From Desirable to Undesirable: The Nazi Re-Germanization of Polish Girls during the Second World War

This paper focuses on the Nazi Re-Germanization Procedure for so-called “racially valuable” Polish girls during the Second World War. Throughout the war, the SS sent thousands of these girls to live with German families in the Reich and to work as domestic servants (Hausgehilfinnen) while undergoing a process of assimilation into the national community. Nazi race experts believed these girls were descendants of previous German colonists who had ‘gone native’ and therefore members of the Nordic race despite their Polish nationality. Although ostensibly a procreative initiative, however, the project backfired, and the regime began to regard the Hausgehilfinnen themselves as a threat. This paper takes a simple question as its starting point: How did the status of these girls change from a “desirable” to an “undesirable population increase” in the eyes of the Nazis? In answering this question, my investigation pursues two interrelated aims. First, it analyzes how a longer tradition of cultural attitudes and beliefs influenced this particular resettlement program. Second, it reconstructs the daily lives and interactions of the girls, their German hosts, and the SS officials charged with managing the operation, in order to describe a reciprocal process of community-building between state and non-state actors. I will show how the perceived inability of these girls to live up to stereotypical ideals of Germanness convinced the SS that they were dangerous and beyond saving, and reveal how a program of demographic integration became a system of annihilation. Exploring these dynamics can shed light on the significance of the Nazis’ continent-wide effort to reclaim alleged carriers of “lost German blood” and the relationship of this quest to policies of ethnic cleansing and mass murder, as well as address unanswered questions about public support for Nazi resettlement policies and the meanings of race and Volk during the Third Reich.