Hitler

‘brave new world’ opened up.
    With scarcely any direct involvement by Hitler, racial policy unfolded its own dynamic. Within the Reich, pressures to rid Germany of its Jews once and for all increased. In the asylums, the killing of the mentally sick inmates was in full swing. And the security mania of the nation at war, threatened by enemies on all sides and within, coupled with the heightened demands for national unity, encouraged the search for new ‘outsider’ target groups. ‘Foreign workers’, especially those from Poland, were in the front line of the intensified persecution.
    However, the real crucible was Poland. Here, racial megalomania had carte blanche. But it was precisely the absence of any systematic planning in the free-for-all of unlimited power that produced the unforeseen logistical problems and administrative cul-de-sacs of ‘ethnic cleansing’ which in turn evoked ever more radical, genocidal approaches.
    Those who enjoyed positions of power and influence saw the occupation of Poland as an opportunity to ‘solve the Jewish Question’ – despite the fact that now more Jews than ever had fallen within the clutches of the Third Reich. For the SS, entirely new perspectives had emerged. Among party leaders, all the Gauleiter wanted to be rid of ‘their’ Jews and now saw possibilities of doing so. These were starting points. At the same time, for those ruling the parts of former Poland which had been incorporated into the Reich, the expulsion of the Jews from their territories was only part of the wider aim of Germanization, to be achieved as rapidly as possible. This meant also tackling the ‘Polish Question’, removing thousands of Poles to make room for ethnic Germans from the Baltic and other areas, classifying the ‘better elements’ as German, and reducing the rest to uneducated helots available toserve the German masters. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ to produce the required Germanization through resettlement was intrinsically connected with the radicalization of thinking on the ‘Jewish Question’.
    Beginning only days after the German invasion of Poland, Security Police and party leaders in Prague, Vienna, and Kattowitz – seizing on the notions expounded by Heydrich of a ‘Jewish reservation’ to be set up east of Cracow – saw the chance of deporting the Jews from their areas. Eichmann’s own initiative and ambition appear to have triggered the hopes of immediate expulsion of the Jews. Between 18 and 26 October he organized the transport of several thousands of Jews from Vienna, Kattowitz, and Moravia to the Nisko district, south of Lublin. Gypsies from Vienna were also included in the deportation. At the same time, the resettlement of the Baltic Germans began. Within days of the Nisko transports beginning, the lack of provision for the deported Jews in Poland, creating chaotic circumstances following their arrival, led to their abrupt halt. But it was a foretaste of the greater deportations to come.
    At the end of the month, in his new capacity as Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of Germandom, Himmler ordered all Jews to be cleared out of the incorporated territories. The deportation of around 550,000 Jews was envisaged. On top of that came several hundred thousand of the ‘especially hostile Polish population’, making a figure of about a million persons in all. From the largest of the areas designated for deportations and the resettlement of ethnic Germans, the Warthegau, it proved impossible to match the numbers initially charted for deportation, or the speed at which their removal had been foreseen. Even so, 128,011 Poles and Jews were forcibly deported under horrifying conditions by spring 1940. Sadistic SS men would arrive at night, clear entire tenement blocks, and load up the inhabitants – subjected to every form of bestial humiliation – on to open lorries, despite the intense cold, to be taken to holding camps, from where they were herded into unheated and massively overcrowded cattle-trucks and sent south, without possessions and often without food or water. Deaths were frequent on the journeys. Those who survived often suffered from frostbite or other legacies of their terrible ordeal. The deportees were sent to the General Government, seen in the annexed territories as a type of dumping-ground for undesirables. But the Governor General, Hans Frank, was no keener on having Jews in his area than were the Gauleiterof the incorporated regions. He