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Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Racist Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

John Connelly
John Connelly
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Increasingly, historians have been turning their attention to the effects of Nazi racism. In recent years major studies have appeared on forced sterilization, euthanasia, theft of “racially valuable” children, and “antinatalism,” as well as the destruction of “racially undesirable” groups: the handicapped, certain foreign laborers, and homosexuals.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1999 , pp. 1 - 33
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1999

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References

1. Ulrich Herbert has defined racism as a “self-contained and consistent worldview, claiming to offer a cogent and all-embracing explanation for developments, contradictions, and problems in human society. Moreover, it proposes to elucidate events not on the basis of myths or superstition, but the postulates of natural science. In essence, racism can be paraphrased as the “‘biologizing of society.’” “Racism and Rational Calculation: The Role of ‘Utilitarian’ Strategies of Legitimation in the National Socialist ‘Weltanschauung’” in Yad Vashem Studies 24 (Jerusalem, 1994): 135.Google Scholar

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3. This point has been made in regard to the relation between eugenics and foreign policy by Weindling, Paul, “Understanding Nazi Racism: Precursors and Perpetrators,” in Confronting the Nazi Past: New Debates on Modern German History, ed. Burleigh, Michael (New York, 1996), 76.Google Scholar A major recent study on Nazi imperialism includes only a very brief consideration of the issue of race. See Smith, Woodruff D., The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (New York, Oxford, 1986), 91–92.Google Scholar The best systematic general treatment of Nazi policy toward Eastern Europe remains Rich, Norman, Hitler's War Aims: The Establishment of the New Order, vol. 2 (London, 1974).Google Scholar For the prewar period see Weinberg, Gerhard L., The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe 1933–36 (Chicago and London, 1970).Google Scholar

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7. Pilichowski, Czeslaw, Es gibt keine Verjährung (Warsaw, 1980), 11.Google ScholarKulski, W. W. has written that “The war, which started as a war against Poland, turned into a general war against all Slavs.” Germany and Poland: From War to Peaceful Relations (Syracuse, 1976), 39.Google Scholar Other interpretations projecting an axiomatic relation between Nazi aversion to “Slavs” and policies adopted during the war include Duraczyński, Eugeniusz, Wojna i okupacja wrzesień 1939-Kwiecień 1943 (Warsaw, 1974), 92;Google ScholarGross, Jan T., Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement 1939–1944 (Princeton, 1979), xi;Google ScholarJacobmeyer, Wolfgang, “Der Überfall auf Polen und der neue Charakter des Krieges,” in September 1939: Krieg, Besatzung, Widerstand in Polen, ed. Klessmann, Christoph (Göttingen, 1989), 23–26;Google ScholarAugust, Jochen, “Sonderaktion Krakau”: Die Verhaftung der Krakauer Wissenschaftiler am 6. November 1939 (Hamburg, 1997), 15–18.Google Scholar For conflicting interpretations of the relation between ideology and occupation practice in the Czech lands see K´rny, Miroslav; and Milotov´, Jaroslava, “Od Neuratha k Heydrichovi,” Sbornik archivnich praci 39, no. 2 (1989),Google Scholar which rejects the claim of Vojtech Mastny that the early period of Nazi rule had been a time of “haphazard German improvisation” See Mastny, , The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance (New York and London, 1971), 187.Google Scholar

8. Walczak, Marian, Szkolnictwo wyzsze i nauka polska w latch wojny i okupacji 1939–1945 (Wroclaw, 1978), 24.Google Scholar

9. This fact is noted in Broszat, Martin in Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik (Munich, 1963), 183;Google ScholarKlessmann, Christoph, Die Selbstbehauptung einer Nation: NS-Kulturpolitik und polnische Widerstandsbewegung (Düsseldorf, 1971), 27–29;Google ScholarBorejsza, Jerzy W., Antyslawizm Adolfa Hitlera (Warsaw, 1988), 12–14;Google Scholar Mastny, The Czechs under Nazi Rule, 11.

10. This study has benefited especially from the important work by Polish historian Borejsza, Jerzy W., Antyslawizm Adolfa Hitlera (The Anti-Slavism of Adolf Hitler) (Warsaw, 1988).Google Scholar See also his “Racisme et antislavisme chez Hitler,” in Bédarida, François, La politique nazie d’extermination (Paris, 1989), 57–74.Google Scholar

11. On the uniqueness of Nazi anti-Semitism within the world of Nazi racism, see Goldhagen, Erich, “Weltanschauung und Endlösung: Zum Antisemitismus der nationalsozialistischen Führungsschicht,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 24, no. 4 (1976): 379–405;Google Scholar Katz, “The Holocaust,” 56–63; Mosse, George L., Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (Madison, 1985), 220–22.Google Scholar

12. Steven T. Katz has written: “Hitler’s ‘Jew’ is not rooted in empirical realities, in how things are in the world.” Emphasis in original. “The Holocaust,” 60.

13. In his last military order of 15 April 1945, issued after 6 million Jews had been killed, Hitler instructed his troops that “the Jewish Bolsheviks have launched their massive forces to the attack. Their aim is to reduce Germany to ruins and to exterminate our people.” Cited in Dawidowicz, Lucy S., The War Against the Jews 1933–1945 (New York, 1986), 166;Google Scholar in the last sentence of his last will and testament, issued the day before his suicide, Hitler wrote “Above all I commit the leadership of the nation and my following to strict keeping of the racial laws and merciless opposition to the world poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.” Erich Goldhagen, “Weltanschauung,” 384.

14. Broszat, Martin, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 1961);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and coauthored with Hory, Ladislaus, Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941–1945 (Stuttgart, 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar One of Hans Mommsen’s early studies was also devoted to Nazi policies in Europe, Eastern. See his “Stellung, Aufgaben und Befugnisse der in den Ostgebieten eingesetzten Gebiets-Kommissare,” in Gutachten des IfZ München, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1966).Google Scholar Cited in Majer, Diemut, “Führerunmittelbare Sondergewalten in den besetzten Ostgebieten. Entstehung und Wirksamkeit,” in Verwaltung contra Menschenführung im Staat Hitlers, ed. Rebentisch, Dieter and Teppe, Karl (Göttingen, 1986), 375.Google Scholar

15. In his diary entry of 14 December 1938 Goebbels, Joseph referred to the Bulgarians as a “courageous people and also our friends.” Fröhlich, Elke, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, sämtliche Fragmente, part I, vol. 3., (Munich 1987), 548.Google Scholar In part the good relations can be attributed to Hitler’s positive estimation of King Boris. Picker, Henry, Hitlers I’ischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier (Stuttgart, 1976), 135 (24 03 1942).Google Scholar

16. Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 258; Miller, Marshall Lee, Bulgaria during the Second World War (Stanford, 1975).Google Scholar

17. See Hory and Broszat, Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941–1945; Hoensch, Jörg K., “The Slovak Republic, 1939–1945,” in Mamatey, Victor S. and Luza, Radomir, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic 1918–1948 (Princeton, 1973).Google Scholar

18. Hory and Broszat, Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat, 93–106.

19. Tropper, Ernst, Slowakei: Land zwischen Ost und West (Brno, Munich, Vienna, 1944);Google ScholarFeuring, Wilhelm et al. , eds., Slowakei: Land und Leute (Munich, 1944);Google ScholarDresler, Adolf, Kroatien (Essen, 1942),Google ScholarGärtner, Emil, Kroatien in Südslawien: eine historisch-politische Studie (Berlin, 1944);Google ScholarRetzlaff, Erich, Länder und Völker an der Donau: Rumänien, Bulgarien, Ungarn, Kroatien (Vienna, 1944).Google Scholar

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21. Mastny, The Czechs, 82–84. Also: Brandes, Detlev, Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat, 2 vols. (Munich and Vienna, 1969–1975).Google Scholar

22. Mastny, The Czechs, 101.

23. Czech students of medicine and technical sciences could study in Germany, though few took advantage of this option. A number of medical, scientific, and even historical and legal journals continued appearing in the Czech language throughout the war, as did Czech language editions of the works of Czech scholars such as Václav Richter and Zdeněk Kalista (art history), Jan Mukařovský (Czech literature), Josef Peskaŕ (history). In 1943 alone 3 million copies of Czech language fiction, scientific, religious, and school texts appeared in the Protectorate. See Doležal, Jiří, Ceská kultura za protektorátu Śkolství, písemnictví, kinematografie (Prague, 1996), 151.Google Scholar

24. See the “Výroční zpráva České spoleěnosti sociologické” 28 June 1943, in Král papers, Czech Academy of Sciences, i.č. 654; reports on Česká Mysl in ibid., i.č. 661–62.

25. On White Russia see Chiari, Bernard, “Deutsche Zivilverwaltung in Weissrussland, 1941–1944; Die lokale Perspektive der Besatzungsgeschichte,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 52, no. 1 (1993): 67–89;Google Scholar on Russia, and Ukraine, : Dallin, Alexander, German Rule in Russia 1941–1945 (New York, 1980);Google ScholarReitlinger, Gerald, The House Built on Sand: The Conflicts of German Policy in Russia 1939–1945 (London, 1960);Google ScholarKamenetsky, Ihor, Hitler’s Occupation of Ukraine (1941–1944): A Study of Totalitarian Imperialism (Milwaukee, 1956);Google ScholarArmstrong, John A., Ukrainian Nationalism, 1939–1945 (New York, 1955);Google ScholarTorzecki, Ryszard, Kwestia ukraińska w polityce III Rzeszy (1933–1945) (Warsaw, 1972).Google Scholar Valuable specialized studies include Schulte, Theo J., The German Army and Nazi Politics in Occupied Russia (New York, 1989);Google ScholarMulligan, Timothy Patrick, The Politics of Illusion and Empire: German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1942–1943 (New York, Westport, London, 1988).Google Scholar For a summary of research and extensive bibliography see Müller, Rolf-Dieter and Ueberschär, Gerd R., Hitler’s War in the East 1941–1945: A Critical Assessment (Providence, Oxford, 1997).Google Scholar

26. Streit, Christian, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941–1945 (Stuttgart, 1978);Google ScholarBartov, Omer, The Eastern Front 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare (Basingstoke, 1985), 107–19.Google Scholar

27. The Germans were able to raise the level of production in the occupied areas to about 10 percent of the prewar total in industry, and 50 percent in agriculture. Müller and Ueberschär, Hitler’s War, 309.

28. Any villages which partisans had visited were subject to obliteration. Bartov, Eastern Front, 119–41.

29. Reich minister of the occupied territories A. Rosenberg thought of Ukraine as a balance to Russia and Poland, and wanted to foster the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian literature and art, and establish a Ukrainian university in Kiev. All of this would take place in an independent Ukrainian state. Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 373–74; For Rosenberg’s visions of Ukrainian policy, see his Der Zukunftsweg einer deutschen Aussenpolitik (Munich, 1927).Google Scholar Several leading officials, like Otto Bräutigam, supported a more liberal approach to the occupied territories. Steinberg, Jonathan, “The Third Reich Reflected: German Civil Administration in the Occupied Soviet Union, 1941–44,” English Historical Review (06 1995); 626–27.Google Scholar Other members of the Nazi elite who were less rigorous in their thinking on racial understanding of Ukrainians included Goering and Hans Frank. Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 97.

30. The administrators were called “Ostnieten” [Eastern losers] and “golden pheasants,” because of the color of their uniforms. Chiari, “Deutsche Zivilverwaltung,” 74.

31. Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 375–81.

32. Ackermann, Josef, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe (Göttingen, 1970), 211, n. 99.Google Scholar

33. Dallin, German Rule, 123–67; Müller and Ueberschär, Hitler’s War, 305–7.

34. Torzecki, Ryszard, Polacy i Ukraińcy: sprawa ukraińska w czasie II wojny światoswej na terenie II Rzeczpospolitei (Warsaw, 1993).Google Scholar

35. Gross, Polish Society, 188–89.

36. Torzecki, Polacy i Ukraińcy, 247; Dallin, German Rule, 598. Himmler rationalized the recruiting of this division as a continuation of Habsburg military tradition, and tried to make use of former Austro-Hungarian army officers. Mulligan, Politics of Illusion, 156.

37. Using Ukrainians to displace Polish influence was a favorite idea of Alfred Rosenberg, but had been proposed by publicists in the nineteenth century. See for example Franzos, Karl Emil, Aus Halb-Asien: Culturbilder aus Galizien, der Bukowina, Südrussland und Rumanien, part 1, 2d ed. (Leipzig, 1878), 16–17.Google Scholar

38. At war’s end Poland had suffered the highest per capita death rate of any country in Europe. Close to six million Polish citizens (22 percent) did not survive the war. Half of the victims were Jews. Dlugoborski, Waclaw, “Die deutsche Besatzungspolitik gegenüber Polen,” in Nationalsozialistische Diktatur 1933–1945: Eine Bilanz, ed. Bracher, Karl Dietrich, Funke, Manfred, Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf (Düsseldorf, 1983), 573.Google Scholar For the view that the “largest number of civilian casualties of the war in Europe was sustained by the Ukrainians,” see Davies, Norman, “The Misunderstood Victory in Europe,” The New York Review of Books, 42, no. 9 (1995): 8.Google Scholar

39. The number executed in Western Poland in September and October 1939 is estimated at 42,000. Borodziej, Wlodzimierz, Terror i polityka: policja niemiecka i polski ruch oporu w GG 1939–1944 (Warsaw, 1985), 22.Google Scholar

40. This remark was made to a correspondent of the Völkischer Beobachter on 6 February 1940 and is reproduced in Pilichowski, Es gibt keine Verjährung. This fragment was not included in the published interview.

41. Eapanka is usually translated as “manhunt.” For recollections of a narrowly missed manhunt in Warsaw, see Milosz, Czeslaw, The Captive Mind (New York, 1981), 90.Google Scholar Jan T. Gross has argued that the randomness of such terror encouraged opposition, because Poles had no basis upon which to calculate survival. Polish Society, 238.

42. Rich, , Hitler’s War Aims, 2: 68–105;Google Scholar Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik: Madajczyk, Czeslaw, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945 (Cologne, 1988).Google Scholar

43. Rich, , Hitler’s War Aims, 2:60;Google Scholar Hoensch, “The Slovak Republic,” 284.

44. Hamann, Matthias, “Erwünscht und unerwünscht: Die rassenpolitische Selektion der Ausländer,” Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik, vol. 3;Google ScholarAugust, Jochen et al. , Herrenmensch und Arbeitsvölker (Berlin, 1986), 163.Google Scholar

45. From an early point Ukrainians and Russians were used in the administration; even in White Russia Poles were excluded from administration, however, though in many regions they comprised the elites. Chiari, “Deutsche Zivilverwaltung,” 75.

46. Overtures were, however, made to the mountain people of southern Poland, the “Gorales,” but efforts to recruit an SS legion among these ostensible Germans failed Berghauzen, Janusz, “Grupy nacisku’w niemieckiej polityce zagranicznej i w systemie okupacyjnym,” Dzieje najnowsze 3, nos. 1/2 (1971); 224–25.Google Scholar

47. According to “Instructions for dealing with foreign workers in the Reich” from 1943. Reiter, Raimond, Tötungsstätten für ausländische Kinder im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Zum Spannungsverhältnis von kriegswirtschaftlichem Arbeitseinsatz und nationalsozialistischer Rassenpolitik in Niedersachsen (Hanover, 1993), 237–38.Google Scholar In the Czech lands, on the other hand, German soldiers and officials were permitted to marry Czech women. Mastny, The Czechs, 134–35. Indeed, in 1938 Joseph Goebbels almost toppled over an affair with the Czech actress, Lida Baarová. For a general description of the hierarchy established for foreign workers, see Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany, 127.

48. Madajczyk, Czeslaw, “Vom ‘Generalplan Ost’ zum ‘Generalsiedlungsplan,’” in Der “Generalplan Ost,” ed. Rössler, and Schleiermacher, , 13.Google Scholar

49. The process was supposed to take several decades; in their new “homes” the Slavs were to be given only the most rudimentary possibilities of survival, and not permitted independent culture or statehood. Madajczyk, “Vom ‘Generalplan Ost,’” 13. The estimates of people to be removed from Poland, the Baltic states, and the Soviet provinces of Zhitomir, Kamenets-Podolsk, and Vinnitsa varied between 31 million (SS) and 46 to 51 million (Eastern Ministry). In both estimates some 14 million persons were to stay behind for germanization. Ackermann, Himmler, 223.

50. Mein Kampf, transl. Manheim, Ralph (Boston, 1943), 388;Google ScholarRauschning, Hermann, The Voice of Destruction (New York, 1940), 136, 138.Google Scholar

51. Hitlers zweites Buch: Ein Dokument aus dem Jahr 1928 Introduction and commentary by Weinberg, Gerhard L. (Stuttgart, 1961), 81;Google ScholarMein Kampf, 390.

52. Broszat writes that “Hitler’s admiration for Pilsudski, vanquisher of the Red Army (1920), led him to a rather sympathetic assessment of the political and military ability of the Polish nation, which obscured (überdeckte) broad notions of Slavic racial inferiority for many years.” Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, 10–11.

53. Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 182–83.

54. As late as the first months of 1939 a pro-Polish book could be printed in Germany, with an enthusiastic contribution by Schacht, Hjalmar. See Polen von Polen gesehen, miteinem Beitrag von Reichsminister Dr. H. Schacht (Berlin, 1939).Google Scholar During the war the Nazis kept a guard of honor at Pilsudski’s grave in Kraków. Klessmann, Christoph, Die Selbstbehauptung einer Nation: Nationalsozialistische Kulturpolitik und polnische Widerstandsbewegung im Generalgouvement 1939–1945 (Düsseldorf, 1971), 27.Google Scholar On Hitler’s respect for Pilsudski, see also Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 67–68; Rosenthal, Harry Kenneth, German and Pole: National Conflict and Modern Myth (Gainesville, 1976), 103–4, 108.Google Scholar

55. Hitlers zweites Buch, 158–59. Here, too, one senses ambivalence, however. In Mein Kampf (p. 326) Hitler refered to the Russians as a “great people” which had suffered the domination of a “gang of Jews, journalists and stock exchange bandits,” For the development of Nazi views toward Russians, see Weissbecker, Manfred, “‘Wenn hier Deutsche wohnten…’ Beharrung und Veränderung im Russlandbild Hitlers und der NSDAP,” in Das Russlandbild im Dritten Reich, ed. Volkmann, Hans-Erich (Cologne, 1994), 9–54;Google ScholarDmitrów, Edmund, Obraz Rosji i Rosjan w propagandzie narodowych socjalistów 1933–1945: Stare i nowe stereotypy (Warsaw, 1997).Google Scholar

56. “Dem Slawentum selbst fehlen im allgemeinen staatenbildende Kräfte.” Hiders zweites Buch, 156. See also Rosenberg, Der Zukunftsweg, 87–90. The idea that Czechs did not possess “abilities to form a state” was current in the press of Vienna in the early years of this century. See the thesis of Kandl, Elenora, Hitlers Österreichbild (Vienna, 1963), 77Google Scholar at Institut für Zeitgeschichte of Vienna University, cited in Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 131, n. 19.

57. Hitlers zweites Buch, 158–59; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, 12–13.

58. NSDAP Amt für Schrfltumspflege: Ausstellung “Europas Schicksalskampf im Osten,” unter Schirmherrschaft des Stellvertreters des Fuhrers Reichsminister Rudolf Hess (nd., n.p.), 15–16. According to several experts on racial law in the Third Reich, Russians were a European people. Gerhart Hass, “Zum Russlandbild der SS,” in Volkmann, Das Russlandbild, 202–3.

59. NSDAP Amt für Schrfitumspflege: Ausstellung “Europas Schicksalkampf im Osten,” unter Schirmherrschafr des Stellvertreters des Führers Reichsminister Rudolf Hess (n.d., n.p.), 109.

60. Schroetter, Karl-Heinz. “Die Vorgeschichte des Ostens im Lichte neuer Erkenntnisse,” in Europas Schicksal im Osten, ed. Hagemeyer, Hans (Breslau, 1939), 90;Google Scholar see also llse Schwidetzky, , Rassenkunde der Altslawen (Stuttgart, 1938),Google Scholar which summarizes the views of German as well as Polish and Czech anthropologists.

61. Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 78–81; Hildebrand, Klaus, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970), 82–83.Google Scholar

62. Brackmann, Albert, Krisis und Aufbau in Osteuropa: Ein weltgeschichtliches Bild (Berlin, 1939), 11.Google Scholar The view that Germans had brought culture to Poland and Eastern Europe was well-established among German historians. See Wippermann, Wolfgang, Der “Deutsche Drang nach Osten”: Ideologie und Wirklichkeit eines politischen Schlagwortes (Darmstadt, 1981), 106–8.Google Scholar

63. November, 1939, Goebbels, Tagebücher, 628.

64. Cited in Pridham, G. and Noakes, J., eds., Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 3, Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination: A Documentary Reader (Exeter, 1988), 929.Google Scholar For further examples of the deep impressions made upon Hitler by direct experience of Poland in the autumn of 1939, see Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 85.

65. Hitler, Adolf, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944: Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed. Jochmann, Werner (Hamburg, 1980), 66 (23 09 1941).Google Scholar

66. Ackermann, , Himmler, 211, n. 101.Google Scholar

67. Mastny, The Czechs, 128. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (p. 388) that “germanization can only be applied to soil and never to people” (emphasis in original). Hitler consistently sided with those officials who themselves had great reservations about germanizing Slavic peoples, for example with Koch and Bormann against Rosenberg or Forster. See the discussion of 12 May 1942 in Picker, Tischgespräche, 283–90.

68. Taylor, Fred, ed., The Goebbels Diaries 1939–1941 (London, 1982), 272 (18 03 1941);Google Scholar See also the comments of 4 July 1942, Picker, Tischgespräche, 412.

69. Mastny, The Czechs, 128–35; 30 January 1942, Jochmann, ed., Monologe, 244.

70. Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 44–45.

71. On the Nazis’ persistent brutalization of Ukrainians who had lived in the Soviet Union, see Dallin, German Rule, 123–67, 442–71; and on the Nazi leadership’s stubborn resistance to ameliorating Ukrainians’ living and working standards in the Reich even after 1943, Herbert, Ulrich, Fremdarbeiter Politik und Praxis des “Ausländer-Einsatzes” in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Bonn, 1985), 263–69.Google Scholar

72. Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers, 188.

73. Picker, Tischgespräche, 345–46.

74. Again, Hitler, was impressed by the preponderence of blond and blue-eyed people, which were evidence of “enormous Germanic racial fragments” (riesige gcrmanisclie Volkssplitter), Jochmann, , ed., Monologe, 331 (6 08 1942).Google Scholar

75. An SS training brochure wrote that “it was probably the Germanic blood which had caused the freedom–loving soldier–peasants [Wehrbauern] to take this step.” Ackermann, Himmler, 185.

76. Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 349; Ackermann, Himmier, 206.

77. See suggestions of October 1940 by Himmler for a questionaire for Czech schoolchildren in Ackermann, Himmler, 208, n. 85. There were two categories for hair: blond and dark blond; or brown, dark brown, and black. Attempts to recognize race through blood had been abandoned after some initial enthusiasm in the mid–1930’s. Friedländer, Nazi Germany, 119–20.

78. From his “Aufzeichnung über die Frage der zukünftigen Gestaltung des böhmischmährischen Raumes,” 31 August 1940, in Mastny, The Czechs, 127. The entire ludicrous operation of attempting to identify valuable “blood” in the Protectorate is described with suitable irony in ibid., 123–39.

79. From a discussion between Himmler and Hans Frank from 13/14 March 1942 on the deportation of Poles in Madajczyk, , ed., Vom Generalplan Ost, 44.Google Scholar

80. Pridhim and Noakes, Nazism, 963.

81. See Mastny, The Czechs, 132. Though no official measurements were carried out there, leading Nazi racial experts also suspected that the racial value of the Poles in the Lódź area was greater than that of the Germans there. See the “thoughts” of Dr. Erhard Wetzel on the Generalplan Ost of 27 April 1942 in Madajczyk, , ed., Vom Generalplan Ost, 61.Google Scholar

82. This was supposed to be a “general statement about the germanizability [Eindeutschungsfähigkeit] of the Slavs,” in response to Gauleiter Albert Forster’s view that Poles might be germanized even if their German descent could not be definitively established. Forster favored a positive judgment on assimilation if the “complete impression” given by the Pole led one to believe that “in appearance, character, and intelligence he reveals Germanic characteristics.” See the conversations from 12 May 1942 in Picker, Tischgespräche, 286–88. For the “scientific” consensus that the “Slavic peoples are of diverse racial composition” see Reche, Otto, Rasse und Heimat dee Indogermanen (Munich, 1936), 34.Google Scholar This point was emphasized in a report of the SD of 11 November 1940, which directed attention to the increasing tendency to speak of “Slays” in speeches, newspaper articles, and school books: “This way of speaking is popular but extremely disturbing. The first thing to note is that it does not correspond to our racial way of thinking. The term ‘Slav’ comes from linguistics. The racial picture corresponds to linguistic affinities to a far lesser extent than is the case with Germanic peoples. Ukrainians and Poles, Bulgarians and Croats, Russians and Czechs are so different in a racial sense, that they cannot be understood as a common racial unit… It is a basic mistake to conceal the natural enmity of certain Eastern (Poles—Ukrainians) and Southeastern peoples (Czechs—Slovaks).” Emphasis in original. Boberach, Heinz, ed., Meldungen aus dens Reich: Die geheimen Lageberichee des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1938–1945, vol. 5 (Herrsching, 1984), 1756–57.Google Scholar For the continued use of the term “Slays” to denote race by leading Nazis, see below n. 118.

83. “The Jewish people are tougher” (Das jüdische Volkstum ist eben zäher) Picker, Tischgespräche, 398–99 (1 July 1942); also 24 July 1942: “Geschäftlich suche das Judentum Europa, Europa müsse es aber schon aus Sakroegoismus ablehnen, da das Judentum rassisch härter sei.” 456.

84. Picker, Tischgespräche, 453 (22 July 1942).

85. See Burleigh, Michael, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (Cambridge, New York: 1988), 225.Google Scholar

86. For further references see Szarota, Tomasz, “Stereotyp Polski i Polaków w oczach Niemców podczas ll Wojny Swiatowej,” Sobótka 33, no. 2 (1978): 197–98.Google Scholar

87. Föhl, W., “Die Bevölkerung des Generalgouvernements,” in Das Generalgouvernement ed. Prel, Max Freiherr du (Würzburg, 1942), 27.Google Scholar

88. Polish works cited include Stolyhwo, Kazimierz, Analiza typów antropologicznych (Warsaw, 1924)Google Scholar and Ludnośí Województwa Lubeiskiego (Lublin, 1932);Google ScholarSrokowski, Stanislaw, Geografia gospodarcza Polski (Warsaw, 1939);Google Scholar and Kolberg, Oskar, Lud, jego zwyczaje, sposób zycia, mowa, podania (Kraków, 1864–1891).Google Scholar See also the use of Czekanowski’s work (in particular his depiction of certain Eastern Poles as “Lappanoide”) in the “thoughts” of DrWetzel, Erhard on the Generaiplan Ost of 27 April 1942 in Madajczek, , ed., Vom Generaiplan Ost, 6.Google Scholar Though Czekanowski’s early work had been produced in Pilsudski’s Poland, it proved of use both to the Nazis, in their program to declare Poles racially inferior, and to the postwar Polish Communist regime, in its efforts to legitimate Polish presence in recently German territories. Czekanowski’s Introduction to the History of the Slavs (Wstęp do historii Slowian: perspektywy antropologiczne, etnograficzne, prehistoryczne i językoznawcze) appeared as volume one of the Lwów Slavonic library in 1927, and as volume twenty-one in the studies of the Western Institute in Poznań thirty years later. In an introduction to the latter work Czekanowski reported that the “original homeland” of the Slays had been located in the “basin of the Oder and Neisse rivers … contrary to the traditional theses of German scholarship.” 5–6.

89. Föhl, “Die Bevölkerung,” 31–50.

90. Ibid., 45.

91. Other ethnographers upon whose work the Germans drew were Kolberg’s students Udziela, Antoniewicz, and Bystroń See Föhl, Walter, “Die Bevölkerung des Generalgouvernements,” in Das Generalgouvernement: Seine Verwaltun und seine Wirtschaft, ed. Bühler, Josef (Kraków, 1943), 50–57.Google Scholar The Nazis also made use of Bystroń’s work on the polonization of names; see Lück, Kurt, Der Lebenskampf im deutsch-polnischen Grenzraum (Berlin, 1941), 79.Google Scholar

92. Cited in Pridham and Noakes, Nazism, 932. These “thoughts” were subsequently approved by Hitler. In February 1940 Himmler had given a secret speech to Gauleiter and Reichsleiter in which he explained the advancement from tribes to nations of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians through the partial presence of Nordic blood. Breitman, Richard, The Architect of Genocide: Himmiler and the Final Solution, (New York, 1991), 99–100.Google Scholar

93. Jerzy W. Borejsza writes that it is impossible to discover any “great precision in Hitler’s use of the words Slawen, Ostvölker, Oststaaten, Ostraum, Ostpolitik, Osteinsatz.” Antyslawizm, 28.

94. For example, the most extensive treatment of Nazi wartime policies in Poland devotes only a few pages to the prewar period. Madajczyk, Czeslaw, Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce: okupacja Polski, 1939–1943, 2 vols. (Warsaw, 1970).Google Scholar

95. See Rauschning, Voice of Destruction, 136–38.

96. See esp. Bauman, Modernity.

97. Götz, , Aly, and Heim, Susanne et al. , eds., Sozialpolitik und Judenvernichtung: Gibt es eine Ökonomie der Endlösung? Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits-und Sozialpolitik 5 (Berlin, 1987), 8;Google Scholar see also Aly and Heim, Vordenker, 69–111. For trenchant critiques of “modernity”–driven studies of National Socialism, see Frei, Norbert, “Wie modern war der Nationalsozialismus,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19 (1993): 367–87;Google Scholar Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State, 1–22; Burleigh, . “A ‘Political Economy of the Final Solution?’ Reflections on Modernity, Historians and the Holocaust,” in idem, Ethnics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide (Cambridge, 1997), 169–82;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Steinberg, “The Third Reich Reflected,” 650, n. 1; and, with extensive references to the literature, Wippermann, Wolfgang, “Wie modern war der ‘Generalplan Ost’? Thesen und Antithesen.” Der “Generalpian Ost” ed. Rössler, and Schleiermacher, , 125–30Google Scholar.

98. For decades social scientists have registered “overpopulation” in Eastern Europe without advocating depopulation. See for example Hicks, Barbara, Environmental Politics in Poland: A Social Movement between Regime and Opposition (New York, 1996). 35;Google ScholarRothschild, Joseph, East Central Europe between the World Wars (Seattle, 1974), 15, 17, 20;Google ScholarSchöpflin, George, Politics in Eastern Europe (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1993), 138;Google ScholarFedorowicz, Michael and Levitas, Anthony, “Works Councils in Poland: 1944–1992,” in Market Economy and Social Justice: The Report of the Institute of Social Sciences, Chuo University 13 (Tokyo, 1994), 228.Google Scholar

99. Weinberg, Foreign Policy, 13; Dmitrów, Obraz, 125, 134.

100. Dallin, German Rule, 7–9; on the location of Lebensraum see also Hitlers zweites Buch, 155; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, 12–14; Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre, 182–83; Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 30.

101. Klessmann, Selbstbehauptung, 27–28; Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, 10. “Lebensraum” did not need to be a neat contiguous entity: the first places the Nazis intended to annex after the War were the Baltic states, Galicia, and the Crimea. Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 327.

102. Steinberg The Third Reich, 648–49.

103. Vojtech Mastny has written that the “Nazis did not follow any master plan for the administration of their rapidly growing European domains. The circumstances of their seizure varied, leaving a permanent imprint upon the character of each occupation regime.” Yugoslavia and Poland were both punished for resistance, unlike the Czechs who had “peacefully submitt[ed] to German overlordship.” The Czechs, 99.

104. See Walczak Szkolnictwo; Buszko, Józef and Pacyzńska, Irena, ed., Universities during World War II (Kraków, 1984);Google ScholarHartmann, Karl, Hochschulwesen und Wissenschafi in Polen; Entwicklung, Organisation und Stand, 1918–1960 (Frankfurt am Main, 1962).Google Scholar

105. Wippermann, “Wie modern,” 127. No monograph exists on the evolution of antiSlavism within Germany. For valuable short studies see Wippermann, Wolfgang, “Probleme und Aufgaben der Beziehungsgeschichte zwischen Deutschen, Polen und Juden,” in Deutsche Polen-Juden: Ihre Beziehungen von den Anfängen his ins 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Jersch-Wenzel, Stefi (Berlin, 1987), esp. 35–37;Google ScholarZumbini, Massimo Ferrari, “Grosse Migration und Antislawismus: negative Ostjudenbilder im Kaiserreich,” in Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 3 (1994); esp. 207–12;Google ScholarLammich, Maria, Das deutsche Osteuropabild in der Zeit der Reichsgründung (Boppard am Rhein, 1978);Google ScholarWippermann, Wolfgang, “‘Gen Ostland wollen wir reiten!’ Ordensstaat und Ostsiedlung in der historischen Belletristik Deutschlands,” in Germania Slavica 2, ed. Fritze, Wolfgang H. (Berlin, 1981), 187–235.Google Scholar On nationality conflict within Prussian Poland see Hagen, William W., Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 (Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar and Blanke, Richard, Prussian Poland and the German Empire (1871–1900) (Boulder, 1981).Google Scholar

106. From the spring of 1939 German propaganda returned to traditional stereotypes of Poles from the nineteenth century. Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 102–3; Szarota, “Stereotyp Polski,” 191; Rosenthal, German and Pole, 102–3. For a history of German images of Poland, see von Zitzewitz, Hasso, Das deutsche Polenbild in der Geschichte: Entstehung—Einflüsse—Auswirkungen (Cologne, 1993).Google Scholar

107. Chickering, Roger, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League 1886–1914 (Boston, 1984), 242–43;Google ScholarGalos, Adam, Genthen, Felix-Heinrich, Jakóbczyk, Witold, Der deutsche Ostmarkenverein (1894–1934) (Berlin, 1966), 199–206.Google Scholar

108. Käthe Schirmacher, a representative of the radical wing of the bourgeois women’s movement, claimed that the “racial” differences between Poles and Germans were too great to allow for common ancestry; the Poles were descended from a “primordial anteater” (Urschuppentier) Wippermann, “Wie modern,” 128.

109. Rosenthal, German and Pole, 101–2; Jung, Rudolf, Die Tschechen: Tausend Jahre deutschtschechischer Kampf (Berlin, 1937).Google Scholar

110. According to Jerzy W. Borejsza, German anti-Slavism of Hitler’s time did not result from the works of Gobineau or Houston Stewart Chamberlain; the latter had even written positively about the Slays. Rather, “this racism was connected to a mass mentality formed over decades and centuries, and shaped in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by popular newspapers … a feeling of superiority became one of the major components of the mentalities of millions of Germans even before 1933, and was later raised to the level of an official state doctrine. This doctrine then served as the ideological motivation for the extermination of millions of people.” Antyslawizm, 18.

111. Hitler told his entourage at the Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939 that his “previous Polish policy was at odds with the opinions of the people.” Domarus, Max, Hitler, Reden und Prokiamationen 1932–1945, vol. 2 (Munich, 1962/63), 1235Google Scholar cited in Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 81. For anti-Polish sentiments in the Weimar Republic. Borejsza, Antyslawizms, 27–29; Friedrich, Dorothea, Das Bild Polens in der Literatur der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main, 1984).Google Scholar On the Nazis’ success in stirring up anti-Polish sentiments in Germany after September 1939, see Kershaw, Ian, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford and New York, 1987), 143–44.Google Scholar

112. Borejsza, Antyslawizm 110–11, 123 (quote). Hitler’s Polish policy “echoed but went beyond those which Pan-Germans such as General Ludendorff had attempted to realize during the First World War and which had been kept alive by academics and right wing pressure groups during the 1920s and 1930s.” Pridham and Noakes, Nazism, 923.

113. Roth, Karl-Heinz, “‘Generalplan Ost’—‘Gesamtplan Ost’: Forschungsstand, Quellenprobleme, neue Ergebnisse,” in Der “Generalplan Ost”, ed. Rössler, and Schleiermacher, , 25–82.Google Scholar On the noxious role of lower level German administrators and police in the East, see also Chiari, , “Deutsche Zivilverwaltung,” and, with regard to the Holocaust of the Jews, Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. (New York, 1996).Google Scholar

114. Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 105–6. Borejsza’s assumption of a relation between the presence of Jews in the Third Reich and Nazi obsession with a Jewish threat is questionable. See above, n. 12–13.

115. Duraczyński, Wojna, 102. For similar views see Madajczyk, C., “Wojna i okupacja w Polsce jako instrument zniszczenia narodu,” Dzieje najnowsze, 1 (1969); 15–25;Google Scholar Roth, “‘Generalplan Ost’— ‘Gesamtplan Ost,” 38–89; Dmitrów, Obraz, 130; Gross, Polish Society, 75; Lukas, Richard C., The Forgotten Holocaust (New York, 1997), 2–5.Google Scholar These views are also widespread among the Polish educated public (See for example the comments of Wladyslaw Sila-Nowicki in Polonsky, Antony, ed., “My Brother’s Keeper?” Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust (London and New York, 1990), 65–66,Google Scholar and seem to have their ongins in wartime fears of Poles and other Slavic peoples that the Nazis intended their complete destruction. See for example the reports on western Poland from March and June of 1941 in Boberach, , Meldungen, vols. 6–7; 2157–58, 2434–35. In 1942 according to a report from the Brest-Litovsk area, a rumor was “going round in the population that after the Jewish action first the Russians, then the Poles and then the Ukrainians will be shot.” White Russians had begun to hide their children “convinced they were next on the list.”Google Scholar Steinberg, “Third Reich,” 639, 643. See also: Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, Student Edition (New York and London, 1985), 196, 215–16.Google Scholar

116. Maier, Charles S., The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 76, 82.Google Scholar

117. He continues: “The goal in each case was identical: to break down psychological barriers to the killing of people, and to convince Germans that they are dealing with Untermenschen, i.e., insects. And one does not fight insects (because a fight is between partners) as much as one exterminates them as vermin, for reasons of hygiene.” Szarota, “Stereotyp Polski,” 200.

118. Though racial “experts” in the Eastern administrations and the SD opposed popular beliefs in a unified racial entity called “Slavs,” one finds continued reference to Slavs by Nazi leaders to denote a group based in race, and located mostly in German-occupied Europe, especially Russia. See Himmier’s secret speech of 24 October 1943 in Poznań, and its reference above all to “Russian space,” because “Russia is the mother of all Slavs.” Ackermann, Himmler, 290–96. See also the remarks of Reinhard Heydrich to leading officials in Prague on 2 October 1941. Referring in one moment to the people of the East (Osträume), Heydrich declared that ‘the Slav … did not wish to be treated as an equal,” and in the next to the Czechs as Slays who interpret “kindness as weakness.” Kárńy, Miroslav et al. , Protektorátní polityka Reinharda Heydricha (Prague, 1991), 102, 105.Google Scholar See also Bormann’s, Martin hateful remarks about “Slays” from August 1942 in Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem internationalen Militärgerichtshof, vol. 19 (Nuremberg, 1948), 558.Google Scholar All of these officials subscribed to the notion of racial variations among the Slavs, however.

119. See Günther, Hans F. K., Rassenkunde des jüdischen Volkes (Munich, 1930), 11–13, 239–48, 323–24.Google Scholar For Hitler’s view see Mein Kampf, 232, 300, 325; also Jäckel, Eberhard and Kuhn, Alex, eds., Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, (Stuttgart, 1980), 89,Google Scholar cited in Borejsza, Antyslawizm, 52. See also Hitler’s 30 January 1939 “prophecy’ of the ’destruction of the Jewish race in Europe.” Cited in Hillgruber, Andreas, “Imperialismus und Rassendoktrin als Kernstück der NS-Ideologie,” in Strukturelemente des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Haupts, Leo and Mölich, Georg (Cologne, 1981), 30–31.Google Scholar For other leading Nazi propagandists’ belief in a Jewish “race”: see Rosten, Curt, Der jüdischen Rasse Weg und Ziel (Berlin, 1934);Google ScholarRosenberg, Alfred, Dee Bolschewismus als Aktion einer fremden Rasse (Munich, 1935).Google Scholar

120. Fischer, Eugen, “Rassenentstehung und älteste Rassengeschichte der Hebräer,” Forschungen zur Judenfrage, vol. 3 (1938), 136.Google Scholar

121. He concluded with a defense of the “complete racial separation of Jews and Germans,” contending that the “maintenance of the character of our people was directly threatened by racial infiltration [Übefremdung].” von Verschuer, Otmar Freiherr, “Rassenbiologie der Juden,” Forschungen zur Judenfrage, vol. 3 (1938), 149.Google Scholar Verschuer succeeded Fischer at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in 1942, and taught in Frankfurt until 1951, when he moved to Münster, where he was professor until his death in 1969. Kürschners deutscher GelehrtenKalendar 1950 (Berlin, 1950), 2153;Google ScholarKürschners deutscher Gelehrten-Kalendar 1970 (Berlin, 1971), 3115, 3438.Google Scholar See also the references to a Jewish race in Munich Professor Fester’s, Richard “Das Judentum als Zersetzungselement der Völker: Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen,” Forschungen zur Judenfrage, vol. 6 (1941), 29, 38.Google Scholar Much of the popular literature on race continued communicating Günther’s view of Jews as a “racial mixture,” mainly of the “Near Eastern” (vorderasiatisch) and “oriental” (orientalisch) races; see for example Magnussen, Karin, Rassen-und bevölkerungspolitisches Rüstzeug: Statistik, Gesetzgebung und Kriegsaufgaben (Munich, Berlin, 1943), 32;Google ScholarHöft, Albert, Rassenkunde, Rassenpflege sod Erblehre im volksbezogenen lebenskundlichen Untemcht (Osterwieck/Harz and Berlin, 1936), 159;Google ScholarDobers, Ernst, Rassenkunde: Forderung und Dienst (Leipzig, 1939), 95;Google ScholarWoltereck, Heinz, ed., Erbkunde, Rassenpflege, Bevölkerungspolitik: Schicksalsfragen des deutschen Volkes (Leipzig, 1940), 145.Google Scholar The tension is reflected in an SS training brochure, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. Schutzstaffel, , Rassenpolitik (Berlin, 1942?), 8,Google Scholar which speaks on the same page of Jews as a “racial mixture,” and as “race”: “through its parasitical instincts the Jew keeps his race pure.”

122. This analysis contrasts with that of leading Polish expert on German National Socialism Franciszek Ryszka, who writes that “every Pole by virtue of belonging to a definite breed [gatunek]” became an “enemy” of Germany. U źródel sukcesu i kleski: Szkice z dziejów hitleryzmu (Warsaw, 1972), 129.Google Scholar

123. Race expert Prof. Günther said after completing a ten-day trip in Danzig-Westpreussen that four-fifths of the Poles in the North could be germanized. See the conversations from 12 May 1942 in Picker, Tischgespräche, 286–88. Indeed, many hundreds of thousands of Poles in the annexed regions were made into Germans by the institution of the Volkslisten during the war. For exact figures and a discussion of the four varieties of the Volksliste, see Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik, 458, 469.

124. On the racially based differences in the treatment of Jews and Slavic populations, see Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, 312–15, 469–71.

125. Dallin, German Rule, 533–44. Omer Bartov has detailed the escalating compromises in the operations of the German 18th Panzer Division, which began using local “Hilfskräfte” in May 1942, within two months had established armed “volunteer” units to guard lines of communication, and in August set up “self-defence” units in villages it controlled. By December two companies of over 300 Russians were invloved in “security” operations. In August of 1943 the division numbered 7,415 German soldiers and 1,053 Hiwis. Bartov, Eastern Front, 138–39. In 1942 a self-administering area behind the front was created near Lokot, with no German occupying forces, which organized the local economy, deliveries to the Germans, and also antipartisan forces. By the end of 1942 these forces totaled over 10,000 men, and were the beginning of the so-called Russian Popular Army of Liberation. Schulte, The German Army, 172–79.

126. Between 21 April and 20 May 1943, 172 Russians serving in police military units, or with the civil administration, received land grants of one to seven hectares. Alarmed at this report, Himmler stipulated that the number of Eastern nationals in German service receiving land would not be greater than 2 percent (about 24,000) of their number each year. Mulligan, The Politics of Illusion, 154.

127. Chiari, “Deutsche Zivilverwaltung.”

128. From his “Thoughts on the Treatment of the Alien Population in the East,” May 1940, in Ackermann, Himmler, 300.

129. From Himmler’s thoughts on “future German peasant settlements,” 24 June 1940, ibid., 303.

130. Wenn man dieses slawische Volk richtig behandelt, kann man aus der Masse Mensch unendliche Werte herausholen und unendliche Kräfte schaffen.” Cited in ibid., 292–94.

131. For German population losses from Silesia until 1939 see Brozek, Andrzej, Ostflucht na Śląsku (Katowice, 1966).Google Scholar Between 1939 and 1945 approximately 400,000 “ethnic Germans” were settled in areas of Poland that had been attached to the Reich. Of these over 90 percent came from areas further East in Poland, the Baltic states, the Bukovina, and Bessarabia. Koehi, Robert L., RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945 (Cambridge, MA, 1957), 254.Google Scholar On the impracticality of Himmler’s programs of resettlement in the East, even in the event of victory against the Soviet Union, see idem, 227–28. One major attempt to settle “Germans” in the Zamość region in Poland in 1942/43 ended in failure, because of massive Polish resistance, including the killing of new settlers, and the refusal of some of the supposed Volksdeutsche (Alsatians, Slovenians, and Luxemburgers) to move eastward. Madajczyk, Czeslaw, Generalna Gubemia w planach hitlerowskich. Studia (Warsaw, 1961), 111–86.Google Scholar

132. See for example Geisler, Walter, Der deutsche Osten als Lebensraum für alle Berufsstände (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, 1941);Google ScholarGeisler, Walter, Deutscher! Der Osten ruft Dich! (Berlin, 1941);Google ScholarLorenz, Walter, Die handwerkliche Ansiedlung im Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen (Berlin, 1941);Google ScholarArlt, Fritz, Siedlung und Landwirtschaft in den eingegliederten Gebieten Oberschlesiens (Berlin, 1942).Google Scholar

133. On 17 October 1941 Hitler told his dinner companions, including Sauckel and Todt, that the German settlers would come “not only from the Reich, but above all from America; they would also come from Scandinavia, Holland, and Flanders.” Madajczyk, , ed., Vom Generalplan Ost, 23.Google Scholar

134. See Wetzel’s report from 7 February 1942 of a “discussion in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Territories on Questions of germanization, especially of the Baltic Lands,” including representatives of the Reichsführer SS, the Reich Commissariat for Strengthening German Volkstum, and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Anthropology (Prof. Eugen Fischer), in Madajczyk, , ed., Vom Generalplan Ost, 40.Google Scholar

135. For these more conventional responses to the problems of “overpopulation,” see the “thoughts” of Dr. Erhard Wetzel on the Generalplan Ost of 27 April 1942 in ibid., 57.

136. The original reads: “Dass man die Polenfrage nicht in dem Sinne lösen kann, dass man die Polen, wie die Juden, liquidiert, dürfte auf der Hand liegen. Eine derartige Lösung der Polenfrage würde uns überall die Sympathien nehmen, zumal auch die anderen Nachbarvölker damit rechnen müssten, bei gegebener Zeit änlich behandelt zu werden.” Madajczyk, , ed., Vom Generalplan Ost, 63.Google Scholar

137. Die Behandlung des fremden Volkstums, Referat des SS-Standartenführers Dr. Ehlich, Reichssicherheitshauptamt, auf der Tagung des Volkspolitischen Reichsreferats der RSF am 10./11. Dezember 1942 in Salzburg, ,” in Der “Generalplan Ost,” ed. Rössler, and Schleiermacher, , 49.Google Scholar

138. Gross, Polish Society, 75.

139. Szarota, Tomasz, “Upowszechnienie kultury,” in Ryszka, Franciszek, ed., Polska ludowa 1944–1950: Przemiany spoleczne (Wroclaw, 1974), 411–12.Google Scholar

140. University teachers among the Polish prisoners of war even organized higher education in the camps Woldenberg. Gross Born, Edelbach, and Murnau with partial knowledge of the Germans. The prisoners collected libraries of many thousands of volumes; in Woldenberg alone 20,000 scholarly and 30,000 popular books. Some 1,200 prisoners attended the courses in Woldenberg. In Edelbach Polish and French scholars had been permitted to coorganize a Université française de captivité. Mauersberg, Stanislaw, “Nauka i szkolnictwo wyzsze w latach 1939–1951,” in Historia Nauki Polskiej, ed. Suchodolski, Bogdan, vol. 5, part 1 (Wroclaw, 1992), 381–83.Google Scholar For a description of university courses, as well as the hardships of life in these camps, see also Walczak, Szkolnictwo, 173–78.

141. See Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 372–73; Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, 220–21.

142. Rassenpolitik, 8–9 (see n. 121); Fester, “Das Judentum.”

143. The Voice of Destruction, 241–42. On the metaphysical and mystical character of Nazi anti-Semitism, see Katz, “The Holocaust,” 56–63; Erich Goldhagen, “Weltanschauung,” 379–405.

144. Such at least was the view of Heinrich Himmler. Hilberg, Destruction, 252.

145. Lukacs, John, The Hitler of History (New York, 1997), 123.Google Scholar

146. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, 221.

147. Erich Goldhagen, “Weltanschauung,” 387.

148. Erich Goldhagen has described the theory of a “Jewish conspriracy” as the “core of the constitutive myth of the National Socialists.” Ibid., 380.

149. “Holocaust” is derived from the Greek holokaustos: holos (whole) and kaustos (burnt). Webstar’s New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA, 1960), 394.Google Scholar