page_title: History of Poland (1939–1945)
section_title: German-occupied Poland
hierarchical_section_title: History of Poland (1939–1945) / Occupation of Poland / German-occupied Poland
caption_attribution_description: English: The Black Book of Poland. Plates 21–24 inserted between pages 74 and 75 of The Black Book, illustrating Part&#160;I. Massacres and Tortures
context_page_description: The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses primarily the period from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II. Following the German-Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September. The campaigns ended in early October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland. After the Axis attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the entirety of Poland was occupied by Germany, which proceeded to advance its racial and genocidal policies across Poland. Under the two occupations, Polish citizens suffered enormous human and material losses. According to the Institute of National Remembrance estimates, about 5.6 million Polish citizens died as a result of the German occupation and about 150,000 died as a result of the Soviet occupation. The Jews were singled out by the Germans for a quick and total annihilation and about 90% of Polish Jews were murdered as part of the Holocaust.
context_section_description: The greatest extent of depredations and terror inflicted on and suffered by the Poles resulted from the German occupation. The most catastrophic series of events was the extermination of the Jews known as the Holocaust.
  About one-sixth of Polish citizens lost their lives in the war, and most of the civilian losses resulted from various targeted, deliberate actions. The German plan involved not only the annexation of Polish territory, but also a total destruction of Polish culture and the Polish nation (Generalplan Ost).
  Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler (8 October and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed to Germany. These included all the territories which Germany had lost under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, such as the Polish Corridor, West Prussia and Upper Silesia, but also a large, indisputably Polish area east of these territories, including the city of Łódź.
  The annexed areas of Poland were divided into the following administrative units:
  Reichsgau Wartheland (initially Reichsgau Posen), which included the entire Poznań Voivodeship, most of the Łódź Voivodeship, five counties of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, and one county of the Warsaw Voivodeship;
  the remaining area of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, which was incorporated into the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia (initially Reichsgau Westpreussen);
  Ciechanów District (Regierungsbezirk Zichenau) consisting of five northern counties of the Warsaw Voivodeship (Płock, Płońsk, Sierpc, Ciechanów and Mława), which became a part of East Prussia;
  Katowice District (Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz) or, unofficially, East Upper Silesia (Ost-Oberschlesien), which included the Silesian Voivodeship, Sosnowiec, Będzin, Chrzanów, Oświęcim, and Zawiercie counties, and parts of Olkusz and Żywiec counties, which became a part of the Province of Upper Silesia.
  The area of these annexed territories was 92,500 square kilometres and the population was about 10.6 million, a great majority of whom were Poles.
  In Pomeranian districts German summary courts sentenced to death 11,000 Poles in late 1939 and early 1940. A total of 30,000 Poles were executed there already in 1939, with an additional 10,000 in Greater Poland and 1500 in Silesia. Jews were expelled from the annexed areas and placed in ghettos such as the Warsaw Ghetto or the Łódź Ghetto. Catholic priests became targets of campaigns of murder and deportation on a mass scale. The population in the annexed territories was subjected to intense racial screening and Germanisation. The Poles experienced property confiscations and severe discrimination; 100,000 were removed from the port city of Gdynia alone already in October 1939. In 1939–40, many Polish citizens were deported to other Nazi-controlled areas, especially the General Government, or to concentration camps. With the clearing of some western Poland regions for German resettlement, the Nazis initiated the policies of ethnic cleansing. About one million Poles were forcibly removed from their dwellings and replaced with over 386,000 ethnic Germans brought from distant places.
  (see also: Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany)
  Under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty, the Soviet Union annexed all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Bug and San, except for the area around Vilnius (known in Polish as Wilno), which was given to Lithuania, and the Suwałki region, which was annexed by Germany. These territories were largely inhabited by Ukrainians and Belarusians, with minorities of Poles and Jews (for numbers see Curzon Line). The total area, including the area given to Lithuania, was 201,000 square kilometres, with a population of 13.2 million. A small strip of land that was a part of Hungary before 1914 was given to Slovakia.
  After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Polish territories previously occupied by the Soviets were organized as follows:
  Bezirk Bialystok (District of Białystok), which included the Białystok, Bielsk Podlaski, Grajewo, Łomża, Sokółka, Wołkowysk, and Grodn
caption: Photos from The Black Book of Poland, published in London in 1942 by the Polish Government-in-Exile
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