Operation Tannenberg

Not to be confused with Operation Tannenbaum.

Operation Tannenberg Unternehmen Tannenberg
Operation Tannenberg, 20 October 1939, the mass murder of Polish townsmen in western Poland
Location	German occupied Poland
Date	1939
Target	Polish people
Attack type	Genocidal Massacre, mass shooting
Weapons	Automatic weapons
Deaths	20,000 deaths in 760 mass executions by SS Einsatzgruppen
Perpetrators	Nazi Germany

Operation Tannenberg (German: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was a codename for one of the extermination actions by Nazi Germany that was directed at the Polish nationals during the opening stages of World War II in Europe; part of the Generalplan Ost for the German colonization of the East. The shootings were conducted with the use of a proscription lists (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen), compiled by the Gestapo in the span of two years before the 1939 attack.

The top secret lists identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, and others, who were to be interned or shot. Members of the German minority living in Poland assisted in preparing the lists. It is estimated that up to 20,000 Germans living in Poland belonged to organizations involved in various forms of subversion.

Operation Tannenberg was closely followed by the Intelligenzaktion, a second phase of the Unternehmen Tannenberg directed by Heydrich's Sonderreferat from Berlin. It lasted until January 1940. In Pomerania alone 36,000–42,000 Poles including children have been killed already before the end of 1939.

Implementation

Polish teachers from Bydgoszcz guarded by members of Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz before execution

The plan was finalized in May 1939 by the Central Office II P (Poland). Following the orders of Adolf Hitler, a special unit dubbed Tannenberg was created within the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). It commanded a number of Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD formed with Gestapo, Kripo and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) officers who were theoretically following the local Wehrmacht commanders. Their task was to track down and arrest all the people listed on the proscription lists exactly as it has been compiled before the outbreak of war.

The first phase of the action occurred in August 1939 when about 2,000 activists of Polish minority organisations in Germany were arrested and murdered. The second phase of the action began on September 1, 1939, and ended in October, resulting in at least 20,000 deaths in 760 mass executions by Einsatzgruppen special task units with some help from regular Wehrmacht (armed forces). In addition, a special formation was created from the German minority living in Poland called Selbstschutz, whose members had trained in Germany before the war in diversion and guerilla fighting (see: Deutscher Volksverband, the German People's Union in Poland). The formation was responsible for many massacres and due to its bad reputation was dissolved by Nazi authorities after the September Campaign with transfer to regular formations.

In the course of Operation Tannenberg patients from Polish hospitals were murdered in Wartheland (Wielkopolska) by Einsatzgruppe VI under Herbert Lange. He was appointed commandant of the first Chełmno extermination camp soon thereafter. Already by mid-1940, Lange and his men were responsible for the murder of about 1,100 patients in Owińska, 2,750 patients at Kościan, 1,558 patients and 300 Poles at Działdowo who were shot in the back of the neck; and hundreds of Poles at Fort VII where the mobile gas-chamber (Einsatzwagen) was first developed along with the first gassing bunker.

According to historian Peter Longerich, the hospital massacres were conducted on the sole initiative of Einsatzgruppen, because they weren't requested by Himmler to do so. Lange's experience in the mass killing of Poles during Operation Tannenberg was the reason why Ernst Damzog, the Commander of Security Police and SD stationed in occupied Poznań (Posen) placed him in charge of the SS-Sonderkommando Lange (special detachment) for the purpose of mass gassing operations which led to the eventual annihilation of the Łódź Ghetto.

See also

• Anti-Polonism
• Genocide
• Pacification operations in German-occupied Poland
• History of Poland (1939–1945)
• Wawelberg Group
• Operation Himmler

Bibliography

• Verbatim transcript of Part I of the book The German New Order in Poland published for the Polish Ministry of Information by Hutchinson & Co., London, in late 1941. The period covered by the book is September, 1939 to June, 1941.
• Jean Maridor, La Station de Radiodiffusion de Gleiwitz (Gliwice) - L'Opération TANNENBERG. (French)
• Alfred Spiess, Heiner Lichtenstein: Unternehmen Tannenberg. Der Anlass zum Zweiten Weltkrieg. Korrigierte und erweiterte Ausgabe. (Ullstein-Buch ; Nr. 33118 : Zeitgeschichte) Ullstein, Frankfurt/M ; Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-548-33118-1.