Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum

The "most generous resettlement campaign in world history" - Nazi propaganda poster for the colonization of the Warthegau (1939/41)

Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum (abbreviation: RKF , also RKFDV ) was the official title given by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler when he was carrying out the tasks assigned to him by Adolf Hitler in the so-called "Decree for the consolidation of German Volkstum " of October 7, 1939. These tasks included the return to the "final return to the Reich " of Reich and ethnic Germans from abroad, the "elimination of the harmful influence" of "non- ethnic parts of the population on the Reich and the German national community " and "the creation of new German settlement areas through resettlement ".

Several SS offices were available to Himmler to carry out his duties . The appointment to the RKF in 1939 meant the fruit of years of efforts to gain extensive power with the ultimate goal of making German settlement policy a matter for the SS.

The external reason for this order was the resettlement of Germans east of the newly drawn border, agreed in the German-Soviet Border and Friendship Treaty on September 28, 1939, which affected over 100,000 people and was carried out with the help of a central immigration office . Some organizational structures had already been created beforehand for similar purposes, most recently for the option regulation intended and long-negotiated with Italy . These structures have now been expanded considerably, because because of Hitler's plans for the attack on the Soviet Union there was now a need for speed, with the help of which the central National Socialist idea of living space in the east was to be implemented.

Germans and those who were "able to Germanize" from abroad (approx. 1 million) were resettled into the Reich, including the annexed areas, and " foreigners " from these areas were resettled in the Generalgouvernement . When further measures were taken, different priorities led to conflicts within the German administration. While civil administration and the military gave war economic considerations absolute priority, the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler as the responsible Reich Commissioner and ultimately Hitler adhered to the racially motivated policy, which meant the extermination of significant parts of the population. The Polish population was intended as a “work reservoir for the execution of subordinate work”, but the physical extermination of the Jews and the Polish intelligentsia , both of which were very broad, had priority.

Himmler took further steps with the creation of the General Plan East for Eastern Europe commissioned by him . a. the German colonization of the Ingermanland south of Leningrad and the " Gotengau " in the Crimea , the planned and started creation of a general settlement plan for all of Europe as well as the Zamość action as the first attempt to implement the general plan in the general government.

Creation of the institution

The basis of the institution "Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum" was formed by the Fuehrer's decree of the same name from October 7, 1939 by Adolf Hitler. The text of the decree was not published by the government at the time and only fragmentarily summarized by the National Socialist press organs. One day after the German invasion of Poland was over , Hitler described his visions of a future large-scale Germanization of Eastern Europe for the first time. So he wrote:

“The consequences of Versailles in Europe have been eliminated. This gives the Greater German Reich the opportunity to take in and settle German people who previously had to live in a foreign country and to design the settlement of the ethnic groups within its limits of interest in such a way that better dividing lines are achieved between them. "

Reich Commissioner Heinrich Himmler in 1942

In keeping with his absolute claim to leadership, Hitler entrusted the implementation of such a large-scale aryanization of the occupied Polish territories to the representative of the organization which symbolized the realization of the “will of the Führer” without reservation. In detail, Hitler ordered:

"According to my guidelines, the Reichsführer-SS is responsible for:

1. the repatriation of the Reich and ethnic Germans abroad who are eligible for the final return to the Reich,

2. the elimination of the harmful influence of those non-ethnic sections of the population that pose a threat to the Reich and the German national community,

3. The creation of new German settlement areas through resettlement, in particular through the settlement of the Reich and ethnic Germans returning from abroad. "

Now Himmler was able to draw on the entire administrative apparatus of the Reich and the occupied territories to carry out his tasks:

"The Reichsführer-SS is authorized to take all general orders and administrative measures necessary to carry out these duties."

“[…] In the formerly occupied Polish territories, the head of administration Ober-Ost carries out the tasks assigned to the Reichsführer-SS according to his general instructions. The head of administration Ober-Ost and the subordinate heads of administration of the military districts are responsible for implementation. Their measures are to be adapted to the needs of the military leadership. Persons who are assigned special orders to carry out these tasks are not subject to the Wehrmacht jurisdiction. "

"[...] In addition, in the area of ​​the German Reich, the Reichsführer-SS uses the existing authorities and institutions of the Reich, the states and the municipalities as well as the other public corporations and the existing settlement companies to carry out its mandate."

In the same month, Himmler's first appointment in his new function was made. The title “Reichskommissar”, in the tradition and in the sense of the National Socialist constitution of power, drew its legitimation and powers directly from the official authority of the Reich Chancellor . With the order, Himmler immediately established the office of the Reich Commissioner:

“By the Fuehrer's decree of October 7, 1939, I was appointed Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationality.

I set up the office of the Reich Commissioner to manage and publish the general orders and guidelines and to carry out certain tasks that are only to be carried out centrally. I have given the leadership to SS-Oberführer Greifelt. "

organization

The "Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity" was formed in mid-October 1939 from the "Control Center for Immigration and Return". This had already been brought into being in June 1939 for the purpose of resettling the South Tyroleans , with the functions of a personal management staff of the Reichsführer SS. Its leader was the future SS-Obergruppenführer Ulrich Greifelt, mentioned in the first order of Himmler as RKF .

Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity

The newly established department had the following organizational structure at the end of 1939:

I. Planning questions

II. Control of human intervention, distribution of resettlers to the new areas

III. Compensation of claims

IV. Funding and management of financial resources

V. Central Land Office, seizure and redistribution of land

VI. Settlement office

Konrad Meyer was the head of the planning department as well as the "Planning and Soil Main Department" . This was mainly responsible for the development of the general plan east . A subdivision of the “Main Planning and Soil Department” was the “ Spatial Planning and Urban Development Department” founded on May 3, 1940 , responsible for (Polish) cities. The director was Josef Umlauf .

Main Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum

In June 1941 the office was reorganized. Equivalent to an upgrade, it was converted into an SS main office and was now called the "Staff Main Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity" (StHA / RKF). According to the model of other SS main offices, their organizational structure changed accordingly:

Office group A

Amt Z - Central Office (personnel issues, central registry)

Office I - Resettlement and Ethnicity

Office II - labor

Office group B

Office III - Economy

Office IV - Agriculture

Amt V - financial administration, headed by Otto Schwarzenberger

Office group C

Office VI - Planning and Ground

Office VII - Buildings

Office VIII - Central Soil Office

The above-mentioned Office VI “Planning and Land” was entrusted with the registration and inventory of the entire land in the occupied territories, the safeguarding of the former Polish and Jewish property and the participation in the regulation of the rural property traffic. Local land offices existed in Gdansk-West Prussia , Zichenau , Silesia , Posen (with their 32 branch offices), as well as in the western and southern areas (in Metz for the Gau Westmark , in Strasbourg for Alsace , in Marburg an der Drau (today Maribor) for Lower Styria and in Veldes (today Bled) for Carinthia and Carniola ).

The so-called "Representatives of the RKF" also belonged to the wider circle of the RKF. Among other things, these were the higher SS and police leaders . These were settled in the authorities of the high presidents or Reich governors. One of these representatives of the RKF was the later head of the "Volunteer Control Center East" Fritz Arlt . As head of the Upper Silesia branch , he coordinated, among other things, the evictions in Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and the surrounding areas. Other agents were, for example, the Reich Governor and Gauleiter Siegfried Uiberreither in Graz , the head of the Lower Styria resettlement staff in Marburg an der Drau.

A number of companies under private law, which also performed the functions of an authority, were subject to the main office:

The Deutsche Umsiedlungs-Treuhand GmbH (DUT) was founded on November 3rd, 1939. The company advised the resettlers on property law issues. In the case of property and possessions left behind, it made compensation payments to resettlers or granted them loans or advances.

The "Siedler Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft GmbH" (SWG) in Zamosc was responsible for the economic support of the resettlers in the Generalgouvernement . She organized the supply of equipment, goods and the receipt of farm products. The SWG played an important role in Aktion Zamosc , an expulsion campaign from Poland in the Zamosc district that began in November 1942 and was ordered by the RKF.

The Deutsche Ansiedlungsgesellschaft (DAG) emerged in 1936 from the "Deutsche Ansiedlungsbank", which had already been founded in 1898. Still settled in 1938 within the Race and Settlement Main Office described below, it was placed under the StHA in 1939. Their task was to take over the property of the dispossessed in the occupied territories and to keep them ready for the new settlers.

With the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the entire organization was expanded. New offices were established that not only fully fulfilled the tasks of the RKF, but were directly subordinate to it. This was in contradiction to the Fuehrer's Decree of October 7, 1939, which did not provide for an authority to fulfill the tasks assigned to it, but rather a management staff that was to use exclusively the existing departments of the Reich.

Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle

→ Main article : Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle

The “Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle” (Vomi) was originally launched in 1936 as an instrument of National Socialist foreign policy. The aim of the organization was to apparently support the so-called ethnic Germans abroad financially and politically, but at the same time to instrumentalize them for the Nazi national politics . In this sense all the relief organizations were brought into line , which had previously worked with Germans abroad. Its leader was the former farmer and SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz .

The later head of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle Werner Lorenz in 1933

In the early years Vomi was organizationally subordinate to the deputy of the Führer Rudolf Hess and financially to the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP. This changed, however, in 1938. From then on, Vomi was subordinate to Adolf Hitler personally and was included in the list of organizations in which party-political and state-political tasks were inseparable.

With the appointment of the Reichsführer SS as "Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum" in October 1939, he was also assigned Vomi, who at that time had been charged with organizing the return of the Baltic Germans . As a consequence, the organization lost the privilege of reporting directly to the Führer .

In 1941 the Vomi were raised to a main SS office . Numerous other institutions were set up under its head Werner Lorenz, so that there were soon disputes over competence with the main office. In addition to the order of the Reichsführer SS of November 28, 1941 on "the development of the NSDAP's work for the people and the delimitation of the responsibilities of the main offices of the SS", the respective heads of the main office of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the main staff office agreed on a delimitation of their tasks on September 9, 1942 :

“Vomi: national work; Supervision of the [...] "German People's List"; Resettlement, transport and supply of the resettlers [...]; Leadership of the German ethnic groups. "

“StHA: planning and implementation of the settlements; Human engagement; Economic issues related to resettlement […]; Propaganda for settlement. "

The SS main office “Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle” comprised a total of eleven offices. Three of these offices worked partially or fully for the RKF. This was about:

Amt VI - Securing German Volkstum in the Reich

Office VII - Securing German Volkstum in the new Eastern Territories

Office XI - Relocation

Office XI operated exclusively with funds from the RKF budget.

Race and Settlement Main Office

The Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) organized the “racial reviews” of ethnic German resettlers and Germans from the Old Reich who wanted to settle in the eastern areas (so-called SS settlement policy ). Furthermore, the agency selected individuals from the “foreign” ethnic groups in the occupied territories who were “capable of Germanization” and could thus be integrated into the so-called “German national community” according to the Nazi racial ideology. Furthermore, the authority was a useful instrument for Himmler to cement his sole claim, and thus the SS, for the German settlement policy in the occupied territories at an early stage. The then head of the RuSHA Günther Pancke wrote in a letter to Reinhard Heydrich on March 31, 1939, around 5 months before the outbreak of the Second World War :

"[...] Since, in my opinion, the settlement problem, especially outside the old imperial borders, is primarily a political one, in my opinion, only a political organization - the SS - comes into question for dealing with it, and not the ministerial offices that were previously located have proven largely unsuitable for carrying out political tasks. [...] "

A forerunner organization of the RuSHA, the "Race Office of the SS", had already been established on January 1, 1932 and was renamed in the course of 1933 to the "Race and Settlement Office SS". Its activity was initially limited to examining potential candidates and current applicants for membership in the SS, including their wives, for their racial suitability.

Walter Darré , first head of the RuSHA

The first head of the RuSHA and its forerunner was Walther Darré from 1932 to 1938 , who also held the offices of Reichsbauernführer and Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture . Darré was a close friend of Himmler and a member of the "Nordic Ring", a group of supporters of the racial ideologist Hans Günthers . With his works on the classification of races published in the 1920s, he provided the basis for the racial policy of the SS and, subsequently, of the RuSHA. Günther's concept of a "Nordic race" and a "race selection" had fallen on fertile ground with Darré and Himmler and had inspired the former to become journalistic in order to present his thoughts on race to an interested public. Two works by Darré formed the basis on which the later race and settlement policy of the SS was founded: "The blood as the source of life for the Nordic race" (1929) and "New nobility from blood and soil" (1930). In it he propagated, among other things, the superiority of the Nordic race as well as the idea of ​​the peasantry as a supporting layer of society, which, in his opinion, provided “the German people with good blood”. Darré's theses thus formed the basis of the “blood and soil ideology” propagated by the SS . As the head of the Race and Settlement Office, Darré was able to put his ideas on race selection and settlement theory into practice both politically and officially.

In the first years of its existence, the activities of the Race Office concentrated on the alignment and implementation of the above-mentioned selection process of SS men and their future wives. For this purpose, the Austrian racist Bruno Kurt Schultz and, at Himmler's insistence, Horst Rechenbach , who worked for the Reichswehr as a medical examiner, joined the office in the year it was founded. The latter became deputy chairman and was responsible for carrying out the selection process. From then on, Schultz was responsible for the theory and practice of the SS's racial anthropological training.

A main focus of the office's activities in 1934 was the establishment of a "training apparatus for the SS". The office began to appoint so-called training supervisors for each SS section , who had to carry out training courses and community events for SS members on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. The selection and training of suitable trainers was the responsibility of the “race consultants” of the SS head sections , who represented the race and settlement office on site. Topics of the training were among other things the tasks and activities of the SS, "population policy and race care", the National Socialist worldview as well as "blood and soil". So-called “peasant consultants”, who were SS members and “peasant leaders”, that is, functionaries of the Reichsnährstand , were on hand to assist the trainers on issues such as “peasantry” and Nazi settlement policy .

In 1935 the Race and Settlement Office was upgraded. With effect from January 30th, it was raised to a main office and from then on carried the designation "Race and Settlement Main Office " (RuSHA). At the same time, the authority received an expanded organizational structure. In addition to the "Organization and Administration Office" there was now a "Race Office", "Training Office", "Family and Marriage Office" and a "Settlement Office"; In June 1937 an “Office for Archives and Newspapers” was added. In filling the management positions of the various offices, Darré could count on the cooperation of SS companions and functionaries from the party's agricultural policy area. During this time, Hermann Reischle , who held a management position in the Reichsnährstand , was appointed head of the race office. Werner Willikens , a department head under Darré in his ministry, was entrusted with the management of the settlement office. The post of head of the clan office went to Baron Bernd von Kanne . Since 1933 he was the so-called Reich Commissioner for Dairy and Fat Management .

The settlement office within the RuSHA was now supposed to be the institution which, according to Himmler's will, had to realize his visions of an SS settlement order for the "new formation of German peasantry" on a racial basis. In a Reichsführer SS order of September 3, 1935, he formulated the SS's sole claim with regard to future rural settlement projects:

“[…] The creation of new German peasantry and non-peasant settlements are part of the ideological and political tasks of the SS and are sustainably promoted. The implementation of all measures required for this is exclusively a matter for the Race and Settlement Main Office. "

The above-mentioned order from Himmler also regulated the responsibility of the so-called "Neubauerauslese". Responsibility for the accreditation of farmers, up to this point in the Reichsnährstand, was now transferred to the RuSHA, and the candidates had to submit to a selection process in which “racial aptitude”, “National Socialist convictions” and “hereditary health” were checked. By 1939, around 30,000 “new farmer's certificates” had been issued to applicants in 70,000 examination procedures. The RuSHA attached particular importance to rural settlement projects on Germany's eastern borders. SS candidates wishing to settle should preferably be settled in these areas in order to secure the borders “racially” and “ideologically” and to initiate the later expansion to the east through the existence of SS settlements.

As seen above, the settlement plans of Himmler and the SS were not limited to the German territory even in those years. The term “ people without space ”, coined by the folk author Hans Grimm in 1926, was given a new impetus and was supplemented by other, partly older catchwords such as “ urge to the east ”. Darré's writings and speeches illustrate the dimensions in which the SS pioneers were already floating in those years. For example, at the agricultural Gau expert adviser conference at the end of January 1936, he referred to all of Eastern Europe as far as the Urals as a “German settlement area”.

Baptism of a Lebensborn child in 1936

Also in 1935, at Himmler's instigation, two further institutions were founded in Berlin under the banner of the RuSHA: the SS foundation “Ahnenerbe” on July 1st and the registered association “ Lebensborn ” on December 12th. The main tasks of the "ancestral heritage" should be archaeological, anthropological and historical research and studies, which, in the spirit of Himmler, should scientifically underpin the National Socialist theses and views on topics such as "race" or " clan ". In contrast to this, the “Lebensborn” association was intended to be active in promoting births and “applied clan care”. The aim was to support “racially high-quality single mothers” and their offspring in order to counteract the declining birth rate in the German Reich at that time and the associated weakening of the “Nordic blood”.

With effect from September 12, 1938, Darré officially withdrew from his offices within the RuSHA. The resignation was preceded by a restructuring of the office. The areas “Lebensborn”, “Ahnenerbe” and the training office were assigned to the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS and the SS main office. Darré, who already saw himself heavily burdened by his simultaneous activity as Minister of Agriculture, also found his role of SS ideologist obsolete in the stronger orientation of the RuSHA towards "applied clan care" ordered by Himmler. Together with their leader, two old companions of Darré also resigned in 1938: Hermann Reischle, already mentioned above, as well as SS staff leader and RuSHA representative for the SS upper sections George Ebrecht .

Darré's successor in, according to Himmler, “the most beautiful office that the SS has to offer”, was the previously mentioned former SS instructor Günther Pancke on the day of Darré's official resignation. His successor in 1940 was SS-Obergruppenführer Otto Hofmann , who held this office until 1943. The last leader was Richard Hildebrandt , who was also Senior SS and Police Leader in the occupied eastern territories until the end of the war .

Around 500 people worked in the agency during the war. In addition to the headquarters in Berlin, the RuSHA had two branch offices in Prague and Litzmannstadt , in which "proficiency testers" were active. Another third agency was temporarily maintained in Slovenia . In addition, RuSHA executives, so-called "SS leaders in race and settlement", along with their own staff, were integrated within the offices of the higher SS and police leaders operating across Europe.

Until 1940, the so-called “Zentralbodenamt” was located within the RuSHA. This was created in 1938 in order to prepare organizationally for the confiscation and expropriation of agricultural property of Jewish or “people hostile to the Reich” in the future German-occupied territories. In the following year, during the attack on Poland, mobile operational teams of the RuSHA accompanied the operational groups of the security police and the SD in order to “exercise the rights of the Reich on the soil of Polish citizens at the time.” From October 1939, the RuSHA operational teams became part of the Government General transferred to stationary, local land offices in various Polish cities.

In the course of a power struggle and a corruption scandal within the RuSHA, as a result of which the then head of the settlement office, SS-Oberführer Curt von Gottberg , had been relieved of his office, a reorganization took place within the RKF: the Central Soil Office was removed from the RuSHA and finally in June 1941 the office group C assigned to the newly created "Staff Main Office RKF".

Reich Security Main Office

→ Main article : Reich Security Main Office

The Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), founded in September 1939, was subordinate to the RKF and was responsible for all aspects of "non-Germans" in the Old Reich and in the occupied territories. Within the RSHA, the “Amt III B Volkstum” is to be seen as an office of the RKF, whose extended arm was the chief of the security police and the SD (CSSD) Reinhard Heydrich . The office was subordinate to SS-Obersturmbannführer Hans Ehlich in March 1941 , from October 1942 to SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Strickner and had the following organizational structure:

III B 1 - Volkstumsarbeit

III B 2 - minorities

III B 3 - Race and Public Health

III B 4 - Immigration and Relocation

III B 5 - Occupied Territories

The tasks of Office III B included the “segregation of foreign nationalities”, the political assessment of “ethnic Germans” and the naturalization of resettlers, for which the RKF Heydrich caused two additional authorities to be founded.

The " Immigrant Central Office " (EWZ) was founded on October 11, 1939 and was organizationally subordinate to the RSHA. It represented a collective authority with partly mobile offices, in which employees of all authorities responsible for the official naturalization of foreigners of German ethnicity were brought together. The smuggling offices at the headquarters of the headquarters of the immigrant central office as well as at the immigrant branches and the flying commissions had the following organizational composition:

Naturalization of resettlers by the EWZ (1941)

1. Registration office (chief of the regulatory police)

2. ID card office (chief of the security police)

3. Photo office (chief of the security police)

4. Health center (Reich Health Leader)

5. Race and Settlement Office (Race and Settlement Main Office)

6. Citizenship Office (Reich Ministry of the Interior, Section I)

7. Job placement office (Reich Ministry of Labor)

8th HJ position (Reich Youth Leadership)

9. Asset office (Reich Ministry of Finance)

The latter two positions were later deleted. The offices of the central office for immigrants also made the so-called “approach decision” based on criteria of political reliability and racial and genetic biology. A, O and S cases were differentiated, which, closed for so-called clans, meant a settlement in the Old Reich, in the incorporated eastern regions or remaining in or return to the country of origin. The EWZ received its financial resources via an account within the budget and economic office (II C) of the RSHA, which was fed by the Reich Ministry of Finance .

The Umwandererzentralstelle (UWZ), established on December 11, 1939 as the “Office for Resettlement of Poles and Jews”, had a coordinating function for the forced resettlement or deportation of Poles and Jews from the Warthegau , Danzig-West Prussia , East Upper Silesia and the area Zamosc to the east. Like the EWZ, the UWZ was subordinate to the RSHA. The locations of the UWZ were in Litzmannstadt and in Kattowitz . Its leader was the Obersturmbannführer Hermann Krumey .

The chief of the security police and the SD was also responsible in particular for the deportation of so-called alien populations known as "evacuation" . In the course of the war, the Polish population in particular was increasingly deported to the Altreich or the Generalgouvernement for forced labor .

From the first planning guideline to the resettlement measures that have taken place

With the beginning of the war and the appointment of "Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum" shortly afterwards, Himmler was able to work out and put into practice his lofty plans for the "Germanization" of the East. In the course of the first years of the war he succeeded in eliminating competing ministries and authorities, such as the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture , in seizing the settlement policy of the Third Reich and incorporating it into the SS. Although Himmler was only able to partially implement his medieval and racist utopias of a “reorganization” in the east by means of a Germanic military peasantry due to the course of the war, he obsessively stuck to the idea of ​​a “settlement of the [eastern] area with Germanic sons and Germanic families” until 1944 - at a time when the Soviet army had re-conquered the formerly lost territories and the war was effectively lost for the Third Reich.

Planning guideline on the structure of the villages and districts in the eastern settlement area

Arrival of "ethnic German" resettlers in Wartheland (1940)

Just four days after Hitler's decree on the “consolidation of the German nationality”, on October 11, 1939, Himmler, as RKF, announced the first “preliminary planning guidelines” on the future village structure in the newly created Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland :

"[...] First of all, you have to be clear about which folk and tribal base you want to use for the individual Gau. One district will be settled with Swabians , the other with Franconia , and another with Westphalia , Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein as the tribal base.

A village of around 25 farms will therefore have a core of 10 to 12 farms of Old Reich Germans of a certain tribe. 10 to 12 ethnic Germans will be added to these, so that the ethnic Germans can fit into German life again with the help of the old Reich Germans.

Two to three SS military farmers are settled in each village, with whom one can fill local farmer leaders, community elders and similar posts. [...] "

Himmler's speech on October 24, 1939 in Posen

Himmler in front of a model of a German settlement (1941)

Just two weeks after taking office as RKF, Himmler explained his visions and plans to an audience of SS leaders, including Gauleiter Arthur Greiser , in the city of Posen in the newly created "Warthegau". While he did not go into any practical and organizational questions about the future Germanization of the East, he delved into long explanations on the national-socialist blood-and-soil ideology :

"[...] Teutons lived in the eastern provinces in which we are today already 3,000 years ago and in the period that followed. […] These old German settlements have more or less been preserved racially in closed places and islands until today, even if the language has partly been lost.

[…] The land was taken possession either by treaty or by the sword. The remaining people who were still resident were brought in to work as servants, but the German remained the master.

[...] The settlement land does not need to be bought - the settlement land is available here. The prerequisite for a able-bodied peasantry on the eastern border as an outpost against Slavicism is that the settler has enough land to lay the foundation for the development of a strong, child-rich nation. Many will die, the work will be rough and hard. But we must always be aware that only the strong remain alive. A hardworking and high-ranking people always have the right to rule over others. You own the land.

[…] The Polish worker has to give up the cheap labor needed to settle and cultivate the fields. […] The leading men in all things are always Germans, the henchmen are Poles.

[...] Above all, I want to speak again about military farming. It is said to be a selection of particularly good SS men, especially from a racial perspective. 2 - 3 families of particularly valuable settlers should take the lead in a settlement community. It is up to them to strengthen and weld the community together.

The settlement is reserved only for particularly valuable national comrades. Under no circumstances should wild immigration be allowed. It is supposed to be a Germanic settlement. Particular emphasis is placed on hereditary health and having a large number of children. In 3 - 5 years, every settlement should show a certain character. You have to see from the blond girls and boys that they belong to a Germanic settlement.

[…] In 50 - 80 years, 20 million German settlers are to be living in this large settlement area in the east, of which 10 million farmers have 8 - 10 children. The perpetual motion machine then stands still. When there is no more land to distribute, then, as has been repeated over and over again in history, new land must be brought by the sword. The hardest tradition must be placed in this people; it has to be people who feel the responsibility to pass on only the best of blood. The eternal course of a people's history - fields are conquered and resettled again and again ... "

Ulrich Greifelt's speech on December 13, 1939 in Berlin

Ulrich Greifelt in 1947

Himmler's chief officer, at that time SS Brigadefuhrer , Ulrich Greifelt, explained his boss's ambitious plans to a select audience two months later in the “Volksdeutsche Klub” in Berlin. His five-minute remarks, which were in the form of a memo from an unknown listener, left little room for interpretation about the planned future fate of the Polish population in the General Government :

"1. The resettlement, which is currently in progress, is the most powerful state-controlled migration of peoples of all time. He [Greifelt] recalled the Fuehrer's words that there is a right to the land that a people are able to cultivate and that a people has a right to bring the land into harmony with the population.

[…] 3. The aim of resettlement can be summarized in the following points:

1. The newly won land must be settled with German people, only then will it become inviolable property.

2. Blossoming Germanic provinces must emerge from the land that conquered the German sword.

3. The settlement area must be settled

a) primarily with the people who held this soil during the time of foreign rule (i.e. with the previous Polish Germans ).

b) With people who had previously lived and worked under foreign nationalities (for example with the Baltic , Volhynian and Galician Germans ).

c) With people from the Old Reich, so that a homogeneous national community can be created; For this settlement from the Reich, the soldiers at the front would primarily come into consideration, so this settlement would only begin after the end of the war.

4. Leaving foreign folk in this room is impossible; the danger of racial intermingling must be eliminated by evacuating the foreign nation.

5. The selection of the German people to be deployed on this soil must be based on racial and hereditary biological aspects; Only the best people can be settled on the border wall against the onslaught of foreign expansion.

6. This space must be adequately dimensioned, both for the individual settlers and as a whole for the growing people, future generations must find space here. When this place is also over, the sword must speak again.

4. In connection with this, Greifelt also stated that German people were no longer allowed to be cultural fertilizers abroad. The value of German settlements overseas is already low in peacetime, in war it is 0. The resettlement is therefore not yet finished, it will only be started now. [...] "

"General Plan East" (1940)

→ Main article : General Plan East

At the time of Greifelt's speech, Himmler was faced with a number of rival authorities, despite his appointment to the RKF, all of which were keen to play a leading role in the future settlement of the east.

For example, there was the Reich Office for Spatial Planning (RfR) established by the Führer Decree of June 26, 1935 . Its chairmanship was taken over by the Reich Minister and Prussian Minister of State Hanns Kerrl , head of the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs , which he headed in personal union with the RfR. After his death in 1941, the previous State Secretary Hermann Muhs represented the official business of both Reich authorities. In the sense of a control and coordination instance for spatial planning in the Reich territory, the RfR had to watch over at the beginning according to the "law on the regulation of land requirements of the public sector" of March 29, 1935 that "the German area in one of the needs of the people and State is designed in a corresponding manner ”.

Furthermore, the Reich Ministry of Agriculture (RME), under its Reich Minister and SS-Obergruppenführer Walther Darré , invoked the "Reich Law on the New Formation of German Peasantry" of July 14, 1933 and saw itself as the only authoritative institution for planning and implementing the settlement actions. The German Labor Front (DAF) with its "Reichsheimstättenwerk" in association with the RfR and even the Army High Command (OKH) took part in the race for the leadership position.

Exhibition “Planning and Construction in the East” (1941): Konrad Meyer (right) gives a lecture.

In this situation, Himmler turned to the agricultural scientist and professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin Konrad Meyer and won him over for a part-time job as head of the planning department of the RKF. Meyer had been in office since 1933 for the Race and Settlement Office at that time and the later RuSHA in Berlin as a training manager and expert on race and settlement issues. Meyer should now “draw up a general plan” in a short time. The first draft of such a “General Plan East” was then available in February 1940.

In this phase, Meyer's plan was limited to the former Polish areas annexed to the German Reich: the newly created districts "Wartheland" and "Danzig-West Prussia". Based on a total population of 9.5 million people with a share of 11% Germans, the draft envisaged a continuous expulsion of around 3.4 million Poles and a constant influx of 3.4 million German settlers in the medium term, thus making up the German proportion in the total population would increase to at least 50 percent in the two districts. The entire Jewish population, which according to Meyer's information comprised 560,000 people in 1939, was to be deported to the General Government during the first winter months of the same year (1940).

The draft provided for a "mixed agricultural-industrial" structure for the area to be settled, in which at least 35% of the total population should work in agriculture. In the rural regions, the German population should be at least 70% with a view to "consolidating the people and securing the people's soil". According to Meyer, this meant that around 1.5 million German agricultural workers and farmers, or around 200,000 families, would be needed "for the formation of new German farmers" in the eastern regions.

Settlement planning with Volkstumsbrücken, January 1940

A priority in the choice of the areas to be settled "urgently" was the establishment of a so-called "settlement zone of the first order". The idea behind this was to build a “settlement wall” for German farms, which was supposed to connect Silesia , East Prussia and Pomerania . Such German “Volkstumsbrücken” were supposed to separate the Polish populated areas and thus create isolated “Polish islands”. The plan envisaged an influx of around 820,000 Germans, or “100,000 families of new farmers, farm workers and village craftsmen with small property”.

According to the National Socialist ideology, the plan saw the East settlers responsible for “ensuring the blood security of the peasantry and the people.” In particular, the future “new peasantry” of the “settlement areas of the first order” was surrounded by “foreign and hostile” influences hence an offensive political mandate. However, this was very vague. The aim was to “stand in the attack in a genuinely militant-political sense” and “ensure economic and cultural exchange with other parts of the economy”.

Coupled with the idea of ​​“national and military leadership” was the concept of the so-called “military farm”, which was supposed to serve as a role model within the ethnic German village in terms of size and production . The area to be cultivated should be at least 50 hectares, and the manager of such a farm had to have excellent business management skills as well as "exemplary" National Socialist character traits. Meyer wrote in his draft: “The highest demands must therefore be placed on the owners of these businesses. In addition to the obvious basic requirement that they are capable of the SS and that they meet the völkisch duties with regard to their family and number of children, they must at the same time have provided evidence that they are capable practical managers. "Meyer's plan saw a number of 11,700 such farms in the occupied eastern territories.

Meyer calculated the total agricultural area to be 5.9 million hectares in the occupied territories. Within five years of the end of the war, a total of 238,700 farms under German management were to be established here. It remained unclear how many existing farms, which were still owned by Polish farmers at that time and which were later to be confiscated in the course of Germanization, had already been included in Meyer's advance invoice. Within the aforementioned “settlement zone of the first order”, Meyer reckoned with around 100,000 “new or existing operating units in around 2,800 communities”. Each village community should have a minimum of 300 to 400 residents in order to meet the minimum economic requirements imposed by the Reich.

Expulsion and ghettoization of the Jewish population

→ Main article : Deportation of Jews from Germany

The elimination of Jewish life and the expulsion of Jews from the Reich and the annexed areas was one of the central tasks that the Führer decree of October 7, 1939 provided for Reich Commissioner Himmler-designate. Plans for the deportation of the Jewish population from the occupied territories and a large-scale ghettoization were drawn up between representatives of the RSHA and the Wehrmacht on September 19 and 21, 1939. The German-speaking areas of Poland were to be "cleared" of Jews, the Jewish rural population evacuated and concentrated in larger cities. The resolutions for an immediate evacuation resulted in an order to the relevant SS Einsatzgruppen on the same day, September 21 . The order provided for the expulsion of all Jews from Danzig, West Prussia, Posen and eastern Upper Silesia. The Jews were to be deported to various cities in the eastern part of Poland, which later became the General Government. Only those cities were to be selected that had access to railway connections or were in the vicinity of a railway line. Jewish communities with fewer than 500 members had to be dissolved and evacuated to the nearest collection point.

The deportations began on December 1, 1939. However, it was no longer only Jews and Poles from the incorporated eastern regions that were affected, but also Jews and Gypsies from all over the Reich. The original plan envisaged the deportation of a total of one million Jews to the Generalgouvernement. The Lublin district was to be converted into a so-called "Jewish reservation". In the first two months, the deportation machine ran at full speed: around 200,000 Poles, Jews and Gypsies were deported to the Generalgouvernement. However, the steadily increasing stream of people soon posed insoluble problems for the civil administration of the Governor General and Reich Minister Hans Frank . Frank used a conference in Berlin on the topic of "Eastern Issues" to protest against the never-ending transports.

Deportation of Jews to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto (1940)

Besides Frank attended the conference of 12 February 1940, chaired Reich Marshal Hermann Goering , the Reich Governor Albert Forster ( Danzig-West Prussia ) and Arthur Greiser ( Wartheland ), the Provincial President Josef Wagner ( province of Silesia ) and Erich Koch ( East Prussia ) and Heinrich Himmler part. The conference ended with Göring's decision that no further transports should be sent to the Generalgouvernement without Frank's approval. Himmler added that 40,000 Reich Germans, 70,000 Baltic Germans, 130,000 Wolhynia Germans and 30,000 Germans from the Lublin area should be settled in the areas that will be free from Jews.

If the deportations from the Reich and the annexed areas were initially suspended, Frank began to expel the Jewish population from areas that were supposed to be free of Jews within his territory . This was particularly true of the city of Krakow , the seat of the Governor General .

The evacuation freeze from the Altreich formally ended on September 18, 1941. In a letter to Arthur Greiser that day, Himmler announced that "the Führer wishes to see the Altreich and Protectorate emptied and cleaned of Jews". All Jews from both areas were therefore initially to be transported to the integrated areas and then deported further east in the spring of 1942. In particular, the Litzmannstadt ghetto was intended to serve as a reception camp for the deported Jews. The planned mass deportations from all areas of the Reich began in October 1941. In contrast to the first wave in 1939, however, they no longer served the mere resettlement, but the targeted extermination of all Jews in the areas controlled by the Reich.

Expropriation and Aryanization of Polish and Jewish businesses

At the same time as the evictions, Jewish property, assets and Jewish businesses were confiscated on a large scale by the German occupiers. At the beginning of the measures, however, the RKF was outside the front. Almost simultaneously in the late autumn of 1939, Hermann Göring and Hans Frank founded two independently operating trust agencies for the confiscation and sale of Jewish property, material assets and financial resources: on November 1st the Haupttrreuhandstelle Ost (HTO) by Göring and two weeks later, on November 15th the "Trustee management in the General Government" by Frank. Himmler only reappeared when it came to transferring formerly Jewish companies to so-called “Reichsdeutsche” and “ethnic German resettlers”, as this was in line with his mission of “de-Judging” or “Germanizing” all areas of social life in the East , including business.

Display board for the evacuation of Poles and Jews from the incorporated areas (1941)

From then on, those involved had to come to terms with the RKF's direct influence on the business of the trust companies. From then on, the head of the HTO, Max Winkler , had to endure having the sales of Jewish businesses approved by a liaison officer of the RKF, Obersturmbannführer Bruno Galke. The latter could submit a veto at any time as soon as a sale was not in line with Himmler's instructions to give preference to German residents and ethnic German settlers over Reich Germans when allocating businesses. The cooperation between the HTO and the RKF finally resulted in an agreement between Winkler and Himmler's head of department Ulrich Greifelt of July 29, 1940, which provided for a ranking list of potential buyers of Polish and Jewish companies.

The buyers were divided into four groups, with the first group having the highest priority when awarding companies. These were all Reich Germans and ethnic Germans who had their residence in the incorporated areas on December 31, 1938. Group II, and thus also priority level 2, consisted of all ethnic German repatriates. Group III consisted of all imperial and ethnic Germans who had given up their residence in the incorporated territories after October 1, 1918 shortly before those territories from the former German Reich as part of the Versailles Treaty removed and the newly formed Polish Republic awarded had been. The lowest priority level with group IV comprised all remaining German buyers.

Greifelt and Winkler's agreement also provided for an additional ranking to be established within each individual group, with the highest priority for those involved in the war and “survivors of Poles murdered ethnic Germans”. "Proven party comrades", extended families, survivors of fallen soldiers and, as the fourth and last group (lowest priority), all other applicants were listed below. In order to guarantee future veterans the takeover after the end of the war, the HTO simultaneously founded and financed so-called “rescue companies”, which managed the confiscated businesses until they were handed over to a designated owner.

People interested in buying Polish and Jewish businesses from ethnic Germans received helpful loans from several financial institutions: in addition to the "Ostbank für Handel und Gewerbe AG Posen", a subsidiary of Dresdner Bank and other banks from the "Altreich", two companies were active in the Headquarters of the RKF, namely the already mentioned "Deutsche Ansiedlungsgesellschaft" (DAG) and "Deutsche Umsiedlungs-Treuhand GmbH" (DUT). The ethnic Germans also received support from the RKF with regard to the negotiated purchase price of a confiscated company. An agreement of February 20, 1940 between Himmler and Winkler stipulated that ethnic German buyers only had to pay the price of the machines and the rest of the inventory when acquiring a company and would be automatically released from any debt burden that the company might have.

After the end of the Third Reich, the extent of the large-scale expropriations of Polish and Jewish individuals and companies could be documented with the help of official documents and statistics. Around 10 million Poles, including around 500,000 Jews, were affected by the expropriations in the incorporated areas. In the end, around 1 million people were displaced from these areas. All real estate and almost all craft and industrial businesses forcibly changed hands or were liquidated without the Reich paying the affected people even the slightest amount of compensation in the form of the HTO. Rather, the authority earned two billion Reichsmarks (RM) from the sale of the land and companies in favor of the Reich . This sum included 115 million RM, which represented the profit from the confiscations and the eventual expulsion of the Polish Jews from the annexed areas.

In the Generalgouvernement, too, large-scale Jewish property, company and private property were expropriated, sold or liquidated. As early as 1941, there were only 3,000 Jewish businesses (out of 112,000 previously) that were considered “worthy of retention” by the German authorities. The vast majority of Jewish businesses had been closed and liquidated by this time.

The extent to which the Aryanization process, initiated by the RKF, had progressed at this point in time can be illustrated by a report written on August 15, 1942 by Ludwig Fischer , the governor of the Warsaw district, covering the months of June and July . According to this, a total of 913 non-agricultural holdings in the greater Warsaw area were managed by 208 "trustees" in the summer of 1942. These were broken down into 70 Reich Germans, 51 Volksdeutsche, 85 Poles, one Russian and one Ukrainian.

Himmler's speech on October 22, 1940 in Madrid

At a reception by the National Group of the NSDAP in the German house in Madrid , Himmler, in his role as RKF, was once again able to advertise his conception of the “Eastern folk politics”, even if at that time the race for leadership in settlement policy between the RKF and the RME was not yet decided. In his speech, Himmler referred in particular to the already completed and planned deportations of Poles and Jews from the incorporated eastern regions:

"[...] A won war does not consist in the gain of people from other nationalities, but in the field won. Due to her military victories, Germany had to take over 8 million foreign nationals in the east, but she has already made all preparations to keep the different peoples apart in a clear way. All foreign nationalities and especially Judaism will in future be assigned to the General Government, which means that about 5 to 6 hundred thousand people will be resettled there, with the Jews being housed in a separate ghetto , all Jews from the whole of the Greater German Reich . [...] "

Himmler added that around 250,000 ethnic Germans from Bessarabia , southern Bukovina and Dobruja were resettled to the new eastern territories at that time . The final version of the “General Plan East” was to be implemented in the following year in order to make the Germans “the healthiest and most productive people in the world”.

The incorporation of the "Reich Office for Spatial Planning"

At the time of Himmler's speech, a revised version of the General Plan East was not yet available. Only various “principles and guidelines for rural development in the new eastern regions” for the establishment of new German villages had been developed by the RKF. At the same time, Hitler appointed the head of the DAF, Robert Ley, "Reich Commissioner for Social Housing". He immediately commissioned his authority with the planning of residential areas and the creation of a housing construction program, especially in the new eastern areas.

Himmler saw Ley as a rival for dominance in settlement policy and as a result urged the Reich Office for Spatial Planning , RfR, to complete the district spatial planning plan for the new areas, which had already been commissioned in September 1940. In the following power struggle between the RfR and the RKF, the RfR insisted on its position as an independent authority, while Himmler was determined to acquire the RfR within his power apparatus, all the more since the RfR, as the sole authority of the Reich, had access to all plans and construction projects of the Economy, armed forces and administration. After a smear campaign staged by the SS against the head of the RfR Hanns Kerrl and the harmonization of the eastern planning by the Wehrmacht and the DAF, Himmler had come one step closer to his goal of unrestricted power in settlement policy in spring 1941.

Establishment of the "Main Office for Ethnicity Issues of the NSDAP"

On June 22, which occurred raid of the German Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union . Two days later, Himmler instructed his Reich Commissioner, in the person of Konrad Mayer, to draft an extended General Plan for the East, which was to include the newly conquered territories in the Soviet Union. Initially, it remained with a sketch that Himmler presented to Hitler on July 16, 1941. In an effort to maintain and further expand his leading role in settlement policy in the former Soviet areas, Himmler set up a so-called “industrial advisory office”, which was supposed to coordinate the settlement of interested and suitable companies from the “Old Reich” in the occupied eastern territories.

On the other hand, the Reich Ministry of Agriculture created the new department "Planning and Spatial Planning" in October 1941, which controlled the activities of the "Landwirtschaftungsgesellschaft Ostland". This should be responsible for the settlement of the Baltic region. At the same time, on October 30, 1941, Alfred Rosenberg , the newly appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, presented his ideas for "regional planning in the eastern area" to representatives of various Reich authorities. This in turn called the German Labor Front onto the scene, which submitted its own settlement plan just two weeks after Rosenberg's presentation by its "Ergonomic Institute".

In this situation, Himmler worked again with renewed energy to expand his abundance of power and to eliminate the supposed competition in terms of power politics. In February 1941, Himmler had already become "the NSDAP's representative for all ethnic issues". At the end of the year he strove to establish a main office for ethnicity issues within the party's Reich leadership. This should be manned by representatives of various SS agencies who were active on behalf of the RKF: the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle was to coordinate all "Germanization measures", the Reich Security Main Office was entrusted with the "segregation of all foreign nationalities", the Race and Settlement Main Office with the " racial selection ”and the main office of the RKF finally with the settlement policy in the entire Reich and the occupied territories. On March 12, Hitler confirmed Himmler's renewed expansion of power by decree.

"Final solution to the Jewish question"

→ Main article : Final solution to the Jewish question

Otto Hofmann , head of the RuSHA in 1942

At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, which was aimed at “preparing the final solution to the Jewish question”, the complete annihilation of all Jews in the German area of ​​influence, especially in Eastern Europe, was discussed, which was thus free of Jews and freed from “ethnic” and “anti-German elements” should be, in the sense of the above-mentioned Fuehrer decree of October 7, 1939. Reinhard Heydrich , the organizer of the conference, said at the beginning of the meeting that Europe was “being combed from west to east” in order to finally “evacuate the Jews “To perform.

Although the coordination and execution of the final solution was mainly carried out by Adolf Eichmann's department for Jews , it was the “Race and Settlement Main Office” (RuSHA) which, through its activity of “racial reviews” of the population in the occupied territories, provided the basis for the later deportations of Jews to the ghettos and then to the extermination camps . During the conference, at which the RuSHA was represented by its head Otto Hofmann , the question of how to deal with Jewish mixed race and mixed marriages between Jews and “Reich Germans” was also discussed in the course of the final solution .

Regarding the number of Jews living in the occupied territories, the so-called Korherr report from 1943 provided important information on the dimensions of the expulsion process and the subsequent wave of extermination. According to an estimate, 790,000 respectively in the annexed areas and in the area of ​​the later Generalgouvernement had before the German attack. 2,000,000 Jews lived. On December 31, 1942, the Jewish population in the incorporated areas was 233,210 and in the Generalgouvernement 297,914 people. After the end of the war in 1945, just 55,000 Jewish survivors could be identified on Polish soil.

"General Plan East" (1942)

→ Main article : General Plan East

At the same time as the beginning of the Holocaust , the RSHA developed its own draft of a “General Plan East”, which was discussed in a meeting between Himmler, in his function as RKF, and representatives of the East Ministry on February 4, 1942. It was finally agreed that "as voluntarily as possible to deport the concerned undesirables to the Russian area". Both sides also decided that a large-scale settlement of the affected areas with Germans could not take place immediately, "so that there would be no unrest in the population".

The draft of the RSHA and the discussions with the East Ministry led to further instructions from Himmler to Konrad Meyer, who had been commissioned with the drafting of a revised version of the General Plan East. This was finally presented to him on May 28, 1942.

Meyer's draft was divided into three subject areas: the future settlement order, the expected costs of settlement measures and the boundaries of the settlement areas, so-called "settlement marks". For the administration of the settlement area it was said:

The settlement area of ​​the General Plan East

“In the incorporated eastern areas, the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity directs and supervises the implementation of the settlement construction. The other settlement areas are placed under the sole sovereignty of the Reichsführer-SS as RKF as settlement marks for the duration of the construction. "

“The power of disposal over the land rests with the Reich, represented by Reichsführer-SS. [...] "

"[...] The settlement marks will be spun off from their previous territorial association under constitutional law for the duration of the establishment and placed under the sovereignty of the Reichsführer-SS as RKF. This sovereignty encompasses law-making, jurisdiction and enforcement. [...] "

Meyer estimated the expected costs of the settlement operation at a total of 66.6 billion Reichsmarks, divided into 45.7 billion for the incorporated eastern areas and 20.9 billion for the occupied eastern areas in eastern Poland and the Soviet Union. The main sources of financing were to be 34% funds from the Reich budget and 42% funds from the private capital market.

The areas newly gained by the attack on the Soviet Union were to be divided into three "settlement marks":

"1. Ingermanland (Petersburg area) "

"2. Gotengau (Crimea and Kherson region) "

"3. Memel and Narew region (Bialystok district and western Lithuania) "

A period of 25 years was planned for successful “Germanization” of these areas. This meant that at least 50% of the local population should be of German descent.

Meyer's plan envisaged a need for 4.85 million additional settlers, divided between 1.5 million people for the annexed eastern areas and 3.35 million for the occupied eastern areas. For the so-called development program, around 450,000 workers were planned for the first ten years.

Activity report for the years 1939–1942

At the end of 1942, the RKF, together with the main office, wrote a detailed activity report on the resettlement measures that had taken place in the occupied territories and in the "Altreich" and their financing in the period from 1939 to 1942. In view of the further course of the war in Eastern Europe in the following years, the Report the actual end point of all the Third Reich's ambitions to reorganize Eastern Europe .

Under the heading “Repatriation of Germans from abroad”, the report notes that a total of 629,000 “ethnic Germans were resettled in the Reich and its new settlement areas” during the period of activity. Of this, 429,000 from the fields of now by the Wehrmacht occupied Soviet Union . The large-scale resettlement measures affected not only the occupied Polish and Soviet Russian territories, but almost all European regions under the political or military influence of the Third Reich. For example, 77,000 "ethnic Germans" from Romania , a further 79,000 from South Tyrol and 34,000 from the "former Yugoslav regions" were resettled. According to the report, however, around three million people in countries such as France , Romania and Hungary were not able to settle . Although these were of German descent, the RKF regarded them as “people who had been absorbed in the foreign people” and had accordingly lost their “German nationality”.

Arrival of Galician resettlers in Schwarzenau near Gnesen (1940)

In line with the ideology of the National Socialist racial hygiene , a “national political review of the population” was carried out in the occupied territories. Accordingly, the RKF divided the people living in the designated "German settlement area" into four main groups:

"A) recognized German people (German citizens),

b) German people with ties to foreigners [...] who require ethnic probation (citizens on revocation),

c) People of German origin or other valuable people who are recognized as capable of Germanization,

d) foreign nationality (protection members of the German Reich). "

About three million people received the "German citizenship on revocation" mentioned under b), mostly from areas around the city of Gdansk and West Prussia with up to 1.3 million people and Upper Silesia with around one million people. The RKF recognized a total of 25,000 people as "capable of Germanization".

Several repressive measures and regulations were directed against the “foreign population”. 365,000 Poles were expelled from formerly Polish areas that were later incorporated into the Reich into the so-called General Government under the premise of "eliminating the harmful influence of non-ethnic parts of the population in the German settlement area". Expropriations and evictions did not only affect Poles, even if they were hardest hit by the measures. The report reported that "17,000 German-hostile Slovenes had been expropriated" and "295,000 Alsatians , Lorraine people and Luxembourgers were deported to France or prevented from returning, others resettled in the old Reich or in eastern settlement areas".

The report also reported "special provisions in almost all areas of life" to further legal restrictions on Poles and " Eastern workers " living in the occupied areas , which were marked separately. Furthermore, they were not only subjected to a special tariff and taxation system, residence restrictions and a reduced allocation of consumer goods, but also had to endure “restrictions on marriage and sexual intercourse”.

The report also detailed the individual resettlement actions of ethnic Germans in certain areas, which in the administrative jargon of the RKS was called "the resettlement of resettlers". The following ethnic groups and areas were affected:

“A) [In the incorporated eastern regions], 6,000,000 hectares of rural property were confiscated and released from the old debts for the Reich at the disposal of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity. [...] The down-to-earth Germanness in these areas strengthened by the influx and settlement of 332,000 resettlers. Its biological and professional composition was improved by the favorable age structure and the predominantly rural character of the resettled groups. Among other things, 65,000 farms in these areas were selected, cleared and filled with resettlers. The influx of Reich Germans was promoted through tax advantages and other measures. [...]

New "ethnic German" village in Wartheland (1940)

c) 6,000 resettlers from the southeast and 600 Luserner and Fersental residents are currently being settled in the protectorate . Through these and other settlements, a Deutschtumsbrücke will be laid from north to south across Prague and another from north-east to south-west through Moravia . Settlement land is procured through purchase or expropriation for cheap compensation. [...]

f) In the occupied eastern territories around 40 - 60,000 East Wolhynia Germans are currently being concentrated and settled at three bases between Zhitomir and Vinnitsa . The care of the 127,000 ethnic Germans in Transnistria was taken over by the Reich Commissioner on the basis of an agreement with the Romanian government. The resettlement of the Transnistrian Germans to the Crimea and the ethnic Germans from the neighboring areas of the Crimea is in preparation.

g) In Alsace and Lorraine there are currently 5,000 Germans from Beech Country. [...] "

Regarding the financial resources of the entire resettlement campaign, the RKF stated that the total budget of the RKF in the period from 1939 to 1942 was around 770 million Reichsmarks. The low costs of the so-called "resettlement of resettlers" in the opinion of the RKF were explained "by the use of former foreign assets without compensation."

Withdrawal and end of settlement in the east

At the beginning of 1943, Himmler tried to extend his expansion plans to other areas in the east. On January 12, he instructed his chief planner Konrad Meyer with the extension of the General Plan East, based on the report prepared in September 1942 general settlement plan . This should be based on an "eastern settlement area" which, in addition to the previously annexed areas, also included Lithuania , Latvia , Estonia , Belarus , Ingermanland as well as the Crimea and Tauria . In view of the changed course of the war, Himmler's efforts in the spring of 1943 also represented the end of the “General Plan East”. Rather, in the summer of 1943, in the course of the Soviet summer offensive, German settlers began to retreat westward.

The first settlers and farmers affected by the retreat came from the Caucasus. Very few of them were “Volksdeutsche” in the National Socialist sense. Rather, it was mostly people of foreign nationalities who were judged by the SS to be “racially useful” and who were sent westward for work in the Reich. The ethnic Germans from the Russian territories were initially settled in western Ukraine. At the end of September 1943 the number of German settlers evacuated east of the Dnieper was already 67,000, and swelled to several hundred thousand in the coming months.

With the approaching war front, however, the settlers' treks soon began to move again. The goal was now the Wartheland. There, the settlers first lived in camps administered and controlled by the SS, before they were then “smuggled through” and “assigned”. Settlement then took place in the aforementioned "settlement area of ​​the first order" on so-called "dwarf farms". The Polish owners of these farms had previously been driven from their property. Plans to deport all expropriated Polish farmers to Ukraine were no longer implemented.

At this point in time, in December 1943, the planning work for the settlement in the east of the RKF was finally stopped. In May 1943, Himmler had spoken to Konrad Mayer for the last time on the “General Plan East”. Despite the reality of the war, however, he continued to fantasize about a German settlement in the east. On July 26, 1944, when the Soviet Army was already on Polish territory, Himmler declared in a speech to German officers:

“[It is about] pushing out the German ethnic border by at least 500 km to the east, seen from the 1939 border. It is the settlement of this area with German sons and German families, with Germanic sons and Germanic families, so that a plant garden becomes Germanic blood, so that we can continue to be a peasant people, which we have almost ceased to be, because the peasant part in ours People has become less and less. I want to tell you something more. I tell you this today, when the Russian is so close to our border: It depends on the fields that we had already won and lost in this war and that we will get back, which will not be a problem at all, to win. It is about pushing a defense border to the limit of our military area of ​​interest, with a constant eating into the east, which must not be a ghost for us. "

literature

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• Alexa Stiller: Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum. In: Ingo Haar / Michael Fahlbusch (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften. Munich 2008, pp. 531-540.
• Alexa Stiller: Germanization and Violence. National Socialist Volkstumsppolitik in the Polish, French and Slovenian annexed areas 1939–1945. Dissertation University of Bern, 2015.
• Bruno Wasser: Himmler's spatial planning in the east. The General Plan East in Poland 1940–1944. Birkhäuser, Basel 1993, ISBN 3-7643-2852-5 ( City, Planning, History , 15).
• Peter Widmann: Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood. In: Wolfgang Benz u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 3rd edition, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag , Munich 1998, ISBN 3-423-33007-4 , p. 677 ( dtv 33007).

Web links

• Decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor on the consolidation of German nationality of October 7, 1939 (Plain text and facsimile on Clio-online / European history portal)
• The emergence and competencies of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum

Individual evidence

1. ^ Völkischer Beobachter of October 26, 1939.
2. ↑ Hans Buchheim : The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 182 ff.
3. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 187.
4. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 187 f.
5. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 188 f.
6. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 191 f.
7. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 186 f.
8. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 192 ff.
9. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 84.
10. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 12.
11. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 24f.
12. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 56.
13. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 66f.
14. ↑ Paul Hoser: [1] , Historisches Lexikon Bayerns , accessed on June 3, 2016.
15. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 69f./Stabsbefehl 19/35 of the head of the Race and Settlement Main Office of April 10, 1935.
16. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 74.
17. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 71./ Order of the Reichsführer SS of September 3, 1935, BA NS 2/86, p. 175.
18. ^ Hermann Benz (Agricultural Council): [2] , 1939, accessed on June 5, 2016.
19. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 72f./.
20. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 71./BAK NL 94 II, 47b.
21. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 87 f.
22. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 102.
23. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 112 ff.
24. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 116.
25. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 197.
26. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 11ff.
27. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 188 f.
28. ↑ Hans Buchheim: The SS - the instrument of rule, command and obedience. Munich 1967, p. 195 f.
29. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 83 ff.
30. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 118 f .; Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Volkstum. Tgb. No./1240/4 RF / Pt. with distribution to the office group chiefs and the Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia and the Warthegau.
31. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 119 ff .; Statements by the Reichsführer-SS at an evening as a guest of SS- Brigadführer Greiser on October 24, 1939 in the casino of the former Voivodeship (now Chief of Civil Administration ) (CdZ) in front of the SS leaders.
32. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 124 f .; Memorandum on the statements made by SS Brigadefuhrer Greifelt on "the ethnic German return migration and resettlement" on December 13, 1939 (section).
33. ↑ Federal Archives, Reich Office for Spatial Planning (inventory), inventory description, BArch, R 113.
34. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 86 ff.
35. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, p. 74.
36. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 130 ff .; The Reichsführer SS, Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum, Main Planning Department. For official use only. Annex to the notification of the OKW of March 8, 1940.
37. ↑ Raul Hilberg : The Destruction of European Jews , Volume 1 Frankfurt am Main 1990, pp. 200 f.
38. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 216 f .; Summary of a conference on Eastern issues chaired by Goering, February 12, 1940, EC-305.
39. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 222; Letter from Himmler to Greiser, September 18, 1941, Himmler files, folder No. 94.
40. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main 1990, pp. 251ff.
41. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 255.
42. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 256.
43. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 255.
44. ↑ Bernhard Rosenkötter: "... one of the most radical robberies in world history ...". The role of the main trust center East and its "special department Altreich". In: Katharina Stengel (ed.): Before the annihilation: the state expropriation of the Jews during National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 2007, pp. 118ff.
45. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main 1990, pp. 257f.
46. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 258.
47. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 139; Confidential copy of a speech by Himmler to the NSDAP regional group in Madrid on settlement issues on October 22, 1940.
48. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 93.
49. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 94 ff.
50. ^ Raul Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jews, Volume 2 Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 423 f.
51. ^ Raul Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jews, Volume 3 Frankfurt am Main 1990, pp. 1287 ff.
52. ^ Raul Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jews, Volume 3 Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 1293.
53. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 103 f.
54. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 185 ff.
55. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 200 ff .; Activity report of the RKF / Main Staff Office on the resettlement measures (status at the end of 1942).
56. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 110 ff.
57. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 113; Himmler's speech to the officer corps of a grenadier division at the Bitsch military training area on July 26, 1944.