General Gouvernement
| General Government | ||||||||||||
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Generalgouvernement (German) Generalne Gubernatorstwo (Polish) |
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| Administratively autonomous component of Germany |
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.svg) The General Government in 1942.
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| Capital | Litzmannstadt (12 Oct – 4 Nov 1939) Krakau (4 Nov 1939 – 1945) |
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| Languages |
German (official) Polish Ukrainian Yiddish |
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| Government | Civil administration | |||||||||||
| Governor-General | ||||||||||||
| • | 1939–1945 | Hans Frank | ||||||||||
| Secretary for State | ||||||||||||
| • | 1939–1941 | Arthur Seyss-Inquart | ||||||||||
| • | 1941–1945 | Josef Bühler | ||||||||||
| Historical era | World War II | |||||||||||
| • | Invasion of Poland | October 12, 1939 | ||||||||||
| • | Vistula-Oder Offensive | February 2, 1945 | ||||||||||
| Area | ||||||||||||
| • | 1939 | 95,000 km² (36,680 sq mi) | ||||||||||
| • | 1941 | 142,000 km² (54,827 sq mi) | ||||||||||
| Population | ||||||||||||
| • | 1941 est. | 12,000,000 | ||||||||||
| Density | 84.5 /km² (218.9 /sq mi) | |||||||||||
| Currency |
złoty Reichsmark |
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| Today part of |
 Poland Slovakia Ukraine
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.svg)
.svg)
The General Government—sometimes also referred to as General Governorate (German: Generalgouvernement [ɡenəˈʀaːlɡuvɛʁnəˌmãː], Polish: Generalne Gubernatorstwo, Ukrainian: Генеральна губернія)—was a German zone of occupation established by Adolf Hitler after the joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany 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 in 1941 to include the District of Galicia.
The basis for the formation of General Government was a German claim of the total collapse of the Polish state, proclaimed by Hitler on October 8, 1939 through the so-called Annexation Decree on the Administration of the Occupied Polish Territories. This rationale was utilized by the German Supreme Court to reassign the identity of all Polish nationals as stateless subjects, with exception of the ethnic Germans of interwar Poland, named the only rightful citizens of the Third Reich, in disregard of international law.
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Wikipedia