During World War I, Arthur Greiser was a pilot and officer in the German Air Force. He was promoted to the rank of Air Force Squadron Commander. Greiser served in Hermann Goering's wing during the final stages of the war, when the "Flying Circus" assimilated the remains of the squadrons that still remained in service, for concentrated activity on the Western Front. He was awarded the Iron Cross first and second degree, the Medal rfor the Wounded and other medals of honor.
From 1919 to 1921 he belonged to one of the army veterans' militias held by the Weimar government and fought in the Baltic states against Soviet invasion.
In the early 1920s he lived in the port city of Danzig, as one of the leaders of an extremist militia. Danzig was a city under joint Polish-German rule, within western Poland.
Greiser joined the Nazi Party in 1928. He gained great party prestige as the hot-tempered mayor of Danzig, between 1935-1939.
In this position he was directly responsible for the escalating tensions with the Polish Republic, which were the main cause of the outbreak of World War II.
After the occupation of Poland, in October 1939, western Poland was annexed to Nazi Germany and divided into two districts. Greiser was appointed head of the party administration and governor of the Reich in the southern region, whose capital was the city of Lodz.
As an extremist racist, he enthusiastically implemented a "ethnic cleansing" program designed to remove from the area all Poles and put Germans in it. In all, he replaced about 600,000 Poles he had expelled, with about 600,000 ethnic Germans.
His anti-Polish policy was been implemented in various spheres, such as property confiscation, restrictions on education and culture, the massacre of Polish orphans and the campaign against the Catholic religion and its clergy. Mass executions were the norm.
Greiser turned the district in which he ruled for example of Nazification to the rest of Europe's Nazi-occupied areas. The Nazification and later the Lodz ghetto and the extermination of the Jews, were the first of their kind in the occupied territories of Poland. They became a reality and a model for the pattern of action throughout the Reich. This was the model by which the final solution was carried out.
The largest ghetto in Poland operated in Lodz. Its inhabitants justified their existence in the eyes of the Nazi regime thanks to the extensive industry in which they worked, which contributed to the German war effort.
Despite this, Greiser refused to respond to requests to improve the food rations of the Jews in the ghetto and his extremist anti-Jewish stance guided his subordinates in this spirit.
Greiser was active in Holocaust planning. In the area of his rule, the first extermination facility was established in Chelmno. Many attempts were made at the facility until it became effective. Later lessons were learned from its operation in all extermination facilities. During the war, about 320,000 people were killed in this facility, 98 percent of them Jews.
The first Jews sent to Chelmno came from Czechoslovakia, under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, the governor of this country.
Graiser praised the members of the Nazi unit who operated the facility. In a letter to Himmler, during the extermination operation, he suggested using the same method for Poles infected with tuberculosis and endangering the health of the Germans.
Grazer knew how to get the support of the top officials at the Chancellor's Office in Berlin. He was the most prominent and influential of all the many dozens of governors of the Nazi districts, most of whom were Flavian and even ridiculous figures. He belonged to the military elite along with Goering, Hess and Heydrich. In 1942 he was promoted to the rank of General in the SS. He may also have been marked as Heydrich's successor after his liquidation.
At the end of the war, Greiser was the victim of intrigue among the regime's leaders in Berlin and received conflicting orders regarding the defense from the approaching Soviets. As a result he was sent to Bavaria. At the end of the war he was captured by the Americans in the Alps and extradited to Poland. He was tried for war crimes. He claimed to have carried out orders, but the ample evidence against him clarified his character and motives. He was convicted of genocide and other counts, sentenced to death and was hanged in public.
Greiser is a clear example of a Nazi criminal, a militant nationalist from the border region, who acted mercilessly and out of hatred. A look at his picture shows an amazing resemblance to Goering, which is the result of cultivation no less than a natural resemblance. Like Goering, they both had bright, large, bold, watery and cold shark eyes, a plump but firm face and a love for fancy military uniforms. They were also similar in character traits: ambition, composure, cruelty, intrigue and love for risk-taking. They were both greedy and loved a life of luxury. What saved some of the Jews of the Lodz ghetto was his greediness.
