The expulsion of Poles from Gdańsk Pomerania was the mass deportation of the Polish and Jewish populations from the territory of Gdańsk Pomerania, Northern Poland, carried out by the Nazi occupiers between 1939 and 1943.
Polish historians estimate that during World War II, between 120,000 and 170,000 Polish citizens of Polish and Jewish nationality were displaced from Gdańsk Pomerania – incorporated into the Reich as the so-called Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia () – and almost 120,000 German settlers were brought in to replace them. The expulsion campaign reached its peak and became most brutal between October 1939 and March 1941. Later, the deportations of Poles to the General Government were replaced by so-called "consolidation of Polish families," internal displacements, and an intensified Germanization campaign.
Background
Shortly after the end of the September Campaign, Adolf Hitler unilaterally annexed the western territories of the Second Polish Republic to the Reich by decree of 8 October 1939. The annexed territories were henceforth referred to as the "incorporated eastern territories" (). On 26 October 1939, the authorities of the Third Reich established a new administrative unit in the area of Gdańsk Pomerania – the so-called Reich District of West Prussia (renamed Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia on 2 November) – which included, among others, the territories of the pre-war Polish Pomeranian Voivodeship. Hitler appointed Albert Forster – formerly the Nazi leader in the Free City of Danzig – as Reichsstatthalter of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. In addition to his role as governor, Forster also served as Gauleiter, i.e. head of the regional NSDAP organization.
The task that Hitler entrusted to the governors of the newly annexed territories was clearly defined. During a conversation with members of the Wehrmacht high command on 18 October 1939, the Führer expressed his hope that "in ten years, Greiser and Forster will be able to report that Poznań and West Prussia have become a thriving German land". German plans for Pomerania and the other "incorporated eastern territories" could be summed up in three words: Eindeutschung, Entjudung, Entpolonisierung ("Germanization," "de-Judaization," "de-Polonization"). One of the means of implementing these plans was direct extermination, which was mainly carried out against the Polish intelligentsia and socially active and influential members of the Polish community. Between October 1939 and April 1940, in Pomerania alone, the Germans murdered between 30,000 and 40,000 representatives of the so-called Polish leadership as part of the Intelligenzaktion. Other people considered "undesirable" by the Nazis were also murdered en masse, including Jews and patients in psychiatric or infectious disease hospitals. calculated that between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis murdered between 52,794 and 60,750 people in Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. With the exception of a few hundred, almost all of these people lost their lives in the first months after the German army entered the region.
The second measure used by the Third Reich authorities to quickly Germanize the annexed territories was the mass displacement of Poles and Jews. The idea of changing the ethnic composition of the region through mass resettlement had been considered by the Germans even before the outbreak of war. Among other things, as early as August 1939, the Staff Office of the Reich Farmers' Leader () developed, on its own initiative, a secret project for German settlement in Pomerania and Greater Poland (the so-called Darré Plan). The plan provided for the displacement of 200,000 Poles to the east. The remaining Polish population was to be kept in place and used as cheap labor for German industry and agriculture.
Already in the first ten days of September 1939, while hostilities were still ongoing, Forster (then head of civil administration in the areas of Pomerania occupied by the Wehrmacht) issued a special instruction to the party and state authorities under his command: "Completely undesirable Poles are to be expelled immediately [...]. When cleansing the city and other areas, do not forget the Jews either". On 21 September 1939, a meeting chaired by SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich was held in Berlin, attended by the commanders of the German Einsatzgruppen (operational groups of the German Security Police and Security Service) operating in Polish territory and the heads of the most important departments of the General Security Police Office. During the meeting, Heydrich informed his subordinates that the western provinces of Poland would soon be incorporated into the Reich. He announced the liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia and the rapid removal of Jews from the annexed territories. With regard to the Jewish population, the plan was first to gather them in cities (to facilitate control over the entire community) and then to resettle them to central Poland. Finally, on 2 October 1939, the Reich Ministry of the Interior issued a memorandum entitled "Tasks of the Civil Administration in the Occupied Polish Territories". The authors of the document proposed bringing German settlers from the Reich and other European countries to the newly annexed territories, and depriving those Poles who had acquired land from Germans after 1918 of their property.
However, the actual "legal" basis for the mass displacement of the Polish population was the "Decree on the Strengthening of German Nationhood" issued by Hitler on 7 October 1939. Although the document did not mention expulsions, it unambiguously announced the "elimination of the harmful influence of foreign elements in terms of nationality". Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who was appointed Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood for this purpose, was responsible for implementing the provisions of the decree. Just four days after the "Decree on the Strengthening of German Nationhood," was issued, Himmler authorized the Security Police and Security Service to begin the displacement of the Polish and Jewish populations from Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Poznań. In Pomerania, the implementation of the order was to be supervised by the Deputy of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, whom Himmler appointed SS-Gruppenführer Richard Hildebrandt – the local Higher SS and Police Leader. On 27 October 1939, Gauleiter Forster announced during a rally in Bydgoszcz: "We have been sent to this country by the Führer as trustees of the German cause with a clear goal – to make this land German again. [...] Anyone who belongs to the Polish nation must leave this country". In a memorandum from late October 1939, the head of the SD office in Bydgoszcz, Dr. Rudolf Oebsger-Röder, wrote that "in accordance with the Führer's will, German West Prussia is to be created from Polish Gdańsk Pomerania in the near future". As one of the means of implementing this plan (alongside the liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia), he mentioned "the expulsion or resettlement of all 'native Poles' and 'Congress Poles'". However, Dr. Oebsger-Röder predicted that the implementation of the plan would take years.
Initially, Himmler planned that overall supervision of the resettlement operation would be exercised by the commander of the SD and Security Police in the General Government – SS-Brigadeführer Bruno Streckenbach. For this reason, a high-level conference entitled "Settlement or Evacuation in the Eastern Territories" was organized on 8 November 1939 in Kraków, the capital of the General Government. The meeting was attended by, among others, Streckenbach, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger (Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Government), Becker (local commander of the Order Police), and Higher SS and Police Leaders of the Gdańsk-West Prussia and Wartheland districts. The conference was mainly devoted to determining the technical details of the planned resettlement operation. It was decided that it would begin in mid-November and would be carried out mostly by rail. The plan was to resettle almost one million Poles and Jews from the territories incorporated into the Reich by the end of 1940, including about 400,000 from Pomerania. Ultimately, on 28 November 1939, Himmler decided to entrust the coordination of the deportations to the Berlin headquarters of the Reich Security Main Office.
At the same time, general concepts for the Germanization of western Polish territories were being prepared in Berlin. On 25 November 1939, the NSDAP Office for Racial and Political Affairs completed work on a memorandum entitled "The Question of the Treatment of the Population in the Former Polish Territories from a Racial and Political Point of View". The authors of the document, Dr. and Günther Hecht, postulated that "the goal of eastern policy in the new territories of the Reich must be to create a racially homogeneous German population". To this end, in their opinion, three tasks had to be carried out: to Germanize that part of the population of the occupied territories that was suitable for this, to resettle the remaining population, and to bring Germans to replace them. In conclusion, the authors of the memorandum stated: "Poles who cannot be Germanized will have to be resettled to the remaining Polish territory". Wetzl and Hecht predicted that 5,636,000 people would be displaced from the Polish territories incorporated into the Reich – in particular, Poles who had settled in the western territories after 1918, representatives of the "Polish leadership", Jews and people of mixed blood, as well as so-called "neutral" Poles who were considered incapable of Germanization. Intensive German settlement in the annexed areas was also planned. However, the authors of the memorandum pointed out that "racial and political criteria, which by their very nature must be applied uncompromisingly," could not conflict with the economic needs of the Reich. A few weeks later, the Reich Commissariat for the Consolidation of German Nationhood prepared a study on the principles of planning for the reconstruction of the newly incorporated eastern territories. The authors of the memorandum estimated that in the fall of 1939, the former western territories of the Republic of Poland were inhabited by approximately 8 million Poles and 1.1 million Germans. In the first stage, they therefore proposed "achieving the nationality status of 1914," which meant removing 3.4 million Poles and bringing in the same number of Germans to replace them.
In January 1940, the commission for minorities at the Academy of German Law prepared (probably inspired by Hans Frank) a memorandum entitled "The Legal Nature of German Policy in Poland from a National-Political Point of View". Its assumptions were more modest than in previous plans. It was proposed that, due to the limited "absorptive capacity" of the General Government, "only" 1–1.5 million inhabitants – Jews and representatives of the "Polish leadership" – should be resettled from the territories incorporated into the Reich. In the spring of 1940, Konrad Meyer developed the "Assumptions Shaping Resettlement and Settlement Policy in Former Poland," which provided for the completion of German settlement in rural areas within five years and in cities within ten years. Finally, in May 1940, the Reich Commissariat for the Consolidation of German Nationhood drafted a memorandum entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Foreigners in the East". This document took into account the already clearly visible need to limit the scale of the displacement campaign. Its authors therefore emphasized the need to internally divide the Polish nation by separating various ethnographic groups (such as the Kashubians and Highland Poles) and through intensive Germanization.
"Wild" expulsions