The death of a Polish Wehrmacht soldier in Russia: Bernhard Switon (1923-1942)

General historical context

 

After the three gradual partitions of Poland by the neighbouring powers of Prussia, Austria and Russia, from 1795 to the end of the First World War, Poland as a sovereign state completely disappeared from the map of Europe. The partitioning powers handled the remaining Polish population differently in each of the formerly Polish territories. The political strategy in Prussia was to Germanise the Polish population. Poles who lived in Prussia had Prussian citizenship and are referred to in German secondary literature as “domestic Poles” and those who lived in the other parts are referred to a “Poles living abroad”.[1] The domestic Poles had to learn German in school and were not allowed to live their Polish culture or maintain contact with Poles from other territories. Because of this forced assimilation, Polish migrants involved in the later labour migration were already proficient in German but, despite everything, Polish remained at the forefront of their private and family lives and, to a large extent, helped to form the Polish national identity.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the industrial sector in the German empire began to develop quickly. The rapidly increasing need for labour enticed many workers from the more remote regions into the industrial cities in the Ruhr area and into mining, steel production, construction and brick production. To ensure that domestic Poles who were attractive for the growing labour market were also able to migrate to certain western provinces for work, the legislation bowed to the economic interests of industry. This is how the Ruhr area became “Polonised”, which heralded the birth of the so-called Ruhr Poles. At the same time, however, the rights of the Polish migrants were controlled to such an extent that the Polish culture and language were not able to spread.[2] Calculations show that between 1870 and 1920, up to half a million people who were Polish speaking or of Polish heritage migrated from the rural Eastern provinces of Prussia to the industrial areas on the Rhine and the Ruhr.[3] The lack of social structures for immigrants meant that they quickly created their own Polish clubs in large numbers ensuring that traditions were maintained, the language was kept alive and support was provided.[4] However, the number of members fell drastically in the 1920s and 1930s and some clubs even had to close due to lack of members.

After the end of the First World War and in the global economic crisis, many of the Polish migrants left Germany for personal or economic reasons or because they were motivated by nationalist views. Many former prisoners of war, forced labourers and deported persons returned to the re-formed Polish nation state, others were able to be enticed away and migrated to Northern France.[5] A comparatively small fraction of Poles remained in Germany. After the National Socialists assumed power, a “potential Pogrom atmosphere”[6] eventually developed towards the national minorities, which included the Ruhr Poles. The Prussian citizenship that had been granted to them previously now no longer afforded them political rights comparable to those of the limited circle of German citizens of the Reich.[7]

There were arrests, redundancies, orders for the disbanding of clubs as subversive institutions and seizures of club assets, members of various minorities  were disadvantaged in institutions and press censorship steadily intensified. The zenith of this development was the disbanding of all Polish organisations seven days after the outbreak of war in 1939 and the arrest and internment of the leading officials and chairpersons in concentration camps.[8] The large majority of Ruhr Poles, which remained under the radar, was spared for the most part because the mining industry needed a workforce. However, they too were unable to avoid the everyday racism that prevailed in various areas of society. From 1939, the National Socialist policy found another problem with the Polish miners – the possible connections of the Ruhr Poles to the Polish forced labourers since “between 3 and 4 million [Polish-speaking people]” had been trafficked to the German Empire “during the Fascist occupation of Poland”[9]. The concern meant that the activities of the Ruhr Poles were watched very carefully and underwent further restrictions. The children of Polish immigrants were no longer able to attend their Polish lessons but had to subscribe to the National Socialist organisations instead whose aim was to provide the “correct” education for young people.

Ultimately, young Polish men were also drafted into military service because they were unable to escape conscription.  It is not clear what the conditions for Ruhr Poles and other minorities were like in the ranks of the Wehrmacht. In 2003, Christoph Rass noted that “[...] with respect to the social structures within the Wehrmacht, the soldiers remain a blank spot in the research landscape”[10]. A similar and even more direct assessment can be found in Ryszard Kaczmarek who notes the following: “The state of research into the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, and its Polish soldiers in particular, can hardly be called satisfactory. The latter hardly feature in contemporary German historical research even though there have long been investigations into members of the Wehrmacht from other countries [...].”[11]

Kaczmarek’s book “Polen in der Wehrmacht” [Poles in the Wehrmacht] deals with the forced “Germanisation” and intake of Poles into the Wehrmacht from the areas that were annexed in 1939. It describes the status of Poles as “second-class citizens and soldiers”[12], but the situation of Poles from the Ruhr area is not dealt with specifically.