Editing General Government (section)

===Territorial dissection===
[[File:General Government Poster 1939 - 1 (de+pl).jpg|thumb|Official proclamation of the General-Government in Poland by Germany, October 1939]]

Nazi planners never definitively resolved the question of the exact territorial reorganization of the Polish provinces in the event of German victory in the east. Germany had [[Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany|already annexed]] large parts of western pre-war Poland (8 October 1939) before the establishment of the General Government (26 October 1939), and the remaining region was also intended to be directly incorporated into the German Reich at some future date. The Nazi leadership discussed numerous initiatives with this aim.

The earliest such proposal (October/November 1939) called for the establishment of a separate ''Reichsgau [[Beskids|Beskidenland]]'' which would encompass several southern sections of the Polish territories conquered in 1939 (around 18,000&nbsp;km<sup>2</sup>), stretching from the area to the west of [[Kraków]] to the [[San (river)|San river]] in the east.<ref>{{cite news |last=Burleigh |first=Michael |year=1988 |title=Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=142 |isbn=9780521351201 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yVM4AAAAIAAJ&dq=reichsgau+beskidenland&pg=PA159 |access-date=2022-03-14 |archive-date=2023-03-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230317071114/https://books.google.com/books?id=yVM4AAAAIAAJ&dq=reichsgau+beskidenland&pg=PA159 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Madajczyk, Czesław (1988). ''Die okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939-1945'', p. 31 (in German). Akademie-Verlag Berlin.</ref> At this time Germany had not yet directly annexed the [[Łódź]] area, and Łódź (rather than Kraków) served as the capital of the General Government. This was due to the fact that western border was not precisely established, the main subject of the dispute was Łódź. [[Hans Frank]] intended to make it the capital of the General Government and therefore installed his offices in the city.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Rukowiecki|first1=Andrzej|title=Łódź 1939-1945. Kronika okupacji|year=2011|publisher=Księży Młyn Dom Wydawniczy|isbn=978-83-7729-069-9|language=pl|page=24}}</ref> In November 1940, Gauleiter [[Arthur Greiser]] of Reichsgau Wartheland argued that the counties of [[Tomaszów County, Łódź Voivodeship|Tomaszów]] and Petrikau should be transferred from the General Government's Radom district to his Gau. Hitler agreed, but since Frank refused to surrender the counties, the resolution of the border question was postponed until after the final victory.<ref>Catherine Epstein (2012), ''Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland'', Oxford University Press, {{ISBN|0199646538}}, p. 139</ref>

Upon hearing of the German plans to create a "[[Gau (country subdivision)|Gau]] of the [[Goths]]" (''{{lang|de|Gotengau}}'') in the [[Crimea]] and the Southern [[Ukraine]] after the start (June 1941) of [[Operation Barbarossa]], Frank himself expressed his intention to turn the district under his control into a German province called the ''{{lang|de|Vandalengau}}'' (Gau of the [[Vandals]]) in a speech he gave on 16 December 1941.<ref>Rich, p. 89.</ref><ref>NS-Archiv: Dokumente zum Nationalsozialismus. ''Diensttagebuch Hans Frank: 16.12.1941 - Regierungssitzung'' (in German). Retrieved 12 May 2011. [http://www.ns-archiv.de/personen/frank/16-12-1941.php] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304023337/http://www.ns-archiv.de/personen/frank/16-12-1941.php|date=2016-03-04}}</ref>

When Frank unsuccessfully attempted to resign his position on 24 August 1942, [[Nazi Party Chancellery|Nazi Party Secretary]] [[Martin Bormann]] tried to advance a project to dissolve the General Government altogether and to partition its territory into a number of [[Reichsgaue]], arguing that only this method could guarantee the territory's Germanization, while also claiming that Germany could economically exploit the area more effectively, particularly as a source of food.<ref name="Okkupation">Madajczyk, pp. 102-103.</ref> He suggested separating the "more restful" population of the [[Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria|formerly Austrian territories]] (because this part of Poland had been under [[Austrian Empire|German-Austrian rule]] for a long period of time it was deemed more racially acceptable) from the rest of the Poles, and cordoning off the city of [[Warsaw]] as the center of "criminality" and [[Polish resistance movement in World War II|underground resistance activity]].<ref name="Okkupation"/>
[[File:Kundt, Fischer, Frank, Wächter, Zörner, Wendler.jpg|thumb|Hans Frank with district administrators in 1942 – from left: Ernst Kundt, [[Ludwig Fischer]], [[Hans Frank]], [[Otto Wächter]], Ernst Zörner, [[Richard Wendler]]]]

[[Ludwig Fischer (Nazi)|Ludwig Fischer]] (governor of Warsaw from 1939 to 1945) opposed the proposed administrative streamlining resulting from these discussions. Fischer prepared his own project in his Main Office for Spatial Ordering (''{{lang|de|Hauptamt für Raumordnung}}'') located in Warsaw.<ref name="Okkupation"/> He suggested{{when|date=November 2017}} the establishment of the three provinces ''Beskiden'', ''Weichselland'' ("[[Vistula]] Land"), and ''Galizien'' ([[Galicia (Central Europe)|Galicia]] and [[Chełm]]) by dividing the Radom and Lublin districts between them. ''Weichselland'' was to have a "Polish character", ''Galizien'' a "Ukrainian" one, and the ''Beskiden''-province to provide a German "admixture" (i.e. colonial settlement).<ref name="Okkupation"/> Further territorial planning carried out by this Warsaw-based organization under [[Sturmbannführer|Major]] Dr. Ernst Zvanetti in a May 1943 study to demarcate the eastern border of "[[Central Europe]]" (i.e. the Greater German Reich) with the "[[Eastern Europe]]an landmass" proposed an eastern German border along the "line [[Klaipėda|Memel]]-[[Odessa]]".<ref name="Wasser">
Wasser, Bruno (1993). ''Himmler's Raumplanung im Osten'', pp. 82-83. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel.
</ref>

In this context Zvanetti's study proposed a re-ordering of the "Eastern Gaue" into three geopolitical blocs:<ref name="Wasser"/>

*a western group comprising the ''Gaue'' ''[[Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia|Danzig-Westpreußen]]'', ''[[Reichsgau Wartheland|Wartheland]]'', and ''Schlesien'' ([[Silesia]])
*a central group with the ''Gaue'' ''Ostpreußen'' ([[East Prussia]]), ''Südpreußen'' ([[South Prussia]]), ''Litzmannstadt'' ([[Łódź]]), and ''Beskidenland''
*the eastern group with the ''Gau Südostpreußen'' (South-East Prussia) and including ''Wolhynien'' ([[Volhynia]] and the Lublin district), ''Galizien'', and ''Podolien'' ([[Podolia]]).