While Ukrainians awaited for the approval of the UNO project statute by GG administrators, they did not sit idly by. In accordance with Kurtz’s instructions, the UNO undertook a ‘bottom up’ approach in consolidating their authority, beginning with the regional councils throughout the GG. During two meetings held in Kraków on December 26 and 28, delegates from the Chełm and Jarosław councils declared their subordination to the UNO.312 That same month Kubiiovych expressed his readiness to build and organize a Ukrainian aid committee; a decision coming following talks with Ukrainian political, church and OUN representatives.313
For the GG civil administration, a key question was how to legally control the fremdvölkische, non-Germans in their new administrative borders. Concerning non-Jews, they looked toward the tried tactic of divide et impera to not only achieve their colonist and racial goals for the GG but to also exploit, as much as possible, the ethnic groups they inherited. Here, the principle of divide and conquer was synonymous with racial inequality of non-Germans. Diemut Majer termed this the “principle of special law” – the classification of
309 Kubiiovych, Ukraїntsi v Heneral’nii Huberniї, 37; Hempel, Pogrobowcy klęski..., 54-55. In October 1941, a training center for GG Ukrainian auxiliary policemen was opened in Lwów; replacing the short-lived ones in Kraków and Lublin. The commandant was Jerzy Walter, a Volksdeutsche Pole who previously served as captain in the Polish auxiliary police in Chełm. He was automatically advanced to the position of major in the Ukrainian auxiliary service.
310 Archiwum Państwowe w Przemyślu (AP-P), Akta Miasta Przemyśla, sygn. 2275, Der Stadthauptmann Deutsch-Przemysl Bericht, 1940, p. 3.
311 Knysh, Pered pokhidom na skhid vol. 1, 119.
312 Boidunyk, Na perelomi, 70; Kubiiovych, Ukraїntsi v Heneral’nii Huberniї, 71-72.
313 Arlt, Polen-, Ukrainer-, Juden-Politik im Generalgouvernement..., 31.
94
German and occupied citizens into ‘Aryans’ and Aryans’ or ‘Germans’ and ‘non-Germans.’ This legal separation deprived ‘non’ elements of human rights and social protection. As Majer noted, it also deprived non-Germans of paid labor without public means; “a psychic death before the physical one.” As the first Reich colony created from the spoils of war, the authorities envisioned creating a legal and administrative framework toward non-German people that would be a blueprint for future Nazi conquests in the east.314
The colonial definition of the GG was also reflected in its policies of oppression and suppression – implemented through the theory of sub humans (Untermenschen) – via the racial fragmentation of the local, non-German population. Experts urged a patriarchal system be created under German sovereignty. On the one hand, non-Germans were to be segregated and assimilation prevented while on the other, they were to be supported and administered as much as possible. The subject peoples were to be preserved in “ethnic-racial sovereignty” and oriented toward Nazi racial principles.315
The instigation of historic Polish-Ukrainian antagonisms set in motion this policy of ethnic fragmentation toward the elimination of Untermenschen. The occupiers realized their political goals in part by realizing the suggestions of German experts, and in part through varying, most often violent, brutal means: terror and genocide; deportation and resettlement;
forced labor; group expropriation and pillaging; liquidation and suppression of cultural life.
These measures were not uniform but differed according to the various GG ethnic groups and in accordance with Nazi goals and plans. Where Poles were viewed in terms of economic usefulness, designated as slave laborers before being completely eliminated, and Jews were to be completely exterminated, Ukrainians meant to prove economically and politically useful in marginalizing and assisting, whether consciously or not, in ‘weeding-out’ other non-Germans.316
The Polish underground noted of the German policy with relation to the Ukrainians;
one of exploitation especially in the “economic oppression of Poles,” that is, giving the Ukrainians certain concessions not granted them. However, the report stressed these concessions as small while making no efforts at affording them any political measures.317 The free Poles in London, through their underground channels, were familiar with the German’s policy of splintering the two Slavic groups. A report indicated how the occupier’s caste system placed the Ukrainians on a perceived even level with the Germans; the relationship of collaboration between the two non-Polish groups was described as a “political weapon”
against both, the Poles and the Soviets. However, their approach toward the Ukrainians was
314 Majer, “Non-Germans” under the Third Reich…, xvi-xvii; 267.
315 Ibid, 270-274.
316 Bogdan Musiał, “Niemiecka polityka narodowościowa w okupowanej Polsce w latach 1939-1945.” Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość vol. 2 no. 6 (2004), 15-16; Chodakiewicz, Between Nazis and Soviets..., 144. Legal segregation of GG Jews underwent four phases: segregation and discrimination; isolation, total isolation, and resettlement or evacuation (which meant in essence extermination). Majer, “Non-Germans” under the Third Reich…, 284-286
317 “Sprawy Ukraińsko-Polskie od września 1939 do listopada 1941 – przewidywania na przeszłość,”
(November 15, 1941), Armia Krajowa w dokumentach, vol. 2, 139.
95
“politically slim.”318 Concessions given to them at the expense of Poles or Jews – differentiating Ukrainians and granting them full rights as Reich citizens in contrast to Poles or filling veterinary or medical positions with them – were described as the creation of a
“Ruthenian [Ukrainian] Republic” by the German.319 In other words, the Poles viewed German-Ukrainian collaboration in terms of political-propaganda without the occupier openly forming a pro-Ukrainian platform.320
Tantamount to the creation and implementation of racial laws or means by which to divide or remove non-Germans were academic specialists. Scholarship was to take account of political priorities while academics were to advice politicians. In Nazi rhetoric, many intellectuals found similar echoes or goals as in their scholarship; ranging from territorial revisionism to reordering Europe along racial lines. The war provided them with an opportunity to prove the value of their research and theories. A November 1939 paper outlined the task of the Ostforscher or “eastern researcher” during and after the war:
“Research will be one of the principal means of strengthening the legitimacy of German action.” With the advent of war, thousands of maps were ordered by the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and civil administrations. Maps, charts and graphs were also created proving German historical claims in the east – place names or the extent of ethnic Germandom.
Ostforshung scholars were instrumental in delineating new boundaries in the annexed Polish territories and resettling ethnic Baltic Germans to those regions in place of expelled Poles and Jews.321
The General Government’s administrative needs provided the Publikationstelle (PuSte), an academic think-tank in the orbit of the Reich interior ministry, an opportunity to demonstrate its resourcefulness. Frank was also quickly convinced of the value of Ostforscher specialists to his regime; a PuSte office was opened in Kraków on January 1, 1940. The office’s tasks included: producing maps and statistics for the administration; and compiling scholarly and publicist work based on local archival or library sources – a German guide to Kraków, research on Polish-Reich relations during the Middle Ages, studies on German culture and art in Polish history, and the economic structure in the GG. All this was to prove the dominance of Germandom over everything Polish. Eastern “researchers”
contributed to creating, and later working in, the Institute for German Development work in the East, guidelines on renaming streets in GG towns, or providing convincing data legitimizing ethnic deportations and resettlements. It is interesting to note that one of the
318 PISM, MIiD, folder A.10.3/9, List na temat sprawy ukraińskiej, November 20, 1940.
319 “Sprawy organizacyjne, informacyjne wywiadowcze, raport o sytuacji w kraju, sprawa łączności i pieniędzy,” (February 8, 1940), Armia Krajowa w Dokumentach vol. 1, 108.
320 PISM, MIiD, folder A.10.3/10, Niemiecka propaganda ukrainizmu – w okupowanej Polsce, n.d.
321 Burleigh, Germany turns Eastwards..., 155-186. Dr. Otto Reche compiled a memorandum entitled “Basic Principles on the Demographic-Political Securing of the German East.” It explained the necessity of acquiring Raum for the German people (“The German people needs a new settlement area bordering its existing frontiers of at least 200,000 km2), ethnic settlement which called for the emptying all non-German ethnic elements, races and peoples from the Raum (“We do not need a bastard population there with Polish characteristics and Polish cultural incapability which is determined by blood!”), specific territorial stipulations, and a racial contextualization of the uselessness of non-Germans in the annexed territories.
96
street names recommended for change were those named after Pieracki “who was notorious because of his measures against the Ukrainians and German ethnic groups in Poland.” As Burleigh summarized, the work of the PuSte office and Ostforscher ranged from symbolic and historical to radical attempts to change the face of Poland; showing how selective history could conform with the dictates of the Nazi ideology.322
A third area in which Ostforscher proved invaluable was in policy toward the subject peoples; something which pivoted on the recognition of the existence of various ethnic groups. Not only was this another means by which the Germans underscored the extinction of the superfluous, artificial and imperialistic Polish-Versailles state but it lay the foundation for dividing non-German ethnic groups under their control. A central figure in this policy-making was Fritz Arlt. He joined the NSDAP in 1932. Having completed his studies in theology, anthropology, and sociology in Leipzig, he entered the SS in 1937 before taking on his post in the GG beginning in 1939; an administrative tour which lasted until September 1940.323 In conjunction with his scholarly work and as a representative of the local Nazi racial-political office, he carried out an ‘ethnic-biological’ investigation of the population of Leipzig. This involved a deep examination of the city’s Jewish population – places of birth, addresses, number of children, occupations, etc. His results created a card catalogue of the city’s Jews; containing personal information and, most importantly, their level of Semitism:
whether they were full, three-quarter, half or one-quarter Jews. His results were published in 1938 while his card catalogue served as a model for the card index on Jews being created by the SD. After his time in Leipzig, he worked as an assistant professor at the university in Breslau where he made contacts with the SD and Abwehr.324
During the September campaign, Arlt was attached to a Wehrmacht division in western Poland. He was recruited by the military occupation apparatus to conduct research and create procedures for them to deal with the newly inherited ethnic groups. He agreed and reported to GG civil administrators where he proposed plans for a bureau to oversee the welfare of the ethnic groups. Josef Bühler, the future GG secretary of state and the man Arlt met with, was happy to gain a knowledgeable linguist and bureaucrat within his administration especially since many early civil servants were employees of Frank’s legal office in Munich with little practical administrative experience: “They were ignorant of the country, the language, the population, their future administrative territory but they were of
322 Ibid, 190-197. The guidelines for renaming streenames of towns in the GG (August 22, 1940) called for main squares in all towns to be christened “Adolf Hitler Square” while “obliterating” all names associated with anti-German personalities, events or Jews; and renaming them with names “closely bound up with the history of Germandom” or German cultural achievements.
323 Ernst Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945? (Frankfurt am Main:
S. Fischer Verlag 2003), 18-19; Frank Mecklenburg, “Von der Hitlerjugend zum Holocaust. Die Karriere des Fritz Arlt in Jürgen Matthäus and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds), Deutsche, Juden, Völkermord. Der Holocaust als Geschichte und Gegenwart (Darmstadt: WBG 2006), 87-99.
324 Götz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth, Die restlose Erfassung: Volkszählen, Identifizieren, Aussondern im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Mein: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000), 72-74; Burleigh, Germany turns Eastward..., 215-216. Aly and Roth noted that the department, where SS-Hauptscharführer Adolf Eichmann began, made contact with Arlt in July 1936. For his published results, see Fritz Arlt, Volksbiologische Untersuchungen über die Juden in Leipzig (Leipzig: S. Herzel, 1938).
97
good will.” At 27 years old, Arlt headed the GG population and welfare bureau from November 1939 until September 1940. His background and experience earned him a free hand in constructing it, placed under the authority of the internal affairs department.325 In his postwar interrogation, Bisanz described Arlt as a “pupil of Hans Koch.” Indeed, he closely collaborated with Koch and Oberländer; gaining more insight into Ukrainian questions.326
As a racial specialist, Arlt also handled GG demographic questions. He maintained that the various ethnic groups – Poles, Ukrainians, Górale, Russians, White Russians and Jews – all exhibited differing attitudes toward the occupation administration. The special treatment of these groups undertaken by his bureau regulated uniform self-help and welfare assistance as well as created a set of regulated guidelines, uniformly applicable at all administrative levels of the GG. At the same time, he also organized a resettlement office which resettled hundreds of thousands of people under difficult circumstances.327 Knysh described Arlt as an average beaurocrat with little understanding of the nationality issues in the GG. Rather, he claimed his position was effortless, something which saved him from frontal service. In his memoirs, Kubiiovych diminished the role Arlt played in constructing ethnic policy around population and welfare issues, claiming it no fault of Arlt’s that the Ukrainian social issue was “squeezed into the narrow statue of organizational aid.”328
Fritz Arlt modified Nazi racial concepts to suite GG legal needs by first internally consolidating ethnic groups.329 Work over population and welfare distribution in his newly-created bureau – ambiguously titled ‘department of population management and welfare’ – made him responsible for reorganizing state welfare under wartime conditions under the dispensation of ethnic policy. This included: organizing public soup kitchens, negotiating with the International Red Cross and overseeing population policy including the supervision of religious communities and resettlement operations. Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, and Jews all had dedicated sub-bureaus in his department. Arlt’s activities and focus were determined by overpopulation and attendant population movements. As such, welfare distribution had to be reorganized in such a way so as to take into account, first and foremost, German needs.
Simultaneously, welfare distribution subconsciously integrated ethnic groups into the
325 Arlt, Polen-, Ukrainer-, Juden-Politik im Generalgouvernement..., 26-28; Aly and Heim, Architects of Annihilation..., 130. From September 1940 until May 1943, Arlt was transferred to Silesia where he planned to construct Jewish-racial catalogues. Prior to his transfer there, Kubiiovych and the UTsK organized a special banquet in his honor, bidding him farewell while all attendees took in a performance of Kraków’s Ukrainian Choir. “Vidїzd d-ra F. Arlta z Krakova,” Krakivs’ki Visti vol. 1 no. 89 (September 11, 1940), 2. In Silesia, he carried out the resettlement of 35,000 people as well as the inventarization and seizure of property from “foreign races.” This meant determining whether property left behind by Jews sent to concentration camps was either allocated to German settlers or appropriated by the state. Burleigh, Germany turns Eastwards…, 216.
326 Struve, Deutsche Herrschaft, ukrainischer Nationalismus, antijüdische Gewalt..., 167-168fn102; Aly and Heim, Architects of Annihilation..., 136.
327 Josef Bühler (ed), Das Generalgouvernement. Seine Verwaltung und seine Wirtschaft (Krakau: Berverlag Krakau 1943), 81; Burleigh, Germany turns Eastwards..., 215-216.
328 Knysh, Pered pokhodom na skhid, vol. 2, 98; Kubiiovych, Meni 85, 167.
329 Arlt, Polen-, Ukrainer-, Juden-Politik im Generalgouvernement..., 29; 35; 57; Torzecki, Kwestia ukraińska w polityce III Rzeszy..., 155.
98
rigorous Nazi system of monitoring; an additional administrative means to surveil attitudes and opinions of the newly inherited sub-human groups.330
The first progress report of the population and welfare bureau explained its purpose:
“… an agency that concerns itself specifically with the ethno-political structure of said territory; for collecting ethno-political data of all kinds – historical, ethnological, racial, statistical, etc. – to form the basis of any practical work of administration…”331 In a more detailed analysis of his welfare program in the confidential Volkspolitische Informationen journal, Arlt argued that had welfare remained in the hands of GG populations to provide for themselves, solidarity among the inhabitants would be unavoidable; something which in no way lay in the interests of the occupier. Instead:
The guiding principles of our welfare work in the GG are therefore political in character. All welfare issues must be handled in accordance with German racial and population policy. This will safeguard us against allowing our welfare work to be influenced solely by charitable and humanitarian considerations, when instead we should be guided constantly by the national and ethno-political interests of the German Reich… [to develop] a planning strategy [for the GG] based largely in the purely numerical ratio of its inhabitants… to be able to rule more easily.332
Thus, the population and welfare bureau of the internal affairs department of the GG served as the legal means by which the policy of divide and conquer would be implemented among ethnic groups. As Arlt argued, whoever offered help would win-over any oppositionists.333 He was also a strong proponent of controlling what he saw as the greatest drain on the resources of the GG – population numbers. Controlling this, he believed, was in turn critical to the success of welfare work. According to him, the main drain on the GG were the Jews. In 1940 he publicly proposed the complete deportation of Jews, something which
“would reduce the pressure on Lebensraum in the GG by something like 1,500,000 Jews.”
His aim was to decrease population density and provide greater labor opportunities for non-Jews. As he wrote:
Through a process of sociological restructuring some of these people could then take over those jobs in industry, commerce and the skilled trades that were previously held by Jews. This would be a major contribution towards the social regeneration of the Polish rural proletariat. At the same time it would reduce overemployment in the agricultural sector and thus create a further opportunity for dealing constructively with the problem of overpopulation.334
330 Aly and Heim, Architects of Annihilation…, 130-131.
331 BA, R 52 II/247, Bericht über den Aufbau der Verwaltung im Generalgouvernement vom Juni 1940, p. 182.
332 Quoted in Aly and Heim, Architects of Annihilation..., 131.
333 Arlt, Polen-, Ukrainer-, Juden-Politik im Generalgouvernement..., 27.
334 Fritz Arlt, Übersicht über die Bevölkerungsverhältnisse im Generalgouvernement (Krakau: Volkspolitischer Informationsdienst der Regierung des GG, 1940), 21; 24.
99
This solution was not only meant to socially re-engineer the Poles but also the Ukrainians, an overwhelming agricultural ethnic group. Once the Jewish element was completely removed, Arlt believed “the influx of the peasant class to the towns and cities” would follow. Only in this way could the GG “social structure be gradually altered.”335
The German invasion of Poland was undertake with the logic that it could not exist as a sovereign state. Occupation meant the geographic appropriation of territory rather than the subjugation of a prior state or polity. German lawyers contended that Poland was not a state and, as such, a place without a sovereign over which they were now masters. Prewar laws were declared null and void. By this logic, Hitler destroyed the principle of state citizenship.336 More importantly, through that destruction, he also overturned prewar Poland’s Achilles heel – the minority policy, especially its Ukrainian one.
Just before the outbreak of war, a Nazi press directive was issued, ordering: “it is
Just before the outbreak of war, a Nazi press directive was issued, ordering: “it is