Editing Arthur Greiser (section)

==World War II==
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1998-0109-502, Arthur Greiser in Posen.jpg|thumb|In occupied Poznań, 1939]]
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-E12078, Posen, Amtseinführung Arthur Greiser.jpg|thumb|Reviewing the troops in Poznań, November 1939.  Greiser is on the right with [[Wilhelm Frick]] (center) and Generalmajor [[Walter Petzel]] (left).]]
Immediately following the [[Invasion of Poland|German invasion of Poland]], Greiser was transferred from Danzig and on 8 September was appointed ''Chef der Zivilverwaltung im Militärbezirk Posen'' or [[Chief of Civil Administration]] in the military district of [[Province of Posen|Posen]], which was annexed to the German Reich on 8 October 1939. The military administration ended and he was then appointed ''[[Gauleiter]]'' of the newly created [[Reichsgau Posen]] on 21 October. At the same time he was named [[Reich Defense Commissioner]] of the newly established ''[[Wehrkreis]]'' XXI, consisting of the new Reichsgau. As the Head of the Civil Administration of the Poznań District, Greiser made intensive efforts to incorporate Łódź into the Reich.{{sfn|Rukowiecki|2011|p=24}} Additionally, he was appointed to the [[Prussian State Council (Nazi Germany)|Prussian State Council]]. On 2 November, he was also named ''[[Reichsstatthalter]]'' (Reich Governor) of the new territory, thereby uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdiction. On 29 January 1940, the region was renamed [[Reichsgau Wartheland]]. A member of several Nazi [[paramilitary]] organizations, Greiser was made a [[National Socialist Flyers Corps|NSFK]]-''[[Gruppenführer]]'' as well as a [[National Socialist Motor Corps|NSKK]]-''[[Obergruppenführer]]'' in April 1940. Finally, on 30 January 1942, he was promoted to SS-''Obergruppenführer''.{{sfn|Miller|Schulz|2012|pp=354, 360–364}}

The territory over which Greiser ruled was potentially very rich – the [[Kingdom of Prussia|Prussian]] Imperial province of Posen had been the breadbasket of [[Wilhelmine]] Germany before 1914, possessed an excellent rail and road network, and a comparatively healthy and well educated workforce; [[Łódź|Litzmanstadt]] (Łódź) had developed a fairly sophisticated industrial base during the 19th century. Although every ''Gauleiter'' was expected to fully Germanize his assigned area by any means,{{sfn|Kershaw|2000|p=251}} Greiser emphasized brutality to achieve this goal. He was an ardent [[racism|racist]] who enthusiastically pursued an '[[ethnic cleansing]]' program to rid the Warthegau of [[Polish people|Poles]] and to resettle the 'cleansed' areas with ethnic Germans.{{sfn|Rees|1997|pp=143–5}} This was along the lines of the racial theories espoused by ''[[Reichsführer-SS]]'' [[Heinrich Himmler]]. Mass expulsions of Poles from the Warthegau to the [[General Government]] and [[summary execution]]s were the norm. A Polish servant in Greiser's house described him as "a powerfully built figure. He was a tall man, you could see his arrogance, his conceit. He was so vain, so full of himself—as if there was nothing above him, a god, almost. Everybody tried to get out of his way, people had to bow to him, salute him. And the Poles, he treated them with great contempt. For him the Poles were slaves, good for nothing but work".{{sfn|Rees|1997|p=142}} Greiser himself stated his beliefs: "If, in past times, other peoples enjoyed their century-long history by living well, and doing so by getting foreign peoples to work for them without compensating them accordingly and without meting out justice to them, then we too, as Germans want to learn from this history. No longer must we stand in the wings; on the contrary, we must altogether become a master race!".{{sfn|Rees|1997|p=145}}

In addition to mass deportation, Greiser's district was also at the forefront of "internal" racial cleansing according to Nazi ideals. His subordinate [[Wilhelm Koppe]] provided the '[[Herbert Lange|Special Detachment (''Sonderkommando'') Lange]]' to the nearby [[Gau (administrative division)|Gau]] of [[East Prussia]] during May and June 1940. This SS squad gassed 1558 patients from mental asylums at the [[Soldau concentration camp]] and then returned to his region to continue this process.{{sfn|Kershaw|2000|p=261}}

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J09397, Lodz, Millionster Umsiedler im Wartheland.jpg|thumb|Arthur Greiser in March 1944 welcoming the one-millionth [[Volksdeutsche]]r resettled from East Europe to occupied Poland as part of the "[[Heim ins Reich]]" campaign.]]

Greiser was involved in the resettlement of German [[refugees]] from lands annexed to the [[Soviet Union]] in 1939 and 1940. Between October and December 1939, nearly 60,000 ''[[Volksdeutsche]]'' (ethnic Germans) arrived in Germany from the [[Baltic states]] of [[Estonia]] and [[Latvia]]. Evidently [[Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt]] (later employed as translator for General [[Andrey Vlasov]]) was in this group, as he "resettled" in [[Poznań|Posen]]. Neighbouring ''[[Gauleiter]]'' and rival [[Albert Forster]] refused them entry, and they were largely settled in properties seized from Poles in [[Poznań]] and across the [[Wartheland]]. However even Greiser was wary, noting that many were elderly and urbanized aristocrats with a strong class consciousness, not the virile peasant warrior types idolized by the SS. Closer to his heart were the over 100,000 ethnic Germans who were evacuated from [[Volhynia]] and eastern [[Galicia (Central Europe)|Galicia]]. These were mostly farmers and rural people, and, learning from the Baltic experience, Łódź in eastern Wartheland was designated the main [[Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle]] (VoMi) reception centre. In May 1940 a further 30,000 [[Volksdeutsche]] were relocated from the [[Nazi]] General Government of Poland to Greiser's domain. After 1941 a further 300,000 ethnic Germans were evacuated from Russia and [[Ukraine]] to Wartheland during the German invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union. Greiser's Poznań was considered the Germanised city par excellence, and on 3 August 1943 he hosted a national gathering of ''Gauleiter'' and senior Nazis, including [[Martin Bormann]], [[Joseph Goebbels]] and Heinrich Himmler.

===Anti-Church campaign===
[[Richard J. Evans]] wrote that the Catholic Church was the institution that "more than any other had sustained Polish national identity over the centuries".{{sfn|Evans|2009|p=34}} The Nazi plan for Poland entailed the destruction of the Polish nation.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The destruction of Warsaw: the Nazi plan to obliterate a city |url=https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-destruction-of-warsaw-the-nazi-plan-to-obliterate-a-city |access-date=2023-07-05 |website=Sky HISTORY TV channel |language=en}}</ref> This necessarily required attacking the Polish Church, particularly in those areas annexed to Germany.<ref>Jozef Garlinski; ''Poland and the Second World War''; Macmillan Press, 1985; p 60</ref> Greiser, with the encouragement of [[Reinhard Heydrich]] and Martin Bormann, launched a severe attack on the Catholic Church. He cut off support to the Church from the state and from outside influences such as the Vatican and Germany. In July 1940 he instituted Bormann's anti-church "thirteen point" measures in the territory.{{sfn|Epstein|2012|p=224}} The anti-church measures, which had Hitler's approval, suggest how the Nazis aimed to «'de-church' German society».{{sfn|Epstein|2012|pp=225–8}}

Catholic Church properties and funds were confiscated, and lay organisations shut down. Evans wrote that "Numerous clergy, monks, diocesan administrators and officials of the Church were arrested, deported to the General Government, taken off to a concentration camp in the Reich, or simply shot. Altogether some 1700 Polish priests ended up at Dachau: half of them did not survive their imprisonment." Greiser's administrative chief [[August Jäger]] had earlier led the effort at Nazification of the Evangelical Church in Prussia.{{sfn|Evans|2009|pp=33–4}} In Poland, he earned the nickname "''Kirchenjäger''" (Church Hunter) for the vehemence of his hostility to the Church.<ref>[[Mark Mazower]]; ''Hitler's Empire – Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe''; Penguin; 2008; {{ISBN|978-0-713-99681-4}}; p. 92.</ref> "By the end of 1941", wrote Evans, "the Polish Catholic Church had been effectively outlawed in the Wartheland. It was more or less Germanized in the other occupied territories, despite an encyclical issued by [[Pope Pius XII]] as early as 27 October 1939 protesting against this persecution."{{sfn|Evans|2009|p=34}}

===Holocaust===
SS-''Obergruppenführer'' Greiser actively participated in the [[Holocaust]].{{sfn|Epstein|2012|pages=231–232}} Early in 1940, Greiser is on record challenging [[Hermann Göring]] over efforts to delay the expulsion of Łódź Jews to Poland. On 18 September 1941, ''Reichsführer-SS'' Himmler informed Greiser that he intended to transfer 60,000 [[Czechs|Czech]] and German Jews to the [[Łódź Ghetto]] until spring 1942, when they would be "resettled". The first transport arrived a few weeks later, and Greiser sought and received permission from Himmler to kill 100,000 Jews in his area.{{sfn|Kershaw|2000|p=484}} He then instructed [[HSSPF]] [[Wilhelm Koppe]] to manage the overcrowding. Koppe and SS-''[[Sturmbannführer]]'' [[Herbert Lange]] proceeded to manage the problem by experimenting at a country estate at [[Chełmno nad Nerem]] with [[gas vans]], establishing the first extermination unit which ultimately carried out the mass murder of approximately 150,000 Jews between late 1941 and April 1942. Furthermore, on 6 October 1943 Greiser hosted a national assembly of senior SS officers in [[Poznań|Posen]] at which Himmler candidly spoke of the mass executions of civilians (the infamous [[Posen Speech]]). Greiser's [[mass murder]] operations were coordinated by SS-''[[Oberführer]]'' [[Herbert Mehlhorn]].<ref name="GrunerOsterloh2015">{{cite book|author1=Wolf Gruner|author2=Jorg Osterloh|title=The Greater German Reich and the Jews: Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935–1945|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5R6jBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA205|date=15 January 2015|publisher=Berghahn Books|isbn=978-1-78238-444-1|page=205|quote=Wartheland's Security Police and SS-Oberführer Herbert Mehlhorn, who was ordered by Greiser to coordinate the mass murder operations, resorted to gas wagons, which had already ...}}</ref>

On 20 January 1945, Greiser ordered a general evacuation of Posen (having received a telegram from Bormann relaying Hitler's order to leave the city). Greiser left the city the same evening and reported to Himmler's personal train in [[Frankfurt (Oder)|Frankfurt an der Oder]]. There Greiser found that he had been tricked by Bormann. Hitler had announced that Posen must be held at all costs, and Greiser was now viewed as a deserter and coward, particularly by Goebbels, who in his diary on 2 March 1945 labeled Greiser "a real disgrace to the ([[Nazism|Nazi]]) Party", but his recommendations for punishment after the capture of Poznań were ignored.{{sfn|Kershaw|2000|p=759n24}}

He surrendered to the [[United States|Americans]] in Austria in 1945.