Genocide

Traitorfish · May 6, 2015

Borachio said:
About 20% of the Polish population died during WW2. If that's not genocide (or attempted genocide), I'm not sure what is.

"Genocide" describes an attempt to destroy an ethnic group as an ethnic group, with methods ranging from assimilation to physical destruction, and I don't think you'll find any evidence of such a policy in war-time Poland. As Warpus says, it's likely that the Nazis' long term plans Poland included forced assimilation, which would have been genocidal, but those wheels had only barely begun to turn in 1945. There were attempts to remove "Aryan" (i.e. blond and blue-eyed) children from Polish families, and there were more extensive programs of assimilation against Slavic ethnic groups living within pre-1939 Germany like the Sorbs, Kashuns and Silesians, but no general policy of Polish assimilation developed by the time the Soviets rolled them back into Germany.

Loss of life, absolute or proportional, simply isn't the measure of these things.

Domen · May 6, 2015

Traitorfish said:
it's likely that the Nazis' long term plans Poland included forced assimilation

No, it was Bismarck who applied forced assimilation.

You are confusing Hitler with Bismarck:

LINK

"(...) Not only in Austria, however, but also in the Reich, these so-called national circles were, and still are, under the influence of similar erroneous ideas. Unfortunately, a policy towards Poland, whereby the East was to be Germanized, was demanded by many, and was based on the same false reasoning. Here, again, it was believed that the Polish people could be Germanized, by being compelled to use the German language. The result would have been fatal. A people of foreign race would have had to use the German language to express modes of thought that were foreign to the German, thus compromising, by its own inferiority, the dignity and nobility of our nation. (...)"

Source: Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle")

Traitorfish said:
but no general policy of Polish assimilation developed by the time the Soviets rolled them back into Germany.

Because Hitler did not want to dillute "German blood" any further (read above).

It was Bismarck who had previously wanted to turn Poles into Germans.

Traitorfish said:
There were attempts to remove "Aryan" (i.e. blond and blue-eyed) children from Polish families

"Aryan" wasn't really about hair color, but rather about distance from left eye socket to right eye socket, cephalic index, breadth of face, etc., etc. If you read about pre-war racial classifications, then you will see that "blond East Baltids" or "blond Armenoids" were not counted as "Nordic-Aryan".

Hence the SS needed special units responsible for measuring people. Looking at their hair and eye colors was not what they did.

Of course Nazi Germany did not apply those measurements to people who were already Germans, only to "candidates for future Germans".

Domen · May 6, 2015

If we extend that citation to include also further excerpt, then Hitler mentioned Jews in the same context as Poles (i.e. "you can't make a German out of a Pole and out of a Jew"), but admitted that many Slavs and Balts had been Germanized during the course of the "Drang nach Osten", as well as later - and he considered that as having a negative impact on the "racial unity" of the Germans, which had already taken place (therefore any further dillution of "German blood" was to be avoided at all costs - only those Slavic individuals carefully measured and classified by his experts as members of the "Nordic-Aryan" anthropological race could be Germanized, to improve the "racial nature" of the already too much "mongrelized" Germans) - let Hitler speak:

https://books.google.pl/books?id=xG...gP0h4GgCg&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

That was Hitler's view. He did not want to forcibly assimilate all Poles.

Some Poles, yes - perhaps even a large part -, but others were to be exterminated or deported eastward. Of course, not immediately - because, as I wrote before, at first Poles were needed as a nation of workers, to build infrastructure for future "Germania" in Eastern Europe.

Traitorfish said:
the Nazis' long term plans Poland included forced assimilation, which would have been genocidal, but those wheels had only barely begun to turn in 1945.

Those assimilation policies actually had begun on 2 September 1940, with the introduction of the Volksliste. The Volksliste had four categories, of which only the 1st category was for ethnic Germans. The 2nd category was for people regarded as already partially Germanized, or willing to become Germans. The remaining two categories were for ethnic Polish people who were supposed to become Germanized. In some western regions of Poland people were being forcibly added to the Volksliste, against their will or without their consent. Thanks to that, they could be drafted to the Wehrmacht.

Traitorfish said:
Slavic ethnic groups living within pre-1939 Germany like the Sorbs, Kashuns and Silesians

My comment in the spoiler (since its not perfectly on-topic):

Spoiler :

Domen · May 7, 2015

Domen said:
(...) problems with ethnic classifications.

For example among believers of Judaism there were people who considered themselves ethnic Jews and such who considered themselves ethnic Poles. There were also many who had a problem with deciding whether they were more Polish, more Jewish, or equally both. Let's cite Maksymilian Apolinary Hartglas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolinary_Hartglas

"I called my memoirs “At the border of two worlds” not because I had in mind the world of today and the eternal ever existing world but for a much more mundane reason. I, myself as a human being found myself at a border of the Jewish world and the Polish world. To elaborate, throughout my whole life, two forces, difficult to reconcile, strove within me: a Polish childhood and upbringing, an attachment to the Polish nation, its culture and its soil together with a self formed love for the Jewish nation, its suffering and troubles and the hope of its rebirth in its own homeland. My whole life I suffered a split within myself since there is no power that could have fused these two different souls. I loved both nations as a man and I was at times critical and angry at both of them: as a Jew I could not forget the wrongs that my people sometimes suffered in Poland (personally I have not suffered these) and as one assimilated into the Polish culture I shared some of the grief that even the best of Poles occasionally had towards the Jews."

- Maksymilian Apolinary Hartglas (born April 7, 1883 in Biala Podlaska, died on March 7, 1953 in Tel Aviv)

Evie · May 7, 2015

The fact that they have two identities doesn't really impact the question of whether or not there was a polish genocide. The point is not that those jews weren't poles (that's not an argument I'd ever make), but that they weren't killed for being poles. They were killed for being Jews.

There may well have been a Polish genocide in WW2, like I said it's something you can legitimately argue for. But the jewish genocide is a solidly proven fact and so it's generally safest to consider jewish victims of the holocaust as victims of a Jewish genocide, not a polish one.

Domen · May 8, 2015

Oda Nobunaga, is Traitorfish right that forced assimilation is also a genocide? If so, then such genocidal policies were implemented already by Otto von Bismarck. He explicated what he planned to do on 26 February 1861, so a year before he was appointed as Minister President of Prussia (1862):

"Hit the Poles till they despair of their very lives. I have every sympathy for their position, but if we are to survive, our only course is to exterminate them."

(source: Werner Richter, "Bismarck", Putnam Press, New York 1964, page 101).

Some other citations from Bismarck:

"Prussia even more needs Germanization, than Germany needs Prussification."

"What are the arcana of politics? To sign a good treaty with Russia."

And my favourite:

"With use of bayonets you can do everything, you just can't sit on them."

Agent327 · May 8, 2015

What Bismarck (or Hitler) said is rather immaterial to the question of a Polish genocide. What matters is actual policies.

warpus said:
Hitler's plan was to eliminate the Polish culture and identity. He wanted the lands for German settlement. Right? That sounds like a genocide in the making to me.

There is no doubt about that. The doubt is to if what was actually accomplished amounts to genocide.

Domen · May 8, 2015

Hitler first of all wanted to exterminate Polish elites, in a broad sense of this word.

Already in September 1939 German SS units entering Poland behind the Wehrmacht had "Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen" with them, which contained the list with surnames of over 61,000 Poles to be immediately exterminated.

That list had been compiled before the invasion with help of agents recruited from the German minority in Poland. German minority reported surnames of their Polish neighbours to "Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle", and later that organization passed them further to Hans Lammers, who added them to the list. Other surnames were collected by Zentralstelle II/P (Polen), created in May 1939.

Those 61,000 people were exterminated already in September 1939.

But since the Autumn of 1939 mass murders of Polish elites continued with the implementation of Intelligenzaktion, in which 100,000 more perished:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion

During the course of Intelligenzaktion Pommern my granduncle, a merchant from Gdynia, was murdered on 11 November 1939, near Piasnica:

His entry in the list of victims:

http://work.brp.pl/2wojna/UserFiles/File/straty-osobowe.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion_Pommern

Link to video.

Later other similar mass extermination operations against the Polish nation continued.

During first months of occupation they affected selected types of people - as Hitler wanted to "decapitate" the Polish nation.

The Soviets were doing similar things, as Katyn was by no means the only Soviet crime against Poles - it was part of a larger whole.

Soviet and German occupiers cooperated in hunting down Polish elites, and held Gestapo-NKVD conferences:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo–NKVD_Conferences

During those conferences they discussed together what means of terror to implement in occupied Poland.

=============================

As for Piasnica - those executions were photographed by members of the German minority in Poland who participated in killings:

Warning: viewer discretion is advised, a mildly disturbing content (shot people can be seen):

Spoiler :

=============================

Agent327 said:
What Bismarck (or Hitler) said is rather immaterial to the question of a Polish genocide. What matters is actual policies.

Bismarck's policies of forced assimilation were actually implemented and enjoyed varying degrees of success, depending on region.

At the same time the Prussian Colonization Commission supported German settlement and immigration to Polish-inhabited provinces. It acted in such a way that it was buying land and creating "strips" of German settlements, usually separating from each other or surrounding larger areas of Polish settlement. They bought land not just from Poles, but also from German landowners, in order to parcellate it and pack even more settlers into the same area.

The main goal of the Prussian Colonization Commission was to create an area with German majority connecting East Prussia with the rest of Germany - to pack as many German settlers as possible into the so called "Polish Corridor". But they did not fully succeed with that goal until WW1.

Already Frederick the Great started to colonize the Noteć (Netze) River valley with German settlers after the First Partition (1772).

Simultaneously with bringing in German colonists from the west, Prussia/Germany often evicted any Poles who crossed the border. So for example Polish people could not travel freely from Kalisz (Russia) to Pleszew (Prussia), from Mława (Russia) to Działdowo (Prussia), from Suwałki (Russia) to Olecko (Prussia), from Brześć Kujawski (Russia) to Inowrocław (Prussia) or from Bielsko (Austria) to Pszczyna (Prussia), even though those towns were just several kilometers from each other, and were parts of the same historical regions, and often even of the same administrative provinces of Poland before the Partitions.

Those Prussian/German settlement policies in Polish lands in 1740-1918 were quite similar to Israeli settlement policies in Palestine.

Evie · May 8, 2015

Assimilation is something of a gray area, and depend a lot on HOW the assimilation is carried out, rather than the ultimate aim of the program. (For example, the USA's assimilation of Irish immigrants or Francophone immigrants is not by any fair definition a genocide).

ON the other hand, the residential schools program that Canada (and the US) used against Native Americans has been labeled in Canada a genocide, and rightly so, because the measure used (taking children away from their parent and people, locking them into school in miserable condition, beating them if they showed signs of the old culture) were clearly aimed at destroying the Natives as a distinct people, not at better integrating the people of Canada.

Domen · May 8, 2015

Oda Nobunaga said:
ON the other hand, the residential schools program that Canada (and the US) used against Native Americans has been labeled in Canada a genocide, and rightly so, because the measure used (taking children away from their parent and people, locking them into school in miserable condition, beating them if they showed signs of the old culture) were clearly aimed at destroying the Natives as a distinct people, not at better integrating the people of Canada.

Beating school children if they attempted to show signs of the old culture (for example to speak Polish) was the case under Bismarck. Eventually there took place mass protests against Germanization policies, the first of which was the school strike by the pupils in Września:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Września_children_strike#Background

Polish-Americans also protested against Germanization policies in Prussia - "American Polonia and the School Strike in Wrzesnia":

http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/Content/24779/American Polonia and the School Strike in Wrzesnia.pdf

(...) The Poles in America regularly read in Zgoda, the PNA’s official organ, and Naród Polski, the PRCU official organ, about the persecution of Poles in the Prussian sector [of Poland] and the condemnations of the HaKaTa and its supporters and activities. Similar stories were to be found in Ameryka, an independent weekly published by Antoni Paryski in Toledo, Ohio.

In 1901 there were reports about dismissals of Poles from the military and civil service, Polish soldiers compelled to confess in German, the expulsion of Polish students from gymnasia and the university for engaging in Polish cultural initiatives, the ban on Polish in churches and in schools, and reports of teachers seizing Polish language school books from their students.

One comment on the administrative harassment of Poles described it as "fierce German purges [that] are prepared to cut off the heads of all Poles and to order them to walk about on all four hands and legs. The punishments for our sins do not matter and it is not enough for our enemy to severely persecute us. We will still conduct an obstinate battle".25

Letters to Naród Polski from Poles in West and East Prussia expressed concern for children, "the victims of the barbarism and chauvinism of the Prussian bureaucracy." "The barbarism of the Prussian HaKaTa-ists" was so bad that "Moscovite persecutions paled by comparison".26

Another article could not understand the reasons for the "present war of extermination" that the German government wages against the Poles.27

Nevertheless, Professor Tomasz Siemiradzki believed that Germanization was not to be feared for it encouraged "the Polish spirit" and that the day would come when "the future Poland might even be grateful for this compulsory school of patriotism".28

This discourse was emotionally charged, but it included another patriotic lesson for the American Poles. Identifying with "our brothers" the appropriate response "in this foreign land" was "to unite, to work for the common good, to awaken the Polish spirit and to faithfully stand by the faith of our fathers" (...)

The children of Września were the first ones to actively oppose, but other schools followed - including that in Toruń (Thorn) in West Prussia:

(...) The national Polonia [Polish-American] press recapitulated the history of German persecution of the Poles going back to Bismarck and expressed the conviction that the new persecution, while arousing fear, indignation and the demand for revenge, "deepens in our spirit, hardens and fixes the conviction that we will persevere, we will survive, and triumph despite everything".33

There were also more reports of the contemporary German – Polish school and language conflict. Readers found out about the banning of the speaking of Polish in the schoolyard in Krotoszyn and about the Gniezno children who returned their German-language catechisms explaining to the teacher that their parents told them that "to pray in German was a mortal sin and that their parents and priests ordered them not to sin".

The Toruń trial of Polish secondary schools students who were members of a secret society to promote the study of Polish history and literature also made the news.35 (...)

HaKaTa was the "Society for the Advancement of Germanness in the Eastern Marches" ("Verein zur Förderung des Deutschtums in den Ostmarken"):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Eastern_Marches_Society

It was a chauvinistic organization founded by radical German nationalists, but it enjoyed support and cooperation from the government:

German Eastern Marches Society (German: Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, also known in German as Verein zur Förderung des Deutschtums in den Ostmarken) was a German radical,[1][2] extremely nationalist[3] xenophobic organization[4] founded in 1894.

Mainly among Poles, it was sometimes known acronymically as Hakata or H-K-T after its founders von Hansemann, Kennemann and von Tiedemann.[5]

Its main aims were the promotion of Germanization of Poles living in Prussia and destruction of Polish national identity in German eastern provinces.[6]

Contrary to many similar nationalist organizations created in that period, the Ostmarkenverein had relatively close ties with the government and local administration,[6][7] which made it largely successful, even though it opposed both the policy of seeking some modo vivendi with the Poles pursued by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg[3] and Leo von Caprivi's policies of relaxation of anti-Polish measures.[8] (...)

Evie · May 8, 2015

I don't think JUST beating children for speaking polish in class would qualify.

It's the combination that works - beating children AND taking them away from their parents without any contact with their family for most of the year if not all hte year AND locking them in miserable conditions that adds up to something that qualifies as a genocide.

I don't think you can make the case that the situation of polish students was nearly as bad as that of First Nations children in the Residential Schools.

Domen · May 8, 2015

There were criminal charges against children (and their parents), and locking them in prisons - but that was after the protests.

Anyway beating was only one of consequences of other kinds of persecution against Polish culture, language, identity and people.

I don't think you can make the case that the situation of polish students was nearly as bad as that of First Nations children in the Residential Schools.

Probably not. But still there was enough persecution that the Germans themselves created entire generation(s) of German-hating people.

And another effect of those policies was of course that they partially succeeded in causing people to adopt German language and identity.

So in general they caused increasing polarization of citizens of eastern provinces from "neutrals" into Polish-haters and German-haters.

The division usually went along linguistic (Polish-German) and / or religious (Catholic-Lutheran) lines.

In the Upper Silesian Plebiscite of 1921 according to my calculation ca. 90% of monoglot Polish-speaking residents voted for Poland:

% of monoglot Polish among eligible resident voters (> 20 years old) / % of resident votes for Poland / votes for Poland as % of monoglot Poles:

1) Counties with % of resident votes for Poland lower than 50% of monoglot Polish-speakers eligible to vote:
[note: most of these counties were counties with significant Lutheran majority, also among Polish-speakers]

Leobschuetz - 5,12% / 0,58% ========== 11,33%
Kreuzburg - 41,93% / 6,64% =========== 15,84%
Namslau - 23,23% / 4,83% ============ 20,79%
Neustadt - 39,52% / 14,37% =========== 36,36%
Kosel - 70,90% / 30,38% ============= 42,85%
Ratibor Stadt - 25,80% / 11,39% ======== 44,15%

2) Counties with % of resident votes for Poland amounting to 50% - 100% of eligible monoglot Polish-speakers:

Oppeln Stadt - 13,13% / 6,59% ========= 50,19%
Rosenberg - 77,23% / 41,71% ========== 54,01%
Oppeln Land - 71,77% / 38,17% ========= 53,18%
Lublinitz - 75,99% / 53,03% ============ 69,79%
Gross-Strehlitz - 75,58% / 58,70% ======= 77,67%
Toest-Gleiwitz - 72,40% / 62,91% ======== 86,89%
Koenigshutte Stadt - 29,54% / 27,15% ==== 91,91%
Pless - 83,17% / 80,24% ============== 96,48%
Beuthen Stadt - 28,51% / 28,10% ======== 98,56%
Kattowitz Land - 59,93% / 59,12% ======= 98,65%
Rybnik - 74,00% / 73,14% ============= 98,84%

3) Counties with % of resident votes for Poland higher than 100% of number of eligible monoglot Polish-speakers:

Beuthen Land - 57,93% / 61,72% ======== 106,54%
Tarnowitz - 62,16% / 67,11% =========== 107,96%
Ratibor Land - 44,36% / 49,05% ======== 110,57%
Hindenburg - 45,93% / 52,02% ========== 113,26%
Kattowitz Stadt - 10,98% / 13,85% ======= 126,14%
Gleiwitz Stadt - 12,25% / 23,01% ======== 187,84%

4) Average figures for the entire Plebiscite Area:

% of monoglot Polish among eligible resident voters (> 20 years old) / % of resident votes for Poland / votes for Poland as % of monoglot Poles:

TOTAL - 51,74% / 46,71% ========== 90,28%

So - if we trust the data from German 1910 census on the percent of Polish-speakers among the population - around 90,28% of monoglot Polish-speaking inhabitants voted for Poland in the plebiscite. In those six counties in which % of votes for Poland was higher than % of monoglot Polish-speaking inhabitants, that was of course due to bilingual Polish-German speakers and monoglot German-speakers voting for Poland.

Notes:

According to the census of 1910, monoglot Polish-speakers had a different age structure than monoglot German-speakers. Among monoglot Polish-speakers only 448 out of 1000 were aged over 20 (= eligible to vote in the plebiscite), while among monoglot German-speakers as many as 561 out of 1000. German-speakers had a higher median age than Polish-speakers. That was of course disadvantageous for the Poles in the plebiscite, as they were a much lower % of the electorate than of the population. In my calculations I assumed that bilingual Polish-German speakers had 500 eligible voters per 1000 population. I also took the data on % of Polish-speakers among the population from the census of 1910 and extrapolated them to 1921, but in fact in 1921 the proportion of Polish-speakers could be lower than in 1910 since it was constantly decreasing (which is evident when we compare the censuses of 1890, 1900, 1905 and 1910). In my calculation I extrapolated the percent of Polish-speakers from 1910 to 1921 and also the age structure of inhabitants from 1910 to 1921.

Agent327 · May 9, 2015

Persecution does not necessarily imply genocide. Jews have suffered persecution and restrictive measures throughout Christian history, but this didn't amount to genocide until the Nazi era.

Domen said:
Hitler first of all wanted to exterminate Polish elites, in a broad sense of this word.

Already in September 1939 German SS units entering Poland behind the Wehrmacht had "Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen" with them, which contained the list with surnames of over 61,000 Poles to be immediately exterminated.

That list had been compiled before the invasion with help of agents recruited from the German minority in Poland. German minority reported surnames of their Polish neighbours to "Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle", and later that organization passed them further to Hans Lammers, who added them to the list. Other surnames were collected by Zentralstelle II/P (Polen), created in May 1939.

Those 61,000 people were exterminated already in September 1939.

But since the Autumn of 1939 mass murders of Polish elites continued with the implementation of Intelligenzaktion, in which 100,000 more perished:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion

(...)

Later other similar mass extermination operations against the Polish nation continued.

During first months of occupation they affected selected types of people - as Hitler wanted to "decapitate" the Polish nation.

The Soviets were doing similar things, as Katyn was by no means the only Soviet crime against Poles - it was part of a larger whole.

Soviet and German occupiers cooperated in hunting down Polish elites, and held Gestapo-NKVD conferences:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo–NKVD_Conferences

During those conferences they discussed together what means of terror to implement in occupied Poland.

No argument against the facts here, but the issue is whether such measures in themselves can be termed genocide. As mentioned, Katyn certainly does not fall into that category. So the question would be if eliminating a country's elite can be termed genocide.

Domen said:
Bismarck's policies of forced assimilation were actually implemented and enjoyed varying degrees of success, depending on region.

At the same time the Prussian Colonization Commission supported German settlement and immigration to Polish-inhabited provinces. It acted in such a way that it was buying land and creating "strips" of German settlements, usually separating from each other or surrounding larger areas of Polish settlement. They bought land not just from Poles, but also from German landowners, in order to parcellate it and pack even more settlers into the same area.

The main goal of the Prussian Colonization Commission was to create an area with German majority connecting East Prussia with the rest of Germany - to pack as many German settlers as possible into the so called "Polish Corridor". But they did not fully succeed with that goal until WW1.

Already Frederick the Great started to colonize the Noteć (Netze) River valley with German settlers after the First Partition (1772).

Simultaneously with bringing in German colonists from the west, Prussia/Germany often evicted any Poles who crossed the border. So for example Polish people could not travel freely from Kalisz (Russia) to Pleszew (Prussia), from Mława (Russia) to Działdowo (Prussia), from Suwałki (Russia) to Olecko (Prussia), from Brześć Kujawski (Russia) to Inowrocław (Prussia) or from Bielsko (Austria) to Pszczyna (Prussia), even though those towns were just several kilometers from each other, and were parts of the same historical regions, and often even of the same administrative provinces of Poland before the Partitions.

Those Prussian/German settlement policies in Polish lands in 1740-1918 were quite similar to Israeli settlement policies in Palestine.

Which weren't by any means termed 'genocidal'. Employing terror and deportation in themselves do not amount to genocide. (The case of the Herrero in Namibia was actually termed genocide, and this was definitely pre-Hitler.)

Domen · May 12, 2015

Agent237 said:
So the question would be if eliminating a country's elite can be termed genocide.

Zbigniew Herbert (link) (born 1924, died 1998), who attended a very good high school in the city of Lwów, said the following:

"In our high school class there were 24 pupils. I was the least talented one of them all, and out of the whole class - only I survived the war."

Note that high school before WW2 was not for everyone, but probably most of pupils ended their education on primary school.

Domen · May 12, 2015

What the Nazis had started with elites, was later continued by the Communists - only with less bloody methods, and for totally different reasons.

As Rafał Ziemkiewicz wrote in his book "Polactwo":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polactwo

"(...) We should finally end with that Communist claim turning the world upside down, that one who swings a shovel is better or more important than one who trades, does business or carries out scientific research. From the point of view of proft that a nation has from its members, and for me this is the most important criterion, it is the exact opposite. Please take note that I'm writing about the post-war invasion of Communism-incited savagery not just against remnants of intelligentsia or elites, but against remnants of a society as a whole. Communism consciously and in principle turning the world upside down, had an ambition to destroy not just upper classes, but all classes of the society in general. Contrary to their lofty slogans, Communists did not tolerate the proletariat - they destroyed it with the exact same virulence as they did with aristocracy or the old intelligentsia. In the same manner Communists hated traditional social structures in the countryside - an activist of labour unions, an old-line foreman or a team leader, were all just the same kind of enemies for Communism, as was a prosperous and self-sufficient peasant - a kulak. "In order for equality to prevail, we need first to trample everyone into the fecal matter" - as Janusz Szpotański very accurately summed up the nature and spirit of the Socialist Revolution. Socialism required ALL of the old, refusing to succumb to the overpowering authority of the Red bandits, structures, to be squashed, and then replaced by a homogenous mob, flattened to resemble a uniform pulp, controlled by propaganda and kept on a tight rein with use of violence. In the state which claimed to be "of Workers and Peasants", ultimately there were to be no workers, and no peasants - only a mob of "lemmings". (...)"

Agent327 · May 12, 2015

Are you now trying to argue the Nazis commit genocide or the Soviets? Because it's becoming very unclear at this point.

daft · May 18, 2015

Agent327 said:
Are you now trying to argue the Nazis commit genocide or the Soviets? Because it's becoming very unclear at this point.

More like Jews and Slavs(as a whole with a few exceptions) and perhaps Roma-Gypsies to a degree.
War crimes or Genocide?

Domen · Jun 9, 2015

daft said:
More like Jews and Slavs(as a whole with a few exceptions) and perhaps Roma-Gypsies to a degree.

In his press decree from 24 October 1939, Hitler actually did not label all Slavs collectively as subhumans, but specifically Poles:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Besetzung_Polens_1939–1945#Polen_in_der_deutschen_Wahrnehmung

Letztlich stellte Hitler am 24. Oktober 1939 in seiner Anweisung Nr. 1306 an das Reichspropagandaministerium fest:

"Es muss auch der letzten Kuhmagd in Deutschland klargemacht werden, dass das Polentum gleichwertig ist mit Untermenschentum. Polen, Juden und Zigeuner stehen auf der gleichen unterwertigen Stufe."

Translation:

"... Polishness is equivalent to Subhumanness. Poles, Jews and Gypsies are on the same worthless level."

Joseph Goebbels also had many nice things to say specifically about Poles (not about Slavs as a whole!) - an excerpt from Goebbels' diaries:

"(...) The Fuhrer's verdict on the Poles is damning. More like animals than human beings, completely primitive, stupid, and amorphous. And a ruling class that is an unsatisfactory result of a mingling between the lower orders and an Aryan master race. The Poles' dirtiness is unimaginable. Their capacity for intelligent judgment is absolutely nil. (...)"

Also:

(...) The Union of Poles in Germany was forbidden by the Nazis in 1939. The Nazis confiscated the property of the Poles. The Nazis stripped the Poles of their citizenship and placed them under "state subject status" and placed under "special law". The Nazis introduced a penal law known as "the Criminal Law Decree for Poles and Jews of 4 December 1941" which stipulated loads of decrees against them which were criminal offenses and were liable for the death penalty. The Nazis carried out extensive policies to transfer large populations of Jews and Poles from the Reich. The Nazis forbid sexual relations between Germans and Poles. Thousands of Poles were executed without trial for their relations with German women. (...) Members of the NSDAP were forbidden from marrying a person who had two or more grandparents of Polish descent. (...)

The majority of ordinary Germans had similar racist opinions about Poles and Jews as their Nazi leadership:

From the diary of Hauptmann L. from Inf.Reg.67. of the Wehrmacht - events on 16.09.1939 in Tykocin:

"(...) In order to prevent espionage, sabotage and assaults, the local civilian population was imprisoned in the nearby wonderful Baroque church. Controlling the outposts, I entered the church. In frousy interior, I found haggling Jews with hostile attitudes. Some Polack women kneeled in front of the altar. Suddenly over that whole village fair, pipe organ music blared out. But those were Lutheran sounds. I went up the devastated and dirty stairs, to the gallery. I found two soldiers there and ordered them to immediately leave the church, otherwise they could get infected by human worms from those dirty Polacks and Jews crowded below them. When I stood again in the aisle, ceremonially and triumphally the sounds of Deutschlandlied and Horst-Wessel-Lied blared out. Never before had I felt as a master to such an extent, and never before had I been so proud of German soldiers as in that moment. (...)"

Unteroffizier Udo D. from Inf.Reg.67. of the Wehrmacht wrote in a letter to his parents, dated 09.09.1939:

"(...) As far as I could see, there were only ovens sticking out of the ground, around which houses used to stand before. Only one or two houses survived in those villages. But there is nothing to cry about. Quite the contrary - it is very good that this habitat of manlike bugs has been razed to the ground. (...)"

Unteroffizier H. from Inf.Reg.67. wrote in his report from the invasion of Poland, titled "Ein polnisches Dorf!":

"(...) Polacks are almost as primitive as Negroes. This nation can't govern itself, but must have a foreign master ruling it and controlling their low instincts. (...)"

Cheezy the Wiz · Jun 10, 2015

FWIW, the Polish government didn't really believe that Jews (or Ukrainians or Belorussians or Germans or Lithuanians) were Poles even by 1939, so the question of whether a genocide against Jews who lived in Poland was also a genocide of Poles is a rather subjective one which Poles of the time would generally not have agreed with.

Domen · Jun 10, 2015

There were two genocides - one of Jewish Poles, another one, albeit on a smaller scale, of Christian Poles.

the Polish government didn't really believe that ... Germans ... were Poles

I know. However - I do really believe that all Germans to the east of the Elbe River are Poles in disguise.

I'm not like the Polish governmemt!

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