2-WWII+Poland+OT

__** What were the circumstances in the Occupied Territory that compelled the policies implemented **____ ** by the occupying power there? How was policy shaped to address these circumstances? ** ____ ** What were the effects of the occupation of your territory on the occupying power's war effort? ** __ __** This should include basic data such as numbers of troops diverted to the occupation and so forth, but should also take into account less logistical factors such as the psychological effect of **____ ** occupation on the occupying power, issues of morale, attitudes of occupation forces toward the ** ____ ** local population (and vice versa) and the degree to which that sharpened or dulled the occupiers' ** ____ ** resolve, etc. ** __ Before the war even started the Nazis had begun their policies of controlling the Polish populations once they had actually taken control of the country. They initiated operation Tannenberg, which created a list of over 60,000 polish intellectuals, actors, activists, scholars, and other people the Nazis deemed a threat to the occupation to be rounded up to be imprisoned or shot. Prewar Poland had a Jewish population of 3.4 million and accounted for half the population in the capital of Warsaw and this population caused for hateful policies to be enacted by the Germans once they were occupied. After Poland was taken over by the Nazis in September of 1939, policies dealing with the segregation of the Jewish population in many large cities into poor living conditions, most notably in the Jewish Ghettos in Warsaw were put in place immediately. Though the Jewish populace was targeted to the highest degree Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, deemed it necessary to divide up all the different groups in Poland in order to make room for the “living space” of ethnic German people, and to quell any forms of resistance therefore keeping the German Occupation in power. However this did not stop the resistance, Poland actually had the largest resistance movement out of any occupied country during the war. The general results of the occupation were that quite a large number of German soldiers were taken from the fighting army to stay and act as guard personnel, about 10,000 troops were stationed all throughout the country. The occupation also had devastating effects on the populations of Poland especially the minority populations like the Jewish. With mass deportations of civilians from Poland and segregation of specific populations the psychological stability of the populations of Poland was extremely unsteady which caused for large splinter groups to be created resulting in large resistance movements in Poland. The occupations of Poland at first drastically lowered the moral of the civilians but once the resistance movements began the moral rose back up. Throughout the occupation of the Poland the civilians and Germans did not get along very well due to the harsh treatments of the civilians of the German soldiers. This feeling was mutual for the Germans who felt that the non-German populations in Poland were beneath them and not worth the same as a German.

__** What were the motivations/methods/outcomes of resistance and collaboration? How did this **____ ** affect the Occupied Territory after the war? Use case studies to illustrate. ** __ The motivations of the resistance movements in Poland were attributed to how the Germans treated the populations of non-German people which was terribly. The methods of resistance included direct fighting which included direct combat with German soldiers as well as non- direct combat including gaining the trust of the German soldiers in order to gain information to send to British intelligence. The resistance movement in Poland was the largest underground resistance in all of Europe at the time with estimates of over 300,000 people involved in resistance actions. This also meant that there was little collaboration and the little collaboration that did occur only dealt with befriending guards to help them get supplies needed in order to survive. This resistance lasted from 1939 when Poland was first taken over to the end of the war in 1945, resulting in many deaths on both sides. In Warsaw a barricade was created by resistance members and lasted many weeks causing the deaths of many German soldiers who tried to destroy the barricade. However the barricade was finally destroyed and all of its inhabitants were killed. But this act of resisting the Germans inspired more people to support the effort. The results of the resistance caused for feelings between Germans and Polishs populations to be terrible for many years after the war.

__** What were the effects of occupation on women & youth in the Occupied Territory? Use case **__ __** studies to illustrate. **__ Throughout the occupation of Poland the Germans began kidnapping children that they believed to look and act German. They would take them from their parents and put them through psychological, and racial tests in order to see if the child was “German” enough. If the child passed he went to Germany was taught in a Nazi sponsored school which educated the new "German" in the Nazi culture as well as to instill extreme German patriotism and make the child forget their old home. This affected the children who were indoctrinated into this program and scarred them for the rest of their lives. The Germans were extremely harsh to the Polish and other cultural groups in the country, especially the women, their violent acts of terror were one of the reasons that the resistance movements in Poland were the largest in the world.

__** Bibliography **__ "Germany's WWII Occupation of Poland: 'When We Finish, Nobody Is Left Alive'." //SPIEGEL ONLINE //. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. .

Majer, Diemut. //"Non-Germans" under the Third Reich: the Nazi judicial and administrative system in Germany and occupied Eastern Europe with special regard to occupied Poland, 1939-1945 //. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Print.

"The Nazi Occupation of Poland." //The Nazi Occupation of Poland //. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. 