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Generalplan Ost (GPO) was a Nazi plan of genocide[1] and ethnic cleansing to be realised in the territories occupied by Germany in Eastern Europe during World War II. The plan, prepared in the years 1939-1941, was part of Adolf Hitler's own Lebensraum plan and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") ideology of the German expansion to the east.
The plan
It should be noted that nearly all the wartime documentation on Generalplan Ost was deliberately destroyed shortly before Germany's defeat in May 1945.[2]
Development
The body responsible for the drafting of this plan was the Reich Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - RSHA). The RSHA was tasked with combating all enemies of Nazism and Nazi Germany. It was a strictly confidential document, and its contents were known only to those in the topmost level of the Nazi hierarchy.
According the testimony of SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Ehlich, one of the witnesses in Case VIII before the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, the final version of the plan was drafted in 1940. As a high official in the RSHA, Ehlich was the man responsible for the drafting of Generalplan Ost. It had been preceded by the Ostforschung, a number of studies and research projects carried out over several years by various academic centres to provide the necessary facts and figures. The preliminary versions were discussed by the SS chief Heinrich Himmler and his most trusted colleagues even before the outbreak of war. This was mentioned by SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski during his evidence as a prosecution witness in the trial of officials of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt).
Reconstruction
Unfortunately no copies of the plan were found after the war among the documents in German archives. Nevertheless, the fact that such a document was created and used by Nazi officials is beyond doubt. Apart from Ehlich's testimony, there are several documents which refer to this plan or are supplements to it. Although no copies of the actual document have survived, much of the essential elements of the plan have been reconstructed from related memos, abstracts and other ancillary documents.
The principal document which makes it possible to recreate with a great deal of accuracy the contents of Generalplan Ost is a memorandum of April 27, 1942 entitled: Stellungnahme und Gedanken zum Generalplan Ost des Reichsführers SS ("Opinion and Ideas Regarding the General Plan for the East of the Reichsführer-SS"). Its author was Dr. Erich Wetzel, the director of the Central Advisory Office on Questions of Racial Policy at the National Socialist Party (Leiter der Hauptstelle Beratungsstelle des Rassenpolitischen Amtes der NSDAP). This memorandum is an elaboration of Generalplan Ost.
Short-range and long-term plan
The final version of Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan for ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts; the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won (to be carried into effect gradually over a period of 25-30 years).[3]
The individual stages of this plan would then be worked out in greater detail. The Kleine Planung was to be put into practice as the Germans conquered the areas to the east of their pre-war borders. In this way the plan for Poland was drawn up at the end of November 1939.
GPO envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation (for example, 50% of Czechs, 35% of Ukrainians and 25% of Belarusians), extermination, expulsion and other fates, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would be Germanized. In ten years' time, the plan effectively called for the extermination, expulsion, Germanisation or enslavement of most or all East and West Slavs living behind the front lines in Europe (millions were sent to forced labor). A widely varying degrees of brutality were to be employed: for example, Einsetzgruppen deaths squads and concentration camps were employed to deal with the Polish elites already by August-September 1939 (Operation Tannenberg, followed by the A-B Aktion in 1940), while the Czech intelligentsia members were to be allowed to emigrate overseas.
After the war, under the Große Planung, GPO foresaw the eventual expulsion of more than 50 million non-Germanized Slavs of the Eastern Europe through forced migration as well as some of the Balts (especially almost all of Lithuanians) through "volunteery" migration beyond the Ural Mountains and into the Western Siberia. In their place, up to 8-10 million Germans would be settled in an extended Lebensraum ("living space") of the 1000-Year Reich (Tausendjähriges Reich).
In 1941 it was decided to destroy the Polish nation (believed by the Nazis to be Untermenschen, that is "sub-people") completely and the German leadership decided that in 10 to 20 years the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists.[4] Majority of them, now deprived of their leaders and most of intelligentsia (through human losses, destruction of culture and lack of education above the absolutely basic level), would have to be deported to regions in the East and scattered over as wide an area as possible, according to the plan resulting in their assimilation by the local populations. By 1952, only about 3-4 million non-Germanized Poles (all of them peasants) were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland. Those of them who would still not Germanize were to be forbidden to marry, the existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles would cease to exist.
See also
- Holocaust victims
- Hunger Plan
- Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles
- Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs
- Nazism and race
- Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)
- Racial policy of Nazi Germany
- World War II evacuation and expulsion
Footnotes
- ^ DIETRICH EICHHOLTZ "»Generalplan Ost« zur Versklavung osteuropäischer Völker"[1]
- ^ Joseph Poprzeczny, Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East, McFarland, 2004, ISBN 0786416254, Google Print, p.186
- ^ Madajczyk, Czesław. "Die Besatzungssysteme der Achsenmächte. Versuch einer komparatistischen Analyse." Studia Historiae Oeconomicae vol. 14 (1980): pp. 105-122 [2] in Hitler's War in the East, 1941-1945: A Critical Assessment by Gerd R. Uebersch̀ear and Rolf-Dieter Müller [3]
- ^ Berghahn, Volker R. (1999). "Germans and Poles 1871–1945". Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences. Rodopi.
References
- Götz Aly & Susanne Heim (2003). Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction. Phoenix. ISBN 1-84212-670-9.
- Template:De icon Helmut Heiber, Der Generalplan Ost, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 6, 1958.
- Template:De icon Dietrich Eichholtz, Der `Generalplan Ost' Über eine Ausgeburt imperialistischer Denkart und Politik, Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Volume 26, 1982.
- Template:De icon Roth, Karl-Heinz "Erster `Generalplan Ost' (April/May 1940) von Konrad Meyer, Dokumentationsstelle zur NS-Sozialpolitik, Mittelungen, Volume 1, 1985.
- Template:De icon Czesław Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939-1945, Cologne, 1988.
- Template:Pl icon Czesław Madajczyk, Generalny Plan Wschodni: Zbiór dokumentów, Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Warszawa, 1990
- Template:De icon M. Rössler & S. Scheiermacher (editors), Der `Generalplan Ost' Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Plaungs-und Vernichtungspolitik, Berlin, 1993.
- Template:Pl icon Andrzej Leszek Szcześniak, Plan Zagłady Słowian. Generalplan Ost, Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, Radom, 2001.