"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (215 page)

5.
At the end of 1941 each
Landkreis
had an average of 10 to 15 German officials and between 15 and 30 other staff (statement by Governor General Frank to members of the Berlin Civil Service Academy, November 18, 1941, “Diensttagebuch 1941,” 1030). At first, various offices tried to remedy the situation on their own initiative by “luring” new recruits from the Reich. For the judiciary, see the decree issued on February 28, 1941, by the head of the Justice Department in the office of the governor general to the districts, which strictly forbade such recruiting intiatives. Requests for postings were to be his exclusive preserve (Main Commission Warsaw, Archive, Reg. des GG, Hauptabteilung Justiz V 6); cf. also decree issued by the government of the General Government to the Central Department of Internal Administration on June 24, 1941, with instructions to set up personnel control bureaus to prevent employees sacked from the public services from gaining employment with other offices (ZS, Polen 256, Bl. 185 f.).

6.
It was less the scarcity of food and material goods than the poor traffic conditions, the confined living space, the alienation from political and cultural life, the unfamiliar surroundings and unaccustomed administration practices, the high workload, the failure to honor assurances with regard to promotion, etc., that made an assignment in the General Government and the Occupied Eastern Territories singularly unattractive for established civil servants; indeed, it was often perceived as a “transfer for disciplinary reasons.” There were also conflicting loyalties with the Reich authorities (this sometimes led to a double game, which the governor general was all too willing to play along with; in Berlin, the official concerned declared himself in agreement with the point of view of the central administration, but in Kraków he did the opposite [Frank at a meeting of the Department of Internal Administration on January 19, 1941, “Diensttagebuch 1941,” Bl. 83]). Forbidding stories about life in the General Government were circulating in the Reich (
News from the Reich
, no. 217, November 4, 1941, IfZ, Ma-441/4, 4727 ff.; also BA R 22/243).

7.
Decree circulated by the RFSSuChddtPol on the deployment of the Gendarmerie as a special service within the General Government, November 11, 1940 (BA R 19/304). Letter from RFSS to HSSPF Ost, July 19, 1941 (ZS, USA doc., film no. 2, 860–64). At a meeting of the government on December 16, 1941, however, Governor General Frank declared that, in view of the acute scarcity of manpower, “the most recent and stringent selection criteria … are not paramount; anyone who is more or less acceptable should be retained” (“Diensttagebuch,” December 16, 1941, Bl. 317). See, for example, monthly report of
Kreishauptmann
Łowicz, January 1941 (ZS, Polen 347 ff.), as well as the sources cited in note 9, below. Report, F. Siebert, “Der Verwaltungswirrwarr im Generalgouvernement” (BA Ostdok. 13 GG I a/1; ZS, Versch. 104, Bl. 695 ff., 699, copy). Regarding the miserable conditions in the Galicia District, cf. RSHA reports of events in the USSR, no. 50 of August 12, 1941 (BA R 58/216, Bl. 12, 51, 76, 72). Report of the commander of the SIPO Radom from spring 1943 (half the
Kreishauptleute
“fell far short of the accepted moral standards”) (IfZ, Ma-641, 2217 ff.). [The word “moral” referred mainly to economic performance, relationship to Poles and Jews, and sexual morality—Author.]

8.
Report, Dr. F. Siebert, “Hauptabteilung Innere Verwaltung” (BA Ostdok. 13 GG I b/5).

9.
Excerpt from the situation reports of
Kreis
- and
Stadthauptleute
of the General Government for February 1941 (Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
). The president of the Central Department of Internal Administration in a discussion on November 21, 1941, in Kraków (“Diensttagebuch 1941”); Governor General Frank at a government meeting of July 13, 1942, in Kraków (“Diensttagebuch 1942,” 3:361 ff., 362). Summary of charges relating to a total of 11 cases against the
Stadthauptmann
Kraków, September 9, 1944 (ZS, USA doc., film no. 4, Bl. 130 ff.). Material about professional and personal misconduct of members of the police, including a lack of “toughness” in dealing with Poles, in BA R 19/115. See also report of the commander of the SIPO and the SD Radom about the “undignified” conduct of the Germans in the General Government, spring 1943 (IfZ, Ma-641, 2271 f.).

10.
Report, F. Siebert, “Der Verwaltungswirrwarr im GG” (BA Ostdok. 13 GG I a/1), especially with regard to the presidents and officials of the Eastern railway: “A thousand and more kilometers from home the most trustworthy of officials [turned] to women and alcohol … and went to the bad.” Cf. also diary notes by Dr. Troschke (BA Ostdok. 13 GG No. 1a/10): “There are some … who believe that, once in Poland, they may indulge in vodka and other temptations until the cup is drained to the last drop” (46 f.). Many have succumbed to vodka and “loose living,” which makes a “shameful impression” on the Poles. “Many behaved sensibly in the Reich, but once across the border, they think anything goes” (78, 94).

11.
See, for example, the description of alcoholic excess and corruption among members of the local Gestapo unit in Przemy
l (a branch office of the Security Police Commander [KdS] in Radom) given in a judgment of the LG (State Court of Appeals) Hamburg against Karl F. Reisener et al., January 14, 1969 (AZ. Sign. 50–38/67, Bl. 64 ff.).

12.
Cf. a report by the military commander of Kraków for the first week of October 1939, dated October 9, 1939, which related the positive reception given to the course of the war and the occupation by country people and industrial workers (because they hoped for improved economic conditions and believed the war was directed only against government and “international Jewry”) and the hostile attitude of the intelligentsia (IfZ, Bestand MiG, Ma-682, Bl. 486 ff.). The thesis of relatively tolerable conditions in the General Government is also supported by H. Roos, “Polen in der Besatzungszeit” (1959), 179, who put the anti-German resistance of the Poles down to the police terror rather than the acts of the administration. [This thesis was probably close to the truth until 1942, when the mood turned irrevocably against German rule—Author.]

13.
The final turning point came in 1942, the year of the so-called
Ernteschlacht
(harvest battle), in which the delivery quotas imposed on Polish farmers, the round-ups of workers, and the police terror reached a high point. A summary of the causes is given in a report by the chief of the General Staff of the District Military Command of the General Government to the chief of Army General Staff, April 7, 1943 (IfZ, Ma-1017, Bl. 0715 f.): “growing hardship,” “increasing burden of the war,” “emotional oppression,” “restriction of civil liberties,” “psychological mistreatment,” “misplaced severity,” and “complete contempt coupled with lack of welfare” had robbed “the Poles of the last shreds of belief in the goodwill of the Germans.” Report, Dr. F. Siebert, Central Department of Internal Administration, November 11, 1959 (BA Ostdok. 13 GG I b/5), with numerous illuminating examples. Cf. also diary notes by Dr. Troschke (BA Ostdok. 13 GG no. 1a/10), 45 ff., according to which the
Kreishauptmann
of Reichshof (Rzeszów), a
Regierungsrat
in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, tried, with “grim determination,” to prevail but proved incompetent in every way. The Poles hated him, because he played the
Herrenmensch
(member of a superior race) wherever he went. He had Poles and Jews whipped, something that would never be forgotten. For him, Poles were human beings of a lower rank. In his monthly report of February 1941, the
Kreishauptmann
of Łowicz proposed cutting off the ears of Polish hostages as a reprisal for attacks on German soldiers (ZS, Polen 347, Bl. 408 f.).

14.
Report, Dr. F. Siebert (BA Ostdok. 13 GG I b/5), according to which there were many rackets involving supplies of food from the so-called district stocks to the offices of the
Kreishauptleute
and district governors; many were certainly involved in small-time swindles (the Central Department of Internal Administration was—Siebert said—by and large free from corruption).
Herrentum
(lordship) had been misunderstood: taking into consideration “certain transgressions of wartime regulations and the special situation prevailing in the occupied territories,” in which “not all the fundamental principles of the homeland could be upheld,” it was “not correct to say that the majority of civil servants” had behaved in a “morally reprehensible manner.”

15.
Secret report from the commander of the Security Police and the SD for the Galicia District in Lemberg (L’viv) to RSHA Amt III (III A) (III D) and to the commander-in-chief of the Security Police and the SD in the General Government concerning “the conduct of the Reich Germans in the occupied areas,” May 14, 1943 (Reich security matter; 5 copies), AZ III A 4 SA: 23 (ZS, Versch. 48, Bl. 49 ff.). The report has 142 pages. It has been proved—according to the report—“that the Germans posted here have failed right down the line” and that the “Propaganda Offices and press of the General Government … have given a deliberately distorted picture of the situation … banking on the Reich administration’s ignorance of the real conditions in the General Government” (Bl. 133 f.). Further details are supplied by another 100-page report from the same source in June 1943 (ZS, Ordner 36, Bl. 49 ff.). Cf. report of the commander of the Security Police in Radom in spring 1943 about the “undignified behavior” of the Germans in the General Government (IfZ, Ma-641, 2271 f.). On the basis of this account, the Reich Chancellery produced a report, “The Conditions in the General Government,” dated April 12, 1943, which was sent to Himmler on April 13, 1943, with the intention that it should be used as the basis for a verbal report to Hitler on conditions in the General Government to be given by the RMuChdRkzlei and the RFSSuChddtPol. Himmler replied on May 8, 1943, saying he had nothing to add to the report (Nuremberg doc. no. 3321).

16.
Report by F. Siebert (BA Ostdok. 13 GG I b/5). A catalog of accusations, put together by the Reich Chancellery on April 12, 1943 (Nuremberg doc. no. 3321), included the following reproaches directed toward Frank: “Mistaken perception of the General Government as a state in itself, independent of the Reich,” by means of which Frank was able to display “all the trappings of power”; toward the Reich and within the General Government: numerous “ill-considered instructions,” as well as “arbitrary acts” and “emotional impulses”; the effect was to undermine the confidence of both the local population and the Civil Service in the stability of governmental and administrative leadership, with the consequence that decrees and laws were frequently ignored, sidestepped, or sabotaged. Moreover, there had been a “conspicuous absence of a sense of propriety in personal conduct”; Frank, it was said, was predisposed by his “great vanity” to “surround himself with largely incompetent yes-men … who, by painting a rosy picture of the real conditions in the General Government, had created a false impression of success in the political and administrative spheres … to pander to the smugness of the governor general” and further their own careers; the result was a regime based on “favoritism and nepotism.” In the economic sphere, the bad example given—in some cases by close relatives of the governor general—had led to a prevalence of “ruthless wheeler-dealers and brutal war profiteers,” resulting in “signs of corruption” permeating the Civil Service, with “hundreds of cases” of graft and racketeering by petty officials and employees.

17.
Memorandum of the commander-in-chief East, February 6, 1940 (inhuman and barbarous behavior by the SS, the Security Police, and the SD) (ZS, Versch. 12, Bl. 3423 ff.). Anonymous report, February 1942, detailing the actions of SS members in the General Government (BA Ostdok. 13 GG 19/10). Unsigned letter from a German living in Kraków to Hitler, March 25, 1943, in which the sender reported police manhunts against Poles, the starvation conditions suffered by the Polish population while the Germans had plentiful food supplies, and acts of cruelty perpetrated by the Gestapo against Jews in the Ghetto. The Führer should know about such acts; if he—the letter-writer—were given safe conduct, he would report on them in person (ZS, Eichmann, no. 1567). Concerning the general conduct of the SS in the East, cf. parallel report by the chief of the general Wehrmacht Bureau in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (high command of the Wehrmacht) to the RSHA (
Obergruppenführer
Wolff) of August 2, 1943, which dealt with the excesses of the SS in Russia (including killings, theft, molestation, beating and rape of women; ZS, no sources given). To some extent the Wehrmacht also gave grounds for complaint: cf. letter from the garrison headquarters Warsaw to the police regiment Warsaw, November 13, 1939 (with numerous accusations of dishonorable conduct by soldiers, such as consorting with prostitutes and Jewish women, maltreatment of Jews, etc.).