In the spring of 2008, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article on a dark chapter in German–Polish history, one supposedly over and done with. Konrad Schuller, the newspaper’s Eastern Europe correspondent, related the story of Winicjusz Natoniewski, a 72-year-old Polish pensioner who had recently brought a lawsuit against the Federal Republic of Germany at the Gdańsk District Court.1 Natoniewski demanded one million zlotys as compensation for lifelong suffering, for the severe disfigurement and mutilation of his body. ‘When I first saw Winicjusz Natoniewski,’ Schuller noted, ‘my eyes lingered on his facial burns before taking in … his ruined ear, his remaining hair, carefully combed over the burned areas of his head, and the swollen, flaming red balloons of his hands, terminating in the knobbly remnants of his fingers’.2
These wounds were inflicted on Natoniewski as a five-year-old boy living in the village of Szczecyn, southeast of Lublin. On 2 February 1944, German troops led by Konrad Rheindorf, commander of the Ordnungspolizei3 (Kommandeur der Ordnungspolizei or KdO), the Nazi police force in Lublin, carried out a massacre of the villagers. This occurred in the context of the Nazi ‘combating of bandits’. Rheindorf suspected that a ‘600-strong Bolshev. band’4 were hiding out in the densely wooded environs of Szczecyn, a group he was eager to crush in a ‘major operation’ involving a ‘substantial force made up of the Truppenpolizei [Order Police], Wehrmacht and Sicherheitspolizei [Security Police]’.5 It was the spatial proximity between the village and the presumed whereabouts of a supposed unit of Bolshevik partisans that, from Rheindorf’s perspective, aroused well-founded suspicions – namely, that the residents of Szczecyn were cooperating with this group in various ways to the detriment of the German occupiers. This accusation turned the village into a ‘nest of resistance’6 and thus a legitimate target for a ‘clean-up operation’.7
Against this background, German troops encircled Szczecyn in the early hours of 2 February 1944 and shelled the village with mortars.8 The thatched roofs of the houses were quick to catch alight and the entire village soon went up in flames.9 Panic broke out. As the mortar fire continued, the residents tried to flee the burning village, but were shot when they reached the security cordon. When the shelling had stopped, units of the KdO Lublin entered the village and killed men, women and children indiscriminately. A scenario of excessive violence unfolded. The German troops whipped people with bull pizzles; shot them at point-blank range with carbines and machine guns; and forced old people, children and the injured into houses before burning them alive.10 The KdO Lublin stated in its situation report that ‘around 480 bandits and suspects [were killed] in the firefight or while fleeing’11 in Szczecyn and the surrounding villages that day. The German units had suffered no ‘losses of our own’, according to Rheindorf.12
This phase of unfettered violence was followed by a slower pace of action. The survivors were rounded up and underwent selection in accordance with their ability to work. The younger and stronger were obliged to carry out forced labour,13 while all others – that is, women, the elderly and children – were left behind in the village, which had burned to the ground. Winicjusz Natoniewski, five years old, was one of them. When the first mortars hit, he had tried to run out of his parents’ burning house and hide but, in his terror, he had failed to notice that his entire body was already on fire. He wandered ablaze through the village before his father discovered him and managed to douse the flames in the cold mud of a puddle.14 He survived the massacre as a child with severe burns who would remain scarred for life. His claim for compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany was dismissed in 2010 by the last-instance Supreme Court in Warsaw on grounds of state immunity.15
The story of Winicjusz Natoniewski, the destruction of the village of Szczecyn and the murder of its inhabitants leads us into the complex history of Nazi massacres of Polish civilians in the context of the drive to crush partisans. It shines a light on the complexity of a violent event that continues to reverberate into the present day, underlining a number of aspects of relevance to the analysis of massacres; brings out the diverse constellation of actors involved and points up the wide spread of responsibility for the planning and carrying out of massacres; highlights the integration of massacres into the objectives and practice of occupation policy, which constituted a framework for action that determined the pace and extent of massacres, provided opportunities to carry them out and created the prerequisites for their occurrence – thus providing the ‘good reasons’ through which massacres were legitimized; and illustrates the cruelty, excess and unfettered violence entailed in the practice of the massacre – thus indicating that there is more to massacres than their apparent objectives. Finally, this story reveals both the disastrous consequences of massacres for survivors and how post-Nazi Germany has dealt with this specific legacy of violence.
I consider all these aspects and dimensions in the present study, which is dedicated to German massacres of Polish civilians during the Second World War. I work on the assumption that the use of violence in occupied Poland was not fundamentally a deviant form of action.16 In the words of Norbert Elias, the German occupation was based on a massive increase in the ‘level of violence from person to person’.17 The zone of the permitted and required use of violence was massively expanded in occupied Poland: what was forbidden in the ‘Old Reich’ was allowed there. To put it bluntly, new spaces for the acting out of violence opened up in occupied Poland, which actors in situ could exploit. Against this background, my core interest is in what conditions, circumstances and configurations fostered massacres; how and why certain actors in specific circumstances decided to carry them out; what patterns of legitimation underpinned their decisions; to what extent massacres altered the various constellations and contexts; why the practice of massacres always produced an excess of violence; what this says about the various actors; and what factors shaped the social and political approach to these massacres after 1945. I thus take up Richard J. Evans’s proposal: ‘What we need is to understand why the murder of Poles took place and how people could carry it out.’18
My analysis is centrally informed by the concept of the massacre. This conceptual decision delimits the present study in two respects. First, it rejects the category of terror, which foregrounds the indiscriminate use of violence for the purpose of intimidation.19 Through this implicit presupposition, the category of terror determines in advance the motives that in fact require investigation and analysis, forcing all acts of violence into a single motivational structure. Second, this study breaks away from the category of genocide, which implies that cases of collective violence are always planned and intentionally executed sequences of action.20 This premise, as Birthe Kundrus has stated, makes the term ‘an obstacle … to research’,21 since it demands a teleological perspective that can only lead us astray if our goal is to analyse. Such a premise causes us to lose sight of ‘inconsistencies, improvisations and contingencies’22 – that is, fundamental elements of collective violence, which must surely be understood as a process characterized by happenstance as well as by actors’ enduring improvisations.23
Against this background, the category of the massacre undoubtedly has advantages. Conceptually, it does not reduce collective acts of violence to a single motive, and it does not understand excesses of violence exclusively as centrally organized acts based on long-term, anticipatory planning.24 In order to distinguish the massacre as a specific form of collective violence from other forms of violence, it is vital to clarify and operationalize the term. The following observations aim to develop an ideal type of massacre that provides us with a concept specific enough to be used in the subsequent analysis.
In the first instance, as Peter Burschel has emphasized, the semantic field of the term ‘massacre’ relates to the ‘world of abattoirs’.25 In French, the word ‘massacre’ originally referred to a slaughtering block.26 Hans Medick has shown that the term’s semantic link with the slaughtering of animals persisted until the sixteenth century.27 It was the experience of violence in the French wars of religion that led to a conceptual shift. Subsequently the term massacre referred primarily, though not exclusively, to the mass killing of people, the ‘collective extermination of non-combatants’.28 Since then, the massacre has denoted a ‘one-sided, extreme form of violence in which a relatively defenceless group of people is killed or slaughtered by other people’.29 This deadly violence is carried out ‘by perpetrators with the resources to use deadly force without endangering themselves’.30 From this definition of the term – commonly used by researchers31 – we can develop core aspects of an ideal-typical model of the massacre.
In contrast to genocide, the massacre has the character of an event; is by no means aimed at the destruction of entire societies; and remains tied to certain situations, to specific spaces and times.32 Massacres usually feature specific spatial structures: they are carried out in a particular location that has been surrounded and cordoned off. The massacre requires ‘enclosed places’33 that make it impossible for the victims to escape. In this demarcated space, the violence of the massacre unfolds without adhering to a characteristic temporal rhythm. The massacre may occur at a fast pace and result in the rapid killing of all victims.34 But it may integrate frequent moments of deceleration if the perpetrators take their time and drag the killing out.35 However, by no means are all residents necessarily killed. Sometimes survivors are desired as a source of forced labour or are simply left behind so they can relate the horrors of the massacre to others.36
In sharp contrast to the situation of an execution, killing in the context of a massacre is not shaped by specific rituals, although a massacre may certainly entail elements of ritualization – for example, in the form of firing squads that kill their victims at graves dug in advance. Nevertheless, a massacre differs from an execution with its precise regulations. It is more savage and more unbridled, an event in which ‘the passions can be given free rein’37 and ‘the creativity of human bestiality … takes on untrammelled form’.38 The massacre forces its victims into a world of violence in which everything is allowed. Excess and cruelty are its defining elements, which demolishes the boundaries of the permissible in a given situation. The violence of the massacre is characterized by the close proximity between perpetrators and victims. What we find here is not murder at a distance but rather ‘face-to-face killings’, a physical form of killing and the bloody infliction of injuries at close quarters.39
The excessive nature of the violence is not deviant behaviour in the context of the massacre. As a form of collective violence, the violence of the massacre takes place ‘in accordance with the behavioural norms of a superordinate collective’.40 The massacre opens floodgates and offers spaces for action in which excess violence is congruent with collective behavioural expectations.41 At the same time – and closely bound up with this – the massacre is public violence. It does not take place covertly, like torture; the killing is done in plain sight. In contrast to the pogrom, however, the massacre does not depend on the approval of spectators.42 The concentration camp, meanwhile, is linked with the massacre by a comparable ‘spatial order of violence’.43 Just as the scene of the massacre is surrounded by troops, barbed-wire fences mark off the concentration camp from the outside world. In the concentration camp, however, the excess is enduring. This is ongoing rather than situational violence: permanent excess. The massacre, conversely, is a situational form of excess that does not take place ceaselessly.
Against this background, sociologists have debated how best to classify and evaluate the massacre. Trutz von Trotha assigns it a specific role in the enforcing and securing of occupation.44 The massacre appears here as a purposeful instrument of the conquest of foreign territories. It is intended to bloodily demonstrate the conquerors’ superiority and lay the ground for the establishment of a new order. As von Trotha sees it, after the completion of this process the massacre serves to maintain this order within the framework of foreign rule, which always essentially means the rule of the few over the many: ‘The massacre creates order because the overwhelming violence simply convinces on its own, because it clarifies or at least tries to clarify the prevailing balance of power.’45 Wolfgang Sofsky, meanwhile, questions this assumption of pure functionality, conceptualizing the massacre as independent of any regime’s objectives: ‘The purpose of destruction is destruction itself, not reconstruction, not a tabula rasa for a new beginning’.46 From this perspective, the massacre is a ‘collective excess of action’,47 which has become detached from all ‘political, social and cultural contexts and orders’.48 The aim of the massacre, according to Sofsky, is ‘not victory and power, but the festival of blood, the fireworks of the explosion’.49 Sofsky highlights the momentum that builds in the concrete situation of the massacre, in which the exercise of violence may become detached from the factors that initiated the event. The massacre generates its own motives; the actors involved, free of all normative limitations, may unleash their full potential for violence.
Wolfram Pyta has pointed out the analytical pitfalls of Sofsky’s perspective, which runs the risk of the massacre ‘taking on a life of its own as an ahistorical category’50 that ascribes to ‘the act of violence its own semantic logic’,51 through ‘which violence ultimately becomes a self-generating phenomenon that engenders, by itself, an infinite chain of violent acts’.52 Nevertheless, there is no reason not to combine the two perspectives. We can conceptualize the massacre in light of its goal-orientation, its relation to power interests and in terms of its own dynamics in specific contexts of practice. The key point is to analyse massacres against the background of their political and cultural circumstances, in other words to embed them in particular constellations while maintaining an awareness that massacres are not wholly a matter of rational calculation, but – detached from their original goals – may entail elements of excessive violence.
In what follows, then, I understand massacres as locally bound excesses of violence with their own special dynamics: events that are characterized by highly asymmetrical power relations but are in many ways context-dependent with regard to their conditions of possibility and capacity for legitimization. It is in light of these considerations that the present study seeks to analyse German massacres of Polish civilians. I draw on groundbreaking findings from recent research on the Holocaust and on genocide that have enhanced our understanding of the development of large-scale processes of violence in key ways. Three aspects stand out here. In combination, they define the present study’s analytical framework.
(1) Massacres are not isolated events. In his seminal study on the political dimension of massacres, Jacques Sémélin emphasizes that the massacre must ‘be understood as a form of extreme violence … in the context of a comprehensive trajectory of violence that precedes and goes hand-in-hand with it’.53 What Sémélin is pointing out here is that massacres arise out of a specific set of circumstances formed by ‘the coming together of a political history, a specific cultural area and a particular international context’.54 In light of this, it will be crucial to contextualize massacres of Polish civilians as broadly as possible. A triad of superordinate contexts is particularly important when it comes to integrating massacres into a setting of violence characterized by a multitude of interwoven elements: the prior history of German–Polish relations, German occupation as a specific order of violence and the overarching development of the Second World War with its shifting fronts and alliances. Considering these structures is vital to achieving a deeper understanding of massacres.
(2) Massacres are closely bound up with a specific representation of the other. Crucial here is the key role of enemy constructs, public discourses and propaganda in establishing a ‘semantic matrix … that lends meaning to the growing momentum of violence, which then becomes a springboard for the massacre’.55 What Sven Reichardt brings out here is that constructs of the enemy are patterns of perception ‘characterized by a clearly derogatory attitude or negative charge’56 and are created and inculcated through a social process. ‘[A]s totalities of perceptions, ideas and feelings’, Reichardt continues, constructs of the enemy reduce ‘the variety of possible world views to a strict and one-dimensional friend-enemy relationship’.57 Enemy constructs are conveyed through propaganda and public discourses, which are relevant to the execution of massacres in two respects. First, they furnish a ‘reading of a situation’,58 so they are not just abstract dogma, but must be understood, with Mark Roseman, as a lens that influences the perception and assessment of specific situations.59 Second, they are important providers of legitimacy for the ‘unleashing of increasingly radical violence against a stated enemy’60 in that they incite violence and engender a ‘climate of impunity’.61
In order to analyse massacres of Polish civilians, it is thus crucial to shed light on the specific structures underpinning enemy constructs and the propagation of these structures in public space – both of which underlay the anti-Polish violence considered here. Of particular relevance is Sémélin’s reference to a ‘rhetoric of threat’, which often shapes public discourse in the run-up to massacres, generating feelings of insecurity: ‘Those poised to become murderers’, Sémélin explains, ‘present themselves as victims … , [so that] their work of destruction [appears] as a preventive measure’.62 Against this background, the present study will show that the construction of a specific Polish affinity for violence was a key resource used to legitimize massacres of Polish civilians. This is a trope centred on Germans as victims of foreign violence, such that countering this threat with their own violence – in order to protect, prevent or avenge –seemed not only justified but imperative. Such a construction made it possible for the Germans to interpret their own practice of violence as a defensive response to Polish acts of violence.63
(3) The specific way in which a massacre unfolds cannot be understood in terms of a top-down model of political control. One key finding of numerous studies on the concrete implementation of the Holocaust – in different areas of German-occupied Europe – is that processes of mass violence do not follow a rigid trajectory; in no way are they based on a coherent plan of action featuring a central authority issuing commands.64 Instead, the dynamics of the murder of the Jews developed through a complex interplay between the interpretations and options for action provided by central authorities and initiatives at regional and local level.65 This insight is undergirded by a specific understanding of action within hierarchical structures. In the case of the Holocaust, this action was by no means based on unambiguous and clearly formulated commands that were implemented on a one-to-one basis on site.66 Instead, actions were guided by overarching orders, which were often vague and ambivalent and mostly involved substantial scope for interpretation.67 Hence, in the words of Michael Wildt and Alf Lüdtke, they created ‘a terrain of possibilities for violence’68 that massively expanded the sphere of permissible violence.
In this configuration, it was the commanders on site who, on the basis of their interpretations of the situation and their specific experiences, adapted these overarching orders to specific local requirements and conditions.69 For this study, these observations mean that ‘we must conceptualize the massacre simultaneously from “above” and “below’’’.70 Hence, an exclusively ‘hierarchical perspective’71 focused on the central authorities is just as unhelpful as a one-sided focus on local actors. Only coupling the two levels will get us to our analytical goal. The overarching orders issued at the leadership level created opportunities, provided models of legitimation and opened up options for initiating violence that could be utilized on site.
The present study renders these three aspects fruitful for an analysis of German massacres of Polish civilians. I aim to broadly contextualize these massacres, reconstruct images of the enemy and public discourses, and sound out the relationship between intention and situation in the planning and implementation of massacres. It is the analytical linkage of these aspects that promises to provide new insights.
Against this background, we can link massacres of Polish civilians to ongoing scholarly debates in light of two major sets of questions: those concerning the connection between prevailing circumstances and massacres, and those pertaining to the mechanisms of escalation, actor constellations and concrete practices of violence.
Historical and Occupation-Related ParametersMy first step is to examine the relationship between various parameters and massacres of Polish civilians under German occupation. These parameters include the prior history of German–Polish relations since the nineteenth century, the war, specific policies pursued by the German occupation regime, the structures of the occupied society and the ideological foundations of German rule.
The first questions that arise here concern historical continuity. In which broad contexts of the preceding history can we meaningfully place the Nazi history of violence?72 According to Dieter Pohl, the research is typified by ‘a certain arbitrariness’73 on this point. In recent years, authors have drawn quite different lines of continuity, encompassing – and here I make no claim to completeness – attempts to combat French francs-tireurs in 1871;74 the supressing of the Herero and Nama uprisings between 1904 and 1908;75 the mass shootings of Belgian civilians in 1914;76 and the activities of German Freikorps, or volunteer corps, after the First World War.77 The present study will address certain elements of these academic debates. But to analyse German massacres of Polish civilians, it seems more productive to examine the chequered German–Polish relationship from the nineteenth century onwards.78 The key question here is to what extent the massacres carried out between 1939 and 1945 are interwoven with a potent prior history. It is crucial to tease out the many layers of this history, which was shaped by ruptures, reversals and ambivalences. It is not my intention to produce an airtight narrative centred on the assumption that this prior history inevitably culminated in the massacres of the Second World War. In the context of an analysis of German massacres of Polish civilians, we need to consider both continuities and disjunctures if we are to grasp how massacres were embedded in longer-term structures and processes, and identify the specifically new features that pertained between 1939 and 1945.
The German occupation of Poland during the Second World War – the second relevant context – has been analysed from a wide range of different perspectives.79 The present study can build on this in a number of ways. Martin Broszat, Gerhard Eisenblätter and Czesław Madajczyk have produced important structural-historical overviews.80 In addition to valuable sourcebooks,81 numerous studies have also appeared on the structures of the German apparatus of occupation82 and, above all, on individual policies pursued by the occupation regime. For example, foundational studies have now appeared on economic exploitation,83 the new racial order,84 the policing of the occupied Polish territories,85 and Nazi cultural and educational policy.86 In this context, Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg has identified three spatial foci,87 particularly with respect to the older Polish research: the Reichsgau Wartheland;88 German policies in the Zamość region;89 and the fate of the capital Warsaw, particularly during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.90 These studies are of great relevance to the analysis of German massacres of Polish civilians: the key parameters of these events were largely determined by the practice of occupation policy in general.
In order to systematize this research, some years ago Ulrich Herbert suggested foregrounding the different temporal and action-related perspectives involved. According to Herbert, the occupiers wished to achieve a ‘new ethnonational order’ (völkische Neuordnung) in the occupied territories over the long term and exploit them as much as possible over the medium term, while responding on an ad hoc basis to the shifting pressures of the military situation, the war economy and security policy over the short term.91 This observation is a productive one for the present study. The pace and extent of massacres, the opportunities to carry them out and their preconditions were largely determined by the objectives of overarching occupation policy. This raises questions about the concrete ways in which different policy fields were interwoven with the practice of massacres in specific circumstances. How and why did the lattice of long-, medium- and short-term goals mutate over time and what consequences did this have for the practice of massacres? In what way did certain policies foster massacres? How did they legitimize them? But countervailing tendencies are also of key importance. In which situations and contexts did certain policies have a de-escalating effect and slow the pace of violence? Finally, the present study also sheds light on the reverse effect. What influence did massacres have on the practice of general occupation policy?
In addition, the present study draws on studies of society under German occupation. Alongside investigations into everyday life,92 the most interesting contributions in this context have been recent studies that overcome the rigid dichotomy between occupiers and occupied by exploring zones of cooperation. Noteworthy here are the studies by Barbara Engelking93 and Jan Grabowski,94 which sparked heated debates.95 Both are dedicated to the fate of Polish Jews in hiding. They not only raise questions about preconditions for evading the occupiers but also point out that the Schutzstaffel (‘Protection Squadron’, or SS) and police would not have been able to track down those in hiding without the active assistance of Polish denouncers. What both studies have in common, to quote Ingo Loose, is that they paint a picture of everyday life under occupation that ‘was quite evidently more complex than is generally assumed’.96 What we see emerging here is an image of an occupation society that no longer revolves exclusively around the rigid contrast between occupiers and occupied. We begin to discern a more differentiated reality in which there were interactions, at least in certain cases, between Germans and Poles in certain fields of action. In this context, the role of the former German minority is also of great significance.97 The ethnic Germans were that group of the pre-war Polish population that became a central element of the German system of violence when the German occupation began through the various means of participation that opened up to them. Here, the research has highlighted different forms of participation – encompassing both institutional integration into paramilitary formations and individual involvement as interpreters, translators, scouts, informants and denouncers.98
Particularly in the context of German massacres of Polish civilians, these findings may indicate a flexible system of violence under German occupation and options for participation for certain groups within the Polish population. To what extent does the evidence point to similar structures of interaction in the planning and implementation of massacres of Polish civilians? How did the parameters of the German system of violence change over time? Which shifting constellations of actors were granted licence to commit violence? What were the root causes of this integration of certain groups within the Polish population into German violence?
Finally, the present study builds on research that explores ideological foundations and specific enemy constructs. In this context, a wide range of historians has highlighted the significance of Nazi anti-Slavism, which both shaped relations between the ‘Third Reich’ and its eastern neighbour and influenced key actors in the German occupation regime.99 However, John Connelly has shown that the catch-all concept of anti-Slavism is an academic smokescreen that obscures our view of the complex, often fractured and contradictory relations between National Socialism and the countries of Eastern Europe.100 More promising in the context of the present book are works that have begun to outline a specifically anti-Polish enemy construct. The ethnic Germans clearly played a key role in this regard: Doris Bergen and Miriam Arani have produced the first significant investigations to analyse the Nazis’ ‘atrocity propaganda’ in the run-up to the German invasion and in the context of ‘Bloody Sunday at Bromberg’.101 The present work builds on these studies and scrutinizes the preconditions for the formation of an anti-Polish enemy construct, the specific forms it took and its potency in specific situations. Which traditions could the Nazis draw on? Which elements did they add to existing ones? How was this enemy construct communicated and how was it linked with the massacres of Polish civilians as a practice?
Actor Constellations, Escalation Mechanisms and the Practice of MassacresIn a second step, I turn to the actors, escalation mechanisms and practices involved in massacres. Here, the present work can draw on important Polish studies. Having initially concerned themselves, before the war was over, with various forms of violence under the occupation regime,102 after 1945, Polish historians steadily compiled meticulous accounts of numerous massacres in individual villages, towns and regions.103 It is these countless individual studies, as Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg has rightly emphasized, that continue to provide the basis for any study of acts of violence under the German occupation.104 While the reading of these early studies – with their long lists of the scenes of murder, perpetrators and victims’ names – is a sometimes strenuous task, their merits are obvious. It was this comprehensive, detailed work that made it possible to reconstruct the world of violence under German rule.
However, these studies require revision for several reasons. First, they presented only snippets, providing descriptions of what happened but generally forgoing analysis. These, then, are primarily descriptive studies that said virtually nothing about decision-making processes, actor constellations, escalation mechanisms, practices of violence or the incorporation of massacres into occupation policy. Second, these studies were children of their time. They were produced under the specific circumstances of the Cold War and reflected the views of the communist rulers, leading to peculiar distortions over the course of time. They tended to flatten out the fundamental differences between the Polish and Jewish experience of occupation, implying that Poles and Jews were affected by German violence in the same way. In this context, Polish historians always referred to the supposed parity in the number of victims, comparing the three million murdered Polish Jews with the fictitious figure of three million murdered Poles as determined by the communist security apparatus.105 Furthermore, practising a form of ideological self-censorship, Polish historians often drew a distorted, dichotomous picture of Nazi rule that was free of grey areas or ambivalences and, in particular, largely ignored the involvement of certain groups within the Polish population.106 Zygmunt Mańkowski summed up the results of Polish research in sobering fashion: ‘This problem has yet to be dealt with coherently, comprehensively … and using the latest historical methods.’107
In Western research, meanwhile, the focus on the persecution and extermination of the Jews has undoubtedly overshadowed other contexts of oppression. It is true that in recent years a number of scholars have managed to produce a clearer image of the ‘German East’108 by elucidating its specific level of antisemitic violence.109 But this focus has obscured other situations of persecution. Western research on German massacres of Polish civilians is, therefore, a far from vast field. Richard C. Lukas deserves credit for having presented Polish suffering to a Western audience for the first time.110 Lukas’s objective, however, was not really to analyse the structures, practices and actors involved in mass violence against Polish civilians, with these topics making up a negligible portion of his book.111 His study is in fact a polemical contribution to the debate on rival Polish and Jewish claims of victimhood.112 Otherwise, all we have to go on is a short essay by Werner Röhr113 and a spatially limited study by Robert Seidel on the district of Radom,114 which evaluates the older Polish literature on German ‘terror’, partially reproducing the haziness of the Polish historiography. Only recently has a powerful narrative been presented – by Timothy Snyder – that gives Polish suffering due coverage within a comprehensive history of violence in East-Central Europe.115 Snyder’s achievement, however, lies primarily in his vivid description and presentation of selected events. His analysis, meanwhile, centres on the intentions of German leaders.116
The present book can build on all these studies, enlarging upon them by analysing the dynamics and the processual nature of Nazi violence; examining the differing interests of a variety of violent actors; illuminating legitimation strategies and contexts; and by providing a close-up view of the specific ways in which massacres were executed. But the present study does not exist in isolation. It builds on three strands of research that have provided key findings on the history of Nazi violence.
(1) The more recent research on perpetrators has sought to illuminate the motives and biographies of ‘ordinary men’117 from the middle and lower levels of the military, civil and police apparatus.118 In this regard, studies on the civil administration,119 the SS and police apparatus,120 and the Wehrmacht121 are of particular importance to the present book. The research has shown convincingly that quite different actors with different biographical backgrounds and institutional affiliations were responsible for initiating and implementing the ‘final solution’: no generational cohort, social or ethnic background, confession, educational class or gender proved resistant to involvement in violent measures. In addition, research has demonstrated that the perpetrators were by no means actors devoid of a will of their own under the control of abstract structures. In fact, they showed a high degree of initiative; had considerable freedom of action; and pursued a multitude of different interests, desires and goals.122 However, the findings of recent research on perpetrators relate chiefly to persecution in the context of the ‘final solution’. Other contexts of Nazi persecution have as yet barely been examined using the methods of perpetrator research. Here, the present study can supplement the existing research in important ways by identifying similarities, but also differences, in the practice of violence.123
(2) There are also important points of connection with recent studies dealing with the war and the first two years of German occupation. A number of studies are now available on this formative phase in the history of Nazi violence, whose common finding is that the dividing line between soldiers and civilians became increasingly blurred.124 Here, the research has painted a picture of a war characterized in significant part by numerous massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians by soldiers of the Wehrmacht and members of the Einsatzgruppen (task forces). Explanatory approaches diverge considerably, foregrounding widespread racism and antisemitism,125 the fear- and stress-based responses of inexperienced troops,126 the boundless need for military security127 and the ‘lack of any external control’.128 These studies provide us with comprehensive findings on the early phase of German occupation. But their investigation is limited temporally, with a veil of obscurity still hanging over four years of the German occupation. The present study can, therefore, build directly on these studies, analysing massacres of Polish civilians over the entire period of German occupation.
(3) Finally, the present book follows up on studies of German efforts to crush partisan groups. In recent years, this has been identified as a key context of action, in which massive violence was carried out against civilians.129 On a broad empirical basis, a new, nuanced overall picture of anti-partisan activities has emerged, demonstrating the need to revise ideas – in circulation for decades – about supposedly legitimate forms of self-defence against ‘perfidious bands’, ‘treacherous saboteurs’ and ‘cowardly snipers’.130 Analytical attention has turned to the increasingly hopeless situation of the civilian population in the occupied territories, which was caught in the middle of the military conflict between partisans and the German occupying power. They became the defenceless victims of an ever more radical and brutal German push to combat partisans.
Without making recourse to the simplistic trope of a ‘partisan struggle without partisans’,131 a notion whose exponents denied the very existence of a partisan movement and interpreted supposed German anti-partisan activities as a mere pretext for the implementation of racial objectives, researchers have almost unanimously underlined the disproportionate use of force in the context of ‘band-fighting operations’, which chiefly affected the local civilian population.132 Although this finding is largely undisputed, there is some considerable divergence between the various explanatory approaches to this specific form of ruthless violence against civilians. At its core, the debate revolves around cultural, intentional and situational factors and their weighting, and the relationship between ‘anthropological constants’,133 world views informed by racial biology, occupation policy strategies and ‘military necessities’. A number of scholars have also analysed connections with analogous complexes of violence and probed interrelationships with policies centred on the war economy in the context of a prolonged conflict. In sum, these factors indicate that the effort to crush partisans was characterized by a fundamental multifunctionality that went beyond achieving security.134
However, this advance in the research contrasts with a spatial narrowing of relevant studies to the occupied territories of the Soviet Union and the Balkans, a limitation that is no doubt legitimate given the dimensions of the partisan war in these regions but that leaves much of occupied Europe largely untouched. It is true that these approaches have recently undergone an expansion in their spatial perspective: individual studies have analysed the transfer and adaptation in Western European regions of methods for combating partisan bands first used in occupied Eastern Europe.135
But occupied Poland in particular has attracted virtually no attention from this point of view. The only relevant studies are the predominantly descriptive ones by Czesław Madajczyk136 and Józef Fajkowski,137 but as yet no one has built on them. Questions about the actors involved in, and the functions and forms of massacres in the context of, efforts to crush the Polish partisan movement have yet to be answered.
This is not a complete overview of Nazi violence against Polish civilians. By focusing on the category of the massacre, I disregard many forms of violence that would be indispensable in a comprehensive history of violence and suffering in occupied Poland. It is here that the limits of the present study come into view, along with the opportunities it opens up.
Under German rule, Polish civilians were subject to acts of violence of many different kinds. They suffered a variety of forms of everyday violence: being struck, kicked and humiliated. They had to perform forced labour and were subjected to sexual violence. Polish civilians were also forcibly evicted and deported in cattle wagons. They were transported to countless detention centres, where they were tortured en masse in the ‘interrogation rooms’ of the SS and police and, particularly if they were members of strata vital to the state,138 were often put to death before a firing squad either in these centres or elsewhere. All these manifestations of German violence in Poland are only of interest to the present study if they are connected analytically to massacres – that is, if they help to illuminate the specific context of a massacre or if they represent a form of violence involved in one. I do not, however, provide a separate analysis of these different violent practices.
This applies to the violence in the concentration camps as well. Auschwitz, the ‘largest slaughterhouse in human history’,139 is not the subject of the present study. Particularly in the West, Auschwitz’s dual role within the camp system is often overlooked. It was not only an extermination camp for more than a million Jews from all over Europe but also a concentration camp in which, among others, around 140,000 Polish civilians were imprisoned. No less than 70,000 of them did not survive, being shot or perishing due to the wretched living and working conditions in the camp.140 But Auschwitz can be clearly distinguished from massacres as an institution of violence. In a space fenced in with barbed wire, a specific group of perpetrators carried out a range of violent practices with no time limit – eventually resulting in the deaths of countless people.
This book is an examination of the specific form of violence that is the massacre; no lexicon, it is essentially a qualitative analysis. Its empirical focus is on massacres in the context of German anti-partisan efforts. Mark Levene has emphasized the fact that the massacre as a specific form of violence is rarely carried out in situations of undisputed power and secure relations of domination. Massacres, he contends, are usually undertaken by a state ‘whose power is diffused, or fragmented, or [a state that is] unsure of itself, or frightened of the fact that the power it thinks it ought to have is illusory or slipping out of its control’.141 Hence, massacres are typically committed by states in the context of threatening scenarios that lay bare their own vulnerability and the fragility of their claims to power.142 The present study takes up these observations, foregrounding the German effort to combat partisans. It was the presence of Polish partisans that aroused feelings of fear and perceptions of threat among the German occupiers, a trend that gradually led to the idea of a wholesale crisis. This produced a sense of urgency, fostering countless massacres.
My decision to focus on anti-partisan activities allows me to do two valuable things. First, I can forge direct links with current research on the first phase of the German occupation. In this context, German soldiers’ and police officers’ propensity for violence was attributed, among other things, to the ‘underhand’ fighting style of the supposedly ubiquitous Polish partisans. But Jochen Böhler has shown that it was a virtual war that was being waged here. According to him, there was no organized Polish partisan movement in September 1939. Nonetheless, Böhler tells us, the illusory notion of an omnipresent enemy influenced German conduct and helped bring about massacres of Polish civilians.143 An investigation of massacres in the context of the fight against partisans can update existing studies and analyse how the German occupiers reacted to the real partisan movement. The findings of important research produced over the last few years can thus be used to illuminate the entire period of German rule.
Second, I have the opportunity to help provide something that scholars have long identified as a key desideratum. ‘A truly exhaustive work on the “pacification” of Polish villages’, as Włodzimierz Borodziej once put it, ‘does not exist. [This complex of violence] is an unwritten history’.144 Here, the German fight against partisans in occupied Poland deserves special attention for a number of reasons. Its geographical location made occupied Poland the most important transit country for the war against the Soviet Union. The vast majority of rolling stock had to pass through the area on its way to the Eastern Front and was thus exposed to potential attack. In addition, occupied Poland served Wehrmacht troops as an important ‘haven’ to which they were sent from the theatres of war on the Eastern Front to rest and replenish their energies.145 Furthermore, within the overall structure of the war economy, the area occupied an increasingly prominent position as a huge reservoir of forced labourers and an important supplier of agricultural products. Finally, occupied Poland was at the intersection of various, often intertwined strands of persecution and extermination in German-occupied Eastern Europe, which made it the setting for the mass murder of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war. These factors made occupied Poland an important area in terms of military strategy and the war economy. Its stability had to be guaranteed at all costs.
Having detailed my empirical focus, I can now specify the main territory analysed in the present book: the central Polish region under the General Government. I foreground this area because the vast majority of Polish partisan organizations operated there. The districts of Radom and Lublin in particular offered the partisans comparatively favourable topographical conditions and were key arenas of German efforts to crush them.146 In the annexed territories, however, there was virtually no activity by Polish partisan units during the entire period of occupation.147 Nevertheless, I include certain developments in the new Reichsgaue (Reich districts) in my analysis in order to contextualize massacres as broadly as possible. The eastern Polish ‘Kresy’ (borderlands), on the other hand – with their complex, near-indecipherable civil wars – are not discussed. This is regrettable but unavoidable because the character of German rule, from 1941 onwards, was completely different in this multi-ethnic, conflict-ridden region. The specific problems of German rule in eastern Poland require bespoke research.
The concept of the massacre provides the guiding thread for the present study, and I present my analysis in three steps, which are reflected in the structure of the book. In Part I, I examine the ‘setting of massacres’, first scrutinizing the prior history of German–Polish relations in terms of continuities and ruptures. I then analyse the various temporal and action-related perspectives of German occupation policy in general as the foundational contexts of massacres. The focus of this section then shifts to constructs of the enemy, which are closely linked with the victimization of ethnic Germans and the notion of a specific Polish affinity for violence. Finally, I examine German efforts to install a system of violence in occupied Poland. This was bound up with the tendency to grant the ethnic Germans carte blanche to use violence, and went hand in hand with countless massacres of Polish civilians.
Part II analyses the practice of massacres and the nexus of resistance, war and massacres. In light of an analysis of the early stages of the German occupation, I then consider massacres in the context of efforts to stabilize and maintain German rule. Here, I investigate the development of massacres in the context of anti-partisan activities from 1940 to 1945, highlighting the actors, functions, practices and legitimacy of massacres. In the shape of the putting down of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, I consider how the German fight against partisans shifted from rural areas to an urban centre. In addition, I probe the involvement in massacres of specific groups within the Polish population. Polish civilians were given free rein to use violence in certain contexts. This aspect of my study can thus be linked with the structures, elaborated above, of the system of violence in occupied Poland – a system that proved flexible. This section also examines how massacres of Polish civilians were connected with parallel complexes of violence as well as with the objectives of occupation policy. Part III analyses how post-Nazi Germany and Communist Poland dealt with these events.
The research presented here is based on a variety of source materials from German, Polish and US archives. In order to analyse massacres as comprehensively as possible from a range of perspectives, it draws on contemporary German sources, reports and statements by survivors as well as files generated by the judicial processing of Nazi crimes. I have evaluated contemporary sources produced by the German occupation apparatus at the Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde. The central holdings of the German civil administration are stored there, including the complete official diary of Governor General Hans Frank, which is a key source for the present study. The same archive contains the holdings of the subordinate departments of the civil administration, which provide insights into the regional contexts of massacres, as well as key collections of the SS and police apparatus that were of tremendous relevance to this study: the files of the Personal Staff of the Reichsführer-SS, various police stations, the Main Office of the Ordnungspolizei as well as the latter’s troops and academies. Similarly important are the holdings of the Federal Archives in Ludwigsburg, which cover the judicial processing of Nazi crimes in its entirety – that is, preliminary proceedings, indictments and verdicts. A plethora of preliminary investigations deal with massacres of Polish civilians as well. Also worth mentioning is the voluminous document collection, which contains a valuable selection of important sources of Eastern European provenance.
The Federal Archives-Military Archive Freiburg im Breisgau was also of much value. I was able to examine in their entirety the key holdings of relevance to the apparatus of military occupation – that is, military commands (Militärbefehlshaber) in the General Government, the Armaments Office (Rüstungsinspektion) and armaments teams (Rüstungskommandos). The war diaries of the assigned reserve units – namely, the 154th and 174th infantry divisions – are also of tremendous relevance. Finally, the archive’s holdings provide valuable records that parallel and occasionally substitute for gaps in the SS and police files. The archive of the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (Institute of National Remembrance) in Warsaw was also important to the present study. Its extensive holdings are an exceptional source for the investigation of German occupation policy. There, I was able to view key collections of contemporary source material, mainly produced by the SS and police apparatus. Holdings relating to the gendarmerie (one of the two subdivisions of the Ordnungspolizei – the other being the Schutzpolizei, or Protection Police) commanders in particular allow important insights into the practice of massacres. In addition, I viewed some fragmentary documents generated by the civil administration and the Wehrmacht. Poland’s Archiwum Akt Nowych (Archives of New Records) stores the files of the Central Agricultural Office, the Department of Food and Agriculture and the Niemieckie władze okupacyjne (German occupation authorities) collection, which contains a large number of different holdings – particularly, documents produced by the civil administration. Finally, I evaluated the holdings of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which houses microfilm copies from all the larger and smaller archives in Eastern Europe. There, I analysed files from regional Polish archives as well as key sources produced by the SS and police apparatus, which are difficult to access in Poland.
The analysis of each of these source materials raises specific problems. The contemporary German sources can be considered authentic in a special sense and provide valuable insights into the practice of German rule in Poland. However, it must constantly be remembered that there may be gaps between decrees, orders and practices: they do not always reflect what actually occurred, with events sometimes unfolding in a completely different way than originally intended. Often, then, the contemporary sources offer only imprecise information about the actual practice of violence. The testimony of Polish survivors of or witnesses to massacres provides a valuable supplement in this context. But this type of source has its own problems. Survivors and witnesses were generally unable to identify the German units involved for understandable reasons. What they experienced was an indistinguishable mass of ‘Hitlerists’ who inflicted massive violence on them and their families. Still, such testimony can be regarded as an important supplementary source that, together with other materials, offers valuable insights into the dynamics of violence.
The files arising from the judicial processing of Nazi crimes, meanwhile, provide an opportunity to answer questions that are virtually impossible to address through contemporary source material. In particular, these sources shed light on the core cultural–historical question of meaning. It should, however, be borne in mind that the statements they contain were made in the context of judicial investigations. The legal focus on prosecution differs markedly from a historiographical approach, which seeks to understand events in the course of their development.148 Judicial investigative procedures necessarily concentrated only on aspects relevant to criminal law, focusing on isolated offences that could be assigned to individual perpetrators. In addition, perpetrators’ statements in the context of judicial proceedings must be seen for what they were. As witnesses or defendants, their testimony was mostly guided by the imperative of refraining from providing the authorities with any evidence, usable in a court of law, that massacres had been committed against the civilian population. So they kept quiet, denied involvement or made self-serving assertions. Only a tiny number of statements refer openly and in detail to the practice of violence in occupied Poland. Overall, despite these problems, the source material facilitates a comprehensive, multiperspectival analysis of German massacres.
Finally, I would like to highlight a terminological choice. The term ‘Polish civilians’ is central to the present study. This means Christian or ethnic Poles. I decided on this approach solely for reasons of linguistic simplicity. Since Jews were of course also Polish citizens, in theory we ought to refer to ‘ethnic/Christian Poles’. My terminological choice reflects the cumbersome nature of this phrasing and in no way implies the semantic exclusion of Jews from Polish society.
1. Konrad Schuller, ‘Als Winicjusz Natoniewski um sein Leben lief’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2 February 2008, 3. Schuller expanded on this article to create a powerful book, which appeared a year later. See Konrad Schuller, Der letzte Tag von Borów. Polnische Bauern, deutsche Soldaten und ein unvergangener Krieg (Freiburg im Breisgau, 2009). See also Konrad Schuller, ‘Kein Haus blieb verschont’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 September 2009, 11.
2. Schuller, Tag, 75f.
3. The ‘Order Police’.
4. KdO Lublin, Tägliche Lagemeldung (Daily Situation Report), 3.2.1944, AIPN, GK 104/51, fol. 6.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. See the account in Schuller, Tag, 42–48.
9. KdO Lublin, Tägliche Lagemeldung (Daily Situation Report), 3.2.1944, AIPN, GK 104/51, fol. 6.
10. See the survivors’ recollections in Schuller, Tag, 51.
11. KdO Lublin, Tägliche Lagemeldung (Daily Situation Report), 3.2.1944, AIPN, GK 104/51, fol. 6.
12. Ibid.
13. The report stated that ‘more than 300 family members [villagers] … [had been] evacuated for transfer to the employment office’: ibid.
14. Schuller, Tag, 46.
15. Nina Schulz, ‘Die eine Sache noch’, Analyse & Kritik. Zeitung für linke Debatte und Praxis 604 (21 April 2015), 30f.
16. Herbert Jäger, Verbrechen unter totalitärer Herrschaft. Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Gewaltkriminalität (Olten and Freiburg, 1967); Herbert Jäger, Makrokriminalität. Studien zur Kriminologie kollektiver Gewalt (Frankfurt am Main, 1989); Michaela Christ, ‘Die Soziologie und das “Dritte Reich”. Weshalb Holocaust und Nationalsozialismus in der Soziologie ein Schattendasein führen’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 40 (2011), 407–31, here 424.
17. Norbert Elias, Studien über die Deutschen (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 227.
18. Richard J. Evans, ‘Who Remembers the Poles?’, London Review of Books 32(21) (4 November 2010).
19. Dieter Pohl, ‘Nationalsozialistische und stalinistische Massenverbrechen: Überlegungen zum wissenschaftlichen Vergleich’, in Jürgen Zarusky (ed.), Stalin und die Deutschen. Neue Beiträge der Forschung (Munich, 2006), 253–64.
20. Birthe Kundrus and Henning Strotbek, ‘“Genozid”. Grenzen und Möglichkeiten eines Forschungsbegriffs – ein Literaturbericht’, Neue Politische Literatur 51 (2006), 397–423; Boris Barth, Genozid. Völkermord im 20. Jahrhundert. Geschichte, Theorien, Kontroversen (Munich, 2006); Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan (eds), The Specter of Genocide. Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2003); Norman Naimark, Flammender Hass. Ethnische Säuberung im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2004); Peter Imbusch, ‘Probleme der deutschen Genozidforschung. Eine Übersicht’, Mittelweg 36(2) (2001), 49–53.
21. Birthe Kundrus, ‘Entscheidung für den Völkermord? Einleitende Überlegungen zu einem historiographischen Problem’, Mittelweg 36(6) (2006), 4–17, here 6.
22. Ibid.
23. Peter Imbusch, ‘Der Gewaltbegriff’, in Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan (eds), Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung (Wiesbaden, 2002), 26–57.
24. Jacques Sémélin, Säubern und Vernichten. Die politische Dimension von Massakern und Völkermorden (Hamburg, 2007), 353ff.
25. Peter Burschel, ‘Massaker’, in Friedrich Jaeger (ed.), Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, vol. 8, 110–12, here 110.
26. Mark Levene, ‘Introduction’, in Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (eds), The Massacre in History (New York, 1999), 1–38, here 2.
27. Hans Medick, ‘Massaker in der Frühen Neuzeit’, in Claudia Ulbrich, Claudia Jarzebowski and Michaela Hohkamp (eds), Gewalt in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 2005), 4–19, here 15.
28. Sémélin, Säubern, 353ff.
29. Medick, ‘Massaker’, 15.
30. Ibid.
31. See, for example, the relevant definitions in Sémélin, Säubern, 353; Levene, ‘Introduction’, 5; Burschel, ‘Massaker’, 110; Wolfgang Sofsky, Traktat über die Gewalt (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 175f.
32. Trutz von Trotha, ‘Genozidaler Pazifizierungskrieg. Soziologische Anmerkungen zum Konzept des Genozids am Beispiel des Kolonialkriegs in Deutsch-Südwestafrika, 1904–1907’, Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung 4 (2003), 30–57, here 49f.
33. Sofsky, Traktat, 178.
34. Trutz von Trotha and Michael Schwab-Trapp, ‘Logiken der Gewalt’, Mittelweg 36(6) (1996), 56–64, here 60.
35. Von Trotha, ‘Pazifizierungskrieg’, 49f.
36. Von Trotha and Schwab-Trapp, ‘Logiken’, 60.
37. Sofsky, Traktat, 180.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 181.
40. Imbusch, ‘Gewaltbegriff’, 48; Jäger, Makrokriminalität, 11f.
41. See, for example, Klaus-Michael Mallmann, ‘“Mensch, ich feiere heut’ den tausendsten Genickschuß”. Die Sicherheitspolizei und die Shoah in Westgalizien’, in Bogdan Musial (ed.), ‘Aktion Reinhardt’. Der Völkermord an den Juden im Generalgouvernement 1941–1944 (Osnabrück, 2004), 353–79.
42. Stefan Wiese, ‘Pogrom’, in Christian Gudehus and Michaela Christ (eds), Gewalt. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch (Stuttgart and Weimar, 2013), 152–58, here 157.
43. Trutz von Trotha, ‘Formen des Krieges. Zur Typologie kriegerischer Aktionsmacht’, in Sighard Neckel and Michael Schwab-Trapp (eds), Ordnungen der Gewalt. Beiträge zur politischen Soziologie der Gewalt und des Krieges (Opladen, 1999), 71–96, here 86.
44. Trutz von Trotha, ‘Gewaltforschung auf Popitzschen Wegen. Antireduktionismus, Zweckhaftigkeit und Körperlichkeit der Gewalt, Gewalt und Herrschaft’, Mittelweg 36(6) (2000), 26–36, here 35f.
45. Wolfgang Knöbl, ‘Imperiale Herrschaft und Gewalt’, Mittelweg 36(3) (2012), 19–44, here 36.
46. Sofsky, Traktat, 175ff.
47. Ibid., 176.
48. Medick, ‘Massaker’, 15.
49. Sofsky, Traktat, 181.
50. Wolfram Pyta, ‘Selbstmobilisierung der Endkämpfer. Kriegerische Gewalteskalation im 20. Jahrhundert und deren kulturhistorische Durchleuchtung’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 May 2006, 10.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.; Harald Welzer once stated that such a perspective is ‘stupid’ because it ‘dwells on the horror that it purports to describe’. See Harald Welzer, ‘“Verweilen beim Grauen”. Bücher über den Holocaust’, Merkur 538 (1994), 67–72, here 72.
53. Sémélin, Säubern, 355.
54. Ibid., 356.
55. Jacques Sémélin, ‘Elemente einer Grammatik des Massakers’, Mittelweg 36(6) (2006), 18–40, here 27.
56. Sven Reichardt, ‘Feindbild und Fremdheit – Bemerkungen zu ihrer Wirkung, Bedeutung und Handlungsmacht’, in Benjamin Ziemann (ed.), Perspektiven der Historischen Friedensforschung (Essen, 2002), 250–71, here 250.
57. Ibid., 255.
58. Sémélin, ‘Elemente’, 22.
59. Mark Roseman, ‘Ideas, Contexts, and the Pursuit of Genocide’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London 25/1 (2003), 65–83.
60. Sémélin, ‘Elemente’, 27.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., 24.
63. Stimulating in this context is Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 2008), 2–7.
64. See, for example, Dieter Pohl, Von der ‘Judenpolitik’ zum Judenmord. Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Main, 1993); Thomas Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’ in Galizien. Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsintiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941–1944 (Bonn, 1996); Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord. Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 1998); Bogdan Musial, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung und Judenverfolgung im Generalgouvernement. Eine Fallstudie zum Distrikt Lublin 1939–1944 (Wiesbaden, 1999); Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk, Judenmord in Zentralpolen. Der Distrikt Radom des Generalgouvernements 1939–1945 (Darmstadt, 2007); Michael Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1945 (Wiesbaden, 2006). For a summary, see Peter Longerich, ‘Tendenzen und Perspektiven der Täterforschung’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 14–15 (2007), 3–7; Klaus-Michael Mallmann, ‘Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Der Täterdiskurs in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft’, in Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Andrej Angrick (eds), Die Gestapo nach 1945. Karrieren, Konflikte, Konstruktionen (Darmstadt, 2009), 292–318.
65. A brilliant synthesis is provided by Dan Stone, Histories of the Holocaust (New York, 2010); see also Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution. A Genocide (Oxford, 2009).
66. Jan Philipp Reemtsma, ‘Freiheit, Macht, Gewalt’, in Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Mord am Strand. Allianzen von Zivilisation und Barbarei (Munich, 1998), 125–45.
67. Wolfgang Sofsky, Die Ordnung des Terrors: Das Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 265ff.
68. Alf Lüdtke and Michael Wildt, ‘Einleitung. Staats-Gewalt: Ausnahmezustand und Sicherheitsregimes’, in Alf Lüdtke and Michael Wildt (eds), Staats-Gewalt: Ausnahmezustand und Sicherheitsregimes. Historische Perspektiven (Göttingen, 2008), 7–38, here 22.
69. Klaus-Michael Mallmann, ‘Die Türöffner der “Endlösung”. Zur Genesis des Genozids’, in Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds), Die Gestapo im Zweiten Weltkrieg. ‘Heimatfront’ und besetztes Europa (Darmstadt, 2000), 437–63.
70. Sémélin, ‘Elemente’, 30; Kundrus, ‘Entscheidung’, 15.
71. Matthias Häußler and Trutz von Trotha, ‘Brutalisierung “von unten”. Kleiner Krieg, Entgrenzung der Gewalt und Genozid im kolonialen Deutsch-Südwestafrika’, Mittelweg 36(3) (2012), 57–89, here 58.
72. Birthe Kundrus and Sybille Steinbacher (eds), Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten. Der Nationalsozialismus in der Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 2013).
73. Dieter Pohl, ‘Massengewalt und der Mord an den Juden im “Dritten Reich”’, in Sybille Steinbacher (ed.), Holocaust und Völkermorde. Die Reichweite des Vergleichs (Frankfurt am Main, 2012), 107–23, here 110.
74. Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction. Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, 2005); see also Susanne Kuss, ‘Vernichtungskrieg in Polen 1939: Vernichtung als Kontinuität in der deutschen Militärgeschichte’, in Bernd Martin and Arkadiusz Stempin (eds), Deutschland und Polen in schweren Zeiten. Alte Konflikte – neue Sichtweisen (Poznań, 2004), 69–86. The francs-tireurs were irregular military formations deployed by France during the early stages of the Franco–Prussian War.
75. See, especially, the collection of the most important essays by one of the main protagonists in this debate: Jürgen Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beiträge zum Verständnis von Kolonialismus und Holocaust (Berlin, 2011); see also the convincing riposte by Stefan Malinowski and Robert Gerwarth, ‘Der Holocaust als “kolonialer Genozid”? Europäische Kolonialgewalt und nationalsozialistischer Vernichtungskrieg’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 33 (2007), 439–66; Birthe Kundrus, ‘Kontinuitäten, Parallelen, Rezeptionen. Überlegungen zur “Kolonialisierung” des Nationalsozialismus’, WerkstattGeschichte 43 (2006), 45–62; Birthe Kundrus, ‘Von den Herero zum Holocaust? Einige Bemerkungen zur aktuellen Debatte’, Mittelweg 36(2) (2005), 82–91; most recently, see Sybille Steinbacher, ‘Sonderweg, Kolonialismus, Genozide: Der Holocaust im Spannungsfeld von Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten der deutschen Geschichte’, in Frank Bajohr and Andrea Löw (eds), Der Holocaust. Ergebnisse und neue Fragen der Forschung (Frankfurt am Main, 2015), 83–101.
76. John Horne and Alan Kramer, Deutsche Kriegsgreuel 1914. Die umstrittene Wahrheit (Hamburg, 2004).
77. Dieter Pohl, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht. Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944 (Munich, 2008), 34–40; Dieter Pohl, Massengewalt, 111–12; Boris Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration. Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2003), 229–90; Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, ‘Personelle Kontinuitäten in baltischen Angelegenheiten auf deutscher Seite von 1917/19 bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg?’, in John Hiden (ed.), The Baltic in International Relations Between the Two World Wars (Stockholm, 1988), 157–70.
78. See the recent contribution by Jörg Hackmann and Marta Kopij-Weiß, Nationen in Kontakt und Konflikt. Deutsch-polnische Beziehungen und Verflechtungen 1806–1918 (Darmstadt, 2014); see also, for example, Martin Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik (Frankfurt am Main, 1972); Dietrich Beyrau (ed.), Blick zurück ohne Zorn. Polen und Deutsche in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Tübingen, 1999); Robert L. Nelson (ed.), Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 through the Present (New York, 2009); Hubert Orłowski, ‘Polnische Wirtschaft’. Zum deutschen Polendiskurs der Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1996); Karoline Gil and Christian Pletzing (eds), Granica. Die deutsch-polnische Grenze vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2010); Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East. 1800 to the Present (Oxford, 2009); Gregor Thum (ed.), Traumland Osten. Deutsche Bilder vom östlichen Europa im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2006); Wolfgang Wippermann, Die Deutschen und der Osten. Feindbild und Traumland (Darmstadt, 2007); Włodzimierz Borodziej, ‘Deutschland und das östliche Europa’, in Joachim von Puttkamer and Włodzimierz Borodziej (eds), Europa und sein Osten. Geschichtskulturelle Herausforderungen (Munich, 2012), 131–46; Günther Stökl, Osteuropa und die Deutschen. Geschichte und Gegenwart einer spannungsreichen Nachbarschaft (Oldenburg and Hamburg, 1967).
79. About 4,000 entries are included in Andreas Lawaty and Wiesław Mincer (eds), Deutsch-polnische Beziehungen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Bibliographie (Wiesbaden, 2000), vol. 1, 735–950; see also Walter Okonski, Wartime Poland, 1939–1945: A Select Annotated Bibliography of Books in English (Westport, 1997).
80. Czesław Madajczyk, Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce, 2 vols (Warsaw, 1970); Czesław Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945 (Berlin [East], 1987); Martin Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 1961); Gerhard Eisenblätter, Grundlinien der Politik des Reiches gegenüber dem Generalgouvernement 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Main, 1969).
81. See Documenta Occupationis (Poznań, 1945–1990); Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 1975); Czesław Madajczyk (ed), Zamojszczyzna – Sonderlaboratorium SS. Zbiór dokumentów polskich i niemieckich z okresu okupacji hitlerowskiej, 2 vols (Warsaw, 1977); Czesław Madajczyk (ed), Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan (Munich, 1994); Werner Röhr (ed.), Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Polen 1939–1945 (Berlin [East], 1989).
82. See, most recently, Markus Roth, Herrenmenschen. Die deutschen Kreishauptleute im besetzten Polen – Karrierewege, Herrschaftspraxis und Nachgeschichte (Göttingen, 2009); Peter Klein, ‘Behördenbeamte oder Gefolgschaftsmitglieder? Arthur Greisers Personalpolitik in Posen’, in Jochen Böhler and Stephan Lehnstaedt (eds), Gewalt und Alltag im besetzten Polen 1939–1945 (Osnabrück, 2012), 187–204; Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter. Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie (Osnabrück, 2007); Musial, Zivilverwaltung. See also Edward Jędrzejewski, ‘Administracja i NSDAP w systemie okupacyjnym ziem polskich włączonych do Trzeciej Rzeszy (1939–1945)’, Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerwoskich w Polsce 27 (1977), 131–47; Stanisław Nawrocki, Policja hitlerowska w tzw. Kraju Warty w latach 1939–1945 (Poznań, 1970); Ryszard Kaczmarek, Pod rządami gauleiterów. Elity i instancje władze w rejencji w latach 1939–1945 (Katowice, 1998); Kazimierz Radziwończyk, ‘Niemieckie siły zbrojne w okupowanej Polsce, 22.6.1941 – wiosną 1944 r.’, Wojskowy Przegląd Historyczny 7 (3) (1962), 103–59 and 7 (4) (1962), 31–96; Leon Herzog, ‘Die verbrecherische Tätigkeit der Wehrmacht im Generalgouvernement in den Jahren 1939 bis 1945’, Zeitschrift für Militärgeschichte 6 (1967), 445–58.
83. Czesław Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa i ekonomiczna hitlerowskich Niemiec w okupowanej Polsce (Poznań, 1993); Czesław Rajca, Walka o chleb 1939–1945. Eksploatacja rolnictwa w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie (Lublin, 1991); Sonja Schwaneberg, ‘Die wirtschaftliche Ausbeutung des Generalgouvernements durch das Deutsche Reich 1939–1945’, in Jacek Młynarczyk (ed.), Polen unter deutscher und sowjetischer Besatzung 1939–1945 (Osnabrück, 2009), 103–29; Tadeusz Janicki, ‘Die deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik in den eingegliederten polnischen Gebieten 1939–1945’, in ibid., 79–102; Bogdan Musial, ‘Recht und Wirtschaft im besetzten Polen 1939–1945’, in Johannes Bähr and Ralph Banken (eds), Das Europa des ‘Dritten Reichs’. Recht, Wirtschaft, Besatzung (Frankfurt am Main, 2005), 31–57; Roth, Herrenmenschen, 119–74.
84. See, especially, Gerhard Wolf, Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität. Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Polen (Hamburg, 2012); Philip T. Rutherford, Prelude to the Final Solution. The Nazi Program for Deporting Ethnic Poles, 1939–1941 (Lawrence, 2007); Isabel Heinemann, Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut. Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas (Göttingen, 2003); Michael G. Esch, ‘Gesunde Verhältnisse’. Deutsche und polnische Bevölkerungspolitik in Ostmitteleuropa 1939–1950 (Marburg, 1998); Mechthild Rössler and Sabine Schleiermacher (eds), Der ‘Generalplan Ost’. Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik (Berlin, 1993).
85. See, especially, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Terror i polityka. Policja niemiecka a polski ruch oporu w GG 1939–1944 (Warsaw, 1985); German version: Terror und Politk. Die deutsche Polizei und die polnische Widerstandsbewegung 1939–1944 (Mainz, 1999).
86. Christoph Kleßmann, Die Selbstbehauptung einer Nation. Nationalsozialistische Kulturpolitik und polnische Widerstandsbewegung im Generalgouvernement 1939–1945 (Düsseldorf, 1971); Hans-Christian Harten, De-Kulturation und Germanisierung. Die nationalsozialistische Rassen- und Erziehungspolitik in Polen 1939–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1996).
87. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, ‘Die Erinnerung an die deutsche Besatzung während des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Polen – Transformationen und Kontinuitäten der polnischen Erinnerungskultur 1980–2005’, in Bernd Faulenbach and Franz-Josef Jelich (eds), ‘Transformationen’ der Erinnerungskulturen in Europa nach 1989 (Essen, 2006), 55–78.
88. Jerzy Marczewski, ‘The Aims and Character of the Nazi Deportation Policy as Shown by the Example of the “Warta Region”’, Polish Western Affairs 2 (1969), 235–62; Jerzy Marczewski, Hitlerowska koncepcja polityki kolonizacyjno-wysiedleńczej i jej realizacja w ‘Okręgu Warty’ (Poznań, 1979). For a more recent study with a similar focus, see Czesław Łuczak, Pod niemieckim jarzmem (Kraj Warty) (Poznań, 1996).
89. See, for example, Zygmunt Klukowski, ‘Pacyfikacje i egzekucje masowe w powiecie zamojskim w latach 1939–1945’, Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce 5 (1949), 171–205; Jerzy Markiewicz, Nie dali ziemi skąd ich ród. Zamojszczyzna 27 XI 1942–31 XII 1943 (Lublin, 1967); Madajczyk, Zamojszczyzna.
90. Several thousand studies deal with the Warsaw Uprising: Władysław Henzel, Powstanie warszawskie 1944 r. Bibliografia selektywna (Warsaw, 1994–2004); see also Tomasz Szarota, Warschau unter dem Hakenkreuz. Leben und Alltag im besetzten Warschau 1.10.1939 bis 31.7.1944 (Paderborn, 1985).
91. Ulrich Herbert, ‘Arbeit und Vernichtung. Über Konvergenzen und Widersprüche nationalsozialistischer Politik, Vortrag in der Arbeitskammer Wien am 27.7.2007 im Rahmen der Tagung “Arbeit und Vernichtung” des Wiener Wiesenthal Centers für Holocaust-Studien’. Retrieved 20 November 2021 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njH3nHkWOwI&list=PL3A11F36A921841FB&index=8&t=2986s.
92. See, especially, Stephan Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten. Besatzeralltag in Warschau und Minsk 1939–1944 (Munich, 2010) as well as the individual chapters in Jochen Böhler and Stephan Lehnstaedt (eds), Gewalt und Alltag im besetzten Polen 1939–1945 (Osnabrück, 2012).
93. Barbara Engelking, ‘“Sehr geehrter Herr Gestapo”. Denunziationen im deutsch besetzten Polen 1940/41’, in Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial (eds), Genesis des Genozids. Polen 1939–1941 (Darmstadt, 2004), 206–20; Barbara Engelking, Jest taki piękny słoneczny dzień. Losy Żydów szukających ratunku na wsi polskiej 1942–1945 (Warsaw, 2011).
94. Jan Grabowski, Judenjagd. Polowanie na Żydów 1942–1945. Studium dziejów pewnego powiatu (Warsaw, 2011).
95. Stephan Lehnstaedt and Ruth Leiserowitz, ‘Polen und Juden unter deutscher Besatzung. Einführung in eine aktuelle Debatte über nachbarschaftliche Verhältnisse’, sehepunkte 7/8 (15 July 2011). Retrieved 20 November 2021 from www.sehepunkte.de/2011/07/forum/polen-und-juden-unter-deutscher-besatzung-einfuehrung-in-eine-aktuelle-debatte-ueber-nachbarschaftliche-verhaeltnisse-149/.
96. Ingo Loose, ‘Judenmord im nationalsozialistisch besetzten Polen. Neue Forschungen zu den Beziehungen zwischen Polen und Juden im Generalgouvernement 1939–1945’ (review), sehepunkte 7/8 (15 July 2011). Retrieved 20 November 2021 from www.sehepunkte.de/201120322.html.
97. On the pre-war period, see the recent study by Winson Chu, The German Minority in Interwar Poland (Cambridge, 2012). See also Rudolf Jaworski et al. (eds), Deutsche und Polen zwischen den Kriegen. Minderheitenstatus und ‘Volkstumskampf’ im Grenzgebiet. Amtliche Berichterstattung aus beiden Ländern, 2 vols (Munich, 1997); Richard Blanke, Orphans of Versailles. The Germans in Western Poland 1918–1939 (Lexington, 1993).
98. See, for example, Christian Jansen and Arno Weckbecker, Der ‘Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz’ in Polen 1939/40 (Munich, 1992); Doris Bergen, ‘The Nazi Concept of “Volksdeutsche” and the Exacerbation of Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe 1939–1945’, Journal of Contemporary History 29 (1994), 569–82; Doris Bergen, ‘The “Volksdeutschen” of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust: Constructed Ethnicity, Real Genocide’, Yearbook of European Studies 13 (1999), 70–93; Doris Bergen, ‘The Volksdeutsche of Eastern Europe and the Collapse of the Nazi Empire, 1944–1945’, in Doris Bergen, Alan E. Steinweis and Daniel E. Rogers (eds), The Impact of Nazism: New Perspectives on the Third Reich and its Legacy (Lincoln, 2003), 101–28. For a different spatial context, see also Eric C. Steinhart, ‘Creating Killers: The Nazification of the Black Sea Germans and the Holocaust in Southern Ukraine, 1941–1944’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C. 50 (2012), 57–74.
99. See the studies by such different historians as Eugeniusz Duraczyński, Jan Tomasz Gross, Jerzy Borejsza and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer: Eugeniusz Duraczyński, Wojna i okupacja. Wrzesień 1939 – Kwiecień 1943 (Warsaw, 1974), 92; Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation. The Generalgouvernement 1939–1944 (Princeton, 1979), xi; Jerzy W. Borejsza, Antyslawizm Adolfa Hitlera (Warsaw, 1988); Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, ‘Der Überfall auf Polen und der neue Charakter des Krieges’, in Christoph Kleßmann (ed.), September 1939. Krieg, Besatzung, Widerstand in Polen (Göttingen, 1989), 16–37, here 23–26. See also Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg. Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Frankfurt am Main, 2006), 24ff.
100. John Connelly, ‘Nazis and Slavs. From Racial Theory to Racist Practice’, Central European History 32 (1999), 1–33; John Connelly, ‘Why the Poles Collaborated So Little. And Why That Is No Reason for Nationalist Hubris’, Slavic Review 64 (2005), 771–81. See also Dieter Pohl, ‘Der Holocaust und die anderen NS-Verbrechen: Wechselwirkungen und Zusammenhänge’, in Frank Bajohr and Andrea Löw (eds), Der Holocaust. Ergebnisse und neue Fragen der Forschung (Frankfurt am Main, 2015), 124–40, here 128.
101. Doris L. Bergen, ‘Instrumentalization of Volksdeutschen in German Propaganda in 1939. Replacing/Erasing Poles, Jews, and Other Victims’, German Studies Review 31 (2008), 447–70; Miriam Y. Arani, Fotografische Selbst- und Fremdbilder von Deutschen und Polen im Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1945. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Region Wielkopolska (Hamburg, 2008); Miriam Y. Arani, ‘Wie Feindbilder gemacht wurden. Zur visuellen Konstruktion von “Feinden” am Beispiel der Fotografien der Propagandakompanien aus Bromberg 1939 und Warschau 1941’, in Rainer Rother and Judith Prokasky (eds), Die Kamera als Waffe. Propagandabilder des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Munich, 2010), 150–63.
102. Dieter Pohl, ‘War, Occupation and the Holocaust in Poland’, in Dan Stone (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust (London, 2004), 88–119, here 88; see, for example, Polish Ministry of Information (ed.), The German Invasion of Poland. Polish Black Book containing documents, authentical reports, and photographs (London, [n.d.] [1940]); Polish Ministry of Information (ed.), The German New Order in Poland (London, 1941); Polish Ministry of Information (ed.), The Black Book of Poland (New York, 1942); Polish Ministry of Information (ed.), The Quest for German Blood (London, 1943).
103. In addition to the academies of sciences and universities, the Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce (Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland) and the Instytut Zachodni (West Institute) in Poznań became influential institutions. Through their sourcebooks and publication series, both bodies have provided the foundation for every scholarly attempt to get to grips with the German occupation. Of outstanding importance are the series Documenta Occupationis Teutonicae, produced by the Instytut Zachodni, and the Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, published by the Główna Komisja. Also important are the journals Przegląd Zachodni, produced by the Instytut Zachodni, and Dzieje Najnowsze.
104. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, ‘Die deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen 1939 bis 1945’, in Bernhard Chiari (ed.), Die polnische Heimatarmee. Geschichte und Mythos der Armia Krajowa seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich, 2003), 51–86, here 52.
105. On the number of victims, see Mateusz Gniazdowski, ‘“Ustalić liczbę zabitych na 6 milionów ludzi”. Dyrektywy Jakuba Bermana dla Biura Odszkodowań Wojennych przy Prezydium Rady Ministrów’, Polski Przegląd Dyplomatyczny 41 (2008), 99–113; Mateusz Gniazdowski, ‘Zu den Menschenverlusten, die Polen während des Zweiten Weltkrieges von den Deutschen zugefügt wurden. Eine Geschichte von Forschungen und Schätzungen’, Historie. Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1 (2008), 65–92; Klaus-Peter Friedrich, ‘Erinnerungspolitische Legitimierungen des Opferstatus. Zur Instrumentalisierung fragwürdiger Opferzahlen in Geschichtsbildern vom Zweiten Weltkrieg in Polen und Deutschland’, in Dieter Bingen, Peter Oliver Loew and Kazimierz Wójcicki (eds), Die Destruktion des Dialogs. Zur innenpolitischen Instrumentalisierung negativer Fremdbilder und Feindbilder. Polen, Tschechien, Deutschland und die Niederlande im Vergleich 1900–2005 (Wiesbaden, 2007), 176–91.
106. Bömelburg, ‘Besatzungspolitik’, 52.
107. Zygmunt Mańkowski, ‘Działalność eksterminacyjna niemców wobec narodu polskiego w latach II wojny światowej. Zarys koncepcji syntezy’, in Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce/Instytut Pamięci Narodowej: Stan i Perspektywy Badań Historycznych Lat Wojny i Okupacji 1939 1945. Sesja 14–15 listopoada 1985 r. (Warsaw, 1988), 106–32, here 106.
108. Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Volker Rieß and Wolfram Pyta, Deutscher Osten 1939–1945. Der Weltanschauungskrieg in Photos und Texten (Darmstadt, 2003).
109. See, for example, Pohl, ‘Judenpolitik’; Młynarczyk, Judenmord; Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’; Michael Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1945 (Wiesbaden, 2006).
110. Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939–1944 (Lexington, 1986).
111. In a total of 345 pages, Lukas devotes thirty to describing various forms of German violence. See ibid., 1–30.
112. Lukas states, for example, ‘Thus the conclusion is inescapable that had the war continued, Poles would have been ultimately obliterated either by outright slaughter in gas chambers, as most Jews had perished, or by a continuation of the policies the Nazis had inaugurated in occupied Poland during the war – genocide by execution, forced labor, starvation, reduction of biological propagation, and Germanization’, quoted in ibid., 5. See also David Engel, ‘Poles, Jews, and Historical Objectivity’, Slavic Review 46 (1987), 568–80. The main thrust of Lukas’s book is already discernible in its title. Even if we were to concede that the term ‘Holocaust’ is used in a far more comprehensive sense in the United States than in Germany and Europe as a whole, reference to a ‘forgotten Holocaust’ tends to obliterate differences between quite different contexts of persecution.
113. Werner Röhr, ‘Terror und Politik. Über die Funktion des Terrors für die faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Polen 1939–1945’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 43 (1995), 27–54.
114. Robert Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen. Der Distrikt Radom 1939–1945 (Paderborn, 2006), 180–213. See also the outstanding review by Klaus-Peter Friedrich, ‘Rezension zu: Robert Seidel, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen’, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus 23 (2007), 216–18.
115. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010).
116. For the debate on Snyder’s book, see, especially, Thomas Kühne, ‘Great Men and Large Numbers. Undertheorising a History of Mass Killing’, Contemporary European History 21 (2012), 133–43; Evans, ‘Who remembers the Poles?’; Johannes Hürter, ‘Gewalt, nichts als Gewalt. Zu Timothy Snyders Bloodlands’, Journal of Modern European History 10 (2012), 446–51; Jürgen Zarusky, ‘Timothy Snyders “Bloodlands”. Kritische Anmerkungen zur Konstruktion einer Geschichtslandschaft’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 60 (2012), 1–31.
117. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992).
118. On the research programme pursued by recent scholarship on perpetrators, see Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann, ‘Sozialisation, Milieu und Gewalt. Fortschritte und Probleme der neueren Täterforschung’, in Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul (eds), Karrieren der Gewalt. Nationalsozialistische Täterbiographien (Darmstadt, 2004), 1–32. See also Thomas Sandkühler, ‘Die Täter des Holocaust. Neuere Überlegungen und Kontroversen’, in Karl Heinrich Pohl (ed), Wehrmacht und Vernichtungspolitik. Militär im nationalsozialistischen System (Göttingen, 1999), 39–65; Gerhard Paul, ‘Von Psychopathen, Technokraten des Terrors und “ganz gewöhnlichen” Deutschen. Die Täter der Shoah im Spiegel der Forschung’, in Gerhard Paul (ed), Die Täter der Shoah. Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche? (Göttingen, 2003), 13–90; Christopher R. Browning, ‘German Killers: Behavior and Motivation in the Light of New Evidence’, in Christopher R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge, 2000), 143–69.
119. See, especially, Musial, Zivilverwaltung; Roth, Herrenmenschen.
120. See, for example, Ruth Bettina Birn, Die Höheren SS- und Polizeiführer. Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten (Düsseldorf, 1986); Andreas Mix, ‘Organisatoren und Praktiker der Gewalt. Die SS- und Polizeiführer im Distrikt Warschau’, in Timm C. Richter (ed.), Krieg und Verbrechen. Situation und Intention: Fallbeispiele (Munich, 2006), 123–34; Martin Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah. Die Waffen-SS, der Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939–1945 (Darmstadt, 2005).
121. See, especially, Johannes Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer. Die deutschen Oberbefehlshaber im Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941/42 (Munich, 2006).
122. See, for example, Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten. Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamts (Hamburg, 2002); Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg, 2003).
123. See the call for such research in Jürgen Matthäus, ‘Holocaust als angewandter Antisemitismus? Potential und Grenzen eines Erklärungsfaktors’, in Frank Bajohr and Andrea Löw (eds), Der Holocaust. Ergebnisse und neue Fragen der Forschung (Frankfurt am Main, 2015), 102–23, here 117.
124. Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland. Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (Kansas City, 2003); Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Bogdan Musial (eds), Genesis des Genozids. Polen 1939–1941 (Darmstadt, 2004); Böhler, Auftakt; Jochen Böhler, Der Überfall. Deutschlands Krieg gegen Polen (Frankfurt am Main, 2009); Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Jochen Böhler and Jürgen Matthäus, Einsatzgruppen in Polen. Darstellung und Dokumentation (Darmstadt, 2008); Stephan Lehnstaedt and Jochen Böhler (eds), Die Berichte der Einsatzgruppen in Polen 1939. Complete edition (Berlin, 2013).
125. Rossino, Hitler, 191–226.
126. Böhler, Auftakt, 241–48.
127. Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer, 180.
128. Pohl, Herrschaft, 51.
129. On what follows, see Daniel Brewing, ‘“Wir müssen um uns schlagen”. Die Alltagspraxis der Partisanenbekämpfung im Generalgouvernement 1942’, in Jochen Böhler and Stephan Lehnstaedt (eds), Gewalt und Alltag im besetzten Polen 1939–1945 (Osnabrück, 2012), 497–520, here 500–2.
130. On the scholarly debate in recent years, see, for example, Walter Manoschek, ‘Serbien ist judenfrei’. Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42 (Munich, 1993); Klaus Naumann and Hannes Heer (eds), Vernichtungskrieg. Die Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 1995); Timm C. Richter, ‘Herrenmensch’ und ‘Bandit’. Deutsche Kriegsführung und Besatzungspolitik als Kontext des sowjetischen Partisanenkrieges (1941–1944) (Münster, 1998); Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg, 1999); Ben Shepherd, War in the Wild East: the German Army and Soviet Partisans (Cambridge, 2004); Philip W. Blood, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters. The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe (Washington, DC, 2006). Scholars now began to examine the Soviet Union as well. See, especially, Alexander Brakel, Unter Rotem Stern und Hakenkreuz: Baranowicze 1939–1944. Das westliche Weißrussland unter sowjetischer und deutscher Besatzung (Paderborn, 2009); see also Bogdan Musial, Sowjetische Partisanen 1941–1944. Mythos und Wirklichkeit (Paderborn, 2009).
131. Hannes Heer, ‘Die Logik des Vernichtungskrieges. Wehrmacht und Partisanenkampf’, in Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 1995), 104–56, here 107.
132. See the following research reports: Lutz Klinkhammer, ‘Der Partisanenkrieg der Wehrmacht 1941–1944’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds), Die Wehrmacht. Mythos und Realität (Munich, 1999), 815–36; Ben Shepherd, ‘The Clean Wehrmacht, the War of Extermination, and Beyond’, in The Historical Journal 52(2) (2009), 455–73. At times, studies of German efforts to combat partisans serve present-day needs for interpretation and orientation, especially in the Anglo-American world: Ben Shepherd and Juliette Pattinson ‘Partisan and Anti-Partisan Warfare in German-Occupied Europe, 1939–1945: Views from Above and Lessons for the Present’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 31 (2008), 675–93.
133. According to Klaus Jochen Arnold, these include such things as fear, a desire for revenge, opportunism, career ambitions and mechanisms of solidarity. See Klaus Jochen Arnold, Die Wehrmacht und die Besatzungspolitik in den besetzten Gebieten der Sowjetunion: Kriegführung und Radikalisierung im ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’ (Berlin, 2005), 26ff.
134. See, especially, Gerlach, Morde, 859–1055.
135. See Peter Lieb, Konventioneller Krieg oder NS-Weltanschauungskrieg? Kriegführung und Partisanenbekämpfung in Frankreich 1943/44 (Munich, 2007); Peter Lieb, ‘Repercussions of Eastern Front Experiences on Anti-Partisan Warfare in France 1943–44’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 31 (2008), 797–823; Carlo Gentile, Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Partisanenkrieg. Italien 1943–1945 (Paderborn, 2012).
136. Czesław Madajczyk, Hitlerowski terror na wsi polskiej 1939–1945. Zestawienie większych akcji represyjnych (Warsaw, 1965).
137. Józef Fajkowski, Wieś w ogniu. Eksterminacja wsi polskiej w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej (Warsaw, 1972); Józef Fajkowski and Jan Religa, Zbrodnie hitlerowskie na wsi polskiej 1939–1945 (Warsaw, 1981).
138. On the anti-intelligentsia campaign, see, especially, Barbara Bojarska, Eksterminacja inteligencji polskiej na Pomorzu Gdańskim (wrzesień – grudzień 1939) (Poznań, 1979); Paweł Dubiel, Wrzesień na Śląsku (Katowice, 1963); Dieter Schenk, Hitlers Mann in Danzig. Gauleiter Forster und die NS-Verbrechen in Danzig-Westpreußen (Bonn, 2000); Maria Wardzyńska, Był rok 1939. Operacja niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa w Polsce Intelligenzaktion (Warsaw, 2009).
139. Wolfgang Sofsky, ‘Auschwitz’, in Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (ed.), 200 Tage und 1 Jahrhundert. Gewalt und Destruktivität im Spiegel des Jahres 1945 (Hamburg, 1995), 83–97, here 84.
140. Franciszek Piper, ‘Die Rolle des Lagers Auschwitz bei der Verwirklichung der nationalsozialistischen Ausrottungspolitik. Die doppelte Funktion von Auschwitz als Konzentrationslager und als Zentrum der Judenvernichtung’, in Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth and Christoph Dieckmann (eds), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Entwicklung und Struktur, vol. 2, (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), 390–414; Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz. Geschichte und Nachgeschichte (Munich, 2004).
141. Levene, ‘Introduction’, 11.
142. Jacques Sémélin has likewise pointed out that ‘massacres are mainly [committed] by states that consider themselves vulnerable or believe that they cannot win a war unless they eliminate sections of the civilian population’. See Sémélin, ‘Elemente’, 20.
143. Böhler, Auftakt.
144. Quoted in Schuller, ‘Als Winicjusz Natoniewski um sein Leben lief’.
145. See Lehnstaedt, Okkupation, 36.
146. In the General Government, conditions for the formation of resistance groups were better for two reasons. First, at least during the first few years of the German occupation, there were no intrusive and coercive measures of the kind so central to the Nazis’ new ethnonational order, which caused devastation in the annexed areas. Second, the Nazi occupation authorities were dependent on a degree of cooperation from sections of the Polish population. For example, local officials at the regional level were integrated into the administration of the occupied territories. Although this specific situation occasionally fostered outright collaboration, it also opened up room for manoeuvre in Polish society that did not exist in this form in the annexed territories. See Włodzimierz Borodziej, ‘Politische und soziale Konturen des polnischen Widerstands’, in Christoph Kleßmann (ed.), September 1939. Krieg, Besatzung und Widerstand in Polen (Göttingen, 1989), 95–116; Grzegorz Mazur, ‘Der Widerstand im Generalgouvernement’, in Jacek Młynarczyk (ed.), Polen unter deutscher und sowjetischer Besatzung 1939–1945 (Osnabrück, 2009), 405–26.
147. The conditions here were generally unfavourable due to the comprehensive elimination of the Polish intelligentsia, mass expulsions and the permanent pressure to Germanize. Nevertheless, scattered resistance groups managed to carry out espionage and sabotage, especially in Upper Silesia, though armed forms of resistance did not emerge until late 1944 and only in specific regions. See, for example, Aleksandra Pietrowicz, ‘Die Widerstandsbewegung in den eingegliederten polnischen Gebieten 1939–1945’, in Jacek Młynarczyk (ed.), Polen unter deutscher und sowjetischer Besatzung 1939–1945 (Osnabrück, 2009), 427–52.
148. Michael Wildt, ‘Differierende Wahrheiten. Historiker und Staatsanwälte als Ermittler von NS-Verbrechen’, in Norbert Frei, Dirk van Laak and Michael Stolleis (eds), Geschichte vor Gericht. Historiker, Richter und die Suche nach Gerechtigkeit (Munich, 2000), 46–57.