Volksliste

The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List) was a Nazi Party institution whose purpose was the classification of inhabitants of German occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria systematized by Heinrich Himmler. The institution was first established in occupied western Poland. Similar institutions were subsequently created in Occupied France and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) were people of German ancestry living outside Germany. Though Volksdeutsche did not hold German or Austrian citizenship, the strengthening and development of their communities throughout east-central Europe was an integral part of the Nazi vision for the creation of Greater Germany (Großdeutschland).

In 1931, prior to its rise to power, the Nazi Party established the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP (Foreign Organisation of the German National Socialist Workers Party), whose task was to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the German minorities living outside Germany. In 1936, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic German Welfare Office), commonly known as VoMi, was set up under the direction of Himmler as RKFDV of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) as the liaison bureau for ethnic Germans and was headed by SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz.

According to the testimony of Kuno Wirsich:

The aim of the German People's List was that those people who were of German descent and of German ethnic descent were to be ascertained and were to be Germanized.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it annexed the western part of the country (basically the Gaue of Danzig/West Prussia, the Wartheland, and Silesia), and placed the rest of the country under the administration of the General Government.

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