"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (31 page)

At root, this was merely the judicial expression of ideas that Hitler had already developed prior to 1933 for a graduated social organization of the populations within the future German power sphere. Accordingly, the lowest level of the new hierarchy was formed of the great mass of stateless “non-Germans” subject to special law, that is, without any kind of legal status; next came the class of privileged “non-Germans” granted protected status as a reward for loyal behavior. “Non-Germans” found worthy of “Germanization” were to enjoy conditional German subject status. Slated for such experiments were, first and foremost, the native populations (i.e., “non-Germans”) in the Occupied Eastern Territories, the General Government, and the Annexed Eastern Territories. Full German state subject status could be awarded to foreigners “of German extraction” on the basis of merit. The best example of this is the Führer decree dated May 19, 1943,
⁹⁷
which was issued at the urging of the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) shortly after the promulgation of the Twelfth Decree; it granted unrestricted German state subject status by means of collective naturalization to all foreigners “of German extraction”
⁹⁸
(with the exception of Poles and Czechs) who served in the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS, the Organisation Todt (the Reich agency that organized the compulsory labor in the occupied territories), and the police—as a way of recruiting volunteers from the non-German nations for service in the German ranks.
⁹⁹

The technical aspects of the semicolonial institutions of
conditional state subject
and
protected status
provide a foretaste of what the “non-Germans” in the occupied territories might have expected had this legislation been more fully implemented. In essence, they were police regulations that annulled the principle (still formally in effect even in the Nazi era) that the courts were not bound by administrative regulations, since they empowered the Reich Ministry of the Interior with administrative control over the legal standing of persons with protected status in a way that was binding even on the courts.
¹⁰⁰
To be sure, this could only take place with the consent of the RFSS/RKF and the Party Chancellery, for the treatment accorded to “non-Germans” was a political question for whose solution (among other things, the “neutralization of the harmful influence of foreign population elements”) the
Reichsführer
-SS in his capacity as Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood had been granted unlimited power by a secret Führer decree dated October 7, 1939;
¹⁰¹
and over this political matter the NSDAP, as the “guiding political force,” naturally had authoritative influence. Thus, responsibility for questions regarding the state subject status of “non-Germans” was taken away from the Reich minister of the interior, who was henceforth obliged to seek participation and mutual agreement from the Party Chancellery and the RKF regarding all regulations.
¹⁰²

The first examples, and the legal consequences, of such graduated forms of state subject status reveal the procedural details of these regulations. These were admittedly issued primarily for the Poles in the Annexed Eastern Territories. Nevertheless, they belong to the realm of law governing questions of citizenship for the entire territory of the Reich, since most of the Poles who came to acquire German state subject status were transplanted to the Reich itself, and thus they can probably be considered a model for the future treatment of all “non-German” persons later to be accepted into the German polity.

On the basis of the decree instituting the German Ethnic Classification List of March 4, 1941,
¹⁰³
the Polish population was divided into persons “capable of Germanization” (Class 3), persons “capable of re-Germanization” (Class 4), and persons with protected status. According to provisional regulations issued by the RFSS/RKF, persons “capable of Germanization” were those “of German descent” who had ties “to Polish culture” but who in their behavior inclined to German culture (including persons of Masurian, Kashubian, and Upper Silesian extraction). (Regulations that, according to the decree, were to be provided by the Reich Ministry of the Interior “in consensus” with the RFSS/RKF were never issued owing to disagreement over the definition of
Polish
ethnicity, because the former had approached the problem from the opposite end and, early on, had already fixed the definition of
German
ethnicity.)
¹⁰⁴
Considered capable of re-Germanization were persons of German descent who had “merged politically with Polish culture.”
¹⁰⁵
Persons “capable of Germanization” acquired conditional state subject status upon registration in the German Ethnic Classification List,
¹⁰⁶
whereas that status had to be
granted
to persons “capable of re-Germanization.” All remaining inhabitants of the Eastern Territories were considered to be stateless—with protected status. The legal protection accorded the various classes differed according to their status. We have already discussed the de facto prohibition on marriage, which had been in force since 1942 for marriages between stateless Polish persons of protected status and German state subjects or Poles “capable of Germanization,”
¹⁰⁷
as well as the prohibition under section 8, paragraph 1, of the Decree on Protected Status of April 25, 1943,
¹⁰⁸
which proscribed marriage between persons of protected status and persons of other categories. Such provisions clearly revealed the intent to restrict the intermingling of members of the Polish nation with other classes and ultimately to bring about its extinction.

A dense system of graduated measures served to deepen the ostracism of those with protected status from the privileged Poles listed in the German Ethnic Classification List, while simultaneously introducing a precise sequential hierarchy of rights and obligations among the diverse privileged classes. Thus, Poles “inclined toward German ethnicity” in Class 3 of the German Ethnic Classification List (that is, Poles of German extraction) enjoyed a status that can only be described as advantageous in comparison with that of Poles in Class 4, who were merely “capable of re-Germanization”—if one uses the absolute lack of rights accorded to “non-Germans” as the standard of measurement.

Thus, under directives issued by the
Reichsführer
-SS,
¹⁰⁹
the Poles of Class 3 of the German Ethnic Classification List were subject to residential restrictions “necessitated by the objective of Germanization.” The goal was to uproot these persons, to tear them loose from their old environment, and yet
not
to integrate them fully into a new one. This put them under the Damoclean sword of losing all rights if they failed to behave in an acceptable manner. Therefore, they were in principle to be “utilized” only in the Altreich. Members of Class 3 of the German Ethnic Classification List already resettled (in the General Government) were prohibited from returning home. Upon emigrating to the Altreich, their farm holdings were subject to mandatory sale (exclusively to the offices of the RKF or the Main Trustee Office East), in order “to prevent these persons from taking root in the Eastern Territories.” They were not permitted to join the Party or the Civil Service or take other “trusted or leading positions” in the public service; however, they could be admitted in subordinate, nonindependent capacities. The confiscation of their real property remained in effect pending expiration of the conditional quality of their state subject status (after no later than ten years); their agricultural holdings, taken away from them and occupied by German resettlers, were not to be “returned for the purpose of owner management and cultivation.”
¹¹⁰
Nevertheless, public management and administration by commissariat of their property was discontinued upon their admission to the German Ethnic Classification List: “In the interests of Germanization, it [their property] should be protected as far as possible, to the extent that it could in any way be useful in establishing a livelihood in the Altreich.”
¹¹¹
Furthermore, certain modest cultural rights were preserved; thus, they were free to attend technical colleges, but they needed permission to matriculate at universities.
¹¹²
They were expected to meet considerable obligations, such as labor and military service.
¹¹³

By contrast, the members of Class 4 of the German Ethnic Classification List, which in the terrible idiom of the offices of the
Reichsführer
-SS/RKF was comprised of “actively Polonized persons of German extraction,”
¹¹⁴
were subject to much harsher regulations,
¹¹⁵
however much they may have appeared to be “at an advantage” in comparison with those Poles who merely had protected status. In order to achieve “complete separation from the Polish environment,” for example, this group was subject to compulsory resettlement in the Altreich, where they were liable for conscription into the armed services, with exception made for those selected out as racially inferior and/or politically incriminated, who were sent to concentration camps.
¹¹⁶
Prior to resettlement in the Altreich, they were subject to almost the same restrictions as stateless Poles in the Annexed Eastern Territories: no admission to the Party, no attendance at schools of higher learning or universities, and continued confiscation of property. The only area in which they were given equal status with Germans was that of food supply.
¹¹⁷
And even after their placement in the Altreich,
¹¹⁸
their property remained confiscated and was sold or otherwise turned to account by the office of the higher SS and police leader (HSSPF) in its capacity as deputy of the RKF. However, an amount not to exceed RM 2,000 per annum was placed at their disposal. One coercive measure was the provision that the confiscated property would be restored when “Germanization” was completed.

Other conditions imposed upon the Poles “capable of re-Germanization” by the offices of the Gestapo were as follows: that they promptly seek out and join an auxiliary unit of the NSDAP (children were to apply for membership in the Hitler Youth), that during the first five years of residence in the Altreich they change their place of domicile only with permission from the responsible officer of the HSSPF, that they contract marriages and take up studies at institutions of higher learning only with permission of the HSSPF, that they assume no legal guardianship, and that any “non-German” names be replaced with German ones. Moreover, each family of Polish resettlers in this class was assigned a political watchdog, called an “adviser” for “aid in re-Germanization,” whose job was to make regular reports on the political behavior of the family to the offices of the HSSPF and the responsible Gestapo office.

Severe penalties were imposed for those who dared to refuse the favor of “re-Germanization,” preferring instead to remain Poles. In cases of “resistance to re-Germanization,” application was to be made for revocation of naturalization; furthermore, this was to be brought to the attention of the responsible Gestapo office in order to initiate appropriate “state police measures” (internment in a concentration camp). In cases in which children were “detrimentally influenced by their parents” and said influence could not be removed by “state police measures” (police supervision or confinement in a concentration camp), the children were taken away from their parents and placed in “politically irreproachable families.”
¹¹⁹
Taken all together, Poles deemed “capable of re-Germanization” were subject to hardships that were often far greater than those suffered by Polish persons of protected status.

Later on there were further gradations undertaken within individual classes, the aim being to provide persons who had actively taken the part of Germany with a better status than the total disfranchisement (of the person of protected status), since the system was dependent upon their labor and cooperation. Thus, in a directive dated January 3, 1944,
¹²⁰
the
Reichsführer
-SS/RKF created the class of so-called
privileged persons of protected status
, which consisted of “German-Jewish
Mischlinge
who had actively taken the part of Germany,” “Poles from Upper Silesia who have fought on the German side, and possibly also Ukrainians, Czechs in the Annexed Eastern Territories, and persons capable of Germanization.” This gave them a status somewhere between that of stateless Poles and Poles listed in Class 4 of the German Ethnic Classification List.

In sum, it must be emphasized that “non-Germans” who were granted protected or conditional state subject status could by no means consider themselves in any way privileged. As was frequently the case with National Socialist legal constructs, this was a pseudoconcept behind which there was nothing, or at least very little, of legal substance. This is particularly true of the institution of protected status, which in reality afforded no protection whatsoever, as shown by the transportation of Polish civilian laborers into the Reich and the deportation of Poles from the Annexed Eastern Territories to the General Government.
¹²¹
Nor could the institution of conditional state subject status be seen as in any way equivalent to the legal position of German state subjects. In reality, all this was merely a means of implementing the all-dominating principle of dividing and segregating the various population groups (
divide et impera
). The privilege accorded to conditional state subjects consisted in being liable to the same duties and obligations as full state subjects, while equal rights were withheld by means of numerous prohibitions and injunctions on the grounds that the affected individual had to be integrated cautiously and gradually into the “German
Volk
community.”
¹²²