| Intelligentsia mass shootings | |
|---|---|
| Part ofGeneralplan Ost and thegenocide of Poles by Nazi Germany | |
 In occupied Poland, on 9 September 1939, the Germans publicly executed twenty-five prominent citizens, in front of the Municipal Museum, in the Market Square ofBydgoszcz, as part of themass shootings of Polish intelligentsia.[1][2] To terrorise the townsfolk, the Germans displayed the bodies for six hours.[3] | |
| Native name | Intelligenzaktion |
| Location | Occupied Poland |
| Date | 1939–1940 |
| Target | Poles (teachers, priests,intellectuals, civic officials, and the upper classes) |
Attack type | mass murder,mass shooting,genocidal massacres |
| Weapons | Automatic weapons and small arms |
| Deaths | 100,000[4] (61,000from lists)[5] |
| Perpetrators | SiPo,Kripo,Gestapo,SS |
| Motive | Consolidation of Nazi control of Poland,Germanisation,Anti-Polish sentiment |
TheIntelligenzaktion (German pronunciation:[ɪntɛliˈɡɛnt͡s.akˌt͡sjoːn]), or theIntelligentsia mass shootings,[citation needed] was a series ofmass murders committed against thePolishintelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society) during the early years of theSecond World War (1939–45) byNazi Germany. The Germans conducted the operations in accordance with their plan toGermanize the western regions ofoccupied Poland, before their territorial annexation to theGerman Reich.
The mass murder operations of theIntelligenzaktion resulted in the killing of 100,000 Polish people; by way offorced disappearance, the Germans imprisoned and killed select members of Polish society, identified as enemies of the Reich before the war; they were buried in mass graves in remote places.[4] To facilitate the depopulation of occupied Poland, the Germansterrorised the general populace by carrying out public,summary executions of select intellectuals and community leaders, before theyexpelled the general population from occupied Poland. The executioners of theEinsatzgruppendeath squads and members of the localVolksdeutscher Selbstschutz, the German-minority militia, justified their actions by falsely stating that the purpose of their police-work was to remove politically dangerous people from Polish society.[4]
TheIntelligenzaktion was a major step towards the implementation ofSonderaktion Tannenberg (Special Operation Tannenberg), the installation of Nazi policemen and functionaries — from theSiPo (composed ofKripo andGestapo members), and members of theSD — to manage the occupation and facilitate the realization ofGeneralplan Ost, the German colonization of Poland.[6] Among the 100,000 people who were killed in theIntelligenzaktion operations, approximately 61,000 of them were members of the Polish intelligenzia, people who the Germans considered political targets according to theSpecial Prosecution Book-Poland, a book which was compiled before the war began in September 1939.[5] TheIntelligenzaktion occurred soon after theGerman invasion of Poland (1 September 1939), and lasted from the autumn of 1939 until the spring of 1940; the mass murder of the Polish intellectuals continued with the operations of theAB-Aktion.[7]
Adolf Hitler ordered the murder of theintelligentsia and the social élites of Poland to prevent them from organising the Poles against their German masters, and thwart the occupation and colonisation of the country; the mass murder was to occur before the annexation of western Poland to theGreater Germanic Reich:[8]
Once more, theFührer must point out that the Poles can only have one master, and that is the German; two masters cannot and must not exist side by side; therefore, all representatives of the Polish intelligentsia should be eliminated [umbringen]. This sounds harsh, but such are the laws of life.[9]
Nazi racialism considered the Polish élites as being most likely of German blood, because their style of dynamic leadership contrasted positively against the “Slavonic fatalism” of the Russian people;[10] nonetheless, the extermination of such national leaders was necessary, because their patriotism (moral authority) would prevent the full-scaleGermanization of the enslaved populace of Poland.[11]
Moreover, by way of theRassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP (Nazi Party Office of Racial Policy),[12] the racially valuable (Aryan-looking) children of the Polish intelligentsia were to bekidnapped to the Reich proper, for Germanization;[8] Nazi ideology claimed that such non-Slavic acculturation would prevent the generational resurgence of the Polish intelligentsia, and thus prevent the resurgence of Polish nationalism in Germanised Poland.[10]
Upon controlling Poland, the Germans arrested, imprisoned, and killed approximately 61,000 people as enemies of the German Reich, all of whom were identified as the intelligentsia of each city, town, and village. Each man and woman was biographically listed in theSpecial Prosecution Book-Poland (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen), whichGerman citizens of Poland loyal to the Nazi party in the German Reich compiled before the war for the German police and security forces of theSiPo (Security Police) and theSD (Security Service).
TheEinsatzgruppen and theVolksdeutscher Selbstschutz, the Ethnic Self-defence militia of the German minority in Poland, were to kill the intelligentsia identified in the Special Prosecution Book–Poland.[13] Aware they would be killing unarmed civilians, the commanders of the paramilitary militias strengthened morale with ideological andracialist instructions to the soldier–policemen, that their political role in theethnic cleansing of Poland (executions,counterinsurgency, policing) would be more difficult than fighting in battle against soldiers; as noted byMartin Bormann, in a meeting (2 October 1940) between Hitler and Hans Frank:[14]
TheFührer must emphasize, once again, that for Poles there is only one master, and he is a German; there can be no two masters, beside each other, and there is no consent to such, hence, all representatives of the Polishintelligentsia are to be killed. . . . TheGeneral Government is a Polish reservation, a great Polish labour camp.[15]
As part ofGeneralplan Ost, the political purpose of theIntelligenzaktion was extermination of the élites of Polish society, which the Nazis broadly defined as theSzlachta (Polish nobles), the intelligentsia, teachers, social workers, judges, military veterans, priests and businessmen; any Polish man and woman who had attended secondary school, and so could provide nationalist leadership to resist the German occupation of Poland.[14]
Oblicza się, że akcja „Inteligencja" pochłonęła ponad 100 tys. ofiar.Translation: It is estimated thatIntelligenzaktion took the lives of 100,000 Poles.