Persecution of Germans

Persecution of ethnic Germans was much the same in Australia as it was in the United States during World War I. Many were interned for the duration of the war and others faced hostility from their fellow citizens. To avoid persecution and/or to demonstrate that they commit themselves to their new home, many Germans changed their names into anglicised or Francophone variants.

In Canada, thousands of German born Canadians were interned in detention camps during World War I and World War II and subjected to forced labour. Many Ukrainians and other Central and Eastern Europeans were also detained during World War I as were Japanese and Italian-Canadians during World War II.

2,000 Germans were massacred in Postoloprty and Zatec by the Czechoslovakian army within a few days after the World War.[1]

In the summer of 1945 there were a number of incidents and localised massacres of the German population.[2]

The following examples are described in a study done by the European University Institute in Florence:[3]

• In the Přerov incident, 71 men, 120 women and 74 children were killed.
• 30,000 Germans were forced to leave their homes in Brno for labour camps near Austria. It is estimated that several hundred died in the death march.
• Estimates of killed in the Ústí massacre range from 30 - 50 to 600 - 700 civilians. Some women and children were thrown off the bridge into the Elbe River and shot.

Law No. 115 of 1946 (see Beneš decrees) providees: "Any act committed between September 30, 1938 and October 28, 1945, the object of which was to aid the struggle for liberty of the Czechs and Slovaks or which represented just reprisals for actions of the occupation forces and their accomplices, is not illegal, even when such acts may otherwise be punishable by law."

As a consequence all atrocities committed during the expulsion of Germans were made legal, and since the law is still in effect no perpetrator has ever faced charges for his or her crimes during the expulsion.[4]

After the end of World War I, the German-speaking southern part of Tyrol was included in the new boundaries of Italy. Following the rise of the Fascist movement of Benito Mussolini, the ethnic Germans of this enclave faced growing persecution. Their names, and the names of the towns and places in the area, were forcibly changed to Italian. In addition, Mussolini engaged in a vigorous campaign to resettle ethnic Italians into the region. Many Tyroleans fled to Germany during this time, and the matter of this province became a source of friction between Hitler and Mussolini.

After the end of World War II, the organised persecution of Germans in South Tyrol came to an end, although ethnic strife continued for decades.

The children of Norwegian mothers and German soldiers were persecuted after the war, see War children.

German POWs in Norway were forced to clear their own minefields and then walk over them, leading to the death and mutilation of hundreds of prisoners.

See Bloody Sunday (1939)

As a result of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Stalin decided to deport the German Russians to internal exile and forced labor in Siberia and Central Asia. It is evident that, at this point, the regime considered national minorities with ethnic ties to foreign states, such as Germans, potential fifth columnists. On August 12, 1941, the Central Committee of the Communist Party decreed the expulsion of the Volga Germans, allegedly for treasonous activity, from their autonomous republic on the lower Volga. On September 7, 1941, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was abolished and about 438,000 Volga Germans were deported. In subsequent months, an additional 400,000 ethnic Germans were deported to the Gulag in Siberia and Central Asia from their other traditional settlements such as the Ukraine and the Crimea.(It is very difficult to establish precise numbers from Soviet sources).

The Soviets were not successful in expelling all German settlers living in the Western and Southern Ukraine, however, due to the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht (German army). The secret police, the NKVD, was able to deport only 35% of the ethnic Germans in the Ukraine. Thus in 1943, the Nazi German census registered 313,000 ethnic Germans living in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. With the Soviet re-conquest, the Wehrmacht evacuated about 300,000 German Russians and brought them back to the Reich. Because of the provisions of the Yalta Agreement, all former Soviet citizens living in Germany at war’s end had to be repatriated, most by force. More than 200,000 German Russians were deported, against their will, by the Western Allies and sent to the Gulag . Thus, shortly after the end of the war, more than one million ethnic Germans from Russia were in special settlements and labor camps in Siberia and Central Asia. It is estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 died of starvation, lack of shelter, over-work and disease during the 1940s.[5]

In the dying days of World War II and during the occupation of Germany, Soviet forces invaded German villages and raped German women en masse. It is believed by historian Antony Beevor that "a 'high proportion' of at least 15 million women who lived in the Soviet zone or were expelled from Germany's eastern provinces were raped."[6] Several thousand women committed suicide. On the final day of hostilities, 900 women in one village just east of Berlin took their children and drowned them in the river (followed by their own suicides) as soon as they heard the Russian guns coming. In all, only about 4,000 Soviet soldiers were ever punished for atrocities. (See also Soviet war crimes)

Germans were demonized in the press well before World War I, e.g. when the Kaiserliche Marine started to challenge the Royal Navy, but particularly around 1912 and during World War I. Anti-German sentiment was so intense that the British Royal Family was advised by the government to change its name (which was of German origin), resulting in the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha becoming the House of Windsor. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was a grandson of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and the nephew of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, German-Americans were the most visible non-Anglophone group in the United States. Pennsylvania was the most Germanic state but German-language schools and German-language media were common throughout the Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic states. Numerous incidents of hostility against these groups took place during the 19th century, but were largely non-systematic.

A source of particular tension was the presence of pacifist Mennonite and Amish communities, which spoke (and speak) a dialect of German called Pennsylvania Dutch. Although most Germans were not Mennonites, this reinforced the popular view that Germans did not consider themselves part of America.

The portrayal of Germany as "The Hun" in British pro-war propaganda inflamed existing tensions. The situation came to a crisis with America's entry into the war in 1917. Anti-German rioting was widespread. Many German-language periodicals, which had numbered in the hundreds, ceased operation (many were destroyed). These towns were primarily in the Midwestern region of the United States. Many German-Americans translated their names or altered them to resemble English names (a trend which had begun in the 19th century, e.g. Gustave Whitehead). By the time the U.S. troops returned from Europe, the German community had ceased to be a major force in American culture, or was no longer perceived as German (see Groucho Marx).

Largely for this reason, although some persecution of ethnic Germans did occur during World War II, it was not widespread. Most of the German-American population no longer identified themselves as German, nor were they identified with the Nazis in the popular mind. Despite this, the US government interned as dangerous nearly 11,000 persons of German ancestry. Only enemy aliens were supposed to be interned, but family members, many of them American citizens, often joined them in the camps.[7]