Did the east belong to the SS? : the realism of the SS demographic reorganization policy in the light of the germanization operation of SS- and Polizeiführer Odilo Globocnik

Abstract

The research goal of this study is to ascertain whether the SS would have been able to carry out large-scale National Socialist demographic reorganization projects after the Second World War if Germany had won the war. The objective of the National Socialists was to Germanise large areas of eastern Europe by removing the local non-German inhabitants and replacing them with so-called Germanic populations. The fate of those non-German people was to be slavery or extermination. The SS was the most influential of the National Socialist organisations that were interested in demographic reorganisation. The SS included organs suitable for both planning and implementing the National Socialist demographic reorganisation policies in practice, but its operations were hampered by several difficulties. Despite these, the SS wished to carry out demographic reorganisation projects even in almost totally non-German areas while the war was still under way. As an example of this, I use the Germanisation project of SS- und Polizeiführer Odilo Globocnik, which was carried out in Distrikt Lublin in Poland in 1942 and 1943. Globocnik's operation was strongly supported by Reichsfiihrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who was personally interested in it and visited Lublin several times. Globocnik's Germanisation operation was carried out in two phases. The first part of the operation was effected during the last months of 1942 and the second part in the summer of 1943. The enormous problems encountered by Globocnik's Germanisation project indicate that the SS might not have been able to carry out large demographic reorganisation projects after the war.