Operation Tannenberg
:
This article relates the anti-Polish action of German forces at the beginning of World War II. For related activities see: Gleiwitz incidentOperation Tannenberg (
German:
Unternehmen Tannenberg) was the codename for one of the extermination actions directed at the
Polish people during
World War II, part of the
Generalplan Ost. Conscription lists (
Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen) of more than 61,000 Polish activists,
intelligentsia, actors, former officers, etc who were to be interned or shot. Members of the German minority living in Poland assisted in preparing the lists.
The plan was created in May of
1939. 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 der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD formed of
Gestapo,
Kripo and
SD officers who were theoretically subordinate to local
Wehrmacht commanders. Their task was to arrest all the people listed on the proscription lists prepared before the outbreak of
World War II.
First, in August
1939 about 2,000 activists of Polish minority organisations in Germany were arrested and murdered. The second part of the action started September 1,
1939 and ended in October resulting in at least 20,000 murdered in 760 mass executions by special units,
Einsatzgruppen, in addition to regular
Wehrmacht units. In addition to them a special formation was created out of the German minority living in Poland called
Selbstschutz, whose members trained in Germany prior the war in diversion and guerilla fighting. The formation was responsible for many massacres and due its bad reputation dissolved by Nazi authorities after September Campaign.
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Anti-Polonism*
Genocide*
Pacification operations in German-occupied Poland*
History of Poland (1939â€"1945)*
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*
Hitlers Vorbereitungen zum Angriff und zur Vernichtung der Polen in Pommern und der Freien Stadt Danzig
