The borders of Poland were not set in stone. Therefore the Polish people were mixing with many others. German conquest meant that only one of those peoples, the Germans were to be provided for. Yet a Nazi henchman and wife with delusions of Royalty actually thwarted the German plan as it would have lessened their authority. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp shows the courthouse in Krakow that no longer stands. Showing the architecture of the occupied area leaves out anything in Warsaw. Cities like Krakow and Lublin were considered more traditionally German while Warsaw was to be completely redeveloped as a German city after population replacement. Crazy stuff.
Todays stamp is issue OS1, a 50 Groszy stamp issued by the German General Government of occupied Poland in 1940. It was a 17 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.
When Germany conquered the western two thirds of Poland in 1939, it was intended that the occupation government would be short lived. Polish peasants were to be made employees of their conquerors while Poles of more achievement were to be forcefully suggested to go east. Some of this happened. A farm on my mothers German side of the family was assigned Polish peasants to work the farm after the German ones were off serving the country. I asked my mother how that could work out well. She said they were peasants in Poland and then they were peasants in Germany, why should they care? Well….. it was a different world then. The highlight of the German plan for Poland was a leveling of Warsaw and a redevelopment as a much smaller model German city with a small Polish quarter in the other side of the river. It was called the Papst Plan.
Probably luckily for Poland the General Government was put under a Nazi henchman named Hans Frank who had been with Hitler since the Beerhall Putsch. He was not interested in reducing his power by letting the territory be reorganized into new German goas. So this part of the plan went very slowly. The territory of the General Government was instead expanded when Russian occupied areas of Poland and the Polish areas of the Ukraine were transferred to it.
Hans Frank and his wife Brigitte instead were acting as the new Royals of Poland. Brigitte was opening referring to herself as Queen of the Poles. This became an embarrassment to Germany as remember there was not to be a Poland. In 1942, Frank sought to divorce his wife but she refused as she would rather according to her be his widow.
She got her wish after Frank was executed post war at Nuremburg with his crimes made specific against the Jews. In his last days, Frank put out a story that Hitler was being blackmailed by people who knew that Hitler had a Jewish grandfather that his grandmother had worked as a maid for. The story did not check out.
I mentioned that the General Government never got around to leveling Warsaw. This them happened during the Warsaw uprising just before the Red Army arrived in 1944 as various groups tried to establish themselves to next rule Poland. The Polish friends of the Red Army rebuilt Warsaw post war, not of course using the Pabst Plan.
Well my drink is empty and I will not be toasting the Pabst Plan. Germans might however point out that they themselves were much more efficiently cleansed from east of the Oder post war by Poles. Perhaps they should have considered beforehand that turnaround is fair play. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.