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87-486: It was founded in 1937 under the command of SS- Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz as a state office of the Nazi Party . Its headquarters were on Unter den Linden , Berlin (this changed to Keithstraße in 1943 due to Allied Bombing ). VoMi's primary task was the resettlement of German peoples outside Germany. Between 1939 and 1942, VoMi had resettled half a million ethnic Germans into the newly occupied territories of

174-590: A Baltic German is able to avenge her family's deaths, but commits suicide after, unable to live with meaning in the Soviet Union. 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. Frisians in Peril depicted the suffering of a village of Volga Germans in the Soviet Union; it also depicted

261-569: A Waffen-SS unit. ("Organization and Personnel") This was managed by an SD officer. It dealt with SS and non-SS personnel within the Volksdeutsche . In the later period of the war, Amt II's importance increased as it was responsible for allocating Volksdeutsche to the Reich Labor Service. ("Finances, Economics and Administration") It was responsible for financing VoMi projects and distributing funds to Volksdeutsche . It

348-668: 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. In 1931, prior to its rise to power,

435-619: A better social status. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle organised large-scale looting of property and redistributed goods to the Volksdeutsche. They were given apartments, workshops, farms, furniture, and clothing confiscated from Jews and Poles. In turn, hundreds of thousands of the Volksdeutsche joined the German forces, either willingly or under compulsion. During World War II , the Polish citizens of German ancestry that identified with

522-577: A mix of Sk-R units and ethnic German Selbstschutz militia killed them. Most of these murders occurred in the county (Judetul) of Berezovca, where ethnic Germans, distributed among 40 or so villages, made up 40% of the population. Sk-R was commanded by SS- Standartenfuher Horst Hoffmeyer, a senior VoMi officer. His HQ was in Landau, located west of the River Bug. Apparently, the unit was divided into seven local offices, three of which were: Liebl's unit

609-573: A second round of colonisation with the goal of Germanisation after 1832. 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. The reconstitution of Poland following the Treaty of Versailles (1919) made ethnic German minorities of some Prussian provinces of

696-531: A singular female, and Volksdeutscher , a singular male. The words Volk and völkisch conveyed the meanings of "folk". Ethnic Germans living outside Germany shed their identity as Auslandsdeutsche (Germans abroad), and morphed into the Volksdeutsche in a process of self-radicalisation. This process gave the Nazi regime the nucleus around which the new Volksgemeinschaft was established across

783-1070: Is seduced and abandoned by a Czech, and such a relationship leads to her drowning herself. 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 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

870-710: The Allies . Particularly in Polish Pomerania and Polish Silesia, many of the people who were forced to sign the Volksliste played crucial roles in the anti-Nazi underground, which was noted in a memo to the Polish Government in Exile which stated "In Wielkopolska there's bitter hatred of the Volksdeutsche while in Silesia and Polish Pomerania it's the opposite, the secret organization depends in large measure on

957-634: The Danube and in Russia . The Nazi goal of expansion assigned the Volksdeutsche 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 Generalplan Ost . In some areas, such as in Poland, Nazi authorities compiled specific lists and registered people as ethnic Germans in

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1044-538: The General Government there were 120,000 Volksdeutsche. Volksdeutsche of Polish ethnic origins were treated by the Poles with special contempt. Because of actions by some Volksdeutsche and particularly the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany , after the end of the war, the Polish authorities tried many Volksdeutsche for high treason. In the postwar period, many other ethnic Germans were expelled to

1131-464: 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

1218-802: The Polish Corridor . The Austrian Germans also found themselves not allowed to join Germany as German Austria was strictly forbidden to join Germany as well as the name "German Austria" was forbidden so the name was changed back to just "Austria" and the First Austrian Republic was created in 1919. During the Nazi years, the German Nazis used the term "Volksdeutsche", by which they meant racially German since they believed in

1305-725: The Polish Government in Exile , advised Poles to sign up to the Volksliste in order to avoid atrocities and mass murder that happened in other parts of the country. In occupied Poland, Volksdeutscher enjoyed privileges and were subject to conscription, or draft, into the German army . In occupied Pomerania , the Gauleiter of the Danzig-West Prussia region Albert Forster ordered a list of people considered of German ethnicity to be made in 1941. Due to insignificant voluntary registrations by February 1942, Forster made signing

1392-1051: The Potsdam Agreement from 1945 to 1948 towards the end and after the war. Those who became ethnic Germans, by registering in the Deutsche Volksliste and Reichsdeutsche, retained German citizenship during the years of Allied military occupation. Citizenship was further retained after the establishment of East Germany and West Germany in 1949, and later in the reunified Germany. In 1953 the Federal Republic of Germany – by its Federal Expellee Law – naturalised many more East European nationals of German ethnicity, who were neither German citizens nor had enrolled in any 'Volksliste', but had been stranded as refugees in West Germany and fled or were expelled due to their German or alleged German ethnicity. An estimated 12 million people fled or were expelled from

1479-501: The RSHA , was to hold dual police rank as SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei . SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS was the equivalent in the armed SS; in 1944, most active SS generals received this designation in order to command military troops during the last days of the war. Approximately fifteen SS generals were ranked as SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei und Waffen-SS . SS- Obergruppenführer

1566-540: The Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 28, 1941, and from the beginning of 1942 those Soviet Germans who were deemed suitable for hard work (men aged from 15 to 55 and women from 16 to 45) were mobilised for forced labour into Working columns where they lived in a prison-like environment, and sometimes, together with regular inmates, were put in prison camps. Hundreds of thousands died or became incapacitated due to

1653-517: The Volksdeutsche " (the memo referred to those of Category III, not I and II). In the turmoil of the postwar years, the Communist government did not consider this sufficient mitigation. It prosecuted many double-agent Volksdeutsche and sentenced some to death. The secret protocols of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact created domestic problems for Hitler. Supporting the Soviet invasion became one of

1740-466: The Volksliste mandatory and empowered local authorities to use force and threats to implement the decree. Consequently, the number of signatories rose to almost a million, or about 55% of the 1944 population. The special case of Polish Pomerania , where terror against civilians was particularly intense, and where, unlike in rest of occupied Poland, signing of the list was mandatory for many people,

1827-618: The " Deutsche Volksliste ". 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

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1914-649: The Becker brothers became an integral part of the Nazi Holocaust machine. In September 1939 in German occupied Poland , an armed ethnic German militia called Selbstschutz (Self-Defence) was created. It organised the mass murder of Polish elites in Operation Tannenberg . At the beginning of 1940, the Selbstschutz organization was disbanded, and its members transferred to various units of

2001-568: The Conference of Potsdam considered the "transfer" of "German populations" from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary an effort to be undertaken (see article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement ), although they asked a halt because of the inflicted burden for the Allies to feed and house the destitute expellees and to share that burden among the Allies. France, which was not represented in Potsdam, rejected

2088-626: The Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKFDV) run by Himmler. The RKFDV, as an SS-controlled organization, had the authority to say who was German, where ethnic Germans could live, and what populations should be cleared or annihilated in order to make room for the German settlers. As RKFDV chief, Himmler authorized the SS- Einsatzgruppen (mobile death squads) and other SS police units to round up and kill Jews , Slavs and Roma . In June 1942 Himmler put all VoMi personnel under

2175-608: The German borders. Volksdeutsche were further divided into "racial" groups—minorities within a state minority—based on special cultural, social, and historic criteria elaborated by the Nazis. According to the historian Doris Bergen , Adolf Hitler coined the definition of Volksdeutsche which appeared in a 1938 memorandum of the German Reich Chancellery . That document defined Volksdeutsche as "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". After 1945,

2262-422: The German colony of Shonfeld, Romas were burned in farms. During the winter of 1941/1942, German Selbstschutz units participated in the shooting, together with Ukrainian People's Militia and Romanian gendarmes , of some 18,000 Jews . In the camp of Bogdanovka , tens of thousands of Jews were subject to mass shootings, barn burnings and killing by hand grenades. Heinrich Himmler was sufficiently impressed by

2349-684: The Germans that, with the government change, they could close down their Baltic consulates by September 1. The Soviet annexations in Romania caused further strain. While Germany had given the Soviets Bessarabia in the secret protocols, it had not given them North Bukovina . Germany wanted guarantees of the safety of property of ethnic Germans, security for the 125,000 Volksdeutsche in Bessarabia and North Bukovina, and reassurance that

2436-554: 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. Prussia encouraged

2523-475: The Nazi citizenship laws of 1935 ( Reichsbürgergesetz  [ de ] ) - and the associated regulations that referred to the National Socialist concepts of blood and race in connection with the concept of volksdeutsch - were rescinded in Germany. For Adolf Hitler and the other ethnic Germans of his time, the term " Volksdeutsche " also carried overtones of blood and race not captured in

2610-674: 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

2697-510: The Nazi policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing , and profited from the expulsion and murder of their non-German neighbors throughout Eastern Europe. For example, in Ukraine the Volksdeutsche directly participated in the Holocaust and were involved in deportation of local farmers and their families; Volksdeutsche figures like Arthur Boss from Odessa ( Blobel 's right-hand man) or

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2784-701: The Nazi-conquered former Yugoslavia joined the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, the majority conscripted involuntarily as judged by the Nuremberg Trials . Yet "[a]fter the initial rush of Volksdeutsche to join, voluntary enlistments tapered off, and the new unit did not reach division size. Therefore, in August 1941, the SS discarded the voluntary approach, and after a favourable judgement from

2871-603: The Polish nation faced the dilemma whether to register in the Deutsche Volksliste. Many families had lived in Poland for centuries and more-recent immigrants had arrived over 30 years before the war. They faced the choice of registering and being regarded as traitors by the Poles, or not signing and being treated by the Nazi occupation as traitors to the Germanic race . Polish Silesian Catholic Church authorities, led by bishop Stanisław Adamski and with agreement from

2958-848: The Reich under the slogan " Heim ins Reich " (Home into the Empire). These territories included the Reichsgaue of the German Reich ; these included Wartheland ( Posen ) and Danzig-West Prussia ( Danzig ). 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

3045-503: The Reich") This office looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans that had been allowed to settle within the borders of Germany . It also assessed potential candidates for settlement grading them on their ethnicity, politics and skills. However, Amt VI, although tasked with the welfare of Volksdeutsche , worked closely with the Gestapo and the SD of the RSHA . ("Office of ethnic Germans in

3132-474: 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

3219-448: The SA from 1929 to 1930 and as a title until 1933. In April 1942, the new rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer was created which was above Obergruppenführer and below Reichsführer-SS . The rank of Obergruppenführer was created in 1932 by Ernst Röhm and was intended as a seniormost rank of the Nazi stormtroopers for use by Röhm and his top SA generals. In its initial concept,

3306-481: The SS and Nazi Party after his abortive flight to Scotland in 1941. Helldorff was stricken from the SS rolls in 1944 after the 20 July plot against Hitler. Helldorff was a unique case, in that his SS rank had been bestowed for technical reasons in order to command the Berlin Police . While holding SA membership, Helldorff was never actually an SS member although for administrative purposes he held SS rank and

3393-785: The SS court in Belgrade, imposed a mandatory military obligation on all Volksdeutsche in Serbia-Banat, the first of its kind for non-Reich Germans." In the former Yugoslavia a majority of ethnic Germans became members of the Schwäbisch-Deutscher Kulturbund (Swabian German Cultural Association), and reprisals on this group by Tito's partisans resulted in many immediate revenge killings in 1944 and incarceration of approximately 150,000 ethnic Germans in 1945. Most ethnic Germans fled or were expelled from European countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary) under

3480-682: The SS in the Berlin region. Daluege's promotion was to avoid the SS splitting into two separate entities, one based in Northern Germany under Daluege and the other in Bavaria under Himmler. This early SS disunity became a non-issue after a common ground was found amongst SS leaders in their general hatred of the SA. Udo von Woyrsch and Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger were promoted to SS- Obergruppenführer in 1935 while Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont , and Max Amann received

3567-409: 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. In 1941 the VoMi was upgraded to an SS Main Office ( Hauptamt ) with control over all VoMi personnel and field offices. In June 1941 VOMI was absorbed into the office of the Reich Commissioner for

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3654-726: The SS, Gestapo and the German police. Throughout the invasion of Poland , some ethnic German minority groups assisted Nazi Germany in the war effort: they committed sabotage, diverted regular forces and committed numerous atrocities against civilian population. After Germany occupied western Poland, it established a central registration bureau, called the German People's List ( Deutsche Volksliste , DVL), whereby Poles of German ethnicity were registered as Volksdeutsche . The German occupants encouraged such registration, in many cases forcing it or subjecting Poles of German ethnicity to terror assaults if they refused. Those who joined this group were given benefits including better food, as well as

3741-472: The Soviet Union and non-German-speaking Central Europe, many of them being 'Volksdeutsche'. Most left the Soviet -occupied territories of Central and Eastern Europe; they comprised the largest migration of any European people in modern history. The then three Allies had agreed to the expulsions during negotiations in the midst of war. The western powers hoped to avoid ethnic Germans being an issue again in Central and Eastern Europe. The three Allies at

3828-466: The Soviets had argued. The agreement covered protected migration to Germany within two and a half months of Volksdeutsche, and similar migration to the Soviet Union of ethnic Russians, Baltic and "White Russian" "nationals" from German-held territories. In many cases, the resulting population transfers resulted in resettlement of Volksdeutsche on land previously held by ethnic Poles or Jews in now German-occupied territories. The agreement formally defined

3915-434: The Transnistria area, carried out numerous massacres of Jews during the first half of 1942. The victims were deportees from Rumanian-controlled territory, it being Marshal Ion Antonescu's policy to racially "cleanse" the Rumanian nation. His preferred technique was to expel them to German-controlled territory and have the responsible SS/ Police units exterminate them. Many of these Jews were passed back and forth for weeks before

4002-403: The Volksbund fled from the region. They were called 'Svabo' by their Serbian, Hungarian, Croatian, and Romanian neighbors. Most of the Danube Swabians who were not members in the so-called Volksbund were expelled to Allied-occupied Germany and Allied-occupied Austria in 1946-1948, following the Potsdam Agreement . After Romania acquired parts of Soviet Ukraine, the Germans there came under

4089-407: The Volksdeutsche communities and the work of the Selbstschutz to order that these methods be copied in Ukraine. In the former Yugoslavia, the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen was formed with about 50,000 ethnic Germans from the Banat region of Serbia . It was conspicuous in its operations against the Yugoslav Partisans and civilian population. About 100,000 ethnic Germans from

4176-412: The Volksdeutsche, while the Soviets requested 50 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ for their property claims in German-occupied territories. The two nations reached general agreement on German shipments of 10.5-cm flak cannons, gold, machinery and other items. On 10 January 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the German–Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement to settle all of the open disputes which

4263-415: The Waffen-SS, they would be forced into conscription in any case. According to head of recruitment for the Waffen SS, Gottlob Berger , no one in Germany or elsewhere cared for what happened with the ethnic Germans anyway, making forced recruitment easy to force upon ethnic German communities. Among the indigenous populations in the Nazi-occupied lands, Volksdeutsche became a term of ignominy. During

4350-404: The authority of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle , which deployed SS personnel to several settlements. They eventually contained German mayors, farms, schools and ethnic German paramilitary groups functioning as police called Selbstschutz ("Self-protection"). German colonists and Selbstschutz forces engaged in extensive acts of ethnic cleansing , massacring Jewish and Roma populations. In

4437-437: The border between Germany and the Soviet Union areas between the Igorka River and the Baltic Sea . After the Russian Revolution of 1917 , the government granted the Volga Germans an autonomous republic. Joseph Stalin abolished the Volga German ASSR after Operation Barbarossa , the German invasion of the USSR. Most of Soviet Germans in the USSR were deported to Siberia , Kazakhstan , and Central Asia by Decree of

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4524-404: The common English translation "ethnic Germans". According to German estimates in the 1930s, about 30 million Volksdeutsche 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

4611-437: The decision of the Three of Potsdam and did not absorb expellees in its zone of occupation. The three Allies had to accept the reality on the ground, since expulsions of Volksdeutsche and Central and Eastern European nationals of German or alleged German ethnicity who never had enrolled as Volksdeutsche, were going on already. Local authorities forced most of the remaining ethnic Germans to leave between 1945 and 1950. Remnants of

4698-400: The early years of the Second World War (i.e., before the US entered the war), a small number of Americans of German origin returned to Germany; generally they were immigrants or children of immigrants, rather than descendants of migrations more distant in time. Some of these enlisted and fought in the German army. Ethnic Germans throughout Europe benefited financially during World War II from

4785-534: The economics of ethnic Germans") This office established agriculture, work projects, banking and credit for the Volksdeutsche . During the Second World War its main role was the exploitation of the ethnic Germans in the interest of the Third Reich . ("Resettlement") This department was primarily responsible for handling the massive germanisation operation to settle Volksdeutsche throughout Germany and Occupied Europe . A VoMi unit, Sonderkommando R (Russland) , institutional successor to Einsatzgruppe D in

4872-443: 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

4959-451: The equivalent of a General ; holders were titled in full SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS . Volksdeutsche In Nazi German terminology, Volksdeutsche ( German pronunciation: [ˈfɔlksˌdɔʏtʃə] ) 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 Volksdeutsche denoting

5046-436: The ethnic German community survive in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. A significant ethnic German community has continued in Siebenbürgen ( Transylvania ) in Romania and in Oberschlesien ( Upper Silesia ) but most of it migrated to West Germany throughout the 1980s. There are also remnant German populations near Mukachevo in western Ukraine. The term Volksdeutsche is generally avoided today due to its usage by

5133-663: 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

5220-415: The film Heimkehr drew on such putative events as the rescue of Volksdeutsche by the arrival of German tanks. Heimkehr' s introduction explicitly states that hundreds of thousands of Poles of German ethnicity suffered as the characters in the film did. Menschen im Sturm reprised Heimkehr' s effort to justify the invasion of Slavonia , using many of the same atrocities. In The Red Terror ,

5307-407: The following month. Upon the outbreak of World War II, there were seventeen men who held the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer . During the Second World War, there were 88 promotions to the rank, of which 22 were considered regular officers of the Waffen-SS and the rest members of the Allgemeine SS . The first wartime promotions to SS- Obergruppenführer occurred in April 1940 when the rank

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5394-478: The harsh conditions. A significant portion of Volksdeutsche in Hungary joined the SS , which was a pattern repeated also in Romania (with 54,000 locals serving in the SS by the end of 1943). The majority of 200,000 Volksdeutsche from the area of Danube who served with the SS were from Hungary. As early as 1942, some 18,000 Hungarian Germans joined the SS. they have been called Danube Swabians . After World War II, approximately 185,000 Volksdeutsche in

5481-526: The jurisdiction of the SS Police and Courts . With Hitler's blessing, Himmler now had complete control over VoMi, ethnic Germans outside Imperial Germany policy and living space programs. Although VoMi remained technically an office of the Nazi Party until the end of the Second World War , it was under the control of the SS. The RKFDV-VOMi was organized into 11 departments (1942): ("Headquarters") This department, unlike other VoMi Amts, contained only SS personnel. It contained SS legal officers and

5568-500: The most ideologically difficult aspects of the countries' relationship. The secret protocols caused Hitler to hurriedly evacuate ethnic German families, who had lived in the Baltic countries for centuries and now classified as Volksdeutsche, while officially condoning the invasions. When the three Baltic countries, not knowing about the secret protocols, sent letters protesting the Soviet invasions to Berlin, Ribbentrop returned them. In August 1940, Soviet Foreign minister Molotov told

5655-413: The most important department within VoMi as it provided the political leadership for ethnic Germans within the Third Reich and occupied Europe . Amt IX had several sub divisions, these included domestic affairs, relations between ethnic Germans and the Nazi Party, affairs between foreign states and the Third Reich regarding ethnic Germans and liaisons with the Nazi Foreign Ministry . ("Office managing

5742-427: The murder of a young woman for an affair with a Russian—in accordance with Nazi principle of Rassenschande —as an ancient German custom. 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; when she succumbs, in defiance of blood and soil , she

5829-554: The new eastern areas ") It had a similar role as Amt VI but looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe, such as in occupied Poland , Czechoslovakia and Russia . It had field offices in Kraków , Riga and Kiev . ("Culture and science") This section was engaged in collating and archiving the cultural history of resettled Volksdeutsche . The department also acted as a curator for artifacts, treasure and documents belonging to ethnic Germans. ("Political office of German ethnic groups") The SS considered this to be

5916-405: The rank a year later along with Karl von Eberstein and Philipp Bouhler . The year 1936 saw several promotions to the rank, including Friedrich Jeckeln who would become one of the most infamous SS and police leaders on the Eastern Front during World War II . The last pre-war promotion to the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer was in April 1939 for Friedrich Graf von der Schulenburg who died

6003-411: The rank was intended to be held by members of the Oberste SA-Führung (Supreme SA Command) and also by veteran commanders of certain SA-Gruppen (SA groups). Some of the early promotions to the rank included Ernst Röhm , Viktor Lutze , Edmund Heines , August Schneidhuber , and Fritz Ritter von Kraußer . The rank of SA- Obergruppenführer was the most senior rank of the Sturmabteilung until

6090-483: The spring of 1933, when Röhm made the title position of Stabschef (SA Chief of Staff) into a rank and promoted himself accordingly. Also in the summer of 1933, Heinrich Himmler was promoted by Adolf Hitler to the newly created rank of SS- Obergruppenführer with the intent being to make Himmler the equivalent of the senior commanders of the SA, to which the SS was still subordinated. Although Himmler usually referred to himself as Reichsführer-SS , before

6177-492: The summer of 1934, this was simply a title for the SS commander, and not yet an actual rank. Shortly after Himmler's promotion, Hitler further promoted Franz Xaver Schwarz , with Himmler's date of rank backdated to 1 January 1933 in order to confirm his seniority as the top officer within the SS. Shortly after Rudolf Hess was appointed as his deputy in April 1933, Hitler promoted him to SS- Obergruppenführer . However, in September, Hitler decreed that Hess should no longer use

6264-608: The title of Obergruppenführer but only use the title of Deputy Führer. A number of men were promoted to SS- Obergruppenführer in 1934, these being Fritz Weitzel , Richard Walther Darré and Walter Buch . After the Night of the Long Knives in July 1934, Sepp Dietrich was promoted to the rank. On 9 September 1934, so as to prevent a power struggle within the SS, Hitler further promoted Kurt Daluege who commanded most of

6351-667: The train tracks carrying Romanian oil would be left alone. In October 1940, Germany and the Soviet Union negotiated about the Volksdeutsche in Soviet-occupied territories and their property. Instead of permitting full indemnification, the Soviets put restrictions on the wealth that the Volksdeutsche could take with them and limited the totals that the Soviets would apply to the Reich's clearing accounts. The parties discussed total compensation of between 200 million  ℛ︁ℳ︁ and 350 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ for

6438-668: The underwear of victims. It ordered that the property should be sent to the VoMi offices in Łódź , Poland. The memorandum refuted claims that organizations like VoMi had no knowledge that Jews were being murdered en masse in the extermination camps. The note is an example of the use of the Nazi euphemism "evacuation" for Jews that were being murdered in The Holocaust . Notes Further reading Obergruppenf%C3%BChrer Obergruppenführer ( German: [ˈoːbɐˌɡʁʊpm̩fyːʁɐ] , lit.   ' senior group leader ' )

6525-406: The west and forced to leave everything. In post-war Poland, the word Volksdeutsche is regarded as an insult, synonymous with "traitor". In some cases, individuals consulted the Polish resistance first, before signing the Volksliste. There were Volksdeutsche who played important roles in intelligence activities of the Polish resistance, and were at times the primary source of information for

6612-622: Was a paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the Sturmabteilung (SA) and adopted by the Schutzstaffel (SS) one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank after only Reichsführer-SS . Translated as "senior group leader", the rank of Obergruppenführer was senior to Gruppenführer . A similarly named rank of Untergruppenführer existed in

6699-440: Was actively recruiting ethnic Germans and the Nazi secret service " SicherheitsDienst " (SD) was forming them as early as October 1938 into armed unit that were to serve Nazi Germany. Historian Matthias Fiedler typified ethnic German collaborationists as former "nobodies" whose major occupation was the expropriation of Jewish property. Heinrich Himmler remarked that whatever objections ethnic Germans might have against serving in

6786-634: Was an official of the SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt ( SS Main Economic and Administrative Office ), which was responsible for the administration of the Nazi concentration camps . Frank was responsible for taking the property from Jews murdered in Aktion Reinhard in 1942. After the war, a memorandum prepared by Frank on September 26, 1942 , detailed instructions on dealing with this ill-gotten wealth; which even included collecting

6873-580: Was considered the highest rank of the Allgemeine SS until April 1942; equivalent to a lieutenant general (three-star general) in the American and British armies. It was only outranked by Himmler's special rank of Reichsführer-SS . However, within the Waffen-SS , the rank of SS- Gruppenführer was equivalent to a Generalleutnant , and an SS- Obergruppenführer came to be considered

6960-582: Was granted to Joachim von Ribbentrop , Martin Bormann and Hans Lammers ; Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Otto Dietrich were promoted a year later. All five promotions were honorary SS ranks with the first promotion of an active SS officer occurring in September 1941 when the rank was granted to Reinhard Heydrich . The Waffen-SS commander, Paul Hausser was promoted to the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer on 1 October 1941. Waffen-SS commander Theodor Eicke

7047-486: Was headed by SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz. According to the historian Valdis Lumans, Nazi propaganda used the existence of ethnic Germans who they called Volksdeutsche 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. Massacres of ethnic Germans, such as Bloody Sunday , or alleged atrocities, were used in such propaganda, and

7134-406: Was promoted to SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS on 20 April 1942. Sepp Dietrich remained senior, having served as General der SS-VT ( SS-Verfügungstruppe ) upon the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Two SS officers would be demoted from the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer : Rudolf Hess and Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff . Hess was stripped of his rank and expelled from both

7221-464: Was ranked as the 15th most senior SS officer. A total of 107 men would eventually hold the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer with 97 such officers listed on the SS seniority list in 1944. Several men with the rank would die during World War II; some of the more notable being Heydrich, Eicke, and Artur Phleps . The last promotion was made in March 1945 to Hans Kammler . The rank of Obergruppenführer

7308-491: Was recognised by the Polish Underground State and other anti-Nazi resistance movements, which tried to explain the situation to other Poles in underground publications. The Deutsche Volksliste categorised non-Jewish Poles of German ethnicity into one of four categories: Volksdeutsche of statuses 1 and 2 in the Polish areas annexed by Germany numbered 1 million, and Nos. 3 and 4 numbered 1.7 million. In

7395-725: Was responsible for the massacre of 1,200 Jews at Suha Verba in early June 1942. Slightly more detail on this can be found in Andrej Angrick's paper in Yad Vashem Studies XXVI (1998), pp 232–234. Perhaps oddly, Radu Ioanid's The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 does not cover Sk-R, nor does Valdis O. Lumen's book dedicated to VoMi. SS- Obergruppenführer August Frank

7482-635: Was the only department that remained under complete control of the Nazi State and not the Allgemeine SS . ("Information") This department documented and reported all VoMi activity and resettlement projects. It worked closely with Joseph Goebbels ' Ministry of Information . Amt IV also published information journals for the German settlers . ("Germanness education") This provided cultural and educational services to help Volksdeutsche assimilate to German ways . ("Office of ethnic Germans within

7569-466: Was used by four major paramilitary groups of the Nazi Party, these being the SA, SS, National Socialist Motor Corps , and National Socialist Flyers Corps . The rank would remain the highest SS general officer rank until April 1942, when the rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer was created. Standard practice for SS generals serving as an SS and police leader , as well as those senior SS personnel of

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