Following Poland’s collapse, an immediate, brutal process of Germanization ensued in the prewar Polish territories incorporated directly into the Reich.240 Territory not directly annexed was officially decreed by Hitler on October 26, 1939 to form the ‘General Government for Occupied Polish Territories’ (from here on – GG). To oversee this administrative creation, he appointed Reich minister and personal lawyer Hans Frank as general governor who, in his proclamation to the people of the GG, foreshadowed a bleak future: “Under fair authority all will work for their daily bread. There will be no room for political instigators, economic hyenas, and Jewish exploiters in the region under German authority.” He officially assumed power in Kraków, the administrative capital, on November 7, 1939; a ceremony conducted with much pomp and flair.241
238 Ibid; Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer 1914-1939, 950.
239 PISM, MSW, folder A.9.III.2d/9, MIiD Biuro Geograficzne: uwagi dotyczące Włodzimierza Kubijowicza, October 6, 1943.
240 For an examination of the Intelligenzaktion in these territories, see for example Maria Wardzyńska, Był rok 1939. Operacja niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa w Polsce. Intelligenzaktion (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009). Jan Sziling analyzed the fate of Polish Cahtolic clergy during, but not limited to, the early German pacification in these territories. See Jan Sziling, Polityka okupanta hitlerowskiego wobec Kościoła Katolickiego 1939-1945 (Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1970). According to Borodziej, an estimated 42 thousand Poles were executed in the western Polish territories annexed into the Reich between September and October 1939. Włodzimierz Borodziej, Terror i polityka Policja niemiecka a polski ruch oporu w GG 1939-1944 (Warszawa: PAX, 1985), 22.
241 Okupacja i ruch oporu w Dzienniku Hansa Franka 1939-1945, vol. 1 (eds) Stanisław Płoski, et al (Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1970), 116-117; 122-123; Dieter Schrenk, Hans Frank. Biografia generalnego gubernatora, trans. Krzysztof Jachimczak (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2009), 150. Prior to coming to Kraków, Frank’s temporary seat of authority was Łódź. On September 25, 1939 Hitler approved creation of the Łódź and Kraków military districts in central and southeastern Poland; ones encompassing the future territory of the GG. Beside the military apparatus was a Chief of Civil Administration – Frank in Łódź and Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyß-Inquart in Kraków. Frank also maintained authority over Poland as a whole. Martin Winstone, The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe: Nazi Rule in Poland under the General Government (London: Tauris, 2015), 28.
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The GG was created from the left-overs after the Germans and Soviets annexed what they wanted and became one of five early colonies created following Hitler and Stalin carving-up of Poland. It contained characteristics of colonial political novelties and distinctions – the administration carried on under a system distinct from yet subordinate to its national territory with a separate bureaucracy and separate civil servants. The region was viewed as a colonial settlement meant for economic exploitation and conversion into a metropolitan territory of the Reich by means of state-directed immigration and extermination.242 Here the Germans started by smashing what had existed in their revolution to “develop” the east. Only after did they get down to the business to find legal forms for the new fait accompli created.
German economic theorists saw the GG as ripe for exploitation. Their plans envisioned the development of preexisting economic structure there in order to later envelope the GG into the Reich-proper. Hitler viewed it as a military spring-board for his main prize – German living space at the expense of a conquered Soviet Union. Frank echoed these visions when speaking of the GG as the Reich’s Nebenland, or borderland, and first colonial territory. While constituting a component of the German sphere of influence, he hoped to see the region absorbed into the Altreich in the future.243
As a colony, the GG received a specific administrative character and structure in that it was neither a separate state from the Reich, nor a protectorate; nor did it constitute a component portion of the greater Reich. Rather, it became its own quasi-state meant to function in the Reich’s racial, political, and economic interests but was separated from it with an administrative border, a separate internal currency and foreign currency exchange.
However, it did contain simplified forms of Reich principles in administrative, legislative and judiciary sectors. It was directly subordinate to the Führer who personally appointed the general governor.244 Its exclusive administrative structure, as well as the later official change
242 David Furber, “Near as Far in the Colonies: The Nazi Occupation of Poland,” The International History Review vol. 26 no. 3 (September 2004), 551-553. Besides the General Government, the four other colonies created were the Warthegau, Danzig-West Prussia, Zichenau and East Upper Silesia. Even though they were annexed directly into the Reich, they were treated to carious colonial experiments. Concerning the conquest of Poland and creation of the GG, Furber compared it to the Italian conquest and reorganization of Ethopia.
243 Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej (AIPN) Warszawa, Dziennik Hansa Franka (DHF), GK 95/2, Protokoll über die 1. Konferenz der Abteilungleiter, December 2, 1939, pp. 18-19. As early as the summer of 1940, Frank submitted plans to the Reich Chancellery to fully incorporate the GG into the Reich by a Führer decree. In 1942, the Reich interior ministry proposed the GG be incorporated in the form of a Reichsgaue. Both plans were ultimately rejected. Frank also commissioned Bühler to prepare a study into the potential for a complete transfer of the GG to the Reich administration. The General Governor even snewed of the GG one day becoming a “homogenous Reichsgau” led by a Reichsstatthalter. IPN, GK 95/20, Tagebuch 1942: August bis September, pp. 202-205; GK 95/20, Abschließende Betrachtungen zur Entwicklung des letzten Vierteljahres (August 28, 1942), pp. 216-217.
244 Majer, “Non-Germans” under the Third Reich…, 268-269; Marek Mączyński, Organizacyjno-prawne aspekty funkcjonowania administracji bezpieczeństwa i porządku publicznego dla zajętych obszarów polskich w latach 1939-1945. Ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem Krakowa jako stolicy Generalnego Gubernatorstwa (Kraków: Wydawnictwo PROMO, 2012), 153-154. For example, Reich criminal law or the Civil Code of the Reich were either adopted substanially or in full. Reich judgements could be enforced in matters of law or judicial assistance. Furthermore, Frank sought to achieve a certain harmony between the GG and Reich with the aim of an immediate customs and economic union.
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of its title from the ‘General Government for Occupied Polish Territories’ to simply the
‘General Government’ diminished any left-over illusions of it being the prewar home of the Polish nation. This change represented the desire to forsake any affiliation with the Polish people, prewar sovereignty and the state as, in German eyes, it became extinct. Since the prewar Polish state was extinct, treatment of occupied territory was viewed by the Germans as an internal Reich matter; something outside the jurisdiction of international laws. As such, German confiscations, expropriations, destruction, looting, mass-murder and extermination were “legal measures of the internal German state powers in domestic German territories of those belonging to the German Grossraum.” To non-Germans, the change in nomenclature left the “new political creation up in the air without any territorial foundation.”245 With Frank at the helm, the central GG administration consisted of 12 departments.246
Hans Frank ruled his colony like his own, private kingdom. At the opening of the German judicial system in the GG, he urged German judges to develop a “colonial, legal system.” As he saw it, and as Nazis viewed their role for the east, his appointment took on a historic, messianic role – he was entrusted with the task of turning Poland into an ideal, Germanic territory. He spoke of his position after the war as one driven to contribute to the triumph of national socialism: “In my own sphere I did everything that could possibly be expected of a man who believes in the greatness of his people and who is filled with fanaticism for the greatness of his country, in order to bring about the victory of Adolf Hitler…”247 Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who criticized the haste of Frank’s decisions and work, summarized his rule: “Frank feels more like the king of Poland than a representative of the Reich… Frank does not govern, he rules… King Stanislaus, as the old party comrades refer to Frank, seems himself to be a Polish ruler and is surprised that the guard does not honor him when he enters into any German official building.”248 Being the ruler of his own territory and a life-long admirer of Hitler, he soon became a ‘little Hitler,’
convincing himself and others around him that he answered to no one but the Führer. He viewed himself as Hitler’s untouchable right-hand man. Karl Lasch, the then governor of the Radom District, described his brother-in-law Frank as such:
He was not… an example to us. He spent his time wandering from palace to palace in a magnificent limousine with a guard of honor, listening to music, entertaining, and attending banquets. There is nothing about him that is natural, nothing that is straightforward: everything is a theatrical pose, serving to satisfy his arrogance and intoxication with power. His flatterers have persuaded him of his resemblance to Mussolini, assuring him that he is destined to play the same role as il Duce… Whether
245 Majer, “Non-Germans” under the Third Reich…, 265-266; Czesław Madajczyk, Generalna Gubernia w planach hitlerowskich (Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1961), 34-48. The change in name designation occurred on July 12, 1940.
246 Departments of: Internal Affairs, Finance, Justice, Economy, Food and Agriculture, Forestry, Labor, Propaganda, Science and Education, Building (infrastructure), Railways and Post.
247 AIPN, DHF, GK 95/4, Tagebuch 1940: Zweiter Band – April bis Juni, pp. 44-45; Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, vol. 12 (Nuremberg 1947), 6.
248 Schrenk, Hans Frank…, 151-152; 160.
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consciously or unconsciously, Hans Frank began aping Hitler. He began using Hitlerian catchphrases… He established his own Berghof in the hills of Zakopane. He certainly did have something in common with an amateur play-actor thirsting for a heroic role.249
A valuable insight into the feudal style of life among the Nazi elite of the GG was conveyed by Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte, a guest of Frank’s at his private residence – the royal Wawel Castel, renamed the Burg. In 1944, he published his recollections there in the ironically entitled Kaputt. He described his reaction upon entering the general governor’s office:
On Frank’s command two large, glazed doors were opened and we entered the loggia.
“Here is the German Burg” said Frank, showing with a broad arm movement the immense silhouette of the Wawel, cut off sharply by the backdrop of blinding white snow… The frost was so cold that our eyes watered. I closed mine for a moment. “It looks like a dream, doesn’t it?” asked Frank.
Sitting across from Frank – the “German king of Poland” – at his immense, mahogany table adorned with two bronze candelabras, where he deliberated over the future of Poland, Malaparte wrote:
Frank sat across from me in a high, stiff-backed chair, as if this were the throne of the Jagiellonians or Sobieskis and was seriously convinced that he was the embodiment of Poland’s royal, chivalrous traditions. A naïve pride glistened on his face with pale, flushed cheeks on which an eagle nose accented a will of complete vanity and uncertainty. Shiny black hair, combed to the back, revealed a high forehead, one white with a shade of ivory…
“All the people of the New Europe” said Frank, “and the Poles, first and foremost, should feel proud having in Hitler a just and austere father. Do you know what the Poles think of us? That we are a nation of barbarians.” “Does this offend you” I asked with a grin. “We are a nation of masters, not barbarians: Herrenvolk. My one ambition” declared Frank, resting his hands on the edge of the table and leaning back,
“is to raise the Polish nation to an honorable position within European civilization.”250
The administrative structure of the GG itself further convinced Frank of his Hitler-like role there. A March 1941 directive expanding administrative functions reconfirmed its uniform character. Executive power fell into the hands of the secretary of state – Josef Bühler – and his deputy while the power of the general governor centered around providing the executive with direction or guidelines, leading the most important meetings, and representing the GG beyond its borders. To better illustrate this division in western political terms, if the General Government were to function on the basis of a state, Bühler served as its ‘prime minister’ while Frank was ‘head of state.’ In other words, Bühler governed and Frank ruled;
the later de facto possessing administrative competencies and the former de jure executing
249 Quoted in Martyn Housden, Hans Frank: Lebensraum and the Holocaust (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 81-82; 85-86.
250 Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt, trans. Barbara Sieroszewska (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 2000), 84-85; 103.
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them. This administrative structure, with comprehensive powers of the general governor, were modeled on the status of foreign states or autonomous regions.251
Along with its borders, Poland’s former administrative structure was also dismantled;
except at the lowest town and village levels. A key issue faced by GG administrators was how a small-number of Germans were to rule over so many non-Germans; a true colonial conundrum. Encompassing 150 thousand km2 by 1942, the GG contained 18 million inhabitants: 80% Polish, 12% Jewish, 6% Ukrainian, 1% German and 1% other.252 Overcoming this problem meant creating an administration which combined Nazi racial doctrine toward non-Aryans with a legal codex demeaning their right of existence; something following the precedent Timothy Snyder termed “in ink” and “in blood” created after the destruction of Poland.253
In total, the GG was divided into 4 districts: Kraków, Lublin, Radom, and Warsaw.
Later, in 1941, a fifth Galicia District was added. Each was administered by a governor appointed by Frank. Each district was subdivided into counties (Kreise), patterned after prewar Polish ones, and headed by a Kreishauptmann. Their deputies – Landkommissare – administered sub-divisions of counties. Urban-districts were also created, headed by Stadthauptmann. These third-tier administrators were often Nazi party leaders, combining administrative and ideological power. In theory, they controlled everything at the local levels, managing all institutions and aspects of social, political, cultural religious, and economic life.
No legal transactions could take place without his knowledge. He oversaw the rationing of food and industrial products while also deciding over property confiscation and population deportations. No public employee could quit or be hired without his permission.254
GG structures and names given to them were borrowed from Austria-Hungary. As the majority of its territory previously belonged to Austria before 1918, it was hoped that this
251 Majer, “Non-Germans” under the Third Reich..., 267; Mączyński, Organizacyjno-prawne aspekty funkcjonowania administracji..., 156-157.
252 Max du Prel (ed), Das Generalgouvernement (Würzburg: Konrad Triltsch, 1942), xv.
253 Snyder, Black Earth…, 106-107. Legally, Poland ceased to exist following the signing of the German-Soviet Pact of Friendship and Economic Cooperation on September 28, 1939. Concerning the bloody aspect, it was during the Polish campaign and the construction of occupation regimes – whether in the GG or in the annexed territories – that Reinhard Heidrich first unleashed the Einsatzgruppen, task forces of policemen and SS members led usually by either party or SS men of long standing. The liquidation of Poles included eliminating the intelligentsia or anyone simply deemed an enemy to the occupiers. The bloody work of the Einsatzgruppen in occupied Poland became a training ground of sorts for more brutal work later in the east.
254 Maria Wąsik, “Urząd Kreishauptmanna w hitlerowskim aparacie władzy w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie” in Czesław Pilichowski (ed), Zbrodnie i sprawcy: Ludobójstwo hitlerowskie przed sądem ludzkości i historii (Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1980), 519-525; Chodakiewicz, Between Nazis and Soviets..., 74; Housden, Hans Frank: Lebensraum and the Holocaust, 124. An ethical problem which many Poles encountered when working as low-level civil servants was the mandated declaration all non-Germans were obligated to sign; something introduced in November 1940. The signator agreed to faithfully complete their responsabilities in obedience to the German administration while declaring all ties or allegiances sworn to the Polish state or Polish political organizations void. Maciej Mitera, Zwyczajny faszyzm. Położenie prawne obywateli II Rzeczypospolitej w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie 1939-1944 (Warszawa: Agencja Wydawnicza CB, 2017), 102.
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would cause the least amount of friction.255 All levels of the administration were headed by a motley array of lawyers from Munich, surplus civil servants from Austria or former Reich prisoners. A problem which beset the GG from the outset was the lack of skilled administrators; something which throughout the war Frank lamented over. The problem was such that even the Reich foreign office contacted the Reich interior ministry, requesting for lists of ethnic Germans suitable for administrative duties. Needless to say, the quality of administrators was overall rather poor. According to Bogdan Musiał, they were common criminals, failures, adventurers and soldiers of fortune, disciplinarily transferred and previously sacked officials, “visionaries of the East” and fanatical Nazis with no knowledge of Polish.256 At the lowest administrative levels, often non-German locals such as Poles or Ukrainians were used. This was deemed by Frank to be self-administration for the fremdvölkische peoples of the GG.
The GG administration was based on the concept of “Unified Administration;”
regarded as the ideal form of administration for colonial and semi colonial territories by experts. All levels of administration were based on the Führerprinzip. Authority lay in the hands of one man, the head of the administration at a given level. In each district, administrative functionaries were fully subordinate to Kreishauptmänner who in turn reported directly to their governors who answered to Frank. In strengthening the lowest levels of administration, Frank hoped to alleviate the highest levels from tedious matters so it could govern smoothly. In turn, this meant keeping mid-level administration in check so that no district governor could supersede his authority. This pyramidal system of ‘checks and balances’ was held together by Frank’s principle of “unity of administration” (Einheit der Verwaltung), something he hoped would be a model for the Reich. His theory sought to prevent government agencies from competing for jurisdiction while also preventing any unnecessary interference from Berlin. His attempts at creating a country, rather than leaving the region as a labor reserve subject to its own fate as Hitler saw it, caused much criticism among top Reich officials. Goebbels expressed his distaste: “[Frank] wants to create out of Poland a model country. He is moving too far. This should not be done and he should not be doing it…” As of 1943, the GG numbered just under 30 thousand administrative workers.257 Frank contested that introducing law and order into his territory equated to the GG’s path to Germanization.
A problem which beset the GG throughout the war was the clash between law and racial ideology. Formerly Hitler’s private lawyer and a relatively senior figure in the Reich, Frank strongly identified himself with the Notification of German law. He served as president
255 Furber, “Near and Far in the Colonies…,” 552-553.
256 Bogdan Musiał, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung und Judenverfolgung im Generalgouvernement. Eine Fallstudie zum Distrikt Lublin 1939-1944 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 85-86; Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik..., 52; 71-72; Burleich, Germany turns Eastwards..., 187. In January 1944, Frank estimated that (excluding railway workers and policemen), there were 4-5 thousand administrators in the GG.
257 Majer, “Non-Germans” under the Third Reich..., 276-284; Winstone, The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe…, 43-44; Schenk, Hans Frank..., 151-158.
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of the Academy of German Law, which he founded, as well as head of the constitutional law
of the Academy of German Law, which he founded, as well as head of the constitutional law