1 00:00:43,209 --> 00:00:47,339 One country suffered more than any other under the Nazis - 2 00:00:47,514 --> 00:00:49,243 Poland. 3 00:00:49,416 --> 00:00:53,216 Nearly one in five Poles died during World War Two. 4 00:00:56,456 --> 00:01:00,415 This was where the Nazis conducted one of the most brutal acts 5 00:01:00,593 --> 00:01:03,255 of ethnic cleansing in history. 6 00:01:04,130 --> 00:01:05,529 (GUNFIRE) 7 00:01:18,778 --> 00:01:22,578 One of the chief architects of this policy lived here 8 00:01:22,749 --> 00:01:26,549 on a 70-acre estate in the western part of Poland. 9 00:01:27,854 --> 00:01:30,584 His name was Arthur Greiser. 10 00:02:06,292 --> 00:02:10,592 In 1946, Arthur Greiser was put on trial for war crimes. 11 00:02:10,763 --> 00:02:13,288 He cut a pathetic figure. 12 00:02:15,935 --> 00:02:19,803 He claimed he too had been "a victim of Hitler's policies" 13 00:02:19,973 --> 00:02:24,535 and that he was merely "a scapegoat for the crimes of his masters". 14 00:02:25,979 --> 00:02:28,504 (SPEAKS IN POLISH) 15 00:02:31,851 --> 00:02:34,752 Arthur Greiser, like other leading Nazis, 16 00:02:34,921 --> 00:02:38,721 claimed he'd simply been "acting under orders". 17 00:02:41,227 --> 00:02:43,195 But he lied. 18 00:02:46,366 --> 00:02:50,769 For when Arthur Greiser sat in the drawing room of his 60-room palace, 19 00:02:50,937 --> 00:02:53,906 he possessed the independence and power 20 00:02:54,240 --> 00:02:56,538 of a mighty feudal baron. 21 00:02:56,709 --> 00:03:00,668 This is the story of the first 20 months of the Nazi occupation, 22 00:03:00,847 --> 00:03:05,648 when men like Greiser tried to turn Poland into the model Nazi state. 23 00:03:30,376 --> 00:03:34,335 The Germans invaded Poland on 1st September, 1939. 24 00:03:39,953 --> 00:03:42,478 (GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS) 25 00:03:48,628 --> 00:03:52,587 Within five weeks, the Polish army had been crushed. 26 00:03:55,501 --> 00:03:58,595 (GERMAN MARCHING SONG) 27 00:04:18,391 --> 00:04:20,689 Hitler's popularity soared. 28 00:04:21,394 --> 00:04:24,795 To German soldiers, he was the military genius 29 00:04:24,964 --> 00:04:28,764 who let them regain all the German territory in the East 30 00:04:28,935 --> 00:04:31,460 they had lost after World War One. 31 00:04:36,542 --> 00:04:38,669 (CHEERING) 32 00:04:46,519 --> 00:04:48,919 Germany was a world superpower 33 00:04:49,088 --> 00:04:51,682 and Hitler was the man to thank. 34 00:04:53,993 --> 00:04:56,962 Now Hitler revealed his vision for Poland - 35 00:04:57,130 --> 00:05:01,692 a fundamental re-ordering of the country based on Nazi racial theory. 36 00:05:03,970 --> 00:05:05,938 In August 1939, 37 00:05:06,105 --> 00:05:10,064 Hitler and Stalin had agreed to share Poland between them. 38 00:05:11,944 --> 00:05:15,903 The Nazis created three new districts in their part of Poland. 39 00:05:16,082 --> 00:05:18,550 Hitler wanted two of them, 40 00:05:18,718 --> 00:05:21,084 the Warthegau under Arthur Greiser 41 00:05:21,421 --> 00:05:23,821 and West Prussia under Albert Forster, 42 00:05:23,990 --> 00:05:27,949 to be ethnically cleansed and incorporated into Germany. 43 00:05:28,127 --> 00:05:30,652 And in a typically vague order, 44 00:05:30,830 --> 00:05:35,392 Hitler told Forster and Greiser that they should Germanise their districts, 45 00:05:35,568 --> 00:05:39,368 but he would ask no questions about their methods. 46 00:05:43,843 --> 00:05:48,041 A crucial part of Germanisation was the grading of the population 47 00:05:48,381 --> 00:05:50,747 according to how German they were 48 00:05:50,917 --> 00:05:53,477 in terms of looks, language and attitude. 49 00:06:00,593 --> 00:06:03,562 One group could be Germanised instantly. 50 00:06:03,730 --> 00:06:06,096 They were the ethnic Germans 51 00:06:06,432 --> 00:06:11,369 who lived in the parts of Poland which were German before World War One. 52 00:06:11,571 --> 00:06:14,972 They welcomed the German army as their saviours. 53 00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:19,560 Charles Bleeker Kohlsaat lived with the rest of his family on a 1500-acre estate 54 00:07:19,739 --> 00:07:22,105 in Greiser's province of the Warthegau. 55 00:07:22,275 --> 00:07:27,235 The Nazis renamed the area around his house "Bleekersdorf" after his family. 56 00:07:49,836 --> 00:07:54,000 The Nazis believed the Germans were racially superior to the Poles. 57 00:07:54,173 --> 00:07:58,974 Poles that were not thought German risked deportation to another district 58 00:07:59,145 --> 00:08:01,113 or arbitrary arrest. 59 00:08:01,280 --> 00:08:05,842 Poles who could stay in the Germanised areas were treated as slaves. 60 00:08:11,691 --> 00:08:16,060 And the Nazis encouraged the ethnic Germans to settle old scores 61 00:08:16,229 --> 00:08:18,789 with their former neighbours. 62 00:09:03,676 --> 00:09:05,644 (GUNSHOTS) 63 00:09:32,238 --> 00:09:35,071 And in the Nazi kingdom of Poland, 64 00:09:35,241 --> 00:09:37,766 the SS could do anything it liked, 65 00:09:37,944 --> 00:09:40,674 as one German soldier witnessed. 66 00:11:20,146 --> 00:11:24,674 Some senior German army officers were appalled at these atrocities. 67 00:11:24,850 --> 00:11:27,216 One general's complaint reached Hitler. 68 00:11:27,386 --> 00:11:31,345 The Fuhrer's military adjutant recorded Hitler's reaction to it. 69 00:11:31,524 --> 00:11:36,154 "Hitler makes serious criticism of childish attitudes amongst the army leadership. 70 00:11:36,962 --> 00:11:40,762 "One can't fight a war with Salvation Army methods. " 71 00:11:45,204 --> 00:11:49,004 Hitler may have had a vision for what he wanted in Poland, 72 00:11:49,175 --> 00:11:54,135 but he also believed men like Greiser should run their domains as they saw fit. 73 00:11:54,313 --> 00:11:57,180 That meant they all ran them differently. 74 00:11:57,349 --> 00:12:01,149 Arthur Greiser's rival and neighbour, Albert Forster, 75 00:12:01,320 --> 00:12:04,016 who ran Danzig/West Prussia, 76 00:12:04,190 --> 00:12:09,753 chose to conduct the ethnic cleansing in his district in a completely different way. 77 00:12:15,034 --> 00:12:19,994 Albert Forster, though himself a committed Nazi later found guilty of war crimes, 78 00:12:20,172 --> 00:12:23,539 did not believe rigidly in Nazi racial theory. 79 00:12:23,876 --> 00:12:28,245 His view was that if the Fuhrer wanted this part of Poland Germanised, 80 00:12:28,414 --> 00:12:30,939 the quicker it was done, the better. 81 00:12:31,117 --> 00:12:35,247 He simply declared that whole groups of Poles were now Germans 82 00:12:35,421 --> 00:12:38,049 without checking their ethnic origins. 83 00:13:08,220 --> 00:13:12,020 But Romuald Pilaczynski's uncle lived in Posen, 84 00:13:12,191 --> 00:13:14,819 within the area run by Arthur Greiser. 85 00:13:14,994 --> 00:13:18,395 There he and his family suffered a different fate. 86 00:13:34,280 --> 00:13:39,582 So Romuald Pilaczynski's uncle was, according to Arthur Greiser, a Pole, 87 00:13:39,919 --> 00:13:43,878 whilst he, according to Albert Forster, was a German. 88 00:13:44,456 --> 00:13:47,425 As a result, he and his family weren't deported 89 00:13:47,593 --> 00:13:51,552 and he could still receive an education, but he didn't FEEL German. 90 00:14:21,393 --> 00:14:26,353 Albert Forster believed he was acting within the discretion given him by Hitler. 91 00:14:26,532 --> 00:14:30,992 His neighbour, the fanatical racist Arthur Greiser, was furious. 92 00:14:32,504 --> 00:14:35,029 Greiser wrote letters of complaint 93 00:14:35,207 --> 00:14:39,007 to his mentor, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. 94 00:14:40,079 --> 00:14:44,982 "I avoided trying to win cheap successes by Germanising people 95 00:14:45,150 --> 00:14:48,950 "who could not provide proof of their German origin. 96 00:14:49,121 --> 00:14:51,487 "As I have frequently discussed with you, 97 00:14:51,657 --> 00:14:56,617 "my ethnic policies are threatened by those pursued in Danzig/West Prussia 98 00:14:56,962 --> 00:14:59,328 "insofar as the policy attempted there 99 00:14:59,498 --> 00:15:03,298 "appears to the superficial observer to be more successful. " 100 00:15:04,236 --> 00:15:08,195 Like Greiser, Himmler was fanatically committed to racial theory. 101 00:15:09,241 --> 00:15:13,701 He believed it was possible scientifically to distinguish a Germanic race. 102 00:15:17,216 --> 00:15:21,585 But Forster had been heard to joke that if he looked like Himmler, 103 00:15:21,754 --> 00:15:25,713 he wouldn't go on about the idea of race so much. 104 00:15:30,429 --> 00:15:34,388 When Himmler heard that Forster was Germanising en masse, 105 00:15:34,566 --> 00:15:37,091 he wrote a letter of complaint to him, 106 00:15:37,269 --> 00:15:42,229 telling him to Germanise each Pole only after detailed ethnic examination 107 00:15:42,408 --> 00:15:45,138 and reminding Forster... 108 00:15:45,311 --> 00:15:48,109 "You, as an old National Socialist, 109 00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:53,240 "know that just one drop of false blood that comes into an individual's veins 110 00:15:53,419 --> 00:15:56,217 "can never be removed." 111 00:15:59,658 --> 00:16:03,617 But Albert Forster wasn't worried by Himmler's threatening letter. 112 00:16:03,796 --> 00:16:08,324 As a Gauleiter, or district leader, he had direct contact with Hitler 113 00:16:08,500 --> 00:16:13,062 and he believed that Hitler would let him govern his own area as he liked. 114 00:16:13,238 --> 00:16:18,039 He was right. Hitler didn't intervene and Forster never changed his policy. 115 00:16:26,251 --> 00:16:28,344 Greiser had another problem. 116 00:16:28,520 --> 00:16:33,321 In the autumn of 1939, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans arrived 117 00:16:33,492 --> 00:16:36,017 in Nazi-occupied Poland. 118 00:16:36,195 --> 00:16:38,993 Under a deal between Hitler and Stalin, 119 00:16:39,164 --> 00:16:44,124 they were allowed to leave neighbouring countries and come home to the Reich. 120 00:16:44,303 --> 00:16:49,366 Greiser had to find homes for many incoming Germans in the Warthegau. 121 00:17:19,805 --> 00:17:25,368 German propaganda film shows the incoming Germans being welcomed 122 00:17:25,544 --> 00:17:28,843 by the indigenous German population of Poland. 123 00:17:29,181 --> 00:17:31,547 The reality could be very different. 124 00:18:23,135 --> 00:18:27,231 But if the local Germans weren't impressed with the new arrivals, 125 00:18:27,406 --> 00:18:30,375 many of the new arrivals were equally disappointed. 126 00:18:30,542 --> 00:18:33,909 They were told they were being resettled in Germany. 127 00:18:34,246 --> 00:18:36,612 According to the Nazis, they were, 128 00:18:36,782 --> 00:18:40,741 but that depended, of course, on how you defined Germany. 129 00:19:53,926 --> 00:19:57,726 The new arrivals needed somewhere permanent to live. 130 00:19:57,896 --> 00:20:00,865 In Greiser's district, that was easily solved. 131 00:20:01,667 --> 00:20:06,229 Polish families like the Jeziorkowskas simply received a late-night visit 132 00:20:06,405 --> 00:20:08,771 from the German security forces. 133 00:22:21,506 --> 00:22:26,534 The Nazis distributed the property they had stolen to incoming ethnic Germans. 134 00:22:32,651 --> 00:22:35,814 Each head of a family was given a key, a map, 135 00:22:36,655 --> 00:22:40,614 and told to go and find their new flat somewhere in the city. 136 00:22:44,062 --> 00:22:48,863 Propaganda pictures show the pristine glory of the fresh accommodation. 137 00:22:49,034 --> 00:22:51,559 For the Eigis, it wasn't like that at all. 138 00:23:47,192 --> 00:23:52,858 The incoming ethnic Germans now had homes to live in, but they didn't have jobs. 139 00:23:53,031 --> 00:23:55,556 That difficulty too was swiftly overcome. 140 00:23:55,901 --> 00:23:58,301 Before coming to Greiser's Warthegau, 141 00:23:58,470 --> 00:24:02,270 Irma Eigi's father had run a hotel and restaurant. 142 00:24:36,074 --> 00:24:41,512 Irma Eigi's father eventually found a restaurant that was still in Polish hands. 143 00:24:41,847 --> 00:24:47,046 He informed the local Nazis and they stole it from the Polish owner for him. 144 00:25:29,361 --> 00:25:34,321 In the depths of the Polish countryside, the forced evictions could be even worse. 145 00:25:34,499 --> 00:25:37,559 Whole villages could be uprooted in one action. 146 00:25:37,903 --> 00:25:40,269 One night in the summer of 1940, 147 00:25:40,438 --> 00:25:43,930 the Nazis arrived at Odrowaz, an isolated village 148 00:25:44,109 --> 00:25:47,510 in the heart of Greiser's fiefdom of the Warthegau. 149 00:25:48,413 --> 00:25:53,373 They planned to remove every inhabitant of the village at three in the morning. 150 00:25:58,590 --> 00:26:01,150 Franz Jagemann was an interpreter 151 00:26:01,326 --> 00:26:04,887 assigned to the German forces carrying out the action. 152 00:27:27,679 --> 00:27:30,204 Appalled at this barbarism, 153 00:27:30,382 --> 00:27:35,342 Franz Jagemann later warned other Polish villagers in advance of their fate, 154 00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:40,116 but he still carried on participating as an interpreter in the evictions. 155 00:28:44,789 --> 00:28:47,815 (MOURNFUL VIOLIN MUSIC) 156 00:29:18,323 --> 00:29:20,291 In Greiser's Warthegau, 157 00:29:20,458 --> 00:29:22,426 in little over a year, 158 00:29:22,594 --> 00:29:26,394 700,000 Poles were evicted from their homes. 159 00:29:35,940 --> 00:29:38,500 Greiser deported many south-east, 160 00:29:38,676 --> 00:29:42,635 to the part of Poland he saw as the Nazis' racial dustbin - 161 00:29:42,814 --> 00:29:46,807 the General Government run by Nazi Hans Frank. 162 00:30:35,366 --> 00:30:40,303 The Jeziorkowskas were simply thrown off the train once it reached its destination. 163 00:30:40,505 --> 00:30:46,375 In spring, 1940, 15,000 Poles a month were sent to the General Government. 164 00:31:33,458 --> 00:31:38,361 These massive deportations from Greiser's district enraged Hans Frank, 165 00:31:38,529 --> 00:31:41,896 the man who ruled the General Government. 166 00:31:43,001 --> 00:31:45,401 (FAINT ITALIAN OPERA) 167 00:31:46,337 --> 00:31:51,741 The country house of this Italian-opera-loving Nazi was outside Krakow 168 00:31:51,910 --> 00:31:54,435 in a palace seized from a Polish prince. 169 00:31:54,646 --> 00:31:57,046 (OPERA) 170 00:32:48,766 --> 00:32:52,725 Hans Frank was proud of his long relationship with Hitler, 171 00:32:52,937 --> 00:32:56,429 a relationship characterised by Frank's total sycophancy. 172 00:33:31,876 --> 00:33:35,835 Frank was confident that such abasement to the Nazi cause 173 00:33:36,014 --> 00:33:39,814 could help him win the argument over the deportations, 174 00:33:39,984 --> 00:33:43,784 but Himmler showed he knew best how to deal with Hitler 175 00:33:43,955 --> 00:33:46,253 and timing could be everything. 176 00:33:46,424 --> 00:33:48,949 He wrote Hitler a memo emphasising 177 00:33:49,127 --> 00:33:53,427 that the General Government should remain a racial dumping ground. 178 00:33:53,765 --> 00:33:57,724 He gave it to Hitler when the Fuhrer was euphoric in May 1940 179 00:33:57,902 --> 00:34:00,302 after German successes against France. 180 00:34:00,471 --> 00:34:03,031 Hitler discussed the memo with Himmler. 181 00:34:03,207 --> 00:34:08,008 Then Himmler wrote that Hitler found the memo to be "sehr gut und richtig", 182 00:34:08,179 --> 00:34:10,306 "very good and correct". 183 00:34:10,481 --> 00:34:15,009 In a typical example of how key decisions could be taken in the Third Reich, 184 00:34:15,186 --> 00:34:19,316 Hitler never put his own views about the subject down on paper. 185 00:34:19,490 --> 00:34:21,958 Himmler had won the battle. 186 00:34:22,126 --> 00:34:24,492 Armed only with a nod from Hitler, 187 00:34:24,829 --> 00:34:26,797 he told Arthur Greiser 188 00:34:26,964 --> 00:34:30,764 to carry on deporting Poles down to Hans Frank. 189 00:34:36,374 --> 00:34:40,834 Hans Frank dealt with his disappointment in his customary way. 190 00:34:41,012 --> 00:34:45,381 He led his subordinates to believe that he supported Hitler's decision 191 00:34:45,550 --> 00:34:48,075 and that he hadn't been defeated at all. 192 00:34:56,027 --> 00:35:00,987 Himmler's victory ensured that Poland was still the scene of gigantic upheaval 193 00:35:01,165 --> 00:35:05,261 and even the ethnic Germans did not escape cruel treatment. 194 00:35:05,436 --> 00:35:10,897 Ethnic German farmers in a resettlement camp refused to be relocated 195 00:35:11,075 --> 00:35:13,305 because they were homesick. 196 00:35:14,278 --> 00:35:17,805 Dr Fritz Arlt helped deal with the problem. 197 00:35:18,616 --> 00:35:21,084 In our interview with him, 198 00:35:21,252 --> 00:35:25,780 Dr Arlt emphasised that he tried to help the occupied population. 199 00:35:27,258 --> 00:35:30,785 But this letter about these ethnic German farmers 200 00:35:30,962 --> 00:35:33,931 shows a very different side to his character. 201 00:35:35,133 --> 00:35:39,001 It bears the dictation mark "Dr A" for Dr Arlt. 202 00:35:39,837 --> 00:35:42,203 We reminded him of its existence. 203 00:35:53,117 --> 00:35:57,315 The letter calls for the ringleaders of the ethnic German farmers 204 00:35:57,488 --> 00:36:00,389 to be sent to a Nazi concentration camp. 205 00:36:52,677 --> 00:36:55,646 Dr Arlt joined the Nazi Party in 1932. 206 00:36:56,681 --> 00:36:59,172 Is he now ashamed he did? 207 00:37:22,473 --> 00:37:27,433 But another group suffered most at the hands of the Nazis in Poland - 208 00:37:27,612 --> 00:37:30,137 the three million Polish Jews. 209 00:37:32,183 --> 00:37:35,482 Early on in the German occupation of Poland, 210 00:37:35,686 --> 00:37:38,211 the Nazis gathered together Polish Jews 211 00:37:38,422 --> 00:37:42,722 and then transported them into ghettos within the major towns. 212 00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:01,241 The Nazis had not yet decided what the final fate of the Jews would be. 213 00:38:12,290 --> 00:38:16,249 The biggest ghetto in Arthur Greiser's district was in Lodz. 214 00:38:16,427 --> 00:38:18,725 Here in the spring of 1940, 215 00:38:19,063 --> 00:38:22,863 160,000 Polish Jews were ordered to congregate in a ghetto area 216 00:38:22,933 --> 00:38:25,458 of less than two square miles. 217 00:39:28,799 --> 00:39:32,758 Within weeks of the ghetto being opened, the Nazis sealed it, 218 00:39:32,937 --> 00:39:36,065 imprisoning the Jews behind barbed wire. 219 00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:41,400 In order to escape starvation, the Jews had to buy food at inflated prices, 220 00:39:41,579 --> 00:39:46,812 either from the Nazis or unofficially from locals who lived outside the wire. 221 00:40:17,014 --> 00:40:20,973 Eugen Zielke was an ethnic German living in Lodz. 222 00:40:21,152 --> 00:40:25,680 His family owned a food shop and some of his relatives were involved 223 00:40:25,856 --> 00:40:28,222 in extorting money from the Jews, 224 00:40:28,559 --> 00:40:30,959 a crime from which he benefited as well. 225 00:41:48,672 --> 00:41:52,039 The Jews, trapped behind the barbed wire, 226 00:41:52,243 --> 00:41:54,768 began by using their money to buy food. 227 00:41:54,945 --> 00:41:59,507 When that ran out, they sold jewellery, ornaments, even their clothes. 228 00:41:59,683 --> 00:42:03,983 When they had nothing left they could sell, they began to starve. 229 00:42:45,229 --> 00:42:49,063 This was the office of the ambitious Nazi who ran the Lodz ghetto, 230 00:42:49,266 --> 00:42:53,726 a former coffee importer from Bremen called Hans Biebow. 231 00:42:55,806 --> 00:43:00,175 He quickly discovered that in the ghetto he could do anything he liked, 232 00:43:00,344 --> 00:43:02,869 even attempt rape and murder. 233 00:44:01,238 --> 00:44:06,835 Biebow began to do well for himself as a result of extorting money from the Jews. 234 00:44:08,979 --> 00:44:12,005 But as spring turned to summer in 1940, 235 00:44:12,182 --> 00:44:14,742 the death rate in the ghetto began to rise, 236 00:44:14,918 --> 00:44:19,321 the victims buried here in the Jewish cemetery within the Lodz ghetto. 237 00:44:23,727 --> 00:44:27,788 A debate raged among the local Nazis as to what they should do. 238 00:44:28,399 --> 00:44:32,927 Biebow's deputy said the Germans should let all the Jews die. 239 00:44:34,004 --> 00:44:37,405 But Biebow knew that if all the Jews did die, 240 00:44:37,741 --> 00:44:39,971 then he couldn't exploit them any more, 241 00:44:40,144 --> 00:44:43,011 so he came up with the solution which prevailed. 242 00:44:49,720 --> 00:44:52,086 The Jews became slave workers, 243 00:44:52,256 --> 00:44:55,851 making goods which could be exchanged for more food. 244 00:45:01,765 --> 00:45:04,131 Biebow made even more money, 245 00:45:04,301 --> 00:45:08,101 but he realised that he had to share the profits around, 246 00:45:08,272 --> 00:45:10,934 particularly with his boss, Arthur Greiser. 247 00:45:46,376 --> 00:45:50,073 At the end of this road constructed by slave labour, 248 00:45:50,247 --> 00:45:52,545 Arthur Greiser sat in luxury 249 00:45:52,883 --> 00:45:56,842 in a palace also built on the suffering of the Poles. 250 00:45:59,123 --> 00:46:02,183 (TRIUMPHANT GERMAN SONG) 251 00:46:14,805 --> 00:46:18,002 Far from being a victim of Hitler's policies, 252 00:46:18,175 --> 00:46:20,575 Greiser was their greatest beneficiary. 253 00:46:22,212 --> 00:46:24,578 Far from acting under orders, 254 00:46:24,915 --> 00:46:29,284 he had interpreted the vague instructions he had been given from Hitler 255 00:46:29,453 --> 00:46:32,980 in a way that brought greatest profit to himself. 256 00:46:33,157 --> 00:46:37,389 Far from being a scapegoat, he chose to be a thief and a murderer. 257 00:47:06,089 --> 00:47:09,889 In the first 20 months of their occupation of Poland, 258 00:47:10,060 --> 00:47:15,020 the Nazis showed they were amongst the cruellest conquerors the world has seen, 259 00:47:15,199 --> 00:47:17,565 but even worse was to come.