In The Shadow Of The Reich
by Niklas Frank
Book Summary Information
Author: Niklas FrankEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-08-27
ISBN: 0394583450
Number of pages: 371
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of In The Shadow Of The Reich
Book Review: Niklas Frank on Hans Frank and the Planned Extermination of the Poles
Summary: 5 Stars
Although Niklas was born in 1939, the same year that Germany unleashed WWII by conquering Poland with the Soviet Union, and was therefore too young to understand what was going on then, he provides a devastating critique of his father's conduct as the Butcher of Poland. Of course, some of the matters raised by Niklas have since been subject to further clarification. For instance, Hans Frank's assertion that he was responsible for protecting the Black Madonna of Czestochowa (Tschenstochau)(p. 117, 357) has since been exposed as a lie. It turns out that the Germans had placed explosives in the monastery in order to blow it up during their retreat, but a perceptive Pole saw a wire that led to the explosives, enabling the Poles to disarm these in time, thereby saving the Black Madonna.
Much attention has been devoted to the fact that the Nazis, as individuals and as a group, profited personally from the theft of Jewish valuables. Niklas points out that Hans also stole a great deal of valuable Polish properties, including much art, Oriental carpets, gobelins, choice pieces of furniture, clocks, vitrines, jewelry, furs from both Jewish and Polish women, etc. (p. 116, 121, 224).
We keep hearing about Poles and Jews being unequal victims. It is clear that they were unequal in the matter of timing and methods of their destruction, and not in terms of German attitudes and aims. To begin with, the Poles were not deemed to have any more inherent worth than the Jews. For instance, Niklas quotes Hans as: "...using the icy voice you always liked to use when you talked about inferior Poles and Jews who had no right to be alive." (p. 201). Also: "...Kruger...and his SS men commenced their extermination of the `subhuman creatures', whether Jew or Pole." (p. 123).
Up to that time during the German occupation of Poland, two million Poles had already been openly murdered (p. 254), while the remainder of the Polish population was being forced to die a slow death, as tacitly admitted by Hans: "The majority of Poles consumer only about six hundred calories per day. The population is by now so debilitated that it becomes an easy prey for typhus...We may further decease the diet of the Polish peasant only to the point just short of where he is no longer fit for manual labor!" (p. 128). Clearly, Poland under Hans Frank had been transformed into one giant concentration camp! Niklas also points out that Hans Frank's later concessions to the Poles were belated attempts to cover up his crimes as the defeat of Nazi Germany was becoming inevitable (e. g., p. 258).
Niklas Frank quotes his father's statements that came up at Nuremberg (p. 26). The elder Frank had said that there would not be enough trees on which to print the names of all of the Poles that he had ordered killed. An even more chilling statement by Hans Frank was the one in which he said that, after Germany won the war, the Poles and Ukrainians could be turned into mincemeat.
The juxtaposition of Jews and Poles, and the eventual German goal of exterminating them both, is obvious from the following genocidal ditty composed by Heinrich Himmler: "One, two, three, the Polack rabble / I shall send straight to Heaven, / And also the Jews and Ukrainians, / Not a one shall outlive me. / And who's the one to help me out in this? Thank God, / Our Reichminister Frank. " (p. 111).
Hans Frank himself left nothing to the imagination. He openly said, "In several years, Poles will no longer be in existence." (p. 255).
Had there instead been hundreds of millions of Jews but only a few million Slavs, can it seriously be supposed that the respective German exterminatory attitudes and policies towards Jews and Poles would have been the same? Considering the fact of the war, German manpower was simply unavailable for the extermination of the tens of millions of Poles at that point in time. Referring to the Poles, living on their own land, as foreigners (sic!), Hans Frank complained: "It is outrageous that the Government in Berlin can send only a handful of men, give them orders to exterminate fifteen million foreigners here, and then expect them to remain in this territory without additional security. When the Bolsheviks plan to annihilate people, they send at leas two thousand Red Army troops into every little village where the people are to be exterminated. But to send us only ten thousand police troops for the whole GG [General Government--German-occupied central Poland], and then order us to finish off fifteen million people...that just can't be done." (pp. 260-261).
Hans Frank was a homosexual (p. 259). He also showed his anti-Christian stance when he complained that too many Germans were attending church, even in the face of impending German defeat (p. 281).
Niklas Frank appears to be, at least to a degree, endorsing the view that Germans are inherently warlike. Alluding to Limes Germanicus, which was part of the Roman's defense system built c. 74 A.D. east of the Rhine, Niklas "addresses" his father as follows: "Good, you helped the German people to attain their true nature: war, murder, and slaughter, just as it used to be in long-ago times in the dark forests on this side of the Limes." (p. 165).
Niklas Frank contends that millions of Germans were sufficiently guilty to have been hanged at Nuremberg (p. 17). As for denazification, he is of the opinion that the postwar transformation of Germans from Nazis into Social Democrats was largely cosmetic in nature (p. 16-18).
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