Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944

by Jan Tomasz Gross

By combining historical and political analysis with a sophisticated sociological approach, Jan Gross offers a new interpretation of the German occupation of Poland during World War II. Based on his hypothesis that a society cannot be destroyed by coercion short of the physical annihilation of its members, his work has a twofold to examine the model of German occupation in theory and in practice, and to identify the patterns of collective behavior that emerged among the Polish people in response to the social control exercised over them. The author argues that when an occupier provides no institutions through which a local population can at least minimally satisfy its social needs, the subjugated populace builds substitute institutions on the remnants of previous forms of its collective life. These substitutes constitute the society's self-defense, to which the occupier must in some way adjust if its goals of manipulation and exploitation are to be achieved. Professor Gross points out numerous ways in which the Poles under the Generalgouvernement circumvented the goals and authority of the German occupiers. Most significant was the emergence of the Polish underground, which took on the leadership, social welfare, political, and financial functions of an independent state. This phenomenon, he concludes, shows that resistance should not be conceived merely as a military movement but rather as a complex social phenomenon. Jan Tomasz Gross is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University.

Genres: History

343 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just looked him up, and indeed, Jan Tomasz Gross is a sociologist, which explains the lens used in the writing of this book... which is a very (very) academic look at how Polish society functioned under the German occupation - in particular the General Government area, which was essentially the huge central part of Poland which Nazi Germany did NOT immediately incorporate into the Reich, and which was intended, at least for the war years, as a huge labour camp where Poles would work in various ways (farming etc) to help support the Reich.

anyway - for my purposes, this is not a useful book at all, and I have much preferred Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe for insights into what the germans were doing in the General Government area:
The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe: Nazi Rule in Poland under the General Government

What did interest me was Gross's views of Polish anti-semitism... particularly on pages 184/185:
Unfortunately, it must be recorded that the Poles by and large remained neutral observers of the horrors of life in the Jewish ghettos and of the German atrocities perpetrated against the Jewish population. The commander of the Home Army reported this attitude in a dispatch sent to London in September 1941: "Please accept it as a fact that the overwhelming majority of the country is anti-Semitic. ... Anti Semitism is widespread now

Anyway - Gross's book is very dry and theoretical... with very academic studies of the economy (and the black market) in the General government, and the social life, cultural life of Poles.
Even the chapters on the Polish Underground are just... well... fit for graduate tutorial sessions, not for the historically curious like me.

I mean.... come on... (page 214):

He quotes this passage... The defense of Warsaw, based on citizen-volunteers, drew from all political parties regardless of former feuds. It was a shortened process of emergence and evolution of political leadership.

and then states:
This statement formulates well the basic theme of our investigation. We shall try to discover what processes account for the emergence of collectivity-orientation as the focus of social action in a besieged city. Broadening somewhat the scope of Durkheim''s analysis in his "Division of Labor", we shall try to demonstrate mechanisms through which the social bond in a Gesellschaft reveals its de facto nomic quality.

EEEK!

SOOOOO..... yes... if you want to read a book which views the Germans in Poland through a sociological and academic lens like this - THIS IS YOUR BOOK! YAY!! :)

But if you want more detail about the blood sweat and tears of the Poles living under the Germans, then this was not written for you.. and was definitely not written for me.