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GENOCIDE of the Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia 1944-1948 In order to come to the final
conclusion that these atrocities were indeed a
genocide, historical examination has to ask the
question: "What were the reasons of Tito's partisan
movement that led to the genocide of the ethnic
Germans of Yugoslavian citizenship of the former
Yugoslav kingdom?" A careful examination of the
events and review of the Tito partisans own
statements lead to varying reasons which induced
the annihilation of the ethnic Germans in
Yugoslavia. The causes are of ethnic, national,
ideological, poweroriented and personal nature.
A primary reason is the hate
of everything German which has its origin in the
course of World War II. Beginning April 1941 and
following orders of the Komintern, under the
command of party leader Josip Broz, also called
Tito, the Yugoslav Communists began their fight
against the German and Italian occupation and
shortly thereafter also against the Serbian
Tschetniks who were loyal to the monarchy as well
as against the Croatian Ustaschas - all in support
of the Soviet Union, the "Socialist Motherland."
In 1942 the Tito partisans
infiltrated the autonomous Westbanat, administered
by the ethnic German Group. The "Volksgruppe's"
leadership wanted to organize a battalion, called
"Prinz Eugen," consisting of Banat ethnic Germans
for protection, a form of home guard, considered
legal by international conventions, and turned to
the German occupation forces for weapons.
Himmler, head of the SS,
however, had other plans. In order to circumvent
the "Haag Convention on Conduct of Warfare," he
declared the recruitment as "volunteer actions."
The originally intended Banat home guard battalion
"Prinz Eugen" became the "SS Volunteer Mountain
Division Prinz Eugen." Against the wishes of the
ethnic German leadership the division was used in
the war against the partisans outside of the Banat.
For the Tito partisans, this was reason enough to
identify the Danube Swabians with their main enemy:
Hitler's Germany. During its battle, the
communist Tito movement changed direction. It saw
its chance to grasp the power in Yugoslavia,
provided Germany would lose the war. For tactical
reasons it no longer preached the "Communist
Revolution" as its objective but the "Liberation of
the People" and developed a popular-front movement
to entice as many non-Communists as possible to
join their fight. In its November 1943 meeting,
the Anti-Fascist Council for the Liberation of
Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), an interim ruling commission
declared: "Whoever served in the enemy's armed
forces, whoever supported the occupation forces, is
a traitor, will lose citizenship rights, be
court-martialed and indicted for treason, which
carries the threat of the death penalty."
This resolution could be used
as a pretext for the murder of all soldiers of the
former Yugoslavia who fought against the
Communists, including the Germans, Croats, Slovenes
and Serbs under the leadership of Nedic or
Mihajlovic. The resolution also outlined
the federative structure of the future "People's
Republic." Ethnic German citizens were not included
in the ethnic nationalities with equal rights. It
was obvious the purpose was to punish not only the
soldiers who were drafted mainly into the German
units but to establish a collective guilt of the
entire ethnic German population by designating them
"Enemies of the People," "Collaborators" and
"Fascists." These were the preparations for the
annihilation of all Germans and they were no longer
considered part of the future Yugoslavia.
This patriotic approach was
used in the interest of the Communist power grab
and to mobilize many patriots who loved their own
country - while Tito had greater Yugoslavian
aspirations. He succeeded to maintain this national
patriotism, if not by conviction, then by force.
After Tito's death the
individual Serbian, Croation, Slovenian,
Macedonian, Bosnian, Kosovo-Albanian Patriotisms
suddenly resurfaced. We all have witnessed the
horrible consequences of the unraveling of
Yugoslavia since 1990. The proclamation of Jajce
removed all killing restraints for the partisan
leaders and gave the executions a semblance of
legality. The results were tens of thousands of
victims: Croatian Ustachas, Domobranen, German
soldiers, whole sections of the division Prinz
Eugen and about 8,000 Danube Swabians mainly male
non-military victims during the fall 1944 massacres
in the Banat, Batschka and Syrmia. The genocide of the ethnic
German population, branded as Fascists, proved to
be an important factor in stabilizing the
Communist's power since it was an effective
intimidating factor against the
national-conservative forces and loyal monarchists.
At the same time the annihilation of the Germans
suited the Communist concept in removing a segment
of the population which, in a Communist society,
would have been the greatest source of resistance.
There was, as admitted by the
partisans, another motive for the annihilation of
the ethnic Germans: the confiscated property was to
serve as a reward for the fighters of the
"liberation battle." In the relatively barren
revolutionary regions of the country, there was a
dearth of fertile agricultural soil. A large
percentage of the land, if not most of it, which
was redistributed by the Agrarian Reform, belonged
to the Germans. Thousands of active partisan
fighters and their families from these barren
areas, particularly from Krajina and Lika were
rewarded with the homes of the escaped or interned
Germans in the Wojwodina. They had to learn how to
cultivate the fertile land of the evacuated
villages within the Communist's communal property
doctrine. The extensive Agrarian Reform
of August 23, 1945 confirmed again the collective
confiscation, regardless of individual culpability
and the transfer of the entire tillable land
belonging to "persons of German ethnicity" to the
land trust of the Agrarian Reform. These former
German properties were to be granted preferably to
Yugoslav partisans and soldiers. This clearly
illustrates that the annihilation of the Germans
was contemplated simultaneously as a step towards a
government-managed economy. The confiscated real
property of the Danube Swabians, double the size of
Luxembourg, appeared to be particularly suitable to
carry out the ideology of the government.
Causes only become reality if
certain circumstances prevail. The Serb Djilas, in
his book Revolutionary War writes: "Our
warriors, as well as the people, became so weary of
'our Germans,' that in our Central Committee we
repeatedly touched on the subject of expelling the
ethnic German population. However, we might have
thought differently, had not the Russians, Poles
and Czechs already decided the expulsion of the
Germans from their territories and started doing
so. We arrived at our position, without discussion
or negotiations, a matter that was understandable
and justified because of the 'German crime'."
The intent of the Yugoslav
government to effectively cleanse the country of
her ethnic Germans is also evident in Yugoslavia's
approach to the Western Allies in an Aide-memoire
on January 19, 1946 asking to agree to a collective
transfer to Germany of the 110,000 ethnic Germans
that survived the first persecution year. It
repeated this request on May 16, 1946; however, it
did not receive any reply. At a January 1947 London
meeting of the Deputy Foreign Ministers in
preparation of a peace treaty with Germany, the
Yugoslav delegate Dr. Mladen Ivecovic again raised
this request, however, it was not considered.
In spring 1946 the US
government intervened at the Yugoslav government on
behalf of American citizens of Yugoslav heritage
and protested repeatedly against their internment
in forced labor camps. On October 18, 1946 the US
ambassador at Belgrade delivered a note of protest
to the Yugoslav government in which the actions of
the Yugoslav government were declared a violation
of the human rights of American citizens of ethnic
German heritage, who were interned without any
judicial process. Under different political
conditions, the partisans could have possibly
refrained from the annihilation of the Germans.
However, on November 21,1944 the AVNOJ issued an
ex-judicial decree declaring the Germans "Enemies
of the People" and stripped them of all civic
rights. All their personal properties were
confiscated by the government without any
compensation. Exempt were only those
married to other nationals or active fighters
belonging to or supporters of Tito's Communist
"Peoples' Liberation Movement." To give this action
a semblance of legal justification the decree had
to be made by an ex-judicial process. This meant
that they did not lose their citizenship but were
deprived of civic rights. Thus, the ethnic Germans
could, without providing any reason, be expelled
from their homes, coerced into forced labor, put
into labor camps or camps for children or
liquidation camps for sick persons. Among the criteria for
genocide the UNO Convention of December 9, 1948
specifies: "Genocide means: Deliberately inflicting
on the group conditions of life calculated to bring
about its physical destruction in whole or in
part." The AVNOJ decrees provided
exactly these conditions and are the basis and
justification for the planned and
government-sanctioned genocide of the Danube
Swabians. The question as to what
extent the expulsion of the Germans in Yugoslavia
was also due to the desire of the Serbs for
territorial expansion, is actually the most
controversial debate among Danube Swabian and Serb
authors. The Serbs were only a
minority in the Banat, Batschka and Syrmia (now
called Wojwodina) which were part of the Hungarian
kingdom. These areas, which for about 1,000 years
belonged to Hungary and historically never to
Serbia, were given to Serbia after World War I at
the 1920 peace treaty of Trianon. The strongest
ethnic groups which suddenly came under Serbian
domination were the Germans and Magyars
(Hungarians). In spite of immediate Serb
colonization efforts, in 1941 the Serbs still did
not represent more then 37% of Wojwodina's total
population, in the Batschka only 23%. The objective of the
Great-Serbian Nationalism to squeeze the Germans
and, to a lesser degree, the Magyars out of the
Wojwodina took several forms. Already starting in
1918, the government adopted anti-German measures
by restricting the teaching of German-language
classes at grade and high schools, nationalizing
real estate, discriminatory tax rates, eliminating
ethnic Germans from public service jobs,
prohibition of Danube Swabian umbrella
organizations, etc. After the April War of 1941
(the occupation of Yugoslavia by German forces
which led to the partition of the Yugoslav
kingdom), the anti-German groundswell in the Serb
political thinking and the determination to
eliminate the Germans increased dramatically.
Germany was blamed for the demise of the Yugoslav
kingdom and, by association, this also included the
ethnic Germans in their own country. During World War II,
nationalistic Serbian circles also expressed their
intent to expel minorities. In 1942, the
monarchy-loyalist, but nationalistic Tschetniks, at
their Congress at Sahovici (Montenegro) adopted a
resolution that stipulated: "Within the territory
of the future nation there can only be Serbs,
Croats and Slovenians. No minorities are
tolerated." The Secretary of War of the
Government-in-Exile and leader of the Tschetniks,
General Oraza Mihajlovic intended to expel all
Germans, Magyars and Romanians after the hoped for
victory of his Tschetniks. After the renewed recent
break-up of Yugoslavia the resurrected Tschetniks
retained their radical nationalistic Great-Serbian
course. Fifty years later, during the wars in
Bosnia and Kosovo, their paramilitary units
committed bloody massacres. Even General Milan Nedic, the
Prime Minister of German-occupied Serbia and
installed by the Germans in 1941, did not want to
have any national minorities in a future post-war
Serbia. In 1944, the Communist party of Yugoslavia,
however, became the executor of the elimination
plans. The conclusion of those who
cite Great-Serbian Nationalism as a major reason
for the expulsion and annihilation of Yugoslavia's
ethnic Germans is the following: The three leading
Serbian, respectively Serb-dominated groups, the
Tschetniks, partisans and Nedic-followers, who were
fighting each other during World War II, towards
the end of 1942 all agreed on the elimination of
the Germans from a future Yugoslavia. At the very
least, the intent was to make them disappear as an
ethnic group by integrating them into the Slavic
ethnic sections. Lately, national-conservative
Serbian authors have strongly objected against the
theory that Great-Serbian Nationalism was the virus
which infected the movement of the Tito-partisans
and thus injected them with the idea of the
expulsion of the Germans. They claim that the
Great-Serbian Nationalism had no decisive influence
on the Politbüro (the political leadership) of
the partisan movement which at that time consisted
of Tito, Kardelj, Rankovic and Djilas. They offer
the following reasons: 2. Alexander Rankovic,
although being a Serb but a radical Communist
and since 1944 chief of the OZNA (Yugoslav
secret police), controlled the leadership
policies and issued the instructions to the OZNA
chiefs of the country's regions, as well as to
the other members of the political leadership.
He was considered the "executor of the political
suppression and annihilation of all real or
suspected enemies of the regime." Therefore, the
policy of political terror was Communist
motivated. 3. Edward Kardelj was a
Slovene, leading party ideologist and second in
command after Tito. He pursued the
transformation of the society according to the
Communist doctrine. He considered the Germans
potential opponents and enemies and he needed
their property values to carry out the agrarian
reform according to the Communist pattern.
4. Josip Broz Tito was a
Croat, had a Croatian father and Slovenian
mother. The actions of the genocide were subject
to his approval and tolerance. He was hardly
influenced by nationalistic Serbian
considerations since he had a schismatic
relationship with the Serbs. He toned down the
Great-Serbian ambitions and limited the
sovereignty of the Serbian part of the nation by
establishing the two autonomous provinces
Wojwodina and Kosovo. 5. According to the
national-conservative Serb Zoran Ziletic, not
enough consideration is given to the sufferings
of the anti-Communist, Serbian intelligentsia,
middle class, commercial and industrial
citizenry and all other "South-Slavs" in the
AVNOJ of Yugoslavia. 6. Zoran Ziletic and the
Danube Swabian Hans Sonnleitner recognize that
the Atheism of Communism is the predominant
cause of the inhuman, gruesome and bestial
actions of the Tito-partisans against the
defenseless ethnic German population. The
ungodliness of the Communist zealots diminished,
even eliminated all moral restraints. Ziletic in
the prologue to Nenad Stefanovic's book Eine
Welt an der Donau - Gespräche und
Kommentare (A World at the Danube -
Discussions and Commentaries), published 1996 in
Belgrad, writes: "The dictators in 1944-1948
also expelled our God." Final comment by Herbert
Prokle, another Danube Swabian eye witness: "Even
if Great-Serbian Nationalism did not provide the
impulse for the crime, it certainly facilitated it.
The execution of the indescribably fiendish
genocide between 1944 and 1948 on such a national
scale required a large number of participants, not
all of whom were Communists. Furthermore, there was
a large segment of the Serbian population that,
while not wanting to 'dirty their hands,' were
quite in agreement with the annihilation of the
Germans. The pathologically extreme Nationalism of
a part of the Serbs may very well be responsible
for it." |