"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (57 page)

There is also a rather curious phenomenon: in the Germanization of Poles, the Reich Ministry of the Interior pursued a liberal policy, in that for the two criteria “German extraction” and “bonds to Germanness” (“declared belief in Germanness”), it laid the emphasis on German extraction if evidence of a “declared belief in Germanness” proved difficult, with the aim of ensuring that “no German blood was lost” and “could be used by non-German
Volkstum
” (no. 2, par. 2, of the administrative decree of the Reich Ministry of the Interior of March 13, 1941);
⁴⁷
it also included “Polonized” persons of German extraction. In contrast, the departments of the RFSS/RKF, otherwise the most forceful champions of the extraction (racial) principle, pursued a restrictive policy to exclude as many applicants as possible from German state subject status. In view of this restrictive policy, the practices of the interior administration were to be undermined and outmaneuvered by the requirement of additional racial examination of “non-German” persons whose German extraction was not unambiguous, as mentioned above (RFSS/RKF guidelines of September 12, 1940,
⁴⁸
in conjunction with sec. 2, par. 2c, of the Reich Ministry of the Interior decree of March 13, 1941). It is obvious that this examination slowed down the process, since the concept of German extraction had not been defined and the interior administration decided in favor of the “reclamation of German blood” in case of doubt, whereas substantially fewer individuals were able to withstand the strict racial examination by the departments of the RFSS/RKF. To make the chaos complete, a complicating factor was that the heads of the administration in the Annexed Eastern Territories, insisting on their administrative autonomy, frequently rejected regulations from the center, whether they originated from the Reich Ministry of the Interior or the departments of the RFSS/RKF.

The consequence of all this was that the concepts and conditions for deciding Germanization remained unsolved, vague, and fluid right up to the end of the Third Reich, thereby making a substantial contribution to the conceptual chaos that characterized the National Socialist regime in the sphere of the (ethnic-racial) “New European Order.” As it proved impossible in the Reich to define clearly the concept of “German or related blood” or the concept of the “non-German,” so it proved impossible to agree on a consistent definition for the Annexed Eastern Territories of what percentage of German blood was necessary to classify an individual as “of German extraction” and thus “capable of Germanization” and which persons were to be deemed “non-Germans” and thus “not capable of Germanization.”
⁴⁹
Germanization practice in the new
Gaue
thus varied considerably. Each administrative chief of the new
Reichsgaue
acted independently on the basis of his own political notions.
⁵⁰
The brutal classification of persons as “capable of Germanization” or “not capable of Germanization” often penetrated into individual families, exposing them to unbearable strains or even tearing them asunder indefinitely.
⁵¹

In this era of general conceptual chaos, other key terms also remained unresolved. For instance, the terms
Pole
and
Polish ethnic origin
were never defined. As a result, the individual authorities often acted independently without mutual consultation. As the district president of Hohensalza (Inowrocław) in the Warthegau complained eloquently, the “inconsistency of the nationality policy” meant that the administrative authorities responsible for German Ethnic Classification List matters were still unaware in April 1942 (more than a year after the German Ethnic Classification List Decree) of the details of the racial examination procedure used by the Racial and Settlement Office (of the SS) in the Germanization of Poles, “which has been practiced here for some time” and “[should have] been coordinated with the German Ethnic Classification List procedure.”
⁵²
In essence, the concept of the Pole was and remained a political concept that could not be interpreted racially, so the administrative authorities spoke much more cautiously, not of Poles but of “members of the Polish nationality,” of “members of the Polish
Volk,
” or of “subjects of Polish ethnic origin.” The Reich Ministry of the Interior was unable to specify definitively who was a Pole, on the one hand because questions of demarcation could not be solved in legal terms and on the other because the practice of the SIPO—counter to existing regulations—narrowed down to treating all Poles, including Poles registered in the German Ethnic Classification List, as Poles so long as they had not “proved” themselves.
⁵³
All the Reich minister of the interior was able to rouse himself to do was to issue a negative definition of “nonmembership in the Polish
Volk
”;
⁵⁴
this did away with the need for a positive definition of the term
Pole
but also played into the hands of Himmler as head of the SS and police and Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, who was thus free to do as he pleased, as evidenced by the conflict about the treatment of persons who had applied for registration in the German Ethnic Classification List but whose applications had yet to be approved.
⁵⁵

The new institution of protected subject status was also unresolved; this was a stopgap category to deal with the fact that not all “non-German” Reich inhabitants could be incorporated into the German state community.
⁵⁶
Although described as “a status of protection by and obligation to the German Reich under public law,” it was never fixed in any law.
⁵⁷
The literature allowed that protected subject status should involve granting those limited rights of resident nationals—the right of economic freedom and the right to protection by the state—to which stateless persons were entitled, as long as these did not run counter to “German interests,”
⁵⁸
but this political proviso meant that the concept of protected subject status was at the total disposition of the state and thus no more than a formula without substance, a circumscription of the status, in principle, of statelessness.

The legal position of persons included in the German Ethnic Classification List was just as unclear and contradictory as the notions of the laws of nationality and citizenship themselves. There was no central regulation in political, economic, or legal terms. The Reich Ministry of the Interior should have been responsible for it, but such areas were subsequently usurped by the RFSS/RKF.
⁵⁹
The consequence was that the proposed re-Germanization was delayed and the uncertainty of the administrative authorities increased.
⁶⁰

The practice reflected this uncertainty. Despite the formally equal status under constitutional law of the “Germanized” Poles in groups 3 and 4 of the German Ethnic Classification List and the “Reich Germans,”
⁶¹
complaints were voiced about the poor treatment of these new state subjects by the “Reich Germans”;
⁶²
the differences between the various categories of German state subjects could not be blurred so quickly, especially since the “ethnic Germans” living in the Annexed Eastern Territories could “under no circumstances” be termed “satisfactory,” even in the opinion of the authorities of the day.
⁶³
Furthermore, there was not a great amount of attention paid to the requirement of a “declared belief in Germanness” for inclusion in the German Ethnic Classification List; police departments reported that Polish members of the German Ethnic Classification List were “politically totally unreliable.”
⁶⁴
Neither do progress reports from training camps for children of members of groups 3 and 4 of the German Ethnic Classification List appear particularly encouraging.
⁶⁵

There were also many individuals whose application for registration in the German Ethnic Classification List depended more on political motives—that is, the progress of the war
⁶⁶
—than their inner sense of Germanness, because the German Ethnic Classification List and the status of “half-Germans” (probationary state subject status) offered certain advantages, bringing as it did equality with the Germans in terms of labor law and rations and protection from deportation to the General Government.
⁶⁷
However, the flood of applications to join the German Ethnic Classification List was not as large as had been expected.
⁶⁸
As early as 1940, the office of the deputy Führer felt compelled to issue a directive
⁶⁹
under which lower-level Party offices had to investigate in each individual instance why “so many Germans did not opt for the Reich after the 1914–18 war” but had preferred to adopt Polish citizenship and now wished to remain Poles. Even in 1942 the number of applications for the German Ethnic Classification List fell so far short of expectations that Himmler set May 31, 1942, as the final deadline for submitting applications.
⁷⁰
As the course of the war started going against the Germans, there was an increase in the number of cases in which Poles neglected to submit their applications for inclusion in the German Ethnic Classification List or Polish persons who were included on the German Ethnic Classification List returned their identification documents or refused to accept identification documents in order to avoid the threat of military service.
⁷¹
The Gestapo reacted to this with coercive measures, cautions, brief detention, and later with committal to concentration camps.
⁷²
At the end of 1944, Himmler even ordered the execution of such individuals.
⁷³
Little remained of the originally intended voluntary nature of inclusion on the German Ethnic Classification List.

The Germanization policy in the Annexed Eastern Territories, officially conceived as the “reclamation of German blood,” therefore did not achieve the desired level of success with those Poles “with German blood in the family.” Despite formal equality with the full state subjects, probationary state subject status did not bring any genuine improvement in police practice: such persons were torn from their former environment but still not treated as Germans (they were subject to police supervision and the prohibition on attending higher education establishments, and their assets were still either confiscated or only partially returned, etc.). A further factor was the radicalism with which the racial and nationality fanatics in the Party, the SS, and the RKF proceeded, so that despite a number of specific advantages, the acquisition of German state subject status no longer appeared particularly desirable, at least after 1942. Even the later suggestions and advice of the Party about the increased reclamation of Poles for “Germanness”
⁷⁴
testify more to the unbroken naïveté of the conquerors than to their sense of reality. The entire German Ethnic Classification List procedure—in particular as practiced in the “model district” of the Wartheland—resulted less in any genuine equality between the status of the Poles “of German extraction” and that of the German state subjects in the Altreich than in the separation, division, and segregation of the Polish population on the basis of the criterion of “desired population growth” in “ethnic-racial” terms; the Polish neighbors either became persons “capable of Germanization” but without the full legal status of German state subjects or “impure” “protected status subjects,” regarded as a “permanent” danger to the
Volk
⁷⁵
and therefore to be repressed “by all means.” This element of protected status subjects, accounting for around two-thirds of the local population, was the real object of the special legislative measures in the Annexed Eastern Territories, as described above, because those people did not enjoy any guaranteed protection (not even the status of stateless persons under the Aliens Police Decree of 1938). The institution of protected subject status therefore served merely to subject the mass of the “non-Germans” to unlimited discrimination behind the facade of a specious legal concept. This will be illuminated by the following examples.

VI. Marriage Law

For the policy of segregating Germans from “non-Germans,” the classification of the population into those “capable of Germanization” and those “not capable of Germanization” was in itself not sufficient. It was far more important to avoid the “permanent danger to the
Volk,
” namely, the mingling of the “non-Germans” either with other “non-Germans” or with Germans, in order to reduce their birthrates. As no models were available in the Altreich in this respect, new methods had to be found. Although the Blood Protection Law (the prohibition on marriage and sexual relations between persons of “German or related blood” and Jews) had been in force in the Annexed Eastern Territories since 1941, it was restricted to German state subjects and persons registered in the German Ethnic Classification List.
¹

The other provisions of Reich law that had been issued by the office of the deputy Führer or the Armed Forces High Command to prevent marriages between Party or Wehrmacht members and “non-Germans”
²
were also in force in the Annexed Eastern Territories but were by no means sufficient. Depending on the political line they pursued, the heads of administration in the
Gaue
issued a variety of regulations without any legal basis
³
(marriage law fell under the jurisdiction of the Reich Ministry of Justice),
⁴
whose scope far exceeded the other regulations mentioned above.