"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (63 page)

Indeed, the status of the General Government can be explained only by the established facts, with allowance for the political objectives. Thus it is evident that the General Government was essentially viewed by the administrative leadership as a component of the Reich, as Reich territory, despite its far-reaching administrative and legislative autonomy. Notwithstanding the zealous efforts of the governor general to prevent Reich authorities from “interfering” with the administration of the General Government,
³⁷
Reich principles were still applied in the administration, the legislature, and the administration of justice, albeit in simplified form, as illustrated by the following examples.

The criminal law and the Civil Code of the Reich were adopted in full, or at least to a very substantial degree. The Reich authorities and the German authorities of the General Government provided each other with administrative assistance.
³⁸
With regard to judicial assistance and the law of enforcement,
³⁹
the General Government was regarded as Reich territory, in which Reich judgments could be enforced without further ado.
⁴⁰
In terms of finance, appointments, and personnel, the General Government was completely dependent upon the Reich and integrated into the Reich financial administration.
⁴¹
In economic terms, too, the General Government was for all intents and purposes a part of the Reich. With the relocation of businesses, production, and armament factories to the General Government, the customs frontiers that existed formally were essentially eliminated, so that the differences with the Reich lay essentially only in the different price and wage levels, a number of import and export bans, and the foreign exchange and police frontiers.
⁴²
Although the governor general continually insisted on his administrative autonomy, even with respect to agencies outside the General Government, he aspired to achieving the greatest possible harmonization of the General Government with the Reich for financial reasons, with the immediate aim of a customs and economic union.
⁴³

This de facto incorporation of the General Government into the Reich was also evident in the change in the terminology used by the administration
⁴⁴
and the political leadership. For example, after meeting with criticism in the Reich, the term
Nebenland
was no longer used after the end of 1940 by order of Frank.
⁴⁵
Instead, there was increasing talk of the General Government as a “component of the German sphere of influence” or of the “Greater German Reich.”
⁴⁶
Hitler himself regarded the General Government as part of the Reich
⁴⁷
and declared the Austrian part of Galicia, which had been incorporated into the General Government in 1941, to be future “Reich territory.”
⁴⁸
The Reich Ministry of the Interior spoke of the “increasing amalgamation of the Reich territory with the General Government at all levels.”
⁴⁹

The literature also recognized that the General Government had aligned itself with the Reich, was a “political structure that was integrated” into the state order of the Reich, and was in reality a “
component
” of the Reich.
⁵⁰

The incorporation of the General Government into the Reich was, however, no more than a principle, one that saw numerous exceptions in everyday practice. If the special legislative treatment of “non-Germans” could be enforced better if the General Government was deemed to be foreign territory, then it was not part of the Reich territory; conversely, it was reckoned as part of the Reich in cases in which “non-Germans” were to be subjected to German sovereign powers (e.g., in the area of criminal law).
⁵¹

No doubt in connection with the long-term Germanization plans, there were also plans to reinforce the constitutional integration of the General Government into the Reich, but these never reached any concrete stage because the tensions between the Reich administration and the semiautonomous General Government prevented any attempts at implementation. As early as summer 1940, the governor general had submitted plans to the Reich Chancellery to incorporate the General Government in full into the German Reich by a Führer decree; these plans were, of course, opposed by the Reich Ministry of the Interior as long as Frank stuck to his administrative autonomy.
⁵²
Various Reich agencies, however, above all the Reich Ministry of the Interior, themselves proposed in 1942 that the General Government be incorporated into the Reich (by abolishing its administrative autonomy) in the form of three or five
Reichsgaue,
because—as Governor General Frank quite correctly suspected—such a vague, and worse still, autonomous structure as the General Government was a thorn in the flesh of the well-oiled bureaucracy of the Reich.
⁵³
But this proposal was rejected by Hitler because of his aversion to the Reich administration and Frank’s urging against the “centralized bureaucracy.” Because of these efforts, however, Frank had commissioned his own state secretary, Joseph Bühler, to prepare a secret study of the potential for a complete transfer of the General Government to the Reich administration.
⁵⁴
He even thought that the General Government could someday become a “homogeneous
Reichsgau,
” “headed by a
Reichsstatthalter,
who—as in the
Reichsgau
Wartheland—could try to cope with the situation here,” because the Reich administration was becoming increasingly hostile to the autonomy of the General Government.
⁵⁵

IV. Principles of Administrative Policy and Their Results

The specifics of the efforts of the administration to cope with the conditions in the General Government were oriented toward the definition of the General Government as a colony and a de facto part of the Reich territory. This colonial definition was also reflected in a policy of “oppression” and suppression, which implemented the theory of the subhuman creature (
Untermensch
) by way of the “racial” breakup of the local population, by way of its classification by special law, or by way of deportation to concentration camps or to forced labor in the Reich territory. The administration developed in the General Government thus represented the purest form of National Socialist occupation administration, not encountered in any other territory occupied by Germany.
¹

The policy of a relatively small German administration at the top that left the Poles largely to themselves was correspondingly propagated. Hitler himself had ordered in fall 1939 that no German “model administration” was to be developed in Poland; the “Polish economy” was to be left intact.
²
Originally, the administrative leadership in the General Government therefore had no more than limited goals: the “maintenance of security and order,” “ensuring that the population was fed,” and “securing the total resources of the General Government for the Reich.”
³
In terms of legislation, this “securing” was to be achieved by allowing Polish law to continue in force where it did not contradict the “assumption of administration by the German Reich” (sec. 4 of the Führer decree of October 12, 1939).
⁴
The German administration was to be restricted to a few areas of public law:
⁵
where German security or economic interests were affected, German (special) law applied, for instance in the realms of police, criminal, and labor law; Polish law otherwise remained in force. Some examples of these German regulations deserving mention are the severe legal segregation of Germans and Poles and the exclusion of the Jews from the entire economy.
⁶
As regards the specific treatment of the “non-Germans,” however, opinions differed sharply.

To avoid uprisings, the administrators and
Grossraum
experts of the old school warned—as history taught—against the self-deceit of treating the “non-German” peoples as Helots. All historical experience spoke against harsh treatment. Instead, they urged a patriarchal system under German sovereignty; although the local population must be segregated from the Germans and any assimilation prevented, these peoples must be
administered
and
supported
as much as possible within these limits.
⁷
Each of the “subject peoples” must be preserved in its “ethnic-racial sovereignty” and the “harmonious cohesion of national legislation sustained”;
⁸
in contrast to the “imperialism of past epochs,” the
Grossraum
must be oriented toward “racial principles” and should not be allowed to become a “cover for conquests.”
⁹
Not only compulsion but also voluntary acts would hold the
Grossraum
together; it must be regarded by the “non-German” peoples as an “inner necessity.
¹⁰
The “
Führer Volk
” therefore had a duty to take precautions to ensure an adequate life for the “subject peoples” as well as their external defense.
¹¹

In reality, however, exactly the opposite occurred: the leadership acted stolidly on the concept that they had devised for the treatment of alien peoples and took everything into account apart from reality. All proclamations on respect for the “characteristic racial features” of the local population therefore proved to be empty phrases and concealed the true intentions of the regime. In its haste, blind zeal, and belief in force as the only means of rule, the Nazi leadership and its enforcers, the SS and the police, as well as the administrative leadership of the General Government itself (albeit to a lesser extent), reduced the Poles to the status of Helots through a ruthless policy of exploitation. In view of the high population surplus and the large number of jobless people in the General Government, there was no need to display any particular consideration in this policy of exploitation; on the contrary, they were able to act as they pleased, that is, work toward the greatest possible productivity of labor at the lowest possible cost.

The harsh anti-Polish policy of the administrative leadership of the General Government was expressed in a comprehensive catalog of special legislative restrictions, very similar to the regulations issued against the “non-Germans” in the Annexed Eastern Territories, as well as in a policy of “divide and conquer,” which, in line with the National Socialist doctrine of the inequality of peoples, was intended to separate the individual ethnic groups in the General Government (Poles, Ukrainians, Górales). A particularly drastic policy was pursued in Galicia, earlier occupied by Soviet Russia, which was regarded as a Reich German settlement area and the incorporation of which had been dealt with by the head-quarters in Kraków even before the beginning of the war with Russia.
¹²
There the principle ruled, as expounded by the reigning governor of the Lemberg (L’vov) District at a conference, of not straying too far from the “harshness … applied by the Soviets,” because ostensibly the population would have doubted the seriousness of the German instructions.
¹³
Unlike the situation in the Annexed Eastern Territories, however, there was no general policy of expulsion in the General Government because this region was to become a labor reservoir regardless of population density, in line with Hitler’s axiom that the Poles were slaves born to perform menial labor;
¹⁴
neither was the extermination policy practiced in the Annexed Eastern Territories pursued to the same extent,
¹⁵
although large numbers of the “non-German” intelligentsia had been killed or abducted (via the AB Operation, etc.) with the backing of the administrative leadership.
¹⁶
However, it was a self-evident principle that the treatment of the Poles was not based on any humanitarian grounds but exclusively determined by considerations of expediency;
¹⁷
in this respect, the administrative leadership held the view that it was in their own properly understood interest to subject the Poles to severe special laws but at the same time to attempt to preserve their working capacity and morale, for instance by a certain level of welfare benefits for the nonworking population (e.g., support for Polish welfare organizations and for the Central Polish Aid Committee).
¹⁸

But this principle of “preserving” the Polish workforce was misleading, because in terms of National Socialist theory, it meant only that the foreign laborers would not be allowed to starve to death immediately. All living conditions were to be organized in such a way that the Poles could do no more than
exist
as cheap labor, entailing the reduction of the population to or below the subsistence level (“emaciation status”) as well as neglecting all its cultural and social needs.
¹⁹