Germanisation

As early as 1933 Hitler spoke of the 'ruthless Germanisation' of living space in the East. In the Polish lands annexed to the Reich, Polish schools, newspapers and churches were closed, towns and streets were renamed, and hundreds of thousands of Poles and Jews were expelled to the General Government, their homes given to Germans from the Baltic states, Volhynia or Bessarabia. The population was sorted according to the German national list. Polish children with 'desirable racial traits' were taken from their families and sent to the Reich, among other places from the Zamość region in 1942–1943.

The Germans pursued similar policies in Luxembourg and Alsace, where French was banned and even surnames were Germanised, and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia they planned to Germanise part of the Czech population after the war. The aim was the permanent Germanisation of the conquered lands and the removal of those deemed undesirable.