During the German occupation of Poland (1939–1945), the Nazis brutally suppressed the Catholic Church in Poland, most severely in German-occupied areas of Poland. Thousands of churches and monasteries were systematically closed, seized or destroyed. As a result, many works of religious art and objects were permanently lost.

Church leaders were especially targeted as part of an overall effort to destroy Polish culture. At least 1,811 members of the Polish clergy were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. An estimated 3,000 members of the clergy were killed. Hitler's plans for the Germanization of the East did not allow Catholicism.Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London p.661

The actions taken against Polish Catholicism were part of Generalplan Ost which, if carried out, would have eventually eradicated the existence of the Poles. Adolf Hitler said in August 1939 that he wanted his Death's Head forces "to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language".

Background

The Roman Catholic Church has had a presence in Poland for almost 1,000 years.Jozef Garlinski; Poland and the Second World War; Macmillan Press, 1985; p 60 Historian Richard J. Evans wrote that the Catholic Church was the institution that "more than any other had sustained Polish national identity over the centuries".Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press New York; 2009; p.34 By 1939, around 65% of Poles professed to be Catholic.

The invasion of predominantly Catholic Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939 ignited the Second World War. The United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany as a result of the invasion while the Soviet Union invaded the Eastern half of Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler.Hitler's Pope? ; by Sir Martin Gilbert; The American Spectator; 18.8.06

Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland from the West took place on 1 September 1939, commencing a period of occupation. Nazi ideology targeted Polish Jews for extermination and categorized ethnic Poles, most of whom were Catholic, as an inferior race. The Jews were rounded up into Ghettos or sent to extermination camps while the ethnic Polish intelligentsia, priests and politicians were targeted for elimination (Intelligenzaktion, AB-Aktion). Forced labor was also employed as a technique of elimination.

The Red Army invaded Poland from the East on 17 September 1939.Encyclopedia Britannica: Poland – World War II The Soviets also repressed the Polish Catholics and clergy, with an emphasis on fighting "class enemies". The Soviet occupation lasted nearly two years. Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union was launched in June 1941, shattering the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact and bringing all of Poland under Nazi control.Encyclopedia Britannica Online: Poland – World War II Norman Davies wrote:Norman Davies; Rising '44: the Battle for Warsaw; Viking; 2003

The Nazi plan for Poland included the destruction of the Polish nation, which required attacking the Polish Church, particularly in areas annexed to Germany.Jozef Garlinski; Poland and the Second World War; Macmillan Press, 1985; p 60 Biographer Ian Kershaw said in the scheme for the Germanization of Central and Eastern Europe, that Hitler had made it clear there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches".

Nazi ideology was hostile to Christianity and Hitler held the teachings of the Catholic Church in contempt. Hitler's chosen deputy and private secretary Martin Bormann and the official Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg were firmly anti-Christian. In his 1930 book Myth of the Twentieth Century, Rosenberg wrote that the main enemies of Germans were the "Russian Tartars" and "Semites" – including Christians, especially the Christians of the Catholic Church.Encyclopedia Britannica Online: Alfred Rosenberg

Division of Poland

The German military controlled Poland until 25 October 1939.Norman Davies; Rising '44: the Battle for Warsaw; Viking; 2003; p.83 Following this, Germany annexed Polish territories into the eastern German provinces: Reichsgau Wartheland, Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, Province of Silesia, and East Prussia. The remainder of Nazi-occupied Poland came under the administration of the General Government – a "police run mini-state" under SS control and the rule of Nazi lawyer Hans Frank. Davies wrote that this area "became the lawless laboratory of Nazi racial ideology,” over time becoming the base of the main Nazi concentration camps.Norman Davies; Rising '44: the Battle for Warsaw; Viking; 2003; p.86 However, Nazi policy toward the Church was less severe than in the annexed regions.Norman Davies; Rising '44: the Battle for Warsaw; Viking; 2003; p.92

Persecutions

Targeting of intelligentsia and clergy

According to Norman Davies, the Nazi terror was "much more fierce and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in Europe." The Nazi ideology viewed ethnic "Poles"—the mainly Catholic ethnic majority of Poland—as "sub-humans". Following their 1939 invasion of West Poland, the Nazis instigated a policy of genocide against Poland's Jewish minority. They murdered or suppressed the ethnic Polish elites including religious leaders. During the 1939 invasion, special death squads of SS and police were sent to arrest or execute anyone considered capable of resisting the occupation: professionals, clergymen, and government officials.

The following summer, the A-B Aktion (Extraordinary Pacification Operation) rounded up several thousand Polish intelligentsia and the SS shot many of the priests in the General Government sector. During this operation, Poland was under military control. This period of military control lasted from 1 September 1939 to 25 October 1939. During this period, "according to one source, 714 mass executions were carried out, and 6,376 people, mainly Catholics, were shot. Others put the death toll in one town alone at 20,000. It was a taste of things to come."Norman Davies; Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw; Viking; 2003; pp.85–86

In 1940, Hitler proclaimed: "Poles may have only one master – a German. Two masters cannot exist side by side, and this is why all members of the Polish intelligentsia must be killed." According to Craughwell, between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish clergy, were murdered. Of these, 1,992 were murdered in concentration campsCraughwell, Thomas J., The Gentile Holocaust Catholic Culture, Accessed July 18, 2008 (the Encyclopædia Britannica cites 1811 Polish priests murdered in Nazi concentration campsEncyclopædia Britannica Online – Stefan Wyszyński; Encyclopædia Britannica Inc; 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2013.).

On November 16 and 17 of 1940, Vatican Radio broadcast that the religious life of Polish Catholics continued to be brutally restricted. They claimed that at least 400 clerics had been deported to Germany in the preceding four months:The Nazi War Against the Catholic Church; National Catholic Welfare Conference; Washington D.C.; 1942; pp. 49–50

Around 150,000 to 180,000 civilians were killed in the suppression of an uprising, along with thousands of captured insurgents. Until the end of September 1944, Polish resistance fighters were not considered by Germany as combatants. Thus, when captured, they were executed. 165,000 surviving civilians were sent to labor camps; while 50,000 were shipped to concentration camps, and the city was systematically demolished.

Annexed Regions

Nazi policy towards the Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where the Nazis set about systematically dismantling the Church – arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen were murdered. The annexed areas included the Catholic archdiocese of Gniezno-Poznań and the dioceses of Chełmno, Katowice and Włocławek, and parts of the dioceses of Częstochowa, Kielce, Kraków, Łomża, Łódź, Płock and Warsaw, which were all to be "Germanized". In these areas, the Polish Church was to be thoroughly eradicated, though German Catholics could remain or settle there.

Hitler intended to use Poland as a colony for settlement by Germans. The indigenous Poles were to be cleared out to make room for German settlers. Following the defeat of Poland, Heinrich Himmler was appointed Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of the German Race. Germanization of the annexed regions began in December 1939 with deportations of men, women, and children.Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press New York; 2009; pp.28-29 In the Wartheland, regional leader Arthur Greiser, with the encouragement of Reinhard Heydrich and Martin Bormann, launched an attack on the Catholic Church. Its properties and funds were confiscated, and lay organisations shut down. Evans wrote that "numerous clergy, monks, diocesan administrators and officials of the Church were arrested, deported to the General Government, taken off to a concentration camp in the Reich, or simply shot. Altogether some 1700 Polish priests ended up at Dachau: half of them did not survive their imprisonment." Greiser's administrative chief August Jager had earlier led the effort at Nazification of the Evangelical Church in Prussia.Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press New York; 2009; p.33-34 In Poland, he earned the nickname "Kirchen-Jager" (Church-Hunter) for the vehemence of his hostility to the Church.Mark Mazower; Hitler's Empire – Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe; Penguin; 2008; ; p.92. "By the end of 1941", wrote Evans, "the Polish Catholic Church had been effectively outlawed in the Wartheland. It was more or less Germanized in the other occupied territories, despite an encyclical issued by the Pope as early as 27 October 1939 protesting against this persecution."Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press New York; 2009; p.34

In West Prussia, 460 of the existing 690 Polish priests were arrested; the survivors simply fled; only 20 were still serving in 1940. Of those arrested, 214 were executed; the rest were deported to General Government. Fatalities were numerous: in Wrocław, 49.2% of the clergy were dead; in Chełmno, 47.8%; in Łódź, 36.8%; in Poznań, 31.1%. In the Warsaw diocese, 212 clergy were murdered; in Vilnius, 92; in Lwów, 81; in Kraków, 30; in Kielce, 13. Nuns shared a similar fate; about 400 nuns were imprisoned at Bojanowo concentration camp. Many seminary students and nuns were conscripted as forced laborers. In Poznań, only two churches were not closed or re-purposed; in Łódź, only four remained open.

Poland's higher clergy was not exempt from repression; some were forced to retire, whereas others were arrested, imprisoned, or executed. Among those, Bishops Marian Leon Fulman, Władysław Goral, Michał Kozal, Antoni Julian Nowowiejski and Leon Wetmański were sent to concentration camps, with Goral, Nowowiejski, Kozal and Wetmański being murdered in Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Soldau and Auschwitz, respectively.

Cardinal Hlond's Report

In the aftermath of invasion, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal August Hlond, submitted an official account of the persecutions of the Polish Church to the Vatican. He reported seizures of church property and abuse of clergy and nuns in the Archdiocese of Gniezno:The Nazi War Against the Catholic Church; National Catholic Welfare Conference; Washington D.C.; 1942; pp. 34-51

Opening hours for churches (that still had their priests) had been restricted to Sundays from 9 am to 11 am. Sermons could only be preached in German. Polish hymns were proscribed. Crucifixes were removed from schools and religious instructions were forbidden. Catholic Action had been banned and Catholic charities such as St Vincent de Paul dissolved and their funds confiscated. Religious shrines and statues in public places were "battered to the ground".