Germanization in Poland During WWII

On September 1, 1939, without a declaration of war, Germany's army, navy, and air force invaded Poland from three directions. This act was part of Nazi's campaign of the "need" for more Lebensraum (German for "habitat" or literally "living space"). "Lebensraum" served as a major motivation for Nazi Germany's territorial aggression. According to Hitler's book (Mein Kampf), Adolf Hitler belief that the German people needed "lebensraum" (for a grossdeutschland, land, and raw materials), and that it should be taken in the east. Not only Poland, but also Czechoslovakia, Austria, Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and many others countries in Europe invaded by German.

Before 1919, several region of Poland became part of the German Empire, such as Province of Posen (now Poznan), West Prussia, Upper Silesia, and the area of Soldau. All of that region, has a large German population. As the result of The Treaty of Versailles at 1919, Germany losses all of that territories. Then, in 1939, large areas of western Poland were annexed to Germany. That areas included the city of Lodz, which never became part of the German Empire. The area of these annexed territories was 94,000 square kilometres and the population was about 10 million, the great majority of whom were Poles. Thats why, in all of annexed territories, the Nazis' goal was complete "Germanization", or political, cultural, social, and economic assimilation of the territory into the German Reich. The annexed areas of Poland divided by Germans into several administrative units:

In the north, there are Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen. This administrative unit covers an area of Danzig, and Pomerania. The leader of civil administration here was Albert Forster. He was a Nazi German politician. He persued a policy of Germanization, in which he simply declared Poles people in his area of responsibility to be German. Of course, SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler threatened Forster over this issue. According to Himmler, his's Germanization policy was against Nazi racial theory.

While, in Reichsgau Wartheland, Germanization policy was include renamed streets and cities and seized tens of thousands of Polish enterprises, (from large industrial firms to small shops), without payment to the owners. There are also strictest ethnic segregation and elimination of the Jewish population here. Contact with Poles should be limited to the minimum required for official or economic purposes. Many Polish children was taken from their parent, putting them in German families or public orphanages, and giving them German names. This administrative unit covers an area of Province of Posen. The administrator was Arthur Greiser.

Another area was Ciechanów District (Part of East Prussia province) and Katowice District (Upper Silesia). Like another area, Germanization here include cleaning this area from Jews. In Ciechanow, the Jews from the towns near the German-Soviet demarcation line, such as, Ostrow Mazowiecka, Przasnysz, Ostroleka, and Pultusk, were forced to cross over to the Soviet zone. Another Jews were segregated into ghettos.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraumhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Poland_(1939%E2%80%931945)http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206496.pdf
http://www.shoaheducation.com/aryan.html
http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ciechanow/cie001.html