Networks of Nazi Persecution, by Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel (eds.) 2005. Bergahn Books, New York and Oxford
This book presen
ts some little-known information. I fogus on this.
POLAND REALLY SACRIFICED HERSELF BY REFUSING A QUISLING GOVERNMENT
Author Baruch studies Vichy France. He specifies the fact that the French adopted a Quisling government precisely so that they would not experience the fate of Poland. He writes, “For the vast majority of them, collaboration appeared as the only sensible solution to the risks of ‘Polandization’ of France: Hence the ease with which it was accepted, in spite of everything it implied in terms of denial of French republican liberties.” (p. 209).
NAZI GERMAN RACIAL CRITERIA RULES THE POLES
The recent bogus furor about Poles in the Wehrmacht obscures an essential fact: Poles never served the Germans willingly, and the Germans never, under any circumstances, accepted any Poles as fellow Germans. Moreover, any blurring of the boundary between Poles and Germans was done in accordance with German need, and was conducted by the Nazi German authorities with the greatest reluctance.
While discussing the DVL (DEUTSCHE VOLKSLISTE) and the Warthegau, German scholar Isabel Heinemman quotes a German-language source on Heinrich Himmler. He writes, “As a justification, Heinrich Himmler again conjured up a vision of racial threat: ‘Given our notion of blood it would be irresponsible to absorb Slavic blood in great quantities into our German national body by accepting Upper Silesian Poles [WASSERPOLEN], Kashubes, and German-Polish half-breeds without a racial examination. In order to at least prevent the worse damage, the defective elements must be eradicated before inclusion in the List of Ethnic Germans.” (p. 225).
WHY NO GERMAN EXTERMINATION OF POLES DURING THE WAR
This question presupposes that Nazism was as free to radicalize against the Poles as it was to radicalize against the Jews. It was not. The Polish population was much larger. The massive expulsion of Poles from the territories annexed to the Third Reich already proved counterproductive, to say nothing about any future physical extermination of Poles as a whole. Hirschfeld and Seibel comment, “At the administrative level, the resettlement measures were incompatible with the overall goal to establish efficient German rule in the newly conquered territories. Even the infamous Gauleiter Arthur Greiser, a hard-boiled racist and chiefly responsible for the ‘final solution’ in Western Poland, at some point complained to Himmler about the detrimental effects of the resettlement agencies for political stability and economic exploitation.” (pp. 142-143).
Clearly, the Germans were in no position to exterminate the Poles, during wartime, as they were to exterminate the Jews.
