Ideology and the Rationality of Domination. Gerhard Wolf

process certainly did not lead the German minorities in Poland to an overcoming of their traditional fragmentation. A development like that seen in Czechoslovakia with Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten German Party (Sudetendeutsche Partei) failed to materialize in Poland. Instead, the 1921 founding of the German National Socialist Association for Poland (Deutscher Nationalsozialistischer Verein für Polen) in Bielsko (formerly Bielitz) would prove to be a catalyst for increasingly stormy disputes. Conflicts with the Polish authorities may have forced the organization’s renaming in 1928 to the Young German Party for Poland (Jungdeutsche Partei für Polen, or JdP), but the agenda of the party now led by Rudolf Wiesner had not changed, including its support for the development of a “Volksgemeinschaft,” the pursuit of radical antisemitism, and the struggle against Marxism.¹²³ The party’s expansion beyond its home region led to conflicts with the established—and often fragmented—interest groups of each local German minority. Emboldened by Hitler’s coming to power, Wiesner’s followers acted as if they were “young guns” rebelling against the sclerotic power structures of the “old-timers”—a pretense that was increasingly contrived as the relevant German associations in Wielkopolska and Pomerelia all became less and less different from the JdP in their political agendas, as a result of their self-chosen Nazification. This certainly did nothing to blunt the mutual antipathy, which sometimes even led to bloody skirmishes. For example, a Polish newspaper smugly noted that the local police had to be summoned to break up a brawl at a hall in Sępólno Krajeńskie (formerly Zempelburg), which took place under a banner reading “Wir wollen sein ein einig Volk und Brüder” (We want to be a united people and brothers).¹²⁴

      The VR would prove incapable of ending the general escalation, which from Berlin’s viewpoint was highly undesirable in its threat to paralyze the German minorities and spin them out of Berlin’s control.¹²⁵ Its inability to assert itself, particularly in the face of Nazi Party agencies like its Foreign Organization (Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP), prompted Hess in October 1935 to transfer the coordination of ethnopolicy from the dissolved VR to party member Otto von Kursell, whose agency, the Kursell Bureau (Dienststelle Kursell), was put at least nominally under Joachim von Ribbentrop, the appointee in charge of foreign-policy matters on Hess’s staff. Thus, what had been an “autonomous, nonpartisan, honorary institution” had now become a “special party agency” to which “only party comrades belonged and which was led by an ‘Alter Kämpfer’ [an ‘old fighter’ from the Nazi Party’s early period].”¹²⁶ Kursell was now able to threaten recalcitrant representatives of the German minorities with the severance of all contact and the withdrawal of financial grants unless the infighting stopped immediately. Although the change did not open a new era of cooperation (as hoped by Berlin) between groups like the JdP and others, the intensity of their disputes did subsequently lessen to a noticeable degree.¹²⁷

      Kursell was a member of not only the Nazi Party but also the SS, which was a situation that Heinrich Himmler, as head of the SS, wanted to exploit in order to expand his influence into the field of ethnopolicy. From his perspective, the attempt to extend his power over the more than ten million members of German minorities was a logical one as it would not only enhance his position within the Reich but also provide the intelligence arm of the SS with access to a network of informants in countries across Europe. And Himmler must have ultimately recognized an opportunity to give political force to an idea that was also widely anchored in the SS with the founding of RuSHA (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, the Race and Settlement Main Office), namely the tying of settlement planning to racial selections, thereby concretizing the Nazi conception of “Lebensraum.”¹²⁸ During a conflict with the SS about its interference in the ethnopolicy of Czechoslovakia, however, Kursell made it clear that he did not want to take up the role intended for him by Himmler, who then pointedly withdrew his confidence in him.

      Hess had already learned during the fight over the VR that ethnopolicy could not be implemented in the face of opposition from the relevant components of the Nazi Party, but only with their support, and so he did not want to make the same mistake twice. Instead of engaging in a confrontation with Himmler, he relieved Kursell of his office and accepted Himmler’s candidate for a successor. In 1937, when SS Senior Group Leader Werner Lorenz took over the former Kursell Bureau, which had since been renamed the Ethnic German Liaison Office (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, or VoMi), the handling of ethnopolicy fell completely within Himmler’s sphere of influence. Although the tasks had remained the same, the founding of VoMi signaled a qualitative leap in the ethnopolicy of Nazi Germany. The reason was, first, it dovetailed with a new stance of the German government: on February 20, 1938, Hitler broke his five-year silence on the fate of the “Volksdeutsche” in Eastern Europe, and during a speech to the Reichstag, he made himself a champion for the rights of the “Germans” in Austria and Czechoslovakia. Second, Lorenz—unlike his predecessor—could soon justify the pursuit of his mission by pointing to a direct order from Hitler, dated July 2, 1938: VoMi was tasked with the “unified organizing of all state and party agencies, as well as with the unified deployment of all resources available to these agencies for the handling of ethnopolitical and borderland issues”—meaning that a party organization had been granted authority over state offices.¹²⁹ For the first time, Lorenz’s agency also had control over extensive financial resources, which had always been the most effective instrument of ethnopolicy.¹³⁰ In 1938 alone, this meant control over 50–60 million Reichsmarks, a sum that approximated the budget of the Foreign Office.¹³¹ A half year later, a decree from Hess completed this “Gleichschaltung” (“enforced conformity”) of ethnopolitically oriented organizations: in accordance with the main focus of their activities, all existing bodies were to be incorporated into either the VDA or the Alliance of the German East (Bund deutscher Osten), both of which were placed under VoMi.¹³²

      With the support of the state, the party, and the SS, this “bastard organization” was assured a new level of power that gave Lorenz more freedom of action than either Steinacher or Kursell had before him.¹³³ In place of a “loose collaboration based on the principle of reciprocity,” according to Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, “there appeared the unilateral directive, and the command backed by threat of reprisals.”¹³⁴ The effects were felt not only by Germandom organizations like the VDA, but also by the German minorities in Poland. As early as April 1937, Lorenz had invited the nine most important groups to Berlin in order to persuade them of the need for a common nationwide committee. After some initial failures, his tone became sharper. In a missive dated May 18, 1938, to the representatives of each organization, Lorenz threatened that this was his “first, but also his last, suggestion,” and that anyone who abstained from this accord was putting himself outside the “Volksgemeinschaft” and must bear the consequences.¹³⁵ With this, although Lorenz had not yet risen to level of “complete master of the ethnic German organizations in Poland,” the path toward the founding of a loose umbrella organization in August 1938 was now open.¹³⁶

      Kotowski’s observation that Warsaw’s policy stance toward the German minorities was a variable dependent on German-Polish international relations is as true for the second half of the 1930s as it is for the entire preceding period.¹³⁷ It is therefore unsurprising that as Berlin’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy and the advancing spread of Nazi ideology were matched by an increasingly irredentist stance among Poland’s German inhabitants and that both taken together would ultimately affect Warsaw’s minorities policy. Between March and June 1936 alone, the Polish government banned the National Socialist German Workers’ Federation (Nationalsozialistischer deutscher Arbeiterbund) and dissolved thirty-three local branches of the German Union for Posen and Pomerelia (Deutsche Vereinigung für Posen und Pommerellen), the biggest political organization of the German minorities in Wielkopolska, which Warsaw accused of inciting the Kashubian populace against it.¹³⁸ Other measures aimed at reducing German influence, especially in the economy, and also at controlling the German-language school system. Beyond efforts to prevent Polish-speaking children from attending German schools, however, the relevant guidelines actually contained little that could cause umbrage: German schools were instructed to observe Polish public holidays, use approved textbooks only, and keep out all Nazi influences. In comparison with Prussia’s Germanization policy, the approved measures proved to be—contrary to Kotowski’s assessment—relatively harmless, and they were ultimately impotent when