"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (56 page)

This nonregulation of Poles’ citizenship, like the nonregulation of their general legal status, still offered some advantages with regard to the radical goals of the political leadership, despite the great misgivings of the Reich administration.
¹⁹
With everything left in abeyance, the authorities could exercise infinite official discretion to treat the “non-Germans” as inhabitants of a colony without any rights and to govern not on the basis of binding judicial norms but by internal guidelines from case to case.

The statelessness of the “non-Germans” in the Annexed Eastern Territories particularly suited the wishes of the Party and the police, that is, the departments of the RFSS/RKF (
Reichsführer
-SS/Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood) and the local Party organizations, because these agencies operated a Germanization policy based purely on aspects of security policy—on the basis of the greatest possible blocking of citizenship for Poles (the “racial struggle”)—in sharp contrast to the extensive interpretation of the concept of “membership of the German
Volk
in the interests of the largest possible number of Germanizations”
²⁰
as understood by the Reich Ministry of the Interior. These agencies, which in any case regarded themselves as having sole authority in all issues relating to non-German races (the Party, because these were political issues; the RKF agencies because they were responsible under the secret Führer decree of October 7, 1939),
²¹
were therefore not only satisfied with the consultation rights they enjoyed in the matter of nationality;
²²
they had also claimed crucial rights. For instance, they almost completely ignored the relevant circular decree of the Reich Ministry of the Interior of November 25, 1939, in which the review of nationality and the establishment of German state subject status was assigned to the lower administrative authorities. In both Danzig–West Prussia and Posen (Pozna
), ethnic Germans and Poles qualified for Germanization were registered solely by the Party offices and the Security Police, with the administration being increasingly eased out of the whole field of nationality issues.
²³

Although the Party and police leadership would have preferred to maintain this status of the indigenous population without any rights, statelessness raised too many legal problems in the long term, and clarification of the nationality status of the “non-German” population became increasingly urgent. In the disputes between the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the political leadership, the ethnic-racial argument won the upper hand because of the political predominance of the Party and the police. The Reich Ministry of the Interior abandoned its earlier standpoint, and “agreement” was reached on two principles for the future legal status of the “non-Germans”: (1) that German state subject status was reserved for Germans only, and (2) that Poles with “German blood in the family” should somehow be introduced into the German state community and after a probationary period be granted German citizenship.
²⁴
However, the varying procedures for the establishment of nationality in the Annexed Eastern Territories and the differences between the Reich Ministry of the Interior on the one hand and the deputy Führer and Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood on the other
²⁵
delayed the conclusion of the negotiations.

2. Decree on the German Ethnic Classification List and German Citizenship in the Annexed Eastern Territories, March 4, 1941

As was so often the case when no agreement with the Reich administration appeared possible, the RFSS/RKF acted independently; this then forced the Reich Ministry of the Interior to give way and more or less accept the reality of the situation. The basic line taken by the RFSS/RKF was to establish various mechanisms to separate those Poles “qualifying for Germanization” from the rest and incorporate them into the Reich with a special status (as probationary state subjects), whereas for the remaining Poles the so-called protected subject status (discussed below) was established. The relevant decree of September 12, 1940,
²⁶
issued not by the Reich Ministry of the Interior but by the RFSS/RKF and enjoying Hitler’s basic approval,
²⁷
divided the population of the Annexed Eastern Territories into four categories, based on the German Ethnic Classification List, and stipulated a procedure for ethnic-racial classification, the major principles of which had been practiced from the outset in the radical ethnic policy of the Warthegau,
²⁸
regarded by the Racial Policy Office of the NSDAP and the deputy Führer as exemplary.
²⁹

The Reich Ministry of the Interior then swung into action. The Decree on the German Ethnic Classification List and German State Subject Status in the Annexed Eastern territories issued on March 4, 1941, in the version of the decree of January 31, 1942,
³⁰
essentially adopted the decree of September 12, 1940, and was therefore, as was often the case with National Socialist legal innovations, no original act of the Reich interior administration but a legalization of practices long exercised, that is, the arbitrary practices of Himmler’s departments. On the basis of this decree, whose substance was laboriously justified by borrowing from Germanic legal history, in which the “differences caused by blood” had been decisive,
³¹
the German Ethnic Classification List was created to establish membership in the German
Volk
and thus state subject status.

Groups 1 and 2 of the German Ethnic Classification List included those German members of the
Volk
who had been active in promoting Germanness (
Deutschtum
) or had “proved their Germanness” before September 1, 1939; at the same time, it confirmed that they had acquired German state subject status on October 26, 1939 (the effective date of the Führer decree of October 8, 1939), without any special act of conferment.
³²
For Polish members of the
Volk,
the “probationary state subject status” (with ten days’ notice of revocation) was created: Poles and other “non-Germans,” if recognized as “capable of Germanization,” could apply for inclusion in group 3 of the German Ethnic Classification List, acquiring probationary German state subject status on
registration.
Those Poles merely classified as “capable of re-Germanization” were registered in group 4 of the German Ethnic Classification List and acquired probationary German state subject status by a special
naturalization act.
³³
All other former state subjects of Poland and Danzig became “protected subjects of the German Reich” (sec. 7). Jews and Gypsies were not capable of either acquiring German state subject status on the basis of the German Ethnic Classification List or of becoming protected subjects of the German Reich.
³⁴
All Jews and Gypsies living in the Annexed Eastern Territories thus had no legally defined status whatsoever.

The
conditions
for inclusion in group 3 of the German Ethnic Classification List were not contained in the decree of March 4, 1941, itself but set out in the implementing circular issued by Reich Ministry of the Interior on March 13, 1941.
³⁵
This decree shows clearly the emasculation of the Reich Ministry of the Interior by the political authorities, since the Reich Ministry of the Interior was no longer, as before, exclusively responsible for all state subject status issues as regards “non-Germans”; it was obliged to seek the consent of the political authorities, which saw themselves as primarily responsible for “Non-German Racial Policy” (sec. 10, German Ethnic Classification List Decree), so that even this decree itself was issued only after gaining the consent of the deputy Führer and the RFSS/RKF.

Under this decree, persons “capable of Germanization” could be registered in group 3 of the German Ethnic Classification List: included were Poles and other “non-Germans” (Kashubians, Mazovians, the so-called
Wasserpolen,
and others) who were of “German extraction” (“of German stock”) and who could demonstrate a “declared belief in Germanness” (not active participation) at the time of Polish “foreign rule,” if the ties to the Polish nation could be dissolved; persons who were living in “mixed marriage” with a member of the German
Volk
in which the German element had prevailed, again if the ties to the Polish nation could be dissolved; and members of ethnic groups incapable of unambiguous classification but inclined toward Germanness (Mazovians, Kashubians, and others) (art. 2, clauses 2 and 6, of the implementing circular).

Group 4 was designated for “non-Germans” “capable of re-Germanization,” that is, persons who were “of German stock” but who had “merged with the Polish nation” (who had in some way been “hostile to Germany” before 1939) (sec. 2, par. 7, of the decree). If the “German extraction” could no longer be demonstrated with certainty, an additional “racial examination” was prescribed (sec. 2, par. 2c, of the decree), which, as mentioned before, was performed not by the general administrative authorities (
Landrat
) but by the departments of the RFSS/RKF.

The other implementing regulations for the decree of March 4, 1941, and all associated questions clearly reflect the increasing exclusion of the Reich Ministry of the Interior; the regulations were issued either by the ministry
in conjunction with
the RFSS/RKF or, for the most part, solely by Himmler’s departments or by the
Reichsstatthalter
for their own areas.

Among the issues covered by the individual regulations were the drawing up of the population figures and the planned future composition of the population in the Annexed Eastern Territories;
³⁶
the preparation of criteria for the “selection of Polish families capable of Germanization,”
³⁷
to be performed by special departments of the SS, the reimmigration offices (
Umwandererzentralen
); the question of the nationality of non-Polish “non-Germans” in the Annexed Eastern Territories; and the differing treatment of Germanized “non-Germans” and Altreich Germans.
³⁸

In particular, the more precise requirements for the acquisition of German state subject status on the basis of the decree of March 4, 1941, were covered in detail,
³⁹
as was their implementation: for instance, the inclusion regulations for groups 1 and 2 of the German Ethnic Classification List, which were intended especially to keep out Jews;
⁴⁰
the recording in the German Ethnic Classification List of registered ethnic Germans;
⁴¹
the regulations for the constitutional, asset, family, and police law treatment of Poles to be Germanized in groups 3 and 4,
⁴²
as mentioned in part 1 of the regulations; and the procedure and competence of the Supreme Court of Review for Nationality Questions in the Annexed Eastern Territories.
⁴³

As mentioned above, a special portion of the implementing decree gave specific guidelines for determining who was to be included in group 3 of the German Ethnic Classification List.
⁴⁴
An additional “racial inspection” ordered by the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the RFSS/RKF was to be carried out if the German extraction could no longer be demonstrated with certainty. Because of a conflict about jurisdiction, this met with protest from the
Reichsstatthalter
in the Warthegau, because the inspection declared numerous persons to be Poles who had already been classified as Germans on the basis of the political examination conducted by the administration (which relied on a person’s declared belief in Germanness, etc.).
⁴⁵

3. Questions of Interpretation regarding the Decree of March 4, 1941: The Concept of Being Capable of Germanization

Despite the number of detailed regulations, the most important questions remained unsolved, with the result that the Germanization of “non-Germans” was
institutionalized
by the German Ethnic Classification List Decree but by no means
consistently implemented.
⁴⁶
The differences in the political authorities’ interpretation of the nature and scope of the Germanization of the Eastern Territories were simply too great to allow any agreement on a consistent policy by the interior administration and the departments of the RFSS/RKF. These differences existed because the Reich administration had linked the question of who was “capable of Germanization or re-Germanization” to cultural-political criteria in the “ethnic sense” (declared belief in Germanness, solidarity with German culture, etc.), whereas the intervention of the departments of the SIPO and of the RFSS/RKF in the process of Germanization of the Eastern Territories threw the entire previous definition of national status into disarray. These powers, pursuing racial policies, were steadfastly persistent in their goal of replacing the political definitions until that time governing state subject status by racial definitions, or at least putting racial definitions on a par with the political concepts. Completely new terms, such as “non-German,” “of German stock,” “with German blood in the family,” “capable of Germanization,” and “capable of re-Germanization” now appeared in the implementation of the German Ethnic Classification List Decree. These were gradually adopted by the general administration as well, but they were not capable of definition and there was no agreement on their material substance. Indeed, these defects were an advantage in the eyes of the radical racial politicians, because they could proceed flexibly, depending on the “racial policy” situation, in other words, on the basis of ethnic-racial expediency.