Hitler's aim in invading Poland was not only to regain the territories lost in 1918. He also intended to impose German rule on Poland. To this end, he had ordered three ss Death's Head regiments to follow behind the infantry advance, and to conduct what were called 'police and security' measures behind the German lines. […] In protecting Hitler's Reich […], the ss would have to 'incarcerate or annihilate' every enemy of Nazism, a task that would challenge even the 'absolute and inflexible severity' which the Death's Head regiments had learned in the concentration camps.
From: Martin Gilbert, The Second World War, A Complete History, Herry Holt and Company, Inc., New York, 1989, pp. 2, 4.
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