Polish Areas Annexed By Nazi Germany

Polish Areas Annexed By Nazi Germany

At the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the pre-war Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under German civil administration, while the rest of Nazi occupied Poland was named as General Government. The annexation was part of the "fourth" partition of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, outlined months before the invasion, in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Some smaller territories were incorporated directly into the already existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia, while the bulk of the land was used to create new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland. Of those, Reichsgau Wartheland was the largest and the only one comprising solely the annexed territory.

The official term used by the Nazi authorities for these areas was the "incorporated Eastern territories" (German: Eingegliederten Ostgebieten). They planned for a complete Germanization of the annexed territories, considering them part of their lebensraum. The local Jewish population was forced to live in ghettos, and was gradually deported to concentration and extermination camps, the most infamous of which, Auschwitz, was located in annexed East Upper Silesia. The local Polish population was to be gradually replaced by German settlers. The Polish elite especially became subject to mass murder, and an estimated 780,000 Poles were subject to expulsion, either to the General Government or to the Altreich for forced labour. The remaining Polish population was strictly segregated from the German population and subject to a variety of repressive measures. These included forced labour and their exclusion from all political and many cultural aspects of society. At the same time, the local German minority was granted several privileges, and their number was steadily raised by the settlement of ethnic Germans, including those displaced by the Nazi-Soviet population transfers.

After Vistula-Oder offensive in early 1945, the Soviet Union took control over the territories. The ethnic German population either fled the Red Army or were later expelled and the territories became part of the People's Republic of Poland.