The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe: Nazi Rule in Poland under the General Government

The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe: Nazi Rule in Poland under the General Government

Martin Winstone

Language: English

Pages: 336

ISBN: 1780764774

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


After the German and Soviet attack on Poland in 1939, vast swathes of Polish territory, including Warsaw and Kraków, fell under Nazi occupation in an administration which became known as the 'General Government'. The region was not directly incorporated into the Reich but was ruled by a German regime, headed by the brutal and corrupt Governor General Hans Frank. This was indeed the dark heart of Hitler's empire. As the principal 'racial laboratory' of the Third Reich, it was the site of Aktion Reinhard, the largest killing operation of the Holocaust, and of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing against Poles which was intended to be a template for the rest of eastern Europe. This book provides a thorough history of the General Government and the experiences of the Poles, Jews and others trapped in its clutches. Employing previously underused sources, Martin Winstone provides a unique insight into the occupation regime which dominated much of Poland during World War II.

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From Kraków, but they otherwise indulged simpler pleasures. Ever since the designation of the castle in August 1944 as the evacuation point for Frank and his staff, large transports had arrived regularly from Kraków. As von Richthofen explained, they had initially brought ‘mainly art treasures for storage, later, however, also a large quantity of foodstuffs and alcohol’. These stocks were suitably diminished by Frank and his men. The local leader of the Nazi welfare organization noted that they.

‘countless, often submerged traces of old German cultural and pioneering work’ referred to in the introduction were highlighted with astonishing and tedious frequency. Ever since northern Europeans had first settled in the region in, apparently, the late Stone Age, Germanic culture had, readers were assured, been the constant wellspring of any achievement of note.7 This was most obvious in the architecture of the cities, as in the case of Kraków whose townscape would impress visitors as that of.

Led each time to an inevitable scaling back in the form of various ‘short-range’ and ‘interim’ plans in advance of the constantly postponed movements of millions. This also meant that those expelled to the General Government were chiefly the inhabitants of the incorporated territories whose properties would be most useful to the ethnic German settlers, many of whom were farmers. The majority of the deportees, therefore, were not Jews, but Poles. Even so, the scale and nature of the expulsions.

Aktion Reinhard towards the end of that year, the overwhelming majority of the Jews who had survived thus far would lose their lives, along with tens of thousands deported to Treblinka and Sobibór from across the continent. Ultimately, approximately one in every three victims of the Holocaust was murdered in the General Government, more than anywhere else in Europe. One further point is worth noting. The killings included in the Höfle Telegram had only begun on 17 March and then only in Bełżec.

Going by. I think of all the thousands of people moving into the unknown. With the winter weather many will not survive, especially small children. The diary entries of the following days recorded the growing terror seizing the Polish population of Zamojszczyzna as more and more villages were cleared by the Germans. By 5 December, people were ‘in a panic. They move from place to place, sleep completely clothed, and wait for the gendarmes to come.’ It was only on 8 December that Klukowski began.

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