"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (165 page)

55.
Bormann at the working supper of July 22, 1942; Hitler at the working supper of July 22, 1942, both quoted by Picker,
Hitlers Tischgespräche
, 246 f.

56.
Hitler, quoted in ibid., 233, 246 f., 248.

57.
Ludwig, “Ethische Grundzüge,” 502 f.

58.
Ibid.; cf. also statements by Darré, quoted by Rauschning,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, 38 f.

59.
H. Frank at the Reich Defense Commission, March 2, 1940 (Nuremberg doc. PS-2233); full details of the autonomy movement in the Ukraine and further references will be found in Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine
(1956), esp. 386 ff.

60.
For more details see Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine
, 159 ff., with numerous references; Ilnytzkyj describes Germany’s delaying tactics with regard to the Ukraine: “Work and wait,” as well as admonitions to combat Bolshevism and not “upset” the German authorities through their memoranda.

61.
In the General Government the Polish administration was replaced by the “Government of the General Government,” with its district administrations, district prefectures, and commissars. Only at the municipal level was there “a sort of self-management … , completely detached from the local situation and closely controlled by the German authorities” (Governor General Frank at a meeting at the Reich Defense Commission on March 2, 1940, Nuremberg doc. PS-2233); more details in Klein, “Zur Stellung des Generalgouvernements” (1941), 248; Lasch, “Die deutsche Aufgabe im Osten.” For the administrative structure of the Occupied Eastern Territories, see the Führer’s decree of July 17, 1941 (Nuremberg doc. NG-1280) (division of the regions into Reich commissariats, each subdivided into general and regional commissariats); under the regional commissariats the Ukrainian auxiliary administration functioned in the form of department heads (
Rayonchefs
), who had no powers to issue orders of their own (F. Markull, in Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine
, 2:297 ff.); for details see Wuttke, “Der Deutsche Verwaltungsaufbau in der Ukraine” (1942) (Wuttke was a
Landrat
entrusted with directing the administration department under the Reich commissar for the Ukraine); Mommsen, “Die Rechtsstellung des Reichskommissariats Ukraine” (1966); Wilhelmi, “Die Rechtspflege in den besetzten Ostgebieten” (1942) (Wilhelmi was in charge of the legal department of the RM for the occupied territories). A similar procedure was followed in the “Reichskommissariat Ostland,” comprising Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the region inhabited by the “White Ruthenians” (Directive of the Führer and
Reichskanzler
of July 17, 1941, Nuremberg doc. NG-1280).

62.
For more details on the Ukraine, see Mommsen, “Die Rechtsstellung des Reichskommissariats Ukraine.”

63.
Speech by Rosenberg on June 20, 1941 (Nuremberg doc. PS-1058); see also Nuremberg docs. PS-1056 and EC-347.

64.
According to the Directive of the Führer and Reichskanzler of July 17, 1941, the Reich minister for the occupied territories was invested with wide administrative powers—as specified in the official communication of November 17, 1941 (Hohlfeld,
Dokumente der deutschen Politik und Geschichte
, 5:346). The powers of the Wehrmacht (which was the supreme military authority [Führer’s directive of June 25, 1941]), the head of the Four Year Plan (who was in charge of the economic exploitation of the factories [Führer’s directive of June 29, 1941]), the railways and the postal administration, which were initially under the authority of the chief of the OKW, were all unaffected by this, however. In the field of security, Himmler had received broad powers by virtue of the Führer’s directive of July 17, 1941, and was thus authorized to issue instructions to the civil administration. The further order contained in the Führer’s decree, that all instructions of a general or politically important nature should be transmitted via the Reich minister for the occupied territories, was of no concern to Himmler, since he was able to act at will by way of the HSSPF, attached to the Reich commissars, or the SSPF. More details of the power struggle between these offices will be found in Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine
, 63. With regard to the individual conditions in the Ukraine, see the Führer’s directive of August 15, 1941 (Nuremberg doc. NG-3480). In addition to its actual policing duties, the RFSSuChddtPol had other, broadly embracing powers that put all internal political authority into his hands (“resulting out of the struggle, yet to be finally decided, between two rival political systems”), including the liquidation by the SIPO task forces of all undesirable groups such as Jews, the intelligentsia, the politically suspect, etc. (cf. the directives “Richtlinien auf Sondergebieten zur Weisung 21—Fall Barbarossa,” Nuremberg doc. PS-447, 2 f., issued by the OKW chief on the basis of an order of the Führer). Over and above this, the police demanded direct priority access and answerability to the Reich authorities, that is to say,
supreme powers
, and strove to anchor them in a corresponding legal document (a Führer’s directive or an ordinary decree), a move countered only with difficulty by the Reich Chancellery (see also the following note). With regard to the conditions in the district of Bialystock, where Hitler’s vassals reigned supreme without obeisance to any Reich authority, see the Führer’s decrees of July 17 and August 15, 1941. For all the Führer’s decrees in this note not otherwise identified, see Nuremberg doc. NG-1280.

65.
The
complete authority
of the police with
priority
over all offices of the civil administration was intended to get rid of the whole annoying dependence on the administrative and legal principles of the Reich in “foreign territories.” In a letter to the RMuChdRkzlei dated September 18, 1941, a few months after the war with Russia began (BA R 43/396), in which he pursued
total
internal political hegemony—under the camouflage, of course, of “internal security”—the SIPO and SD head, R. Heydrich, had already attempted a move toward this totalitarian position. These demands were discussed by Lammers and Himmler on October 6, 1941 (cf. the note of October 7, 1941, from the Reich Chancellery and the letter of the same date from the RMuChdRkzlei to the SIPO and SD head [BA R 43 II/396]).

66.
These directives were based on the Führer’s decree of May 13, 1941, regarding “implementation of martial law in the Barbarossa region and special measures by the troop” (IMT Nuremberg 0150 C, quoted by Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine
, 66–68). They put the population of the occupied territories outside the prevailing law, sanctioned reprisals in the event of attacks on the Wehrmacht, ordered the execution of political leaders without legal action, and flouted the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of Soviet Russian prisoners of war on the grounds that the Soviet Union had not been a party to The Hague Land Warfare Convention of 1907 and the Geneva Convention and had thus distanced itself from international law. With regard to the liquidation of political functionaries by the SIPO task forces, see the so- called Commissar’s Decree of May 6, 1941 (Nuremberg doc. PS-884), the so-called Hostage Decree of October 1, 1941 (Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine
, 70) (seizure of hostages from civilian and Communist circles in the event of attacks on the Wehrmacht); the “Communist Decree” of September 16, 1941 (69), according to which 50–100 “Communists” were to be shot in the area for every German soldier killed by partisans, and the “Night and Fog” (
Nacht und Nebel
) Decree of December 7, 1941 (70). With regard to the treatment of the population, see Ilnytzkyj,
Deutschland und die Ukraine
, 64.

67.
Fest,
Hitler
, 28.

68.
See the statements made by Darré, quoted in Rauschning,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, 39 f., according to which the new social order should no longer apply only in a small country such as Germany but for the whole continent as well, “the whole universe.” More details in Fest,
Hitler
, 928 f.

69.
Hitler, quoted by Rauschning,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, 43 f.: “Our considerations are not primarily economic.” The economic wealth of these countries was of course needed, but “our idea is to establish our dominance and to anchor it so firmly that it remains secure for a thousand years.” “To this end no political or economic treaties are of any use … they are just liberalistic trifles…. We are today faced with the dire necessity of creating a
new social order
” (emphasis in the original).

70.
Hitler, in ibid.

71.
Rauschning,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, 36 f., 41; Rauschning reproduces an agrarian-political speech by the agricultural and land-settlement expert of the NSDAP, Darré, at the Brown House in Munich in the summer of 1932.

72.
Hitler, in ibid., 46 (“The racial-biological aspect is always only one side of the whole problem. We will very soon reach out beyond the limits of today’s narrow nationalism”).

73.
Ibid., 39, 45 f.

74.
About which Hitler himself said that it was urgent to put a stop once and for all to what was known as general education. General education “is the corrosive poison that liberalism has found for its own destruction.” Full freedom of education is the privilege of the elite and of those who are allowed in. “Knowledge is useful in life but is not the main point as far as I am concerned. Let us therefore be consistent and give the masses of the lower classes the benefit of illiteracy” (ibid., 37 ff.).

75.
Ibid., 46.

76.
Poland was divided up into the Annexed Eastern Territories and the General Government; the Baltic states were renamed Ostland; a confidential note from the Party Chancellery (25/349 of March 28, 1942) made it known that the Reich press office of the NSDAP had requested that the editors of the whole German press speak rather of “Ostland” than “the Baltic” when writing about Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia and similarly not to speak of German colonization but of the hundreds of years of German pioneer work (
Verfügungen
, 1:217). Geographic names such as Galicia or Ukraine were not affected.

77.
See, for example, Esch,
Polen kreuz und quer
(1939); von Zeska,
Der großdeutsche Freiheitskrieg
(1940); Scheuermann,
Der Deutsche Osten ruft
(1942); Reimers,
Der Kampf um den deutschen Osten
(1943).

78.
Rauschning,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, 33; cf. also the discussion of January 27, 1940, between Hitler and Rosenberg: “The Führer speaks of Poland. He says a small ruling class regarded the country as a plantation but themselves preferred to live in Paris than in the country. I maintained … that control had been left in the hands of a class with a veneer of culture, capable of the occasional brave act but incapable of anything constructive” (quoted in Seraphim,
Das politische Tagebuch Alfred Rosenbergs
[1964], 119). Against such an opponent there was no need—indeed it was disadvantageous—to keep to one’s word, and all agreements were merely tactical (Hitler, in Rauschning,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, 33, 106 ff., 109, 113 [these were statements made in 1932 and 1933—Author]).

79.
Thus even before 1939, for example, records were kept of Polish anti-German activities, such as judgments againsts members of German organizations on account of “conspiratory activity”: see a Foreign Office letter of March 19, 1938, to the RMuChdRkzlei; the Foreign Office note of November 26, 1938, on the “de-Germanization” of the Olsa region through provocative behavior of the Germans settled there; a telegraphic report of March 29, 1939, from a German correspondent on attacks on Germans in Poland and anti-German promulgations (BA R 43 II 1482 b).

80.
Originally it was intended that Poland should be a rump state without access to the sea (Hitler, quoted by Rauschning,
Gespräche mit Hitler
, 113). In his Reichstag speech of October 6, 1939, however, he announced that the Polish state had ceased to exist (quoted in
Der großdeutsche Freiheitskampf, Reden Adolf Hitlers
[1942]).

81.
See also Gruchmann,
Der Zweite Weltkrieg
(dtv no. 4010), introduction.

82.
Hitler’s speech at the end of August 1939 to the military commanders (quoted by Püschel,
Der Niedergang des Rechts im Dritten Reich
[1947], 68).

83.
RGBl.
I, 2042.

84.
Cf. Supreme Court for Civil Cases 167, 274; cf. also Pungs, Buchholz, and Wolany,
Ostrechtspflegeverordnung
(1943); in their opinion, all regulations of the former state (general and particular) were annulled with the dissolution of the Polish state. The occasional application of the previous legislation by the yielding state occurred only on the strength of the legislation of the state taking over. The yielding state can regulate all legal relations with its own laws, and thus basically establish the internal juridical order in the acquired territories.

85.
Pungs, Buchholz, and Wolany,
Ostrechtspflegeverordnung
.

86.
With regard to the annexation of these areas in contravention of international law, see Strupp and Schlochauer,
Wörterbuch des Völkerrechts
(1960–61), 1:69 f.; 2:776; see also BVerfG I, 322; Dahm,
Völkerrecht
(1958), 1:90 n. 3, 605; H. Lauterpacht,
Recognition in International Law
(1948), 99, 124, 125; Oppenheim and Lauterpacht,
International Law
(1952), 2:252; K. Marek,
Identity and Continuity of States
(1954), 564 f.; Verdross,
Völkerrecht
, 5th ed. (1964), 251 f.

87.
With regard to Greiser, who had previously been president of the Senate in Danzig (Gda
sk), as a person, see the official communication in the
Gauamtsblatt der NSDAP Posen
, no. 1, of May 1, 1940; see also the description by C. J. Burckhardt, who described Greiser as “soft by nature”: “But when circumstances forced him to be hard, and that they did regularly, he overdid the hard side.” “No price was too high” for him to pay to be in Hitler’s good graces (
Meine Danziger Mission
[1960], 75 ff., 78). For information on Greiser as a person from the Polish viewpoint, see Wietrzykowski,
Powrót Artura Greisera
(1946), an unofficial German translation of which will be found in ZS, AZ I 110 AR 655/73, 6–8. Greiser was taken prisoner by the British in 1945, extradited to Poland, condemned, and executed on July 9, 1946, in Posen (Pozna
), where he had been active.