Generalplan Ost (GPO) was a Nazi plan to realize Hitler's "new order of ethnographical relations" in the territories occupied by Germany in Eastern Europe during World War II. It was prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942. The plan was part of Hitler's own Lebensraum plan and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten state ideology. There are many famous Holocaust survivors who survived the Nazi genocides in Europe and went on to achievements of great fame and notability. ... This is a list of victims of Nazism who were noted for their achievements. ... This is a list of people who helped Jewish people and others to escape from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, often called rescuers. The list is not exhaustive, concentrating on famous cases, or people who saved the lives of many potential victims. ... Holocaust resources for main article The Holocaust. ... Book cover The Destruction of the European Jews is a three-volume work published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Functionalism versus intentionalism is a historiographical debate about the origins of the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945, standard German pronunciation in the IPA) was the Führer (leader) of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. ... Map of Eastern Europe Pre-1989 division between the West (grey) and Eastern Bloc (orange) superimposed on current national boundaries: Russia (dark orange), other countries of the former USSR (medium orange),members of the Warsaw pact (light orange), and other former Communist regimes not aligned with Moscow (lightest orange). ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... For the movie, see 1941 (film). ... 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ... Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945, standard German pronunciation in the IPA) was the Führer (leader) of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. ... Lebensraum (German for habitat or living space) was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. ... This does not cite its references or sources. ...

Development of the Plan

The body responsible for the drafting of this plan was the Reich Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - RSHA). The Reich Security Office was tasked with combating all enemies of Nazism and Nazi Germany. It was a strictly confidential document, and its contents were known only to those in the topmost level of the Nazi hierarchy.

According the testimony of Hans Ehlich, the final version of the Plan was drafted in 1940. It had been preceded by a number of studies and research projects carried out over several years by various academic centres to provide the necessary facts and figures. The preliminary versions were discussed by Himmler and his most trusted colleagues even before the outbreak of war. This was mentioned by SS Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski during his evidence as a prosecution witness in the trial of officials of the SS Main Office for Race and Settlement.

Reconstruction of the Plan

Unfortunately no copies of the plan were found after the war among the documents in German archives. Nevertheless, the fact that such a document was created and used by Nazi officials is beyond doubt. The existence of the plan was confirmed by Dr. Hans Ehlich, one of the witnesses in Case VIII before the American Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, SS-Standartenführer. As a high official in the RSHA, Ehlich was the man responsible for the drafting of Generalplan Ost. Apart from his testimony, there are several documents which refer to this plan or are supplements to it.

Although no copies of the actual document have survived, much of the essential elements of the plan have been reconstructed from related memos, abstracts and other ancillary documents. The principal document which makes it possible to recreate with a great deal of accuracy the contents of Generalplan Ost is a memorandum of April 27, 1942 entitled: Stellungnahme und Gedanken zum Generalplan Ost des Reichsführers SS (Opinion and ideas Regarding the General Plan for the East of the Reichsführer SS).2 Its author was Dr. Erich Wetzel, the director of the Central Advisory Office on Questions of Racial Policy at the National Socialist Party (Leiter der Hauptstelle Beratungsstelle des Rassenpolitischen Amtes der NSDAP). This memorandum is an elaboration of Generalplan Ost - a detailed description of Nazi policy in Eastern Europe.

Short-range and Long-term Plan

The final version of Generalplan Ost was made up of two basic parts. The first, known as Kleine Planung, covered the immediate future. It was to be put into practice gradually as the Germans conquered the areas to the east of their pre-war borders. The individual stages of this "Little Plan" would then be worked out in greater detail. In this way the plan for Poland was drawn up at the end of November, 1939.

The second part of the Plan, known as Grosse Planung, dealt with objectives to be realized after the war was won. They were to be carried into effect gradually and relatively slowly over a period of 25-30 years.

Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan for ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts, the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won. The plan envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation, expulsion into the depths of Russia, and other fates, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would be Germanized. Armenian civilians, being cleansed from their homeland during the Armenian Genocide. ...

In ten years' time, the plan called for the extermination, expulsion, enslavement or Germanisation of most or all Poles and East Slavs still living behind the front line. Instead, 250 million Germans would live in an extended Lebensraum ("living space") of the 1000-Year Reich (Tausendjähriges Reich / 1000-Year empire) . Fifty years after the war, under the Große Planung, Generalplan Ost foresaw the eventual expulsion and extermination of more than 50 million Slavs beyond the Ural Mountains. Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people as defined by Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or... Slave redirects here. ... The East Slavs are a Slavic ethnic group, the speakers of East Slavic languages. ... A front line is a line of confrontation in an armed conflict, most often a war. ... The Slavic peoples are the most numerous ethnic and linguistic body of peoples in Europe. ... Map of the Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains (Russian: , Uralskiye gory) (also known as the Urals, the Riphean Mountains in Greco-Roman antiquity, and known as the Stone Belt) are a mountain range that runs roughly north and south through western Russia. ...

Of the Poles, by 1952 only about 3-4 million people were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland, and then only to serve as slaves for German settlers. They were to be forbidden to marry, the existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles (believed by the Nazis to be Untermenschen, that is "sub-people") would cease to exist. A family of Russian settlers in the Caucasus region, ca. ... Untermensch (German: subhuman) is a term from Nazi racial ideology. ...

Implementation

Ethnic cleansing

The plan was primarily the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler. During the war the Nazis started to realise the plan by carrying out expulsions in Poland and Ukraine, and by resettling ethnic Germans from further east on previously Polish-owned properties. In 1943, the Zamość area, due to its fertile black soil, was selected for further German colonisation in the Generalgouvernement (General Government) as part of Generalplan Ost. Polish farmers were expropriated and forcibly removed from their farms, the Polish population expelled amid great brutality, and the farms were then handed over to German settlers, but few Germans actually settled in the area before 1944. Heinrich Luitpold Himmler ( ; October 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945) was the commander of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. ... Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) is a historical term which arose in the early 20th century to apply for Germans living outside of the German Empire. ... 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1943 calendar). ... Zamość County (Polish: ) is a powiat (county) in eastern Poland, in Lublin Voivodship. ... The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ...

Germanisation

In Poland during World War II, Polish citizens of German ancestry, who often identified themselves with the Polish nation, were confronted with the dilemma of whether to sign the Volksliste, the list of Germans living in Poland. This included ethnic Germans whose families had lived in Poland proper for centuries. Often the choice was either to sign and be regarded as a traitor by the Polish, or not to sign and be treated by the Nazi occupation as a "traitor of the Germanic race." Some ethnic Poles had signed the Volksliste for different reasons. Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) is a historical term which arose in the early 20th century to apply for Germans living outside of the German Empire. ... In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to ones nation. ...

A certain number of Polish children were also forcibly separated from their parents and, after undergoing scrutiny to ensure that they were of appropriately "Nordic" racial stock, were sent to Germany to be raised in German families. Only a very small number of the children who were taken were ever returned to their parents. A Nazi illustration of the Nordic master race. ...

Genocide

Activities such as Operation Tannenberg (Unternehmen Tannenberg) and various Intelligenzaktionen entailing elimination of Polish intelligentsia and activists were also carried out in conformity with Generalplan Ost. Operation Tannenberg (German: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was the codename for one of the extermination actions directed at the Polish people during World War II, part of the Generalplan Ost. ... The notion of an intellectual elite as a distinguished social stratum can be traced far back in history. ...

References

• Eichholtz, Dietrich "Der `Generalplan Ost' Über eine Ausgeburt imperialistischer Denkart und Politik from Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Volume 26, 1982.
• Heiber, Helmut "Der Generalplan Ost" from Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 6, 1958.
• Madajczyk, Czesław Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939-1945, Cologne, 1988.
• Rössler, M. & Scheiermacher, S. (editors) Der `Generalplan Ost' Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Plaungs-und Vernichtungspolitik, Berlin, 1993.
• Roth, Karl-Heinz "Erster `Generalplan Ost' (April/May 1940) von Konrad Meyer from Dokumentationsstelle zur NS-Sozialpolitik, Mittelungen, Volume 1, 1985.

See also

• Germanization
• Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion
• Occupation of Poland (1939-1945)
• Pacification operations in German-occupied Poland
• Expulsion of Poles by Germany

The Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion (AB-Aktion in short, German for Extraordinary Peace-Bringing Action) was a German campaign during the World War II aimed at the Polish leaders and intelligentsia. ... This article deals with the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War (1939 - 1945). ... The pacification operations in German-occupied Poland were the unlawful use of military force and punitive measures conducted during World War II by the German state with the goal of suppressing any Polish resistance. ... Poles were victims of discrimination and expulsions by German state in both XIX and XX century. ...

External links

• Documentary sources regarding Generalplan Ost