German National Association in Poland

Emblem of the German People's Association in Poland (with runes from May 1938)

The German People's Association in Poland (DVV) was an association of the German minority in Poland from 1924 to 1939, with its seat in Lodz . The association emerged from the German Association for Lodz and the surrounding area , which existed from 1916 to 1919, as well as the subsequently founded Association of Germans in Poland (1921-1924). Contrary to what the name implies, the German People's Association in Poland was not an overall organization for the Germans living in Poland. Its activities were limited to central Poland or until 1934 almost exclusively to the Lodz area.

In addition, there were a number of ethnic minority organizations in inter-war Poland that represented the interests of the German ethnic group regionally and independently of one another. One of the largest membership organizations and parties next to the German People's Association, among others, the listed German People's League (Silesia), the German Association (western Poland), the German Party Association of the German people in Poland , the German Party (Poland) or the young German party in Poland .

Politically, the association is mainly assigned to the conservative spectrum as a reservoir for the bourgeois center , which like all German minority organizations got caught up in the national socialist national politics from 1933 onwards . In Polish historiography , the association is sometimes depicted as a right-wing extremist political party with a connection to the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle , which from May 1938 sought to create a unified union of Germans in Poland . However , due to the quarreling German minority, such a foundation and organizational harmonization never came about and should not be confused with the constitution of the German People's Association in Poland.

introduction

Poland within the borders from 1920 to 1939

Polish propaganda poster from 1931 about the successful "de-Germanization" (figures in the cities show the percentage of the German minority compared to 1910)

As a result of the First World War , a large part of the population of Europe found themselves in another country without having left their hometown. The new borders changed citizenship for around 80 million people. A number of new states emerged which tried with all their might to enforce their national character, but often only had a very weak national and linguistic homogeneity .

The Second Polish Republic , founded on November 11, 1918, with a population of 45% “non-Poles” was not a nation state , but a multi-ethnic state dominated by the Polish nation . Despite the signing of a minority protection treaty between the Allied and Associated Main Powers and Poland , the Polish government severely restricted the rights of the many minorities, especially Ukrainians, Jews and Germans. In 1923 , Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski openly formulated the goal of "de-Germanization" in Poland.

So-called polonization campaigns aimed to displace ethnic minorities from the economy while at the same time emphasizing the values ​​of Polish work in industry, trade and economy. The consequences were discrimination against “non-Poles” and partial forced migration . Since the Polish government believed that it could only secure the western areas in the long term through Polonization, and conversely no German government of the Weimar Republic recognized the new eastern border, German-Polish tensions were inevitable. As a result, both German and Polish propaganda exaggerated the importance and role of the Polish Germans into gigantic proportions.

The difficult political situation of the German minority in inter-war Poland caused a mass exodus of the German population to Germany, due to the loss of previous supremacy and the fear of the hostile minority policy of the Polish government, in which around one million people by the mid-1920s alone Germans left the western areas of Poland. In order to stop this flow of German people fleeing Poland, German policy already under Gustav Stresemann pursued the goal of convincing the German minorities to remain in Poland, but also to be able to use them as a lever for future border revisions .

Against this background, a number of German organizations and companies, including associations, societies, cooperative banks, printers and publishers, which supported the remaining German population, emerged in Poland in the early 1920s on the initiative of the German Foreign Office . It should be noted, however, that the German minority in Poland was divided up to the end of the 1930s due to religious, political and historical differences and controversies. Until the German invasion of Poland, there were a large number of German minority organizations, which, especially during the Weimar period , received different or no subsidies at all, depending on the political direction of the respective Reich government .

For example, the former Prussian provinces of Posen and Pomerania were predominantly evangelical and before the First World War they were strongholds of the German Conservative Party , whose members were close to the German National People's Party after 1918 . In contrast, the Catholic Center Party dominated in Upper Silesia before and after the First World War . In Central Poland, the former Congress Poland , the German Socialist Labor Party played a major role, which received support from the SPD and the Socialist International . Meanwhile, the German minority in Volhynia and Galicia behaved apolitically and founded more cultural or economic organizations.

As the leading representation of interests of the German minority in Poland, three associations emerged in the mid-1920s: the German People's Association for Polish-Silesia (VB), the German Association for Poznan and Pomeranian (DV) and the German People's Association in Poland (DVV) with headquarters in Lodz. The Polish government was able to prevent a merger in a targeted and successful manner until September 1939. With one exception, all German organizations were only tolerated by the Polish state, but never accepted as negotiating partners with equal rights. Only the German People's Federation for Polish Silesia had the status of an officially recognized representative of the German minority with the Polish authorities, protected by the Geneva Agreement on Upper Silesia .

In contrast to the Upper Silesian, but also to the West Polish association, the Central Polish DVV in particular never developed a complex administrative apparatus. On the one hand, the Polish authorities had explicitly forbidden the DVV from self-administration . On the other hand, the German People's Association in central Poland was not promoted by the Foreign Office in the same way as the German minority in areas that were formerly part of the German Empire. In other words, contrary to what some Polish historians have suggested, the DVV initially received no financial and political assistance from the Foreign Office, and much later only partial.

Although there is no doubt that many “ ethnic Germans ” sympathized with the Nazi regime in Germany from the mid-1930s onwards, historical research doubts that they actually knew the goals and program of the racist “ Lebensraum im Osten policy ”. Rather, the German ethnic group in Poland, as an oppressed ethnic minority, was an easy victim of the popular propaganda, which wanted to regain the privileges that were lost after the First World War and to live again in secure conditions. Furthermore, in any assessment of this period, it must be taken into account that an authoritarian nationalist regime prevailed not only in Germany but also in the Second Polish Republic . According to the German historian Wolfgang Benz , “fascist elements of the Polish dictatorship” are unmistakable during this period.

Emergence

The history of the Germans in the Łódź area begins at the end of the 18th century. According to Polish historians, it was characteristic of Lodz, particularly between 1900 and 1918, that there were no conflicts between Poles and Germans. On the part of the Germans living in central Poland, there was no political party or organization before the First World War. It was not until 1916 that the businessman and general representative of BASF in Russian Poland, Adolf Eichler, founded a German association for Lodz and the surrounding area . The aim of the association was to promote education and general education and was increasingly popular with the German population in Lodz and the surrounding area.

The establishment initially caused consternation in the civil administration in Warsaw . At this time, the Central Powers tried to put the existence of a Polish state in a positive light and avoided anything that could cause “unrest and discontent in Poland” or Polish resistance to Germany. Ultimately, the civil administration supported the association, including with unbureaucratic building permits for school buildings. The high school director Hugo von Eltz was the chairman of the German Association for Lodz and the surrounding area . By the end of 1918 the association had around 230 local groups with around 30,000 members. After the establishment of the Second Republic, the Polish Ministry of the Interior dissolved the association after a series of house searches in April 1919.

On May 8, 1921, the German Association for the Protection of Minority Rights (DB) was founded. The head office was initially in Lodz, later in Bromberg . The aim of the organization was to strengthen the minority rights of Germans in Poland and to protect their political, economic and cultural activities. DB was in close contact with the Berlin government and received financial support from it. However, the activities were almost exclusively limited to the former Prussian partition areas.

Since the DB did not develop any significant activities in central and eastern Poland, the Federation of German Poles (BDP) was founded in Lodz in September 1921 . The aim of the BDP was to unite all Germans in Poland and to fight for political and cultural freedoms for the German minority. Eduard von Behrens, editor of the Lodzer Free Press, was in charge of the tour . Parallel to its activities in the Lodz area, the BDP tried to expand its sphere of activity to Galicia , Cieszyn Silesia and Volhynia , which the Polish government prevented through various bans.

The Lodz entrepreneur and city councilor Josef Spickermann played an important role in the founding of the Federation of German Poles . He publicly advocated loyalty to the Polish state, although he saw as a prerequisite that all ethnic minorities can cultivate their own language and culture. Spickermann advocated the idea that the Polish state should be built on the principle of equal rights and free cultural development for all nationalities living in Poland.

By decision of the Political Committee of the Council of Ministers, on August 23, 1923, the Polish authorities dissolved the Deutschtumsbund for the protection of minority rights, which they accused of espionage and a policy directed against the Polish state. This not only deprived the German part of the population of a political party, but also of the central organization that could have coordinated all the activities of the German minority.

In autumn 1923, a series of criminal trials against representatives of the German minority began across the country. For this purpose, the Polish Council of Ministers had already passed the resolution in July 1923 that "any attempt to agitate against the state authority or the state's interests will be severely punished". What exactly that meant was not clear from the decree. In fact, all opposition was eliminated. This decision was even seen as a warning to the Sejm MPs , who had to expect their immunity to be lifted .

In the course of the wave of lawsuits, investigations were initiated against leading members of the Federation of German Poles, which the Polish authorities had never recognized. Thereupon the chairman of the BDP, Eduard von Behrens, initially left Lodz for Bromberg and later went to Germany for a short time. At the end of December 1923, the Federation of Germans in Poland had to cease its activities.

After the dissolution of the Federation of German Poles, the German People's Association in Poland (DVV) was founded in its place on June 1, 1924 in Lodz in the legal form of a party. The founding of a party was much easier than that of an association, did not require approval from the authorities and allowed activities throughout Poland. In addition to the German, other minority associations, such as Jewish and Ukrainian, also chose this legal form. In principle, however, the German political associations in Poland were only partly parties in the classic sense. The German minority was too small and too homogeneous in economic, social and denominational terms to be able to produce a spectrum of parties at all.

In this respect, the DVV should be viewed more as an umbrella organization to which various parties, associations, cooperatives and sales organizations belonged. The goals of the DVV were to defend and promote the political and economic interests of the German minority. The sphere of activity initially extended exclusively to central Poland, later also to Volhynia and a few areas of Galicia. Leading founding members were August Utta and Josef Spickermann as well as Julian Will and Eduard von Behrens. August Utta, who held the office from 1924 to 1938, was elected first chairman of the DVV. Then Ludwig Wolff took over the leadership until the dissolution of the association .

The Polish government approved the establishment of the Volksverband and did not order a dissolution at any time in order not to initiate similar steps against Polish organizations in Germany. In fact, the Polish minority in Germany also had a dense network of organizations that received financial and political support from Warsaw government agencies. The "Banki Ludowie" (Polish "Volksbank") provided material security for the Polish associations in Germany. The official organ of Poles in Germany was the monthly Polak w Niemczech ("The Pole in Germany") with supplements for school children and young people, edited by Edmund Jan Osmańczyk .

Political activities

Politically, the German National Association in Poland is assigned to the conservative spectrum in both German and Polish historical studies as a reservoir for the bourgeois center , which like all German minority organizations got caught in the wake of National Socialist national politics from 1933 . However, at no time was the DVV a right-wing extremist party, as stated in some English-language reference works in particular. The association did not pursue any racist goals and had no authoritarian, anti-pluralistic or anti-democratic understanding of society. Likewise, the German minority in central Poland had no revisionist or “ home-into-the-Reich ” interests , if only because the former Congress Poland, unlike western Poland and Upper Silesia, never belonged to Germany.

The German People's Association in Poland expressly committed itself to the international minority organizations and was a member of the European Nationalities Congress (ENK) from 1925 to 1938 , represented by August Utta. The representatives of the ENK assumed that a solution of the national questions through irredentism would never be possible and therefore a balance between nations and states would have to be found on the basis of mutual recognition.

Particular emphasis of the association work of the DVV was the promotion of the school and Protestant church system. Many teachers, village cantors and pastors actively supported the German People's Association. Around 90% of the German minority in central Poland belonged to the Evangelical Augsburg Church , which opposed the state-imposed attempt to dissolve it. With the establishment of the Second Republic, the Polish government declared Catholicism the state religion. Despite the constitutional equality of the religions in 1921, the Catholic Church continued to receive preferential treatment by the Polish state.

In the 1920s, the Evangelical Augsburg Church in central Poland had around 400,000 members. The situation in the parishes worsened from year to year, among other things, Polish newspapers repeatedly published calls to “hand over the superfluous German churches”. With the ecclesiastical law of 25 November 1936 coming into force, the parishes could only dispose of their property with the consent of the voivode , who from this point also had the right to object and withdraw from the appointment of pastors and the election of senior citizens and consistorial councilors .

In the cultural field, the dominant theme of the DVV was the restrictive attitude of the Polish state towards the German school system, which in fact meant its destruction. A resolution of the Polish Council of Ministers of March 3, 1919 stipulated that the German language of instruction could remain “as soon as this is requested by the majority of parents or their representatives of the children attending the school”, but these and the following regulations were implemented interpreted by the responsible Polish authorities in such a way that the retention of German lessons was mostly not enforceable.

The architect of the minority school policy was called Stanislaw Grabski. The aim of his legislation was to transform the Polish school system into an instrument for the gradual assimilation of minorities. A study by the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag in 2009 stated: “The Polish government did everything it could to employ Polish teachers in the minority schools and to reduce the number of German schools.” The total number of German schools in the area fell accordingly Poland's former Congress from 560 in 1914 to fewer than 100 in 1931.

Of these, however, only 50 to 60 schools were those where German was actually the language of instruction. From 1932, teachers in German schools required a certificate of loyalty from the respective Starostei , which was refused in many cases without giving a reason. Many schools lost their teachers and had to close due to a lack of staff. In the school year 1935/36 there were only eleven schools with German as the language of instruction in central Poland. Two years later, only around 14,000 children from the German minority were receiving lessons in their mother tongue in all of Poland, for a maximum of one to five hours per week.

As Senator of the Republic of Poland and Chairman of the German People's Association in Poland, August Utta unsuccessfully wrote several petitions to the League of Nations in Geneva , "regarding the protection of the rights of the German minority in the former congress Poland in the field of education", in which he referred to the violation of the protection of minorities pointed out in Poland. On September 13, 1934, at the Assembly of the League of Nations, Poland officially denounced the minority protection treaty , which was originally part of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference . Polish diplomacy had planned and carefully prepared this step for a long time.

Originally, the constitution of the Second Republic provided for two parliamentary chambers: the Sejm with 444 members, who were supposed to exercise actual power, and the Senate with 111 senators. The president, on the other hand, should have a more representative function without political power. In fact, the electoral system of the March constitution in 1921 already excluded individual parties or associations of the many ethnic minorities from participating in the formation of political will. In order to increase their chances of being elected, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and White Ruthenians therefore formed a “minority bloc”. The German minority thus gained 17 members in the Sejm from 1922 to 1927 and five senators in the Senate, and 21 members and five senators in the Sejm from 1928 to 1930. This included August Utta, who was a member of the Sejm for central Poland from 1922 to 1930 and a senator from 1931 to 1935.

After Piłsudski's May coup in 1926, Poland had an authoritarian regime based on a nationalist consensus. The coup was associated with many deaths and a significant weakening of the parliament. Like a facade democracy, Piłsudski formally handed over the presidency to his supporter Ignacy Mościcki , but reserved the “right” to intervene at will. In 1930 he took the government into his own hands.

Piłsudski ruled against the Sejm by means of a so-called Cabinet of Highs ( military regime ) and had thousands of opposition members arrested in the autumn of 1930 after protests and demonstrations . The following five years were marked by changes in the electoral code, election fraud, decisions without the consent of the Sejm, revelations about the conditions of detention of the opposition in the Bereza Kartuska concentration camp , the growing number of politicians who had to go into exile, permanent border disputes with almost all neighboring countries, and the steadily deteriorating economic situation. When Pilsudski died on May 12, 1935, he left behind a torn republic.

As a result, after the “elections” in November 1930, the German minority only had five members of the Sejm and three senators, whose term of office lasted until 1935. However, the German MPs no longer had parliamentary groups , so their “parliamentary” participation was limited to interpellations and personal interviews in ministries or authorities. Finally, in April 1935, a new constitution came into force. This transferred state authority to the President and placed the Sejm as well as the Senate and the Council of Ministers under his supervision. The simultaneous introduction of collective lists of candidates for each constituency, instead of different party lists, reduced the generality of the elections and removed the principle of proportional representation . One third of the senators were elected directly by the president, the rest by elite electors .

Social relevance

One year after it was founded, the DVV had around 7,000 members. In 1927 there were already 16,430 members in 256 local groups, two years later 305 local groups with 21,000 members and in 1930 around 24,000 members in 305 local groups. From 1937 the DVV had around 25,000 members. In relation to the totality of the German minority, however, the number of members indicates that the German People's Association has little influence. Immediately before the start of the Second World War, 350,000 Germans lived in central Poland, 30% of them in cities. At that time there were around 1.1 million people in the German minority in all of Poland (340,000 Germans in Poznan and Pomerania, 370,000 in Upper Silesia, Central Poland 350,000, Volhynia 47,000–60,000, Galicia 60,000 etc.). As of September 1, 1939, the proportion of all Germans living in Poland was 2.9% of the total population of Poland.

In fact, the German People's Association only exerted an influence on the German rural population in the Lodz area and later in Volhynia. The DVV found a large following, especially in the flat countryside, where German farmers had a poor command of the Polish language and were closely associated with the Protestant Church. The German farmers living in central Poland were acutely threatened in their economic livelihood by unresolved property and citizenship issues. The main reason for this was the agrarian reform initiated by Władysław Grabski in 1926, which enabled the Polish authorities to carry out widespread expropriations of German farms and the parceling or eviction of German property in order to make the land available to Polish farmers for settlement.

The rural German minority in central Poland extended over different, spatially non-contiguous areas that showed great differences. The German-speaking islands in the Kalischer Land were predominantly populated by small farmers and so-called Saxons who, due to the barren soil, often went to the German Reich as seasonal workers . In the Łódź region and in other fertile areas, for example in the Weichseliederung ( Weichseldeutsche ), in the Bugtal or in the Dobriner Land , German families have lived on medium-sized farms or as large farmers for generations, sometimes for over 200 years .

In several rural communities, the German People's Association founded youth organizations, sports and singing clubs and promoted cultural work by creating libraries, theater groups and hiking clubs. In addition, the DVV had its own welfare services , such as the aid organizations "Deutsche Nothilfe" or "Mutter und Kind" or the "Deutsche Kinderhilfe", which has existed since 1924, which offered, among other things, children's country deportations to Germany and Austria for recreation . To replace the discontinuation of the German schools, the DVV formed a secret school committee to which the pastors Gustav Schedler and Eduard Kneifel as well as August Utta and Ludwig Wolff (senior) belonged. The aim of the committee was to teach the German children in the villages with the help of hiking teachers. Most of these traveling teachers were German teachers who had been dismissed by the Polish government. They were denounced many times and not a few had to answer for their work in court.

In contrast, the DVV had little influence in the large textile cities of central Poland during its existence. The German Socialist Labor Party of Poland (DSAP) , founded in Lodz in January 1922, dominated here . It was Marxist- oriented and works closely with the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (PPS). The DSAP recruited its supporters in the cities of central Poland and Upper Silesia. In 1928 it had a total of 8,406 members, along with 13,000 associated union members and a youth organization with 1,200 members.

The press organs of the German Socialist Labor Party of Poland included the Volkszeitung (edition 8000) from Lodz, the Volkswille (edition 5000) from Katowice , the Volksstimme (edition 5000) from Bielitz and the Volkszeitung (edition 2500) from Bromberg. The publication organs of the DVV were the Łódź daily Freie Presse with a circulation of 4,500 and the weekly Der Volksfreund with a circulation of 6,000 copies.

These circulation figures from the 1930s show on the one hand the lower influence of the DVV and the greater influence of the DSAP on the German minority as a whole. On the other hand, the figures clearly indicate that both organizations in central Poland were able to convey their messages and perspectives to relatively few recipients , since the gross reach of the publications of the DVV and the DSAP of 350,000 Germans living in central Poland put together until the outbreak of the Second World War was less than 6 % was.

The DVV newspapers until 1939 and the DSAP newspapers until 1933 were financed by publishing companies belonging to Konkordia Literäre GmbH, a cover company created by Max Winkler for the German Foreign Office. As an economic advisor, Winkler was at the service of the governments in the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic of Germany in the concealment of state newspaper holdings. It should be noted here that in the interwar period all newspapers belonging to the German-speaking minorities in Eastern and Southeastern Europe received support from the Foreign Office. Winkler testified after the war: “From Riga to Constantinople I got everything that was printed in German into my hands over time.” In fact, without the financial support of the Foreign Office, not a single German-language newspaper in Poland would have been able to support itself economically .

Trends from 1933

Hitler's seizure of power from January 1933 had a considerable impact on the coexistence of the various population groups in Poland. Jewish associations called for a boycott of German goods, which many Polish companies and organizations joined. In addition, there were violent riots against members of the German minority, regardless of whether they sympathized with the Nazi regime in Germany or not. A break in the relationship between the Łódź Jews and Łódź Germans, who until then had always represented their political interests together, occurred on April 9, 1933. From this point on, the cooperation between German and Jewish organizations in central Poland was over.

The attacks reached their climax on this so-called Black Palm Sunday in 1933 in Lodz. An angry crowd demolished German schools, libraries, shops and Protestant churches without being stopped by the police. The hot spots included the Łódź German grammar school and the editorial rooms as well as the print shop of the Free Press , whose facilities and machines were destroyed. After these events, the German minority in central Poland led an independent life, isolated in Polish society. Against this background, a large part of the German minority in Poland was influenced by Nazi propaganda in Germany, which was also expressed in the press and in the associations.

Even within the German Socialist Workers' Party in Poland, after these events there was a split and numerous members converted to the DVV. Arthur Kronig, who has been its chairman since the founding of the DSAP, declined further cooperation with the Polish and Jewish socialists and negotiated with August Utta about a common German electoral front. However, after the events of April 1933, it was not left, but increasingly right-wing groups that gained influence within the DVV.

Especially among young Germans living in Poland, National Socialism was seen as an idealistic worldview, although from a distance they did not even know its true face, its effects and state interventions in Germany. The fact that Hitler had so emphatically advocated respect for ethnic minorities in his first speeches as Reich Chancellor seemed to many Germans abroad to be the beginning of a new European nationality policy that was fair to all ethnic groups. In addition, Hitler concluded a German-Polish non-aggression treaty with Piłsudski on January 26, 1934 , which all previous governments of the Weimar Republic had rejected. At the same time, a press agreement was reached in which the German and Polish governments undertook to refrain from hostile journalism. The pact thus ensured a temporary normalization of the situation, also between Poland and the German minority in Poland.

After Piłsudski's death from May 1935, however, tensions increased from year to year; they reflected the deterioration in relations between the two states. Every measure taken by the German authorities against Poland, every statement by the Nazi leadership heated up the mood against the “ ethnic Germans ” in Poland . As early as 1937, the Sejm passed a law on the compilation of lists of persons belonging to the German minority to be imprisoned in Polish communities in the event of war. Conversely, from May 1939 there were arrest lists on the German side for members of the Polish minority in Germany.

After Hitler's seizure of power, the German People's Association initially behaved in a reserved manner. The social-revolutionary habitus of the NSDAP and its neo-pagan tendency , which was in clear contradiction to the basic Christian attitude of the DVV, caused skepticism . However, from autumn 1934 August Utta largely lost his influence on the DVV he founded. It was only at this time that the Bielsko- born Young German Party for Poland (JdP) also gained importance in central Poland. Although large sections of the German minority in the Lodz area had little confidence in this National Socialist party, a local branch of the JdP in Lodz was founded in September 1934. Under the leadership of Ludwig Wolff , the predominantly young members submitted to the DVV, but worked independently in the Lodz area. This means that the local branch of the JdP in Lodz was an independent party within the German People's Association, which also ran its own lists of candidates against the DVV in local elections.

Power struggles

The increasing influence of the Young Germans led to power struggles and a split in the association. The JdP intensified the youth work of the DVV, the membership recruitment and the engagement in remote areas. Due to the constant arguments between the two groups, many members of the minority felt compelled to take a political stance and become more involved than before. In many families and schools, the differences culminated in a dispute between old and young. The members of the JdP wore uniform-like clothing and carried out more and more meetings, rallies or parades with flags of the JdP or DVV, adapted the Hitler salute in various forms, for example "Volk Heil!", But for a longer time also "Piłsudski Heil!", And friends now addressed them as “comrades” or “national comrades”.

The political rise of the Young German Party was closely observed by the Polish authorities, but was anything but detrimental. The Warsaw authorities hoped, with good reason, that the JdP would break the political unity of the respective associations of the German minority. Leading JdP politicians were even accepted as contact persons by the Polish government, especially since the Polish government cooperated with the National Socialists on an international level. However, the Young Germans did not succeed in usurping the political leadership of the German minority. The JdP had contributed to the spread of National Socialist ideas, but in view of its provocative behavior it did not seem suitable for the majority of the German minority to take on a leading role or responsibility.

Until the spring of 1938, the moderate forces within the DVV retained the upper hand. This was clearly expressed, for example, in the city council elections held in Lodz on September 27, 1936, in which the JdP received only 3,200, but the DVV received 13,000 votes. Around the same time, the JdP tried to take up activities in Galicia and Volhynia. Although no other political organization existed in either of the two settlement areas, the JdP was only able to gain a foothold in very few rural German settlements because of the negative attitude of the Protestant churches there.

Nevertheless, in Galicia and Volhynia, too, the state demand to hold church services only in Polish led to considerable tension. The conflict intensified until September 1939 to such an extent that the Evangelical Augsburg Church in Poland was on the verge of collapse. In addition, from the summer of 1937 onwards, actions against companies and businesses belonging to the German minority flared up again. For example, the Polish Association of Innkeepers in Poznan decided not to purchase any more beverages from ethnic German breweries. In the Vistula region, leaflets called for a boycott of German shops that said: “The Germans deliberately do not want to speak Polish. Remember that whoever does not want to speak Polish on Polish soil is not worth eating Polish bread. Anyone who does not buy in Polish shops or Polish products is a traitor. "

Joint rally of the JdP and DVV in Lodz on May 18, 1938

At the end of November 1937 the foreign organization of the NSDAP (AO) founded a local group in Lodz without the involvement of the DVV, but almost no one of the German minority in central Poland became a member, if only because the AO only had Reich Germans, i.e. holders of the citizenship of the German Reich , could join. Likewise, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi), a Nazi authority from the German Reich, increasingly tried to coordinate the association work of the German minority. The VoMi actively supported Ludwig Wolff, whereby August Utta finally lost the leadership of the German People's Association to his adversary. Ultimately, Utta, who was already in poor health, resigned on May 18, 1938 and the DVV board of directors elected Wolff as the new chairman.

The new leadership of the German People's Association with its center in Lodz under Ludwig Wolff, as well as the leadership of the German Association in Posen and Pomeranian under Hans Kohnert, were oriented towards Hitler's Germany. At the same time as August Utta resigned, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle took concrete steps on behalf of Adolf Hitler to unite the divided parties and associations of the German minority. The aim was to found a "League of Germans in Poland", for which the leading minority functionaries were invited to Berlin on May 28, 1938. However, the minority leaders opposed this organizational harmonization and rejected the establishment. Even Ludwig Wolff, who was already envisaged by VoMi as a candidate for the chairmanship of the “Federation of Germans in Poland”, expressed reservations about the unification proposal. Theodor Bierschenk , a member of the JdP and later expellee functionary , stated: "Not even the tours of the parties that professed National Socialism as a worldview followed the baton of Berlin."

In fact, the resistance of the associations against this association is significant and shows that the Nazi leadership in Berlin only had limited influence on the German minority in Poland. The Foreign Office had to state: "All attempts to bring about an agreement between the parties in dispute were unsuccessful." The Bund der Deutschen in Poland was therefore not founded, nor was it brought into conformity, which in view of the intensification of the German- Polish relations at the highest level were no longer necessary; for the instrumental role of the German minority in Poland had receded into the background in Berlin compared to Warsaw, and the struggle of the “young” against the “old” had fulfilled its political and ideological role.

resolution

In the summer of 1939 the tensions between the German Reich and Poland increased even further. As early as the end of May 1939 there were numerous arrests of association leaders, pastors, teachers and editors in the local DVV groups. The arrested were accused of high treason and contacts in the German Reich were given as a reason. At the same time, a ban on meetings came into force, which put all association life on hold. After the conclusion of the Hitler-Stalin Pact , the Polish authorities interned all leading representatives of the German minority and declared all German associations dissolved.

Members of the German minority greet the German troops marching into Lodz, September 9, 1939

The general mobilization of Poland took place on August 29, 1939. Polish Germans who had taken on Polish citizenship were also called up. The German invasion of Poland began on September 1, 1939. In the first days of the war, according to the lists prepared, many members of the German minority were arrested and deported to Bereza Kartuska . Due to the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht , a highly threatening situation developed for the Polish Germans serving in the Polish army. German troops viewed them as enemies, and their own Polish comrades and officers frequently suspected them of espionage and shot them.

On September 17, 1939, the Soviet attack on eastern Poland followed . A day later, the Polish government fled to Romania with a large number of soldiers and civilians. From the German and Soviet point of view, the “Polish state and the Polish government ceased to exist”. On September 22nd, 1939, General Guderian and Brigade Commander Kriwoschein held the first joint German-Soviet victory parade in Poland and ceremoniously exchanged swastika for red flag . On October 6, 1939, the last field troops of the Polish army surrendered .

At the beginning of the war, Hitler did not yet have a conclusive concept for Poland. The only thing that was certain was that the territory of the former Prussian provinces would be annexed to the German Empire again. He did not rule out the possibility of a residual Polish state continuing to exist as Vistula , as in the Russian Empire, since he saw such a state as an object of negotiation in a peace agreement with the Western powers. After the complete occupation of Poland , the former Prussian province of Posen was reintegrated into the German Empire on October 26, 1939 . A short time later, the area was named Reichsgau Wartheland , into which the entire Lodz industrial area was integrated on November 9, 1939, although it had never belonged to Germany, but only to Russia or Poland.

On November 25, 1939, all so-called ethnic Germans in the incorporated areas were automatically granted German citizenship. This also resulted in the formal dissolution of the German People's Union in Poland, which in fact had already ceased operations before September 1, 1939.

Myth "fifth column"

Propaganda poster 1939, slogans E. Rydz-Śmigły (excerpts): "We will win.", "In war every man and woman will be a soldier."

Shortly after the end of the attack on Poland, the Polish government- in- exile in London published around 500 reports of acts of sabotage by the German minority in Poland, which was to lead to the creation of the myth of the Polish Germans as Hitler's “ fifth column ”. Since then there have been many controversies and publications about the use of German divers , mainly in Poland and in the English-speaking world.

The German National Association in Poland is often associated with alleged or actual acts of sabotage. There is no evidence of this. Rather, most of the works by these authors show a lack of knowledge of the German language with regard to the ambiguity of the term Volksverband . Likewise, due to the similarity of names, the predecessor association of the DVV, the Association of Germans in Poland that existed from 1921 to 1924 , is not infrequently confused with the Association of Germans in Poland aimed at by the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle in 1938, but not established . Furthermore, with the alleged involvement of the associations in acts of sabotage, it must be taken into account that from mid-August 1939 all leading representatives of the German minority were interned in Polish prisons. This meant that there was no leadership everywhere for coordinated actions. The association officials, pastors, teachers and editors from Lodz and the surrounding area were imprisoned in Bereza Kartuska and did not return until September 25, 1939. Ludwig Wolff was also arrested on August 28, 1939; he did not return to Lodz, which had been occupied since September 9, 1939, until October 5, 1939.

Nevertheless, there is no question that many members of the German minority welcomed the invasion of the Wehrmacht and viewed it as a liberation. Without a doubt, some of them were also recruited by the German Abwehr or the SD . In 2009, after extensive research, the Polish historian Tomasz Chincinski came to the conclusion that the diversionary activities of the German secret services certainly had an influence on stirring up panic and war psychosis. Specifically, 180 attacks were planned by the SD, of which only ten were actually carried out. Ultimately, the reports of the Polish government-in-exile on acts of sabotage put the German minority as a whole under general suspicion and served to divert attention from the real reasons for the military defeat.

In the summer of 1939, for example, a large part of the Polish population believed their government's assurances that their own army was, as the propaganda posters said, “strong, united and ready”, while the potential opponent, Germany, was weak and unprepared. The reality was different: it was the Polish army that turned out to be weak, the decisions of the commanders were chaotic, the military technology was out of date, and both the government and the president left the country while the fighting was still ongoing. In light of this, it is not surprising that the defeat was accompanied by feelings of disappointment, bitterness, the search for culprits, and even anger at times towards the political elite.

The Polish underground newspaper Biuletyn Informacyjny wrote on the first anniversary of the outbreak of war: “The blame for our defeat in September lies to a certain extent with the political and military leadership. The military debacle has shown how degenerate a part of the national leadership class was, how faint-hearted the administration was, how disoriented the regime was and how incompetent the military leadership was. "

literature

• Albert S. Kotowski: Poland's policy towards its German minority 1919–1939. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998.
• Ingo Eser: People, State, God! The German minority in Poland and their school system 1918–1939. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The runic script in the DVV emblem was only used from the end of May 1939, cf. Association magazines of the DVV.
2. ↑ Monika Kucner: German press landscape in the interwar period in Lodz. Folia Germanica 5. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, 2009, p. 287.
3. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Walter de Gruyter, 2013, p. 338 f.
4. ↑ Christian Jansen, Arno Weckbecker: The "Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz" in Poland 1939/1940. Walter de Gruyter, 2010, p. 24.
5. ^ Oskar Kossmann: The Germans in Poland since the Reformation. Marburg 1978, p. 344.
6. ↑ Monika Kucner: German press landscape in the interwar period in Lodz. Folia Germanica 5. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, 2009, pp. 287-288.
7. ↑ Mark Mazower: Hitler's Empire: Europe under the Rule of National Socialism. CH Beck, 2009, p. 52.
8. ↑ Michael G. Müller, Kai Struve: Fragmented Republic? The Political Legacy of the Partition Period in Poland 1918–1939. Wallstein Verlag, 2017, p. 385 f.
9. ^ Albert S. Kotowski: Poland's policy towards its German minority 1919-1939. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998, pp. 16-17.
10. ↑ Ingo Eser: People, State, God! The German minority in Poland and their school system 1918–1939. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010, p. 186.
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111. ↑ Ludwig Wolff returned home . In: Deutsche Lodzer Zeitung , October 6, 1939, p. 3, digitized version , ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 4.8 MB) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on March 25, 2020. 
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