by The Destruction of the European Jews, Vol. 1-3 (Third Edition) Yale University Press (2003) (pdf)
a new type of territorial administration, first known as the “General
Government in Poland” and later referred to simply as the “General
Government”
(Generalgouvernement).
This
region
held
approximately
1,400,000
Jews.
The
principal
difference
between
the
incorporated
areas and the Generalgouvernement was the degree of centralization in
the
bureaucratic
machinery.
The
Reichsstatthalter
was
primarily
a
coordinator. Thus the regional offices of the various ministries took all
their
functional
instructions
(fachliche
Anweisungen)
from
Berlin
and
were subject only to territorial orders from the Reichsstatthalter or
Oberpräsident in accordance with the following formula: *
Hitler's Free City (Chicago, 1973); Erwin Lichtenstein, Die Juden der Freien Stadl
Danzig (Tübingen, 1973); and Konrad Ciechanowski, "Das Schicksal der Zigeuner und
Juden in den Jahren des zweiten Weltkrieges in Pommerellen,” paper for Main
Commission for Investigation of Nazi Crimes/lntemationaJ Scientific Session on Nazi
Genocide. Warsaw, April 14-17, 1983. Of roughly 1,500 Jews remaining on August 31.
1939, at least 560 were still able to emigrate. Deportations took place to the Warsaw
ghetto, Theresienstadt, and directly to camps. Survivors numbered about 100.
17. Krakauer Zeitung, January 28, 1941, p. 1.
195
CONCENTRATION
Hitler ► Reichsstauhalter
Ministry------- ►■Regional office
The horizontal arrows represent functional authority; the vertical arrows, territorial authority.
In the Generalgouvernement this closed diagram did not apply.
Generalgouverneur
Hans
Frank
did
not
have
ministerial
offices.
He
had main divisions (Hauptabteilungen) which were responsible only to
him:
Hitler
Ministry
Frank as Generalgouvemeur had more authority than a Reichsstatthalter or an Oberpräsident. He also had more prestige, for he was a Reichsminister without portfolio, a Reichsleiter of the party, the president of the German Academy of Law—in short, a top Nazi in every respect.
When Frank came to Poland, he brought with him a retinue of
party dignitaries who occupied some of his main divisions:"
Generalgouverneur: Hans Frank
Deputy (to May 1940): Reichsminister Seyss-Inquart
Staatssekretär: Dr. Biihler
Deputy Staatssekretär: Dr. Boepple
Higher SS and Police Leader (from April 1942), Staatssekretär, Security, SS-Obergruppenfiihrer Kriiger (replaced in 1943 by Koppe) Main divisions
Interior: Ministerialrat Dr. Siebert (Westerkamp, Siebert, Losacker)
Justice: Ministerialrat Wille
Education: Hofrat Watzke
Propaganda: Oberregierungsrat Ohlenbusch
Railways (Ostbahn): Präsident Gerteis
Postal Service: Präsident Lauxmann
Construction: Präsident Bauder
Forests: Oberlandforstmeister Dr. Eissfeldt
Emissionsbank: Reichsbankdirektor (ret.) Dr. Paersch
Economy: Ministerialdirigent Dr. Emmerich 18
18.
Dr. Max Freiherr du Prel ed., Das Generalgouvernement (Würzburg, 1942),pp.
375-80. See also Krakauer Zeitung (passim) and the Frank diary, PS-2233.
196
POLAND
T A B L E 6 - 6
REICH AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT REGIONAL MACHINERY
Reichsstauhalter
or Oberpräsident
Generalgouvemeur
I
Regierungspräsident
Gouverneur
Obeibürgermeister
Landrat
Stadthauptmann
Kreishauptmann
or Bürgermeister
(rural)
Stadtkommissar
(town executive)
Polis mayor
Polish mayor
Food and Agriculture: SS-Brigadeführer Körner (Naumann)
Labor: Reichshauptamtsleiter Dr. Frauendorfer (Struve)
Finance: Finanzpräsident Spindler (Senkowsky)
Health: Obermedizinalrat Dr. Walbaum (Teitge)
The
regional
network
of
the
Generalgouvernement
administration
closely paralleled the regional machinery in the Reich, but the titles
varied somewhat, as Table 6-6 shows. The Gouverneur was originally
called Distriktchef, but the new title was conferred as a boost to
morale.” There were four Gouverneure in Poland in 1939. After the
outbreak of war with Russia, the German army overran Galicia, and
this area became the fifth district of the Generalgouvernement (in August 1941). The names of the Gouverneure and of their administrative deputies are listed in Table 6-7. It may be noted that, as a rule, the
Gouverneur was a party man, but his Amtschef was a civil servant.
The
Generalgouvernement
administration
combined
party
initiative
on
the top with bureaucratic thoroughness on the bottom.
Generalgouvemeur Hans Frank was a moody autocrat who displayed sentimentality and brutality. He was a jurist who often used the eloquent and precise language of the law, but he was also a party man
who could address the mob in the language of the street. In his castle in
Kraköw,
Frank
behaved
like
a
cultured
ruler
who
entertained
his
guests by playing Chopin’s piano music. In the conference room, however, he was one of the principal architects of the destruction process in Poland. He was powerful but vain. The party treasurer (Reichs-
'9. Summary of discussion between Frank and Dr. Wächter (Gouverneur, Warsaw).
November 10. 1939, Frank diary. PS-2233.
197
CONCENTRATION
T A B L E 6 - 7
THE GOUVERNEURE
Kraköw
Gouverneur: SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Wächter (SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Wendler,
von Burgsdorff)
Amtschef:
Ministerialrat Wolsegger (Dr. Eisenlohr, Dr. Stumm)
Lublin
Gouverneur: Schmidt (Oberstarbeitsführer Zömer, Wendler)
Amtschef:
Landrat Dr. Schmige (Losacker, Oberregierungsrat Engler,
Schlüter)
Radom
Gouverneur: Reichsamtsleiter Dr. Karl Lasch (Unterstaatssekretär Kundt)
Amtschef:
Oberregierungsrat Dr. Egen
Warsaw
Gouverneur: Hauptamtsleiter SA-Brigadeführer Dr. Fischer
Amtschef:
Reichsamtsieiter Landgerichtsdirektor Barth (Reichshauptstellenleiter Staatsanwalt Dr. Hummel)
Galicia
Gouverneur: Dr. Lasch (SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Wächter)
Amtschef:
Regierungsrat Dr. Losacker (Bauer, Dr. Brandt)
NOTE: Compiled from Dr. Max Freiher
r du Frei, Das Deutsche Generalgouvernement in Polen (Kraköw, 1940), pp. 87.100-101, 147. 200; du Prel, Das Generalgouvernement (Würzburg, 1942), pp. 375-80, Krakauer Zeitung, passim.
Schatzmeister), Schwarz, once referred to him as “König Frank,”
which means “King Frank” or “the royal Frank.”“
The Generalgouverneur was an uneasy king. He did not fear the
Poles and much less the Jews, but he fought a desperate battle with
certain personalities in Berlin who wanted to rob him of his authority
and his power. Frank never tired of pointing out that he was an absolute
dictator responsible only to Hitler, that the Generalgouvernement was
his private preserve, and that no one was permitted to do anything in
this preserve unless he took orders from the castle in Kraköw. “As you
know,” he said, “I am a fanatic of the unity of administration.”21 “Unity
of administration” meant that no one holding an office in the Generalgouvernement was supposed to take orders from anyone but Frank.
The attempt by Berlin agencies to give instructions to offices in the
20. Berger (chief ofSS Main Office) to Himmler, July 2, 1941, NO-29. TheGeneral-
gouvemement was sometimes called (in joke) Frankreich.
21. Summary of conference of party men in the Generalgouvernement, March 18,
1942, Flank diary, PS-2233.
198
POLAND
Generalgouvernement
Frank
called
hineinregieren (to “reign into”
his
domain). He did not tolerate that. But the unity of administration was
actually a fiction, at least so far as three agencies were concerned.
The first exception was the army. Frank had no authority over the
troops. The authority was held exclusively by a general who was
called,
successively,
Oberbefehlshaber
Ost
(Generaloberst
Blas-
kowitz),
Militärbefehlskaber
im
Generalgouvernement
(General
der
Kavallerie
Kurt
Freiherr
von
Gienanth),
and,
ultimately,
Wehrkreisbefehlshaber im Generalgouvernement (Gienanth and General der Infanterie Haenicke). The army controlled not only troops but also war production, which was in the hands of the Rüstungsinspektion, or Armament
Inspectorate
(Generalleutnant
Schindler).
The
relation
between Gienanth and Schindler is illustrated in the following diagram:
Chief of the Replacement Army
High Command of the Armed Forces/
I
Economy-Armament Office
Thomas----------------------
Gienanth and Schindler had subordinate but not unimportant functions
in the destruction process.
The second exception to Frank’s unity of administration was the
railway system. Although Frank had a Main Division Railway under
the direction of Präsident Gerteis, that official was also the Generaldirektor of the Ostbahn, which in turn was run by the Reichsbahn. The Ostbahn operated the confiscated Polish State Railways in the Generalgouvernement,“
and its key personnel consisted of 9,000 Germans.”
However, the railway had taken over, in addition to the Polish equipment, about 40,000 railway employees." By the end of 1943 the Ostbahn was still run by 9,000 Germans, but by that time it employed
145,000 Poles plus a few thousand Ukrainians.” These statistics are not 22 23 24 25
22. Reichsbahnrat Dr. Peicher, “Die Ostbahn,” in du Prel, Das Generalgouvernement, pp. 80-86.
23. Ibid.
24. Oberlandgerichstrat Dr. Weh, “Das Recht des Generalgouvernements,”
Deutsches Recht, 1940, pp. 1393-1400. ln April 1940. German railway personnel included 9,298 in the Generalgouvernement and 47,272 in the incorporated territories, whereas the Polish employees numbered 36,640 in the Generalgouvernement and 33.967
in the incorporated territories. Transport Ministry to OKH/TVansport, April II, 1940,
H 12/101.2, p. 219. The Ostbahn was confined to the Generalgouvernement. It did nor
administer the railways in the incorporated areas.
25. Speech by Frank before air force officers, December 14, 1943, Frank diary, PS-
2233.
199
CONCENTRATION
without significance, because the railway administration was to play a
crucial role in the concentrations, and a decisive one in the deportations.
The third and most important exception to Frank’s absolute authority was the SS and police, the apparatus of Heinrich Himmler What was the Himmler apparatus and how did it assert its authority in
the Generalgouvemement?
Himmler, the son of a professor and rector of a Gymnasium, had
barely missed combat in World War I and had turned briefly to agronomy thereafter. His diary, which he kept as an adolescent and as a young man, reveals a normal bourgeois childhood, an early concern
with what was proper, and habits of meticulousness with a hint of
pedantry.“
Conservative,
conventional,
and
patriotic,
he
read
fairly
widely and kept a list of the books he read. Comparatively little in this
literature was anti-Semitic, and from the diary it would seem that
Himmler developed any anti-Jewish notions very slowly. Hungry for
power, he joined the Nazi movement while still in his early twenties
and took over its formation of bodyguards: the Schutzstaffel, or SS.
The attributes of his youth were still evident in his wartime leadership
of the SS and Police. He was forever on the lookout for corruption,
especially in the ranks of his rivals. As he expanded his power base in
various directions, he became involved in all manner of things.r His
interests
encompassed
foreign
affairs,
internal
administration,
armament production, the resettlement of populations, the conduct of the
war, and, of course, the destruction of the Jews. He could talk about
these subjects at great length, and he often held his audience for three
hours at a stretch. (It may be added that the audience consisted of his
own SS generals.) Above all, Himmler’s power rested on his independence. This is a fact of utmost importance. Himmler was not part of any hierarchy, but he had his foothold everywhere. In the machinery of
destruction
he
is,
perforce,
placed
between
two
hierarchies:
the
ministerial bureaucracy and the party. Himmler received most of his
funds from the Finance Ministry and recruited most of his men from
the party. Both fiscally and in its personnel structure, the SS and Police
was consequently a civil service-party amalgamation.“ 26 27 28
26. See Bradley F. Smith, Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900-1926
(Stanford. 1971). Smith deciphered the diary and used it as one of his principal sources.
27. Note the book about SS politics by Heinz Hdhne, The Order of the Death's
Head (New York, 1970).
28. Originally, the SS was part of the party formation SA. See order by Rohm (SA
/>
commander), November 6, 1932, SA-13. The police was a decentralized apparatus,
placed under Himmler in 1936. Himmler was henceforth the Reichsfiihrer-SS und Chef
der deutschen Polizei. Decree of June 17, 1936 RGB1 I, 487. The SS (party sector)
200
POLAND
The SS and Police operated centrally through main offices, the
chiefs of which were directly responsible to Himmler, and regionally
through Higher SS and Police Leaders (Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer),
who also were answerable to him directly.
The
central
organization
consisted
of
twelve
main
offices
(see
Table 6-8). The police components of this machinery are to be found in
the RSHA and in the Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei, the one a relatively
small organization in which the Gestapo was the predominant element,
the other an old institution on the German scene.
RSHA*
Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police)
Gestapo
ca. 40,000 to 45,000
Kripo (Criminal Police)
ca. 15,000
Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service,
originally the party's intelligence
arm)
A few thousand
OrdnungspolizeiM
Einzeldienst (stationary)
ca. 250,000 (including
reservists)
Urban: Schutzpolizei
Rural: Gendarmerie
Truppenverbände (units)
ca. 50,000 (including
reservists)
The regional network of the main offices was topped by more than
thirty Higher SS and Police Leaders. (The number varied from time to
time.) The five with jurisdiction in Poland were; Generalgouvernement,
Kriiger
(Koppe);
Danzig-West
Prussia,
Hildebrandt;
Wartheland,
Koppe; East Prussia, Rediess (Sporrenberg); Silesia, Schmauser. The 29 30
consisted of 700,000 men on December 31, 1943. It reached nearly 800,000 on June 30,
1944. Most of these men were organized into field units for combat. SS-Statistician
Korherr to Himmler. September 19, 1944, NO-4812. Only 39,415 SS men were in the
administrative apparatus: the main offices and their regional machinery. Memorandum,
Statistical Office of the SS, June 30, 1944. D-878.
The Armed SS (Waffen-SS), most of whom were lighting as combat units, and the
police forces were paid for by the Reich. The bill for the Waffen-SS alone was RM
657,000,000 during fiscal year 1943. Summary of conference between Finance Ministry
and SS officials, NG-5516. To finance some of his "special” projects, Himmler drew