Sonderdienst were mostly non-German Nazi paramilitary formations created in the occupied General Government during the occupation of Poland in World War II. They were based on similar SS formations called Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz operating in the Warthegau district of German-annexed western Poland in 1939.
Leaders of General Government during inspection of Sonderdienst battalions: from right, Generalgouverneur Hans Frank, Higher SS and Police Leader GG Herbert Becker and secretary of state Ernst Boepple
Sonderdienst battalion in occupied Kraków, July 1940
Gauleiter Hans Frank and Sonderdienst leaders in Kraków, 1941.
Hiwis from one of two Sonderdienst battalions trained by Karl Streibel at the Trawniki training camp during the firearms artillery subjugation of Warsaw. Photo from Jürgen Stroop Report, 1943
The General Government, formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region, was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovakia and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II. The newly occupied Second Polish Republic was split into three zones: the General Government in its centre, Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in the west, and Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union in the east. The territory was expanded substantially in 1941, after the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, to include the new District of Galicia. The area of the Generalgouvernement roughly corresponded with the Austrian part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.
Hans Frank, head of the General Government, at a police parade in Kraków during the German occupation of Poland
Official proclamation of the General-Government in Poland by Germany, October 1939
Hans Frank with district administrators in 1942 – from left: Ernst Kundt, Ludwig Fischer, Hans Frank, Otto Wächter, Ernst Zörner, Richard Wendler
Announcement of the execution of 60 Polish hostages and a list of 40 new hostages taken by Nazi authorities in Poland, 1943