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Conclusion. The Nazi terror was, in scholar Norman Davies's words, "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in Europe." Reliable statistics for the total number of Poles who died as a result of Nazi German policies do not exist. Many others were victims of the 1939-1941 Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and of deportations to Central Asia and Siberia. Records are incomplete, and the Soviet control of Poland for 50 years after the war impeded independent scholarship. The changing borders and ethnic composition of Poland as well as vast population movements during and after the war also complicated the task of calculating losses.
In the past, many estimates of losses were based on a Polish report of 1947 requesting repatriations from the Germans; this often cited document tallied population losses of 6 million for all Polish "nationals" (Poles, Jews, and other minorities). Subtracting 3 million Polish Jews victims, the report claimed 3 million non-Jewish victims of the Nazi terror, including civilian and military casualties of war.
Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German occupation policies and the war. This approximate total includes Poles killed in executions or who died in prisons, forced labor, and concentration camps. It also includes an estimated 225,000 civilian victims of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, more than 50,000 civilians who died during the 1939 invasion and siege of Warsaw, and a relatively small but unknown number of civilians killed during the Allies' military campaign of 1944-45 to liberate Poland.
Source: Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Used with permission.
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A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
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