Poland, Nazis, and World War II

I was forwarded this article in NPR talking about how the government of Poland is poised to pass a law making it a criminal offense to claim "...Poland was complicit in the Nazi atrocities committed on Polish soil during World War II."  First allow me to say that I am not a fan of any law that attempts to restrict or regulate academic inquiry or the exploration of history.  Frankly such a law seems to imply more a fear of something being discovered or a high degree of prickliness about the past.  But the broader issue I wanted to address in this blog post is the question, can one argue that Poland has any complicity in the actions conducted by the Nazis during World War II on its soil.  My contention is that this conversation is actually particularly valuable because it forces those considering it to answer the question of what exactly makes a nation-state complicit in events that occur when it is occupied.

First off Poland (technically the Second Polish Republic) existed as a sovereign nation from 1918 to 1939, and gained its independence from a mix of the Versailles Treaty and armed resistance after the end of World War I.  That independence ended de facto by early October 1939 when the last organized and formal units of the Polish army were defeated in the field of battle and some dispersed to continue fighting through guerrilla actions.  By 30 September 1939 the Polish government-in-exile was formed with its wartime leader taking the oath of office in the Polish embassy in Paris.  This action was undertaken within the bounds of the Polish republic's constitution at the time.  This government in exile was recognized by nations outside of Germany and its allies.

Now what makes Poland unique in World War II is that, unlike every other nation Germany successfully invaded and overran, the Nazi German government did not create a puppet government to oversee Poland incorporating elements of the Polish citizenry to lead it.  Every other nation the German's occupied had at least a fig-leaf of a government with some local citizens providing token leadership or its pre-invasion government was allowed to continue operations with German controls upon its functions.  Poland though had territory directly annexed to Germany and the non-annexed bits were put under the control of a special Nazi created government called the General Government.

The General Government was under the control of Hans Frank, who held the rank of Gauleiter, which although it had different technical duties depending on location, time period, and ambient Nazi administrative chaos factor in his case meant he was the head of all civilian government operations in the General Government.  Below him every official within the General Government, above the lowest ranks of civil administration were filled with German officials.  Higher education institutions were closed, the judiciary was modified so that only Poles answered to Polish judges, matters involving German interests were overseen by a parallel court system.  Although Polish police officers were retained (and history indicates probably took part in anti-Jewish violence and roundups) Polish police officials and officers were installed Germans.  (Polish policemen were restricted to the rank of patrolman.)  The Polish police department was also nationalized to further German ambitions.

Now individual Poles and organized groups of Poles did engage in actions that supported the Nazis, of that there is no historical question.  But I think I can say comfortably that the Polish state can probably be found to not be responsible for what the Nazis did on Polish soil.  I'll admit it is reading the events of World War II in Poland with a very narrow lens, and if anyone has information about the Polish state supporting the Nazi actions during the occupation I'm interested in learning about it.

Sources

• Wikipedia article on General Government
• Wikipedia article on Polish police during the Occupation, the Blue Police
• Wikipedia article on Hans Frank
• Wikipedia article on Gauleiter
• Time article on the law