From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Generalplan Ost (GPO)
was a secret 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 1939-1940, 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.
Development and
reconstruction of the plan
The body responsible for the drafting of this plan was the
Imperial (Reich)
Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - RSHA), the
security organ of the SS responsible for fighting all enemies
of National Socialism. 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 head
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 Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt RuSHA (SS Office of
Race and Settlement).
Nearly all the wartime documentation on Generalplan Ost was
deliberately destroyed shortly before Germany's defeat in May
1945.[2]
Thus, 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.
One principal document which made it possible to recreate with a
great deal of accuracy the contents of Generalplan Ost is a memo 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") and written
by 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.
Phases of the plan
and its implementation
The final version of Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan
for ethnic
cleansing, was divided into two parts; the "Small Plan"
(Kleine Planung), which covered actions which were to be
taken during the war, and the "Big Plan" (Grosse Planung),
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]
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. The "Small Plan" 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
and probably is responsible for much of the WWII expulsion of Poles by
Germany. After the war, under the "Big Plan", GPO foresaw the
eventual expulsion of more than 50 million non-Germanized Slavs of
Eastern Europe
through forced
migration, as well as some of the Balts (especially almost all Lithuanians) through "voluntary" migration,
beyond the Ural
Mountains and into Siberia. In their place, up to 8-10 million Germans would be settled in an extended "living
space" (Lebensraum) of the 1000-Year Empire
(Tausendjähriges Reich).
In 1941 it was decided to destroy the Polish nation 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] A
majority of them, now deprived of their leaders and most of their
intelligentsia
(through human losses, destruction of culture, and the ban
on education above the
absolutely basic level), would have to be deported to regions in
the East and scattered over as wide an area of Western Siberia as
possible, according to the plan resulting in their assimilation by the local
populations which would cause the Poles to vanish as a nation. 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.
Widely varying policies were envisioned by the creators of GPO
and/or employed by Germany in regards to the different Slavic
territories and ethnic groups. For example, Einsatzgruppen
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 small number
Czech intelligentsia members were to be allowed to emigrate overseas. Parts of Poland
were already annexed
by Germany early in the war (leaving aside the occupied General
Government and the areas previously annexed by the Soviet
Union), while the other territories were officially occupied by or
allied to Germany (for example, the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia became a
theoretically-independent German puppet state, while the ethnic-Czech
part became a "protectorate"). It is unknown in what
degree the plan was actually directly connected to the various
German war crimes and crimes against humanity in the
East, especially in the latter phases of the war (the time the
Germans were withdrawing). In any case, majority of Germany's 12
million forced laborers were abducted in the Eastern Europe,
mostly in the Soviet territories and Poland (both Slavs and local
Jews).
Among charges listed in the indictment presented at the trial of Adolf Eichmann,
the SS officer responsible for transportation part of the Final Solution,
one was that he was responsible for the deportation of 500,000
Poles. Eichmann was convicted on this count, too, and the sentence
assumed he had been motivated by his intention to destroy the
intelligentsia class of Polish society.[5]
Civilian death toll in
the Soviet Union
The Russian Academy of Science in 1995 reported civilian victims
in the USSR at German hands, including Jews, totaled 13.7 million
dead, 20% of the 68 million persons in the occupied USSR. This
included 7.4 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals; 2.2
million deaths of persons deported to Germany for forced labor; and
4.1 million famine and disease deaths in occupied territory. There
were an additional estimated 3.0 million famine deaths in the USSR
not under German occupation. These losses are for the entire
territory of the USSR in 1946-1991 borders, including territories
annexed in 1939-40.[6] The
deaths of 8.2 million Soviet civilians, including Jews, were
documented by the Soviet Extraordinary State
Commission.[7]
See also
- ^
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).
- ^ Stefan Korbonski The Polish Underground State:
A Guide to the Underground, 1939-1945
- ^
The Russian Academy of Science Rossiiskaia Akademiia nauk. Liudskie
poteri SSSR v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny:sbornik statei.
Sankt-Peterburg 1995 ISBN 5-86789-023-6
- ^ A
Mosaic of Victims- Non Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis.
Ed. by Michael Berenbaum New York University Press 1990 ISBN
1-85043-251-1)
References
- Götz Aly & Susanne Heim (2003).
Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of
Destruction. Phoenix. ISBN
1-84212-670-9.
- (German)
Helmut Heiber, Der Generalplan Ost, Vierteljahrshefte für
Zeitgeschichte, Volume 6, 1958.
- (German)
Dietrich Eichholtz, Der `Generalplan Ost' Über eine Ausgeburt
imperialistischer Denkart und Politik, Jahrbuch für
Geschichte, Volume 26, 1982.
- (German)
Roth, Karl-Heinz "Erster `Generalplan Ost' (April/May 1940) von
Konrad Meyer, Dokumentationsstelle zur NS-Sozialpolitik,
Mittelungen, Volume 1, 1985.
- (German)
Czesław Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in
Polen 1939-1945, Cologne, 1988.
- (Polish)
Czesław Madajczyk, Generalny Plan Wschodni: Zbiór
dokumentów, Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w
Polsce, Warszawa, 1990
- (German)
M. Rössler & S. Scheiermacher (editors), Der `Generalplan
Ost' Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Plaungs-und
Vernichtungspolitik, Berlin, 1993.
- (Polish)
Andrzej Leszek Szcześniak, Plan Zagłady Słowian. Generalplan
Ost, Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, Radom, 2001.
- (Russian)
The Russian Academy of Science Rossiiskaia Akademiia nauk. Liudskie
poteri SSSR v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny:sbornik statei.
Sankt-Peterburg 1995 ISBN 5-86789-023-6
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