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Concentrated southeast of S\u0142upsk, units of the 4th Army quickly crossed the Polish border, and divisions recruited in Pomerania also took part in the fighting in Gda\u0144sk Pomerania and Kujawy: the 2nd Infantry Division (Motorized), unofficially named the 2. Pommerische Division (2nd Pomeranian Infantry Division) from Szczecin, and the 32nd Infantry Division from Koszalin. Pomeranians learned about the fighting from the press, viewing the first front-line photographs documenting the achievements of the Wehrmacht and the destruction of Polish cities. A detailed map of Poland was also published so that readers could follow the course of the fighting. The declaration of war by Great Britain and France caused some unease; for some, memories of World War I and fears related to the consequences of fighting on two fronts returned. The Nazi press in Pomerania dispelled these fears through means such as a photo reportage presenting the calm daily life of the residents of Szczecin on September 3, 1939. On the ninth day of the war, wanting to document the complete success of the blitzkrieg, false information was published stating that German troops had entered Warsaw\u2014a report that was subsequently never retracted. In the second half of September, articles appeared reporting on wounded soldiers brought by hospital ships to Szczecin, where they were said to be recovering thanks to excellent medical care. However, nothing was written about the killed Pomeranians, so as not to dampen public morale. The “Polish campaign” in the Pomeranian press ended on September 25, when photographs of the triumphal entry of German troops into Szczecin were presented. Accounts described the enthusiasm of the population, who for hours lined the streets with flowers to welcome their victors. It is difficult to precisely estimate the level of support among Pomeranians for the NSDAP at that time, which was already spectacularly high compared to the rest of Germany. Military successes, the conquest of Poland, and subsequently the capture of Denmark, Norway, France, and the Benelux countries undoubtedly drove this support to the highest levels of acceptance and identification with the Nazi regime.<\/p>\n\n
Attempting to gauge public sentiment by analyzing the Pomeranian press from 1939\u20131942, one gets the impression that the war was taking place somewhere far away, and the residents of Szczecin and other centers only remembered it when reading reports on operations at distant fronts. On a daily basis, they personally noticed it when encountering soldiers on the streets who were on leave or passes. The general population of Pomerania experienced the war primarily by observing units preparing for successive invasions. The war was also brought to mind by the published death notices of soldiers who died on various fronts, although over time, fewer of these were printed in order to maintain morale. Due to the scarcity of sources, it is difficult to assess changes in the daily lives of the residents, but it seems they happened quite slowly. Press advertisements, just as before, encouraged audiences to go to the cinema, theater, or a concert. The repertoire was just as rich as before the war, and following the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, it was even supplemented with cultural offerings from the USSR. Business announcements, as before, advertised large and smaller Szczecin companies. It was assumed that thanks to the aggressive policy pursued toward the neighbors of the Third Reich, new markets and opportunities for action would open up for Szczecin merchants and producers. The slogan stating that the port of Szczecin was the gateway to the Baltic took on new meaning at the time. The press presented idyllic pictures of civilian life to convince people that the war would not knock on the doors of Szczecin homes, and that every man called up to arms would eventually see his family during a soldier’s leave. This makes it impossible to determine to what extent the plunder of conquered lands affected the material situation of the Pomeranians. In the published propaganda photographs showing crowds expressing their joy, pride, and euphoria over military successes, there is no room for sympathy toward the defeated, which was rather replaced by satisfaction from participating in the effects of the economic drain organized by the Third Reich.<\/p>\n\n
When considering the life of Pomeranians during World War II and their attitude toward events related to it, an important question seems to be the state of their knowledge concerning the occupied territories in the East. Today, we are unable to trace what was said among themselves on this subject, what information was brought by German army soldiers coming home on leave, what was learned from the numerous forced laborers, or whether their presence and semi-slave labor stirred the conscience of the German “master race”? Did a second, covert circulation of information exist, generated on the basis of leaks from the NSDAP, SS, Gestapo, or other criminal organizations? Even if we answer these questions in the affirmative, a fundamental issue remains: were ordinary Germans interested in the crimes in the East at all? Could media information, openly presented also by the Pomeranian press, have thus aroused doubts and a sense of shame? The subject of the eastern territories frequently appeared in it already after the end of the aggression against Poland. Special correspondents for the “Pommersche Zeitung” and “Stettiner General Anzeiger” stayed in the occupied areas, from where they sent abundant correspondence to Szczecin. The main topic of interest was the Jewish question in the Polish lands. Presenting the living standards of Jews and Poles in the worst possible light with the aim of dehumanizing the image of the racial enemy, the authors asked the question: “Is this still Europe?” The authorities were praised for the idea of organizing ghettos, which were intended to provide space for the settlement of Germans arriving from the territory of the USSR. Of course, there is no mention of the extermination experienced by Pomeranian Jews as well. In February 1940, they were deported to the territories of occupied Poland into the Lublin District of the General Government. In 1942, almost all of them were murdered as part of the so-called final solution to the Jewish question, prepared and implemented by the German state. Following the forced deportation of Jews, Gauleiter F. Schwede-Coburg boasted that Pomerania was the first German region to be completely “free of Jews” (*Judenfrei*). Pomeranian officials and policemen had, in any case, already acquired organizational and extermination experience earlier, when from September 1939 they carried out the T4 action aimed at eliminating individuals with genetic defects and the mentally ill from German society.<\/p>\n\n
At the same time, Szczecin became one of the most important locations on the map of the “Return to the Reich” (*Heim ins Reich*) campaign organized by the German authorities, which involved the resettlement of Germans from the Baltic states. As part of this heavily publicized propaganda program, approximately 125,000 people were brought to Germany, a significant portion of whom were transported through the port of Szczecin. At the same time, Pomerania was treated as a relatively safe area, far removed from the fronts of World War II for a long time. Consequently, especially from 1943 onward as Allied bombings against German cities intensified, people from threatened industrial towns of the Third Reich were evacuated and accommodated in Pomeranian villages and small towns. The scale of the phenomenon was quite large, and by early 1944, the Pomeranian “air raid shelter of the Reich” (*Luftschutzbunker des Reichs*) was hosting around 100,000 evacuees, mainly from Berlin and other German metropolises as well as the Ruhr area.<\/p>\n\n
A widely visible consequence of the war was the appearance on the streets of Pomeranian towns and villages of new “residents” forcibly brought from areas occupied by the German army, who were sent to work in local agriculture and industry. The labor shortage resulting from the mobilization of Pomeranian men and the increase in the number of workplaces along with the expansion of factories producing for war needs meant that the first prisoners of war and forced laborers were brought to Pomerania as early as September 1939. Their number systematically grew, reaching nearly 90 thousand by the beginning of 1940, including 67 thousand employed in agriculture. Following the Poles, along with further Nazi conquests, transports of Frenchmen, Belgians, Serbs, and nationalities inhabiting the USSR at the time arrived. After 1943, Italians also appeared in large numbers, yet the number of Polish forced laborers remained the largest throughout the entire war. German labor offices recorded a growing number of foreign workers, which at its peak in 1944 reached 225 thousand, of whom about 60% were employed in agriculture.<\/p>\n\n
The living conditions of forced laborers were poor, though also varied. Workers from Western countries were generally treated the best, followed by Czechs, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs, and Poles, while at the very bottom of the hierarchy were Russians and representatives of other nationalities of the USSR. The wages paid were only enough to cover maintenance costs, which were deducted by employers for accommodation and rather meager meals.<\/p>\n
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For better control, foreign workers were marked: Poles wore a purple letter “P” on a yellow background, those from the USSR wore an “OST” patch, and the French wore a tricolor badge. Forced laborers were not allowed to use public transport, attend cinemas, theaters, or restaurants, and sometimes they were even banned from city parks. There was also no place for them in public air-raid shelters. A curfew applied to them. They were severely punished for many behaviors, and being late for work or making a mistake at a factory could be considered sabotage, punishable by deportation to a concentration camp or death. This latter punishment was also reserved for those forced laborers who maintained intimate relations with German women. In such cases, the death penalty was most often carried out publicly, witnessed by other foreign workers. They lived in various places. Camps were organized near larger industrial plants, which forced laborers were often not allowed to leave. To provide labor for the synthetic gasoline factory (Hydrierwerke P\u00f6litz), the largest complex of camps was established in Police. Smaller workplaces and workshops organized collective accommodation sites, where workers generally had more freedom. Women mostly worked as domestic help and lived next to the apartment owners or in company premises. Due to the concentration of industry, the area of Greater Szczecin was the largest complex of forced labor camps and collective accommodation sites in Pomerania. It is estimated that during the war there were about 180 of them here, inhabited by over 40,000 foreign workers. They accounted for about 10% of the city’s population, with Poles being the most numerous group among them.<\/p>\n\n
What was the attitude of German Pomeranians toward this group of new, wartime “residents”? Forced labor for foreigners generally did not arouse remorse, as it was considered one of the consequences of war and the result of the conquest and exploitation of Europe. Foreign workers encountered both decent treatment and an approach full of cruelty and sadism. A bad reputation was held by the penal camp located near Police on board the ship “Bremerhaven,” as well as the subcamp of the Stutthof concentration camp in M\u015bci\u0119cin. As a rule, however, there was the legally guaranteed subordination of forced laborers, who had to obey German orders, and regulations even made it impossible to share a meal with Germans. The end of the exploitation of foreign workers and the existence of the forced labor system in Pomerania was brought only by their evacuation and the flight of the German administration before the approaching Eastern Front in the winter and spring of 1945.<\/p>\n\n
World War II persecutions also affected other groups of Pomeranian residents. In the crosshairs of the Gestapo was a group of Catholic priests and monks gathered around the Church of St. John the Baptist and the Borromean Sisters’ hospital in Szczecin, as well as in several other parishes of the Szczecin regency. Particularly in this area, unlike the Byt\u00f3w and L\u0119bork counties inhabited by Kashubians, the Catholic community was not very numerous (around 3.5% of the population in the entire Pomeranian province). However, among some of them, a rejection of Nazi ideology\u2014distant from the truths of the Christian faith\u2014was germinating. The authorities viewed this with concern, especially when, during World War II, priests also ministered to soldiers of this denomination from other areas of Germany and to the numerous Polish forced laborers present in Pomerania. Suspecting the priests of propagating anti-Nazi views, the Gestapo carried out a provocation as part of “Fall Stettin,” resulting in the arrest of 40 people in February 1943, including 11 priests from Szczecin, Greifswaldu, Wolgast, Borzys\u0142awiec near Goleni\u00f3w, Zinnowitz on the island of Usedom, and Parchim. One of them was tortured to death in a concentration camp, and three were executed in 1944. Years later, in 2011, the Szczecin priest Carl Lamprecht was raised to the altars by the Church.<\/p>\n\n
There were other groups in Pomerania that opposed Nazism and were subject to discrimination, disenfranchisement, or state violence. These included conservatives gathered around the von Thadden family from Trzyg\u0142\u00f3w near Gryfice, who had ties to the Kreisau Circle. Victims of the Nazi regime also included Christian denominations that refused military service, such as Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as secular pacifists who, following the trauma of the Great War, warned that A. Hitler’s rule was leading the world to a new hecatomb. Opposition to the Nazis was also manifested in communist and social democratic circles, as well as among the residents of the eastern and southern parts of the province who were gathered in the Union of Poles in Germany, which was outlawed in 1939. However, it must be stated that the reach of these groups was rather limited and their significance quite small. Symbolically, today they represent the brightest page in the history of the Pomeranian community. For the most part, however, Pomeranians\u2014like Germans in general\u2014accepted the rule of the NSDAP and, even if they did not express enthusiasm for its successes, they adapted to the new conditions.<\/p>\n\n
The horror of war began to reach Pomerania in 1943, when, following the defeat at Stalingrad, J. Goebbels announced the necessity of waging total war. The Nazi authorities demanded increased sacrifices from Germans, first and foremost through successive age cohorts being called up to arms. Despite the predatory exploitation of Europe’s conquered regions, industrial and food goods became increasingly subject to rationing; collections of non-ferrous metals, secondary raw materials, peelings, and food scraps were organized; and warm clothes and shoes were donated for the army on the Eastern Front. However, unlike in World War I, there was no hunger in German cities. The first bombings of Szczecin took place as early as 1940, but back then the British focused mainly on the synthetic gasoline factory in Police, although individual tenement houses in the city were also destroyed. The plant in Police itself was ultimately destroyed in bombings in January and March 1945. In August 1943, the British air force carried out Operation Hydra, attacking the Military Research Institute in Peenem\u00fcnde on the island of Usedom to prevent the Germans from producing V-2 rockets. The residents of Szczecin experienced their first carpet bombings in 1943 and 1944. Initially, these were directed at industrial districts (north and south of the city center), before concentrating on the port and surrounding areas in August 1944. As a result, very serious damage was sustained by the Old Town, parts of Niebuszewo, Pomorzany, and Goc\u0142aw. Szczecin was the most heavily attacked city in Pomerania. According to estimates, several thousand residents died, and tens of thousands were left homeless. As a consequence of the Nazis locating the arms industry in Pomerania after 1933, some cities, especially those situated west of the Oder, were also bombed. In 1943 and 1944, the Allies attacked the Heinkel air base and workshops near Ribnitz; in May, June, and October 1944, bombs fell on Stralsund, where the Americans targeted the causeway and bridge built in 1936 leading to the island of R\u00fcgen. Heavy bombings were directed at Anklam several times between 1943 and 1944, targeting, among other things, the Arado aircraft factories. One of the final bombings was the raid on the city of \u015awinouj\u015bcie on March 12, 1945, which\u2014due to the heavy casualties among the civilian population\u2014is referred to as the “Dresden of the North.”<\/p>\n
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During the final months of German Pomerania, the Red Army’s offensive from the Vistula River, which began on January 12, 1945, heavily impacted the daily existence of the residents. Increasing power shifted into the hands of military and police structures, which treated the civilian population both as a reservoir of labor needed to build a defensive system and as unnecessary dead weight as the front approached. The successes of the Soviet advance were confirmed by tens of thousands of refugees from East Prussia and Gda\u0144sk Pomerania, who streamed along Pomeranian roads toward the West starting in late January 1945. This caused a deterioration in public morale, which the authorities attempted to counter through escalating police control and psychological and physical terror directed against anyone spreading defeatist sentiments. Soldiers suspected of desertion were punished with death by public hanging. Executions of actual and alleged opponents of the regime were carried out up until the very last moments.<\/p>\n
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It was assumed at the time that Pomerania would be protected by the fortification line of the Pomeranian Wall (*Pommernstellung*), built along the border with Poland since the 1930s. It did not form a cohesive system of concrete bunkers and shelters, but consisted mainly of fortified positions and terrain obstacles, making use of an area full of forests, rivers, and lakes. Designed to protect against an attack by the Polish army, its construction was halted after 1939. It was returned to in late 1944, using civilians and forced laborers for the work. The initial momentum of the Soviet attack bypassed the main fortified areas of the Pomeranian Wall and aimed to reach the Oder River in the direction of Berlin. This was achieved as early as late January 1945, when the Red Army became entangled in several weeks of fighting for Kostrzyn. Trying to exploit the operational stretch of the 1st Belorussian Front and reduce the potential threat to Berlin, the German side launched a southward attack from the vicinity of Stargard and Lake Miedwie between February 15 and 18, 1945. The so-called Operation *Sonnenwende* (Solstice) was one of the last counteroffensive attempts on the Eastern Front and ended in complete failure, with German troops only managing to temporarily retake Pyrzyce and Banie.<\/p>\n
At that time, fighting along the Pomeranian Wall was already underway, with units from the 1st Polish Army\u2014formed in 1943 in the USSR\u2014also taking part. In heavy combat, they broke through the main German defensive positions, capturing Z\u0142ot\u00f3w, Jastrowie, Dobrzyca, Nadarzyce, and Miros\u0142awiec between January 30 and February 10, 1945. This success cost the Poles nearly 1,800 soldiers killed and about 1,000 missing in action. During the fighting in the village of Podgaje, 32 captured Polish soldiers were murdered by soldiers of the Waffen-SS in violation of the laws of war. Debates regarding their exact nationality continue to this day, and the act is blamed either on Germans or on Latvians collaborating with them.<\/p>\n
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