The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (40 page)

The decision to tap the reservoir of Polish labour was taken as part of a long-term plan for Poland, reaching into the anticipated post-war phase. Just how draconian that exploitation was going to be was made clear at a conference involving Hitler, Hans Frank, Martin Bormann, and others on 2 October 1939. Bormann's memorandum of the discussion reflects Hitler's wish that the Poles be kept in a position of inferiority relative to the Germans. For example, when 'normal times' returned, the German worker was never to work more than eight hours each day, while a Pole, even if he or she worked fourteen, should still be paid less than the German."
According to a decree from Hitler of 12 October 1939, Poland was not going to be incorporated into the Reich as were Austria and Czechoslovakia; its western areas were to be 'Germanized'-cleansed of Poles and 'returned' to Germanywhile for the time being its eastern territory was to go to the Soviet Union. What was left, the central section, was turned into the General Government under Hans Frank.21'
On 20 October 1939, at a meeting between Hitler and Keitel, it was decided that the Poles there were only to be given the lowest level of subsistence: no effort was to be made to turn the General Government into a 'model state along the lines of German order'; quite the contrary, the area was to be kept leaderless and in a state of confusion. Among other things, the region was to become a kind of dumping-ground for groups deported from the Fatherland proper; in that regard 'it should enable us to cleanse the Reich of Jews and Poles'.I
I

The threat of war between Poland and Germany, and its outbreak in
September, had already disrupted the flow of Polish labour recruited to help with the harvest that year. Immediate relief was provided by employing some 300,000 Polish prisoners of war and an additional i 10,000 civilians by the end of October.22
Brought to Germany, the prisoners were used in groups of fifty or so, supervised by the military, in agriculture in the first instance, but also in public works. This initial exploitation of the Poles, however, was simply on an ad hoc basis. As Jan Gross makes clear, utilization of Poles and many others from the east as slave labour 'was a residual goal, adopted as a temporary measure, in view of unavoidable delay before reaching-through resettlement, extermination, or Germanization-the final desired state of the intended polity: the racially pure Great German Reich. In its extreme form, employed in the concentration camps, this goal was known as the policy of "extermination through labour".
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There were few attractive options open to the 15 million or so Poles crowded into the General Government on the defeat of their country. Not only were all labour organizations abolished and welfare legislation suspended, but the new regulations of 26 October made all Poles between the ages of 18 (soon reduced to 14) and 6o `subject to compulsory public labour'.24
Given the possibilities of employment in Germany proper, something like 100,000 Poles tried to make the best of a bad situation.25
Even had they been treated kindly, however, given the numbers which Nazi authorities were demanding, compulsion would almost certainly have been called for sooner or later. By early 1940 the Reich was asking Governor Hans Frank for over one million workers, male and female, for work in agriculture and industry. This number was to be sent in 1940 alone
.26

Alongside the general labour shortage in Germany, there had been a flight from the land of essential labour and domestics. Poles were to help fill this gap. Initially, 780,000 were wanted for agricultural work-with 100,000 for Bavaria alone.27
Domestics were to be consigned to rural areas, where, besides helping out with household chores, they were to provide agricultural labour. Frank was right to doubt the feasibility of such plans because of the sheer numbers involved. In early i 940 an effort to advertise the opportunities for work in Germany met with some success, because word had spread that Polish workers had been treated relatively decently there before the war; but by mid-March compulsion was being used.2'
According to stories told by
Poles in Germany, many were simply pressed into coming and round-ups were often carried out by Nazi 'recruiters' and their Polish helpers.29
Certainly by 1944 few would go unless subjected to compulsion of one kind or another."'
One recent estimate suggests that probably 'no more than 15 per cent' departed voluntarily."
Rumours were circulating about what was in store in Germany, as is obvious from the ways in which Poles would do everything in their power to escape the round-ups.32

From the start Governor Frank was bothered about the use of force to fill the quotas, but he also thought it counter-productive for Poles to be treated so badly once they had arrived.33
`If the people are supposed to work in Germany, they should not at the same time be kept under as parasites.'
34 The money that Poles managed to scrape together from their work in Germany, he remarked, was worth practically nothing by the time it was sent home and converted.35
He complained later that 'we would have been able to send at least 5o per cent more volunteer workers to the Reich if they had been better treated'.
36 Efforts to attract workers, he said on many occasions, were `constantly hampered by the fact that the Poles and the Jews were placed on the same level' inside Germany. In February 1944 he finally got Himmler to agree to drop the expression `Jews and Poles' in ordinances and police regulations, since the Poles considered it a defamation to be thus lumped together in the same category.
37

By March 1943 one million Poles had been recruited for work.;"
Because some people returned home (pregnant women, people suffering from some infirmity, for example), there was a constant fluctuation in the total number at any one time, but the tally never dropped back below one million. (The precise statistics are, however, difficult to analyse in view of the many official changes in the border of Poland.) On 30 September 1944 some 1,701,412 people were registered, of whom just over a third were women.39
In the summer of 1944 approximately three-quarters of all the women worked in agriculture, compared with just over two-thirds of the Polish men.`"'

Initially the overwhelming majority of all Poles were in agriculture (9o per
cent in mid-1940), but in time German industry also showed an interest in Polish technical and industrial workers. By November 1942 the percentage in agriculture went below 75 per cent for the first time, and continued to decline slowly thereafter.'
But in view of the initial concentration on agriculture it is not surprising that their geographic distribution coincided with Germany's major agriculture sectors. The eastern states consistently employed most Polish labour; the figures for September 1944 (for example) are: Brandenburg, 162,391; East Prussia, 144,511: Lower Silesia, 132,496; Pomerania, 116,105. At the same time, the west German state of Westphalia had 91,590, and Bavaria a total of 71,711.`42

Within Bavaria Polish men and women were usually distributed in small clusters or sent directly to the homes of farmers; as a rule there were fewer than ten per village. Because many either worked as domestics or had quarters in the same house, social interaction was virtually unavoidable. Surveillance and separation were easier in the cities, where larger groups could be kept in camps near railway stations or in the proximity of a factory. Bavaria's Catholic rural population was reluctant to support Nazism before 1933 and, especially in Lower Franconia, slow to come round thereafter. By June 1940 there were already some 3,000 Poles in the Wiirzburg district alone (2.400 men, 600 women).`';
Almost without exception, these people were Catholic, and often they were rural folk themselves. How was the Gestapo to go about enforcing the stringent policies on non-fraternization in such circumstances?

2. GESTAPO CONTROL OF THE FOREIGN WORKERS

The recruitment of Polish citizens in the 1930S was accompanied by a concern about 'racial mixing',"
and this was reflected in the creation of a special department within the personal staff of Reichsfiihrer SS Himmler. Werner Best, in a letter of 13 August 1937 to local authorities, had made it clear that 'every police measure must be taken' to ensure that, after completing their jobs in agriculture, these workers left Germany again."
The Poles who came were protected under the terms of a treaty of November 1927, and were allowed to attend church and celebrate religious holidays, and generally were to be respected."
A wholly new situation arose after the defeat of Poland in September 1939.

Throughout the autumn and into the winter, as more and more Poles were brought to Germany, a whole series of policies were being formulated to
regulate their every move. A long communication sent on 8 March 1940 instructed the Gestapo posts concerning their enforcement. The memorandum set out guide-lines for dealing with all eventualities: (i) insubordination, disobedience, and shirking were to be dealt with immediately (recalcitrant cases were to be sent to the rock-quarry in Mauthausen, and perhaps given 'special handling'); (2) 'undesirable' sexual behaviour, was also to be subject to 'special handling', and the German person involved was to be arrested; (3) security risks were to be watched by the Gestapo, which was to censor letters; (4) the Gestapo was also to co-ordinate the hunt for workers who left their workplace without permission. Finally, (5) ordinary citizens' behaviour would in future also have to be policed more closely in order to protect the 'honour and dignity' of the Germans. Specifically, anyone caught aiding and abetting Poles in not fulfilling their duties would have to be 'warned'; also to be warned were those who encouraged Poles in 'unfortunate' behaviour, such as frequenting bars and restaurants not set aside for them, or who helped them by purchasing tickets, passing on letters, collecting money and clothes for them, and so on. If a warning did not suffice, trangressors should be sent to a concentration camp.
7 These stipulations, given somewhat more precision in the weeks and months that followed, were an open invitation to local Gestapo officials to take measures as they saw fit. As the Poles left the transports they were registered; a file, with photograph attached, was opened on each person.'"

The 'duties of male and female civilian workers of Polish nationality during their stay in Germany' were written up in nine short paragraphs. Translated where necessary, these were to be read and, some local police insisted, even signed by each person and kept on file. These regulations institutionalized the Poles' inequality. Henceforth, confined to their workplace and to their billets after curfew, excluded from using public transport except with special permission, they were at all times to wear an identification badge-a purple 'P' sewn to all their clothing on the right breast. Even when they worked indoors in a household, the 'P' was still mandatory. Paragraph 6 prohibited 'all social contact with the German people'. 'Visits to theatres, cinemas, dances. bars, and churches in company with Germans' were explicitly forbidden. Paragraph 7 stated bluntly that 'anyone who has sexual intercourse with a German man or woman, or approaches them in any other improper manner, will be punished by death'."
in other words, 'race defilement' of Germans by Poles, which had been serious enough when it involved Jews and non-Jews, was turned into a capital offence.

Another letter from Himmler on 8 March 1940 indicates that even before the adoption of these measures, in the provinces harsh consequences already ensued wherever sexual relations between Poles and Germans were discovered. Writing to Rudolf Hess in Munich, Himmler remarked on the practice of on-the-spot justice. His plea for immediate arrests was not, he claimed,

to prevent expressions of the justified anger of the German people about such shameful behaviour. On the contrary, I believe the impact of public defamation to be a most effective deterrent; I have no reservations if, for example, a German woman, in the presence of the female youth of the village or such, has her hair shaved off or is led through the village with a sign telling of her act. Still, the defamation must be kept roughly within these bounds and ought not to lead to the injury of the persons involved.

As another of his letters to local authorities made clear, it was expected that some public demonstration should take place as a means of instruction for Germans and Poles alike."'
It would seem that the police brutality which gradually developed in dealing with the 'Jewish question' inside Germany was applied from the start when it came to the Poles. That there was now a state of war contributed further to the brutality.

The Gestapo was to make sure that even in the workplace German managers saw to it that contact between Poles and Germans be kept to a minimum. Managers were to be informed that they would be watched to make sure that they did not forget that 'all social relations between Poles and Germans' were forbidden. 'Friendliness' towards the Poles, they were reminded, would not be tolerated."
In addition, larger firms employing great pools of foreign labour were encouraged to establish their own punishment systems in the vicinity of the plant: there are indications that some of these approached the Dachau model in cruelty, and of course, many more groups were represented in them besides the Poles."

Just as many of the lessons learnt from experiences gathered during the persecution of the Jews were applied to the Poles, in turn the methods used in dealings with the Poles were later applied to other groups brought from eastern Europe. Similar stipulations, including the death penalty for sexual relations and a distinctive sign ('Ost') that was to be worn on their clothing, were imposed on the workers brought into Germany from the occupied Soviet territories after the beginning of the war in the east in June 1941. If anything, even greater efforts were expended to keep them apart from the German
population-not only because of the danger of racial mixing, but out of fear of ideological pollution from those exposed to Communism.53