The 'Intelligenz Aktion' was the German programme to target and destroy elite segments of the Polish population, most especially the intelligentsia, as part of the 'Generalplan Ost' effort to destroy any change of a Polish resurgence against the German occupation (October 1939/spring 1940).

As such, the 'Intelligenz Aktion' was the precursor of the 'AB Aktion', and resulted in the deaths of some 60,000 persons. The various elements of the Polish elite were seen as the possible leaders of an insurrection against the German occupation and exploitation of Poland, and were seen by Nazi racial theorists as being most likely of 'German blood' as their dynamic leadership contrasted with Slavonic fatalism, but even so the removal of such elements was regarded as necessary to remove leadership from the Polish nation and also because their patriotism and hatred of Germany would prevent full-scale Germanisation. Their children were targeted for abduction and Germanisation. The 'Intelligenz Aktion' was the task of the Einsatzgruppen (SS paramilitary death squads) and the Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz (para-military organisation of the German ethnic minority in Poland), which were informed by their commanders that their role would be far more difficult than merely fighting in battle.

For the purposes of the 'Intelligenz Aktion', the Polish elite was defined broadly as the nobility, intelligentsia, teachers, entrepreneurs, social workers, military veterans, members of national organisations, priests, judges, political activists, and anyone who had attended secondary school. People were arrested in accordance with the listings created for the Sonderuntersuchung Buch Polen (special investigation book Poland) before the war by members of the German minority in Poland in co-operation with the German intelligence services.

The operation took the form of a number of regional sub-operations including the 'Intelligenzaktion Pommern' (Pomerania, where 23,000 Poles were killed), 'Intelligenzaktion Posen' (Poznań, where 2,000 Poles were killed), 'Intelligenzaktion Masovien' (Masovia, where 6,700 Poles from Ostrołęka, Wyszków, Ciechanów, Wysokie Mazowieckie, and Giełczyn near Łomża were killed), 'Intelligenzaktion Schlesien' (Silesia, where 2,000 Poles were killed), 'Intelligenzaktion Litzmannstadt' (Łódź, where 1,500 Poles were killed), 'Sonderaktion Krakau' (183 Polish professors from the Jagiellonian University of Kraków were deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp), 'Zweite Sonderaktion Krakau', 'Sonderaktion Tschenstochau' (Częstochowa), 'Sonderaktion Lublin' (Lublin, where 2,000 Poles, mostly priests, were killed), 'Sonderaktion Bürgerbräukeller' (Łódź region), and 'Czarny Las Massacre' (Stanisławów, where 250 Poles were killed).