page_title: Reichsgau Wartheland
section_title: Characteristics
hierarchical_section_title: Reichsgau Wartheland / Characteristics
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Nach dem Feldzug der 18 Tage begann die bisher großzügigste Umsiedlungsaktion der Weltgeschichte. Alle Volksgruppen, die Draußen ihre Aufgaben erfüllt haben, rief der Führer zurück in die Heimat ihrer Väter. Sie helfen jetzt mit beim Ausbau und der Fertigung des großdeutschen Reiches. In besonderem Maße werden beim Aufbau des Warthegaues ihre kolonisatorischen Fähigkeiten wirksam werden. Information added by Wikimedia users.Genuine Nazi German propaganda poster, superimposed with the outline of Poland missing from the original, as if the country vanished from the map of Europe even though borders of other countries have been marked with dotted white lines. Showing origins of German colonists resettled during the "Heim ins Reich" action from the east into territories annexed from Poland after the Nazi-Soviet invasion of the Second Polish Republic in 1939.
context_page_description: The Reichsgau Wartheland was a Nazi German Reichsgau formed from parts of Polish territory annexed in 1939 during World War II. It comprised the region of Greater Poland and adjacent areas. Parts of Warthegau matched the similarly named pre-Versailles Prussian province of Posen. The name was initially derived from the capital city, Posen, and later from the main river, Warthe.
  During the Partitions of Poland from 1793, the bulk of the area had been annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia until 1807 as South Prussia. From 1815 to 1849, the territory was within the autonomous Grand Duchy of Posen, which was the Province of Posen until Poland was re-established in 1918–1919 following World War I. The area is currently the Greater Poland Voivodeship.
context_section_description: The Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Reichsgau Wartheland, native-born Arthur Greiser, embarked on a program of complete removal of the formerly Polish citizenry upon his nomination by Heinrich Himmler. The plan also entailed the re-settling of ethnic Germans from the Baltic and other regions into farms and homes formerly owned by Poles and Jews. He also authorized the clandestine operation of exterminating 100,000 Polish Jews (about one-third of the total Jewish population of Wartheland), in the process of the region's complete "Germanization". In the first year of World War II, some 630,000 Poles and Jews were forcibly removed from Wartheland and transported to the occupied General Government (more than 70,000 from Poznań alone) in a series of operations called the Kleine Planung covering most Polish territories annexed by Germany at about the same time.
  Both Poles and Jews had their property confiscated.
  By the end of 1940, some 325,000 Poles and Jews from the Wartheland and the Polish Corridor were expelled to General Government, often forced to abandon most of their belongings. Fatalities were numerous. In 1941, the Nazis expelled a further 45,000 people, and from autumn of that year they began killing Jews by shooting and in gas vans, at first spasmodically and experimentally. Reichsgau Wartheland had the population: 4,693,700 by 1941. Greiser wrote in November 1942: "I myself do not believe that the Führer needs to be asked again in this matter, especially since at our last discussion with regard to the Jews he told me that I could proceed with these according to my own judgement."
caption: Heim ins Reich re-settlement in Warthegau. Map of the Third Reich in 1939 (dark grey) after the conquest of Poland; with pockets of German colonists brought into Reichsgau Wartheland from the Soviet "sphere of influence" – superimposed with the red outline of Poland missing entirely from the original print.[12]
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