The Intelligenzaktion Pommern[1][2][3][4] was a Nazi German operation aimed at the eradication of the Polish intelligentsia in Pomeranian Voivodeship and the surrounding areas at the beginning of World War II.

[6] On the direct orders from Adolf Hitler, carried out by Reinhard Heydrich's bureau of Referat Tannenberg along with Heinrich Himmler’s established Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Poles from among intelligentsia and elites were rounded up,[7] and executed without any due process by the SS-Einsatzgruppen in dozens of remote locations such as the forest massacres in Piaśnica and the cavernous Valley of Death.

Many of the crimes were carried out, with official approval, by the so-called Einsatzkommando 16 and "Selbstschutz", or paramilitary organizations of ethnic Germans with previously Polish citizenship.

[14] According to official criteria, the Polish "intelligentsia" included anyone with a middle school or higher education, priests, teachers, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, veteran military officers, bureaucrats, members of Polish administration, police, medium and large businessmen and merchants, medium and large landowners, writers, journalists and newspaper editors.

[14] Between the fall of 1939 and spring of 1940, in the Intelligenzaktion and other actions, the Nazis killed around 100,000 Polish intellectuals and other prominent citizens, 61,000 of whom came from special lists.