|
Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, many former citizens of the Second Polish Republic from across the Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany were forcibly conscripted into the ''Wehrmacht'' army in Upper Silesia and in Pomerania. They were declared citizens of the Third Reich by law and therefore subject to drumhead court-martial in case of draft evasion. Professor Ryszard Kaczmarek of the University of Silesia in Katowice, author of a monograph titled ''Polacy w Wehrmachcie'' ("Poles in the Wehrmacht") noted that the scale of this phenomenon was much larger than previously assumed, because 90% of the inhabitants of these two westernmost regions of prewar Poland were ordered to register on the Nazi ''Deutsche Volksliste '' by the invader regardless of will. The number of the conscripts however, is not known. The data does not exist beyond 1943. In June 1946 the British Secretary of State for War reported to parliament that among the citizens of interwar Poland who served in the Wehrmacht as foreign conscripts, a total of 68,693 men were captured by the Allies in north-west Europe. The overwhelming majority of them, 53,630, enlisted into the Polish Army under the British Command, and served in the Polish Armed Forces in the West against the Germans until the end of World War II.〔 ==A matter of conscience== The Republic of Poland was a multicultural country before World War II, with almost a third of its population originating from the minority groups: 13.9% Ukrainians; 10% Jews; 3.1% Belarusians; 2.3% Germans and 3.4% percent Czechs, Lithuanians and Russians. Members of the German minority resided predominantly in the lands of the former German Empire but not only. Some of the German soldiers had Polish origin. The conscripts belonged to often vastly different categories.〔 Some of them considered themselves and felt German all along. Others seemed aware that their service meant collaboration with the enemy. The overwhelming majority nevertheless served with the idea of keeping their families safe. The only reliable number can be drawn from the statistics of the Polish Armed Forces in the West listing 90,000 volunteers who arrived in wartorn France in order to fight for Poland against Germany. Only they might be considered Polish by their own individual conscience, whilst those who fought against Poland of their own free will – and later settled in West Germany or elsewhere – might be rightfully categorized as German-blooded rather than Polish.〔 The majority of conscripts, coming from the former Polish Second Republic, were deployed in occupied Western Europe as not trustworthy enough to serve in the East even with their already Germanized names.〔 After the war ended, many of them were afraid to return to Poland although at least 10,000 did return. Service in the Wehrmacht was a personal tragedy for many.〔 There was also a German storm brigade known as ''Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz'' formed by the German minority in Poland. Many of its members were trained in the Third Reich. As soon as the war started, ''Selbstschutz'' engaged in widespread massacres of Poles and Jews in West Prussia, Upper Silesia and Reichsgau Wartheland, together with the ''Einsatzgruppen''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Poles in the Wehrmacht」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|