[1] This was seen by Nazi Germany as a pre-emptive measure to keep the Polish resistance scattered and to prevent the Poles from revolting during the planned German invasion of France.

As the result of this operation 100,000 Polish nobles, teachers, entrepreneurs, social workers, priests, judges and political activists were arrested (save those whose skills were temporarily needed for civil administrative purposes) in 10 regional actions.

[10] One such action, the November 1939 Sonderaktion Krakau, in which the president and the entire faculty Jagiellonian University in Kraków were arrested and sent to concentration camps,[10] drew condemnation from Fascist Italy and the Vatican.

[3] The later anti-Polish AB-Aktion had its roots in discussions with Soviet officials during a series of secretive Gestapo–NKVD conferences that began at the end of September 1939 after the two nations had defeated and divided Poland.

[16] By that time Hitler had also personally charged GG governor-general Hans Frank with keeping Poland under control to avoid any distractions during the upcoming actions on the Western Front.

[17] Accordingly, on March 2, 1940, Frank convened a meeting with the military and security leadership and all four leaders of the GG's districts, to announce Aktion AB, its name from the words for "extraordinary pacification" in German.

"[17] Immediately after the second meeting, SS Brigadeführer Bruno Streckenbach, commander of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) in the GG, to begin arresting members of resistance organizations.

Citing the ongoing partisan actions of the Detached Unit of the Polish Army and other recent incidents of attacks and sabotage against Germans and the occupying military,[22] the attendees agreed to initiate a plan to ensure that "the Polish resistance movement will be deprived of its leaders, the authority of the Führer and the Reich in the General Government will increase enormously, and peace in the country will be unconditionally maintained."

Frank made it clear to all concerned that Aktion AB was specifically aimed at preventing the Poles from taking advantage of the invasion of France and the Low Countries to mount an uprising, which he described as a duty participants owed to the Reich.

[27] Streckenbach reported that half of "the flower of Polish intelligentsia and resistance" had been arrested; he estimated that 75% of the total would be in Nazi hands by the conclusion of Aktion AB.

Through AB the Germans sought particularly to intimidate the whole population as they further eliminated those they believed could lead the resistance[32] To that end, they arrested 3,000 known criminals in order to discredit the intellectuals they were murdered alongside.

[33] Ernst Zörner, governor of the Lublin District, requested that workers and peasants be dropped from the lists for economic reasons, suggesting that originally the scope of Aktion AB had been broader.

[37] The majority of those arrested were, however, not transported to camps but shot en masse at selected sites in remote forests within the GG after being questioned about any involvement in or awareness of resistance activity.

[35][38] On the orders of Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the GG's SS commander, units carrying out the executions were provided with "spiritually valuable" entertainment after completing their duties.

[23] The arrests began at the end of March, targeting politicians, activists, teachers and professionals, all categories that in the opinion of the city's SS commander, Josef Albert Meisinger, could play a significant role in inciting and leading resistance to German rule.

While, as happened in Warsaw some were taken to nearby forests near Przegorzały and Nowy Wiśnicz to be shot, at least 150 executions were carried out at Fort 49 in Wzgórza Krzesławickie in the city's northwest, continuing the site's use for that purpose since the preceding October.

[48] In early July 112 of those prisoners were shot on Gruszka Hill near Tarnawa Dolna, with an additional 93 killed in the woods near Sieklówka; all the deaths were officially listed as suicides.

[57][58] The rest, about 450–500, were executed at Rury Jezuickie, a short distance outside Lublin, in five large groups from the end of June through August, with some having been formally sentenced to death by the Standgerichten.

[60] Aktion AB is considered to have begun in the GG's Radom District with 42 arrests of "leadership class" intelligentsia in Częstochowa and another hundred in Radomsko and Piotrków Trybunalski.

[61] Two months later, additional raids were carried out in most towns within the district, with another 63 coming in Częstochowa, 53 (mostly school principals and teachers) in Radomsko[62] and 120 in Piotrków Trybunalski on 12 June.

[68] On 29 June came one of the largest mass executions in the district with 760 prisoners killed in the Brzask Forest near Skarżysko-Kamienna, along with 19 residents of the village of Królewiec who had been detained during a raid on the Detached Unit.

[82] The Gestapo was able to augment Aktion AB with several raids on small units of the Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ),[83] leaving what resistance organizations remained, already demoralized by the fall of France that June, chaotic and scattered.

[82][84] In November ZWZ general Stefan Rowecki wrote to the Polish government-in-exile in London that both working conditions and security for the resistance had become much worse since May.

Officers in the security services believed that such ad hoc actions yielded minimal results that, ultimately, did not impede the growth of the resistance.

[87][c] Streckenbach conceded at a GG meeting a year after the operation that the belief that resistance came exclusively from those who had been officers, officials, activists or highly educated had been "mistaken and very dangerous".

[77] As a result the GG decided, after concluding Aktion AB, to forsake similar mass actions, at least for a while, and concentrate instead on targeting specific Polish resistance cells.

Krüger, having survived a 1943 assassination attempt in Kraków, went on to command Waffen-SS units in Yugoslavia, Finland and finally Austria, where he killed himself in May 1945 as Germany surrendered.

[95] At the same time that Aktion AB began, in April and May of 1940, the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, were carrying out the Katyn massacre of Polish army officers it had taken prisoner when invading the country from the east as Germany had from the west the preceding September.

None of the documentary evidence from the Zakopane meeting, or any other Gestapo-NKVD conference, records any suggestion the two sides informed each other of their plans to murder many members of Poland's elite.

[102] In William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice and its film adaptation, the title character's father and husband are revealed to both have been professors in Kraków who, despite being strongly antisemitic Nazi sympathizers, were nevertheless arrested and executed along with their colleagues.