War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II
Memorial to victims of Nazism in occupied Poland during World War II, Kraków
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| Date | 1939–1945 |
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| Location | Occupied Poland |
| Cause | Invasion of Poland |
| Participants | Wehrmacht, Gestapo, SS, Selbstschutz, Trawnikis, Sonderdienst, NKVD, SMERSH, Red Army, OUN-UPA |
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Approximately 6 million Part of a series
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Nazi crimes against the Polish nation Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–46) Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia Rape during the liberation of Poland |
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Approximately 6 million
It's estimated that over 6 million Polish citizens, divided nearly equally between Christian and Jewish Poles, perished during World War II. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and their respective allies. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, three categories of wartime criminality were established: waging a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These three core crimes of international law were set apart from other crimes, and for the first time since the end of the war categorised as violations of fundamental human values and norms. They were committed in occupied Poland on a tremendous scale.
In 1939 the invading forces totalled 1.5 million Germans, and nearly half a million Soviets. Throughout the entire course of occupation the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the USSR. In the summer and autumn of 1941 the lands annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Nazi Germany in the course of the initially successful Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. Both regimes engaged in campaigns of destruction purposed to eradicate the existence of a sovereign Poland, its cultural heritage and citizens. War crimes included deportations in cattle cars aimed at complete transformation of the ethnic character of these regions, mass executions and pacification actions, forced labor camps and extermination of the Jews and Poles, death marches, decimation of prisoner populations through hunger and disease as well as leveling of entire city districts and mobile killing campaigns.
From 1 September 1939, the war against Poland was intended as a fulfilment of the plan described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf. The main goal of the plan was to make all of Eastern Europe into the Lebensraum (living space) of Greater Germany. German historian Jochen Böhler observed that the war of annihilation did not begin with the Final Solution, but immediately after the attack on Poland. In order to inspire rage against the Poles and trigger broad public acceptance for total war (that is, war with no legal or moral limitations), the Goebbels propaganda soon published and distributed throughout Germany two books based on falsified information: Dokumente polnischer Grausamkeit (Documents of Polish Brutality) and the Polnische Blutschuld (Polish Blood Guilt). The Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) was sent out "to kill without mercy and reprieve all men, women and children of the Polish race", as ordered by Adolf Hitler in his speech to military commanders on 22 August 1939. This could be seen as an attempt to destroy the entire nation. The invading Germans believed that the Poles were racially inferior to them.
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Wikipedia