1944 March 4 Hitler document on admiration of Poles -- is it legitimate?

[Wetzelrad]

This document is said to source only to a Polish newspaper called Głos Wielkopolski. I don't see a more specific publishing date than "1947". Here it is with machine translation to English:

Co myślał naprawdę Hitler o Polakach.jpg (311.46 KiB) Viewed 208 times

Here is the Hitler quotation in plaintext:

The Poles are the most intelligent nation of all [those] the Germans encountered during this war in Europe... The Poles, in my opinion and based on observations and reports from the General Government, are the only nation in Europe that combines high intelligence with incredible cunning. It is the most capable nation in Europe because, while constantly living in incredibly difficult political conditions, it has developed a great common sense, unparalleled anywhere else.

[paragraph indented] Based on recent research conducted by the Reichsrassenamt [Reich Racial Office], German scholars have concluded that Poles should be assimilated into German society as a racially valuable element. Our scholars have concluded that combining German systematicity with Polish flair would yield excellent results.

On its face, it seems plausible because it aligns with other of Hitler's views and actions of that time. Those are neatly summarized here:

Brendan Simm's book Hitler: A Global Biography documents Hitler's changing views of Slavs:

[...] The man who had started his career criticizing the notion of ‘Germanization’ of peoples, rather than territory, now superintended the greatest attempted assimilation project in German history.

What do you think? Has any corroboration of this document been found, and should it be regarded as a real quote?

[pilgrimofdark]

The archive for the paper itself is online here:

Głos Wielkopolski

Głos Wielkopolski
> Structure
>> 1947
>>> 1947 Wyd.ABC
>>>> Głos Wielkopolski. 1947.12.01 R.3 nr330 Wyd.ABC

Full issue:
Głos Wielkopolski. 1947.12.01 R.3 nr330 Wyd.ABC

A few other papers in their archive also have results for "Hitler o Polakach." One has an almost identical story.

Someone else might be better at finding the United Press article this references, or the actual memo.

[Wetzelrad]

Full issue:
Głos Wielkopolski. 1947.12.01 R.3 nr330 Wyd.ABC

Thanks. It's good to have a copy of the exact issue, and the date.

A few other papers in their archive also have results for "Hitler o Polakach." One has an almost identical story.

That sounds promising. I was hoping to find something like that, but when I tried googling in Polish I got a lot of results and nothing of substance.

So Express Poznańsk reported the same story one day later (1947 December 2). Compared to the Głos Wielkopolski article, it contains no new details. One could easily have been based on the other. Since the Hitler quote has exactly the same wording, it's more likely to be copied from a Polish article than an English one, as that would have required an independent translation.
https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/public ... 00/content

It occurs to me now that the Hitler quote must be a translation of a translation, plus it probably passed through the hands of the NMT staff. The document's content could have been well mangled by all that handling.

Someone else might be better at finding the United Press article this references, or the actual memo.

It would be great if they did. I've looked but found no hint of it. United Press has a selection of old articles on their website, but this is not among the 9 of those from 1947. So it may only be found in an offline archive. Beside that, we're probably looking for a record of something sent over the newswire, not necessarily a published article.

[pilgrimofdark]

United Press has a selection of old articles on their website, but this is not among the 9 of those from 1947. So it may only be found in an offline archive. Beside that, we're probably looking for a record of something sent over the newswire, not necessarily a published article.

Maybe the UP Frankfort branch's publications are archived elsewhere online, but I'm not finding anything.

Also, Reichsrassenamt refers to the Rassenamt of the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS (RuSHA), SS Race and Settlement Main Office.

Looking through the Polish internet, many either accept it uncritically or dismiss it as propaganda. Only a couple mentions on Google Scholar works and both reference it uncritically.

"Secret memorandum from Hitler to Himmler" may be a tell that it's nonexistent.

But possible sources are locating the "secret memorandum" or something from the RuSHA.

[Wetzelrad]

Looking through the Polish internet, many either accept it uncritically or dismiss it as propaganda. Only a couple mentions on Google Scholar works and both reference it uncritically.

The main thing is, not a single one of them made the effort to investigate. No one found the article, no one found the second article, no one checked to see if the newspaper editors have a truthful track record, or if its origin at United Press can be confirmed, or any other line of inquiry. Just people who want to believe and people who do not want to believe.

One argument made is that maybe a Polish journalist made the story up to dunk on Germans. Both articles do end with a sort of dunk, but this would not appear any different if the story was legitimate.

Another argument is that maybe it was Western propaganda to unify Poles to their cause against the Russians. Although this lacks any basis, it does offer a believable motive.

"Secret memorandum from Hitler to Himmler" may be a tell that it's nonexistent.

Does this argument hold water? I'm hardly qualified to say that it doesn't, but let me make a short attempt since no one else has.

If we imagine a document with those words ("Secret memorandum from Hitler to Himmler") written across the top, perhaps that is unlikely to exist. But if we imagine a memorandum of a conversation, perhaps typed up by an assistant, or perhaps a document of another type on which Hitler's thoughts were added or recorded, it doesn't seem at all odd to me.

Did Hitler ever send memos to subordinates? Well, we know that his private talks were normally recorded by stenographers. I will cite from Hitler and his Generals, which claims that in 1945, "the stenographers had accumulated around 103,000 pages of single-sided text." (p. xxi) The author notes that Hitler himself ordered these recordings to be made, and that some of these records were sent to other offices and filed away. (pp. xiv, xxvi) Can we qualify those as memos sent to subordinates?

This book includes many of these stenographic records, and included in them are numerous references by Hitler to memos and letters, written and sent. At no point in the text does Hitler come right out and say "I sent a memo to Himmler", but then that is not something that would typically warrant remark.

One item mentioned is Hitler's 1939 "Memorandum and Guidelines for the Conduct of War in the West", which was addressed to his military leaders. (pp. 535, 1035) Surely this counts? And if that exists, why couldn't there equally be a "Memorandum and Guidelines for the Administration of the Occupied Territories", which would effectively fit the description given by Głos Wielkopolski?

[pilgrimofdark]

Looking through the Polish internet, many either accept it uncritically or dismiss it as propaganda. Only a couple mentions on Google Scholar works and both reference it uncritically.

The main thing is, not a single one of them made the effort to investigate. No one found the article, no one found the second article, no one checked to see if the newspaper editors have a truthful track record, or if its origin at United Press can be confirmed, or any other line of inquiry. Just people who want to believe and people who do not want to believe.

I noticed that, too. In the internet's defense, it looks like the newspaper wasn't digitally archived until 2020 at the earliest.

But in ~80 years, we might be the first* to attempt to trace the literary history of this and narrow it down to at least 3 potential sources of further investigation.

1. Hitler memo to Himmler discovered in a Frankfurt bunker (March 4, 1944)
2. RuSHA research related to this (around or before then)
3. United Press Frankfort article (around or before December 1947)

If it isn't a Polish Intelligence Hallucination, then it's likely one of those sources is available, but has never been connected to this obscure and tangential newspaper article (and its article the next day in another paper).

* Caveat: also possible someone in Europe wrote a dissertation in the 1950s solving this mystery entirely that's only available offline in microfilm from the university. Stuck in this situation on another topic right now.