By Tomislav Sunic
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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[ly] 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.
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At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, more than [1,500,000] 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.
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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 multi-ethnic 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]
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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]
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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.
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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.
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The wartime and postwar plight of Germans in the Balkans also provides lessons about the fate of multi-ethnic and multicultural states. [...] 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.
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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.
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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? > To Full Article
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[...] What about the Valentine’s Day cremation of the undefended hospital city Dresden by the British and Americans? What’s that you say – you’ve never even heard of these things? [...]
[...] German “Ethnic Cleansing” [...]
[...] German Ethnic Cleansing [...]