Author: Tomislav Sunic
INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW
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 understanding 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 of 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.
