General Government - History

History

After the attack on Poland all areas (including the Free City of Danzig) that were occupied by the German army initially fell under military rule. This area extended from the 1939 eastern border of Germany proper and East Prussia up to the Bug River where the German armies had halted their advance and linked up with the Soviet Red Army. Under the initial Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty concluded in August the territory between the Vistula and Bug rivers was assigned to the Soviet sphere of influence in divided Poland, while Warsaw was to be jointly ruled city between the two powers. To settle this deviation from the original agreement the German and Soviet representatives met again on September 28 to delineate the permanent border between the two countries. Under this revised version of the pact the territory concerned was exchanged for the inclusion of Lithuania into the Soviet sphere, which was similarly allotted originally to the other power, namely Germany. With the new agreement the entire central part of Poland, including the core ethnic area of the Poles came under sole German control.

Hitler decreed that large parts of the occupied Polish territory in the western half of the German zone were to be annexed directly to the German Reich to increase its Lebensraum. Most of these areas were organized as two new Reichsgaue, Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland. The remaining three regions, the so-called areas of Zichenau, Eastern Upper Silesia and the Suwalki triangle were attached to adjacent Gaus of Germany. Draconian measures were introduced to facilitate their immediate Germanization, typically resulting in mass expulsions, especially in the Warthegau. The remaining parts were to become a German Nebenland (March, borderland) as a frontier post of German rule in the east. The Government General was established by the Führer's decree of October 12, 1939, which came into force on October 26, 1939. Hans Frank was appointed as the Governor-General of these occupied territories. A sharp contrast was therefore made between the new Reich territory and a supposedly occupied rump state that could serve both as a bargaining chip with the western powers as well as a pool reservoir of slave labor. A closed border was also established between the two German zones to heighten the difficulty of cross-frontier communication between the different segments of the Polish population.

The official name chosen for this new administration was the Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete (General Government for the Occupied Polish Territories), then changed to the Generalgouvernement (General Government) by the Frank's decree of July 31, 1940. However, this name did not imply anything about the actual nature of the administration. These Polish territories, apart from the short period of military administration during the actual Invasion of Poland, was never at any point considered to be an occupied territory by the German authorities. The Nazis considered the Polish state to have effectively ceased to exist with its defeat in the September campaign, and that the demise of the Polish nation would follow; the very nationhood of the Polish people was to be simply eradicated.

Overall, 4 million of the 1939 population of the General Government area had lost their lives by the time the Soviet armed forces had entered the area in late 1944. If the Polish underground killed a German, 50–100 Poles were executed as a punishment and as a warning to other Poles.

As the Soviets advanced through Poland in late 1944 the General Government collapsed. Frank was captured by American troops in May 1945 and was one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. During his trial he converted to Catholicism. Frank surrendered forty volumes of his diaries to the Tribunal and much evidence against him and others was gathered from them. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and on October 1, 1946, he was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on October 16.