General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: My goodness, the FReepers are in a tizzy [View all]RZM
(8,556 posts)Certainly there were German units carrying out racial war in Poland from 1939 on. Though the mass murder of Jews didn't really get started in earnest until the invasion of the USSR. Whether or not these units were called that before 1941 I don't know. I don't think so, but I could be wrong about that. There was a lot of confusion about what the Nazis goals/plans were for the Polish population in the early years of the war.
One interesting thing about the Nazis was that despite all of the stereotypes about Germans as orderly, they were actually lousier at bureaucracy and efficiency than you might think. From 1939-1941 they and the Soviets were both deporting people en masse from territory both states seized under the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The Nazis were moving Jews and Poles around, while the Soviets were moving Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, and others from territory they had seized. And by all accounts, the German deportations were chaotic and disorderly, while the Soviet deportations went quite smoothly, at least from an administrative standpoint.
It's an interesting contrast.