Quoting Katarzyna Jedynak’s German repressions in the Częstochowa area during the Second World War:

The Częstochowa area¹ suffered the first losses already at the onset of the 1939 Defensive War. The Wehrmacht units entering Poland committed numerous crimes, among others setting fire to buildings and executing Polish citizens. Repressive operations of this kind were rarely connected with military action. In the main, they were retaliation on the local populace for the stubborn resistance of regular troops of the Polish Army.

The methods of terror included taking hostages, death threats, brutal treatment, various types of harassment, as well as destruction and robbery of property. The shooting of civilians usually did not follow from any formal procedure, and in many cases even the personal data of the victims were not checked. The majority of executions were conducted ad hoc and spontaneously, but first and foremost arbitrarily, for which reason they may be called war banditry.

The casualties of 1 September 1939 included residents of three villages in the Kłobuck district: Konieczki (three people), Koski (four people), and Przystajń (one person). Next, on the night of 1–2 September, the villages of Parzymiechy and Zimnowoda, both situated in the Częstochowa district, were pacified. The [Fascists] shot 75 and 39 people respectively, and razed both locations to the ground.

On the following day (3 September) in the township of Krzepice (Krzepice commune), the invaders gathered the residents in the market square and began shooting. As a result, 30 people perished.

On the same day in the Myszków district, south of Częstochowa, Wehrmacht troops surrounded and set fire to the village of Mysłów (Koziegłowy commune). The soldiers shot at anyone who attempted to escape. Some people suffocated or burned alive in the basements of farm buildings which the [Fascists] had set alight. 22 people died at the time, including 10 children. On 4 September, [the Fascists] shot 104 people in Żarki (Żarki commune) (Rejestr miejsc i faktów, 1986, pp. 54, 64, 71, 99, 101).

The Wehrmacht units marked their advance into Poland with a succession of tragedies, committing crimes against civilians who were not taking part in fighting off the aggressor. The armies of the Third Reich thus violated international treaties on the laws of war, including for instance the Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, appended to the 1907 Hague Convention IV (Kosowska, 2011, p. 63).

By 6 September, the [Fascists] had perpetrated crimes in a dozen or so villages in the vicinity of Częstochowa, all situated along the route of the German Tenth Army, which was commanded by General Walter von Reichenau (including XVI Panzer Corps and XV Light Corps).

The killings included: in Koszęcin commune — Koszęcin (seven people), in Konopiska commune — Hutki, Rększowice, and Łaziec, in Kłobuck commune — Łobodno (13 people), in Poczesna commune — Nierada, in Lipie commune — Napoleon (10 people), in Kruszyna commune — Baby and Jacków (14 people), and Kruszyna (38 people), in Mstów commune — Małusy Wielkie (11 people), in Przyrów commune — Zarębice (25 people), in Dąbrowa Zielona commune — Cielętniki (11 people), Chrząstów (presently a district of Koniecpol; 21 people) and Kajetanowice (72 people).

The [Fascists] also committed numerous crimes against the residents of towns. In Częstochowa, 4 September 1939 was dubbed “Bloody Monday”; according to various estimates, on that day the [Fascists] murdered from 227 to 500 people (Pietrzykowski, 1985, pp. 16–23; Pietrzykowski, 1964, pp. 14–21; Domański, Jankowski, 2011, pp. 25–28).

The first 55 days of the Wehrmacht on Polish soil were marked by the brutality of its soldiers, who often destroyed Polish townships and killed their residents without any [given] reason, just as a pre‐emptive measure. Only some expeditions were military in nature, with their objective being — for instance — a search for weapons (for example in the village of Stany in the Częstochowa district, where three men were killed for hiding Polish Army weapons) (Pietrzykowski, 1985, p. 28).

Civilians were in particular danger near large concentrations of troops, where they would be attacked for largely inexplicable (and oftentimes imaginary) reasons. For instance, if weary, inexperienced and careless soldiers accidentally wounded their comrades at their billets, blame would be placed on the local populace or on alleged “soldiers of the Polish Army”, who purportedly had already resorted to partisan warfare (Böchler, 2009, pp. 22, 84, 87).

In October, Augustyn Gwóźdź, a teacher from Kalety, was arrested on charges of shooting a [Fascist] soldier. He was killed on the way to prison. Six men were murdered in Mokrzesz (Mstów commune). In the same commune, the village of Jaskrów became one of the first mass execution sites. On two separate dates — 9 and 25 November — the [Fascists] brought in some 47 arrestees from Częstochowa and shot them there (Rejestr miejsc i faktów, 1986, p. 41).

Also worth mentioning here are the crimes committed by auxiliary units assigned to the main Wehrmacht forces. These included: deployment units (so‐called Einsatzkommando), operational groups of the Security Police, units of the Order Police, Field Gendarmerie, Secret Field Police, and the self‐protection militia (Selbstschutz), which was composed of members of the local German minority (Durlej, Gmitruk, 2008, p. 10; Pietrzykowski, 1989, p. 135; Pietrzykowski, 1964, pp. 10–11).

Among the numerous crimes which they perpetrated was the shooting of four local farmers in the village of Piasek (Koszęcin commune) in September 1939 (Rejestr miejsc i faktów, 1986, p. 74).

Although this author presents these atrocities as arbitrary, the Fascists slaughtered the civilians in this area for the same reasons that other imperialists in other colonial wars had: looting the dead for any goods, and making room for later settling. The annihilation of the natives also meant that the settlers would have less competition in the struggle for food, wood, and other resources.

Quoting Witold Wojciech Mędykowski’s Macht Arbeit Frei?: German Economic Policy and Forced Labor of Jews in the General Government, 1939–1943, chapter 1:

One [of Fascism’s] objectives […] was economic expansion in […] new territories, which was generally referred to as Lebensraum. However, this concept represented much more than merely territory.

It was, first of all, “living space for the German economy,” bringing with it, apart from territory, a labor force, raw materials, and agricultural production. On May 10, 1939, the chief commander of the armed forces sent a letter to various OKW departments that was signed by Hitler. Attached to the letter were the “Instructions for the conduct of war and the economic security of their own.”¹

Thus, parallel to the preparations for the military, were preparations for sustainability in economic terms. A conference in the Reich’s Chancellery was held on May 23, 1939 to summarize preparations in economic terms. The report from this meeting was called the “Schmundt protocol.”²

During his speech, Hitler recalled again the validity of Lebensraum and said that the war was not really because of Gdańsk and the Corridor, but its objective was extension of living space in the east.³ Also in other occasion, during a meeting with Mussolini in August 1939, Hitler said: “For economic reasons also, Germany needed the foodstuffs and timber from these eastern regions.”⁴