[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] More on Germans in Poland

[Günther Böhm]

Richard Benert schrieb:

>I happen be reading a wonderful (in some ways) and dreadful (in others) book 
>by one Bernhard Schwarz, "Wolhyniendeutsches Schicksal", published in 
>Germany in 1942.  He was a German soldier and quite sympathetic to at least 
>the cultural cause for which he was fighting--the advancement of Deutschtum.
>
Hello Dick,
I think, this 'advancement of the Deutschtum' is the criminal core of 
the German war propaganda since it was not possible without the ejection 
and at least partial annihilation of the inhabitants of the conquered 
East European territories.

>But for now I offer some comments he made about the reasons why people left 
>Germany for Poland.  One was overpopulation in the villages, which we all 
>know about.  Then he mentions the restrictions placed on people by gild 
>regulations and "Bürgerordnung" (which I take to refer to all the civic laws 
>regulating just about every aspect of life from dancing on the village green 
>to what you wore and how you behaved towards your betters.  If I'm wrong 
>about Bürgerordnung, someone please correct me).
>
The very strict medieval guild and civic regulations knew just a limited 
number of guilds and it was quite difficult to enter them. Citizenship 
and guild membership were long-term tools against competition and 
underbidding, foeign craftsmen and imports from abroad.

>  This is perhaps something 
>we sometimes overlook.  Finally he suggests that the emigrants "knew nothing 
>other than that Germany had for centuries sent its sons abroad (in die 
>Fremde) because the homeland was too small (die Heimat zu eng war)."
>
When the first German settlers went to Russia or Siebenbürgen, they 
didn't feel as Germans but as 'Schwaben', 'Sachsen', 'Hessen', 'Preußen' 
etc. since a German national state didn't exist. And a 'narrow native 
country' is just a relative and quite modern idiom. They didn't feel 
narrowness but poverty and simply longed for a better life. I think you 
know about the book 'Volk ohne Raum' (People Without Space, 1926) by 
Hans Grimm which was kind of a bible for the nazis and fundamental for 
the ideological preparation of their wars of conquest. The theory of 
(the German) 'people without space' was a twin birth of racism and 
closely linked with it.

>  the Germans, he says, knew that they would be living among other peoples "either in misery or in a patient, meager guest friendship (Gastfreundschaft)."
>
I think this is the bottom line of the book. It even follows the 
arguments of the 'Generalplan Ost' of "Reichskommissar für die Festigung 
deutschen Volkstums" (1942) respectively the only leftover comments of 
Dr. Wetzel. The logical résumé of the quotation reads: The Germans will 
either have to stay at home (and suffer narrowness) or the native 
inhabitants of the conquered and colonized territories must be 
exterminated - nazi aims in plaintext!

Good night (it is late night here),
Günther