The Nazi Campaign to Annihilate the Polish People

Today, virtually every historical scholar acknowledges that the Nazis did commit a terrible genocide against the Jewish people.  However, in recent years, there has been a question as to whether other groups of people were also targeted by the Nazis for genocide.  One such group of people is the Polish people.  In order to properly answer that question, one must first ask: “What is Genocide?”  This in itself is a difficult question to answer as so many people have differing views on what constitutes genocide.  Though the definitions vary, one of the most consistent and accepted definition is the one given by the United Nations

“Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

 Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1.      Killing members of the group;

2.      Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

3.      Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculate to bring about its  

         physical destruction in whole or in part;

4.      Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5.      Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

So let us consider each of these five points when answering this question. 

#1: Killing members of the group. 

There is no doubt that the Nazis did this.  During the Nazi campaign and occupation of Poland, it was estimated that 3 million Poles perished.  During the 1939 invasion, over 100,000 Poles perished.  Throughout the campaign, the German Wehrmacht, SS, & Luftwaffe deliberately launched campaigns of mass slaughter against the Poles.  The Nazi death squads quickly followed this up at Aktion AB in which Polish elites (intellectuals, influential clergy, government leaders, & cultural figures) were rounded up and sent to prison camps, or simply shot.  During the early years of the occupation, the Nazis were obsessed with creating Lebensraum (Living Space), for Germans in the Western Poland region, known as Warthegau.  Between Autumn of 1939 & Spring of 1941, over 1 million Poles were expelled from the region into Central Poland (known as the General Government).  Thousands of Poles perished during these forced deportations.  Even within the General Government region, similar ethnic cleansing operations took place.  During the Winter of 1942-43, the Nazis expelled over 110,000 Poles from over 300 villages in the Zamosc-Lublin region of the General Government.  The Nazis also took advantage of the long-standing animosity between the Ukrainians & the Poles.  Soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis began to arm Ukrainian militia (UPA) and urged them to carry out ethnic cleansing of Poles in the Eastern part of Poland.  It is estimated that by the end of the war, over 100,000 Poles were slaughtered by the UPA. 

This was but a few examples of the mass killings that the Nazis inflicted on Poles.  During the course of the war, Nazis murdered Poles by the thousands in reprisal actions.  Such reprisals included the killing of Germans by the Polish Resistance (100 Poles killed in reprisal for each German killed), Poles caught sheltering Jews, and Poles who tried to defy Nazi decrees in any form whatsoever.  At times, entire villages could fall victim to reprisal.  The most infamous example of reprisal was in August of 1944.  The Polish Resistance in Warsaw launched a massive uprising against the Germans.  Over the next two months, the Germans slaughtered over 200,000 Poles, expelled the population, and leveled the entire city.  It’s safe to say that Mass murder was a direct and deliberate action that the Nazis carried out against the Poles. 

#2: Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

It can go without saying that the Nazis did this to the Poles.  When driving them out of their homes they showed no concern for those who were deported.  Most were forced to grab what they could and trek to the General Government under adverse conditions and even when they got there, they were left to fend for themselves when many had little, if anything.  Not surprisingly, thousands perished as a result.  During the war, an estimated 1.7 million Poles were forcibly deported to Germany for slave labor, thousands died under the horrific conditions.  The mass enslavement of Poles both in German and the General Government became a fact of life.  Poles who protested their harsh treatment were subject to beating, imprisonment, even death.  During the war, 1 million Poles eventually ended up inside the infamous Concentration Camps.  Poles within the camps were subject to the infamous “medical experiments” and the notorious “Death Marches” as the liberating Allied armies came.  It’s only natural that when you kill groups of people en masse, as the Nazis did to the Poles, then they will also inflict serious physical and mental abuse upon them

#3: Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculate to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

There is strong evidence in recent years to show that the Nazis planned to do to the Poles what they had done to the Jews throughout the War.  The only thing that prevented them from fully carrying out a “Polish Final Solution” was their defeat.  From the offset of the occupation, the Nazis only permitted 669 calories of daily rations to be allocated to the Poles (Germans received 2413, Jews 184).  It is physically impossible to survive on 669 calories of food and mass hunger gripped the country.  Only the Black Market trade of food prevented mass starvation.  The Nazis wanted the Polish population reduced to the point where Germans could eventually come in and take over the territory, and deliberate starvation was an effective way of doing just that.  On Jan. 25, 1940, a secret document between Hans Frank and Heinrich Himmler confirmed that these current rations would guarantee the “systematic starving of the Polish people.  For the Germans, it was more economical to ensure a gradual death through starvation and over-work rather than outright murder, and it proved it proved very effective.  These poor rations led to widespread malnutrition, leading to the increased the spread of disease.  By 1942, up to 40% of the population became diseased.  

#4: Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

Hitler used his starvation policy and forced deportation policy to decrease the Polish birth rate.  Widespread malnutrition coupled with the deliberate separation of families for slave labor led the birth rate to drop by 80%.  However, the Nazis did not stop here.  Many Polish slaves within the Reich and in concentration camps throughout Europe became subject to the most brutal method of birth prevention: forced sterilization.  Throughout occupied Poland, the Nazis picked up young Polish women at random and shipped them to Germany for sterilization experiments in order to discover the most effective way to kill off the next generation of Poles.  Nazi officials also sent out doctors to administer sterilization shots to Polish slaves even as they worked in the fields.  Guards in Ravensbruck continually subjected female Polish prisoners to forced sterilization.  Many Polish women who became impregnated while serving as slaves in Germany were forced to get their children aborted.  The abortions were highly dangerous.  Jewish and Gentile women in Ravensbruck typically had the abortions done in the 8^th month of their pregnancy and the equipment was so primitive that it often led to the death of both the baby and the mother.  At times the Nazis even abducted Polish babies and used them to provide blood transfusions for wounded German soldiers.  The Polish babies died as a result. 

#5: Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

There is no telling how many newborn Polish children lost their lives due to the Nazis notorious birth control methods, nor can we ever know how many potential lives were lost during the war years, but we do know that hundreds of thousands of Polish children faced yet another terrible Nazi practice: forced Germanization.  Children throughout Poland, found themselves snatched up by the Nazis and underwent extensive physical and psychological screenings to determine whether they could be successfully “Germanized.”  The Germans trained groups of women known as the “Brown Sisters” to locate and abduct children for Germanization.  At times, the Nazis did not even bother to try to lure the children away; they simply snatched them from their parents during raids.  Some of the older children that were taken away were forced to reside in Lebensborn clinics where they were forced to serve as “breeders” in order to bring more German babies into the world.  By the wars end, over 200,000 Polish children had been kidnapped to be “Germanized.”  Most never saw their families again. 

What the Germans did the Poles clearly matches the five criteria of what the United Nations describes as genocide.  The only thing that kept the number of Polish death rate from being

Was that there simply too many of them, and at the time the Nazis had other priorities, namely exterminating the Jews and winning the war.  Nevertheless, even as the war raged, Nazi leadership continued to make plans for the gradual eradication of the Slavic people.  In a plan drawn up by Nazi leadership known as Generlplan Ost, the Nazis planned by the year 1980 to exterminate 11 million Jews and 30 million Slavs, and ship another 70 million “sub-humans” to Siberia, Africa, or Latin America.  Generlplan Ost specifically called for the expulsion of 80-85% of the Polish people to Siberia, the rest would serve as slaves until the Nazis no longer needed them, and then they too would die.  Himmler called for the complete annihilation of the Polish people from the very beginning of the war, stating that “All Poles will disappear from the world…It is essential that the great German people should consider it as a major task to destroy all Poles.  Polish prisoners who survived Auschwitz recalled watching helplessly as the guards led the Jews away to the gas chambers.  All the while, the guards kept telling the Polish prisoners that they too “were destined to follow the Jews to heaven.”  Holocaust Rescuer Irene Gut Opdyke overheard a similar statement made by an SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) to a German major in the Wehrmacht (German Army) in the spring of 1943: “The Führer wants all of the Jews exterminated.  Once we finish with them, we’ll eliminate the Poles and their tiresome Catholic Church.”  In the end, the only thing that prevented the Nazis “Final Solution” to the “Polish Problem” from reaching the same lever as their “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Problem” was their defeat at the hands of the Allied Powers. 

Primary Sources:

Opdyke, Irene Gut and Jennifer Armstrong.  In My Hands.  New York: Dell Laurel Leaf, 1999.

The Black Book of Poland.  Published by The Polish Ministry of Information.  New York: G.P.  Putnam’s Sons, 1942.

“UN General Assembly.”  Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  9 December 1948.  A/RES/260.  Available at http://www.oas.org/dil/1948_          Convention_on_the_Prevention_and_Punishment_of_the_Crime_of_Genocide.pdf.         

Secondary Sources:

Borowiec, Andrew.  Destroy Warsaw: Hitler’s Punishment, Stalin’s Revenge.  Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2001.

Coutouvidis, John and Jaime Reynolds.  Poland 1939-1947.  New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986.

Davies, Norman.  Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw.  New York: Penguin Books, 2003.

Henry, Clarissa and Marc Hillel.  Of Pure Blood.  Translated by Eric Mossbacher.  New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976.

Lukas, Richard C.  Did the Children Cry?  Hitler’s War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945.  New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994.

Lukas, Richard C.  The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation.  New York: Hippocrene Books, 1997.

Rutherford, Phillip T.  Prelude to the Final Solution: The Nazi Program for Deporting Ethnic Poles, 1939-1941.  Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2007.

Poles: Victims of Nazi Occupation.  Accessed February 11, 2014 from http://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/2000926-Poles.pdf.