The ''Intelligenzaktion'' (), or the Intelligentsia mass shootings, was a series of

mass murder Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more pe ...

s which was committed against the Polish

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

(teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society) early in the Second World War (1939–45) by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. The Germans conducted the operations in accordance with their plan to Germanize the western regions of

occupied Poland ' ( Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 Octobe ...

, before their territorial annexation to the

German Reich German ''Reich'' (lit. German Realm, German Empire, from german: Deutsches Reich, ) was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 1871 to 1945. The ''Reich'' became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty ...

. The mass murder operations of the ''Intelligenzaktion'' resulted in the killing of 100,000 Polish people; by way of

forced disappearance An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organi ...

, the Germans imprisoned and killed select members of Polish society, identified as enemies of the Reich before the war; they were buried in mass graves which were dug in remote places. In order to facilitate the depopulation of Poland, the Germans terrorised the general populace by carrying out public,

summary execution A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes includ ...

s of select intellectuals and community leaders, before they effected the expulsion of the general population from occupied Poland. The executioners of the ''

Einsatzgruppen (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...

death squad A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in which they are f ...

s and members of the local '' Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz'', the German-minority militia, justified their actions by falsely stating that the purpose of their police-work was to remove politically dangerous people from Polish society. The ''Intelligenzaktion'' was a major step towards the implementation of '' Sonderaktion Tannenberg'' (Special Operation Tannenberg), the installation of Nazi policemen and functionaries — from the

SiPo The ''Sicherheitspolizei'' ( en, Security Police), often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Germany for security police. In the Nazi era, it referred to the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the ...

(composed of

Kripo ''Kriminalpolizei'' (, "criminal police") is the standard term for the criminal investigation agency within the police forces of Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. In Nazi Germany, the Kripo was the criminal poli ...

and

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

members), and members of the SD — to manage the occupation and facilitate the realization of '' Generalplan Ost'', the German colonization of Poland.Prof. Dietrich Eichholtz (2004)
»Generalplan Ost« zur Versklavung osteuropäischer Völker.
PDF file, direct download 74.5 KB. Among the 100,000 people who were killed in the ''Intelligenzaktion'' operations, approximately 61,000 of them were members of the Polish intelligentsia, people who the Germans considered political targets according to the Special Prosecution Book-Poland, a book which was compiled before the war began in September 1939.Dr. Jan Moor-Jankowski
Holocaust of Non-Jewish Poles During WWII.
Polish American Congress, Washington. The ''Intelligenzaktion'' occurred soon after the German invasion of Poland (1 September 1939), and lasted from the autumn of 1939 until the spring of 1940; the mass murder of the Polish intellectuals continued with the operations of the AB-Aktion.Tadeusz Piotrowski,
Poland's Holocaust: ethnic strife, collaboration with occupying forces and genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947
', McFarland, 1998, p. 25.

Purpose

Adolf Hitler ordered the murder of the

and the social élites of Poland to prevent them from organising the Poles against their German masters, and thwart the occupation and colonisation of the country; the mass murder was to occur before the annexation of Poland to the

Greater Germanic Reich The Greater Germanic Reich (german: Großgermanisches Reich), fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation (german: Großgermanisches Reich deutscher Nation), was the official state name of the political entity that Nazi Germany ...

:International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg,
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression
', Office of the United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nuremberg 1946

Nazi racialism considered the Polish élites as being most likely of German blood, because their style of dynamic leadership contrasted positively against the “Slavonic fatalism” of the Russian people;Richard C. Lukas,
Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children
', 1939-1945. Hippocrene Books, New York, 2001. nonetheless, the extermination of such national leaders was necessary, because their patriotism (moral authority) would prevent the full-scale Germanization of the enslaved populace of Poland.Northwestern University
Hitlers Plans for Eastern Europe
www.dac.neu.edu 2012. Moreover, by way of the ''Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP'' ( Nazi Party Office of Racial Policy), the racially valuable (Aryan-looking) children of the Polish intelligentsia were to be

kidnapped Kidnapped may refer to: * subject to the crime of kidnapping Literature * ''Kidnapped'' (novel), an 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson * ''Kidnapped'' (comics), a 2007 graphic novel adaptation of R. L. Stevenson's novel by Alan Grant and Cam ...

to the Reich proper, for Germanization; Nazi ideology claimed that such non-Slavic acculturation would prevent the generational resurgence of the Polish intelligentsia, and thus prevent the resurgence of Polish nationalism in Germanised Poland.

Method

Upon controlling Poland, the Germans arrested, imprisoned, and killed approximately 61,000 people as enemies of the German Reich, all of whom were identified as the intelligentsia of each city, town, and village. Each man and woman was biographically listed in the '' Special Prosecution Book-Poland'' (''Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen''), which German citizens of Poland loyal to the Nazi party in the German Reich compiled before the war for the German police and security forces of the

(Security Police) and the SD (Security Service). The ''Einsatzgruppen'' and the '' Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz'', the Ethnic Self-defence militia of the German minority in Poland, were to kill the intelligentsia identified in the Special Prosecution Book–Poland. Aware they would be killing unarmed civilians, the commanders of the paramilitary militias strengthened morale with ideological and

racialist Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies can be more ex ...

instructions to the soldier–policemen, that their political role in the

ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...

of Poland (executions, counterinsurgency, policing) would be more difficult than fighting in battle against soldiers; as noted by

Martin Bormann Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...

, in a meeting (2 October 1940) between Hitler and Hans Frank: As part of '' Generalplan Ost'', the political purpose of the ''Intelligenzaktion'' was extermination of the élites of Polish society, which the Nazis broadly defined as the ''

Szlachta The ''szlachta'' (Polish: endonym, Lithuanian: šlėkta) were the noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth who, as a class, had the dominating position in ...

'' (Polish nobles), the intelligentsia, teachers, social workers, judges, military veterans, priests and businessmen; any Polish man and woman who had attended secondary school, and so could provide nationalist leadership to resist the German occupation of Poland.

Regional operations

# ''

Intelligenzaktion Pommern The ''Intelligenzaktion Pommern''Stefan Sutkowski (2001), ''The history of music in Poland: The Contemporary Era. 1939–1974''. Vol. 7, page 37 "...some 183 professors of the Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Mining and Foundry in Craco ...

'', a regional mass murder operation in the

Pomeranian Voivodeship Pomeranian Voivodeship, Pomorskie Region, or Pomerania Province ( Polish: ''Województwo pomorskie'' ; ( Kashubian: ''Pòmòrsczé wòjewództwò'' ), is a voivodeship, or province, in northwestern Poland. The provincial capital is Gdańsk. Th ...

; 23,000 Poles were arrested, imprisoned, and killed soon after identification and arrest. To terrorise the general populace, the Germans then selected prominent citizens, from the arrested people, and publicly executed them, leaving the corpses on display, as formal warning against resistance to German occupation. # ''Intelligenzaktion Posen'', the mass murder of 2,000 victims from

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...

. # ''Intelligenzaktion Masovien'', regional mass murder in the Masovian Voivodeship, 1939–40, 6,700 people killed, from Ostrołęka,

Wyszków Wyszków (; yi, ווישקאָוו ''Vishkov'') is a town in eastern Poland with 26,500 inhabitants (2018). It is the capital of Wyszków County in Masovian Voivodeship. History The village of Wyszków was first documented in 1203. It was gr ...

, Ciechanów,

Wysokie Mazowieckie Wysokie Mazowieckie is a town in north-eastern Poland, in Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the capital of Wysokie Mazowieckie County. Population is 10,034 . In town there is one of the biggest dairy companies in this part of Europe - " Mlekovita ...

, and Giełczyn, near

Łomża Łomża (), in English known as Lomza, is a city in north-eastern Poland, approximately 150 kilometers (90 miles) to the north-east of Warsaw and west of Białystok. It is situated alongside the Narew river as part of the Podlaskie Voivodeship ...

. # ''Intelligenzaktion Schlesien'', regional mass murder in the Silesian Voivodeship in 1940; 2,000 Poles killed. # ''Intelligenzaktion Litzmannstadt'', regional mass murder in

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of ca ...

, 1939; 1,500 people killed. # '' Sonderaktion Krakau'', mass arrest of intelligentsia, 183 professors from

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University ( Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...

, whom the Germans deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. # ''Zweite Sonderaktion Krakau'' # ''Sonderaktion Tschenstochau'' in

Częstochowa Częstochowa ( , ; german: Tschenstochau, Czenstochau; la, Czanstochova) is a city in southern Poland on the Warta River with 214,342 inhabitants, making it the thirteenth-largest city in Poland. It is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship (adm ...

# ''Sonderaktion Lublin'', regional mass murder in

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of ...

; 2,000 people killed, most were priests of the Roman Catholic Church. # ''Sonderaktion Bürgerbräukeller'' in the Łódź Voivodeship # ''Professorenmord'', mass murder of the intelligentsia in the Stanisławów, the Kresy region, Czarny Las Massacre; 250–300 Polish academics killed.

Notes

References

* * * * Maria Wardzyńska, ''"Intelligenzaktion" na Warmii, Mazurach oraz Północnym Mazowszu''. Główna Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu. Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej nr. 12/1, 2003/2004, ss. 38-42
ceeol.com
*

External links

*Elżbieta Grot, ''Ludobójstwo w Piaśnicy z uwzględnieniem losów mieszkańców powiatu wejherowskiego'' ("Genocide in Piaśnica with a discussion of the fate of the inhabitants of Wejherow county"), Public Library of Wejherowo

*Tadeusz Piotrowski, ''Poland's holocaust: ethnic strife, collaboration with occupying forces and genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947'', McFarland, 1998, p. 25

,

Encyklopedia WIEM WIEM Encyklopedia (full name in pl, Wielka Interaktywna Encyklopedia Multimedialna - "Great Interactive Multimedia Encyclopedia"; in Polish, ''wiem'' also means 'I know') is a Polish Internet encyclopedia. The first printed edition was released i ...

''Intelligenzaktion''
Encyklopedia PWN
Testimonies concerning genocide of Polish elites during WWII in 'Chronicles of Terror' collection
{{Einsatzgruppen 1939 in Poland 1940 in Poland Massacres in Poland Nazi war crimes in Poland Germany–Poland relations Germanization Persecution by Nazi Germany Persecution of Poles Persecution of Jews Persecution of intellectuals