The 1st of September 1939.

After a false
accusation that Polish forces attacked a German radio station, Nazi Germany launches a so-called
“retaliatory” campaign against Poland, triggering World War II.

After defeating the Polish army, the
Germans ruthlessly suppress the Polish population, whom they consider racially inferior.

In the
weeks that follow the invasion, German SS, police, and military units shoot thousands of
Polish civilians, including many members of the nobility, clergy, and intelligentsia.

The situation is especially brutal in and around the city of Danzig, where the local Polish
and Jewish populations are subjected to forced Germanisation, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder.

Tens of thousands of civilians, especially Jews, are humiliated, tortured, and eventually
deported and murdered in concentration camps.

Less than three months after the German invasion,
the local Gauleiter proudly reports to Hitler, that his region is now Judenfrei, meaning
free of Jews.

His name is Albert Forster.

Albert Maria Forster, the youngest of
six children, was born on the 26th of July 1902 in the city of Fürth, then part
of the German Empire.

From 1908 to 1912, he attended a local elementary school,
and later continued his studies at the Humanistic Gymnasium in Fürth, which he left in
1920 with a lower secondary school certificate.

He worked at a local bank beginning in 1922, but
his political involvement soon drew attention.

In November 1923, he joined the Nazi Party and
became the leader of its local branch in Fürth, while also affiliating himself with the SA,
the party’s paramilitary wing.

His active role in antisemitic agitation led to his dismissal
from the bank in May 1924.

Shortly thereafter, he began working as a part-time journalist for the
antisemitic weekly newspaper Der Stürmer.

He also developed a close relationship with its publisher,
the German Nazi fanatic Julius Streicher.

Between August 1924 and February 1925,
during the temporary ban of the Nazi Party, Forster served as chairman of the Fürth branch
of the Greater German People’s Community.

He was also present at the trial of
Adolf Hitler and other putschists, who had attempted to overthrow the
Weimar Republic during the failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923.

In April 1925,
following the re-legalization of the party, Forster officially rejoined the Nazis and,
by June 1926, became a member of the SS.

In the years that followed, Albert Forster
steadily rose through the ranks of the Nazi Party.

In September 1930, he was elected
to the Reichstag, the German parliament, a position he would officially hold
until the end of the war—though by then, the Reichstag had become little more than a
symbolic institution under National Socialist rule.

Just one month later, at the age of
only 28, Forster was appointed Gauleiter of the Free City of Danzig – todays Polish Gdańsk,
replacing Arthur Greiser, who was reassigned as his deputy.

This leadership change sparked a
deep and lasting rivalry between the two men, as many local residents viewed Forster as an
outsider who had usurped a native Danziger.

Determined to assert control, Forster quickly
moved to reshape Danzig’s political landscape.

Through aggressive propaganda and intimidation
tactics, he led the local Nazi takeover and, by 1933, had effectively brought the
city’s government under Nazi control.

On the 30th of January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of
Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg.

Although Forster remained Gauleiter, Greiser
gradually regained political standing and, by 1934, became President of the Danzig Senate—effectively serving
as the city’s head of state.

In May 1934, Forster married Gertrud Deetz in a
formal ceremony held at the Berlin Chancellery, with Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess – Deputy Führer,
present as witnesses.

Forster remained a committed follower of Hitler and, in 1935, wrote a personal
account titled “How I Experienced Hitler”, in which he described himself as a loyal
admirer since 1923.

Several years later, a psychological report prepared for U.

S.

intelligence by psychoanalyst Walter C.

Langer claimed that Forster “is known to be a
homosexual” and noted he was often addressed as “Bubi,” a nickname reportedly common
among German homosexual circles at the time.

During the 1930s, Forster intensified efforts
to bring Danzig under German control.

Although the city was mostly German-speaking, it
remained politically independent due to the Treaty of Versailles.

Acting on orders from
Berlin, Forster used aggressive propaganda to rally support for reunification with the Reich,
declaring that “Poland will be only a dream.

” On the 23rd of August 1939, he replaced
Arthur Greiser as Danzig’s head of state, further increasing his authority in the
region.

The Danzig issue became one of the justifications for the Nazi invasion of
Poland.

Forster’s extreme views were no secret; he openly referred to Jews as a “dirty and
slippery race” and expressed his desire to rule over parts of Poland after the
expulsion of the Polish population.

The Second World War started on the 1st of
September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

Following the invasion, Albert Forster was
appointed Gauleiter of the newly formed Reichsgau Danzig–West Prussia, an administrative region
of Nazi Germany, and simultaneously made Reich Governor of the territory.

This consolidation
of power gave him full control over both the Nazi Party and civil administration in the
region.

Acting on Hitler’s orders, Forster and his rival Arthur Greiser, who at the time
was the Gauleiter of the neighboring Warthegau, were tasked with turning their territories into
purely German regions.

Hitler made it clear that “there would be no questions asked” about
how this was to be achieved.

In his Reichsgau, Forster behaved as a king and promised that
his area would be fully Germanised within ten years.

He personally oversaw the brutal
policies designed to accomplish that goal.

Forster openly called for the genocide of
Poles and Jews, declaring that “we have to exterminate this nation, starting from the
cradle,” and insisting that Poles and Jews were not human.

Around 70 detention and transit
camps were established across the region, where Polish civilians were systematically
tortured and murdered.

Women and girls were often raped by Nazi personnel before being
executed.

In mid-September 1939, Forster convened a high-level meeting of Nazi officials
and ordered the immediate removal of Jews, Polish clergy, and any Poles deemed politically
or racially undesirable.

He personally criticized local party officials in the city of Grudziądz
for, in his words, “not killing enough Poles.

” One of the most horrific atrocities linked to
Forster was the mass execution of civilians in the forests near the village of Piaśnica.

There,
between 12,000 and 16,000 people — including Poles, Jews, Czechs, Kashubians, and even German
dissidents — were massacred during the winter of 1939 to 1940.

During a rally at the Prusinski
Hotel in Wejherowo, a town near the massacre site, Forster incited violence by saying:
“We have to eliminate the lice-ridden Poles, starting with those in the cradle.

In
your hands I give the fate of the Poles; you can do with them what you want.

” The
crowd responded with chants like “Kill the Polish dogs!” and “Death to the Poles.

”
Ethnic German paramilitary groups, known as the Self-Defense Units, later
carried out the killings.

Forster was later held accountable for these crimes
by the Polish National Tribunal in Gdańsk.

Forster’s views on Jews were equally
violent.

At the start of the war, he stated: “Jews are not humans and must be eradicated like
vermin… mercy towards Jews is reprehensible.

Any means of destruction of Jews is desirable.

”
Thousands of Jews were either shot on the spot or deported to the General Government in
occupied Poland.

By November 1939, the region of Danzig–West Prussia was declared Judenfrei,
meaning “free of Jews,” a term the Nazis used to signal that an area had been completely emptied
of its Jewish population.

Historians estimate that up to 30,000 Jews from annexed parts of Poland
were murdered under Forster’s administration.

Unlike Greiser, who followed a policy of
widespread expulsion and extermination, Forster adopted a different approach when it came to the
Poles.

He launched a mass Germanisation campaign, declaring tens of thousands of Poles to be
ethnic Germans if they were considered “racially suitable.

” This decision brought him into open
conflict with Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, who was furious that Nazi racial purity laws
were being bent for political convenience.

But Forster, confident in Hitler’s backing, ignored
Himmler’s protests.

When Greiser and Himmler took their complaints to Hitler, they were simply told
to resolve the matter on their own.

Forster made his disdain for Himmler clear in private, saying:
“If I looked like Himmler, I wouldn’t talk about race,” mocking the SS leader’s physical
appearance, as Himmler was shortsighted, physically unimpressive, and even awkward-looking.

Because of Forster’s classification policies, two-thirds of the Polish population in
his region were officially labeled as German.

While this resulted in fewer mass
deportations than in Greiser’s Warthegau, the repression remained brutal.

By the end of
the war, an estimated 60,000 people had been murdered in Danzig–West Prussia, and between
35 and 170,000 were expelled.

Forster himself reported that by February 1940, 87,000 people
had already been “evacuated” from the region.

In December 1941, Forster was promoted to
SS-Obergruppenführer, a rank equivalent to Lieutenant General in the U.

S.

Army.

Despite
internal rivalries and growing tensions within the Nazi leadership, he retained full control
of his territory throughout the war, continuing to implement his genocidal vision through
terror, racial persecution, and mass murder.

As the war neared its end and the Third Reich
crumbled, Albert Forster remained in Danzig, refusing to abandon his position.

He stayed in
the city until March 1945, even as Soviet forces rapidly closed in.

Toward the end of March, he
traveled to Berlin and met with Hitler in the Führerbunker to express his belief that Danzig
could no longer be defended against the Red Army.

Hitler rejected the idea.

Forster later recalled:
“He told me that he would save Danzig, and that left no room for doubt”.

Convinced by Hitler’s words, he returned to Danzig but fled just days later.

Disguising himself as a rank-and-file soldier, the once powerful Gauleiter attempted to
avoid capture, but his efforts failed.

In May 1945, Forster was arrested by British
occupation forces in Hamburg.

In August 1946, the British military government extradited him
to Poland to face justice for his crimes.

He was first imprisoned in Warsaw, then transferred
to a prison in Danzig.

His trial began on the 5th of April 1948 and lasted until the 29th
of April.

Forster faced multiple charges, including the mass murder of members of the
Polish intelligentsia and Jews, the persecution and mistreatment of the Polish population, and
the appropriation of public and private property.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death by
hanging by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal.

Forster however begged for mercy,
submitting clemency requests to the court, the Polish president, and several
prominent figures in Western Europe.

These appeals delayed his execution but did
not prevent it.

Albert Forster was 49 years old when on the 28th of February 1952, he
was transferred from Danzig back to Warsaw, and executed that same day in the
courtyard of the central prison.

His wife, who had last received a letter from him
in 1949, was not informed of his death until 1954.

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