After the invasion of Poland, the conquered territory of Greater Poland was split between four Reichsgaue and the General Government area. The Militärbezirk Posen was created in September 1939, and on 8 October 1939 annexed by Germany. It was named the Reichsgau Posen, and SSObergruppenfuhrerArthur Greiser was appointed Gauleiter on 21 October. He would remain in office through the end of the war. Reichsgau Posen was renamed Reichsgau Wartheland on 29 January 1940. The Wehrmacht established there the Wehrkreis XXI, based at Poznań, under the command of General der Artillerie Walter Petzel. Its primary operational unit was the 48th Panzer Korps, covering so-called Militärische Unterregion-Hauptsitze including Posen, Lissa, Hohensalza, Leslau, Kalisch, and Litzmannstadt. It maintained training areas at Sieradz and Biedrusko. The territory was inhabited predominantly by ethnic Poles with a German minority of 16.7% in 1921, and Polish Jews, most of whom were imprisoned at the Łódź Ghetto eventually, and exterminated at Chełmno extermination camp within the next two years.
Characteristics
The Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Reichsgau Wartheland, native-born Arthur Greiser, embarked on a program of complete removal of the formerly Polish citizenry upon his nomination by Heinrich Himmler. The plan also entailed the re-settling of ethnic Germans from the Baltic and other regions into farms and homes formerly owned by Poles and Jews. He also authorized the clandestine operation of exterminating 100,000 Polish Jews, in the process of the region's complete "Germanization". In the first year of World War II, some 630,000 Poles and Jews were forcibly removed from Wartheland and transported to the occupied General Government in a series of operations called the Kleine Planung covering most Polish territories annexed by Germany at about the same time. Both Poles and Jews had their property confiscated. By the end of 1940, some 325,000 Poles and Jews from the Wartheland and the Polish Corridor were expelled to General Government, often forced to abandon most of their belongings. Fatalities were numerous. In 1941, the Nazis expelled a further 45,000 people, and from autumn of that year they began killing Jews by shooting and in gas vans, at first spasmodically and experimentally. Reichsgau Wartheland had the population: 4,693,700 by 1941. Greiser wrote in November 1942: "I myself do not believe that the Führer needs to be asked again in this matter, especially since at our last discussion with regard to the Jews he told me that I could proceed with these according to my own judgement." re-settlement in Warthegau. Map of the Third Reich in 1939 after the conquest of Poland; with pockets of German colonists brought into Reichsgau Wartheland'' from the Soviet "sphere of influence" – superimposed with the red outline of Poland missing entirely from the original print.
End of war
By 1945 nearly half a million Germanic Volksdeutsche had been resettled in the Warthegau alone among the areas annexed by Nazi Germany while the Soviet forces began to push the retreating Nazi forces back through the Polish lands. Most German residents along with over a million colonists fled westward. Some did not, due to restrictions by Germany's own government and the quickly advancing Red Army. An estimated 50,000 refugees died from the severe winter conditions, others as war atrocities committed by Soviet military. The remaining ethnically German population was expelled to new Germany after the war ended.
