Did you know this?
As part of the plan to destroy Poland, the Germans engaged in cultural genocide in which they destroyed or closed universities and high schools, libraries, museums and national monuments as well as scientific institutes and laboratories.[24] Polish children were forbidden from acquiring education beyond the elementary level so that a new generation of Polish leaders could not arise in the future.[24]. According to a May, 1940, memo from Heinrich Himmler: “The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one’s name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. I do not think that reading is desirable.”[24] The Poles responded with the “Secret Teaching” (Tajne Nauczanie) a campaign of underground education.
In the same document, Himmler promised to eventually deport all Slavic Poles to Russia. In other statements, he mentioned the future killing fields in the Pripet Marshes where all were intended to die during the cultivation of the swamps. Plans for the mass transportation and creation of slave labor camps for up to 20 million Poles were made. According to Himmler, “All Poles will disappear from the world. [...] It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles.”[25]
Yes, the Jews were on the “fast track”, but it still was the Nazi goal to exterminate all Poles as well, but to just get more slave labor out of them before finishing the deed.
How unlucky for the Jews that they were target number one.
Lucky for the Poles, I guess, the Jews were ahead of them.
I think the end goal was to destroy the entire world and everyone in it. I don’t think the Nazis realized that Hitler wanted to kill them too. Hitler wanted to kill everyone and perhaps eventually himself.
Those Poles whom Himmler thought could be “Germanized” were to be saved, albeit only as slave labor-The rest were to be starved to death, along with millions of other Slavs. This is why so many Polish children were kidnapped and given to German families. Gitta Sereny wrote an excellent book chronicaling this. It is called “The Healing Wound”.