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fail to come to pass, things without which the world cannot be imagined. The remnant shall work on, fight on, live on until the dawn of better days. Toward that dawn I greet you. May we meet again in peace.” 19
    II
    Hitler’s views about the newly conquered populations and territories in the East were tentatively outlined on September 29, in a conversation with one of his earliest companions, party chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg: “The Poles” the Nazi leader declared “a thin Germanic layer, underneath frightful material. The Jews, the most appalling people one can imagine. The towns thick with dirt. He [Hitler] had learnt a lot in these past weeks…. What was needed now was a determined and masterful hand to rule. He wanted to split the territory into three strips: (1) Between the Vistula and the Bug: this would be for the whole of Jewry (including the Reich) as well as all other unreliable elements. Build an insuperable wall on the Vistula—even stronger than the one in the West [the Siegfried Line, which faced France]. (2) Create a broad cordon of territory along the previous frontier to be Germanized and colonized. This would be a major task for the nation: to create a German granary, a strong peasantry, to resettle good Germans from all over the world. (3) In between, a form of Polish state. The future would show whether after a few decades the cordon of settlement would have to be pushed farther forward.” 20
    At this stage Hitler’s plans included only half of former Poland, up to the Vistula and the Bug Rivers; the eastern part of the country had been invaded by the Soviet Union on September 17 in accordance with one of the main provisions of the secret protocol added to the German-Soviet pact of August 23, 1939. Moreover, the Germans had recognized Soviet “special interests” in the Baltic countries, Finland, and Bulgaria, and with regard to two Romanian provinces. For both sides the August treaty and a further secret arrangement signed on September 27 were tactical moves. Both Hitler and Stalin knew that a confrontation would ultimately come. 21 How long, though, the “truce” between National Socialism and Bolshevism would last was something that in September 1939 nobody could tell.
    In a so-called peace offer during a festive Reichstag speech on October 6, Hitler indeed spoke of a territorial reorganization of those areas of Eastern Europe lying between the German border and the Soviet-German demarcation line. His settlement idea was to be based on the principle of nationalities and solve the problem of national minorities, including “in this context, the attempt to solve the Jewish problem.” 22
    Reestablishing a Polish state was mentioned as a possibility. By then, however, Great Britain and France had become familiar with Hitler’s tactics; the “peace offer” was rejected. The idea of some form of Polish sovereignty disappeared, and German-occupied Poland was further divided. The Reich annexed several areas along its eastern borders: a large region along the river Warthe (Reichsgau Wartheland, or Warthegau 23 ), Eastern Upper Silesia (eventually part of Gau Upper Silesia), the Polish corridor with the city of Danzig (Gau Danzig–West Prussia) and a small stretch of territory south of East Prussia. A population of 16 million people was thus added to Germany, around 7.5 million of whom were Germans. After a brief interim plan to establish an autonomous “ Rest-Polen ” (rump Poland), the remaining Polish territory, which included the cities of Warsaw, Kraków, and Lublin, became the “General Government,” an administrative unit of around 12 million people, governed by German officials and occupied by German troops. The General Government itself was subdivided into four districts: Warsaw, Radom, Kraków, and Lublin. The district of Galicia would be added in August 1941, after the German attack on the Soviet Union.

    On October 17, freed from the peace proposal gimmick, the Nazi leader