"Yet the more Frank got to know his fiefdom, the more he began to doubt the wisdom of expelling or starving nearly one in ten of the population, to say nothing of the dangers of allowing epidemics to break out in the principal cities. In the early 1930s, Jews had accounted for nearly half of Poland's highest income-earners. A very high proportion of the entrepreneurs, managers and skilled workers of Polish cities were Jewish. One of the first acts of the German occupation had been to authorize the seizure of all Jewish property - the beginning of a campaign of systematic and ruthless plunder. At around the same time Frank had issued an edict imposing a general obligation for forced labour on all male Jews between the ages of twelve and sixty. Whether for their capital or their labour, Jews had an unquestionable economic value; simply stealing the former and eliminating the latter was patently not a profit-maximizing strategy. Unless Frank wanted to return the Polish economy to the Middle Ages, he needed to work out a compromise between the dictates of racist ideology and the economics of empire."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 401
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hans_Frank
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Hans Frank
1900 – 1946
deutscher Politiker der [[w:DAP|DAP]] und [[w:NSDAP|NSDAP]], Jurist, Generalgouverneur der besetzten polnischen Gebiete im Zweiten Weltkrieg, verurteilt im [[w:Nürnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher|Nürnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher]]
27 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Hans Frank →
Related Quotes
"I am thankful for the kind treatment during my captivity and I ask God to accept me with mercy."
"Death by hanging...I deserved it and I expected it, as I've always told you. I am glad that I have had the chance to …"
"This war would be only a partial success if the whole lot of Jewry survived it, while we shed our best blood to save …"
"We must not be squeamish when we learn that a total of 17,000 have been shot. We are now duty bound to hold together,…"
"If the authority of the National-Socialist Reich is to be upheld, then it is unacceptable that representatives of the…"
"In Prague, big red posters were put up on which one could read that seven Czechs had been shot today. I said to mysel…"
"Let me tell you quite frankly: in one way or another we will have to finish with the Jews. The führer once expressed …"
"I did not care for Wagner. My tastes are more classical. Der Fuhrer had no musical taste and liked Wagner because of …"
"I tried to commit suicide because I sacrificed everything for Hitler. And that man whom we sacrificed everything for …"
"Ah! American cigarettes are like the American soul - sweet and light."