"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (250 page)

3.
Cf. Huber,
Verfassungsrecht des Groβdeutschen Reiches
(1939), 181.

4.
Figures from the memorandum of November 25, 1939, from the Race Policy Office of the NSDAP (Nuremberg doc. NO-3732, 6; reproduced in
Doc. Occ.
5:2 ff., 8); these concur with Reich Ministry of the Interior data transmitted confidentially to the Supreme Reich Authorities on November 13, 1939 (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Berlin-Dahlem, State Secretary Pfundtner, Rep.; 320/125). The absolute figures show minor variations among the different sources.

5.
According to the memorandum referred to in note 4, there were 3.6 million Poles (85.1%), 323,000 Jews (7.6%), and 309,000 Germans (7.3%) living in the Wartheland as of fall 1939.

6.
The extermination campaigns carried out by the
Einsatzgruppen
(special operations squads) of the SIPO began in the very first days of the war; more details in Adam,
Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich
(1972), 247 ff. By 1940 the Jewish population had already been almost completely deported from the Annexed Eastern Territories or concentrated in the ghetto of Łód
, which was administered exclusively by the SS and the police; more details in Broszat,
Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik
(1961), 68 f.; a number of Jews in the Wartheland (especially the eastern part) lived under close surveillance in ghettos without walls until spring 1942; see Hohenstein,
Wartheländisches Tagebuch
(1963), 144 f., 214 f., 233.

7.
See the memorandum of November 25, 1939, by the Race Policy Office of the NSDAP (see note 4 above); also the secret report dated January 1940 by the Academy for German Law, “Rechtsgestaltung deutscher Polenpolitik nach volkspolitischen Gesichtspunkten” (Nuremberg doc. PS-661; IMT XXVI, 206 ff., 208, 210 f.). Full details can be found in Greiser,
Der Aufbau im Osten
(1942), in which the Gauleiter of the Wartheland boasts of a future “German East.”

8.
Summary in Huber,
Verfassungsrecht des Groβdeutschen Reiches
(1939), 181 ff.; and Blau,
Das Ausnahmerecht für die Juden in Deutschland
(1965).

9.
See, e.g., the statements by the Reich minister of justice in
Richterbriefe
nos. 19 and 26 (BA R 22/4002).

10.
Tautphaeus, “Der Richter im Reichsgau Wartheland” (1941).

11.
On the illegality of the treatment of the Polish population under international law, especially in the field of penal law, see Steiniger and Leszczy
ski,
Das Urteil im Juristenprozeβ
, 64 ff.

12.
See the statements by Reich Minister of Justice Thierack on the position of judges and the public prosecutor on the occasion of the inauguration of a new chief public prosecutor (Steinberg) in Posen (Pozna
n). According to Thierack, the public saw the judge as the person responsible for the administration of justice. His job was to make judicial decisions, and therefore he needed freedom of judgment. His standing in the judicial establishment was based on the fact that he drew his authority from the power of the Führer as supreme judge of the nation. Thus, only the Führer could hand down directives to a judge, who furthermore was answerable only to his conscience (
Ostdeutscher Beobachter
, January 13, 1944, 1–2).

13.
Speech in February 1942 on the duties of the public prosecutor in the Warthegau (
DJ
[1942]: 188); similarly, Tautphaeus, “Der Richter im Reichsgau Wartheland,” 1941, 2467.

14.
Speech by the Reich governor of the Wartheland, A. Greiser, before the presiding judges of the courts of appeal and special courts and members of the Posen Court of Appeal (
DJ
[1942]: 532; undated, presumably August 1942).

15.
Report on a meeting of the attorneys general and prison directors of the Wartheland,
Ostdeutscher Beobachter
, July 25, 1943, 5.

16.
Chief public prosecutor, Posen,
DJ
(1942): 188.

17.
Chief public prosecutor, Posen,
Ostdeutscher Beobachter
, June 24, 1940.

18.
Froböß, “Zwei Jahre Justiz im Warthegau” (1941).

19.
Speech by R. Freisler on the occasion of the inauguration of the presiding judge of the court of appeal (Block) and the chief public prosecutor (Dr. Steimer) on June 12, 1941, in the new court of appeal district of Kattowitz (Katowice),
DJ
(1941): 716 f.

20.
The Warthegau was described by the presiding judge of the Posen Court of Appeal, for example, as the “
Gau
of the soldiers on the front” (
Ostdeutscher Beobachter
, January 13, 1944, 1).

21.
Statements by Reich Minister of Justice Thierack on the occasion of the inauguration of Chief Public Prosecutor Steinberg in Posen (
Ostdeutscher Beobachter
, January 13, 1944, 1–2). In his situation report of January 8, 1941, the presiding judge of the Danzig (Gda
sk) Court of Appeal recommended that judges from the East be used in the Annexed Eastern Territories as far as possible in order to avoid passing overly lenient judgments on Poles. Anyone “who has grown up in the national-racial struggle in the East knows better than the judges of the Altreich that Poles are to be treated differently from Germans” (BA R 22/3360). (On account of a shortage of law officers, however, the majority of judges and public prosecutors did come from the Altreich.) The careers of the senior judiciary certainly largely followed these ideas. The presiding judge of the court of appeal and the chief public prosecutor of Danzig; the presiding judge of the Königsberg Court of Appeal, who was also responsible for the Zichenau District Court (
Landgericht
); and the chief public prosecutor of Königsberg and the presiding judge of the Posen Court of Appeal all had several years or even decades of “Eastern experience” in the administration and judiciary (more details in
Handbuch der Justizverwaltung
[1942]; regarding the presiding judge of the Posen Court of Appeal, see also the
Ostdeutscher Beobachter
of April 3, 1942; Fröboß personal files, State Archive Pozna
, OLG [State Superior Court] Posen, 264, 265; and report on the inauguration in
DJ
[1940]: 409 f., R. Freisler,
DJ
[1940]: II, 1125 ff.) and were considered radical “stalwarts of the national-racial struggle.” This also goes for the chief public prosecutors of Posen (there were three in all) (see
Ostdeutscher Beobachter
, April 30, 1940, p. 5; June 18, 1940, p. 5; July 29, 1943, p. 3; January 13, 1944). Only the chief public prosecutor of Kattowitz was without “Eastern experience,” and he requested transfer to the Reich territory on grounds of health in the spring of 1943, after the Reich Ministry of Justice had already taken steps to transfer him (presumably on account of his critical reports on police practices).

22.
According to information by Freisler in
DJ
(1940): II, 1125 ff., 1127, the judges and public prosecutors came from the court of appeal districts of Berlin, Brunswick, Breslau (Wrocław), Celle, Darmstadt, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hamm, Kassel, Kiel, Munich, Naumburg, Stettin (Szczecin), and Zweibrücken, plus staff who had worked in Posen before 1918 or had been born in the old province of Posen, and a few “upholders of the law” from Bessarabia and Burgenland. Later the judiciary took on a “whole new look” as a result of the “return of the Baltic Germans” (1130). Personal details and material on the careers and Party-political activity of judges from the Warthegau will be found in the State Archive Pozna
—(a) municipal courts:
Signatur Landgericht
Posen (64, 65, 70, 71, 73, 74, 80, 83, 84, 86, 89 et passim; Posen Court of Appeal, 1232, 1143, 1355); (b) district courts:
Signatur Oberlandesgericht
Posen 1286 (regarding the presiding judge of the Kalisch [Kalisz] District Court), 285 (regarding the presiding judge of the Gnesen [Gniezno] District Court), 1352 (regarding the presiding judge of the Leslau District Court), 560 (regarding the presiding judge of the Ostrowo [Ostrów Wielkopolski] District Court), 582 (regarding the presiding judge of the Łód
District Court), 1168 (regarding the presiding judge of the Lissa [Leszno] District Court), 191 (regarding the presiding judge of the Hohensalza [Inowrocław] District Court); also Posen District Court, 78 and
Gauamtsblatt der NSDAP
—
Gau Wartheland
—1/40, of May 1, 1940, p. 12 (regarding the presiding judge of the Posen District Court). Personnel records of the court of appeal directors from the Warthegau district courts:
Signatur Landgericht
62, 63, 82, 87;
Oberlandesgericht
Posen 103a; 1204, 1187, 177, 907, 1251, Bl. 1, 5, 83, 90; 414; 405, 663; 865; 1363, 324; 540; 1387; (c) Posen Court of Appeal,
Signatur
Posen Court of Appeal 85 and 1311, 265, Bl. 3.