The Destruction of Ethnic Germans and German Prisoners of War in Yugoslavia, 1945-1953

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Thu Nov 29 06:58:48 EST 2007


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The Destruction of Ethnic Germans and German Prisoners of War in 
Yugoslavia, 1945-1953

Tomislav Sunic

http://www.ihr.org/other/sunic062002.html

From the European and American media, one can often get the 
impression that World War II needs to be periodically resurrected to 
give credibility to financial demands of one specific ethnic group, 
at the expense of others. The civilian deaths of the war's losing 
side are, for the most part, glossed over. Standard historiography of 
World War II is routinely based on a sharp and polemical distinction 
between the "ugly" fascists who lost, and the "good" anti-fascists 
who won, and few scholars are willing to inquire into the gray 
ambiguity in between. Even as the events of that war become more 
distant in time, they seemingly become more politically useful and 
timely as myths.

German military and civilian losses during and especially after World 
War II are still shrouded by a veil of silence, at least in the mass 
media, even though an impressive body of scholarly literature exists 
on that topic. The reasons for this silence, due in large part to 
academic negligence, are deep rooted and deserve further scholarly 
inquiry. Why, for instance, are German civilian losses, and 
particularly the staggering number of postwar losses among ethnic 
Germans, dealt with so sketchily, if at all, in school history 
courses? The mass media -- television, newspapers, film and magazines 
-- rarely, if ever, look at the fate of the millions of German 
civilians in central and eastern Europe during and following World 
War II. [1]

The treatment of civilian ethnic Germans -- or Volksdeutsche -- in 
Yugoslavia may be regarded as a classic case of "ethnic cleansing" on 
a grand scale. [2] A close look at these mass killings presents a 
myriad of historical and legal problems, especially when considering 
modern international law, including the Hague War Crimes Tribunal 
that has been dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity in 
the Balkan wars of 1991-1995. Yet the plight of Yugoslavia's ethnic 
Germans during and after World War II should be of no lesser concern 
to historians, not least because an under-standing of this chapter of 
history throws a significant light on the violent breakup of 
Communist Yugoslavia 45 years later. A better understanding of the 
fate of Yugoslavia's ethnic Germans should encourage skepticism of 
just how fairly and justly international law is applied in practice. 
Why are the sufferings and victimhood of some nations or ethnic 
groups ignored, while the sufferings of other nations and groups 
receive fulsome and sympathetic attention from the media and 
politicians?

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, more than one and a half 
million ethnic Germans were living in southeastern Europe, that is, 
in Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Romania. Because they lived mostly near 
and along the Danube river, these people were popularly known "Danube 
Swabians" or Donauschwaben. Most were descendants of settlers who 
came to this fertile region in the 17th and 18th centuries following 
the liberation of Hungary from Turkish rule.

For centuries the Holy Roman Empire and then the Habsburg Empire 
struggled against Turkish rule in the Balkans, and resisted the 
"Islamization" of Europe. In this struggle the Danube Germans were 
viewed as a rampart of Western civilization, and were held in high 
esteem in the Austrian (and later, Austro-Hungarian) empire for their 
agricultural productivity and military prowess. Both the Holy Roman 
and Habsburg empires were multicultural and multinational entities, 
in which diverse ethnic groups lived for centuries in relative 
harmony.

After the end of World War I, in 1918, which brought the collapse of 
the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg empire, and the imposed Versailles 
Treaty of 1919, the juridical status of the Donauschwaben Germans was 
in flux. When the National Socialist regime was established in 
Germany in 1933, the Donauschwaben were among the more than twelve 
million ethnic Germans who lived in central and eastern Europe 
outside the borders of the German Reich. Many of these people were 
brought into the Reich with the incorporation of Austria in 1938, of 
the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1939, and of portions of 
Poland in late 1939. The "German question," that is, the struggle for 
self-determination of ethnic Germans outside the borders of the 
German Reich, was a major factor leading to the outbreak of World War 
II. Even after 1939, more than three million ethnic Germans remained 
outside the borders of the expanded Reich, notably in Romania, 
Yugoslavia, Hungary and the Soviet Union.

In the first Yugoslavia -- a monarchical state created in 1919 
largely as a result of efforts of the victorious Allied powers -- 
most of the country's ethnic Germans were concentrated in eastern 
Croatia and northern Serbia (notably in the Vojvodina region), with 
some German towns and villages in Slovenia. Other ethnic Germans 
lived in western Romania and south-eastern Hungary.

This first multiethnic Yugoslav state of 1919-1941 had a population 
of some 14 million people of diverse cultures and religions. On the 
eve of World War II it included nearly six million Serbs, about three 
million Croats, more than a million Slovenes, some two million 
Bosnian Muslims and ethnic Albanians, approximately half a million 
ethnic Germans, and another half million ethnic Hungarians. Following 
the breakup of Yugoslavia in April 1941, accelerated by a rapid 
German military advance, approximately 200,000 ethnic Germans became 
citizens of the newly established Independent State of Croatia, a 
country whose military and civil authorities remained loyally allied 
with Third Reich Germany until the final week of the war in Europe. 
[3] Most of the remaining ethnic Germans of former Yugoslavia -- 
approximately 300,000 in the Vojvodina region -- came under the 
jurisdiction of Hungary, which during the war incorporated the 
region. (After 1945 this region was reattached! to the Serbian 
portion of Yugoslavia.)

The plight of the ethnic Germans became dire during the final months 
of World War II, and especially after the founding of the second 
Yugoslavia, a multiethnic Communist state headed by Marshal Josip 
Broz Tito. In late October 1944, Tito's guerilla forces, aided by the 
advancing Soviets and lavishly assisted by Western air supplies, took 
control of Belgrade, the Serb capital that also served as the capital 
of Yugoslavia . One of the first legal acts of the new regime was the 
decree of November 21, 1944, on "The decision regarding the transfer 
of the enemy's property into the property of the state." It declared 
citizens of German origin as "enemies of the people," and stripped 
them of civic rights. The decree also ordered the government 
confiscation of all property, without compensation, of Yugoslavia's 
ethnic Germans. [4] An additional law, promulgated in Belgrade on 
February 6, 1945, canceled the Yugoslav citizenship of the country's 
ethnic Germans. [! 5]

By late 1944 -- when Communist forces had seized control of the 
eastern Balkans, that is, of Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia -- the 
German-allied state of Croatia still held firm. However, in early 
1945, German troops, together with Croatian troops and civilians, 
began retreating toward southern Austria. During the war's final 
months, the majority of Yugoslavia's ethnic German civilians also 
joined this great trek. The refugees' fears of torture and death at 
Communist hands were well founded, given the horrific treatment by 
Soviet forces of Germans and others in East Prussia and other parts 
of eastern Europe. By the end of the war in May 1945, German 
authorities had evacuated 220,000 ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia to 
Germany and Austria. Yet many remained in their war-ravaged ancestral 
homelands, most likely awaiting a miracle.

After the end of fighting in Europe on May 8, 1945, more than 200,000 
ethnic Germans who had remained behind in Yugoslavia effectively 
became captives of the new Communist regime. Some 63,635 Yugoslav 
ethnic German civilians (women, men and children) perished under 
Communist rule between 1945 and 1950 -- that is, some 18 percent of 
the ethnic German civilian population still remaining in the new 
Yugoslavia. Most died as a result of exhaustion as slave laborers, in 
"ethnic cleansing," or from disease and malnutrition. [6] Much of the 
credit for the widely-praised "economic miracle" of Titoist 
Yugoslavia, it should be noted, must go to the tens of thousands of 
German slave laborers who, during the late 1940s, helped to build the 
impoverished country.

Property of ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia confiscated in the aftermath 
of World War II amounted to 97,490 small businesses, factories, 
shops, farms and diverse trades. The confiscated real estate and 
farmland of Yugoslavia's ethnic Germans came to 637,939 hectares (or 
about one million acres), and became state-owned property. According 
to a 1982 calculation, the value of the property confiscated from 
ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia amounted to 15 billion German marks, or 
about seven billion US dollars. Taking inflation into account, this 
would today correspond to twelve billion US dollars. From 1948 to 
1985, more than 87,000 ethnic Germans who were still residing in 
Yugoslavia moved to Germany and automatically became German citizens. 
[7]

All this constitutes a "final solution of the German question" in Yugoslavia.

Numerous survivors have provided detailed and graphic accounts of the 
grim fate of the ethnic German civilians, particularly women and 
children, who were held in Communist Yugoslav captivity. One 
noteworthy witness is the late Father Wendelin Gruber, who served as 
a chaplain and spiritual leader to many fellow captives. [8] These 
numerous survivor accounts of torture and death inflicted on German 
civilians and captured soldiers by Yugoslav authorities adds to the 
chronicle of Communist oppression worldwide. [9]

Of the one and a half million ethnic Germans who lived in the Danube 
basin in 1939-1941, some 93,000 served during World War II in the 
armed forces of Hungary, Croatia and Romania - Axis countries that 
were allied with Germany - or in the regular German armed forces. The 
ethnic Germans of Hungary, Croatia and Romania who served in the 
military formations of those countries remained citizens of those 
respective states. [10]

In addition, many ethnic Germans of the Danubian region served in the 
"Prinz Eugen" Waffen SS division, which totaled some 10,000 men 
throughout its existence during the war. (This formation was named in 
honor of Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had won great victories against 
Turkish forces in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.) [11] 
Enlisting in the "Prinz Eugen" division automatically conferred 
German citizenship on the recruit.

Of the 26,000 ethnic Danubian ethnic Germans serving in various 
military formations who lost their lives, half perished after the end 
of the war in Yugoslav camps. Particularly high were the losses of 
the "Prinz Eugen" division, most of whom surrendered after May 8, 
1945. Some 1,700 of these prisoners were killed in the village of 
Brezice near the Croat-Slovenian border, while the remaining half was 
worked to death in Yugoslav zinc mines near the town of Bor, in 
Serbia. [12]

In addition to the "ethnic cleansing" of Danube German civilians and 
soldiers, some 70,000 Germans who had served in regular Wehrmacht 
forces perished in Yugoslav captivity. Most of these died as a result 
of reprisals, or as slave laborers in mines, road construction, 
shipyards, and so forth. These were mostly troops of "Army Group E" 
who had surrendered to British military authorities in southern 
Austria at the time of the armistice of May 8, 1945. British 
authorities turned over about 150,000 of these German prisoners of 
war to Communist Yugoslav partisans under pretext of later 
repatriation to Germany.

Most of these former regular Wehrmacht troops perished in postwar 
Yugoslavia in three stages: During the first stage more than 7,000 
captured German troops died in Communist-organized "atonement 
marches" (Suhnemärsche) stretching 800 miles from the southern border 
of Austria to the northern border of Greece. During the second phase, 
in late summer 1945, many German soldiers in captivity were summarily 
executed or thrown alive into large karst pits along the Dalmatian 
coast of Croatia. In the third stage, 1945-1955, an additional 50,000 
perished as forced laborers due to malnutrition and exhaustion. [13]

The total number of German losses in Yugoslav captivity after the end 
of the war -- including ethnic "Danube German" civilians and 
soldiers, as well as "Reich" Germans -- may therefore be 
conservatively estimated at 120,000 killed, starved, worked to death, 
or missing.

What is the importance of these figures? What lessons can be drawn in 
assessing these postwar German losses?

It is important to stress that the plight of German civilians in the 
Balkans is only a small portion of the Allied topography of death. 
Seven to eight million Germans -- both military personnel and 
civilians -- died during and after World War II. Half of those 
perished during the final months of the war, or after Germany's 
unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945. German casualties, both 
civilian and military, were arguably higher in "peace" than in "war."

In the months before and after the end of World War II, ethnic 
Germans were killed, tortured and dispossessed throughout eastern and 
central Europe, notably in Silesia, East Prussia, Pomerania, the 
Sudetenland, and the "Wartheland" region. Altogether 12-15 million 
Germans fled or were driven from their homes in what is perhaps the 
greatest "ethnic cleansing" in history. Of this number, more than two 
million were killed or otherwise lost their lives. [14]

The grim events in postwar Yugoslavia are rarely dealt with in the 
media of the countries that emerged on the ruins of communist 
Yugoslavia, even though, remarkably, there is today greater freedom 
of expression and historical research there than in such western 
European countries as Germany and France. The elites of Croatia, 
Serbia and Bosnia, largely made up of former Communists, seem to 
share a common interest in repressing their sometimes murky and 
criminal past with regard to the postwar treatment of German 
civilians.

The breakup of Yugoslavia in 1990-91, the events leading to it, and 
the war and atrocities that followed, can only be understood within a 
larger historical framework. As already noted, "ethnic cleansing" is 
nothing new. Even if one regards the former Serb-Yugoslav leader 
Slobodan Milosevic and the other defendants being tried by the 
International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague as wicked criminals, 
their crimes are trivial compared to those of Communist Yugoslavia's 
founder, Josip Broz Tito. Tito carried out "ethnic cleansing" and 
mass killings on a far greater scale, against Croats, Germans and 
Serbs, and with the sanction of the British and American governments. 
His rule in Yugoslavia (1945-1980), which coincided with the "Cold 
War" era, was generally supported by the Western powers, who regarded 
his regime as a factor of stability in this often unstable region of 
Europe. [15]

The wartime and postwar plight of Germans in the Balkans also 
provides lessons about the fate of multiethnic and multicultural 
states. The fate of the two Yugoslavias -- 1919-1941 and 1944-1991 -- 
underscores the inherent weakness of multiethnic states. Twice in the 
20th century, multicultural Yugoslavia fell apart amid needless 
carnage and a spiral of hatreds among its constituent ethnic groups. 
One can argue, therefore, that it is better for diverse nations and 
cultures, let alone different races, to live apart, separated by 
walls, than to pretend to live in a feigned unity that hides 
animosities waiting to explode, and leaving behind lasting 
resentments.

Few could foresee the savage inter-ethnic hatred and killings that 
swept the Balkans following the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, and 
this among peoples of relatively similar anthropological origins, 
albeit different cultural backgrounds. One can only speculate with 
foreboding about the future of the United States and western Europe, 
where growing interracial tensions between the native populations and 
masses of Third World immigrants portend disaster with far bloodier 
consequences.

Multicultural Yugoslavia, in both its first and second incarnations, 
was above all the creation of, respectively, the French, British and 
American leaders who crafted the Versailles settlement of 1919, and 
the British, Soviet Russian and American leaders who met at Yalta and 
Potsdam in 1945. The political figures who created Yugoslavia did not 
represent the nations in the region, and understood little of the 
self-perceptions or ethnic-cultural affinities of the region's 
various peoples.

Although the deaths, suffering and dispossession of the ethnic 
Germans of the Balkans during and after World War II are well 
documented by both German authorities and independent scholars, they 
continue to be largely ignored in the major media o the United States 
and Europe. Why? One could speculate that if those German losses were 
more widely discussed and better known, they would likely stimulate 
an alternative perspective on World War II, and indeed of 20th 
century history. A greater and more widespread awareness of German 
civilian losses during and after World War II might well encourage a 
deeper discussion of the dynamics of contemporary societies. This, in 
turn, could significantly affect the self-perception of millions of 
people, forcing many to discard ideas and myths that have fashionably 
prevailed for more than half a century. An open debate about the 
causes and consequences of World War II would also tarnish the 
reputations of many scholars and opinion makers in the United States 
and Europe. Arguably, a greater awareness of the sufferings of German 
civilians during and after World War II, and the implications of 
that, could fundamentally change the policies of the United States 
and other major powers.

--------------------------------------------

Notes

1. Mads Ole Balling, Von Reval bis Bukarest (Copenhagen: 
Hermann-Niermann-Stiftung, 1991), vol. I and vol. II.

2. L. Barwich, F. Binder, M. Eisele, F. Hoffmann, F. Kühbauch, E. 
Lung, V. Oberkersch, J. Pertschi, H. Rakusch, M. Reinsprecht, I. 
Senz, H. Sonnleitner, G. Tscherny, R. Vetter, G. Wildmann, and 
oth-ers, Weissbuch der Deutschen aus Jugoslawien: Erlebnisberichte 
1944-48 (Munich: Universitäts Verlag, Donauschwäbische 
Kulturstif-tung, 1992, 1993), vol. I, vol. II.

3. On Croatia's armed forces during World War II, and its destruction 
after 1945 by the Yugoslav Communists, see, Christophe Dol-beau, Les 
Forces armées croates, 1941-1945 (Lyon [BP 5005, 69245 Lyon cedex 05, 
France]: 2002).On the often critical attitude of German military and 
diplomatic officials toward the allied Ustasha regime of the 
Independent State of Croatia ("NDH"), see Klaus Schmider, 
Partisanenkrieg in Jugo-slawien 1941-1944 (Hamburg: Verlag E.S. 
Mittler & Sohn, 2002). This book includes an impressive bibliography, 
and cites hitherto unpublished German documents. Unfortunately, the 
author does not provide precise data as to the number of German 
troops (including Croat civilians and troops) who surrendered to 
British forces in southern Austria, and who were subsequently handed 
over to the Yugoslav Communist authorities. The number of Croat 
captives who perished after 1945 in Communist Yugoslavia remains an 
emotion-laden topic in Croatia, with importan! t implications for the 
country's domestic and foreign policy.

4. Anton Scherer, Manfred Straka, Kratka povijest podunavskih 
Nijemaca/ Abriss zur Geschichte der Donauschwaben (Graz: Leopold 
Stocker Verlag/ Zagreb: Pan Liber, 1999), esp. p. 131; Georg 
Wild-mann, and others, Genocide of the Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia 
1944-1948 (Santa Ana, Calif.: Danube Swabian Association of the USA, 
2001), p. 31.

5. A. Scherer, M. Straka, Kratka povijest podunavskih Nijemaca/ 
Abriss zur Geschichte der Donauschwaben (1999), pp. 132-140.

6. Georg Wildmann, and others, Verbrechen an den Deutschen in 
Jugo-slawien, 1944-48 (Munich: Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung, 
1998), esp. pp. 312-313. Based on this is the English-language work: 
Georg Wildmann, and others, Genocide of the Ethnic Germans in 
Yugoslavia 1944-1948 ( Santa Ana, Calif.: Danube Swabian Association 
of the USA, 2001).

7. G. Wildmann, and others, Verbrechen an den Deutschen in 
Jugo-slawien, 1944-48, esp. p. 274.

8. Wendelin Gruber, In the Claws of the Red Dragon: Ten Years Under 
Tito's Heel (Toronto: St. Michaelswerk, 1988). Translated from German 
by Frank Schmidt.In 1993 the ailing Fr. Gruber returned to Croatia 
from exile in Paraguay, to spend his final years in a Jesuit 
monastery in Zagreb. I spoke with him shortly before his death on 
August 14, 2002, at the age of 89.

9. Stéphane Courtois, and others, The Black Book of Communism: 
Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999).

10. G. Wildmann, and others, Verbrechen an den Deutschen in 
Jugo-slawien (cited above), p. 22.

11. Armin Preuss, Prinz Eugen: Der edle Ritter (Berlin: Grundlagen 
Verlag, 1996).

12. Otto Kumm, Geschichte der 7. SS-Freiwilligen Gebirgs-Division 
"Prinz Eugen" (Coburg: Nation Europa, 1995).

13. Roland Kaltenegger, Titos Kriegsgefangene: Folterlager, 
Hun-germärsche und Schauprozesse ( Graz : Leopold Stocker Verlag, 
2001).

14. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the 
Germans From the East. (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska, 1989 [3rd rev. 
ed.]); Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War 
and Peace (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993); Alfred-Maurice de 
Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The "Ethnic Cleansing" of the East 
European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994); 
Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest: The Allies' Postwar War Against 
the German People (Institute for Historical Review, 1992).

15. Tomislav Sunic, Titoism and Dissidence: Studies in the History 
and Dissolution of Communist Yugoslavia (Frankfurt, New York: Peter 
Lang, 1995)



---------------------------------------------------------------


Tomislav Sunic holds a doctorate in political science from the 
University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an author, translator 
and former professor of political science in the USA. Tom Sunic 
currently lives with his family in Croatia. An interview with him, 
"Reexamining Assumptions," appeared in the March-April 2002 Journal 
of Historical Review 
(http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v21/v21n2p15_sunic.html). His most recent 
book is Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age (2007), which 
can be obtained through Amazon books 
(http://www.amazon.com/Homo-americanus-Child-Postmodern-Age/dp/1419659847). 
For more by and about him, see his website 
(http://doctorsunic.netfirms.com/).



This article is adapted from Dr. Sunic's address on June 22, 2002, at 
the 14th IHR Conference, in Irvine, California.



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