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| “ | 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! | „ |
| ~ Arthur Greiser |
Arthur Karl Greiser (22 January 1897 – 21 July 1946) was a Nazi German politician, SS-Obergruppenführer, Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of the German-occupied territory of Wartheland. He was one of the persons primarily responsible for organizing the Holocaust in occupied Poland and numerous other crimes against humanity. He was arrested by the Americans in 1945, and was tried, convicted and executed by hanging in Poland in 1946.
Biography edit
Greiser was born in Schroda (Środa Wielkopolska), Province of Posen, Imperial Germany, Greiser was the son of a minor local bailiff. He learned to speak Polish fluently during his childhood.
In 1903, he enrolled in elementary school, which was followed by two years of intermediate school and finally the Königlich-Humanistisches Gymnasium (Royal Humanities Secondary School) in Hohensalza, which he left in 1914 without receiving a diploma.
In August 1914, he volunteered to join the Imperial German Navy. He served in the Kiel harbour naval forts at Korugen, Falckenstein, and in the fortress tower of Laboe from August 1914 to July 1915. He was then assigned as an artillery observer in Flanders as well as participating in minesweeping operations in Friedrichsort.
Greiser was fanatically anti-Christian and an early member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP number 166,635). After many years with the nationalist Deutschsoziale Partei (DtSP) founded by Richard Kunze and membership in Der Stahlhelm in the mid-1920s, he joined the NSDAP and Sturmabteilung on 1 December 1929, and the Schutzstaffel on 29 September 1931.
He was the Deputy President of the Free City of Danzig from 1933 to 1934 in the Rauschning Senate, and was made Senate President (Senatspräsident) in 1935–1939. As Senate President of Danzig, he was a rival to his nominal superior Albert Forster, Gauleiter of the city since 1930. Greiser was part of the SS empire whilst Forster was closely aligned with the Nazi Party officials Rudolf Hess and later Martin Bormann. On 23 August 1939 Forster replaced Greiser as Danzig's head of state.
Greiser was accused by Poland as being directly responsible for escalating tensions between the Free City and the Republic of Poland in 1939. When the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Józef Beck announced economic reprisals following the harassment of Polish frontier guards and customs officers, Greiser issued an announcement on 29 July 1939 declaring that the Danzig police no longer recognised their authority or power, and demanded their immediate withdrawal. The notice was so rudely worded that the Polish diplomatic representative to Danzig, Marian Chodacki, refused to forward it to Beck and instead sent a court summary.
Immediately following the 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 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.
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. On 30 January 1942, Greiser was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer.
Greiser typified the brutality exhibited by officials of Nazi Germany to the Poles. He was an ardent racist who enthusiastically persued an 'ethnic cleansing' program to rid the Warthegau of Poles and to resettle the 'cleansed' areas with ethnic Germans. This was along the lines of the racial theories espoused by SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. Mass expulsions of Poles from the Warthegau to the General Government and summary executions were the norm.
Greiser actively participated in the Holocaust. 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 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. He then instructed HSSPF Wilhelm Koppe to manage the overcrowding. Koppe and 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 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.
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 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 Joseph Goebbels, who in his diary on 2 March 1945 labeled Greiser "a real disgrace to the (Nazi) Party", but his recommendations for punishment after the capture of Poznań were ignored.
After the war, the Poles tried him for war crimes. He plea that he was only following orders did not hold up as it was shown that other Gauleiters did not follow a similar policy (such as Albert Forster in the other German-annexed section of Occupied Poland called Danzig-West Prussia, who simply declared the Poles in his area of responsibility to be Germans). After Greiser was convicted, he was paraded around the city of Poznan in a cage, before being hanged.