On October 7, 1939, two days after Poland had been overrun, Adolf Hitler appointed the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to the new role of Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (German: Reichskommissariat für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums - RKFDV). This position authorized the SS to plan, initiate, and control the pace of Germanization, settlement and population transfer projects in occupied Poland, and later, after the invasion of the Soviet Union, in occupied Russia.