Branch: Government
Born: 26 July 1902 in Germany.
Died: 28 February 1952 in Warsaw, Poland.
Appointment's:
Decorations:
Other: Personnel
Articles:
Albert Maria Forster was a German politician. Under his administration
as the Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia during the Second
World War, the local non-German population suffered ethnic
cleansing, mass murder, and forceful Germanisation. Forster
was sentenced to death for his crimes after Nazi Germany was
defeated.
Life
Forster was born in Fürth, Bavaria, where he attended
the Humanistisches Gymnasium from 1912 to 1920. In 1923, he
became a member of the SA in Fürth and observed the trial
for high treason of
Erich
von Ludendorff,
Adolf
Hitler, and eight others, which took place between February
26 and April 1, 1924, in the court of Munich.
Free City of Danzig
In 1930, Forster became the National Socialist Party's Gauleiter
of the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). In the spring
of 1933, Forster spearheaded the Nazi take-over of Danzig.
Between 1933-1939, Forster became embroiled in a feud with
the Nazi President of the Danzig Senate, Arthur Greiser, who
was to remain Forster's life-long nemesis.
Before World War II Forster had tried and failed to gain
control over the organisation of the irredentist activities
of the minority ethnic German population in the Polish Corridor,
neighboring Freie Stadt Danzig, which was created in 1920
by Treaty of Versailles), rather it was the SS-dominated
Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle that won control. With Forster
and
Heinrich
Himmler engaged in a power struggle, this rendered the
(ethnic) Germans concerned suspicious of Forster. When these
territories were annexed after the Invasion of Poland
they became Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, Forster's distrust
of the local Nazi leaders led him to deny them political
power and he filled all the significant positions with people
from the pre-war Free City of Danzig. The result was, inevitably,
great bitterness amongst the local Germans, which Forster's
Germanization policies, which denied them higher status
than that of the Poles, naturally exacerbated.
In May 1934 Forster, who had been made Honorable Citizen
of Fürth and of Danzig, married Gertrud Deetz. The
wedding took place in the Berlin Chancellory, with
Adolf
Hitler and Rudolf Heß as witnesses and wedding
guests.
In 1939, following orders from Berlin, Forster led the
agitation in Danzig to step up pressure for annexation by
Nazi Germany and proclaimed that in future Poland will be
only a dream. The Danzig issue was one of the pretexts used
for the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. He was hateful
of Jews whom he called dirty and slippery race
and he expressed his desire to control parts of Poland after
Poles would be expelled from them
World War II
Following Poland's defeat, Greiser became Gauleiter in the
Warthegau, which became part of Germany after 1939. Forster
became the Gauleiter and Reichstatthalter (governor) of the
province Danzig-West Prussia from 1939 to 1945, thereby concentrating
both the State and National Socialist Party power in his hands.
Adolf Hitler
instructed the Gauleiters, namely Forster and his rival Arthur
Greiser, in the Warthegau to Germanize the area, promising
that There would be no questions asked about how this Germanization
was to be accomplished. Forster goal was to make the area
fully Germanised within ten years
Ethnic cleansing and Polish holocaust
Forster was responsible for ethnic cleansing of Poles to the
General Government, as well as sending them to the Stutthof
concentration camp. He was also one of those responsible for
Mass murders in Piasnica, where approximately 12,000 Poles
and Kashub intelligentsia were killed in 1939-1940. At Forster's
disposal in early Nazi occupation of Polish territories were
17.667 members of the paramilitary Selbstschutz, Danzig police
units (including Einsatzkommando 16), and a special SD unit
Forster announced that West Prussia would become a blossoming,
pure German province and all Poles will be driven off.
Forster personally encouraged pogroms and violence in
a speech at the Prusinski Hotel in Wejherowo he agitated
ethnic Germans to attack Poles by saying We have to
eliminate the lice ridden Poles, starting with those in
the cradle… in your hands I give the fate of the Poles,
you can do with them what you want. The crowd gathered
before the hotel chanted Kill the Polish dogs!
and Death to the Poles The Selbstschutz participated in
the early massacres as Piasnica, and many of their members
later joined police and SS formations which continued the
massacres until the Fall of 1940.
The total number of victims of what Christopher Browning
calls orgy of murder and deportation cannot
be estimated with precision, Nazi reports from early occupation
speak of about 20,000 Poles destroyed, while
additionally Forster reported that 87.000 people had been
evacuated from the region by February 1940 alone.
It is estimated that till the end of the war up to 60.000
people had been murdered in the region and up to 170.000
ethnically cleansed.
Role in the Jewish HolocaustForster at the outbreak of
the war declared that Jews are not humans, and must
be eradicated like vermin...mercy towards Jews is reprehensible.
Any means of destruction of Jews is desirable. Jews were
being arrested, executed and murdered as well as deported
to General Government. By November 1939 Danzig-West Prussia
was declared Judenfrei It is estimated that up to 30.000
Jews from Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in Pomerania
and attached to Danzig-West Prussia were mass murdered during
the war.
Germanization policies
Forster put remaining Poles between alternative-become Germanised
or become slaves.
Forster pursued a policy of forced assimilation of the population
in his area of responsibility. Forster was willing to accept
any and all Poles who claimed to have German blood as Germans.
In practice, the method of determining whether Poles had any
German ancestry or not was to send out National Socialist
Party workers to interview the local Poles all Poles who stated
that they had German ancestry had their answers taken at face
value with no documentation required. SS Reichsführer
Heinrich
Himmler, appointed by
Adolf
Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of
Germandom and, as such, the man assigned to decide the Germanization
policy in German-occupied territories, took the opposite view.
Refusal to become Germanised was punishable by deportation
to General Government or imprisonment in concentration camp.
Forster was at odds with Arthur Greiser who had complained
to
Heinrich
Himmler that Forster's assimilation policy was against
Nazi racial theory. When
Heinrich
Himmler approached Forster over this issue, Forster
simply ignored him, realizing that
Adolf
Hitler allowed each Gauleiter to run his area as he
saw fit. Both Greiser and
Heinrich
Himmler complained to
Adolf
Hitler that Forster was allowing thousands of Poles
to be classified as Germans, but
Adolf
Hitler merely bounced the problem back to them, telling
them to go sort out their problems with Forster on their
own. This was a difficult task.
Heinrich
Himmler attempts to cajole Forster to see matters his
way met with resentment and contempt. In a discussion with
Richard Hildebrandt, HSSPF Vistula, over Germanization in
his Reichsgau, Forster scoffed, if I looked like
Heinrich
Himmler, I wouldn't talk about race.
Conflict with SS and colonization policies
Forster's conflict with the SS also had direct and injurious
consequences for ethnic Germans. During the war, hundreds
of thousands of ethnic-Germans were moved by Nazi-Soviet agreement
from Soviet Union into Poland used as colonists in Nazi
occupied Poland. While Greiser did all he could to accommodate
them in his Reichsgau, Forster viewed them with hostility,
claiming that his region needed young farmers while the refugees
were old and urbanized. He initially refused to admit any
of them into his Reichsgau. When a ship bearing several thousands
of ethnic Germans from the Baltic states arrived at Danzig
he initially refused them entry unless
Heinrich
Himmler promised that they would not be settled in Danzig-West
Prussia but proceed immediately elsewhere, an assurance that
Heinrich
Himmler could not provide. It was only following a lengthy
telephone consultation with the desperate
Heinrich
Himmler that Forster allowed the passengers to disembark
on the understanding that their residence in the Reichsgau
would be temporary, though most did not, ultimately, leave
the region. In time he had to relent and by June 1944 53,258
colonists had settled in Danzig-West Prussia, a far cry from
the 421,780 settled in the Warthegau. Forster's Germanization
policies left less free land housing than Greiser's mass
expulsions, although it is evident that Forster's perception
of the ethnic German refugees as wards of the SS played its
role in determining his attitude.
Trial and death
At the end of the war, Forster took refuge in the British
Occupation Zone of Germany. The British handed him to communist
Poland. Forster was condemned to death by the Polish court
for war crimes (the Supreme National Tribunal) and crimes
against humanity in 1948. He was held and had his sentence
deferred, but was moved from Danzig and hanged on February
28, 1952 in Mokotów Prison in Warsaw. His wife, who
had not heard from him since 1949, was in 1954 informed of
his death.
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