https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesia Most inhabitants of Silesia today speak the national languages of their respective countries, while before the population shifts after 1945, the majority of Silesia's population spoke German. The population of Upper Silesia is native (with some immigrants from Poland who came in the 19th to 20th centuries), while Lower Silesia was settled by a German-speaking population before 1945. An ongoing debate exists whether Silesian speech should be considered a dialect of Polish or a separate language.[citation needed] Also, a Lower Silesian German dialect is used, although today it is almost extinct.[citation needed] It is used by expellees who relocated to the remaining parts of Germany, as well as by Germans who stayed in their Lower Silesian home ------------- Polish Silesia was among the first regions invaded during Germany's 1939 attack on Poland. One of the claimed goals of Nazi occupation, particularly in Upper Silesia, was the extermination of those whom Nazis viewed as subhuman, namely Jews and ethnic Poles. The Polish and Jewish population of the then Polish part of Silesia was subjected to genocide involving ethnic cleansing and mass murder, while German colonists were settled in pursuit of Lebensraum.[9] Two thousand Polish intellectuals, politicians, and businessmen were murdered in the Intelligenzaktion Schlesien[10] in 1940 as part of a Poland-wide Germanization program. Silesia also housed one of the two main wartime centers where medical experiments were conducted on kidnapped Polish children by Nazis.[11] ----------------------------- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesia#/media/File:Landkarte_von_Schlesien.jpg First map of Silesia by Martin Helwig, 1561; north at the bottom ----------------------------- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udo_von_Woyrsch Udo von Woyrsch (24 July 1895[1] – 14 January 1983) was a high-ranking SS official in Nazi Germany who was responsible for implementing the regime's racial policies during World War II Einsatzgruppe[edit] In September 1939 Woyrsch commanded the Einsatzgruppe ("Special Purpose Operational Group") specifically charged with terrorizing and murdering the Jewish population of Poland. Woyrsch was responsible for some of the deadliest massacres of Jews in Poland in 1939, where in East Upper Silesia he led the group that murdered 500 Jews in Kattowitz, Bedzin, and Sosnowiec.[5] The brutality of this Einsatzgruppe in Kattowitz was such that some Wehrmacht officers interceded with the Gestapo to have it withdrawn.[6] However many junior military commanders actively supported Woyrsch's campaign.[5] Between 20 April 1940 and February 1944, Woyrsch was the Higher SS and Police Leader in military district IV and district leader in Dresden. Woyrsch was removed from office in 1944 for incompetence.[7] According to Richard Grunberger, Woyrsch was part of Himmler's entourage trailing about northern Germany in 1945.[8] Trials and convictions[edit] Woyrsch was interned by the British from 1945 to 1948.[citation needed] In 1948, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the "Night of the Long Knives" in 1934.[7] However, he was released in 1952.[7] He was tried again in 1957 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.[7] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives The Night of the Long Knives (German: About this soundNacht der langen Messer (help·info)), or the Röhm Purge, also called Operation Hummingbird (German: Unternehmen Kolibri) was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, carried out a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his hold on power in Germany, as well as to alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' own mass paramilitary organization. Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm - the so-called Röhm putsch. The primary instruments of Hitler's action, who carried out most of the killings, were the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary force under Himmler and its Security Service under Reinhard Heydrich, and the Gestapo, the secret police, under Göring. Göring's personal police battalion also took part in the killings Reaction[edit] Law Relating to National Emergency Defense Measures July 3, 1934.[57] Almost unanimously, the army applauded the Night of the Long Knives, even though the generals Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow were among the victims. The ailing President Hindenburg, Germany's highly revered military hero, sent a telegram expressing his "profoundly felt gratitude" and congratulated Hitler for "nipping treason in the bud."[58] However, during the Nuremberg Trials Hermann Goring admitted the telegram was never seen by Hindenburg, and was actually written by the Nazis.[59] General von Reichenau went so far as to publicly give credence to the lie that Schleicher had been plotting to overthrow the government. In his speech to the Reichstag on July 13 justifying his actions, Hitler denounced Schleicher for conspiring with Ernst Röhm to overthrow the government; Hitler alleged both were traitors working in the pay of France.[60] The Night of the Long Knives represented a triumph for Hitler, and a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as "the supreme leader of the German people", as he put it in his July 13 speech to the Reichstag. Hitler formally adopted this title in April 1942, thus placing himself de jure as well as de facto above the reach of the law. Centuries of jurisprudence proscribing extrajudicial killings were swept aside. Despite some initial efforts by local prosecutors to take legal action against those who carried out the murders, which the regime rapidly quashed, it appeared that no law would constrain Hitler in his use of power.[m] The Night of the Long Knives also sent a clear message to the public that even the most prominent Germans were not immune from arrest or even summary execution should the Nazi regime perceive them as a threat. In this manner, the purge established a pattern of violence that would characterise the Nazi regime. Röhm was purged from all Nazi propaganda, such as The Victory of Faith, the Leni Riefenstahl film about the 1933 Nuremberg rally, which showed Röhm frequently alongside Hitler; a copy of the original survived and was found in the United Kingdom many years later To a lesser extent, the Sturmabteilung (SA), a Nazi paramilitary organisation, remained somewhat autonomous within the party. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. The Freikorps were nationalistic organisations primarily composed of disaffected, disenchanted, and angry German combat veterans founded by the government in January 1919 to deal with the threat of a Communist revolution when it appeared that there was a lack of loyal troops. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------