and Poles. In turn, hundreds of thousands of the Volksdeutsche joined the German forces, either willingly or under compulsion. During World War II, the Polish citizens of German ancestry that identified with the Polish nation faced the dilemma whether to register in the Deutsche Volksliste. Many families had lived in Poland for centuries and more-recent immigrants had arrived over 30 years before the war. They faced the choice of registering and being regarded as traitors by the Poles, or not signing and being treated by the Nazi occupation as traitors to the Germanic race. Polish Silesian Catholic Church authorities, led by bishop Stanisław Adamski and with agreement from the Polish Government in Exile, advised Poles to sign up to the Volksliste in order to avoid atrocities and mass murder that happened in other parts of the country. In occupied Poland, Volksdeutscher enjoyed privileges and were subject to conscription, or draft, into the German army. In occupied Pomerania, the Gauleiter of the Danzig-West Prussia region Albert Forster ordered a list of people considered of German ethnicity to be made in 1941. Due to insignificant voluntary registrations by February 1942, Forster made signing the Volksliste mandatory and empowered local authorities to use force and threats to implement the decree. Consequently, the number of signatories rose to almost a million, or about 55% of the 1944 population. The special case of Polish Pomerania, where terror against civilians was particularly intense, and where, unlike in rest of occupied Poland, signing of the list was mandatory for many people, was recognised by the Polish Underground State and other anti-Nazi resistance movements, which tried to explain the situation to other Poles in underground publications. The Deutsche Volksliste categorised non-Jewish Poles of German ethnicity into one of four categories:Bruno Wasser, Himmlers Raumplanung im Osten: Der Generalplan Ost in Polen, 1940-1944, Birkhäuser, 1993, pp. 109ff, Category I: Persons of German descent committed to the Reich before 1939. Category II: Persons of German descent who had remained passive. Category III: Persons of German descent who had become partly "Polonised", e.g., through marrying a Polish partner or through working relationships (especially Silesians and Kashubians). Category IV: Persons of German ancestry who had become "Polonised" but were supportive of "Germanisation". Volksdeutsche of statuses 1 and 2 in the Polish areas annexed by Germany numbered 1 million, and Nos. 3 and 4 numbered 1.7 million. In the General Government there were 120,000