Racial theories played a very important role in National Socialist ideology. Based on them, most German researchers conducted pseudo-scientific studies to please the authorities. Among other things, they concluded that the mountain people had specific predispositions that distinguished them favourably from other people. In this way, the Polish highlanders were also identified with the mythical Arian descendants, the ancestors of the white race, according to the Nazis.
After the German occupation of Poland, Nazi researchers, on the initiative of Governor Hans Frank, quickly targeted the inhabitants of Podhale and other mountainous areas. German propaganda began to promote the false theory that they were descended from the Goths and were therefore a people related to the Germans. Hence, the idea of the Goralenvolk was born. Such a classification of the more than 150,000 inhabitants of the Podhale region under occupation had far-reaching political consequences.
As an expression of German benevolence towards the Highlanders, Frank received in Krakow a “delegation of the entire Podhale region” dressed in traditional Goral costumes. It was headed by Wacław Krzeptowski, who humbly asked the Governor to visit Zakopane. Frank quickly accepted the invitation, visiting the town as early as mid-November 1939. In the capital of the Tatra Mountains, he proclaimed the need to create a highland state. The visit was widely reported in the press, and the conquered Polish population remembered Krzeptowski’s particularly disgraceful words to Frank, who welcomed him as a ‘friend’.
Historians have repeatedly puzzled over the volte-face taken by Krzeptowski and his associates, who were favoured by the authorities of the Second Polish Republic. According to their findings, he was probably a victim of German Abwehr agent activity, influenced by an agent Dr Henryk Szatkowski and his own propensity for an extremely extravagant life.
Although a file of blue recognition cards with the letter “G” has not survived, there is no doubt that the Germans did not succeed in Germanising the Highlanders. According to estimates, only about 30,000 people accepted the cards, many of them forcibly.
The German plans to create a collaborationist army made up of Podhale inhabitants also failed completely. The Goralische Waffen SS Legion had reported about 300 people, 200 of whom were fit for service, but most deserted already at the training stage.
On 20 January 1945, by a sentence of the Polish Underground State, Krzeptowski was hanged by partisans from a Home Army unit.