Main trust center east

The Haupttreuhandstelle Ost (HTO) was a German authority for recording, managing and realizing the assets of the Polish state and its citizens during the German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945 . In the eastern regions incorporated into the German Reich, she was responsible for the execution of the confiscation, the provisional administration and the confiscation of the property of the Polish state and Polish citizens. For the Generalgouvernement a special trustee office for the Generalgouvernement with seat in Cracow was established by decree of the general governor of November 15, 1939.

organization

The main trust center East was founded on October 19, 1939 by Hermann Göring as an agency of the four-year plan . During the war the authority was subordinate to party member Max Winkler . Their task was the economic " Germanization " of Poland, as well as the regulation of the monetary and credit system. Chief lawyer in Department VI of the HTO was the later President of the Federal Constitutional Court Hermann Höpker-Aschoff .

The main trust center in the east had branches in Gotenhafen (Gdynia), Zichenau (Ciechanów), Posen (Poznań), Litzmannstadt (Lódz) and Kattowitz (Katowice).

activity

The competencies and powers of the main trust agency were laid down by Göring in the circular of October 19, 1939. Among other things, in the Polish areas occupied by German troops, which had been politically annexed to the German Reich, the property of the Polish state and the private property of "Polish and Jewish hands" were to be recorded and the monetary and credit system to be regulated. The main trust agency arranged for the “land of the former Polish state, the expelled Polish intelligentsia and all Poles shot or expelled for hostilities to be confiscated.” A “close-up plan” by the chief of the security police and SD from December 1939 envisaged the expulsion of 600,000 Jews and to confiscate and dispose of their property, including furniture, “in agreement with the trustees”.

In August 1940, the head of the main trust center in the east issued an order on the realization of the confiscated property. According to this, around ten percent of the provisionally managed property, industrial, commercial and craft businesses as well as banks and insurance companies should be transferred to reliable and suitable applicants for a reasonable purchase price. Individual applicants were ethnic Germans who had their place of residence in Poland before 1939 or who had to leave it in 1918, as well as German resettlers abroad. Reich Germans should only be taken into account "to guarantee the justified claims of soldiers in the field" if they themselves had been released from the army as combatants.

literature

Jeanne Dingell: On the activity of the main trust office in the east, trust office in Posen 1939 to 1945. (= European university publications, series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences 955) Lang, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2003, ISBN 3-631-50569-8 . (At the same time: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2002)
Ingo Loose: Loans for Nazi crimes. The German Credit Institutions in Poland and the Robbery of the Polish and Jewish Population 1939–1945. (= Studies on Contemporary History 75). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58331-1 . (Also: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2005) (Awarded the “Prix Jacques Rozenberg” 2005)
Bernhard Rosenkötter: Fiduciary Policy. The "main trust agency East" and the robbery of Polish assets 1939–1945. Essen, Klartext-Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-89861-141-8 .

Web links

Ingo Loose: Book reviews at H-Soz-u-Kult.

Individual evidence

^ Ordinance of the Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan on Securing the Property of the Former Polish State of January 15, 1940. In: Reichsgesetzblatt. Part I p. 174.
^ Ordinance on the treatment of assets of the members of the former Polish state of September 17, 1940. In: Reichsgesetzblatt. Part 1, p. 1270 ff.
↑ BArch R 144
↑ Files of the Reich Chancellery The Hitler Government. Volume IV 1939, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71257-5 , p. 642 ff.
↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . (Source collection) Volume 4: Poland - September 1939-July 1941. (edited by Klaus-Peter Friedrich), Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , p. 113.
↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 4, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , p. 192.
↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 4, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , document 155, pp. 355-359.

[1] Ordinance of the Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan on Securing the Property of the Former Polish State of January 15, 1940. In: Reichsgesetzblatt. Part I p. 174.

[2] Ordinance on the treatment of assets of the members of the former Polish state of September 17, 1940. In: Reichsgesetzblatt. Part 1, p. 1270 ff.

[3] BArch R 144

[4] Files of the Reich Chancellery The Hitler Government. Volume IV 1939, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71257-5 , p. 642 ff.

[5] The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . (Source collection) Volume 4: Poland - September 1939-July 1941. (edited by Klaus-Peter Friedrich), Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , p. 113.

[6] The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 4, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , p. 192.

[7] The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 4, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , document 155, pp. 355-359.