Pomeranian Voivodeship

The totalitarian and anti-Polish Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, took power in Germany in 1933. By this time, the Second Polish Republic was led by Józef Piłsudski who ruled the country as an authoritarian democracy. Hitler at first ostentatiously pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland,^[10] culminating in the ten year Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. In the coming years, Germany placed an emphasis on rearmament, to which Poland and other European powers reacted.^[11][12] Initially Nazis were able to achieve their immediate goals of territorial expansion without provoking armed resistance; in 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria and the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreement. In October 1938, Germany tried to get Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact. Poland refused, as the alliance was quickly becoming a sphere of influence for an increasingly powerful Germany. ^[13]

Following negotiations with Hitler for the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain reported that, "He told me privately, and last night he repeated publicly, that after this Sudeten German question is settled, that is the end of Germany's territorial claims in Europe".^[14] Almost immediately following the agreement, however, Hitler reneged. The Nazis increased their requests for the incorporation of the Free City of Danzig into the Reich, citing the "protection" of the German majority as a motive.^[15] In November 1938, Danzig's district administrator, Albert Forster reported to the League of Nations that Hitler had told him Polish frontiers would be guaranteed if the Poles were "reasonable like the Czechs." German State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker reaffirmed this alleged guarantee in December 1938.^[16]

The situation regarding the Free City and the Polish Corridor created a number of headaches for German and Polish Customs.^[15] The Germans requested the Free City of Danzig and the construction of an extra-territorial highway (to complete the Reichsautobahn Berlin-Königsberg) and railway through the Polish Corridor, connecting East Prussia to Danzig and Germany proper. Poland agreed on building a German highway and to allow German railway traffic, in return they would extend the non-aggression pact for 25 years.^[2]

This seemed to conflict with Hitler's plans and with Poland's rejection of the Anti-Comintern Pact, his desire to either isolate or gain support against the Soviet Union.^[2] German newspapers in Danzig and Nazi Germany played an important role inciting nationalist sentiment; headlines buzzed about how Poland was misusing its economic rights in Danzig and German Danzigers were increasingly subjugated to the will of the Polish state.^[15] At the same time, Hitler also offered Poland additional territory as an enticement, such as the possible annexation of Lithuania, the Klaipėda Region, Soviet Ukraine and Czech inhabited lands.^{[17] [18]} However, Polish leaders continued to fear for the loss of their independence and a shared fate with Czechoslovakia, although they had also taken part in its partitioning. ^[18] Some felt that the Danzig question was inextricably tied to the problems in the Polish Corridor and any settlement regarding Danzig would be one step towards the eventual loss of Poland's access to the sea. ^[15] Nevertheless, Hitler's credibility outside of Germany was very low after the occupation of Czechoslovakia.

Hitler used the issue of the status of Danzig as pretext for attacking Poland, while explaining during a high-level meeting of German military officials in May 1939 that his real goal is obtaining Lebensraum for Germany, isolating Poles from their Allies in the West and afterwards attacking Poland, thus avoiding the repeat of the Czech situation.^{[19][20][21][22][23]}

In 1939, Nazi Germany made another proposal regarding Danzig; the city was to be incorporated into the Reich while the Polish section of the population was to be "evacuated" and resettled elsewhere.^[16] Poland was to retain a permanent right to use the seaport and the route through the Polish Corridor was to be constructed. However, the Poles distrusted Hitler and saw the plan as a threat to Polish sovereignty, practically subordinating Poland to the Axis and the Anti-Comintern Bloc while reducing the country to a state of near-servitude. ^{[24] [25]} Writing about the Danzig crisis on 30 April 1939, Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin sent a dispatch to Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet saying Hitler wanted:"...a mortgage on Polish foreign policy, while itself retaining complete liberty of action allowing the conclusion of political agreements with other countries. In these circumstances, the new settlement proposed by Germany, which would link the questions of Danzig and of the passage across the Corridor with counterbalancing questions of a political nature, would only serve to aggravate this mortgage and practically subordinate Poland to the Axis and the Anti-Comintern Bloc. Warsaw refused this in order to retain its independence....Polish acceptance of Germany's demands would have rendered the application of any braking machinery in the East impossible. The Germans are not wrong then, when they claim that Danzig is in itself only a secondary question. It is not only the fate of the Free City, it is the enslavement or liberty of Europe which is at stake in the issue now joined."^[24] Additionally, Poland was backed by guarantees of support from both the United Kingdom and France in regard to Danzig.

A revised and less favorable proposal came in the form of an ultimatum made by the Nazis in late August, after the orders had already been given to attack Poland on September 1, 1939. Nevertheless, at midnight on August 29, Joachim von Ribbentrop handed British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson a list of terms which would allegedly ensure peace in regard to Poland. Danzig was to be incorporated into Germany and there was to be a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor; all Poles who were born or settled there since 1919 would have no vote, while all Germans born but not living there would. An exchange of minority populations between the two countries was proposed. If Poland accepted these terms, Germany would agree to the British offer of an international guarantee, which would include the Soviet Union. A Polish plenipotentiary, with full powers, was to arrive in Berlin and accept these terms by noon the next day. The British Cabinet viewed the terms as "reasonable," except the demand for a Polish Plenipotentiary, which was seen as similar to Czechoslovak President Emil Hácha accepting Hitler's terms in mid-March 1939.

When Ambassador Józef Lipski went to see Ribbentrop on August 30, he was presented with Hitler's demands. However, he did not have the full power to sign and Ribbentrop ended the meeting. News was then broadcast that Poland had rejected Germany's offer.^[16]

Free City of Danzig

In May 1933, the Nazi Party won the local elections in the city. However, they received 57 percent of the vote, less than the two-thirds required by the League of Nations to change the Constitution of the Free City of Danzig. The government introduced anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic laws, the latter primarily being directed against the Polish and Kashubian inhabitants. In the 1930s the rights of local Poles were commonly violated and limited by the local administration.^[26] Polish children were refused admission to public Polish-language schools, premises were not allowed to be rented to Polish schools and preschools.^[27] In 1937, Poles who sent their children to private Polish schools were demanded to transfer children to German schools, under threat of police intervention, and attacks were carried out on Polish schools and Polish youth.^[27]

German militias carried out numerous beatings of Polish activists, scouts, and even mailmen, as "punishment" for distributing the Polish press.^[28] German students attacked and expelled Polish students from the technical university.^[28] Dozens of Polish surnames were forcibly Germanized,^[28] while Polish symbols that reminded that for centuries the city was part of Poland were removed from landmarks, such as the Artus Court and the Neptune's Fountain.^[29]

From 1937, the employment of Poles by German companies was prohibited, and already employed Poles were fired, the use of Polish in public places was banned and Poles were not allowed to enter several restaurants, in particular those owned by Germans.^[29] In 1938, the Germans committed over 100 attacks on Polish homes on the day of the Polish 3 May Constitution Day.^[29] In 1939, before the German invasion of Poland and outbreak of World War II, local Polish railwaymen were victims of beatings and arrests.^[30]

The city also served as a training point for members of the German minority within Poland that, recruited by organisations such as the Jungdeutsche Partei ("Young German Party") and the Deutsche Vereinigung ("German Union"), would form the leading cadres of Selbstschutz, an organisation involved with murder and atrocities during the German invasion of Poland in 1939.^[31] Jews were also increasingly persecuted; the Danzig Great Synagogue was taken over and demolished by the local authorities in 1939.

Province of Pomerania

Deportation of the Pomeranian Jews

In 1933, about 7,800 Jews lived in the Province of Pomerania, of which a third lived in Stettin. The other two thirds were living all over the province, Jewish communities numbering more than 200 people were in Stettin, Kolberg, Lauenburg, and Stolp.^[42]

When the Nazis started to terrorize Jews, many emigrated. Twenty weeks after the Nazis seized power, the number of Jewish Pomeranians had already dropped by eight percent.^[42]

Besides the repressions Jews had to endure in all Nazi Germany, including the destruction of the Pomeranian synagogues on November 9, 1938 (Reichskristallnacht), all male Stettin Jews were deported to Oranienburg concentration camp after this event and kept there for several weeks.^[43]

On February 12 and 13, 1940, the remaining 1,000 to 1,300 Jews from all the Stettin Region, regardless of sex, age and health, were deported from Stettin and Schneidemühl to the Lublin Reservation, that had been set up following the Nisko Plan in occupied Poland. Among the deported were intermarried non-Jewish women. The deportation was carried out in an inhumane manner. Despite low temperatures, the carriages were not heated. No food had been allowed to be taken along. The property left behind was liquidated. Up to 300 people perished from the deportation itself. In the Lublin area under Kurt Engel's regime, the people were subject to inhumane treatment, starvation and murder. Only a few survived the war.^[44][45]

Regarding the Jewish community from the Schneidemühl area, JewishGen with reference to research by Peter Simonstein Cullman says that the widespread belief of the Schneidemühl Jews being deported along with the Jews from all the Stettin Region is contradicted by the respective files in the Bundesarchiv and USHMM archives. While there were indeed such orders and Jews from the Schneidemühl area were rounded up after 15 February, an intervention of the Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung) resulted in a change of the Nazi plans on 21 February: instead of deportation to the Generalgouvernement like the Stettin Jews, these people were to be deported to places within the Altreich. Deportations to transit and death camps followed.^[46]

Invasion and occupation of the Polish Corridor and Danzig

Province of Pomerania 1939–1944

In September 1939, the persecution of Poles from pre-war German Pomerania reached its climax with mass arrests of Polish activists, teachers etc., who were then sent to concentration camps.^[67]

On manors and bigger farms Polish prisoners of war partly replaced German workforce. In the cities, Polish forced-labourers were exploited by German companies and factories.

Germany operated several prisoner-of-war camps, including Stalag II-B, Stalag II-C, Stalag II-D, Stalag II-E, Stalag Luft I, Stalag Luft II, Stalag Luft IV, Stalag Luft 7, Stalag 302, Stalag 351, Oflag II-D and Oflag 65, for Polish POWs and civilians, including women and children, and French, Belgian, Dutch, Serbian, Italian, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Czech, Soviet, Senegalese, Tunisian, Moroccan, Algerian, South African and other Allied POWs, with numerous forced labour subcamps in the region.^[68]

There were also several subcamps of the Stutthof concentration camp^[69] and several Nazi prisons with numerous forced labour subcamps in the region. Połczyn-Zdrój was the location of a Germanisation camp for kidnapped Polish children.^[70] Unieszyno and Police housed camps for Sinti and Romani people (see Romani Holocaust).^[71][72]

Roughly 60,000 German men from Pomerania died as soldiers in the Wehrmacht and SS until May, 1945.

Since 1943, the province became a target of allied air raids. The first attack was launched against Stettin on April 21, 1943, and left 400 dead. On August 17/18, the British RAF launched an attack on Peenemünde, where Wernher von Braun and his staff had developed and tested the world's first rockets. In October, Anklam was a target. Throughout 1944 and early 1945, Stettin's industrial and residential areas were targets of air raids. Stralsund was a target in October 1944.^[73]

Despite these raids, the province was regarded "safe" compared to other areas of the Third Reich, and thus became a shelter for evacuees primarily from hard hit Berlin and the West German industrial centers.^[73]

After the war had turned back on Germany, the Pomeranian Wall was renovated in the summer of 1944, and in the fall all men between sixteen and sixty years of age who had not yet been drafted were enrolled into Volkssturm units.^[73]

The province of Pomerania became a battlefield^[74] on January 26, 1945, when in the pretext of the Red Army's East Pomeranian Offensive Soviet tanks entered the province near Schneidemühl (Piła), which surrendered on February 13.^[73]

East Pomeranian Offensive

On February 14, the remnants of German Army Group Vistula ("Heeresgruppe Weichsel") had managed to set up a frontline roughly at the province's southern frontier, and launched a counterattack (Operation Solstice, "Sonnenwende") on February 15, that however stalled already on February 18. On February 24, the Second Belorussian Front launched the East Pomeranian Offensive and despite heavy resistance primarily in the Rummelsburg area took eastern Farther Pomerania until March 10. On March 1, the First Belorussian Front had launched an offensive from the Stargard and Märkisch Friedland (Mirosławiec) area and succeeded in taking northwestern Farther Pomerania within five days. Cut off corps group Hans von Tettau retreated to Dziwna as a moving pocket until March 11. Thus, German-held central Farther Pomerania was cut off, and taken after the Battle of Kolberg (March 4 to March 18).^[75][76]

The fast advances of the Red Army during the East Pomeranian Offensive caught the civilian Farther Pomeranian population by surprise. The land route to the west was blocked since early March. Evacuation orders were issued not at all or much too late. The only way out of Farther Pomerania was via the ports of Stolpmünde (Ustka), from which 18,300 were evacuated, Rügenwalde (Darłowo), from which 4,300 were evacuated, and Kolberg (Kołobrzeg), which had been declared fortress and from which before the end of the Battle of Kolberg some 70,000 were evacuated. Those left behind became victims of murder, war rape, and plunder. On March 6, the USAF bombed Swinemünde, where thousands of refugees were stranded, killing an estimated 25,000.^[77]

Many Germans fled westward as the Red Army advanced on the Eastern Front. The Hel Peninsula and Hel town, northwest of Danzig, were defended by the German army until the end of the war on May 9, 1945. 900,000 people were evacuated by ship, mainly by the Kriegsmarine. 200,000 could flee to the more western provinces of Germany on land (most before March, 1945). Only 3% of those who fled per ship died on the Baltic sea due to Soviet torpedoes. On land, due to the harsh winter and due to Soviet air raids, the losses among civilians were much higher.

The roving cauldron of Hans von Tettau's corps was defended by some 10,000^[78] to 16,000^[78][79] troops, stemming primarily from the remnants of the "Holstein" and "Pommerland" Panzer Divisions,^[78] taking with them about 40,000 civilians. This group had managed to break through the Soviet encirclement north of Schivelbein (Świdwin) and fought their way toward the coastline. Hoping for evacuation by the German navy, they secured a bridgehead near Hoff and Horst (Niechorze). As evacuation did not happen, they moved on to Dievenow, from where they were ferried to Wollin island on March 11 and 12.^[78][79]

East of the Oder river, Wehrmacht's 3rd Panzer Army had set up the Altdamm (Dąbie) bridgehead between Gollnow (Goleniów) and Greifenhagen (Gryfino). The Red Army cleared the areas south of the bridgehead with the 47th Army until March 6, and the areas north of it with the 3rd Shock Army, reaching the coast on 9 March. On March 15, Adolf Hitler ordered some of the defending units to reinforce the 9th Army near Küstrin (Kostrzyn nad Odrą), seriously weakening the Altdamm bridgehead. Hasso von Manteuffel, in command since 10 March, was unable to further defend the bridgehead after March 19, evacuated most of it on 20 March and had the Oder bridges blown up. The Red Army took the remaining pockets of the former bridgehead on March 21. About 40,000 German troops had been killed and 12,000 captured defending the bridgehead.^[80]

Battle of Berlin

On March 20, Wehrmacht abandoned the last bridgehead on the Oder rivers eastern bank, the Altdamm area. The frontline then ran along Dievenow and lower Oder, and was held by the 3rd Panzer Army commanded by general Hasso von Manteuffel. After another four days of fighting, the Red Army managed to break through and cross the Oder between Stettin and Gartz (Oder), thus starting the northern theater of the Battle of Berlin on March 24. Stettin was abandoned the next day.^[77]

Throughout April, the Second Belorussian Front led by general Konstantin Rokossovsky advanced through Western Pomerania. Demmin and Greifswald surrendered on April 30.^[77]

In Demmin, nearly 900 people committed mass suicides in fear of the Red Army. Coroner lists show that most drowned in the nearby River Tollense and River Peene, whereas others poisoned themselves.^[81] This was fueled by atrocities – rapes, pillage and executions committed by Red Army soldiers until the city commander had the access to the rivers blocked on May 3.^[82]

In the first days of May, Wehrmacht abandoned Usedom and Wolin islands, and on May 5, the last German troops departed from Sassnitz on the island of Rügen. Two days later, Wehrmacht surrendered unconditionally to the Red Army.^[77]

Evacuation

Pomeranian Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg propagated a turn of the war until the very end. Evacuation orders therefore were issued either too late or not at all. Schwede-Coburg even had the authorities repel flight attempts by the population.^[83]

Civilian losses

Many Germans in Pomerania, including Danzig (Gdańsk) and Pomerelia, died during and shortly after the war due to air raids, but mainly^{[citation needed]} afterwards due to Soviet Red Army atrocities committed in revenge against the German civilians.

The official post-war West German Schieder commission estimated German civilian losses in all of the territories generally called "Pomerania" at:

• Danzig: 100,000 dead out of 404,000 inhabitants, living there in December 1944.
• German Province of Pomerania: 440,000 dead out of 1,895,000 inhabitants, living there in December 1944.
• West Prussia (Pomerelia): 70,000 of 310,000 inhabitants, living there in December 1944 (of which 100,000 were "settlers" transferred to this province by the Nazi government).^[84]