Poland in World War II

I           Last Partition of Poland: Hitler-Stalin Pact (Aug-Sept 1939)

            German part: West incorporated into German Reich (Wartheland)

            East—General Governement

            Soviet part (Ukraine, Bielorussia): Deportation of Polish elites, Soviet    plebiscites

            Katyn massacre of Polish officers

General Gouvernement is sight of most Nazi labor, concentration camps 1939-41.  June 1941 Germans take Soviet Poland too

II         The Holocaust & Final Solution

A. Hitler’s racial theory: hierarchy of races

• Germans = Aryans “Uebermenschen” master race
• Slavs—Slave labor
• Gypsies below that
• Jews at very bottom, inhuman, to be eliminated to the last “final solution”

B. Stages of destruction

Racial definition acc. to grandparents

            Armbands

            Confiscation of property

            Exclusion

            Ghettoization

            Starvation

            Extermination

III.  German invasion of Soviet Union

• Opens way for “final solution”
• Jews/Bolsheviks to be destroyed totally—war of annihilation
• Special units (“Einsatzgruppen”) mass shooting
• Local population involvement: pogroms
• Evolution of gas chamber system
• 5-6 million Jews died in Holocaust

IV.       Responsibility over the Holocaust

• Primary responsibility Hitler, Nazis
• German Army?
• Antisemitic governments allied with Germany
• In Poland some collaboration between Polish & Jewish resistence
• Some ordinary Poles helped Jews
• Much indifference (see Czeslaw Milosz and Jan Blonski)
• Hostility (see Jan Gross Neighbors & story of Jedwabne)

V.        Motivation for pro-Nazi anti-Semitic actions

·        Christian superstition

·        Economic interest

·        Opportunity

·        Unethical collaborators switched from pro-Soviet to pro-Nazi to pro-Soviet positions easily

VI.       The Polish Resistance Movement: Home Army vs. Stalin

Polish underground state connected to London Polish gov’t

Stalin’s plan keep what he had taken in 1939—convinces Allies

1943 He breaks off relations with London Poles (over discovery of Katyn massacre)

Soviet "liberation" and the Warsaw Uprising: August-October 1944

• Soviets form Lublin Committee, i.e. Polish communist gov’t, and push it back into Poland
• Soviets pursue Germans across Poland and liberate eastern areas
• Home Army uprising to enables Poles themselves to liberate Warsaw from Nazis
• Soviets promise help, but stop outside Warsaw and watch Home Army get killed
• Polish communist gov’t then takes over (1945-47)

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