The fate of Polish Jews under the German occupation has been well documented, but not as much is known about the wartime ordeal of non-Jewish Poles. Phillip Rutherford investigates Nazi policies of "ethnic cleansing" to reveal the striking anti-Polish nature of the crusade to Germanize newly occupied territory and to show that these actions were a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.

Rutherford explores the origin and implementation of Nazi resettlement schemes in occupied western Poland, where Germany sought to reclaim territory for its expanding population by booting out the "ethnically...