“Polenfeldzug”: Nazi Crimes during the War against Poland in 1939 and their Place in German Memory
“Polenfeldzug”: Nazi Crimes during the War against Poland in 1939 and their Place in German Memory
Author(s): Stephan LehnstaedtSubject(s): Military history, Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust, Politics of History/Memory, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Instytut Solidarności i Męstwa im. Witolda Pileckiego
Keywords: Polenfeldzug; Nazi crimes; Poland; German memory;
Summary/Abstract: German crimes committed in Poland during the years 1939–1945 have not been forgotten in present-day Germany. But the so-called “Polenfeldzug” plays a strangely marginal role in memory. This is surprising insofar as it not only represented a drastic break from previous policy towards Poland, (Lehnstaedt, 2017) but also constituted the “prelude to the war of annihilation,” as Jochen Böhler termed it (Böhler, 2006; Böhler, 2009b). A war of annihilation not from 1941 but already in 1939. The Second World War was a crime against humanity from its very beginning.
Journal: Studia nad Totalitaryzmami i Wiekiem XX
- Issue Year: 2020
- Issue No: 4
- Page Range: 446-455
- Page Count: 10
- Language: English