Die deutsche polnischsprachige Presse im Generalgouvernement (1939–1945)

This article gives an overview of three decades of Polish historical research into National-Socialist press policy in occupied Poland. It sketches the development of the major Polish-language daily newspapers («gadzinówki»), which were published under close German supervision, and it deals with the aims and means of the occupier’s propaganda and the people who created it. German propaganda, in different phases, was aimed against the Poles, the Jews, the Bolsheviks or the Western allies. Its motive was to influence the Polish population in the sense of the Nazi ideology, in order to be able to put into effect, with as little personnel as possible, the major political projects: the isolation and annihilation of the Jews, the fight against communism and the breaking of the Polish national resistance for good. Polish historiography and media have fought over the question of the effect of Nazi propaganda on the Poles. In light of the murder of three million Polish Jews, it can be assumed that anti-semitic propaganda, which in part continued a tradition of the time before the war, did not miss its aim. The same can be said of anti-communist propaganda, whereas the anti-Polish propaganda of the early period of occupation evidently increased a lack of orientation among the Polish population.