‘The German is the Master:’ Segregation in the Warthegau

Arthur Greiser's anti-Polish policies are what most distinguished him from other Nazi leaders. To Greiser, anti-Polish measures were just as crucial for his Germanization program as the persecution and murder of Jews. The Warthegau thus saw the most severe anti-Polish policies in Nazi-occupied Europe. At the same time, he used radical racial policies to accumulate additional personal powers and to strengthen his radical Nazi credentials. Many of his other measures — including anti-church policies carried out in the name of Germanization — fractured or otherwise alienated the Gau's German population. So while segregation policies divided Germans from Poles, they also exposed contradictions in Greiser's policies and ruptured the German community in the Warthegau. Many of his policies were based on realities that he simply could not overcome, such as his need for Polish workers or the support of Germans in his Gau.