Operation Tannenberg

Operation Tannenberg (german: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was a codename for one of the anti-Polish extermination actions by Nazi Germany that were directed at the Poles during the opening stages of World War II in Europe, as part of the ''Generalplan Ost'' for the German colonization of the East. The shootings were conducted with the use of a proscription list ('' Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen''), compiled by the Gestapo in the span of two years before the 1939 invasion.

The top secret lists identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, clergy, actors, former officers and others, who were to be interned or shot. Members of the German minority living in Poland assisted in preparing the lists.Unternehmen Tannenberg - August 1939: Wie der SD den Überfall auf Polen vorbereitete (III)
bei wissen.spiegel.d

that up to 20,000 Germans living in Poland belonged to organizations involved in various forms of subversion.

Operation Tannenberg was followed by the ''Intelligenzaktion'', a second phase of the ''Unternehmen Tannenberg'' directed by Heydrich's ''Sonderreferat'' from Berlin, which lasted until January 1940. In Pomerania alone, 36,000–42,000 Poles, including children, were killed before the end of 1939.

Implementation

The plan was finalized in May 1939 by the Central Office II P (Poland). Following the orders of Adolf Hitler, a special unit dubbed ''Tannenberg'' was created within the Reich Security Main Office (''Reichssicherheitshauptamt''). It commanded a number of '' Einsatzgruppen'' units formed with Gestapo, Kripo and ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD) officers and men who were theoretically to follow the ''Wehrmacht'' (armed forces) into occupied territories. Their task was to track down and arrest all the people listed on the proscription lists exactly as it had been compiled before the outbreak of war.Peter Longerich (2012)
War and Settlement in Poland.
''Heinrich Himmler: A Life.'' OUP Oxford, pp. 425–429. .

The first phase of the action occurred in August 1939 when about 2,000 activists of Polish minority organisations in Germany were arrested and murdered. The second phase of the action began on September 1, 1939, and ended in October, resulting in at least 20,000 deaths in 760 mass executions by ''Einsatzgruppen'' special task units with help from regular ''Wehrmacht'' units. A special formation was created from the German minority living in Poland called ''Selbstschutz'', whose members had trained in Germany before the war in diversion and guerilla fighting (see: Deutscher Volksverband, the German People's Union in Poland). The formation was responsible for many massacres and due to its bad reputation was dissolved by Nazi authorities after the September Campaign with transfer to regular formations.

Massacres of hospital patients

During Operation Tannenberg patients from Polish hospitals were murdered in ''Wartheland'' (Wielkopolska) by ''Einsatzgruppe'' VI men led by Herbert Lange, who was under the command of Erich Naumann. He was appointed commandant of the first Chełmno extermination camp soon thereafter. By mid-1940, Lange and his men were responsible for the murder of about 1100 patients in Owińska, 2750 patients at Kościan, 1558 patients and 300 Poles at Działdowo who were shot in the back of the neck; and hundreds of Poles at Fort VII where the mobile gas-chamber (''Einsatzwagen'') was first developed along with the first gassing bunker.

According to the historian Peter Longerich, the hospital massacres were conducted on the initiative of ''Einsatzgruppen'', because they were not ordered by Himmler.Longerich 2012, p. 430. Lange's experience in the mass killing of Poles during Operation Tannenberg was the reason why Ernst Damzog, the Commander of Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and SD stationed in occupied Poznań (Posen) placed him in charge of the '' SS-Sonderkommando Lange'' (special detachment) for the purpose of mass gassing operations which led to the eventual annihilation of the Łódź Ghetto.

See also

* Nazi crimes against the Polish nation
* Intelligenzaktion
* Special Prosecution Book-Poland
* Intelligenzaktion Pommern
* Valley of Death
* Katyn massacre
* Gestapo–NKVD conferences (1939–1940)
* Pacification operations in German-occupied Poland
* Operation Himmler
* Anti-Polonism
* History of Poland (1939–1945)
* Genocide
* Wawelberg Group

Notes and references

Bibliography

* Verbatim transcript of Part I of the book
The German New Order in Poland
' published for the Polish Ministry of Information by Hutchinson & Co., London, in late 1941. The period covered by the book is September, 1939 to June, 1941.
*
* Alfred Spiess, Heiner Lichtenstein: ''Unternehmen Tannenberg. Der Anlass zum Zweiten Weltkrieg.'' Korrigierte und erweiterte Ausgabe. (Ullstein-Buch ; Nr. 33118 : Zeitgeschichte) Ullstein, Frankfurt/M ; Berlin 1989, .

External links

*
* Jean Maridor

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1939 in Germany
1939 in Poland
Einsatzgruppen
Massacres in Poland
Germany–Poland relations
Invasion of Poland
Nazi war crimes in Poland
Mass murder in 1939
Mass murder in 1940
Persecution by Nazi Germany
Persecution of Poles
Persecution of Jews
Persecution of intellectuals