Intelligenzaktion — secret mass murder conducted by Nazi Germany against the Polish intelligentsia early in the Second World War
The Intelligenzaktion was a systematic Nazi campaign to destroy Polish leadership by killing roughly 100,000 people, facilitating German colonization of occupied Poland.
Key Facts
- Total killed
- approximately 100,000 people
- Intelligentsia members killed
- approximately 61,000 people
- Duration
- Autumn 1939 – Spring 1940
- Primary perpetrators
- Einsatzgruppen and Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz
- Pre-war targeting list
- Special Prosecution Book-Poland
- Successor operation
- AB-Aktion
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Nazi Germany planned to Germanize the western regions of occupied Poland by eliminating Polish civic, intellectual, and religious leadership. Before the war began in September 1939, German authorities compiled the Special Prosecution Book-Poland, identifying teachers, priests, physicians, and community leaders as enemies of the Reich to be neutralized upon invasion.
Beginning immediately after the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, Einsatzgruppen death squads and Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz militia carried out mass shootings and forced disappearances of targeted Polish intelligentsia. Victims were buried in mass graves in remote locations, while public executions were staged to terrorize the broader population and accelerate depopulation of occupied territories.
The Intelligenzaktion killed approximately 100,000 people, roughly 61,000 of whom were identified intelligentsia members, devastating Polish civil society. It advanced Sonderaktion Tannenberg and laid groundwork for Generalplan Ost, the broader German colonization scheme. The murder of Polish intellectuals continued under the subsequent AB-Aktion operation into 1940.
Belligerents & Mobilization Analysis
Side A
2 belligerents
Side B
1 belligerent