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's investigation of Nazi policies of "ethnic cleansing" reveals the striking anti-Polish nature of the crusade to Germanize newly occupied territory and shows that these actions were a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.<BR>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 inferior" Poles who had lived there for generations. Focusing on the Wartheland region, he examines four major deportation operations carried out between December 1939 and March 1941, including the day-to-day logistics and actions overseen by the powerful German Central Emigration Office.<BR>Drawing on both German archival and Polish-language sources, Rutherford considers a subject often marginalized by historians, but one that underscores the crucial relationship between the Nazis' early anti-Polish actions and their later annihilation of the Jews. He shows in detail when, where, and how the Nazis' operations evolved into a highly efficient "science" of human roundups, expropriated property, and human cargo shipments en masse.