Volksdeutsche meeting in occupied Warsaw 1940.

Volksdeutsche(r) - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood. These terms were used by Nazis to define people in terms of their ethnicity rather than citizenship and thus included Germans living beyond the borders of the Reich.^[1] This is in contrast to Imperial Germans (Reichsdeutsche), German citizens living within Germany. The term also contrasts with the usage of the term Auslandsdeutsche (Germans abroad) since 1936, which generally denotes German citizens residing in other countries.^[2]

Volksdeutsche were further divided into Volksgruppen - a minority within a minority in a state - with a special cultural, social and historic development as described by Nazis.^[3]

Origin of the term[link]

According to the historian Doris Bergen, Adolf Hitler is reputed to have coined the definition of "Volksdeutsche" which appeared in a 1938 memorandum of the German Reich Chancellery. In that document, the Volksdeutsche were defined as "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship."

For Hitler and the other ethnic Germans of his time, the term "Volksdeutsche" 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 Volksdeutsche and Auslandsdeutsche ( German citizens residing abroad, see McKale 1977: The Swastika Outside Germany, p. 4) were living outside the Reich. A significant proportion of them were in eastern Europe: Russia, Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia, where many were located in villages along the Danube. Many of their ancestors had migrated to such areas of eastern Europe in the 18th century, invited by governments that wanted to repopulate areas decimated by the Ottoman Empire occupation and sometimes by disease.

The Nazi goal of expansion to the east assigned the Volksdeutsche a special role in German plans, to bring them back to German citizenship and elevate them to power over the native populations in those areas. The Nazis detailed such goals in Generalplan Ost.^[4]

Historical background[link]

Ostsiedlung[link]

Over the last thousand years, Germans emigrated from traditional German lands in Central Europe and settled further east in Russia, present-day Romania and other countries. Many Germans settled in the Baltic and parts of present day Poland in colonies established by the Teutonic Knights beginning in the thirteenth century. The Knights were also granted rights in Transylvania, resulting in the settlement of many Germans there.

In the sixteenth century Vasili III invited small numbers of German craftsmen, traders and professionals to settle in Russia 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 westernize the empire. He also brought in German engineers to supervise the construction of the new city of Saint Petersburg.

Catherine the Great, herself a German, invited German farmers to immigrate and settle in Russian lands along the Volga River. She guaranteed them the right to retain their language, religion and culture. Germans were also sent^{[by whom?]} in organized colonization attempts aiming at Germanization 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 the state of New York.^[5][6]

Prussia encouraged a second round of colonization with the goal of Germanisation after 1832.^[7] Prussia passed laws to encourage Germanisation of 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[link]

The reconstitution of Poland following the Treaty of Versailles (1919) separated German minorities of the Prussian provinces of the German Empire from a German nation state. Ethnic German inhabitants of provinces of the dissolved Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as Sudeten Germans, Danube Swabians and Transylvanian Saxons, became citizens of newly-established Slavic or Magyar nation-states. Tensions between the new administration and the ethnic German minority arose in the Polish Corridor.

The Nazi era before World War II[link]

1932 German map with claims regarding presence of Volksdeutsche by Edgar Lehmann, a Nazi party member in years 1940-1945^[8][9]

Entry to Volksdeutsche office in Kraków 1940.

During the Nazi years, they used the term "Volksdeutsche" to refer to foreign-born Germans living in countries newly occupied by Nazi Germany and who applied for German citizenship. 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.

Pre-war relations with the Nazis[link]

In 1931, prior to its rise to power, the Nazi party established the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP (Foreign Organisation of the Nazi Party), which task was to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the ethnic German minorities living outside Germany (Volksdeutsche). In 1936, the government set up the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic Germans' Welfare Office), commonly known as VoMi, under the jurisdiction of the SS as the liaison bureau. It was headed by SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Werner Lorenz.

In 1936 the Nazis set up an office to act as a contact for the Volksdeutsche. According to the historian Lumans Valdiso,

"[one of Himmler's goals was] centralizing 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."^[10]

Internal propaganda[link]

The suffering of Volksdeutsche in foreign lands was often depicted to Germans, before and during the war, to help justify the aggression. The annexation of Poland was presented as necessary to protect the German minorities there.^[11] Alleged massacres of Germans, such as Bloody Sunday were used in such propaganda, and the film Heimkehr drew on such attempts although allowing the Volksdeutsche depicted to survive, saved by the arrival of German tanks.^[12] Heimkehr's introduction explicitly states that hundreds of thousands of Germans in Poland suffered as the characters in the film did.^[13]

Menschen im Sturm reprised Heimkehr's effort to justify the invasion of Slovania, using many of the same atrocities.^[14] 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.^[15] 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.^[16] Friesennot depicted the suffering of a village of Volga Germans in the Soviet Union;^[17] it also depicted the murder of a young woman for an affair with a Russian -- in accordance with Nazi principle of rassenschande -- as an ancient German custom.^[18]

Rassenschande also featured in Die goldene Stadt, where the Sudeten German heroine faces not persecution but the allure of the big city;^[19] 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.^[20]

Collaboration with the Nazis[link]

Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz Bydgoszcz 1939.

Before and during World War II, some Volksdeutsche, in countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia, actively supported the Nazis. 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 means in their countries of origin.

In Yugoslavia, the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen was formed. It was conspicuous in its operations against the Resistance partisans and among the population. About 300,000 Volksdeutsche from the Nazi-conquered lands and the satellite countries joined the Waffen-SS, the majority conscripted involuntarily. In Hungary, for instance, some 100,000 ethnic Germans volunteered for service in it. "After 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 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."^[21]

Among the indigenous populations in the Nazi-occupied lands, Volksdeutsche became a term of ignominy.

During the early days of WWII (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.

During World War II[link]

Volksdeutsche in German-occupied western Poland[link]

In September 1939 in German occupied Poland, an armed ethnic German militia called Selbstschutz (Self-Defence) was created. It organized the mass murder of Polish elites in Operation Tannenberg. At the beginning of 1940, the Selbstschutz was disbanded and its members transferred to various units of the SS and 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.^[22][23]

Arthur Greiser welcoming a million Volksdeutcher resettled during "Heim ins Reich" action from the East Europe to occupied Poland - March 1944

Origin of German colonisers resettled during "Heim ins Reich" action to annexed Polish territories

After the Germans occupied western Poland, they established a central registration bureau, called the German People's List (Deutsche Volksliste, DVL), whereby Polish citizens of German ethnicity were registered as Volksdeutsche. The Germans encouraged such registration, in many cases forcing it or subjecting Polish Germans to terror assaults if they refused.^[24] Those who joined this group were given benefits, including better food as well as 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, Polish citizens of German ancestry, who often identified with the Polish nation, were confronted with the dilemma of registering in the Deutsche Volksliste. Many ethnic Germans had families who had lived in Poland for centuries; even the more recent immigrants had arrived 30 years or more before the war. They faced the choice of registering and being regarded as traitors by other Poles, or not signing and being treated by the Nazi occupation as traitors to the Germanic "race".

In Polish Silesia Catholic Church authorities lead by bishop Stanisław Adamski and with agreement from 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^[25]

In occupied Poland, the status of "Volksdeutscher" gave many privileges, but one big disadvantage: Volksdeutsche were subject to conscription into the German army. In occupied Pomerania, the Gauleiter of the Danzig-West Prussia region Albert Forster issued a secret order which mandated a creation of a list of people who were considered to be of German ethnicity, in 1941. Since the number of supposedly ethnic Germans who signed up voluntarily was insignificant by 1942, in February of that year Forster made signing of the Volksliste mandatory and empowered local police and other authorities to employ various methods, including physical force and threats, to implement the decree. Consequently, the initially insignificant number of signatories rose to almost a million persons, or about 55% of the population by 1944. The special case of 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, was recognized by the Polish Underground State and other anti-Nazi resistance movements, which tried to explain the situation to other Poles in underground publications.^[26]

The Deutsche Volksliste categorised German Poles into one of four categories:^[27][28]

• Category I: Persons of German descent committed to the Reich before 1939.
• Category II: Persons of German descent who had remained passive.
• Category III: Persons of German descent who had become partly "polonized", e.g., through marrying a Polish partner or through working relationships (especially Silesians and Kashubians).
• Category IV: Persons of German ancestry who had become "polonized" but were supportive of "Germanisation".

Volksdeutsche of statuses 1 and 2 in the Polish areas annexed by Germany numbered 1,000,000, and Nos. 3 and 4 numbered 1,700,000. In the General Government there were 120,000 Volksdeutsche. Volksdeutsche of Polish ethnic origins were treated by the Poles with special contempt, but were also committing high treason according to Polish law.^{[citation needed]}

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 the west and forced to leave everything. In 21st century 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 the Allies. Particularly in Pomerania and 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 Volksdeutshe while in Silesia and Pomerania it's the opposite, the secret organization depends in large measure on the Volksdeutshe" (the memo referred to those of Category III, not I and II).^[26] 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.

Volksdeutsche in the territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939-40[link]

Volksdeutsche resettling after the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland

Volkdeutsche resettling after the Soviet occupation of Bukovina and Bessarabia in 1940^[29]

Resettled Baltic Germans take new homes in Warthegau after expulsion of the local Poles.

German settlers are shown around their Nazi-appropriated farmhouse in occupied Poland in November 1939 during action "Heim ins Reich"

The Soviet invasion of Finland, which had been covertly ceded under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact secret protocols, created domestic problems for Hitler.^[30] Supporting the Soviet invasion became one of the most ideologically difficult aspects of the countries' relationship.^[31] The secret protocols caused Hitler to hurriedly evacuate ethnic German families, the Volksdeutsche, who had lived in Finland and the Baltic countries for centuries, while officially condoning the invasions.^[32][33] When the three Baltic countries, not knowing about the secret protocols, sent letters protesting the Soviet invasions to Berlin, Ribbentrop returned them.^[34]

In August 1940, Soviet Foreign minister Molotov told the Germans that, with the government change, they could close down their Baltic consulates by 1 September.^[34] The Soviet annexations in Romania caused further strain.^[34] While Germany had given the Soviets Bessarabia in the secret protocols, it had not given them Bucovina.^[34] Germany wanted guarantees of the safety of property of ethnic Germans, security for the 125,000 Volksdeutsche in Bessarabia and Bukovina, and reassurance that the train tracks carrying Romanian oil would be left alone.^[33]

In October 1940, Germany and the Soviet Union negotiated about the Volksdeutsche in Soviet-occupied territories and their property.^[35] 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.^[36] The parties discussed total compensation of between 200 million and 350 million Reichsmarks for the Volksdeutsche, while the Soviets requested 50 million Reichsmarks for their property claims in German-occupied territories.^[37] The two nations reached general agreement on German shipments of 10.5-cm flak cannons, gold, machinery and other items.^[37]

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 the Soviets had argued.^[38] 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.^[39] In many cases, the resulting population transfers resulted in resettlement of Volksdeutsche on land previously held by ethnic Poles or Jews in now Nazi-occupied territories. The agreement formally defined the border between Germany and the Soviet Union areas between the Igorka River and the Baltic Sea.^[39]

After the German invasion of the USSR[link]

Volksdeutsche murdered at Ternopil as German troops approached are examined on July 10, 1941

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. He had many of the inhabitants deported to prison camps in Siberia.^{[citation needed]}

Expulsion and exodus from Eastern Europe at the end of the war[link]

Sudeten Germans expelled after World War II

Dead Germans after Nemmersdorf massacre in Nemmersdorf, East Prussia.

Most Volksdeutsche left or were expelled from eastern European countries from 1945-1948 towards the end and after the war. Both those who became Volksdeutsche by registering and Reichsdeutsche retained German citizenship during the years of Allied military occupation, after the establishment of East Germany and West Germany in 1949, and later in the reunified Germany.

An estimated 12 million Germans fled or were expelled from the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, many of them being Volksdeutsche.^{[41][42][43][44]} Most left the Soviet-occupied territories of Eastern Europe; they comprised the largest migration of any European people in modern history.^[42][45] The 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 eastern Europe.^[46][47][48] Thus the expulsion of Volksdeutsche was demanded by article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement.

Local authorities forced most of the remaining ethnic Germans to leave between 1945 and 1950. Remnants of 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 but most of it migrated to West Germany throughout the 1980s. There are also remnant German populations near Mukachevo in western Ukraine.^[49]

Legacy[link]

The Nazis defined and popularized the term Volksdeutsche, and exploited such peoples for their own purposes. As a result, the term is not much used today.

Instead, ethnic Germans living outside of Germany are called "Auslandsdeutsche", or names more closely associated with their earlier places of residence, such as Wolgadeutsche or Volga Germans, the ethnic Germans living in the Volga basin in Russia; and Baltic Germans, who generally called themselves Balts. They were relocated to German-occupied Poland during World War II by an agreement between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and most were expelled to the West after the war.

Ethnic Germans were among the millions of displaced peoples on the roads of Europe in the years after the war.

See also[link]

• Goralenvolk
• Selbstschutz
• Imperial Germans, for a discussion of the different concepts and the shift of meaning between them.
• Fifth column
• Heimatvertriebene
• Umvolkung
• German exodus from Eastern Europe
• World War II evacuation and expulsion
• Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
• Nur für Deutsche

Bibliography[link]

• Nazi Fifth Column Activities: A List of References, Library of Congress, 1943
• The German fifth column in the Second World War, by L. de Jong
• The German Fifth Column in Poland, Hutchinson & Co Ltd, London
• Luther, Tammo (2004): Volkstumspolitik des Deutschen Reiches 1933-1938. Die Auslanddeutschen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Traditionalisten und Nationalsozialisten. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart
• de Zayas, Alfred M.: Die deutschen Vertriebenen. Graz, 2006. ISBN 3-902475-15-3.
• de Zayas, Alfred M.: Heimatrecht ist Menschenrecht. München, 2001. ISBN 3-8004-1416-3.
• de Zayas, Alfred M.: Nemesis at Potsdam. London, 1977. ISBN 0-8032-4910-1.
• de Zayas, Alfred M.: A terrible Revenge. Palgrave/Macmillan, New York, 1994.
• Franzel, Emil: Sudetendeutsche Geschichte. Mannheim, 1978. ISBN 3-8083-1141-X.
• Franzel, Emil: Die Sudetendeutschen. Aufstieg Verlag München, 1980.
• Meixner, Rudolf: Geschichte der Sudetendeutschen. Nürnberg, 1988. ISBN 3-921332-97-4.
• Naimark, Normn: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, Harvard University Press,2001.
• Prauser, Steffen and Rees, Arfon: The Expulsion of the "German" communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the 2nd World War. Florence, Italy, European University Institute, 2004.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Ericson, Edward E. (1999), Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933-1941, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-275-96337-3 
• Philbin III, Tobias R. (1994), The Lure of Neptune: German-Soviet Naval Collaboration and Ambitions, 1919 - 1941, University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 0-87249-992-8 
• Roberts, Geoffrey (2006), Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-11204-1 

External links[link]

• Hitler's Fifth column in Czechoslovakia
• Hitler's Fifth column in Croatia
• Hitler's Fifth column in Yugoslavia
• Hitler's Fifth column in Poland

Tomislav (Tom) Sunić is a Croatian-American writer, translator and a former professor. He is best known for his books and writings critical of egalitarianism, biblical monotheism and liberal political discourse. His views are considered to be favorable to white ethnocentrism. His views are often cited as part of the Nouvelle Droite movement in Europe

Biography[link]

Dr. Sunic was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1953.^[1] His father, the Catholic attorney Mirko Sunic (1915–2008), was between 1984–1988 a prisoner of conscience in Communist Yugoslavia (wherefrom he was adopted by Amnesty International and 15 US congressmen in 1985),^[2] and was in 1996 author of the book Moji inkriminirani zapisi.^[3] He studied French and English Language and Literature at the University of Zagreb until 1978. From 1980 to 1982 he worked in Algeria as an interpreter for the Yugoslav, Croatian construction company Ingra. He immigrated to the USA where he first received a Master's degree at California State University, Sacramento in 1985.^[4] He received a doctorate in political science in 1988 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. During his graduate studies in America he was lobbying for Croatian political prisoners in ex-Communist Yugoslavia and also wrote for the émigré Croat London-based biweekly Nova Hrvatska and the Madrid-based Croat literary quarterly Hrvatska Revija (Revista Croata). From 1988 until 1993, he taught at California State University, the University of California, and Juniata College in Pennsylvania. From 1993 until 2001, he served in various diplomatic positions with the Croatian government in Zagreb, London, Copenhagen, and Brussels. He has also taught at the Anglo-American College in Prague and currently resides in Zagreb, where he continues to work as a freelance writer,^[1] for example as a contributor on political semiotics and the spirit of communist totalitarianism to the French quarterly^[5] Catholica.

Views[link]

Dr. Sunic's books and views can be described as being in the style of the GRECE, a school of thought by Alain de Benoist, who wrote a preface to Sunic’s book and whose articles Sunic often translates into English.^[6][7] Sunic has widely written, translated and lectured on many authors, novelists and political thinkers who can be called the predecessors of the European New Right (Southern Agrarians, Emile Cioran, Ernst Jünger. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ludwig F. Clauss), and who can be described as antidemocratic, populist, elitist and racialist thinkers^[8] The European New Right, or Nouvelle Droite, is a name for various forms of conservative, right-wing, or dissident cultural movements and political groupings which emerged in opposition to the liberal and leftist academic milieu of the mid- to late-twentieth century. GRECE was created in January 1968 by forty anti-liberal theoreticians and French academics. Liberal-leftist critics have argued that De Benoist has developed a novel cultural fascism and have depicted the advocates of his school of thought as “literary fascists."^[9]

Professor Kevin B. Macdonald, an evolutionary psychologist at the California State University, Long Beach, a prominent far-right intellectual, who has been characterized as "The Marx of the Anti-Semites",^[10] wrote an introduction to Sunic’s book Homo Americanus, a book which deals extensively with the Judeo-Christian mindset and its secular modalities in the USA. The introduction says that he "addresses the modern world of hyper-liberalism, globalist capitalism and the crisis of our inherited Indo-European civilization." Sunic is critical of Judeo-Christian monotheism to which he attributes the rise of communism and liberalism. He is also critical of post-World War II legislative changes in Europe, favoring non-white immigration and restrictions on freedom of speech. Sunic calls "Christian anti-Semitism”^[11] an apostasy and a form of Christian neurosis" [10]

Dr. Sunic has never denied the Holocaust although he has attended and spoken at some conferences organized and attended by historical revisionists. In August 2003, he lectured in German, alongside the far-rightist ex-lawyer Horst Mahler, currently serving a prison sentence in Germany for Holocaust denial, at a conference sponsored by Germany’s nationalist right-wing party, the National Democratic Party. He lectured on Carl Schmitt, a prominent German legal scholar, quite influential in National-Socialist Germany.^[12] Sunic's articles have been published in a variety of American, French, German^[13] and Croatian journals,^[14] including the now defunct Journal of Historical Review.^[15]

While his controversial perspectives on race and Judeo-Christian monotheism have gained influence (both from supporters on the far-right and critics on the left), he has also spoken and written on a variety of philosophical and religious topics. His articles and letters on Yugoslavia have appeared in a variety of mainstream publications, including Le Monde, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Washington Times, The New York Times,^[16] The New York City Tribune, The Chicago Tribune,^[17] London's The Evening Standard, and The Christian Science Monitor, among others.^[18]

Speaking appearances[link]

Sunic has accepted a number of invitations to speak before radical conservatives, white nationalist academics^[19] and individuals suspected of anti-semitism.^[20] For example, Sunic spoke at the 2002 and 2003 'Eurofest' events, sponsored by the Sacramento chapter of National Alliance. There he gave a speech from "Turkish Onslaught to Europe to Communist Disaster, "which was critical of non-European immigration.^[21][22]

Dr. Sunic spoke at the French Senate on 15 January 2007, during a conference entitled "Nationalismes et religions dans les Balkans occidentaux" (Nationalisms and Religions in the Western Balkans), sponsored by the Fondation Robert Schuman. The topic of his talk was "Facteur nationaliste et facteur religieux dans les tensions actuelles" ("The Nationalist and Religious Factor in the Present Tensions"). Other speakers included Michel Barnier (former French Minister of Foreign Affairs), General David Leakey (former Commander of EUFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina), Doris Pack (President of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with countries of South-Eastern Europe), and Nicolas Petrovich Njegosh (Prince of Montenegro).^[23]

Sunić also spoke at the March 2007 Los Angeles meeting of the Institute for Historical Review.^[24] The topic of Dr Sunić's speech was the semantic distortions surrounding the expression "hate speech". Dr Sunic traced the lexical manipulations embedded in the German, and French criminal code. His main argument was that the “liberal system, by using 'soft narratives' and 'sentimental normative locutions,' is no less dangerous than the violence and vulgarity of communist double-speak. It is less transparent and therefore it better deceives the masses.”

His recent conference tour was with Dr Kevin MacDonald in June 2011, in Sweden, where they both talked about the topic “Individualism and Nationalism in the Modern Multicultural Society”.^[25]He spoke at the "Forgotten Genocide" International Conference, held in St. Louis Community College, on the topic of "The Fate of the Danube Germans in Yugoslavia in the Wake of WWII".^[26]In July 2011, Sunic was a guest speaker in Knin, Croatia, at the summer school of the Flemish separatist, rightwing, parliamentary party, Vlaams Belang, where he lectured on the parallels between Belgium and ex-Yugoslavia.^[27] Sunic is a frequent guest of expatriate German and Croat communities in North America, Australia and Europe, where he talks about Communist genocides and mass killings of ethnic German and Croat civilians in ex-Yugoslavia and in East Europe in the aftermath of WWII.^[28]

He went back to Sweden in August 2011, and made a speech at the "Identitär Idé III" (Identité Idea III), about "Culture and race", where he talked about the future of Europe. He mentioned that he thinks that the European nationalists are too anti-, and insufficiently pro. For example: he stated that European nationalists are more "Anti-Islam, anti-Islam, anti-Islam!" than they are "Pro-ourselves!". They should focus more on their own legends, culture, history, language, race, et cetera instead of ranting on Islam and their culture and race et cetera.

Radio programme[link]

In June 2009, Dr Sunić began broadcasting a radio show with the Voice of Reason Broadcast Network.^[29] His inaugural broadcast of The New Nationalist Perspective was on June 2.^[30] Topics addressed by him include race, culture, nationalism, and politics.

The show, since re-named The Sunic Journal, airs on Tuesdays at 9 PM, US Eastern Time.

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} ‘Reexamining Assumptions’: An Interview with Tom Sunic
2. ^ http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Sunic-Decommunization.html
3. ^ http://www.bestwebbuys.com/Moji_inkriminirani_Zapisi-ISBN_9789536264407.html?isrc=b-search
4. ^ Crown Home Page
5. ^ Revue Catholica - Numéro 92 (Eté 2006) : sommaire
6. ^ Europska Nova Desnica,Zagreb
7. ^ The Tomislav Sunic Collection
8. ^ The Occidental Observer, Sunic articles
9. ^ Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, 1991
10. ^ The Marx of the Anti-Semites
11. ^ Marx, Moses and the Pagans in the Secular City (CLIO) Vol. 24, No. 2, 1995
12. ^ Carl Schmitt on Liberalism
13. ^ Bleiburg und die Folgen
14. ^ Razgovor sa Dr.Tomislavom Sunićem,HKV
15. ^ http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/Backgrounder:+American+Third+Position.htm?Multi_page_sections=sHeading_6
16. ^ For Yugoslavia, Breakup Is Best Answer,The New York Times (March 02, 1991)
17. ^ The Terminal Illness Of Yugoslavia,Chicago Tribune,(June 9, 1990)
18. ^ http://www.tomsunic.info/essays.html^{[dead link]}
19. ^ Norway speeches
20. ^ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/03/24/croatian-extremist-joins-white-hate-group-leadership/
21. ^ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/summer/in-sheeps-clothing?page=0,1
22. ^ SN&R > Local Stories > White like me > 03.13.03
23. ^ http://www.robert-schuman.org/actualite/invitation_balkans_18_12_2007.pdf
24. ^ Sunic, Weber and Smith Address Spirited IHR Meeting
25. ^ Nationalism and Indentity, Dr.T.Sunic, Dr.K.MacDonald
26. ^ http://www.stlcc.edu/Document_Library/Servcie_Learning/Events-Calendar.pdf
27. ^ Vlaams Belang Jongeren, Croatia
28. ^ Bleiburg,Volksdeutsche
29. ^ VORNetwork.com: Announcement of new programme with Tomislav Sunic (May 28, 2009)
30. ^ VORNetwork.com: Show description and podcast (June 2, 2009)

Books[link]

• Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right (1990)
• Titoism and Dissidence (1995)
• Američka Ideologija
• Cool Croatia
• Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age (March 2007)
• Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity (Collected Essays) (February 2010)
• La Croatie: un pays par défaut? (June 2010)
• Homo americanus; Rejeton de l’ère postmoderne (2010)
• Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right (1990, 2002, 2011)

Articles/ Interviews[link]

• « Homo americanus et homo sovieticus » French quarterly Réfléchir et Agir,(été) (2011)

External links[link]

• Dr. Tomislav Sunic's official website
• Archive of Tom Sunic's broadcasts at VOR

Ethnic Germans from the Volga region at a refugee camp in Schneidemühl, Germany, in 1920

The Volga Germans (German: Wolgadeutsche or Russlanddeutsche, Russian: Поволжские немцы, Povolzhskie nemtsy) were ethnic Germans living along the River Volga in the region of southeastrn European Russia around Saratov and to the south. Recruited as immigrants to Russia in the 18th century, they were allowed to maintain German culture, language, traditions and churches: Lutherans, Reformed, Roman Catholics, and Mennonites (Russian Mennonites). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Volga Germans emigrated to the Midwestern United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and other countries.

Nazi Germany rose in part on a pan-German appeal, claiming interests in lands where ethnic Germans had been long settled. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 during World War II, the Soviet government considered the Volga Germans potential collaborators and transported them wholesale to labour camps, where many died. After the war, it expelled some ethnic Germans to the West. In the late 1980s, many of the remaining ethnic Germans moved from the Soviet Union to Germany.

Catherine the Great[link]

Catherine II

In 1762, Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst, a German native of Stettin, Pomerania, displaced her husband Peter III (an even more Western German) and took the vacant Russian imperial throne, assuming the name of Catherine II. Catherine the Great published manifestos in 1762 and 1763 inviting Europeans, (except Jews)^[1] to immigrate and farm Russian lands while maintaining their language and culture. Although the first received little response, the second improved the benefits offered and was more successful in attracting colonists. People in other countries such as France and England were more inclined to migrate to the colonies in the Americas than to the Russian frontier. Other countries, such as Austria, forbade emigration. The settlers came mainly from Bavaria, Baden, Hesse, the Palatinate and the Rhineland, over the years 1763 to 1767.

Those who went to Russia had special rights under the terms of the manifesto. Some, such as being exempt from military service, were revoked in the latter part of the 19th century when the government needed more conscripts for the Russian army. The German Mennonite communities were opposed to military service because of their religious beliefs. Many Mennonites emigrated to the Americas then rather than serve in the military, as pacifism was and remains a deeply protected value. Some Mennonites remained in Russia. As a result of the migrations, Winnipeg, Canada, is now a center of the Mennonite population and religious practice.^{[citation needed]}

The 20th century[link]

Following the Russian Revolution, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Autonome Sozialistische Sowjet-Republik der Wolga-Deutschen in German; АССР Немцев Поволжья in Russian) was established in 1924, and it lasted until 1941. Its capital was Engels, known as Pokrovsk (Kosakenstadt in German) before 1931.

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin was worried that the Volga Germans might collaborate with the invaders. On August 28, 1941, he dissolved the Volga-German ASSR and ordered the immediate relocation of ethnic Germans, both from the Volga and from a number of other traditional areas of settlement. Approximately 400,000 Volga Germans were stripped of their land and houses, and transported eastward to Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia, Altai Krai in Siberia, and other remote areas. Other minority ethnic groups were also deported into internal exile in labor camps, including North Caucasian Muslim ethnic groups, Kalmyks and Crimean Tatars. In 1942 nearly all the able-bodied German population was conscripted to the Labor Army. About one third did not survive the labour camps.^[2]

In 1941 after the Nazi invasion, the NKVD (via Prikaz 35105) banned ethnic Germans from serving in the Soviet military. They sent tens of thousands of these soldiers to the Trudarmii (Labor Army).^[3]

Recent years[link]

Streckerau, 1920, nowadays Novokamenka, Rovnoye (Rovensky) district, Saratov Oblast

The Volga Germans never returned to the Volga region in their prior numbers. They were not allowed to settle in the area for decades.^{[citation needed]}. After the war, many remained in the Ural Mountains, Siberia, Kazakhstan (1.4% of today's Kazakh population are recognized as Germans - approximately 200,000), Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan (approximately 16,000 = 0.064%).^[4] After the initial period of persecution, they recovered in their new locations, where their numbers increased, and they continued to preserve their distinct cultural identity. Decades after the war, some talked about resettling where the German Autonomous Republic used to be. They met opposition from the population that had been resettled in the territory and did not persevere.

A proposal in June 1979 called for a new German Autonomous Republic within Kazakhstan, with a capital in Ermentau. The proposal was aimed at addressing the living conditions of the displaced Volga Germans. At the time, there were approximately 936,000 ethnic Germans living in Kazakhstan, as the republic's third-largest ethnic group. On June 16, 1979, demonstrators in Tselinograd (Astana) protested this proposal. Fearing a negative reaction among the majority Kazakhs and calls for autonomy among local Uyghurs, the ruling Communist Party scrapped the proposal for ethnic German autonomy within Kazakhstan.

Since the late 1980s and the fall of the Soviet Union, some ethnic Germans have returned in small numbers to Engels, but many more emigrated permanently to Germany. They took advantage of the German law of return, a policy which grants citizenship to all those who can prove to be a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant of such a person. (Greece had a similar law for the ethnic Greek minority from the former Soviet Union). This exodus occurred despite the fact that some Volga Germans speak little or no German.^{[citation needed]}

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the independence of the Baltic states, some Russian ethnic Germans began to return to the area of the Kaliningrad Oblast (formerly part of East Prussia), especially Volga Germans from other parts of Russia and Kazakhstan. This tempo increased after Germany stopped granting the free right of return to ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union. As of the 2002 Russian census, there were 8,340 Germans (or 0.87% of the population) listed in the Kaliningrad Oblast. However, almost none of the pre-World War II German population remains in the Kaliningrad Oblast.

By the late 1990s, however, Germany made it more difficult for Russians of German descent to settle in Germany,^{[citation needed]} especially for those who do not speak some of the Volga dialects of German. A number of German families who originally immigrated to Germany from former Soviet territories have since moved on to places such as Steinbach, Manitoba, fewer than 100 kilometres from Winnipeg, where the world's largest population of ethnic German Mennonites can be found. Most of the recent ethnic German immigrants likely have a Mennonite background.

Today, there are approximately 600,000 ethnic Germans in Russia (Russian Census (2002)), a number that increases to 1.5 million when including people of partly German ancestry.

North America[link]

Germans from Russia were the most traditional of German-speaking arrivals. They were Germans who had lived for generations throughout the Russian Empire, but especially along the Volga River in Russia. Their ancestors had come from all over the German-speaking world, invited by Catherine the Great in 1762 and 1763 to settle and introduce more advanced German agriculture methods to rural Russia. They had been promised by the manifesto of their settlement the ability to practice their respective Christian denominations, retain their culture and language, and retain immunity from conscription for them and their descendants. As time passed, the Russian monarchy gradually eroded the ethnic German population's relative autonomy. Conscription eventually was reinstated; this was especially harmful to the Mennonites, who practice pacifism. Throughout the 19th century pressure increased from the Russian government to culturally assimilate. Many Germans from Russia found it necessary to emigrate to avoid conscription and preserve their culture. About 100,000 immigrated by 1900, settling primarily in the Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska. The south-central part of North Dakota was known as "the German-Russian triangle". A smaller number moved farther west, finding employment as ranchers and cowboys.

The largest groups settled mainly in the area of the Great Plains; Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan in Canada; and North Dakota, Kansas and nearby areas in the US. Outside that area, they also settled in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, and Fresno County in California's Central Valley. They often succeeded in dryland farming, which they had practiced in Russia. Many of the immigrants who arrived between 1870 and 1912 spent a period doing farm labor, especially in northeastern Colorado and in Montana along the lower Yellowstone River in sugar beet fields.

Cities[link]

Other Volga Germans made new lives in the industrializing cities of the United States. Chief among these was Chicago, which had an immense upsurge in immigration from Eastern Europe during this time. Today it has the largest number of ethnic Volga Germans in North America. The largest area of concentrated settlement was in Jefferson Park on the city's Northwest Side, mostly between the years 1907-1920. By 1930, 450 families of the Evangelical faith were living in this area, most of whom originated from Wiesenseite.^[5] Later during the period of suburbanization, many of their descendants moved out to outlying areas such as Maywood and Melrose Park. A number of families living in the Jefferson Park central business district along Lawrence and Milwaukee Avenue have Volga German immigrant ancestors.

During the first two decades of the 20th century, the Chicago neighborhood of Jefferson Park was the point of initial settlement for many Volga German immigrants

Wheat[link]

Bernhard Warkentin, a German Russian, was born in a small Russian village in 1847, and travelled to America in his early twenties. Interested in flour mills, he was especially impressed with the wheat-growing possibilities in the United States. After visiting Kansas, Warkentin found the Great Plains much like those he had left behind. Settling in Harvey County, he built a water mill on the banks of the Little Arkansas River – the Halstead Milling and Elevator Company. Warkentin's greatest contribution to Kansas was the introduction of hard Turkey Wheat into Kansas, which replaced the soft variety grown exclusively in the state.

Culture[link]

Negatively influenced by the violation of their rights and cultural persecution by the Tsar, the Germans from Russia who settled in the northern Midwest saw themselves a downtrodden ethnic group separate from Russian Americans and having an entirely different experience from the German Americans who had immigrated from German lands; they settled in tight-knit communities that retained their German language and culture. They raised large families, built German-style churches, buried their dead in distinctive cemeteries using cast iron grave markers, and created choir groups that sang German church hymns. Many farmers specialized in sugar beets—still a major crop in the upper Great Plains. During World War I their identity was challenged by anti-German sentiment.

By the end of the World War II the German language, which had always been used with English for public and official matters, was in serious decline. Today German is preserved mainly through singing groups and recipes, with the Germans from Russia in the northern Great Plains states speaking predominantly English. German remains the second most spoken language in North and South Dakota, and Germans from Russia often use loanwords, such as Kuchen for cake. Despite the loss of their language, the ethnic group remains distinct and has left a lasting impression on the American West.^[6]

Memory[link]

During the 1970s, Dr. Kenneth Rock, a professor of history at Colorado State University, collected sixty oral histories of German Russian immigrants and their descendants as part of the "Germans from Russia in Colorado" Study Project. It documented life in the ethnic German communities in Russia, the immigration experience, work and social life in the United States, and interaction between the German-Russian communities and the wider society in both Russia and the United States.^[7]

Approximately one million descendants of these Russian Germans live in the United States.^[8] Modern descendants in Canada and the United States refer to their heritage as Germans from Russia, Russian Germans, Volgadeutsch or Black Sea Germans. In many parts of the United States, they tend to have blended to a large degree with the "regular" German Americans who are much more numerous in the northern half of the United States.

South America[link]

Flags of Argentina, Buenos Aires Province and Germany in front of St. Joseph Catholic Church in San José, Coronel Suárez Partido, Argentina (Volga German colony)

Germans from Russia also settled in Argentina (see Crespo and Coronel Suárez among others, also German Argentine), Paraguay, and Brazil (see German-Brazilians). Most Volga Germans who settled in Latin America were Catholic. Many Catholic Volga Germans chose South America as their new homeland because the nations shared their religion.

• Brazil 1,180,000
• Argentina 2,500,000^[9]
• Paraguay 45,000

Notable people of Volga German descent[link]

• Harold W. Bauer, USMC aviator
• Jean Bethke Elshtain, professor
• Tom Daschle, politician
• Zhanna Friske, singer
• Andre Geim, physicist and 2010 Nobel laureate
• German Gref, banking executive and politician
• Gabriel Heinze, football player
• Oscar Ibañez, football player
• Boris Rauschenbach, scientist, physicist
• Eduard Rossel, politician
• Alfred Schnittke, composer
• Lawrence Welk, musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario

See also[link]

Volga German pioneer family commemorative statue in Victoria, Kansas, USA.

• Expulsion of Germans after World War II
• Germans of Kazakhstan
• Gulag
• History of Germans in Russia and the Soviet Union
• Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
• Volhynia
• Russian Mennonites
• Volga Finns

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Center for Volga German Studies at Concordia University
• Germans from Russia Heritage Society
• Flag
• Volga Germans
• American Historical Society of Germans from Russia
• Germans from Russia Heritage Collection North Dakota State University
• Germans from Russia in Argentina Genealogy (Spanish)
• Wolgadeutschen (Russian)
• The Golden Jubilee of German-Russian Settlements of Ellis and Rush Counties, Kansas
• Germans from Russia in Argentina
• German Memories - Volga Germans Migration Towards Americas