1.
Polish Underground State
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The first elements of the Underground State were established in the final days of the German invasion of Poland that began in September 1939. The Underground State encompassed not only military resistance, one of the largest in the world, although the Underground State enjoyed broad support throughout much of the war, it was not supported or recognized by the far left. Influence of the communists eventually declined amid military reversals and the hostility of the USSR. The Soviet Union had created an alternative, puppet government in 1944, during the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Poland at the end of the war, many Underground State members were prosecuted as alleged traitors and died in captivity. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of people were involved with various agencies of the Underground State. The rationale behind the creation of the civilian authority drew on the fact that the German. Hence, all created by the occupying powers were considered illegal. During the Cold War era, research on the Underground State was curtailed by Polish communist officials, hence, until recently, the bulk of research done on this topic was carried out by Polish scholars living in exile. In many respects, the history of the Polish Underground State mirrors that of the Polish non-communist resistance in general, SZP founder General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski received orders from Polish Commander-in-Chief Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły to organize and carry out the struggle in occupied Poland. This government was recognized by France and the United Kingdom. Raczkiewicz, described as weak and indecisive, held little influence compared to charismatic Sikorski. Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski supported that move, aiming to include parties marginalized by the Sanacja regime, Sikorski named General Kazimierz Sosnkowski the head of the ZWZ and Colonel Stefan Rowecki was appointed the commander of the ZWZ German occupation zone. Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski became the commander of the ZWZ Soviet zone, but was arrested in March 1940 by the Soviets when attempting to cross the new German-Soviet border, in June Sikorski appointed Rowecki as the commander of both zones. Sikorskis government opted for a more democratic procedure then the less democratic prewar Sanacja regime. The National Council was formed by the government in exile in December 1939, the structures in occupied Poland maintained close communication with the government in exile, through radio communications and hundreds, if not thousands of couriers, such as Jan Karski. The post of the Delegate could be seen as equivalent to that of a Deputy Prime Minister, unlike the GRP and PKP, which operated alongside the military structures but had no influence over them, the Delegation had budgetary control over the military. The Delegation was to oversee the military, and recreate the civilian administration, as early as 1940, the Underground States civilian arm was actively supporting underground education, it then set out to develop social security, information and justice networks. By 1942, most of the differences between politicians in occupied Poland and those in exile had been positively settled, by 1943, the PKP had evolved into the Home Political Representation, which served as the basis of the Council of National Unity, created on 9 January 1944
2.
Palmiry massacre
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The Palmiry massacre was a series of mass executions carried out by Nazi German forces, during the Second World War, near the village of Palmiry in the Kampinos Forest, located northwest of Warsaw. Between December 1939 and July 1941 more than 1700 Poles and Jews – mostly the inmates of Pawiak prison – were executed by the SS and the Ordnungspolizei in the forest glade near Palmiry. The best documented of these took place on 20–21 June 1940. Palmiry is one of the most infamous sites of Nazi crimes in Poland, along with the Katyn massacre it has become a symbol of the martyrdom of Polish intelligentsia during the Second World War. Warsaw was perceived by Nazi leaders as one of the biggest obstacles to their plan to subjugate the Polish nation, after the Nazi invasion of Poland, Warsaw was reduced to a provincial city in the newly created General Government. However, it remained a center of Polish cultural life, Warsaw also headquartered the high command of the Polish Underground State and soon became a stronghold of armed and political resistance against the German occupation. On 14 December 1943 Governor-General Hans Frank noted in his diary, three days later members of Einsatzgruppe IV led by SS-Brigadeführer Lothar Beutel entered the city. They immediately conducted a search in public and private buildings, as well as mass arrests, many of the prisoners were deported to Nazi concentration camps. In the first months of German occupation political prisoners from Warsaw were secretly executed in the back of the Polish parliament building complex at Wiejska Street, between October 1939 and April 1940 several hundred people were murdered in this place. However Nazi German police authorities soon realized that they would not be able to keep executions secret if they were conducted in the center of a large city. Executions in Palmiry were carried out by the members of the Ordnungspolizei or by the SS-Reiterei regiment which was quartered in Warsaw and they were overseen by Gestapo officers led by the SD and Sicherheitspolizei Commander in Warsaw, SS-Standartenführer Josef Meisinger. In every case mass executions in Palmiry were prepared in a careful manner, mass graves were always dug a few days before the planned execution. Usually it was done by the Arbeitsdienst unit which was quartered in Łomna or by Hitlerjugend members who camped near Palmiry, in most cases the graves were shaped like a ditch and were more than 30 metres long and 2. 5–3 metres deep. Sometimes, for groups of convicts or for individual victims, irregularly shaped graves were prepared. The glade where executions took place was enlarged by tree-cutting. On the day of planned execution Polish forestry workers always received a day off, in the meantime German police undertook intensive patrolling near the glade and in the surrounding forest. Victims were transported to the place of execution by trucks, usually they were brought from Pawiak prison, rarely from Mokotów Prison. SS soldiers tried to convince their victims that they are going to them to another prison or to a concentration camp
3.
Warsaw
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Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It stands on the Vistula River in east-central Poland, roughly 260 kilometres from the Baltic Sea and 300 kilometres from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population is estimated at 1.750 million residents within a metropolitan area of 3.101 million residents. The city limits cover 516.9 square kilometres, while the area covers 6,100.43 square kilometres. Once described as Paris of the East, Warsaw was believed to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world until World War II. On 9 November 1939, the city was awarded Polands highest military decoration for heroism, Warsaw is one of Europe’s most dynamic metropolitan cities. In 2012 the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Warsaw as the 32nd most liveable city in the world, in 2017 the city came 4th in the “Business-friendly” category and 8th in the “Human capital and life style”. It was also ranked as one of the most liveable cities in Central, Warsaw is considered an Alpha– global city, a major international tourist destination and a significant cultural, political and economic hub. The city is a significant centre of research and development, BPO, ITO, the Warsaw Stock Exchange is the largest and most important in Central and Eastern Europe. Frontex, the European Union agency for external security, has its headquarters in Warsaw. Together with Frankfurt, London and Paris, Warsaw is also one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in the European Union, the city is the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and the University of Warsaw. The historic city-centre of Warsaw with its picturesque Old Town in 1980 was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, buildings represent examples of nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw provides many examples of architecture from the gothic, renaissance, baroque, neoclassical and modern periods, furthermore, the city is positioning itself as Europes chic cultural capital with thriving art and club scenes and renowned restaurants. Folk etymology attributes the city name to a fisherman, Wars, according to legend, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula River with whom Wars fell in love. In actuality, Warsz was a 12th/13th-century nobleman who owned a village located at the site of Mariensztat neighbourhood. See also the Vršovci family which had escaped to Poland, the official city name in full is miasto stołeczne Warszawa. A native or resident of Warsaw is known as a Varsovian – in Polish warszawiak, warszawianin, warszawianka, warszawiacy, other names for Warsaw include Varsovia and Varsóvia, Varsovie, Varsavia, Warschau, װאַרשע /Varshe, Варшава /Varšava /Varshava, Varšuva, Varsó. The first fortified settlements on the site of todays Warsaw were located in Bródno, after Jazdów was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new similar settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called Warszowa
4.
General Government
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The territory was expanded in 1941 to include the District of Galicia. The General Government was run by Nazi Germany as an administrative unit for logistical purposes. Within days, Eastern Galicia was overrun and renamed Distrikt Galizien, until 1945 the General Government comprised much of central and southern Poland, including the major Polish cities of Warsaw, Kraków, Lwów, Lublin, Tarnopol and Stanisławów, among others. The Nazi German rulers of the Generalgouvernement territory had no intention of sharing power with the Poles or Ukrainians throughout the war, the authorities rarely even mentioned the name Poland in government correspondence. The only exception to this was the General Governments Bank of Issue in Poland, on 31 July 1940 governor Hans Frank, on Hitlers authority, shortened the name to just Generalgouvernement. A more literal translation of Generalgouvernement, which is a borrowing from French, the correct translation of the term Gouvernement is not government but actually governorate, which is a type of administrative division or territory. The area was known colloquially as the Restpolen. The designation General Government was chosen in reference to the Government General of Warsaw, after Germanys attack on Poland, all areas occupied by the German army including the Free City of Danzig initially came under the military rule. To settle the deviation from the agreement, the German. Under this revised version of the pact the territory concerned was exchanged for the inclusion in the Soviet sphere of Lithuania, with the new agreement the entire central part of Poland, including the core ethnic area of the Poles, came under exclusively German control. Hitler decreed the annexation to the German Reich of large parts of the occupied Polish territory in the western half of the German zone. Germany organized most of areas as two new Reichsgaue, Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland. The remaining three regions, the areas of Zichenau, Eastern Upper Silesia and the Suwałki triangle. Draconian measures were introduced by both RKF and HTO, to facilitate the immediate Germanization of the territory, typically resulting in mass expulsions. The remaining parts of the former Poland were to become a German Nebenland as a frontier post of German rule in the east, a Führers decree of October 12,1939 established the General Government, the decree came into force on October 26,1939. Hans Frank was appointed as the Governor-General of the General Government, German authorities made a sharp contrast between the new Reich territory and a supposedly occupied rump state that could serve as a bargaining chip with the Western powers. The Germans established a border 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 the new entity was the Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete, however, this name did not imply anything about the actual nature of the administration
5.
Wehrmacht
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The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1946. It consisted of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler’s most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern armed forces fully capable of offensive use. In December 1941, Hitler designated himself as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany’s politico-military power. In the early part of World War II, Hitlers generals employed the Wehrmacht through innovative combined arms tactics to devastating effect in what was called a Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmachts new military structure, unique combat techniques, newly developed weapons, and unprecedented speed and brutality crushed their opponents. Closely cooperating with the SS, the German armed forces committed war crimes and atrocities. By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, only a few of the Wehrmacht’s upper leadership were tried for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions. The German term Wehrmacht generically describes any nations armed forces, for example, the Frankfurt Constitution of 1848 designated all German military forces as the German Wehrmacht, consisting of the Seemacht and the Landmacht. In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that, from 1919, Germanys national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, in March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420, 000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, the army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, submarines, tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military, the Reichswehr, was established on 23 March 1921, General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty. The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, though Seeckt retired in 1926, the army that went to war in 1939 was largely his creation. Germany was forbidden to have an air-force by the Versailles treaty, nonetheless and these officers saw the role of an air-force as winning air-superiority, tactical and strategic bombing and providing ground support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations. The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939. By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, a secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the treaty of Rapallo. Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms, Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany
6.
Einsatzgruppen
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Einsatzgruppen were Schutzstaffel paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass killings, primarily by shooting, during World War II. As ordered by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the Wehrmacht cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen, historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen and related auxiliary troops killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews. The total number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust is estimated at 5.5 to 6 million people, after the close of World War II,24 senior leaders of the Einsatzgruppen were prosecuted in the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1947–48, charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes. Fourteen death sentences and two sentences were handed out. Four additional Einsatzgruppe leaders were tried and executed by other nations. The Einsatzgruppen were formed under the direction of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich and operated by the Schutzstaffel before, the Einsatzgruppen had its origins in the ad hoc Einsatzkommando formed by Heydrich to secure government buildings and documents following the Anschluss in Austria in March 1938. Originally part of the Sicherheitspolizei, two units of Einsatzgruppen were stationed in the Sudetenland in October 1938, when military action turned out not to be necessary due to the Munich Agreement, the Einsatzgruppen were assigned to confiscate government papers and police documents. They also secured government buildings, questioned senior civil servants, and arrested as many as 10,000 Czech communists, from September 1939, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt had overall command of the Einsatzgruppen. Action T4 mainly took place from 1939 to 1941, but the killings continued until the end of the war, initially the victims were shot by the Einsatzgruppen and others, but gas chambers were put into use by spring 1940. In response to Adolf Hitlers plan to invade Poland, Heydrich re-formed the Einsatzgruppen to travel in the wake of the German armies, membership at this point was drawn from the SS, the Sicherheitsdienst, and the police. Heydrich placed SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Best in command, who chose leaders for the forces and their subgroups, called Einsatzkommandos. Some had previously been members of groups such as the Freikorps. There must be no Polish leaders, where Polish leaders exist they must be killed, the Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen — lists of people to be killed — had been drawn up by the SS as early as May 1939. The Einsatzgruppen performed these murders with the support of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, members of the SS, the Wehrmacht, and the Ordnungspolizei also shot civilians during the Polish campaign. Approximately 65,000 civilians were killed by the end of 1939, in addition to leaders of Polish society, they killed Jews, prostitutes, Romani people, and the mentally ill. Psychiatric patients in Poland were initially killed by shooting, but by spring 1941 gas vans were widely used, seven Einsatzgruppen of battalion strength operated in Poland. Each was subdivided into four Einsatzkommandos of company strength, many senior army officers were only too glad to leave these genocidal actions to the task forces, as the killings violated the rules of warfare as set down in the Geneva Conventions. However, Hitler had decreed that the army would have to tolerate, some army commanders complained about unauthorised shootings, looting, and rapes committed by members of the Einsatzgruppen and the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, to little effect
7.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
8.
Schutzstaffel
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The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party in Nazi Germany. It began with a guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed, under his direction, it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance. The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS and Waffen-SS, the Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units of troops within Nazi Germanys military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände, ran the concentration camps, additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst organizations. The SS was the organization most responsible for the killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II, the SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. After Nazi Germanys defeat, the SS and the NSDAP were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be criminal organizations, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking surviving SS officer at the time, was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and hanged in 1946. By 1923, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler had created a volunteer guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz to provide security at their meetings in Munich. The same year, Hitler ordered the formation of a bodyguard unit dedicated to his personal service. He wished it to be separate from the mass of the party, including the paramilitary Sturmabteilung. The new formation was designated the Stabswache, originally the unit was composed of eight men, commanded by Julius Schreck and Joseph Berchtold, and was modeled after the Erhardt Naval Brigade, a Freikorps of the time. The unit was renamed Stoßtrupp in May 1923, the Stoßtrupp was abolished after the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by the NSDAP to seize power in Munich. In 1925, Hitler ordered Schreck to organize a new bodyguard unit and it was tasked with providing personal protection for Hitler at NSDAP functions and events. That same year, the Schutzkommando was expanded to an organization and renamed successively the Sturmstaffel. Officially, the SS marked its foundation on 9 November 1925, the new SS was to provide protection for NSDAP leaders throughout Germany. Hitlers personal SS protection unit was enlarged to include combat units
9.
Ordnungspolizei
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The Ordnungspolizei, abbreviated Orpo, were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1945. The Orpo organization was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly on power after regional police jurisdiction was removed in favor of the central Nazi government, the Orpo was under the administration of the Interior Ministry but headed by members of the SS until the end of World War II. Owing to their uniforms, Orpo were also referred to as Grüne Polizei. The force was first established as a centralized organisation uniting the municipal, city, the Ordnungspolizei encompassed virtually all of Nazi Germanys law-enforcement and emergency response organizations, including fire brigades, coast guard, civil defense, and even night watchmen. Deployed along with the German Army in the invasion of Poland in 1939, traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. In this role, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, however, the decree effectively subordinated the police to the SS, making it virtually independent of Fricks control. Himmler gained authority as all of Germanys uniformed law enforcement agencies were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei, the police were divided into the Ordnungspolizei and the Sicherheitspolizei, which had been established in June 1936. The Orpo assumed duties of regular uniformed law enforcement while the SiPo consisted of the state police. The Kriminalpolizei was a corps of professional detectives involved in fighting crime, on 27 September 1939, the SS security service, the Sicherheitsdienst and the SiPo were folded into the Reich Main Security Office. The RSHA symbolized the connection between the SS and the police. The Order Police played a role in carrying out the Holocaust. By both career professionals and reservists, in battalion formations and precinct service through providing men for the tasks involved. Generalmajor der Ordnungspolizei und SS-Brigadefuhrer Wilhelm Fritz von Roettig was the first general to be killed in World War II, in Opoczno, the Nazi German Order Police had grown to 244,500 men by mid-1940. The Orpo was under the control of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler who was the Chef der Deutschen Polizei im Ministerium des Innern and it was initially commanded by SS-Oberstgruppenführer und Generaloberst der Polizei Kurt Daluege. But in 1943, Daluege had a heart attack and was removed from duty. He was replaced by SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS und der Polizei Alfred Wünnenberg, by 1941, the Orpo had been divided into the following offices covering every aspect of German law enforcement. The central command office of the entire Ordnungspolizei was located at its Headquarters in Berlin, from 1943 was considered a full SS-Headquarters command as well. The Orpo main office had the departments, Amt I
10.
Sicherheitsdienst
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Sicherheitsdienst, full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was considered an organization with the Gestapo. Between 1933 and 1939, the SD was administered as an independent SS office, after which it was transferred to the authority of the Reich Main Security Office, as one of its seven departments/offices. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reichs reach under continuous supervision. Heydrichs successor, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials, sentenced to death and hanged in 1946. The SD was one of the oldest security organizations of the SS and was first formed in 1931 as the Ic-Dienst, operating out of a single apartment, Himmler appointed a former naval officer, Reinhard Heydrich, to organise the small agency. The office was renamed Sicherheitsdienst in the summer of 1932, the SD became more powerful after the Nazis took control of Germany and the SS started infiltrating all leading positions of the security apparatus of the Reich. Once Hitler was appointed Chancellor by German President Paul von Hindenburg, Himmlers SS and SD made their presence felt at once by helping rid the regime of its known political enemies and its perceived ones, as well. As far as Heydrich and Himmler were concerned, the SD left their mission somewhat vaguely defined so as to remain an instrument for all eventualities, one of those eventualities would soon arise. For a while, the SS was in ‘competition’ with the Sturmabteilung for influence within Germany, Himmler distrusted the SA and came to deplore the ‘rabble-rousing’ brownshirts and what they considered to be the indecent sexual deviants amid its leadership. On 20 April 1934 Hermann Göring handed over control of the Geheime Staatspolizei to Himmler, Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also continued as head of the SD. Thereafter, the SD was made the sole Party information service on 9 June 1934, additionally, reports were coming in to the SD and Gestapo that the vulgarity of the SAs behavior was damaging the party and was even making antisemitism less palatable. Moreover, the crushing of the SA and its leadership sent a clear message to everyone that opposition to Hitler’s regime could be deadly. During the autumn of 1937, Hitler secured Mussolini’s support to annex Austria, nonetheless, to facilitate the incorporation of Austria into the greater Reich, the SD and Gestapo went to work arresting people right away using lists compiled by Heydrich. Heydrich’s SD and Austrian SS members received financing from Berlin to harass Austrian Chancellor von Schuschnigg’s government all throughout 1937, one section of the SD that was nothing more than a front for subversive activities against Austria ironically promoted “German-Austrian peace. Once the annexation was official, the Austrian police was immediately subordinated to Heydrich’s SD, SS and the Gestapo. Machinations by the SD, the Gestapo, and the SS helped to bring Austria fully into Hitlers grasp and on 13 March 1938, concomitant to their machinations against Austria, the SD was also involved in subversive activities throughout Czechoslovakia. This SD intelligence operation was akin to their efforts in Austria, however, unlike Austria
11.
Gestapo
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The Gestapo, abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, or the Secret State Police, was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various security agencies of Prussia into one organization. Then from 27 September 1939 forward, it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and was considered an organization to the SS Sicherheitsdienst. This gave Göring command of the largest police force in Germany, soon afterward, Göring detached the political and intelligence sections from the police and filled their ranks with Nazis. On 26 April 1933, Göring merged the two units as the Geheime Staatspolizei, which was abbreviated for a stamp and became known as the Gestapo. He originally wanted to name it the Secret Police Office, and its first commander was Rudolf Diels, a protégé of Göring. Diels was appointed with the title of chief of Abteilung Ia of the Political Police of the Prussian Interior Ministry, Diels was best known as the primary interrogator of Marinus van der Lubbe after the Reichstag fire. In late 1933, the Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick wanted to integrate all the forces of the German states under his control. Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the interior ministry. Göring himself took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend the agencys authority throughout Germany and this represented a radical departure from German tradition, which held that law enforcement was a Land and local matter. In this, he ran into conflict with Heinrich Himmler, who was chief of the second most powerful German state. Frick did not have the muscle to take on Göring by himself so he allied with Himmler, with Fricks support, Himmler took over the political police of state after state. Concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to counteract the power of the Sturmabteilung, Göring handed over control of the Gestapo to Himmler on 20 April 1934. Also on that date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia, Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also continued as head of the SS Security Service. Himmler wanted to free himself entirely from Roehm, who he viewed as an obstacle, roehms position was menacing as upwards of over 4. Several Nazi chieftains, among them Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, both the SD and Gestapo released information concerning an imminent putsch by the SA. Once persuaded, Hitler acted by setting Himmlers SS into action, on 17 June 1936, Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in the Reich and named Himmler as Chief of German Police. This action effectively merged the police into the SS and removed it from Fricks control, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Frick as police chief, but as Reichsführer-SS, he answered only to Hitler
12.
Invasion of Poland
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The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident, as the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom. While those two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September, in the end their aid to Poland was very limited. The Soviet Red Armys invasion of Eastern Poland on 17 September, in accordance with a protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded the defence of the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible, on 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland. The success of the invasion marked the end of the Second Polish Republic, the Soviet Union incorporated its newly acquired areas into its constituent Belarusian and Ukrainian republics, and immediately started a campaign of sovietization. In the aftermath of the invasion, a collective of underground resistance formed the Polish Underground State within the territory of the former Polish state. Many of the exiles that managed to escape Poland subsequently joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. On 30 January 1933, the Nazi Party, under its leader Adolf Hitler, as part of this long-term policy, Hitler at first pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, trying to improve opinion in Germany, culminating in the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. Earlier, Hitlers foreign policy worked to weaken ties between Poland and France, and attempted to manoeuvre Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact, forming a front against the Soviet Union. The Poles feared that their independence would eventually be threatened altogether, the so-called Polish Corridor constituted land long disputed by Poland and Germany, and inhabited by a Polish majority. The Corridor had become a part of Poland after the Treaty of Versailles, many Germans also wanted the city of Danzig and its environs to be reincorporated into Germany. Danzig was a city with a German majority. It had been separated from Germany after Versailles and made into the nominally independent Free City of Danzig, the series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier. Poland participated with Germany in the partition of Czechoslovakia that followed the Munich Agreement and it coerced Czechoslovakia to surrender the region of Český Těšín by issuing an ultimatum to that effect on 30 September 1938, which was accepted by Czechoslovakia on 1 October. This region had a Polish majority and had been disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the aftermath of World War I, the Polish annexation of Slovak territory later served as the justification for the Slovak state to join the German invasion. Poland rejected this proposal, fearing that after accepting these demands, it would become subject to the will of Germany
Nazi Germany