and colonisation policies Forster's conflict with the SS also had direct and injurious consequences for ethnic Germans. During the war, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans were moved by Nazi-Soviet agreement from the Soviet Union into Poland and used as colonists in Nazi occupied Poland. While Greiser did all he could to accommodate them in his Reichsgau, Forster viewed them with hostility, claiming that his region needed young farmers while the refugees were old and urbanised. He initially refused to admit any of them into his Reichsgau. When a ship bearing several thousands of ethnic Germans from the Baltic states arrived at Danzig he initially refused them entry unless Himmler promised that they would not be settled in Danzig-West Prussia but proceed immediately elsewhere, an assurance that Himmler could not provide. It was only following a lengthy telephone consultation with the desperate Himmler that Forster allowed the passengers to disembark, on the understanding that their residence in the Reichsgau would be temporary, though most did not, ultimately, leave the region. In time he had to relent, and by June 1944, 53,258 colonists had settled in Danzig-West Prussia, a far cry from the 421,780 settled in the Warthegau. Forster's Germanization policies left less free land and housing than Greiser's mass expulsions, although it is evident that Forster's perception of the ethnic German refugees as wards of the SS played its role in determining his attitude. Trial and death At the end of the war, Forster took refuge in the British Occupation Zone of Germany. The British handed him over to the People's Republic of Poland. In 1948, Forster was condemned to death by the Polish court for war crimes (the Supreme National Tribunal) and crimes against humanity. He was held and had his sentence deferred. The Polish president denied clemency on 21 February 1952 and Forster was moved from Gdańsk to Mokotów Prison in Warsaw, where he was hanged on 28 February 1952. His wife, who had not heard from him since 1949, was informed of his death in 1954. See also List SS-Obergruppenführer References Notes Bibliography Levine, Herbert S. (1969) "Local Authority and the SS State: The Conflict over Population Policy in Danzig-West Prussia, 1939-1945" in Central European History 2#2 pp. 331–355 McNamara, Paul (2009) Sean Lester, Poland, and the Nazi Takeover of Danzig Dublin and Portland, Oregon: Irish Academic Press. Miller, Michael D. and Schulz, Andreas (2012) Gauleiter: The