First World War
Even before the First World War some Germans like Hans Delbrück or Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow proposed expelling Poles from eastern territories of Germany. With the coming of the war, those ideas begun to take real and determined form in the shape of plans to be realised after German victory and as consequence hegemony of Central and Eastern Europe. The idea of extraordinary measures was the result of the failed economic attempt to Germanise Polish provinces. Heads of the Settlement Commission were among the architects and supporters of those plans. The president of the Settlement Commission, Gense, was one of the chief supporters and planners of the so called "Polish Border Strip" that envisioned expelling circa 2 million non-Germans (chiefly Poles and Jews) from 30,000 square kilometers of the would-be annexed territories from Congress Poland, which would then become Germanised. The Poles remaining in Germany who would refuse to become Germanised were to be "encouraged" to move to a planned German-run Polish puppet state established from the remains of Congress Poland.
Other notable names of Settlement Commission activists include Friedrich von Schwerin and industrialist Alfred Hugenberg who worked for and represented the Krupp family.
Read more about this topic: Prussian Settlement Commission
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“When they are not at war they do a little hunting, but spend most of their time in idleness, sleeping and eating. The strongest and most warlike do nothing. They vegetate, while the care of hearth and home and fields is left to the women, the old and the weak. Strange inconsistency of temperament, which makes the same men lovers of sloth and haters of tranquility.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)