Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland , along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II , consisted of the murder of millions of ethnic Poles and the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles . The Germans justified these genocides on the basis of Nazi racial theory , which regarded Poles and other Slavic peoples as racially inferior '' Untermenschen '' and depicted Jews as a constant threat . By 1942 , the Nazi Germans were implementing their plan to kill every Jew in German-occupied Europe , and had also developed plans to eliminate the Polish people , through mass murder , ethnic cleansing , enslavement and extermination through labor , as well as the assimilation into German identity of a small minority of Poles regarded as racially valuable . During World War II , the Germans not only murdered millions of Poles and Jewish Poles , but ethnically cleansed millions more through forced deportation , to make room for the “ racially superior ” German settlers ( see Generalplan Ost and Lebensraum )
forced deportation
Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation