Figure 1.--Most Germans were moved by Hitler's oratory and early achievements and then the spoectascular first 2 years of the war. But few Reich Germans were willing to take up on the offer to move into the wilds of Eastern Europe as part of Generalplsn Ost. The NAZIs planned to mureder or enslave the existing popultion to make room for German xsettlers. But Himmler had the Home to the Reich Germans who had been kept in camps rather than allowed to enter the Reich. Here what looks like Bsltic Germans are beung evaluated to assess to what extent they represented undiluted German stock and could become reliable NAZI supporters to cfreate the Eastern Blood Wall. .

Himmler could not wait to begim implemnting Generalplan Ost, the German plan for the occupied Soviet Union and other eastern territories until after they won the War (Autumn 1942). He swanted to estblish an Eastern Blood Wall of ethnic Germans that would be a barrier to any slabic movemnent basck jnti gthe area. At the time German advances into the Cauacauses and Stalingrad looked like the tide of war was turning back in the German favor. Himmler chose the area around Lublin (Zamosc, the eastern corner of the General Government). The SS had extensive oerations (factories and concentrartion camps) in the area and it was a rich agricultural zone. The SS began arresting and deporting Poles. Over 100,000 Poles were brutally driven from 300 villages, some in the dead of winter. The process continued even afrer the Stalingrad disaster. Some 4,000 of the children with blond hair and blue eyes were selected for Germamization as part of the Lebensborn program--one of Himnker's pet projects. The plan was to move in German farmers, the beginning of a Blood Wall between the Reich and the Slavic East. This was a concept formulated by SS-Oberführer Konrad Meyer, an agronamist deeply involved with formulating Generalplan Ost, at times on Himmler's personal staff. The SS moved in some 9,000 ethnic Germams including Home to the Reich Volksdeutschen from Bessarablia (Romania) and 5,000 Reich Germans. This of course was far less than the number of ousted Poles. And the new farmers were unfamiliar with the local climate and soil conditions. The result was a substantial decline in harvests. 【Luczak. p. 120.】 This decline wrecked Himmler's bloody experiment given the food situation in the Reich, at least postponed it until the War was won. It would made a difference if the food was feeding Poles, but much of the Polish harvest was going to feed Germans. In addition, the German settlers faced resistance/partisan attacks. German brutality had made the area a hot bed of Polish resistance actibity. And conditions for the new settlers were terrible. Homes and whole villages had been burned down, many by theur owners or partisans. Much of value had been removed. Clothes given the settlers was from the SS murderous elimination of the Jewish ghettoes, often still dirty and blood stained. 【Harvey, p. 270.】 German teachers were sent to 'civiize' the Volksdeutschenm teching then German lanbufe such as cleanliness, home keeping, child raising, and modern agricultural methods. They reported appaling conditions. The Volksdeutschen were resentful of second class treatment and the Reich Germans were frustrated by inadeqiate potection from partian/resistance attacks. The settlers thus began to move into the safety of nearby towns and abandon their assigned farms. Even the SS could not convince more German farmers to move East which sas seen as cikd and orimitive, in poart due to NAZI prooaganbda. So Himmler arrested and deported Luxenbourg farmers who were seen as anti-German. It was clear that bo substantiak number of German farmers were not going to move East, the SS began considering Danish and Dutch farmers who were seen to have the needed Germanic blood. Hermann Roloff in the Reich Office for Spatial Planning was working in occupied Belgium and the Netherlands was put in charge of the process, notably he did not consider Belgian farmers including the Flemish. Fortuntely only 600 Dutch farmers went East, and those who survived returned with horor stories.

Sources

Harvey, Elizabeth. Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witneeses of Germanization (Yale Iniversity Press: London, 2003).

Luczak, Czeskaw. "Landwirtschaft und Ernähurng in Polen: Während der deutschen Nedatzungszeit 1939-1945," in Berbs Martin and Alam S. Milward eds, Agricilture and Food Supply in the Second Works War (Landwirtschaft und Bersorgung im Sweiten Weltkrieg) (Sceiota Mercaturae Verlag: Ostfildernb, 1985), pp. 117-27.

Created: 1:51 AM 4/30/2023
Last updated: 1:51 AM 4/30/2023