During the Second World War, millions of people of different nationalities, including Poles, died at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices. All races in the Nazis’ view were arranged depending on the proximity of blood to the Aryans, to which, in addition to the Germans, some Western European peoples were assigned. According to the Nazis, the Poles were at the lowest stage of development and did not have the ability to create, so they had to obey the Aryans. However, according to Race and Space policy, the attitude towards Jewish Poles and non-Jewish Poles differed significantly.
Non-Army Poles in the framework of the Race and Space policy were supposed to act as cheap labor for the German population. However, Jews, including Polish ones, were considered a genetically inferior racial type that could not be used even as a labor force and were to be destroyed (Holocaust in Hungary 6). With the rise of the Nazis to power, anti-Semitism became the official ideology and policy of the German leadership. Racial theory has found its expression in legislation and education. The ideas that Jews, including Polish ones, are carriers of negative racial qualities, were intensively introduced into the public consciousness with the help of powerful propaganda. According to Race and Space policy, only a race at the highest level of evolution is capable of generating culture. Just as a person cannot change their race, they cannot change their cultural affiliation. Hitler further explains that the very “destroyers of culture” are the Jews. Thus, Race and Space policy argued for the need to destroy Jewish Poles.
The Nazis sought not only to change the situation in Germany, but also to bring the whole world into line with their ideology based on racial theory and social Darwinism. According to Hitler, there was a failure in the natural struggle for power between the races, which violated the law of nature, according to which the strongest wins. Consequently, the “higher” Aryan race must rectify the situation and regain the dominant position rightfully assigned to it. It was considered necessary to do this not only for Germany itself, but also for the benefit of the whole world. Other races, including the Polish, were considered weaker by nature, unable to reach the heights of spirit that are inherent in the Aryans. However, non-Jewish Poles, unlike Jewish Poles, were not regarded as posing a danger to the Nazi system, therefore they were not destroyed.
The idea that Jews belong to the anti–race was added to the Nazi concept of an eternal struggle between races for life and death. According to the Nazi worldview, world Jewry leads all mankind to destruction. The Nazis perceived Jews as parasites, carriers of a disease that destroys the very essence of a healthy world. Thus, the Jews represented a real and serious threat to “Aryan” Germany and all of humanity. The Nazis claimed that the Jewish “race” was responsible not only for the problems of German society, but also for the dangers threatening the whole world. Therefore, the only way to fight the Jews is a war to the bitter end. The exclusion of Jewish Poles from all spheres of society was considered necessary for the implementation of the Nazi “idea” and the salvation of Germany, and such sanctions were not applied to non-Jewish Poles.
The policy of the Nazis towards both Jewish Poles and Poles did both begin with terror and economic restrictions. However, non-Jewish Poles under the Race and Space policy program were considered disenfranchised labor. The policy towards the Jewish Poles ended with their almost complete destruction in the occupied territories of Poland. It was the Nazi ideology of racial anti-Semitism that led to the extermination of Jewish Poles, while the right to life was preserved for non-Jewish Poles.
Works Cited
Holocaust in Hungary [PowerPoint slides], n. d.