Rohde - The German Fifth Column in Poland

THE

GERMAN FIFTH COLUMN

IN

POLAND

By THE POLISH MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

Edited by Aleksandra Miesak Rohde

Printed in Great Britain December 1940

Reprinted in the United States 2014 by

Home of Americas Dreams

Silver Spring, Maryland

Copyright 2014 by Aleksandra M. Rohde

All rights reserved.

FOREWORD

FOR many months after the German invasion of Poland public opinion in Western Europe and America was skeptical of the stories about the part played by the German minority in Poland in preparing and executing this invasion. These stories, which spoke of plots and subversion carried on for years, of espionage and sabotage practised on an enormous scale, of parachutists dressed in civilian clothes, or as priests and women, or even, against all international law, wearing the uniform of the invaded State, certainly far surpassed all experiences of previous wars.

Only when similar methods were used in Norway and Denmark, and later in Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France, were the eyes even of the most blind opened. It was proved beyond all doubt that the events in Poland were only the first manifestations of a great plan, thoroughly worked out by Berlin, embracing not only Europe, but other continents also. Everywhere the German minorities became a fit instrument in the hands of the political and military leaders of the Third Reich, everywhere we come up against these same methods of operation, characterized by deceit, hypocrisy, and the absence of all juridical and moral scruples.

Poland was the first to put up an active resistance to the German might, and also was the first to feel all the effects of this type of German operation. Her experiences have lost none of their relevance for the present day. On the contrary, closer acquaintance with them has become a necessity for all the countries who cherish the preservation of their essential independence.

Nazism, like its predecessor, Prussianism, has so great an attraction for the average German that its enormous influence on German minorities abroad is not in the least surprising.

The conception that Germanism is something which surpasses the bounds of political frontiers has been expressed by the well-known German writer, von Hintze, in the following words:

The painful lot which, since Versailles, has hung like a black cloud over the nation's horizon, has given rise to a new German ideal. In place of a nation of sixty millions which regarded its political frontiers as identical with its national frontiers (Volkstum) we have today a nation of ninety million Germans joining hearts and hands across the political frontiers in one common task for the good of the nation. For of what significance to a nation are the political frontiers, those lines inscribed by the hazards of history on maps of paper? We are everywhere: in Eastern Europe, in North and South America, in Asia, and in Africa. And this numerical power can and must be a force which as such should mean more than warships and cannon. The appreciation of this phenomenon constitutes a great success which we Germans have achieved in consequence of the last war.

Therefore, if we are to believe this apostle of Pan- Germanism, in 1939 there were some thirty million Germans scattered over the world and benefiting from the hospitality of other States. On the other hand, this new national doctrine proclaims the superiority of this idea of the nation ( Volksgedanke ) to the conception of the State ( Staatsgedanke ). Nevertheless, it is to the Reich that the Germans abroad and the German minorities are to owe at least a minimum of loyalty.

For the nations not menaced by German hegemony this state of things involves the abuses of German propaganda and espionage. But for the States directly menaced by the Reich it involves being laid open to purely destructive factors, such as treason, sabotage, and subversion.

Today abundant proof is forthcoming that the German minority in Poland formed the vanguard of the armies of the Third Reich. This minority was acting under direct orders from the German authorities or by various organizations which carefully concealed their real character.

The Verein fr das Deutschtum im Auslande , one of the most important organizations for the protection of Germans abroad, always openly aided and stimulated the subversive activities of the German minorities.

Again, the Auslandsinstitut of Stuttgart, a pseudoscientific organization, is in reality purely political in its character, and a representative of the Information Bureau of the German War Office ( Nachrichtenstelle des Reichswehrministeriums ) is an official member of its governing body. This Institute is an important centre of the Second Bureau (German Intelligence Service) which works in conjunction with Germans living abroad.

Subversive activities and conspiracy against the State were the programme and political conception dominating the German minorities during the period preceding the war. The philosophical, juridical, scientific, or quasi-pacifist theories preached by German statesmen were only a facade, behind which this programme and conception were advanced.

The Reich exploited not only these theories, but also the minority clauses imposed upon several States in 1919 (which, however, were not made binding on the Reich), in order to undermine from within almost all the States of interest to Germany. Again and again she charged them with oppressing and ill-treating the German minorities.

Thus, Poland was attacked on these grounds even in the days of the Weimar Republic. After the emergence of the Third Reich, but particularly during the two years preceding the premeditated German aggression of September, 1939, Berlin intensified its anti-Polish campaign. The more violent these attacks became, so the more flagrant grew the subversive activities of the Germans in Poland.

Methodical preparations for this situation can be traced back through all the past twenty years, from 1919 onwards. The German minority had been slowly and steadily won over to subversive ideas, and the dynamic quality of the Nazi movement only gave those ideas a new, realistic basis. By September, 1939, the 765,000 Germans who constituted the German minority in Poland formed the nucleus of an army of spies and conspirators who were only awaiting the Fhrer's order to march.

The present book provides a survey of these activities based upon a selection of depositions carefully assembled and classified in Paris during the six months from October, 1939, to March, 1940. The purpose of publishing such a compilation is not only to serve historical truth, but also, after the tragic experiences of Poland, to provide a warning. Obviously, from this angle it will interest most of all those countries in which there is a more or less compact German minority. But it will also serve to place on their guard those States which in the present situation are directly menaced by espionage, sabotage, and by German-made putsches. Recent news from the continent of Europe provides further confirmation that the successes of the German army of aggression have been rendered possible only because of the direct collaboration of accomplices: of German residents, together with troops and marines disguised as tourists, commercial representatives, and merchant sailors.

London,

December 1940

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTORY SURVEY

INSPIRED by the general principles of justice and respect for the specific national cultures of all peoples, the authors of the Treaty of Versailles supplemented the treaties with a number of special regulations in the form of Minority Clauses. These clauses were to be binding primarily upon those countries which had regained their independent existence after the Great War of 1914-1918. They were not imposed upon Germany, which, so far as the national minorities issue was concerned, was not bound under the Versailles Treaty by any legal or formal international obligations. On the one hand, Germany was free from all obligations in regard to minorities, despite the fact that within its frontiers, exclusive of Jews, there were some 2 million foreign nationals, of which approximately 1.5 million were Poles. On the other hand, the German minorities living in the new States had their rights to national culture guaranteed in the form of the Minority Clauses. But, instead of being in the nature of educative principles for the guidance of the new States, in the hands of Berlin these Clauses very quickly became a convenient instrument for the gradual disintegration of the political relations which were to have constituted the permanent basis of the Peace Treaty.