Intelligenzaktion
Sign in to saveThe Intelligenzaktion (), or the Intelligentsia mass shootings, was a series of mass murders committed against the Polish intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society) during the early years of the Second World War (1939–45) by Nazi Germany. The Germans conducted the operations in accordance with their plan to Germanize the western regions of occupied Poland, before their territorial annexation to the German Reich.
Key facts
- Civilian attack.title
- Intelligentsia mass shootings
- Civilian attack.native_name
- Intelligenzaktion
- Civilian attack.native_name_lang
- de
- Civilian attack.partof
- Generalplan Ost and the genocide of Poles by Nazi Germany
- Civilian attack.image
- Bydgoszcz-rozstrzelanie zakładników 9.09.1939.jpg
- Civilian attack.image_size
- 300
- Civilian attack.caption
- In occupied Poland, on 9 September 1939, the Germans publicly executed twenty-five prominent citizens, in front of the Municipal Museum, in the Market Square of Bydgoszcz, as part of the mass shootings of Polish intelligentsia. To terrorise the townsfolk, the Germans displayed the bodies for six hours.
- Civilian attack.location
- Occupied Poland
- Civilian attack.target
- Poles (teachers, priests, intellectuals, civic officials, and the upper classes)
- Civilian attack.date
- 1939–1940
- Civilian attack.type
- mass murder, mass shooting, genocidal massacres
- Civilian attack.fatalities
- 100,000(61,000 from lists)
- Civilian attack.perps
- SiPo, Kripo, Gestapo, SS
- Civilian attack.weapons
- Automatic weapons and small arms
- Civilian attack.motive
- Consolidation of Nazi control of Poland, Germanisation, Anti-Polish sentiment
via Wikipedia infobox
~8 min read
Encyclopedic overview
7 sectionsContents
- Purpose
- Method
- Regional operations
- See also
- Notes
- References
- External links
The Intelligenzaktion (), or the Intelligentsia mass shootings, was a series of mass murders committed against the Polish intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society) during the early years of the Second World War (1939–45) by Nazi Germany. The Germans conducted the operations in accordance with their plan to Germanize the western regions of occupied Poland, before their territorial annexation to the German Reich.
The mass murder operations of the Intelligenzaktion resulted in the killing of 100,000 Polish people; by way of forced disappearance, the Germans imprisoned and killed select members of Polish society, identified as enemies of the Reich before the war; they were buried in mass graves in remote places. To facilitate the depopulation of occupied Poland, the Germans terrorised the general populace by carrying out public, summary executions of select intellectuals and community leaders, before they expelled the general population from occupied Poland. The executioners of the Einsatzgruppen death squads and members of the local Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, the German-minority militia, justified their actions by falsely stating that the purpose of their police-work was to remove politically dangerous people from Polish society.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Intelligenzaktion” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.