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Phillip T. Rutherford's impressive book deals with four large deportation operations carried out by Nazi Germany from December 1939 to March 1941, which moved inhabitants, mostly non-Jewish Poles, from annexed Polish territory to the General Government. The focus is the Reichsgau Posen, renamed in January 1940 Reichsgau Wartheland and known as the Warthegau. Comprising most of the former Prussian province of Posen, also with territories that used to be in the Russian Empire, the Warthegau was the largest and economically most important incorporated Polish territory. Nearly four million non-Jewish Poles lived there, as well as 366,000 Jews (concentrated in and around the city of Litzmannstadt/Lód[Greek and Coptic U+00378]) and 327,000 Germans. The Nazis aimed to Germanize the region and left hundreds of thousands homeless and impoverished. During its five years of operation there, the Umwandererzentralstelle (Central Emigration Office) of the Security Police was responsible for the eviction and deportation or displacement of almost 905,000 natives, mainly non-Jewish Poles. Many people died along the way.
German propaganda only mentioned allegedly constructive Germanization. Thus SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Greiser, the region's Gauleiter (senior Nazi party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Reich governor), proclaimed, "As we make the land on the Warta and the Vistula the breadbasket of the Greater German Reich and create Lebensraum for millions...