I've read in Architects of Annihilation that the average size of the land-plots received by settlers was 25 hectares, what sort of plots did they have before? How did they feel about moving, was it voluntary? And how did it change the quality of their life?
When talking of the Reichskommissar für die Festigung des Deutschen Volkstums (RFK) policy in Upper Silesia, the book states
The farms allocated to the new German farmers by the RKF averaged 20-25 hectares in size
For now, this answer is a work in progress.
Piotr Eberhardt. Political Migrations in Poland, 1939–1948 (2006) distinguishes between settlers from pre-war Germany ("Altreich"), and those from Eastern Europe.
For the first he gives on p.22 a total number of "some 500,000 German citizens came to the areas incorporated into the Reich (i.e. excluding the General Governorship) from Germany in the years 1939-1944", without any distinction of where they ended up, or whether they moved to cities or to farmland.
The second group as he explains, was formed by the relocation of ethnic Germans ("Volksdeutsche", from outside the borders of the German Reich) from the influence sphere of the Soviet Union as defined in the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty to Eastern Poland ("Heim ins Reich").
On p. 24 Eberhardt has a table of where the Eastern European settlers came from and where they went:
According to him, of the ca. 36,000 persons settled in (eastern) Silesia, about 30.000 came from Bukowina. Note this is only one of several attempts to give numbers, and they differ widely, as the Wikipedia article lists.
One target areas for settlement in Eastern Upper Silesia was the Landkreis Saybusch (Żywiec). In the above table, the resettlements there are included in the numbers for "2 – Eastern Little Poland, Volhynia, Narew region". A Nazi propaganda calendar about the resettlement effort is available online: Heimatkalender des Beskidenkreises Saybusch 1941, Jg. 1. Don't expect veracity from that. It very obviously downtalks the conditions for Germans in the areas they were resettled from, and promises a bright future in Saybusch.
Among the few usable informations is the area that the settlers of the year 1940 came from (p. 350 of the digitization): the towns of Felizienthal, Annaberg und Tucholka in Galicia. Other towns mentioned are Smorze (westwards), Karlshof and Klimiec (southwards towards the Hungarian border). On p. 379, it says that a total of 3013 persons were settled on 629 farms with a total area of approx. 10,000 ha. (The text uses the unit vha, which stands for "Viertelhektar" (quarter hectar), derived from the older unit Morgen.) This would amount to an average of 16 ha per farm.
Mirosław Sikora: Niszczyć, by tworzyć. Germanizacja Żywiecczyznyprzez narodowosocjalistyczne Niemcy 1939–1944/45 [Destroying to Create. The Germanization of the Zywiec District by National Socialist Germany 1939–1944/45]
is available online in Polish. It is a lot to take in a 700-page book in a language that I have to get translated before reading. But it contains detailed descriptions of the settlement process.
My apologies for this geting very long, but for now I am just preparing excerpts while I go on translating (feeding the text to DeepL and Google Translate).
The chapter 2.4, "First wave of resettlers arrives in Silesia" (pp. 94–103), describes resettlements from the Russian occupation zone between December 1939 and February 1940:
Unfortunately, the lack of adequate sources and scholarly studies makes it difficult to reconstruct the worldview of the East Germans, including their attitude towards the Third Reich and the war it waged, even before the resettlement. These people, previously living on the territory of the Second Polish Republic (then temporarily in the Ukrainian SSR), must have had some knowledge of the National Socialist-ruled state at the time of their decision to go to Germany...
The majority of Germans living in the eastern areas of the Second Republic were inhabitants of small towns and villages, mainly craftsmen, farmers and forestry workers. It is obvious that the representatives of these professional groups did not show much interest in political issues...it is more difficult to assess whether, for example, they had knowledge of the repressive measures taken against Jews and Poles...during the German-Polish war of 1939 and the first months of the occupation. In doing so, it is worth taking into account that the future resettlers were at that time in the Soviet occupation zone, where at most they could have encountered the actions of the NKVD.
The first opportunity to come into contact with the German administration was the activity of the mixed Soviet-German commissions responsible for preparing the Volksdeutsche to leave their previous places of residence. One can only guess how keen the German authorities were at the time to make the best possible impression on potential resettlers. Both patriotic and economic tones were struck, and malcontents and contesters were even threatened and isolated. Nazi propaganda condemned any form of ignoring the ‘Führer's appeal to his compatriots’. The influence of the fear factor of living under the Soviet yoke (horror sovieticus) and the socialist reforms implemented by the USSR, especially the collectivisation of agriculture, entailing expropriation, cannot be overestimated. These fears stemmed not only from forecasts, but also from the already accumulated experience of the period of the First World War and the Soviet Revolution, when some Russian Germans were deported to the East.
The resettlers must have been positively impressed by the fairly good...organisation...., as well as the euphoric atmosphere of ‘return to the Reich’ (Heim ins Reich) fostered by propaganda specialists. It should also be remembered that the resettlement of Germans from eastern Galicia and Volhynia took place just after the undisputed triumph of the Wehrmacht in the war against Poland...
According to the German-Soviet agreement, each family (Herdstelle) that travelled to the border of the Reich (GG) in a so-called trek, i.e. a horse-drawn carriage, was allowed to take one double-drawn (two-horse) carriage along with their private belongings. Displaced persons who did not travel by trek but by truck or rail were allowed to take - in addition to their hand luggage - only luggage weighing up to about 50 kg, and accompanying family members up to about 25 kg. It was forbidden to export money, securities, gold, silver, works of art and antiquarian items, as well as cars and motorbikes. The property thus left behind was to become the property of the Soviet state, which in turn would make an appropriate settlement with the Reich...The land was to be nationalised and the Soviets refused to pay compensation for it.
Generally, men travelled by trek, while women and children were loaded into trains or trucks beforehand...
Between 21 December 1939 and 3 February 1940, a total of around 135,000 people were deported from the territory of the USSR to the Reich (of whom around 7,000 were subsequently recognised as foreign nationals and deported back to the USSR), including around 57,000 from eastern Galicia, 67,000 from Volhynia (the pre-war Volhynia and Polesie voivodeships) and 11,000 from the Narva area (the pre-war Novogrudok, Vilnius and Białystok voivodeships). According to the Kattowitzer Zeitung, the resettlers who had crossed the Reich border by 31 January 1940 alone (118,000 people) brought 22,000 horses, 1,500 cattle and 12,000 carts with them...In total, 80% of the displaced persons arrived by Russian rail...The remaining 20% of people arrived on horseback or in horse-drawn vehicles...The greater disproportion between displaced persons travelling by trek and those travelling by train was due to the larger than initially estimated number of children...
...Women and children predominated in the transports arriving in Bogumin and Cieszyn, as the men still remained in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia to complete all the formalities for the transfer of movable property to the Reich...
By the late spring of 1940, 21 resettlement camps were in operation in the Silesian province, with more than 8,000 Germans from East Galicia living in them. Since their establishment at the beginning of 1940, these camps were subjected to a five-month quarantine, which must have entailed significant restrictions on the freedom of movement of their inhabitants. The VoMi authorities' decision to isolate the camps was influenced by the high percentage of children suffering from scarlet fever, diphtheria and measles...Initially, it was mainly women and children who were sent to the camps in Upper Silesia, while men (mainly from those families who had travelled by trek) were housed until March 1940 in camps in the Lodz area...
Sikora goes on to describe a filtering procedure, called Durchschleusung ("channeling"), aiming to sort the arrivals by their fitness to serve as builders of a new German culture in Silesia. Category "O" were allowed to settle immediately, category "A" were sent to the old mainland for re-education, and category "S" were to be deported again.
The main "channeling" of Germans from Eastern Galicia and Volhynia staying in camps located in the Silesian province (and most probably in neighbouring provinces) was carried out in the Bohumín camp between 10 April and 21 August 1940...and covered 26,608 people during that period. Of those who received the "O" category at that time, only 918 families (4,161 people) of Germans from Eastern Galicia were sent to settle in Upper Silesia, including 775 peasant families (3,713 people) and 143 families representing other industries (448 people) - approximately the same number as were later settled under "Aktion Saybusch". In 1941, 82 more Galician families (210 people) representing professions other than peasants were “transferred”. In 1942, the last two peasant families (5 people) and 109 families from other professional groups (294 people) were “transferred”. In the years 1940–1942, this gave a total of exactly 1,111 families (4,679 people).
Future settlers were subjected to intensive indoctrination in the relocation camps, which was to be served by performances, lectures, listening to radio broadcasts, film screenings and other forms of transmitting the content of the National Socialist worldview...Discipline was in force in the camp, and violations were severely punished. The war going on in the background had an impact on material conditions and food. In order to improve the atmosphere, the camp authorities, as well as party organizations, took care to provide entertainment for the resettled people by organizing singing and dancing evenings, film screenings and various types of courses.
The next chapter goes on to describe the decisions that lead to the Żywiec district being one of the first areas settlers were to be sent at, leading to the necessity to displace the Polish farming population - the above mentioned "Aktion Saybusch".
When the Polish farmers were evicted from their farms by German soldiers, the German settlers moved in within hours. Before their arrival, a civilian and police command went through to "clean up" and desinfect the farms and to feed the animals left behind. Household appliances were confiscated from Poles that were not displaced.
At the time of the beginning of "Aktion Saybusch", the German resettlers from Eastern Galicia were in the collective camps in Cieszyn and Bohumín, from where they were transported by passenger trains to the Żywiec district as part of the subsequent displacement and settlement operations...More or less simultaneously with the arrival of the settlers, a special NSV train set with supplies, the so-called Verpflegungszug, arrived at the station (it may have been attached to the settlers' transport earlier). It contained furniture, dishes and clothes, intended for the new inhabitants of the Żywiec region and distributed to them successively in the following weeks.
At the railway stations, the newcomers were officially welcomed by the German authorities – representatives of the public administration and the NSDAP. From there, settlers were transported by trucks and vans to assembly points (the assembly points were most often located near railway stations, which did not require road transport), where NSV sisters, delegated by the German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreutz – DRK), treated them to a warm meal and provided them with dry provisions (Lebensmittelkoffer), which were to enable them to exist on their new farms for the next ten days after settlement...after ten days the settlers were to obtain supplies at least partially on their own from local trade representatives. The assembly points also included medical care points.
...The settlers usually arrived at the village about five hours after the Poles had been evicted, that is, at about 3:00 p.m...
In view of the fact that the cleaning teams were not always able to improve the image of the modest mountain homes left by the Poles within a few hours, it happened that the settlers felt very disappointed when they saw their “new” farms. Then the commanders of the cleaning teams, policemen and NSV sisters who were present on the spot stepped into action, their task being to help the settlers “swallow” the sometimes shocking picture they saw before their eyes, which was far from the idyllic perspective painted before them by the German authorities who in the autumn of 1939 encouraged them to leave their previous estates in the territories annexed to the USSR and settle in the Greater German Reich. The settlers confirmed the takeover of the farm, together with livestock and dead animals, in writing to the police officer at the station. There were resettlers who refused to take over the property after seeing with their own eyes that it had simply been taken away from Poles, thus not wanting to build their future on the wrongs of others...
In the initial phase of "Aktion Saybusch", the Germans managed to avoid financial and material losses resulting from "sabotage" by the Polish population. However, after only a few days, when news of the displacements spread throughout the district, the situation changed radically. It happened more and more often that the desperate and distraught population got rid of their movable property and livestock in various ways: by selling it, hiding it, eating it away or giving it to farmers who were not directly threatened with displacement at that time...
The German authorities often noted after the displacement operation that villages in which significant surpluses were noted during the inventory (e.g. in livestock) now required additional supplies. In the opinion of the working staff, the so-called "sabotages" had serious consequences for the settlers' acclimatization period, when appropriate food supplies were needed. It is worth noting that as of 3 December 1940, the amount of livestock in the district (there were then 21,550 households with livestock in the district) had decreased in almost all areas compared to 10 June 1940..., despite the fact that as part of the settlement action underway at that time, livestock brought to the Reich by settlers was flowing into the district, and SLG was also taking care of replenishing the inventory...
Despite the opposition of the Polish population, the German authorities took possession of huge quantities of equipment, livestock, fertilizers, seeds, fodder and agricultural products...
A positive surprise for the German authorities was the higher than expected number of seized cattle, but much less horses than expected. Since the German authorities aimed to equalize the quantitative status of livestock on individual farms, in the days following settlement some settlers were deprived of some of their livestock, while others were given new ones...The livestock came mainly from farms taken over from Poles, but it cannot be ruled out that the SLG also distributed livestock brought by German resettlers. In the Żywiec and Bielsk counties, by the end of May 1941, a total of 2,705 livestock units (horses, oxen, pigs, cows, poultry), 91,881 hundredweight of 461 fertilisers, 35,884 hundredweight of seed materials, 18,188 hundredweight of fodder and 2,541 pieces of agricultural equipment (ploughs, carts, etc.) had been distributed.
I'll not cite from the paragraphs describing the demolition of "unsuitable" buildings and the re-use of the materials for reconstruction, new worker's barracks and chicken sheds, but it must be noted that this was carried out by a unit of Jewish slave workers guarded by SS.
For seasonal farm work both HJ and Reichsarbeitsdienst established camps in the region.
...90 percent of the most urgent repairs had been completed by early June 1941. However, 750 craftsmen and construction workers were still employed. The renovation of one farm cost an average of 1,000 RM. In total, 3 million RM from the Ministry of Agriculture had been spent on inventory, equipment of the farms and repairs by the end of May 1941. The substantive advice during this work was in the hands of the Reichsnährstand, and at least some of the seed and breeding material came from seven farms (Stützpunktgüter) managed by Ostland.
By 31 May 1941, 30 dresses, 40 work clothes, 310 pairs of gloves, 50 kitchen aprons, 30 towels and the same number of headscarves had also been sewn for the settlers. Shoemakers also repaired 1,200 pairs of shoes, and tailors darned 500 work clothes...
The settlers could also count on loans to purchase additional equipment. By 31 May 1941, for example, the NSV had granted 14 loans for the purchase of furniture, each for the sum of 600 RM (totalling 8,400 RM).
Medical care and medicines (at least in the initial period) were free for the settlers...
The next chapter tries to sum up the Poles deported to the Generalgouvenement and the German settlers from the East in the course of "Aktion Saybusch".
According to the report of the Bielsko settlement staff for the period from 10 July 1940 to 31 May 1941, a total of 15,791 people (3,173 families) were deported to the GG from the Żywiec district, and 2,033 people (423 families) from the Bielsk district – a total of 17,824 people (3,596 families)...Thus, a total of 18,027 people left Łódź eastwards...
It is also not easy to determine the number of deaths in the transports...
Regardless of the deportations, in the period from August 1, 1940 (sic!) to May 31, 1941, 1,678 Polish families (8,060 people) were internally resettled in Żywiec County, and 404 families (2,128 people) in Bielsk County. Together with those resettled in Blachownia County and Sosnowiec, this gave 2,304 families (10,926 people).
The data on German settlers are divergent...According to the probably most reliable data of the Żywiec NSDAP, within the framework of “Aktion Saybusch” 750 families with a total number of 3,385 people were settled in 34 localities of Żywiec county between 22 September and 10 December 1940, and another 145 families (705 people) in 7 localities of Bielsk county (mainly in the part of the former Wadowice county).
In the SLG report from the “Galizienaktion”, sent on June 6, 1941 to the RKF representative Bracht, it was stated that so far (in the Żywiec and Bielsk counties) 790 farms had been created with a total area of 10,766.74 ha (average farm size approx. 12 ha), in addition 156 so-called reserve plots with a total area of 327.72 ha (average plot size approx. 2 ha), and the plan included 17 farms with a total area of 144.08 ha (average 8 ha). The remaining area – designated for various other settlement purposes – amounted to 146.58 ha (which gave a total of 11,385.12 ha).
After outlining a second wave of settlers from the Bukovina, arriving in spring 1941, the last 100 pages of the book contains two chapters on the further development of the region for German settlements: 8. "Soldiers Without Uniforms". Care for German Settlers and 9.Towards the Gardens of Eden – Raumplanung. They might contain some answers to your question about the quality of their new life, for the three years it existed before they were deported to post-war Germany.
Another scholastic work about resettlement to Eastern Upper Silesia is
Hans-Werner Retterath (Hg.): Germanisierung im besetzten Ostoberschlesien während des Zweiten Weltkriegs (= Schriftenreihe des Instituts für Volkskunde der Deutschen des östlichen Europa; Bd. 20), Münster: Waxmann 2018.
The editor has made an extract available online. This review identifies the settlers as Volksdeutsche from Galicia and Bukowina.
