In Nazi German terminology, () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship." The term is the nominalised plural of volksdeutsch, with denoting a singular female, and , a singular male. The words Volk and völkisch conveyed the meanings of "folk".As to older meanings of völkisch, see "Völkisch movement".
Ethnic Germans living outside Germany shed their identity as Auslandsdeutsche (Germans abroad), and morphed into the in a process of self-radicalisation. This process gave the Nazi regime the nucleus around which the new Volksgemeinschaft was established across the German borders.
were further divided into "racial" groupsminorities within a state minoritybased on special cultural, social, and historic criteria elaborated by the Nazis.Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945, 1993, p. 23.
Origin of the term Volksdeutsche According to the historian Doris Bergen, Adolf Hitler coined the definition of which appeared in a 1938 memorandum of the German Reich Chancellery. That document defined as "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". After 1945, the Nazi citizenship laws of 1935 ()and the associated regulations that referred to the National Socialist concepts of blood and race in connection with the concept of volksdeutschwere rescinded in Germany.
For Adolf Hitler and the other ethnic Germans of his time, the term also carried overtones of blood and race not captured in the common English translation "ethnic Germans". According to German estimates in the 1930s, about 30 million and Auslandsdeutsche (German citizens residing abroad) lived outside the Reich. A significant proportion of them were in Eastern Europe – i.e., Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, where many were located in villages along the Danube and in Russia.
The Nazi goal of expansion assigned the a special role in German plans, to bring them back to German citizenship and to elevate them to power over the native populations in those areas. The Nazis detailed such goals in .Bergen, Doris. "The Nazi Concept of 'Volksdeutsche' and the Exacerbation of Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1939–45", Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 29, No. 4 (October 1994), pp. 569–582 In some areas, such as in Poland, Nazi authorities compiled specific lists and registered people as ethnic Germans in the "Deutsche Volksliste".
Historical background
In the sixteenth century Vasili III invited small numbers of craftsmen, traders and professionals to settle in Russia from areas that would later become Germany so that Muscovy could exploit their skills. These settlers (many of whom intended to stay only temporarily) were generally confined to the German Quarter in Moscow (which also included Dutch, British and other western or northern European settlers whom the Russians came to indiscriminately refer to as "Germans"). They were only gradually allowed in other cities, so as to prevent the spread of alien ideas to the general population.
In his youth, Peter the Great spent much time in the 'German' quarter. When he became Tsar, he brought more German experts (and other foreigners) into Russia, and particularly into government service, in his attempts to westernise the empire. He also brought in German engineers to supervise the construction of the new city of Saint Petersburg. Catherine the Great, herself ethnically German, invited Germanic farmers to immigrate and settle in Russian lands along the Volga River. She guaranteed them the right to retain their language, religion and culture.
Also in other areas with an ethnic German minority people of other than German descent assimilated with the ethnic German culture and formed then a part of the minority. Examples are people of Baltic and Scandinavian descent, who assimilated into the minority of the Baltic Germans. Jews of Posen province, Galicia, Bukovina and Bohemia, with their Yiddish culture derived in part from their German heritage, often mingled into the ethnic German culture, thus forming part of the various ethnic German minorities. But anti-Semitic Nazis later rejected Jewish ethnic Germans and all Jewish German citizens as "racially" German.
Ethnic Germans were also sent in organised colonisation attempts aiming at Germanisation of conquered Polish areas. Frederick the Great (reigned 1740–1786) settled around 300,000 colonists in the eastern provinces of Prussia, acquired in the First Partition of Poland of 1772, with the intention of replacing the Polish nobility. He treated the Poles with contempt and likened the "slovenly Polish trash" in newly occupied West Prussia to Iroquois, the historic Native American confederacy based in what is now the state of New York."In fact from Hitler to Hans we find frequent references to Poles and Jews as Indians. This, too, was a long standing trope. It can be traced back to Frederick the Great, who likened the 'slovenly Polish trash' in newly' reconquered West Prussia to Iroquois". David Blackbourn, James N. Retallack, Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930, University of Toronto, 2007
Prussia encouraged a second round of colonisation with the goal of Germanisation after 1832.Wielka historia Polski t. 4 Polska w czasach walk o niepodległość (1815–1864). Od niewoli do niepodległości (1864–1918) Marian Zagórniak, Józef Buszko 2003 p. 186 Prussia passed laws to encourage Germanisation of the Prussian Partition including the provinces of Posen and West Prussia in the late 19th century. The Prussian Settlement Commission relocated 154,000 colonists, including locals.
Treaty of Versailles
The reconstitution of Poland following the Treaty of Versailles (1919) made ethnic German minorities of some Prussian provinces of the German Empire citizens of the Polish nation state. Ethnic German inhabitants of provinces of the dissolved Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as Bukovina Germans, Danube Swabians, Sudeten Germans and Transylvanian Saxons, became citizens of newly established Slavic or Magyar nation-states and of Romania. Tensions between the new administration and the ethnic German minority arose in the Polish Corridor. The Austrian Germans also found themselves not allowed to join Germany as German Austria was strictly forbidden to join Germany. In addition, the name "German Austria" was forbidden, so the name was changed back to just "Austria" and the First Austrian Republic was created in 1919.
The Nazi era before World War II
During the Nazi years, the German Nazis used the term Volksdeutsche, by which they meant racially German since they believed in a German 'race' or 'Volk', to refer to foreign nationals of some German ethnicity living in countries newly occupied by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Prior to World War II, more than 10 million ethnic Germans lived in Central and Eastern Europe. They constituted an important minority far into Russia. Because of widespread assimilation some people whom the Nazis called Volksdeutsche could no longer speak German and in fact were culturally regionalized as Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks, etc.
Pre-war relations with the Nazis In 1931, prior to its rise to power, the Nazi party established the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP/AO (Foreign Organisation of the Nazi Party), whose task it was to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the ethnic German minorities viewed as Volksdeutsche in Nazi ideology. In 1936, the government set up the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic Germans' Liaison Office), commonly known as VoMi, under the jurisdiction of the SS as the liaison bureau. It was headed by SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz.
According to the historian Valdis Lumans, "[one of Himmler's goals was] centralising control over the myriad of groups and individuals inside the Reich promoting the Volksdeutsche cause. Himmler did not initiate the process but rather discovered it in progress and directed it to its conclusion and to his advantage. His principal instrument in this effort was an office from outside the SS, a Nazi party organ, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi), translated as the Ethnic German Liaison Office."Lumans Valdis, Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945, Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press,
Internal propaganda Nazi propaganda used the existence of ethnic Germans who they called in foreign lands before and during the war, to help justify the aggression of Nazi Germany. The annexation of Poland was presented as necessary to protect the ethnic German minorities there.Cinzia Romani, Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich p. 145 Massacres of ethnic Germans, such as Bloody Sunday, or alleged atrocities, were used in such propaganda, and the film Heimkehr drew on such putative events as the rescue of by the arrival of German tanks.Robert Edwin Hertzstein, The War That Hitler Won p. 289 Heimkehr'''s introduction explicitly states that hundreds of thousands of Poles of German ethnicity suffered as the characters in the film did.Robert Edwin Hertzstein, The War That Hitler Won, p. 287 Menschen im Sturm reprised "Heimkehrs effort to justify the invasion of Slavonia, using many of the same atrocities.Robert Edwin Hertzstein, The War That Hitler Won pp. 292–293 In The Red Terror, a Baltic German is able to avenge her family's deaths, but commits suicide after, unable to live with meaning in the Soviet Union.Erwin Leiser, Nazi Cinema pp. 44–45 Flüchtlinge depicted the sufferings of Volga German refugees in Manchuria, and how a heroic blond leader saved them; it was the first movie to win the state prize.Erwin Leiser, Nazi Cinema pp. 29–30 Frisians in Peril depicted the suffering of a village of Volga Germans in the Soviet Union;Erwin Leiser, Nazi Cinema pp. 39–40 it also depicted the murder of a young woman for an affair with a Russianin accordance with Nazi principle of Rassenschandeas an ancient German custom.Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, p. 384,
Sexual contact between what the Nazis viewed as different 'races' followed by remorse and guilt was also featured in Die goldene Stadt, where the Sudeten German heroine faces not persecution but the allure of the big city;Cinzia Romani, Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich p. 86 when she succumbs, in defiance of blood and soil, she is seduced and abandoned by a Czech, and such a relationship leads to her drowning herself.Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, p. 20, 1976, Chelsea House Publishers, New York
Collaboration with the Nazis
Before and during World War II, some ethnic Germans gathered around local Nazi organizations (sponsored financially by the German Foreign Office), actively supported the Nazis in countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. During the social and economic tensions of the Great Depression, some had begun to feel aggrieved with their minority status. They participated in espionage, sabotage and other fifth column means in their countries of origin, trained and commanded by the Abwehr. In November 1938 Nazi Germany organized German paramilitary units made out German minority members in Polish Pomerania that were to engage in diversion, sabotage as well as political murder and ethnic cleansing upon German invasion of Poland.
Reich intelligence actively recruited ethnic Germans, and the Nazi secret service SicherheitsDienst (SD) formed them as early as October 1938 into armed unit that were to serve Nazi Germany.Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945, Valdis O. Lumans p. 98