender to Allies rather than Soviet forces. Borovets' detachment surrendered to the Allies on May 10, 1945, and was interned in Rimini Italy. Because of the fluid nature of these allegiances, historian Alfred Rieber has emphasized that labels such as "collaborators" and "resistance" have been rendered useless in describing
13456-501: Was used by the SA ( Sturmabteilung ) and the SS ( Schutzstaffel ). The rank of Obersturmbannführer was junior to the rank of Standartenführer , and was equivalent to the military rank of Oberstleutnant ( lieutenant colonel ) in the German Army . As the SA expanded, the rank of Ostubaf was created in May 1933 to provide a rank above Sturmbannführer ; likewise, the Ostubaf
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