On October 12, 1939, Adolf Hitler issued a decree establishing the General Government (GG), a destructive administrative entity unprecedented in modern history. Its primary mission was the annihilation of Polish statehood, the consolidation and extermination of the Jewish population, and economic vassalage to the German war machine. Therefore, the GG cannot be recognized as an independent state entity. The GG comprised pre-war Polish lands belonging to the Kielce and Lublin voivodeships, and parts of the Kraków, Warsaw, and Łódź voivodeships.
After the invasion of the USSR in 1941, the Lviv, Tarnopol, and Stanisławów voivodeships were incorporated into the GG. At its peak, the GG covered nearly 145,200 km² and housed approximately 16 million people. The president of the German Academy of Law and the party's Reichsleiter with the rank of minister without portfolio (Reichsminister), Nazi lawyer Dr. Hans Frank, was appointed Governor-General. Reporting solely to Adolf Hitler, he wielded near-absolute authority in the territories under his control.
