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Reviewed by:
  • Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity
  • Bryan Mark Rigg
Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity, Alexander B. Rossino (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 352 pp., $34.95.

In a crowded field of study of World War II and the Holocaust, Alexander B. Rossino has done an outstanding job finding new and important material. Hitler Strikes Poland sheds light on Nazi policy about Poland before, during, and after the German invasion on September 1, 1939. Most Germans were anti-Polish and felt that Poland was a Raubstaat, a state created by criminal means by the Western Allies at Versailles (p. 225), so it was no surprise that when news reached Germany that Warsaw had surrendered, church bells tolled across the country to commemorate the Reich's victory in the East.1 Once Poland was defeated, the Germans quickly implemented occupation policies that served as an invaluable test for the Nazis' brutal new order, though Rossino clearly shows that the "Final Solution" as we know it was not planned in detail from the beginning of the war.

In 1939, there were 3.3 million Polish Jews. By 1945, only 300,000 were still alive. Although the invasion of Poland signaled the beginning of the end for Polish Jewry, Rossino demonstrates that in 1939 the Nazis did not focus on that group exclusively, but rather on Polish citizens generally. During the initial stages of Nazi rule, Polish Gentiles were killed at the same rate as Jews relative to their representation in the population. In other words, in the beginning, 80 percent of the Poles whom the Nazis killed were Gentiles. Hitler wanted to see the destruction not only of the Jews, but also of Polish Slavs, with a focus on "political leaders, socialists, intellectuals, members of the nobility, [and] the Catholic clergy" (p. 1).

Rossino is the first American historian to provide a comprehensive picture of this facet of mass murder in Poland.2 It has been widely assumed that primarily Jews were abused and killed from the invasion of Poland on, an image popularized by The [End Page 127] Pianist and other Holocaust films. Rossino shows that while the treatment of the Jews was brutal, initially it was not reserved for Jews only.

The author does a fine job documenting the fact that the SS was not solely responsible for the atrocities in Poland; the military provided much needed assistance. Other authors, such as Christopher Browning and Jürgen Förster, have also documented this, but with a heavy emphasis on the Soviet campaign of 1941.3 In truth, the Wehrmacht worked closely with the SS from the start. For instance, by the end of the Polish campaign in early October 1939, "Wehrmacht firing squads had executed no fewer than 16,000 Poles" (pp. 86-87); when December came to a close, the SS and the Wehrmacht had murdered some 50,000 Polish citizens, 7,000 of whom were Jews (p. 234). The German armed forces worked closely with the SS to create a Polish society obedient to the Nazis and capable of becoming part of Hitler's new plans for Lebensraum—plans that included the elimination of Jews and many Poles and the subjugation of the remaining Slavs: as one army general stated in late September, "Germans are the masters and Poles are slaves" (p. 141). Yet this was only the first step toward the Nazi goal of dominating the nation. Hitler explained that Poland would eventually be "depopulated and settled by Germans" (p. 10).

Rossino's book makes it clear that the Einsatzgruppen and other SS units, as well as the Wehrmacht, were conducting a well-organized test-run for what the world would suffer once Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941—Vernichtungskrieg (a war of extermination). Had it not been for the experience gained in Poland, not to mention the foundation laid there (i.e., the construction of ghettos and concentration camps), Germany would not have been able to conduct the Holocaust with such efficiency, brutality, and organized evil. By way of illustration, more Jews died in the first month of the invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) than in the previous eight...

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