Throughout World War II Poland was a member of the Allied coalition that fought Nazi Germany. During the German occupation of Poland, some Polish citizens of diverse ethnicities collaborated with the Germans. Estimates of the number of collaborators vary from several thousand to about a million. The main collaborators were members of Poland's German minority.^[1] During and after the war, the Polish State and the Resistance movement executed collaborators.

Due to differences in Nazi Germany's aims in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, and due to Germany's historical Drang nach Osten ("Drive to the East") and Lebensraum ("living space") policies, collaboration in Poland was much less widespread and institutionalized than in Western Europe. Compared to the situations in other German-occupied countries, collaboration in Poland was marginal.^[2]

Background

Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Hitler sought to establish Poland as a client state, proposing a multilateral territorial exchange and an extension of the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact. The Polish government, fearing subjugation to Nazi Germany, instead chose to form an alliance with Britain (and later with France). In response, Germany withdrew from the non-aggression pact and, shortly before invading Poland, signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Soviet Union, safeguarding Germany against Soviet retaliation if it invaded Poland, and prospectively dividing Poland between the two totalitarian powers.

On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. The German army overran Polish defenses while inflicting heavy civilian losses, and by 13 September had conquered most of western Poland. On 17 September the Soviet Union invaded the country from the east, conquering most of eastern Poland, along with the Baltic states and parts of Finland. Some 140,000 Polish soldiers and airmen escaped to Romania and Hungary, and later many soon joining the Polish Armed Forces in France. Poland's government crossed over into Romania, later forming a government-in-exile in France and then in London, following the French capitulation. Poland as a polity never surrendered to the Germans.^[3]

Nazi authorities annexed the westernmost parts of Poland and the former Free City of Danzig, incorporating it directly to Nazi Germany, and placed the remaining German-occupied territory under the administration of the newly formed General Government. The Soviet Union annexed the rest of Poland, incorporating its territories into the Belorussian and Ukrainian republics.^[4] Germany’s primary aim in Eastern Europe was the expansion of the German Lebensraum which necessitated according to Nazi views the elimination or deportation of all non-Germanic ethnicities, including Poles; the areas controlled by the General Government were to become "free" of Poles within 15–20 years.^[5] This resulted in harsh policies which targeted the Polish population, in addition to the explicit goal of exterminating the Jewish people, which was carried out by Nazi Germany in the occupied Polish territories.

Individual collaboration

Estimates regarding the number of Polish collaborators vary from several thousand to about a million,^{[6][dubious – discuss]} depending on the one's definition of "collaboration".^[7] The main group of Polish citizens who activley collaborated with Nazi Germany were members of the German minority living in Poland,^[8]: 166 which before the war numbered approximately 741,000.

Historian Leszek Gondek estimates the number of Polish collaborators at about 17,000, relying on the number of death sentences for treason issued by Special Courts of the Polish Underground State, and describes the phenomena as "marginal".^[9] Also, historian John Connelly writes that "only a relatively small percentage of the Polish population engaged in activities that may be described as collaboration, when seen against the backdrop of European and world history."^[9] According to Gondek, the courts heard at least 5,000 collaboration cases and sentenced 3,500 (according to historian Czesław Madajczyk over 10,000) people to death for collaboration.^[6]

Prewar Poland had a population of over 35 million inhabitants, including over 3 million Polish Jews.^[6][9][10] Postwar statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission^[who?] gave the number of Polish collaborators at around 7,000.^{[11]: 13 [12]: 128}

Varying interpretations of what constitutes collaboration account for the broad range of estimates of Poles' collaboration with the Germans in World War II.^[9] The higher collaboration estimates can include workers in slave-labor camps (Baudienst), low-ranking Polish bureaucrats, the Polish Blue Police, Poland's prewar German minority (former Polish citizens who declared themselves to be Volksdeutsche), and even all of Poland's peasants, whose agricultural produce fed the German military and administration.^[6] Polish labor-camp workers were sometimes used in rounding up Jews for transportation to ghettos, or to dig graves for massacre victims; evasion of such service was punishable by death, and the individual's family could suffer reprisals.^[6]

Ethnographic groups

The Germans also singled out, as potential collaborators, two ethnographic groups in Poland which had some limited separatist interests. The scheme was directed at the Kashubians in the north and the Gorals in the south. The German attempt to reach out to the Kashubians proved a "complete failure", but in the south the Germans met with limited success, and Katarzyna Szurmiak has called the resulting Goralenvolk movement "the most extensive case of collaboration in Poland during the Second World War."^{[13]: 86–87} Still, Szurmiak writes, "when talking about numbers, the attempt to create Goralenvolk was a failure... a mere 18 percent of the population took up Goralian IDs... Goralian schools [were] consistently boycotted, and... attempts to create Goralian police or a Goralian Waffen-SS Legion... failed miserably."^[13]: 98

Political collaboration

Unlike the situation in most German-occupied European countries where the Germans successfully installed collaborationist governments, in occupied Poland there was no puppet government.^{[14][15][16][17][18][19][20]} The Germans had initially contemplated the creation of a collaborationist Polish cabinet to administer, as a protectorate, the German-occupied Polish territories that Nazi Germany did not annex outright into the Third Reich.^[20][21] At the beginning of the war, German officials contacted several Polish leaders with proposals for collaboration, but the Poles refused the offers.^{[22] [23]}A prominent peasant-party leader and former Prime Minister of Poland, Wincenty Witos, rejected several German offers to lead a puppet government,^[24][20][25] as did Janusz Radziwiłł and Stanisław Estreicher.^{[26][27][28][19]} The pro-German right-wing politician, Andrzej Świetlicki, formed a National Revolutionary Camp and approached the Germans with a collaboration offer but was ignored.^[29] Władysław Studnicki,^[30] an anti-Soviet publicist, and Leon Kozłowski, a prominent scholar and former Prime Minister, each favored Polish-German cooperation against the Soviet Union, but was rejected by the Germans. Nazi racial policies and German plans for the conquered Polish territories, on one hand, and Polish anti-German attitudes on the other, militated against any Polish-German political collaboration.^[31] Further German efforts in that direction were precluded after April 1940, when Hitler banned negotiations concerning any degree of Polish autonomy.^[32] German plans envisioned the eventual complete disappearance of the Polish nation, which was to be replaced by German settlers.^[33][32][34]

During the 1940 German invasion of France, the French government suggested that Polish politicians in France negotiate an accommodation with Germany; and in Paris the prominent journalist Stanislaw Mackiewicz tried to get Polish President Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz to negotiate with the Germans, as the French defenses were collapsing and German victory seemed inevitable. Three days later the Polish Government and Polish National Council rejected discussing capitulation and declared they would fight on until full victory over Nazi Germany. A group of eight low-ranking Polish politicians and officers broke with the Polish Government and in Lisbon, Portugal, addressed a memorandum to Germany, asking for discussions about restoring a Polish state under German occupation, which was rejected by the Germans. According to Czeslaw Madajczyk, in view of the low profile of the Poles involved and of Berlin's rejection of the memorandum, no political collaboration can be said to have taken place.^[35] For his efforts, Mackiewicz was sentenced to death by the Polish resistance (but survived to return to Poland after the war).^{[citation needed]}

Security forces

In October 1939, the Nazi authorities ordered the mobilization of pre-war Polish police, to serve under the command of the German Ordnungspolizei, creating the "Blue Police". The policemen were to report for duty by 10 November 1939^[36] or face the death penalty.^[37] At its peak in May 1944, the Blue Police numbered some 17,000 men.^[38] Their primary task was to act as a regular police force dealing with criminal activities, but they were also used by the Germans in combating smuggling and resistance, rounding up random civilians (łapanka) for forced labor or for execution in reprisal for Polish resistance activities (e.g., the Polish underground's execution of Polish traitors or egregiously brutal Germans), patrolling for Jewish ghetto escapees, and in support of military operations against the Polish resistance.^[6][39]

The German General Government also tried to create additional Polish auxiliary police—Schutzmannschaft Battalion 202 in 1942 and Schutzmannschaft Battalion 107 in 1943. Very few people volunteered and the Germans were forced to forcefully conscript them to fill up the ranks. Subsequently, most of the men deserted, and the two units were disbanded.^[40] Schutzmannschaft Battalion 107 mutinied against its German officers, disarmed them, and joined the Home Army resistance.^[41]

In 1944, Nazi Germany in General Government tried to recruit 12,000 Polish volunteers to "join the fight against Bolshevism". The campaign failed and only 699 men were recruited, 209 of whom either deserted or were disqualified for health reasons^[42].

Poles in the Wehrmacht

Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, many former citizens of the Second Polish Republic from across the Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany were forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht in Upper Silesia and in Pomerania. They were declared citizens of the Third Reich by law and therefore subject to drumhead court-martial in case of draft evasion. Professor Ryszard Kaczmarek of the University of Silesia in Katowice, author of a monograph, Polacy w Wehrmachcie (Poles in the Wehrmacht), noted that the scale of this phenomenon was much larger than previously assumed, because 90% of the inhabitants of these two westernmost regions of prewar Poland were ordered to register on the German People's List (Volksliste), regardless of their wishes. The exact number of these conscripts is not known; no data exist beyond 1943.^[43]

In June 1946, the British Secretary of State for War reported to Parliament that, of the pre-war Polish citizens who had involuntarily signed the Volksliste and subsequently served in the German Wehrmacht, 68,693 men were captured or surrendered to the Allies in northwest Europe. The overwhelming majority, 53,630 subsequently enlisted in the Polish Army in the West and fought against Germany to the end of World War II.^[44][43]

Collaboration and the resistance

The main armed resistance organization in Poland was the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK), numbering some 400,000 members, including Jewish fighters.^[12][45][46] AK command rejected any talks with the German authorities,^[12]: 88 but some AK units in eastern Poland did maintain contacts with the Germans, to "gain intelligence on German morale and preparedness and perhaps to acquire some badly needed weapons. ^[47] The Germans made several attempts at arming regional partisan units belonging to the Armia Krajowa to encourage them to act against Soviet partisans operating around Nowogrodek and Vilnius; the local units accepted the armaments but used them for their own purposes, disregarding the Germans' intents and even turning them against them.^[48][49][12] Tadeusz Piotrowski concludes that "[these deals] were purely tactical, short term arrangements"^[12]: 88 and quotes Joseph Rothschild as saying that "the Polish Home Army was by and large untainted by collaboration."^[12]: 90

The National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, or NSZ) from time to time attacked or took as prisoner Jewish partisans, who were part of the communist People's Army (Armia Ludowa, or AL), which was a Polish partisan militia that included Jewish detachments.^[50] A single NSZ unit, the "Holy Cross Mountains Brigade" of the NSZ, numbering 800-1,500 fighters ceased hostile operations against the Germans for a few months in 1944, accepted logistical help, and—late in the war, with German approval, to avoid capture by the Soviets—withdrew from Poland into Czechoslovakia. Once there, the unit resumed hostilities against the Germans and on 5 May 1945 liberated the Holýšov concentration camp,^[51] saving several hundred Jewish women^[52] NSZ in general did not have an uniform view about Jews, and although generally considered antisemitic and involved in killing and handing out Jews, at the same time it included Jewish fighters, including ones in higher commanding positions, some members and units of NSZ were also involved in rescue of Jews and awarded Righteous Among the Nations awards post-war^{[12]: 96-97}

The Holocaust

Historian John Connelly writes that the vast majority of ethnic Poles showed indifference to the fate of the Jews; and that "Polish historiography has hesitated to view [complicity in the Jewish Holocaust] as collaboration."^[9] On the other hand, Klaus-Peter Friedrich writes that "most [Poles] adopted a policy of wait-and-see... In the eyes of the Jewish population, [this] almost inevitably had to appear as silent approval of the [German] occupier's actions."^[6] According to historian Gunnar S. Paulsson, in occupied Warsaw (a city of 1.3 million, including 350,000 Jews before the war), some 3,000 to 4,000 Poles acted as blackmailers and informants (szmalcownik), who turned in Jews and fellow Poles who provided assistance to them.^[53] In 2013, historian Jan Grabowski wrote in his book that 200,000 Jews "were killed directly or indirectly by the Poles".^[54] However, the book sparked a public controversy in Poland and the estimate has been criticized, notably by fellow historians and by the Polish League Against Defamation.^[55][56] To back up the work, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research scholars published statements in defense of Grabowski.^[57][58][59]

Collaboration by ethnic minorities

Germans used the divide and rule method to create tensions within the Polish society, by targeting several non-Polish ethnic groups for preferential treatment or the opposite, in the case of the Jewish minority.^[13]

Ethnic Germans

During the invasion of Poland in September 1939, members of the ethnic German minority in Poland assisted Nazi Germany in its war effort. They committed sabotage, diverted regular forces and committed numerous atrocities against civilian population.^{[60][61]: 33}

Shortly after the German invasion of Poland, an armed ethnic-German militia, called the Selbstschutz, numbering around 100,000 members, was formed.^[62] It organized the Operation Tannenberg mass murder of Polish elites. At the beginning of 1940, the Selbstschutz was disbanded, and its members transferred to various units of SS, Gestapo, and German police. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle organized large-scale looting of property, and redistributed goods to Volksdeutsche. They were given apartments, workshops, farms, furniture, and clothing confiscated from Jewish Poles and ethnic Poles.^[63]

During the German occupation of Poland, Nazi authorities established the German People's List (Deutsche Volksliste, DVL), whereby former Polish citizens of German ethnicity were registered as Volksdeutsche. The German authorities encouraged registration of ethnic Germans, and in many cases made it mandatory. Those who joined were given benefits, including better food and better social status. However, Volksdeutsche were required to perform military service for the Third Reich, and hundreds of thousands joined the German military, either willingly or under compulsion.^[64] People who became Volksdeutsche were treated by Poles with special contempt, and their having signed the Volksliste constituted high treason according to Polish underground law.^{[citation needed]}

Collaboration by Ukrainians and Belorussians

Before the war, Poland had a substantial population of Ukrainian and Belorussian minorities living in her eastern, Kresy regions. After the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland on 17 September 1939, those territories were annexed by the USSR. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, German authorities recruited Ukrainians and Belorussians who had been citizens of Poland before September 1939 for service in Waffen-SS and auxiliary-police units. In District Galicia, the SS Galicia division and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, made up of ethnic-Ukrainian volunteers, took part in widespread massacres and persecution of Poles and Jews.^[65][66]

Collaboration by Polish Jews

The Judenräte (s. Judenrat, literally "Jewish council") were Jewish-run governing bodies set up by the Nazi authorities in Jewish ghettos across German-occupied Poland. The Judenräte functioned as a self-enforcing intermediary, and were used by the Germans to control the Jewish population and to manage the ghetto's day-to-day administration. The Judenräte also collected information on the Jewish population and supervised the Jewish policemen in the ghettos in helping the Germans load Jews onto transport trains bound for concentration camps.^{[67] [68]: 117–118} In some cases, Judenrat members exploited their positions to engage in bribery and other abuses. In the Łódź Ghetto, the reign of Judenrat head Chaim Rumkowski was particularly inhumane, as he was known to get rid of his political opponents by submitting their names for deportation to concentration camps, hoard food rations, and sexually abuse Jewish girls.^[69][70][68] Political theorist Hannah Arendt stated that without the assistance of the Judenräte, the German authorities would have encountered considerable difficulties in drawing up detailed lists of the Jewish population, thus allowing for at least some Jews to avoid deportation.^[68]

The Jewish Ghetto Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) were volunteers recruited from among Jews living in the ghettos who could be relied on to follow German orders. They were issued batons, official armbands, caps, and badges, and were responsible for public order in the ghetto. Also, the policemen were used by the Germans for securing the deportation of other Jews to concentration camps.^[71][72] The numbers of Jewish police varied greatly depending on the location, with the Warsaw Ghetto numbering about 2,500, Łódź Ghetto 1,200 and smaller ghettos such as that at Lwów about 500.^[73]: 310 The Jewish ghetto police distinguished themselves by their shocking corruption and immorality.^[74] Historian and Warsaw Ghetto archivist Emanuel Ringelblum described the cruelty of the ghetto police as "at times greater than that of the Germans."^[72]

Some Polish Jews, belonging to the collaborationist groups Żagiew and "Group 13", colloquially known as the "Jewish Gestapo", inflicted considerable damage on both Jewish and Polish underground resistance movements. ^[75] Over a thousand of these Jewish Nazi collaborators, some armed with firearms,^[12]: 74 served under the direction of the German Gestapo as informers on Polish resistance efforts to hide Jews,^[75] and engaged in racketeering, blackmail, and extortion in the Warsaw Ghetto.^[76][77] A group composed of 70 members led by Jewish collaborator called Hening was tasked with operations aimed at the Polish resistance, and was located on Szucha Street in Warsaw.^[12]: 74 Similar groups and individuals operated in towns and cities across German-occupied Poland — Abraham Gancwajch and Alfred Nossig in Warsaw,^[78][79] Józef Diamand in Kraków,^[80] and Szama Grajer in Lublin.^[81] One of the Jewish collaborationist groups' baiting techniques was to send agents out as supposed ghetto escapees who would ask Polish families for help; if a family agreed to help, it was reported on to the Germans, who (as a matter of announced policy) executed the entire family.^{[82][83][84][unreliable source?]} It is estimated that at the end of 1941 and the start of 1942 there were approximately 15,000 "Jewish Gestapo" agents in the General Government.^[12]: 74

Some members of the Jewish Social Self-Help (Jüdische Soziale Selbsthilfe), also known as the Jewish Social Assistance Society, collaborated with Nazi authorities in the deportation of Warsaw Jews to death camps.^[85] The group was formed as a humanitarian organization funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which also supplied it with legal cover,^[86] and was allowed to operate in the territories of the General Government. Concerned with its lack of effectiveness, and seeing it as a cover for Nazi atrocities, both Jewish and Polish underground movements actively resisted the organization.^[87]

See also

• Polish resistance movement in World War II
• Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II
• Szmalcownik
• Trawniki
• Sonderkommando
• Sonderdienst
• Judenjagd

References