"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (50 page)

For the “non-German” population, the special status of the “German” municipalities as a symbol of the integration of the municipality into the German legal system entailed substantial discrimination. Local self-government was abolished in favor of the Führer principle, and the Party was accorded farreaching rights of participation,
⁵⁹
leading to a form of “secondary administration” by the NSDAP.
⁶⁰
The only residents of the municipality with active and passive voting rights were Reich citizens and ethnic Germans, at least twenty-five years of age, who had resided for a minimum of one year in the municipality and who enjoyed civic rights; the “non-Germans” were merely “inhabitants” without any legal status.
⁶¹

Those municipalities in which German municipal law did not apply were administered by municipal or town commissioners with varying qualifications and enjoying substantial powers, in accordance with general instructions issued by the
Landräte.
The provisions of general law (e.g., police law) regarding the powers of the mayor did not apply.
⁶²
However, the municipal or town commissioners, although local policy authorities, did not have their own administration. The police remained under the control of the (staunchly National Socialist)
Landräte.
⁶³
The Polish village headmen of the rural municipalities, who under no circumstances were allowed to be called mayors (Bürgermeister), because this was a term under German law,
⁶⁴
were employed as assistants to the municipal commissioners or replaced by ethnic Germans. However, pertinent reports show that this rule by municipal commissioners appears to have been more lenient in the treatment of “non-Germans” than administration under the German Municipal Code: a “loyal” chief administrative official could therefore allow “humane impulses,” that is, take the needs of the Polish and Jewish inhabitants much more into consideration, whereas in a municipality under the German Municipal Code, with its strong links to the Party, this was more difficult or even impossible. As far as these local administrators were concerned, the introduction of the German Municipal Code was therefore viewed as undesirable.
⁶⁵

The private sphere did not remain untouched by the general policy of segregation. Because of the numerous family ties between Germans and Poles, the policy led to extreme directives, thus encouraging—as demanded by the political leadership—not only the isolation of the “non-Germans” but also the severing of
all
inhabitants of the Warthegau from events in the Reich, establishing a veil behind which the administrative policy, with its aim of separation from the Reich administration and ruthless ethnic policies could proceed with as little outside attention as possible. At the request of especially the Party, visits to the Warthegau from outside were to be discouraged, especially during the late war years, to avoid any “undersirable contacts,” and visits by Reich Germans to Polish relatives were to be prevented “wherever possible.
⁶⁶
To force the departure of such undesirable visitors, the district president of Posen proposed exclusion orders by the Gestapo.
⁶⁷
The
Landrat
of Schrimm simply banned such visits.
⁶⁸
Of course, these administrative measures were not able to eliminate altogether the numerous family ties existing between Poles and Germans. Instead of a cautious, flexible policy of adaptation, the ethnic segregation policy was pursued stubbornly and systematically, producing far-reaching and cruel results. This is particularly evident from the treatment of illegitimate German-Polish children.

Because there were numerous contacts between Germans and Polish women producing illegitimate children (around two thousand by 1944) despite all the bans, state and Party agencies endeavored to implement a segregation of these children as well into ethnically “undesirable” and “desirable” (i.e., suitable for Germanization) children. If the Polish mothers were considered acceptable in terms of National Socialist ethnic policy, they could keep the children. But if the mothers proved to be “not desirable,” the children were taken away from them. With no decision forthcoming from the RFSS/RKF (
Reichsführer
-SS and Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood), the Posen
Gau
Youth Welfare and
Gau
Social Welfare Offices suggested subjecting these “50 percent children” first to an “ethnic examination by the Racial and Settlement Office of the SS,” which if positive, would result in the children’s being sent initially to foster homes in the Wartheland and later to German foster parents in the Altreich.
⁶⁹
The arrangement finally decided by the office of the Posen
Reichsstatthalter
envisaged the following graduated scheme: transfer of unmarried Polish mothers “suitable for Germanization” to the Altreich together with their children; ethnic examination of the remaining children, with “culling” of those “totally undesirable … for the German people”; gradual transfer of the remaining children classified as “desirable” to the
Gau
children’s home in Kalisch (Kalisz) and thence to the Altreich, to avoid the removal of the children from their mothers, “principally due to the very adverse effect on the Poles.”
⁷⁰

B. The Manifestations of Special Measures: Exceptional Regulations on the Basis of the General Law or Overt Special Legislation? (The Struggle over the Adoption of the Prussian Law of Police Administration)

The enactment of special legislative measures saw the political leadership facing the same question as before with the anti-Jewish laws in the Reich: should the appearance of nondiscrimination be maintained superficially and treatment under special legislation be implemented via special clauses, or could overt special legislation be adopted from the outset? Whereas the former path was chosen in the Altreich until 1938 for domestic and foreign political reasons (anti-Jewish laws in the form of general laws with special provisions, e.g., the Professional Civil Service Code), this approach was neither possible nor appropriate in the Eastern Territories. Nevertheless, it was understood that the technique of special legislation within the realm of general law could be implemented in the face of the vast majority of the local population only if the German element of the population was “fully oriented toward ethnic policies,”
¹
that is, was convinced of the need for the repression of the Poles and the Jews and would be able to ensure that the special legislation could be strictly applied; as many ethnically aware authorities bemoaned, this was certainly not the case. However, this principle of special legislation was also superfluous because no foreign policy considerations prohibited “calling a spade a spade”—openly announcing the repression of the Poles and the Jews as the objective of the policy. Furthermore, such consideration was viewed not only as no longer necessary but also as virtually a sign of weakness;
²
therefore, there was much pressure for the enactment of
overt
special legislation or administrative regulations as the only possible way, as had been pursued in the territory of the Altreich only with the adoption of overt anti-Jewish legislation from 1938.

This explains why German law was not adopted, or was adopted [
uno actu
] only from case to case,
³
although this method ran directly counter to the planned Germanization. The Reich Ministry of the Interior alleged that the new administrative structure was “not up to the global adoption of law” and neither was the general adoption of law appropriate “for reasons of population policy,”
⁴
arguments that barely concealed the true motive, the exclusion of the local population from the community of rights. The fields not affected by the adoption of law were correspondingly covered by overt special legislation in individual areas for Poles or Jews (the plan, cited above, for a comprehensive settlement of the legal situation of the Poles was never realized)
⁵
or—which was more often the case—remained completely unregulated and therefore had to be covered laboriously by the corresponding application of German law or acts of individual discretion (the application of “dubious principles”), which resulted in innumerable complaints and much irritation among the German population.
⁶
In particular, one issue never clarified during the entire period of occupation was that of the actual status of the “non-Germans” under special legislation, since only a few areas were legislated, the others being governed by internal guidelines.

The best example of the disputes surrounding the adoption of German law is provided by the struggle over the adoption of the Prussian Law of Police Administration in the Annexed Eastern Territories. This episode displays to the full the conflict between the traditional police authorities (Reich administration) and the revolutionary principles of the new
Partikulargewalten
(regional powers, e.g.,
Reichsgaue
) in the Eastern Territories;
⁷
it was not only a struggle about authority but also a fundamental conflict about whether legal criteria or those of police policy should apply to the “non-Germans.”

The initial position was that there were sufficient opportunities in legal terms to adopt Reich police law, as section 8 of the Decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor on the Organization and Administration of the Eastern Territories, issued on October 8, 1939, entitled the Reich minister of the interior to adopt Reich law and Prussian state law by decree, in consultation with the Reich minister responsible, and also authorized him to issue all implementing and supplementary regulations.
⁸
The primacy of Reich law was ultimately reinforced, as the Reich minister of the interior explained to the
Reichsstatthalter
of Danzing—West Prussia in a letter dated October 7, 1941, by the fact that the police regulations issued by the Reich minister on the basis of the Reich Police Decree of November 14, 1938, automatically applied to the Annexed Eastern Territories as well.
⁹

However, these decrees of the Reich minister concerned only peripheral areas. From the outset, political developments tended to concentrate the powers of police law in the new
Partikulargewalten.

As regards formal police law, the power of the administrative authorities in the Eastern Territories to issue police regulations was not explicitly governed anywhere, but it was tacitly claimed by the
Reichsstatthalter
on the basis of their comprehensive jurisdiction for the administration;
¹⁰
district presidents and
Landrat
offices also derived their powers to issue police regulations without any formal basis in law, on the basis of the Prussian Law of Police Administration or the Annexation Decree of October 8, 1939,
¹¹
because there was a need for “more rapid decisions, free from bureaucratic restraints.”
¹²
In contrast, the municipal commissioners, despite being local police authorities, were denied such a power to issue police regulations for political reasons, counter to section 28 of the Prussian Law of Police Administration.
¹³
However, the rural districts (
Landräte
) and the district presidents played a significant role only early on and were subsequently limited to subordinate matters. The central authorities (
Reichsstatthalter
), who made every effort to gather as many powers as possible, were of much greater importance. One example of this was the power, not customary under Reich law, in force in the Wartheland to reserve approval of key police regulations, in particular of all police regulations concerning the treatment of Poles and Jews. The formal justification used by the Posen (Pozna
)
Reichsstatthalter
was the argument that such regulations were of a fundamental nature requiring harmonization throughout the entire
Gau.
¹⁴

In contrast, the organization of substantive police law hinged crucially on the question of whether the police law in force in the Reich should also be observed in the Annexed Eastern Territories. An affirmative answer still meant that there were certain limitations on police encroachment into the personal sphere of “non-German” persons, as police law did not distinguish by race or nationality in this respect. Rejection of the validity of the principles of Reich police law meant that “non-German” inhabitants were ultimately deprived of the principle of legitimacy of the administration, that is, the application of the
rule of law,
and subject only to the political principles of police law enshrined in the “racial struggle.”