This is an in-depth study of the ethnic German minority in the Serbian

Zakić
Banat (Southeast Europe) and its experiences under German occupation in
World War II. Mirna Zakić argues that the Banat Germans exercised great
agency within the constraints imposed on them by Nazi ideology, with its

Ethnic Germans

in Yugoslavia in World War II

Ethnic Germans and National Socialism
expectations that ethnic Germans would collaborate with the invading
Nazis. The book examines incentives the Nazis offered to collaboration
and social dynamics within the Banat German community – between
their Nazified leadership and the rank and file – as well as the various
and National Socialism
and ever-more damning forms collaboration took. The Banat Germans
provided administrative and economic aid to the Nazi war effort, and took in Yugoslavia in
part in Nazi military operations in Yugoslav lands, the Holocaust and
Aryanization. They ruled the Banat on the Nazis’ behalf between 1941 and World War II
1944, yet their wartime choices led ultimately to their disenfranchisement
and persecution following the Nazis’ defeat. Mirna Zakić
Mirna Zakić received her Ph.D. in modern European history from the
University of Maryland in 2011, and won the university’s Distinguished
Dissertation Award in 2012. She has been Assistant Professor of German
history at Ohio University since fall 2011. In 2013–2014 she completed a
postdoctoral fellowship from the Volkswagen Foundation at in residence
at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her article “The Price of Belonging
to the Volk: Volksdeutsche, Land Redistribution and Aryanization in the
Serbian Banat, 1941–1944” was published in the Journal of Contemporary
History in 2014.

Cover image: © Roger Viollet/Getty Images

Ethnic Germans and National Socialism in
Yugoslavia in World War II

This is an in-depth study of the ethnic German minority in the Serbian

Banat (Southeast Europe) and its experiences under German occupa-
tion in World War II. Mirna Zakić argues that the Banat Germans
exercised great agency within the constraints imposed on them by Nazi
ideology, with its expectations that ethnic Germans would collaborate
with the invading Nazis. The book examines incentives the Nazis offered
to collaboration and social dynamics within the Banat German commu-
nity – between their Nazified leadership and the rank and file – as well as
the various and ever more damning forms collaboration took.
The Banat Germans provided administrative and economic aid to the
Nazi war effort and took part in Nazi military operations in Yugoslav
lands, the Holocaust, and Aryanization. They ruled the Banat on the
Nazis’ behalf between 1941 and 1944, yet their wartime choices led
ultimately to their disenfranchisement and persecution following the
Nazis’ defeat.

Mirna Zakić is Assistant Professor of German history at Ohio University.

Ethnic Germans and National
Socialism in Yugoslavia in
World War II

Mirna Zakić
Ohio University
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107171848
DOI: 10.1017/9781316771068
© Mirna Zakić 2017
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2017
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For my parents
 Contents

List of Maps page viii

Acknowledgments ix
Note on Terminology xi

Introduction 1
1 The Banat Germans from Settlement to Partial
Nazification, 1699–1941 25
2 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941 56
3 Ethnic German Administration (1941) and
Community Dynamics 79
4 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups 113
5 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity 144
6 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization 161
7 Ideology and Propaganda 185
8 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” and
Anti-Partisan Warfare in Yugoslavia, 1942–1944 209
Conclusion 239

Guide to Place Names 263

Glossary 266
Bibliography 273
Index 293

vii
 Maps

1.1 Kingdom of Yugoslavia – Banovinas, 1929–1941. © David Cox. 29

2.1 Yugoslavia occupied and partitioned, 1941–1943. © David Cox. 65
3.1 Serbian Banat. © David Cox. 79

viii
 Acknowledgments

The completion of this book would have been impossible without the aid
and support of many individuals and institutions.
For their support during my time as a doctoral student at the University
of Maryland, and ever since, I would like to thank my Doktorvater Jeffrey
Herf, whose academic incisiveness, moral support, and faith in my abil-
ities as a historian never wavered, and Marsha L. Rozenblit and John
R. Lampe, who were on hand with good humor and clarity of thought.
Thanks are also due to Vladimir Tismăneanu of the University of
Maryland and Christopher R. Browning of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, for their invaluable feedback, and to Ulrich
Herbert of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg and Paul Nolte
of the Freie Universität Berlin, for facilitating my research travel to
Germany in 2009.
Getting access to archival holdings can be a daunting prospect, as
archivists and librarians feel a justified proprietary pride in ‘their’ materi-
als. It is therefore a relief and a pleasure for a researcher to be welcomed in
an archive. I thank all the archivists, librarians, and staff of various reading
rooms who aided me in my efforts. I would especially like to salute the
graciousness of the Interlibrary Loan staff at the McKeldin Library of the
University of Maryland and the Alden Library of Ohio University;
Mareike Fossenberger of the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts;
Dragana Dragišić, Zorica Netaj, Jelena Ivanović, and Dimitrije Spasojević
of the Arhiv Jugoslavije; Svetlana Đukić and Arinka Balint of the Istorijski
arhiv Zrenjanin; Eva Terheš-Telečki and Slobodan Stanić of the Istorijski
arhiv Kikinda; Obrenija Stojkov of the Muzej Vojvodine; Miroslav
Marlog of the Arhiv Vojvodine; and the staff of the Bundesarchiv’s
branches in Berlin, Freiburg, and Bayreuth; the Jack, Joseph and
Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the Library of Congress; the
National Archives’ microfilm and main reading rooms in College Park,
Maryland; the Narodna biblioteka Srbije; and the Vojni arhiv in Belgrade.

ix
x Acknowledgments

For research and writing support, I would like to thank the Department
of History and the Graduate School at the University of Maryland for
providing me with several years of graduate funding, including two full-
time fellowships, a Prospectus Development Grant in 2008, and the Mary
Savage Snouffer Dissertation Fellowship in 2010–2011; the Conference
Group for Central European History for a dissertation research grant,
which allowed two additional months of research in Germany in 2009;
the Cosmos Club for awarding me the Cosmos Club Foundation Young
Scholars Award in 2008; the Volkswagen Stiftung for awarding me the
Post-doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at Universities and Research
Institutes in Germany, which allowed me to spend the academic year
2013–2014 revising this book at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced
Studies (FRIAS), Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg; and the
Department of History and the Graduate College at Ohio University for
providing me with funds for last-minute research and additional book
materials.
An earlier draft of parts of chapters 4 and 6 of this book was published
in the Journal of Contemporary History in April 2014. Michael Watson and
Lewis Bateman at Cambridge University Press shepherded this project
through publication. Two anonymous readers offered invaluable sugges-
tions. Ohio University’s Department of History supported my year-long
leave. The entire staff at FRIAS made my stay in Germany supremely
pleasant and productive. I salute and thank them all most sincerely.
Last but by no means least, an immense debt is due to my parents,
Emina Sućeska-Zakić and Mirko Zakić. This book is dedicated to them,
with love and gratitude.
 Note on Terminology

The choice of terminology in this book poses a complex set of challenges:

there was the issue of avoiding the uncritical use of Nazi terms, which
appeared to reify what were Nazi perceptions rather than lived reality; the
multiplicity of untranslatable German terms; multiple place names in
several languages for a single village, town, or river. Even the use of
terms such as “ethnic German” and “Nazi” requires judgments about
what made someone a German – or a Nazi.
The adjective “ethnic” preceding a group denominator indicates
members of an ethnic group, who were not citizens of that ethnic group’s
nation-state, i.e., an ethnic minority. In the context of this book, ethnic
Germans (Volksdeutsche) were persons of German origin and language,
most of whom were not German citizens for all or part of the Nazi period.
By contrast, Reich Germans or Germans from the Reich (Reichsdeutsche)
were German citizens as well as persons of German ethnicity.
I use the term “German-speakers” rather than “ethnic Germans” in
Chapter 1 to distinguish the Banat’s German-speaking settlers from later,
nationally tinged definitions of belonging.
“Rom/Roma/Romany” is the preferred term rather than the derogatory
“Gypsy,” which appears only in direct translations from original
documents.
Since this is a German-centric story about an ethnic German
community in a multiethnic region, I call most towns and villages in the
Serbian Banat by their German names. Many had an official Serbian
name as well as a commonly used German name (some also had
a Hungarian, Romanian, or Slovak name, depending on the ethnic
composition of individual towns and villages). The different names
were often used interchangeably, even in official documents, both by
the prewar Yugoslav and by the wartime German authorities. Only in
1943 were several dozen place names officially altered so the German
names became names of primary usage. In order to avoid confusion and
convey the ethnic Germans’ perspective, I chose to call places in the
Banat by their German names even in chapters dealing with the periods
xi
xii Note on Terminology

before 1941 and after 1944. A table of German place names with
corresponding Serbian names is included.
With regard to major geographic features such as cities and rivers
located outside the Serbian Banat, the ones familiar to English-language
readers are called by the Anglicized forms of their names (e.g., Belgrade,
Danube, Budapest). Others I call by the names they bear in the language
of the nation-state to which they belonged before or during World War II
(e.g., Timişoara rather than Temesvár or Temeschburg). I call
geographic regions by the name used in the official language of the nation-
state to which they belonged (e.g., the Vojvodina and its constituent
parts: the Banat, the Bačka, the Baranja, and the Srem). If a geographic
term could refer to more than one state, I refer to it by the name it bears in
the official language of the state to which it is relevant in this book (e.g.,
the River Tisa could be claimed by wartime Hungary, Romania, Slovakia,
Ukraine, and Yugoslavia – I call it by its Serbian [Serbo-Croatian] name).
With reference to political movements, I call Josip Broz Tito’s
communist resistance movement by its widely used Anglicized name
“Partisans” (Serb. partizani). I preferred to compromise between original
spelling and English plural forms for the name of the Croatian fascists
(Ustašas) and the Serbian nationalist-royalist resistance (Četniks).
Since Serbian is a phonetic language, which “transcribes” foreign
names in accordance with its own spelling conventions, I decided not to
“correct” the names of ethnic Germans as transcribed in relevant primary
documents, especially since some of these ethnic Germans preferred to
use at least the Serbianized version of their first names in order to blend
in, in the postwar period (e.g., Marija instead of Maria).
The term “Serbia proper” refers to the territory that belonged to the
Serbian state before 1918 – Serbia south of the River Danube. The “Banat”
or the “Serbian Banat” refers to the half of the historical Banat region west
of the Serbo-Romanian border. “Serbia-Banat” is a term used in wartime
German documents to indicate the territory occupied by Nazi Germany,
inclusive of both Serbia proper and the Serbian Banat.
Finally, the choice between calling the larger region “Southeast Europe”
or “the Balkans” has been ideologically and politically charged, especially
since the 1990s. I consider both terms equally valid and acceptable, since
one is geographic and the other a historical name. These terms are therefore
used interchangeably to describe the lands of former Yugoslavia, Romania,
Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece during World War II. Hungary was at that
time a liminal state, which could be counted as part of Central or Southeast
Europe, depending on the context – the Nazis tended to consider it
Southeast-European, as they did wartime independent Slovakia.
 Introduction

“Settlers came to the Southeast / To stand here at their posts / As the

farthest watch of the Reich. / German will then accomplished / What no
other could before: / A new homeland [Heimat] for our people [Volk].”1
In August 1942, the Banater Beobachter, a German-language daily news-
paper published in the town of Grossbetschkerek in the Serbian Banat,
printed the Nazified version of the German folk song about the eight-
eenth-century Habsburg general Eugene of Savoy. Whereas the original
extolled Prince Eugene’s martial prowess, the later version foregrounded
his role in the colonization of then-South Hungary by German-speakers
after the expulsion of the Ottomans, tying these distant events to the
involvement of the settlers’ descendants in the Nazi war for racial regen-
eration and territorial expansion in Europe.
The song posited a long-standing struggle to preserve the settlers’
Germanness – an ineffable, yet fundamental, quality of “being
German” – in the face of foreign cultural influence and emphasized
military service as an enduring bond between the German nation and its
scattered members abroad. This idealized narrative of German historical
experience far from the national heartland culminated in a direct correla-
tion between the eighteenth-century settlers and their descendants’ place
in Nazi-dominated Europe: “Adolf Hitler, our oath of loyalty / Accept
today once again / As from Prince Eugene’s soldier!”2
The past and the present were unified in a supposedly eternal German
nation, undivided by different historical experiences or settlement areas.
The song suggested that every location inhabited by Germans bore the
stamp of their triumph over hardship; their warlike might; and their ability
to reshape any area in their image, making it an extension of Germany.
More specifically, it foregrounded the Serbian Banat as such a place, in
which a German presence made all the difference, separating the Banat

1
Nikolaus Britz, “Prinz-Eugen-Lied,” reproduced in “Prinz-Eugen-Feier in
Grosskikinda,” Banater Beobachter [henceforth BB], August 19, 1942, p. 5.
2
Ibid.

1
2 Introduction

from its geographic and cultural surroundings in Southeast Europe,

implied to be the bastion of backwardness and savagery. Last but not
least, the song implied that, by 1942, to be a German had the same
meaning as being a follower of Adolf Hitler.
The German minorities in Southeast Europe during World War II were
not the easternmost German populations in Europe, given the presence of
ethnic German (Volksdeutsche) communities in Poland and the Soviet
Union. Yet their depiction as the “farthest watch of Reich” reflected a view
of them by the National Socialist government in Germany as a bulwark
against the savagery of the “East.” Already in the Weimar era, ethnic
Germans were portrayed in German literature as an advance guard of the
Greater Reich, people who lived in “far-flung posts . . . in the midst of
a foreign land.”3 In the Nazi period, specifically Southeast-European
ethnic Germans earned praise as the Reich’s bulwark or outpost.4
When the Nazis looked at East Europe, they saw both threat and
opportunity, not only a menace but also a territory open to conquest,
racially and culturally inferior yet rife with possibility if brought under
German control. The idea of ethnic Germans as the Reich’s outpost and
bulwark was also meant to appeal to the Banat Germans themselves. Put
forth by their Nazified wartime leaders, in a newspaper that sought to
reconcile Nazi tropes with the Banat German viewpoint, this image of the
Banat Germans revealed not so much their claim to equality with
Germans from the Reich (Reichsdeutsche) as the fundamental ambiva-
lence of their position in the Nazi New Order.
This book is a microhistory of the ethnic Germans in the Serbian Banat
during World War II. It analyzes their collaboration with the Third Reich,
highlighting the intersections of Nazi ideology, the complexities of
German nationalism, and German minority behavior in an area far from
the Reich’s borders. This book focuses on the ethnic German perspective
and how the Banat Germans retained and exercised their agency within
the Nazi paradigm, while remaining susceptible to the same tensions and
pressures as all professed members of the German Volk.
This is also a transnational history of a specific region and the ethnic
group that came to dominate it during the war, a case study as well as an
example of how broader patterns of ideology, nationalism, occupation,
and collaboration interacted. It explores hierarchies and inequalities
contained within the seemingly monolithic model of the German nation

3
Hans Naviasky, Gesamtüberblick über das Deutschtum ausserhalb der Reichsgrenzen (Munich:
Verein für das Deutschtum im Auslande, 1922), p. 20.
4
Heinz Brunner, Das Deutschtum in Südosteuropa (Leipzig: Verlagsbuchhandlung Quelle &
Meyer, 1940), p. 57; Hans Herrschaft, Das Banat. Ein deutsches Siedlungsgebiet in
Südosteuropa, second edition (Berlin: Verlag Grenze und Ausland, 1942), p. 64.
 Introduction 3

proffered by National Socialism; the surprising flexibility of Nazi racial

categories when applied to ethnic Germans – people of ostensibly
German descent who were not German citizens; and the reasons for,
extent of, and scope of Banat German collaboration with the Nazis.
The Banat is a geographic region of fertile flatlands in Southeast
Europe, split since 1918 between Romania and Serbia – the latter was
then a part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, from 1929
known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Between April 1941 and October
1944, the Serbian half of the Banat was under German military occupa-
tion, but its daily administration and security were left up to its 120,000-
strong ethnic German minority (20% of the Banat’s population). Led by
a dedicated core of local Nazis, the Banat Germans were a population of
predominantly peasants and craftspeople, long accustomed to seeing
their Germanness as a mark of distinction in an ethnically mixed, pre-
dominantly Slavic area.
In Nazi plans for the future of Europe, the Banat and Southeast Europe
were of secondary importance compared to the conquest of Lebensraum
(living space) in Poland and the Soviet Union. This opened up possibi-
lities for the Banat Germans to exercise their agency in ways not available
to the racially suspect ethnic Germans of Poland or Ukraine, whom the
Reich Germans saw as fit to kill Jews and persecute Slavs, but not to wield
any actual power or enjoy even partial territorial autonomy.
The Banat Germans were a unique case in Hitler’s Europe. They were
the German minority group to which the Nazis granted administrative
control over their home region and preferential access to local power and
resources, second only to Reich Germans. Their leaders wielded more
influence over the lives of co-nationals and other Banat residents than was
true of any other ethnic German community during World War II, which
was limited to lowly forms of collaboration and subject to endless ‘sifting’
for suspected racial pollution.
At the same time, the Banat Germans were not exceptional in their
overall dependence on the Third Reich for military protection, ideologi-
cal legitimation, and approved scope of activity. They remained junior
partners to the Third Reich, which continued to see them as second-class
Germans. Collaboration failed to cement their position as the Reich
Germans’ racial kin. Instead, it guaranteed that Banat Germans became
associated with Nazi crimes, even while full membership in the Nazi
Volksgemeinschaft (national or people’s community) continued to
elude them.
Nazi racial categories proved flexible enough to accommodate likely
collaborators, but not to overcome Nazi suspicion of Germans from
places other than Germany. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, VoMi
4 Introduction

(Ethnic German Liaison Office), an offshoot of the SS charged with

regulating ethnic German affairs, was created in 1937. In early 1938,
a Reich Chancellery memo defined ethnic Germans rather vaguely as
persons “whose language and culture are of German origin, but who do
not belong to the German Reich as its citizens.”5 This and other docu-
ments left the matter of what made someone German open to interpreta-
tion, acknowledging the importance of language and culture, yet stressing
racial affinity with Germans from the Reich as crucial.6
The Reich Germans’ attitude to ethnic Germans – an uneasy mixture
of suspicion of racial mixing, condescension, and ideologically dictated
support – illuminated the complexities and ambivalences of German
nationalism refracted through Nazi ideology. This nationalism was
defined by strong regional currents and a nation-state, as well as ascriptive
factors: culture, language, local tradition, history, and ethnicity.
The elasticity and nebulousness of Nazi racial categories served as both
incentive to collaboration and hindrance for ethnic Germans’ acceptance
as equal members of the Volk. The Nazi bureaucracy delayed having to
determine a baseline of Germanness until after the hoped-for victory in
World War II, but it also expected ethnic Germans to embody its purely
subjective criteria of national belonging.
This near-willful ambivalence on the Nazis’ part had the practical effect
of driving the Banat Germans to ever more incriminating forms of colla-
boration, in a bid to prove their fitness for inclusion in the German Volk
(people or nation) by attempting to equate Germanness with National
Socialism. The Banat Germans professed enthusiasm for German rule
during the Tripartite Pact’s invasion of Yugoslavia in spring 1941.
The Serbian Banat ultimately was occupied by German forces due less
to Nazi ideology than in order to prevent armed conflict between
Romania and Hungary for possession of the region. Throughout the
occupation period, Banat Germans’ aspirations to equality with Reich
Germans hinged on their usefulness to the Third Reich.
Under the leadership of Josef “Sepp” Janko, since 1939 Volksgruppen-
führer (Nazified community leader) in Yugoslavia, the Banat Germans
rendered valuable administrative service to the thinly stretched Reich
German personnel in Serbia. Instead of screening them minutely, as it
did to ostensible Germans in Poland and the Soviet Union, the Third
Reich allowed the Banat Germans to maintain their community cohesion
in order to better exploit their willingness to collaborate. Choosing not to
5
Hans Lammers memo, January 25, 1938, NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 417, fr. 5,163,331.
6
German Interior Ministry memo, March 29, 1939, NARA, RG 238, entry 170, roll 4, doc.
NG-295, frs. 432–433; Egon Leuschner, Nationalsozialistische Fremdvolkpolitik (Berlin:
Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP, 1942), p. 18.
 Introduction 5

resettle them, the Reich used the Banat Germans as a diplomatic bargain-
ing chip and an economic and military resource in the Southeast. Nazi
relations with the Banat Germans were thus tempered by several factors
in addition to ideology: economic and strategic necessity, diplomatic and
legal precedent, prioritizing some aspects of Nazi policy (the Holocaust,
anti-partisan warfare) over others (furthering ethnic German interests).
For their part, the Banat Germans significantly altered their home region
and contributed to the widespread destruction and suffering in Yugoslav
lands during the war, while attempting to balance their attachment to the
Banat and their place in it with their desire for equality with Reich
Germans. They used Nazi tropes and central aspects of Nazi ideology –
anti-Slavism, anti-Semitism, devotion to Heimat (homeland) – to talk
about their worldview, historical experience, and sense of attachment to
the Banat as well as a German Volk unlimited by Germany’s borders. They
supplied the Nazi war machine with food for German troops and attempted
to further their own economic position in the Banat, often at the expense of
other ethnic groups such as Jews, Roma, and Serbs, yet without resorting to
open persecution of most non-Germans.
The Banat Germans did participate in the persecution of the Banat
Jews and the Aryanization of their property. In spring 1942, Banat
German men were recruited into the Waffen-SS division “Prinz Eugen”
and took part in brutal anti-partisan operations in Serbia, Bosnia, and
Croatia. Their recruitment by the Waffen-SS was merely the logical
extension of their earlier collaboration with the Nazis, which also cemen-
ted the Banat Germans’ enduring association with Nazi violence in the
memory of their victims and former opponents.
In late summer and early fall 1944, most Banat Germans remained in
their home area rather than attempt escape before the advancing Allied
forces. They bore the brunt of retribution when the postwar Yugoslav
government laid the blame for the savage internecine warfare among the
country’s various ethnic groups at the feet of the Germans – those from
the Reich as well as the Yugoslav German minority. By the war’s end, in
the eyes of the Nazis and the Allies alike, to be an ethnic German meant,
for all intents and purposes, to be a Nazi collaborator, regardless of age,
gender, or individual wartime actions. Yet during the war, the Banat
Germans’ view of themselves – not only as Germans but also as ethnic
Germans, and especially as Banat Germans distinct from other German
groups – remained multilayered rather than compatible with a stream-
lined ideological and racial model of the German Volk.
Ethnic Germans, in general, and Banat Germans, in particular,
attempted to balance the Nazi view of them with their own ideas about
their place in Adolf Hitler’s grand scheme. The Banat Germans became
6 Introduction

both the object and the agent of Nazi racial fantasies and their violent
implementation. Far from being mere passive recipients and unquestion-
ing executors of Nazi wishes, the Banat Germans exercised their agency
throughout the Nazi period. Leaders and ordinary Banat Germans alike
made choices for a variety of reasons, within specific circumstances: the
Nazi attitude to them, Nazi requirements from them, personal and ethnic
relations inside the Banat, the military situation in Southeast Europe, etc.
Their options diminished and became more stringent and binding over
time – nevertheless, the Banat Germans continued to make choices until
the very end of the Banat’s occupation and the defeat of the Nazi regime.
Paradoxically, Banat German agency confirmed their subordination to
the Third Reich’s interests in Southeast Europe. Every modicum of
power and all privileges the Banat Germans gained during World War
II, they gained with Nazi approval and in the Nazis’ rather than their own
best interest. Collaboration was the means of Banat Germans’ empower-
ment as well as what kept them under the Third Reich’s thumb.
Sometimes individual Banat Germans expressed disapproval or reser-
vations about certain Nazi policies yet, overall, they remained compliant
and complicit with – if not always enthusiastic about – the reality of
occupation and their position as the most powerful group in the Banat.
Because they were executors of German policy rather than policymakers
in their own right, for the Banat Germans to prove themselves good
Germans came to mean proving themselves good Nazis, even as their
Nazism continued to overlap imperfectly with their Germanness and their
ability to dominate their home area with its ethnically mixed population
underlined their subordinate position vis-à-vis Reich Germans.
As a case study of collaboration and the spread of National Socialism
beyond Germany’s borders, this book argues that the Nazi treatment of
the Banat Germans was often a matter of expedience and practical neces-
sity as much as, if not more than, ideology. It also foregrounds the Banat
German minority as a factor in the disparate experiences of World War II
in the largely peaceful Banat and other parts of Yugoslavia, which were
riven by competing resistance movements, brutal occupation policies,
and civil warfare.
Moreover, this book presents the Banat German perspective and
experience as historical factors of equal importance as the Nazi attitude
to the Banat Germans. It addresses the issue of Banat German agency and
choices and demonstrates how this relatively small German minority, in
an area of secondary importance to Nazi plans and on the periphery of
Hitler’s wartime sphere of influence, navigated the tension field of Nazi
ideology, racial policy, diplomacy, warfare, and local interests.
Ultimately, this is a book that decentralizes the history of World War II
 Literature and Themes 7

in Europe from a Reich-centric perspective and shows how events in

peripheral areas and the actions of certain minority groups interacted
with policy imposed from above.

Literature and Themes

During World War II, the Serbian Banat remained a region between
nation-states.7 With regard to its ethnic Germans, the interplay of
minority nationalization and great-power ideology created a microcosm
of broader developments yet remained rooted in place-specific pressures
and dynamics, which sometimes diverged from patterns evident in other
parts of the German sphere of influence. The Banat Germans in World
War II illuminated general trends in the history of the Third Reich at war.
They were also, first and foremost, a case study unto themselves.
During the Cold War, ethnic Germans’ behavior in World War II
tended to be subsumed under one of two paradigms: a communist view
of all ethnic Germans as Nazis and war criminals or an ethnic German
expellee perspective, which painted them as innocent victims of commu-
nist persecution.
The official historiography of World War II in postwar Yugoslavia
portrayed Yugoslav Germans as a treacherous “fifth column,” subsuming
the varieties of ethnic German behavior and the reasons behind it under
a blanket assumption of total Nazification. Yugoslav historians tended to
assume that German hatred of Slavs had simmered for centuries, only to
erupt in wartime violence and mass murder. This primordialist approach
served a political purpose: it blamed Germans for wartime violence rather
than dredge up the legacy of violence perpetrated by Serbs, Croats,
Bosnian Muslims, as well as Germans, Italians, and others. Bland claims
that the ethnic Germans’ postwar fate fell outside of these works’ scope
signaled that official history was not open to scholarly discussion.8
An exception to this trend was the Slovene historian Dušan Biber,
whose sophisticated analysis of Nazification among the Yugoslav
7
This was also the case in wartime Transylvania, see Holly Case, Between States:
The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2009).
8
Nikola Božić and Ratko Mitrović, “Vojvodina i Beograd sa okolinom u planovima Trećeg
Rajha,” Zbornik za društvene nauke, No. 48 (1967), pp. 116–125; Venceslav Glišić, Teror
i zločini nacističke Nemačke u Srbiji 1941–1944. (Belgrade: Rad, 1970); Božidar Ivković,
“Uništenje Jevreja i pljačka njihove imovine u Banatu 1941–1944” in Tokovi revolucije
(Belgrade, 1967), pp. 373–402; Božidar Ivković, “Zatvori, koncentracioni logori i radni
logori u Banatu od 1941–1944. godine,” Zbornik za društvene nauke, No. 39 (1964),
pp. 108–134; Josip Mirnić, Nemci u Bačkoj u Drugom svetskom ratu (Novi Sad: Institut
za izučavanje istorije Vojvodine, 1974); Đorđe Momčilović, Banat u narodnooslobodilačkom
ratu (Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački zavod, 1977).
8 Introduction

Germans in the 1930s compared dynamics at work in different parts of

interwar Yugoslavia. However, Biber’s study covered only the period
until the 1941 invasion.9
Memoir literature by ethnic German expellees fell on the other side of
the Cold War divide, depicting the Banat Germans before 1944–1945 as
apolitical peasants or, at worst, benign German nationalists untainted
by anti-Semitism or militarism. Expellee authors tended to elide the war
years as unimportant or uneventful, focusing instead on the ethnic
Germans’ postwar suffering. They blamed violent impulses ostensibly
inherent in communist ideology and Slavic, primordial hatred of
Germans for their postwar persecution.10 Memoir literature thus
reached conclusions remarkably similar to those proffered by historians
in socialist Yugoslavia, even if they produced diametrically opposed
interpretations of wartime events. The emphasis on supposed long-
standing ethnic hatreds lent the Nazification and eventual persecution
of ethnic Germans an air of inevitability, obviating the need to contex-
tualize and explain ethnic German behavior except in the very broadest
terms.11
Starting in the 1990s, historians in former Yugoslavia sought to explain
how the circumstances surrounding the creation of the second Yugoslavia
in 1945 – including the postwar persecution of the Yugoslav Germans
and memory culture in socialist Yugoslavia – contributed to the country’s

9
Dušan Biber, Nacizem in Nemci v Jugoslaviji 1933–1941 (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva Založba,
1966).
10
Josef Beer, Donauschwäbische Zeitgeschichte aus erster Hand (Munich: Donauschwäbische
Kulturstiftung, 1987); Hans Diplich and Hans Wolfram Hockl, ed., Wir Donauschwaben
(Salzburg: Akademischer Gemeinschaftsverlag, 1950); Sepp Janko, Weg und Ende der
deutschen Volksgruppe in Jugoslawien (Graz and Stuttgart: Leopold Stocker Verlag, 1982);
Otto Kumm, “Vorwärts Prinz Eugen!” Geschichte der 7. SS-Freiwilligen-Division “Prinz
Eugen” (Osnabrück: Munin-Verlag, 1978); Hans Rasimus, Als Fremde im Vaterland. Der
Schwäbisch-Deutsche Kulturbund und die ehemalige deutsche Volksgruppe in Jugoslawien im
Spiegel der Presse (Munich: Arbeitskreis für donauschwäbische Heimat- und
Volksforschung in der Donauschwäbischen Kulturstiftung, 1989); Josef Volkmar Senz,
Geschichte der Donauschwaben. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna and Munich:
Amalthea, 1993); Harold Steinacker, Das Südostdeutschtum und der Rhythmus der
europäischen Geschichte (Munich: Verlag des Südostdeutschen Kulturwerkes, 1954);
Johann Wüscht, Ursachen und Hintergründe des Schicksals der Deutschen in Jugoslawien.
Bevölkerungsverluste Jugoslawiens im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Kehl: Self-published, 1966).
11
This form of memory culture was officially sanctioned by the West German government in
the 1950s. Theodor Schieder – a historian with ties to scholarly circles, which had aided the
Nazi government to prepare and implement its violent population policies in East Europe –
presided over the editing of a multivolume compilation of expellee reports. The accom-
panying biased analysis of the 1944–1948 expulsions emphasized German suffering over
earlier German complicity with Nazi crimes. See Mathias Beer, “Im Spannungsfeld von
Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Das Grossforschungsprojekt ‘Dokumentation der Vertreibung
der Deutschen aus Ostmitteleuropa’,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 46, No. 3 (July
1998), pp. 345–389.
 Literature and Themes 9

violent disintegration in 1991–1992. They examined the second

Yugoslavia’s legitimation through the targeting of certain groups, ethnic
Germans included, and the concomitant official culture of silence regard-
ing certain aspects of wartime violence.12
These works have tended to critique the failures of postwar memory
rather than examine the wartime context. My book explains and contex-
tualizes the Banat German role in events between 1941 and 1944 and ties
them to patterns of Nazi domination over Europe rather than fold
wartime events into a discussion of postwar retribution and the misre-
membered past or assume that Nazism and its adherents were self-
explanatory and, therefore, easily dismissed following their defeat.
General histories of World War II in Yugoslav lands by émigré histor-
ians Stevan K. Pavlowitch and Jozo Tomasevich have provided a valuable
corrective to the simplistic narrative proffered by the postwar Yugoslav
government of a struggle between the Partisans – the communist resis-
tance movement that eventually created the second Yugoslavia – and
their opponents: the Germans, the Italians, the Ustašas (Croatian fas-
cists), and the Četniks (the Serbian royalist-nationalist resistance).13
Other authors have shed light on native collaboration and the complex
ethnic dynamics of warfare in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia.14 Building on
12
Jovan Bajford, Staro Sajmište: Mesto sećanja, zaborava i sporenja (Belgrade: Beogradski
centar za ljudska prava, 2011); Vladimir Geiger, Folksdojčeri: Pod teretom kolektivne krivnje
(Osijek: Njemačka narodnosna zajednica, 2002); Zoran Janjetović, Between Hitler and
Tito: The Disappearance of the Vojvodina Germans (Belgrade, 2000); Slobodan Maričić,
Susedi, dželati, žrtve: Folksdojčeri u Jugoslaviji (Belgrade and Pančevo: Centar za doku-
mentaciju o vojvođanskim Nemcima, 1995).
13
Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Hitler’s New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution
in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2001).
14
Ana Antić, “Police Force under Occupation: Serbian State Guard and Volunteers’ Corps
in the Holocaust” in Lessons and Legacies X: Back to the Sources: Reexamining Perpetrators,
Victims, and Bystanders, ed. Sara R. Horowitz (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 2012), pp. 13–36; Max Bergholz, “The Strange Silence: Explaining the Absence of
Monuments for Muslim Civilians Killed in Bosnia during the Second World War,” East
European Politics and Societies, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Summer 2010), pp. 408–434; Jovan Byford,
“Willing Bystanders: Dimitrije Ljotić, ‘Shield Collaboration’ and the Destruction of
Serbia’s Jews” in In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern
Europe, ed. Rebecca Haynes and Martyn Rady (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011),
pp. 295–312; Alexander Korb, “A Multipronged Attack: Ustaša Persecution of Serbs,
Jews, and Roma in Wartime Croatia” in Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities
in Nazi-Dominated Europe, ed. Anton Weiss-Wendt (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2010), pp. 145–163; Damir Mirković, “Victims and Perpetrators in
the Yugoslav Genocide 1941–1945: Some Preliminary Observations,” Holocaust and
Genocide Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Winter 1993), pp. 317–332; Sabrina P. Ramet and
Sladjana Lazić, “The Collaborationist Regime of Milan Nedić” in Serbia and the Serbs in
World War Two, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet and Ola Listhaug (Basingstoke and New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 17–43.
10 Introduction

pioneering work on the Wehrmacht’s role in the Holocaust in the East,15

historians have explored the overlapping influences of resistance opera-
tions, anti-partisan warfare, and collaboration in Southeast Europe.16
My book builds on these multifaceted narratives in order to draw out
the role the Banat Germans played in their home region and Yugoslav
lands as a whole.
With regard to Nazi policy toward ethnic Germans, Valdis
O. Lumans’s study of the VoMi provides an interpretative framework in
institutional history but is less concerned with ethnic German
perspectives.17 A few German-language monographs have examined the
Banat Germans in the period from 1941 to 1944, notably Akiko
Shimizu’s narrative history, which uses few Serbian-language sources;
Ekkehard Völkl’s comparative study of the Banat’s German and
Hungarian minorities; and Mariana Hausleitner’s work comparing the
ethnic Germans in the Serbian and Romanian Banats, with an emphasis
on the latter.18 Karl-Heinz Schlarp’s study of German economic policy in
occupied Serbia remains a valuable source on the Banat German

15
Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Saul Friedländer, “The Wehrmacht,
German Society, and the Knowledge of the Mass Extermination of the Jews” in Crimes
of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, ed. Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann, and
Mary Nolan (New York: The New Press, 2002), pp. 17–30; Hannes Heer, “Killing
Fields. Die Wehrmacht und der Holocaust” in Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der
Wehrmacht 1941–1944, ed. Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger
Edition, 1995), pp. 57–77.
16
These works demonstrate that World War II in the partitioned Yugoslav lands involved
several overlapping civil wars as well as foreign occupation and anti-partisan warfare.
Groups and individuals changed sides, sometimes more than once. The situation was
further complicated by attempts on all sides to attract support – the Četniks from among
the ethnic Serbs in Serbia and Bosnia, the Germans from among ethnic Germans, some
Serbs, some Bosnian Muslims, the Ustašas, etc. See Walter Manoschek, “‘Gehst mit
Juden erschiessen?’ Die Vernichtung der Juden in Serbien” in Vernichtungskrieg.
Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944, ed. Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann
(Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995), pp. 39–56; Mark Mazower, “Militärische
Gewalt und nationalsozialistische Werte. Die Wehrmacht in Griechenland 1941 bis
1944” in Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944, ed. Hannes Heer and
Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995), pp. 157–190; Ben Shepherd,
Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare (Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London: Harvard University Press, 2012).
17
Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German
National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1993).
18
Mariana Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben 1868–1948. Ihre Rolle im rumänischen und
serbischen Banat (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014); Akiko Shimizu, Die deutsche
Okkupation des serbischen Banats 1941–1944 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutschen
Volksgruppe in Jugoslawien (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2003); Ekkehard Völkl, Der Westbanat
1941–1944. Die deutsche, die ungarische und andere Volksgruppen (Munich: Rudolf
Trofenik, 1991).
 Literature and Themes 11

economy.19 Walter Manoschek and Christopher R. Browning have

shown how the Holocaust in Serbia predated by a couple of months the
opening of the death camps and closely resembled the “Holocaust by
bullets” in the East, but these cornerstone works have less to say about the
Holocaust and Aryanization in the Banat.20
The role ethnic Germans played in World War II and the Holocaust has
been largely missing from historiography, especially in the English
language. Since the end of the Cold War, a range of monographs and
studies in German and some in English have started to correct this
omission. Departing from the hagiography of expellee memoirs, histo-
rians have examined the German minorities in Romania, Ukraine,
Croatia, Poland, the Sudetenland, and the Czech lands in the 1930s
and 1940s as case studies in issues of collaboration, state loyalty, nation-
alism, and Nazi ideology. They have shown how regional variations and
diverse ethnic German perspectives dovetailed with the Nazi need for
collaborators and facilitated the implementation of racial policy.21
The relatively late unification of only some predominantly German-
speaking lands into the German nation-state in 1871 and the presence of

19
Karl-Heinz Schlarp, Wirtschaft und Besatzung in Serbien 1941–1944. Ein Beitrag zur
nationalsozialistischen Wirtschaftspolitik in Südosteuropa (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag,
1986).
20
Christopher R. Browning, Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution
(New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1985); Christopher R. Browning, The Final
Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland
1940–43 (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1978); Walter Manoschek, “Serbien
ist judenfrei”. Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42
(Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1993).
21
Johann Böhm, Hitlers Vasallen der Deutschen Volksgruppe in Rumänien vor und nach 1945
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006); Chad Bryant, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech
Nationalism (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press,
2007); Meir Buchsweiler, Volksdeutsche in der Ukraine am Vorabend und Beginn des
Zweiten Weltkriegs – ein Fall doppelter Loyalität? (Gerlingen: Bleicher Verlag, 1984);
Marie-Janine Calic, “Die Deutsche Volksgruppe im ‘Unabhängigen Staat Kroatien’
1941–1944” in Vom Faschismus zum Stalinismus. Deutsche und andere Minderheiten in
Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa 1941–1953, ed. Mariana Hausleitner (Munich: IKGS
Verlag, 2008), pp. 11–22; Winson Chu, The German Minority in Interwar Poland
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Mark Cornwall,
The Devil’s Wall: The Nationalist Youth Mission of Heinz Rutha (Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2012); Ralf Gebel, “Heim ins
Reich!” Konrad Henlein und der Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938–1945) (Munich:
R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999); Tudor Georgescu, “Pursuing the Fascist Promise:
The Transylvanian Saxon ‘Self-Help’ from Genesis to Empowerment, 1922–1935” in
Re-Contextualising East Central European History: Nation, Culture and Minority Groups, ed.
Robert Pyrah and Marius Turda (London: Legenda, 2010), pp. 55–73; Hausleitner, Die
Donauschwaben 1868–1948, passim; Christian Jansen and Arno Weckbecker, Der
“Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” in Polen 1939/40 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1992);
Beata Dorota Lakeberg, Die deutsche Minderheitenpresse in Polen 1918–1939 und ihr Polen-
und Judenbild (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010).
12 Introduction

German-speaking communities beyond that state’s borders made

German nationalism a matter of degree and nuance rather than absolutes.
Dialect of German spoken (if at all), folk customs, collective memory, and
self-perception could confirm or bring into question a group or indivi-
dual’s claim to Germanness. These criteria were rife with ambiguity, open
to interpretation, and fundamentally ascriptive. The monolithic Volk
model also failed to account for the reality of ethnic mixing, multilin-
gualism, and historical migration patterns, which brought German-
speaking groups to lands from the Baltic region to the Balkans. Before
World War I, some German-speakers were subjects of Austria-Hungary
or Russia, their ancestors having arrived as early as the Middle Ages or
during organized migrations in the modern period. To them, the term
‘Heimat’ was multivalent – it could refer to Germany as well as the
group’s historical area of residence, the ostensible Germanness of which
always needed to be shored up and reaffirmed.22 Being German remained
a constant work in progress.
After World War I, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and
Yugoslavia inherited the Russian, Habsburg, and German empires’
German-speaking minorities. These ethnic Germans – of whom an
estimated 10–12 million inhabited East and Southeast Europe until the
end of World War II – exhibited not only different degrees of nationalism
but also national indifference, a lack of interest in or commitment to
nationalist projects, a counterpoint to the assumption that nationalism
was a clear-cut factor in German minorities’ behavior.23
This book argues that nationalization and Nazification among the
Banat Germans remained incomplete in the interwar period. The Banat
Germans before 1941 were rarely nationally indifferent, even while they
preserved a certain national fluidity as a legacy of residence in an ethni-
cally diverse area and of Hungarian assimilationist policies in 1867–1918.
22
Maiken Umbach and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann, “Introduction: Towards
a Relational History of Spaces under National Socialism” in Heimat, Region, and
Empire: Spatial Identities under National Socialism, ed. Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann
and Maiken Umbach (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 1–22.
23
Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial
Austria (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2006);
Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics,
1848–1948 (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002); Philip W. Lyon,
“After Empire: Ethnic Germans and Minority Nationalism in Interwar Yugoslavia” (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Maryland, 2008); Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National
Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 2008).
In addition, Winson Chu’s analysis of the German minority in interwar Poland posits
that what appeared at first as a unified minority was actually a case of nationalism
undercut by regionalism, rather than a simple indifference to nationality or preference
for multiple ethnic identities. Chu, passim.
 Literature and Themes 13

German wartime occupation seemed to translate this fluidity into

uniform compliance with Nazi dicta, yet the Banat Germans continued
to grapple with competing definitions of Germanness, retained a sense of
themselves as separate from as well as connected to the greater German
Volk, and attempted to reconcile the two with National Socialism’s
nebulous criteria of national belonging.
The importance of real and imagined borders for German minorities in
the interwar period added another layer of significance to the nationality
issue. Physical borders created after World War I gained cultural mean-
ing; encouraged the creation of group identities that were national as well
as regional, cultural, and linguistic; and helped distinguish German
minorities in the new states of Central and East Europe not only from
their surroundings but also from the German nation in its nation-state.24
German minorities saw themselves as Germans and as ethnic Germans,
defined by their triangular relationship with their host states and
Germany proper – a relationship that implied not only connection but
also separation and distance.
Shared language and culture and a romanticized history of migration
and settlement as a far-flung outpost of Germandom were these groups’
claims to being a part of the imagined community of all Germans, to
adapt Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation.25 German-speaking
groups abroad developed their own narratives, which could parallel,
intersect, or even clash with dominant national narratives. At the same
time, state borders and citizenship continued to matter.
As suggested by David Blackbourn and James Retallack, the “subna-
tional spaces” inhabited by ethnic Germans were imagined communities
in their own right.26 Ethnic Germans harbored not only national passions
but also fiercely, proudly, and defensively local ones. When they
professed German nationalism, they did so from the standpoint of their
historical experience and their deep attachment to the areas settled by
their ancestors, rather than merely aping the perceptions and nationalist
criteria of Germans from Germany. Ethnic Germans aspired not only to
be recognized and accepted as equal members of the nation but also to
preserve their specific group identity markers, whether a German dialect,

24
Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1990); Judson, passim; Annemarie Röder,
Deutsche, Schwaben, Donauschwaben. Ethnisierungsprozesse einer deutschen Minderheit in
Südosteuropa (Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1998).
25
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, revised edition (London and New York: Verso, 1991).
26
David Blackbourn and James Retallack, “Introduction” in Localism, Landscape, and the
Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930, ed. David Blackbourn
and James Retallack (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. 18.
14 Introduction

religious customs different from those of their host society, or a senti-

mental historical memory of migration and hardship. This book argues
that the war years reinforced the differences as well as the connections
between Banat and Reich Germans, due in equal measure to Nazi reluc-
tance to recognize the Banat Germans as equals and the Banat Germans’
insistence on their specificity as well as their claim to belong to the
German Volk.
From the Third Reich’s perspective, ethnic Germans had dual value.
They could swell the ranks of the Volk as racially superior individuals and
groups, especially during the planned colonization of the East, while
remaining under the Reich Germans in terms of power and prestige,
and they could render numerous practical services to the Third Reich
during the war. Some were resettled from their homes in the Baltic states,
Bessarabia, Dobruja, East Poland, France, and parts of Yugoslavia in
1939–1941. They spent the war in transit camps, while their Germanness
was evaluated by SS racial experts, or settled on land taken away from
expelled and murdered Poles and Jews or in specially created, model
colonies in Ukraine. Ethnic Germans served in the Reich’s armed forces:
the Wehrmacht, but even more the Waffen-SS. They aided the Germans
from the Reich in identifying, expropriating, persecuting, and murdering
Jews. They enjoyed privileges at the expense of other ethnic groups and at
the Third Reich’s indulgence. Their exploits in the field and in their home
areas were grist for the Nazi propaganda mill.
Ethnic Germans’ many contributions to the Nazi campaign to rear-
range the human and physical landscape of East Europe may seem, at first
glance, to confirm the ethnic Germans’ predisposition to collaborate with
the Nazi regime as well as the existence of a coherent Nazi master plan for
Europe’s future. In fact, Nazi policy in the East was often driven by
circumstance and pragmatism and displayed great regional variation,
while remaining rooted in a racial superiority/inferiority dichotomy and
the absolute conviction that the Jewish ‘menace’ had to be removed from
Europe.
The Nazi view of Poland and the Soviet Union as open to conquest by
the supposedly superior German race went hand in hand with anti-
Semitism, anti-communism, and the desire to improve the ethnic
German living standard and position in local power hierarchies.
Southeast Europe was of secondary importance, but its raw materials
and ethnic diversity made it a factor in Hitler’s grand scheme, none-
theless. In the Nazi imagination, an area could become German because
of the presence of German-speakers, seen as more significant than the
majority, “inferior” non-German population. In tune with the Nazi rheto-
ric of racial regeneration, geographic locations could be renewed and
 Literature and Themes 15

bettered through settlement and cultivation by racially sound human

stock.
These fantasies of rootedness and regeneration, both an unbroken
succession of generations and the possibility for racial improvement,
show that the connection between race and space was a dynamic link in
the National Socialist worldview, embodied in the word “Lebensraum,”
living space – not just space in which one could live but a space that itself
lived in a symbiotic relationship with its inhabitants, defined by
a rootedness of bloodlines in the soil. Ethnic Germans may not have
been German enough for some Reich Germans’ preference, but they
would do for the purposes of expansion and colonization. They could
be uprooted from their home areas and made to set down new, better
roots.
Racial ‘science’ influenced preexisting ideas about alleged Eastern
inferiority and provided a seemingly objective justification for large-
scale ethnic reshuffling. Physical encounters with the East and its peoples
during the war served only to sharpen these perceived contrasts, so that
differences in living standards and economic development appeared to
the Nazis as absolute and ineradicable, the result of inherent racial reali-
ties rather than social and economic circumstances. Nazi ideas about the
East and its peoples created a vicious circle: ideology dictated the Nazi
treatment of newly conquered territories and populations, only for the
very brutality of German occupation policy to reaffirm and exacerbate the
Germans’ preconceived ideas about supposed Polish lack of culture,
Ukrainian backwardness, or Serbian treacherousness.27
Nazi perceptions of Southeast Europe have received less scholarly
attention than Nazi fantasies about the East. Some perceptions featured

27
Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Michael Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft im
Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik? Die “Volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften”
von 1931–1945 (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesselschaft, 1999); Ingo Haar and
Michael Fahlbusch, ed., German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing 1919–1945 (New York
and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005); Klaus Latzel, “Tourismus und Gewalt.
Kriegswahrnehmungen in Feldpostbriefen” in Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der
Wehrmacht 1941–1944, ed. Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger
Edition, 1995), pp. 447–459; Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East:
1800 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Michael McConnell,
“Lands of Unkultur: Mass Violence, Corpses, and the Nazi Imagination of the East” in
Destruction and Human Remains: Disposal and Concealment in Genocide and Mass Violence,
ed. Élisabeth Anstett and Jean-Marc Dreyfus (Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press, 2014), pp. 69–85; Gregor Thum, “Mythische Landschaften. Das Bild
vom ‘deutschen Osten’ und die Zäsuren des 20. Jahrhunderts” in Traumland Osten.
Deutsche Bilder vom östlichen Europa im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Gregor Thum (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), pp. 181–211; Wolfgang Wippermann, Die Deutschen
und der Osten. Feindbild und Traumland (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2007).
16 Introduction

in the Nazi treatment of both areas, while others were specific to German
and especially Austrian attitudes to the Southeast, such as Austrian
animosity toward Serbs dating back to the former’s military humiliation
by the latter in World War I, which, in turn, influenced the severe treat-
ment of occupied Serbia by Austrian troops in World War II.28
The connection between Nazi ideology and the practical consequences
of occupation has been the focus of a growing body of work on
Germanization policies in the occupied East. Conditions on the ground
drove the often-improvised and diffuse implementation of centrally deter-
mined policy, contributing to moral, legal, and societal breakdown, which
facilitated further radicalization. Top-down and from-the-bottom-up
forces converged and spurred each other on. Their cumulative effect
was widespread rape and rapine, the forced displacement of entire popu-
lations, and the mass murder of those perceived as racially pernicious.29
Moreover, the Nazi interest in ethnic Germans often became the
engine of other population policies. Jews, Poles, and other Slavs were
robbed and forcibly removed from their homes in order to make room for
resettled ethnic Germans. Germanization fueled the Holocaust and

28
Jonathan E. Gumz, “Wehrmacht Perceptions of Mass Violence in Croatia, 1941–1942,”
The Historical Journal, Vol. 44, No. 4 (December 2001), pp. 1015–1038; Brigitte Hamann,
Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship, translated from the German by
Thomas Thornton (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Manoschek,
“Serbien ist judenfrei,” passim; Christian Promitzer, “The South Slavs in the Austrian
Imagination: Serbs and Slovenes in the Changing View from German Nationalism to
National Socialism” in Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg
Central Europe, ed. Nancy M. Wingfield (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books,
2003), pp. 183–215; Ben Shepherd, “Bloodier than Boehme: The 342nd Infantry
Division in Serbia, 1941” in War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-Partisan Warfare
in Eastern Europe, 1939–45, ed. Ben Shepherd and Juliette Pattinson (Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 189–209.
29
Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule
(Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press 2004); Catherine Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of
Western Poland (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Wolf Gruner
and Jörg Osterloh, ed., The Greater German Reich and the Jews: Nazi Persecution Policies in
the Annexed Territories 1935–1945, translated by Bernard Heise (New York and Oxford:
Berghahn Books, 2015); Elizabeth Harvey, Women and the Nazi East: Agents and
Witnesses of Germanization (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003);
Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill:
The University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Phillip T. Rutherford, Prelude to the
Final Solution: The Nazi Program for Deporting Ethnic Poles, 1939–1941 (Lawrence,
Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2007); Eric C. Steinhart, The Holocaust and the
Germanization of Ukraine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015);
Andreas Strippel, NS-Volkstumspolitik und die Neuordnung Europas. Rassenpolitische
Selektion der Einwandererzentralstelle des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD
(1939–1945) (Paderborn and Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2011); Gerhard Wolf,
Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität. Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Polen
(Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012).
 Literature and Themes 17

enhanced the Nazi regime’s ability to attract ethnic Germans as colla-

borators – policemen, concentration-camp guards, soldiers, low-level
administrators, etc. – by offering them Aryanized property and a mod-
icum of brute power over their non-German neighbors. The fact that the
Nazi regime failed to establish clear criteria of racial belonging to the
German Volk made it easier for the Nazis to extend the possibility of
belonging as an incentive to collaboration, while keeping ethnic Germans
at arm’s length.
The Nazi government’s official stance remained that ethnic Germans
were racial kin and as such deserved to be treated well – at least, better
than other ethnic groups – but it did not trust ethnic Germans to make
independent decisions. Nazi officials’ treatment of ethnic Germans varied
depending on their home area (how “Eastern” it supposedly was) and
perceived degree of mixing with non-Germans. Nazi observers saw the
average ethnic German as the keeper of German cultural and racial
uniqueness in a foreign land and as highly susceptible to assimilation
into other cultures and nations. Ethnic Germanness was paradoxically
both a mark of superiority and very fragile, in need of constant shoring up.
Although, as Doris L. Bergen points out, for many Germans in the Nazi
period, the term “Volksdeutsche” “carried overtones of blood and race
not captured in the English translation ‘ethnic Germans’,”30 ethnic
Germans continued to seem not quite German enough. Nazi racial
categories would stretch only up to a point. Somewhat sympathetic,
useful collaborators, and historical guardians of Europe’s cultural and
civilizational borders, in Nazi eyes, the ethnic Germans remained ulti-
mately pathetic, racially dubious, and a lesser priority than Jews, resis-
tance guerrillas, or the Third Reich’s labor needs.
Nazi ambivalence toward ethnic Germans illuminated a paradox inher-
ent in the National Socialist worldview: that between the emphasis on
community and unity on the one hand, and the mania for classification on
the other. The Nazi concept of Volksgemeinschaft remained a desired
goal and incentive for future social harmony rather than reality.31

30
Doris L. Bergen, “The Nazi Concept of ‘Volksdeutsche’ and the Exacerbation of Anti-
Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1939–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 29, No.
4 (October 1994), p. 569.
31
The concept of Volksgemeinschaft could serve as a force for social unity insofar as
exclusion from it – of Jews, Slavs, Roma, the disabled, homosexuals, various social misfits
as loosely defined by Nazi racial criteria – was a clear and often deadly disadvantage,
making inclusion in it a goal toward which to aspire. See Frank Bajohr and
Michael Wildt, ed., Volksgemeinschaft. Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschaft des
Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009); Jochen Oltmer,
Nationalsozialistisches Migrationsregime und “Volksgemeinschaft” (Paderborn: Ferdinand
Schöningh, 2012); Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann, ed., “Volksgemeinschaft”: Mythos,
18 Introduction

Volksgemeinschaft could be imagined as national (equated with German

citizenship and Germany’s political borders), supranational (correspond-
ing to the idea of a cross-border German Volk), and subnational (among
German minorities). The Nazi aspiration toward a supranational Volk
and ethnic German emphasis on their own, subnational communities
were compatible, even as these models underlined how challenging it
could be for ethnic Germans to slot themselves into the Nazi
paradigm.32 The case of the Banat Germans illustrates vividly these
coexisting and competing models of national belonging.
The Nazis mercilessly sifted populations and looked for “hidden” ethnic
Germans in order to create a unified Volk community and keep it separate
from “inferior” peoples, yet the very act of constantly questioning the
racial and ideological credentials of the Volksgemeinschaft’s potential
members undermined its existence. Moreover, the lack of clear-cut racial
criteria, coupled with practical circumstances such as the Reich’s labor
and recruitment needs, made the racial screening process too time- and
labor-intensive.33 The German Volk, supposedly unified and uniform, de
facto was divided into groups with different degrees of Germanness, as
suggested by the very existence of the term “Volksdeutsche.”
The Nazis manipulated their own racial categories and the ethnic
German desire for material profit and recognition as “full” Germans in
order to draw members of German minorities into complicity in the
Holocaust and other discriminatory policies. The Nazi desire to extermi-
nate the Jews ultimately overpowered their desire to promote and support
ethnic Germans, yet ethnic Germans played on Nazi perceptions of them
in order to advance their position, becoming embroiled in Nazi crimes in
the process.34 The Nazi regime did not go to the trouble of subjecting the
Banat Germans to detailed racial screening, relying instead on their

wirkungsmächtige soziale Verheissung oder soziale Realität im “Dritten Reich”?

Zwischenbilanz einer kontroversen Debatte (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012).
32
Norbert Götz, “German-Speaking People and German Heritage: Nazi Germany and the
Problem of Volksgemeinschaft” in The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness, ed.
Krista O’Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy Reagin (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 2005), pp. 58–81.
33
Isabel Heinemann, “Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut”. Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt
der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2003);
Markus Leniger, Nationalsozialistische “Volkstumsarbeit” und Umsiedlungspolitik
1933–1945. Von der Minderheitenbetreuung zur Siedlerauslese (Berlin: Frank & Timme,
2006); Alexa Stiller, “On the Margins of Volksgemeinschaft: Criteria for Belonging to the
Volk within the Nazi Germanization Policy in the Annexed Territories, 1939–1945” in
Heimat, Region, and Empire: Spatial Identities under National Socialism, ed. Claus-
Christian W. Szejnmann and Maiken Umbach (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012), pp. 235–251.
34
Doris L. Bergen, “The Nazi Concept of ‘Volksdeutsche’,” passim; Doris L. Bergen, “Sex,
Blood, and Vulnerability: Women Outsiders in German-Occupied Europe” in Social
 Literature and Themes 19

Nazified leadership and preexisting organizations to determine member-

ship in the Banat German community and to police their own. At the
same time, the inherent ambivalences of Germanness affected Nazi atti-
tudes toward the Banat Germans, requiring them to prove their
Germanness again and again. Collaboration was thus a means to an end
as well as an everyday fact of life in the wartime Banat.
However much they may have wished to rule by blood and sword alone,
the Nazis found it necessary to cajole, persuade, and inspire their allies
and potential collaborators in order to control vast swaths of Europe
during World War II. Collaboration proved crucial to Adolf Hitler’s
ability to harness support for his war while maintaining a violently exclu-
sivist ideology as Germany’s guiding light. Collaboration allowed groups
as well as individuals to profit materially; oppress others; and gain legiti-
macy, power, and self-respect. For some, collaboration vindicated their
preexisting worldview. For the lowest of the low, it made survival
possible. It satisfied a broad spectrum of material, psychological, and
emotional needs and was a widespread phenomenon in wartime Europe.
Jan Tomasz Gross has shown that the Nazis could not exclude an entire
majority population from at least some benefits accrued through colla-
boration, short of attempting to exterminate that population
completely.35 The Nazis did attempt the physical extermination of the
Jews, but the Jews were a minority. With most European populations in
their sphere of influence, the Nazis made various twisted forms of the
social contract. Gross pinpoints two types of social groups that made
excellent collaborators:36 either a former governing elite given new

Outsiders in Nazi Germany, ed. Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus (Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 273–293; Doris L. Bergen,
“The ‘Volksdeutschen’ of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust:
Constructed Ethnicity, Real Genocide” in Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural
Identities and Cultural Differences, ed. Keith Bullivant, Geoffrey Giles, and Walter Pappe
(Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999), pp. 70–93; Doris L. Bergen,
“The Volksdeutsche of Eastern Europe and the Collapse of the Nazi Empire,
1944–1945” in The Impact of Nazism: New Perspectives on the Third Reich and Its Legacy,
ed. Alan E. Steinweis and Daniel E. Rogers (Lincoln and London: University of
Nebraska Press, 2003), pp. 101–128.
Depending on their perceived degree of Germanness, the Nazi treatment of ethnic
Germans could be draconian as well as arbitrary. See Alexa Stiller, “Zwischen
Zwangsgermanisierung und ‘Fünfter Kolonne’: ‘Volksdeutsche’ als Häftlinge und
Bewacher in den Konzentrationslagern” in Nationalsozialistische Lager. Neue Beiträge
zur NS-Verfolgungs- und Vernichtungspolitik und zur Gedenkstättenpädagogik, ed.
Akim Jah, Christoph Kopke, Alexander Korb, and Alexa Stiller (Münster: Verlag
Klemm & Oelschläger, 2006), pp. 104–124.
35
Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement,
1939–1944 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. xi–xii.
36
Gross, p. 123.
20 Introduction

legitimacy under occupation37 or a formerly oppressed and aggrieved

minority.38
The second type of collaborator was a better option for the Nazis.
A minority group that had been oppressed by a regime dismantled by
the Nazis – or had perceived itself as oppressed – owed its new freedom
and empowerment to the Nazi regime. Unlike an elite group in a position
of some authority, a minority could not challenge the Third Reich’s claim
to absolute power and control over its home region and had limited
leverage with which to bargain against German demands. Its willingness
to collaborate was rewarded by certain perks, but never any significant
power.
The Banat Germans combined qualities of the two collaborationist
types described by Gross: they were a supposedly beleaguered minority,
which became a local elite. The privileges they received under Nazi
occupation were more in the nature of perks, which could be revoked
and had to be repaid by successive, ever more radical forms of collabora-
tion. The very fact that the Banat Germans essentially ruled their home

37
The prime example of a governing elite that gained a new lease on life through collabora-
tion was Vichy France. The Vichy leadership inspired as well as coerced wide sections of
French society into actions that implicated the French deeply in Nazi crimes.
Paradoxically, a collaborationist regime like Vichy had at least limited sovereignty and
independence of action so did not produce very malleable collaborators. Because it had
its own claim to legitimacy and discrete political and ideological traditions, it divided its
subjects’ loyalty and accrued for itself some of the support that otherwise may have gone
to the Third Reich. See Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans: Collaboration and
Compromise, translated by Janet Lloyd (New York: The New Press, 1997); Shannon
L. Fogg, The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France: Foreigners, Undesirables, and
Strangers (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009);
Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001); Debbie Lackerstein, National Regeneration in Vichy France: Ideas and
Policies, 1930–1944 (Abingdon and New York: Ashgate, 2012); Robert O. Paxton,
Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944, revised edition (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001).
38
Such was the case in occupied Ukraine, where ethnic Germans, some Ukrainians, and
Soviet prisoners of war were co-opted into executing the Nazis’ murderous policies.
The desire for survival, the possibility to gain a measure of power and wealth or just the
opportunity to oppress others, the removal of social inhibitors and widespread brutal-
ization, the hope of climbing up the Nazi racial hierarchy – all these and more could
inspire collaboration as well as, if not better than, fervent agreement with Nazi ideology.
See Berkhoff, passim; Martin Dean, “Soviet Ethnic Germans and the Holocaust in the
Reich Commissariat Ukraine, 1941–1944” in The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony,
Memorialization, ed. Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 248–271; John-Paul Himka, “Ukrainian
Collaboration in the Extermination of the Jews during the Second World War: Sorting
out the Long-Term and Conjunctural Factors” in The Fate of the European Jews,
1939–1945: Continuity or Contingency?, ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 170–189; Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the
Holocaust in Ukraine, passim; Steinhart, passim.
 Scope, Sources, and Organization 21

region on the Third Reich’s behalf underlined their inferior position –

dependence on an outside source of legitimacy and power was a salient
quality of collaboration. Even so, everyday life in the Banat between 1941
and 1944 was decisively shaped by the ethnic German administration.
Ethnic German agency may have been constrained by what the Third
Reich would allow, but within those parameters the Banat Germans
wielded great influence over their neighbors and each other.

Scope, Sources, and Organization

The temporal focus of this book is the period between the Serbian Banat’s
occupation by German forces in April 1941 and its liberation-qua-
occupation by the Red Army and the Yugoslav Partisans in October
1944. The period before April 1941 is examined insofar as it influenced
wartime events, while the conclusion covers the immediate postwar era.
Since so much postwar literature on ethnic Germans has been shaped
by expellee apologia and whitewashing narratives of ethnic Germans’
wartime behavior, this book offers a counterpoint and corrective in focus-
ing on the war years. The lacunae in expellee memory are also the reason
why the use of Banat German sources – wartime ones as well as a critical
selection of expellee documents – necessitates a comparison of ethnic
German sources with those produced by their Nazi overlords and non-
German victims. While the Nazi perspective permeates Banat German
sources, comparing these with other types of sources makes possible the
cross-checking of facts, allegations, and arguments to produce the most
plausible account of past events.39
This book is organized both thematically and chronologically. A case
study rather than a comprehensive comparison of the Banat with other
regions, it offers analysis and thick description of the Banat Germans’
wartime record as implementers of Nazi policy, objects of Nazi percep-
tion, and historical agents in their own right.
Chapter 1 presents a brief overview of the Banat’s colonization by
German-speakers in the eighteenth century, their historical development,
and the state of the Yugoslav German minority before the 1941 Nazi
attack on Yugoslavia. The nationalization and Nazification of the
Yugoslav Germans remained incomplete as late as early 1941, some 18
months after the VoMi orchestrated the election of Sepp Janko as

39
On the need to “triangulate” evidence produced by a totalitarian system with other
sources, see Diana Dumitru, “An Analysis of Soviet Postwar Investigation and Trial
Documents and Their Relevance for Holocaust Studies” in The Holocaust in the East:
Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses, ed. Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and
Alexander M. Martin (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), pp. 142–157.
22 Introduction

Volksgruppenführer. Nevertheless, the Nazified leadership made signifi-

cant progress toward imposing Nazi tropes on the Yugoslav German
community’s public discourse, while contending with inconsistent
attitudes adopted toward it by Nazi Germany and the Yugoslav govern-
ment alike.
Chapter 2 examines the polarization, in March–April 1941, of
Yugoslav German loyalties away from Yugoslavia as their host state and
toward the Third Reich as their ancestral and, their new leadership
claimed, ideological homeland. The Yugoslav Germans’ behavior during
the Tripartite Pact’s invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 suggests that,
while many welcomed the possibility of German occupation, they
remained too disorganized to constitute a “fifth column.” The partitioning
of Yugoslavia between Germany and its allies disappointed and dismayed
the Yugoslav ethnic Germans – yet it also opened up a space for the Banat
Germans to claim pride of place as the Reich Germans’ racial kin and
helpers.
The consequences of German occupation and the Banat Germans’
empowerment in service to the Third Reich are the subject of the next
five chapters. The setting up of a Banat German administration in spring
and summer 1941 forms the core of Chapter 3. The Banat Germans’
empowerment was the result of complex trade-offs between German
diplomacy, Nazi ideology, and practical necessity. The Banat’s autonomy
from the rest of occupied Serbia was a function of the Banat Germans’
subordination to the Third Reich, at the same time as the Banat Germans
consolidated themselves as an outwardly Nazified community, even if the
criteria of their Germanness remained somewhat vague. The Banat
German leadership preferred to cajole and manipulate its co-nationals
and used open terror sparingly – and effectively – to secure compliance.
The rank and file, in turn, tended to grumble rather than resist and
accepted German occupation and Nazi rule as the best option available
to them.
Chapter 4 evaluates the economic, ideological, and educational means
by which the Third Reich secured the Banat Germans’ complicity and
compliance with its policies, thus benefiting itself first and foremost.
The Banat Germans paid dearly for every perk extended to them, while
these perks drew them deeper into complicity with the Nazis. They also
made significant economic contributions to the Third Reich’s war effort,
which the perks they received were supposed to facilitate. Other Banat
ethnicities – except the Jews – enjoyed some minor perks of their own or,
at the very least, avoided the kind of extreme suffering common in other
wartime Yugoslav lands. Even discriminatory policies against Serbs
tended not to be as severe as in Serbia proper or Croatia.
 Scope, Sources, and Organization 23

The negative consequences of German occupation and the Banat

German administration, suffered by the Banat Jews, Roma, and indivi-
duals suspected of communist sympathy and resistance activity, are the
focus of Chapters 5 and 6. The Banat’s peacefulness was due to the
relative failure of native resistance movements to take hold there and
the equally relative efficiency of Banat German security forces.
Chapter 5 describes the Banat German police and militia as agents of
security but also inchoate anti-partisan warfare, and returns to the
balance of cajoling and coercion, which allowed the Banat German
leadership to enforce its will without often resorting to outright terror.
Chapter 6 examines the Holocaust in the Banat, with an emphasis on
the Banat Germans’ role in the persecution of the Banat Jews and the
influence of Aryanization and preferential access to Jewish property on
the Banat Germans’ willingness to aid the Nazi project to annihilate the
Jews. This chapter demonstrates how material greed and ideology under-
pinned each other, enticing the Banat Germans into truly damning parti-
cipation in Nazi policy.
The Banat Germans’ interpretation of Nazi ideology is the theme of
Chapter 7. National Socialism monopolized public discourse among the
Banat Germans, as it did in the Third Reich, yet proved elastic enough to
accommodate the Banat Germans’ interest in the ambiguities of Heimat,
which reflected their position in the Nazi worldview as well as their
attempt to be both Germans and Banat Germans. Other prominent
themes were the instrumentalization of history, the exaltation of the
military experience in service to Waffen-SS recruitment, and the
relatively stronger claim anti-Slavism had on Banat German passions
than anti-Semitism.
In the second half of the war, the Banat Germans’ value to the Third
Reich boiled down at last to their military potential. Chapter 8 describes
the circumstances that led to their mass recruitment by the Waffen-SS in
spring 1942, while the Reich maintained the legal and moral illusion that
all ethnic Germans in the Waffen-SS were volunteers. Once deployed, the
Banat Germans proved far more effective massacring civilians in Bosnia
and Croatia in 1943–1945 than they ever did as fighting units. Waffen-SS
service represented the culmination and most damning form of Banat
German collaboration with the Nazis.
The legacy of the Banat Germans’ favored position in the occupied
Banat, and especially their role in massacres during anti-partisan warfare
in Yugoslav lands, was the brutal treatment meted out to Banat Germans
in 1944–1948. The conclusion surveys their postwar persecution and
disempowerment and focuses especially on the Banat Germans’ decisions
to flee or stay in their homes in fall 1944, faced with an imminent Russian
24 Introduction

and Partisan breakthrough into the Banat. The fact that most Banat
Germans stayed was arguably the culmination of their dependence on
and deference to the Third Reich’s wishes and priorities, as well as their
continued efforts to reconcile devotion to “their” Banat with the desire to
become full members of the German Volk.
1 The Banat Germans from Settlement to
Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

In the eighteenth century, German-speakers colonized what was then

South Hungary as part of a Habsburg policy to repopulate the area after
the Ottoman withdrawal and consolidate the border between the two
empires along the Danube River. The House of Habsburg’s primary inter-
est was in Catholic settlers with firm dynastic loyalties rather than creating
a “German” buffer zone on the Danube. During the nineteenth century,
a German national movement did develop in the Kingdom of Hungary, yet
its influence was counterweighed by Hungarian assimilationist policies.
In the Banat region, with its ethnically homogeneous villages, the German-
speaking minority preserved its language and culture, but also proved open
to assimilation into the Hungarian nation. A degree of national ambiva-
lence and polynational behavior, rather than nationalist activism, were its
dominant experiences before World War I.
After the war, these German-speakers became citizens of the newly
forged Kingdom of Yugoslavia (known until 1929 as the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). Their relations with the Yugoslav govern-
ment were mostly positive, as it saw the German minority as a useful ally
against Hungarian irredentism. The German minority became more
nationalized than before, yet remained geographically scattered and pos-
sessed of varying degrees of nationalist commitment. The rise of National
Socialism in Germany sparked enthusiasm among a subset of younger
Yugoslav Germans. Responding to mixed signals sent to them from the
Third Reich, these Nazi activists competed for power within the minority
with the conservative older generation of ethnic Germans. In August
1939, a young lawyer called Josef “Sepp” Janko became the official leader
of the Yugoslav Germans, with the Reich’s support.
Between the start of World War II in September 1939 and the
Tripartite Pact’s invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Nazified
leaders of the Yugoslav Germans exercised their agency by attempting
to exploit the tensions the European war engendered in Yugoslavia.
They bargained with the Yugoslav government for concessions and
preferential treatment vis-à-vis other ethnic groups. They also perceived

25
26 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

the jurisdictional tug-of-war between the German Foreign Ministry

(Auswärtiges Amt) and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi), and
played these offices against one another with limited success.
At the same time, they strove to implement their vision of a unified,
homogeneous, Nazified Yugoslav German community. Despite the lead-
ers’ efforts to project the image of a mini Volksgemeinschaft, the Yugoslav
Germans continued to espouse different degrees of nationalization and
interest in Nazi ideology. Nevertheless, the totalizing vision of the local
Nazis and the example presented by the Third Reich’s successes made the
Nazi model of Germanness omnipresent.
For its part, the Yugoslav government in 1939–1941 was hamstrung
between growing suspicion of all things German and a desire to use ethnic
Germans as leverage in its relations with the Third Reich. With Hitler’s
war a looming reality in Europe, the Yugoslav Germans increasingly
became targets of suspicion as seditious, potential irredentists, even
a treasonous “fifth column.” The resettlement of ethnic Germans from
Bessarabia through Yugoslavia in fall 1940, with the aid of numerous
Yugoslav German volunteers, was a watershed event in the Yugoslav
government’s attitude to its German minority, as suspicion of the ethnic
Germans’ political reliability became more apparent at the turn of
1940–1941.
The Yugoslav Germans still had to fulfill their duties as Yugoslav
citizens, yet their Nazified leadership looked increasingly to Nazi
Germany. This was a precarious position to maintain in peacetime,
even more so as Yugoslavia drew closer to an alliance with the Third
Reich between 1939 and early 1941, while also trying to maintain its
neutrality. Ordinary ethnic Germans balanced their roles as Germans and
as Yugoslav citizens within the space allowed them by the unsettled,
ambivalent relations between Yugoslavia and Germany and both states’
equally ambivalent attitudes toward the ethnic Germans.

From Settlers to Yugoslav Germans

Writing about the ethnic Germans of Southeast Europe in 1939, the
folklorist Johannes Künzig waxed lyrical about the eastward movement
of German peasants since the Middle Ages, likening these settlers to “a
bulwark of Germandom . . . a watch in the East.”1 Künzig projected the
National Socialist view of ethnic Germans back into the past and inter-
preted the migration of German-speakers to South Hungary under

1
Hans Retzlaff and Johannes Künzig, Deutsche Bauern im Banat. 80 Aufnahmen (Berlin:
Verlag Grenze und Ausland, 1939), p. 5.
 From Settlers to Yugoslav Germans 27

Habsburg auspices in the eighteenth century as a sign of the settlers’

eternal devotion to the interests of the German Volk.2 In reality, the
settlement of German-speakers in the Southeast was a manifestation of
eighteenth-century Habsburg politics, which prioritized religion and
imperial loyalty over inchoate nationalism.
The Banat region’s natural borders are the rivers Tisa (Germ. Theiss,
Hung. Tisza), Mureş, and Danube. The Banat was never an independent
state or even a proto-state, rather a historical geographic region contig-
uous to the Bačka to the west, Transylvania to the east, present-day
Hungary to the north, and Serbia proper to the south.
The final expulsion of the Ottomans from the then-southern part of the
Kingdom of Hungary occurred in 1699. As most of the region’s Muslim
population followed the retreating Ottoman troops and administrators,
South Hungary became severely depopulated. Members of various ethnic
groups participated in the Habsburg repopulation effort, including
Hungarians, Serbs, Romanians, and Ashkenazi Jews. Organized settle-
ment of German-speakers in the Banat began only after the Habsburgs
secured control over the region, following the Austro-Turkish War of
1717–1718. Instead of placing the Banat under Hungarian rule, as
happened in the Bačka and Transylvania, the imperial court in Vienna
took direct control of the Banat and extended the Military Border into the
newly acquired territories. Patterns of colonization differed between
regions under Austrian control (Banat, Military Border) and regions
under Hungarian control (Bačka).3
The Hungarian landowning nobility in the Bačka invited Catholics as
well as Protestants to settle on their estates and encouraged ethnic mixing
in villages and towns. In the Banat and the lands of the Military Border,
Vienna insisted on the settlement of Catholic German-speakers from the
Holy Roman Empire and built planned villages for the settlers, keeping
them more isolated from other ethnic groups. The settlers’ Catholicism
mattered more than their putative Germanness: the Habsburgs intended
to make the Banat a “bulwark of Christendom” along their new border
with the Ottoman Empire, but also against the competing strains of
Reformation and Counterreformation in the Kingdom of Hungary.4

2
Retzlaff and Künzig, pp. 5, 8.
3
Karl A. Roider and Robert Forrest, “German Colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in
the Eighteenth Century” in The Germans and the East, ed. Charles Ingrao and Franz
A. J. Szabo (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2008), pp. 89–91;
Holm Sundhaussen, “Southeastern Europe” in The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities
in Europe: From the 17th Century to the Present, ed. Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer,
Leo Lucassen, and Jochen Oltmer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 168.
4
Márta Fata, “German Settlers (Donauschwaben) in Southeastern Europe since the Early
Modern Period” in The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the 17th
28 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

Some of the Catholic settlers were not originally German-speakers and

became assimilated into the German-speaking population, as was the case
with the French-speakers from Lorraine, who settled in the Banat villages
of Soltur, Charleville, and Sankt Hubert.5
Settlers came from such diverse regions as the Rhineland, Ulm, Passau,
Württemberg, Baden, Hessen, Pfalz, Alsace, Lorraine, and Swabia.
Colonization occurred in three waves: the first one was spearheaded by
Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), the Habsburg general who led the
expulsion of the Ottomans from South Hungary; the second and third
occurred during the reigns of Maria Theresa (1717–1780) and Joseph II
(1741–1790). The latter allowed limited settlement by German-speaking
Lutherans, in line with his practice of enlightened absolutism.
The economic incentives offered to the settlers (affordable land, tax
breaks) endured even after control over the Banat passed to the
Kingdom of Hungary in 1779.6
Initially favoring peasants and craftsmen, in the second half of the
eighteenth century Vienna also encouraged the settlement of tradesmen.
This led to some social stratification of the German-speakers in the
Banat. They lacked a landowning nobility – large estates were the pro-
perty of Hungarian aristocratic families. The German-speakers remained
predominantly peasants, ranging from wealthy ones to landless peasants
and agricultural laborers for hire.7
The Banat German-speakers preserved their language and culture because
early settlement patterns and Austrian policy discouraged their assimilation
into other ethnic groups. This did not, however, lead to the development of
a strong German nationalist movement in the Banat in the nineteenth
century. Rather, once the Hungarian nobility became active supporters of
political and economic reform under the banner of Hungarian nationalism,
German-speakers proved open to Magyarization, especially after the reorga-
nization of the Habsburg Empire as the Dual Monarchy in 1867.8

Century to the Present, ed. Klaus J. Bade et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2011), pp. 445–446; Roider and Forrest in Ingrao and Szabo, pp. 89–91.
5
“La minorité allemande en Yougoslavie,” August 5, 1939, AJ, fund 38, folder 93, unit
225, p. 1 of this document.
6
Biber, p. 12; Fata in Bade et al., p. 446; Roider and Forrest in Ingrao and Szabo,
pp. 90–94; Sundhaussen in Bade et al., pp. 168–169.
7
Carl Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten in Kroatien und der Vojvodina
1918–1941. Identitätsentwürfe und ethnopolitische Mobilisierung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
Verlag, 2009), pp. 125–126; Sundhaussen in Bade et al., pp. 168–169.
8
Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, p. 133; Biber, pp. 12–13; Fata in Bade et al.,
p. 446.
 From Settlers to Yugoslav Germans 29

AU S T R I A
H U N G A R Y
DRAVA
Ljubljana
I
T

BANOVINA Zagreb
A L

DANUBE R O M A N I A

B
BANOVINA BANOVINA
Y

VA Novi Sad
SA

A
N
Belgrade A
T
Banja Luka BELGRADE CITY
VRBAS BANOVINA ADMINISTRATION

DRINA BANOVINA

Sarajevo MORAVA
LITTORAL
Split (PRIMORSKA)
A

BANOVINA

B U
BANOVINA Niš
d

L G A R I A
r Z E TA B A N O V I N A
i
a
Cetinje
t
i VARDAR
Skopje
c BANOVINA
A L

S
e
B A N

I T A L Y
a

I A

0 50 100 150 200 km G R E E C E

0 25 50 75 100 miles

Map 1.1 Kingdom of Yugoslavia – Banovinas, 1929–1941

Nevertheless, the tendency to assimilate was more evident among

German-speakers in Central Hungary, major cities like Budapest, and
the more industrialized East Banat than in the agricultural West
Banat, where German-speakers continued to reside mostly in their
own villages or in small towns with mixed populations. The low
premium placed on higher education in a peasant population also
took away some of the incentive to assimilate into the Hungarian
nation.
30 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

The first clear signs of a German national “awakening” in South

Hungary occurred only after 1900, in response to increased
Hungarian nationalist pressure. The first explicitly German political
institutions – such as the Ungarländisch-Deutsche Volkspartei
(Hungarian-German People’s Party), founded in Werschetz in 1906 –
enjoyed only modest success. This small, local, ostensibly national
party remained a marginal political phenomenon in the Dual
Monarchy. It had a challenger for German-speakers’ political alle-
giance in the social-democratic movement, which developed in the
East Banat and emphasized class solidarity over national unity.9
Overall, the German-speakers of South Hungary at the turn of the
twentieth century remained nationally ambivalent or polynational –
German-speakers rather than Germans.
World War I altered their position and worldview. Coming into contact
with ethnically diverse troops from the Austrian half of the Dual
Monarchy, some of whom were German-speakers, the Banat Germans
discovered the greater community of Germans beyond their solipsistic
provincial world. Then, at the end of the war, they experienced the
wrenching transition from living in a multiethnic, Hungarian-
dominated state to living in a multiethnic, Slav-dominated state.10
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was cobbled together in
1918 out of independent Serbia and parts of the defeated Ottoman and
Habsburg empires, with the Serbian capital Belgrade serving also as the
new state’s capital.
In late 1918, the Banat was occupied by Serbian and Romanian armies,
both hoping to assert their co-nationals’ right to national self-
determination, i.e., to ensure the Banat’s annexation by their respective
states. Self-determination ultimately mattered less than the presence of
the Serbian and Romanian armies: according to the 1920 Treaty of
Trianon between Hungary and the Entente, two-thirds of the Banat
went to Romania, one-third went to the Serbian part of the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, while only 1% of the Banat was left to rump
Hungary.11

9
Fata in Bade et al., p. 446; Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, pp. 29–33, 50–63; Lyon,
pp. 64–79.
10
Lyon, pp. 151–155.
11
Hans-Heinrich Rieser, Das rumänische Banat – eine multikulturelle Region im
Umbruch. Geographische Transformationsforschungen am Beispiel der jüngeren
Kulturlandschaftsentwicklung in Südwestrumänien (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag,
2001), pp. 82, 84.
 From Settlers to Yugoslav Germans 31

What thus became the Serbian Banat covered roughly 9,300 km2,12
and was bound by the rivers Tisa and Danube in the west and south and
the Serbo-Romanian border in the east and north. The major urban
center was Grossbetschkerek, from 1935 officially called Petrovgrad in
honor of King Petar I Karađorđević (1844–1921).
States created at the end of World War I tended to treat their various
ethnic minorities depending on the vagaries of their nationality policy and
territorial ambitions.13 Thus, the ethnic Germans in the Vojvodina –
formerly South Hungary, which comprised the Serbian part of the
Banat, the Bačka, and the Baranja – and Slavonia (East Croatia) were
seen by the Belgrade government as useful allies against the threat of
Hungarian irredentism and border revisionism. Since the Vojvodina
Germans had no active ties to either the German nation-state or rump
Austria, the authorities’ assumption was that the ethnic Germans would
throw in their lot with the new government rather than their former
Hungarian masters. Slovenia, by contrast, had been part of the Austrian
half of the Dual Monarchy, so the attitude of the Belgrade authorities to
the Slovene Germans was considerably more suspicious.14 Overall, how-
ever, initial relations between the Yugoslav government and the German
minority in the new state were cordial.
Weimar-era literature routinely depicted the ethnic Germans in the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as physically and spiritually
oppressed, devoted to hard work and resultant material prosperity, yet
essentially hapless, helpless, and in need of Germany’s protection and
support. If they represented a bulwark of Germandom, they were a very
fragile bulwark.15 Whatever the flaws of interwar Yugoslav minority
policy, this insistence by outside observers on the ethnic Germans’
supposed lack of integration into the host state was misleading, given
their economic successes and the government’s view of them, until the
very end of the 1930s, as a beneficial factor opposing Hungarian desire to
recover its lost territories in the Vojvodina.

12
Chef der Militärverwaltung Südost to OKH, “Abschlussbericht des Chefs der
Militärverwaltung Südost,” April 10, 1945, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 264, fr. 214.
13
Holly Case, “Territorial Revision and the Holocaust: Hungary and Slovakia during
World War II” in Lessons and Legacies VIII: From Generation to Generation, ed. Doris
L. Bergen (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2008), pp. 222–244.
14
Biber, pp. 29–32.
15
Wolfgang Aly, Denkschrift über die Batschka und das südliche Banat. Reisebericht (Berlin:
Bernard & Graefe, 1924); Andreas Dammang, Die deutsche Landwirtschaft im Banat und
in der Batschka (Munich: Verlag Ernst Reinhardt, 1931); Paul Rohrbach, Deutschtum in
Not! Die Schicksale der Deutschen in Europa ausserhalb des Reiches (Berlin and Leipzig:
Wilhelm Undermann Verlag, 1926); Hermann Rüdiger, Das Deutschtum an der mittleren
Donau (Ungarn, Jugoslawien, Rumänien) (Munich: Verein für das Deutschtum im
Auslande, 1927).
32 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

The 1921 and 1931 population censuses conducted in the Kingdom

of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – renamed in 1929 the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia – are problematic sources on ethnic numbers. Both censuses
adopted as the primary criterion of national belonging the thorny cate-
gory of ‘mother tongue’ – overly simplistic in multiethnic areas where
mixed marriages were common and policies like Magyarization before
1918 complicated any association between language use and national-
ity. Nevertheless, these censuses indicate some general demographic
trends.
In 1921, the kingdom had just over 12 million citizens, of whom some
2 million did not belong to any of the major South Slav groups (Serbs,
Croats, Slovenes). The largest minority were the ethnic Germans with
just over 500,000 people (4.21% of the population), concentrated in the
northern part of the country (Slovenia, Slavonia, Vojvodina). This repre-
sented a slight decline from the numbers recorded on the 1910 Habsburg
census. The reasons behind this decline were the historically low birthrate
among ethnic German peasants (so family landholdings were not split
among multiple children), the departure of some German-speaking
administrators after 1918 (especially from formerly Austrian Slovenia),
and the long-term impact of Magyarization and Croatization in Slavonia
and postwar Slovenization in Slovenia (which caused some ostensible
Germans to be classified as Hungarians, Croats, or Slovenes on the
basis of language use).16
Despite a slight, continued decline of ethnic German numbers
recorded on the 1931 census to just under 500,000 people (due to
emigration and the low birthrate), the ethnic German population of the
Vojvodina remained the largest in the country, with over 350,000 people
or over two-thirds of the kingdom’s ethnic Germans.17 In the Serbian
Banat in 1931, the ethnic Germans were the largest minority at 20.57% of
the population (120,450 people), with Serbs and ethnic Croats account-
ing for 46.72%, ethnic Hungarians 16.35%, and ethnic Romanians
10.63%. The remaining 5.73% consisted of ethnic Slovaks, ethnic
Russians, ethnic Czechs, ethnic Albanians, ethnic Bulgarians, Roma, and

16
Biber, p. 11; Lyon, pp. 14–18, 21.
17
Biber, p. 19; Alfred Bohmann, Menschen und Grenzen, Vol. 2 Bevölkerung und
Nationalitäten in Südosteuropa (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1969),
p. 233.
Regardless of the two censuses’ flaws, claims – made at different points during the
1920s and 1930s by the German government and ethnic German activists in Yugoslavia –
that the Yugoslav Germans numbered as many as 600,000–700,000 were a cynical
attempt to gain diplomatic and political leverage by inflating population numbers. Biber,
pp. 17–18; Lyon, pp. 12–14.
 From Settlers to Yugoslav Germans 33

Jews.18 German-speaking Jews accounted for 2% of all German-speakers

in Yugoslavia (10,026 people, of whom 1,874 lived in the Banat).19
The Yugoslav Germans were overwhelmingly Catholic (76.7% or
nearly 385,000 people)20 – a legacy of eighteenth-century colonization
patterns. As an instrument of nationalizing the German-speaking minor-
ity, the Catholic Church had a mixed record. Among Yugoslav ethnic
groups in general, religion often served as a sign of ethnic affiliation –
Serbs were associated with the Serbian Orthodox Church, Croats and
Slovenes with Catholicism, Bosnian Muslims with Islam – yet the overlap
between nationality and religion remained imperfect, as different ethnic
nationalisms held disparate views on religion’s role in politics.21
Among the Yugoslav Germans, this issue was complicated by the fact
that, while religion could distinguish some of them from their neighbors –
in the Vojvodina more so than in Slovenia or Croatia – Yugoslav Catholics
included members of other ethnic groups. The supranational Catholic
Church in Yugoslavia had stronger ties to Croats and Slovenes than to the
German minority. Most ostensibly German priests in the Vojvodina in
the 1920s had been educated in Hungarian and the priesthood was
dominated by ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Croats.22
The German Lutherans in Yugoslavia were organized in 1930 into
their own state-sponsored church, the German Lutheran Church of the
Augsburg Confession in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Deutsche
Evangelische Kirche Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses im Königreiche
Jugoslawien). Yet the Catholic and Reformed churches both continued
to accommodate German, Hungarian, Slovak, and Croat believers.23
Thus, neither major denomination among the ethnic Germans had a
clear connection to German nationalism, although the Lutheran
Church fared better in this regard than the Catholic Church.
Few Yugoslav Germans were either extremely poor or extremely
wealthy. While many were landless peasants and smallholders who
worked their own land as well as others’ for a wage, the Yugoslav
Germans lacked both an aristocracy and an industrial working class.

18
Völkl, p. 63. 19 Biber, pp. 19, 40; Bohmann, p. 236.
20
Biber, p. 40; Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, p. 150; Lyon, p. 20.
21
Mark Biondich, “Controversies surrounding the Catholic Church in Wartime Croatia,
1941–45” in The Independent State of Croatia 1941–45, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet (London and
New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 31–59; Pedro Ramet, “Religion and Nationalism in
Yugoslavia” in Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics, ed.
Pedro Ramet (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1984), pp. 149–169,
261–264.
22
Bergen, “The Nazi Concept of ‘Volksdeutsche’,” p. 575; Hausleitner, Die
Donauschwaben, p. 173.
23
Lyon, pp. 290–307.
34 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

They tended to inhabit the most prosperous, northern parts of

Yugoslavia and were predominantly engaged in agriculture, trade,
handicrafts, and agriculture-related activities such as cattle raising, brick-
works, and food and hemp production. All this contributed to a general
social leveling effect. The Yugoslav Germans had their own economic
associations, which helped them maintain business contacts with each
other as well as producers and buyers abroad, especially in Germany.
They also founded loan, credit, and social-welfare institutions to which
ethnic Germans could contribute.24
An issue close to the heart of many ethnic Germans, which helped sour
relations between their political leaders and the Yugoslav government in
the late 1930s, was the interwar land reform. Undertaken in order to
break the residual power of the Hungarian landowning aristocracy and
reward Slav veterans of World War I, the land reform brought an
estimated 21,000 ethnic Serb smallholder families from poor areas in
Montenegro, Bosnia, East Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, and
Kosovo to the Vojvodina. Ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Germans
officially were excluded from this program, even though they made up
the largest number of landless agricultural workers and day laborers in the
Vojvodina.25
Initially, some ethnic German peasants did manage to buy land
affected by the reform. They bypassed regulations by purchasing land
not from the state, which might have refused to sell to them, but from
Serbs who benefited from the land reform, yet could not or would not
cultivate their land. This way, by 1938, ethnic Germans owned 21% of all
arable land in the Banat, some of it acquired in the interwar period.26
In the late 1930s, it became more difficult for them to purchase land, as
government concerns grew regarding German irredentism, especially in
Slovenia, which after the 1938 German annexation of Austria bordered
directly on the Third Reich.27 The perceived injustice of the land reform
became a staple complaint of the Yugoslav Germans, wedding economic
grievance with perceived ethnic discrimination.
24
Biber, pp. 23, 26–27; Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, p. 152.
25
Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, pp. 217–225; Carl Bethke, “Serbian and
Montenegran Colonists in Vojvodina (Serbia) and in Slavonia (Croatia) since the End of
World War I” in The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the 17th
Century to the Present, ed. Klaus J. Bade et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2011), p. 677.
26
Jovica Luković, “‘Es ist nicht gerecht, für eine Reform aufkommen zu müssen, die gegen
einen selbst gerichtet ist.’ Die Agrarreform und das bäuerliche Selbstverständnis der
Deutschen im jugoslawischen Banat 1918–1941 – ein Problemaufriss” in Kulturraum
Banat. Deutsche Kultur in einer europäischen Vielvölkerregion, ed. Walter Engel (Essen:
Klartext Verlag, 2007), p. 158.
27
Biber, pp. 203–206.
 From Settlers to Yugoslav Germans 35

An explicitly German national identity came into being only after the
former Habsburg German-speakers became the German minority in the
Yugoslav state. The very creation of new state borders in 1918, which
separated them from the majority of German-speakers in Europe,
fostered in the ethnic German communities of Southeast Europe a self-
image defined by supposedly eternal ethnic markers. Ambivalent criteria –
language, culture, personal qualities such as cleanliness – were projected
onto the whole group as absolute facts, which signified belonging to an
ethnic German community.28 Whereas earlier the German settlers’
diverse origins were folded into the collective term Swabians, after
World War I, the settlers’ descendants often called themselves the
Danube Swabians (Ger. Donauschwaben, Serb. Dunavske Švabe). This
term signaled that they saw themselves as a unique German-speaking
group, emphasizing both their affinity with the German nation and their
regional specificity as residents of the Danube basin.29
The interwar Yugoslav state inadvertently aided the national conso-
lidation of the German minority through its education policy. Until
nearly the eve of the German invasion in 1941, successive Yugoslav
governments encouraged German-language education in order to
bolster ethnic Germans as a bulwark against Hungarian revisionism.
The system had its flaws. The government invested the most in German-
language education in the Vojvodina, where there was less practical
possibility for German irredentism than in Slovenia. Children from
mixed marriages were sometimes assigned to classes taught in Serbo-
Croatian, as were children from municipalities with low numbers of
German-speakers (officially, 25 children were required for a separate
German-language class to be created). Even in German-language
classes, some instruction was conducted in Serbo-Croatian or by teach-
ers with an imperfect command of German. Some older ethnic Germans
continued to associate the Hungarian language with better social class
and superior culture.30
Nevertheless, Dušan Biber estimated that, by 1932, some 78% of all
ethnic German children in Yugoslavia received their primary education in
German,31 which was both impressively tolerant of the Yugoslav govern-
ment and sufficient in a largely peasant community with little use for
higher education. Thus, most young ethnic Germans were raised in an
educational environment that stressed their ethnic belonging.

28 29
Röder, passim. Sundhaussen in Bade et al., pp. 168–169.
30
Biber, pp. 38–39; Zoran Janjetović, Nemci u Vojvodini (Belgrade: INIS, 2009), pp.
181–184.
31
Biber, p. 39. See also Stefan Kraft to Predsedništvo Ministarskog saveta, September 12,
1929, AJ, fund 38, folder 93, unit 225, pp. 1–9 of this document.
36 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

The official motto of the Yugoslav German minority in the interwar

period was that of their political party, the Partei der Deutschen in
Jugoslawien (Party of the Germans in Yugoslavia), founded in 1922:
staatstreu und volkstreu, loyal to the state and to the Volk,
a demonstration of the minority’s dual allegiance. The party won enough
votes to send a few representatives to parliament throughout the 1920s
and even joined the government bloc in 1923 – a sign of ethnic German
leaders’ eagerness to cooperate with their host state. After all political
parties were banned by King Aleksandar Karađorđević’s royal dictator-
ship in 1929, the role of mouthpiece of the ethnic German community in
Yugoslavia devolved to the Schwäbisch-Deutscher Kulturbund
(Swabian-German Cultural Association).32
Founded in Novi Sad (Bačka) in 1920 as an ostensibly nonpolitical
organization for cultural and educational activities, the Kulturbund,
nevertheless, involved itself in politics. The government banned it in
1924–1927, for allegedly oppressing non-Germans in Slovenia, and
again after the royal dictatorship in 1929, only to allow it to be reconsti-
tuted in 1930. King Aleksandar hoped the Kulturbund would aid the
government in improving relations with Germany as well as repelling the
challenges posed by Hungarian revisionism, the expansionist policies of
fascist Italy, and the anti-Yugoslav Ustašas.33
Despite this explicitly political role, the Kulturbund was supposed to
remain an apolitical institution, while serving ethnic German cultural
interests and the diplomatic interests of its host state. This thorny position
alone did not precipitate the Kulturbund’s transformation into a vehicle
of Nazification and German nationality politics among the Yugoslav
Germans, but it certainly made Kulturbund leaders’ claim to an apolitical
stance disingenuous at best.
The Yugoslav Germans who founded the Kulturbund and the Partei
der Deutschen had been nationalist activists in the late Habsburg period,
who wanted the German minority to achieve a position of social and
political influence, while fitting into its multiethnic host state – first
Austria-Hungary, then Yugoslavia. They recognized Yugoslavia’s legiti-
macy and the German minority’s place in it as clear-cut issues, and
repudiated any hint of Habsburg revisionism, even as they cherished
a certain Habsburg nostalgia and emphasized cultural and linguistic ties
to Germany. They appealed to the ethnic Germans’ localism, their ideal-
ized historical memory of colonization and becoming a civilizing influ-
ence in a supposedly savage land, and tried to blend this romantic model
of Germanness with a sense of spiritual belonging to the greater German

32 33
Biber, pp. 32–33, 35–36. Biber, pp. 32–35.
 From Settlers to Yugoslav Germans 37

Volk – a delicate attempt to talk about the German nation without talking
about German nationalism in ways which could sound treasonous to
Yugoslav ears.34
After the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933, this nationalist old
guard faced the challenge posed by a younger generation of ethnic
Germans. Their formative experiences included World War I, the transi-
tion from life under the Habsburgs to life in Yugoslavia, and time spent as
exchange students at German and Austrian universities, where they came
into contact with various nationalist, völkisch, and National Socialist
youth and student organizations. In addition to bringing Nazi ideology
back to Yugoslavia, these younger activists realized that their host state
allowed them limited employment opportunities, working within and for
their ethnic community, only rarely employment in the state bureaucracy.
This exacerbated competition for employment and mutual acrimony with
the older generation of community leaders and office holders.35
Calling themselves the Erneurer (Renewers), the younger activists were
inspired by similar stirrings in the ethnic German community in neigh-
boring Romania in the early 1930s.36 However, in Romania social
democracy among ethnic Germans had been thriving since before
World War I and proved capable of challenging the local Nazis’ claim
that they spoke for the whole Romanian German community.
By contrast, the ethnic Germans in the Vojvodina lacked a working-
class culture and its associated ideologies.37
Moreover, even though the Partei der Deutschen cooperated with the
Yugoslav government whenever possible, ethnic Germans were an uneasy
fit for the paradigm of a Yugoslav (South Slav) nation. While the Erneurer
in the 1930s failed to attract mass support from the community, they at
least offered a coherent worldview and a sense of youthful vigor as
a counterpoint to the Kulturbund’s aging leadership and its commitment
to Yugoslavia.
The Erneurer’s ideology caused friction with the Catholic Church in
Yugoslavia. The Church accused them of placing nationality above

34
Lyon, pp. 4–5, 7–8, 248–258, 261–278.
35
Biber, pp. 43–50; Lyon, pp. 310–378, 554–557.
36
The Yugoslav and Romanian ethnic Germans were not the only ones to experience this
crisis of leadership – similar upheavals occurred in other minorities influenced by Nazi
successes, the shock of the Great Depression, and new expectations of what the state
should provide in exchange for minority loyalty. See Franz Sz. Horváth, “Minorities into
Majorities: Sudeten German and Transylvanian Hungarian Political Elites as Actors of
Revisionism before and during the Second World War” in Territorial Revisionism and the
Allies of Germany in the Second World War, ed. Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff, and
Dieter Langewiesche (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), pp. 30–55.
37
Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, pp. 11, 80–92, 152–173.
38 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

religion, while the Erneurer vacillated between cajoling the predominantly

Catholic Yugoslav Germans and attacking the Church as un-German,
Magyarized, or nationally ambivalent. The Church’s supranational char-
acter, its association with nostalgia for the Habsburg period among some
older Yugoslav Germans, and the Kulturbund’s insistence on keeping
religion a private matter undermined attempts by some younger priests
and Catholic journals in Yugoslavia to offer an alternative to the
Erneurer. Following the Nazi propaganda coup related to the annexation
of neighboring Austria, the disunited Catholic resistance against the
Erneurer dissipated.38
Relations between the Erneurer and the German Lutheran Church in
Yugoslavia were considerably smoother, as the latter had cultivated
a benevolent attitude to German nationalism since the 1920s.39
Nevertheless, the Erneurer had to work hard to win even partial support
from their co-nationals. They proved adept at riling up their elders and
the Yugoslav government alike with public displays of Nazi sympathies.
Throughout the 1930s, the Kulturbund labored under the Yugoslav
government’s failure to appreciate differences of opinion in the ethnic
German community and the government’s tendency to conflate the old,
nationalist Kulturbund leadership with their younger, National Socialist
challengers. Thus, when Nazi graffiti appeared in the town of Kula in the
Bačka in summer 1933, the municipal authorities blamed ethnic German
students home for the summer holidays. They also blamed the
Kulturbund for sponsoring the youths’ studies in Germany, allegedly
for the purpose of spreading Nazi propaganda in Yugoslavia.40
Kulturbund leaders kept deflecting accusations, caused by Erneurer
agitation, of Nazi sympathies in their ranks. The Kulturbund also had to
contend with the atmosphere of heightened tension and suspicion after
King Aleksandar Karađorđević was assassinated by a conspiracy between
Macedonian nationalists and the Ustašas while on a state visit to France
in 1934. By mid-1938, the Yugoslav government veered erratically
between treating the Kulturbund-Erneurer conflict as an internal minor-
ity issue of little interest to the general public and growing suspicion that
Yugoslav Germans might become an irredentist “fifth column” like their

38
Branko Bešlin, Vesnik tragedije: Nemačka štampa u Vojvodini 1933–1941. godine (Novi Sad
and Sremski Karlovci: Platoneum and Izdavačka knjižarnica Zorana Stojanovića, 2001),
pp. 149–158; Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, pp. 507–511, 622–623;
Janjetović, Nemci u Vojvodini, pp. 240, 250, 261–262, 265–267; Lyon, pp. 450–515.
39
Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, pp. 516–522; Janjetović, Nemci u Vojvodini,
pp. 254–255, 267–276; Lyon, pp. 515–530.
40
Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova, Odeljenje za državnu zaštitu to Ministarstvo prosvete,
June 17, 1933, AJ, fund 14, folder 27, unit 71, p. 11.
 From Settlers to Yugoslav Germans 39

co-nationals in the Sudetenland, South Tyrol, and recently annexed

Austria.41
For its part, Adolf Hitler’s government played the long game.
It reassured the Yugoslav government throughout the late 1930s that it
had no objections to Yugoslavia’s minority policy, that its primary inter-
ests in Yugoslavia were economic and diplomatic. Hitler claimed he
desired only general pro-German stability in Southeast Europe. At the
same time, the Nazi regime maintained an uneasy balance between racial
ideology and diplomatic expedience in allowing ethnic German policy to
be determined by a veritable “jungle” of government offices as late as
1937. At that relatively late date, the VoMi, led by Heinrich Himmler’s
protégé Werner Lorenz, came to the fore, paralleling the SS’s monopo-
lization of racial policy within the Nazi state.42
In fall 1938, the German government finally adopted uniform policy
guidelines vis-à-vis ethnic Germans, which amounted to a request for
ethnic German communities to become Nazified and advance the Third
Reich’s interest in their host states. The Third Reich expected ethnic
Germans to satisfy its ideological desires as well as its need for allies, while
avoiding any offense to their host states through their adoption of Nazi
trappings. Nazi offices maintained contact with the Erneurer as well as the
Kulturbund and may have even funneled funds to the Yugoslav Germans.
The SS and the VoMi encouraged the Nazification of ethnic Germans,
while the German Foreign Ministry prioritized harmonious diplomatic
relations with German minorities’ host states.43 The jurisdictional
conflict between Heinrich Himmler and Foreign Minister Joachim von
Ribbentrop resulted in the Yugoslav Germans being sent mixed messages
throughout the 1930s.
The annexation of Austria and the Munich Agreement in 1938 stoked
Erneurer agitation as well as the Yugoslav government’s suspicion of any
overtly political behavior by its ethnic German citizens. The Third Reich
continued to fan the flames, albeit discreetly, so as not to damage diplo-
matic and economic relations with Yugoslavia. While tensions in
Yugoslavia never ran as high as they did in pre-Munich Czechoslovakia,

41
Biber, pp. 53–56, 58–59, 79–89; Joca M. Georgijević to Milan Stojadinović, undated
1938 memo, AJ, fund 37, folder 54, unit 351, pp. 412–413; “Die deutschen Stadträte
berichten,” Wrschatzer Gebirgsbote, May 18, 1938, p. 2, AJ, fund 37, folder 54, unit 351,
p. 418.
42
Adolf Hitler memo, July 2, 1938, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2415, fr. E221,562;
Norbert Spannenberger, “The Ethnic Policy of the Third Reich toward the Volksdeutsche
in Central and Eastern Europe” in Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in
the Second World War, ed. Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff, and Dieter Langewiesche
(New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), pp. 56–58.
43
Biber, pp. 59–65, 89–91, 179–184.
40 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

in August 1939, the Erneurer became sufficiently influential to secure the

election of one of their own as Kulturbund chief and Volksgruppenführer –
both institutional president and leader of an ostensibly Nazified ethnic
German community.
The newly minted Volksgruppenführer was Josef “Sepp” Janko from
the Banat village of Ernsthausen. Born in 1905 and employed as a jurist in
Grossbetschkerek, before his election as official leader of the Yugoslav
Germans, he had enjoyed no public prominence or great professional
success, beyond a period of legal study as an exchange student in Graz.
Despite his reputation as a moderate Erneurer, Janko represented the
younger cohort of ambitious ethnic Germans, who were thoroughly
Nazified and enjoyed the support of the VoMi, which had orchestrated
Janko’s election.44
Clean-shaven and unassumingly handsome, Janko may have appeared
to VoMi string-pullers as a gray eminence they could easily control.
However, Janko proved to be an energetic, even willful administrator
and ideologue, whose zeal sometimes exercised his Nazi superiors’
patience in terms of the degree of involvement they expected from
a collaborator. His major goals were the transformation of the
Yugoslav – later the Banat – Germans into an outpost of the Third
Reich with administrative autonomy and legal protection in their area of
residence and full Nazification of the community. While pursuing these
goals, Janko demonstrated the paradox of being the leader of an ethnic
German community in the Nazi period: he may have presented himself to
his co-nationals and other local ethnicities as Adolf Hitler’s stand-in, but
Janko was most effective as an executor of orders passed down from
Hitler’s government. His every success was dependent on the Third
Reich’s approval, imposing limits on his political agency.
In the period between the leadership change in August 1939 and the
Tripartite Pact’s attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Erneurer-led
Kulturbund adopted the trappings of a National Socialist organization
while continuing to struggle with the issue of host-state loyalty and the
need to bind the entire Yugoslav German community to its vision of
Germanness. The new Yugoslav German leaders moved from seeing
their co-nationals as a passive minority (Minderheit) on the receiving
end of host-state policies to seeing them as members of an assertive,
confident, unified, racially defined national community (Volksgruppe)
with a right to claim its place in the greater community of all Germans.45
The adoption of the title Volksgruppenführer barely papered over the
fact that the Yugoslav Germans showed varying degrees of national and

44 45
Biber, pp. 167–184, 194–199, 208–210; Lyon, pp. 535–537. Lyon, pp. 554–557.
 From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty 41

political commitment to the Nazi model of German nationhood. Many

Yugoslav Germans did not care for the intricacies of Nazi ideology
beyond being overawed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s economic
and diplomatic triumphs. As was the case with the ethnic Germans in
interwar Poland, a unified ethnic German community remained a fond
dream rather than reality.46
Nevertheless, the Vojvodina Germans’ ethnic identity did strengthen in
the interwar period, under the dual impact of Yugoslav minority policy
and Nazi influence.47 Their nationalization and their Nazification were
intertwined and influenced each other. Starting in 1939, the Erneurer’s
influence made it necessary for any ethnic German to adopt nationalist
and Nazi tropes in order to be heard in a public arena. Nevertheless,
without the experience of invasion, the attendant partitioning of
Yugoslavia, and the occupation of parts of it by the Third Reich, it is
questionable how Nazified any geographic segment of the Yugoslav
German minority would have become.

From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty

Following Sepp Janko’s election as Kulturbund leader in August 1939, in
the increasingly polarized atmosphere between the outbreak of World
War II a few weeks later and the Tripartite Pact’s invasion of Yugoslavia
in April 1941, the twofold loyalties of the Yugoslav German minority
became more and more difficult to maintain. Janko initially insisted on
the pretense of continuity. His inaugural speech promised order, positive
development, and enduring trust between the Yugoslav state and its
German minority.48 Despite Janko’s effort to demonstrate continuity,
he represented a clear Nazi-oriented current within the Kulturbund. He
and his cohort were in the position to speak for the whole Yugoslav
German community at precisely the time when the Third Reich became
not only the dominant economic power but also the dominant military
power on the European continent.
In spring 1940, Janko compared the Yugoslav Germans to a “bridge
between two cultures.”49 The bridge metaphor should have conveyed
positive rapprochement, when really it suggested ethnic German

46
Chu, pp. 4–6.
47
Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, pp. 23–27, 622–624.
48
Sepp Janko’s August 8, 1939, speech quoted in Rolf Hillebrand, “Element der Ordnung
und des Aufbaus,” Deutsche Arbeit, Vol. 11 (November 1940), p. 378.
49
“20 Jahre Kulturbund,” speech given in Novi Sad in spring 1940, in Sepp Janko, Reden
und Aufsätze (Betschkerek: Buchreihe der Deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und in
Serbien, 1944), p. 41.
42 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

alienation. Neither as German as citizens of the Third Reich, nor fitting

the South Slav model of their host state, which viewed them with growing
hostility, the Yugoslav Germans could claim neither country as their own.
The German conquests of Poland and France and ever closer economic
and diplomatic relations between Yugoslavia and the Third Reich further
tilted the balance.
Also in spring 1940, Janko wrote the following equivocal statement of
his political goals as leader of the Yugoslav Germans:
[J]ust as no one will ever succeed in driving us from this home turf
[Heimatscholle], over which we have labored, or swaying us in our sense of duty
vis-à-vis the state, so no one will ever restrict our natural right, to which every Volk
is entitled: the right to perfect ourselves spiritually, to profess the German world-
view, and to produce a culture of eternal value.50
Despite the disclaimer about state loyalty, the weight of this statement
rested squarely on Janko’s desire to regiment the German minority along
National Socialist lines. While the Kingdom of Yugoslavia endured, Janko
lacked the means to integrate all ethnic Germans into the Kulturbund.
Catholicism remained a reason for some to avoid joining. The Erneurer
extended Kulturbund membership of male heads of households to their
entire families and used membership fees to tie members to the organiza-
tion, formally unifying and partly assimilating the whole minority into the
Erneurer view of Germanness.51 Yet when individuals were signed up
without their approval, they could refuse to pay membership dues and be
struck off, though they had to resist verbal pressure to stay.52
Undeterred, Sepp Janko and his fellow Erneurer overflowed with ideas
for how they might consolidate and improve their community. Their zeal
was underpinned by their Nazi conviction, even though their agency and
willingness to exercise it sometimes caused tensions between them and
the Third Reich as well as complicating their relations with the Yugoslav
government.
Germany’s efforts at alliance building in the 1930s continued after the
outbreak of war, as the German Foreign Ministry continued to make
overtures toward potential allies. In 1939–1940, Hitler’s government
consistently failed to live up to Yugoslav German leaders’ expectations

50
“Die Aufgaben des Deutschtums im Südosten,” published in Grenzbote (Bratislava),
March 24, 1940, in Janko, Reden, p. 35.
51
Biber, pp. 75–79; Lyon, pp. 548–551, 561–568, 574–575.
52
Testimony of Marija Šibul in Dunavske Švabice, ed. Nadežda Ćetković and
Dobrila Sinđelić-Ibrajter (Belgrade and Kikinda, 2000), p. 101; testimony of
Marija Pfajfer in Dunavske Švabice II, ed. Nadežda Radović, Dobrila Sinđelić-Ibrajter,
and Vesna Weiss (Sremski Karlovci: LDIJ – Veternik, 2001), pp. 84, 101; deposition of
Josif Solman from Pantschowa, December 13, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 670, p. 16.
 From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty 43

that it would serve as their unequivocal champion and protector. Because

Berlin saw the Yugoslav Germans as a means to pressure the Yugoslav
government into closer cooperation, it discouraged any and all ethnic
German initiatives that upset the status quo.
Adolf Hitler’s October 6, 1939, speech announcing resettlement as the
future of all ethnic Germans caused an uproar among the Germans in
North Yugoslavia. As a predominantly peasant population in a prosper-
ous region of relative political stability, most did not view resettlement as
the salvation it may have been to Latvian or Bessarabian ethnic Germans,
whose lives were marked by grinding poverty or Soviet oppression.53
The German Foreign Ministry swiftly announced that the resettlement
of Yugoslav Germans was not imminent, nor was speculation about it
desirable.54 The Reich would have preferred if ethnic Germans were
“seen, not heard”; obeyed orders; and avoided spreading rumors and
taking independent action.
Nazi ambivalence toward ethnic Germans ran up against the twofold
loyalties of the Yugoslav Germans again in fall 1940, when ethnic
Germans from Soviet Bessarabia were resettled to Germany by riverboats
sailing up the Danube through Romania and Yugoslavia. As a gesture of
good will to the Third Reich, Yugoslav Minister President Dragiša
Cvetković agreed that the Bessarabian Germans could rest in transit
camps erected near Prahovo, a village on the Danube in East Serbia,
and at Zemun, a municipality across the River Sava from Belgrade, where
the Sava flows into the Danube.
The erection of the camps started in August 1940. By the time the
resettlement ended and the camps were torn down in November, an
estimated 100,000 people had passed through them. The Yugoslav
government granted the camps special territorial status, so they were
not considered Yugoslav territory but flew the flags of the Third Reich,
the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the Kulturbund. The hierarchy of tasks

53
Ernst Woermann memo, October 7, 1939, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file
Belgrad 63/3, no page number.
There were some exceptions. Branimir Altgayer, Kulturbund official in interwar
Croatia and future Volksgruppenführer in the Independent State of Croatia, had to
caution the ethnic Germans in Slavonia not to sell their land as though resettlement
were imminent. Resettlement may have seemed an acceptable prospect to the relatively
poorer Slavonia Germans, less so to the well-off Vojvodina German peasants. Altgayer
memo, October 18, 1939, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 63/3, no
page number; Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, pp. 599–600, 623.
54
Woermann memo (1939) accompanying document, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft
Belgrad, file Belgrad 63/3, p. 3 of this document; Ernst von Weizsäcker to German
Embassy in Belgrade, October 28, 1939, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file
Belgrad 63/3, no page number; “Meldungen aus dem Reich,” December 13, 1939, BA
Berlin, R 58, file 146, fiche 1, fr. 32.
44 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

and nations was plain to see – the top positions in the camps were filled by
VoMi personnel from Germany, while Serbian gendarmes patrolled the
camps’ outer perimeter.55
Construction, supply work, and various practical tasks – repairs, cook-
ing, help during transport ships’ arrival and departure, organizing
luggage – were performed mostly by Yugoslav German volunteers
mustered by the Kulturbund. An estimated 10,000 or more volunteers
participated during the three-month resettlement, with quick turnover
intended to expose as many young Yugoslav Germans as possible to the
company of other Germans.56
The volunteers’ primary motivation seems to have been youthful
enthusiasm, affection for an idealized Germany about which they wished
to learn more, and the opportunity to meet Germans from the Reich as
well as other ethnic Germans. Some shared Sepp Janko’s affinity for Nazi
ideology and wanted to contribute to the forging of a Nazi Volksgemein-
schaft. Whatever their motives, the volunteers worked hard to please their
VoMi supervisors and make the journey as easy as possible for the
Bessarabian Germans. The Reich Germans in charge remained unim-
pressed by the ethnic Germans’ organizational skills but were gracious
enough to ascribe it to the absence of the Nazi Party’s marshalling
influence in Yugoslavia and applauded the volunteers’ dedication.57
For many Yugoslav Germans, volunteering in the transit camps was
their first contact with Germans from other places and must have repre-
sented a rude awakening. VoMi personnel tended to rub everyone the
wrong way. Despite explicit instructions to protect the Third Reich’s
good name abroad through exemplary behavior, not to provoke political
arguments, and to refrain from displaying Nazi insignia, German super-
visors in the Prahovo and Zemun camps routinely wore uniforms both
inside the camps and during drunken excursions; treated Serbian officials
with excessive and peremptory roughness; and encouraged the singing of
Nazi songs and the use of the Hitler salute in the camps.58

55
Viktor von Heeren to AA, October 5, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 313, fr.
238,612; unsigned memo, November 9, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 648, no
frame number; testimony of Egon Hellermann from Ruma (Serbia proper), June 29,
1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 151, pp. 2–3.
56
Gradmann memo, August 28, 1940, BA Berlin, R 69, file 1099, fiche 1, fr. 37; Hans
Reiter, “Abschlussbericht über die Umsiedlung der Bessarabien-Deutschen,”
November 23, 1940, BA Berlin, R 59, file 375, fiche 1, fr. 12.
57
Reiter report (1940), BA Berlin, R 59, file 375, fiche 1, frs. 11–12.
58
“Merkblatt für die in Jugoslawien und Rumänien eingesetzten Angehörigen der EWZ,”
August 27, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 264, frs. 2,381,968–969; agent 6625
(German agent in Yugoslavia), “Auftreten der Mitglieder der Umsiedlungskommission,”
September 18, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 647, no frame number; Reiter report
(1940), BA Berlin, R 59, file 375, fiche 1, frs. 16–17.
 From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty 45

Such behavior did nothing to allay the suspicions of the Serbian

gendarmes on security detail. Some shared the fears of the very Serbian
nationalists from whom they were meant to protect the transit camps –
that the camps were the first step on the road that would end with
Yugoslavia meeting the fate of Czechoslovakia in 1938–1939 and
Poland in 1939.59
VoMi personnel hardly improved its reputation by referring contemp-
tuously to the Bessarabian Germans as “fur-cap wearers
[Pelzkappenleute],”60 to indicate their close resemblance to Russians.
The Reich Germans also refused to engage in manual labor and share
the rough living conditions in the camps and were often drunk and
disorderly.61 They failed to exhibit empathy for or interest in ethnic
German problems or even recognize the unique challenges facing the
ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia. Instead, they appeared to the ethnic
Germans as “little Adolf Hitlers” in uniform, in the words of a Nazi
transportation official sympathetic to the ethnic German perspective.62
The ham-fisted arrogance of the Reich personnel was not just hurtful –
it was potentially destructive to the ethnic Germans’ fond dream of the
Third Reich’s infallibility.63 Yet the Reich as an idealized German father-
land of superior culture, race, and lifestyle remained alive and well in the
Yugoslav Germans’ hearts and minds long after the conclusion of the
Bessarabian resettlement. Ethnic Germans cherry-picked which experi-
ences to remember, until only those memories that supported
a preexisting framework of thought remained. So they retained a high
opinion of their own importance as part of the greater German nation,
unsullied by the sorry spectacle of German resettlement personnel
whiling away the time at their posts with alcohol and superior attitudes.
Issues of perception and the Reich’s image abroad aside, the Third
Reich saw the Bessarabian resettlement also as the means to attract and
enlist young Yugoslav Germans willing to fight for it, so long as this did
not openly infringe upon Yugoslav sovereignty. Waffen-SS chief of staff
Gottlob Berger suggested to Heinrich Himmler in August 1940 that
clandestine recruitment already taking place among the Romanian
Germans be extended to Hungary and Yugoslavia. Acting independently
and probably in ignorance of these larger plans, Sepp Janko proposed
59
Hellermann testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 151, p. 4.
60
Hellermann testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 151, p. 2.
61
Agent 6625, “Auftreten der Mitglieder der Umsiedlungskommission” (1940), NARA,
RG 242, T-175, roll 647, no frame number; agent 6625, “Verhalten von
Reichsdeutschen in Jugoslavien,” January 10, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 648,
no frame number.
62
Reiter report (1940), BA Berlin, R 59, file 375, fiche 1, fr. 16.
63
Hellermann testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 151, p. 7.
46 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

in September 1940 the formation of Waffen-SS units in Yugoslavia and

received enthusiastic approval from the SS, provided the recruits could be
smuggled out of the country for training, without arousing Yugoslav
suspicions.64
Under cover of medical examinations and physical-exercise routines,
ethnic German volunteers in the Prahovo and Zemun camps received
basic military training and were selected on the basis of general health and
racial suitability. Some 300 Yugoslav German recruits were then
smuggled out of the country, mixed with the Bessarabian Germans –
this became standard Waffen-SS practice for recruiting young
resettlers.65 Some joined extant Waffen-SS units in various theaters of
war, while others returned to Yugoslavia to aid in the secret recruitment,
which continued after the cover provided by the Bessarabian resettlement
was gone.
Volunteering for the Waffen-SS exhibited beyond the shadow of
a doubt the extent to which these young men had tipped the scales away
from their loyalty to Yugoslavia, choosing instead loyalty to their national
affiliation and to Nazi Germany as both the German nation-state and an
ideology. This was especially true of those men who had been reserve
officers in the Yugoslav army, who joined the SS already in early 1940 and
returned to Yugoslavia during the Bessarabian resettlement to aid in the
new recruits’ clandestine transportation out of the country.66
Although the Nazi government discouraged ethnic Germans from
openly challenging Yugoslav sovereignty, miscommunication and juris-
dictional conflict conspired to produce some such initiatives. In
December 1940, barely a month after the successful conclusion of the
Bessarabian resettlement and its attendant recruitment drive, Heinrich
Himmler ordered another secret recruitment for the Waffen-SS in
Southeast Europe, which should have yielded 200 recruits from
Yugoslavia, 500 from Hungary, and 500 from Romania. Gustav

64
Gottlob Berger to Heinrich Himmler, September 16, 1940, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2358,
fiche 1, fr. 2; RFSS Persönlicher Stab to Berger, September 17, 1940, BA Berlin, NS 19,
file 2358, fiche 1, fr. 1; George H. Stein, The Waffen-SS: Hitler’s Elite Guard at War
1939–1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), p. 169.
65
Berger to Himmler, September 10, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 127, fr.
2,652,328; Heeren to AA, September 13, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 197, fr.
152,314; unsigned memo on the Zemun camp, November 9, 1940, NARA, RG 242,
T-175, roll 648, no frame numbers, pp. 1–2 of this document; Berger to Himmler,
November 20, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 128, fr. 2,654,228; Hellermann
testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 151, p. 8; Lumans, Himmler’s
Auxiliaries, pp. 213–214; Stiller in Szejnmann and Umbach, p. 238.
66
Berger to Himmler (1940), BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2358, fiche 1, fr. 2; Berger to Himmler
(1940), NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 128, fr. 2,654,228; Rimann to Janko, November 30,
1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 197, fr. 152,424.
 From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty 47

Halwax, a Yugoslav German, ardent Erneurer, and Waffen-SS veteran of

the 1940 campaign in West Europe, coordinated the recruitment with
Sepp Janko. The recruitment was to take place under the cover of forming
a German sports club in Yugoslavia, with the help of an SS doctor passing
himself off as a sports physician. However, Joachim von Ribbentrop
refused to have anything to do with recruitment in Hungary and
Yugoslavia, suggesting instead the recruitment of 1,000 ethnic Germans
from Romania as less politically incendiary.67
Quite apart from the fact that Himmler had acted in contravention of
the Foreign Ministry’s continued attempts to draw Yugoslavia into the
Tripartite Pact, these events inspired some ethnic Germans to consider
Yugoslavia a provisional state they inhabited only until something better
suited came along. The very inconsistency of Reich policy toward ethnic
Germans and of Yugoslav minority policy created a space in which Janko
and his closest coworkers could conceive of themselves as Berlin’s equal
partners in the Balkans, and at least some Yugoslav Germans could
choose between their state and Volk loyalties in ways that fed the rumors
about German sedition in Yugoslavia.
By the end of 1940, the Kulturbund associated the free expression of
Nazi ideology with ethnic German parity with other Yugoslav peoples.
The Deutsches Volksblatt, the main German-language daily in Yugoslavia,
openly proclaimed in its last edition for 1940: “Every Volk [in the
Balkans] must finally be allowed those rights which are its due on the
basis of its numbers and importance. We demand the right to create
a Volksgemeinschaft for ourselves in accordance with the German
Volk’s views. Therefore there is only one direction we can take: that of
National Socialism.”68
During the Bessarabian resettlement, stories percolated about military
training and Nazification efforts in the resettlement camps, campsites
turned temporarily into alien land, and Germans parading around the
Serbian countryside in SS uniforms. German influence over Yugoslav
domestic policy, the presence of uniformed Nazi personnel in Yugoslavia,
and the mass participation of Yugoslav ethnic Germans in the resettle-
ment caused heightened distrust of the whole ethnic German community.
After displays of German efficiency as well as German arrogance during
the resettlement of Bessarabian Germans, their Yugoslav counterparts’
claims that they were loyal to both their host state and their German Volk

67
Rimann to AA, January 24, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, frs. H297,797–798;
Berger memo, no date, likely early February 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 3517, fiche 5,
frs. 227–228.
68
“Grosskundgebung der Deutschen in Vršac,” Deutsches Volksblatt [henceforth DV],
December 31, 1940, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 28873, no page number.
48 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

rang hollow, at precisely the time when the Yugoslav government clung
ever more tenuously to its formal neutrality – so much so that it made
nominal efforts to appease its German minority, seeing in it a potential
cat’s paw of the Nazi regime.
Allowing those ethnic Germans who could afford it to send their
children to private German-language schools and giving leading ethnic
Germans medals in recognition of unspecified services to the Yugoslav
state protected the status quo better than addressing the Kulturbund’s
demands for ethnic German political autonomy, self-administration, or
legislation guaranteeing ethnic Germans full equality with Slavs in the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia would have done.69 The government allowed
several private German lyceums and a private teacher-training college in
Novi Vrbas (today part of Vrbas, Bačka) – the latter founded already in
1931 – to open in time for the 1940–1941 school year. The Kulturbund
exhorted German-speaking parents to take their children out of state
schools and send them to the more expensive private schools.70
Separate schools hampered rather than helped their students’ integration
into the social mainstream and caused students to flirt openly and provo-
catively with National Socialism.
Given the geographic spread of Yugoslav ethnic Germans across
Slovenia, Slavonia, and the Vojvodina, with smaller numbers in Serbia
proper, Bosnia, and Macedonia, and the fact that in a largely farming
population education above the elementary level was not a priority, prob-
ably not even half of Yugoslav German youth attended one of these
German lyceums. Nevertheless, in a multinational state struggling to bal-
ance various ethnic groups’ demands, the very existence of private German
schools signified the government granting the ethnic Germans special
status and riled up nationalist and pro-Yugoslav sentiment accordingly.
While it continued to labor at convincing all its co-nationals to adopt
Nazi ideology, the Kulturbund and its adherents made a convincing show
of full Nazification in public spaces. Thus, when upperclassmen at the
Novi Vrbas lyceum donned tall boots and leather coats like those worn by
Luftwaffe (German Air Force) pilots, aped the goose step, started classes

69
“Ordensüberreichung an den Volksgruppenführer Dr. Janko und seine Mitarbeiter,”
DV, November 20, 1940, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 28873, no page number;
“Odlikovanje vođstva ‘Kulturbunda’ u Novom Sadu,” Jutarnji list (Zagreb),
November 30, 1940, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 28873, no page number.
70
“Volksdeutsche Schulwesen,” no date, NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 350, fr. 5,078,927;
“Deutsches Gymnasium in Novi Vrbas,” DV, June 15, 1940, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file
28872, no page number; “Verordnung über die Errichtung eines Privaten Deutschen
Vollrealgymnasiums in Neu Werbass,” August 23, 1940, in Rasimus, pp. 638–639;
“Verordnung über die Private Deutsche Lehrerbildungsanstalt mit Öffentlichkeitsrecht
in Neu Werbass,” August 23, 1940, in Rasimus, p. 640.
 From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty 49

with the Hitler salute, attended pro-Nazi after-class lectures conducted

by their teachers, and acted disrespectfully to their Slav teachers and
Yugoslav state insignia, observers saw such behavior as more than mere
misguided youthful enthusiasm. This behavior seemed symptomatic of
all Yugoslav Germans’ aggressive rejection of Yugoslavia in favor of
a foreign state and ideology. Sometimes the offending students became
easy targets for popular frustration incurred by German diplomatic
pressure on Yugoslavia.71
Instead of organized government persecution of ethnic Germans,
ethnic, popular, and private tensions occasionally boiled over into physi-
cal violence in fall 1940. In addition to the beating of schoolboys, fights
occurred between Serbian and German amateur soccer teams. Some
ethnic German civilians were attacked by Yugoslav gendarmes and
soldiers. There were even a few cases of outright murder. In November
1940, the official in charge of propaganda in the Kulturbund’s
Grossbetschkerek chapter was shot dead in the street by a Serbian
gendarme, with whom the victim had quarreled in the past.72 While the
use of Nazi symbols or the German language could provoke Serbian
nationalists, this was hardly grounds for murder. The Grossbetschkerek
incident seems to have been more in the nature of a personal quarrel
exacerbated by nationalism than an example of uncontrollable ethnic
tensions akin to a powder keg waiting to blow.
Both sides could have done more to prevent violent clashes. If the
Kulturbund encouraged its co-nationals to equate their Germanness
with National Socialism, the Yugoslav state failed to keep its representa-
tives of law and order in line or encourage tolerance in its Slavic popula-
tion. In late 1940, the Yugoslav Interior Ministry still described the
Yugoslav Germans’ attitude as one of continued “civic obedience and
proper dutifulness vis-à-vis the laws of the land,” emphasizing that most
ethnic Germans balanced their sympathies for Hitler and the Third Reich
with loyalty to the Yugoslav state and remained divided in their attitudes
to the Nazified Kulturbund leadership.73 Nevertheless, German

71
“Der deutsche Gruss an den privaten deutschen Schulen amtlich eingeführt,” DV,
December 10, 1940, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 28873, no page number; “Prügeleien in
Vrbas,” DV, December 17, 1940, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 28909, p. 30; unsigned report
for the Yugoslav Education Ministry’s “Dosije nemačke manjine,” 1941, NARA, RG
242, T-120 Yugoslav Archive, roll 833, no frame number.
72
Agent 6625, “Ermordung des Volksdeutschen Deringer,” November 18, 1940, NARA,
RG 242, T-175, roll 648, no frame numbers, pp. 1–2 of this document; Heeren to AA,
November 18, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 197, fr. 152,358; “Meldungen aus
dem Reich,” December 9, 1940, BA Berlin, R 58, file 156, fiche 3, frs. 252–253.
73
“Nemačka manjina u 1940 godini,” no date, NARA, RG 242, T-120 Yugoslav Archive,
roll 833, no frame numbers, p. 1 of this document.
50 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

successes in the ongoing war encouraged the Yugoslav government to

abandon its implicit trust in its ethnic Germans as a counterweight to
Hungarian irredentism.
Official suspicions found expression in routine accusations leveled
against prominent ethnic Germans – merchants, businessmen, peasants
rich enough to attempt large land purchases – of being German spies,
receiving money from Germany for unspecified subversive activities,
organizing ethnic German youth for military action, using their radios
to listen to foreign stations or even communicate with foreign intelligence
services, etc.74 A firm policy to address these accusations failed to materi-
alize, which fed the atmosphere of distrust between Germans and Slavs.
Worse, at least some rumors were well founded. Most likely in November
1940, the Kulturbund received a radio transmitter code-named “Nora,”
through which Sepp Janko and his colleagues communicated directly
with German military intelligence.75
The lack of a clear Yugoslav policy regarding suspected subversive
activity can be laid at the door of a weak central government in the
impossible position of trying to both appease Nazi demands and remain
beyond the grasp of Hitler’s ambition. Minister President Cvetković’s
primary task as head of government was to preserve Yugoslav neutrality in
the face of growing German insistence that Yugoslavia choose a side in the
European conflict. Just as the German government sent the ethnic
Germans mixed signals, while it sought to use them as a way of pressuring
Yugoslavia into joining the Tripartite Pact, so the Yugoslav government
assumed an ambivalent, even confused attitude toward its German mi-
nority, using it as a convenient means to rebuff Berlin’s demands yet
remain on cordial terms with Nazi Germany.
In fall 1940, Cvetković routinely promised not to curb the Nazification
of the ethnic German community; that municipalities with a majority

74
Načelnik Glavnog đeneralštaba to Ministar vojske i mornarice, 1940, NARA, RG 242,
T-120 Yugoslav Archive, roll 786, no frame number; “Yugoslav-German Relations,”
June 29, 1940, NARA, RG 165, entry 77, box 3295, doc. 3850, p. 2; Rukovodilac radova
(Grossbetschkerek) to Komandant 1. armijske oblasti, September 2, 1940, NARA, RG
242, T-120 Yugoslav Archive, roll 789, no frame numbers; Komandant štaba 1. armijske
oblasti to Ministar vojske i mornarice, September 19, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120
Yugoslav Archive, roll 789, no frame number; Načelnik Glavnog đeneralštaba to
Ministar vojske i mornarice, September 22, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120 Yugoslav
Archive, roll 789, no frame numbers; “Meldungen aus dem Reich,” October 7, 1940, BA
Berlin, R 58, file 155, fiche 1, fr. 33; Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD to AA,
October 22, 1940, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, R 101098, fiche 2833, pp. 11–12 of this
document; Načelnik Glavnog đeneralštaba to Ministar vojske i mornarice, February 26,
1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120 Yugoslav Archive, roll 821, no frame number.
75
“Primedbe k radiogramima sređenim u 5 svezaka,” no date, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv,
box 27-A, folder 1, docs. 31/15–16; Shimizu, p. 77.
 From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty 51

ethnic German population would get ethnic German administrators and

notaries; that ethnic German reserve officers who had lost their rank in fall
1939, due to official concerns about minorities’ political loyalties, would
have their ranks restored; and that limitations on ethnic German land
purchases would be lifted. Yet little was done to fulfill any demands,
which would have amounted to greater autonomy for the Kulturbund
to treat its co-nationals virtually like a völkisch state within Yugoslavia.76
The vacillations of Cvetković’s nationality policy were rooted in
Yugoslavia’s uncertain position in wartime Europe. When the Third
Reich seemed invincible, as it did in 1940, after the fall of France,
kowtowing to it seemed the most prudent course for an internally divided
country clinging to neutrality. So the Yugoslav government promised the
moon to its German minority and then dragged its feet in the hope that its
geopolitical position would be improved by outside influence.
By January 1941, with the Italian defeat in North Africa reducing the
immediate danger fascist Italy posed to Yugoslavia, the Kulturbund’s
hopes were dashed and the Yugoslav government earned a reprieve, at
least so far as the ethnic Germans were concerned.
Throughout these developments, Nazi Germany desired the Yugoslav
Germans to remain, at least outwardly, loyal citizens of the Yugoslav state,
at a time when luring Yugoslavia into an alliance with the Tripartite Pact
was paramount, in light of Italian failures. Nazi Germany wished also to
secure Yugoslavia as a source of food and raw materials and to prevent its
becoming a tool of British wartime diplomacy. At the same time, the Third
Reich was willing to impinge on Yugoslav state sovereignty and to use
ethnic Germans for this purpose. The ambivalence of Yugoslavia’s
minority policy was exacerbated by Berlin urging the Yugoslav Germans
to act one way in public and another way in private – to perform as well as
subvert their loyalty to their host state.
Convinced that his influence over general Nazi policy was greater than
it was, Sepp Janko demanded in December 1940 that weapons be
smuggled into the country and placed at the ethnic Germans’ disposal.
Janko claimed that attacks on ethnic Germans by the Yugoslav army and
Četnik paramilitaries were on the rise. He, therefore, requested that the
Third Reich provide him with no fewer than 1,000 handguns; 300 auto-
matics; an unspecified number of machine guns; and as many as 8,000

76
“Meldungen aus dem Reich,” September 12, 1940, BA Berlin, R 58, file 154, fiche 1, frs.
79–80; Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD to AA (1940), PA AA, Inland II Geheim,
R 101098, fiche 2833, no frame numbers, pp. 2–3 of this document; Chef der
Sicherheitspolizei und des SD to AA, December 6, 1940, PA AA, Inland II Geheim,
R 101098, fiche 2834, no frame numbers, pp. 1–2 of this document; “Meldungen aus
dem Reich,” January 27, 1941, BA Berlin, R 58, file 157, fiche 2, frs. 117–118.
52 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

light machine guns, 8,000 or more carbines, 8,000 pistols, 1,200–1,400

hand grenades, dynamite, and ammunition. Janko tried appealing to both
the German Foreign Ministry and the VoMi, varying the numbers of
weapons requested, depending on how responsive he assumed his inter-
locutors would be.77
Janko understood the competing and overlapping jurisdictions in the
Third Reich and drew shrewd conclusions about using them for his own
ends. However, he overreached due to his assumption that the Nazi gov-
ernment would prioritize Erneurer whim over its diplomatic efforts.
Supplying the Yugoslav Germans with weapons would have been detri-
mental to relations between the two states. Janko’s request was officially
refused, on the grounds that, short of the Yugoslav state directly threaten-
ing its ethnic Germans with “annihilation [Vernichtung],” the political
situation would not suffer such an affront to the Yugoslav authorities.78
At most, a few hundred handguns and some submachine guns were
smuggled into the country, in the personal luggage of ethnic Germans
returning to Yugoslavia from visits to Germany. The Yugoslav gendarm-
erie intercepted some of these weapons, while some ethnic Germans
undermined Janko’s efforts when they got caught bragging and offering
to procure weapons for acquaintances.79
The request for weapons to be delivered from the Reich suggests that
Sepp Janko considered serious breaches of diplomatic etiquette and
Yugoslav sovereignty a matter of course by the end of 1940. Whatever
the average ethnic German’s feelings on the matter, German minority
leaders certainly aligned themselves with what they perceived as
Germany’s primary interest in Yugoslavia – protection of ethnic
Germans, regardless of consequences to interstate relations – some three-
and-a-half months before the final deterioration of German-Yugoslav
relations in late March and early April 1941.
In early 1941, the Nazi government attempted to straighten out depart-
mental jurisdiction over ethnic German issues. Still treading with caution
as it endeavored to cajole Yugoslavia into an alliance, on January 13, the

77
Agent 6625, “Waffen für die Volksgruppe,” December 11, 1940, BA Berlin, R 58, file
1139, fiche 3, no frame numbers, pp. 1–2 of this document; Rimann to AA,
December 17, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1451, frs. D599,327–328.
78
Helmut Triska memo, December 23, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1451, fr.
D599,329.
79
Picot to SD, December 10, 1940, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, R 101098, fiche 2834, no
frame number; agent 6625, “Waffen für die Volksgruppe” (1940), BA Berlin, R 58, file
1139, fiche 3, no frame numbers; unsigned memo to agent 6625, “Waffen,” January 7,
1941, BA Berlin, R 58, file 1139, fiche 1, no frame number; agent 6625 report, January 10,
1941, BA Berlin, R 58, file 1139, fiche 1, no frame number; agent 6625, “Rosler, Novi
Sad,” January 15, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 648, no frame number.
 From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty 53

German Foreign Ministry forced through a moratorium on all recruit-

ment for the Waffen-SS or the creation of any sort of SS-style units in
Yugoslavia.80 The VoMi’s Werner Lorenz informed SS recruiter Gustav
Halwax that all recruitment had to stop at once.81 The Nazis had a low
opinion of the Yugoslav Germans’ potential for forming paramilitary
units. The Kulturbund too recognized that the average ethnic German
led too staid an existence for such clandestine adventures. As an unnamed
informer commented “with a wink,” woe betide the ethnic German
paramilitary who fell into the Četniks’ hands.82
The German Foreign Ministry also issued secret guidelines, which
stated unambiguously that ethnic Germans were to be considered
primarily citizens of their host countries, to which they owed the loyal
fulfillment of duties expected of all citizens. Any organized, politically
conscious ethnic German community had to align its activities with Nazi
policies toward the host country. All VoMi activities had to be coordi-
nated with German foreign policy.83 For the time being, Ribbentrop
reigned supreme in matters of Nazi policy toward the Yugoslav
Germans, while the SS’s ambitions to transform them into racial and
ideological warriors went on the back burner.
In line with this temporary supremacy of Nazi foreign policy in relation
to ethnic Germans, in early February 1941, the Foreign Ministry was
obliged to deal with two ambitious Yugoslav Germans’ radical proposal
for the racial and political rearrangement of Yugoslavia. Johann Wüscht,
head of the Kulturbund’s Statistics Main Office (Hauptamt für Statistik) –
characterized by the VoMi as an “eccentric [Eigenbrötler],”84 that most
damning moniker in a highly regimented society – and Sepp Janko’s acting
deputy Fritz Metzger proposed that a legal statute be passed or
a diplomatic agreement concluded to ensure legal protection for the ethnic
Germans in Yugoslavia. The proposed statute built on unfulfilled promises
extended by Minister President Cvetković in fall 1940.
If adopted, this proposal would have meant the ethnic German minor-
ity’s recognition as a separate legal body organized in accordance with

80
Nöldeke to VoMi, January 16, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, frs. H297,
788–789; Heeren memo, January 20, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr.
152,453.
81
Werner Lorenz to AA, January 16, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr.
H297,793; Triska to Gerhart Feine, March 26, 1941, PA AA, Inland II Geheim,
R 100935, fiche 2417, no frame number.
82
Unsigned memo on the Zemun camp (1940), NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 648, no frame
numbers, p. 2 of this document.
83
Unsigned memo to Lorenz, January 16, 1941, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, R 100896, fiche
2294, frs. D653,141–142.
84
Triska memo, February 6, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1451, fr. D599,332.
54 Settlement to Partial Nazification, 1699–1941

National Socialist principles. A national registry would have made adult

membership mandatory for life. Since applying for inclusion on the
registry would have been left up to individual choice, the proposal
stopped short of making racial belonging an ascribed fact. However, the
proposal implied that every applicant’s racial eligibility would be of para-
mount importance, evaluated according to supposedly objective criteria.
Furthermore, Sepp Janko and his circle would have gained absolute
authority in matters of taxation, schooling, public and private language
use, and administration in the ethnic German community. For all intents
and purposes, the Yugoslav Germans would have become an ersatz state
not infringed upon by the Yugoslav state, yet enjoying some of the
benefits of existing within it, such as a portion of its tax revenue.85
In effect, the Yugoslav Germans would have ceased to be citizens with
rights and obligations and become, instead, wards of the Yugoslav state,
their privileged position guaranteed from within by the proposed legal
statute, from without by the Third Reich’s might. Potentially extending
over the ethnic German communities in Hungary, Romania, and
Slovakia, the proposal was likely intended as a prelude to the creation of
an ethnic German protectorate on the Danube, not unlike the one the
Nazis had supposedly extended over the Czech lands in 1939.86
Wüscht and Metzger submitted their proposal in December 1940,
heady days following the closing of the resettlement camps on the
Danube and the departure of several hundred young men for military
training in Germany, while Sepp Janko brusquely demanded that the
Third Reich supply the Yugoslav Germans with weapons. Janko, at
least, had followed the established chain of command when he submitted
his demands. Wüscht and Metzger exercised their agency in submitting
their proposal directly to the German Foreign Ministry, without consult-
ing Janko first, and were not taken seriously in Berlin. Nazi Germany
deemed the Yugoslav government unable to force through a special law
protecting the ethnic Germans. In line with the subordination of ethnic
German interests to its foreign policy, the Third Reich would not ruin its
chances of drawing Yugoslavia into an alliance by strong-arming it into
giving one group of its citizens special rights, even if those citizens hap-
pened to be ethnic Germans.87

85
“Gesetzentwurf zur Selbstverwaltung der deutschen Volksgruppe in Jugoslawien,”
January 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 648, no frame numbers, pp. 1–5 of this
document.
86
Triska memo (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1451, frs. D599,332–334.
87
Rimann to AA, February 1, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1451, frs. D599,
330–331; Heeren to AA, February 21, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1451, fr.
D599,352.
 From State Loyalty to Volk Loyalty 55

Although the Third Reich maintained a certain distance from Yugoslav

Germans, in the eyes of many patriotic Yugoslavs they were two sides of
the same coin. In early 1941, the pressure exercised by the German
Foreign Ministry on Yugoslavia and the behavior of at least some ethnic
Germans inflamed Yugoslav resentment. This popular mood clashed
with the overtly Germanophile attitude adopted by the Yugoslav govern-
ment, even as it clung to neutrality.
Rumors to the effect that, in the case of a German-Yugoslav conflict,
Serbian nationalists would massacre the Yugoslav ethnic Germans may
have originated in the Nazi propaganda mill as a way of pressuring the
Yugoslav government into compliance with Nazi wishes, so as to avoid
provoking Hitler’s displeasure by seeming to tolerate violence against the
Germans’ racial kin.88 A doctor in Grossbetschkerek allegedly was told by
a Serbian administrator, “There are not enough trees in the Banat, from
which to hang all you Germans.”89 Another ethnic German supposedly
almost had a swastika carved into his cheek with a knife; his attackers
mocked him, “Now the swastika will look good on you!”90 True or not,
such stories certainly heightened the average ethnic German’s alienation
from the Yugoslav state and society.
More sinister than individual acts of violence and rumors thereof were
indications that, in the first three months of 1941, the Yugoslav Interior
Ministry stepped up its surveillance of ethnic Germans and even
compiled lists of people to be taken hostage if war broke out between
Germany and Yugoslavia.91 The Yugoslav authorities overestimated the
ethnic Germans’ importance for and influence on German policy. Even
so, Yugoslav official action remained limited to observation and report
writing until the very eve of the Tripartite Pact’s attack in April 1941.
Tensions ran higher than before in early 1941, but there is no evidence
that the Yugoslav government prepared to massacre its ethnic Germans,
whatever their non-German neighbors may have threatened in fits of
pique and Nazi propaganda may have put forth as a given.

88
“Meldungen aus dem Reich,” March 20, 1941, BA Berlin, R 58, file 158, fiche 2, fr. 133.
89
Peter Herold to NSDAP, April 16, 1941, PA AA, Inland I Partei, R 98952, p. 6.
90
Quoted in “Meldungen aus dem Reich,” February 13, 1941, BA Berlin, R 58, file 157,
fiche 3, fr. 222.
91
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (January 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 157, fiche 2, fr. 119;
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (February 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 157, fiche 3, fr. 221;
Komanda žandarmerije to Ministar vojske i mornarice, March 12, 1941, NARA, RG
242, T-120 Yugoslav Archive, roll 833, no frame number; Komanda žandarmerije to
Ministar vojske i mornarice, March 13, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120 Yugoslav Archive,
roll 833, no frame number.
2 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion
of Yugoslavia, 1941

The Kulturbund’s Nazified leadership’s loyalties to Yugoslavia as their

host state and to Nazi Germany as their ideological and ancestral home-
land coexisted in uneasy balance until late 1940–early 1941, when Sepp
Janko’s circle began to show a clear preference for the latter. Yet even on
the eve of the German invasion in April 1941, Janko had to contend and
cooperate with the Yugoslav government as a practical reality, albeit one
he came to consider provisional at best. Janko agitated at home and
appealed to different Nazi offices in hopes of getting his way, but he
understood that he owed his ascent within the ethnic German community
to the Third Reich’s support. Even before the German invasion of their
host state, Yugoslav German leaders instinctively adopted a subordinate
position toward the Third Reich, which, in turn, used them for propa-
ganda purposes, yet refused to prioritize their demands over its own
diplomatic and economic interest in Yugoslavia as a potential ally.
If the Erneurer’s loyalties were deeply suspect by early 1941, ordinary
Yugoslav Germans remained a heterogeneous community in terms of
ideology and degree of nationalization. Their Nazification remained
incomplete as well. The final polarization of their loyalties away from
Yugoslavia occurred only during the tense days between the anti-
Tripartite Pact coup d’état on March 27 and the start of the invasion
on April 6, 1941, at which point they could exercise their agency only
within the set of ever-diminishing options left to them by diplomatic and,
eventually, armed conflict between states.
During the invasion, ethnic German leaders and individual ethnic
Germans were left to their own devices until the arrival of Tripartite
Pact troops in mid-April. Given how stark and urgent their choices
became over a very short period of time, in matters such as responding
to Yugoslav mobilization orders and relations with non-German neigh-
bors, ethnic Germans continued to display a range of behaviors that
complicated the facile interpretation of their actions as those of a uniform,
treasonous “fifth column.”
Underlining the ethnic Germans’ relative (un)importance in Nazi
plans, the German government omitted to inform Sepp Janko of its

56
 The Coming of War 57

plans to invade Yugoslavia or its eventual decision to divide the Vojvodina

into the German (Banat), Hungarian (Bačka and Baranja), and Croatian
(Srem) occupation zones. Banat German leaders briefly fantasized in
late April about creating an ethnic German state on the Danube.
Without the constraints imposed by the Yugoslav state, ethnic Germans
displayed the most initiative in the absence of clear guidelines from
Berlin, only to obey once Berlin did order all attempts at state building
to cease.
The destruction of Yugoslavia meant the partitioning of its German
minority into several minority groups in the German and Hungarian
occupation zones and the Independent State of Croatia, the quick end
to any hope of creating a separate ethnic German state in Southeast
Europe, and the establishment of German rule in the Serbian Banat.
Paradoxically, the very fact that the Third Reich divvied up Yugoslav
territory so as to satisfy its and its allies’ desire for expansion and
economic exploitation opened up a space in which Sepp Janko and his
cohort could finally consolidate an ethnic German community – in the
Banat, if not in now-defunct Yugoslavia, and in service to Nazi interest
rather than as independent geopolitical actors.

The Coming of War

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia abandoned formal neutrality and acceded to
the Tripartite Pact on March 25, 1941. Yugoslav neutrality had become
a precarious position to maintain since, by spring 1941, most of its
neighbors were allied with or occupied by Nazi Germany and fascist
Italy. On March 27, 1941, the Yugoslav government, which signed the
pact, was overthrown following popular protests against the Nazi alliance.
The underage Crown Prince Petar Karađorđević announced he would
take the throne and form a new government.
At that point, Adolf Hitler decided to crush the Yugoslav state, which
he came to see as traitorous. It no longer merited even the position of
junior partner in the Nazi New Order, having bitten the hand of friend-
ship Hitler claimed he had extended. Rather than a departure from
German efforts to entice Yugoslavia into an alliance, the invasion of
Yugoslavia was an extension of Nazi diplomacy as well as a response to
the breakdown of relations following the March 27 coup d’état. In order
to further German interests in Southeast Europe, if Hitler could not make
Yugoslavia his ally, he could still control it by violent means.1

1
Christian memo, March 27, 1941, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945
[henceforth Akten], Serie D, Vol. XII.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969),
58 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany and its

allies, Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria, on April 6, 1941. The so-called April
War (Serb. Aprilski rat) occurred simultaneously with the German-
Italian attack on Greece, which Benito Mussolini had failed to secure
and which might have become a British foothold in Southeast Europe.
The German plan was to secure the Balkans as the flank of the planned
invasion of the Soviet Union as well as to soothe Hitler’s resentment over
being “cheated” by the Yugoslavs.
During the hectic ten days between the Yugoslav coup and the start of
the April War, the ethnic Germans had to strike an even finer balance than
before between Yugoslavia and Germany, at least in public. Heightened
tensions between their host state and the Third Reich meant that ethnic
German officials’ every move and public statement were subject to
scrutiny as a reflection of the whole community’s loyalties and attitudes.
Sepp Janko chose to err on the side of caution while also giving out
mixed signals. His and his closest associates’ behavior in this period
suggested that they welcomed the possibility of a German attack on
their host state. Thus, their behavior toward Yugoslav officials was
doublespeak intended to protect themselves and their co-nationals in
case Yugoslavia managed to survive the diplomatic contretemps with
the Third Reich. In terms of what they considered preferable, Yugoslav
German leaders favored the possibility of German rule, even if they were
responding to deteriorating state relations rather than devising an original
strategy.
Janko visited the president of the Danube Banovina (Yugoslav admin-
istrative unit in the 1929–1941 period, which compassed the Vojvodina)
on March 27, 1941, the day of the royal coup, and assured this govern-
ment representative of the ethnic Germans’ loyalty to the Yugoslav state
and its new king.2 On the same day, Janko sent the following open
telegram to the king:
To our ruler, His Majesty King Petar II, the German Volksgruppe of the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, filled with loyalty, devotion, and faithfulness, wishes
from the bottom of its heart, on this historic day, a long and happy reign crowned
by peace and blessed by God.
Long live His Majesty the King! Long live the Kingdom of Yugoslavia!3

doc. 217 on pp. 307–309; “Memorandum als Anlage zur Erklärung der Reichsregierung,”
April 6, 1941, Dokumente zum Konflikt mit Jugoslawien und Griechenland (Berlin:
Deutscher Verlag, 1941), pp. 10–19.
2
Carstanjen to AA, March 29, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2415, fr. E221,510;
“Treuekundgebung der deutschen Volksgruppe,” DV, March 28, 1941, p. 2.
3
“Huldigungstelegramm des Volksgruppenführers Dr. Sepp Janko an S. M. König Peter
II,” DV, March 30, 1941, p. 1.
 The Coming of War 59

On March 28, Janko ordered that all Kulturbund activities be suspended

for an indefinite period, ostensibly so as to avoid provoking anti-German
sentiment. However, the concluding lines of the announcement were
ambiguous: “We have always displayed great discipline and done our
duty. This time, too, we will show that we know how to maintain disci-
pline and do our duty.”4 The emphasis on discipline suggested that Janko
was expecting violence against ethnic Germans. The emphasis on duty
failed to specify duty to whom: Yugoslavia or the Third Reich.
Between March 28 and April 5, 1941, the Yugoslav government sent
increasingly frantic oral and written messages to the German Embassy in
Belgrade and arranged a series of meetings with prominent ethnic
Germans, all in the hope of staving off a German attack on the
country.5 In a meeting on March 31, the new Yugoslav Minister
President, Air Force General Dušan Simović, expressed a fervent desire
for Sepp Janko to act as a go-between and assure Berlin of Yugoslavia’s
continued loyalty to the Tripartite Pact. The fact that the Yugoslav
German leadership passed on this information to Nazi military intelli-
gence via radio “Nora” boded ill for Janko’s willingness to help
Yugoslavia survive this acute diplomatic crisis.6
Janko overestimated again the ethnic Germans’ ability to influence
Nazi policy. His actions were reactive and belated anyway, since Hitler
had decided already on March 27 to destroy Yugoslavia in a swift
campaign. After most of the staff of the German Embassy in Belgrade
took the night train to Budapest on April 3, Minister President Simović
must have realized the likelihood of war and the concomitant unlikeli-
hood of the Yugoslav Germans influencing Hitler’s government one way
or the other.7
Even so, Simović would not risk openly antagonizing the ethnic
Germans, since the Nazi propaganda machine used their supposed
persecution by the Yugoslav government as a casus belli, even if protecting

4
“Kreisleiter und Ortsgruppenleiter!”, DV, March 28, 1941, p. 2.
5
Heeren to AA, March 28, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XII.1, doc. 225 on p. 328; Heeren to
AA, March 29, 1941, Dokumente zum Konflikt mit Jugoslawien und Griechenland, doc. 86
on p. 129; Heeren to AA, March 30, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XII.1, doc. 235 on p. 347;
Feine to AA, April 2, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,787; Feine to AA,
April 3, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XII.1, doc. 252 on p. 360; Feine to AA, April 3, 1941,
NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,822; Feine to AA, April 5, 1941, Akten, Serie D,
Vol. XII.1, doc. 271 on p. 382; Feine to AA, April 5, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XII.1, doc.
272 on pp. 382–383.
6
“Nora” transcript, no date, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 1, doc. 30/152.
7
Joachim von Ribbentrop to the German Embassy in Belgrade, April 2, 1941, NARA, RG
242, T-120, roll 199, frs. 152,806–808; Feine to AA, April 3, 1941, NARA, RG 242,
T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,830; Feine to AA, April 4, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199,
fr. 152,861.
60 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

the ethnic Germans was a convenient excuse rather than a salient reason
for the imminent Nazi attack on Yugoslavia. While trying to secure
Hungarian aid in the attack on Yugoslavia, Hitler cited the royal coup
and the mistreatment of Yugoslav Germans as “sufficient grounds for
war.”8 Moreover, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Heinrich Himmler agreed
in late March to temporarily set aside their rivalry in order to achieve the
destruction of Yugoslavia – for which purpose they instrumentalized the
Yugoslav Germans.9
The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi) cooperated with Ribbentrop in
instructing relevant offices to “organize [i.e., fabricate] cries for help”
from Yugoslav ethnic Germans, Croats, Macedonians, and Slovenes – all
supposed victims of the Serbs as Yugoslavia’s dominant ethnic group – to
be publicized in the German press and lend moral justification to the
impending invasion.10 Reports of the supposed mistreatment of ethnic
Germans duly surfaced: a litany of fights, verbal abuse, broken windows,
straw set on fire, bodily harm, harassment of ethnic German women by
Četniks, etc.11
These unsettling reports emphasized the Yugoslav government’s weak-
ness in failing to prevent such outrages against its own citizens. Yet they
hardly fulfilled alleged Serbian nationalist threats to “wade knee-deep in
German blood” during a “second Bromberg,”12 alluding to an incident in
early September 1939, when Polish troops clashed with ethnic German
paramilitaries in the city of Bromberg (Bydgoszcz), which was used to
justify German reprisals against the local Poles and Jews. The choice of

8
Weizsäcker memo, April 4, 1941, Documents of German Foreign Policy [henceforth
DGFP], Series D, Vol. 12 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing
Office, 1962), doc. 264 on p. 450.
9
Ribbentrop to Lorenz, March 30, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, frs. H298,
209–210; Ribbentrop and Himmler, “Vereinbarung über die Zuständigkeit in
Volkstumsfragen,” March 31, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr. H298,211.
10
Berger to Himmler, April 3, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2802, fiche 1, fr. 1.
11
German Consulate Ljubljana, Branch Office Maribor to AA, March 28, 1941, NARA,
RG 242, T-120, roll 1687, frs. E023,744–746; Carstanjen to AA, March 29, 1941,
Dokumente zum Konflikt mit Jugoslawien und Griechenland, doc. 88 on p. 130; OKW to
AA, March 30, 1941, Dokumente zum Konflikt mit Jugoslawien und Griechenland, doc. 91
on p. 131; Weizsäcker memo, March 31, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XII.1, doc. 240 on
p. 350; Carstanjen to AA, March 31 and April 1, Dokumente zum Konflikt mit Jugoslawien
und Griechenland, docs. 93–95 on pp. 132–133; Hermann Neubacher to AA, April 1,
1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,741; Feine to AA, April 2, 1941,
Dokumente zum Konflikt mit Jugoslawien und Griechenland, doc. 97 on pp. 134–137;
“Meldung des Deutschen Nachrichtenbüros,” April 2, 1941, Dokumente zum Konflikt
mit Jugoslawien und Griechenland, doc. 98 on pp. 137–138; Neubacher to AA, April 3,
1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,805; German Military Attaché in
Bucharest to AA, April 4, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,884.
12
“Meldung des Deutschen Nachrichtenbüros” (1941), Dokumente zum Konflikt mit
Jugoslawien und Griechenland, doc. 98 on p. 137.
 The Coming of War 61

reference suggests that this mention of a ‘second Bromberg’ came from

a Nazi source rather than an authentic Yugoslav one: a Serbian nationalist
uttering dire threats against ethnic Germans would have come up with
a local reference to convey his intent.
Contrary to the claims of Nazi propaganda, the relatively low-level
ethnic tensions predating Yugoslavia’s accession to the Tripartite Pact
and the anti-fascist reaction only exploded into serious violence on a few
occasions. Specifically the Serbian Banat saw little conflict between
ethnic Germans and non-Germans and between ethnic Germans and
the Yugoslav authorities, apart from some Serbian youths’ susceptibility
to nationalist authority figures and local administrators, who frowned
upon “everyone who wouldn’t dance the kolo [Serbian folk dance].”13
The worst outrages were limited to minor damage to property – broken
windows, excrement smeared on door posts, swastikas daubed on houses –
and the rather haphazard requisitioning of horses, radios, hunting rifles,
bicycles, motorcycles, and food by the Yugoslav army and Četniks, and
verbal threats. On March 27, a few dozen Serbs celebrated the royal coup
by driving through the villages near Grosskikinda, firing pistols into the air
and “laying claim” to ethnic Germans’ houses on behalf of poorly paid
Serbian civil servants.14 The atmosphere was tense, yet hardly incendiary.
Nevertheless, in the run-up to the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Reich
press embellished on such incidents to depict a Yugoslav landscape of
burning villages, in which ethnic Germans were systematically hunted
down, assaulted, murdered, or forced to flee by Jews and bloodthirsty
Četniks armed by the Yugoslav government.15 Said government roundly
denied these allegations and even organized a tour of areas inhabited by
ethnic Germans for foreign journalists, in order to counter reports of

13
Testimony of Thomas Welter from Kudritz, April 21, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17,
file 9, p. 4.
14
Feine to AA, April 5, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,925; testimony of
Michael Havranek from Pavlis, June 14, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 46;
testimony of Elisabeth Mojse from Karlsdorf, May 26, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17,
file 4, p. 8; testimony of Peter Schneider from Sankt Hubert, March 10, 1958, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 5, p. 83; testimony of Hans Stein from Franzfeld in Jedan
svet na Dunavu: Razgovori i komentari, ed. Nenad Stefanović, sixth edition (Belgrade:
Društvo za srpsko-nemačku saradnju, 2007), p. 84.
15
“Deutsches Dorf von serbischen Demonstranten eingeäschert,” Völkischer Beobachter,
April 1, 1941, BA Berlin, R 8034 II, vol. 2489, p. 2; “‘Gott sei Dank, wir sind in
Sicherheit’,” Völkischer Beobachter, April 1, 1941, BA Berlin, R 8034 II, vol. 2489, p. 3;
“Serben wollen in deutschem Blut waten. Volksdeutsche Flüchtlinge über das
Schreckensregiment in Jugoslawien,” Völkischer Beobachter, April 3, 1941, BA Berlin,
R 8034 II, vol. 2489, p. 5; “Chaotische Zustände in Jugoslawien,” Deutsche-Stimmen,
April 5, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 28909, p. 18; “Furchtbare Misshandlungen von
Volksdeutschen,” Der Grenzbote, April 8, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 544, fr.
5,315,859.
62 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

violent mistreatment.16 Sepp Janko personally denied any major excesses

were committed against ethnic Germans, but Yugoslavia’s fate was never
dependent on its treatment of its German minority. Rumors of govern-
ment abuse served merely as a convenient pretext for Nazi plans.
While exaggerated reports of the dangers, under which the Yugoslav
Germans supposedly labored, laid the propaganda groundwork for the
invasion, the already contentious issue of ethnic German loyalty to
Yugoslavia finally came to a head. Until late March 1941, their loyalties
had to remain, at least outwardly, balanced between the Yugoslav state
and the German Volk. The royal coup of March 27, 1941, emboldened
Yugoslav German leaders to disregard their host state, despite their, at
best, equivocal public statements to the contrary. As for ordinary
Yugoslav Germans, their attitudes also underwent a final, rapid polariza-
tion as many allowed their attachment to Germany to supersede that to
Yugoslavia, its king, and its institutions.
Ethnic German responses to Yugoslav mobilization orders illustrate
how stark the choices were that they had to make just before and during
the April War. On March 28, one day after the royal coup and his decision
to crush Yugoslavia, Adolf Hitler decreed that, if called up for military
service as part of a general mobilization order, Yugoslav Germans ought
to avoid responding and go into hiding. Hitler specified that ethnic
German men of recruitment age should try to reach German territory
rather than be drafted into the Yugoslav army. The German Foreign
Ministry coordinated with the VoMi and the German embassies in
Hungary and Romania in order to enable ethnic German refugees from
Yugoslavia to cross the Hungarian and Romanian borders and ensure
they received aid and protection in their efforts to reach Germany.17
Those ethnic Germans who chose to follow Hitler’s order demon-
strated unequivocal, open rejection of service in the Yugoslav army and
of Yugoslavia as such. Those who chose to do so crossed the nearest
border – into annexed Austria from Slovenia, into Hungary from the
Bačka and North Croatia, into the Romanian Banat from the Serbian
Banat. They had no means of knowing how long they might be away or
whether they would come back at all, though most border jumpers from
the Serbian Banat returned, still civilians, with the German troops, which
16
Unsigned telegram to AA, April 1, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,776;
Feine to AA, April 2, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,792; Feine to AA,
April 4, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,851.
17
Wilhelm Keitel to AA, March 28, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2415, fr. E221,506;
Emil von Rintelen to Lorenz, March 28, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr.
H297,815; Weizsäcker to Erdmansdorff, March 28, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll
5782, fr. H297,761; Weizsäcker to Killinger, March 29, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120,
roll 5782, fr. H297,762.
 The Coming of War 63

soon invaded from neighboring Romania.18 Such a radical break from the
state of their birth and residence required ethnic Germans to make the
mental leap away from the Yugoslav context of their lives and toward
a purely Reich-centric context. In the process, they committed treason
against the Yugoslav state. Every ethnic German man of recruitment age
had to solve this dilemma for himself.
The exact number of ethnic Germans who chose to border jump
remains unknown. Ethnic Germans could and did make a range of
choices in those fateful days. Some chose to dodge Yugoslav mobilization
orders, while others were drafted into the Yugoslav army, whether out of
slowness to act, fear of the unknown, or a lingering sense of duty to their
host state. (Most Banat German expellees’ postwar reports on the April
War stressed – with more than a little embellishment – that there was no
draft-dodging among their co-nationals.19) The pace of events sometimes
overtook the ethnic Germans. A “Nora” message suggested that the
Hitler order to dodge mobilization may have reached the Vojvodina
Germans too late, at a point when 90% of eligible men were already
drafted in the Srem and 70% in the Banat and the Bačka.20
Some expellee reports reveal the complex motivations behind these
numbers. The choice whether or not to respond to mobilization orders
depended in equal measure on the proximity of the border, an indivi-
dual’s ideological inclination, and the varied speed of the mobilization in
the Vojvodina. In the village of Kudritz near Werschetz in the Banat,
some ethnic Germans were drafted, while others fled to Romania. All save
one youth called up in the village of Sankt Hubert, within walking
distance of the Romanian border, literally chose the easy way out and
border jumped. In Modosch, escape across the border supposedly
stopped after the Serbian district president assured the town’s leading
ethnic Germans that their co-nationals had nothing to fear from the non-
German population. In Glogau near Pantschowa, the mobilization never
even took place because the German invasion of the Serbian Banat

18
Josef Beer, “Die Haltung der Volksgruppenführung während des Balkanfeldzuges,”
January 2, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 37, pp. 7–8.
19
Such was the unanimous assessment of expellees from as many places as Setschan
(testimony of Ludwig Toutenuit, February 21, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file
3, p. 19), Karlsdorf (testimony of Peter Kurjak, February 24, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 17, file 4, p. 2), Sakula (testimony of Franz Scheidt, May 3, 1958, BA Bayreuth,
Ost-Dok. 17, file 6, p. 21), Kubin (testimony of Franz Kneipp, February 16, 1958, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 6, p. 35), Karlowa (testimony of Josef Lemlein, April 10,
1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 7, p. 3), Rustendorf (testimony of Adolf Horcher,
March 24, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 7, p. 14), Deutsch-Etschka (testimony
of Johann Keller, no date, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 8, p. 45), and Haideschütz
(testimony of Berta Sohl, April 29, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 8).
20
“Nora” transcript, no date, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 1, doc. 30/32.
64 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

happened too quickly, and since Pantschowa is very close to Belgrade, the
town was likely deemed unworthy of its own defenses.21
On the eve of the invasion, the German Consul in Timişoara estimated
the number of Yugoslav Germans in his town as 800 draft-dodgers and
their family members, while the Romanian German leadership suggested
that some 2,000 ethnic Germans in total had crossed over from the Serbian
Banat. This supports the information transmitted by “Nora” about the
quick mobilization of the Vojvodina Germans by the Yugoslav army.
German diplomatic reports omitted firsthand accounts of any major
outrages committed against the Yugoslav Germans.22 The border jumpers’
primary reason for flight seems to have been the desire to avoid serving in
the Yugoslav army rather than escape from government persecution. Either
way, the border jumpers had resolved the problem of divided loyalty by
abandoning their duty to the state of which they remained citizens.

The April War

The April War began without a formal declaration of war by Germany. Its
herald was the early-morning Luftwaffe bombing of Belgrade on April 6,
1941, Orthodox Easter Sunday. The war lasted barely 12 days.
The Yugoslav defeat was sped along by the failure of central command
posts, overstretched divisions, the morale and materiel setbacks produced
by the bombing of Belgrade, airfields, and major communication lines,
and the secession of Croatia with German support on April 10. The
invasion of the Vojvodina culminated when the Hungarian army occu-
pied Novi Sad, the Bačka’s administrative center and largest city, on April
13. On April 15, German troops took control of Grossbetschkerek, the
Banat’s major town. Yugoslavia’s collapse was complete with the fall of
Belgrade to the Germans on April 13, King Petar II and his government’s
flight to England on April 14, and the capture of the Yugoslav Army High
Command near Sarajevo on April 15. The Yugoslav capitulation, signed
on April 17, 1941, went into effect the following day at noon.23
21
Welter testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 4; Schneider testimony
(1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 5, p. 84; deposition of Jovan S. Jurišin to the
Serbian Interior Ministry, no date, likely May 1941, Vojni arhiv, Nedićev arhiv, box 20A,
folder 1, doc. 1–25; testimony of Maria Lehr from Glogau, March 8, 1958, BA Bayreuth,
Ost-Dok. 17, file 7, p. 30.
22
Neubacher to AA, April 5, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,909.
23
Feine to AA, April 15, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 153,071; Feine to AA,
April 17, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 153,103; Ivo Goldstein, Croatia:
A History, translated from the Croatian by Nikolina Jovanović (Montreal and Kingston,
Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), p. 133; Pavlowitch, pp. 17–20;
Detlef Vogel, “The German Attack on Yugoslavia and Greece” in Germany and
the Second World War, Vol. III The Mediterranean, South-east Europe, and North Africa
 The April War 65

In a message to the Regent of Hungary, Miklós Horthy, Hitler termed the

collapse of Yugoslavia “the best Easter present for all of us.”24
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was divided into the German zone of
occupation (Serbia south of the Danube, the Serbian Banat), the
Hungarian zone (the Bačka, the Baranja, part of North Croatia, part of
Slovenia), the Italian zone (Dalmatia, Montenegro, part of Slovenia), and
the Bulgarian zone (Macedonia, part of South Serbia). A part of Slovenia
was annexed by the Third Reich. Croatia became the Independent State

AU S T R I A
Hungarian H U N G A R Y
Occupation
German
Occupation
I

Ljubljana
T

Italian Zagreb
A L

Occupation Hungarian R O M A N I A
Occupation

B
Novi
Y

Sad

A
Bačka Palanka
N
Independent State Belgrade A
Bihać T
3rd

Banja
I

Smederevo
ta

2n Luka
lia

d
n

Ita
Oc

lia pa o f C r o a t i a
cu

Ita n
lia Oc tio Bulgarian
n
Oc cu nZ German Occupation
cu pa on
tio e Sarajevo
p ati nZ Occupation
Šibenik on on ( N D H )
Split e
A

B U
Niš
d

L G A R I A
r n
tio
Montenegro
i Italian
pa

Occupation
a Italian
ccu

Cetinje Occupation
t
n O

i Skopje
c
aria
A L

S
Bulg

e
B A N

I T A L Y
a

I A

0 50 100 150 200 km G R E E C E

0 25 50 75 100 miles

Map 2.1 Yugoslavia occupied and partitioned, 1941–1943

1939–1941, translated by Dean S. McMurry, Ewald Osers, and Louise Willmot (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 516–522.
24
Adolf Hitler to Miklós Horthy, April 13, 1941, DGFP, Series D, Vol. 12, doc. 334 on p. 538.
66 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska), which comprised the Srem and

Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as the Croatian lands. It was a German
satellite with an Ustaša government rather than a truly sovereign state, its
independence undercut also by its division into a German occupation
zone in the north and an Italian one along the Adriatic coast.
Hungarian revisionism gained a new lease on life after the royal coup
in Belgrade, since it provided a useful excuse for Hungarian participa-
tion in the attack on Yugoslavia. On March 28, 1941, Hitler combined
diplomacy with warlike intent when he dangled the possibility of border
revision before Horthy, in order to secure Hungarian aid in destroying
Yugoslavia. Hitler’s fateful, sweeping promise to Hungary was that in
an armed conflict between Germany and Yugoslavia, “Germany would
place no restrictions on Hungary’s revisionist desires.”25
A related memorandum stated explicitly that “[t]he formerly
Hungarian part [of Yugoslavia], which borders on Hungary (as far as
the Danube) falls to Hungary.”26 Yet allowing Hungary to occupy or
annex the entire Vojvodina would have sparked a conflict with Romania,
which Germany forbade from participating in the invasion of Yugoslavia
and which had already lost a part of Transylvania to Hungary at
the Second Vienna Award in 1940.
In order to prevent its allies from going to war with each other and
destabilizing Southeast Europe, once the invasion of Yugoslavia was
ongoing, Hitler decided to keep the Hungarians and the Romanians
physically separate by having German troops occupy the Serbian Banat
as well as Serbia proper, while giving the Bačka to Hungary and restricting
Romanian troops to their side of the Serbo-Romanian border.27
The Serbian Banat thus served as a territorial wedge and buffer zone
between Hungary and Romania.
Although the German-occupied Serbian Banat would eventually be
ruled in the Third Reich’s name by its ethnic Germans, its occupation
by German troops was the result of practical expediency rather than racial
ideology. As had been the case when Reich propaganda foregrounded

25
Hewel memo, March 28, 1941, DGFP, Series D, Vol. 12, doc. 215 on p. 369.
26
“Allgemeine Absichten für die spätere Organisation der Verwaltung im jugoslawischen
Raum,” unsigned and undated memo, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945,
Serie D, Vol. XII.2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), doc. 291 on p. 404.
27
Karl Ritter memo, April 5, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XII.1, doc. 277 on pp. 387–388;
Ribbentrop to the German Embassy in Romania, April 5, 1941, DGFP, Series D,
Vol. 12, doc. 276 on p. 468; unsigned telegram to Wehrmacht Commander in
Bucharest, April 8, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 269, fr. 291; Keitel memo,
April 8, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 269, fr. 293; Führer Directive, April 13,
1941, DGFP, Series D, Vol. 12, doc. 335 on p. 539; Keitel memo, April 18, 1941,
NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 269, fr. 309.
 The April War 67

their alleged suffering as a convenient pretext for the German attack on

Yugoslavia, the ethnic German presence in the Banat was fortuitous, yet
ultimately incidental, to the realization of the Reich’s diplomatic and
military goals.
Yugoslav German leaders spent the two-and-a-half weeks from the
royal coup on March 27 until the Hungarian arrival on April 13, 1941,
in the Kulturbund’s headquarters at Habag-Haus in Novi Sad. They
knew little of the course of the April War and nothing of the decisions
Hitler and his allies made about the disposition of Yugoslav territory.
Despite war seeming likely in the days before the German attack
on April 6, the outbreak of hostilities left the already nervous, temporarily
disorganized ethnic German leaders fumbling for a plan of action. In the
absence of reliable information or guidelines from Berlin, they continued
to exercise their agency in any way they could, with limited practical
effect, yet in the clear expectation of an imminent German occupation
of their home region.
On March 27, 1941, Sepp Janko and other ethnic German leaders were
placed under house arrest, while the new Yugoslav government sorted out
its priorities. Already on March 29, after Janko suspended the
Kulturbund’s activities and issued – in agreement with the Novi Sad
police chief – the telegram congratulating King Petar II on his accession
to the throne, Janko was released and even assigned plainclothes police-
men as a protective escort. A police cordon protected Habag-Haus from
possible attacks by Četniks, while the Simović government attempted to
mollify the Third Reich by treating Yugoslav German leaders with every
courtesy.28
Paradoxically, police protection kept Janko and his inner circle safe, in
one place, and better able to consult with each other, even if they gained
no organizational or operational advantage thereby. Their initiative was
limited to following developments on the radio, sandbagging Habag-
Haus, and bringing in a small quantity of firearms in case the building
was besieged. They demanded to be informed of German intentions
through “Nora,” so they could make the necessary preparations, but
were ignored and left to coin elaborate, useless schemes about using
white sheets to mark landing spots for Luftwaffe airplanes and
paratroopers.29

28
Feine to AA, April 1, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr. 152,755; “Deutsche
Volksgruppenführer unter Polizeiaufsicht,” Pester Lloyd (Budapest), April 1, 1941, BA
Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 28874, no page number.
29
“Nora” transcript, no date, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 1, doc. 30/19;
Beer, “Die Haltung der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file
37, pp. 6–8.
68 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

For most Vojvodina Germans, who stayed at home rather than border
jump, this was also a time of polarization. Their behavior and experiences
during the April War were shaped by the likelihood of war and their
attitudes to it, the behavior of the Yugoslav authorities and non-
German neighbors, and geographic location (whether they lived in the
Banat or the Bačka). They exhibited diverse behaviors even in so small
a geographic area as the Banat. Most Vojvodina Germans as well as their
leaders adopted a “wait and see” attitude. Circumstances allowed them
few outlets for their agency and desire for news other than fantasy and
feverish anticipation of the German troops’ arrival.
Once the Yugoslav army abandoned Novi Sad on April 10 or 11,
blowing up the bridge across the Danube behind it in order to cut off
the route to Belgrade, the ethnic Germans in the city were free to pursue
their own agenda. They crossed the Danube in boats to reach the
Petrovaradin fortress, where they easily liberated the several hundred
ethnic German hostages from all over the Vojvodina, who had been
arrested at the start of the April War and abandoned by the retreating
troops.30 The withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from the Vojvodina
meant that for some 72 hours a power vacuum existed in Novi Sad, before
the Hungarian army marched into the city on April 13, exactly one week
after the start of the hostilities.
The ethnic German leadership stepped in to fill this vacuum. They
disarmed the few Yugoslav soldiers left in the city; organized
a peacekeeping citizens’ militia composed of ethnic German, Serb, and
ethnic Hungarian civilians as well as a few remaining Yugoslav
gendarmes; and seized stores of weapons and food in order to feed the
hostages released from Petrovaradin and prevent Serbian or Hungarian
nationalists from seizing those stores.31 The evidence for similar events in
the Banat is very patchy. One expellee did describe the amicable handover
of executive power in Pantschowa by the departing Yugoslav adminis-
trators and the formation of an ethnic German-ethnic Hungarian militia
armed with weapons taken from retreating Yugoslav soldiers.32
A sense of euphoria infected the Vojvodina Germans, who expected to
be occupied by German troops at any moment. Sepp Janko managed to
organize a public celebration of the imminent arrival of the Wehrmacht in
Novi Sad, complete with hastily sewn swastika flags and a Romany
orchestra playing the German national anthem. In attendance was

30
Beer, “Die Haltung der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file
37, pp. 8–11.
31
Beer, “Die Haltung der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file
37, pp. 11, 13, 15.
32
Solman deposition (1944), AJ, fund 110, box 670, p. 16.
 The April War 69

a single German soldier, who had lost his way and been literally seized by
the ethnic Germans of Bačka Palanka after his motorcycle broke down,
and then brought to Novi Sad, against his will, to be acclaimed as victor
and liberator.33
These first acts of the ethnic Germans in de facto if not de jure power
suggest that Janko and his circle relied on the arrival of German armed
forces to justify and ratify their actions after the fact. Moreover, all
measures the ethnic German leadership undertook were of a provisional,
stop-gap nature, rather than long-term moves intended to secure control
of administrative posts and economic resources, such as arable land or
factories. In mid-April 1941, Yugoslav German leaders were not thinking
of establishing their own state. If anything, they hoped that once the
Wehrmacht arrived, a state might be given to them. Their agency was
tempered by the assumption that the Third Reich was ultimately in
charge and would approve of their actions.
The slightly grotesque, carnival-like atmosphere of the victory celebra-
tions in Novi Sad bore this out. The old order was gone, yet instead of
establishing a new one, the ethnic Germans threw a liberating party,
a celebration in limbo. A return to normalcy hinged on the arrival of an
outside force in the shape of an invading army.
The Hungarian invasion of the Bačka had a profoundly negative effect
on the resident ethnic Germans and their leaders. The German-
Hungarian invasion of the Vojvodina was meant to be a relatively blood-
less affair, yet Hungarian soldiers acted in contravention of those orders.
In addition to numerous broken windows, swastika flags being torn down,
and verbal insults, several ethnic German civilians were shot. Hungarian
soldiers, inspired by equal parts national chauvinism, the euphoria of easy
victory, and nervousness over a handful of sharpshooters concealed on
rooftops, fired indiscriminately, engaged in robbery, and inflicted wanton
damage on ethnic Germans’ property, under the pretext that everything
in the Bačka was now Hungarian anyway.34
In addition to the loss of life and property, the Hungarian occupation
severely damaged ethnic German morale. Sepp Janko sent a series of

33
Beer, “Die Haltung der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file
37, pp. 11–12.
34
Lorenz to OKW, April 16, 1941, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, R 100937, fiche 2419, fr.
H297,859; Rintelen to AA, April 22, 1941, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, R 100937, fiche
2419, frs. H297,849–851; “Bericht über den Brandschaden der ‘Jugo-Agrar’ A.G. in
Neusatz,” April 23, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 531, frs. 5,299,462–465; “Aus
dem besetzten Jugoslawien,” May 7, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-580, roll 59, no frame
numbers, pp. 1–2 of this document; Beer, “Die Haltung der Volksgruppenführung”
(1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 37, pp. 15–18.
70 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

messages via “Nora,” expressing his co-nationals’ sense of betrayal and

abandonment by the Third Reich they idealized:
We are disappointed, embittered, and outraged. What are the Hungarians doing
here? We would rather spend the rest of our lives under the Hottentots than live
one day under the blessings of St. Stephen’s Crown and be delivered to our
enemies’ ridicule.
700,000 [sic] ethnic Germans are waiting in vain for an answer: why has the
Reich left us in the lurch? We call and call for help, but receive not even the
shadow of a response. It’s enough to drive one to despair.
We urge once again that occupation by German troops [take place], as they
have already crossed the Danube into West Bačka.
Send the army urgently, we are in a terrible position. Answer us!
The Volksgruppe despairs over its delivery to the Asiatics. Our position very
critical. Any moment now, we expect catastrophe. Send German troops at once.35
Despite earlier disappointments such as the behavior of the Reich
personnel in charge of the Bessarabian German resettlement, for the
ethnic Germans in Novi Sad, the Hungarian invasion and German unre-
sponsiveness to their pleas were a very rude awakening, after the heady
atmosphere of the previous few days. Janko’s ever shriller complaints
inspired no sympathy in Berlin. The Bačka remained under Hungarian
occupation, while the German zone of occupation was limited to the
Serbian Banat and Serbia proper.
The Banat Germans missed out on the initial euphoria evident among
the ethnic Germans in Novi Sad, but they also evaded the final, crushing
disappointment. The most traumatic event was the taking of ethnic
German hostages by the Yugoslav army and gendarmerie in the first
days of the hostilities. Most were transported to Belgrade or
Petrovaradin. These men returned home safely, often even before the
Yugoslav capitulation.36 In only one case did the hostages come to
harm: a small group of Yugoslav soldiers took nine men from
Pantschowa south of the Danube, abused them, stabbed them to
death, and buried them in an unmarked grave. The Nazi press

35
“Nora” transcripts, no dates, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 1, docs. 30/62,
30/65–68.
36
Testimony of Katharina Schneider from Kubin, December 5, 1952, BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 2, file 392, p. 42; testimony of Nikolaus Kathrein from Charleville, March 1, 1958, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 5, p. 88; Kurjak testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17,
file 4, p. 2; Mojse testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 4, pp. 7–8; Horcher
testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 7, p. 14; Lehr testimony (1958), BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 7, p. 30; Keller testimony (no date), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17,
file 8, p. 45; Sohl testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 8.
 The April War 71

augmented this into a tale of martyrs to Germanness dying with “Heil

Hitler” as their last words.37
In contrast to this gruesome incident, some Banat non-Germans
protected the ethnic Germans, who hid or escaped to Romania with at
least the tacit help of their Serbian neighbors. One sergeant in charge of 90
hostages, clearly realizing the futility of the endeavor and the overwhelming
odds in favor of a German victory, took his charges not to prison in Belgrade
but to an isolated landholding, where they all waited for the Wehrmacht’s
arrival together. When a train carrying 300 hostages was abandoned at the
railway station in Deutsch-Zerne near Grosskikinda, the village’s Serbian
notary, Orthodox priest, and head of the village council let the hostages go.
In Kubin, the Serbian Orthodox priest led a few hundred local Serbs in
invoking the precedent set in 1914, when the town’s Serbian hostages were
released after the outbreak of World War I, and secured the release of some,
though not all, ethnic German hostages. In Modosch, the mayor persuaded
the gendarmerie sergeant in charge that different ethnicities had lived in
peace for hundreds of years and would need to live together in the future as
well. Those hostages were released already on April 6.38
A touching example of interethnic respect occurred in the village of Perlas,
where on April 7 the most prominent local Serbs, ethnic Croats, and ethnic
Germans drafted and signed a bilingual statement, in which they vouched for
all village residents’ loyalty to the state, correct behavior, and safety.39
Without presuming to influence the course of the war, this document
remained focused on village matters, attempted to prevent unnecessary
destruction and suffering, and was a purely moral victory. It also suggested
that Sepp Janko’s cohort had a lot of work still to do before it could claim that
the entire ethnic German community’s primary goal in life was promoting
National Socialism, even if some Perlas Germans who signed their village’s
declaration of commitment to multiethnic values also may have harbored
Nazi sympathies.

37
“Neun Volksdeutsche von serbischer Soldateska verschleppt und gemordet,” Völkischer
Beobachter, April 24, 1941, BA Berlin, R 8034 II, vol. 2489, p. 61; testimony of Heinrich
Köller from Pantschowa in Stefanović, p. 114.
38
Testimony of Josef Stirbel from Deutsch-Zerne, no date, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file
5, p. 4; testimony of Jakob Laping from Mastort, February 21, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 17, file 5, p. 46; testimony of Johann Kunz and Josef Burger from Modosch, April 5,
1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 5, p. 31; testimony of Hans Klein from Heufeld,
May 3, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 5, p. 17; Schneider testimony (1952), BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 392, p. 42; Schneider testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 17, file 5, p. 84; Kneipp testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 6, p. 35;
Lehr testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 7, p. 30; Welter testimony
(1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 4.
39
“Erklärung,” April 7, 1941, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 395, p. 167; “Izjava,” April 7,
1941, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 395, p. 168; testimony of Franz Schmidt from
Perlas, March 4, 1953, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 395, pp. 169–170.
72 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

As the Vojvodina’s civilian population was abandoned by the Yugoslav

armed forces in April 1941, the decision taken by some Banat non-
Germans to show solidarity with their ethnic German neighbors demon-
strated how the likelihood of foreign occupation narrowed at least some
people’s focus from the national to the local and personal. This included
safeguarding not only one’s family and property but one’s village and all
its residents as well. Ethnic Germans and their neighbors alike exercised
their agency in the course of events that were beyond their control.
The course of the April War in the Serbian Banat was swift and mostly
uneventful. The Yugoslav army, along with most Serbian administrators
and notaries, withdrew from the Banat between April 6 and 11, 1941. They
fell back toward Belgrade, blowing up bridges behind them, as they were
doing in the Bačka as well. The Wehrmacht’s Infantry Regiment
“Grossdeutschland” and the SS Armored Division “Das Reich” occupied
the Banat, sometimes mere hours after the Yugoslav retreat. German
troops arrived mostly on foot, because heavy rain and the poor condition
of the roads meant tanks initially had to be left behind in Romania. German
forces entered Grossbetschkerek on April 15 and appealed to the popula-
tion to maintain order, turn in any firearms, and obey the new authorities.
So swift was the Yugoslav retreat that the Banat Germans had fewer
opportunities to disarm Yugoslav soldiers, which anecdotal evidence
suggests happened a lot in the Bačka. The Banat also witnessed hardly
any sharpshooter activity. Ethnic Germans from villages along the
Romanian border were already partly armed – whether with hunting rifles
or scavenged army guns remains unclear – when German personnel
succeeded in delivering some weapon caches to them on April 7–8.40
These weapons were used in the villages of Mastort and Heufeld to
repel attempts by a few lone Serbian gendarmes to take hostages, and later
to repel attempted retaliation for the killing of said gendarmes. Unlike the
futile calls for aid issuing from Habag-Haus, a handful of Wehrmacht
soldiers responded to appeals from the residents of Mastort and Heufeld,
crossed the border ahead of the scheduled invasion of the Banat, and
helped push back the second wave of Serbian attack on these two
villages.41 This skirmish was the most that an ethnic German “fifth

40
German military intelligence had attempted to smuggle in weapons for Yugoslav
Germans starting on April 1, but the personnel in charge of the operation were fired
upon by Romanian troops or had the weapons seized by Hungarian border patrols.
Summary of “Jupiter” reports from Yugoslavia for March 30–31, 1941, BA MA, RW
5, file 497, pp. 132–133; Shimizu, pp. 87–88.
41
“Das Banat durch deutsche Truppen Besetzt,” DV, April 19, 1941, p. 4; “Bericht über
den Marsch der SS-Division ‘Reich’ von Frankreich nach Rumänien und den Einsatz am
11. und 12.4.41 nördl. Belgrad.”, no date, NARA, RG 242, T-354, roll 122, fr.
3,755,636; Klein testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 5, pp. 17–18.
 Liberation, Occupation, Statehood? 73

column” had the means, opportunity, and time to accomplish before

German troops occupied the Serbian Banat.

Liberation, Occupation, Statehood?

Many Banat Germans greeted the occupation of their home region by
German forces as true liberation. In a postwar report, former Kulturbund
official Josef Beer insisted that it was a matter of pride for every ethnic
German village in the Banat to host at least one or two German soldiers,
“almost drag[ging] them out of their tanks for joy.”42
German officers encouraged the Banat Germans to display the swastika
flag. Some of those who responded had never shown Nazi or Erneurer
sympathies before, suggesting that for many ethnic Germans the path to
collaboration was first paved by perceived kinship with the German
Reich, regardless of ideology. An abundance of swastika flags served as
a visible sign of the end of Yugoslav rule over the Banat and created
a suitable atmosphere for the dual celebrations of the Wehrmacht’s arrival
and Adolf Hitler’s birthday on April 20, 1941.43 For the latter occasion
and the May Day celebrations that followed, the municipal building in
Grossbetschkerek was decorated with a banner declaring “This land was
and remains German,”44 a pointed challenge to Hungarian territorial
ambitions and the more reticent Banat Germans alike.
The generation gap may have influenced reactions to the Wehrmacht’s
arrival. Whereas younger members of the Banat German community
greeted the Wehrmacht with delight, the older generation echoed its
skepticism toward the Erneurer by advising caution in relations with non-
German neighbors. These objections tended to get drowned out by the
younger ethnic Germans’ loud enthusiasm.45 Ideological agreement
between the German forces occupying the Banat and the Erneurer
ensured that Nazified ethnic Germans were the only ones allowed to
speak for the whole Banat German community.

42
Josef Beer, “Interregnum in das Banat,” June 25, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file
163, p. 1.
43
Ortskommandantur Alisbrunn, “Standortbefehl Kr. 1.”, April 19, 1941, NARA, RG
242, T-354, roll 130, fr. 3,766,925; “Das Banat durch deutsche Truppen Besetzt,” DV,
April 19, 1941, p. 4; “Wie Gross-Betschkerek befreit wurde,” DV, April 29, 1941, p. 5;
“Deutscher Soldat erlebt das Banat,” DV, April 30, 1941, p. 5; photo spreads, DV,
May 1, 1941, p. 6 and May 3, 1941, p. 6.
44
Josef Beer, “Der Aufbau der Volksgruppenverwaltung im Banat,” no date, BA Bayreuth,
Ost-Dok. 16, file 35, p. 1.
45
Testimony of M. R. from Franzfeld, May 6, 1957, in Dokumentation der Verteibung der
Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, Vol. V Das Schicksal der Deutschen in Jugoslawien, ed.
Theodor Schieder et al. (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984), p. 65.
74 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

All Banat Germans did share one sentiment: relief at not having been
occupied by the Hungarians or even the Romanians. They held this relief
in common with other residents of the Banat (except, of course, the Banat
Jews). In the village of Haideschütz near the Serbo-Romanian border,
ethnic Germans, Serbs, and ethnic Slovaks alike greeted German soldiers
with food, drink, and tobacco, grateful that they had not been occupied by
the Romanian army and probably eager to curry favor.46 The German
armed presence in the Banat was acceptable to the Banat Germans, even
if its political implications initially met with a mixed response.
The days and weeks following the German occupation of the Banat
were a transitional period, during which the region’s future seemed wide
open, so far as the Banat Germans and even the Wehrmacht’s representa-
tives there were concerned.47 Possibilities included military or civilian
occupation or even the creation of a new state, which had some theoretical
precedent.
At the turn of 1918–1919, ethnic German national councils
(Nationalräte) existed briefly in Grossbetschkerek and Timişoara but
came to naught once the Banat was split between Romania and the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.48 The ethnic Germans in the
Romanian Banat agitated for the reunification of the Banat under
German auspices in 1940, to no avail.49 On the eve of the invasion of
Yugoslavia, Helmut Triska of the German Foreign Ministry’s
Volkstumsreferat (Department for Nationality Questions) mentioned in
passing the possibility of the Banat becoming a part of the Third Reich but
stressed that the final territorial settlement in the Balkans would not be
possible before the war’s end.50 Finally, on the heels of the German

46
Sohl testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 9.
47
The existence of Nazi plans for a separate territorial unit for the ethnic Germans of the
Danube basin – whether as part of an expanded German Reich or an independent state – tied
economically and administratively to Belgrade as a “Reich fortress” (Reichsfestung), was
a mainstay of postwar Yugoslav historiography. The assumptions behind it were that plans
for the Germanization of the Danube basin dated back to the time of Eugene of Savoy; that
a highly organized ethnic German “fifth column” in absolute agreement with the Third
Reich’s plans had existed during the April War; and that Yugoslav German leaders had
rejected Yugoslavia as a viable state as early as 1939. Even the more moderate view from
West German historiography overemphasized grandiose Nazi visions over practical short-
term plans in this regard. Božić and Mitrović, pp. 117, 119–120; Hans-Ulrich Wehler,
“‘Reichsfestung Belgrad’. Nationalsozialistische ‘Raumordnung’ in Südosteuropa,”
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 11, No. 1 (January 1963), pp. 77–80.
48
Otto Franz Kern, “Das Deutschtum im ehemaligen Jugoslawien,” Deutsche Arbeit, Vol. 5
(May 1941), p. 160; Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, pp. 64–72.
49
Štab komande Dunavske divizijske oblasti to Garnizonar Zemunske garnizonske uprave,
October 26, 1940, NARA, RG 242, T-120 Yugoslav Archive, roll 835, no frame number.
50
Helmut Triska to Martin Luther, April 2, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 199, fr.
152,801.
 Liberation, Occupation, Statehood? 75

invasion of the Serbian Banat, Romanian German leader Andreas

Schmidt drafted a proposal for a “protectorate” comprising all territories
inhabited by ethnic Germans along the Lower Danube, which would have
ensured the “re-Germanization [Rückgermanisierung]” of these areas.51
Like the German military presence in the Banat, the division of
Yugoslav territory and the administrative future of the Banat were
dictated by the Third Reich’s priorities, finalized at two meetings
convened in Vienna on April 17–18, 1941. Proving beyond the shadow
of a doubt that the Third Reich’s diplomatic corps was as ideological as
any other Nazi institution, despite its perennial jurisdictional conflict with
the SS, the Foreign Ministry argued that Volkstum (nationality principle)
ought to be the yardstick of German territorial policy in Southeast
Europe. Helmut Triska and Wilhelm Stuckart of the German Interior
Ministry complained that the partitioning of Yugoslavia prioritized terri-
tory over the ethnic groups that inhabited it – specifically that the
Vojvodina Germans were separated from ethnic Germans in the rest of
Danube basin.52
In an attempt to balance pragmatic concerns with long-term ideologi-
cal plans, Stuckart accepted the necessity of maintaining extant occupa-
tion zones in Yugoslavia. He also made four proposals for the general
treatment of ethnic Germans living in partitioned Yugoslavia: the
creation of autonomous administrative areas wherever the ethnic
Germans had a relative or absolute majority (achieved, if need be,
through localized resettlement); full cultural, linguistic, educational,
economic, and organizational autonomy for these ethnic German
communities; the possibility of dual (Reich and host-country) citizenship
to ensure the ethnic Germans’ long-term protection; and possible reset-
tlement, either of ethnic Germans to the Reich or of non-Germans from
areas inhabited by ethnic Germans.53
This was more grandiose, long-term, and nebulous than Andreas
Schmidt’s proposal, and as unviable, given that East, not Southeast,
Europe was the area the Nazis were most eager to Germanize and rear-
range along ethnic lines and that Germany’s allies had to be placated with
territory in the Balkans. The Bačka and the Baranja remained under
Hungarian occupation, while the Serbian Banat was appended to
German-occupied Serbia proper, in violation of the Volkstum principle
but in line with the exigencies of power politics in the Tripartite Pact.

51
Andreas Schmidt memo, April 15, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2724, fiche 1, fr. 42.
52
Triska memo, April 21, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2415, frs. E221,521–523.
53
Wilhelm Stuckart, “Einzelthesen über die deutschen Volksgruppen im ehemaligen
Jugoslawien,” no date, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2415, fr. E221,525.
76 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

The destruction of Yugoslavia raised the issue of ethnic German lea-

dership. The Vojvodina Germans were split between three occupation
zones, yet had one official leader, Sepp Janko. Shortly after the
Hungarians occupied Novi Sad, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Heinrich
Himmler summoned Janko to Berlin. He remained in Germany for nearly
a month, leaving his co-nationals territorially divided and leaderless.
In Janko’s absence, Franz Basch, the ethnic German leader in Hungary,
arrived in Novi Sad and peremptorily announced his jurisdiction over the
ethnic Germans living in the Bačka, the Baranja, and even the Banat.54
The Banat’s future was decided in Berlin and Vienna in broad strokes,
but the details remained in flux. No one was passing orders down the
chain of command. Ethnic German leaders in the Banat defied Franz
Basch’s ambition, aided by the backing of the Wehrmacht regiment
“Grossdeutschland” and the lack of a Hungarian armed presence to
compel them. “Grossdeutschland” aided the Banat Germans in filling
key administrative positions in railways, communications, local adminis-
tration, and the police, which had been left vacant by fleeing Serbian
officials. A “Grossdeutschland” officer even accompanied two ethnic
German administrators to Novi Sad on April 29, where they met with
the ethnic German leadership (minus Janko) and proposed that it should
move to the Banat, to help create an ethnic German state on the
Danube.55
The absence of clear orders allowed “Grossdeutschland” officers to
play out a fantasy of state building in miniature in the Banat in
late April 1941. It remains unclear whether the idea to proclaim an ethnic
German state in the Serbian Banat came from an orderless
“Grossdeutschland” officer or a Banat German euphoric with relief at
not having been occupied by the Hungarians, buoyed up by the memories
of the 1918–1919 national council and stories about Eugene of Savoy’s
exploits fighting the Ottomans in Southeast Europe. Either way,
“Grossdeutschland” officers certainly supported the ethnic Germans’
belief in an imminent declaration of a Banat Free State (Freistaat).56
In the information vacuum following Yugoslavia’s defeat, competing
ideas and desires for the ethnic Germans’ future briefly coexisted. Some
ethnic Germans tried to preserve a semblance of order by resurrecting the
administrative routine disrupted by the flight of Serbian officials, while
others indulged in wild political fantasies. The German troops had too

54
Beer, “Die Haltung der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file
37, p. 20.
55
Beer, “Interregnum” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 163, pp. 2–3.
56
Harald Turner, “1. Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes beim Militärbefehlshaber in
Serbien,” May 26, 1941, BA MA, RW 40, file 183, p. 4.
 Liberation, Occupation, Statehood? 77

few men and resources for serious state building, absolutely no orders to
fall back on, and a surfeit of arrogance (or maybe just boredom) in
wanting to create a new state from scratch.57
The rudderless ethnic German leaders in Novi Sad were starting to
realize that the Hungarians were unlikely to make them a better offer than
the delegation from the Banat had done. Janko’s deputy Josef Beer went
to the Banat to initiate the process of transforming it into an ethnic
German state. These high hopes were quickly quashed. Placing the
chain of command in the ranks of the SS ahead of his co-nationals’
schemes for statehood, Gustav Halwax contacted his superior,
Reinhard Heydrich of the Reich Security Main Office, who ordered the
plans for a Danube German state to be “nipped in the bud.”58
As Sepp Janko was still in Berlin at this point, Ribbentrop took him to
task for the Banat Germans’ failure to accept their position as executors of
German orders rather than initiators of policy. Nevertheless, on May 16,
1941, Ribbentrop approved Janko and other ethnic German leaders
relocating from the Bačka to the Banat. Janko would take over as
Volksgruppenführer of the German minority in occupied Serbia and the
Banat only, which confirmed Franz Basch’s authority over the ethnic
Germans in the expanded Hungary. This decision was passed off to the
ethnic Germans of partitioned Yugoslavia as one made jointly by the
VoMi, Janko, Basch, and Branimir Altgayer, former Kulturbund official
and now Volksgruppenführer in the Independent State of Croatia.59
Far from being the product of negotiations among equals, this decision
stemmed from the German territorial settlement with Hungary,
a prerequisite for an enduring German-Hungarian alliance. The Nazis’
racial interest in ethnic Germans yielded to the need to keep the two allies’
spheres of influence in Southeast Europe clearly demarcated as well as to
prevent either Hungary or Romania from invading the Serbian Banat.
At the same time, the Nazi government prioritizing its diplomatic and
military alliances over the Volkstum principle had the side effect of
enabling Sepp Janko and his cohort to consolidate a diminished, yet
territorially secure, German minority under seemingly prime conditions
for its nationalization and its Nazification.
Janko and his colleagues moved from Novi Sad to Grossbetschkerek in
the second half of May 1941 and were greeted with jubilation by the

57
Zöller to Einsatzgruppe der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in Belgrade, June 2, 1941,
Arhiv Beograda, Registar imena, file J-167, p. 3.
58
Reinhard Heydrich quoted in Shimizu, p. 122.
59
Rimann to AA, May 16, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2415, frs. E221,491–492;
“Volksgruppenführer Dr. Franz Basch in der rückgegliederten Batschka,” DV, May 23,
1941, p. 2.
78 Ethnic Germans and the Invasion of Yugoslavia, 1941

Nazified strata of the Banat Germans.60 Janko’s inner circle did not seem
to mind their failed attempt at state building. By moving to the “little
Banat,”61 they had the chance to rule their own administrative fiefdom,
answering to no greater ethnic German authority – least of all, Franz
Basch. The Third Reich alone stood above them and would guide the
policies they enacted.
This arrangement presented the German minority in the Banat with
a new set of challenges as well as new strengths. Janko had been confirmed
as Volksgruppenführer, ensuring continuity of leadership as well as antici-
pated full Nazification of the ethnic German community. Ethnic
Germans already occupied key positions in the Banat administration.
Despite Hungarian territorial ambitions, the Banat was under German
protection. However, the Banat Germans’ privileged position in the
Banat lacked a firm legal and administrative basis. The Banat Germans
had yet to come to grips with their new duties and responsibilities – and
power – as the effective rulers of their home region under Nazi auspices.

60
“Die Ankunft des Volksgruppenführers Dr. Sepp Janko in Grossbetschkerek,” DV,
June 15, 1941, p. 5.
61
Beer, “Interregnum” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 163, p. 7.
3 Ethnic German Administration (1941)
and Community Dynamics

H U N G A R Y
a
Tis

Arad
Mureş

Alt-Kanischa nka
Neukanischa Ara
Verbitza
B

Tschoka
Mokrin
Nakodorf

Padej
A Grosskikinda Soltur
Charleville
Sankt Hubert
Botschar Heufeld Mastort
Ruskodorf Timişoara
Karlowa
Beodra N Deutsch
Toba Zerne
Aratsch Molidorf R O MA N I A
Novi Neu-Betsche Klein Kikinda
Vrbas Torda
A
Tschestereg
Kumane Pardan
Banater Hof
Melenz
Sankt Georgen T
V O J V O D I N A Stefansfeld
Deutsch Elemer Kathreinfeld Modosch
Grossbetschkerek Schurjan
Lasarfeld
Aradatz Ernsthausen Boka
BAČK A
Deutsch Etschka Sigmundfeld Setschan
Novi Sad Setchanfeld
Elisenheim Heideschütz
Petrovaradin
Danube Perlas Georgshausen
Farkaschdin Zichydorf
Rudolfsgnad Sakula
S Werschetz Kudritz
Kowatschitza Alisbrunn Pavlis
R Debeljatscha
E Crepaja
Karlsdorf
Glogau
M Apfeldorf Franzfeld
Duplaja
Kubin
Homolitz Pantschowa Weisskirchen
Zemun Wojlowitz
Sajmište Startchowa
Sav Belgrade
a Rustendorf
Banjica be
nu
Blauschütz Da
Smederevo
0 20 40 60 km

0 10 20 30 40 miles

Map 3.1 Serbian Banat

79
80 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

Josef Beer served as deputy to Sepp Janko in his role as

Volksgruppenführer and played an active part in the establishment of
the Banat German administration in summer 1941. In West Germany
after the war, Beer became prominent in expellee circles as an impas-
sioned apologist for Banat German wartime behavior, presenting an often
contradictory picture of a Banat German administration that wielded
great power in its home area yet supposedly remained untainted by
Nazism – an unwitting victim of the Nazis rather than a willing
collaborator.
In one of his postwar works, Beer called the period 1941–1944 a “Banat
era [Banater Ära],”1 giving undue credit to the ethnic German adminis-
tration’s ability to shape its own destiny independently of external factors
like war, occupation, and the exigencies of German diplomacy. Yet, in
another work, Beer described the Banat as “merely . . . an appendage to
defeated Serbia,”2 thus relieving its ethnic German administration and
leadership of any responsibility for wartime events.
It would be too facile to claim that the truth lay somewhere between the
two extremes straddled by Beer’s whitewashing narratives. The Banat
German administration wielded significant power and authority inside
the Banat, altered the lives of all Banat ethnicities, and displayed a zeal for
collaboration that went beyond mere accommodation to Nazi rule. Yet
the Banat Germans’ empowerment was intrinsically tied to their subor-
dinate position in the Nazi New Order and their willingness to follow the
Nazis’ lead, which confirmed the Banat Germans’ ambiguous position:
members of the German Volk yet not equal to Reich Germans, resident in
an area administered by the ethnic German minority yet under Reich
German military control as part of an occupied territory. Banat German
leaders attempted to reconcile their co-nationals’ perceptions and desires
with Nazi ones but, wherever fault lines appeared, Nazi interest tended to
carry the day.
Other factors that contributed to the Banat Germans’ empowered posi-
tion in 1941 included the threat of Hungarian revisionism as a lingering
symptom of the ad hoc partitioning of Yugoslavia; the complexity of the
German occupation apparatus in Serbia; the relative weakness of the
Serbian collaborationist government set up in mid-1941; and the chronic
personnel shortage with which the occupying Germans had to cope, espe-
cially after the start of organized resistance in Serbia proper in late spring
and summer 1941. These factors made the ethnic German willingness to

1
Josef Beer et al., Heimatbuch der Stadt Weisskirchen im Banat (Salzburg: Verein
Weisskirchner Ortsgemeinschaft, 1980), p. 171.
2
Untitled Josef Beer report, May 12, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 13, p. 28.
 Preconditions 81

administer the Banat on the Third Reich’s behalf convenient as well as

ideologically sound in Nazi eyes. As was the case with the Banat’s occupa-
tion by German forces, practical necessity shaped short-term choices. Nazi
ideology facilitated these choices and justified them after the fact.
In summer and fall 1941, a series of legal documents established the
parameters for the ethnic German administration in the Serbian Banat
and the internal organization of the German minority. Relations between
the ethnic Germans and other major ethnic groups in the Banat became
a matter of official policy, with the ethnic Germans firmly on top, thanks
to their standing in the Nazi racial hierarchy and the practical services they
could render to the Third Reich. The Banat Germans were guaranteed
group rights, which made belonging to an organized ethnic German
community both more important and more binding than ever before,
although it could not resolve the ambiguities of Banat ethnic Germanness.
Banat German leaders still had to consolidate the rank and file as
a community and complete Nazification in word as well as deed.
The leadership enforced group belonging and cohesion through manipula-
tion more than outright force, which was used sparingly and for maximum
psychological effect. Compliance, accommodation, and desire to avoid the
label of social misfit served the leadership’s goals well enough. Material
privileges, duty to an idealized Germany, openness to propaganda, even
apathy, as well as the threat of punishment or public shame, meant the
Banat Germans tended to do no worse than gossip and grumble as a means
of relieving social tensions, while following the Nazis’ lead and policies.

Preconditions
Serbia under German occupation in World War II remained of secondary
importance in Adolf Hitler’s grand scheme. It also proved a drain on
German resources and a source of perennial unrest. German personnel in
Belgrade and other Serbian cities were already overstretched in late spring
1941, with a minimal presence in the countryside. Then, in summer
1941, Serbia proper became the epicenter of widespread resistance spear-
headed by not one but two resistance movements: the communist
Partisans and the royalist-nationalist Četniks. By late May 1941, only
three Wehrmacht divisions remained. On June 22, 1941, a single Reserve
Police battalion transferred from Essen to Serbia due to fears of
a communist uprising in reaction to the start of Operation Barbarossa.
The battalion proved insufficient to secure all of rural Serbia.3

3
Kriegstagebuch, June 22, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 425;
Kriegstagebuch, June 30, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 427; Kiessel
82 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

Harald Turner, head of the German civilian administration in Belgrade,

set up a Serbian collaborationist government in late April to try to spread
the burden of administering and securing the country. Dimitrije Ljotić, the
leader of Zbor, the Serbian fascist organization, was too unpopular and
volatile to serve as an effective figurehead.4 Instead, Turner’s first choice
for the head of this collaborationist government was former Belgrade police
chief and Interior Minister, Milan Aćimović. When he proved ill-suited to
the task, Turner settled in late August on former Yugoslav Minister of
Army and Navy, General Milan Nedić.5
The Third Reich formally “supervised” this Serbian government,
which had limited powers of independent decision-making and enjoyed
limited popular support.6 This, in turn, meant that the Germans in
Belgrade needed more and other collaborators – the Banat Germans
were well positioned to take on significant administrative tasks on the
Nazis’ behalf.
The collaborationist government notwithstanding, Serbia-Banat, as
the Nazis called it, remained a German zone of military occupation.
The first Military Commander in Serbia (Militärbefehlshaber in
Serbien7) was installed shortly after the conclusion of the April War
on April 18, 1941. He reported to the German commander for the entire
Balkan Peninsula, Field Marshal Wilhelm List in Greece.8
The occupation of Serbia saw little continuity of leadership, as half
a dozen generals succeeded each other until the war’s end. Five generals
held the command post in 1941 alone and were replaced due to their
inability to defeat the communist and nationalist resistance movements.
They were Air Force General Helmut Förster (April 22–early June 1941),
Artillery General Ludwig von Schröder (early June–July 18, 1941), Air

memo, July 23, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, frs. 597–600; Vogel in Germany
and the Second World War, Vol. III, p. 522.
4
Byford in Haynes and Rady, pp. 296–301.
5
Feine to AA, April 27, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XII.2, doc. 414 on p. 544; Christopher
R. Browning, “Harald Turner und die Militärverwaltung in Serbien 1941–1942” in
Verwaltung contra Menschenführung im Staat Hitlers: Studien zum politisch-administrativen
System, ed. Dieter Rebentisch and Karl Teppe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1986), pp. 353–354.
6
The term “supervisory administration” (“Aufsichtsverwaltung”) was used by Harald
Turner in a letter to Wilhelm Stuckart, July 8, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 266, frs.
1264–1265. See also Ramet and Lazić in Ramet and Listhaug, pp. 17–43.
7
The title was changed in June 1941 to Befehlshaber Serbien (Commander in Serbia) and
then in October 1941 to Bevollmächtigter kommandierender General und Befehlshaber
in Serbien (Plenipotentiary Commanding General and Commander in Serbia).
In summer 1943, it was expanded to become Militärbefehlshaber Südost (Military
Commander in the Southeast). I will refer to this office and its holders as the Military
Commander in Serbia or as the German commander/commanding general in Serbia.
8
Kriegstagebuch, June 21, 1941, BA MA, RW 40, file 3, p. 8.
 Preconditions 83

Force General Heinrich Danckelmann (late July–September 18, 1941),

Infantry General Franz Böhme (September 18–December 3, 1941),
Artillery General Paul Bader (December 3, 1941–August 1943), and
Infantry General Hans Felber (August 29, 1943–fall 1944).
Wielding unlimited command powers over German troops and all
civilians in Serbia, the Military Commander in Serbia contended with
a complex occupation apparatus as well as an unsettled territory. He
presided over two parallel German administrations: a civilian one under
Harald Turner and one in charge of security. Franz Neuhausen as the
representative of the Four-Year Plan (General Plenipotentiary for the
Economy – Generalbevollmächtigter für die Wirtschaft) and Felix
Benzler representing the German Foreign Ministry were nominally
within the Military Commander’s jurisdiction, but in practice they oper-
ated almost independently, thus exacerbating the jurisdictional melee.9
Security, transportation, and economic exploitation were the Military
Commander’s primary tasks.10 The Banat mattered especially due to its
agricultural potential, since the Third Reich’s war effort and its racial
approach to warfare relied on the economic exploitation of occupied
territories. While a steady food supply was crucial for a successful cam-
paign, National Socialism placed the conquest and racial reshaping of the
East ahead of the necessary prerequisites for this conquest.11
The Serbian Banat – like the Bulgarian occupation zone in South
Serbia – held an ambivalent position within the Military Commander’s
administrative jurisdiction.12 Although the Banat was under German mili-
tary occupation, its German minority’s liaison with Berlin was supposed to
be Felix Benzler, the German diplomatic representative in Belgrade. Since
the Ribbentrop-Himmler agreement gave the Foreign Ministry the upper
hand in all Volkstum affairs, Benzler emerged, for the time being, as the
official with the greatest clout in matters pertaining to the Banat Germans.
A collaborationist group could wrest some local power and influence
for itself, provided it was well organized, held a sufficiently high position
in the Nazi racial hierarchy, and posed no threat to the Third Reich’s
supremacy in Europe, as suggested by Jan T. Gross.13 Unlike the abortive

9
“Weisungen für den Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,” no date, NARA, RG 242, T-501,
roll 245, fr. 257; Ribbentrop to Weizsäcker, April 17, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll
199, fr. 153,104; Weizsäcker memo, May 3, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, fr.
153,205; Browning, Fateful Months, pp. 39–40.
10
“Dienstanweisung für den Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,” April 17, 1941, NARA, RG
242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 250.
11
Pavlowitch, p. 272.
12
Walter von Brauchitsch, “Befehl für die Einrichtung einer Militärverwaltung in Serbien,”
April 20, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 247.
13
Gross, pp. xii, 123.
84 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

attempt to create a separate ethnic German state on the Danube, an

ethnic German administration in the Banat emerged as a viable option.
In addition to aiding the chronic manpower problem under which the
Germans in Serbia labored, an ethnic German administration in the
Banat could be less offensive to Hungarian and Romanian sensibilities
than if Germans from the Reich had been installed in key positions, while
still helping to keep Hungarian and Romanian demands to occupy the
Serbian Banat at bay. The fact that the Banat was part of a secondary
theater of war also made it easier for the Banat Germans to gain local
importance, precisely because they and their home region were not
viewed by Berlin as the most important part of the greater German war
effort, and their ambitions would be limited to the Banat.
The administrative organization of occupied Serbia facilitated
partial autonomy for the Banat. The country was divided into military-
administrative units called Field Command Posts (Feldkommandanturen),
each comprising one or more Local Command Posts (Ortskomm-
andanturen). The Banat had its own Local Command Post –
Ortskommandantur 823 – directly subsumed under the commanding
general in Belgrade and fully operational in Grossbetschkerek by April 28,
1941.14 In May, it was renamed District Command Post 823
(Kreiskommandantur 823) and remained subordinated directly to the
Military Commander in Belgrade.15
In December 1941, the civilian administration in Serbia was organized
into 14 counties (Kreise, Serb. okruzi), one of which was the Banat.
Although the Banat enjoyed a degree of autonomy already
before December 1941, thereafter its civilian-administrative borders
coincided with military-administrative ones, making the chain of
command in the Banat somewhat more straightforward than it was in
Serbia proper.16
While administrative boundaries happened to lend the Banat a degree
of separation from Serbia proper, the German manpower dearth

14
Kriegstagebuch, April 16, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 264;
Kriegstagebuch, April 28, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 115; Shimizu,
p. 104.
15
Kriegstagebuch, May 2, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 302. See also
undated organizational chart of the German administration in occupied Serbia-Banat,
NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 266, fr. 1039.
16
Gravenhorst, “Befehl über die neue Einteilung der Militärverwaltung im Gebiete des
Befehlshabers Serbien,” December 4, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 246, fr. 726;
“Verordnung betreffend Zuständigkeit der Feld-, Kreis- und Ortskommandanturen,”
Verordnungsblatt des Befehlshabers Serbien, March 21, 1942, p. 218; “Erste Verordnung
zur Abänderung der Verordnung über die polizeiliche Strafgewalt vom 19. Februar
1942,” Verordnungsblatt des Befehlshabers Serbien, April 6, 1943, p. 317; Browning in
Rebentisch and Teppe, pp. 360–361.
 Preconditions 85

remained extreme. On April 23, 1941, the Wehrmacht commander in

Grossbetschkerek, Captain Rentsch, complained that once the
Wehrmacht regiment “Grossdeutschland” departed from the Banat, he
would have fewer than three dozen men at his disposal to secure the entire
Serbian Banat, including its communication and supply lines.
In addition, in early June, Rentsch had to cover for the illness-stricken
commander of neighboring Field Command Post 610 based in
Smederevo, a town on the Danube’s south bank east of Belgrade, at
a time when all Wehrmacht command posts in Serbia stepped up their
security measures in anticipation of resistance guerrilla activity.17
In the Banat, described by Rentsch as a Reich “protectorate
[Schutzgebiet],”18 the occupiers could rely on the Kulturbund’s inchoate
administrative apparatus established before the April War. The ethnic
German administration gained a gloss of legitimacy when Sepp Janko and
the rest of the ethnic German leadership moved from Hungarian-
occupied Novi Sad to the Banat in May 1941. The formal establishment
of an ethnic German administration, which would share some of
Rentsch’s burdens, depended, however, on the approval of Felix
Benzler, the Military Commander in Belgrade, and their respective super-
iors in Berlin. Diplomatic tensions with neighboring countries played into
the Banat German leaders’ hands by positioning them and their co-
nationals as the best option the Third Reich had for reliable, racially
suitable collaborators in the region.
The threat of a Hungarian or Romanian takeover of the Banat declined
after the April War, but it endured. Lacking support from the German
diplomatic corps, Romanian hopes for territorial expansion into the
Serbian Banat were thwarted for the duration of the war, once the ethnic
German administration found its feet in summer 1941.19
By contrast, Hungary had troops stationed in the Bačka, had been
asked to participate in the occupation of Yugoslavia, and had been
promised the Serbian Banat as part of its war booty, albeit without
a firm guarantee of when the takeover would happen. Their hints having
fallen on deaf ears in Berlin, the Hungarians threatened invasion and
annexation, causing great unrest in the Banat in late spring 1941. Groups

17
Rentsch to Militärbefehlshaber Serbien, April 23, 1941, NARA, RG 238, entry 175, roll
16, doc. NOKW-1110, fr. 274; Gravenhorst to all Feldkommandanturen and
Ortskommandanturen, May 2, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 309;
Kriegstagebuch, June 3, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, fr. 418.
18
Rentsch to Militärbefehlshaber Serbien (1941), NARA, RG 238, entry 175, roll 16, doc.
NOKW-1110, fr. 275.
19
Rintelen to German Embassy in Romania, April 21, 1941, DGFP, Series D, Vol. 12, doc.
376 on p. 592; Ribbentrop to German Embassy in Romania, May 25, 1941, Akten, Serie
D, Vol. XII.2, doc. 551 on p. 729.
86 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

of Hungarian soldiers repeatedly visited Banat villages and towns with

substantial ethnic Hungarian populations near the Tisa River, the natural
border between the Banat and the Bačka. Once in the Banat, they
displayed firearms, got drunk, mistreated non-Hungarian civilians, and
proclaimed an imminent Hungarian invasion. The Banat ethnic
Hungarians displayed Hungarian national colors, flags, and Regent
Horthy’s pictures and visited the Bačka, bringing back nationalist litera-
ture and “fresh courage.”20 Open clashes between ethnic Germans and
ethnic Hungarians occurred, leaving it up to Sepp Janko and Felix
Benzler to curb passions on both sides.21
As worrisome as this behavior was to many Banat Germans and Serbs,
it was mere saber-rattling. Hungary attempted to nudge Hitler into ful-
filling its expectations, but it was not prepared to risk the inevitable clash
with both Germany and Romania if it did attempt to annex the Banat.
Hungarian provocation rendered the German administration in Serbia
unwilling to allow any outside interference in Banat affairs. Since the
Serbian collaborationist government had only nominal executive powers
even in Serbia proper and the Reich Germans had no manpower to spare,
this left the ethnic Germans as the best candidates for the role of Nazi
cat’s paw in the Banat.

Establishing Racial-Administrative Hierarchy

Far from needing to build an administrative infrastructure from scratch,
the Kulturbund had established a network of offices providing diverse
services to the ethnic German community long before the April War.
Moreover, after many Yugoslav officials fled during the invasion,
educated ethnic Germans – lawyers, notaries, teachers, Kulturbund
officials – stepped in as provisional administrators. Josef Beer authorized
their activities on April 24, undoubtedly with the knowledge and approval
of the Wehrmacht command post in Grossbetschkerek.22

20
“Verhalten der Ungarn im Banat und in der Bačka,” June 10, 1941, NARA, RG 242,
T-501, roll 245, fr. 456.
21
Rentsch to Militärbefehlshaber Serbien (1941), NARA, RG 238, entry 175, roll 16, doc.
NOKW-1110, frs. 274–275; Kriegstagebuch, May 4, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll
245, frs. 289–290; Felix Benzler to AA, May 10, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200,
fr. 153,224; Kriegstagebuch, late May 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, frs.
123–124.
22
Beer, “An alle Kreis- und Ortsleiter!”, DV, April 24, 1941, p. 4; deposition of Dušan
Kolarević to the Serbian Interior Ministry, May 14, 1941, Vojni arhiv, Nedićev arhiv, box
20A, folder 1, doc. 1–23; deposition of Radovan S. Stanković to the Serbian Interior
Ministry, May 13, 1941, Vojni arhiv, Nedićev arhiv, box 20A, folder 1, doc. 1–28;
Benzler to AA, May 17, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, fr. 153,236.
 Establishing Racial-Administrative Hierarchy 87

Any attempt by individuals to carve out separate administrative

fiefdoms stopped once Sepp Janko arrived in the Banat in May 1941
and asserted his authority.23 This won him the respect of Harald
Turner, who instructed Janko to select his best people for the “creation
of a solid and firm [civilian] administrative apparatus” in the Banat.24
Every aspect of ethnic German life was covered. In addition to the Main
Office (Stabsamt), the Banat administration had a Land Registry
(Landesschatzamt), an Administrative Main Office (Hauptamt für
Verwaltung), a Central Culture Section (Hauptamt für Kultur), a Main
Office for Public Health and Social Welfare (Hauptamt für
Volksgesundheit und Volkswohlfahrt), and an Economics Section (Amt
für Volkswirtschaft). As in the period before the April War, Kulturbund
members were organized into county and town or village chapters
(Kreisgruppen and Ortsgruppen). Finally, separate organizations were set
up for men (Deutsche Mannschaft), women (Deutsche Frauenschaft), and
youth (Deutsche Jugend), modeled on similar institutions in the Third
Reich.25 This amounted to a Gleichschaltung (cooptation or coordina-
tion) of Banat German communal life to a degree unfeasible before
the April War.
No Nazi Party recruitment took place in the Banat, most likely because
it would have posed a dangerous precedent for racial “undesirables” and
persons of suspect background in other occupied territories to apply for
party membership. The Banat German leadership stood in for the Nazi
Party, insofar as it was in charge of both ideology and practical affairs.
Without explicitly referencing the Nazi Party’s dual role in the Third
Reich, in its first official proclamations after the April War, the Banat
leadership stressed the need for continued ideological and administrative
exertion as its raison d’être. Banat German leaders insisted that, following
the unsettled weeks after the Yugoslav defeat, when individual ethnic
German administrators had been left to their own devices, they intended
to impose uniform rules and expectations. They promised strict regimen-
tation and centralization of the administrative apparatus.26 This
23
Zöller to Einsatzgruppe der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in Belgrade (1941), Arhiv
Beograda, Registar imena, file J-167, p. 3.
24
Zöller to Einsatzgruppe der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in Belgrade (1941), Arhiv
Beograda, Registar imena, file J-167, pp. 1–2.
25
Sepp Janko, “Verordnungen und Anordnungen des Volksgruppenführers,”
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung der deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat, Serbien und
Ostsyrmien [after this first issue, the publication was renamed the Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung der deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und Serbien, then renamed again
in September 1943 the Amtsblatt der Volksgruppenführung der Deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat
und in Serbien; henceforth Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung], May 1941, pp. 2–3.
26
“Neuen Aufgaben entgegen,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, May 1941,
pp. 1–2.
88 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

reassured the German administrators in Belgrade and the government in

Berlin of the Banat Germans’ reliability as executors of orders from
above.
In order to make the Banat German administration more than
a provisional measure, the Serbian collaborationist government, acting
on German orders, passed a series of laws in summer and fall 1941, which
provided legal protection and special privileges to the Banat Germans.
These laws cemented the Banat German leaders’ dependence on the
Third Reich and gave the nervous Banat Germans some peace of mind
regarding Hungarian threats of annexation.
The Banat German administration became official at a meeting in
Belgrade on June 5, 1941, attended by representatives of the Military
Commander in Serbia, Harald Turner, Field Command Post 610 in
Smederevo as the Banat’s immediate neighbor, the Banat Germans,
and the Serbian collaborationist government. The latter were there only
pro forma and readily consented to the ethnic Germans’ demands sup-
ported by Turner and the Military Commander.27 The new Banat admin-
istration’s legal framework was set out in the “Verordnung über die innere
Verwaltung des Banates” (“Decree on the Inner Administration of the
Banat”).
Since in June 1941 Serbia was still divided into the old Yugoslav admin-
istrative units, banovinas, the ethnic German Sepp Lapp became the Banat
Vizebanus (deputy to the ban – head of a banovina) and representative of
the Serbian Interior Ministry in the Banat. Lapp went on to distinguish
himself by a professional zeal that bordered on petty excess. The tone of his
official memoranda reveals not only a serious dedication to furthering the
interests of the Banat German leadership as the community’s representa-
tive but also a tendency to micromanage and insist on the importance of his
position as the Banat’s administrative chief.
While Lapp took over coordinating the administration, other Serbian
ministries retained personnel in charge of protecting their interests in the
Banat, all of whom were ethnic Germans recommended by the Banat
German leadership. For example, when the Court of Appeals moved
from Novi Sad to Grossbetschkerek, Lapp recommended the ethnic
German jurist Wilhelm Neuner to be in charge of it on behalf of the
Serbian Justice Ministry.28 Moreover, in summer 1941, German as well

27
Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien Verwaltungsstab meeting minutes, June 5, 1941, NARA,
RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr. H298,156.
28
Militärbefehlshaber Verwaltungsstab minutes (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll
5782, frs. H298,156–157; Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien Verwaltungsstab meeting min-
utes, June 5, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr. H298,158; “Verordnung über
die innere Verwaltung des Banates,” no date, BA MA, RW 40, file 184, pp. 2–4.
 Establishing Racial-Administrative Hierarchy 89

as Serbian became the official languages in the Banat, in recognition of

the ethnic Germans’ empowerment (as well as the reality that many Banat
residents spoke Serbian as their primary or one of their languages).29
In practical terms, the ethnic German administration acted as a stand-
in for Serbian ministries and Harald Turner by supervising police and
legal matters, German schools, postal services, railways, border control,
and finances in the Banat.30 Turner depended on Lapp’s subordinates for
the provision of basic services vital to the smooth running of the occupa-
tion and extraction of the Banat’s agricultural surplus. The arrangement
also allowed the Reich Germans to get around the Aćimović govern-
ment’s technical jurisdiction over the Banat, by placing the Banat
German administration directly under Turner and the Military
Commander in Serbia. The Aćimović government could only rubber-
stamp German demands, while District Command Post 823 in
Grossbetschkerek was already under the Military Commander’s direct
command. Thus, both the military and the civilian chains of command in
the Banat led straight to the Military Commander in Belgrade.
In summer and fall 1941, the Banat German administration hit its
stride and proved capable of enforcing its and the Third Reich’s will
over the Banat’s mixed population. Like Harald Turner’s administration
in Belgrade, the Banat German administration lacked trained personnel,
so administrative tasks were accomplished slowly, despite the adminis-
trators’ best efforts.31 Even so, in early October 1941, Sepp Lapp drew on
the June 5 decree to announce that all representatives of the Serbian
collaborationist government in the Banat would cease work within
a month’s time, their tasks to be taken over by administrators appointed
by Lapp himself.32 This decision could not have been made without the
approval of the German commanding general in Belgrade. It signaled
a measure of good faith toward the Banat administration. Despite grow-
ing pains, ethnic German administrators were learning on the job and
learning fast.
In November and December 1941, Lapp shored up the administrative
chain of command by reminding his subordinates repeatedly that all items

29
Stille to AA, July 14, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, fr. 153,268.
30
Militärbefehlshaber Verwaltungsstab minutes (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll
5782, fr. H298,157; Militärbefehlshaber Verwaltungsstab minutes (1941), NARA, RG
242, T-120, roll 5782, frs. H298,160–161.
31
Turner, “4. Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes beim Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,”
September 6, 1941, BA MA, RW 40, file 186, p. 10; Turner, “6. Lagebericht des
Verwaltungsstabes beim Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,” November 6, 1941, BA MA,
RW 40, file 188, p. 10; Turner, “7. Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes beim
Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,” December 6, 1941, BA MA, RW 40, file 189, p. 8.
32
Sepp Lapp, “Anordnung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, October 3, 1941, p. 1.
90 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

of business had to pass through his office, not be passed directly to the
German military authorities in Grossbetschkerek or Belgrade, and
written communiqués were safer than passing on orders orally.33
In addition to security, the emphasis on written communication helped
keep both the author and the recipient of orders accountable. Personal
contact remained important in the tightly knit Banat German commu-
nity, while bureaucratic rationalization ensured that everyday tasks were
performed in an orderly, if not always timely, fashion. The Banat admin-
istration was far from the “idiosyncratic peasant democracy” of informal
networks suggested by Josef Beer in his postwar apologia.34 The German
military administration in Belgrade kept the Banat German leadership
tied firmly to the Third Reich’s agenda and prevented the development of
independent policy.
The December 1941 administrative reform made the Banat one of
Serbia-Banat’s 14 counties, with Lapp’s title of Vizebanus replaced by
that of Kreischef (county chief).35 This was a symbolic sign that the Banat
had gained as much autonomy as its ethnic Germans could expect –
autonomy from the Serbian collaborationist government, not the Third
Reich and its representatives in Belgrade. The ethnic German adminis-
tration’s elevation to a dominant position in the Banat occurred at the
behest of German interests and needs and stopped well short of self-
government. In September 1941, Felix Benzler called the Banat “for all
intents and purposes, an ethnic German reservation [praktisch volks-
deutsches Reservat],”36 a dismissive yet incisive assessment of the ethnic
Germans’ new status – locally prominent, but also at the Reich’s mercy.
In addition to catering to German demands, the ethnic Germans had to
contend with the Banat’s other residents, of whom the Banat German
administration was now in charge. Other Banat ethnicities’ claims to
a share of power and resources depended on their standing in the Nazi
racial hierarchy and on relations between their nation-states (if any) and
the Third Reich. The ethnic Germans accounted for only one-fifth of the
Banat population, yet the division of administrative power clearly favored
them.
A proviso of the June 5 agreement determined that municipal presi-
dents in the Banat would be recruited depending on the relative numbers
33
Heim, “Runderlass,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, December 12, 1941, p. 1; Lapp,
“Runderlass,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, December 17, 1941, p. 4.
34
Beer, “Der Aufbau der Volksgruppenverwaltung” (no date), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16,
file 35, p. 12.
35
Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova, “Ernennung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, January 15,
1942, p. 1.
36
Benzler to Heinrich Danckelmann, September 20, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll
249, fr. 844.
 Establishing Racial-Administrative Hierarchy 91

of Serbian, ethnic Hungarian, and ethnic German residents. Thus, the

municipal representative for Grosskikinda was an ethnic German, his first
deputy a Serb, and his second deputy an ethnic Hungarian. Of the Banat’s
eleven municipalities (Alisbrunn, Grossbetschkerek, Grosskikinda,
Kowatschitza, Kubin, Modosch, Neu-Betsche, Neukanischa, Pantschowa,
Weisskirchen, Werschetz) and five major towns (Grossbetschkerek,
Grosskikinda, Pantschowa, Weisskirchen, Werschetz), ten had ethnic
Germans as municipal presidents, five had Serbs, and only one had an
ethnic Hungarian. The chiefs of police in all five major towns were ethnic
Germans, as were the heads of all main administrative offices save one: an
ethnic Hungarian was in charge of the Main Office for Public Health and
Social Welfare. By 1943, all five major Banat towns also had ethnic
German mayors.37
In the case of a Hungarian takeover, the Hungarians would have been
unlikely to respect the Third Reich having made the ethnic Germans the
dominant ethnic group in the Banat. Speaking to Helmut Triska of the
German Foreign Ministry on July 31, 1941, Harald Turner speculated
that the Serbian Banat could become Hungarian around October 1, pro-
vided two preconditions were satisfied – the harvest was secured for the
provisioning of German troops, and the Banat Germans’ legal rights were
guaranteed in the long term.38
Ostensibly in order to debate this possibility, the German Foreign
Ministry convened a meeting in Budapest on August 6, 1941, attended
by representatives of the Foreign Ministry, the VoMi, the German admin-
istration in Belgrade, and the ethnic Germans of the Banat and Hungary.
The German commander in Serbia, Heinrich Danckelmann, was reso-
lutely opposed to the idea of a Hungarian takeover of the Banat at any
time. Paramount among Danckelmann’s misgivings was the Hungarian
practice of expelling Serbs from their zone of occupation in the Bačka.
This caused a serious refugee problem in Serbia and hampered
Danckelmann and the Serbian government’s efforts to combat the
communist resistance, which attracted many desperate and embittered
refugees. Danckelmann feared the royalist Četniks might unite with the
communist Partisans if the Third Reich allowed yet another part of
Serbian territory to fall to the Serbs’ traditional enemy, the Hungarians.39

37
Militärbefehlshaber Verwaltungsstab minutes (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll
5782, fr. H298,159; “Verordnung über die innere Verwaltung des Banates” (no date),
BA MA, RW 40, file 184, p. 2; Völkl, pp. 76–77, 79.
38
Triska memo, July 31, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, frs. H297,935–936.
39
Danckelmann to Wilhelm List, August 9, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2415, frs.
E221,599–600.
92 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

No representatives of the Hungarian government were invited to

the August 6 meeting, despite its taking place in the Hungarian capital.
This confirmed Hungary’s subordinate position in the Tripartite Pact and
suggested that, rather than preparation for the Hungarian annexation of
the Banat, the meeting was mere window dressing intended to fob off
Hungarian claims on the Banat. A German Foreign Ministry memo not
intended for Hungarian eyes confirmed that the meeting had not dealt
with the question of when a Hungarian takeover of the Banat might
happen, rather how Banat Germans would be treated in the case of
such a takeover at an unspecified later date.40
In the meantime, the Third Reich still needed to placate its Hungarian
ally or at least pay lip service to Hungarian demands. On October 23,
1941, the Serbian collaborationist government under Milan Nedić passed
the “Verordnung über die Teilnahme der Ungarn an der Verwaltung des
Banats” (“Decree on the [Ethnic] Hungarian Participation in the Banat
Administration”).
This decree allowed limited participation of ethnic Hungarians in the
Banat administration and the use of Hungarian as the third official
language in those Banat municipalities where ethnic Hungarians were at
least one-third of the population. Ethnic Hungarians obtained chief
administrative positions in Alt-Kanischa and Neu-Betsche and became
deputy municipal presidents in Grossbetschkerek, Grosskikinda, and
Kowatschitza, as well as head of the city council in Grosskikinda – all
towns and villages with substantial ethnic Hungarian populations. Ethnic
Hungarian notaries, judges, and postal workers were appointed in the
very few villages with ethnic Hungarian majorities. Ethnic Hungarian
teachers could teach separate Hungarian-language classes, but only if
a sufficient number of children “proven to belong to the Hungarian
people” registered.41 In addition, as a symbolic gesture toward the
Banat’s ethnic diversity, several Serbs, ethnic Romanians, and a single
ethnic Slovak were appointed deputies to municipal and district
presidents.42
Assessment of people’s nationality was left to individual administra-
tors. Since these were mostly ethnic Germans, the October 23 decree
hardly amounted to a fairer division of power. Instead, it isolated Banat
ethnic Hungarians in the few districts where they had a substantial
presence and demonstrated to the Hungarian government that unfair

40
Werner von Schmieden to Mackeben, August 26, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll
5782, fr. H297,974.
41
“Uredba o učešću mađarske narodnosne grupe u upravi Banata,” Službene novine,
October 28, 1941, p. 2.
42
Völkl, p. 78.
 Defining Community 93

treatment of minorities was a game two could play. As Tripartite Pact

troops got bogged down on the Eastern Front and the campaign entered
its first Russian winter, the Third Reich decided against giving Hungary
more clout by using Hungarian troops to fight the resistance in the
Yugoslav lands – except in the Bačka – since it needed those troops in
the East more.43
By the end of 1941, Hungarian threats of an imminent takeover of the
Serbian Banat, thwarted again and again by Hungary’s unwillingness to
challenge the Third Reich, lost their power to frighten the Banat
Germans. Of the non-German ethnicities in the Banat, the ethnic
Hungarians continued to hold more power even than the largest group,
the Serbs, but the ethnic Germans were the ones in power both formally
and in practice.

Defining Community
The June 5 agreement officially incorporated the Banat German admin-
istration into the occupation system in Serbia. It did not, however, expli-
citly guarantee Banat German legal rights. Such a guarantee would serve
a dual purpose: to reassure the Banat Germans of the Third Reich’s
investment in their future safety44 and make belonging to a legally defined
Banat German community an enduring, binding aspect of their
Germanness. Once the ethnic Germans’ rights and privileges hinged on
their ethnic belonging, Sepp Janko’s vision of the ethnic German
community as an organic Volksgruppe, which would parallel state insti-
tutions, permeate members’ private lives, and bind members to it perma-
nently, could be realized at last, in ways impossible as long as the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia had endured.45
The Banat Germans’ legal standing was also a matter of enduring
interest in the Third Reich, albeit in the long term and as part of the big
picture of Nazi plans for Europe rather than immediate policy.
Combining considerations of diplomacy, economics, and Volkstum,

43
Instead of expanding Hungarian security operations, Germany allowed Bulgaria to
occupy more of Central and Southeast Serbia, hotbeds of resistance activity. Ritter
memo, December 23, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, fr. 153,471; Ritter
memo, December 28, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, fr. 153,474.
44
So concerned was Sepp Janko’s circle about the prospect of annexation by Hungary that,
barely ten days after the June 5, 1941, meeting, it produced a detailed list of demands for
the future preservation of ethnic German economic cooperatives and enterprises, inde-
pendent of the Hungarian economic system. Franz Neuhausen to AA, June 16, 1941, PA
AA, Inland II D, R 100550, pp. 303–305.
45
Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, p. 623.
94 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

Wilhelm Stuckart, one of the Third Reich’s foremost legal minds,

weighed in with a long, speculative report dated July 15, 1941.
Stuckart argued that Southeast Europe was integral to the creation of
a Germanic East, and the improvement of Southeast-European ethnic
Germans’ living conditions was central to this project.46 Unlike many in
the Nazi regime, who ignored the Balkans in favor of waxing lyrical about
the East as the place where the German Volk could prove its mettle,
Stuckart built on his proposal from the April 17–18 meetings in Vienna
on the division of Yugoslav lands to claim that the Balkans held para-
mount importance for German racial regeneration through conquest and
settlement in a fertile landscape. Though he used the kind of grandiose,
vague language typical of Nazi utopias, Stuckart remained true to his
training as a lawyer, concerned with practicalities and details, and
proposed a pragmatic solution for the problems Banat Germans faced
in their possible future under Hungarian rule.47
Stuckart implied that the Third Reich owed the ethnic Germans of the
Vojvodina a debt of honor for their “practically proverbial”48 loyalty to
Germany. He proposed that Banat Germans and all ethnic Germans
living in the expanded Hungarian state receive dual Reich and
Hungarian citizenship, thus making any Hungarian assault on ethnic
German rights tantamount to an attack on the Third Reich.49
This proposal proved unworkable for three reasons: the Hungarian
government would not have agreed to such a sweeping policy; conferring
Reich citizenship on an entire ethnic German community would have
been problematic at a time when the parameters of who could belong to
the German Volk remained ambiguous; and blanket granting of Reich
citizenship would have set a dangerous precedent. By the end of 1941, the
waning of the Hungarian threat to the Banat Germans also undercut the
effectiveness of Stuckart’s proposal.
Stuckart’s memo was premised on the assumption that state borders in
the Nazi New Order would erode over time, nullifying the very concept of
state sovereignty. In a Europe united under Nazi auspices, the movement
of populations and their legal status would be a pure formality. In the
context of wartime realities, however, the Third Reich remained tied to
diplomatic agreements with its allies, evident in the Reich’s continued

46
Wilhelm Stuckart, “Denkschrift über die Lage und das zukünftige Schicksal des
Deutschtums im ehemaligen jugoslawischen Staatsgebiet,” July 15, 1941, NARA, RG
242, T-120, roll 5782, frs. H298,079–081.
47
Stuckart to Ritter, July 15, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr. H298,073;
Wehler, pp. 76–77.
48
Stuckart, “Denkschrift” (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr. H298,078.
49
Stuckart, “Denkschrift” (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, frs. H298,091–092.
 Defining Community 95

treatment of the simmering Hungarian-Romanian rivalry with kid gloves.

Any decision concerning an ethnic group’s legal status, rights, and
obligations was constrained by the borders within which that group
resided as much as, if not more than, said group’s position in the Nazi
racial hierarchy. Stuckart’s memo, therefore, lacked substance as a policy
proposal.
Given the reality of state borders enduring for the foreseeable future,
the eventual official ruling on the Banat Germans’ legal status rested on
the assumption that the borders of occupied Serbia-Banat would not
change until at least the end of the war. As an occupied area, Serbia-
Banat was not a sovereign state, though it possessed a (collaborationist)
Serbian government and a (nominally) autonomous Banat region.
In order for the Third Reich to keep up the appearance of the Serbian
government’s independence and sovereignty, the “Verordnung über die
Rechtsstellung der Deutschen Volksgruppe in Serbien” (“Decree on the
Legal Status of the German National Group in Serbia”) was published
on July 23, 1941, in the Službene novine, the Serbian government’s
administrative-news publication.50
The July 23 decree gave the German minority “full right to be active in
politics, culture, economy, and social issues” and defined it as a “legal
person of a public-legal character,” a group legal entity called the
Deutsche Volksgruppe in Serbien (German National Group in Serbia).
This made the Kulturbund leadership a formal Volksgruppenführung
(national group leadership) in line with Sepp Janko’s preferred title of
Volksgruppenführer. Communal interests were represented by Janko’s
appointees on the municipal, county, and banovina level, and members of
the Deutsche Volksgruppe were guaranteed full equality with Serbs.51
Furthermore, “members of the German Volksgruppe [were] guaran-
teed the full protection of their German Volkstum, compliance with the
National Socialist view of life, the free development of their natural life as
a people, and the free creation and maintenance of völkisch and cultural
ties to their German mother-people.”52 The decree equated identifying as
an ethnic German with belonging to a legally binding ethnic German
organization and active acceptance of Nazi ideology and, thus, furthered
the Reich German and Banat German leadership’s shared goal to
complete the Banat Germans’ Nazification with all haste.
In many ways, the July 23 decree fulfilled the goals toward which
Yugoslav German leaders had striven since Sepp Janko’s appointment
50
Benzler to AA, June 27, 1941, PA AA, Inland II D, R 100550, p. 302.
51
“Uredba o pravnom položaju nemačke narodnosne grupe u Srbiji,” Službene novine,
July 23, 1941, p. 4.
52
“Uredba o pravnom položaju,” Službene novine, July 23, 1941, p. 5.
96 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

as Volksgruppenführer in 1939: recognition of special status for the ethnic

Germans, formal Nazification as central to their community, and full
equality with Serbs. The Banat Germans attained legal equality while
retaining a special status (separate legal standing) and were officially
confirmed as both native and “alien” to their home area – an uninten-
tionally cogent encapsulation of their ambiguous position and the ten-
sions they had to navigate in the Nazi worldview.
At the same time, this decree reminded the German minority of its
unresolved position in Hitler’s Europe. The ethnic Germans of Serbia-
Banat retained their Serbian citizenship. The decree defined the
Volksgruppe as comprising “all Germans who live in this area [Serbia-
Banat], are not citizens of the German Reich, and are led by the
Volksgruppenführer.”53 Still ambiguous, this loose, descriptive definition
of ethnic Germanness nevertheless confirmed that they were not equal to
Germans from the Reich, and they were defined by their area of residence
in addition to their ostensible Germanness.
In calling all ethnic Germans from Serbia-Banat the Deutsche
Volksgruppe in Serbien, the text also denied the Banat any special status,
implying that it and its ethnic Germans were defined first and foremost by
their position within administrative and state borders, rather than their
national affinity, history, or self-perception. Finally, group interest as
articulated by the group’s leader became paramount, reinforcing both
Sepp Janko’s role as a local stand-in for Hitler and the need for individuals
to be officially recognized as members of the ethnic German community.

Consolidating Community
At the turn of 1941–1942, Harald Turner proclaimed the ethnic German
community in Serbia-Banat fully organized and Nazified, with 84 town
and village chapters, most of which were in the Banat and the rest were
spread across four other Serbian counties.54 While in fall 1941, some
2,000 ethnic Germans from Serbia proper were resettled in order to
remove them from unsettled areas rife with resistance activity, in late
summer, the resettlement of the Banat Germans was delayed again till
the war’s end,55 leaving them to contend with their Nazified leadership in

53
“Uredba o pravnom položaju,” Službene novine, July 23, 1941, p. 4.
54
Turner, “8. Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes beim Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,”
January 6, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 190, p. 10.
55
Grosskopf to Luther, August 7, 1941, and Steengracht to Luther, August 2, 1941,
Documents of German Foreign Policy, Series D, Vol. 13 (Washington, DC: United States
Government Printing Office, 1964), doc. 187 on pp. 295–296; Szczytnicka to VoMi,
November 26, 1941, BA Berlin, R 59, file 28, fiche 5, fr. 183; Greifelt memo,
 Consolidating Community 97

ways they could have avoided before the April War. In the second half of
1941, the Banat German leadership was able to make its ideas about
belonging to an ideologically organized German minority binding on the
entire ethnic German community.
While Sepp Janko’s administration was not a government in its own
right, making the ethnic Germans’ legal position an official matter in
summer 1941 gave the Banat German leadership greater power to impose
ideological orthodoxy than they had enjoyed in the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia. The Kulturbund had been a guiding, advisory body.
The Volksgruppenführung’s decrees carried the weight and power of
the law. The fact that occupied Serbia was a sham of a state, its collabora-
tionist government deprived of legitimacy and sovereignty by its status as
a German puppet, actually enhanced the ethnic German leaders’ power
in the Banat, since they operated at the Third Reich’s pleasure and with
the Third Reich’s backing, without having to curry favor with the Serbian
government as well.
After the administrative reform of December 1941, the Serbian colla-
borationist government effectively lost influence over Banat affairs, as did
the specter of Hungarian invasion. By that point, Janko had a sufficiently
firm grip on power in the Banat to prevent any major internal challenges
to his authority. Because Janko was a good National Socialist and aware of
his dependence on the Third Reich as the agent of ethnic German
empowerment,56 he welcomed the regimentation of Banat German
society along National Socialist lines as both necessary and beneficial.
While the Nazi regime used the concept of Volksgemeinschaft as an
aspirational ideal of social cohesion – a “community of hope”57 –
Germans from the Reich and ethnic Germans tended to hold different
ideas about group belonging. The former emphasized a community that
transcended state borders, while the latter stressed their localism and
idiosyncrasy. The two models were fundamentally compatible, despite
enduring tensions between ethnic German and Reich German
perceptions.58
In the Banat Germans’ case, the granting of a separate legal status to
ethnic Germans as a group solidified the chain of command stretching

December 2, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 266, fr. 2,384,372; Greifelt memo,
January 22, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 266, fr. 2,384,373.
56
“Die deutsche Volksgruppe – Rechtspersönlichkeit,” published in BB, July 27, 1941, in
Janko, Reden, pp. 71–72.
57
Birthe Kundrus, “Regime der Differenz. Volkstumspolitische Inklusionen und Exklusionen
im Warthegau und im Generalgouvernement 1939–1944” in Volksgemeinschaft. Neue
Forschungen zur Gesellschaft des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Frank Bajohr and Michael Wildt
(Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009), p. 122.
58
Götz in O’Donnell, Bridenthal, and Reagin, p. 75.
98 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

from Berlin to the Banat and confirmed Janko as the ethnic German
representative in relations with the Third Reich. Even so, the consolida-
tion of the Banat German minority into an organized, Nazified
Volksgruppe remained an ongoing project in summer 1941.
The Banat German leadership announced its intention to secure the
unity and internal cohesion of the ethnic German community in an
unsigned June 1941 article published in its official mouthpiece, the
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung der deutschen Volksgruppe im
Banat und Serbien:
Our highest ambition [is] to nourish communal values in our Volk, to strengthen
a [völkisch] ethos and, through a process of moral and spiritual renewal
[Erneuerung], forge a new, fierce, politically mature Swabian. Yet we must
recognize the fact that our Volksgruppe, as a whole, does not yet think and live
in a National Socialist manner. Our mortal enemy, materialism, keeps breaking
through . . . Many arrivistes have tried to exploit the reversal [Yugoslav defeat and
German occupation] for personal gain; many petty grumblers can only find things
to criticize; many senseless rumors have been fabricated and spread by gullible
people. We still have a long way to go to educate our Volk. We already have
a good, healthy core. But everything which happened recently, due to outside
pressure or deliberately, must be consolidated. Here lies the organization’s
[Deutsche Volksgruppe’s] preeminent task.59
As this text suggests, the first months of the ethnic German administra-
tion in the Banat yielded mixed evidence of popular enthusiasm among
ordinary ethnic Germans for rule by their own people. Banat German
leaders admonished their co-nationals for their perceived decline in ded-
ication to administrative duty, after the devotion so many had shown to
Kulturbund activities before the April War.60 Banat German leaders
displayed a keen grasp of psychology in identifying the sudden removal
of external pressure – the defunct Yugoslav authorities and the specter of
wartime violence – as the key factor in the ethnic Germans’ lassitude and
turning away from communal needs. They accused their co-nationals of
stubborn refusal to obey orders issued by ethnic German administrators,
“when earlier any foreign [Serbian] notary or policeman had only to say
the word, and everyone hopped to it,”61 as an anonymous article in the
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung put it.
While summer 1941 represented a period of consolidation for the
German administration in Serbia and the ethnic German administration
in the Banat, for many Banat Germans it must have seemed a bit of
a disappointment after the adrenaline-fueled days of April. Once the
59
“Unsere Organisation,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, June 1941, pp. 4–5.
60
“Meldungen aus dem Reich,” August 4, 1941, BA Berlin, R 58, file 163, fiche 1, fr. 13.
61
“Stark und einig sein,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, September 1941, p. 2.
 Consolidating Community 99

initial euphoria of German occupation-qua-liberation had waned, the

Banat Germans had to contend with new, often inexperienced adminis-
trators and enduring uncertainty about their legal status, land ownership,
and the possibility of Hungarian invasion, only partly allayed by the
decrees passed during the summer. Some Banat Germans greeted
the July 23 decree on their group legal status with the criticism that
their leaders had “sold the Banat cheaply to Serbia” by not separating
more clearly from the rest of occupied Serbia.62 Many turned away from
official matters in favor of bringing in the harvest: something tangible and
necessary, whatever the future held for the Banat.
The Banat German leadership exhorted co-nationals to aid local
administrators instead of just criticizing their work and appealed to
administrators to help make the Deutsche Volksgruppe into an elite
organization. After the harvest, more time and energy went into propa-
ganda activities on the village level, encouraging all Banat Germans to
take active part in order to strengthen the Volksgemeinschaft. The key
message was that the Banat Germans should place their faith (and fate) in
Adolf Hitler’s hands as into those of a benevolent god who protected the
ethnic Germans, not least from the specter of Hungarian domination.63
The image of a helpless creature in need of protection, ensnared, at the
mercy of superior forces, reinforced the real dependence of the Banat
Germans on the Third Reich – an ironic counterpoint to their newly
empowered status.
The consolidation of the Banat German community as a full-fledged,
regimented, and Nazified Volksgruppe required parameters for who
could belong and who had to be excluded. In general, defining commu-
nity negatively – in terms of who was excluded from it – was a core
element of the idea of Volksgemeinschaft. Negative selection was often
more clear-cut than criteria of belonging were, underlining the ambiguity
of the very concept.64
In the Banat, German-speaking Jews were obvious candidates for
exclusion. Ethnic Germans not already resident in the Banat were usually

62
Editorial comment no. 14 in Janko, Reden, p. 180.
63
“Klar sehen und richtig handeln,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, June 1941,
pp. 1–2; “Die Nachbarschaften,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, June 1941,
p. 6; “Der Beginn der Winterarbeit,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
November 1, 1941, pp. 1–2; “Vom Kulturbund zur Ausleseorganisation,” Verordnungsblatt
der Volksgruppenführung, December 1, 1941, p. 1; “Arbeitsplan der Ortsgruppen,”
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, December 1, 1941, p. 2; “Rückblick und
Ausblick,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, January 1, 1942, p. 1.
64
Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, “Social Outsiders and the Construction of the
Community of the People” in Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, ed. Robert Gellately and
Nathan Stoltzfus (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 4.
100 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

welcomed. The lack of trained personnel in administration, engineering,

teaching, and other professions meant that it was relatively easy for ethnic
Germans to obtain permission to reside in the occupied Banat from the
Banat Police Prefecture in Grossbetschkerek. Especially welcome were
ethnic Germans who moved to the Banat from other Yugoslav lands or
those born outside the Banat before 1918, if they were usefully employed
or married to an employed or mobilized ethnic German, could claim
descent from the eighteenth-century German-speaking settlers of the
Banat, or had escaped resistance-riven Serbia proper.
Reflecting the complexities of national belonging and how it could be
performed in order to blend in and profit from the altered conditions in
the Banat, some applicants overcompensated for their Serbian-sounding
names by meticulously filling out their applications in German and end-
ing them with a conspicuous “Heil Hitler!” After the deportation of the
Banat Jews to Belgrade in August 1941, some applicants made nervous
reference to their deported Jewish spouses, as though hoping to be treated
kindly if they confessed to this racial “transgression” at once. Indeed, the
Banat Police Prefecture seemed to view a marriage effectively ended by
the Jewish spouse’s deportation as no obstacle to granting a residence
permit to the ethnic German spouse. Other applicants were frank about
wanting to live in the Banat out of practical convenience rather than
ideology or a sense of ethnic kinship. One elderly ethnic German hair-
dresser disarmingly claimed he decided to leave Belgrade for the Banat
only in 1944 because the frequent air-raid alarms in the city made his
hands shake so badly that he could not work.65
Almost anyone who could make a passable claim to ethnic German
origin was allowed to reside in the Banat. Being accepted as a full member
of the Deutsche Volksgruppe was a different matter. The Banat German
leadership attempted to emulate Nazi practice in occupied Poland and
65
Approved requests for residence permits submitted by Dr. Karl Beneth (1942), Istorijski
arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc.
144; Josef Müller (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu
boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 32; Johann Wurtz (1942), Istorijski arhiv
Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 131;
Katharina Dennert (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu
boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 851; Elsa Werner (1942), Istorijski arhiv
Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 177;
Dr. Ladislaus Weifert (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu
boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 291; Franz Ruck (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin,
fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, no doc. number; Irene
Ilitsch (no year), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od
BDOW, 1942–1944, no doc. number; Julijana Weis (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin,
fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 89; Karl Luks
(1944), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW,
1942–1944, doc. 82.
 Consolidating Community 101

the Soviet Union by examining individuals’ Germanness as indicated by

place of birth, language use, and everyday behavior, even though the
Banat Germans were never subjected to such intrusive and persistent
“sifting” as were the ethnic Germans in the East.66 While their basic
claim to Germanness was accepted as a given, in the absence of clear
criteria for the slippery notion of nationality-cum-race, the Banat German
leaders, like the Nazi “racial experts” deployed in the East, resorted to
analyzing subjective, ascriptive criteria.67
In summer 1941, the German Armed Forces High Command
(Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) reminded commanders of occupied
areas about the definition of Volksdeutsche as people of German origin
who were not German citizens, and warned them to be especially vigilant
about non-Germans trying to pass themselves off as ethnic Germans in
order to gain certain privileges.68 In his July 1941 memo, Wilhelm
Stuckart suggested unhelpfully that earlier Kulturbund membership
might suffice as proof of Germanness in the Balkans, while latecomers
to the community would have to demonstrate their Germanness by their
behavior, proof of German origin, or “other persuasive grounds” of
belonging.69
The ethnic German communities in Serbia proper, including Belgrade,
screened new applicants for membership, keeping a wary eye out espe-
cially for evacuated Slovenes, who claimed they were actually Slovene
ethnic Germans.70 In the Banat, new applicants for Volksgruppe mem-
bership hailed most often from the Bačka and Belgrade. They, at least,
made for slightly more plausible candidates than German-speakers from
Slovenia or self-proclaimed Serbian-speaking ethnic Germans from
Belgrade and other Serbian cities.

66
Berkhoff, pp. 44–45, 210–213; Heinemann, passim; Kundrus in Bajohr and Wildt,
pp. 105–123; Steinhart, pp. 9–10; Stiller in Szejnmann and Umbach, pp. 235–236,
239–245.
67
Janko, “Anordnung über die Anerkennung der Zugehörigkeit zur Deutschen
Volksgruppe,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, October 15, 1942, pp. 1–2.
68
Gravenhorst, “Über den Begriff ‘Volksdeutscher’,” August 20, 1941, NARA, RG 242,
T-501, roll 246, frs. 145–147.
69
Stuckart, “Denkschrift” (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr. H298,093.
70
“Abschrift aus den Mitteilungen für das Deutschtum im Kreise ‘Prinz Eugen’ (Gross-
Belgrad),” October 25, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-580, roll 59, no frame number; Chef
der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD to RKFDV and VoMi, June 24, 1942, NARA, RG
242, T-580, roll 59, no frame number; Janko, “Anordnung,” Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung, August 15, 1942, pp. 2–3; Brückner to Kubitz, December 7,
1942, NARA, RG 242, T-580, roll 59, no frame number; Kubitz to
Volksgruppenführung, February 8, 1943, NARA, RG 242, T-580, roll 59, no frame
numbers; Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD to RKFDV and VoMi, February 18,
1943, NARA, RG 242, T-580, roll 59, no frame numbers; Janko to VoMi, February 22,
1943, NARA, RG 242, T-580, roll 59, no frame number.
102 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

The ethnic German leadership used modern bureaucracy not only to

ensure group cohesion but also, inadvertently, to show how tenuous its
notions of Germanness were. In fall 1941, it issued new personal docu-
ments to members, classifying ethnic Germans in Serbia-Banat into three
categories modeled on the German National List (Deutsche Volksliste)
implemented in occupied Poland. The ethnic Germans in Serbia-Banat
were divided into so-called “old members,” who had joined the
Kulturbund before July 1940; “new members,” who joined the
Kulturbund between July 1940 and the outbreak of the April War; and
probationary members, who applied for membership after April 6, 1941.
The means by which the latter could demonstrate their Germanness were
highly performative, such as speaking German in everyday life. They were
required also to sign a statement of commitment to membership and to
participate in activities organized by the ethnic German leadership.71
As late as July 1943, Sepp Janko suggested to Heinrich Himmler that
the most “Serbianized” ethnic Germans be resettled to Germany, lest
they be lost to the German Volk. Himmler had more important things to
do just then, since the ethnic Germans of Southeast Europe did not figure
prominently in his attempts to implement German colonization in
the East. The promised “racial IDs” (Volkszugehörigkeitsausweise) for
probationary members of the Belgrade ethnic German community, who
had passed official, arbitrary tests of Germanness, were issued as late as
February 1944.72 The Banat German leadership’s efforts to clarify who
was an ethnic German remained a relatively low priority for the Nazi
government till the very end of the war.
In Sepp Janko’s estimation, the biggest problem for community
cohesion and morale was people he derisively called “also-Germans
[Auchdeutsche].” Janko accused them of failing to appreciate their rare
good fortune in having the Wehrmacht’s protection and Hitler’s concern
extended to them, instead acting “without discipline and in a high-
handed manner.”73 He further accused them of only discovering their
Germanness since the Wehrmacht’s arrival in April 1941, when they
realized they could profit materially from belonging to the Deutsche
Volksgruppe. They learned quickly “how to use their elbows . . . Did
Adolf Hitler visit every village in the German Reich and organize

71
“Abschrift aus den Mitteilungen” (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-580, roll 59, no frame
number.
72
Janko to Himmler, July 3, 1943, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1728, fiche 3, frs. 104–107; Janko,
“Anordnung über die Ausgabe von zweierlei Ausweisen durch die Kreisleitung ‘Prinz
Eugen’,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, February 15, 1944, p. 1.
73
“Volksdeutsche Grosskundgebung in Belgrad,” abridged version of speech published in
BB, July 6, 1941, in Janko, Reden, p. 68.
 Consolidating Community 103

a plebiscite there, before he made his great, far-reaching decisions? Then

how can our people insist that their individual opinions be consulted?”74
Janko asked rhetorically, emphasizing community interest as defined by
himself and other Banat Nazis over the supposedly selfish interests of
individual ethnic Germans.
In order to “root out” people whose motivation in professing their
Germanness he found suspect, Janko proposed that all ethnic Germans
pay fees for membership in the Volksgruppe and the maintenance of
German schools. “Either one is a German and pays up like every other
German or one is an ‘also-German’ and we don’t need his money.
In which case he has to say, ‘I am not German’,”75 Janko thundered in
an August 1941 speech.
Membership in the ethnic German community was binding and carried
with it duties as well as privileges, which made some members reconsider
as the war dragged on. In spring 1944, Janko flatly refused to allow an
ethnic German mobilized by the Waffen-SS and married to an ethnic
Hungarian woman to stop paying his Volksgruppe membership dues or
leave the Volksgruppe, since this could have been grounds for the man’s
discharge from the Waffen-SS.76 Banat Germans’ Germanness remained
more fluid than Janko and his superiors in the Reich would have liked,
despite their best efforts at enforcing an absolute model of group
belonging.
Once officially recognized as an ethnic German, an individual still
could hold multiple group identities, at the very least the ethnic (racial)
one – ambiguous as that was – as well as attachment to one’s home village
or town, given the Banat Germans’ strong attachment to their local
history and homes. At the same time, even German-speakers of mixed
origin or those married to non-Germans became simply ethnic Germans
in official terms, by dint of being members of a legally defined commu-
nity, even though their Germanness remained a work in progress, based
on nebulous criteria, and the source of constant tension between them
and the Germans from the Reich.
The Banat German leadership ignored the reality of some Banat resi-
dents’ – Germans as well as non-Germans – practice of multilingualism,
intermarriage, and, in some cases, national indifference. If, in the interwar
period, ethnic German nationalist activists exerted themselves to

74
“Zur Grosskundgebung des Kreises Hennemann, Werschetz,” speech held
on August 10, 1941, in Janko, Reden, p. 75.
75
“Zur Prinz-Eugen-Feier des Kreises Donau,” speech held on August 15, 1941, in Janko,
Reden, p. 79.
76
Janko to Kreisleitung “Mittelbanat,” April 4, 1944, Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 131,
folder 1944, doc. 4/944.
104 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

convince their co-nationals to accept a single model of Germanness, now

they could enforce such a model with the full force of the Third Reich’s
might behind them, even if official criteria of Germanness remained
unclear and the ethnic Germans’ pride in “their” Banat proved an
awkward fit for the totalizing Volk model.

Community Dynamics
The Banat German leadership’s insistence on their co-nationals behaving
like members of a harmonious mini Volksgemeinschaft overlapped
imperfectly with the everyday realities of communal life, with its ebb
and flow of compliance and complaint, agreement and discontent.
What would have been minor personal conflicts or common gossip in
another context became issues of loyalty and compliance to Nazi ideol-
ogy, the Third Reich, and the Banat Nazis’ expectation that all ethnic
Germans would follow the same patterns of behavior. Yet active
resistance proved rare in the wartime history of the Banat Germans.
Discontent surfaced when some Banat Germans denied the German
Reich and its citizens outward gestures of respect; spread rumors and
grumbled; attempted to officially change ethnicity; avoided their labor
service and broke laws on price control, black marketeering, and the
smuggling and hoarding of food.77 Yet these expressions of discontent
seldom went beyond actionless complaints. They were objections to
individual policies rather than the reality of the Banat German adminis-
tration or the Banat’s occupation by German forces.
Some social tension in the Banat German community originated in
issues of class and generational difference, combining the generation gap
between the Erneurer and their seniors with the perception that leading
ethnic Germans were using their new positions for personal enrichment.
Already in fall 1941, Banat German leaders were widely perceived as
nouveau riches more interested in material gain than fulfilling their admin-
istrative tasks.78
Prominent Banat Germans featured among new board members for
several of the Banat’s most profitable economic enterprises. The head of
the Economics Section Jakob Awender and chief of the Banat adminis-
tration Sepp Lapp sat on the board of directors of the edible-oil factory in

77
“Bekanntmachung der Kreiskommandantur I-823,” BB, June 19, 1942, p. 6; Krause,
“Anordnung,” BB, June 26, 1942, p. 5; “Dumme Gerüchtemacherei,” BB, October 9,
1942, p. 5; “Volksgenosse! Du vergehst Dich am Kriege!”, BB, May 9, 1943, p. 6; “Wer
gehört zur Deutschen Volksgruppe?”, BB, June 4, 1943, p. 4.
78
“Meldungen aus dem Reich,” September 11, 1941, BA Berlin, R 58, file 164, fiche 1,
fr. 82.
 Community Dynamics 105

Grossbetschkerek. Among the directors of the newly founded company

Banat-Film, licensed to import German films and operate mobile
cinemas, were Josef Beer, chief of the German School Foundation
(Schulstiftung) Adam Maurus, and Grossbetschkerek mayor Josef
Gion.79 Like the Nazi Party in the Third Reich, the Banat German
leadership was open to corruption, nepotism, and operating on the
principles of an old-boys’ club.
Sepp Janko did not seem to line his own pockets egregiously, whether
from an excess of zeal in his role as Volksgruppenführer or because he was
subtler than his coworkers. Nevertheless, the widespread perception of
corruption among the Banat German leadership had a negative effect on
morale. Enduring issues included ethnic Germans failing to attend Nazi
rallies in sufficiently large numbers and older ethnic Germans, who had
experienced life in the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy, opining that
Hungarian occupation could not have been worse than the German one,
with its relentless demands on ethnic German time and resources.80
Since the Banat German leadership passed on the Third Reich’s orders
and some of its members were seen by co-nationals to have become rich in
the process, Banat German leaders presented the most immediate and
accessible target for popular discontent. What damned the leadership in
the eyes of some ethnic Germans was its youth and perceived lack of
respect for elders, who were fond of claiming that all the hard work of
building and consolidating the ethnic German administration had been
done during the 1930s, allowing the younger men who followed to reap
the fruits of another’s labor and idle away their days in power.81
Despite the corruption of some of its members, the Banat German
administration worked very hard to keep its home region’s daily affairs
running smoothly, while laboring under a constant shortage of trained
staff – all the more ironic considering Reich German manpower needs
had made a Banat German administration seem attractive to the Nazis in
the first place. Once Waffen-SS recruitment took the majority of ethnic
German men away from the Banat in fall 1942, high-ranking adminis-
trators often held two or three positions at a time.82 In 1942–1943,
ethnic German women trained to fill vacant administrative positions
and perform lighter tasks in workshops, industry, and artisanal shops.
79
“Prva banatska tvornica ulja u Petrovgradu,” Službene novine, August 13, 1941, p. 20;
Okružni sud u Petrovgradu, “Oglas,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, March 12, 1942, p. 2.
80
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (September 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 164, fiche 1, fr. 83;
Gemeindeamt Soltur to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, February 9, 1942, Istorijski arhiv
Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 467; Heinrich Geissler, “Über die soziale Lage der
Volksdeutschen im serbischen Banat,” July 1943, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 29277/a, p. 143.
81
Janko memo, August 5, 1942, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 5, doc. 81.
82
Heim, “Befehl,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, January 12, 1944, p. 4.
106 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

Non-German administrators also continued to find employment, espe-

cially in municipalities with few or no ethnic Germans.83
However long the hours kept by many ethnic German administrators,
the presence alongside them of opportunists, women, and non-Germans,
as well as the Banat’s continued administrative ties to Belgrade, perpe-
tuated the view held by at least some ethnic Germans of their leaders as
lazy, cynical, and corrupt.84 Yet these naysayers did not castigate their
wartime leaders out of opposition to Nazism as an ideology or a system of
rule. While they liked to grumble and complain about the upstart young-
sters in charge, some older Banat Germans shared their leaders’ ideolo-
gical conviction.
Despite their complaints that the German occupation proved too oner-
ous in its demands and perhaps living under the Hungarians would have
been better after all, the Banat Germans were overjoyed and relieved at
having evaded Hungarian occupation, as they demonstrated in spring
1941. They may have objected to some of their leaders’ policies or
relished the opportunity to bring a neighbor-turned-administrator down
a notch, but their awareness of the Hungarian threat and reliance on the
Third Reich’s protection, the flurry of decrees granting ethnic Germans
more rights than before, and new opportunities for enrichment conspired
to prevent overt discontent from escalating from words to deeds.
Documented cases of disagreement among the Banat Germans in
wartime tended to start out personal and became political. Conflicts in
the Banat German community could be colored by ideology, but not
reduced to ideological differences alone, when personal grievances spilled
over into a public arena dominated by Nazi ideas.
In 1943, the ethnic German Catholic priest in the village of Stefansfeld
had a swastika removed from the village cemetery, where he claimed it hid
the chapel cross from view and had no proper place, being a political
symbol. Ordered to report to the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, the SS intelli-
gence service) office in nearby Modosch, he discovered that the swastika
had been put up by the mother of a local man killed fighting in the East,
most likely in the Waffen-SS. This incident and the priest’s habit of

83
Reichel to Benzler, December 7, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100548, p. 82;
“Siebente Durchführungsverordnung zur Verordnung über die Einführung kriegs-
wirtschaftlicher Massnahmen des Reiches,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, September 24,
1943, pp. 1–2; Janko, “Ernennungen,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
January 12, 1944, p. 8.
84
Gemeindeamt Botschar to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, November 9, 1941, Istorijski
arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 403; Gemeindeamt Nakodorf to Landratsamt Gross-
Kikinda, November 10, 1941, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 398;
Gemeindeamt Nakodorf to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, December 10, 1941, Istorijski
arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 427.
 Community Dynamics 107

making thinly veiled references to the preeminence of religion over ideol-

ogy led to his arrest, internment in the Banjica concentration camp in
Belgrade, and eventual deportation to the Third Reich. The fact that the
priest was related to a leading member of the Banat German administra-
tion did not save him – or his cousin preferred to be rid of an ideologically
unsuitable family member.85
The priest left behind a village deeply divided between people who
professed traditional, religious values – people whom Hermann
Behrends, Heinrich Himmler’s representative in Serbia in 1944, described
as having an “uptight, anti-Reich-German, Betschkerek churchy
mindset [die verkrampfte antireichsdeutsch ausgerichtete Betschkereker
Kirchtumshaltung]”86 – and those who openly embraced National
Socialism and Hitler’s war as their own.
Unwritten rules of social behavior applied here as well, so the priest was
condemned for trespassing on private grief and a family matter as well as
for his political transgression. Many villagers agreed that the priest was
prone to “sticking his nose in” where it did not belong and so had brought
his troubles on himself.87 The mother of the fallen soldier from
Stefansfeld may have been motivated more by grief than ideology and
installed the swastika as an attempt to give her loss meaning, rather than
as a symbol of the ideology for which her son had fought and died. Once
the priest dared to challenge how she expressed her grief, however, the
personal conflict swiftly turned political.
This conflict between the grieving mother and the perhaps insensitive,
perhaps courageous priest illuminated National Socialism’s fundamental
ambivalence regarding religion, especially as a general marker of cultural
and ethnic belonging among ethnic Germans, one predating the Nazi
influence.88 It also revealed enduring divisions – personal as well as
ideological ones – within the Banat German community. Even if ethnic
Germans’ growing nationalization meant that especially Catholic piety,
associated with a priesthood friendly to first Hungarian, then Yugoslav
rule, declined somewhat in the interwar period,89 the relationship

85
Testimony of Anton Schmidt from Stefansfeld, August 24, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok.
2, file 387, pp. 81–84.
86
Hermann Behrends to Himmler, April 28, 1944, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1728, fiche 3,
fr. 109.
87
Schmidt testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387, pp. 85–86.
88
Bergen, “The Nazi Concept of ‘Volksdeutsche’,” pp. 575–578; Daniel Mühlenfeld,
“Reich Propaganda Offices and Political Mentoring of Ethnic German Resettlers” in
Heimat, Region, and Empire: Spatial Identities under National Socialism, ed. Claus-
Christian W. Szejnmann and Maiken Umbach (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012), p. 201.
89
Janjetović, Nemci u Vojvodini, p. 265.
108 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

between religion and nationhood got folded into the leadership’s

insistence on depicting the Banat Germans as fully Nazified. So far as
the Modosch SD office was concerned, the various layers in this conflict
boiled down to who was a National Socialist and who was not or, rather,
who behaved like a Nazi and who did not – an imperfect and, in the
priest’s case, disastrous transposition of Nazi ideology onto local
customs, relationships, and personal histories.
Likewise, when Sepp Janko decreed that members of the Waffen-SS
division “Prinz Eugen” would go from house to house to collect
donations for the German Red Cross or an official in Grosskikinda
asked the ethnic German police to help collect for the Winter Relief
charity,90 these Banat German leaders may have trusted the ability of
men in uniform to intimidate people into giving donations. They also may
have assumed that people would be ashamed not to donate, if asked to do
so in public by their neighbors, especially those in uniform, who demon-
strated willingness to give much more than just money for Hitler and
Germandom. Failure to live up to a heightened ideal of Germanness as
projected by the Banat German leadership tinged every communal event
and private incident with ideology.
Grumbling and personal conflicts aside, most Banat Germans contin-
ued to support or, at least, tolerate and obey their Nazified leadership and
the Third Reich until the war’s end. A historical sense of belonging to
a minority and the Nazi depiction of that minority as hemmed in and
beleaguered by racial enemies, the idea of ethnic Germans’ difference
from other Balkan ethnicities, a sense of duty to an idealized German
Reich, the desire for material gain, even apathy were all strong motivators
for ethnic Germans to fall into line, even if they did not always show quite
the level of enthusiasm their leaders desired. Their compliance and
complicity sufficed.
As for the negative consequences of disobedience or open protest, the
mere possibility of ostracism and social exclusion proved highly effective
in this relatively small, tightly knit community. The limited application of
terror against ethnic Germans did take place in the Banat, but personal
acquaintance and local prestige, as well as Banat German leaders’ role as
a stand-in for Hitler and the Third Reich, were far more important than
brute force. As it did when soliciting donations for Nazi charities, the
Banat German leadership manipulated its co-nationals’ interest in what
their neighbors were doing in order to enforce conformity.

90
Kreisleiter of Kreis “Oberbanat” to Polizeivorsteher Grosskikinda, December 18, 1941,
Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 146; “Aufruf zum Winterhilfswerk,” published
in BB on September 13, 1942, in Janko, Reden, p. 136.
 Community Dynamics 109

Although the Third Reich was not above punishing ethnic Germans for
perceived racial and political failures or dissent,91 only within the ranks of
the Waffen-SS could the full coercive power of the Third Reich come to
bear on large numbers of Banat Germans. Otherwise, the Reich Germans
in Serbia were usually too busy with issues like fighting the communist
resistance to enforce compliance among the Banat Germans, with excep-
tions such as the case of the unfortunate priest from Stefansfeld.
The Banat German leadership used its own limited coercive capacities
for maximum psychological effect and with a keen sense of the social
dynamics among the Banat Germans.
An example made of a few ensured that most others would refrain from
open defiance in future. This was precisely what happened in June 1941,
when more than 100 ethnic Germans from the village of Kathreinfeld
were temporarily excluded from the Deutsche Volksgruppe for refusing to
pay their membership dues. Two other Kathreinfeld residents and an
inhabitant of Modosch were permanently expelled from the Banat
German community for refusing to be recognized as racial Germans.
The announcement of their exclusion from the Volksgruppe was pub-
lished in the Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, but apparently it
did not incur prison terms or other coercive or punitive measures against
the recalcitrants. The whole incident was more akin to a public shaming
ritual intended to deter others from similar behavior.92
In early summer 1941, the ethnic German leadership was still coming
to terms with its new responsibilities and power position in the Banat.
The transitional nature of the period and Sepp Janko’s attempts to force
a single model of Germanness on all Banat Germans may have
prompted Kathreinfeld’s show of dissent. No later mass exclusions
from the Volksgruppe were documented, likely because the public
shaming of the Kathreinfeld Germans had the desired effect of discoura-
ging most others from exposing themselves to negative notice.
Moreover, the Banat German leadership may have scrutinized new
applicants for membership in the Volksgruppe, but it was loath to let
those who were already accepted into it leave. Even during the
Kathreinfeld episode, open violence did not have to be used, when
public shame sufficed.
In November 1941, after the Banat German leadership secured legal
protection for their community and could emphasize group conformity
over individual interest, it founded so-called people’s honor courts

91
Stiller in Jah et al., pp. 110–113.
92
Beer, “Mitteilungen und Weisungen der Landesleitung,” Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung, June 1941, pp. 6–7.
110 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

(Volksehrengerichte).93 Not to be confused with honor courts convened

by Holocaust survivors after World War II to arbitrate issues of Jewish
behavior during the Nazi onslaught,94 the Banat wartime honor courts
were a newfangled attempt by the ethnic German administration to
enforce its standards of behavior and social interaction within
a community still in the process of being Nazified. These courts equated
the notion of honor (individual or national) with “correct” Banat German
behavior: compliance with Sepp Janko’s administration and Nazi ideol-
ogy, professional responsibility, and social conformism. By implication,
a harmonious and morally upright ethnic German community was the
only one worthy of being called the Deutsche Volksgruppe.
Sepp Janko stated that the courts’ purpose was to “settle matters of
honor” between individual ethnic Germans and defend the “honor and
prestige of the German Volk or . . . leading German personages in their
public functions” against injury “by word or deed.”95 The honor courts
also had jurisdiction over cases of corruption by ethnic German officials
and were supposed to protect individual ethnic Germans’ standing in the
community against injury by false allegation or sentences passed by
a regular state court. Officially the honor courts could admonish,
reprimand, or sentence an ethnic German to anything from loss of official
post, property, or liberty, to the wearing of a sign stating the person’s
crime (e.g., “work-shyness,” cowardice, being an enemy of the people), to
a loss of legal rights and expulsion from the Volksgruppe.96
The ostensible purpose of the honor courts – to make an example of
a few ethnic Germans in order to discourage others from undesirable or
dissenting behavior – was furthered by the omission of an explicit state-
ment of crimes deserving of the harshest punishments. When, in late
1942, an ethnic German from Grosskikinda was excluded forever from
the German Volksgemeinschaft and sentenced to death, the press report
described his crime simply as behavior “unworthy of a German.”97 It is

93
Jutta Komorowski, “Die wirtschaftliche Ausbeutung des serbischen Banats zur Zeit der
faschistischen deutschen Okkupation 1941–1944 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der
Rolle der deutschen Minderheit,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte der UdSSR und der volksdemok-
ratischen Länder Europas, Vol. 31 (1988), p. 218.
94
Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945–1957 (Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 238–248; Laura Jockusch and
Gabriel N. Finder, ed., Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in
Europe and Israel after the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015).
95
Janko, “Verordnung über die Errichtung von Volksehrengerichten,” Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung, September 1941, p. 4.
96
Andreas Röhm, “Die Volksgerichte,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
November 1, 1941, pp. 3, 5–6.
97
Janko, “Ausschluss aus der Volksgemeinschaft,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
December 1, 1942, p. 4.
 Community Dynamics 111

unclear whether he was ever executed. Other documented cases suggest

that vaguely stated infractions incurred penalties of variable severity, and
only minor infractions were enumerated in some detail.98 By contrast, in
fall 1941, eleven members of the Deutsche Mannschaft (Banat German
militia) and five members of the Banat border patrol were expelled from
their respective organizations for infractions ranging from drunkenness
and dereliction of duty, impersonating a superior officer, theft, and
embezzlement, to ideological crimes such as “unworthy behavior” and
being married to a Jewish woman.99
Paul Bader, the German commanding general in Belgrade in 1942,
considered the honor courts a useful means to instill a healthy dose of fear
in the ethnic Germans on the eve of Waffen-SS mobilization, which he
knew would be an unpopular policy.100 In late 1943, the Banat adminis-
tration, which shared the honor courts’ ability to penalize administrators,
punished several village notaries with salary cuts and forced labor for
irregularities in rationing and dereliction of duty.101
The honor courts were an example of how the mere threat and the very
limited application of terror and punishment could ensure compliance.
They were official shaming sessions in their own right, their decisions
sometimes – depending on the gravity of the charges – publicized in the
Banat German press or by town crier. The Banat Germans could hear and
read about those brought before an honor court and pass the news on,
augmenting their neighbors’ shame by word of mouth and, by contrast,
implicitly affirming their own standing in the community. The implicit
message sent out by the honor courts was that, if misfits “stuck their noses”
in other people’s affairs, it was the community’s prerogative to judge them
for it. Individuals could use condemning others to defend themselves
a priori, by derailing suspicion before it touched them.
Perhaps Banat German leaders relied on their co-nationals to reserve
social opprobrium for people found guilty of “everyday” crimes and easily
comprehensible infractions, rather than crimes too big (or vague) to be
named. If people talked about crimes that almost anyone might commit,

98
Janko, “Ausschluss aus der Volksgemeinschaft,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
August 15, 1942, p. 3; “Dienststrafordnung der ‘Deutschen Jugend’,” Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung, December 1, 1942, pp. 4–5; Janko, “Ausschluss aus dem
Arbeitsdienst,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, September 10, 1943, p. 2.
99
“Aus der DM wurden ausgeschlossen,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
January 1, 1942, p. 4.
100
Benzler to AA, January 13, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, frs. 153,489–490;
Janko, “Verordnung über die Disziplinargerichtsbarkeit der deutschen Volksgruppe,”
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, March 1, 1942, p. 5.
101
“Verlautbarungen der Sektion für die Verwaltung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat,
December 3, 1943, pp. 1–2.
112 Ethnic German Administration (1941) & Community Dynamics

they might remember the need to monitor their own and others’ behavior
more closely. At the same time, vagueness about crimes that drew the
worst punishments kept the Banat Germans alert. To be expelled from
the Deutsche Volksgruppe meant having material privileges revoked and
becoming the subject of gossip, speculation, even ostracism in one’s
community. The Banat German leadership ensured that when it singled
out someone as unworthy, the whole community would be made privy to
that person’s shame, if not its precise source, and the implicit need to
establish their own positions in the community, lest they be singled out
next.
The honor courts’ jurisdiction, broadly and vaguely defined as it was,
could have kept the courts bogged down investigating private score
settling disguised as ideological probity. In practice, few explicit mentions
of the courts’ activity appear in the Banat German press. Service on the
honor courts was an honorary, unpaid position requiring at least
a university degree, limiting the courts’ effectiveness. Given the condi-
tions under which the ethnic German administration labored and how
overstretched it was, excuses not to serve as an honor-court judge were
readily available to men, who may have held multiple administrative
positions already. The honor courts seem to have existed primarily on
paper long before they were dissolved officially in April 1944, their role
absorbed by the Banat German leadership.102
Rather than being an instrument of open terror, through which the
Banat Germans were kept in line,103 the honor courts worked more subtly
and insidiously. Their reputation and sporadic activity fed the rumor mill,
which the Banat German leadership knew how to utilize, even while it
suffered rumor’s slings and arrows due to its members’ prominence in the
community. The leadership made use of social conformism, the lurid joys
of scandalous gossip, and the likelihood that the Banat Germans would
rather bear a policy they disliked than expose themselves to their neigh-
bors’ prurient interest. Open terror was the background threat implicit in,
but also subordinated to, peer pressure and the desire for conformity.
Sepp Janko and his circle had a sufficiently good grasp of their co-
nationals’ psychology to understand that social pressures and informal
ways of exercising power could be more effective than physical violence –
or, at the very least, that violence against their co-nationals was the last
resort rather than the first option.

102
Janko, “Verordnung über die Disziplinarstrafen,” Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung, March 23, 1944, pp. 1–6.
103
Komorowski, pp. 218–219.
4 Privileges, Economy, and Relations
with Other Groups

In spring and summer 1941, the Banat Germans gained certain privileges
that set them apart from other Banat ethnicities in ways both practical and
ideological. In addition to administrative posts that gave them de facto
control of the daily running of the Banat, ethnic Germans received better
food rations than non-Germans, as well as preferential access to land
(a June 1941 decree overturned the Yugoslav interwar land reform) and
movable property expropriated – sometimes outright stolen – from Banat
Jews and some Serbs. A September 1941 decree emphasized the impor-
tance of German-language education as the means to ideologically con-
solidate the ethnic German community, although the quality of the
education was dubious.
Whatever their personal opinions about Nazism, many ethnic
Germans became embroiled in Nazi policies because they accepted
these privileges. Even when certain privileges caused tension inside the
community – e.g., when the leadership expected the Banat Germans to
pay for the maintenance of German schools as well as send their children
to these schools – the Banat Germans still received preferential treat-
ment, whether they claimed to want it or not. The material benefits of
collaboration, general apathy (e.g., there is no evidence that any Banat
Germans refused better food rations), and preference for rule by
Germans rather than Hungarians or Serbs conspired to instill confor-
mity in the Banat German community.
If the benefits that the Banat Germans received were significant, they
nevertheless remained more perks than true privileges, dependent on the
economic needs and ideological good will of the Third Reich. Whatever
power, autonomy, and privileges the Banat Germans managed to get
from Berlin or the German military administration in Belgrade were
only as much as the latter were willing to cede. Ethnic German empower-
ment continued dependent on the Third Reich’s willingness to give
concessions when these suited its own best interests. Economic benefits
for the Banat Germans always benefited the Reich as much as, and
sometimes more than, the Banat Germans themselves.

113
114 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

Granting the Banat Germans access to more arable land meant that they
were better able to make regular, abundant food deliveries for the
Wehrmacht and even Serbia proper. They also paid high taxes and served
Nazi Germany as policemen and soldiers. The Banat German administra-
tion became a way for the Third Reich to secure reliable local collaborators
and soldiers for Hitler, keep occupation costs down, exploit the Banat
economically, and pay lip service to racial ideology, all in one fell swoop.
Thus, while ethnic Germans enjoyed some improvements in their living
standard under occupation, they also had to meet the Reich’s demanding
expectations if they wished to prove themselves worthy members of the
German Volk.
When the Waffen-SS started mobilizing the Banat Germans in spring
1942, this imposed new challenges, including a severe labor shortage.
The latter necessitated the introduction of a mandatory labor service and
even forced labor, which affected other ethnic groups far more than the
Banat Germans. Racial policy interacted with economic necessity in
variable fashion, favoring the Banat Germans with regard to the labor
service, yet demanding their all in terms of overall economic contribution
to the German war effort. Yet while the labor service did little to improve
ethnic relations in the Banat, the ethnic German leadership lacked the
coercive and legislative ability to enforce the new labor rules, highlighting
the limits of its power.
Despite the Banat Germans’ newly elevated position, the reality of the
Banat’s multiethnic population remained significant. Beyond deporting
most Banat Jews in August 1941, the Nazis never attempted to implement
the kind of large-scale ethnic reshuffling in the Banat as they did in Poland
and the Soviet Union. Good diplomatic relations with Hitler’s allies
Hungary and Romania, which had co-nationals residing in the Banat,
were paramount. The Banat German leadership strove to reshape the
Banat in the Third Reich’s image by changing place and street names into
German ones, yet the participation of most other Banat ethnicities in
administrative and economic affairs remained the rule rather than the
exception.
As co-nationals of Germany’s allies, ethnic Hungarians and ethnic
Romanians may not have prospered always in the wartime Banat, but
they did not suffer any great privations either. Even the Banat Serbs, while
subjected to cultural, social, and economic discrimination, were valuable
to the Nazis because they contributed to the labor force and agricultural
production and inhabited an area of scant resistance activity. As such,
the Banat Serbs had a far more sedate wartime experience than their
co-nationals in other Yugoslav lands.
 Oranges and Schools 115

Oranges and Schools

In the Third Reich’s wartime sphere of influence, ideology influenced
education and food rationing, since these everyday concerns were tied to
perceptions of racial belonging and usefulness to the German war effort.
Those serving in any Tripartite Pact armed formation and their families
received a qualitatively better ration. This benefited almost all Banat
Germans, since by the end of 1942 almost all had male relatives in the
Waffen-SS or the Banat police.1
The better basic ration meant 200 kg of wheat per person, whereas
the second-grade ration consisted of 70 kg of wheat and 130 kg of corn per
person.2 Even in such a small area as the Banat, variation in policy
implementation occurred. The second-grade ration meant 60 kg of
wheat in Glogau but 75 kg in Deutsch Elemer. The ethnic German
mayor of Haideschütz may have made it possible even for the Serbian
villagers to get extra grain, above and beyond their assigned ration.3
Better rations exposed ethnic Germans to envy, especially when the
Banat German leadership secured a treat like oranges for its members,
but not for other Banat residents. Food, textile, and shoe rations could
be a powerful incentive for ethnic Germans to toe the official line. They
also made ethnic German women’s domestic pursuits a part of the
broader political mobilization of their community. As Sybille
Steinbacher and Carl Bethke have shown, women’s participation in
the Nazi regime could be framed as apolitical, while still positioning
German woman as privileged members of the Nazi New Order. For
ethnic German women, Nazification could advance personal and pro-
fessional interests while serving the community or engaging in socially
and ideologically acceptable activities. The political and the domestic
dovetailed.4
In their postwar testimonies, some Banat Germans took the cynical
view that women joined the Deutsche Frauenschaft for the express pur-
pose of getting a better sugar ration. Others claimed defensively that many
ethnic Germans were embarrassed by this preferential treatment and used
the extra sugar to bake cakes for Serbian prisoners of war in the Third
1
Luther to Benzler, no date, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, pp. 83–84; Referat D VIII
memo, November 23, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100548, p. 86; Feine to AA,
December 31, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, pp. 79–80.
2
Benzler to AA, November 2, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100548, pp. 87–88.
3
Testimony of Franz Unterreiner, March 6, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 8, p. 75;
Lehr testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 7, p. 31; Sohl testimony (1958),
BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 9.
4
Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, pp. 493–495; Sybille Steinbacher, “Einleitung”
in Volksgenossinnen. Frauen in der NS-Volksgemeinschaft, ed. Sybille Steinbacher (Göttingen:
Wallstein, 2007), pp. 9–10, 20–21.
116 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

Reich.5 If they did, the gesture alleviated unwanted attention from non-
German neighbors by downplaying the ideological reasons behind the
ethnic Germans’ preferential treatment.
Moreover, social pressure could work both ways, not only enforcing
conformity but also prompting discomfort among those who received
preferential treatment. Whether on their own initiative or prompted by
their leaders, some ethnic German women used the bigger sugar ration to
make sweets for German soldiers recovering in field hospitals, including
members of the Waffen-SS division “Prinz Eugen,” into which most
Banat German men were mobilized in 1942. Thus, any embarrassment
could be rationalized away as a service to the greater German cause,
bringing joy to Banat German men serving on the front: a political gesture
given a gloss of the familial.6
Changes in the education system made overt Nazification a part of
the curriculum. In addition to the perceived need to bolster the Banat
Germans’ Germanness through education, German-language school-
ing gained in importance due to the theoretical possibility of future
annexation by Hungary.7 After having secured the Banat Germans’
legal and administrative standing in summer 1941, the German admin-
istration in Belgrade prompted the Serbian collaborationist govern-
ment to issue the “Verordnung über die Schulen der Deutschen
Volksgruppe im Banat” (“Decree on the Schools of the German
National Group in the Banat”) on September 28, 1941, just in time
for the new school year.
Building on the precedents set by German-language schools opened in
late 1940 and the provision, under interwar Yugoslav law, of German-
language classes in municipalities with an ethnic German majority or
substantial minority, the new school law determined that only students
of German origin could attend German-language schools. That way,
German pupils would be isolated from supposedly alien influences,
while other ethnicities would be discouraged from sending their children
to German schools in an attempt to assimilate and obtain privileges
attendant on a high position in the Nazi racial hierarchy. Buildings,

5
Hilde Isolde Reiter, “Ergänzungsbericht: Die letzte Phase des Krieges,” no date, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 386, pp. 11–12; Lemlein testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 17, file 7, p. 4; Lehr testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 7, p. 31;
Unterreiner testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 8, p. 75; Sohl testimony
(1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 11.
6
“Aufzeichnung zur ungarischen Verbalnote vom 16.6.1943 unter Berücksichtigung der
Stellungnahme der Dienststelle in Gross-Betschkerek,” July 7, 1943, PA AA, Inland II
Geheim, file R 100969, fiche 2497, fr. H299,804.
7
Turner, “6. Lagebericht” (1941), BA MA, RW 40, file 188, p. 22.
 Oranges and Schools 117

classrooms, and teaching tools for the German schools would be provided
free of charge by the municipal authorities.8
In practice, this meant that teaching tools and furniture were requisi-
tioned from property belonging to the Serbian state and private institu-
tions. Gym equipment belonging to the Sokol (Slavophile gymnastic
society) and the municipal high school in Grosskikinda was transferred
to the German lyceum already in late April 1941.9 The new school law
merely ratified similar actions after the fact, giving ethnic German
educators and administrators leave to furnish their schools by plundering
other ethnic groups’ schools.
In late 1940, the few private German-language schools existed parallel
to Yugoslav state school and with the indulgence of the Yugoslav state.
In late 1941, the new school law created a truly separate educational
sphere for German-speakers in Serbia-Banat – “complete autonomy
[of] upbringing, instruction, administration, and school supplies [empha-
sis in the original]”10 – and bolstered the ethnic German leadership’s
efforts to make the occupied Banat an extension of the Third Reich in
Southeast Europe. Yet it also confirmed the impossibility of a complete
separation between the Banat and Serbia proper, much to some Banat
Germans’ disappointment. Though German-language schools under
occupation were private institutions nominally separate from state con-
trol, their staff remained civil servants employed by the Serbian state.
The schools also received a yearly subvention from the Serbian Education
Ministry.11
Much like the establishment of the ethnic German administration and
the Nazified leadership’s official confirmation as the power holders in
Banat affairs, German-language schools met with objections from some
of those they were supposed to benefit the most. The part of the school
budget not covered by state subsidy came from an obligatory school tax
levied on all ethnic Germans and all economic enterprises with at least
a 50% capital share owned by racial Germans. While it had the senti-
mental advantage of being a tax that never left the Banat and was used
entirely for Banat purposes, this was an added financial burden on
a peasant community in which higher education was a low priority.12

8
“Verordnung über die Schulen der Deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat,” September 28,
1941, in Rasimus, pp. 649–650.
9
Deposition of Stevan Gajski from Grosskikinda, August 3, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 676,
p. 522.
10
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (September 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 164, fiche 1, fr. 83.
11
“Verordnung über die Schulen” (1941) in Rasimus, pp. 649–651.
12
Sepp Janko, “Verordnung über die Schulsteuer für das Jahr 1942,” Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung, July 1, 1942, p. 1; Janko, “Verordnung über den zu leistenden
Pflichtbeitrag für das Jahr 1943 (Pflichtbeitragsverordnung),” Verordnungsblatt der
118 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

Moreover, despite the quantitative increase in the number of German-

language schools – 84 schools by April 194213 – and German-language
classes in mixed schools, the quality of education remained uneven, due
to a lack of qualified teachers. A teacher-training college opened in
Werschetz to replace the one from Yugoslav times in the Bačka. Even
though its employees scrambled to train some three dozen young ethnic
German teachers before the start of the 1941–1942 school year, the
dearth of German-speaking teachers continued. Once recruitment for
the Waffen-SS began in spring 1942, the situation became critical.
Ethnic Germans with a middle- or high-school diploma and
a completed teacher-training course could be licensed as teaching
assistants or honorary teachers. Ethnic German girls and those boys
declared unfit for military service frequently became teaching assistants
as soon as they graduated from high school, in order to allow German-
language schools to function at all.14
The September 1941 school law’s provision that only persons of
German origin could work as teachers in German-language schools
soon gave way to employment of non-Germans, who had the necessary
work experience and could teach classes in German. The need for teachers
trumped racial ideology, much as the Banat administration continued
to employ non-Germans when necessary. Quite a few Serbs and ethnic
Russians (anti-Bolshevik émigrés, who had settled in Yugoslavia in the
interwar period), who had taught in Yugoslav state schools before
the April War, taught Banat German children in the German language.
Already in fall 1941, the German lyceum in Grossbetschkerek employed
several fully qualified ethnic German teachers who had taught in Serbian
state schools; several ethnic Germans with only high-school diplomas or
who were about to graduate from university; one untenured ethnic
German professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Belgrade;
and two ethnic Russians. Some of these teachers spoke German poorly, as
did many of the ostensibly German students.15

Volksgruppenführung, January 30, 1943, pp. 1–2; Janko, “Verordnung über den zu leis-
tenden Pflichtbeitrag für das Jahr 1944,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
January 12, 1944, p. 1.
13
Turner, “11. Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes beim Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,”
April 6, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 193, p. 8.
14
“Verordnung über die Schulen” (1941) in Rasimus, p. 650; Turner, “7. Lagebericht”
(1941), BA MA, RW 40, file 189, p. 20; Turner, “12. Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes
beim Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,” May 3, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 194, p. 18;
“Deutsche Schulen im Banat. Neuregelung durch Verordnung des Ministerrates” in
Deutsche Zeitung in Kroatien, May 23, 1942, BA Berlin, R 4902, file 7799, p. 3; unsigned
memo, July [3]1, 1943, BA Berlin, R 58, file 7733, p. 21a.
15
Johann Keks, “Zur Geschichte des Deutschen Gymnasiums in Betschkerek,” May 8,
1957, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 72, p. 2.
 Oranges and Schools 119

Whatever the teachers’ ethnicity, the lesson plans in the Banat’s

German-language schools were a tool of official Nazification, so that
growing generations of Banat Germans would learn to equate their
Germanness with National Socialism. Textbooks were imported from
the Third Reich.16 Lessons in German, history, geography, and biology
were permeated by Nazi ideology. Reflecting younger ethnic Germans’,
on average, higher degree of enthusiasm for Nazism, some young teachers
saw in National Socialism a “magic charm [Zaubermittel],” which made
up for lack of professional qualifications.17
In fall 1941, some ethnic Germans chose to send their children to
Hungarian-language schools, either out of lingering Habsburg nostalgia
or from sheer calculation, in expectation of the Banat being annexed by
Hungary. The ethnic German authorities’ nearly apoplectic threats for
parents to either send their children to a German-language school or
provide them with private tutoring in German seem to have had little
effect.18
Like the honor courts and later the mandatory labor service, attendance
of German-language schools highlighted the Banat German leadership’s
preference for methods of social control that stopped short of outright
violence, as well as their lack of genuine coercive power. Nevertheless,
Banat Germans on the whole were willing to have their children educated
in a German-cum-Nazified spirit, since compliance with this and other
official guidelines brought material and social benefits, while defiance
caused public censure.
Once a child joined a German-language class – which required written
proof of the parents’ racial Germanness – the child could only change
schools if the whole family forfeited its membership in the Deutsche
Volksgruppe, which in 1941 became nearly impossible, short of forcible
expulsion from the Volksgruppe.19 Most Banat Germans valued the
chance to increase their landholding or obtain rare and rationed food-
stuffs more than the money saved by not paying the school tax and the

16
“Verordnung über die Schulen” (1941) in Rasimus, p. 650; Keks, “Zur Geschichte des
Deutschen Gymnasiums” (1957), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 72, p. 3.
17
Keks, “Zur Geschichte des Deutschen Gymnasiums” (1957), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok.
16, file 72, p. 3.
18
Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda to Kreisleitung der Deutschen Volksgruppe Grosskikinda,
November 2, 1941, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 179; Landratsamt Gross-
Kikinda to Gemeinde Sankt Hubert, November 2, 1941, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund
84, box 1, p. 179; Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda to Alexander Hewald, January 8, 1942,
Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 181; Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda to
Gemeinde Sankt Hubert, January 8, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1,
p. 182.
19
Janko to Schulstiftung der Deutschen im Banat, May 16, 1944, Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin,
fund 131, folder 1944, doc. 3/944.
120 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

gossip incurred by conflict with the leadership, whether or not they

approved of or even cared about the ideological content of their children’s
education.
Ideology extended into children’s lives outside of school as well. All
pupils in German-language schools automatically became members of
the Deutsche Jugend, the Banat version of the Hitler Youth. Alongside
their high-school diploma, they received a “völkisch diploma” testifying
to the strength and Germanness of their character and their readiness to
make future sacrifices for Volk and Führer. Indeed, starting in 1942,
many seniors graduated from high school straight into the Waffen-SS,
ironically demonstrating that their greatest value to the Nazi regime was
as cannon fodder.20

Agriculture and Taxation

The Nazi government routinely praised the Banat Germans’ hard work
and productivity and the efficiency of their agricultural cooperatives.21
Lothar Heller, the VoMi’s Plenipotentiary for the Economy, waxed lyrical
in December 1943, when he described the Banat as “small in area,
towering in achievement,” a land whose produce could reach the Reich
in a matter of days, not weeks like the grain from occupied Ukraine.22
The Banat German leadership was quick to grasp the Reich’s interest in
the Banat economy, specifically its potential for significant agricultural
surpluses. In late spring 1941, the leadership exhorted the Banat German
peasants to produce even more than before. Slyly likening agricultural
productivity to the ultimate sign of ethnic German gratitude to Adolf
Hitler, the man “who liberated us from long years of bondage,”23 Sepp
Janko underpinned a rapturous appeal for peasants to achieve greatness
by an effort of will with a stern and clear order – the Banat was expected to
feed and supply not only itself, but the Reich as well.

20
Franz Germann and Adam Maurus, “Abkommen zwischen der Landesjugendführung
einerseits und dem Hauptamt für Kultur andnrerseits [sic], über den völkischen Einsatz
der deutschen Schülerschaft,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, November 1,
1941, p. 8; Turner, “12. Lagebericht” (1942), BA MA, RW 40, file 194, p. 18.
21
Rischka, “Bericht über die Reise in das ehemals jugoslawische Gebiet vom Dienstag, den
22. April bis Donnerstag, den 1. Mai 1941,” May 2, 1941, BA Berlin, R 63, vol. 213,
pp. 215–217; Schlarp, pp. 338–339.
22
Lothar Heller, “Die Ausgabe von Pfandbriefen mit Wertbeständigkeitsklausel in der
Deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat/Serbien,” December 22, 1943, BA Berlin, R 63,
vol. 87, p. 220. See also “Kurzbericht über die Wirtschaftsarbeit der Volksdeutschen
im Jahre 1942,” PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100533, p. 24.
23
Sepp Zwirner, “Aufruf. Deutscher Bauer – Deutscher Landarbeiter!”, Verordnungsblatt
der Volksgruppenführung, May 1941, p. 7.
 Agriculture and Taxation 121

A Banat Chamber of Trade, Industry, and Artisanry (Handels-,

Industrie- und Handwerkskammer) was created in August 1941 to
promote and coordinate Banat German economic activities, in the interests
of the German war effort.24 The hierarchy of interests and obligations was
clear from the start. The Third Reich’s needs were paramount, the driving
force of the Banat’s wartime economy. The Banat Germans had to satisfy
the Reich’s economic requirements, since their practical usefulness to the
Reich became a measure of their right to claim a place in the German Volk.
Despite its ideological zeal and desire to please the Nazi government,
the Banat German leadership was aware of how German economic
expectations opened up the Banat to exploitation. Companies from the
Reich interested in exporting food and starting or leasing economic
enterprises in the Banat could pursue their goals without consulting the
Banat Economics Section. Its erstwhile chief Jakob Awender claimed
after the war that Lothar Heller routinely assigned his personal acquain-
tances from Germany to arrange the export of food from the Banat,
instead of employing experienced Banat Germans. This jurisdictional
conflict between Awender and Heller led in early 1942 to Awender’s
replacement by the more biddable Leopold Egger.25 Egger demonstrated
the tendency of Sepp Janko’s circle to accommodate Reich interest and
present it as completely harmonious with the Banat Germans’ desires by
claiming that, of all the German government offices with which he had
dealings, only the VoMi’s economic planning office possessed the right
“Volksdeutsche touch.”26
Egger’s unctuous attitude aside, German state and private companies
wanted to treat the Banat like any other conquered territory, regardless of
the presence of a productive ethnic German population, whose favor they
would have been well-advised to court in the interest of smooth business
dealings. The General Plenipotentiary for the Economy in Belgrade,
Franz Neuhausen, epitomized the rapaciousness and disregard for ethnic
German sensibilities displayed by Reich economic personnel.
In January 1942, he asserted shrilly: “I and I alone am responsible for
all economic activities in Serbia and the Banat!”27

24
“Verordnung über die Errichtung der Handels-, Industrie- und Handwerkskammer in
Petrovgrad (Grossbetschkerek),” August 22, 1941, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100550,
pp. 300–301; Heller to Rischka, October 1, 1941, BA Berlin, R 63, vol. 138, p. 243.
25
“Meldungen aus dem Reich,” March 12, 1942, BA Berlin, R 58, file 170, fiche 2, frs.
134–135; transcript of Jakob Awender’s taped statement, September 29, 1958, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 4, pp. 16–22.
26
Leopold Egger, “Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Hauptamtes für Volkswirtschaft der
Deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und Serbien in den Jahren 1941–1944,”
September 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 97, p. 21.
27
Egger, “Bericht über die Tätigkeit” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 97, p. 10.
122 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

In view of Germany’s chronic inability to produce enough food for its

population without relying on imports or wartime plunder, Lothar Heller
did argue in favor of strengthening the Banat Germans’ economic
position, but only because that would allow Nazi Germany to better
exploit the Banat’s economic potential.28
The first such measure was the overturning of the interwar Yugoslav
land reform in June 1941. Like the laws guaranteeing the ethnic
Germans’ legal standing and rights, this decree was announced by the
Serbian collaborationist government on orders from the German
commanding general in Belgrade and the Reich government. The
decree focused on so-called “volunteer fields” (Dobrovoljzen-Felder,
from the Serbian “dobrovoljac” – volunteer), land given to veterans
who had volunteered for the Serbian army in World War I. Past land
transactions involving this category of land became open to annulment or
revision at the sole discretion of Sepp Lapp, the head of the Banat
administration.29
Rather than declare all Serbian-owned land up for grabs, the June 1941
decree subjected only land obtained by Serbs through the interwar
agrarian reform, which was not being cultivated by its owners, to expro-
priation. This was indicative of initial hesitance on the part of the
Germans in Serbia about mistreating the Serbian population or imping-
ing on its rights without at least a plausible pretext. Although the decree
was announced a mere two days before the start of Operation Barbarossa
on June 22, 1941, and the related flaring-up of communist resistance in
Serbia proper, efforts continued to be made to alleviate some of the
decree’s impact on the Banat Serbian peasantry. Many World War
I veterans lost everything, but an amendment passed in October 1942
provided Serbs in dire straits with at least a small plot of land, enough to
survive on, demonstrating a modicum of good will on the part of the
occupation authorities.30
This good will was based on practical calculation rather than a sudden
improvement of the Serbs’ standing in the Nazi racial hierarchy. Since the
Banat remained largely untouched by communist or other popular
unrest, a conciliatory attitude toward the Banat Serbs was prudent, as
they were still the majority population and overwhelmingly employed in
agriculture.

28
Heller to Reichel, January 15, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 5, fr. 152.
29
“Uredba od delimičnom ukidanju mera izvršenih na osnovu Zakona o agrarnoj reformi,”
Službene novine, June 20, 1941, p. 1.
30
Ibid.; “Uredba o davanju naknade licima oštećenim ukidanjem mera izvršenih na osnovu
Zakona o agrarnoj reformi,” Službene novine, October 30, 1942, p. 1.
 Agriculture and Taxation 123

In March 1942, the Ministry of the Four-Year Plan recommended that

those World War I veterans in the Banat whose land had not been
expropriated yet be left in possession of their landholdings.
The Hungarian practice of expelling Serbs from the Bačka, the thorny
legality of the June 1941 decree repealing the interwar land reform – the
redistributed land was still owned in part by the Serbian state – and the
likely labor shortage, given the imminent recruitment of Banat German
men into the Waffen-SS, dictated that a stable Serbian peasantry
continue to live and work in the Banat.31
Even with these concessions, the net result of the June 1941 decree was
that Banat Germans could and did obtain land more easily, cheaply, and
in greater quantities than before. Between June and October 1941 alone,
nearly 12.5% of the newly available land was bought up by ethnic German
peasants. Even the formal obstacle of needing Franz Neuhausen’s
permission for land transactions, so as to ensure steady food deliveries
for the Reich, was soon lifted. This left Sepp Lapp’s permission, easily
obtained by ethnic Germans, as the only legal prerequisite for ethnic
Germans to buy Serbian-owned land. By July 1943, ethnic Germans
owned about 25.9% of all the land (as opposed to 21% in 1938) and
cultivated some 30% of all arable land in the Banat.32
Ethnic Germans could buy, but not simply expropriate or seize land
subject to the June 1941 decree. Some postwar testimonies implied that
ethnic Germans refrained from buying land for fear of engendering bad
blood with the local Serbs. By contrast, some expellees continued to
display the worst Nazi anti-Slavic prejudices by complaining after the
war that only land not worked by its Serbian owners could be bought up
by ethnic Germans, leaving a lot of valuable real estate in the hands of
lazy, tax-dodging Serbs.33
Postwar depositions made by the Banat’s non-German residents
predictably told a different story. In this version of events, ethnic
German peasants and sometimes ethnic Hungarians outright stole land
from their Serbian neighbors, went through the motions of a legal
31
Gramsch memo, March 21, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100614, fiche 5, fr. 157.
32
“Verordnung über die Veräusserung von Grundstücken,” October 10, 1941, PA AA,
Inland II D, R 100614, fiche 7, fr. 207; VoMi to Benzler, October 27, 1941, PA AA, Inland
II D, file R 100614, fiche 7, fr. 213; Zwirner to Heller, October 31, 1941, PA AA, Inland
II D, file R 100614, fiche 7, fr. 206; Janko to VoMi, December 5, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19,
file 1728, fiche 1, fr. 4; “Kriegseinsatz der Volksgruppe,” July 1943, PA AA, Inland II C, file
R 100380, p. 95; Luković, p. 158.
33
Testimony of Stefan Rohrbacher from Schurjan, no date, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file
3, p. 52; Stirbel testimony (no date), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 5, p. 5; Mojse
testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 4, p. 8; Keller testimony (no date), BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 8, p. 45; Sohl testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17,
file 9, pp. 9–10.
124 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

transaction but withheld payment, or obtained proof of ownership from

the ethnic German administration without the supposed seller even being
consulted. Sometimes Serbs had to sell their land at ludicrously low prices
or cultivate it on ethnic Germans’ behalf without payment.34
A mixture of true grievance and the desire to obtain property (possibly
even property legally sold during the occupation) or legal redress after the
war likely inspired these accusations. A similar blend of greed and
empowerment was the ethnic Germans’ purview during the war, if they
wanted it. At least some Banat Germans seem to have felt ambivalent
about profiting from their neighbors’ misfortune. Yet many behaved like
the occupation-era ethnic German who told a Serbian acquaintance
asking why he had not called in an old debt sooner: “Ja, those were
different times [Ja, to su bila druga vremena]!”35
The official stance toward Serbian ownership of land in the occupied
Banat remained equivocal, the Serbian peasant’s value as laborer and
producer offset by the Nazi desire to improve the overall standing of
ethnic Germans. Despite many opportunities for abuse, the expropriation
of Serbian land never became a matter of course, as did the legalized
alienation of Jewish real estate. Some ethnic German administrators
suggested to Lapp and Neuhausen that large Serbian landholdings should
be placed under commissarial administration,36 but even so land
purchases remained individual transactions subject to the vagaries of
personal whim, finance, greed, and willingness to profit from altered
circumstances.
Land expropriated from Serbs brought with it the expectation that its
new ethnic German owners would cultivate it to the utmost, in service to
the Third Reich’s economic needs. To help them cultivate their enlarged
landholdings, teams of draft horses and oxen belonging to the munici-
pality were placed at the ethnic Germans’ disposal free of charge, if their
own draft horses had been confiscated by the Yugoslav army during
the April War or later by the German armed forces. In 1943, the Banat
administration offered a financial bonus to all peasants who sowed the
same or larger acreage with certain basic crops (wheat, corn, sunflower) as

34
Lenka Perkin from Grosskikinda accuses Adam Kremer from Botschar, October 30,
1944, AJ, fund 110, box 675, p. 130; Pera Kristić from Perlas accuses Franja Dekoren
from Rudolfsgnad, November 30, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 675, p. 40; Ilija Stojnov from
Tschoka accuses Ferko Ezveđ from same, November 14, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 675,
p. 50; Nikola Avakumović from Perlas accuses Jozef Maršal from same, October 31,
1944, AJ, fund 110, box 675, p. 220; deposition of Božidar Mijatović from Banatsko
Karađorđevo, March 3, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 663, p. 453.
35
Mijatović deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 663, p. 453.
36
Landratsamt Grosskikinda to Kreiswirtschaftsamt Grosskikinda, November 13, 1942,
Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 276.
 Agriculture and Taxation 125

they had done the previous year. So important was the Banat as a stable
food source, so much more peaceful than Serbia, that even the economic-
ally deleterious attempt to thwart resistance activity and improve security
in Serbia proper by clearing a 500 m stretch of land along the sides of
roads and railways of tall crops, trees, and bushes was never implemented
in the Banat.37
Whether they chose to avail themselves of the legal and extralegal
possibilities to increase their landholdings or not, ethnic German pea-
sants supplied a controlled market. The food supply in occupied Serbia
was under as strict control as Franz Neuhausen and the Wehrmacht could
impose – meaning it was strictest in the Banat, the most stable area in
partitioned Yugoslavia. The Banat’s grain deliveries were removed from
the unsettled conditions and the black market in Serbia proper, with its
two competing resistance movements and only nominal German control
outside of major urban centers. After the Waffen-SS division “Prinz
Eugen” was deployed in the Independent State of Croatia in early
1943, the Banat took on the additional burden of feeding the German
and ethnic German, and even the Croatian forces in Croatia – the rural
areas of which were even more unsettled than rural Serbia proper – as well
as the Wehrmacht in Serbia.38
To this end, ostensibly the Banat administration, but really Franz
Neuhausen’s office in Belgrade, determined yearly quotas of agricultural
produce the Banat had to deliver as well as which peasant should grow
what, to ensure the quotas were filled. Agricultural cooperatives
dominated by the Banat Germans – Agraria and Agraraprodukt in
Grossbetschkerek; Uljarica, Donau-Cereal, and Cereal-Export in
Belgrade; Akcionarsko društvo za preradu kukuruza in Apfeldorf; and
a few Banat mills – bought up food from private producers and delivered it
to Neuhausen’s officials.39
37
Lapp, “Anordnung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, October 10, 1941, pp. 1–2; “Verordnung
betreffend den Schutz des Verkehrs auf Fahrstrassen und Eisenbahnlinien,”
Verordnungsblatt des Befehlshabers Serbien, January 30, 1942, pp. 197, 199;
Kriegstagebuch, April 2, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 28, p. 2; Kriegstagebuch, April 8,
1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 28, p. 6; Kriegstagebuch, April 17, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file
28, p. 9; Kriegstagebuch, April 26–27, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 28, p. 12;
Kriegstagebuch, April 28, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 28, p. 111; Kriegstagebuch,
June 4, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 30, p. 4; Befehlshaber Serbien memo, June 4, 1942,
BA MA, RW 40, file 30, p. 32; Koch to all Kreis- und Ortsbauernführer, October 16,
1942, Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 131, folder 1942, doc. 1374/42; Lapp,
“Anordnung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, September 17, 1943, p. 1.
38
Feine to AA, February 3, 1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 68; Heller memo,
February 10, 1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 66; Peter Staadlbaur, “Banat –
Land des Ackerbaues,” Donauzeitung, April 18, 1943, BA Berlin, R 8034 II, volume
4780, p. 13; Komorowski, p. 225.
39
“Naredba o prometu kukuruzom u Banatu,” Službene novine, January 30, 1942, p. 3.
126 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

Although they were only one-fifth of the Banat population, ethnic

Germans were responsible for anywhere between one-quarter and nearly
one-half of the Banat’s deliveries of various foodstuffs. In 1943, the ethnic
Germans produced 25% of the Banat’s corn, 28% of wheat, 30.8% of
sugar beets, 33.7% of sunflower seed, and 47.5% of fattened pigs.
Peasants who failed to deliver their predetermined quota could have it
requisitioned without payment.40 This was coercion of a more obvious
kind than the social pressures and manipulation deployed by the Banat
German leaders in everyday interactions with their co-nationals.
Economic policy affected ethnic German and non-German peasants
alike – the Third Reich’s economic need trumped racial ideology in this
regard.
Furthermore, all Banat peasants – ethnic Germans included – could
have land they could not cultivate themselves or with the use of hired
labor taken away and given to others for cultivation. Land could be
expropriated also if it was needed for melioration projects, in which the
Reich invested: irrigation or construction of food-processing facilities,
such as the four dairies the Reich “gifted” to the Banat German peasants
in late 1943.41 A portion of melioration investments came from Serbian
tax revenue, which in turn derived partly from the Banat. Thus, the Third
Reich had the Banat pay for its occupation and for improvements to its
agriculture, of which the Reich was the chief beneficiary. Since economic
exploitation of the Banat was inextricably linked to that of Serbia proper,
overall the Banat economy was more damaged than improved by German
involvement.
The Banat German peasants were quick to notice that their supposed
liberation by the Wehrmacht looked awfully like rank economic exploita-
tion. In the village of Soltur, the required delivery of pigs for the
Wehrmacht was customarily preceded by a few days’ arguing back and
forth, before the local ethnic Germans agreed to hand over the pigs.
In Nakodorf, the ethnic Germans found themselves in default for more
than one-half of their expected wheat delivery from the 1942 harvest.42
40
“Naredba o isporuci pšenice i suncokretovog semena u Banatu,” Službene novine, April 7,
1942, p. 1; Lapp, “Aufruf an sämtliche Landwirte im Banat!”, Amtsblatt für das Banat,
November 26, 1942, pp. 2–3; “Kriegseinsatz der Volksgruppe” (1943), PA AA, Inland II
C, file R 100380, p. 95.
41
Lapp, “Aufruf an sämtliche Landwirte,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, November 26, 1942, p.
1; Lapp, “Anordnung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, January 7 & 14, 1943, pp. 2–3; “Aus dem
Zeitgeschehen,” Deutschtum im Ausland, Vol. 11/12, November–December 1943, p. 234;
“Die Wirtschaftslage im Bereich des Kommandierenden Generals und Befehlshabers in
Serbien. Dritter Gesamtbericht des Generalbevollmächtigten für die Wirtschaft in
Serbien,” January 1944, NARA, RG 242, T-75, roll 69, frs. 166–167.
42
Gemeindeamt Soltur to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, December 8, 1941, Istorijski arhiv
Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 424; Bürgermeisteramt Nakodorf, “Verzeichnis der
 Agriculture and Taxation 127

The reasons included bad weather and flooding due to deliberate

Romanian failure to prevent tributaries of the Tisa River from overflow-
ing their banks (possibly as passive-aggressive payback for Romania los-
ing its tenuous future claim on the Banat to Hungary); a dearth of draft
animals, tools, seed, and feed for milk cows; and low prices offered for the
food and cattle delivered.43 These were valid reasons, but they could be
interpreted as the ethnic Germans’ ideological and racial failure. One
Vojvodina German took the Reich’s side and accused his co-nationals of
“pettiness [Kleinlichkeit]” and unjustified grumbling over low prices:
“the Banat Swabian’s materialism knows no limits,” he declared.44
The low prices offered to Banat peasants were an ironic consequence of
the Banat’s general stability. Because peasants who delivered food for
German troops ran a far higher risk of retaliation by the resistance in
Serbia proper, the prices fetched were also higher in Serbia proper.45
By the same logic of estimated costs, in 1943, the land tax in the Banat
increased by 60%, and in Serbia proper by 120%. Even taking into
account wartime inflation and the relative weakness of the Serbian dinar
vis-à-vis the Reichsmark, the lesser tax hike was small consolation to the
Banat peasant, since it followed on the heels of a 100% increase in general
taxation in 1941–1942.46 The Nazi government arranged for the ethnic

Landwirte, die laut Bestandesaufnahme der Polizei Weizen abzuliefern hatten, aber
bisher ihren Verpflichtungen nicht nachgekommen sind,” August 6, 1942, Istorijski
arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 3, no page numbers.
43
Gemeindeamt Mastort to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, November 11, 1941, Istorijski
arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 395; Gemeindeamt Charleville to Landratsamt Gross-
Kikinda, November 11, 1941, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 397; Kullmann
to Kreiskommandantur 823, March 31, 1942, BA Berlin, R 63, vol. 289, p. 8; Egger to
VoMi, March 31, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 4, frs. 109–110; VoMi
to AA, April 16, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 4, frs. 107–108; Amtliche
Vieh- und Milchzentrale Expositur für das Banat, Aussenstelle Tschoka, to Landrat
Gross-Kikinda, October 23, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 3, no page
number; unsigned and undated memo to Amtliche Vieh- und Milchzentrale Expositur
für das Banat, Aussenstelle Tschoka, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 3, no page
number.
44
Friedrich Becker, “Bericht über meine Eindrücke aus dem Banat und Serbien,” likely
late August 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 544, fr. 5,316,590.
45
“Naredba br. 136 o najvišoj ceni pšeničnom brašnu i hlebu,” Službene novine, July 9,
1943, pp. 3–4; “Naredba o najvišoj proizvođačkoj ceni kukuruzu i o najvišim cenama
i zaradama u trgovini i preradi žitarica, mahunastih plodova, stočne hrane, sena i slame
u Srbiji i Banatu za ekonomsku 1944/45 godinu,” Službene novine, August 18, 1944,
pp. 9–10.
46
Gemeindeamt Heufeld to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, January 9, 1942, Istorijski arhiv
Kikinda, fund 84, box 3, p. 445; Gemeindeamt Heufeld to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda,
February 7, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 464; Gemeindeamt Soltur
to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, February 9, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box
1, p. 467; Breyhan to AA, February 19, 1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 1,
fr. 17; unsigned memo (1943), BA Berlin, R 58, file 7733, p. 35.
128 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

Germans in occupied Ukraine to receive a preferential tax rate, but

Ukraine was central to Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler’s plans for
a Germanic East – the Banat was not.47
Many Banat Germans concluded that it was a strange liberation that
brought such a tax burden with it. The issue around which their resent-
ment revolved went deeper than taxation alone and touched on the
Banat’s continuing status as part of the Serbian state. Taxes were easier
to fudge in Serbia proper than in the Banat, since in the Vojvodina land
registries had been kept meticulously since Habsburg times, whereas
landownership in Serbia proper was less well-documented. Accusations
flew back and forth: the Banat supposedly failed to pay its share into the
state budget, while the Serbian Finance Ministry supposedly failed to give
back a fair share of taxes for road upkeep and melioration projects in the
Banat.48
Although officially economic matters in the Banat were kept separate
from those in Serbia proper, the two remained mutually dependent.
The Banat needed shipments of wood for heating and construction
from Serbia, and Serbia needed – occasionally even depended on – food
from the Banat. While the Banat Germans could be less than gracious
about supplying the Germans and ethnic Germans in Serbia with food,
they positively bridled at feeding the Slavic population of Serbia proper.49
Officially, the Banat was forbidden from “exporting” food to markets in
Serbia proper. Serbian residents should not have crossed the Danube in
order to buy food and bring it from the Banat into Serbia proper without
prior authorization. The ban on unauthorized movement of foodstuffs
extended also to German military, police, and civilian personnel, includ-
ing members of the Waffen-SS division “Prinz Eugen,” who often
brought food and animal fodder with them when returning from leave
in the Banat.50 Nevertheless, due to Franz Neuhausen’s miscalculations

47
Egger to VoMi, September 29, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 2, fr. 53;
Feine to AA, January 28, 1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 2, fr. 33;
Breyhan to AA (1943), PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 1, fr. 18.
48
Unsigned and undated memo, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 4, frs.
99–100; Reichel to VoMi, March 8, 1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 1, fr.
20; Geissler, “Über die soziale Lage der Volksdeutschen im serbischen Banat” (1943),
BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 29277/a, p. 144.
49
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (September 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 164, fiche 1, fr. 82;
VoMi to AA, January 16, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 5, fr. 150;
Geissler, “Über die soziale Lage der Volksdeutschen im serbischen Banat” (1943), BA
Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 29277/a, p. 144; Schlarp, pp. 341–342.
50
Beer to Leitung des Kreises “Prinz Eugen,” April 3, 1942, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box
27-A, folder 5, doc. 51; Janko to Christian Brücker, July 17, 1942, Vojni arhiv, Nemački
arhiv, box 27-A, folder 5, doc. 70; “Naredba o putovanju u Banat,” Službene novine,
August 25, 1942, p. 5; Turner, “15. Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes beim Kdr.
 Labor 129

regarding Serbia-Banat’s overall economic potential and the frequent

disruption of communications in Serbia proper, starting in 1942,
Belgrade occasionally had to be supplied with basic foodstuffs from the
Banat.51 This merely confirmed some ethnic German peasants’ aggrieved
conviction that they had been badly served by the Third Reich.

Labor
The wartime labor shortage further exacerbated the economic pressure
on the Banat peasantry. Already in February 1942, on the eve of official
Waffen-SS mobilization in the Banat, the VoMi estimated some 15,000
non-German laborers would be needed to fill in for mobilized ethnic
Germans. The following month, Sepp Janko suggested more than
25,000 laborers might be needed.52
The two years between the deployment of the division “Prinz Eugen”
outside the Banat in fall 1942 and the arrival of the Red Army in fall 1944
left Banat German women, children, and the elderly fending very much
for themselves, which Tony Judt has pinpointed as the typical civilian
experience in wartime Europe.53 Reich propaganda praised the exertions
of “graybeards [Greisen]”54 as well as ethnic German women as care-
givers, cultivators of land, and givers of life. (In 1941 alone, 2,150 ethnic
German babies were born in the Banat, and another 2,812 in 1942.55)
Propaganda aside, the agricultural output expected of the Banat Germans
would have been impossible, from 1942 onward, without the use of
organized and even forced labor.

General und Bfh. in Serbien für September und Oktober 1942,” November 10, 1942,
BA MA, RW 40, file 35, p. 5; Neuhausen, “Durchführungsverordnung zur
Bewirtschaftungsverordnung (Bewirtschaftung von Obst, Obsterzeugnissen, Gemüse u.
Kartoffeln),” Amtsblatt für das Banat, November 12 & 19, 1942, p. 1; Alfred Amelung,
“Verordnung zur Durchführungsverordnung zur Bewirtschaftungsverordnung
(Bewirtschaftung von Obst, Obsterzeugnissen, Gemüse u. Kartoffeln),” Amtsblatt für das
Banat, November 12 & 19, 1942, p. 1; Rentsch to Feldgendarmerie, November 25, 1942,
Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-C, folder 4, doc. 37; “Warenausfuhr aus dem Banat,”
July 7, 1943, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 1, p. 43.
51
“Die deutsche Militärverwaltung in Serbien,” unsigned and undated report, likely 1944/
1945, BA MA, RW 40, file 117, p. 4; Turner, “13. Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes
beim Kdr. General und Befehlshaber in Serbien für Mai und Juni 1942,” July 3, 1942,
BA MA, RW 40, file 195, p. 10.
52
Unsigned VoMi memo, February 23, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 4,
fr. 131; Feninger to AA, March 14, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 4,
fr. 115.
53
Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2005),
pp. 13–14.
54
“Vielvölkergebiet im Südosten,” Völkischer Beobachter, April 14, 1944, PA AA, Inland II
C, file R 100380, p. 226.
55
“Kriegseinsatz der Volksgruppe” (1943), PA AA, Inland II C, file R 100380, p. 94.
130 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

The Banat German leadership wed ideology to necessity when it

founded the German Labor Service (Deutscher Arbeitsdienst) for ethnic
German youth in spring 1942, to coincide with the start of Waffen-SS
recruitment. Propaganda heralded both forms of service as a joyful yet
voluntary obligation. Sepp Janko called it an “honor service to the
German Volk [Ehrendienst am deutschen Volke].”56 The Reich press
claimed the labor service would forge the ethnic Germans into a true
Volksgemeinschaft, worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with Reich
Germans in defense of Germany, thus framing Germanness as a goal that
had to be achieved by conscious effort and tying it to both military service
and economic activity.57
On paper, the labor service was mandatory for members of the Deutsche
Jugend and its affiliate for young women, the Deutscher Mädelbund, as
well as all students in German-language schools.58 Yet most young recruits
had to attend school, while some also helped out on their parents’ land-
holdings. The Reich put great economic pressure on the Banat German
peasants, but in labor matters it obeyed the ideological imperative to enable
ethnic Germans to prosper at other ethnicities’ expense and turned to the
majority non-German population of the Banat as a potential labor pool.
In June 1942, mandatory labor service was instituted for Banat non-
German men 17–20 years of age, who were employed as agricultural
workers. While its primary beneficiaries were ethnic German households,
whose men were mobilized, missing, killed in action, or taken prisoner, the
new labor service was intended to ensure regular deliveries of predeter-
mined food quotas for the German armed forces in the Balkans. Therefore,
non-German households with family members taken prisoner, missing, or
killed in action could apply for auxiliary labor to be assigned to them as
well. However, ethnic German households got preferential treatment and
were entitled to as many laborers as they had men away fighting, while non-
German households could only get one laborer per household.59
By April 1943, the labor service conscripted some 13,500 men.
In principle, they could be exempt if they were employed or attended
school full-time, or if they were the sole breadwinners in their own

56
Janko, “Verordnung über die Errichtung des Deutschen Arbeitsdienstes (DAD),”
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, March 1, 1942, p. 6.
57
“Die Lage: Serbien,” Nation und Staat, Vol. 10/11, July–August 1942, pp. 388–389.
58
Ibid.; Janko, “Verordnung über die Durchführung der Deutschen Arbeitsdienstpflicht
für die weibliche Jugend,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, May 1, 1942, p. 2;
“Arbeitsdienstpflicht für die weibliche Jugend,” Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung, May 1, 1942, p. 3.
59
Lapp, “Verfügung über die Mobilmachung gewisser Jahrgänge zum Zwecke des
Pflichtarbeitsdienstes und der Verwendung der mobilisierten Arbeiter,” Amtsblatt für
das Banat, June 18 & 25, 1942, pp. 1–3.
 Labor 131

households. Despite allowances made for the conscripts’ other obliga-

tions, proof of having done one’s labor service was required in order to
attend university. Thus, high-school and university students could not get
an exemption, even if they did attend classes full-time, in stark contrast to
young ethnic Germans exempt from their labor service so they could go to
school. Non-German laborers were supposed to receive a small wage,
room and board, and a clothing and shoe allowance. In practice, since the
Wehrmacht controlled the leather supply, they received uncomfortable
wooden clogs as their shoe ration. Labor service should have lasted 45–60
days, with regular rotation of laborer contingents.60
By fall 1943, the labor service duration was extended from two to four-
and-a-half and then to more than six months. The age of the men affected
was raised to 23 years. The overwhelming impression left on employers
and laborers alike was that of mutual disappointment and barely con-
cealed resentment, although some workers allegedly renewed contracts
with their ethnic German employers after their mandatory labor service
finished. The language barrier made communication difficult. Expellee
reports routinely described the Serbian, ethnic Romanian, and ethnic
Slovak workers as fairly useless.61 They committed the gravest sin in
any peasant’s book: “they habitually ate more than they deserved.”62
In March 1943, still attempting to solve the labor issue and likely
inspired by the proclamation of total war in the Third Reich, the Banat
Office for Peasant Affairs (Landesbauernführung) encouraged ethnic
German men who had not been drafted into the Waffen-SS to offer
their advice and help to the wives of mobilized co-nationals. They became
custodians (Hofpaten) to their neighbors’ “orphaned estate.”63 This
unpaid service must have been very unpopular among the overworked
ethnic German peasants, after Waffen-SS recruitment had left mostly the
very young, elderly, and disabled men at home. By the end of 1943, the
Office for Peasant Affairs managed to muster only 883 men to look after
1,287 landholdings.64 One can only imagine what the mobilized men’s
wives thought of this arrangement.

60
Lapp, “Verfügung über die Mobilmachung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, June 18 & 25, 1942,
pp. 2–3, 5; Sohl testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 9.
61
Lapp, “Anordnung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat, September 24, 1943, p. 3; Kathrein
testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 5, p. 89; Sohl testimony (1958), BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 9; Schneider testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok.
17, file 5, pp. 84–85; Komorowski, p. 239.
62
Welter testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 5.
63
Koch to all Kreis- und Ortsbauernführer, March 12, 1943, Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin,
fund 131, folder 1943, doc. 397/43.
64
“Aus dem Zeitgeschehen: Banat und Serbien,” Deutschtum im Ausland, Vol. 11/12,
November–December 1943, p. 233.
132 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

Also in March 1943, Sepp Lapp ordered that all adult, unemployed
Banat residents, regardless of ethnicity or gender, had to report for work
assignment to an agricultural or industrial enterprise. This included
individuals sentenced to forced labor, alcoholics, “asocial” personalities,
the “work-shy,” and Roma.65 While German and ethnic German adults
in Serbia-Banat technically could be called up for labor service, there were
so many exceptions – including for full-time peasants, independent med-
ical professionals, priests, high-school and university students, various
apprentices, pregnant women and mothers of small children, employees
of offices in the domain of public law, and all those already called up for
service in the army, police, or the German Labor Service – that few were
actually called up.66
The Banat German leadership applied Nazi social and racial categories
to the Banat labor pool and extended the 1942 practice of making the
labor burden weigh more heavily on non-Germans. Even if they received
the token payment promised, non-Germans conscripted by the labor
service had to take time away from their own fields and occupations, so
that ethnic German fields would be tilled and harvested. One postwar
ethnic German testimony called young Serbs conscripted for paid labor
service of up to two months’ duration “forced laborers [Zwangs-
Arbeiter].”67 Though the word choice blurred the distinction between
mandatory and forced labor, it conveyed the resentment incurred by the
labor service and the insufficient recompense the laborers received for
their time and trouble.
Many conscripted laborers were not actually employed in agriculture,
as the 1942 labor service decree stipulated they should be. Rather, they
did construction work on roads and the Pantschowa airstrip under
Luftwaffe supervision, or menial labor such as cleaning and laundry in
officers’ clubs, barracks, and hotels taken over by the Wehrmacht.68
Women laborers often had to deal with insults to their ethnicity and

65
“Naredba za Banat o upućivanju na obavezan rad. Alkoholičari i asocijalni tipovi obra-
zuju zasebnu grupu,” Vreme (Belgrade), March 21, 1943, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 29277/
a, p. 195.
66
“Erste Durchführungsverordnung zur Verordnung über die Einführung kriegswirtschaf-
tlicher Massnahmen des Reiches (Verordnung über den Einsatz der Reichs- und
Volksdeutschen),” Verordnungsblatt des Befehlshabers Serbien, March 26, 1943, p. 311.
See also “Verordnung über die Einführung kriegswirtschaftlicher Massnahmen des
Reiches,” Verordnungsblatt des Befehlshabers Serbien, March 26, 1943, pp. 309–310.
67
Rohrbacher testimony (no date), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 3, p. 53.
68
Deposition of Miodrag Putić from Grossbetschkerek, May 17, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box
672, p. 26; deposition of Kosta Margan from Pantschowa, February 28, 1945, AJ, fund
110, box 672, p. 64; deposition of Branislav Đonin from Pantschowa, August 23, 1945,
AJ, fund 110, box 672, p. 103; deposition of Dejan Sudarski from Pantschowa,
August 25, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 672, p. 105.
 Labor 133

improper advances, which one woman refused by saying she was not
a “‘bicycle’ for the German army’s entertainment.”69
Further blurring the distinctions between mandatory and forced labor,
conscripted laborers could be assigned as well as sentenced to a few
months spent cutting wood in the work camp on Ostrovačka Ada, an
island in the Danube near the Romanian border. The camp population
had a high turnover and consisted of a mixture of ethnic German
teenagers doing their labor service during school holidays under their
teachers’ supervision and prisoners sentenced for black marketeering.
Discipline was lax. Apart from the actual work, the worst challenges
were the low-fat diet and swarms of mosquitoes.70
The Banat German leadership could pass decrees, which were in
Germany’s best interest and affected the daily lives of all Banat residents,
but it lacked the ability to enforce them all. Enforcing the labor service
proved well-nigh impossible, even though avoiding it was officially
punishable as sabotage. People often failed to show up, and the Banat
authorities lacked the policemen to round up errant workers.71
Between the lax labor discipline and all the exemptions made, by late
summer 1943, the Banat was in dire need of some 6,000 workers, but
there were no eligible locals left to be conscripted. By spring 1944, some
500 Italian prisoners of war had been promised, yet failed to arrive.72
Despite setbacks, Nazi officials continued to acclaim the Banat German
peasantry. In January 1944, Franz Neuhausen expressed the highest
praise of which he was capable, when he wrote that the Banat “fulfills
its duty [as though it were] a German Heimatgau [home district].”73

69
Deposition of Vukosava Morvai from Pantschowa, August 31, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box
672, p. 107.
70
Deposition of Dejan Obradović from Pantschowa, June 5, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 672,
p. 68; deposition of Jakov Dervenski from Pantschowa, January 26, 1945, AJ, fund 110,
box 672, p. 73.
71
Feninger, “Bericht des Volkstumsreferenten über seine Teilnahme an der
Inspektionsreise des Kriegsverwaltungschefs Staatsrat Dr. Turner im Banat vom 31.5.
bis 2.6.1942.”, June 4, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 3, fr. 94;
Kreisvorstehung des Banater Kreises, “Bekanntmachung,” Amtsblatt für das Banat,
June 11, 1942, p. 4; Amelung to Kreisvorstehung des Banater Kreises, September 10,
1943, AJ, fund 110, box 672, p. 44; Okružno načelstvo Okruga banatskog to Policijska
prefektura za Banat, April 25, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 672, p. 13; Okružno načelstvo
Okruga banatskog to Policijska prefektura za Banat, June 10, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box
672, p. 11.
72
Peter Pentz to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, August 27, 1943, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund
84, box 5, no page numbers; Gemeindeamt Heufeld to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda,
September 5, 1943, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 5, no page number; VoMi,
“Monatsbericht April 1944 über die Lage in den Deutschen Volksgruppen,” no date,
NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1005, fr. 393,494.
73
“Die Wirtschaftslage im Bereich des Kommandierenden Generals und Befehlshabers in
Serbien” (1944), NARA, RG 242, T-75, roll 69, fr. 164.
134 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

Although there was little unrest and resistance activity in the Banat
between spring 1941 and fall 1944, conditions for agricultural production
were less than favorable. No sooner could ethnic Germans obtain more
arable land from expropriated Serbs than the bulk of their labor force was
conscripted into the Waffen-SS, leaving the rest to contend with unreli-
able non-German laborers, demanding German economic officials, and
a growing disparity between their earning power and the tax rate. If the
Banat Germans managed to produce as much as they did under these
conditions, their pride in supposedly German qualities of hard work,
thrift, and dutifulness and their material and ideological interest in the
Third Reich’s victory were to credit, even if they professed no conscious
interest in Nazism.

The Banat Germans and Others

The experiences of other ethnic groups in the Banat hinged on the Nazis’
racial attitude to them, to a variable extent also to their numbers, and
whether they could make themselves useful to the German administration
in Serbia-Banat. The Banat Jews were doomed simply for being Jews in
a German occupation zone. The ethnic Hungarians and ethnic
Romanians remained mostly unsatisfied in their various demands, but
did not suffer privation. They may have got less arable land, poorer
rations, and fewer classrooms than the ethnic Germans, but the high
material and human cost, with which the ethnic Germans paid for the
privilege of being the Nazis’ racial kin, eluded the ethnic Hungarians and
ethnic Romanians.
In addition to ethnic Germans, the June 1941 land-reform decree was
supposed to benefit Romanian citizens of Romanian, Hungarian, and
German ethnicity, who had lost land due to the 1918 division of the
Banat, the breakup of Austria-Hungary after World War I, and the inter-
war Yugoslav land reform.74 This was primarily a salve to Romanian
pride after the Third Reich had granted Hungary a stronger claim on
the Serbian Banat in the unspecified future. Tensions between Hungary
and Romania over any and every issue pertaining to the Serbian Banat
caused the German administration in Belgrade to evade making the
reform repeal seem like a move against either ally. Hence, the repeal
was officially passed by the Serbian collaborationist government, and

74
“Uredba od delimičnom ukidanju,” Službene novine, June 20, 1941, p. 1; Turner, “2.
Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes beim Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,” July 10, 1941,
BA MA, RW 40, file 184, p. 26; “Uredba o dopuni Uredbe o delimičnom ukidanju mera
izvršenih na osnovu Zakona o agrarnoj reformi od 19 juna 1941 godine,” Službene novine,
August 20, 1941, p. 1.
 The Banat Germans and Others 135

every past land transaction affected by the decree had to be examined

separately.75
Such distinctions were too fine for the Hungarian government, which
made no secret of its intention to carry out its own land reform, once it
eventually occupied the Banat. Hungarian threats caused great conster-
nation among Banat German leaders, who saw this as undermining their
authority and that of the German commanding general in Belgrade. They
need not have worried: the Hungarian state lacked the funds with which
to back any large land purchases by its co-nationals in the Banat.
Therefore, the German Foreign Ministry and the Wehrmacht could
afford to pay lip service to Hungary. They prompted the Serbian govern-
ment to amend the June 1941 decree in December of that year, placing
expropriated land in Banat municipalities with large ethnic Hungarian
populations at the latter’s disposal. To keep the peace between its allies, in
1943, the Wehrmacht also allowed ethnic Romanians to buy at least some
available land. Overall, these purchases remained far inferior to purchases
allowed to the Banat Germans.76
In other respects too, the Banat Hungarian position remained inferior
to the Banat German one. Hungarian-language schools mattered less to
the Germans in Belgrade than schools for the Banat Germans. The Banat
Hungarians enjoyed only partial success in importing schoolbooks in
Hungarian and Levente (Hungarian youth organization) uniforms
masquerading as school uniforms. The textbooks had to be submitted
to German censors in Belgrade, while the Levente uniforms had to have
their distinctive decorations removed before they were distributed to
schoolboys as ordinary coats.77 When ethnic Hungarians demanded
75
Turner, “2. Lagebericht” (1941), BA MA, RW 40, file 184, p. 26; Turner, “5.
Lagebericht des Verwaltungsstabes beim Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien,” October 6,
1941, BA MA, RW 40, file 187, p. 28.
76
Franz Hamm to Janko, July 21, 1941, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100614, fiche 8, fr. 248;
Janko to Turner, July 25, 1941, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100614, fiche 8, fr. 249;
Danckelmann to List, August 3, 1941, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100614, fiche 8, frs.
241–242; Bede to Benzler, February 13, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100614, fiche
6, frs. 174–175; Benzler to AA, February 26, 1942, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100614,
fiche 6, fr. 172; “Uredba o ukidanju eksproprijacija izvršenih na osnovu Zakona
o agrarnoj reformi u pogledu nekretnina u opštinama Jabuka, Glogonj, Toba,
Martinica i Lazarevo,” Službene novine, February 27, 1942, p. 12; Rentsch to
Neuhausen, September 9, 1943, NARA, RG 242, T-75, roll 67, fr. 744.
77
Döme Sztójay memo, January 19, 1943, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100969, fiche
2497, fr. H299,818; Woermann to Sztójay, March 4, 1943, PA AA, Inland II Geheim,
file R 100969, fiche 2497, fr. H299,827; Wagner to AA office in Belgrade, June 7, 1943,
PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 16; Benzler to AA, June 10, 1943, PA AA, Inland II
D, file R 100549, p. 11; Benzler to AA, June 12, 1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549,
p. 8; Reichel to RSHA, June 15, 1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 23; Chef der
Sicherheitspolizei und des SD to AA, June 23, 1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file
R 100549, p. 18.
136 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

that teachers from Hungary be permitted to work in the Banat, fewer

teachers were allowed than had been requested.78
Another bone of contention was the better rations for ethnic Germans.
Nazi Germany seized the moral high ground by claiming better rations
were a reward for service in its armed forces. By contrast, the Hungarian
army could not recruit its co-nationals in the Banat, and barely 400 ethnic
Hungarians served in the Banat police. Despite persistent complaints,
even most of them received the same ration as Serbs and ethnic
Romanians or, at best, a one-time ration equal to that given to ethnic
Germans, followed by rations of inferior quality.79
Inflating Banat Hungarian numbers – from the 92,000 reported on the
1931 Yugoslav census to supposedly 121,000 in 1944, which was highly
unconvincing in an area with a low overall birth rate – as a means to wrest
more privileges and argue in favor of the future Hungarian takeover of the
Banat did little good, since the Nazi government knew all about the
numbers game.80 The Nazis had played that game with regards to
the ethnic Germans in Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union while
justifying their invasion of these countries. After the Third Reich occu-
pied its erstwhile ally Hungary in March 1944, the issue of the Banat’s
future ownership declined in urgency, while the ethnic Hungarian
community in the Banat descended into internal squabbling.81
The Banat Romanians issued much the same complaints as – and often
in response to – complaints by ethnic Hungarians. They complained
about rations, schools, and the fact that those Levente uniforms had not
been sent back to Hungary.82 Barely a handful of Romanian schooltea-
chers were allowed to teach in the Serbian Banat, as a counterweight to
concessions made to ethnic Hungarians.83

78
Unsigned memo, August 19, 1943, PA AA, Inland II C, file R 100500, pp. 60–61;
Ringelmann to German commanding general in Belgrade, September 8, 1943, PA AA,
Inland II C, file R 100500, p. 89; Benzler to AA, September 13, 1943, PA AA, Inland II
C, file R 100500, p. 83; unsigned memo, September 27, 1943, PA AA, Inland II C, file
R 100500, pp. 75–76.
79
Feine to AA (1942), PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, pp. 79–80; Feine to AA, May 18,
1943, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 37; August Meyszner to Benzler, June 7,
1943, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5784, fr. H299,455.
80
Gredler note, June 1, 1944, PA AA, Inland II C, file R 100500, p. 128.
81
Neubacher to AA, May 13, 1944, PA AA, Inland II C, file R 100500, pp. 118–119;
Neubacher to AA, June 5, 1944, PA AA, Inland II C, file R 100380, p. 231.
82
Benzler to AA, September 7, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, frs. 153,672–673;
unsigned memo (1943), BA Berlin, R 58, file 7733, p. 23; Feine to AA, May 27, 1943, PA
AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 105.
83
Ringelmann to German commanding general in Belgrade (1943), PA AA, Inland II C,
file R 100500, p. 89; Feninger to AA, November 2, 1943, PA AA, Inland II C, file
R 100500, p. 101; Feninger to AA, December 16, 1943, PA AA, Inland II C, file
R 100500, p. 104; Wagner to AA office in Belgrade, December 31, 1943, PA AA,
 The Banat Germans and Others 137

Although Romania’s economic and military contribution to the

German war effort outweighed Hungary’s, Romania offered its co-
nationals abroad far less overt support, seemingly content to see the
Serbian Banat remain out of Hungarian hands. Thus, whatever
complaints the ethnic Romanian leadership did make on behalf of its co-
nationals in the Banat and the Timok Region in East Serbia fell on deaf
ears in Berlin and occupied Belgrade.84
The Banat Serbs found themselves in a complex position. They had
numerical majority in the Banat and Serbia-Banat as a whole (with ethnic
Croats, they represented 46.72% of the Banat population, according to
the 1931 Yugoslav census85), but they lacked an ethnic organization of
their own to represent their interests and were only nominally protected
by the collaborationist government in Belgrade. They helped secure the
food deliveries, on which the Wehrmacht depended, and provided the
overstretched Banat administration with skilled personnel, yet were
deprived of preferential rations or other privileges.
As Slavic inhabitants of a conquered territory with an ascendant
ethnic German minority, Serbs faced the possibility of violence and
cultural oppression, yet their experiences under occupation were far
milder than most Slavs’ experiences in the Nazi sphere of influence.
Though the documentary record is rife with examples of ethnic
Germans robbing and mistreating them, the Banat Serbs escaped the
sheer lawlessness, large-scale upheavals, forced population movements,
and sifting for racial “quality” common in occupied East Europe. Their
living standard deteriorated only somewhat during the war years, pro-
vided they fulfilled one all-important criterion – they remained free of
association with the communist resistance that flared up in Serbia
proper in summer 1941.
Immediately following occupation in April 1941, ethnic German police
and civilians, aided and abetted by Reich German soldiers and officials,
subjected the Banat Serbs (and Jews) to unsystematic acts of violence.
The most startling assault on Serbian life and safety happened
on April 22, when the nine ethnic German men who had been taken
hostage by Yugoslav officials at the outbreak of the April War and
murdered before reaching Belgrade, were interred in front of the

Inland II C, file R 100500, p. 105; Ringelmann telegram, January 8, 1944, PA AA, Inland
II C, file R 100500, p. 108.
84
Benzler to AA (1942), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, frs. 153,673–676; Alexandru
S. Butorca to German commanding general in Serbia, February 2, 1943, PA AA, Inland
II D, file R 100549, pp. 108–123; Feine to AA (1943), PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549,
p. 105; Gredler to AA, August 24, 1943, PA AA, Inland II C, file R 100500, p. 10A;
Feninger to AA, December 24, 1943, PA AA, Inland II C, file R 100500, p. 106.
85
Bohmann, p. 236.
138 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

Pantschowa town hall with much pomp and in the presence of many
ethnic Germans. That same day, a kangaroo court convened in the town
hotel, presided over by Reich German officers and attended by prominent
ethnic Germans, in order to try 40 Serbian men from the town. All but
four were sentenced to death, although their involvement in the murders
could not be proven by any real legal means.86
The accused were selected from among people arrested by the haphaz-
ardly assembled ethnic German militia, for the “crimes” of belonging to
the Sokol or the Četniks, open expression of pro-Yugoslav, royalist, anti-
German sentiments, and participation in the March 27 demonstrations
against Yugoslavia’s accession to the Tripartite Pact. Of those sentenced
to death, 18 men were hanged, the other 18 shot at the town’s Orthodox
Christian cemetery. The executioners were most likely Reich German
officers and some local ethnic Germans.87
Surviving witnesses to these events concluded after the war that the
ethnic Germans must have drawn up a blacklist of prominent Serbs and
Yugoslav patriots, for purposes of retaliatory action.88 Yet, in a town like
Pantschowa, all that interested ethnic Germans had to do was keep their
eyes open if they wanted to know who of their neighbors was a Serbian
nationalist, an anti-Nazi, a communist, or a Yugoslav patriot. Just as
during the occupation every ethnic German’s adherence to the new law
of the land could be observed by neighbors and memorized for future
accusations of wrongful behavior, so before the April War everyone could
find out easily which of the townspeople expressed anti-German
opinions.
Whether the impetus for the events of April 22, 1941, came from
Pantschowa ethnic Germans or the invading Germans from the Reich
remains unclear. Either way, these events achieved a threefold goal. They
demonstrated the danger to Serbs, inherent in the transition from life in
a sovereign Yugoslav state to life in a German-occupied territory. They
successfully conveyed the impression of a united front between invading
and local Germans, inadvertently alienating many potential Serbian
collaborators. Finally, they ensured that witnesses would remember the
damning spectacle of Pantschowa Germans in their Sunday best making

86
Köller testimony in Stefanović, p. 114.
87
Deposition of Kosta Jovanović from Pantschowa, November 4, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box
664, p. 67; deposition of Maksa Todorov from Pantschowa, November 30, 1944, AJ,
fund 110, box 664, p. 77; deposition of Petar Maksin from Pantschowa, December 22,
1944, AJ, fund 110, box 670, p. 23; deposition of Borislav Patić from Pantschowa,
November 29, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 670, p. 3.
88
Todorov deposition (1944), AJ, fund 110, box 664, p. 77; Patić deposition (1944), AJ,
fund 110, box 670, p. 4.
 The Banat Germans and Others 139

merry while they watched their neighbors being executed at the town’s
Serbian cemetery.89
The ethnic German leadership altered the Banat landscape so it more
closely resembled Nazi Germany, while still acknowledging the Banat’s
ethnic complexity. It accomplished this goal through the change of Banat
place and street names and the destruction of Serbian monuments.
After World War I, the Yugoslav government had remade the Banat
landscape by erecting monuments that marked the Banat as a Serbian
rather than a Habsburg or Hungarian territory. In 1941, the invading
Germans set the tone for a renewed cycle of landscape refashioning by
ransacking Serbian cultural landmarks, such as churches (the one in
Alisbrunn even served as an internment camp immediately after the
invasion), reading rooms, and libraries.90 The dismantling and destruc-
tion of monuments to Serbian kings, cultural and historical heroes, and
victims of World War I followed, usually at the instigation of ethnic
Germans and other local administrators trying to curry favor with the
Banat’s new rulers.91 Alongside the destruction of the Banat’s synago-
gues, this was a visual demonstration of the decisive shift in the balance of
power in favor of the ethnic Germans as representatives of the Greater
German Reich.
In Grosskikinda before the April War, streets were named after
Serbian and Yugoslav historical and cultural personages and geographic
locations. The ethnic German administration changed street names to
make this Banat town resemble a small town in the Third Reich. Streets
named after King Aleksandar Karađorđević (assassinated in 1934), the
city of Sarajevo, Stefan Nemanja (a twelfth-century Serbian ruler), and
Đura Jakšić (a Serbian poet of the Romantic period) were renamed after
Adolf Hitler, Lohengrin, Richard Wagner, and Eugene of Savoy,
respectively.92
Many towns and villages with mixed populations had names in more
than one language before the April War. In fall 1941, Banat German

89
Deposition of Petar Ancin from Pantschowa, December 6, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 664,
p. 83; deposition of Ilija Rozenberg from Pantschowa, July 17, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box
691, p. 157.
90
Deposition of Nevenka Žaradski from Grosskikinda, August 4, 1945, fund 110, box 676,
p. 513; deposition of Kamenko Brančić from Grosskikinda, August 4, 1945, AJ, fund
110, box 676, p. 515; deposition of Todor S. Slankamenac from Alisbrunn, October 16,
1945, AJ, fund 110, box 676, p. 552.
91
Deposition of Milorad Vladiv from Grossbetschkerek, July 1, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box
676, p. 564; deposition of Aca Grubin from Deutsch Zerne, August 25, 1945, AJ, fund
110, box 676, p. 529; Opštinska uprava Aradatz accuses Anton Vihnal from same,
December 19, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 676, p. 605.
92
Ivan Nikolić, “Nazivi ulica za vreme okupacije,” no date, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, box
Mape i planovi, no page number.
140 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

leaders petitioned the Serbian Interior Ministry to make only German

town and village names official. They finally got their wish in 1943.93
The perceived need to make the landscape German by renaming its
various features made sense to the Nazis in principle, but it would have
taken much more than a simple change of village names to convince the
Third Reich to see the Banat as a purely German landscape. The Reich
expectation that Banat Germans would feed German armies, finance the
Banat’s occupation by Germany, and fight in Hitler’s war went hand in
hand with this visible reshaping of the Banat’s physical and human
landscape. Changing place names was but one part of the ongoing project,
the coveted end result of which would have been the Banat Germans’
unconditional recognition as equal members of the German Volk.
In 1941, the ethnic German euphoria of liberation and overnight
transformation from a self-consciously beleaguered minority into the
ruling elite of the Banat found an outlet also in the plunder of Serbian
property, which continued intermittently throughout the occupation.
In 1943, a Nazi Party report described the Banat Germans as essentially
narrow-minded, their “mood fundamentally shaped by purely local
events.”94 Despite the source, this assessment had some merit.
As a peasant population intent on local events and developments, even
when stealing the property of Serbs and Roma, the Banat Germans
demonstrated their willful turning away from grander, global schemes,
in favor of focusing on the local and the immediate.
Postwar reports of robbery and plunder committed by ethnic Germans
read as a litany of mostly unambitious, facile greed. Even the ethnic
German peasants later accused of stealing land from their neighbors did
so on a fairly small scale. The thieving committed by ethnic Germans and
a few ethnic Hungarians was easy to commit and mostly petty. A new car
belonging to a Serbian lawyer was requisitioned for use by Banat Police
Prefect Franz Reith, Volksgruppenführer Sepp Janko, and other leading
ethnic Germans. An ethnic German administrator sold a Rom’s horse to
another ethnic German as his own. An ethnic German seamstress filched
sewing supplies and other bits and bobs from a Serbian seamstress’
household. Ethnic German policemen took a poor railway worker’s
bicycle or left a store with ten pairs of silk stockings without paying.95
93
Janko to Brücker, February 26, 1942, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 5,
doc. 53; “Promena imena mesta u Okrugu banatskom,” Službene novine, March 19,
1943, p. 2; “Uredba o promeni imena gradova Bele Crkve, Velike Kikinde, Vršca
i Petrovgrada u Okrugu banatskom,” Službene novine, March 30, 1943, p. 2; “Promena
imena mesta,” Službene novine, July 27, 1943, p. 1.
94
“Monatsbericht für den Monat Juni 1943,” no date, BA Berlin, NS 43, file 202, p. 96.
95
Vojislav Došen from Grossbetschkerek accuses Krištof Beher from same, February 22,
1945, AJ, fund 110, box 674, p. 320; Mihajlo Novaković from Modosch accuses Valter
 The Banat Germans and Others 141

This behavior demonstrated how Nazi occupation brought out the

worst in people by allowing ideology and opportunism to reinforce each
other, but also a fundamental lack of imagination and ambition on the
ethnic Germans’ part. The same was true when the ethnic German police
and the Waffen-SS division “Prinz Eugen” requisitioned furniture and
clothes for the furnishing of officers’ clubs and apartments, or when
“Prinz Eugen” requisitioned draft animals, cars, bicycles, and radios.
The behavior of the ethnic Germans in charge of the requisitioning was
one of crass one-upmanship rather than a real sense of righteous super-
iority – more provincial materialism than ideological empowerment.96
Despite these instances of violence against persons and property, the
most striking aspect of ethnic German behavior toward Banat Serbs –
and of the latter’s reaction to the occupation – was its relative restraint.
No blanket effort to expel Serbs from the Banat or take away all their
property ever took place. Despite the destruction of their cultural and
historical legacy, the Banat Serbs were spared widespread, extreme
violence. The contrast with the treatment of Banat Jews or the likelihood
of violence faced by Serbs living in the Hungarian Bačka or the
Independent State of Croatia was striking. Even the obligatory labor
service in the Banat was relatively easy to dodge for those Serbs who
wished to dodge it.
Since these were the benefits of omission rather than signs of Nazi good
will toward the Banat Serbs, they did little to diminish the resentment felt
by those personally affected. Nevertheless, this was far from the kind of
violence common in Poland and the Soviet Union – or Serbia proper and
Bosnia. The Banat Serbs remained low in the Nazi racial hierarchy, yet
they felt the proverbial lash considerably less than their co-nationals south
of the Danube, in large part because neither the communist nor the
Serbian nationalist resistance movements were very active in the Banat.

Pirl from same, December 20, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 674, p. 380; Marija Dimitrov
from Neukanischa accuses Hermina Erdeljan from same, November 8, 1944, AJ, fund
110, box 675, p. 60; Veljko Momirski from Grossbetschkerek accuses Stefan Korinek
from same, October 18, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 675, p. 110; Svetozar Zubanov from
Mokrin accuses Bela Mencek from same, November 8, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 675,
p. 230; Milan Milosavljević from Ruskodorf accuses Mikloš Lajtner from same,
January 22, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 675, p. 160.
96
Bambach to all Landratsämter, Bürgermeisterämter and Polizeivorstehungen, May 1,
1942, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 266, frs. 1147–1148; Amelung to Turner, May 16,
1942, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 266, fr. 1151; deposition of Bojana Dragičević from
Pantschowa, April 24, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 674, p. 42; depositions of Bojana
Dragičević, Ljubomir Andrejević, Borivoj Stojković, and Milesa Stefanović, all from
Pantschowa, September 28, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 674, p. 39; depositions of Stevan
Smederevac, Velizar Brankovan, and Kosta Skanovski, all from Pantschowa,
September 29, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 674, p. 40.
142 Privileges, Economy, and Relations with Other Groups

In August 1941, German reports from Serbia-Banat spoke of the Banat

Serbs’ distaste for the possibility of Hungarian rule. In a peculiar exten-
sion of the interwar Yugoslav view of ethnic Germans as allies against
Hungarian revisionism, this gave the Banat Serbs common cause with the
ethnic German administration. The Nazis recognized that the Banat
Serbs were mostly peasants – not a social group predisposed to favor
communism or aid the Partisans. When Partisan activity did occur in
the Banat, tips and information flooded in to the ethnic German police.
By the end of 1941, the communist threat in the Banat was almost
completely neutralized, along with the possibility of Hungarian annexa-
tion. This convinced many Banat Serbs to reconcile themselves to
German rule, even if some lost land and other property or were treated
as second-class subjects, e.g., when Serbs were banned from the city park
in Grosskikinda.97
If accommodation to German rule offered relative peace and security to
Banat Serbs, active collaboration brought certain tangible rewards. Serbs,
even Serbian collaborators, remained excluded from easy access to arable
land, better rations, or Aryanized property. However, the chronic lack of
trained personnel meant that Serbs continued to be employed in the
Banat administration and schools, even if officially they were supposed
to be replaced by ethnic Germans. Serbs who had been born or resided in
the Banat before April 6, 1941, as well as those expelled from the Bačka
and Croatia, and even ethnic Russians long settled in Yugoslavia received
legal residency in the Banat easily, provided they filled vacant posts in the
Banat schools, administration, and technical offices.98
Nazi racial categories did not bend so far as to make an exception for
these individuals – rather, the ethnic German administration in the Banat
turned a blind eye in some cases, when insufficient numbers of ethnic

97
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (August 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 163, fiche 1, frs.
12–13; “Meldungen aus dem Reich” (September 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 164, fiche
1, fr. 85; “Meldungen aus dem Reich,” November 6, 1941, BA Berlin, R 58, file 166,
fiche 1, frs. 37, 41; Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda to “Prinz Eugen” and Polizeivorstehung
Gross-Kikinda, July 20, 1942, Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora u Banatu
1941–1944, doc. 18785.
98
Approved requests for residence permits of Jelena Cvejić (no year), Istorijski arhiv
Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 76;
Pera Erdeljanov (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu
boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 49; Slobodan Lazić (1943), Istorijski arhiv
Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 19;
Svetozar Pendžić (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu
boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 154; Klaudije Ciganov (1942), Istorijski arhiv
Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 194;
Maria Limar (1944), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka
od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 47; and Fedor M. Kovaljov (1942), Istorijski arhiv
Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 205.
 The Banat Germans and Others 143

Germans were on hand to fill all positions required for the daily running of
the Banat. Confirming that Serbian fortunes remained far inferior to
others’, a Serb, even one born in the Banat, could be denied a residence
permit if he or she lacked a steady income and employment, had moved to
the Banat after the April War, and was likely to become a burden on local
resources by requiring medical attention or a pension earned in
Yugoslavia before the April War.99
Overall, though they may not have prospered or been entirely free from
harassment, most Banat Serbs could count on a reasonably peaceful
existence in the occupied Banat, provided they worked in a position the
Banat administration failed to fill with one of its own, steered clear of
communist activities or associating with those who did, and were not
Jewish.

99
Denied requests for residence permits of Aleksandar Cijuk (1942), Istorijski arhiv
Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 91;
Živojin Demić (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu
boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 196; Marija Novaković (1942), Istorijski arhiv
Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 207;
Stevan Narandžić (1942), Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu
boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944, doc. 193; and Kosta Kanazarević (1942), Istorijski
arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 128, box Molbe za dozvolu boravka od BDOW, 1942–1944,
doc. 208.
5 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

No military operations by the Wehrmacht and relatively little resistance

activity occurred in the Banat between its occupation by German troops
in April 1941 and the arrival of the Red Army in October 1944.
The conditions in the Banat stood in stark contrast to Serbia proper,
Bosnia, and parts of Croatia, where the Partisans and the Četniks often
controlled the countryside, and the cycle of violence was fed by resistance
activity and the German and Ustaša approach to anti-partisan warfare as
a campaign of extreme terror, more brutal retaliation than pacification.
The limited application of terror tactics as reprisals for resistance
activity and relative stability conducive to compliance by the majority
Serbian population meant that, by October 1941, the Partisan movement
in the Banat was all but extirpated, and the Četnik movement never truly
took hold at all. Occasional later flare-ups of resistance activity continued
to happen, yet remained far lesser in scope and disruption caused than in
other parts of the East and Southeast.
The instruments of security and anti-partisan warfare in the Banat were
the ethnic Germans serving in border patrols, the Deutsche Mannschaft,
which predated the April War and gained a new lease on life under
occupation, the Banat Auxiliary Police (Banater Hilfspolizei) created in
fall 1941, and as concentration-camp guards. The Third Reich utilized
the ethnic Germans as a reliable local resource instead of tying down
regular Wehrmacht troops during the invasion of the Soviet Union in
summer and fall 1941.
The Deutsche Mannschaft was held in low regard even by its own
members. Despite repeated attempts to give it clear organizational tasks
and identity as late as spring 1944, it remained a disorganized and
inefficient peasants’ militia. By contrast, the Banat Auxiliary Police
became an efficient police force, which used informants and terror tactics
to root out resistance cells. Banat Germans serving as concentration-
camp guards frequently segued into Waffen-SS service starting in 1942,
having learned to treat their Slavic enemy with the same contempt they
had displayed toward Jewish and Slavic prisoners.

144
 Deutsche Mannschaft and Border Patrols 145

Like the consolidation of the Banat German administration, the

formation of ethnic German security organizations was an outgrowth of
local conditions and the Banat Germans’ dependence on the Third Reich.
Nazi racial policy made the Banat Germans ideal candidates to police and
secure their home area on behalf of the Third Reich, but the Banat
German leadership’s willingness to exhort and even recruit its co-
nationals proved just as important.
While in 1941 Nazi Germany still preferred to cajole rather than coerce
the Banat Germans, service in the Banat Auxiliary Police could be
compulsory. An incident in the village of Franzfeld demonstrated how
the Banat leadership used shaming techniques but also, when deemed
necessary, open coercion to ensure its co-nationals did their perceived
duty by the Third Reich. Banat German leaders also sweetened the pill by
offering material incentives – such as a better food ration – for police
service. The mixture of voluntarism, compulsion, and the social pressure
to conform meant that ethnic Germans retained the ability to choose
collaboration, but it was often an easier choice than resistance or refusal.

Deutsche Mannschaft and Border Patrols

In Serbia proper, security and anti-partisan activity were the purview of
the Wehrmacht, aided by some ethnic German police,1 but mostly the
Serbian police and, starting in fall 1942, also the ethnic German Waffen-
SS. In the Banat, security was almost exclusively an ethnic German
matter, although ethnic German policemen acted on orders from the
German occupation officials in Belgrade.2
Since the Wehrmacht’s District Command Post in Grossbetschkerek
had very few soldiers attached to it, a native collaborationist police force
in the Banat became a necessity soon after the April War. Since policemen
in any Nazi-occupied territory enforced racial policy in addition to crim-
inal investigations and keeping the peace, the Banat police also undertook
anti-partisan actions following the start of Operation Barbarossa and the
concomitant outbreak of the communist resistance in Yugoslav lands in
summer 1941.
The first major safety issue facing the occupation authorities in Serbia
was securing its borders. Attack from outside was unlikely, since Serbia-
Banat was surrounded on all sides by states allied with Germany
(Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia) or occupied by Germany and
1
Kriegstagebuch, August 23, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 32, p. 11; John R. Lampe,
Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country, second edition (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 205.
2
Shimizu, pp. 443–444.
146 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

Italy (Greece, Montenegro, Albania). The main issues were daily traffic
across borders and customs control.
The Germans in Belgrade initially wanted to use only Serbs as
gendarmes and customs agents. Ethnic Germans in the Banat and ethnic
Albanians in South Serbia were discouraged from applying for these
positions and rejected if they did apply.3 While Reich Germans needed
collaborators and in early June 1941 the Serbian collaborationist govern-
ment still had the support of German administration chief Harald
Turner, the occupation authorities’ stance was that ethnic Germans and
ethnic Albanians might use any modicum of official power to establish
contact with their co-nationals on the other side of Serbia’s borders and
make common cause for the creation of a Banat Free State or a Greater
Albania. Both hypothetical states would have clashed with German inter-
ests in Southeast Europe.
In June 1941, the Wehrmacht and the German Finance Ministry chose
to replace German soldiers charged with manning border crossings with
Serbian officials supervised by the German Border and Customs Patrol
(Zollgrenzschutz). This proved easier said than done: Banat Germans
and Banat Hungarians denied the newly arrived officials access to their
posts, requiring the Banat German leadership to intervene, with the
Wehrmacht’s aid.4
Serbian border guards represented Serbian administrative interference
in the Banat at a time when the prospect of severing all ties to Belgrade
remained a fond dream among the Banat’s ethnic Germans and ethnic
Hungarians. The Banat German leadership’s dependence on the Third
Reich and its still-ambiguous position as the administration of a mostly
autonomous Banat, within an entity that was no real, independent
Serbian state but a German-occupied territory, made the long-term
deployment of Serbian security officials unacceptable to the ethnic
Germans.
Ethnic German sensibilities aside, the eventual decision to replace
Serbian customs and border agents with ethnic German ones was
a consequence of the developing realities of warfare in the Balkans, rather
than a sign of Nazi Germany’s special regard for ethnic Germans.
The Banat Germans emerged as the logical candidates for the role of
3
Chef des Generalstabes der Armee-Oberkommando 2 to Höheres Kommando LXV,
June 12, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 254, fr. 585.
4
Oberkommando des Heeres, “Befehl über den Einsatz von Zollgrenzschutz in Serbien,”
June 10, 1941, BA MA, RW 40, file 3, p. 31; Kriegstagebuch, June 18, 1941, BA MA, RW
40, file 3, p. 59; Maier to Geheime Feldpolizei Gruppe 20, “Ungarische Volkszugehörige
in Neu Kanischa, Übergriffe gegen serbische Grenzschutzorgane,” June 19, 1941, NARA,
RG 242, T-501, roll 245, frs. 484–485; Josef Beer, “Volksgruppe Banat-Serbien,” no
date, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 34, p. 10.
 Deutsche Mannschaft and Border Patrols 147

border guards, policemen, and concentration-camp guards for many of

the same reasons that made a Banat German administration convenient
for the occupation forces in Belgrade in summer 1941. The Germans in
Serbia quickly grew disenchanted with the possibility of effective Serbian
collaboration, while many ethnic Germans proved willing to accept both
the power and the responsibility a position in the security forces entailed.
By mid-1942, a stable collaborationist Serbia proved illusory. Both the
Partisans and the Četniks stepped up their activities, while the Nedić
government’s ability to control the situation diminished exponentially.
The Germans in Serbia came to rely on the Banat Germans in their home
area and beyond. By May 1943, ethnic Germans helped guard the
borders of Serbia proper as well as the Banat, so low had the Serbian
border patrols sunk in German eyes. A total of 374 ethnic Germans
served in the border patrol, of those 180 in the Banat, while the other
194 aided Serbian border patrols in Serbia proper. Waffen-SS recruit-
ment caused most of these Banat German border guards to be transferred
to the Waffen-SS in summer 1943.5
Unlike ethnic German border patrols, the Deutsche Mannschaft did
not fit comfortably into a specific niche in terms of its duties and purpose.
Before the April War, it was ostensibly an apolitical, völkisch, men’s
organization for cultural and sports activities. It was also the inefficient,
poorly trained and equipped, paramilitary arm of the Kulturbund.6 After
the April War, it failed to become the official Banat police force, much less
an inchoate Banat German army.7 The Mannschaft occupied a no man’s
land between a civilian and a military institution. It aped the military
chain of command and dressed its members in the black uniforms that
eventually earned it the nickname the “black police,” yet was controlled
by the civilian Banat German administration.8

5
Turner, “13. Lagebericht” (1942), BA MA, RW 40, file 195, p. 36; Paul Bader to
Oberbefehlshaber Südost, May 17, 1943, BA MA, RW 40, file 41, p. 119; Chef des
Generalstabes with Kommandierender General und Befehlshaber in Serbien memo,
August 18, 1943, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 253, fr. 136.
6
Jakob Lichtenberger, “Bericht,” March 1, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 182,
pp. 1, 6–7.
7
Comparisons in some of the literature to the Nazi Storm Troopers or the SS give the
Deutsche Mannschaft entirely too much credit. Dirk-Gerd Erpenbeck, Serbien 1941.
Deutsche Militärverwaltung und serbischer Widerstand (Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1976),
p. 12; Mariana Hausleitner, “Politische Bestrebungen der Schwaben im serbischen und
im rumänischen Banat vor 1945” in Vom Faschismus zum Stalinismus. Deutsche und andere
Minderheiten in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa 1941–1953, ed. Mariana Hausleitner (Munich:
IKGS Verlag, 2008), p. 49.
8
“Regelung des Verhältnisses der Volksorganisation zur Deutschen Mannschaft,”
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, August 1941, p. 3; testimony of Wilma Slavik
from Grossbetschkerek, March 27, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 153, p. 7.
148 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

In 1941, the Banat German leadership attempted to represent service in

the Deutsche Mannschaft as a duty and an honor for every ethnic German
man, the Mannschaft itself as an ideological and practical school of the
Volk. The organization’s official purpose was to “educate all ideologically
and racially irreproachable men, regardless of their age and class, for the
great tasks before our Volk, and to deploy them in direct service to the
[Deutsche] Volksgruppe. The Deutsche Mannschaft should be the politi-
cal instrument of the Volksgruppe’s will and accomplishment.”9
In reality, the Deutsche Mannschaft was an institution in futile search
of a purpose. Although it regularly absorbed members of the Deutsche
Jugend, as they came of age, and attempted to enforce quasi-military
discipline over its members, service in it was purely voluntary. Even
Banat German administrators and officials who held honorary rank in it
were relieved of any real militia duties. Despite efforts to step up its
training, the Deutsche Mannschaft remained an ill-trained and ill-
equipped peasants’ militia.10
Despite its shortcomings, in late 1941, the Mannschaft aided the newly
formed Banat Auxiliary Police in combating the Partisans in the Banat,
occasionally even standing in for the police due to a general lack of trained
personnel.11 Village militias helped as best they could, their members
armed with sticks as well as rifles, lacking the sturdy shoes and warm coats
necessary to patrol properly in cold weather.12 Even guarding the airstrip
in Smederevo proved beyond the capabilities of the citizens’ militia
mustered in Pantschowa in 1941: “[T]hese citizens first [need to be]
instill[ed] with some martial spirit. At the moment, they are well and
truly useless,” complained the Wehrmacht Field Command Post in
Smederevo.13
Given the predominantly peaceful conditions in the Banat, the village
militias were a source of great resentment, as an added burden on

9
“Regelung des Verhältnisses,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, August 1941, p. 3.
10
Ibid.; Franz Germann, “Das Verhältnis zur ‘Deutschen Mannschaft’,” Verordnungsblatt
der Volksgruppenführung, November 1, 1941, pp. 8–9; Janko, “Anordnung,”
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, January 1, 1942, pp. 2–3; Janko to Brücker,
March 28, 1942, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 5, doc. 52.
11
Juraj Spiller, “Komanda javne bezbednosti,” February 15, 1948, Muzej Vojvodine,
Dokumenti okupatora u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 18940, pp. 98–99, 105. See also
Turner, “7. Lagebericht” (1941), BA MA, RW 40, file 189, p. 8.
12
Spiller, “Komanda javne bezbednosti” (1948), Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora
u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 18940, pp. 105–106. See also Gemeindevorstehung Mokrin
to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, November 10, 1941, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84,
box 1, p. 394; Opštinka uprava Padej to Sresko načelstvo Velika Kikinda [Grosskikinda],
February 8, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 3, p. 453.
13
Feldkommandantur 610 to Franz Böhme, “Beurteilung der Lage im Banat,”
September 18, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 246, fr. 364.
 Deutsche Mannschaft and Border Patrols 149

members’ time, and were gradually disbanded at the turn of 1941–1942.14

Once Waffen-SS recruitment began, so many Deutsche Mannschaft
members were called up that Sepp Janko temporarily dissolved the
Mannschaft in March 1942. Even Janko considered it far less important
than the ethnic German Waffen-SS division “Prinz Eugen.”15
In fall 1942, Heinrich Himmler proclaimed that every racial German
residing in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union, who did not already
serve in the Waffen-SS, Wehrmacht or the German police, could be
called up to help combat resistance activity anyway. Janko and Felix
Benzler quickly pointed out that Banat German men passed over by
“Prinz Eugen” recruiters were too few to be much use for any potential
anti-partisan action in the Banat.16
Despite dwindling numbers of potential recruits and poor equipment
and discipline, the Deutsche Mannschaft was resurrected
in December 1942, after Banat German boys started compulsory military
training in October.17 In 1943, the Banat German leadership attempted
to present service in the Deutsche Mannschaft as a suitable substitute
among men too old or infirm for Waffen-SS service.18 The leadership
thus strove to prepare young and old men alike for military service, which
equated the Banat Germans’ Germanness with Nazism and Hitler’s war
goals, furthering the regimentation of ethnic German civilian life begun in
German-language schools and the ethnic German administration.
The reconstituted Deutsche Mannschaft ironically proved true to form
as a branch of the Banat German administration, given its limited ability
to enforce compliance. On paper, membership in it became obligatory for
men aged 18 through 40, but in practice anyone who did not wish to join

14
Gemeindeamt Nakodorf to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, December 10, 1941, Istorijski
arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 427; Benzler memo, December 20, 1941, PA AA,
Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 46; Gemeindeamt Nakodorf to Landratsamt Gross-
Kikinda, January 9, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 3, p. 451;
Gemeindeamt Heufeld to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, February 7, 1942, Istorijski
arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 464; Gemeindeamt Soltur to Landratsamt Gross-
Kikinda, February 9, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 467.
15
Janko, “Befehl Nr. 1,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, March 1, 1942, p. 12.
16
Himmler memo, no date, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606, fr.
H299,544; Benzler to AA, September 19, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file
R 101011, fiche 2606, frs. H299,548–549; Triska to VoMi, November 30, 1942, PA
AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606, frs. H299,541–542.
17
Janko, “Verordnung über die vormilitärische Ausbildung der Deutschen Jugend,”
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, October 15, 1942, p. 1; Janko, “Anordnung über
die Wiederaufnahme der Tätigkeit der DM,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
December 31, 1942, p. 2.
18
Zwei Jahre Einsatz und Aufbau. Bericht über Kriegseinsatz und Leistungen unserer
Heimatfront (Grossbetschkerek: Deutsche Volksgruppe im Banat und in Serbien,
1943), p. 36.
150 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

could avoid doing so without penalty. Waffen-SS recruits discharged in

1943 due to advanced age felt the full brunt of social pressure to join the
Mannschaft as soon as they returned home, yet could not be compelled to
join.19 In the words of one man who was discharged from the Waffen-SS
in late 1943 at the age of 51: “At home they tried to get us to join the
Deutsche Mannschaft. But we said no! They got us once as volunteers by
their refined wiles, but they wouldn’t get us a second time.”20
The Mannschaft remained understaffed and undervalued. Even its
members failed to take the Mannschaft seriously, since service in it
offered little in the way of material reward or sense of participation in
a glorious military effort.
In March 1944, Sepp Janko revamped the Mannschaft into the
Deutsche Männergruppe (German Men’s Group), a broadly defined
organization of ethnic German men who remained in the Banat, and
made the Mannschaft its armed, (para)military wing.21 Janko would
have needed time, resources, greater coercive power, and his co-
nationals’ willingness before a mere name change could transform the
Mannschaft into an ideological elite like the SS.
In late summer 1944, the Deutsche Mannschaft took its last bows in
the same half-baked manner established by its track record. Its deploy-
ment in aid of the regular ethnic German police pursuing Partisan groups
newly active in the Banat resembled a bad comic opera. Mannschaft
members gossiped openly about secret operations and exchanged friendly
fire with the police, after getting lost in some tall reeds in broad daylight.22
Whether or not their lack of enthusiasm was enhanced by the war drag-
ging on and ever-growing Nazi demands on their time and resources,
Mannschaft members lacked reason to take service in the militia seriously
even at the best of times.

Banat Auxiliary Police

The police system in the Banat involved parallel jurisdictions: the
Command of Public Safety under Juraj Spiller (Kommando Öffentliche
Sicherheit, equivalent to the Sicherheitspolizei, the Security Police in the

19
Landesführung der Deutschen Mannschaft, “Aufruf,” BB, January 14, 1943, p. 5.
20
Testimony of Franz Unterreiner from Deutsch Elemer, December 1958, in Schieder
et al., p. 73.
21
Janko, “Anordnung,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, March 23, 1944,
pp. 19–20.
22
Deutsche Mannschaft Ortseinheit Perlas Farkaschdin to Landesführung der Deutschen
Mannschaft, August 18, 1944, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 1, doc. 6/1;
Stabseinheit der Deutschen Mannschaft Betschkerek report, August 28, 1944, Vojni
arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 1, doc. 8/1.
 Banat Auxiliary Police 151

Third Reich) and the Command of the State Guard under Ernst Pelikan
(Kommando der Staatswache, equivalent to the Ordnungspolizei, the
Reich’s regular, uniformed Order Police). The Banat Police Prefecture
(Polizeipräfektur des Banates) under Franz Reith oversaw both. Officially
separated from the Banat German administration in early 1942, the
Prefecture answered directly to the newly installed Higher SS and
Police Chief (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer), Austrian SS Major
General and career policeman August Meyszner, who became Heinrich
Himmler’s representative in occupied Serbia.
In addition, Grossbetschkerek had a Gestapo outpost commanded by
a succession of German officers reporting to the Security Police and SD
chief in Belgrade, Emanuel Schäfer.23 Although its commander was
always a German from the Third Reich, the Gestapo in the Banat
employed local ethnic Germans as agents.24 Spiller, Reith, and Pelikan
were all avowed ethnic Germans, although Spiller was rumored to have
Croatian as well as ethnic German heritage.
While official command of all security matters in the Banat rested with
the German administration in Belgrade, Juraj Spiller and Franz Reith
planned and coordinated all anti-partisan actions in the Banat, for which
they needed a reliable local police force. The Deutsche Mannschaft
quickly proved ineffective, and the events surrounding the introduction
of Serbian border guards in summer 1941 demonstrated why recruiting
Banat Serbs would not be feasible. This left the ethnic Germans and, to
a lesser extent, ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Croats as viable candidates.
The recruitment of Banat Germans for police duty in their home region
built on the Nazi practice, since fall 1939, of recruiting ethnic Germans as
SS auxiliaries and police, especially in rural Poland, where police service
included persecution of Jews and Poles.25 In August 1941, Kurt Daluege,
chief of the Third Reich’s Order Police, refused the request of German

23
Ruth Bettina Birn, Die Höheren SS- und Polizeiführer. Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in
den besetzten Gebieten (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1986), p. 240; Shimizu, pp. 204–205,
214–218.
24
Deposition of Sava Talpez from Werschetz, June 18, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 672, p. 70.
25
Peter Black, “Askaris in the ‘Wild East’: The Deployment of Auxiliaries and the
Implementation of Nazi Racial Policy in Lublin District” in The Germans and the East,
ed. Charles Ingrao and Franz A. J. Szabo (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University
Press, 2008), pp. 282–293; Peter Black, “Indigenous Collaboration in the Government
General: The Case of the Sonderdienst” in Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe,
ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books,
2005), pp. 243–266; Epstein, pp. 131–132; Tomasz Frydel, “‘There Was No Order to
Shoot the Jews’: The Polish ‘Blue’ Police and the Dynamics of Local Violence in District
Krakau of the General Government,” paper presented at the Collaboration in Eastern
Europe during World War II and the Holocaust conference, Simon Wiesenthal Center,
Vienna, December 6, 2013, pp. 1–22.
152 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

commanding general in Belgrade Heinrich Danckelmann to have addi-

tional police battalions from the Reich sent to Serbia. Instead, Daluege
petitioned the German Army High Command (Oberkommando des
Heeres) for permission to create “protective outfits [Schutzformationen]”
from the ethnic Germans in occupied Serbia-Banat.26
By October 1941, the Germans in Belgrade were planning a 1,000-
strong auxiliary police composed specifically of Banat Germans.27 Ethnic
Germans were, at this point, the logical choice for the role. The ethnic
German administration in the Banat was sufficiently stable vis-à-vis the
Serbian collaborationist government and Hungarian ambitions alike to
justify giving it a measure of legitimate armed power, while also relieving
Reich Germans of the duty to police the Banat. The Banat Auxiliary
Police served the security, political, and ideological interests of
Germany, as transmitted by Meyszner and Schäfer first to the Banat
German leadership and then to the Banat Police Prefecture.
The Prefecture’s establishment in February 1942 was followed,
in April, by the official ending of police training and the Banat German
policemen’s absorption into the Banat section of the Serbian State Guard
(Serbische Staatswache, Serb. Srpska državna straža), a semi-militarized
police force controlled officially by the collaborationist government in
Serbia proper. In the Banat, it served under Ernst Pelikan and remained
primarily an extension of August Meyszner’s power.28 Despite Waffen-
SS recruitment, by February 1943, the Banat Auxiliary Police had 1,552
members.29
This new police formation was a part of Heinrich Himmler’s “empire”
within the Third Reich’s sphere of influence, which lent it coercive power
over its members. While the Banat German leadership appealed to ethnic
Germans to join the police voluntarily, on the whole, recruitment for the
Banat police was more stringent than recruitment for the Deutsche
Mannschaft, which was left up to the good will of individual ethnic
Germans.
The increased willingness of the Third Reich to coerce the Banat
Germans into doing their perceived duty by it was illustrated through
an incident in the village of Franzfeld, where first the mayor’s son and

26
Kurt Daluege to AA, August 18, 1941, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100779, fiche
1989, fr. 274,778.
27
Turner, “5. Lagebericht” (1941), BA MA, RW 40, file 187, p. 25.
28
Meyszner memo, April 18, 1942, Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora u Banatu
1941–1944, doc. 3009/23, no page number; Franz Reith to Befehlshaber der
Ordnungspolizei in Belgrade, May 9, 1942, Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora
u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 3009/23, no page number.
29
Kommandant der Banater Staatswache to Polizeikreisstelle 1 (Grossbetschkerek),
February 10, 1943, AJ, fund 110, box 663, p. 79.
 Banat Auxiliary Police 153

then all men summoned for police duty refused to go.30 The Banat
German leadership turned Franzfeld into an object lesson.
Administration chief Sepp Lapp, himself from Franzfeld, came to the
village with a detachment of the Deutsche Mannschaft and arrested not
only the men who had refused their summons but several dozen other
ethnic Germans of both sexes who had protested the police recruitment.
While the arrestees were paraded through the village, a woman known for
her anti-Nazi sentiments had to wear a sign proclaiming “We are
Franzfeld’s shame [Wir sind die Schande von Franzfeld].”31
Once this tale spread through the Banat German community, it served
as a forceful reminder that the privileges and perks ethnic Germans
received from the Third Reich came with a price. It also helped secure
compliance with future mobilization summons, much as the occasional
proclamation of honor-court judgments served to encourage compliance
in the community at large. Thereafter, almost no one in the Banat
protested summons to Waffen-SS or police service too loudly, least of
all the residents of Franzfeld, the fight gone out of them.
While the Banat German leadership cracked down on the rebellious
village in a departure from its preferred, cajoling approach, the impetus
for punishing recalcitrants came from Emanuel Schäfer’s predecessor in
the position of Security Police and SD chief in Serbia, Wilhelm Fuchs; the
Reich German personnel in charge of police training; and the full coercive
power of the Third Reich ranked behind them. Whether Fuchs directly
instructed Sepp Lapp to deal with Franzfeld and how remains unclear.
Yet the very creation of an ethnic German police and the use of even light
coercion in the form of summons for armed duty may have been sufficient
to prompt the Banat German leadership to autonomous coercive action,
which nevertheless benefited the Third Reich the most, in line with the
Banat leaders’ characteristic mixture of agency and willing subordination
to the Reich.
Police recruitment thus set the precedent that Banat Germans could be
coerced into armed service to Nazi Germany, because the Banat German
leadership prioritized fulfilling the Third Reich’s wishes over its co-
nationals’ best interests. Nevertheless, the resolution of the incident in
Franzfeld relied on more than just coercion. It stemmed from extant
social mechanisms, with those who protested official decrees as well as
their friends and neighbors exposed to public ridicule, which, in turn,

30
Adam Müller, “Sind die Franzfelder freiwillig zur Waffen-SS eingezogen?”, May 6,
1957, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 170, pp. 5–6; Slavik testimony (March 27,
1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 153, p. 7.
31
Müller, “Sind die Franzfelder” (1957), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 170, p. 6.
154 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

reduced the likelihood of future recalcitrance by them or anyone who

heard of the incident.
In addition to reliance on social pressure and the fear of public shame to
keep ethnic Germans in line, police service included positive incentives.
Unlike the Deutsche Mannschaft, service in the Banat Auxiliary Police
was a paid position affiliated with the German Order Police and carried
with it certain privileges, including a better grain ration for the policemen
and their families.32 Preferential rations acted as a strong incentive to
compliance, as did access to Aryanized property. Once Banat German
men became policemen by fair means or foul, cajoling – making them
want to be policemen – rather than coercing them became again the
dominant approach.
When a group of freshly minted Banat policemen tried to evade taking
the final, binding oath of loyalty, the Reich German personnel in charge of
their training first patiently addressed every excuse the recruits trotted
out. Those who claimed ill health got a checkup and a doctor’s note of
good health or a discharge. Those who claimed economic need could
have a Slavic laborer assigned to their household. Those with bad eyesight
were promised eyeglasses, those with flat feet – arch supports. Only after
exhausting these possibilities did the officers in charge resort to abusive
language. By that point, the ethnic Germans’ resolve had been worn
down by persistent refusal to accept their excuses.33 Conformity won
out, and they officially became policemen for Hitler.
Some 400 ethnic Hungarians served in the Banat Auxiliary Police.
Likely attracted by the promise of better rations – as was the handful of
ethnic Romanians serving in the Romanian army – they braved criticism
from co-nationals, who accused them of betraying Hungarian plans for
the Banat. When these ethnic Hungarian policemen objected to the
possibility of the Banat police being deployed in Serbia proper in summer
1943, most were dishonorably discharged but did not suffer any worse
consequences. The implicit support of the Hungarian government
protected them, as did the Third Reich’s continued willingness to indulge
its ally.34

32
“Richtlinien für die Aufstellung einer Hilfspolizei aus Volksdeutschen in Serbien,” no
date, BA Berlin, R 19, vol. 322, doc. 172a, p. 2 of this document.
33
Testimony of Peter Kaip from Ernsthausen, December 14, 1958, in Schieder et al., p. 69.
34
Luther to Benzler (no date), PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, pp. 83–84; Referat
D VIII memo (1942), PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100548, p. 86; Feine to AA (1942), PA
AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, pp. 79–80; Feine to AA, January 14, 1943, PA AA, Inland
II D, file R 100549, p. 69; Heller memo (1943), PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 67;
Feine to AA (1943), PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100549, p. 37; Benzler to Meyszner,
May 27, 1943, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5784, fr. H299,454; Meyszner to Benzler
(1943), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5784, frs. H299,455–456; Benzler to AA, June 12,
 Anti-Partisan Activity 155

Paradoxically, the ethnic Germans could count on no such indulgence,

since their sole protector and master was the Third Reich. When they
refused to serve it, they could anticipate treatment like that doled out to
the recalcitrant residents of Franzfeld.
Due to their ties to the Independent State of Croatia, which was
Germany’s satellite and ally, ethnic Croats from the Banat could also be
recruited into the Banat police. As racial Slavs, if they refused, their lot
could include arrest, forced labor, and imprisonment, as happened to
about 100 ethnic Croats from the village of Startschowa, who refused to
join the Banat Auxiliary Police in May 1943.35

Anti-Partisan Activity
As the communist resistance gained momentum in Serbia proper in
summer and fall 1941, a real danger existed that it would spread to the
Banat. By contrast, efforts to create a Četnik movement in the Banat
comparable to the one in Serbia proper remained without success.36
In early fall 1941, the Deutsche Mannschaft was not up to the task of
fighting the Banat Partisans, the Auxiliary Police was still undergoing
training, and Reich German forces in the Banat were few. Most were
preparing to transfer from the Banat to Serbia proper, where German
forces were even more overstretched and facing a communist enemy fired
by ideological zeal, made all the more fearsome in Nazi eyes by associa-
tion with the Jews and the Slavs – the unholy trinity of Nazi nightmare.37
By contrast with Serbia proper, a hotbed of resistance activity in
the second half of 1941, the Partisans in the Banat before summer 1944
amounted to a mere six organized cells, only two of which were in major
towns: Grossbetschkerek and Grosskikinda. The other four were in the
villages of Mokrin, Karlowa, Melenz, and Kumane. The Partisans had
about 100 active members in the entire Banat. Their efforts at sabotage in
summer and early fall 1941 were disorganized and of limited success:
setting fire to the odd field, piece of field machinery, or outbuilding;
cutting telegraph wires; throwing a grenade through the window of
a police barracks or the home of an ethnic German administrator;

1943, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5784, frs. H299,451–452; unsigned memo (1943),
BA Berlin, R 58, file 7733, p. 22; Benzler to AA, August 3, 1943, PA AA, Inland II
Geheim, file R 100969, fiche 2497, frs. H299,793–795.
35
Deposition of Franja Jambek from Startschowa, December 28, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box
672, p. 54.
36
Slobodan Milošević, “Kvislinške snage u Banatu u službi nemačkog okupatora
1941–1944. godine,” Vojno-istorijski glasnik, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1979), pp. 146–148.
37
“Beurteilung der Lage im Banat” (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 246, frs. 363–365.
156 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

threatening village officials; opening fire on individual policemen or other

armed ethnic Germans on the open road.38
Working in the Partisans’ disfavor were the general prosperity of the
Banat population, which made the Banat Serbian peasant ill-disposed to
communist ideology; the relatively restrained attitude of the ethnic
German administration to Serbs; and the Banat’s geography.
The Partisans’ greatest strengths, on the whole, were mobility and the
ability to blend in and live off the land, usually with the help of relatives
and sympathetic civilians. Guerrilla warfare was considerably easier in
mountainous Central, South, and East Serbia; South Croatia; or Bosnia.
In the Banat flatlands, hiding in the corn fields became such a common
evasive maneuver that the Nazis nicknamed anti-partisan warfare in that
area the “corn war [Kukuruzkrieg, from the Serbian word for corn,
‘kukuruz’].”39 Commonsense measures such as Sepp Lapp’s order that
corn fields be cleared of stubble right after the harvest undercut the
Partisans’ mobility.40
Further diminishing Partisan effectiveness, Juraj Spiller’s Command of
Public Safety investigated and infiltrated Partisan cells and coordinated
attacks against Partisan hideaways and villages known as communist
strongholds. Spiller’s great talent was coordination and dogged profes-
sionalism paired with devotion to the Nazi approach to warfare as racial
struggle. Presiding over a small group of policemen, whom he trained as
the future core of an anti-partisan fighting force that never quite materi-
alized, Spiller successfully pulled together the limited resources of the
Grossbetschkerek Gestapo, the Banat Auxiliary Police, the Deutsche
Mannschaft, the Border and Customs Patrol, and even the village militias
in order to ensure the ruthless suppression of communist activity.41
Even before 100 Serbs (and Jews and Roma) shot in retaliation for
every murdered German became the norm in Serbia in October 1941,
disproportionate response to the perceived threat helped curb most
communist activity in the Banat. Thus, when on July 31, 1941, two
German soldiers were wounded and one was killed while fighting

38
Feldkommandantur 610 memo, July 23, 1941, BA MA, RW 40, file 1, p. 51;
Feldkommandantur 610 memo, July 28, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 245, frs.
206, 208; Kriegstagebuch, November 12, 1941, BA MA, RW 40, file 13, p. 40; Reith to
Kreiskommandantur 823, Janko, and Lapp, January 15, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-120,
roll 5785, frs. H299,915–919.
39
Weizsäcker memo, September 16, 1941, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik,
1918–1945, Serie D, Vol. XIII.2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), doc.
328 on p. 425.
40
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (November 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 166, fiche 1, fr. 37.
41
Spiller, “Komanda javne bezbednosti” (1948), Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora
u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 18940, pp. 72–75, 81–83, 98–99; Shimizu, pp. 214, 216–217.
 Anti-Partisan Activity 157

Partisans near Grossbetschkerek, the very next day, 90 people were

executed publicly in the town as a warning to others.42
By early October 1941, thanks to coordinated efforts of the German
and ethnic German security forces and the skilled use of intelligence, the
nascent communist movement in the Banat was practically extirpated.
Active Partisans, who had not been captured or killed, escaped to the
Bačka. The spread of communist propaganda was impeded by the arrests
of several hundred people suspected of aiding the Partisans or being
members of the underground Communist Party of Yugoslavia.43
This initial victory over the Banat Partisans brought relative peace even
to some Serbs suspected of harboring communist sympathies. While the
Banat police arrested family members of known Partisans and held them
as hostages in early October 1941, six weeks later, Ernst Pelikan released
children and nursing mothers from custody.44
In a February 1942 report, VoMi chief Werner Lorenz stressed the
Banat German administration’s success in maintaining good relations
with the Banat Serbs as the key factor in the Banat’s peacefulness and
stability. He posited the Banat as the antithesis of Serbia proper, where
the competing Četnik and Partisan resistance movements benefited from
the Reich Germans’ inability to control rural areas. Lorenz went so far as
to call the Banat a place of “absolute peace [absolute Ruhe].”45 Thus, the
Banat German police won for their home region the reputation of
a peaceful haven in the chaos of wartime Yugoslav lands, which brought
the dubious reward of Waffen-SS recruitment to ethnic Germans whose
fighting spirit seemed very strong because they resided in an area where
the anti-German resistance was very weak.
Between 1942 and 1944, Juraj Spiller endeavored to prevent
a resurgence of communist activity in the Banat. Like the Gestapo in
the Third Reich, Spiller relied on informers, whether coerced, bribed, or
anonymous, including members of all Banat ethnicities.46 When Žarko
Zrenjanin, the leader of the Partisan movement in the Banat, returned to

42
“Tagesmeldung des Befehlshabers Serbien,” July 31, 1941, BA MA, RH 20–12, file 113,
vol. 2, no page number; “Tagesmeldung des Befehlshabers Serbien,” August 1, 1941, BA
MA, RH 20–12, file 113, vol. 2, no page number.
43
Reith to Kreiskommandantur 823, Janko, and Lapp (1942), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll
5785, frs. H299,914–917.
44
Ernst Pelikan to Pre[d]stojništvo policije Grosskikinda, October 4, 1941, and Pelikan to
Pre[d]stojništvo policije Grosskikinda, November 21, 1941, Muzej Vojvodine,
Dokumenti okupatora u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 18777.
45
Lorenz, “Serbische Aufstandsbewegung,” February 23, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim,
file R 101093, fiche 2817, fr. H296,600.
46
Sektion für den Sicherheitsdienst Gross-Betschkerek to all Polizeivorstehungen,
Landratsämter, and Polizeikommissäre, July 3, 1941, Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti
okupatora u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 3009/8, p. 3; Policijsko predstavništvo
158 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

the area in late 1942, Spiller struck at once. Zrenjanin was killed in an
ambush set up by Spiller and Franz Reith, with the aid of the Waffen-SS
division “Prinz Eugen,” acting on a tip from a Serbian woman whose
husband had been executed as a communist.47 She herself had spent time
in prison until she was, by her own admission, “cured of communism
[ozdravila od komunizma].”48
As this example of cooperation between the Banat Germans and other
Banat residents in service to the Nazi cause demonstrated, relative peace
in the Banat was dependent on the willingness of most Banat residents to
accept the occupation and the Banat German administration, including
its use of terror. Periodic executions of men and women continued to take
place through summer 1944. After the Jewish hostage pool was exhausted
in 1941, the victims were mostly Serbs and Roma imprisoned in one of
the Banat’s concentration camps as suspected communists. Juraj Spiller’s
men would round up local Roma to dig graves and, sometimes, finish off
the victims, if the method of execution was hanging. Ethnic German
policemen and Deutsche Mannschaft members as well as, on occasion,
German soldiers acted as security and executioners. The bodies were
publicly displayed for 24 hours before burial, as a deterrent to others.49
Additional methods used to keep down the communist resistance
included the destruction of suspected communists’ homes by the ethnic
German police and sending some arrestees to concentration camps in
Germany or their prolonged incarceration in Banat camps.50

Weisskirchen to Spiller, September 18, 1941, Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora u

Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 19736/1; Spiller, “Komanda javne bezbednosti” (1948), Muzej
Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 18940, pp. 51–58,
238–258; Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy
1933–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 61–64, 144–157.
47
Reith to Meyszner, November 6, 1942, AJ, fund 110, box 663, pp. 22–23.
48
Reith to Meyszner (1942), AJ, fund 110, box 663, p. 22.
49
Kommandierender General und Befehlshaber in Serbien to Kreiskommandantur 823,
February 24, 1943, USHMM, RG 49.008M, roll 3, no frame number;
Kreiskommandantur 823 proclamation, July 16, 1943, AJ, fund 110, box 669, p. 84;
Militärbefehlshaber Südost to Kreiskommandantur 823, September 4, 1943, BA MA,
RW 40, file 80, p. 61; Kreiskommandantur 823, “Bekanntmachung,” August 15, 1944,
AJ, fund 110, box 669, p. 97; deposition of Radu Misa from Grossbetschkerek,
November 28, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 669, pp. 10–11; deposition of Jovan Zlatar
from Grossbetschkerek, December 9, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 669, pp. 21–25; deposi-
tion of Branislav Subotin from Deutsch Elemer, December 11, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box
669, p. 29; deposition of Draga Ninin from Grossbetschkerek, December 16, 1944, AJ,
fund 110, box 669, pp. 33–34; deposition of Slavko Marković from Perlas, January 19,
1945, AJ, fund 110, box 669, p. 60.
50
Jela Kevresan from Vojvoda Stepa accuses Juraj Spiller, February 11, 1945, AJ, fund 110,
box 676, p. 380; Emilija Subičin from Melenz accuses Juraj Spiller, February 18, 1945,
AJ, fund 110, box 676, p. 390; deposition of Milka Maćešić from Belgrade, August 16,
1945, AJ, fund 110, box 673, p. 79; Petar Kačavenda, “Zločini nemačke okupacione
 Anti-Partisan Activity 159

The major camp for long-term prisoners in the Banat was located in
Grossbetschkerek, while the police headquarters in all major Banat towns
served as prisons and interrogation centers. A camp also operated in
Svilara, the silk-spinning mill in Pantschowa, until September 1941,
when it was closed down following the deportation of the Banat Jews
the previous month. Another camp was improvised in a dilapidated grain-
storage facility in Neu-Betsche, where the Jews from North Banat await-
ing deportation to Belgrade in summer 1941 slept on wooden floors and
spent what little money they had on food sold by a baker permitted into
the camp every day.51
Three small work camps existed on the Danube island of Ostrovačka
Ada, where prisoners worked in close proximity to civilians – including
ethnic Germans – doing their labor service, and the discipline was
comparatively lax. Some prisoners also worked on large landholdings.
While none of these camps were death camps, they were nonetheless
places where prisoners were routinely beaten, interrogated under torture,
degraded, mocked, even killed.52 On one occasion on Ostrovačka Ada,
a group of Bosnian prisoners transferred from the Sajmište camp outside
Belgrade were almost literally worked to death before the guards executed
them on the tugboat taking them back to Sajmište.53
The camp commanders and guards were ethnic Germans and a few
ethnic Hungarians – members of the Deutsche Mannschaft, the Banat
Auxiliary Police, or the division “Prinz Eugen.”54 Just as the Nazis

vojske i folksdojčera nad Srbima u Banatu 1941–1944. godine,” Istorija 20. veka: Časopis
Instituta za savremenu istoriju, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1994), pp. 96–98.
51
Olga Adam, interview 45646, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute,
accessed online at USHMM, November 27, 2015; Tihomir Ungar, interview 47014,
Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, accessed online at USHMM,
November 27, 2015.
52
Deposition of Milan Protić from Grossbetschkerek, December 8, 1944, AJ, fund 110,
box 667, p. 5; deposition of Petar Polinger from Grossbetschkerek, December 18, 1944,
AJ, fund 110, box 667, p. 12; deposition of Vojislav Đurđević from Grossbetschkerek,
January 2, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 667, p. 34; deposition of Laza Lončar from
Grossbetschkerek, January 22, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 667, p. 43; deposition of
Stevan Jel from Startschowa, March 9, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 667, pp. 137–138;
deposition of Danica Stanković from Pantschowa, March 24, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box
667, p. 139; deposition of Aranka Klajn from Pantschowa, April 14, 1945, AJ, fund 110,
box 691, p. 136; deposition of Emil Pavlović from Werschetz, July 1, 1945, AJ, fund 110,
box 669, p. 454; deposition of Dragutin Pavlović from Pantschowa, July 5, 1945, AJ,
fund 110, box 691, p. 154.
53
Deposition of Simeon Skolenko from Deutsch-Etschka, December 12, 1944, AJ, fund
110, box 667, p. 9; Protić deposition (1944), AJ, fund 110, box 667, p. 5.
54
Skolenko deposition (1944), AJ, fund 110, box 667, p. 9; Polinger deposition (1944), AJ,
fund 110, box 667, p. 12; Đurđević deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 667, p. 34; Jel
deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 667, p. 137; Pavlović deposition (1945), AJ, fund
110, box 691, p. 154.
160 Police and Anti-Partisan Activity

mustered ethnic Germans to serve as concentration-camp guards across

the occupied East and in the Reich proper, as part of preparing the ethnic
Germans for Waffen-SS service,55 so many camp guards in the Banat cut
their teeth in spring and summer 1941, when the Banat Jews were
imprisoned in Pantschowa, Neu-Betsche, and Grossbetschkerek.56
The physical punishments inflicted on the Jews became routine treatment
for captured communists, their relatives, and other prisoners, while the
use of violence against civilians perceived as the enemy helped inure the
Banat Germans to the requirements of Waffen-SS service.

55
Stiller in Jah et al., pp. 114, 116–118.
56
Mirko Caran, interview 47077, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation
Institute, accessed online at USHMM, November 26, 2015; Ida Kockar, interview
46000, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, accessed online at
USHMM, November 26, 2015.
6 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and
Aryanization

Instead of deporting Serbian Jews to the death camps in the East, the
Nazis had Jewish men shot by the Wehrmacht and their collaborators in
fall 1941, as nominal retaliation for attacks on Germans and ethnic
Germans by the Partisan and Četnik resistance movements. Only in the
Nazi imagination, which linked the Jew and the communist, was this
conducive to staunching the resistance in Serbia. The Jewish hostages
selected to die in retaliatory shootings were, for the most part, innocent of
any association with either resistance movement. The Wehrmacht passed
anti-Jewish legislation and played a major role in the Holocaust in Serbia,
in agreement with the SS, the German Foreign Ministry, and the Reich
Security Main Office. Jewish women and children were interned in the
concentration camp at Sajmište outside Belgrade and killed by gas van in
spring 1942.1
Serbia had the dubious distinction of becoming the second country in
Adolf Hitler’s sphere of influence, after Estonia, to be declared “free of
Jews” (judenfrei).2 An estimated 55,000–65,000 of all Yugoslav Jews
perished – no fewer than 80% of their prewar numbers. The death rate
for the Serbian Banat alone may have been as high as 92.8%.3
The destruction of the Serbian Jews encompassed also the Banat Jews,
most of whom were deported to Belgrade in August 1941 – there to be

1
Hans-Jürgen Döscher, SS und Auswärtiges Amt im Dritten Reich. Diplomatie im Schatten der
“Endlösung” (Frankfurt and Berlin: Ullstein, 1991), pp. 310–311; Manoschek in Heer and
Naumann, p. 39.
2
Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office, pp. 56–67; Christopher
R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy,
September 1939-March 1942 (Lincoln and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and
Yad Vashem, 2004), pp. 334–346, 422–423; Manoschek, “Serbien ist judenfrei,”
pp. 185–191.
3
Harriet Pass Freidenreich, The Jews of Yugoslavia: A Quest for Community (Philadelphia:
The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), p. 192; Jaša Romano, Jevreji Jugoslavije
1941–1945. Žrtve genocida i učesnici NOR (Belgrade: Savez jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije,
1980), p. 201; Holm Sundhaussen, “Jugoslawien” in Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl
der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Munich: R. Oldenbourg
Verlag, 1991), p. 330.

161
162 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

shot or interned and gassed – with the full participation and support of the
Banat German leadership, the Banat police, and many ethnic German
civilians.
The Holocaust in Serbia-Banat followed a series of steps. Serbian Jews
were legally and, to an extent, physically isolated from the surrounding
society, stripped of their property and legal rights, and murdered very close
to their former homes by firing squad and gas van. In Serbia, ghettoization
was omitted as a stage in the murderous process. In addition, the
Holocaust in Serbia began even before the Wannsee Conference in
January 1942, which coordinated diverse German government agencies’
complicity and cooperation in the destruction of the Jews from all over
Europe, in addition to the ongoing slaughter in the occupied East.
Although the Holocaust in Serbia-Banat lacked the element of what Jan
Grabowski has called rural genocide, such as occurred in the Polish
countryside,4 it did contain the element of violence inflicted against the
Jews by people they had known all their lives. This was especially true in
the Banat, where the immediate agents of Jewish disenfranchisement,
impoverishment, and deportation were the Banat Germans acting on
orders from Reich Germans.
The Banat Germans’ role in the Holocaust resembled the role played
by the ethnic Germans in Ukraine, who had little executive power yet
proved useful as Nazi agents, security personnel, interpreters, and guides
with local knowledge. They also proved able to manipulate Nazi racial
categories to their own ends by emphasizing their ostensible Germanness
in order to gain economic advantage.5 Yet in the relatively peaceful and
well-governed Banat, the breakdown of administrative structures, brutal
ongoing warfare, and paranoid fear of Reich German retaliation played
a lesser role than in Poland or Ukraine – or even in Serbia proper, where
the Nedić government and the native fascists led by Dimitrije Ljotić saw
the Jews and communism as equally alien to the “true” Serbia and refused
to intervene on the Serbian Jews’ behalf.6
The Banat Germans persecuted Jewish neighbors and obtained their
property as an extension of their newly empowered position in the Banat.
A whole spectrum of motivations enticed the Banat Germans to take

4
Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013), pp. 5–8.
5
Dean, “Soviet Ethnic Germans and the Holocaust,” pp. 255–261; Wendy Lower,
“Hitler’s ‘Garden of Eden’ in Ukraine: Nazi Colonialism, Volksdeutsche, and the
Holocaust, 1941–1944” in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and
Its Aftermath, ed. Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth (New York and Oxford:
Berghahn Books, 2005), pp. 192–194; Steinhart, pp. 8–11.
6
Byford in Haynes and Rady, pp. 306–309; Frydel, pp. 2–4, 15; Grabowski, passim;
Steinhart, pp. 207–229.
 Holocaust 163

active part in anti-Semitic action. Greed for Jewish property, opportu-

nism, and the coarsening of morality, induced by the realization that the
Jews made easy targets under Nazi rule, were powerful incentives.
Though the ethnic Germans were not the ones making anti-Semitic
policy, their complicity with Nazi crimes grew through their involve-
ment in policy implementation and profiteering from the misery of
others. Banat German collaboration in the Holocaust developed from
initial unsystematic violence, to legalized forms of persecution, to
deportation, accompanied by the sanctioned robbery and legalized
alienation of Jewish property. Ethnic German policemen aided the
German occupation forces in arresting Jews right after the end of
the April War and again in August 1941, when the Banat Jews were
deported to their ultimate fates in Belgrade. Ethnic Germans also
served as concentration-camp guards in the Banat and participated
occasionally in the killing process, such as executions of Jews in fall
1941 and again in late 1944.
Moreover, ethnic German officials and civilians were the most obvious
beneficiaries of Aryanization in the Banat. Like their participation in the
anti-partisan struggle in Southeast Europe, Aryanization tainted ethnic
Germans irrevocably in the eyes of their non-German neighbors. Yet
while only some Banat Germans took part in anti-partisan activities in
the Banat, and in 1942–1944 only Banat German men served in the
Waffen-SS, many profited materially from the dispossession and depor-
tation of the Banat Jews. Sharing in the Third Reich’s anti-Bolshevik
struggle and anti-Semitic policies provided an opportunity for individual
ethnic Germans to indulge their acquisitiveness and confirm their
standing in the Nazi racial hierarchy, so that even those ethnic Germans
who may not have labeled themselves National Socialists became an
inextricable part of Hitler’s New Order.

Holocaust
In the Nazi worldview, co-opting ethnic Germans as racial kin and
persecuting Jews went hand in hand. The exacerbation of Nazi anti-
Semitism in conquered territories overlapped with the very tenuousness
of the term “Volksdeutscher.” For people considered German, who were
not Germans from the Reich, the easiest way to prove their racial
credentials was to commit acts of violence against Jews.7 This was
especially true in Poland and the Soviet Union, where the ethnic
Germans’ preferential position vis-à-vis other ethnicities was very

7
Bergen, “The Nazi Concept of ‘Volksdeutsche’,” pp. 570, 574.
164 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

tenuous and subject to the whims of Nazi policy, since the Nazis saw the
ethnic Germans as tainted by racial mixing, in need of proving them-
selves as Nazis and as Germans.
In the Banat, the existence of the ethnic German administration and its
key role in the daily running of the region not only gave the Banat
Germans greater responsibility than was wielded by ethnic Germans
elsewhere in Hitler’s Europe – it also shielded them, to an extent, from
the Nazis’ ever-shifting parameters of what constituted an ethnic
German. At least in their relations with the Banat Jews, the Banat
Germans’ Germanness was not so tenuous as to facilitate anti-Semitic
action as a means to prove themselves to the Nazis.
The Banat Germans’ mistreatment of their Jewish neighbors stemmed,
instead, from a mixture of motives, including enthusiasm for National
Socialism as an ideology and a system of rule; the euphoria of empower-
ment; the sense that, while the Banat Germans remained beneath the
Reich Germans in the Nazi hierarchy, they could lord it over the Jews with
impunity, thus reinforcing Nazi racial categories; opportunism; and
greed. Moreover, the chance to abuse the Banat Jews and especially the
Aryanization of their property gave many ethnic Germans added
incentive to enforce Nazi racial policy in their home region.
Although the interwar Belgrade government officially recognized them
as a religious community rather than an ethnic minority, in 1921, the Jews
were one of the smallest minorities in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes with about 65,000 people (0.54% of the population). Also in
1921, 43.22% of the predominantly Ashkenazi Jews in the Vojvodina
reported their mother tongue as Hungarian, 28.64% as German, and
12.87% as Serbo-Croatian, indicating a high degree of assimilation into
the dominant ethnic groups in what had been the south part of the defunct
Kingdom of Hungary. Yiddish and Ladino speakers, combined,
accounted for only 13.17% of the Vojvodina Jews.8
By the time of the 1931 census, Jews accounted for 0.49% of the
Yugoslav population, even though their absolute numbers rose to over
68,000, indicating a significantly lower Jewish birth rate when compared
to that of the South Slavs. The number of Yugoslav Jews on the eve of the
German invasion in 1941 may have exceeded 71,000–72,000, inclusive of
individuals who could not afford to pay their membership dues in Jewish
organizations or chose not to identify as Jewish.9
The Yugoslav Jews were overwhelmingly urban, with the largest com-
munities residing in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Bitola (Macedonia),
Subotica (Bačka), Novi Sad, Skopje (Macedonia), Osijek (Slavonia),

8 9
Freidenreich, pp. 56–57, 63, 221. Romano, p. 13; Sundhaussen in Benz, p. 311.
 Holocaust 165

Senta (Bačka), and Grossbetschkerek.10 Ashkenazim accounted for some

two-thirds of all Yugoslav Jews and were concentrated in the formerly
Habsburg north of the country. Of all Yugoslav Jews, 27.07% resided in
the Vojvodina in 1931.11
In a predominantly agricultural country, the Yugoslav Jews were
employed overwhelmingly in trade, finance, the civil service, the armed
forces, industry, and artisanal and white-collar professions.12
Intermarriage was common among Jews, ethnic Germans, and other
ethnic groups in the Vojvodina, aided by the fact that provincial law in
the interwar period recognized only civil marriage and divorce.13
Just over 4,000 Jews lived in the Serbian Banat before the April War.
Most Banat Jews resided in Grossbetschkerek (1,269 Jews in 1931),
Pantschowa (599), Werschetz (570), Grosskikinda (436), Debeljatscha
(220), Neu-Betsche (136), Weisskirchen (130), Kubin (57), Tschoka
(55), and Neukanischa (55). Communities of fewer than 50 Jews – some-
times numbering in the single digits or consisting of a single Jewish
resident – lived in an additional 56 villages.14
In interwar Yugoslavia, anti-Semitism existed but remained milder and
less widespread than in countries such as Romania or Poland. Some
Banat Jewish survivors recalled that prewar anti-Semitic outbursts,
when they did happen, were limited to words rather than deeds and
tended to occur only after Nazi Germany began to conquer large swathes
of Europe. Then, ethnic Germans occasionally gave voice to anti-Semitic
sentiment, and some people discouraged their children from playing with
Jewish children. Thus, anti-Semitism in the Banat remained situational
(playground taunts, a convenient means to verbalize economic and ethnic
frustration) and temporal (most apparent after 1939), rather than ende-
mic or conducive to violence before the April War.15
Specifically among the Banat Germans before the April War, the fact
that the Jews were a tiny minority of well under 1% of the population
and their high degree of assimilation into Hungarian and German cultural
and linguistic traditions helped keep anti-Semitism under control.

10
“Statistički podaci o stanovništvu jevrejske veroispovesti,” October 8, 1940, AJ, fund 38,
folder 93, archival unit 225, p. 1 of this document.
11
Freidenreich, p. 218.
12
Nebojša Popović, Jevreji u Srbiji 1918–1941 (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju,
1997), pp. 35–36, 173.
13
Freidenreich, p. 109. 14
Ivković, “Uništenje Jevreja,” p. 375.
15
Aleksandar Greber, interview 48706, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation
Institute, accessed online at USHMM, November 24, 2015; Melanija Marinković, inter-
view 47113, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, accessed online
at USHMM, November 24, 2015; Kockar interview, Visual History Archive, USC
Shoah Foundation Institute.
166 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

Anti-Semitic tropes in public discourse – in Yugoslavia, in general, and

among the Vojvodina Germans, in particular – became more overt only in
the late 1930s, due to Nazi Germany’s international prominence, the rise
of the Erneurer, and the influx of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis in
Central Europe. (Most Jewish refugees who came to Yugoslavia merely
passed through.)16
In October 1940, the Yugoslav government adopted two anti-Semitic
laws, which aimed to discriminate against the Jews in higher education
and the economy. Yet these laws stopped short of defining the Jews in
racial terms, continued to treat the Jews as a religious minority, and may
have been implemented very inconsistently in the months leading up to
the April War.17 Even so, some Banat Jews were banned from pursuing
a secondary education in a state lyceum and were redirected to apprentice
with craftsmen instead.18
Regardless of the relative intensity of anti-Semitism before 1941, the
German occupation made the Jews into easy victims. Even ethnic
Germans who may not have shared the Nazis’ exact anti-Semitic views
saw little reason to refrain from exploiting the Jews’ vulnerability.
The invading Germans gave official approval to, instigated, and abetted
violence against Jews committed by ethnic Germans, but the Banat
Germans were the ones who wholeheartedly persecuted and robbed
their Jewish neighbors.
In April 1941, the Reich Germans followed the practice already estab-
lished in Poland of rounding up Jews from rural communities immedi-
ately after the invasion and relocating them to urban centers. Local ethnic
Germans helped, but the primary instigators at this stage were Germans
from the Reich.19
In Grossbetschkerek, the atmosphere of victory and celebrations of
Adolf Hitler’s birthday prompted the executions of a number of Serbs
on April 22, 1941. Already on April 21, most local Jews were arrested by
the Wehrmacht regiment “Grossdeutschland.” Although the commander
of the Wehrmacht’s District Command Post in the town did not mention
in a memorandum he produced only two days later whether ethnic

16
Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, pp. 438–443, 588–590; Hausleitner, Die
Donauschwaben, pp. 173–176; Popović, pp. 28, 119–125, 130–139, 149–154, 158–164,
168–171.
17
Bethke, Deutsche und ungarische Minderheiten, pp. 588–589; Popović, pp. 140–143.
18
Alisa Reljin, interview 46102, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute,
accessed online at USHMM, November 25, 2015.
19
Testimony of Josef Stirbel from Deutsch-Zerne, no date, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file
5, p. 5; testimony of Jakob Laping from Mastort, February 21, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 17, file 5, p. 46; testimony of Franz Scheidt from Sakula, May 3, 1958, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 6, p. 21.
 Holocaust 167

Germans had taken part, a Jewish survivor from Grossbetschkerek offered

a wealth of detail in his postwar deposition. He testified that a group of
ethnic German policemen arrested him, after he had already been robbed
by another armed gang led by future chief administrator for peasant
affairs Sepp Zwirner.20 These policemen were probably members of the
Deutsche Mannschaft, dressed at this early stage in motley composed of
old Yugoslav army uniforms, “German” caps, and swastika armbands,
reflecting the impromptu nature of the Banat Germans’ novel empower-
ment at their neighbors’ expense.21
In addition to the opportunity to humiliate the merchants, bankers,
doctors, businessmen, and other well-off Jews of the town, the primary
motivation for the events of late April was apparently material greed.
The Wehrmacht was the instigator, encouraging the ethnic Germans to
abuse the Jews, if they so wished. The District Command Post ordered
the Grossbetschkerek Jews to collect 20 million Serbian dinars in just
one day as ransom for the arrestees. Viktor Elek, the director of the local
sugar factory, was released conditionally to try to collect the ransom.
Three days proved insufficient, so many of the arrested Jews remained
in custody until they were deported to Belgrade in August 1941.22
For his failure to collect the ransom for the town’s arrested Jews,
Viktor Elek was hanged outside Grossbetschkerek on April 24, 1941,
in front of a large crowd of ethnic Germans and ethnic Hungarians,
many of whom had been his employees at the sugar factory and came to
gloat at his humiliation and death. Similar scenes reoccurred in late
spring and early summer, at public executions of other Jews.23 None
of the eyewitnesses who later testified about these events could or would
state with certainty whether the executions were carried out by Reich
Germans or ethnic Germans, though they specified the executioners
were men in uniform – Wehrmacht gray as well as black, which could
have been either the SS or the Deutsche Mannschaft. What is certain is
that ethnic German civilians attended and cheered the executions, and
sometimes even herded prisoners to the execution site. Even before the
German commanding general in Belgrade issued an official ruling on the
new status of Jews and Roma, anti-Semitic behavior was de facto policy
in the Banat.
20
Rentsch to Militärbefehlshaber Serbien (1941), NARA, RG 238, entry 175, roll 16, doc.
NOKW-1110, fr. 275; deposition of Vilim Herzog from Grossbetschkerek, no date, AJ,
fund 110, box 746, p. 1125.
21
Patić deposition (1944), AJ, fund 110, box 670, p. 3.
22
Testimony of Wilma Slavik from Grossbetschkerek, March 10, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 16, file 153, p. 5; Herzog deposition (no date), AJ, fund 110, box 746, p. 1125.
23
Deposition of Veselin Grujin from Grossbetschkerek, January 25, 1945, AJ, fund 110,
box 669, p. 245; Ninin deposition (1944), AJ, fund 110, box 669, p. 33.
168 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

Murderous as it could be, the anti-Semitic violence in spring 1941 was

random and spur-of-the-moment. The “Verordnung betreffend die
Juden und Zigeuner” (“Order Concerning Jews and Gypsies”), passed
by the German commanding general in Belgrade on May 30, 1941,
provided a legal basis and structure for anti-Semitic action. It circum-
scribed Jewish social life according to precedent established in the Third
Reich and other occupied territories. Blurring racial and religious criteria,
thus giving the Nazis a double bind with which to limit Serbian Jews’
options, a person was considered Jewish if they had at least three Jewish
grandparents or had once belonged to the Jewish faith, as were first-
degree Mischlinge (half-Jews) married to Jews or with grandparents
who belonged or had belonged to a Jewish religious community.24
All Jews in Serbia-Banat had to register with the police; wear a yellow
armband with the word “Jew”; were fired from positions in the civil service,
education, entertainment, and the free professions serving Gentiles; and
were banned from various public spaces. They could not move house, sell
their real estate (which also had to be registered with the authorities), or
own radios. Jews were subject to a nightly curfew and compulsory labor.25
Roma were defined along the same lines as Jews (“full” Roma had three
or four Romany grandparents, while “part” Roma had one or two – the
decree did not state explicitly what made someone Romany) and were
supposed to wear identifying armbands and be registered with the
authorities.26
The Banat German administration dutifully adopted and implemented
these anti-Semitic guidelines.27 By late summer 1941, Jews became iso-
lated from the rest of Banat society to an extent that damaged rather than
benefited even non-Jews. For example, the quality of health care in the
Banat deteriorated sharply once Jewish doctors were forbidden from
treating Gentiles, since Gentile doctors often expected to be paid high
fees, which prevented the poor from seeking necessary medical care.28
Between April and August 1941, most Jews in the Banat suffered verbal
abuse, random house searches-cum-robbery, assault (including sexual

24
“Order Concerning Jews and Gypsies in Serbia,” May 30, 1941, NARA, RG 165, entry
77, box 3293, doc. 3500, pp. 1–2.
25
“Order Concerning Jews and Gypsies in Serbia” (1941), NARA, RG 165, entry 77, box
3293, doc. 3500, pp. 2–3.
26
“Order Concerning Jews and Gypsies in Serbia” (1941), NARA, RG 165, entry 77, box
3293, doc. 3500, p. 6.
27
Bürgermeisteramt Pantschowa, “Verordnung aus dem Verodnungsblatt Nr. 8 des
Militärbefehlshabers in Serbien,” June 7, 1941, Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora
u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 19616; Gemeindevorstehung Mokrin to Landratsamt Gross-
Kikinda, June 24, 1941, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, no page number.
28
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (August 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 163, fiche 1, fr. 15.
 Holocaust 169

assault), battery, forced labor, and incarceration. Forcing Jews, many of

whom had been well-to-do merchants and educated professionals, to
sweep the streets of their home towns and villages or pluck the grass at
the tennis court where they had played before the war became a common
form of public degradation. As one survivor stated trenchantly, “the point
was not cleaning, but humiliation.”29 Distinguished visibly by the
mandatory yellow armband, Jews were compelled to walk in the road
rather than on the pavements, where pavements existed – an especially
harrowing experience for Jewish children, even those exempt from wear-
ing the armband due to youth, crowded in by horses, carts, and adult
pedestrians.30 A nightly curfew limited the Jews’ freedom of movement
and made it harder for them to secure necessary purchases.31
Jewish survivors and various witnesses stated after the war that the
perpetrators and enforcers of these indignities and violence included
German soldiers, but most – or most noticeable – were younger, openly
Nazified ethnic Germans, who drowned out objections to their treatment
of the Jews by accusing any dissenter of being a “white kike [beli
čivutin].”32 Some ethnic Germans abused their new role as militiamen
to mistreat the Jews. Others needed little official pretext, like the child
who, probably echoing his parents, spat at a woman wearing the yellow
armband and called her a “dirty Jewish sow.”33
Ethnic German behavior struck observers as even more vindictive and
malicious than that of the Reich Germans, since the ethnic Germans were
the neighbors, friends, and former coworkers of the persecuted.
The ethnic German women, who drew water from the same well as the
Jewish women incarcerated in Grossbetschkerek’s old Habsburg army
29
Greber interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute. See also
Adam interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
30
Vera Lichtenberg, interview 45056, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation
Institute, accessed online at USHMM, November 25, 2015; Caran interview, Visual
History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Greber interview, Visual History
Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Reljin interview, Visual History Archive,
USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
31
Šarlota Basler, interview 27545, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation
Institute, accessed online at USHMM, November 27, 2015; Reljin interview, Visual
History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
32
Deposition of Boža Ankić from Sakula, May 15, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 143.
33
Deposition of Lila Stejić from Pantschowa, May 15, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 142.
See also deposition of Aladar Debreceni from Pantschowa, March 13, 1945, AJ, fund
110, box 691, p. 124; deposition of Jovan Kaločaji from Pantschowa, April 4, 1945, AJ,
fund 110, box 691, p. 131; Ankić deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 143; Klajn
deposition (April 1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 136; Vera Pavlović, interview 49127,
Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, accessed online at USHMM,
November 24, 2015; Adam interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation
Institute; Reljin interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute;
Ungar interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
170 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

barracks, and took the opportunity to cause delays, jump the queue, and
churn up mud all around the well; the member of the Banat German
security apparatus, who trained his dog to hunt by having it chase and
knock down the neighbor’s half-Jewish son, yet also accepted impromptu
lessons in correct German-language use from the boy’s Jewish mother;
school friends who ignored or openly abused their Jewish former class-
mates; the ethnic Germans who urged the invading Reich Germans to
search Jewish homes or used their newly acquired police prerogative to
harass and arrest the sons of their former Jewish employers – all left an
indelible negative impression on their victims. The class resentment and
everyday betrayals evident in these acts demonstrated how Nazi anti-
Semitism lent a gloss of legitimacy to personal enmities and allowed racial
policy to play out in the pettiest as well as the most pernicious of ways.34
On the night of August 13–14,35 1941, all Banat Jews still at large were
rounded up from their homes in a highly coordinated, joint action by
German soldiers, the inchoate ethnic German police, and the Deutsche
Mannschaft. The document ordering the deportation of the Banat Jews to
Belgrade has not been found. Orders were probably transmitted orally by
the German commander in Belgrade, relayed by District Command Post
823 in Grossbetschkerek to the Banat German leadership, which, in turn,
instructed the ethnic German security forces to take part in the rounding
up of Jews.
The deportation of the Banat Jews took place in the context of the
German desire to concentrate the Serbian Jews, as a perceived racially
and politically dangerous social element, in Belgrade. Away from the

34
Nikola Poti, interview 47282, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute,
accessed online at USHMM, November 24, 2015; Caran interview, Visual History
Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Marinković interview, Visual History
Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Pavlović interview, Visual History Archive,
USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
35
In his 1952s book on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, survivor-historian Zdenko Levntal dated
the mass arrest of the Banat Jews to the night of August 14–15, 1941, but didn’t offer any
citation. In 1945, fellow survivor Jozefa Elizabeta Dajč claimed she was arrested
on August 13, 1941, while several survivors interviewed by the Shoah Foundation in the
1990s insisted that the arrests occurred on the night of August 14, 1941, with a few specifying
1:30 or 2 a.m. as the time. I chose to give greater weight to these depositions, since these
multiple sources straddling half a century offer a consensus on the date. Deposition of Jozefa
Elizabeta Dajč from Pantschowa, March 5, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 121; Greber
interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Lichtenberg interview,
Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Marinković interview, Visual
History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Pavlović interview, Visual History
Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Zdenko Levntal, ed., Zločini fašističkih okupatora
i njihovih pomagača protiv Jevreja u Jugoslaviji (Belgrade: Savez jevrejskih opština FNR
Jugoslavije, 1952), p. 13.
 Holocaust 171

countryside in Serbia proper, where resistance was rife, the Jews could
more easily be watched and disposed of as necessary.36
After the Jews’ brief internment in concentration camps in
Grossbetschkerek and Neu-Betsche, the deportation to Belgrade by
river barge ensued on August 18. The Pantschowa Jews as well as the
Werschetz Jews brought to Pantschowa by train were held in the munici-
pal police building and taken straight to Belgrade. The deportees lived at
first with Belgrade Jews, before the men were interned in the camp at
Topovske Šupe on the outskirts of Belgrade and gradually murdered by
Wehrmacht firing squads.37
Most Banat Jews could not or never got the chance to attempt escape,
though there were exceptions: some crossed the Tisa River to the
Hungarian-occupied Bačka or traveled to the Bačka after being deported
to Belgrade.38 Some joined the Partisans.39
Banat Jewish women and children lived in relative freedom in Belgrade
until the Sajmište camp opened in December 1941, by which point the
prisoner pool at Topovske Šupe was nearly gone and the Holocaust in
Serbia a foregone conclusion with the decimation of the adult male Jewish
population. Of the approximately 2,000 Jewish men deported to Belgrade
from the Banat, only 600 were still alive in late October 1941. By mid-
May 1942, almost all Jewish prisoners in the Sajmište camp had been
killed by gas van. At the war’s end in 1945, the Grossbetschkerek Jewish
community had only 90–135 members, barely 10% of its prewar
numbers.40
Some 70,000 Roma lived in interwar Yugoslavia. They suffered ende-
mic discrimination and rampant negative stereotypes, which associated
them with crime, disease, vagrancy, dirtiness, sexual misconduct, and the
practice of white slavery.41 During World War II, the severity of

36
Postwar Yugoslav historians overstated the case when they insisted that the deportation
of the Banat Jews to Belgrade in August 1941 was undertaken only or even primarily due
to ethnic German demands. Ivković, “Uništenje Jevreja,” p. 383; Levntal, p. 13.
37
Marinković interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Reljin
interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Levntal, p. 14.
38
Deposition of Pavle Ribar from Pantschowa, December 29, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 691,
p. 96; deposition of Aranka Klajn from Pantschowa, February 22, 1945, AJ, fund 110,
box 691, p. 114; deposition of Mendel Rot from Debeljatscha, April 17, 1945, AJ, fund
110, box 691, p. 137; Dajč deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 121; Basler
interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
39
Deposition of Deneš Najhauz from Pantschowa, February 7, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box
691, p. 111; Greber interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
40
Franz Rademacher memo, October 25, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XIII.2, doc. 425 on p.
571; Ruža Tajti to Julije Dohanj, September 15, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 79;
Herzog deposition (no date), AJ, fund 110, box 746, p. 1125.
41
Danijel Vojak, “‘Ustaj Cigo, tu ti mjesto nije, haj’ u logor gdje se motkom bije!’, ili o
percepciji Roma u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj, 1941.–1945.”, Zbornik radova: Prva
172 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

persecution of the Roma varied among Yugoslav lands and European

lands in general.42 In Serbia-Banat, although anti-Romany and anti-
Semitic decrees were two sides of the same coin, the persecution of
the Roma was far less extreme and consistent than the persecution of
the Jews.43
Some 43 Banat Jewish women married to Gentiles – Serbs, ethnic
Hungarians, and ethnic Germans – received special dispensation to
return home from Belgrade in late fall 1941. This decision came only
after much wrangling between some of the husbands and the SD in
Belgrade. The bastardized biology inherent in Nazi anti-Semitism
dictated that one woman provide medical proof that she was barren, while
another woman’s spouse had to sign an affidavit that he would not have
children with his wife, making official control over the women’s reproduc-
tive capacity a prerequisite for their reprieve from extermination.44
Nevertheless, inconsistency reigned in how these women were treated.
While the Nazis were concerned about the potential offspring of mixed
marriages, one 16-year-old Jewish girl’s life was saved through an
arranged marriage to a Serb. The Nazis found her less threatening as
a respectable married woman than as an unattached young woman just
coming into the bloom of her reproductive potential.45 In 1943, the
women who had become widowed in the meantime were arrested and
deported to Belgrade a second time. Even then, racial science had its day:
one Jewish widow with three daughters married to “Aryans,” who was too
old to have more children herself, was allowed to remain in the Banat,
protected by her sons-in-law and the waning of her reproductive
potential.46
Back in the Banat, the released women remained vulnerable to periodic
maltreatment: querulous demands that they go on wearing their yellow
armbands, summons to present their papers for inspection after being
made to wait in the hot sun for hours. While many mixed couples

međunarodna konferencija Holokaust nad Srbima, Jevrejima i Romima u Drugom svetskom

ratu (Belgrade, 2014), p. 22.
42
Anton Weiss-Wendt, “Introduction” in The Nazi Genocide of the Roma: Reassessment and
Commemoration, ed. Anton Weiss-Wendt (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books,
2013), pp. 1–3, 8–14.
43
Bajford, Staro Sajmište, p. 38; Michael Portmann, Die kommunistische Revolution in der
Vojvodina 1944–1952. Politik, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Kultur (Vienna: Verlag der
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008), p. 447.
44
Deposition of Lila Stejić from Pantschowa, August 13, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691,
p. 235; deposition of Lujza Bukovac from Pantschowa, March 2, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box
691, p. 116; Bergen in Gellately and Stoltzfus, pp. 274, 279–280; Ivković, “Uništenje
Jevreja,” p. 387.
45
Marinković interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
46
Bukovac deposition (March 1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 116.
 Holocaust 173

socialized among themselves and lent each other moral support, the
uncertainty of the rules that circumscribed the Jewish women’s lives was
exacerbated by a lack of support from some Gentile spouses. For every
husband who pleaded for his wife’s release, despite the verbal abuse
heaped on him for staying married to a Jew or pointed reminders that
he was free not to take his wife home from Belgrade, there seem to have
been two husbands who guaranteed their wives would show up at the
mustering point for deportation or even personally delivered their wives
into captivity in August 1941.47
In addition to these Jewish women married to Gentiles, children of
both Jewish and mixed marriages were protected by Gentile parents or
even stepparents. One ethnic German woman brazenly claimed that only
she knew her (half-Jewish) children’s true parentage, and anyway she had
divorced her Jewish spouse already in the late 1930s, making her “clean
before God and Hitler.”48 A loving Serbian stepmother took in a Jewish
girl, whose mother did not want to risk the child ending up in Sajmište
camp – the stepmother pleaded for the girl’s release by implying both of
the child’s parents were already dead and “made a big fuss [napravila
dramu]” until she got her way with the German authorities in Belgrade.49
These women successfully manipulated the authorities using their femi-
ninity and the sentimentality attached to motherhood, and utilized Nazi
racial perceptions to their own ends.
In the Banat, Jewish and half-Jewish children were often confined to
their homes, yet not really in hiding, for their presence was well known.
Their survival depended on the good will of families, friends, and neigh-
bors, who turned a blind eye, when they did not actively help. Even ethnic
Germans occasionally aided Jews, despite the ethnic German community
and leadership’s anti-Semitic stance. Thus, an ethnic German in charge
of rounding up the Jews in Grossbetschkerek in August 1941 allowed an
ethnic Hungarian woman to keep her half-Jewish son and daughter at
home, because he had used to do business with the children’s father
before the war and retained good memories of the man’s honesty.

47
Deposition of Lila Stejić from Pantschowa, February 2, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691,
p. 108; deposition of Vera Veljčin from Pantschowa, March 3, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box
691, p. 119; deposition of Rozalija Švarcer from Pantschowa, March 3, 1945, AJ, fund
110, box 691, p. 120; deposition of Gizela Malbaški from Grossbetschkerek,
February 16, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 669, p. 238; Pavlović interview, Visual History
Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Poti interview, Visual History Archive, USC
Shoah Foundation Institute; Reljin interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah
Foundation Institute.
48
Zoltan Vajs, interview 46165, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute,
accessed online at USHMM, November 23, 2015.
49
Marinković interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
174 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

An ethnic German neighbor taught her young son not to greet the same
family with “Heil Hitler,” as he had learned to do in his Nazified kinder-
garten, but the more neutral “Küss die Hand [I kiss your hand],” and
even gave the neighbor’s half-Jewish daughter refuge in her home during
a possible police raid.50
Kind gestures illuminated both the occasional endurance of human
decency and, by contrast, the prevailing attitudes of compliance and
complicity among the Banat Germans as a whole – including those
Banat Germans who showed kindness to Jews on occasion yet accepted
and even benefited from Nazi rule. Even if every Banat German had one
or two Jews toward whom they felt well-inclined, this hardly expunged
their profiting materially from the Jews’ misfortune or their participation
in the persecution and extermination of the Jews.
On several occasions in fall 1941, prisoners – Jews, Serbs, and Roma –
were transported by trucks from Belgrade to a spot on the road outside the
Banat village of Apfeldorf, where the Wehrmacht shot them as part of the
retaliatory measures intended to combat the communist resistance in
Serbia proper. The ethnic German police was in charge of rounding up
local Roma to dig graves and of crowd control at the execution site. Some
policemen personally executed prisoners. The 1941 killings were very
well known in the wartime Banat. Security at the execution site was lax,
and travelers on the Apfeldorf road could see people waiting to die and
hear gunshots. The open-roofed trucks that had transported prisoners in
the morning returned to Belgrade loaded with their clothes and shoes in
the evening.51
These were the only large-scale killings of Jews in the Banat before fall
1944, when the Waffen-SS, Banat German militiamen, and civilians
massacred Hungarian Jewish forced laborers during the death march
from the Bor mines in East Serbia.52
Overall, the ethnic Germans played an important yet secondary role in
the Holocaust in the Banat. With the exception of the shootings on the
Apfeldorf road in fall 1941 and the massacres in fall 1944, the Banat

50
Greber interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute; Reljin
interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
51
Walther to 704. Infanterie-Division, November 4, 1941, USHMM, RG 49.007M, roll 1,
doc. K.21–2-2/1; deposition of Zlatko Dumitrasku from Pantschowa, January 22, 1945,
AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 105; deposition of Jovan Sajn from Pantschowa, January 22,
1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 106; deposition of Atanasije Mitić from Pantschowa,
April 2, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 140; Bukovac deposition (March 1945), AJ, fund
110, box 691, p. 116; Rot deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 137.
52
Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide, translated from the
Hebrew by Chaya Galai (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 65–66.
 Aryanization 175

Germans participated in the organized killing of Jews predominantly as

guards, interpreters, auxiliaries, and frequent beneficiaries, far more than
instigators. This did not absolve them of responsibility for the persecution
and murders of Banat Jews – it merely brought out the ethnic Germans’
lack of policymaking ability. They were policy implementers par excel-
lence. Like the Serbian State Guard formed by the collaborationist gov-
ernment, which helped the Wehrmacht commit mass shootings in Serbia
proper,53 the ethnic Germans in the Banat were less than ringleaders yet
much more than mere bystanders.
In 1941, the Banat Germans and their leaders escalated swiftly from
observation, through theft of property and physical abuse, to aiding in the
deportation, to active participation in the expropriation and even murder of
their Jewish neighbors. The Serbian Banat was effectively “free of Jews”
already after the deportation in August 1941. This, in turn, made possible
the visible erasure of the Jews’ past presence through the ethnic German
and Reich German destruction, theft, and transfer of the Jews’ property.

Aryanization
Jewish survivors’ testimonies about the deportation from the Banat
recount a sickening panoply of random beatings suffered by the Jewish
men, the possibility of sexual assault against the women, the general
humiliation and crowded conditions in transit.54 Yet the most striking
aspect of the Banat Jews’ experiences was the wanton greed displayed by
ethnic German administrators, guards, policemen, and ordinary people
toward the Jews’ property.
As elsewhere in Hitler’s Europe, Aryanization and the theft of
Jewish property were more than an economic process.55 They furthered
the Jews’ exclusion from their host society, paved the way for their
physical annihilation, helped erase their visible presence from memory
and the human landscape of the Banat, and confirmed the Banat
Germans’ political and ideological complicity with the Third Reich,

53
Antić, pp. 24–25, 33–34; Jovan Byford, “The Collaborationist Administration and the
Treatment of the Jews in Nazi-Occupied Serbia” in Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two,
ed. Sabrina P. Ramet and Ola Listhaug (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011), pp. 109–127.
54
Testimony of Anuška Knežević, April 3, 1945, in Levntal, pp. 13–14; testimony of Marija
Lončar, no date, in Levntal, p. 14.
55
Constantin Goschler and Philipp Ther, “A History without Boundaries: The Robbery
and Restitution of Jewish Property in Europe” in Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over
Jewish Property in Europe, ed. Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther
(New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007), pp. 8–12.
176 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

amounting to what Frank Bajohr termed an “all-encompassing displa-

cement process.”56
One Jewish woman from Pantschowa described the experience after
she was rounded up for deportation as having been “formally weeded
[formalno [su me] oplevili],”57 a complete stripping away of her remain-
ing property and dignity. Only allowed to bring hand luggage and a small
amount of money and valuables, the Jews had their pockets turned out
and their luggage pilfered by ethnic German guards, first while waiting to
be processed in Banat police stations and camps, and then again in transit
or upon arrival in Belgrade. Some ethnic Germans rationalized that they
were taking valuables for safekeeping only, maintaining the illusion of the
Jews’ speedy return to the Banat. Others disdained all pretense: a young
secretary employed by the Pantschowa police flounced into a room where
confiscated jewelry was piled high on a table and selected some for herself
in full view of the assembled Jewish women. Ethnic German women in
Pantschowa even examined the deported women’s private orifices for
hidden valuables.58
These women demonstrated a new-found sense of entitlement in their
Germanness and showed how behaving like a Nazi empowered them in the
face of other, disenfranchised women. Many German and ethnic German
women claimed a privileged place in the Nazi New Order and the occupa-
tion of the “wild East” through similar behaviors and attitudes.59
However tenuous the term “Volksdeutscher” may have been, ethnic
Germans of both genders across East and Southeast Europe profited
directly and immediately from the expropriation of Jewish property in
their host countries.60 This was as true of ethnic Germans in official
positions, who wed service to the Third Reich with material greed, as of
ethnic German civilians, for whom Nazism provided an excuse for open
robbery.

56
Frank Bajohr, “Aryanisation” in Hamburg: The Economic Exclusion of Jews and the
Confiscation of their Property in Nazi Germany (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books,
2002), p. 4.
57
Dajč deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 121.
58
Deposition of Branislav Matić from Pantschowa, January 9, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691,
p. 97; Bukovac deposition (March 1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 116; Stejić deposi-
tion (February 1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 108; Klajn deposition (February 1945),
AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 114; Dajč deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 121;
Marinković interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
59
Harvey, passim; Gudrun Schwarz, “‘During Total War, We Girls Want to Be Where
We Can Really Accomplish Something’: What Women Do in Wartime” in Crimes of War:
Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, ed. Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann, and
Mary Nolan (New York: The New Press, 2002), pp. 121–137; Steinbacher in
Steinbacher, pp. 9–26.
60
Bergen in Bullivant, Giles, and Pappe, pp. 76–77.
 Aryanization 177

The “Verordnung betreffend die Juden und Zigeuner” of May 1941

and its addenda laid the legal groundwork for the registration, expro-
priation, and Aryanization of Jewish property in Serbia-Banat, and
effectively legalized the plunder of Jewish property already taking place
(“wild” Aryanization). An economic enterprise was classified as Jewish
if Jews were as few as one-third of its owners, administrative-board
members, or board-of-directors members. For small companies,
a single Jewish board member sufficed to have a business classified as
Jewish, which could happen also if a business was under ill-defined
Jewish influence – in other words, if it was in German interest to have it
Aryanized.61
The main beneficiary of Aryanization in Serbia-Banat was the Third
Reich,62 but allowing ethnic Germans a share of the spoils was part and
parcel of the ideological plan to strengthen their position as racial
Germans in Southeast Europe. Unlike the ulterior motive the Reich had
in allowing Banat Germans easy access to more arable land, which was
that the crops grown on it would feed German soldiers, allowing ethnic
Germans to plunder Jewish property stemmed from a place where ideo-
logical righteousness met with covetousness. “Low” material cravings
and “high” ideological aspirations conspired to produce a moral myopia
among many Reich and ethnic Germans.
While Aryanization in the Serbian Banat followed the tendency across
the Nazi sphere of influence for relevant policies to evolve and be imple-
mented in a decentralized fashion tied to local conditions, the effects of
Aryanization mirrored those in the Third Reich, where, in addition to
German corporations and banks profiting from Jewish real estate and
business, many ordinary Germans benefited materially from the expro-
priation of Jewish property across Europe and at home. These material
benefits helped make ordinary Germans amenable to the Nazi regime’s
less popular policies. In return, many Germans ignored whatever pangs of
conscience they may have suffered about the Jews’ fate, or even embraced
National Socialism with greater enthusiasm.63

61
“Order Concerning Jews and Gypsies in Serbia” (1941), NARA, RG 165, entry 77, box
3293, doc. 3500, pp. 4–5; “Verordnung zur Ergänzung der Verordnung betreffend die
Juden und Zigeuner vom 30. Mai 1941,” Verordnungsblatt des Militärbefehlshabers Serbien,
July 25, 1941, pp. 137–138.
62
Martin Dean, “The Seizure of Jewish Property in Europe: Comparative Aspects of Nazi
Methods and Local Responses” in Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish
Property in Europe, ed. Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther
(New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007), p. 24.
63
Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, translated by
Jefferson Chase (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), pp. 1–4; Bajohr, pp. 256–259,
291.
178 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

The same line of reasoning underpinned the decision of the Germans in

Belgrade and the Banat German leadership to turn a blind eye to the theft
of Jewish property before and during the August 1941 deportation. In the
Banat, the swift physical removal of the Jews made taking or accepting
their property easier. One could argue, as a salve to one’s conscience, that
houses, furniture, and other belongings had simply been left behind,
masterless and ownerless.
A Jewish survivor as well as an ethnic German woman, who expressed
disgust at what she perceived as indecent behavior and unseemly greed on
the part of lazy upstarts within the leadership, described how wives of
prominent Banat Germans used to wear jewelry that everyone knew had
belonged till recently to Jews and take basketful after basketful of fine
china, crystal, and linens from empty Jewish homes. The Banat Germans
succumbed to the fatal lure of material incentives to Nazified behavior.
At the same time, German soldiers plundered the deported Jews’ homes
for furniture, carpets, clothing materials, and other bulky goods, which
were transported to the Third Reich.64
Franz Neuhausen, the German Plenipotentiary for the Economy and
representative of the Four-Year Plan in Serbia, had his eye on a far bigger
prize than carpets and fine suits. He wanted regulated, legalized
Aryanization of Jewish real estate and economic enterprises. Even before
the August 1941 deportation, German officials and the Serbian collabora-
tionist government exerted pressure on Banat Jewish business owners to
sign over their property for a minimal price. After the deportation, Reich
Germans acquired several of the Banat Jews’ major economic enterprises:
oil and vinegar factories in Grossbetschkerek, numerous mills, food-
processing factories, shares in the late Viktor Elek’s Grossbetschkerek
sugar factory, a Pantschowa shipping company and glass factory, etc.65
The Banat German leadership took Neuhausen’s lead and purchased
Jewish real estate that could benefit the ethnic German community: food-
storage and food-processing facilities, office space, youth recreation
centers, etc. The Banat press reported extensively on some instances of
Aryanization, such as when a Jewish-owned warehouse was turned into
a soldiers’ rest home in Pantschowa in late 1942.66 Individual ethnic
Germans tended to be comparatively more modest in their desire for
64
Slavik testimony (March 10, 1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 153, pp. 4–5; Slavik
testimony (March 27, 1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 153, pp. 9–10; Stejić
deposition (August 1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 235.
65
Hans Gurski, “Treuhandverwaltung und Judenvermögen,” March 23, 1945, NARA, RG
242, T-75, roll 53, frs. 591–592; Egger, “Bericht über die Tätigkeit” (1958), BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 97, p. 14.
66
“Soldaten planen, gestalten und . . . ein Soldatenheim entsteht,” Volkswacht [Banater
Beobachter supplement], November 15, 1942, pp. 3–4.
 Aryanization 179

Jewish property and, therefore, more easily pleased. They stole or bought
Aryanized furniture, personal belongings such as clothes and jewelry, bits
of land or commercial real estate, and private homes.67 A survivor from
Neukanischa described how, since her village lacked ethnic German
residents, ethnic Germans from neighboring Grosskikinda arrived every
week in spring and summer 1941 to pick over Jewish property.68
In addition, Reich Germans and ethnic Germans destroyed or
desecrated synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. The lavishly furnished
synagogues in Grosskikinda and Werschetz were stripped of furnishings
and decorations and transformed into, respectively, a laundry and
a property of the Reformed Church. The original intention had been for
the Wehrmacht to sell the Werschetz synagogue to an ethnic German
butcher for use as storage space or slaughterhouse, adding the insult of
pigs being slaughtered inside to the injury of Jewish deportation and
expropriation. The Pantschowa synagogue became a Wehrmacht ware-
house for the storing of Aryanized property, while the synagogue in the
village of Debeljatscha served as a grain store. The Pantschowa ethnic
Germans broke Jewish gravestones and used the town’s Jewish cemetery
as an open-air toilet.69
While Aryanization, on the whole, represented a happy marriage of
Nazi ideology and economic exploitation, the treatment of Jewish
religious objects was explicitly ideological in purpose, as was the destruc-
tion of the interwar Yugoslav kingdom’s monuments. The Banat land-
scape was refashioned to more closely resemble Nazi Germany, so the
Banat German leadership and its supporters could better reconcile their
vision of the Banat’s place in the Nazi New Order with the reality of the
Banat’s multiethnic heritage, within racial parameters that allowed
Serbs – but not Jews – a place in the Banat. Some of the Serbs’ cultural
legacy in the Banat was erased in World War II, yet most Banat Serbs
were fairly safe from persecution. The deportation of the Banat Jews and
the destruction of their monuments fit Norman M. Naimark’s argument
that the physical removal of a population and the removal of its physical
67
Egger, “Bericht über die Tätigkeit” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 97, p. 30;
Debreceni deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 124; Kaločaji deposition (1945),
AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 131.
68
Adam interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
69
Yugoslav War Crimes Commission memo, deposition of Matija Frankel from
Grosskikinda, and deposition of Vojislav Knežević from Grosskikinda, August 4, likely
1945, AJ, fund 110, box 676, p. 511; deposition of Zoltan Bekaši from Werschetz,
March 28, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 676, p. 473; deposition of Lujza Bukovac from
Pantschowa, April 4, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 132; deposition of Petar Đorđević
from Pantschowa, May 26, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 147; Kaločaji deposition
(1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 131; Veljčin deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691,
p. 119; Vajs interview, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute.
180 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

traces from the landscape could serve as a precursor to and tip over into
mass murder.70
At a meeting on May 14, 1941, two weeks before the proclamation of
the new legal constraints imposed on Jews and Roma in Serbia-Banat,
Felix Benzler signaled the German Foreign Ministry’s interest in racial
and economic issues by recommending that “capable ethnic Germans or
reliable Serbs [sic]” be appointed commissars for Aryanized property.71
While Aryanization in Serbia-Banat remained within Franz Neuhausen’s
purview, in the Banat, ethnic Germans with a background in bookkeep-
ing, teaching, administration, and banking became officially empowered
to look after and sell Jewish businesses and homes, under the implicit
assumption that the Jews would not be coming back to reclaim their
property.72
Some commissars exerted themselves with a zeal born of ideological
conviction or an abstract sense of duty and balked at having to sell off
plundered properties, because they had been plundered, not because they
had belonged to deported Jews. Others saw in their appointment a duty
only to their own pocketbooks, with numerous possibilities for corruption
and legalized robbery. An ethnic German from Deutsch Elemer became
a commissar for a wood trade in Melenz in order to pay off his personal
debts and employ his adult children. Former employees and apprentices
stole or sold off the inventory of Jewish stores, then applied for liquidation
and pocketed the proceeds, or opened their own stores stocked with
stolen goods. An ethnic German butcher from Grossbetschkerek
attracted his co-nationals’ loathing when, as commissar for a leather-
goods factory, he consistently failed to provide shoes even to ethnic
Germans with the right ration card, while using the factory’s inventory
to curry favor with Reich Germans attached to the town’s District
Command Post. Eventually he resorted to robbing leather-goods stores
owned by Serbs, after his own stock had run low.73

70
Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe
(Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 3–5.
71
Benzler to Helmut Förster, May 1941, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file
Belgrad 62/6, no page number.
72
“Verordnung zur Ergänzung der Verordnung betreffend die Juden und Zigeuner,”
Verordnungsblatt des Militärbefehlshabers Serbien, July 25, 1941, p. 138; “Postavljanje
komesara Pančevačkoj tekstilnoj industriji,” Službene novine, August 26, 1941, p. 13;
“Aktennotiz über eine Besprechung wegen der Erfassung (Verwertung) des
Judenvermögens im ehemals serbischen Banat,” September 7, 1942, PA AA, Deutsche
Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 62/6, p. E422,516; deposition of Vilhelm Prohaska
from Pantschowa, June 8, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, pp. 148–151; deposition of Julije
Saueresig from Pantschowa, June 11, 1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, pp. 152–153.
73
Gemeindeamt Melenz to Vizebanusamt Grossbetschkerek, August 17, 1941, AJ, fund
110, box 663, pp. 38–39; testimony of Wilma Slavik from Grossbetschkerek, March 31,
 Aryanization 181

Although Aryanization in the Banat was plagued by corruption,

a dearth of competent personnel, and imperfect bookkeeping, various
German offices in Belgrade commended the Banat German leadership
and its appointed commissars for their professional and ideological
dedication. Sepp Janko earned special praise from Neuhausen for his
early efforts to prevent the misappropriation of Aryanized property.
Three ethnic Germans were arrested for gross plunder during the depor-
tation of the Jews from Pantschowa – and released after barely three weeks
due to lack of evidence, possibly because their arrests were meant
primarily to scare others into coming forward and admitting their own
misconduct involving Jewish property. Orders for property obtained by
“wild” Aryanization to be turned in without punishment apparently met
with much positive response among the Banat Germans.74 Moreover, in
spring 1942, the Banat German leadership started to remedy the fact that
real estate had been Aryanized for a pittance. In Pantschowa, Jewish
houses had been sold for as little as one-quarter of their value.
The Banat German administration compelled the new owners to pay
additional property taxes.75
Sepp Janko also took official steps toward regulating – approving after
the fact rather than preventing – private enrichment by ethnic German
officials. He stipulated that any member of the ethnic German adminis-
tration who wished to take on a leading role in an economic enterprise
had to get Janko’s permission and keep administrative duties separate
from private economic pursuits. Janko’s ostensible intention was to
prevent the Banat administration from becoming liable for any debts
incurred by individual ethnic Germans who (mis)managed Aryanized

1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 153, pp. 1–2; Borivoj Utvić from Grossbetschkerek
accuses Kornelije Harle from same, October 24, 1944, AJ, fund 110, box 676, p. 299;
Bukovac deposition (April 1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 132.
74
Zöller to Einsatzgruppe der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in Belgrade (1941), Arhiv
Beograda, Registar imena, file J-167, pp. 5–6; Gramsch memo, April 6, 1943, PA AA,
Inland II D, file R 100614, fiche 1, fr. 29; Neuhausen to Gramsch, “Liquidation
des jüdischen Vermögens in Serbien,” April 30, 1943, PA AA, Deutsche
Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 62/6, pp. E422,522 and E422,527–528; Gurski,
“Treuhandverwaltung und Judenvermögen” (1945), NARA, RG 242, T-75, roll 53, frs.
560–561; deposition of Nada Janković from Pantschowa, January 11, 1945, AJ, fund
110, box 691, p. 100.
75
“Meldungen aus dem Reich” (November 1941), BA Berlin, R 58, file 166, fiche 1, fr. 38;
Feldkommandantur 610 to Kreiskommandantur 823, March 1, 1942, NARA, RG 242,
T-75, roll 68, fr. 576; “Aktennotiz über eine Besprechung wegen der Erfassung
(Verwertung) des Judenvermögens” (1942), PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad,
file Belgrad 62/6, p. E422,516–517; Geissler, “Über die soziale Lage der Volksdeutschen
im serbischen Banat” (1943), BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 29277/a, p. 146; Gurski,
“Treuhandverwaltung und Judenvermögen” (1945), NARA, RG 242, T-75, roll 53, frs.
517–518, 563–565.
182 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

property.76 As an attempt to protect Banat German leaders from accu-

sations of corruption, this order rather lacked teeth, since all it did was
affirm the possibility of material profit, provided one could juggle per-
sonal enrichment with service to the community.
Some Banat Germans objected to Aryanization, usually because it was
not done as they thought it should be done or because they had not got
what they perceived as their fair share. Moral objections to Aryanization
and the general treatment of the Jews were rare.
Some ethnic Germans expressed resentment because well-off people
bought Aryanized houses rather than leave them for poor families.77 Yet
even the poorest ethnic Germans had the opportunity to obtain property
they would not have been able to afford at normal prices, whether they
helped themselves to Jewish property before or during the deportation, or
bought it directly from an Aryanized house or at a public auction.
One ethnic German from Deutsch Elemer bragged to acquaintances
that he had amassed so much clothing, shoes, and underclothes from
the deported Jews’ belongings that his whole family was set for life.
A married couple of modest means were proud of a good deal they got
on expensive furniture and clothes, which had belonged to a Jewish
banker. They did feel sufficiently ashamed to assure their neighbor,
herself a Jew, that they would give it all back if the former owner ever
came back.78
In late 1942, an elderly ethnic German from Grossbetschkerek, who
used to be employed as caretaker of the town’s Jewish cemetery,
demanded compensation for his loss of livelihood, caused by the depor-
tation of the Banat Jews. He considered it only natural that compensa-
tion should derive from the Aryanized property of the former Jewish
community in Grossbetschkerek. He reasoned that he had worked for
the Jews his entire adult life and was not personally responsible for their
removal from the Banat. Wherever he turned, he saw people younger
and richer than himself appropriating, without qualms, objects and real
estate that had belonged to the Jews, so he decided to follow the

76
Sepp Janko, “Anordnung des Volksgruppenführers über die Genehmigungspflicht für
die Ausübung von Wirtschaftsfunktionen durch Amtswalter der Deutschen
Volksgruppe,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, March 1, 1942, p. 8.
77
Feldkommandantur 610 to Kreiskommandantur 823 (1942), NARA, RG 242, T-75, roll
68, fr. 575.
78
Deposition of Roza (Rozalija) Švarcer from Pantschowa, March 3, 1945, AJ, fund 110,
box 691, p. 117; deposition of Milica Kolarović from Pantschowa, March 3, 1945, AJ,
fund 110, box 691, p. 118; deposition of Jozefina Bergman from Pantschowa, January 12,
1945, AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 103; Unterreiner testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 17, file 8, p. 74.
 Aryanization 183

prevailing zeitgeist. The Banat German administration supported his

demand for compensation.79
Whatever their opinion of the Jews and Nazi ideas about the Jews, in
most Banat Germans the physical absence of the Jews after summer 1941
produced an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. Though they may not
have considered themselves anti-Semites, the Banat Germans accepted
Aryanization as a matter of course, a part of the altered circumstances of
their lives, which benefited them and confirmed their elevated position in
their home region.
Despite some postwar claims to the contrary,80 the Banat Germans had
a good notion of what had happened to the Jews, since so many witnessed
or participated in the Jews’ persecution and profited from Aryanization
with the underlying assumption that no one would reclaim Jewish
property at a later date. An expellee from Kudritz implicitly confessed
how much he had known and understood, when he recounted after the
war how, while purchasing an Aryanized house in Belgrade, he enquired
after the previous owner’s signature on the sale agreement, only to be told
that the previous owner was “certainly no longer living [er sicher nicht
mehr lebe].”81
Indirect as this admission of knowledge about mass murder was, such
oblique statements, the sounds of gunfire, and the tales of passersby and
Romany gravediggers from the Apfeldorf road, and the sight and sounds
of the gas van driving through the streets of Belgrade made the Holocaust
a tangible presence in the lives of ethnic Germans and other local
residents. The Banat Germans were mostly peripheral to the physical
destruction of the Banat Jews, yet by appropriating the Jews’ belongings
and destroying their cultural monuments the Banat Germans played a key
role in efforts to erase the Jewish presence and legacy from the Banat’s
physical and mental landscape.
The SS and its militarized wing, the Waffen-SS, had their own interest
in Aryanization in the Serbian Banat. At the same time as the Banat
Germans were recruited into the Waffen-SS, other ethnic Germans
were being resettled to Poland and given land expropriated from Jews
and Poles, and Heinrich Himmler built up the Waffen-SS as a means to
increase his personal power within the Nazi regime and realize his goal of

79
Peter Kowenz to Kreisamt für Volkswirtschaft, November 30, 1942, NARA, RG 242,
T-75, roll 18, fr. 301; Zwirner to Neuhausen, December 2, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-75,
roll 18, fr. 300.
80
Keller testimony (no date), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 8, p. 45.
81
Welter testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 5.
184 The Holocaust (1941–1942) and Aryanization

a future Germanic East, settled by ethnic German peasant-soldiers,

veterans of the ongoing war.82
Starting in 1942, the Banat German leadership and Franz Neuhausen
sequestered any Aryanized real estate that remained unsold. Some of it
was to be kept in trust for ethnic German social, cultural, educational, and
recreational use. The rest was slated for ethnic German veterans, follow-
ing a Nazi victory.83 The underlying point with regard to ownership of
Aryanized property was clear: in order to enjoy material wellbeing and
security at the expense of other ethnicities, ethnic Germans had to do
more than claim kinship with the German Volk. They had to prove their
loyalty to the Third Reich and help win the war with weapon in hand, not
merely by delivering grain for the Wehrmacht and spreading Nazi ideol-
ogy through German-language schools.
Far from a perk the ethnic Germans enjoyed at the Nazis’ behest,
accepting Aryanized property rendered them even more vulnerable to
Nazi demands. Aryanization emphasized the ethnic Germans’ manifold
connections with the Nazi regime. Profoundly implicated in Nazi policies
by their acceptance of Aryanized property and arable land expropriated
from the Banat Serbs and their participation in the ethnic German admin-
istration, police, and organized persecution of the Jews, the Banat Germans
could hardly refuse Hitler and Himmler’s call to arms in spring 1942.

82
Robert L. Koehl, RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 74.
83
Janko, “Anordnung des Volksgruppenführers über die Übertragung von jüdischen
Vermögen an Angehörige der Deutschen Volksgruppe,” Verordnungsblatt der
Volksgruppenführung, March 1, 1942, pp. 8–9; Luther to AA office in Belgrade, July 22,
1942, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 62/6, no page number;
“Aktennotiz über eine Besprechung wegen der Erfassung (Verwertung) des
Judenvermögens” (1942), PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 62/6,
pp. E422,517–518; Janko to Kreisleitung “Prinz Eugen,” November 2, 1943, Vojni
arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 5-III, doc. 55/II; Gurski, “Treuhandverwaltung
und Judenvermögen” (1945), NARA, RG 242, T-75, roll 53, frs. 568–569.
7 Ideology and Propaganda

Contrary to its apparent monolithic consistency, National Socialist ideology

meant different things to different groups of Germans. Valdis O. Lumans
has suggested that National Socialism united several themes that reso-
nated especially with the ethnic German experience, such as völkisch
nationalism; prejudice against Slavs, Jews, and communists; a sense of
exposure to a hostile environment as well as cultural and ethnic separation
from that environment; economic corporatism; and the idealization of the
peasant experience.1
Nazism provided the Banat Germans with a means to conceptualize,
interpret, and express their own understanding of World War II, the
meaning of Germanness, and their place in Hitler’s Europe. Their under-
standing of Nazi ideology matched core Nazi ideas: loyalty unto death to
Führer and Volk, emphasis on Volksgemeinschaft, anti-Semitism, a view
of Germany as the guardian of European culture and civilization.
In addition, the Banat German leadership used Nazi ideology and rheto-
ric to express themes of special local interest.
National Socialism among the ethnic Germans tapped into already
extant themes and concerns, molded them into a relatively consistent
system of thought, and exacerbated them. It built on elements of the
Banat Germans’ worldview, which predated the Nazi rise to power, to
become the dominant narrative of their historical experience. Despite the
censorship and narrative lacunae in the media, surviving sources reveal
major Banat German concerns and self-perceptions, articulated by means
of Nazified tropes and ideas.
The Banat Germans were preoccupied with the ambiguous concept of
Heimat (homeland), imbued with local-specific as well as national mean-
ing. The Banat Germans’ historical experience as peasants and soldiers
on the borders of the defunct Habsburg Empire was at the root of what
they saw as their uniqueness, but also their connection with the greater
German Volk and its war. Their somewhat forced pride in the Waffen-SS

1
Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, pp. 28–29.

185
186 Ideology and Propaganda

division “Prinz Eugen,” composed in large part of Banat Germans and

named after Eugene of Savoy, coexisted with their leaders’ claim that
armed service for the Third Reich was their only means of protection
against their enemies in Southeast Europe. The image they had of these
enemies was colored by strong animosity toward Slavs (especially Serbs)
and communists, which tended to carry more weight locally even than
anti-Semitism, seen by the Banat Germans as a larger, global issue.
The Banat German worldview was shaped by territorial separation
from their land of origin and romanticized memory of colonization and
hardship.2 Its hallmarks were efforts to preserve a unique group cultural,
linguistic, and ethnic sense of self, including the traditional association of
Germanness with both the soil (farming) and military service. Although
he was writing in the key of postwar apologia, Josef Beer accurately
pinpointed a certain “romance of the Reich [Reichsromantik],”
a sentimental attachment to an idealized ancestral homeland, which
skewed ethnic German perceptions. Beer argued that the average Banat
German “does not know the reality of the Reich; he is a peasant, and
a peasant does not travel.”3
The Banat Germans’ lack of experience with places beyond the Banat
and their idealized view of Germany enabled their leaders to more easily
cast ethnic German concerns and perceptions in a Nazi mold. At the same
time, the Banat German leadership used Nazism to justify the Banat
Germans’ new position of power and confirm their ties to the Third
Reich, and it instrumentalized Nazism to bolster its own dominant posi-
tion in the Banat German community.

Nazification of Discourse
How much any Germans – ethnic or those from the Reich – believed the
constant propaganda barrage directed at them remains a point of edu-
cated inference as well as analysis, since it touches on intimate thoughts
and behaviors. The pervasive social impact of Nazi propaganda among
Reich Germans has been demonstrated by Jeffrey Herf and Ian Kershaw.4
Wartime administrative reports from various Banat villages reveal that,
whatever their personal opinions, the Banat Germans listened to
German-language transmissions from Radio Belgrade and read the

2
Lyon, pp. 7–8.
3
Untitled Beer report (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 13, pp. 14, 15.
4
Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust
(Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2006); Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
 Nazification of Discourse 187

Belgrade German-language daily Donauzeitung as well as the Banater

Beobachter, the daily newspaper published in Grossbetschkerek and
modeled on the main Reich daily, the Völkischer Beobachter. Both were
subsidized by Nazi Germany and edited by people close to the Banat
German leadership.5
The first pages of every issue of the Banater Beobachter were devoted to
general war news transmitted from Berlin. War reporting in the Third
Reich emphasized German courage and victories, contrasted with the
enemy’s supposed material losses and inferior performance in the field.
German defeats were routinely downplayed or ignored.6
From this front-page focus on the Third Reich’s war as a matter of
universal interest for all Germans, the Banater Beobachter shifted to local
events, also refracted through a National Socialist lens. Under the head-
ing “Aus unserem Banat” (“From Our Banat”), page 5 usually contained
announcements of births, marriages, fatalities, and funerals, as well as
longer articles on issues of local interest such as charity drives and political
rallies. All emphasized the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft as a lived
reality in the Serbian Banat. Birth and marriage announcements referred
only to Banat Germans and stressed the men’s belonging to the Waffen-
SS division “Prinz Eugen” or the Deutsche Mannschaft. Only funerals of
fallen members of the Waffen-SS were announced. Despite the Banat
German leadership presiding over an ethnically mixed area, the idea of
a German (“our”) Banat dominated the propaganda discourse, reflecting
how the official adoption of Nazi tropes had helped place the Banat
Germans at the top of the administrative and ethnic hierarchy.
Nazism’s visible presence in the Banat found expression in various
public festivities and themed rallies, which took place on major
National Socialist holidays in all Banat towns and villages with substantial
ethnic German populations. These celebrations included the anniversary
of the Beer Hall Putsch (November 9, 1923), the anniversary of the Battle
of Langemarck in World War I, the memorial for deceased Hitler Youth
member Herbert Norkus as a symbol of youth’s National Socialist
5
Gemeindeamt Nakodorf to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, November 10, 1941, Istorijski
arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 398; Gemeindeamt Sankt Hubert to Landratsamt Gross-
Kikinda, December 9, 1941, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 1, p. 425; Opštinska
uprava Bašaid [Klein Kikinda] to Sresko načelstvo Velika Kikinda [Gross-Kikinda],
January 31, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda, fund 84, box 3, p. 458; Gemeindeamt
Charleville to Landratsamt Gross-Kikinda, February 6, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Kikinda,
fund 84, box 1, p. 465; Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda memo,
December 20, 1943, BA Berlin, R 55, file 890, fiche 1, fr. 17.
6
Representative headlines: “Der Wille der deutschen Führung diktiert den Verlauf des
Krieges. Wunschträume der Allierten, die sich nie erfüllen,” BB, October 12, 1942, p. 1;
“Roosevelts Friedenssabotage,” BB, January 20, 1943, p. 1; “Deutschland soll zerstückelt
werden. Was Juden den Briten als Kriegsziel vorgaukeln,” BB, January 25, 1943, p. 2.
188 Ideology and Propaganda

struggle, the anniversary of the Nazi “seizure of power” (January 30,

1933), and Adolf Hitler’s birthday (April 20, 1889).7
Anniversaries explicitly linked watershed events in the history of the
Third Reich with major events in ethnic German history, as when
the November 9, 1943, celebration in Belgrade was dedicated to both
the dead of the Beer Hall Putsch and fallen comrades from the ethnic
German community.8 Like the emphasis in the press on ethnic German
births and deaths to the exclusion of all others, Nazi holidays served to
impress observers of all ethnicities with visual symbols of the altered
balance of power. They also reminded the Banat Germans of the need
for ideological unity and group cohesion under the Nazi aegis.
Newspaper reports provided elaborate – and telling – descriptions of
the decorations and atmosphere at these celebrations. November 9, 1942,
was marked thus in Pantschowa:
In dark contrast to the blazing swastika flags framing the portrait of the Führer,
pylons with the death rune stood in the foreground [of the stage], crowned by the
black and silver sign of the Iron Cross, the symbol of courage and wholehearted
exertion to the last.9
Hitler’s birthday celebration in Grossbetschkerek on April 20, 1943, allowed
the Banat German leadership to demonstrate how, even far from Germany
proper, Germans formed a cohesive, harmonious, Nazified community:
[T]he town was dominated by the brown shirt and the uniforms of individual
organizations [Deutsche Mannschaft, Deutsche Jugend, Deutsche
Frauenschaft]. Everywhere large and small flags of the German Reich fluttered
from gables, lending the town a festive imprint, a joyous atmosphere.10
As the local stand-in for Hitler, Sepp Janko was arguably the highest
authority on National Socialist orthodoxy in the Banat. At the festive

7
“Feierstunde der Volksgruppe zum 9. November,” BB, November 10, 1942, p. 5; “Banat
feierte den 9. November,” BB, November 13, 1942, p. 3; “Gedenkstunde in Grosskikinda,”
BB, December 7, 1942, p. 5; “Herbert-Norkus-Feier der DJ,” BB, January 29, 1943, p. 5;
“Ortsnachrichten. Grossbetschkerek. Feierstunde zum 30. Januar,” BB, January 31, 1943,
p. 7; “Ortsnachrichten. Stefansfeld. Feier zur 10jährigen Wiederkehr der Machtergreifung
Adolf Hitlers,” BB, February 3, 1943, p. 5; “Eindrucksvolle Feierstunde am 30. Januar in
Franzfeld,” BB, February 4, 1943, p. 5; “Im Zeichen des Dankes und der Entschlossenheit.
Erhebende Feierstunde zum 30. Januar in Werschetz,” BB, February 6, 1943, p. 5;
“Feierstunde der OG. Betschkerek am Geburtstag des Führers,” BB, April 22, 1943, p. 5;
“Feierstunden zum Geburtstag des Führers in Kikinda . . . In Weisskirchen,” BB, April 24,
1943, p. 2.
8
“Wochenbericht, Südosteuropa,” November 4–11, 1943, BA Berlin, R 58, file 124, fiche
2, fr. 49.
9
“Banat feierte den 9. November,” BB, November 13, 1942, p. 3.
10
“Feierstunde der OG. Betschkerek am Geburtstag des Führers,” BB, April 22, 1943,
p. 5.
 Nazification of Discourse 189

closing of a training camp for young women doing their labor service in
Franzfeld in 1943, he emphasized sacrifice of individual interest to group
need, dutifulness, and the all-German national effort as experiences that
the Banat Germans shared with Reich Germans:
We must all be able to say: I am making the struggle for life [Lebenskampf] easier.
As national comrades [Volksgenossen], we must show that we desire no separate
destiny, rather that we are a part of the German Volk charged with the protection
of this region. . . . Like the links of a chain, every national comrade must be
included in the protection of the entire Volk. . . . [I]n this, the fourth year of the
war, every one of us will fulfill his duty.11
As proof of the entire community’s devotion to the Nazi cause – and in
order to compel everyone to play their part in the Nazified community –
the Banat German leadership organized an endless round of donations
and collection drives, to which ethnic Germans were encouraged to
contribute in no uncertain terms. In May 1943, the leadership bragged
that average per capita sums yielded by various Nazi charity drives in the
Banat outstripped the averages collected in the Third Reich.12
Also in 1943, on the second anniversary of the German invasion of
Serbia, Sepp Janko concluded a speech delivered on Radio Belgrade by
likening the start of the German occupation to the New Year as
a symbolic anniversary, which marked the end of one life cycle and the
beginning of another:
The future finds us well-prepared and ready for anything. We have the Führer’s
orders and enter the new year [sic] with the motto: ours is the work and the
bread, ours is the sacrifice and the victory! [emphasis in the original]13

In numerous speeches, Janko and other Banat German leaders used

National Socialism as an ideology in its own right but also as a vehicle
for self-assertion. Constant reminders of the Banat Germans’ supposed
superiority over other local ethnic groups, their duty to the Volk as
embodied by the National Socialist movement, and their role in Hitler’s
war allowed the leadership to confirm its position within the community
but also to project the image it desired the Banat Germans to have of
themselves. Banat German leaders skillfully used Nazi tropes to talk
about the Banat Germans’ impact on the landscape, their history,
devotion to their home area, and uniqueness, as well as their perceived

11
Josef Zich, “Der Volksgruppenführer sprach in Franzfeld. Dorfabend zum Abschluss des
Lagers der Arbeitsmaiden,” BB, February 17, 1943, p. 5.
12
“Opferleistungen der Deutschen Volksgruppe. Reichsdurchschnitt stellenweise
übertroffen,” BB, May 9, 1943, p. 2.
13
“Die Rede des Volksgruppenführers im Sender Belgrad,” BB, April 11, 1943, p. 7.
190 Ideology and Propaganda

ties to the greater German Volk, in ways that combined the Banat
Germans’ preexisting preoccupations with Nazified perceptions.

Home
Much like “Volk,” the German concept of “Heimat” implies a strong emo-
tional attachment not captured by the English translation “homeland.”
Closer to the idea of a national home, a haven for an entire nation, in the
first half of the twentieth century, this concept blurred the distinction
between nationality and regionalism, the universal and the local, and was
eventually hijacked by the Nazi movement as coterminous with racialized
notions of German nationhood.14 To ethnic Germans during the Nazi
period, however, Heimat meant more than just Germany within its
contemporary borders. The term also signified devotion to the ethnic
Germans’ areas of residence.
Heimat was a burning issue for the Banat Germans due to their histor-
ical experience of territorial separation from Germany, their legacy as
descendants of German-speaking colonists, and their heightened sense of
community separate from their Slavic neighbors. Surviving sources
suggest that the Banat Germans fully internalized the German nationalist
idea of themselves as pioneers in a distant land. In this context, use of the
term “Heimat” signified belonging to a great cultural tradition as well as
a great nation. In the words of Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn, the Romanian
German poet and novelist of the interwar period, whose works were
popular among ethnic Germans throughout Southeast Europe: “Our
Heimat is our mother tongue, our German customs and culture,
our folk songs and fairy tales, our Heimat is our history, the
conscious connection we have with the great German people,
[which is] our common mother. [emphasis in the original]”15
Heimat also meant possession and cultivation of the land on which the
ethnic Germans lived, literally an earthy attachment. This attachment to
Heimat in the narrow sense (the Banat) was reinterpreted through
National Socialist ideology. Speaking in 1941 about his listeners’ ances-
tors, who had settled in the Banat in the eighteenth century, Sepp Janko
strikingly compared people to plants, which could only thrive in familiar
soil: “People were not resettled [ausgesiedelt] out of the Reich; they were
simply transplanted [verpflanzt] from one part of the Reich to another.”16

14
Applegate, pp. 4, 18–19, 197–227.
15
Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn quoted in Wilhelm Albert, ed., Deutsches Volk auf fremder
Erde. Auswahl aus volksdeutschem Schrifttum, Vol. 1: Deutschtum jenseits der
Reichsgrenzen (Leipzig: Verlag Ernst Wunderlich, 1936), p. 92.
16
“Volksdeutsche Grosskundgebung in Belgrad” (1941) in Janko, Reden, p. 67.
 Home 191

In Janko’s version of the Banat German past, a mystical connection

between the people and the soil predated and made possible this trans-
plantation of populations between places already claimed for Greater
Germany, defined by its people rather than its political borders.
The imagery suggested that any area settled by Germans and altered by
their presence became a part of Greater Germany, while denying the
newly settled area’s original, fundamental otherness. By portraying the
Banat’s colonization by German-speakers as natural, Janko also down-
played a theme otherwise emphasized in Banat German propaganda: the
hard work and sacrifice generations of German-speakers had put into
making the Banat the prosperous area it became by the early 1940s.
Johannes L. Schmidt, the editor of the regular wartime broadcast
Volksdeutsche Stunde (Ethnic German Hour) on Radio Belgrade, called
this a “Heimat in the heart, which distinguishes a true German wherever
he may live.”17 Heimat was a place, a state of being, a historical legacy, an
emotional state, and a marker of ethnic distinction, all at once.
Heimat was, thus, an ambiguous term, compassing not only the Banat
as the only real home its ethnic Germans knew, but also – to borrow
Benedict Anderson’s phrase – the imagined community of all Germans.18
Heimat in the narrow sense was the fruit of ethnic German community
life and exposure to German history and tales, a spiritual inoculation
against the pernicious influences of schooling and socializing with non-
Germans. Propaganda encouraged the Banat Germans to emphasize
differences from and downplay similarities with their non-German
neighbors.
The Banat German leadership combined emphasis on the traditional
pride ethnic Germans took in their achievements as peasants and bearers
of Germanness on the ethnic borders of the Greater Reich with a sense of
physical homecoming to Greater Germany. In his 1943 radio speech
commemorating the second anniversary of the April War, Sepp Janko
clarified: “We have become equal members of our German Volk. . . .
In these two fatefully difficult and eventful years, we [the ethnic
Germans and the Third Reich] have melted together to such a degree
that we have become one.”19
As the individual had to become part of the community –
a commonplace in Nazi ideology and rhetoric – so Heimat in the narrow
sense had to be integrated in the Greater Reich through occupation

17
“Wachse in uns, Heimat!” in Johannes L. Schmidt, Volksdeutsche Stunde. Eine Auswahl
aus Rundfunk-Feierstunden (Betschkerek: Buchreihe der Deutschen Volksgruppe im
Banat und in Serbien, 1943), p. 85.
18
Anderson, passim.
19
“6. April 1943,” radio speech delivered on April 6, 1943, in Janko, Reden, p. 170.
192 Ideology and Propaganda

and/or annexation as well as shared ideology and nationality. The Banater

Beobachter’s Christmas 1942 issue emphasized this idea of two concepts
of Heimat becoming one. Revealing inadvertently the provincial insular-
ity of people for whom the possession of and group listening to a radio
were momentous events, it conveyed the importance to ethnic Germans
of radio broadcasts from Germany:
We cared not only to hear what was said, far more that the words were meant for
us, that we who stand on the outposts of the Reich were remembered. I shall never
forget the words of an old peasant, who had lived in the Banat his whole life.
Moved by the Christmas address on the radio, he took off his hat and stammered:
“Listen to that! Germany is speaking to us!” Then, his eyes glowing with a new
light, he added, “I am so happy to have experienced this.”20
The desire to prove that ethnic Germans and their areas of settlement
were as much a part of the Greater Reich as Germany itself tapped into
the ethnic Germans’ awareness that Germans from the Reich continued
to see them as lesser Germans. Georg Peierle, head of the Banat’s Culture
Section, wrote in summer 1943: “Where is the Reich? Wherever Germans
are! Borders can no longer cleave apart the great spiritual and cultural
community of our Volk!”21 Furthermore, Peierle claimed that, since the
unification of all Germans under National Socialist auspices and
Germany’s territorial expansion, the term “Volksdeutsche” no longer
stood for supposedly second-class Germans. For Peierle, adopting the
Nazi idea of a unified Volksgemeinschaft meant full equality between
ethnic Germans and Germans from the Reich.
Johannes L. Schmidt added: “[W]e ought to be proud of the fact that
we are ‘just’ ‘Volks-’Deutsche – for it was not given to everyone to be such
a one.”22 He even implied that ethnic German achievements were the
greater because they did not have German state borders, law, and culture
to help them preserve their Germanness over the centuries. Schmidt did
not actually come out and say this, for such a statement would have
confirmed the division of the Volk into “better” and “worse” Germans,
which the Banat German leadership was trying to extirpate once and
for all.
Peierle and Schmidt protested too much. Their dogged assertions of
ethnic German equality with Reich Germans come across as defensive.
The ethnic German leadership was aware of the difference between the
Banat Germans’ self-perception and how Germans from the Reich

20
Sepp Kucht, “Volksdeutsche Weihnacht,” BB, December 25–27, 1942, p. 6.
21
Georg Peierle, “Johannes L. Schmidt: ‘Volksdeutsche Stunde’,” BB, August 29–30,
1943, p. 3.
22
“Lob des Deutschtums im Südosten” in Schmidt, p. 20.
 Home 193

perceived them. Schmidt admitted that ethnic Germans both relished

and feared visits from the Third Reich, since these enhanced the sense of
community across state borders yet might reveal the ethnic German way
of life and manner of speech as not up to German standards.23
Texts in the Banater Beobachter usually described their readers as
Germans (Deutsche), Swabians (Schwaben), or simply “us” (uns). Even
so, they distinguished clearly between their readers and German citizens,
underlining the Banat Germans’ profound attachment to the Banat and
their awareness of the contempt in which they were held by many Reich
officials as not quite German enough.
While they sometimes claimed the Banat as a primordial Germanic
area,24 the Banat Germans tended to emphasize their documented
historical presence in the region. The German-speaking settlers’ efforts
to make a depopulated, pestilential area livable and prosperous formed
the core of a romantic historical myth summed up in the proverb: “For the
first [generation] – death, for the second – poverty, for the third only –
bread! [Für die ersten der Tod, für die zweiten die Not und erst für die
Enkel das Brot!]”25
The idea that the land was made German through German labor and
sacrifice tied notions of natural fruitfulness and bounty to an understand-
ing of cultivation as a sign of modernity, progress, and racial superiority
over the region’s non-German inhabitants. It reflected a core ambiguity in
the Nazi worldview: the tension between an idealized view of the past and
racialized optimism about the future.26 The idealized ethnic German past
became a means to confirm Banat Germans’ perceived ties to their
ancestral homeland as well as their separation from other ethnic groups
in their surroundings and their anticipated integration into the Volk.
It also elided the complexity of their historical group identities (ethnic,
national, regional, religious, social, linguistic, cultural) into a straightfor-
ward narrative of national cohesion and triumph in a foreign land.

23
“Lob des Deutschtums im Südosten” in Schmidt, pp. 13–14.
24
The pride of the Werschetz Heimatmuseum (today Gradski muzej Vršac), founded by
the ethnic German Felix Milleker, was a Bronze Age statue of a bird-headed idol in
a chariot, found near the village of Duplaja. The idol being decorated with swastikas was
taken as proof of the existence of a great ancient area inhabited by Germanic peoples.
“Das Hakenkreuz im Banat vor 3000 Jahren,” Volkswacht, October 18, 1942, p. 5.
25
Mentioned in “Prinz-Eugen-Feier in Grosskikinda,” BB, August 19, 1942, p. 5, and
“Das Banat,” Völkischer Beobachter, March 28, 1944, BA Berlin, R 8034 II, vol. 4780,
p. 38.
26
David Blackbourn, “‘The Garden of Our Hearts’: Landscape, Nature, and Local Identity
in the German East” in Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-
Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930, ed. David Blackbourn and James Retallack
(Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 150–158.
194 Ideology and Propaganda

Banat German ideologues saw the area settled by German-speaking

peasants in the eighteenth century as a tabula rasa waiting to be imprinted
with a specific national or racial character. Articles in the Banater Beobachter
called the readers’ ancestors “culture pioneers [Kulturpionier]” and
“colonizers [Kolonisator]” creating a “living space [Lebensraum]” for their
children.27 Distinguished by their courage and diligence, they had made the
Banat an extension of Germany because the soil had soaked up the
colonists’ blood and sweat. They also did their duty as pioneers by setting
a high standard of living, diligence, and cleanliness to their non-German
neighbors and by making the Banat “blessed” and “fruitful,” a “corn-
producing area of inestimable value for our Reich.”28 Their ties to the
land were both physical and metaphysical, blood-related and symbolic.
In addition to emotionally charged panegyrics to the peasant experi-
ence, Banat German propaganda emphasized hard work in service to
Germany. “It is not necessary to speak to my Volk on the land of work,
for work is my Volk’s first prayer, an inerasable sign on the forehead of
every German in this region,”29 proclaimed a radio broadcast urging the
Banat German peasant to produce ever more food for the Third Reich’s
war effort. The quasi-religious imagery translated the duty to work into an
obverse Mark of Cain, a self-evident positive trait. This appealed espe-
cially to the more conservative and religious ethnic Germans and lent the
peasant’s habitual identification with manual labor an aura of the sacred,
likened it to a god-given duty.
National Socialism’s appeal to the ethnic German peasant stemmed
from its romanticization of the rural existence as one of rewarding hard
work, virtue, and pastoral simplicity. The peasant as a social bulwark
against the evils of liberalism and communism was a trope that fed the
Banat Germans’ sense of self-importance, by making them the supposed
backbone of social order and national harmony as articulated by Nazi
ideology.30 Yet the dominant myth of Banat German history was not
solely that of a prosperous, peaceful peasantry – it was also one of constant
watchfulness and combat against the ethnically foreign elements in
the area.
The SS wed the idea of racial regeneration in the East to the ideal of
a healthy, militarized peasantry in the Sword and Plow (Schwert und
Pflug) policy, developed in 1940–1941, during preparations for

27
“Der fleissige Schwabe,” BB, August 14, 1942, p. 5.
28
Sepp Wildner, “Das deutsche Gesicht,” BB, July 30, 1943, p. 5.
29
“Unser täglich Werk gib uns heute” in Schmidt, p. 73.
30
Adolf Hitler quoted in Sepp Janko, ed., Kalender der Deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und
in Serbien für das Jahr 1943 [henceforth Kalender] (Grossbetschkerek: Banater Druckerei
und Verlagsanstalt Bruno Kuhn und Komp., 1943), p. 14.
 Home 195

Operation Barbarossa.31 Its counterpart among the Banat Germans was

the ideal of the ethnic German as not merely a peasant (Bauer), but
a peasant soldier (Bauer-Soldat, Wehrbauer), which harkened back to
the ethnic Germans’ erstwhile role on the Habsburg Military Border.
Especially resonant was the example set by Eugene of Savoy, routinely
described in the Banat German press as the “noble knight” and the
“father of our homeland,” who “stands at the beginning of our history,”
a model for all toiling and fighting Banat Germans.32 Eugene of Savoy as
the perfect Christian knight fighting the besieging Ottomans evoked
imagery similar to the SS’s choice of the biblical reference to swords
and plowshares – a melding of religious, nationalist, and Nazi symbols.
The Banat Germans’ sentimental attachment to Eugene of Savoy
predated National Socialism. In their folktales, the Habsburg general
featured as a Messianic figure bringing liberty and the promise of salva-
tion to a land overrun by Turkish heathens. Like Moses, he opened
springs of fresh water in a parched landscape. His armies slaughtered
the enemy by the thousands.33
Under Nazi occupation, Eugene of Savoy gained additional signifi-
cance. Sepp Janko produced the following biased account of the founding
of the Military Border:
Prince Eugene was the one who realized that one of the most dangerous portals for
invasion out of the East must be closed once and for all in this very area, in order to
preserve the Reich from further attacks. Therefore, he strove to have peasants
settled here, peasants who knew how to use both plow and sword. . . . He knew
that only German peasants could be settled in such a polluted region, menaced by
enemies from within and without, the very peasants who made this land into what
it is today – the granary of Europe.34
In this account, the “noble knight” of mythologized history became an
early precursor of the Nazi project to unite all racial Germans in a Greater
Reich – a patently anachronistic understanding of a man whose primary
loyalties were dynastic and religious rather than nationalist or racial.
By association with Eugene, the Banat Germans could consider

31
Jürgen Förster, “Die weltanschauliche Erziehung in der Waffen-SS. ‘Kein totes Wissen,
sondern lebendiger Nationalsozialismus’” in Ausbildungsziel Judenmord? “Weltanschauliche
Erziehung” von SS, Polizei und Waffen-SS im Rahmen der “Endlösung,” ed.
Jürgen Matthäus, Konrad Kwiet, Jürgen Förster, and Richard Breitman (Frankfurt:
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2003), p. 96.
32
“Prinz Eugenius der edle Ritter,” Volkswacht, August 16, 1942, p. 1.
33
“Prinz Eugen bei Zenta,” “Prinz Eugen, der Streiter des Herrn,” and “Der Prinz-Eugen-
Brunnen” in Donauschwäbische Sagen, Märchen und Legenden, ed. Hans Diplich and
Alfred Karasek (Munich: Verlag Christ Unterwegs, 1952), pp. 23–24.
34
“Zur Prinz-Eugen-Feier des Kreises Donau,” speech held in Pantschowa on August 15,
1941, in Janko, Reden, p. 77.
196 Ideology and Propaganda

themselves trailblazers. Their leaders adopted and elaborated the

message propagated by the SS and the Nazi regime, and posited the
ethnic Germans as an idealized community of peasants and soldiers (or
peasant soldiers):
[T]he idea of soldier peasantry was born in the SS. Men of the Waffen-SS, who
know their way equally well around a weapon and a plow, will be settled on the
Reich’s borders. They will create the best bulwark against penetration by foreign
peoples and ideologies. The soldier peasantry will form the safest foundation for
the racial build-up and the future of the German Volk.35
A cult of personality surrounding Eugene of Savoy flourished in occupied
Serbia-Banat, since the ethnic Germans saw their occupation by the
German army as a liberation. The ethnic German community in
Belgrade was organized officially into County (Kreis) “Prinz Eugen.”
The 225th anniversary of Eugene’s final expulsion of the Ottomans from
South Hungary in 1717 was celebrated with great pomp in 1942. The
following year, an ethnic German cast performed a play about the
Habsburg general’s Balkan campaign, written by a member of the Waffen-
SS division “Prinz Eugen,” at the National Theater in Belgrade.36
The walls of the soldiers’ rest home in Pantschowa were decorated with
scenes from the romanticized version of ethnic German history: from
Eugene’s triumphant campaign, through the arrival of the first settlers,
to the unification of the roles of peasant and soldier during the Military
Border’s existence. The last mural showed three generations of an ethnic
German family in a freshly plowed field: an old man, his adult son eagerly
saluting a recruitment officer on horseback, and the little grandson
saluting like his father. The painting illustrated the proverb about the
three generations needed to transform a pestilential wasteland into
a fertile, cultivated landscape and drew a parallel between the continuity
of the seasons in a peasant’s life and the continuity between generations.
Overlooking all was a portrait of Adolf Hitler, symbolically bringing the
ethnic Germans full circle, back to the German Reich.37
The advent of Nazism was supposed to be the high point of ethnic
German historical development. In 1943, the Banater Beobachter report
on the celebration of the Nazi regime’s tenth anniversary in the village of
Franzfeld stated: “The residents of Franzfeld have shown yet again . . .
how great their love is for the man who was and is our rescuer and
35
“Blut und Boden” in Janko, Kalender, p. 36.
36
“Prinz-Eugen-Feier in Grosskikinda,” BB, August 19, 1942, p. 5; Erich Queisser, “‘Prinz
Eugen in Belgrad.’ Eine Uraufführung im Belgrader National-Theater,” BB, March 3,
1943, p. 5.
37
Beer, “Aus dem Soldatenheim in Pantschowa. Bilder, die zu uns sprechen,” Volkswacht,
November 1, 1942, p. 4.
 Soldiers 197

liberator, who guides with determination and a sure hand the

fortunes of the German people, and leads us all into a new and
better future. [emphasis in the original]”38
Eugene of Savoy and Adolf Hitler served as the two signposts of
historical continuity in the Nazified version of Banat German history:
from settlement of German-speakers in the Banat to their political and
military triumph under Nazism. Ethnic Germans were supposed to feel
an especially strong connection to Hitler, who had lived outside
Germany’s borders and was, therefore, meant to understand the issues
facing ethnic Germans. Not daring to go so far as to claim Hitler was
himself an ethnic German, Sepp Janko asserted that Hitler at Germany’s
helm meant even more to ethnic Germans than to Reich Germans, since
the former’s need of him was implied to be greater.39
The Banat Germans tried, not entirely successfully, to reconcile their
strong attachment to Heimat in the narrow sense (Banat) with their sense
of belonging to a Greater Reich, the Volksgemeinschaft of all Germans.
The disparity between the two concepts of Heimat was compounded by
the ethnic Germans’ pride in their achievements as settlers and soldiers on
the former Military Border, and their awareness of the fact that many
Germans from the Third Reich continued to look down on them. Thus,
National Socialism as expressed by the Banat Germans confirmed the
ambiguity of their position in the Nazi racial hierarchy.

Soldiers
Like the Banat Germans, Germans from the Third Reich linked the
Banat’s place in Hitler’s Europe to Eugene of Savoy’s imperial coloniza-
tion project, interpreted as an early attempt at consolidating the German
Volk. A Foreign Ministry memo from November 1942 stated: “[T]he
importance of the former ‘Austrian Military Border’ . . . cannot be
overlooked in the politics of the Reich. Following the rebuilding of the
Greater German Reich, the historico-political means used by Reich
Marshal Prince Eugene regarding the incorporation of Southeast
Europe into Greater Central Europe seem particularly pertinent.”40
For the Third Reich to name the Waffen-SS division composed initially
of Banat Germans after Eugene of Savoy made sense as flattery to ethnic
German recruits as well as a reminder that Hitler’s war was the culmina-
tion of German history. Three themes dominated the official discourse
38
“Eindrucksvolle Feierstunde am 30. Januar in Franzfeld,” BB, February 4, 1943, p. 5.
39
“Rede zum Geburtstag des Führers,” April 20, 1942, in Janko, Reden, p. 120.
40
Abteilung Deutschland to Ribbentrop, November 5, 1942, quoted in Manoschek,
“Serbien ist judenfrei,” p. 27.
198 Ideology and Propaganda

regarding the division: the importance of volunteering for the Waffen-SS

as a visible marker of the volunteers’ Germanness; historical continuity
with the original German settlers, peasants, and border soldiers (Grenzer)
defending their villages; and defense of the Heimat in its narrow (Banat)
as well as its broad sense (Greater Reich) from a supposedly familiar,
proverbially savage, racially alien, and numerically superior enemy – the
Slavic Partisans.
Throughout the wartime print run of the Banater Beobachter, in Sepp
Janko’s speeches, and in other Banat German sources, the word “volun-
teer” (Freiwillige, sg. Freiwilliger) was used to describe all members of the
division “Prinz Eugen.” The fact that the Banat Germans were
conscripted en masse in spring 1942 had no impact on this propagandistic
sleight of hand: even Banat German recruits were purported to be
volunteers.
Janko’s deputy Josef Beer explicitly – and paradoxically – linked
volunteering to duty: “For the ethnic Germans, volunteering has become
a blood obligation and a debt of honor.”41 The notion that ethnic
Germans owed a debt of honor to Germany for the protection it extended
them in the form of Wehrmacht units occupying Serbia since April 1941
tied in with notions of the unbreakable racial bond linking all Germans
and warlike virtue as a mark of Germanness. In a November 1941 speech,
Sepp Janko said: “It is not only up to the Reich, but to us as well, to win
the war. . . . Whoever evades his duty is a coward. And no German
can be a coward. [emphasis in the original]”42
The leadership tried to make Waffen-SS service more acceptable to the
Banat Germans by invoking the supposed continuity of Germany’s wars
spanning time (from the Wars of Liberation from Napoleon, through
World War I and the Nazi struggle for power, to the millions who died
for Germany in the ongoing war) and space (the struggle against
communism in the Balkans was linked to the war in the East, especially
the example set by the German army at Stalingrad).43 The ethnic German
soldiers’ role model was again Eugene of Savoy, who had fought in the
Battle of Vienna (1683) as a young volunteer.44

41
Beer, “Aus dem Banater Boden gestumpft. Die Aufstellung und Ausbildung der SS-
Division ‘Prinz Eugen’. Eine traditionsgebundene Kampfgemeinschaft und ihr General,”
Donauzeitung, May 1–2, 1942, BA MA, N 756, file 149b, p. 1 of this document.
42
“Zur Volkskundgebung in Weisskirchen,” speech held on November 16, 1941, in Janko,
Reden, p. 99.
43
Untitled article in BB, February 7, 1943, quoted in “Aus Zeitschriften und Zeitungen,”
Nation und Staat, Vol. 6, March 1943, pp. 210–211; “Grosskundgebungen im Zeichen
des Siegeswillens,” BB, March 14, 1943, pp. 2, 6; “Heldengedenkfeier in Pantschowa.
Rekrutenvereidigung des SS-Geb.-Jäger-Btl. ‘Prinz Eugen’,” BB, March 24, 1943, p. 5.
44
Kumm, p. 13.
 Soldiers 199

Perceived continuity from Eugene of Savoy, through Habsburg-era

Grenzer, to Hitler and the ongoing war reinforced the image of the
brave volunteer as a true member of the Volksgemeinschaft. It legitimated
the introduction of a military service obligation for Banat Germans and
lent it an air of historical inevitability. With the coming of National
Socialism, the ethnic Germans were seen to have come of age, which
meant accepting the German soldier’s uniform, linking military service to
Germanness.45
The home front too received a lot of attention in propaganda, as the
backbone of the armed forces. Sepp Janko elaborated on the forms
sacrifice for the common cause of all Germans would take, emphasizing
the transition from the home front to frontline sacrifice. “Now is the time
for us to prove our will to live and our life strength. This means not only
material sacrifice, such as grain deliveries, donations for the German Red
Cross, collection of furs and suchlike, but also our readiness to aid the
Reich in achieving final victory by supporting it with weapon in hand.”46
The clear underlying message: the home front was important, but active
military service for Hitler was unavoidable.
At the same time as military service was depicted as inevitable and
obligatory, volunteering remained a constant refrain in propaganda,
encouraging Banat German civilians to give their all for the German
war effort. In the Banat, this meant likening the peasants’ hard work at
home to the risks taken by soldiers on the front: “Not only the soldier
fights for [victory], but also the Heimat. Not only the soldier endures
difficulties and hardship, but also the Heimat.”47
Representations of the war and the ethnic German soldiers’ role in it
positioned the ethnic German as the defender of his home and of the
Greater Reich. As was the case in propaganda produced in the Third
Reich, the home front was depicted in Banat German propaganda as
a natural extension of – yet separate from – the front lines.48 Sepp Janko
was eager to reassure Banat German soldiers who picked up a copy of the
Banater Beobachter or another official publication that “the Heimat will

45
“Kriegsweihnacht 1942,” published in Schaffende Jugend, Christmas 1942 edition, in
Janko, Reden, p. 137; “Wir stehen für den Krieg,” speech delivered on Radio Belgrade
on January 1, 1943, in Janko, Reden, p. 139.
46
“Einsatzbereitschaft im Banat. Schulungslager der Kreis- und Ortsbauernführer,”
Donauzeitung, March 12, 1942, p. 3.
47
“Aufruf zum Winterhilfswerk,” speech delivered on September 12, 1942, in Janko,
Reden, p. 136.
48
Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann, “‘A Sense of Heimat Opened Up during the War.’
German Soldiers and Heimat Abroad” in Heimat, Region, and Empire: Spatial Identities
under National Socialism, ed. Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann and Maiken Umbach
(Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 112–113, 115–116.
200 Ideology and Propaganda

not let them down, but will take care of their future and their families at
home, just as they who are on the front take care of the Heimat.”49
The leadership downplayed the violent nature of warfare in the regular
Banater Beobachter column “Front und Heimat” (“The Front and
Home”), in which Waffen-SS recruits could exchange messages with
their families at home. Photo spreads presented the life of a soldier as an
extended holiday in nature or, at worst, struggle against an invisible
enemy leading to effortless military triumph.50
Lest military service became associated with death, in September 1942,
Janko urged officials in Banat villages to submit uplifting articles for
publication. He even proposed suitable topics: fathers of grown sons,
preferably World War I veterans, offering to serve in “Prinz Eugen”
alongside their children; mothers of many children, their husbands
away at the war, bringing in the harvest with neighbors’ help. Janko
wished to depict the war as joy in active service to the Volk, self-
sacrifice, faith in National Socialism, and the militarized uprightness of
ethnic German civilians. He encouraged the myth of a Banat German
community rushing to volunteer so much that it was put about he had
been among the first to volunteer for service in “Prinz Eugen.”51
Starting in late 1942 and intensifying in 1943, as the Partisans became
better organized and more successful in their guerrilla activities, the
Banater Beobachter began to abound in funeral notices and obituaries for
members of the Waffen-SS division “Prinz Eugen,” the Deutsche
Mannschaft, the Banat police, and other armed formations, who had
been killed in combat. Death notices frequently emphasized that the
deceased had been a volunteer or the parent of volunteers and stressed
the ethnic German parents’ duty to raise soldiers willing to give their lives
for the Third Reich.52
These deaths under arms shocked Sepp Janko into briefly abandoning
his habitual tone of enforced optimism while addressing the ethnic
Germans at a rally in Franzfeld in early 1943. The newspaper report of
the rally mentioned Janko’s casually brutal remark: “Who knows . . .
whether the news of a death is not already on its way to some amongst

49
Janko, “Zumgeleit” in Janko, Kalender, p. 19.
50
Photo spreads in Volkswacht, June 14, 1942, pp. 3–4, and November 8, 1942, p. 3.
Photographs from the fighting in Bosnia – though no fighting was ever shown – can be
found in BB, March 15, 1943, p. 2; March 16, 1943, p. 1; March 17, 1943, p. 1;
March 24, 1943, p. 1; March 25, 1943, p. 1; April 5, 1943, p. 1; and April 14, 1943, p. 1.
51
Janko to all Ortsleiter, September 25, 1942, Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 131, folder
1942, doc 1161/42; Beer, “Aus dem Banater Boden gestumpft” (1942), BA MA, N 756,
file 149b, p. 1 of this document.
52
“Aus dem Banat. Tschestereg. Soldatenbegräbnis in Tschestereg” and “Aus dem Banat.
Deutsch-Etschka. Todesfall,” BB, July 2, 1942, p. 5.
 Soldiers 201

you.”53 Speaking at the funeral of two youths from the village of Boka in
summer 1943, Josef Beer tried to ease the mourners’ pain as well as pay lip
service to ideology by reaffirming the connection between the death of an
individual and the survival of the Volk: “Every little bit of land where
German heroes lie at peace in eternal sleep will be our homeland
[Heimatland], the soil which drank German blood will become our living
space [Lebensraum].”54
The idea of death in the war as supreme service to the Volk and ultimate
proof of the deceased soldier’s Germanness could only go so far as
a propaganda tool in the face of real human loss. Newspaper articles
and radio programs claimed that there was no such thing as the dead or
the yet unborn in the Volksgemeinschaft, but only the unity of the Volk in
an eternal present, the unbreakable cycle of seasons and generations.
The creation of the division “Prinz Eugen” was supposedly the point at
which “the Banat came alive.”55
Growth, warfare, and death were meant to be parts of a cycle, to bolster
ethnic Germans’ steadfastness in service to the Third Reich and make
their wartime losses bearable. The attempt to both celebrate youth and
glorify death was cold comfort for the grieving, so propaganda reverted to
agricultural metaphor, to which a peasant population could be receptive.
Soldiers’ graves became the “field and seed” of eternal victory, Germany
itself a wreath of flowers left on those graves.56 The dead soldier became
one with the soil his ancestors had cultivated, which would be cultivated
in the future by his descendants, ensuring the Heimat would bloom and
live on. Death was not the end, but an eternal beginning, a state of endless
potential.57
This imagery built on the idea of a savage, depopulated Banat made
fertile, civilized, and German through the labor and sacrifices borne by
generations of German peasants. This, in turn, tied in with the idea of soil
steeped in and sanctified by German blood: blood that unified the Volk
being shed for the Volk. The image of a bulwark of soldiers’ graves, which
surrounded Germany and was watched over by living soldiers, was
a graphic representation of the Banat German leadership’s siege

53
Zich, “Der Volksgruppenführer sprach in Franzfeld. Dorfabend zum Abschluss des
Lagers der Arbeitsmaiden,” BB, February 17, 1943, p. 5.
54
Josef Beer quoted in “Totenehrung in Boka,” BB, July 22, 1943, p. 5.
55
Beer, “Aus dem Banater Boden gestumpft” (1942), BA MA, N 756, file 149b, p. 1 of this
document.
56
Landesführung der Deutschen Mannschaft to all Ortseinheiten der Deutschen
Mannschaft, “Heldengedenktag – Richtlinien zur Gestaltung,” February 16, 1944,
Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin, fund 131, folder “Stabseinheit der Deutschen Mannschaft,”
doc. 31, p. 1 of this document.
57
“Gedenken der grossen Söhne” in Schmidt, pp. 45–46.
202 Ideology and Propaganda

mentality, engendered by desire for separation from their Slavic host

society and invigorated by their adoption of Nazi tropes.58

Bandits
In summer 1943, a propaganda officer with the division “Prinz Eugen”
sought to motivate new recruits by painting a terrifying image of the
wasteland their homes would become if overrun by the enemy:
The storm flood of the Jewish-Bolshevik plague would cover our homeland,
followed by death and annihilation [Vernichtung] in their most terrifying forms.
My comrades from the Banat, Croatia, Slovakia, Transylvania, and the Reich,
where your towns, villages, and farms flourish today, smoking piles of rubble
would stand. Death would look out of the windows from which your wives and
sweethearts greet you with joy. The threshold over which your siblings and
children tripped, coming to greet your homecoming with laughing eyes, would
no longer be there. Your weeping mother could no longer embrace you, for she
would have embraced death. All these people and everything you hold dear would
lie annihilated, mutilated, and dishonored beneath the rubble of what you call
house and homeland.59

The enemy who threatened to destroy Heimat and Volk was the majority
Slavic population of the Balkans, described in the Banat German press
occasionally as “sub-humans” (Untermenschen)60 but most frequently as
“bandits” (Banditen). The moniker applied to all resistance movements
in Yugoslav lands and the Soviet Union, revealing the frustration engen-
dered by an enemy who preferred guerrilla tactics to open warfare and did
not shy away from huge losses of civilian and combatant life, in order to
inflict damage on German forces and their allies.
Following the physical removal of the Banat Jews and in view of the
relative absence of Četnik activity, the Banat Germans’ understanding of
the enemy focused on the Partisans, “who hide out in the corn and
sunflower fields like wild animals, feeding at the expense of the peasants
who work those fields,” in Banat Police Prefect Franz Reith’s words.61
Most Partisans in the Yugoslav lands were of Serb and Montenegrin
descent. Banat German propaganda sometimes depicted the Partisans
as agents of Jewish and Russian Bolshevism, but the derogatory language
used to describe South Slavs (including the Partisans) emphasized their
58
“Heldengedenktag,” speech held on March 21, 1943, in Janko, Reden, pp. 159–160.
59
“Soldaten des Führers. Feierliche Vereidigung von Rekruten am Adolf-Hitler-Platz in
Betschkerek,” BB, June 8, 1943, p. 5.
60
Adam Paull, “Unserem toten Kameraden. Einst kommt der Tag der Rache. . .”, BB,
February 27, 1943, p. 2.
61
Reith to Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und Sicherheitsdienst in Grossbetschkerek,
September 11, 1942, AJ, fund 110, box 667, p. 75.
 Bandits 203

specifically Balkan backwardness and primitiveness, likening them to

savage beasts and rapacious, parasitic thieves.
Doris L. Bergen has argued that Nazi racial policy in the East saw the
true obverse of the Jew as not just the German but as the ethnic German.62
For the Banat Germans, the true antithesis of the orderly, hard-working
German was not so much the crafty Jew as the lazy, dirty, dishonest Slav,
an exponent of what Nazi propaganda termed the “Muscovite-Asiatic
flood” threatening to destroy European (German) civilization.63
Despite the ethnic Germans’ supposed racial and cultural superiority
over – or at least difference from – Slavs, as propagated by National
Socialism, most Banat Germans remained acutely aware that they were
a numerical minority in their home region and Southeast Europe in
general and that their wartime behavior could spark and intensify the
majority population’s animosity. For all their hysterical delusions about
the power of world Jewry and the Slavic “hordes,” most Reich Germans in
their home state had no comparable experience of vulnerability in a non-
German environment.
The Banat Germans expressed their vulnerability and fear of retribu-
tion by means of anti-Semitism and anti-Slavism. Their mixed feelings of
pride and fear became heightened after the division “Prinz Eugen” left
the Banat for Serbia proper in fall 1942, and then transferred to the
Independent State of Croatia in 1943. Thereafter, maintaining the
steadfastness of the home front and keeping the actual fighting away
from the Heimat (both the Banat and the Greater Reich) gained in
importance.
Local conditions in the Banat influenced the relative degrees of anti-
Semitism and anti-Slavism among the Banat Germans. Once the Banat
Jews were deported to Belgrade in August 1941 and murdered by late
spring 1942, their physical absence and the fact that their property was
speedily Aryanized produced a local sense of immunity vis-à-vis the
“Jewish enemy.” Anomalous as this may seem, given its centrality in the
Nazi worldview, anti-Semitism was most prominent in the Banater
Beobachter in articles taken from the Reich press. It was rarely the central
theme of texts written by the Banater Beobachter’s local contributors. This
is not to say that the paper was not anti-Semitic. It was,64 but it tended to
subsume anti-Semitism to or, at least, combine it with more pressing local

62
Bergen, “The Nazi Concept of ‘Volksdeutsche’,” pp. 570–571.
63
Erich Hoepner quoted in Förster in Matthäus et al., p. 100.
64
Johann von Leers, “Um das Blut der Nichtjuden. Der Bolschewismus ist ein einziger
Ritualmord der Juden,” article published in Völkischer Beobachter, reprinted in BB,
May 12, 1943, p. 6; “Weltpest Juda,” Volkswacht, June 27–28, 1943, p. 5.
204 Ideology and Propaganda

concerns: negative racial attitudes to the majority Slavic population and

growing fears of communist success in the war.
News from Serbia proper in the Banat German press consisted of brief
articles that illustrated the supposedly primitive nature of Balkan life-
styles. These stories portrayed the average Serbian peasant smallholder as
dishonest and greedy, superstitious and naïve, prone to criminality and
violence, incapable of a normal family life.65 Representative titles
included “Man Murdered by His Eighth Wife” and “Niece Breastfeeds
Her Own Uncle.”66
The ethnic German press only mentioned the Banat’s Slavic popula-
tion with relation to crime and the mandatory labor service. Even those
qualities that the ethnic Germans valued in themselves – devotion to
tradition, a vital folk art, resourcefulness in an unforgiving landscape –
became signs of hereditary laziness when displayed by Serbs. An article on
traditional Serbian peasant footwear (Serb. opanci, sg. opanak) discussed
it as a prime example of Serbian folk art and sense of tradition, but the
ironic tone lampooned these qualities as symptomatic of the Serbs’
stubborn resistance to change. Lest the point be lost on the reader, the
text ended with the assertion that Balkan influence in the German Banat
reached only as far as one encountered people wearing such shoes.67
For those ethnic Germans who did not read the newspapers, the point
was reiterated on the radio: ethnic Germans were a group unto
themselves, different from their non-German neighbors in countenance,
stature, bearing, thought, speech, music, even funerary customs. These
differences were the product of racial distinction and German work in the
Southeast, biology as well as willed human action. “Your ancestors’ work
in the German Danube region is a major achievement of German
blood . . . [W]e do not scoff at foreign peoples, we have simply never
underestimated our enemies and have always faced them like true
knights,”68 intoned one of Johannes L. Schmidt’s programs. The enemy
implicitly had been and remained less than knightly, in contrast to Eugene
of Savoy’s chivalrous inheritors, the Banat Germans.
Banat German propaganda posited the existence of a civilizational
border along the Danube, which served as a line of separation between
ethnicities and languages and helped create a sense of distance from the

65
“Abenteuer eines Greises,” BB, August 1, 1942, p. 6; “Der Taufpate war nicht
abergläubich,” BB, August 14, 1942, p. 6; “Überschlauen Milchpantscher,” BB,
August 18, 1942, p. 6; “Mordversuch an der Freundin,” BB, August 22, 1942, p. 6.
66
“Ein Mann von seiner achten Frau ermordet,” BB, September 3, 1942, p. 6; “Nichte
säugt den eigenen Onkel,” BB, November 8, 1942, p. 6.
67
Sepp Kucht, “Opanken,” Volkswacht, November 15, 1942, p. 5.
68
“Ein Wort über Ehre, Blut und Boden” in Schmidt, p. 55.
 Bandits 205

rest of Southeast Europe, reinforced by Nazified notions of blood (race)

and soil. Despite their numerical minority, the leadership encouraged the
Banat Germans to see their home area as purely German soil, part of the
greater Germanic Lebensraum, whereas everything south of the River
Danube supposedly remained as savage as it had been at the beginning of
German settlement in the eighteenth century.
The Banat German press reserved special contempt for Serbian cities,
particularly Belgrade, and mountainous Bosnia, a “land of terror
[Schreckensland],”69 the very antithesis of the flat, fertile Banat.
The attitude to Belgrade reflected a parochial mixture of awe of and
contempt for a metropolis. Belgrade was the place where a cacophony of
noise began early in the morning and drove the inhabitants to drink,
where streetcars did not so much run as “rattle along like a lightly
damaged armored train,” where, “like everywhere in the Balkans, even
the smallest work assignment is accompanied by a lot of fuss and noise.”70
Belgrade’s geographic position made it a “human mill between East and
West,”71 a second Babel in which languages and ethnicities mixed, and
only Germans managed to preserve their racial and national identity.
Similar sentiments permeated Wehrmacht soldiers’ letters written in
Serbia and the Banat during the invasion in 1941. These letters claimed
that Belgrade’s Jewish population was indistinguishable from the Slavs,
since the Jews of Serbia were highly assimilated, therefore not easily
recognizable as “racial Jews” (Rassejuden). If the Jews could not be
clearly and easily distinguished from other people, then all of Southeast
Europe struck the letter writers as “Jewified.”72 This reinforced the Nazi
notion that cultural differentiation and a degree of physical distance
between racial Germans and the Balkan “Other” were crucial, to prevent
the Germans from becoming tainted by their surroundings.
Even though the Banat German press stressed general racial mixing
and chaos – rather than Jewish influence – as the Balkans’ salient
characteristics, to invading Germans and ethnic Germans alike,
Belgrade represented everything negative about Southeast Europe.
These negative attitudes were compounded by the ambivalence toward
urban centers prominent in Nazi rhetoric, with its horror of racial mixing
and unrestrained modernity.

69
Karl Bier, “Deutsche Kulturträger in den bosnischen Bergen. Unbedankte Kulturarbeit
seit sechs Jahrzehnten,” BB, December 2, 1942, p. 4.
70
“Brief aus Belgrad,” Volkswacht, August 30, 1942, p. 5.
71
Franz Thaler, “Aus dem Leben des Donauschwaben. Belgrad – die Menschenmühle
zwischen Orient und Okzident,” BB, January 16, 1943, p. 5.
72
Walter Manoschek, ed., “Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum: Vernichtung”. Das Judenbild in
deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995), pp. 27, 48.
206 Ideology and Propaganda

Descriptions of Bosnia blended contempt of all things Balkan with the

Banat German leaders’ view of their co-nationals as engaged in ideologi-
cal warfare. If Belgrade was the urban antithesis of the “German” Banat,
Bosnia was the city’s rural counterpart. Animosity toward its landscape
and people was coupled with the Banat Germans’ awareness that the
Partisans would not be easily defeated:
Who here [in Bosnia] does not think of our clean villages and hard-working people
in the Banat? What could we do with these godforsaken lairs, where people are so
lazy they go to seed in filth and vermin, while fertile fields yield only a meager
harvest? Germans could make a cultured landscape [Kulturlandschaft] even out
of this space.73

Banat German propaganda claimed that such a savage land naturally bred
dangerous and cowardly people. When the Četnik leader Dragoljub
“Draža” Mihailović allegedly abandoned many of his men to be captured
in Montenegro in June 1943, the Reich and Banat German press offered
this as proof positive of his untrustworthiness and lack of honor.74
Treachery was supposedly a tradition in Serbia and Yugoslavia, linking
Mihailović to the military coup against the Yugoslav government that had
signed the Tripartite Pact in 1941 and to the “clique of corrupt, sick
officers with gambling debts [sic],” who had plotted against and assassi-
nated the Serbian King Aleksandar Obrenović in 1903.75
Nevertheless, while “bandits” could be the Četniks, the moniker was
used most often to describe the Partisans, as the more successful resis-
tance movement. What passed for war reporting in the Banater Beobachter
emphasized how the “bandits” terrorized the civilian population in the
Yugoslav lands. Considering the Partisan practice of living off the land
and their equivocal stance on civilian casualties, not to mention violent
enmity between the two resistance movements, this claim contained
a dram of truth.
The Banat German press did not analyze the military situation in the
Balkans – rather, it sought to boost ethnic German morale by emphasiz-
ing other groups’ supposed preference for German rule over that of the
communists.76 The “bandits” were portrayed as cruel, treacherous, and
sly: qualities considered typical of the Balkans and its peoples, from which
the ethnic Germans were exempt, despite their long sojourn in the
Southeast. This characterization contained an element of barely
73
Beer, “Biwak in den Bergen,” BB, October 9, 1942, p. 5.
74
“Feige Flucht Drascha Mihailowitsch’ nach Einkesselung seiner Truppen,” BB, June 26,
1943, p. 1.
75
“Am Rande der Belgrader Blutmacht,” BB, June 13, 1942, p. 5.
76
Hans Jakob Hein, “‘Es war ein grosser König’,” Volkswacht, June 27–28, 1943, p. 1;
Hein, “‘Er musste gehen. . .’,” Volkswacht, July 4, 1943, pp. 1–2.
 Bandits 207

suppressed fear, also evident in frequent appeals to both the fighting front
and the Banat home front not to falter, lest warfare should destroy the
Banat.
The fact that women and children participated in the Partisan move-
ment became in the Banat press a clear sign of the Partisans’ cruel and
depraved nature:
These creatures have shown how corrupt they are. Notions of manliness and
womanliness, which took centuries to develop, lose in them all meaning: they are
a drab, soulless bunch dreaming the crazy dream of taking the leadership of
Europe into their hands. This sinister specter must be swept away, lest our
continent be dragged down to the lowest depths.77

This view of the “bandits” as barely human creatures, in whom the

genders became hopelessly mixed up and lost their distinguishing fea-
tures, underlined the gendered nature of Nazi notions of racial purity.
By contrast with the “bandits,” the Banat German leadership praised the
ethnic German participation in the April War in starkly gendered terms:
“We proved ourselves worthy in this great historical hour and bore great
sacrifices in a manly way.”78 The commitment to demonstrate how
earnest Banat Germans were in the fulfillment of their military service
went hand in hand with a specific model of masculine virtue as an
extension of their Germanness.
Propaganda depicted Banat German women as more than capable of
fighting and guarding the home front, but their fight was not the literal
struggle of the female Partisans or Red Army soldiers, not armed service
as part of the Third Reich’s “farthest watch.” The women’s fight was the
struggle to maintain high agricultural productivity in the men’s absence
and, more importantly, to bear and raise racially healthy children
(presumably also in the men’s absence) as the surest long-term means
of defeating the racial enemy.79 A Banat German woman was primarily a
caregiver and mother. “The man guards our Volk from external enemies,
the mother protects it from internal decay,” asserted Sepp Janko in a 1941
speech.80
Wartime propaganda in the Third Reich sometimes blurred its own
self-imposed separation of gendered spheres by portraying the “feminine”
home as a place of women’s hard struggle and the “masculine” front as the

77
“Banditentypen aus Bosnien,” BB, August 17, 1943, p. 3.
78
“Neuen Aufgaben entgegen,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, May 1941, p. 1.
79
“Zur Eröffnung der Landfrauenschule in Weisskirchen,” speech held on November 16,
1941, in Janko, Reden, pp. 92–94; “Erntedank,” speech held in Grossbetschkerek
on October 25, 1942, in Janko, Reden, pp. 133–134.
80
“Zur Volkskundgebung in Weisskirchen” (1941) in Janko, Reden, p. 96.
208 Ideology and Propaganda

locus of deep comradely and national emotion.81 Banat German propa-

ganda kept the genders’ roles resolutely separate, even as it shared the
Reich propaganda’s emphasis on the mutual dependence of the front and
the home front. Clear separation of gender roles would ensure racial purity,
political and ideological integrity, and the endurance of the German
Volksgemeinschaft and Heimat.
The “bandits” knew nothing of this separation of the spheres. For
them, all was gender, racial, and political confusion and corruption,
which made them dangerous. The Banater Beobachter described a group
of captured Partisans in no uncertain terms as “criminal types, Soviet
hirelings.”82 The ethnic German perception of the Balkans’ Slavic inha-
bitants dovetailed with National Socialism, making the Partisans into
exponents of a particularly Balkan type of cruelty and savagery, but also
part of the great anti-German conspiracy, which included the Soviet
Union and “world Jewry.” Another captured “bandit” was described in
a self-evident caption, no context or explanation necessary, as “Such
a Jew. . . [So ein Jude. . .]”83
The appearance of such an explicit reference to the Jews by a local
contributor to the Banater Beobachter remained the exception rather than
the rule. The Banat Germans’ anti-Slavism intensified through cross-
pollination with Nazi anti-Semitism yet remained dominant over the
latter. Propaganda encouraged the Banat Germans to remember their
position as a self-conscious minority on the Greater German Reich’s
ethnic and linguistic border and to accept the Nazi idea of a global
Jewish conspiracy as fact. Nevertheless, their awareness that the majority
Slavic population regarded them with animosity – not least due to their
collaboration with the invading Germans – hit much closer to home.
In the Banat Germans’ worldview, shaped by local conditions and
concerns, the “Slavic enemy” posed a far more serious and immediate
threat even than the “Jewish enemy” of fevered Nazi imagination.

81
Claudia Koonz, “‘More Masculine Men, More Feminine Women’: The Iconography of
Nazi Racial Hatreds” in Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth Century Population
Management in a Comparative Framework, ed. Amir Weiner (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2003), p. 119.
82
“Stur zerlumpt verhungert,” Volkswacht, July 4, 1943, p. 3.
83
Volkswacht, September 12–13, 1943, p. 1.
8 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen”
and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Yugoslavia,
1942–1944

The 7th Volunteer Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen” of the Waffen-SS

(7. SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division “Prinz Eugen”) was created in
spring 1942, with the express purpose to mobilize for the Nazi war effort
the ethnic Germans of the Serbian Banat and Southeast Europe in
general. While the ethnic Germans played an important role as producers
of food and human symbols of German racial mastery over Southeast
Europe, ultimately their armed service proved invaluable to the Nazi
regime. More than 20,000 Banat recruits would serve in “Prinz Eugen”
by the war’s end – over 15% of the Banat German community, compris-
ing nearly all able-bodied men.
Before 1942, Germany’s need for good diplomatic relations with its
allies (Hungary, Romania) and potential allies (Yugoslavia until its
destruction in 1941) trumped the SS’s interest in Balkan ethnic
Germans as a potential recruit pool. The beginning of Banat German
recruitment in 1942 marked the eclipse of German diplomacy in
Southeast Europe by Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler’s views on the
war as a conflict of ideologies and races. Even so, the SS’s interest in the
Banat Germans was geared toward short-term goals – winning the war –
rather than long-term planning.
The mass recruitment of ethnic Germans also reflected the exacerba-
tion of Nazi racial policy after Operation Barbarossa. While anti-Semitic
policy escalated into the effort to destroy the Jewish populations of
Europe starting in 1941–1942, the Nazi view of ethnic Germans under-
went a somewhat milder yet decisive change. Ethnic Germans had to
serve the Reich with weapon in hand if they wished to prove themselves,
once and for all, good Germans. Claiming a place in the German Volk
hinged finally on ethnic Germans’ ability to pull their weight as soldiers
for Hitler. While their supposed racial quality and questions of their
nationality, culture, and group affiliation remained unresolved, their
role in the Nazi New Order boiled down, at last, to their military
collaboration with the Nazis.

209
210 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

A legal technicality meant that, while the Wehrmacht had prefer-

ential access to German citizens, the Waffen-SS looked to Germans
beyond the Third Reich’s borders for its recruits. Legal issues also
required ethnic Germans in the Waffen-SS to be volunteers, at least
formally, as reflected in the full name of the division “Prinz Eugen.”
True volunteers in its ranks were few and far between. De facto
abandonment of the principle of voluntarism was evident already
during the recruitment for the Banat Auxiliary Police in late 1941.
Compulsory military service became the norm in “Prinz Eugen,”
coupled with propagandistic emphasis on voluntary, willing, even
enthusiastic service to Führer and Volk. When it came to recruiting
ethnic Germans for the Waffen-SS, the Nazis could have their cake
and eat it too, by ensuring the ethnic German recruits did their duty
by the Reich while appearing to harbor a passionate desire to do it.
Their alleged enthusiasm for armed service aside, most Banat Germans
realized that they owed the Third Reich a material debt as well as a debt of
honor and served without active resistance. Service in the Waffen-SS
marked the culmination of their relationship with the Third Reich, con-
firming the ethnic Germans’ dependence on the Reich as well as the
degree to which they had become complicit in its policies. Having
accepted administrative power, Aryanized property, and arable land,
the Banat Germans could hardly refuse to take on an active role in
Germany’s war.
The division “Prinz Eugen” pursued anti-partisan warfare as imple-
mented also in the Soviet Union: by using terror tactics and extreme
brutality against civilian populations suspected of harboring and collud-
ing with the Partisans and the Četniks. Starting with its deployment in
Serbia proper in fall 1942 and escalating after its transfer to the
Independent State of Croatia in early 1943, the division participated in
military operations intended to destroy resistance strongholds, and took
offensive action against civilians deemed politically and racially suspect
due to Nazi ideological attitudes toward them. The division proved
frighteningly efficient in the execution of these tasks, yet it failed to tip
the scales in Germany’s war against native resistance movements in the
Balkans.

Preconditions
As the armed wing of the SS, the Waffen-SS became the paramilitary
instrument for the extension of Heinrich Himmler’s personal power and
the means for Himmler and Hitler to further their vision of World War II
as a racial and ideological war. Its exponential growth during the war
 Preconditions 211

years – from 18,000 members in 1939 to 910,000 members in 19441 –

meant that the Waffen-SS transitioned from a self-professed racial and
ideological elite to a more pragmatic institution, while retaining its
ideological fervor.2
By the war’s end, in addition to Germans, the Waffen-SS had in its
ranks ethnic German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Flemish, Bosnian
Muslim, Albanian, French, Latvian, Ukrainian, Estonian, Hungarian,
and other soldiers. The Waffen-SS thus demonstrated the variety of
collaborators the Third Reich managed to attract, alleviating its man-
power needs as well as harnessing different ethnic groups in Europe to its
vision of a Nazi New Order. Whether the mobilization of ethnic Germans
and non-Germans caused the Waffen-SS to go into decline as an elite
combat force or this was merely a symptom of the general decline in
German military effectiveness during the war remains open to debate.3
Either way, the Waffen-SS proved highly significant for ideological
warfare, especially in the course of anti-partisan actions in East and
Southeast Europe.
The Wehrmacht was ambivalent toward the Waffen-SS as an explicitly
ideological, rival military force. The Wehrmacht’s institutional and poli-
tical interest was best served if it could take precedence in recruiting
German citizens, so it allowed the Waffen-SS to recruit only 10% of
Reich citizens eligible for military service in any given year, provided
they volunteered to serve in the Waffen-SS rather than the regular
army.4 The SS, in turn, interpreted this rule as allowing it to recruit racial
Germans (ethnic Germans) from other states, still provided they were
volunteers, even if they were volunteers in name only.5 In the case of ethnic
German and other groups whose racial credentials were ambiguous, the

1
Thomas Casagrande, Die volksdeutsche SS-Division “Prinz Eugen”. Die Banater Schwaben
und die nationalsozialistischen Kriegsverbrechen (Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag,
2003), p. 19.
2
Stein, p. 171; Bernd Wegner, The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function, trans-
lated by Ronald Webster (Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell, 1990),
p. 313.
3
Valdis O. Lumans, “The Ethnic Germans of the Waffen-SS in Combat: Dregs or Gems?”
in Scraping the Barrel: The Military Use of Substandard Manpower, 1860–1960, ed.
Sanders Marble (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), pp. 252–253; Stein,
pp. 191–193; Wegner, pp. 330–331.
4
Valdis O. Lumans, “Recruiting Volksdeutsche for the Waffen-SS: From Skimming the
Cream to Scraping the Dregs” in Scraping the Barrel: The Military Use of Substandard
Manpower, 1860–1960, ed. Sanders Marble (New York: Fordham University Press,
2012), p. 202.
5
Valdis O. Lumans, “The Military Obligation of the Volksdeutsche of Eastern Europe
towards the Third Reich,” East European Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3 (September 1989),
pp. 305–307.
212 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

SS broadened and loosened racial prerequisites for Waffen-SS service in

early 1940, in order to attract as many volunteers as it could.6
The SS tended to take a dim view of the ethnic Germans in its ranks.
It paid lip service to their courage and combat readiness as true markers of
Germanness, yet remained unconvinced of ethnic Germans’ racial
reliability.7 When, in early 1942, VoMi chief Werner Lorenz stated that
the ethnic Germans’ combat potential outweighed their sometimes-
dubious racial quality, he as good as spelled out that the ethnic
Germans’ prime value to the Third Reich was as cannon fodder rather
than racial kin.8
By 1941, the Waffen-SS attracted a steady trickle of ethnic German
volunteers. In addition, more or less secret recruitment took place in
allied states such as Hungary and Romania and neutral states like inter-
war Yugoslavia, as well as among ethnic Germans from Poland and
France (including those granted German citizenship after their home
areas were annexed by the Reich in 1939–1940), Baltic Germans resettled
in 1939–1940, and Scandinavians whom the Nazis considered racial kin.9
Nevertheless, volunteers alone could not fill Germany’s depleted ranks.
The Third Reich needed to recruit able-bodied ethnic German men while
maintaining the illusion of voluntarism on the recruits’ part, especially if
their host state opposed the Reich openly recruiting its citizens.
The systematic recruitment of ethnic Germans into the Waffen-SS
began only after the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22,
1941, and the concomitant outbreak of communist resistance movements
in Southeast Europe, which were ideologically and strategically related
to – yet enjoyed much tactical independence from – the state-sponsored
resistance in the Soviet Union.
Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović, a Serbian career army officer and
veteran of the Balkan Wars and World War I, began to organize Četnik
resistance units already in late April 1941. The Četniks were royalists and
Serbian nationalists with some elements of Yugoslavism, who rejected the
legitimacy of the German occupation, professed loyalty to the Yugoslav

6
Bergen in Bullivant, Giles, and Pappe, p. 78; Heinemann, pp. 235–237;
Andreas Strippel, “Race, Regional Identity and Volksgemeinschaft: Naturalization of
Ethnic German Resettlers in the Second World War by the Einwandererzentralstelle/
Central Immigration Office of the SS” in Heimat, Region, and Empire: Spatial Identities
under National Socialism, ed. Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann and Maiken Umbach
(Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 192.
7
“Volksdeutsche durch Bewährung. Der unsterbliche Piefke,” article published in Das
Schwarze Korps, reprinted in BB, August 23, 1942, p. 5.
8
Lorenz to Himmler, February 7, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2386, fiche 1, frs. 1–2.
9
Lumans, “Recruiting Volksdeutsche for the Waffen-SS” in Marble, pp. 202–208.
 Preconditions 213

royal government-in-exile in London, and sought British support for their

plan to resurrect the Yugoslav kingdom after Allied victory.10
Josip Broz Tito, a Croat from Austria-Hungary, emerged from
a colorful career as a peripatetic metalworker, prisoner of war of the
Russians in World War I, and member of the outlawed Communist
Party of Yugoslavia, to take charge of the communist resistance in
summer 1941. The Partisans espoused the idea of communist revolution
and sought a Soviet alliance against the Nazis. Ultimately, they demon-
strated superior strategy, a more appealing popular ideology, and a better
sense of the realities of guerrilla warfare.11
Unlike the Četniks, who lacked a centralized command structure and
sometimes – despite their ideology – openly collaborated with the
Germans and the Italians against shared rivals, the Partisans had
a strong top-down chain of command. They used communist as well as
general anti-German and anti-fascist propaganda, inspired by frequent
massacres of Yugoslav civilians, to attract followers of diverse ethnic and
religious backgrounds. Their vision was resolutely Yugoslav rather than
nationally exclusivist, even though their ranks were filled mostly by ethnic
Serbs from Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia.12
The two resistance movements flirted, on occasion, with making
common cause against the Germans, Ustašas, and other pro-German
forces in Yugoslav lands. More often, they fought each other with even
greater zeal than they fought the occupying forces. This bloody civil war
overlapped with Nazi anti-partisan warfare in a vicious cycle of massacres,
reprisals, and mutual aggression, making Serbia proper, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and parts of Croatia some of the most unsettled areas of
Europe and claiming a little over one million victims across the wartime
Yugoslav lands.13
In the second half of 1941, armed resistance and anti-partisan opera-
tions were concentrated in Serbia proper. Harald Turner initially hoped
to defeat the Partisan and Četnik movements with the help of the Serbian

10
Pavlowitch, pp. 53–55, 91–94. 11 Pavlowitch, pp. 55–57.
12
Nikica Barić, “Relations between the Chetniks and the Authorities of the Independent
State of Croatia, 1942–1945” in Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two, ed. Sabrina
P. Ramet and Ola Listhaug (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011),
pp. 175–200; Goldstein, pp. 141–143, 146; Marko Attila Hoare, “The Partisans and the
Serbs” in Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet and Ola Listhaug
(Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 201–221; Mario Jareb,
“Allies or Foes? Mihailović’s Chetniks during the Second World War” in Serbia and the
Serbs in World War Two, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet and Ola Listhaug (Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 155–174.
13
Goldstein, pp. 144–146; Lampe, pp. 205–207; Mirković, pp. 320–321, fn. 7 on p. 329;
Pavlowitch, pp. 59–60, 62–63, 146–148.
214 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

police and collaborationist government.14 Once these proved ill-suited to

the task, in fall 1941, the Wehrmacht, Heinrich Himmler, and the
German Foreign Ministry decided against supporting the Četniks as an
anti-communist fighting force, lest this encouraged the emergence of
a more independent Serbia. Instead, German forces had to put down
the resistance on their own,15 yet every available German soldier was
needed in the East – Reich reinforcements being sent to Serbia proved
unlikely.16
Even after General Franz Böhme became the Military Commander in
Serbia in late September 1941 and brought a whole division with him, the
situation continued to deteriorate. Serbs expelled from Hungarian-
occupied Bačka, the Independent State of Croatia, and the Bulgarian
zone of occupation in South Serbia were brutalized by the loss of their
homes and loved ones. Between April and September 1941 alone, over
161,000 refugees arrived in German-occupied Serbia. By the war’s end,
there were as many as 400,000 – around 10–11% of Serbia’s wartime
population. Many refugees flocked to the two resistance movements.17
Exacerbating the situation further was the general attitude of the
occupation personnel to Serbs as a people, which reflected the historical
coarsening of the German discourse on Serbs and Slavs as a whole.
If German nationalist propaganda in the Dual Monarchy railed against
the “invasion” of Slavs into the German heartland, embodied by Czech
labor migration to Vienna, World War I engendered negative attitudes
toward Serbia and the Serbs, especially among Austrians, who were
humiliated during their abortive invasion of Serbia in 1914. Following
the Yugoslav royal coup in March 1941 and the beginning of preparations
for the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Third Reich portrayed Serbs as
a backward, untrustworthy peasant population.18
The prevalent Nazi view of Serbs was summed up by an official of the
racial-policy think tank, the Deutsches Ausland-Institut: “To my mind,
the German administration [in Serbia] is far too good. One must deal
with the Serbs much more severely, they truly are a nation of Gypsies and
shifty, to boot.”19 The association of Roma with Serbs was not traditional

14
Browning in Rebentisch and Teppe, pp. 356–357, 367.
15
Benzler to AA, September 12, 1941, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945,
Serie D, Vol. XIII.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), doc. 303 on
pp. 391–392. See also Browning in Rebentisch and Teppe, pp. 356–357, 368.
16
Benzler to AA, August 12, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XIII.1, doc. 195 on p. 255; Benzler
to AA, August 29, 1941, Akten, Serie D, Vol. XIII.1, doc. 257 on pp. 337–338.
17
Turner, “5. Lagebericht” (1941), BA MA, RW 40, file 187, p. 4; Pavlowitch, p. 72.
18
Hamann, pp. 304–324; Promitzer, pp. 202–208.
19
“Sechswöchentliche Reise durch Kroatien, Ungarn und Serbien,” October 25, 1941,
NARA, RG 242, T-81, roll 540, fr. 5,311,223.
 Preconditions 215

in Serbia, where Roma were subjected to widespread discrimination.

The parallel between the two suggests, rather, the extremely low opinion
many Germans from the Reich had of both ethnic groups and the implicit
need to shore up the racial division between these “inferior” groups and
Germans in the Southeast.
In vain did Nazi propaganda claim that the German soldier was the best
friend a new and improved, pro-German Serbia could have.20 Harald
Turner differed from most of his colleagues in his view of the Serbs as fit
for more than just subordination and exploitation, provided they had
leaders sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Yet even the relatively sympathetic
Turner referred to “specific ‘Balkan conditions’,” such as lack of respect
for life (one’s own or that of others) and the habit of carrying weapons,
which made anti-German resistance in the Balkans difficult to combat.21
In addition, Franz Böhme and about one-third of the Reich troops
stationed in Serbia were Austrians and harbored specifically Austrian
anti-Serb prejudices compounded by Nazi racial ideology.22
Heinrich Himmler and the German Armed Forces High Command
chief, Wilhelm Keitel, were not Austrians, but they held extremely
negative views of Serbs, Slavs, and resistance fighters, nevertheless.
Himmler considered the Serbs a nation hereditarily disposed to rebellion
and disobedience. Keitel approved the routine execution of between 50
and 100 communists for every German soldier killed in occupied terri-
tories, so as to cow the restive civilian population into submission.23
Franz Böhme translated this into his October 10, 1941, order that, for
every German or ethnic German killed in Serbia, 100 civilians should be
executed in retaliation. Fifty civilians executed was the norm for every
wounded German or ethnic German.24 By ordering every municipality to
keep a ready pool of arrested communists, Jews, and other undesirables
on hand for retaliatory shooting, Böhme set the stage for the Wehrmacht
to become Holocaust perpetrators in Serbia. He also failed to curb either
resistance movement – if anything, the disproportionate numbers of
people killed by Wehrmacht firing squads inflamed the resistance –
which led to his replacement by General Paul Bader in December 1941.
By late 1941, the campaign in the Soviet Union ground down with the
onset of winter and the beginning of the Soviet counteroffensive, so the

20
Leonard Oberascher, “Unfreiheit durch Freiwirtschaft. Der Irrweg des serbischen
Volkes,” Donauzeitung, December 21, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 5 VI, file 29266/a, p. 2.
21
Turner, “5. Lagebericht” (1941), BA MA, RW 40, file 187, p. 4.
22
Manoschek, “Serbien ist judenfrei,” p. 12.
23
Heinrich Himmler quoted in Browning in Rebentisch and Teppe, p. 369; Keitel order,
September 16, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1298, fr. 482,443.
24
Böhme order, October 10, 1941, USHMM, RG-49.002*01, fiche 7, fr. 650.
216 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

Third Reich could spare even fewer men for the anti-communist struggle
in the Balkans. Wilhelm Keitel preferred to utilize Italian and Bulgarian
soldiers instead. The Bulgarian zone in Southeast Serbia was expanded at
the turn of 1941–1942 and twice more in 1943, but policy implementa-
tion in it required German approval.25 In view of these setbacks, the
Wehrmacht was sufficiently hard-pressed to tolerate SS interference, if
it would help ease the pressure on the German army to pacify the Serbian
countryside. The German Foreign Ministry too proved amenable to
Heinrich Himmler’s proposal to the governments of Hungary,
Romania, Croatia, Slovakia, and Denmark for the Waffen-SS to recruit
their ethnic Germans.26
The Foreign Ministry played right into Himmler’s hands
in January 1942, when it claimed peevishly that it was not the German
soldiers’ job to police Serbia, however restive it might be, thus implicitly
allowing another type of armed formation to take on the unenviable
task.27 As for the Wehrmacht, in January 1942, it proposed the formation
of SS brigades composed of Serbian ethnic Germans. The army could not
recruit ethnic Germans, because they were not Reich citizens, yet
assumed these ethnic German SS units would be under the
Wehrmacht’s command in the field.28
This idea had the benefit of combining a stern approach to combating
the Slavic-Bolshevik enemy in the Balkans with the use of collaborationist
forces, in order to free up German soldiers for the struggle against the
Slavic-Bolshevik-Jewish enemy in the East. Ethnic Germans in the
Waffen-SS would receive an ideological and warlike education and be
deployed only on their home turf, against a Slavic, communist enemy they
were expected to know and understand.29 The Nazi government thus
balanced its need for manpower with its ideological preference for
collaborators who fit Nazi criteria of racial reliability, while implying
that ethnic Germanness needed the crucible of military service to purify
and affirm it. Service in the Waffen-SS was tied to the possibility that
ethnic Germans might be recognized as “real” Germans at last.

25
Tomasevich, pp. 196–197.
26
Luther memo, December 31, 1941, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100981, fiche 2534,
no frame numbers; Ribbentrop memo, January 17, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file
R 101093, fiche 2817, frs. H298,010–011.
27
Keitel memo, December 15, 1941, BA MA, RW 4, file 757, fiche 1, fr. 1; Ritter to
Benzler, January 4, 1942, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945, Serie E,
Vol. I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), doc. 88 on pp. 165–166; Benzler to
AA, January 30, 1942, Akten, Serie E, Vol. I, doc. 185 on pp. 341–342.
28
List to Bader, OKW, and OKH, January 10, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 26, p. 60.
29
Casagrande, pp. 183–184; Robert Herzog, Die Volksdeutschen in der Waffen-SS
(Tübingen: Institut für Besatzungsfragen, 1955), p. 6.
 Making the Division 217

In allied states like Hungary and even satellite states like Croatia, the
diplomatic and legal formalities attendant on dealing with a nominally
independent government had to be honored when the issue of ethnic
German recruitment arose. In territories Germany occupied directly,
such as Serbia-Banat, recruitment of ethnic Germans was easiest, since
the absence of a sovereign government removed a major obstacle to the
Nazi desire to tap into ethnic German manpower reserves. The Waffen-
SS could dispense even with the Foreign Ministry’s compliance – in an
occupied territory administered by the Wehrmacht, the German military
commander’s permission for the Waffen-SS to recruit ethnic Germans
sufficed.30
Moreover, Heinrich Himmler saw the desperate security situation at
the turn of 1941–1942 as a prime opportunity to install a Higher SS and
Police Chief in Serbia, as he had previously done in occupied Poland,
France, and parts of the Soviet Union. The Higher SS and Police Chief
coordinated anti-partisan forces and acted as Himmler’s personal repre-
sentative in dealings with the Wehrmacht and the German Foreign
Ministry’s representatives in Serbia.31 The man Himmler chose, August
Meyszner, had the benefit of extensive police experience, a stellar SS
career, and the typical Austrian view of Serbs. He espoused the personal
motto, “I prefer a dead Serb to a living one.”32

Making the Division

Precedent existed for Banat Germans to join the Waffen-SS. Some had
done so during the resettlement of the Bessarabian Germans in late 1940.
Shortly after the April War, Waffen-SS chief of staff Gottlob Berger
decided that the ethnic Germans taken prisoner while serving in the
Yugoslav army made prime candidates for Waffen-SS recruitment.33
While this idea did not pan out, the SS division “Das Reich,” which had
participated in the occupation of the Serbian Banat, did recruit an
estimated 600 men. Briefly flouting the rules on ethnic German recruit-
ment, the Wehrmacht also took in around 700 volunteers from the Banat
at the turn of 1941–1942.34

30
Luther memo (1941), PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100981, fiche 2534, second frame
of this document.
31
Birn, p. 240.
32
August Meyszner quoted in G. Boehncke, “Bericht über die Reise im Bereich Ob.
Südost,” July 13, 1943, BA MA, RH 2, file 685, fiche 1, fr. 42.
33
Berger to Himmler, April 26, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2725, fiche 1, fr. 1.
34
Berger to Himmler, April 26, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 3517, fiche 2, fr. 68; Lorenz to
Himmler, March 31, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1728, fiche 2, fr. 44; Schieder et al.,
p. 65E; Stein, p. 169.
218 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

Since no blanket order on recruitment of Banat Germans by any of the

Reich’s armed forces existed yet, these early recruits were true
volunteers.35 Almost all Banat Germans who joined the Waffen-SS in
1940–1941 were in their late teens or early twenties, as were three-
quarters of those who joined the Wehrmacht.36 They likely volunteered
to serve the Third Reich out of ideological fervor and the euphoria of
liberation by German forces.
The initial idea to form an anti-communist, paramilitary ethnic
German organization in the Balkans originated with Gottlob Berger in
the last days of the April War. The VoMi and the Wehrmacht in Serbia
passed the suggestion on to Sepp Janko, possibly working at cross-
purposes, each hoping that it could seize full control of the proposed
units. The Foreign Ministry’s representative Felix Benzler objected
strenuously, dreading Hungary’s reaction and the possibility of ethnic
German soldiers trained by German personnel becoming a part of the
Hungarian army after Hungary’s future takeover of the Banat.37
Following the outbreak of communist resistance in summer 1941,
Joachim von Ribbentrop suggested the proposed units be presented as
an ethnic German, anti-Bolshevik “volunteer corps [Freikorps],” which
would place these units in the broader context of Hitler’s ideological war
rather than making them appear as a slight against Hungary.38
Ribbentrop wanted the German commanding general in Serbia to be in
charge of these units.
Ribbentrop’s agreement with the very notion of creating such units
meant that, with Keitel and Hitler’s approval, the Foreign Ministry began
to cede control of ethnic German recruitment to the armed forces already
in 1941: first to the Wehrmacht in August and then the Waffen-SS
in December. In 1942, the Foreign Ministry’s influence over ethnic
German matters was decisively eclipsed by Himmler’s grandiose vision

Although Himmler forbade any more Banat Germans to join the Wehrmacht and
intended to have them all transferred to the Waffen-SS, 602 were still with the
Wehrmacht in December 1943. Benzler to AA, October 23, 1942, PA AA, Inland II
Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606, fr. H299,529; “Volksdeutsche in der Waffen-SS,”
December 12, 1943, NARA, RG 238, entry 174, box 2, doc. NO-2015, p. 3.
35
Herzog, p. 12.
36
Kreisleitung “Mittelbanat,” Abt. Propaganda, “Verzeichnis der SS- und Waffen-SS
Eingerückten des Kreises ‘Mittelbanat’,” February 15, 1942, Muzej Vojvodine,
Dokumenti okupatora u Banatu 1941–1944, box K-3013, doc. K-3013/4.
37
Berger to Himmler, April 17, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2724, fiche 1, fr. 38; Benzler to
AA, July 22, 1941, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100939, fiche 2423, frs. H298,
119–120.
38
Luther to Ribbentrop, July 28, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, frs. H298,
117–118. See also Luther to Triska, August 21, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2424,
fr. E226,999.
 Making the Division 219

of an ethnic German army conquering East and Southeast Europe for

Führer, Reich, and himself.
All recruitment of Banat Germans by the Wehrmacht officially stopped
in mid-January 1942.39 On January 22, 1942, Adolf Hitler
appointed August Meyszner as Himmler’s stand-in in Serbia, confirming
Himmler’s importance in ethnic German affairs, in general, and Banat
German affairs, in particular. Hitler’s order appointing Meyszner stated
unequivocally: “The Higher SS and Police Chief is charged with the
establishment of Waffen-SS volunteer units out of the locally available
ethnic Germans.”40
The Foreign Ministry’s input was reduced to suggesting that the Banat
German leadership be the one to announce the creation of what was
deceptively termed an ethnic German “home army [Heimwehr].”41
While in issues such as Banat land ownership German diplomatic
relations with Hungary and Romania continued to matter, the Banat
Germans’ military service now fell squarely within Himmler’s purview.
Personal differences and professional rivalry plagued the relationship
between August Meyszner on one side, the Wehrmacht’s District
Command Post in Grossbetschkerek and Harald Turner on the other,
yet shared ideological and operational goals tended to outweigh jurisdic-
tion friction between the SS and the Wehrmacht in the Balkans. By the
time the conflict between Turner and Meyszner resulted in Turner being
recalled to the Reich in fall 1942, Meyszner and the Military Commander
in Belgrade proved capable of working together toward a common pur-
pose: defeating the armed resistance in Southeast Europe.42
In 1943, Gottlob Berger claimed the mobilization of the Banat
Germans had been based on an obscure 1782 General Levy Act for the
mobilization of the militia (Landsturm) in the Tyrol.43 This was

39
Keitel to Himmler, December 30, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 3519, fiche 5, fr. 197;
Keitel memo, December 30, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1464, fiche 1, fr. 1; Berger to
Himmler, January 16, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2878, fiche 1, fr. 2.
40
Hitler order, January 22, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 264, fr. 438.
41
Luther to Lorenz, February 10, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100695, fiche
1767, frame 129,689.
42
Meyszner to Kommandierender General und Befehlshaber in Serbien, May 28, 1942,
NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 266, frs. 1152–1154; Amelung to Turner, June 6, 1942,
NARA, RG 242, T-501, roll 266, frs. 1156–1157; Kiessel memo, June 12, 1942, NARA,
RG 242, T-501, roll 266, fr. 1155; Turner to Meyszner, August 29, 1942, BA Berlin, NS
19, file 1672, fiche 1, frs. 10–16; Turner to Himmler, August 30, 1942, BA Berlin, NS
19, file 1672, fiche 1, frs. 17–20; Meyszner to Himmler, September 4, 1942, BA Berlin,
NS 19, file 1672, fiche 1, frs. 36–38 and fiche 2, frs. 39–40; RFSS Persönlicher Stab to
Himmler, October 8, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1672, fiche 2, frs. 50–51; Chef des SS-
Personalhauptamtes to Himmler, October 12, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1672, fiche 2,
frs. 49–50; Browning in Rebentisch and Teppe, pp. 371–372.
43
Berger to Rudolf Brandt, June 16, 1943, BA Berlin, NS 7, vol. 91, p. 27.
220 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

justification after the fact, a mere sop to legalistic sentiment. Serbia-Banat

and Croatia were the first states in the Nazi New Order, in which the
ethnic Germans were subject to a de facto if not a de jure military obliga-
tion. By the end of 1942, the Waffen-SS recruited en masse the ethnic
Germans in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and annexed South Tyrol.44
Voluntarism was, from the start, a propagandistic and legal sham, a fig
leaf that allowed the Third Reich to recruit the Banat (and other ethnic)
Germans with impunity.
The induction of Banat Germans into the Waffen-SS built on
propaganda extolling the ethnic German tradition of serving as border
guards and soldiers for the Habsburg Empire; earlier, unsystematic
recruitment of Banat Germans for the police and border patrol; and the
notion that the Banat Germans owed the Third Reich for all the material
and ideological privileges they enjoyed under German rule. Given their
earlier complicity and compliance, in spring 1942, the Banat Germans
and their leaders lacked practical as well as moral grounds on which to
refuse service in the Waffen-SS.
In order to preserve the illusion of voluntarism, Ribbentrop and
Himmler urged Sepp Janko to call on his co-nationals to volunteer for
armed service as part of the greater German anti-Bolshevik struggle.
Himmler himself drafted a suitable text, which Werner Lorenz passed on
to Janko around the time Meyszner arrived in Serbia in late January 1942,
ready to start recruiting ethnic German “volunteers.”45
The full text of Himmler’s appeal-cum-summons to the Banat
Germans read:
Last year in spring, the German Army liberated your homeland and delivered you
from the foreign yoke.
Germany and its soldiers are waging a difficult battle to protect our father-
land and all of Europe from Bolshevism. The Bolshevik enemy has tried to
raise his head also in your homeland, tried to make the streets unsafe and set
fire to your villages in these past weeks and months. German troops
thwarted him.
Now it is a matter of your honor [Ehrensache] that you should follow your
forefathers’ traditions and take on the protection of your homeland yourselves, as
a people watching our borders [Grenzervolk].
Therefore, I call on all men between 17 and 45 years of age to report to
German village mayors for armed service in protection of your own homeland.

44
Lumans, “Recruiting Volksdeutsche for the Waffen-SS” in Marble, pp. 211–216.
45
Himmler to Lorenz, January 24, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 72, fr. 2,590,101;
Luther memo, February 17, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606,
frs. H299,608–609.
 Making the Division 221

No healthy man may excuse himself from this service. Germans in Serbia and
the Banat, show yourselves worthy of your forefathers, extend your thanks to the
Führer through manly endeavor and deeds [rather than words].46
Sepp Janko’s response to Himmler’s decision to recruit the Banat
Germans en masse suggests he was consumed by a desire to have his co-
nationals give their all for Hitler and Reich. Moreover, he understood that
his position as Volksgruppenführer depended on kowtowing to Nazi
demands. He raised no objections to the planned recruitment – and
would have been powerless to prevent it, in any case. In February 1942,
he even offered to proclaim compulsory military service for all Banat
German men between 17 and 50 years of age.47
Once he saw the draft of Himmler’s text, sent to him by Lorenz, Janko
made a rare attempt to assert even partial independence from Berlin’s
wishes. Yet even when he exercised his agency, Janko proved himself in
possession of a fine-tuned sense for anticipating and satisfying the Reich’s
desires. Janko altered Himmler’s draft text slightly and thus showed
himself a better connoisseur of his co-nationals’ mentality than
Himmler. Himmler had written the text in the second person plural and
stressed the suffering from which the Wehrmacht had delivered the Banat
Germans and their debt of honor to the Third Reich, without acknowl-
edging the ethnic Germans as potentially equal to Reich citizens.48
Janko’s version omitted the references to Reich and Führer, stressing
instead the all-European struggle against Bolshevism as the context for
ethnic German military service. He also referred to his co-nationals as
“national comrades” (Volksgenossen), who played an equal part in keep-
ing communism at bay in the Banat as did the Germans from the Third
Reich. Finally, Janko emphasized the local importance of the greater Nazi
struggle, downplayed the Banat’s role as merely the Reich’s outpost, and
rewrote the text in the first person plural, a more inclusive form of
address:
Last year in spring, the German Army took our villages and homes under its
protection.
Germany and its soldiers are waging a hard battle to protect all Europe from
Bolshevism. The Bolshevik enemy has tried to raise his head also in our home-
land, tried to make the streets unsafe and set fire to our villages in these past weeks

46
“An die Volksdeutschen in Serbien und im Banat,” January 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file
1728, fiche 1, fr. 10.
47
Benzler to AA, February 16, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606,
frs. H299,614–615.
48
“An die Volksdeutschen in Serbien und im Banat” (1942), BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1728,
fiche 1, fr. 10.
222 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

and months. German troops thwarted this danger in tandem with us and all order-
loving elements in the land.
Now it is a matter of our honor [Ehrensache] that we should follow our
forefathers’ traditions and take on the protection of our homes and homesteads
ourselves.
Therefore, I call on all men between 17 and 50 years of age to report, as soon as
the pertinent age group is called up, to [village] mayors and the Volksgruppe’s
County Leadership [Kreisleitung] in Belgrade for armed service in protection of
our homes.
No healthy man may excuse himself from this service. German national
comrades, show yourselves worthy of your forefathers through manly endeavor
and deeds [rather than words].49

The changes Janko introduced kept the gist of Himmler’s message intact,
but they agreed better with the ethnic German desire to be seen and to see
themselves as both unique and equal to Germans from the Reich. At the
same time, Janko showed how eager he was for Himmler’s approval by
raising the maximum recruitment age from 45 to 50. He also snuck in
a reference to the imminent start of recruitment, where the original text
limited itself to strongly encouraging ethnic Germans to volunteer. Janko
had his version of Himmler’s proclamation published earlier than
intended, on March 1, 1942, on the front page of the Verordnungsblatt
der Volksgruppenführung der deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und Serbien.
The same edition carried a portion of Janko’s announcement of
compulsory military service.50 Janko thus invoked obligatory military
service for ethnic Germans twice on the same page of the Banat German
leadership’s official publication. The German Foreign Ministry sputtered
in outrage, but its protests were just a quibble over bureaucratic chains of
command and a display of its impotence vis-à-vis Heinrich Himmler.51
The essence of the message Himmler issued and Janko rewrote
remained unchanged: the Banat Germans had served the Reich as
peasants, racial kin, and administrators. Now they would also serve it as
soldiers, whether they wanted to or not. While he defied orders over
important technicalities, Janko actually furthered Himmler’s purpose.
With his two proclamations, Janko made clear his desire to have the
Banat Germans do their ideological and völkisch duty to the Reich. He

49
Janko, “Aufruf des Volksgruppenführers,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung,
March 1, 1942, p. 1.
50
Janko, “Ergänzungsbestimmungen zum Aufruf zwecks Wehrdienstleistung,”
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, March 1, 1942, p. 1.
51
Luther to Benzler, March 5, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606,
fr. H299,589; Luther to VoMi, March 5, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011,
fiche 2606, fr. H299,590.
 Making the Division 223

also made a mockery of the notion that all Banat Germans in the Waffen-
SS were volunteers.
The 7th Volunteer Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen” of the Waffen-SS
was created officially on March 1, 1942, and named after Eugene of
Savoy. A memo dated April 6, 1942, the first anniversary of the
German invasion of Yugoslavia, reported that the division could already
boast 10,000–15,000 recruits and recruitment was far from over. In fact,
recruitment officially began only in the second half of April 1942,
suggesting these numbers were based on hopeful projections rather than
current fact. Training lasted nearly six months, due to delays while
peasant recruits were inducted into soldierly routine.52
The ratio of ethnic German to Reich German officers in “Prinz Eugen”
was 3:1 for company-grade officers and battalion commanders, 2:1 for
regimental commanders, and 5:1 for non-commissioned officers.53 Many
ethnic German officers had been career officers in the Romanian army,
who defected to the Waffen-SS.54 One of these became division
commander.
SS Lieutenant General Arthur Phleps had seen action in World War
I and participated in the overthrow of the Béla Kun regime in Hungary in
1919. He became Lieutenant General in the Romanian army before
joining the Waffen-SS in 1941, then rounded out his völkisch and anti-
Bolshevik credentials by commanding a Waffen-SS regiment on the
Eastern Front, before Himmler handpicked him to lead the Banat
German division.55 Phleps served also as an example of the ethnic
German military and racial potential, representing the integrity, ethos of
hard work, and faith in the Reich of the ethnic Germans under his
command. Phleps was reported to have said: “The Führer can rest easy.
Whatever task we Germans from the Southeast tackle, will be
accomplished.”56
The ever-shifting tension between ethnic Germans’ dubious
Germanness and their very real value as a military resource played itself
out in “Prinz Eugen” ranks. For some officers from the Third Reich,
52
Luther memo, April 6, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606, fr.
H299,583; Bambach to all Landratsämter and Bürgermeisterämter, April 17, 1942,
Muzej Vojvodine, Dokumenti okupatora u Banatu 1941–1944, doc. 19715.
53
Lumans, “The Ethnic Germans of the Waffen-SS in Combat” in Marble, p. 230.
54
Berger to Himmler, April 28, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 40, fr. 2,550,818;
Himmler to Ion Antonescu, May 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 40, fr. 2,550,815;
Albedyll to OKW/Ausland, May 4, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 40, fr. 2,550,814.
55
Berger to SS-Führungshauptamt, April 10, 1941, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2724, fiche 1, fr.
20; “Ehrungen und Gedenktage. Arthur Phleps SS-Obergruppenführer,” Deutschtum im
Ausland, Vol. 5/6, May–June 1943, p. 119; Wegner, fn. 135 on p. 328.
56
“Worte des Kommandeurs der SS-Freiw. Division ‘Prinz Eugen’,” Volkswacht, May 24,
1942, BA MA, N 756, File 149b, no page number.
224 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

serving in “Prinz Eugen” was preparation for the German Volk’s future in
a German-dominated but still multiethnic East.57 For others, it was, at
best, a fool’s errand.
So many older peasants were mobilized, who had already seen frontline
service in the Habsburg armies in World War I, that the new Waffen-SS
division became known in the Banat, with tongue planted firmly in cheek,
as the “corn and cabbage division” – “Kukuruz-und-Kraut-Div[ision]”
or “K.u.K.Division.”58 One former non-commissioned officer from the
Danube region reminisced after the war that, as an ethnic German
himself, he could allow himself to compare the erstwhile recruits to
a “parcel of pigs [Sauhaufen].” He hastened to add that, against all
odds, a functioning division did come into being – and that, according
to his estimate, some 90% of “Prinz Eugen” members had not been
volunteers.59
Franz Unterreiner, a Banat veteran of World War I who was
conscripted into “Prinz Eugen,” recalled with lingering bitterness the
youthful officers’ lack of respect for many recruits’ advanced age and
worthiness as members of the German Volk. The officers called them,
“Banat devourers of bacon, corn peasants, old flour sacks, night
watchmen.”60 While such language was part of regular military drill, it
also reflected the Reich Germans’ deeply ingrained prejudice, based on
a sense of Germanness bound and restricted by Germany’s political
borders – Nazi fantasies about a border-transcending Volk notwithstand-
ing – as well as ideological suspicion of the ethnic Germans as racially
polluted.
Unterreiner wondered rhetorically why recruits received written
summons if they were all supposed to be volunteers.61 Other Banat
Germans blamed Sepp Janko for the very creation of the division, seeing
in it an attempt by the Banat German leadership to prove its worth as
Hitler’s “favorite child [Liebkind].”62 After the war, members of Janko’s
circle and former division officers tended to admit that few recruits had
been true volunteers, as though to absolve the division and the wider
Banat German community of complicity with Nazi crimes by implying
the Banat Germans had been pressganged into armed service. They also

57
Viktor Brack to Himmler, July 6, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 2526, fiche 1, fr. 2.
58
The Serbian word for ‘corn’ is ‘kukuruz.’ “Beitrag zum Stimmungs- und Lagebericht für
die Zeit v. 26.6–10.7.”, no date, BA Berlin, NS 43, file 202, p. 69.
59
Stefan Helleis quoted in Kumm, p. 39.
60
Unterreiner testimony (1958) in Schieder et al., p. 71.
61
Unterreiner testimony (1958) in Schieder et al., p. 71. See also “Einberufung zum
Wehrdienst,” April 3, 1942, in Schieder et al., p. 177E.
62
Slavik testimony (March 10, 1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 153, p. 5.
 Making the Division 225

hastened to stress that all recruits displayed real courage and were glad to
fight in defense of their homes.63
Many recruits grumbled and complained, yet almost none resisted
recruitment or absconded without leave. Their primary motive for
compliance may have been ideology and the desire to participate in
a victorious war; acceptance of the idea that the Third Reich merited
and needed their armed service; fear of punishment and its more insidious
sisters, peer pressure and fear of ostracism; blinkered devotion to what
they saw as their duty as Germans, which wasn’t always explicitly
ideological; or a plus ça change resignation, especially among men who
had been mobilized once or twice before, in World War I and/or at the
outbreak of the April War. Moreover, many did not realize at first what
anti-partisan warfare would entail.
By spring 1943, mobilization in the Banat yielded 20,624 recruits.64
Waffen-SS recruitment demonstrated how the Third Reich’s various
offices could cooperate effectively in order to achieve shared, closely
related priorities: the destruction of the racial enemy and victory in the
war of ideologies. At the same time, the ethnic Germans’ value to Nazi
Germany became increasingly instrumental, a means to an ideological
and military end.
For once, Janko objected. He may have been suffering pangs of
conscience about having sold his co-nationals down the river or simply
resenting the fact that Arthur Phleps’ authority impinged on Janko’s own
authority. In Gottlob Berger’s uncharitable phrase, Phleps had “upended
[Janko’s] throne.”65 Janko may have been motivated also by the realiza-
tion that most Banat German administrators had been mobilized and
would depart for anti-partisan operations, leaving him to run the Banat’s
daily affairs with a skeleton administration.
Himmler responded that he was in charge of ethnic Germans in the
whole world, let alone the Banat, and it was “impossible that Germans
anywhere in Europe play at pacifism and sit around, while our battalions
protect them.”66 Janko’s continued unease about the division being
deployed outside the Banat earned him almost a literal slap on the wrist.
Himmler instructed Werner Lorenz to “grab Janko by the necktie”67 and
remind him of the chain of command and of whom Janko had to thank for
his position as Volksgruppenführer. In the same vein of Reich arrogance

63
Beer, Donauschwäbische Zeitgeschichte aus erster Hand, pp. 180–181; Kumm, pp. 38–39.
64
Benzler to AA, April 29, 1943, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100981, fiche 2535, fr.
H299,408.
65
Berger to Brandt (1943), BA Berlin, NS 7, vol. 91, p. 28.
66
Himmler to Lorenz, August 10, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 7, vol. 91, p. 10.
67
Himmler to Lorenz, October 25, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 292, fiche 1, fr. 5.
226 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

regarding ethnic Germans, Gottlob Berger remarked that Serbia-Banat

was, for all intents and purposes, sovereign German territory
(Hoheitsgebiet), by dint of being occupied by German forces, and
“nobody really minds what we do with our ethnic Germans down
there.”68
At the same time as Himmler treated the Banat Germans as though
they were subject to de facto mandatory military service, he placated the
German Foreign Ministry by refraining from a proclamation of manda-
tory military service for all ethnic Germans, regardless of citizenship.
Such a proclamation would have created a precedent and caused an
uproar in independent states with substantial ethnic German
populations.69 Himmler thus extended a conciliatory gesture to the
Foreign Ministry from his position of power, maintained the formal
illusion of voluntarism in the Waffen-SS, and paid lip service to ideology
by presenting the division “Prinz Eugen” as a mini Volksgemeinschaft of
eager ethnic German soldiers, all in one fell swoop.
The reality was more complicated. Despite many recruits’ lack of
enthusiasm for armed service, the Banat German leadership enforced
the notion that most Banat Germans felt passionate pride in their soldiers
and mistrust of any able-bodied ethnic German man who did not wear
the Waffen-SS uniform. Pride notwithstanding, the Banat’s daily func-
tioning and continued deliveries of agricultural surpluses for the Third
Reich were in danger of grinding to a halt, due to the manpower shortage
caused by recruitment.70 This led to the introduction of the compulsory
labor service, “custodianship” of the conscripted men’s land by remain-
ing peasants, and the employment of more women and non-Germans in
the Banat administration.
In early fall 1942, the Banat German leadership managed to secure the
release from active Waffen-SS duty of over 600 essential personnel,
among them Sepp Janko. Although nearly one-third were still waiting to
be discharged at year’s end,71 these exemptions earned Janko the scorn of

68
Berger to Brandt (1943), BA Berlin, NS 7, vol. 91, p. 27.
69
Himmler to Lorenz (1942), BA Berlin, NS 7, vol. 91, p. 10; Reinecke to SS-Hauptamt,
July 12, 1943, NARA, RG 238, entry 174, doc. NO-1649, no page number.
70
Meyszner to RFSS Persönlicher Stab, January 2, 1943, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 3798, fiche
2, fr. 60.
71
Lapp to Janko, July 28, 1942, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 5, doc. 77;
SS-Führungshauptamt to “Prinz Eugen,” September 3, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim,
file R 101011, fiche 2606, fr. H299,563; Benzler to AA, November 17, 1942, PA AA,
Inland II D, file R 100615, fiche 2, fr. 57; Luther to Jüttner, November 19, 1942, PA AA,
Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606, fr. H299,534; Triska to Jüttner,
December 18, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606, fr.
H299,533; Jüttner to Benzler, December 31, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file
R 101011, fiche 2606, fr. H299,531.
 “Prinz Eugen” in the Field 227

some ethnic Germans, who already saw him as a young upstart and Nazi
lickspittle. Now they accused him of “settl[ing] into his comfortable
office . . . claiming to be indispensable”72 and “stay[ing] at home, where
no bullets whistle past.”73 Dissenting voices also heaped scorn on young
or wealthy ethnic Germans who used connections to secure a discharge,
but this was merely more of the same kind of grumbling that accompanied
many Nazi demands, rather than a sign of active resistance.

“Prinz Eugen” in the Field

Early proposals for the formation of ethnic German units mentioned that,
barring the annexation of the Banat by Hungary, these units would almost
certainly be deployed outside the Banat, in Serbia proper.74 The inclusion
of the word “mountain” in the new division’s name implied that “Prinz
Eugen” was intended for deployment away from the Banat lowlands.
The Banat was relatively peaceful, whereas rural Serbia proper became
impossible for German forces to subjugate already in summer 1941.
Joachim von Ribbentrop suggested, in February 1942, that ethnic
Germans might replace German units in Serbia-Banat, freeing up all
Wehrmacht and other Reich troops for the anti-Bolshevik struggle
elsewhere. In the end, despite official propaganda that stressed “Prinz
Eugen”’s role in defending the Banat, Felix Benzler’s idea that ethnic
German units might supplement and aid but not supplant German ones
carried the day.75 The Nazi government remained skeptical of the
likelihood that a motley crowd of ethnic Germans, Croatian fascists,
Serbian policemen, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Italian soldiers, in
1943–1944 also Bosnian Muslim and Albanian SS auxiliaries could
keep the Balkans pacified without German supervision.
The date of “Prinz Eugen”’s deployment had to be pushed back twice,
from late August to October 1, 1942.76 As an anti-partisan division, “Prinz
Eugen” played primarily a responsive and defensive role during its initial

72
Slavik testimony (March 10, 1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 153, p. 4.
73
Letter of Nikolaus Unterwiener from Mokrin to his wife Anna, April 11, 1944, Vojni
arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 2, doc. 51. See also letter of Barbara Franz from
Karlsdorf to her husband Josef, July 29, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 14, p. 190.
74
Benzler to AA (July 1941), PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100939, fiche 2423, frs.
H298,119–120; Luther to Ribbentrop (1941), NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 5782, fr.
H298,118.
75
Ribbentrop memo, February 4, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, frs. 153,
508–509; Benzler to AA, February 4, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, fr.
153,510.
76
Feine to AA, June 30, 1942, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 200, fr. 153,630;
Kriegstagebuch, August 14, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 32, p. 8; Kriegstagebuch,
September 9, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 33, p. 6.
228 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

deployment in Serbia proper from October 1942 till January 1943. Despite
Heinrich Himmler’s supreme authority in ethnic German affairs, the
Wehrmacht remained in charge of military operations in Serbia and
commanded even the Waffen-SS as one of the anti-partisan forces there.77
In the course of their deployment, the men of the division “Prinz
Eugen” were treated to a steady round of propaganda lectures customary
in Waffen-SS training, intended to instill in them a sense of belonging to
a greater, racially defined, fighting community of Germans.78 Central to
this ideological training was the notion that the enemy was more danger-
ous and insidious than he appeared. Like Banat German propaganda,
ideological proclamations in “Prinz Eugen” did not discount the threat
the Jews were seen to pose to the New Order, rather they emphasized the
perceived savagery, slyness, and numerical superiority of the Slavic and
especially the communist enemy.
The October 10, 1941 order issued by the erstwhile commanding
general in Serbia, Franz Böhme, set the stage for “Prinz Eugen”’s deploy-
ment by establishing the retaliatory shooting of civilians – Serbs and
Jews – as the norm for German anti-partisan action in Southeast
Europe. Much as the June 1941 Commissar Order did in the occupied
Soviet Union, this order normalized severe punitive measures against
civilians in Serbia.
A training document Arthur Phleps prepared for the men of “Prinz
Eugen” in April 1942 confirmed these norms and expectations. Either
100 Partisans or 100 civilians from the vicinity had to be executed in
retaliation for every dead division member, 50 for every wounded man.
Phleps encouraged his men to display fanaticism in combat and think of
themselves as surrounded by enemies on all sides, an island of
Germanness in a Slavic sea – a perspective typical also of the Nazi view
of Germany’s position in the ongoing conflict. Phleps contextualized the
need for brutality as due to the Serbs’ supposed tendency to see all
kindness as weakness and the Serbs’ own pugnacious fanaticism.79
Phleps’ statements reflected Nazi anti-Serb prejudice but also the Nazi
tendency to see violence perpetrated by Germans as rational, in service to
military goals, whereas violence perpetrated by their enemies was suppo-
sedly the result of the Slavs’ chaotic and irrational approach to warfare.80
77
Kriegstagebuch, September 8, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 33, p. 5; Bader to Meyszner,
September 10, 1942, BA MA, RW 40, file 33, p. 62.
78
Förster in Matthäus et al., pp. 108–113.
79
Arthur Phleps, “Taktische Grundsätze für die Führung des Kleinkrieges,” April 27,
1942, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 15, pp. 133, 151–152.
80
Gumz, pp. 1015–1038; Alexander Korb, “Integrated Warfare? The Germans and the
Ustaša Massacres: Syrmia 1942” in War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-Partisan
Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1939–45, ed. Ben Shepherd and Juliette Pattinson
 “Prinz Eugen” in the Field 229

With this attitude in mind, Phleps’ October 1942 appeal to Serbian

civilians to aid the German armed forces in eradicating the communist
“plague”81 from their midst rang decidedly hollow. Phleps claimed in
vain that a “law-abiding population can live in peace and prosperity under
the protection of the German sword.”82 Two years later, eschewing all
prevarication, Phleps brutally encapsulated the operating principle of the
division “Prinz Eugen” and other German forces: “the Homo Balkanicus
[Balkanmensch] cannot bear a gentle hand. He must feel the lash.”83
This view of the enemy built on images of Slavs and communists
propagated by the Banat German press and the ethnic Germans’ self-
perception as pioneers in an inimical, alien environment. The dehuma-
nization of the enemy was reified through official terminology.
In July 1942, Himmler banned the use in German documents of the
word “partisans,” as used by the communist resistance in the Soviet
Union and other countries. This word lent the communists an aura of
martial glory, whereas Himmler wanted German soldiers to see only
“bandits, franc tireurs, and criminal thugs,” who had to be
annihilated.84 By extension, the Yugoslav Partisans were not seen as
partisans, but as criminals deserving of punishment.
In December 1942, Adolf Hitler decreed that the resistance in the East
and Southeast could be put down only if pro-German forces considered
every civilian a potential “bandit.” This gave German soldiers carte
blanche to abuse or kill any civilian, regardless of age or gender, who was
so much as suspected of being a communist or aiding the communist
cause.85 Hitler’s proclamation declared, in effect, open season in East and
Southeast Europe on anyone who could not prove they were a Nazi
supporter.
The atmosphere of paranoia and brutality engendered by these guide-
lines escalated when the division “Prinz Eugen” transferred from Serbia
proper to the Independent State of Croatia in January 1943, following the
Četnik retreat to Montenegro. The Partisan command had moved already

(Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 210–211; McConnell,
pp. 69–75.
81
Phleps, “Aufruf an die Bevölkerung!”, no date, likely October 1942, PA AA, Deutsche
Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 61/10, p. 2 of this document.
82
Phleps, “Taktische Grundsätze für die Führung des Kleinkrieges” (1942), BA MA, RS
3–7, file 15, p. 151.
83
Phleps to Himmler, July 10, 1944, quoted in Klaus Schmieder, “Auf Umwegen zum
Vernichtungskrieg? Der Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien, 1941–1944” in Die Wehrmacht.
Mythos und Realität, ed. Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (Munich:
R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), p. 918.
84
Heinrich Himmler order, July 31, 1942, quoted in memo to Wedel, August 9, 1944,
NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 74, fr. 2,591,687.
85
Keitel order, December 16, 1942, USHMM, RG-49.002*01, fiche 16, doc. 238.
230 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

in late 1941 from Serbia to Bosnia, which was a part of the Ustaša state.
By late 1942, Partisan forces penetrated to the very center of the
expanded Croatian state, where they controlled a territory the size of
Switzerland, with the town of Bihać in Northwest Bosnia serving as
their unofficial capital. They also started attracting supporters of diverse
ethnic backgrounds, disenchanted with the ideological platforms offered
by the Ustašas, the Third Reich, and the Četniks. The deployment of
“Prinz Eugen” in the Independent State of Croatia was prompted,
moreover, by the Ustaša government’s inability to police its own rural
areas as well as Himmler’s desire to add Croatian and Hungarian ethnic
German recruits to “Prinz Eugen,” in order to create an ethnic German
fighting bloc in Southeast Europe.86
The Banat German division now had to cooperate with the Wehrmacht
in Croatia, the Croatian army, the Ustaša militia, eventually also the
Bosnian Muslim Waffen-SS division “Handschar.” In this new arena of
operations, “Prinz Eugen” started taking offensive action as part of
larger – and largely unsuccessful – operations against Partisan strong-
holds, such as Operation White (January–March 1943) and Operation
Black (May–June 1943).87
Some older residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina retained fond
memories of the Austrian occupation of Bosnia before World War I and
initially looked on all German-speakers as the inheritors of that imperial
tradition. At the very least, they may have seen the Germans as a welcome
alternative to the fighting between the Ustašas and the Partisans.88 This
rosy attitude did not long survive the realities of German anti-partisan
warfare.
Deployment in Bosnia and Croatia proper marked a watershed for
“Prinz Eugen,” as the ban on use of the word “partisan” and official
authorization to use extreme violence came into full force.
In March 1943, Hitler granted Himmler authority even over the
Wehrmacht in the course of anti-partisan and pacification operations,
which Himmler used to escalate terror against civilians, recruit many
Croatian ethnic Germans, and tap into the Bosnian Muslim recruit pool
for the new “Handschar” division of the Waffen-SS. Its officers were
predominantly ethnic Germans, including many “Prinz Eugen”
veterans.89

86
Casagrande, pp. 237–239; Pavlowitch, pp. 114–117, 120–121, 128–130; Tomasevich,
p. 279.
87
Pavlowitch, pp. 152–166.
88
Kühn, “Reisebericht,” June 2, 1943, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101094, fiche
2821, fr. H298,638.
89
Pavlowitch, pp. 174–177; Tomasevich, pp. 289–293, 496–501.
 “Prinz Eugen” in the Field 231

Moreover, the whole territory of the Independent State of Croatia was

declared a German Anti-Partisan Combat Area (Bandenkampfgebiet) in
mid-1943, irrespective of the Croatian state’s formal independence. This
gave German forces in Croatia great operational discretion.90 Differences
of opinion arose in “Prinz Eugen” over whether anyone below the rank of
battalion commander could order the shooting of civilians and whether
women and children should be shot in the course of anti-partisan opera-
tions. The baseline for these diverging opinions remained that extreme
brutality was standard procedure.91
In Bosnia and Croatia, the Banat Germans had to contend with the
oxymoron of ideological warfare: they used the very harshest measures in
putting down the resistance, with the vague hope of sparing friendly or
collaborationist civilians, disregarding the fact that friendly civilians and
collaborators were often indistinguishable from resistance members.
In summer 1943, SS Brigadier General Karl von Oberkamp, Arthur
Phleps’ replacement as division commander, appealed in vain to field
commanders’ common sense, since killing the families of men who had
joined the Partisans or the Četniks might drive even more civilians into the
arms of the resistance. “[O]n such grounds, one could and would even
have to raze substantial portions of the Croatian state to the ground.
Anything else would be a useless half effort,”92 Oberkamp pointed out.
Whereas in Serbia proper in late 1942, the division “Prinz Eugen”
participated in several large-scale massacres of civilians, anti-partisan
warfare as an exercise in extreme brutality became routine in the
Independent State of Croatia in 1943.93 “Prinz Eugen” gained such a
reputation for indiscriminate trigger happiness that the German
occupation forces in Croatia lodged a complaint after members of the
ethnic German division killed a number of Muslims, including several
members of the division “Handschar,” in East Bosnia in summer 1943.
Yet on this and many similar occasions, “Prinz Eugen”’s field comman-
ders merely exercised the prerogative given them by the general guidelines
on anti-partisan warfare and evaded reprimand or punishment.94
90
“Grundsätze und Durchführungsbestimmungen für Säuberungsunternehmen im
Operationsgebiet,” July 10, 1943, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 5, p. 158; “Befehl für Abwehr-
und Vergeltungsmassnahmen gegen die fdl. Bevölkerung,” July 14, 1943, BA MA,
RS 3–7, file 3, p. 505.
91
Karl von Oberkamp memo, July 20, 1943, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 5, p. 160; Birn, p. 271.
92
Oberkamp memo (1943), BA MA, RS 3–7, file 5, p. 161.
93
Testimony of Jakob Cajger, August 12, 1947, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 77, folder
7, doc. 4, pp. 2–3; Schmieder in Müller and Volkmann, pp. 910–911.
94
Sicherheitspolizei in Sarajevo to Einsatzgruppe E in Zagreb, July 7, 1943, BA Berlin, NS
19, file 1434, fiche 1, frs. 2–4; Phleps to Himmler, September 7, 1943, BA Berlin, NS 19,
file 1434, fiche 1, frs. 15–16; Siegfried Kasche to AA, April 16, 1944, PA AA, Inland II
Geheim, file R 101095, fiche 2824, frs. H298,876–878.
232 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

In fall 1943, the division “Prinz Eugen” arrived in Dalmatia, along

Croatia’s Adriatic Sea coast. Germany’s situation in Southeast Europe
was deteriorating rapidly and dramatically. Italy was knocked out of the
war, so German forces took over its occupation zone in South Croatia.
The Ustaša state was very weak, overstretched German forces could not
control the Croatian and Bosnian countryside, and a state of de facto civil
war existed between the Četniks and the Partisans, in which civilians of all
ethnicities became easy targets. Through it all, the Četniks steadily lost
popular support, manpower, and resources. The Partisans reaped the
benefits and posed the greatest challenge to the Germans in the
Southeast.95
In October 1943, Hermann Neubacher became the German Foreign
Ministry’s liaison for Southeast Europe. His primary task was to help
coordinate all Tripartite Pact armed forces in the Balkans, in a desperate
effort to wrest back control.96 In typical Nazi fashion, this involved
driving the German approach to anti-partisan warfare to its farthest
logical extent.
At the turn of 1943–1944, German field commanders in the Balkans
gained the right to order nearly indiscriminate, (nominally) retaliatory
actions including shootings, hangings, arrests, and destruction of home-
steads of “bandits” and their helpers. All individuals, women and children
included, “reasonably” presumed to be members of the resistance or to be
aiding the resistance were subject to these punitive measures, alongside
proven communists and other active resistance fighters.97
Failing to turn the tide of the war, this policy ensured that the division
“Prinz Eugen” shared in the general German reputation for routine
excessive violence. Were effectiveness in killing civilians a measure of
military prowess, “Prinz Eugen” would have acquitted itself well, but,
as an anti-partisan force, its combat effectiveness was undone by the
hostility engendered by its brutal actions, the ways in which ideology
shaped its approach to anti-partisan warfare, the chronic manpower
shortage, and poor coordination among the Tripartite Pact’s diverse
forces.
The notion that the Banat Germans were well-prepared for anti-
partisan warfare because they knew their enemy proved patently untrue.
For most Banat Germans, the only part of Yugoslavia they knew was the
Banat. Their supposed knowledge of the enemy consisted of ethnic and

95
Bergholz, pp. 412–418; Pavlowitch, pp. 181–185, 187, 197–199.
96
Hitler, “Die einheitliche Führung des Kampfes gegen den Kommunismus im Südosten,”
October 29, 1943, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 775, fr. 368,657.
97
Alexander Löhr, “Sühnemassnahmen,” December 22, 1943, BA MA, RW 40, file 89,
p. 1–4 of this document.
 “Prinz Eugen” in the Field 233

cultural stereotypes exacerbated by Waffen-SS ideological training and

was already hampered in Serbia proper in 1942 by differences in living
standards and language. In Bosnia and Dalmatia in 1943, the Banat
Germans in “Prinz Eugen” did not know their enemy at all and could
not always tell Muslim from Croat from Serb, even had they had the good
will to try. Often they preferred to assume civilians were aiding the
resistance and responded with what the Nazi regime considered an
appropriate degree of brutality.98
The sense of being in enemy territory, amidst an actively hostile
population, in circumstances very different from those prevalent in the
mostly peaceful Banat, and the constant barrage of propaganda encoura-
ging the recruits to fanaticism nourished the division’s growing tendency
to resort to extreme violence. The division thus contributed to the exacer-
bation of ethnic strife in a part of Europe where war and civil war
overlapped.
For the Waffen-SS as a whole, making up the manpower shortage
meant an increased intake of ethnic Germans. Starting already in early
summer 1942, while “Prinz Eugen” was solely a Banat German division,
Heinrich Himmler applied the racial thinker’s disregard for state borders
to the problem and planned to add Romanian, Hungarian, and Croatian
Germans to the division’s ranks. Following the German defeat at
Stalingrad in February 1943, Himmler exerted even greater pressure on
Germany’s allies to transfer their ethnic Germans’ military obligation to
the Third Reich and allow the Waffen-SS to recruit Croatian, Hungarian,
Slovak, and Romanian Germans under the continued pretense of
voluntarism.99 By June 1944, some 200,000 ethnic Germans from
Southeast Europe were serving in the Waffen-SS and the German
police.100
Despite Himmler’s requests, individual states’ bargaining power vis-à-
vis the Reich continued to matter. Occupied Serbia-Banat and Croatia
(occupied in all but name) came in second and a very close third of all
Southeast-European states, in terms of the percentages of their ethnic
Germans doing military service as part of the Tripartite Pact’s war effort.
In December 1943, 14.7% of the Serbia-Banat German community (over
21,000 men) were in the Waffen-SS, the Wehrmacht, and the German
police, as were 14.4% of Croatian Germans, inclusive of those serving in
the Croatian army. The only state to outstrip Serbia-Banat and Croatia

98
Phleps to Himmler (1943), BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1434, fiche 1, frs. 15–16.
99
Luther memo, June 4, 1942, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101011, fiche 2606, frs.
H299,579–581; Lumans, “The Military Obligation of the Volksdeutsche,” pp. 317–320.
100
Klumm to Himmler, June 10, 1944, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 22, fr. 2,527,535.
234 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

was Hungary (23.7%), but many Hungarian Germans served in the

Hungarian army rather than the Waffen-SS.101
Since the available pool of Banat Germans became depleted already in
1942, other ethnic Germans were inducted into the division “Prinz
Eugen.” By spring 1944, just over half (53.2%) of “Prinz Eugen” still
consisted of Banat Germans. The rest were a mixture of Romanian
(22.02%), Croatian (10.65%), Slovak (3.07%), and Hungarian
Germans (2.69%) as well as Germans from the Third Reich
(8.27%).102 Nevertheless, divisional identity remained anchored in the
Serbian Banat, the division’s point of origin and ideological touchstone.
The division’s greatest problems were the manpower shortage and the
unresolved ambivalence of Reich Germans toward ethnic Germans,
exacerbated in the field by the fact that almost all Germans from the
Reich held officer rank. Despite lip service paid to the ethnic Germans’
racial and ideological steadfastness, most officers from the Reich saw the
Balkan landscape in which they were deployed as a “pig land
[Sauland].”103 Officers continued to heap verbal abuse on the ethnic
Germans, even though the ever-petit bourgeois Himmler decided to root
out the “Balkan custom [Balkan-Sitte]” of cursing someone’s mother in
an argument and had a division member executed for breaching his
(Himmler’s) ban on such foul language.104
Some officers praised their men for becoming true fighters, but even
then, “Prinz Eugen”’s successes were credited to Arthur Phleps’s efforts
to whip “completely Serbianized, mostly too old” recruits into shape.105
Praise was backhanded at best, suggesting that the division had not done
too shabbily – for a bunch of ethnic Germans.106
Even ethnic German officers absorbed this superior attitude and
pushed their men more than was perhaps wise. In an incident reported
by Franz Unterreiner, an ethnic German officer had his men, most of
advanced years, march uphill, in the July sun, while carrying full gear.
Eventually a Wehrmacht officer came across the dwindling column and

101
“Volksdeutsche in der Waffen-SS” (1943), NARA, RG 238, entry 174, box 2, doc. NO-
2015, p. 3. Hungarian percentages were miscalculated in this document.
102
“Landsmannschaftliche Zusammensetzung,” April 3, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 17,
p. 115.
103
Quoted in Kasche to AA, April 16, 1944, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 101095, fiche
2824, fr. H298,888.
104
“Btl. Tagesbefehl Nr. 11/44,” March 8, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 1, p. 173. See also
Himmler to Phleps, October 27, 1943, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 319, fiche 4, fr. 148.
105
Brack memo, March 23, 1943, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 938, fiche 1, fr. 8. See also “Prinz
Eugen” memo, July 22, 1943, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 7, p. 33.
106
“Erfahrungsbericht über den Einsatz der SS-Geb.Nachr.Abt.7 beim Unternehmen
‘Weiss’ in der Zeit vom 20.1.43–12.2.43 in Kroatien,” February 15, 1943, BA MA,
N 756, file 149a, p. 158.
 “Prinz Eugen” in the Field 235

intervened: “Captain, are you insane, what are you doing to these people?
Look at the road [behind you], it is dotted with your men lying down.
Keep at it for another few kilometers, you will be [marching] all alone.”107
Many Banat Germans quickly grew disenchanted with the life of
a soldier for Hitler, so different from the claims put forth by the propa-
ganda machine. Already in 1942, Phleps castigated the men for writing
anonymous letters to Sepp Janko, August Meyszner, and other occupa-
tion officials in Serbia, complaining of poor treatment and food, being
denied leave to go home for the harvest, and general conditions in the
field.108 By 1944, the Banat Germans were voicing the same complaints
in their regular letters home, possibly in a passive-aggressive attempt to
get the censors’ attention or just satisfying the need to complain to
someone.109
Surviving letters reveal that their authors did not feel morally con-
flicted or disgusted by the realities of anti-partisan warfare. Instead, they
pleaded for their sons to be discharged, claiming their other sons had
already died in service with “Prinz Eugen.” They tried to shift the blame
for their failure to defeat the Partisans by verbally abusing the Croats.
A more pro-active few attempted to desert by dressing up as Ustašas,
hiding with relatives after they were supposed to return from leave, or
resorting to that classic as old as gunpowder: shooting oneself in the
foot.110 The ideological dimension of the war remained of little interest
to them. Even their participation in numerous massacres seemed to
bother them less than their continued sojourn away from home, in
hostile territory.
On May 19, 1943, Adolf Hitler granted German citizenship to all
ethnic Germans – defined as having at least two grandparents of
German origin or being members of the organized German minority in
their host state – who were serving in the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS, the
German police, or Organisation Todt, the Nazi engineering

107
Unterreiner testimony (1958) in Schieder et al., p. 72.
108
Phleps, “Divisions-Sonderbefehl,” December 2, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 292, fiche
1, frs. 9–11.
109
Letter of Thaddäus Liebgott from Rustendorf to his mother Anna, July 16, 1944, BA
MA, RS 3–7, file 14, p. 192; letter of Josef Bojes from Werschetz to his wife Hermine,
July 21, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 14, p. 193; letter of Peter Hess from Sankt Hubert to
his wife Katharina, July 21, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 14, p. 195; letter of Karl Hassler
from Mokrin to his wife, July 26, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 14, p. 199.
110
Netzling to “Prinz Eugen” divisional court, January 29, 1944, BA MA, RS 4, file 1132,
p. 15; SS-Gebirgsjäger Regiment 14 memo, March 29, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 15,
p. 178; Unterwiener letter (1944), Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 2,
document 51; letter of Anna Stuprich from Pardan to her husband Anton, July 20,
1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 14, p. 196; letter of Georg Ulmer from Pantschowa to his
company commander, July 25, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 14, p. 194.
236 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

organization.111 Hitler likely made this decision because in May 1943

Italy was about to be knocked out of the war, so the Third Reich had to tie
its remaining collaborators even closer to itself. German citizenship
should have served as the ultimate morale boost for ethnic German
soldiers.
The decision built on the precedent set by granting German citizenship
to ethnic Germans in annexed territories and the possibility for ethnic
Germans resettled to the Third Reich, who were also in the Waffen-SS, to
apply for it.112 In addition, Nazi legal expert Wilhelm Stuckart proposed
already in 1942 that the “frugal [sparsam]” granting of German citizen-
ship be facilitated for mobilized ethnic Germans from territories under
German military administration that were also considered sovereign
German territory – such as Serbia-Banat.113
In the Banat, the announcement aroused trepidation that German
citizenship would resurrect the dreaded prospect of resettlement to
Germany.114 Confusion arose because ethnic Germans serving in the
Banat police and working in offices that were de jure part of the Serbian
state’s administrative apparatus did not receive German citizenship, nor
did those who received it automatically lose their Serbian citizenship.
The ethnic German soldiers’ wives and children did not become
German citizens, nor were the new German citizens in the Waffen-SS at
liberty to decamp to the Reich for the duration of the hostilities.115
On German orders, in August 1943, the Serbian collaborationist
government reissued the July 1941 decree on the ethnic Germans’ legal
standing. Its title was changed slightly to “Verordnung über die
Rechtsstellung der deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und in Serbien”
(“Decree on the Legal Status of the German National Group in the
Banat and Serbia,” author’s emphasis), to remind the Banat Germans
where and under whose rule they lived.116
Overall, the citizenship decree had a minimal impact on the Banat
Germans, conferring more exceptions and restrictions than privileges.

111
“Erwerb der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit durch deutschstämmige Angehörige der
Wehrmacht, der Waffen-SS, der Polizei und der Organisation Todt,” no date, BA
Berlin, R 69, file 557, fiche 1, fr. 7.
112
Berger memo, June 25, 1941, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 160, frs. 2,692,691–692.
113
Stuckart memo, April 28, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 45, fiche 1, fr. 13.
114
Himmler to Turner, August 27, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 45, fiche 1, fr. 4;
“Lagebericht für den Monat Mai 1943,” no date, BA Berlin, NS 43, file 202, p. 78.
115
Lorenz to Himmler, August 15, 1942, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 45, fiche 1, frs. 2–3;
unsigned memo (1943), BA Berlin, R 58, file 7733, p. 21; “Erwerb der deutschen
Staatsangehörigkeit” (no date), BA Berlin, R 69, file 557, fiche 1, fr. 7; unsigned and
undated memo, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 3886, fiche 1, frs. 10–11, 13.
116
“Neue Verordnung über die Rechtsstellung der deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und in
Serbien,” Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung, September 10, 1943, p. 1.
 “Prinz Eugen” in the Field 237

Their resettlement was deferred again till the war’s end, and Hitler and
Himmler continued to keep them on a very short leash, in order to ensure
the ethnic Germans’ fighting potential was fully utilized before any
sweeping change in the ethnic Germans’ legal status could take practical
effect. Berlin also wanted to keep ethnic German soldiers’ non-German
wives at arm’s length. For the time being, ethnic German civilians in the
Banat went on harvesting crops to feed their men and other German
soldiers, while ethnic German soldiers remained with the Waffen-SS at
Himmler’s pleasure.
By early 1944, the Partisans had an estimated 100,000 active comba-
tants and controlled large parts of Bosnia and Croatia proper, including
Dalmatia.117 The Četniks were in decline, yet continued to maintain
a stronghold in East Bosnia. Arthur Phleps had left “Prinz Eugen” to
command “Handschar,” before assuming command of all operations in
Bosnia and Herzegovina and South Dalmatia in October 1943. In
January 1944, he reported that the Partisans had become a formidable
army distinguished by mobility, tactical shrewdness, the willingness to
suffer severe casualties in order to inflict damage on the enemy, and the
ability to survive and fight in the harshest conditions. In damning
contrast, Phleps assessed pro-German forces in the Independent
State of Croatia as ranging from merely inferior (“Prinz Eugen”) to
completely useless except for terrorizing the ethnic Serbian population
(Ustašas).118
Its other problems aside, the distances the division “Prinz Eugen” was
expected to cover were simply too great, the terrain too difficult. In early
1944, its operational area covered the entire rugged Dalmatian and
Montenegrin coast roughly from Šibenik in Dalmatia as far south as
Albania, as well as all communication and transportation lines leading
into mountainous Bosnia.119 The Wehrmacht and “Prinz Eugen” did
manage to chase the Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito out of his new head-
quarters in the Bosnian town of Drvar (southwest of Bihać) in early
summer 1944, which unintentionally facilitated his making contact with
and winning the support of the Western Allies, after the Soviets airlifted
him to Bari in Allied-occupied South Italy.120
Divisional propaganda continued to harp on sacrifice and unity in
pursuit of final victory. SS Brigadier General Otto Kumm, “Prinz
Eugen” commander after Phleps and Oberkamp, issued the following

117
Pavlowitch, pp. 215–216.
118
Phleps memo, January 25, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 6, pp. 114–117.
119
Otto Kumm memo, March 21, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 4, p. 123.
120
Lampe, pp. 218–221; Pavlowitch, pp. 218–222.
238 The Waffen-SS Division “Prinz Eugen” & Anti-Partisan Warfare

statement to the division after the July 1944 assassination attempt on

Hitler:
Even more than before, duty calls us to [to fight] till our last breath [with]
unceasing loyalty in battle for the future of the Reich. We must toss the last
indifference, the last inhibition and softness overboard. There is no going back
for us anymore. The only choices for the German Volk now are victory or
death!121
This message may have bolstered morale or it may have enhanced
encroaching fatalism as the possibility of defeat sank in. Promises of
victory through ethnic German military and economic exertion rang
decidedly hollow, given that in August 1944 Serbia, the territory neces-
sary to control Yugoslavia, was on the brink of an Allied invasion, with
the Red Army massing on the other side of its border with Bulgaria and
Tito’s Partisans bringing the fight from Bosnia back to Serbia
proper.122
Starting in late 1942, the Banat Germans in the Waffen-SS participated
in anti-partisan actions of escalating brutality yet diminishing overall
effectiveness. The division “Prinz Eugen” perpetrated and took part in
numerous massacres of civilians suspected of collusion with the Partisans
or the Četniks, or simply Slavic civilians who could not demonstrate active
collaboration with the Tripartite Pact. By association with the division
“Prinz Eugen,” the whole ethnic German community of partitioned
Yugoslavia gained a reputation for brutality and enthusiastic collabora-
tion. The massacres committed by the men of “Prinz Eugen” guaranteed
that even noncombatant Banat Germans suffered the retribution, which
the postwar authorities of socialist Yugoslavia meted out to ethnic
Germans who remained in the country after liberation.

121
Kumm, “Divisions-Sonderbefehl!”, July 21, 1944, BA MA, RS 3–7, file 13, p. 33.
122
Lampe, pp. 225–226.
 Conclusion

Between April 1941 and October 1944, the ethnic German minority in
the Serbian Banat ruled its home region at the behest of the Third Reich
and Reich German occupation officials in Belgrade. The Banat Germans
adopted Nazified tropes and trappings in public life, supplied Reich
troops with food, administered and policed the Banat on the Nazis’
behalf, helped carry out the Holocaust and Aryanization in the Banat,
and provided more than 20,000 soldiers for the Waffen-SS. In exchange,
the Reich continued to treat them as second-class Germans, made them
pay dearly for every alleged privilege they received as the Reich Germans’
racial kin, subordinated their interests to Reich interests, and regarded
them as useful tools and potentially valuable racial stock rather than
equal partners in the Nazi New Order. Banat German agency and
choices were constrained by Nazi desires and policies in Southeast
Europe. Ultimately, the Banat Germans’ safety mattered less to the
Reich Germans than securing the Reich troops’ retreat from the
Southeast in 1944–1945.
In October 1944, organized German minority life in the Serbian Banat
effectively ended when the region was occupied by the Partisans, whose
leader Josip Broz Tito went on to rule Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.
The Red Army only passed through the Banat in its pursuit of the
retreating Germans, so it was really the Partisan arrival that signified the
abrupt and decisive reversal of Banat German fortunes.
With the division “Prinz Eugen” away protecting the Wehrmacht’s
retreat through Yugoslav lands toward Austria, some Banat German
civilians attempted flight in late summer and early fall 1944, especially
after Romania changed sides, declared war on Germany, and allowed
Soviet troops to transit through its territory. Those ethnic Germans who
survived flight and reached parts of Germany or Austria occupied by the
Western Allies were able to blend in with the majority population and
even achieve a measure of vindication as victims of the war, commun-
ism, but also Nazism, in postwar German narratives of guilt and
absolution.

239
240 Conclusion

Most Banat Germans chose to stay. Overreliance on the Third Reich’s

protection, the inability to perceive the meaning of defeat in a war of
ideologies, and established patterns of life (harvests, relations with neigh-
bors) shaped ethnic German perceptions in those fateful days and dis-
couraged many from attempting flight. The last days of the Banat
German administration also replicated earlier trends. Reich Germans
put German state interest first and blocked proposals to evacuate the
Banat Germans, so as to ensure the Wehrmacht’s orderly retreat from
Southeast Europe. Sepp Janko’s circle continued to obey Nazi dicta, but
also to exercise its agency in small yet crucial ways.
The postwar mistreatment of ethnic Germans was the product of
wartime perceptions, which associated all Germans with the crimes of
the Nazi regime and wartime actions such as the massacres carried out by
“Prinz Eugen” or the economic exploitation of Jews and Serbs. In a grim
irony evident across East and Southeast Europe, insistence on ethnic
categories as an absolute reality continued after Nazism’s defeat.
Expulsions of ethnic Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia homo-
genized society and made postwar governments appear as champions of
the dominant ethnic group(s), thus solidifying ethnic community and
benefiting it with property taken away from the expelled.1
In Yugoslavia, riven by both multiple occupations and the legacy of
civil war, members of various Slavic groups had fought each other and
relatively few German occupation officials were captured or extradited for
trial. Therefore, the postwar national narrative elided intra-Yugoslav
enmities and gave several Slavic groups formal equality – instead of
‘simplifying’ society to just one dominant group – while Germans were
blamed as doubly guilty, both traitors and invaders.
The Yugoslav ethnic Germans made especially convenient targets
because they were seen as “foreign,” had a record of wartime collabora-
tion, and owned property that could be confiscated and used to reward
Partisan veterans. The expedience of targeting ethnic Germans, so as not
to open up difficult discussions of what various Serbs, Croats, Bosnian
Muslims, Slovenes, and others had inflicted upon each other during the
war, was the primary impetus, coupled with the communists’ suspicion of
all ethnic Germans as fascists. The Yugoslav Germans still in the country
at the time of liberation were subjected, between 1944 and 1948, to
abuse, internment, and disenfranchisement, eventual mass emigration-
qua-expulsion, and the effective erasure of their historical presence in
what amounted to a new stage in remaking the physical and mental
landscape of Yugoslavia.

1
Naimark, pp. 136–137.
 Expulsions 241

Expulsions
The flight and expulsion of ethnic Germans long settled in parts of East,
Southeast, and Central Europe at the end of World War II, as well as the
flight and expulsion of Germans and ethnic Germans brought there
during the war in the course of Nazi occupation and resettlement
schemes, constituted a grimly ironic consequence of Nazi efforts to
reshuffle and homogenize European populations. Between 1944 and
1949, an estimated 12–15 million Germans and ethnic Germans fled
before the Red Army advance, were forcibly displaced by the Red Army
or the postwar authorities in their host countries, or were deported to the
Soviet Union as forced laborers, human war reparations. An estimated
1–3 million did not survive flight and mistreatment at the hands of Soviet
soldiers and erstwhile neighbors.2 The estimates vary widely due to
different criteria of Germanness on national censuses and the political
instrumentalization of the expulsions in the postwar period.
In 1944–1945, Adolf Hitler’s government proved unwilling to concede
that Germans might have to retreat or escape from the “racially inferior”
Soviets and was reluctant to condone flight or organize evacuations from
areas that lay in the Red Army’s westward path. Once the Red Army
entered East Prussia in October 1944, tales of mass rape and the
massacres of several towns’ entire populations spread quickly, impelling
many Germans and ethnic Germans to take flight on roads congested by
the retreating Wehrmacht and strafed by Soviet aircraft.3
In addition to flight and expulsion from eastern parts of the Third Reich,
“wild” expulsions – organized by national governments yet unratified by the
Allies – took place in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania throughout
1945. They culminated in legalized, “orderly” expulsions from spring 1946
through 1947, continuing until 1949.4 Even in the first, flight stage, the
likelihood of ethnic Germans leaving their homes varied depending on their
area of residence, experiences in their host state, and speculation about

2
Klaus J. Bade and Jochen Oltmer, “Germany” in The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities
in Europe: From the 17th Century to the Present, ed. Klaus J. Bade et al. (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 75; R. M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane:
The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2012), p. 1; Stefan Wolff, The German Question since 1919: An Analysis with
Key Documents (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 2003), p. 67.
3
Douglas, pp. 61–63; Eric Langenbacher, “Ethical Cleansing? The Expulsion of Germans
from Central and Eastern Europe” in Genocides by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in
Theory and Practice, ed. Nicholas A. Robins and Adam Jones (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 61–62.
4
Duncan Cooper, Immigration and German Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany from
1945 to 2006 (Zurich and Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2012), p. 71; Douglas, pp. 93–98, 124–129,
158–193.
242 Conclusion

whether the Red Army would appear on their doorsteps. Thus, many more
people (in numbers as well as percentage-wise) escaped from Poland than
Hungary or the annexed Sudetenland.5
In July 1945, the Potsdam Conference ratified as official policy what
was by then an ongoing reality: the expulsion of ethnic Germans from
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Joseph Stalin saw the removal of
ethnic Germans as pivotal, alongside the reassertion or imposition of
communist political and ideological control, for the future security
of the Soviet Union and its new sphere of influence in East and
Southeast Europe. Stalin embraced the idea of wholesale population
transfer, which originated early in the war with Eduard Beneš, the head
of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London. The Polish govern-
ment-in-exile and the Western Allies came to accept Beneš’s idea already
in 1942–1943.6
While the British and the Americans vacillated over how expulsions
should be managed, the Polish, Czechoslovak, Yugoslav, and other
national governments established at the war’s end implemented brutal
population policies against their ethnic Germans, with Stalin’s tacit
approval. The British and American governments made concerned
noises, but accepted brutality against Germans and ethnic Germans as
just dues after the Germans’ wartime behavior. Assumptions about
German collective guilt and political expediency for the sake of the
alliance with the Soviets took precedence over the values set forth in the
Atlantic Charter. Even the attempts to make the expulsions more “orderly
and humane” after Potsdam stemmed from the Western Allies’ desire to
control the escalating refugee crisis rather than a fundamental change in
their attitude to the Germans.7
The expulsions of ethnic Germans from North Yugoslavia into Allied-
occupied Austria (sometimes through Hungary) technically constituted
“wild” expulsions, since Yugoslavia was not covered by the Potsdam
Conference. While the new Yugoslav government did petition the

5
Douglas, pp. 63–64.
6
Christopher Kopper, “The London Czech Government and the Origins of the Expulsion
of the Sudeten Germans” in Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. Steven
Béla Várdy and T. Hunt Tooley (Boulder and New York: Columbia University Press,
2003), pp. 255–266.
7
Douglas, pp. 17–36, 65–92; Matthew Frank, “Reconstructing the Nation-State:
Population Transfer in Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–8” in The Disentanglement of
Populations: Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in Post-War Europe, 1944–9, ed.
Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011), pp. 32–42; A. F. Noskova, “Migration of the Germans after the Second World
War: Political and Psychological Aspects” in Forced Migration in Central and Eastern
Europe, 1939–1950, ed. Alfred J. Rieber (London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass,
2000), pp. 96–114.
 To Evacuate or Not to Evacuate 243

Allies, in January 1946, for permission to carry out organized expulsions,

the proposal was shelved, as it would have created a dangerous precedent
for other states not covered by Potsdam to carry out their own population
transfers, thus exacerbating the refugee crisis. The Allies were suspicious
of Yugoslav intentions, fearing that many more ethnic Germans would be
expelled than was initially suggested. Finally, the removal of ethnic
Germans from Southeast Europe constituted a lesser priority than resol-
ving the legacy of the region’s civil wars during the occupation period,
namely consolidating communist rule and purging political opponents
from the body social.8
This left most Banat and other Yugoslav Germans at the untender
mercies of the Yugoslav authorities, since only about one-third of the
500,000 Yugoslav ethnic Germans attempted escape before the turn of
1944–1945.9 The reasons that such a high percentage of ethnic Germans
remained at home included their assumptions about the Red Army’s
approach and its likely consequences, unwillingness to undertake danger-
ous flight, and the fact that Southeast Europe remained a secondary
priority for the Third Reich – not an area from which most ethnic
Germans were evacuated early or in an organized fashion.

To Evacuate or Not to Evacuate

Throughout 1944, the Third Reich tried desperately to strengthen its
defenses in Southeast Europe by reshuffling the pieces already in place,
without committing additional resources it could ill afford to spare.
Hermann Neubacher, the German Foreign Ministry’s representative for
Southeast Europe and Felix Benzler’s replacement in Belgrade,
had August Meyszner dismissed as Higher SS and Police Chief in April
1944. Meyszner’s successor, Hermann Behrends, saw his jurisdiction
extended to include the Sandžak (Southwest Serbia) and Montenegro
in May, and the Serbian Banat in August 1944.10 This revamping of the
occupation system was intended to make economic extraction and anti-
partisan warfare more efficient. Without more personnel assigned to
Southeast Europe, it yielded meager results. Behrends harbored
grandiose ideas about regimenting and mobilizing to their full capacity
8
Douglas, pp. 110–111, 122–123; Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, p. 302; Michael
Portmann, “Politik der Vernichtung? Die deutschsprachige Bevölkerung in der Vojvodina
1944–1952. Ein Forschungsbericht auf Grundlage jugoslawischer Archivdokumente,”
Danubiana Carpathica. Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Kultur in den deutschen Siedlungsgebieten
Südosteuropas, Vol. 1 (2007), pp. 326–328, 330–333.
9
Douglas, p. 63.
10
Himmler memo, May 16, 1944, BA Berlin, R 59, file 65, fiche 4, fr. 152; Heine to
Behrends, August 5, 1944, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1728, fiche 4, fr. 117.
244 Conclusion

the Banat’s thinly stretched human and economic resources, but he could
not strengthen the Banat as a supposed bulwark against the advancing
Red Army by willpower alone.11
The reality of war made itself more and more noticeable starting in
spring 1944, with Allied air raids against German installations in
Belgrade, the radio tower in Zemun, and other nearby targets of strategic
importance. Air raids continued through the summer, striking targets in
Novi Sad and Alisbrunn in addition to Belgrade.12 In April 1944, the
VoMi described the Banat Germans’ overall mood as “dutiful and pre-
pared [to make] sacrifices,”13 but the standard rhetoric was starting to
ring decidedly hollow. Also in spring 1944, Wehrmacht soldiers and
Italian prisoners of war dug up and burned the bodies buried by the
Apfeldorf road after the mass shootings that had taken place there in
1941.14 German forces were doing the same to bodies of the Nazis’
victims all over East Europe, in areas that lay between the Red Army
and the Third Reich.
Whether the Banat Germans grasped the implications of this attempt to
remove and destroy all traces of past slaughter remains unclear. They got
a pointed hint of the reality of German retreat-cum-defeat when
Organisation Todt workers evacuated from Ukraine in summer 1944
scoffed: “The Germans here in the Banat act as though Hitler were a tin
god; not so with us in the Reich” and told children offering them the
Hitler salute, “Soon you’ll be giving a different salute.”15
Nevertheless, the Romanian declaration of war to the Third Reich
on August 23, 1944, came as a shock to the Banat Germans. They prided
themselves on the relative peace of their home region, only to find them-
selves overnight living practically on the front lines. Especially disturbing
was the seemingly intensified Partisan activity in the Banat
since July 1944, but this may have been more perception than reality, as

11
Behrends to Himmler, August 3, 1944, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 1728, fiche 4, frs. 115–116;
Birn, p. 249; Völkl, p. 81.
12
Junker to AA, April 17, 1944, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 64/
11, no page number; Junker to AA, April 18, 1944, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft
Belgrad, file Belgrad 64/11, no page number; Junker to AA, June 6, 1944, PA AA,
Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 64/11, no page number; Junker to AA,
June 12, 1944, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file Belgrad 64/11, no page
number; Junker to AA, August 3, 1944, PA AA, Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad, file
Belgrad 64/11, no page number; Reiter, “Ergänzungsbericht” (no date), BA Bayreuth,
Ost-Dok. 2, file 386, p. 12.
13
VoMi, “Monatsbericht April 1944 über die Lage in den Deutschen Volksgruppen,” no
date, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1005, fr. 393,494.
14
Mitić deposition (1945), AJ, fund 110, box 691, p. 140.
15
“Monatsbericht Juli 1944 des Hauptamtes Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle,” no date, NARA,
RG 242, T-120, roll 1005, fr. 393,335.
 To Evacuate or Not to Evacuate 245

the main body of Partisan forces was still a long way away. Expellee
reports were mostly silent on any major Partisan activity in the six weeks
between August 23 and the Red Army’s entrance into the Banat in
early October, and official German reports reflected fear for the future,
caused by news of Partisan successes in Bosnia and Serbia proper, rather
than contemporary realities. In August 1944, a 200-strong Partisan
battalion did enter the Banat briefly before retreating back to the Srem
when it encountered a strong armed response.16
In September 1944, Hermann Behrends mustered members of the
Deutsche Mannschaft and Banat German teenagers and sent them to
fight the Red Army in the Romanian Banat. They were quickly pushed
back from the vicinity of Timişoara.17
While Behrends indulged in fantasies of defeating the Red Army under
his own steam and the Banat German leadership made sure an article
condemning the new Romanian government appeared in the Banater
Beobachter,18 the German Foreign Ministry reached an agreement with
the Wehrmacht to quietly evacuate Reich German women, children, and
nonessential personnel from Serbia in early September 1944.19 In mid-
September, Joachim von Ribbentrop informed his subordinates that the
Wehrmacht would not be involved in the evacuation of ethnic Germans
from any part of Europe. As a matter of racial as well as foreign policy,
evacuation would be handled, when and if necessary, by the VoMi and the
Foreign Ministry.20
Despite claiming the prerogative to oversee evacuations alongside the
VoMi, Ribbentrop merely reiterated his relative weakness vis-à-vis
Heinrich Himmler. Since the creation of the Waffen-SS division “Prinz
Eugen” in spring 1942, Himmler’s influence in Banat German affairs had
become practically sacrosanct. In fall 1944, Hermann Behrends as
Himmler’s representative in Serbia, rather than Ribbentrop’s representa-
tive Hermann Neubacher, had the final say in official policy regarding
ethnic Germans.

16
Ibid.; Behrends, “Lage- und Tätigkeitsbericht für den Monat August 1944,” September
3, 1944, BA Berlin, R 58, file 8102, p. 12; Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, p. 293.
17
Testimony of Franz Schmidt from Perlas, March 4, 1953, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file
395, p. 177; Josef Beer, “Die letzten Tage der Volksgruppenführung,” January 10, 1958,
BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 38, pp. 2–3; Hausleitner, “Politische Bestrebungen” in
Hausleitner, p. 58.
18
“Deutschstämmige Verräter,” BB, September 9, 1944, PA AA, Inland II C, file
R 100381, pp. 17–19.
19
Neubacher to AA, August 30, 1944, PA AA, Inland II C, file R 100384, pp. 52–53;
Behrends, “Lage- und Tätigkeitsbericht” (1944), BA Berlin, R 58, file 8102, p. 6.
20
Ribbentrop memo, September 16, 1944, PA AA, Inland II Geheim, file R 100896, fiche
2295, fr. H299,179.
246 Conclusion

Once Germany’s control over the Yugoslav lands became a moot point
in view of Romania’s defection and the advance northward of Tito’s
Partisans, the grain deliveries from the Banat could be counted as lost
as well. Ethnic Germans’ long-term ideological value to the Nazis as racial
stock for the regeneration of the Volk paled next to immediate military
realities, and Banat German men were away with the Waffen-SS, protect-
ing the Nazi retreat.
As the southeast flank of the Eastern Front crumbled rapidly in late
summer and early fall 1944, Banat German civilians had little to recom-
mend them to the Third Reich as a priority population in dire need of
evacuation, when larger German and ethnic German populations in
Poland and East Prussia stood in immediate danger from the Red
Army. On September 10, 1944, Hermann Behrends expressly forbade
Sepp Janko to organize evacuations from the Banat and stressed that
ordinary ethnic Germans should be kept in the dark.21 Behrends wished
to prevent a panic among the Banat Germans, so roads in the Banat
would remain clear for the evacuation of the Wehrmacht from
Southeast Europe and the ethnic Germans from Romania.22
The Banat German leadership did plan an evacuation and even issued
an evacuation order on September 8 or 9, rescinding it only after
Behrends’ September 10 missive to Janko. Banat German leaders next
made a belated, ultimately futile show of initiative by preparing an
evacuation plan, despite Behrends’ command not to do so. The surviv-
ing undated drafts of this plan and the postwar testimonies of leading
Banat Germans suggest that the intention was to evacuate mothers with
small children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the infirm first by
train. They would be followed by adults on foot, carrying only
hand luggage. Groups from different villages would fall in with the
main column of evacuees as it approached the River Tisa, their orderly
retreat westward protected by units of the Deutsche Mannschaft.23
The plan was elegant, comprehensive, and so dependent on precise
timing, uncongested roads, and an absence of panic as to be utterly
unworkable.

21
Behrends to Janko, September 10, 1944, quoted in Beer et al., Heimatbuch der Stadt
Weisskirchen im Banat, p. 206; “Monatsbericht September 1944 des Hauptamtes
Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle,” no date, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1146, fr. 449,418.
22
Testimony of Jakob Sohl-Daxer from Wojlowitz in Stefanović, p. 104.
23
“Verzeichnis,” unsigned and undated document, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A,
folder 2, doc. 6; “Grundsätzliche Verteidigungsbefehl für die Deutsche Mannschaft,”
undated and unsigned document, Vojni arhiv, Nemački arhiv, box 27-A, folder 2, doc. 3;
Jakob Awender, “Über die Evakuierung der Deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und
Serbien,” March 1953, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 174, pp. 1–4; Beer, “Die letzten
Tage der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 38, p. 1.
 To Evacuate or Not to Evacuate 247

Hermann Behrends consistently thwarted attempts to put the plan’s

first phase – the evacuation of children and the infirm – into action,
though he did little more than issue threats over the phone from his office
in Belgrade.24 Even at this late juncture, when the situation was truly
desperate and the Third Reich could not spare the soldiers or police to
compel compliance, the Banat German leadership continued to assert
itself as a historical agent, but one dependent on German wishes.
The habit of reliance on German support and approval took its toll as
Janko’s circle vacillated all through September 1944. Sepp Janko
alternately assured his co-nationals that Hitler would not allow any of
them to come to harm and warned that temporary evacuation might
prove necessary, only until Germany could send more troops to retake
the Banat from the communists.25
Individual Banat Germans too exercised their agency in early fall 1944.
They made momentous decisions, sometimes on the basis of erroneous
assumptions or incomplete information. Yet their stark options – to stay
or to leave – allowed them more individual agency than they had had since
the start of the occupation. Some Banat Germans risked official censure
and punishment for defying Behrends’ orders to stay put, for they could
not have known that Behrends lacked the means to enforce his
commands. Even those Banat Germans who chose to stay displayed
a range of opinions and assumptions, which guided their choices.
The Banat Germans who stayed clung to a wide variety of false hopes
and rationalizations, refined in many a tense conversation with neighbors,
while Soviet artillery echoed thunderously from the direction of
Timişoara. Some Banat Germans considered themselves personally
blameless for any crimes committed by the Third Reich and its soldiers.
A few relied on their Serbian neighbors’ promises of protection or the
hope that the division “Prinz Eugen” would be transferred back to the
Banat. Others, especially World War I veterans who had spent time as
prisoners of war in Imperial Russia, lay their faith in the ethnic Germans
and the Russians’ common humanity and differentiated between these
kindly Russians and the fearsome yet abstract “Slavic enemy” of official
propaganda. Most saw in this war’s end a repetition of the last war’s end:
governments and states would change, but the peasant’s situation would
not. One elderly man shrewdly concluded that those who had the most to
fear were Germans from the Reich and that refugees newly arrived in

24
Awender, “Über die Evakuierung der Deutschen Volksgruppe” (1953), BA Bayreuth,
Ost-Dok. 16, file 174, p. 4; Beer, “Die letzten Tage der Volksgruppenführung” (1958),
BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 38, p. 4.
25
Janko, “Deutsche Männer und Frauen! Volksgenossen und Volksgenossinnen!”, no date,
BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 37, no page numbers.
248 Conclusion

Germany would be the most vulnerable to deportation to the Soviet

Union.26
Underlying these hopeful rationalizations and denial was the fact that it
was harvest time, and the harvest would wait for neither Stalin nor Hitler.
As Josef Beer put it in one of his works of postwar apologia, the veracity of
the sentiment undiminished by the disingenuous tone, “Whoever knows
the peasant mentality can understand . . . War and ruin could not stop the
Danube Swabian from bringing in the harvest safely.”27 Familiar work
routine could be a refuge from the tectonic shifts in the Banat Germans’
situation.
The Banat Germans shared these patterns of behavior with other
ethnic German groups in the Red Army’s path as well as Reich
Germans in 1944–1945, but also with the Jews in the European
portion of the Soviet Union on the eve of Operation Barbarossa in
1941. Overreliance on the dominant regime’s protection and official
sources of information over the more disturbing news produced by the
rumor mill, reluctance to part from family members and material
possessions, and taking refuge in routine all served as powerful disin-
centives for people to attempt escape from homes on the verge of
enemy invasion.28
Finding transportation westward seems not to have been a major obsta-
cle for those who chose to leave the Serbian Banat in ones and twos and
small groups before October 1944. Rather, for many Banat Germans the
prospect of suffering in one’s own home seemed less frightful than
becoming a refugee, venturing into the unknown with all its real and
imagined dangers and risks. In the words of one expellee from the village
of Stefansfeld, although they were well aware of the danger, the ethnic
Germans did not wish to “leave their beautiful Heimat and go forth into

26
Oskar Krewetsch, “Das letzte Telefongespräch mit Karlsdorf am 2. Oktober 1944,” no
date, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 171, p. 1; testimony of Stefan Rohrbacher from
Schurjan, no date, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387, p. 235; testimony of Barbara
Stuber from Rustendorf, January 10, 1953, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 393, p. 19;
testimony of Hans Sonnleitner from Karlsdorf, July 18, 1959, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2,
file 388, pp. 84–85; Schneider testimony (1952), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 392,
p. 43; testimony of Peter Flanjak from Apfeldorf in Ingomar Senz, Die Donauschwaben
(Munich: Langen Müller, 1994), p. 227; Šibul testimony in Ćetković and Sinđelić-
Ibrajter, p. 104.
27
Beer, “Die letzten Tage der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16,
file 38, p. 7.
28
Bergen in Steinweis and Rogers, pp. 101–128; Stephen G. Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers,
Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky,
2004), pp. 115–158; Anna Shternshis, “Between Life and Death: Why Some Soviet Jews
Decided to Leave and Others to Stay in 1941,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and
Eurasian History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Summer 2014), pp. 477–504.
 To Evacuate or Not to Evacuate 249

the unknown.” His neighbor declared that “it wouldn’t be so bad, he

would stay in his house, whatever happened.”29
Rather than suggest that ethnic Germans remained immune to the
ideological view of the enemy propagated by Nazi Germany and their
own leaders, these attempts to think away the Soviet cannons heard just
over the horizon reveal the extent to which the Banat Germans selectively
appropriated Nazi ideology and accepted the idea of an invincible
German Reich that would always protect them. Faith in the Reich’s
protection balanced out fears of Slavic-communist vendetta and was
compounded by the desire to bring in the crops unmolested, the symbolic
protection afforded by remaining in one’s home and on one’s land, and
a fatal lack of imagination.
As September 1944 wore on, the vast majority of Banat German
civilians persuaded themselves that they should stay where they were.
Few were as enterprising as a woman from the village of Rustendorf, who
credited her habit of listening in secret to enemy radio stations with the
decision to turn a deaf ear to her neighbors’ fond hopes and the local
administrators’ assurances. She packed and made her way to Vienna in
the nick of time.30
Hermann Behrends finally rescinded his ban on organized evacuation
on October 1, 1944 – the day the first Soviet units entered the Serbian
Banat. Consisting mostly of prisoners of war newly released from
Romanian prisons, they came, in the vivid words of one expellee,
“[w]ith a howl and a roar, only every fifth had a weapon, barefoot,
a savage pack.”31
The leadership in Grossbetschkerek could not reach all villages by
phone, leaving individual village notaries and administrators to their
own devices. After the war, the former mayor of Kubin gave Sepp Janko
credit for telling him to get his people out even before Hermann Behrends
finally gave permission to do so, although the mayor had had to initiate
the conversation. He then promptly ran up against the local Deutsche
Mannschaft commander’s refusal to go against Behrends’ standing
orders.32
In the absence of clear-cut guidelines and with communications break-
ing down due to the Soviets’ rapid advance, the last days of the “German”

29
Schmidt testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387, p. 17.
30
Stuber testimony (1953), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 393, pp. 19–20.
31
Adam Müller, “Der Umbruch 1944/45 in Franzfeld,” May 29, 1957, BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 2, file 393, p. 168.
32
Testimony of Franz Kneipp from Kubin, February 16, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2,
file 392, pp. 22–23; Beer, “Die letzten Tage der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 38, p. 15.
250 Conclusion

Banat were chaotic and marked by a multiplicity of reactions to unfolding

events.
An organized yet haphazard and incomplete evacuation of children and
the infirm took place, after all. The evacuees had to jostle for place on
trains bearing other refugees, including stragglers from Romania.33
On October 3, 1944, the Luftwaffe airlifted some 400 people from
Franzfeld, which happened to have an airstrip nearby. About 5,000
village residents were left behind when Soviet artillery made further land-
ings impossible.34
The only places where anything resembling organized, large-scale evac-
uation took place were Grossbetschkerek, where the ethnic German
leadership could muster people and enforce a modicum of order, and
villages closest to the River Tisa and to the Danube near Belgrade. Even
there, the Banat Germans escaped with only the clothes on their backs,
rushing to get on river boats in Pantschowa or jostling with Wehrmacht
transports to cross the Tisa before the bridges across it were blown up to
slow down the Soviet advance.35
Despite Behrends’ strict orders, the Banat administration had prepared
a pontoon bridge at some point in September 1944. This bridge allowed
many, including Sepp Janko, Josef Beer, and other leading Banat
Germans, to cross the Tisa into the Bačka.36 Their staying in
Grossbetschkerek until Soviet shells started falling in the town earned
them little gratitude from many ethnic Germans, who described with
lingering bitterness, after the war, how Janko’s vacillation had discour-
aged ethnic Germans from running while the running was good. In light
of the fact that several village mayors had slipped away, without care for
those they left behind, expellees accused all their former leaders of saving

33
“Aufruf der Schulstiftung der Deutschen im Banat, Gross-Betschkerek, zur Evakuierung
der deutschen Schulen,” September 25, 1944, in Josef Volkmar Senz, Das Schulwesen der
Donauschwaben von 1918 bis 1944, Vol. 2: Das Schulwesen der Donauschwaben im
Königreich Jugoslawien (Munich: Verlag des Südostdeutschen Kulturwerkes, 1969),
p. 259; testimony of Michael Müller from Stefansfeld, February 17, 1953, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387, pp. 8–10; Sonnleitner testimony (1959), BA Bayreuth,
Ost-Dok. 2, file 388, p. 85; Beer, “Die letzten Tage der Volksgruppenführung” (1958),
BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 38, pp. 9–10.
34
Testimony of Hans Stein from Franzfeld in Stefanović, pp. 85–86; Müller, “Der
Umbruch 1944/45 in Franzfeld” (1957), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 393, p. 168.
35
Ilse Keiser, “Zielsetzung und Leistungen der Deutschen Frauenschaft in Jugoslawien,”
November 12, 1957, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 23, pp. 2–3; Kneipp testimony
(1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 392, pp. 23–24.
36
Müller testimony (1953), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387, pp. 10–11; Beer, “Die
letzten Tage der Volksgruppenführung” (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 38,
pp. 1, 21; Awender, “Über die Evakuierung der Deutschen Volksgruppe” (1953), BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 174, pp. 1, 5.
 To Evacuate or Not to Evacuate 251

not only their families and themselves but also their household goods
during the evacuation.37
On October 3, while German aircraft helped some Franzfeld residents
escape, Hermann Neubacher reported to the German Foreign Ministry
that the Red Army was closing in on Belgrade from the north and east,
while the Partisans approached from the south and west. Further evacua-
tion of Banat Germans became impossible after October 4, 1944.38
On October 14, 1944, Adolf Hitler approved what was by then
a developing reality: the imminent arrival of some 215,000 ethnic
Germans from Southeast Europe into the Reich.39 Among these, the
VoMi’s initial estimate pegged the number of Banat evacuees at
30,000–35,000. By November 1, that number dropped to 20,000. Out
of a population of about 127,000, with some 21,000 men in the Waffen-
SS, this means that fewer than 20% of the ethnic Germans still in the
Banat in fall 1944 got out.40 By comparison, the evacuation of ethnic
Germans from Croatia was more efficient and resulted in about 90,000
people (out of 150,000 total) escaping.41
Banat German escapees took up to a month to reach Reich territory by
train and on foot. They were quartered in the Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia until their final, more orderly evacuation into the Reich
proper in spring 1945.42
While its members’ families were making the difficult choice to attempt
escape or bide in their homes, the Waffen-SS division “Prinz Eugen” spent
its last days as the handmaiden of the Third Reich’s war effort. Its soldiers
were deemed good enough to fight “bandits” and kill civilians, but not to
have their retreat or lives – or the lives of their families – protected by
German troops. Once an Allied landing on Croatia’s Adriatic coast proved
unlikely, “Prinz Eugen” joined the long, slow retreat of German forces
toward Reich territory, protecting the rearguard of Army Group E as it fell

37
Krewetsch, “Das letzte Telefongespräch mit Karlsdorf” (no date), BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 16, file 171, p. 2; Köller testimony in Stefanović, p. 115; Slavik testimony
(March 10, 1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 153, p. 11.
38
Neubacher to AA, October 3, 1944, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, 1918–1945,
Serie E, Vol. VIII (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), doc. 259 on p. 487;
Behrends to Himmler, October 8, 1944, BA Berlin, NS 19, file 777, fiche 1, fr. 2.
39
Ritter to AA, October 14, 1944, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 2955, fr. E470,202.
40
Rimann memo, October 18, 1944, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100540, p. 7;
“Monatsbericht Oktober 1944 des Hauptamtes Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle,” no date,
NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1042, fr. 416,546.
41
Wagner to Ribbentrop, November 11, 1944, NARA, RG 242, T-120, roll 1025, fr.
405,301.
42
Reichel memo, October 17, 1944, PA AA, Inland II D, file R 100548, p. 5; Awender,
“Über die Evakuierung der Deutschen Volksgruppe” (1953), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok.
16, file 174, p. 6.
252 Conclusion

back through South Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, into Slovenia, where the
division’s remnants were captured by Partisan forces in May 1945.43
In a desperate bid to keep up ethnic German morale, Hitler awarded
the Cross of Honor to ethnic Germans from Southeast Europe, who had
fought for Germany or Austria in World War I and were fighting in the
German armed forces in the ongoing war. He made this decision
on October 20, 1944, two weeks after it had become impossible for ethnic
German civilians to leave the Serbian Banat.44 A German report from
late November 1944 stated the status of the division “Prinz Eugen”
laconically: “[in the] Balkans[,] heavy casualties.”45
Some of the division’s survivors managed to reach Austria and blend in
with the refugees there. Others spent time in Allied detention camps. Few
were extradited to Yugoslavia as war criminals. As a form of summary
retribution combined with a political purge, the Partisans executed an
estimated 1,600 captured “Prinz Eugen” men without trial, alongside
thousands of Ustašas and Croatian army soldiers, Croatian and Slovene
Home Guards, Četniks, and other anti-communist fighters captured or
sent back to Slovenia by the Allies occupying Austria. In addition, thou-
sands of ethnic German prisoners of war were marched into captivity in
Yugoslavia.46

Those Who Stayed

The opening pages of the memoir by the Austrian artist Robert
Hammerstiel provide an impressionistic sketch of the first experiences
of those Banat Germans who stayed at home and faced the Soviet
onslaught. In October 1944, Hammerstiel was 11 years old, his family
one of the few ethnic German families residing in the Serbian quarter of
the town of Werschetz, near the Romanian border. His father had been
mobilized and was away fighting. Hammerstiel described an eerily quiet
morning, following the sounds of gunfire and loud celebration in the town
center the previous night:
The milk sellers do not pass by, our neighbor does not sing, as she is wont to do of
a morning, nor does she take her baskets to market. Instead she comes into our

43
“Einsatzdaten aller SS-Divisionen 1939–1945 (Schlacht- und Gefechtskalender),” no
date, BA MA, RS 1, file 2, p. 12; Tomasevich, p. 761.
44
“Verleihung des Ehrenkreuzes des Weltkrieges,” October 20, 1944, BA Berlin, NS 3, file
488, fiche 1, fr. 1.
45
Juhlin-Dannfelt to Chef der Auslandsabteilung des Verteidigungsstabes, December 8,
1944, NARA, RG 242, T-175, roll 466, fr. 2,985,633.
46
Lumans, “The Ethnic Germans of the Waffen-SS in Combat” in Marble, pp. 250–253;
Pavlowitch, pp. 261–264.
 Those Who Stayed 253

kitchen, and screams, and screams, and weeps loudly. In the gray morning of that
dark October day, she cries that people are being shot in the German quarter, she
has seen it. My mother rests her hand on the door so as not to fall down. Her nails
dig into the doorframe like the claws of a wild animal.47
Like Hammerstiel’s family, most ethnic Germans from Banat villages and
towns close to the Romanian border were too far away from the escape
routes across the Tisa and the Danube to get out in time. They were also
the first to encounter the Red Army. In several villages, commanders of
the Deutsche Mannschaft and the German Labor Service, clearly having
learned nothing from Hermann Behrends’ abortive expedition into
Romania a few weeks earlier, tried to mount armed resistance against
the Soviets and managed only to get their boy soldiers killed.48
There ensued scenes of rapine and rape replicated across East Europe
behind Red Army lines. The relatively milder treatment of Yugoslav
populations at the hands of the Red Army, when compared with the
experiences of defeated Hungarians or Germans, extended mostly to
Yugoslavia’s Slavic populations. Soviet soldiers inflicted wanton physical
and sexual violence on the Yugoslav ethnic Germans, whom they identi-
fied with the fascist enemy of all communist and Slavic forces.49
Rape and the threat of rape loom especially large in the testimonies of
ethnic German women. They feature very rarely in most men’s testimo-
nies: memory was heavily gendered. An egregious example of gendered
blindness to certain types of experience was apparent in one man’s
assessment of Soviet behavior as moderate, since they “only” raped and
robbed but did not kill ethnic Germans.50

47
Robert Hammerstiel, Von Ikonen und Ratten. Eine Banater Kindheit 1939–1949 (Vienna
and Munich: Verlag Christian Brandstätter, 1999), p. 13.
48
Testimony of Anton Weber from Modosch, February 4, 1953, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2,
file 390, pp. 150–151; Schmidt testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387,
pp. 20–23.
49
Vojin Majstorović, “International Bonding through Hatred and Violence: The Yugoslav-
Soviet Encounter and the German Enemy during World War II,” draft paper courtesy of
the author, pp. 6–7; Vojin Majstorović, “The Red Army in Yugoslavia, 1944–1945,”
draft paper courtesy of the author, pp. 1–32.
50
Testimony of Ludwig Toutenuit from Setchan, March 19, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok.
2, file 386, p. 66; testimony of Barbara Schotter from Karlsdorf, March 1, 1952, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 388, p. 98; testimony of Franz, Maria, Magdalene, and Anni
Günther from Sankt Hubert, and Susanna Fischer and Susanna Borbola from Soltur,
July 12, 1946, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 391, p. 59; testimony of Elisabeth Flassak
from Ernsthausen, May 5, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 395, p. 4; testimony of
Michael Kristof from Grossbetschkerek, March 6, 1951, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file
397, pp. 72–73; testimony of Terezija Simić from Grosskikinda in Ćetković and Sinđelić-
Ibrajter, pp. 48–49; Sonnleitner testimony (1959), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file
388, p. 87.
254 Conclusion

By contrast, some expellees described the first wave of Soviets – the

prisoners of war released from Romanian prisons – as much worse than
the regular Soviet troops who followed close behind, and both as better
than the Partisans. A woman reported: “The Russians occupied
Karlsdorf on October 3, 1944. We really couldn’t complain about
them. We had Russians quartered in our house, and they ate at the
table with us. But on October 6, the Partisans arrived from the forests,
and then began our unspeakable suffering.”51 Another woman testified
that a Russian advised her to take down the picture of Adolf Hitler she had
displayed in her home, because – the Russian cautioned – the Partisans
would kill her if they saw it.52
These women may have been the lucky exceptions, or they compared
Soviet behavior favorably with what came after, or they were just
surprised that the Russians ate at the table like everyone else. Either
way, for them, the regular Soviet troops’ brief sojourn in the Banat
compared favorably with the coming of the Partisans.
The wartime invasion and partitioning of Yugoslavia, followed by
widespread population and infrastructure losses, destroyed the interwar
Yugoslav state as a system of political ideology and institutions that had
welded the ethnically diverse country together. Into this ideological and
power vacuum stepped the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, spearheaded
by the Partisans. The Partisans were able to rapidly impose one-party
rule, even without the presence of the Red Army, which never occupied
Yugoslavia. The Partisan provisional government, called the Anti-Fascist
Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (Antifašističko vijeće
narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije, AVNOJ) declared already in late 1943
that it alone was the sole authority and source of legitimacy in the future
Yugoslav state.
By early 1945, AVNOJ enjoyed Allied support, although it still had to
pay lip service to the idea of a democratic, multiparty Yugoslavia, in line
with its adoption, in 1943, of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia
(Demokratska Federativna Jugoslavija) as the future state’s name. Once
the first postwar elections took place in November 1945 and a new con-
stitution was promulgated in January 1946, the Yugoslav monarchy was
replaced by a socialist system of government under Josip Broz Tito.53
The country’s destruction and rebirth were marked officially by yet

51
Anna Pumple from Karlsdorf quoted in testimony of Friedrich Krotz, April 5, 1946, BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 388, p. 79.
52
Testimony of Katharina Sartschefo from Ernsthausen, July 15, 1952, BA Bayreuth, Ost-
Dok. 2, file 395, p. 39.
53
Lampe, pp. 201, 226–230, 234–236; Pavlowitch, pp. 210–213, 252–253, 272–276.
 Those Who Stayed 255

another name, also proclaimed in 1946: the Federal People’s Republic of

Yugoslavia (Federativna Narodna Republika Jugoslavija).
In order to remake the physical and mental landscape of the country yet
again as well as enforce ideological orthodoxy, the People’s Protection
Section (Odeljenje za zaštitu naroda, OZNA) was created in May 1944,
as the Partisan movement’s security agency. Functioning as a secret
police and counterespionage agency, OZNA had broad powers to arrest,
detain, interrogate, and even execute suspected counterrevolutionaries
and fifth-columnists. Its purges of the Yugoslav population targeted many
suspected wartime collaborators, including ethnic Germans.54
The “carrot” to OZNA’s “stick” was the historical narrative the com-
munist government forged: one in which all South Slav ethnic groups of
the old and new Yugoslavias had contributed equally to the (communist,
not Četnik) struggle against fascist occupation, and therefore had a place
in the new state, once the postwar purges were complete. The complex
and painful dynamics of wartime occupation and civil war were simplified
into a narrative of unified struggle against a foreign enemy.55 The brunt of
the blame fell on those who had supposedly never been true Yugoslavs:
ethnic minorities. While the Albanian, Italian, and Hungarian minorities
suffered various degrees of persecution, the ethnic Germans were the
most easily associated with Nazi crimes and were subjected to wholesale
persecution and disenfranchisement as a result.
The Partisan forces’ arrival coincided with the rapid Soviet passage
through the Banat, in pursuit of German forces retreating toward Reich
territory. The Banat Germans noticed that some Partisans had become
Partisans rather late in the day: “Young men who had worked in factories
or in the fields till the previous week put the five-pointed star on their hats
overnight and started calling themselves Partisans and front-line fighters
[prvoborci], shouting communist slogans and writing [them] on walls.”56
As some ethnic Germans embraced Nazism around the time of the April
War as a means to enrichment, empowerment, and prominence in the
community, so at the war’s end some South Slavs adopted communism as
an equally profitable wave of the future.
Immediately after its occupation by Partisan forces in October 1944,
the Vojvodina was placed under military rule. In January 1945, civilian

54
Robert Gellately, Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), pp. 266–268; Portmann, “Politik der Vernichtung?”,
pp. 341–342.
55
Emil Kerenji, “Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia: Politics of Jewish Identity in
a Socialist State, 1944–1974” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2008),
pp. 102–120; Pavlowitch, pp. 266, 281–282.
56
Sohl-Daxer testimony in Stefanović, p. 105.
256 Conclusion

rule replaced martial law, but the province was not officially folded into
the newly constituted Serbian Federal Republic until August 1945.
The military government’s tasks were to secure speedy transition to the
new political and socioeconomic order, including investigation of ethnic
groups whose loyalty was suspect (ethnic Germans first and foremost);
economic extraction for the Partisan war effort; orderly confiscation of
property from “enemies of the people”; and laying the groundwork for the
planned settlement of Partisan families from Bosnia and Montenegro in
the Vojvodina. The military government enjoyed nearly unlimited power
in villages inhabited predominantly by non-Slavs.57
As an early demonstration of the new balance of power, the bodies of
the nine ethnic Germans killed during the April War and interred with
much pomp in Pantschowa in 1941 were dug up in October 1944 and
replaced with the bodies of Soviet officers killed in the fighting around the
town – a symbolic rewriting of the human, material, and cultural land-
scape of the Banat, on top of the palimpsest of Nazi, Yugoslav royal, and
Habsburg narratives.58
An estimated 150,000 ethnic Germans remained in the Vojvodina
in October 1944, of whom some 85,000 in the Banat.59 The Partisans
spent the first weeks of their rule divvying up Banat German property as
war booty and killing, attacking, and arresting ethnic Germans at
random.60 These decentralized yet officially tolerated acts of violence
stemmed in part from the euphoria of victory. Most Partisans came
from poor rural areas of Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia proper.
In the Vojvodina, they encountered not only German-speaking “fascists,”
whom they saw as enemies – even though Waffen-SS recruitment had left
mostly women, the very young, and the elderly at home – but “fascists”
whose standard of living was significantly higher than the Partisans’ own,
in an area relatively untouched by the war. This inspired envy as well as
greed tinged with righteousness. Material and corporeal punishment of
individuals who shared language and ideology with the Nazis and the

57
Pavlowitch, pp. 267–268; Michael Portmann, “Die Militärverwaltung für das Banat, die
Bačka und die Baranja (1944–1945) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung neuerer
Forschungsergebnisse zum Schicksal der Jugoslawiendeutschen” in Mosaik Europas.
Die Vojvodina, ed. Horst Haselsteiner and Doris Wastl-Walter (Frankfurt and Berlin:
Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 93–97.
58
Köller testimony in Stefanović, p. 114.
59
Portmann, “Die Militärverwaltung für das Banat,” pp. 103–104.
60
Testimony of Lorenz Baron from Rudolfsgnad in Stefanović, p. 93; Schneider testimony
(1952), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 392, p. 44; Rohrbacher testimony (no date), BA
Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387, p. 235; Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, p. 296;
Portmann, “Politik der Vernichtung?”, p. 340.
 Those Who Stayed 257

Wehrmacht also made up for the fact that most German occupation
personnel escaped Partisan vengeance.
Banat German survivors remembered the Partisans with special bitter-
ness. In the words of an ethnic German from Franzfeld, “It didn’t hurt so
much to have the Russians take [our best horse], at least it did not fall to
one of those [i.e., Partisans] from [the neighboring village of] Crepaja to
enjoy.”61 The Banat Germans habitually had seen Serbs and communists
as more dangerous even than the Jews. While these perceptions
influenced their memory of Partisan vendetta, an element of schaden-
freude was also evident in the Partisans’ first depredations, especially
those committed by Serb peasants enjoying their own euphoria of libera-
tion and empowerment at the end of occupation and German rule.
There were some exceptions. The former notary in the ethnically mixed
village of Perlas described after the war how the commander of the first
Partisans to arrive in his village allowed him to get the 500 ethnic German
residents out safely.62 In Deutsch-Zerne, a Serb who had joined the
Partisans in 1942 protected his ethnic German sweetheart’s family from
Soviets and Partisans alike in fall 1944, but couldn’t save them from
internment soon after.63
Mass internment was part of the process through which the Yugoslav
Germans were disenfranchised and punished as a minority for the crimes
and abuses some ethnic Germans and the Third Reich had committed in
wartime Yugoslavia. This blanket approach to meting out postwar justice
occurred concurrently with the work done by the Yugoslav State
Commission for the Determining of Crimes Committed by Occupiers
and Their Helpers (Državna komisija za utvrđivanje zločina okupatora i
njihovih pomagača), which operated until April 1948 alongside the reg-
ular courts and the State Security Service (Uprava državne bezbednosti,
UDBA), since 1946 the civilian successor to the OZNA.
The commission collected evidence from thousands of witnesses,
survivors, and low-level collaborators, investigated more than 65,000
suspected war criminals and collaborators, and managed to bring many
prominent personages in the various occupation and collaborationist
organizations to trial, including August Meyszner, Harald Turner,
Hermann Behrends, Heinrich Danckelmann, Franz Neuhausen, Juraj
Spiller, Franz Reith, and others. Arthur Phleps had been killed fighting
in Romania in fall 1944. Several “big fish” evaded capture and trial,
including Ustaša leader Ante Pavelić and Sepp Janko, who escaped
61
Stein testimony in Stefanović, p. 86.
62
Schmidt testimony (1953), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 395, p. 178.
63
Testimony of Eva Spitz from Deutsch-Zerne, August 29, 1946, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok.
2, file 389, p. 102.
258 Conclusion

Allied internment in Germany, spent time hiding in the Ulm area, and
finally emigrated to Argentina, where he died in 2001.64
The new Yugoslav government encountered great difficulties in secur-
ing the extradition of many German, Hungarian, and Italian occupation
officials it identified as war criminals, since many were considered persons
of interest by the Allies and could provide testimony against more
prominent suspects. Moreover, jurisdiction over persons identified as
“domestic traitors” (Yugoslav citizens accused of collaboration) remained
a point of contention between Yugoslavia, the Allies, and the United
Nations War Crimes Commission. Very few of those who fell into this
category – ethnic German collaborators included – were extradited for
trial in Yugoslavia.65
Frustration over these setbacks may have facilitated the Yugoslav
decision to allow some 27,000–30,000 Yugoslav ethnic Germans to be
deported to the Soviet Union as forced laborers at the turn of
1944–1945,66 and to deprive those remaining in the country of legal
rights, since they were presumed collectively guilty of collaboration as
well as ideological and war crimes.
In late November 1944, a new law transferred property ownership from
“persons of German nationality [lica nemačke narodnosti]” and other
“war criminals and their helpers” to the Yugoslav state.67 Unless they
could prove they had actively aided the communist resistance or were

64
“Principi i praksa u izručenju ratnih zločinaca i izdajnika,” no date, AJ, fund 50, folder 36,
unit 77, p. 40 of this document; Dušan Nedeljković to Generalni sekretarijat Vlade
FNRJ, September 20, 1947, AJ, fund 50, folder 36, unit 77, pp. 36–532 through
36–536; “Kratak pregled rada i rezultata rada Državne komisije za utvrđivanje zločina
okupatora i njihovih pomagača u 1947. godini,” January 3, 1948, AJ, fund 50, folder 36,
unit 77, p. 36–559; Albert Vajs, “Nekoliko konkretnih primera protivpravnih postupaka i
nedostataka kolaboracije po pitanjima izručenja ratnih zločina[ca] iz Nemačke,”
February 15, 1948, AJ, fund 50, folder 36, unit 77, pp. 36–576 through 36–580; Josip
Broz Tito to Prezidijum Narodne skupštine FNRJ, April 10, 1948, AJ, fund 50, folder 36,
unit 77, p. 36–585; Nedeljković, “Završni izveštaj Državne komisije za utvrđivanje
zločina okupatora i njihovih pomagača Vladi FNRJ,” April 12, 1948, AJ, fund 50, folder
36, unit 77, pp. 36–627 through 36–674; transcript of taped testimony of Richard
Lackner, June 11, 1958, BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 16, file 39, pp. 1–3; Hausleitner, Die
Donauschwaben, pp. 304–305.
65
“O neizručivanju ratnih zločinaca,” December 31, 1945, AJ, fund 50, folder 36, unit 77,
pp. 36–256 through 36–265; Nedeljković to Generalni sekretarijat Vlade FNRJ, no date,
AJ, fund 50, folder 36, unit 77, pp. 36–326 through 36–330.
66
Mathias Beer, “German Deportees from East-Central and Southeastern Europe in the
USSR after the End of World War II” in The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in
Europe: From the 17th Century to the Present, ed. Klaus J. Bade et al. (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 410–412; Tomasevich, p. 208.
67
“Odluka o prelazu u državnu svojinu neprijateljske imovine: O državnoj upravi nad
imovinom neprisutnih lica i o sekvestru nad imovinom koju su okupatorske vlasti prisilno
otuđile,” published in Borba (Belgrade), November 22, 1944, in Ausgewählte Dokumente zur
neuesten Geschichte der Südostdeutschen Volksgruppen. Staatsbürgerschafts-, Ausweisungs- und
 Those Who Stayed 259

citizens of neutral states, the Yugoslav Germans were equated with war
criminals and lost all property rights. Legalized expropriation of nearly
400,000 hectares (1,545 square miles) of arable land belonging to ethnic
Germans ensued. The land was placed under state control and used to
reward Partisan families. In July 1945, a second law opened up the
possibility of taking away the Yugoslav Germans’ citizenship, interpreting
their wartime behavior as treason and disloyalty to the Yugoslav state, and
leaving them in legal limbo.68
These laws and the opening of internment camps signified the transi-
tion from unsystematic to systematic, organized persecution of the
Yugoslav Germans. Once wholesale expulsion proved unfeasible, the
internment camps were intended as a short-term solution. The first
camps opened in fall 1944, but many ethnic Germans were still allowed
to reside in their homes, albeit vulnerable to frequent maltreatment,
robbery, curfews, and travel bans. In spring 1945, this virtual house arrest
became mass internment in camps or closed-off villages (“naselja pod
specijalnim režimom” – villages under special regime). By 1947, the Red
Cross knew of 96 internment camps for ethnic Germans in the Vojvodina
alone.69
Parts of ethnic German villages cordoned off by barbed wire, ware-
houses, agricultural facilities, and even former concentration camps
served as these new camps, into which the ethnic Germans were herded
alongside German and Italian prisoners of war and various other sus-
pected war criminals and collaborators. Overcrowding, poor sanitation
and nourishment, long hours of forced labor in agriculture and construc-
tion, and routine physical abuse by the guards were daily occurrences.
Some camps, like the one in the Banat village of Rudolfsgnad, gained
a terrible reputation for deliberate starvation of prisoners.70
Overall, however, discipline in the internment camps was sufficiently
lax to allow some ethnic Germans to sneak out on occasion and beg or

Beschlagnahmebestimmungen (Munich: Verlag des Südostdeutschen Kulturwerks, 1956),

pp. 5–9.
68
“Zakon o potvrdi i izmenama zakona o državljanstvu Demokratske Federativne Jugoslavije
od 23. VIII. 1945 god. – gubitak državljanstva,” published in Službeni list, July 5, 1946, in
Ausgewählte Dokumente zur neuesten Geschichte der Südostdeutschen Volksgruppen, pp. 11–12;
Portmann, “Die Militärverwaltung für das Banat,” pp. 105–106.
69
Douglas, p. 136; Portmann, “Die Militärverwaltung für das Banat,” pp. 104–105;
Portmann, “Politik der Vernichtung?”, pp. 343–347.
70
Testimony of Wilhelm Neuner from Grossbetschkerek, February 18, 1953, BA Bayreuth,
Ost-Dok. 2, file 397, pp. 131–135; Toutenuit testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2,
file 386, pp. 67–68; Rohrbacher testimony (no date), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387,
pp. 236–244; Sonnleitner testimony (1959), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 388, pp. 91–95;
Günther, Fischer, and Borbola testimony (1946), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 391,
pp. 61–63; Šibul testimony in Ćetković and Sinđelić-Ibrajter, p. 111.
260 Conclusion

barter for extra food. Some even escaped across the Romanian or
Hungarian borders and reached Austria and Germany, often with the
tacit approval of the authorities, who continued to feel frustrated with
Allied refusal to allow formal expulsions from Yugoslavia.71
Some ethnic German children were placed in Yugoslav orphanages in
order to assimilate them into the majority population, in line with the wide-
spread assumption among postwar governments that children belonged to
the nation and could be “nationalized” in their own best interest.72 Other
children endured the hard work and living conditions in the camps.73
Internment loomed large in survivors’ memories, since it telescoped and
simplified complex issues of collaboration and its consequences, and it
emphasized German suffering. Most internees were not men of military-
service age, who could most easily be blamed for collaboration, war crimes,
or having facilitated German wartime rule in the Serbian Banat – most
internees were the ostensibly apolitical women, children, and the elderly.74
The general ethnic German awareness of and complicity in the Holocaust,
Aryanization, land redistribution, and anti-partisan warfare facilitated their
being lumped together as collaborators, regardless of age, gender, political
stance, or private attitudes to the war and Nazi policy.
The mistreatment and disenfranchisement of the Banat Germans also
allowed the new Yugoslav authorities to assert their legitimacy by claim-
ing that the Vojvodina had always been an essentially Serbian or South
Slav area, in which German-speakers were recent, foreign transplants.
Their physical segregation and the confiscation of their property thus
appeared logical and inevitable, rather than the result of deliberate
government policy, part of the transition to a new system of government
and a new legitimizing narrative about South Slavs unified in struggle
against ethnically and ideologically alien enemies.75
The Partisans and their families from Bosnia, Herzegovina, and
Montenegro, whom the Yugoslav government settled on arable land
expropriated from the ethnic Germans in the Vojvodina and Slavonia,
became a bastion of support for the new political order.76 Their presence
71
Sonnleitner testimony (1959), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 388, pp. 94–95;
Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben, pp. 302–303; Portmann, “Politik der Vernichtung?”,
pp. 333–334, 352–353.
72
Portmann, “Politik der Vernichtung?”, p. 353; Tara Zahra, The Lost Children:
Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge, Massachusetts and
London: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 126–132.
73
Neuner testimony (1953), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 397, pp. 131–132.
74
Portmann, “Politik der Vernichtung?”, pp. 349–350.
75
Sreten Vukosavljević to Privredni savet, April 19, 1945, AJ, fund 97, folder 3, unit 35, no
page numbers.
76
“Uredba o naseljavanju boraca Narodno-oslobodilačkog rata i njihovih porodica u
Bačkoj, Banatu, Baranji i Sremu,” no date, AJ, fund 97, folder 2, unit 17, pp. 114–118;
 Those Who Stayed 261

in towns and villages, the German names of which were replaced by Slavic
ones, sometimes inspired by the communist struggle in World War II –
e.g., Grossbetschkerek became Zrenjanin, after Partisan hero Žarko
Zrenjanin – represented the culmination of the Banat landscape’s postwar
refashioning, begun in October 1944 with the interment of dead Soviet
officers in Pantschowa, in the place of dead ethnic Germans.
By the time the Cold War set in in the late 1940s and Germans became
acceptable as allies to both sides in the new conflict, the expulsions from
East and Southeast Europe were mostly complete. The human and
material landscape was transformed by the war and the Holocaust, the
removal of German minorities, the rebuilding of destroyed cities, further
“sifting” of populations for possible collaborationist taint, and the repla-
cement of the German and Jewish cultural legacy with national narratives
positing the essential Polishness, Czechness, or Yugoslavness of areas
such as the new Polish territories east of the Oder-Neisse Line, the
Sudetenland, or the Vojvodina.77
Fewer than 80,000 of the roughly 125,000 Vojvodina Germans, who
had survived the initial Partisan onslaught and avoided deportation to the
Soviet Union, survived also the malnourishment, exposure, disease, and
executions in the internment camps.78 The camps were gradually closed
down and survivors released in early spring 1948, a few months before the
Tito–Stalin split. The Yugoslav Germans’ property remained confis-
cated, they were forbidden from settling again in their home towns and
villages, and initially they lacked even a provisional Yugoslav citizenship.
Most continued to be employed by the Yugoslav state in menial positions,
until the possibility opened up for them to apply for exit permits and
emigrate permanently to Austria or West Germany starting in 1950. Most
left within a few years.79

“Zakon o agrarnoj reformi i kolonizaciji,” July 24, 1945, AJ, fund 97, folder 2, unit 17,
pp. 95–102.
77
Douglas, pp. 254–283; Benjamin Frommer, “Getting the Small Decree: Czech National
Honor in the Aftermath of the Nazi Occupation” in Constructing Nationalities in East
Central Europe, ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit (New York and Oxford:
Berghahn Books, 2005), pp. 267–282; Tomasz Kamusella, “Ethnic Cleaning in Upper
Silesia, 1944–1951” in Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. Steven
Béla Várdy and T. Hunt Tooley (Boulder and New York: Columbia University Press,
2003), pp. 293–310; Gregor Thum, Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wrocław during the
Century of Expulsions, translated from the German by Tom Lampert and Allison Brown
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), passim.
78
Portmann, “Die Militärverwaltung für das Banat,” pp. 105, 107.
79
Toutenuit testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 386, p. 68; Rohrbacher
testimony (no date), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 387, p. 244; Schneider testimony
(1952), BA Bayreuth, Ost-Dok. 2, file 392, p. 47; Sohl testimony (1958), BA Bayreuth,
Ost-Dok. 17, file 9, p. 13; Portmann, “Politik der Vernichtung?”, p. 334.
262 Conclusion

Once in Germany, they profited from the same economic opportunities

and easy access to citizenship extended to ethnic Germans from other
parts of Europe, among whom the Yugoslav Germans represented
a minority of fewer than 5%.80 In the early 1950s, surviving Yugoslav
Germans deported to the Soviet Union in 1944–1945 were allowed to
leave as well. Most emigrated to East Germany.81 All blended into the
postwar German-speaking polity, which had already absorbed some
12–12.5 million expellees and refugees.82
According to the 1948 Yugoslav census, only 55,337 ethnic Germans
remained in the country – just over 10% of their prewar numbers.83
A decade later, most had left. Internment and mass, semi-forced emigra-
tion closed the chapter on a significant, organized, ethnic German
minority presence in Southeast Europe, though the end could be
discerned already in fall 1944, during the violent and chaotic transition
to the new political and social order.
Ultimately, the catch-22 of ethnic German wartime collaboration was
that the more ethnic Germans demonstrated their ostensible Germanness,
the more they behaved like Nazis. The Nazis, in turn, kept moving the goal
posts, always making new and more serious demands, requiring the ethnic
Germans to keep proving themselves. Thus, no critical mass of collabora-
tion could be reached, which would have established ethnic German
Germanness once and for all – yet ever greater and more damning
forms of collaboration did condemn ethnic Germans in their victims’ and
neighbors’ eyes.

80
Bade and Oltmer in Bade et al., p. 75; Daniel Levy, “Integrating Ethnic Germans in West
Germany: The Early Postwar Period” in Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of
Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic, ed. David Rock
and Stefan Wolff (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002), p. 33; Volker Ronge,
“German Policies Toward Ethnic German Minorities” in Migrants, Refugees, and Foreign
Policy: U.S. and German Policies toward Countries of Origin, ed. Rainer Münz and
Myron Weiner (Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1997), p. 128.
81
Beer in Bade et al., p. 412; Tomasevich, p. 208.
82
Arnd Bauerkämper, “German Refugees and Expellees from Eastern, East-Central, and
Southeastern Europe in Germany and Austria since the End of World War II” in
The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the 17th Century to the
Present, ed. Klaus J. Bade et al. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2011), p. 427; Cooper, p. 71; Rainer Münz, “Ethnic Germans in Central and
Eastern Europe and their Return to Germany” in Diasporas and Ethnic Migrants:
Germany, Israel and Post-Soviet Successor States in Comparative Perspective, ed.
Rainer Münz and Rainer Ohliger (London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass, 2003),
pp. 263–264; Wolff, pp. 67–68.
83
Tomasevich, p. 209.
 Guide to Place Names

Spelling of place names in the primary documents varies in German as well as

Serbian. This table provides the most common variations. Many of these villages
and towns also had Hungarian and/or Romanian names, which are not included
in this table.
S = Serbian/Serbo-Croatian name
SP = Serbian postwar name, if different from prewar/wartime name

GERMAN NAME OTHER NAME

Banatsko Karađorđevo*
Vojvoda Stepa*
Alisbrunn Alibunar (S)
Alt-Kanischa Stara Kanjiža (S), Kanjiža (SP)**
Apfeldorf Jabuka (S)
Aradatz Andrejevac or Aradac (S), Aradac (SP)
Aratsch Vranjevo (S)
Banater Hof Banatski Dvor (S)
Beodra Novo Miloševo (SP)***
Betschkerek see Grossbetschkerek
Blauschütz Pločice (S), Pločica (SP)
Boka Boka (S)
Botschar Bočar (S)
Brestowatz see Rustendorf
Charleville Šarlevil (S), part of Banatsko Veliko Selo (SP)***
Crepaja Crepaja (S)
Debeljatscha Debeljača (S)
Deutsch Elemer Nemački Elemir or Elemir or Srpski Elemir (S), Elemir
(SP)†
Deutsch Etschka, Deutsch- Ečka or Pavlovo (S), Ečka (SP)
Etschka
Deutsch Zerne, Deutsch-Zerne Crnja or Nemačka Crnja or Srpska Crnja (S), Srpska
Crnja (SP)†
Duplaja Dupljaja (S)
Elemer see Deutsch Elemer
Elisenheim Belo Blato (S)
Ernsthausen Banatski Despotovac (S)
Farkaschdin Farkaždin (S)

263
264 Guide to Place Names

(cont.)

GERMAN NAME OTHER NAME

Franzfeld Kraljevićevo or Kačarevo (S), Kačarevo (SP)

Georgshausen Velika Greda (S)
Glogau Glogonj (S)
Grossbetschkerek, Gross- Petrovgrad or Veliki Bečkerek (S), Zrenjanin (SP)
Betschkerek
Grosskikinda, Gross-Kikinda Kikinda or Velika Kikinda (S), Kikinda (SP)
Heideschütz Hajdučica (S)
Hennemannstadt see Werschetz
Heufeld Hajfeld (S), Novi Kozarci (SP)***
Homolitz Omoljica (S)
Inseldorf see Sakula
Jozefovo, Jozefsdorf Obilićevo (S)**
Karlowa Dragutinovo (S), Novo Miloševo (SP)***
Karlsdorf Banatski Karlovac (S)
Kathreinfeld Katarina (S), Ravni Topolovac (SP)
Kikinda see Grosskikinda
Klein Kikinda Bašaid (S)
Kowatschitza Kovačica (S)
Kubin Kovin (S)
Kudritz Gudurica (S)
Kuman, Kumane Kumane (S)
Lasarfeld Lazarevo (S)
Mastort Novi Kozarci (SP)***
Melenz Melenci (S)
Modosch Jaša Tomić (S)
Mokrin Mokrin (S)
Molidorf Molin (S)
Nakodorf Nakovo (S)
Neu-Betsche Novi Bečej (S)
Neuhatzfeld see Tschestereg
Neukanischa, Neu-Kanischa Nova Kanjiža (S), Novi Kneževac (SP)**
Padej Padej (S)
Pantschowa Pančevo (S)
Pardan Ninčićevo or Srpski Pardanj (S), Međa (SP)
Pavlis Pavliš (S)
Perlas Perlez (S)
Petersheim see Setschan
Rudolfsgnad Knićanin (S)
Ruskodorf Rusko Selo (S)
Rustendorf Banatski Brestovac (S)
Sakula Sakule (S)
Sankt Georgen Begej Sveti Đurađ (S), Žitište (SP)
Sankt Hubert Sveti Hubert (S), part of Banatsko Veliko Selo (SP)***
Schurjan Šurjan (S)
Setschan Sečanj (S)
 Guide to Place Names 265

(cont.)

GERMAN NAME OTHER NAME

Setschanfeld Sečenovo (S), Dužine (SP)

Sigmundfeld Martinica (S), Lukićevo (SP)
Soltur Soltur (S), part of Banatsko Veliko Selo (SP)***
Startschowa Starčevo (S)
Stefansfeld Šupljaja (S)
Toba Toba (S)
Torda Torda or Vujićevo (S), Torda (SP)
Tschestereg Čestereg (S)
Tschoka Čoka (S)
Verbitza Vrbica (S)
Weisskirchen Bela Crkva (S)
Werschetz Vršac (S)
Wojlowitz Vojlovica (S) – today a part of Pančevo
Zichydorf Mariolana (S), Banatsko Plandište (SP)

* To the best of my ability, I have not been able to find German names for these villages,
which were founded in the early 1920s and populated mostly by World War I veterans.
** Two towns (or two halves of one town) separated by the River Tisa, officially separated
after World War II. The neighboring settlement of Jozefsdorf/Jozefovo (later also called
Obilićevo) officially merged with Novi Kneževac in 1945.
*** Two or more neighboring villages were combined into one after World War II.
Charleville, Soltur, and Sankt Hubert became Banatsko Veliko Selo; Heufeld and Mastort
became Novi Kozarci; and Beodra and Karlowa became Novo Miloševo.
† Until October 1944, all three original names were used, because the village had a Serbian
as well as an ethnic German quarter, which were sometimes considered twin towns.
 Glossary
Amt für Volkswirtschaft
Antifašističko vijeće narodnog
oslobođenja
Jugoslavije (AVNOJ)
Aryanization
Auswärtiges Amt (AA)
ban
Banater Beobachter
Banater Hilfspolizei
Bandenkampfgebiet
banovina (pl. banovine)
Bundesministerium für
Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge und
Kriegsgeschädigte
Četniks
Deutsche Evangelische Kirche
Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses
im Königreiche Jugoslawien
Deutsche Frauenschaft
Deutsche Jugend
Deutsche Männergruppe
266
Economics Section
Anti-Fascist Council for the
National Liberation of
Yugoslavia
transfer of property ownership
from Jews to non-Jews (“Aryans”)
German Foreign Ministry
head of a banovina
German-language daily
published in Grossbetschkerek
Banat Auxiliary Police
Anti-Partisan Combat Area
Yugoslav administrative unit in
1929–1941
Federal Ministry for Expellees,
Refugees, and Victims of War
(West Germany)
Serbian royalist-nationalist
resistance
German Lutheran Church of the
Augsburg Confession in the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Banat German women’s
organization
Banat German youth
organization
German Men’s Group, successor
to the Deutsche Mannschaft
 Glossary
Deutsche Mannschaft
Deutscher Arbeitsdienst
Deutscher Mädelbund
Deutsches Ausland-Institut
Deutsches Volksblatt
Deutsche Volksgruppe in Serbien
Deutsche Volksliste
dinar
Dobrovoljzen-Felder
Donauschwaben
Donauzeitung
Državna komisija za utvrđivanje
zločina okupatora i njihovih
pomagača
Erneurer
Feldkommandantur (pl.
Feldkommandanturen, FK)
Freistaat
Freiwillige (sg. Freiwilliger)
Führer
Generalbevollmächtigter für die
Wirtschaft
Gestapo
267
Banat German militia, also Banat
German men’s organization
German Labor Service
affiliate of the Deutsche Jugend
for young women
Nazi think tank for racial policy
German-language daily
published in Novi Sad
German National Group in
Serbia
German National List, racial
registry in occupied Poland
Serbian currency
“volunteer fields,” land given to
Serbian World War I veterans in
the interwar period
Danube Swabians, group
moniker for ethnic Germans
inhabiting the Danube basin
(Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia)
German-language daily
published in Belgrade
State Commission for the
Determining of Crimes
Committed by Occupiers and
Their Helpers
Renewers, younger generation of
Kulturbund leaders in the period
of Nazi ascendancy
Field Command Post
free state
volunteers
leader, title refers to Adolf Hitler
General Plenipotentiary for the
Economy
Secret State Police
268 Glossary
Gleichschaltung
Grenzer
Habag-Haus
Handels-, Industrie- und
Handwerkskammer
Hauptamt für Kultur
Hauptamt für Statistik
Hauptamt für Verwaltung
Hauptamt für Volksgesundheit
und Volkswohlfahrt
Heimat
Hofpaten, Hofpatenschaft
Hoheitsgebiet
Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer
(HSSPF)
judenfrei
Kommando der Staatswache
Kommando Öffentliche
Sicherheit
Komunistička partija
Jugoslavije (KPJ)
Kreis (pl. Kreise; Serb. okrug,
okruzi)
Kreischef
Kreisgruppen (sg. Kreisgruppe)
Kreiskommandantur (pl.
Kreiskommandanturen, KK)
Kulturbund (Schwäbisch-
Deutscher Kulturbund)
Landesbauernführung
“coordination” of society in line
with National Socialist principles
border soldiers
Kulturbund headquarters in
Novi Sad
Chamber of Trade, Industry, and
Artisanry
Central Culture Section
Statistics Main Office
Administrative Main office
Main Office for Public Health
and Social Welfare
homeland
custodians/custody of land
belonging to ethnic German
peasants mobilized by the
Waffen-SS
sovereign territory
Higher SS and Police Chief
“free of Jews”
Command of the State Guard
Command of Public Safety
Communist Party of Yugoslavia
county (administrative unit)
county chief
county chapters of the
Volksgruppe, led by a Kreisleiter
District Command Post,
originally Ortskommandantur
Swabian-German Cultural
Association
Office for Peasant Affairs
 Glossary 269

Landesschatzamt Land Registry

Landsturm militia
Lebensraum living space
Lehrerbildungsanstalt teacher-training college
Levente Hungarian youth organization
Luftwaffe German Air Force
Magyarization official policy of assimilation into
the Hungarian (Magyar) nation
Militärbefehlshaber in Serbien German military commander in
occupied Serbia
Mischlinge in Nazi parlance, persons of
partial Jewish heritage
Nationalrat (pl. Nationalräte) national council
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche National Socialist German
Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) Workers’ Party
Nezavisna Država Independent State of Croatia
Hrvatska (NDH)
“Nora” radio transmitter through which
the Kulturbund leadership
communicated with German
military intelligence
Oberbefehlshaber Südost Supreme Military Commander in
the Southeast
Oberkommando der German Armed Forces High
Wehrmacht (OKW) Command
Oberkommando des German Army High Command
Heeres (OKH)
Odeljenje za zaštitu naroda People’s Protection Section
(OZNA)
Operation Barbarossa code name for the invasion of the
Soviet Union
Ordnungspolizei Order Police
Organisation Todt Nazi engineering organization
Ortsgruppen (sg. Ortsgruppe) town or village chapters of the
Volksgruppe, led by an Ortsleiter
270 Glossary
Ortskommandantur (pl.
Ortskommandanturen, OK)
Partei der Deutschen in
Jugoslawien
Partisans (Serb. partizani)
Polizeipräfektur des Banates
Rassejuden
Reichsdeutsche
Reichsführer-SS (RFSS)
Reichskommissar für die
Festigung deutschen Volkstums
(RKFDV)
Reichssicherheitshauptamt
(RSHA)
Schulstiftung
Schwert und Pflug
Serbische Staatswache, Serb.
Srpska državna straža
Sicherheitsdienst (SD)
Sicherheitspolizei
Službene novine
Sokol
Soldatenheim
staatstreu und volkstreu
Stabsamt
Local Command Post,
subdivision of
a Feldkommandantur
Party of the Germans in
Yugoslavia
communist resistance in
occupied Yugoslav lands
Banat Police Prefecture
“racial Jews”
Reich Germans, persons of
German origin who were also
citizens of the Third Reich
Reich SS Leader, Heinrich
Himmler’s main title
Reich Commissar for the
Strengthening of Germandom,
one of Heinrich Himmler’s titles
Reich Security Main Office
School Foundation, Banat
German organization for
German-language schools
Sword and Plow, SS plan for the
colonization of the East
Serbian State Guard
SS intelligence service
Security Police
Serbian government publication
for administrative news
Slavophile gymnastic society
soldiers’ rest home
loyal to the state and to the Volk,
slogan of the Partei der
Deutschen in Jugoslawien
Main Office
 Glossary 271

Ungarländisch-Deutsche Hungarian-German People’s

Volkspartei Party
Uprava državne bezbednosti State Security Service
(UDBA)
Ustašas Croatian fascists
Verordnungsblatt der official publication of the Banat
Volksgruppenführung der deutschen German leadership
Volksgruppe im Banat und Serbien
Vizebanus deputy to a ban
Volk people or nation, inclusive of its
culture, language, and other
perceived intrinsic qualities
völkisch of the Volk, referring to qualities
seen as biologically determined
and intrinsic to a specific nation
or ethnicity
Volksdeutsche ethnic Germans, persons of
German origin who were not
citizens of the Third Reich
Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle Ethnic German Liaison Office
(VoMi)
Volksdeutsche Stunde Ethnic German Hour, German-
language program on Radio
Belgrade
Volksehrengerichte people’s honor courts
Volksgemeinschaft national community or people’s
community, implying the
organic, unbreakable unity of the
Volk
Volksgenossen (sg. Volksgenosse, national comrades
Volksgenossin)
Volksgruppe racially defined, organized ethnic
minority
Volksgruppenführer Nazified community leader,
leader of a Volksgruppe
Volksgruppenführung Nazified leadership of
a Volksgruppe
272 Glossary

Volkstum nationality principle; nationality

and folklore, including all of
a people’s (Volk) ethnic, spiritual,
and cultural achievements, seen
as intrinsic to it and inseparable
from it
Volkstumsreferat Department for Nationality
Questions of the German Foreign
Ministry
Volkszugehörigkeitsausweis (pl. “racial ID”
Volkszugehörigkeitsausweise)
Waffen-SS armed wing of the SS
Wehrmacht German Army
Zbor Serbian fascist organization
Zollgrenzschutz Border and Customs Patrol
 Bibliography

Newspapers and Periodicals

Amtsblatt für das Banat
Banater Beobachter
Deutsche Arbeit
Deutsches Volksblatt
Deutschtum im Ausland
Donauzeitung
Nation und Staat
Službene novine
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung der deutschen Volksgruppe im
Banat und Serbien
Verordnungsblatt des Befehlshabers Serbien

Archives
In Germany:
Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BA Berlin)
• NS 3 SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
• NS 5 VI Deutsches Arbeitsfront, Arbeitswissenschaftlichesinstitut
(Zeitungsausschnittsammlung)
• NS 7 SS- und Polizeigerichtsbarkeit
• NS 19 Persönlicher Stab Reichsführer-SS
• NS 43 Aussenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP
• R 19 Chef der Ordnungspolizei (Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei)
• R 55 Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda
• R 58 Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA)
• R 59 Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle
• R 63 Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, Wien
• R 69 Einwandererzentralstelle Litzmannstadt
• R 4902 Deutches Auslandswissenschaftliches Institut
• R 8034 II Reichsauslandsbund, Presseausschnittsammlung
Bundesarchiv Freiburg i.B., Abteilung Militärarchiv (BA MA)
• N 756 Sammlung Wolfgang Vopersal Bundesvorstand der ehemali-
gen Waffen-SS

273
274 Bibliography

• RH 2 Oberkommando des Heeres/Generalstab des Heeres

• RH 20–12 Armeeoberkommando 12
• RS 1 Führungsstellen und Oberkommandos der Waffen-SS
• RS 3–7 7. SS Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Division “Prinz Eugen”
• RS 4 Brigaden, Kampftruppen und Einheiten der Feldformationen
der Waffen-SS
• RW 4 Oberkommando der Wehrmacht/Wehrmachtführungsstab
(OKW/WFSt)
• RW 5 OKW Amt Ausland/Abwehr
• RW 40 Territoriale Befehlshaber in Südosteuropa
Lastenausgleichsarchiv Bayreuth (BA Bayreuth)
• Ost-Dokumentation 2
• Ost-Dokumentation 16
• Ost-Dokumentation 17
Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin (PA AA)
• Deutsche Gesandtschaft Belgrad
• Inland I Partei
• R 98952 Politik Jugoslawien, 1940–1941
• Inland II C
• R 100380 Deutschtum in Serbien-Banat, Band 2, 1942–1944
• R 100381 Deutschtum in Serbien-Banat, 1944
• R 100384 Deutschtum in Serbien, 1944–1945
• R 100500 Nichtdeutsche Minderheiten in Serbien, 1943–1944
• Inland II D
• R 100533 Wirtschaftliche Lage der deutschen Volksgruppen,
1938–1943
• R 100540 Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, 1944
• R 100548 Banat – Deutsche Volksgruppe, 1942–1944
• R 100549 Ungarische Minderheiten, 1942–1943; Rumänische
Minderheiten, 1943
• R 100550 Slowakei, Ungarn, Banat, Kroatien, Rumänien und
Dänemark, Gesetze und Verordnungen, 1939–1944
• R 100614 Bodenbesitzfragen im Banat, 1941–1944
• R 100615 Allgemeine Lage im Banat, Arisierungen, Liefer- und
Wirtschaftsangelegenheiten, 1941–1944
• Inland II Geheim
• R 100695 Geheime Reichssachen, 1941–1942
• R 100779 Serbien, Tätigkeit des SD, der Abwehr, der Agenten
und Polizeiattaches, 1939–1943
• R 100896 Volksdeutsche (Allgemeines), Volkstumsfragen,
1938–1944
• R 100935 Geheime Reichssachen des Referats Kult A
(Jugoslawien), 1941
• R 100937 Geheime Verschlusssachen des Referats Kult A
(Jugoslawien), 1941
• R 100939 Volksdeutsche: Jugoslawien, Banat und Batschka,
1941–1944
 Bibliography 275

• R 100969 Fremde Volksgruppen: Ungarische Flüchtlinge im ser-

bischen Banat, 1942–1944
• R 100981 Waffen-SS Allgemeiner Dienst, Führeranordnung,
Zuständigkeit, Heranziehung deutscher Volksgruppen und
ausländischer Menschenreserven, 1937–1944
• R 101011 Waffen-SS: Serbien Werbeaktion, 1942–1944
• R 101093 Berichte und Meldungen zur Lage in und über
Jugoslawien, 1942
• R 101094 Berichte und Meldungen zur Lage in und über
Jugoslawien, 1943
• R 101095 Berichte und Meldungen zur Lage in und über
Jugoslawien, 1944
• R 101098 SD-Berichte und Meldungen zur Lage in und über
Jugoslawien, 1940
In Serbia:
Arhiv Beograda, Belgrade
• Registar imena
Arhiv Jugoslavije, Belgrade (AJ)
• Fund 14 Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova KJ (MUP KJ)
• Fund 37 Milan Stojadinović
• Fund 38 Predsedništvo Ministarskog saveta, Centralni pres-
biro (CPB)
• Fund 50 Predsedništvo Vlade FNRJ
• Fund 97 Komisija za agrarnu reformu i kolonizaciju
• Fund 110 Državna komisija za utvrđivanje zločina okupatora
i njihovih pomagača
Vojni arhiv, Belgrade
• Nedićev arhiv
• Nemački arhiv
Muzej Vojvodine, Novi Sad
• Dokumenti okupatora u Banatu 1941–1944
Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin
• Fund 128 Prefektura policije za Banat (Polizeipräfektur des
Banates) – Betchkerek (Zrenjanin) (1942–1944), 1941–1944
• Fund 131 Nemačka narodnosna grupa u Banatu i Srbiji (Deutsche
Volksgruppe im Banat und in Serbien) – Bečkerek (Zrenjanin)
(1941–1944), 1941–1944
Istorijski arhiv Kikinda
• Fund 84 Sresko načelstvo Kikinda, 1941–1944
• Mape i planovi
In the United States:
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland
(NARA)
• RG 165 Records of the War Department
• RG 238 World War II War Crimes Records
• RG 242 Captured German Records
276 Bibliography

• T-75 Records of the General Plenipotentiary for the Serbian

Economy
• T-81 Records of the Deutsches Ausland-Institut
• T-120 Records of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AA)
• T-120 Records of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AA)
“Yugoslav Archive”
• T-175 Records of the Reichsführer-SS
• T-354 Records of the Waffen-SS
• T-501 Records of German Field Commands: Rear Areas,
Occupied Territories, and Others
• T-580 BDC Materials: Miscellaneous Non-Biographic Materials
(“Schumacher Material”)
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
(USHMM)
• RG-49.002*01 Records Relating to the Occupation of Yugoslavia
during World War II – Records Relating to Crimes of the German
Occupying Forces against the Yugoslav Peoples during the
Holocaust, 1941–1945
• RG-49.007 M Selected Records from the Archives of the Jewish
Historical Museum, Belgrade, 1941–1953
• RG-49.008 M Selected Records from the Archives of the Military
Historical Institute of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of
Serbia relating to the German Zone of Occupation Yugoslavia,
1941–1944
• USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Visual History Archive
interviews

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Albert, Wilhelm, ed. Deutsches Volk auf fremder Erde. Auswahl aus volksdeutschem
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Aly, Wolfgang. Denkschrift über die Batschka und das südliche Banat. Reisebericht.
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Brunner, Heinz. Das Deutschtum in Südosteuropa. Leipzig: Verlagsbuchhandlung
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Dammang, Andreas. Die deutsche Landwirtschaft im Banat und in der Batschka.

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Naviasky, Hans. Gesamtüberblick über das Deutschtum ausserhalb der Reichsgrenzen.
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 Index

Aćimović, Milan, 82 agency, 3, 5–6, 21

agriculture, 120–122, 124–127, 128–129,
See land redistribution
Albania, 146, 237
Alisbrunn, 91, 139, 244
Altgayer, Branimir, 43n53, 77
Alt-Kanischa, 92
America, 242
Anti-Fascist Council for the National
Liberation of Yugoslavia, 254–255
anti-partisan warfare, 155–160, 213–214,
227–228, 230–233
anti-Semitism, 163–164, 165–166, 186,
203–204, 208–209
anti-Slavism, 123, 202–208, 214–215, 217,
228–229
Apfeldorf, 174, 244
April War, 57–73
Aryanization, 175–179, 180–184
Atlantic Charter, 242
Austria, Austrians, 31, 34, 39, 62, 214–215,
217, 242, 252, 260–261
Austria-Hungary. See Habsburg
Empire
Austro-Turkish War, 27
Awender, Jakob, 104, 121
Bačka, 27, 31, 62–63, 65–66, 69, 72, 76–77,
86, 91, 101, 157, 171, 214, 250
Bačka Palanka, 69
Bader, Paul, 83, 111, 215
Balkan Wars, 212
Balkans. See Southeast Europe
Baltic region, 14, 212
Banat, 3, 30–31
Banat administration, 83–93, 105–106,
111, 142–143
Banat Auxiliary Police, 108, 141, 148,
151–159, 170, 174, 200
Banat Court of Appeals, 88
Banat Free State, 76–77, 146
Banat Germans, 1–7, 20–21
citizenship, 94, 96, 236–237, 259,
261, 262
class and professions, 33–34
community dynamics, 36–37, 73,
93–112, 152–153, 169, 224–225,
226–227
evacuation and flight, 244–251, 260
history before 1918, 26–30
memory, 8, 80, 253, 257, 260
military service, 45–47, 62–64, 153,
197–202, 217–223, 233
numbers, 32–33, 233, 251, 256, 261–262
postwar persecution, 252–262
Weimar-era representations of, 2, 31
Banat Police Prefecture, 100, 151, 152
Banater Beobachter, 1, 187, 192, 193–194,
196, 198, 200, 203, 206, 208, 245
Banjica, 107
banovinas, 58, 88
Baranja, 31, 65, 76
Basch, Franz, 76, 77
Beer, Josef, 73, 77, 80, 86, 90, 105, 186,
198, 201, 248, 250
Behrends, Hermann, 107, 243, 245–247,
249, 257
Belgrade, 30, 64, 70, 74n47, 88, 101–102,
129, 164, 170–172, 174, 183, 196,
205–206, 244, 251
Beneš, Eduard, 242
Benzler, Felix, 83, 85, 86, 90, 149, 180,
218, 227
Berger, Gottlob, 45, 217–219,
225–226
Berlin, 76, 187
Bessarabia. See resettlement
Bihać, 230
Bitola, 164
Böhme, Franz, 83, 214–215, 228
Boka, 201
Bor, 174
Border and Customs Patrol, 146–147, 156

293
294 Index
Bosnia, 34, 48, 66, 141, 156, 200n50, 205,
213, 230–233, 237–238, 252, 256, 260
Bosnian Muslims, 230–231
Britain, 51, 58, 213, 242
Budapest, 29, 91
Bulgaria, Bulgarians, 58, 65, 83, 93n43,
145, 214, 216, 238
Catholicism, Catholics, 27–28, 33, 37–38,
42, 106–108
Charleville, 28
children, 35, 129, 157, 165, 169, 171,
173–174, 207, 232, 250, 260
collaboration, 3, 4, 6, 19–21, 83, 145,
211, 262
Command of Public Safety, 150, 156
Command of the State Guard, 151
communism. See Partisans; Yugoslavia,
postwar
Communist Party of Yugoslavia, 157,
213, 254
concentration camps (Banat), 159–160,
171, See Banjica; Sajmište; Topovske
Šupe
corruption, 105, 110, 180, 182
Crepaja, 257
Croatia, Croats, 33, 34, 43n53, 60, 62,
64–65, 77, 125, 145, 155–156,
213–214, 216, 220, 229–233, 235,
237, 251–252, 256
Cvetković, Dragiša, 43, 50
Czechoslovakia, Czech lands, 12, 39, 45,
54, 241–242, 251
Četniks, 51, 61, 67, 81, 91, 138, 147, 155,
157, 206, 212–214, 229, 230, 231,
232, 237, 252
Dajč, Jozefa Elizabeta, 170n35
Dalmatia, 65, 232, 233, 237
Daluege, Kurt, 151
Danckelmann, Heinrich, 83, 91, 152, 257
Danube, 27, 31, 43, 68, 74n47, 75, 204, 250
Danube Swabians, 35
“Das Reich” (SS armored division), 72, 217
Debeljatscha, 165, 179
Denmark, 216
Deutsch Elemer, 115, 180, 182
Deutsche Frauenschaft, 87, 115
Deutsche Jugend, 87, 120, 130, 148
Deutsche Männergruppe. See Deutsche
Mannschaft
Deutsche Mannschaft, 87, 111, 147–150,
152–154, 156, 158–159, 167, 170,
187, 200, 245–246, 249, 253
Deutsche Volksgruppe in Serbien, 95–104,
109–110, 112, 119
Deutscher Mädelbund, 130
Deutsches Ausland-Institut, 214
Deutsches Volksblatt, 47
Deutsch-Zerne, 71, 257
Dobruja, 14
Donauzeitung, 187
Drvar, 237
Dual Monarchy. See Habsburg Empire
Duplaja, 193n24
East Europe, 12, 15, 75, 83, 176, 184, 194,
203, 214, 229, 242, 244, 253
East Prussia, 241, 246
education. See German-language
schools
Egger, Leopold, 121
Elek, Viktor, 167, 178
Erneurer, 37–42, 73
Ernsthausen, 40
Estonia, 161
ethnic Albanians, 32, 146
ethnic Bulgarians, 32
ethnic Croats, 32–33, 155
ethnic Czechs, 32
ethnic Germans (general), 2–4, 11–14,
16–19, See Banat Germans;
Germanness
ethnic Hungarians, 32–34, 85–86, 91–93,
135–136, 146, 151, 154, 159, 167
ethnic Romanians, 32, 92, 131, 135,
136–137, 154
ethnic Russians, 32, 118, 142
ethnic Slovaks, 32, 74, 92, 131
Eugene of Savoy, 1, 28, 74n47, 76,
195–196, 197–198, 204, 223
expulsions, 241–243, 260–261
Felber, Hans, 83
Förster, Helmut, 82
Four-Year Plan, 83, 123
France, 14, 20n37, 42, 51, 212, 217
Franzfeld, 152–153, 189, 196, 200,
250, 257
Fuchs, Wilhelm, 153
Führer. See Hitler, Adolf
General Plenipotentiary for the
Economy, 83
German Armed Forces High
Command, 101
German Army High Command, 152
German Foreign Ministry, 39, 42–43,
52–55, 62, 75, 83, 91–92, 135, 161,
 Index
180, 197, 214, 216–219, 222, 226,
232, 245, 251
German Labor Service, 130, 131–132, 133,
253, See labor service (non-German)
German Lutheran Church of the Augsburg
Confession in the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia. See Lutheranism,
Lutherans
German National List, 102
German School Foundation, 105
Germanization, 16–17, 74n47, 75
German-language schools, 35, 48–49,
116–120, 130
Germanness, 1, 4, 12, 17, 18, 19, 19n34,
93, 96, 101–103, 130, 162, 164, 198,
201, 207, 212, 216, 224, 262
Germany, Reich Germans, 3, 4, 31, 34, 36,
39, 41–45, 50–51, 54, 57–58, 64–66,
70, 74n47, 82–83, 86–87, 90–95, 98,
108–109, 115, 119, 121–122, 126,
130–131, 134, 136, 145, 151–153,
155, 158, 165–166, 168, 175,
177–178, 186–187, 193, 197, 199,
207, 212, 216–217, 220, 223–224,
225, 230, 232–234, 236, 243,
245–246, 259–262
Gestapo, 151, 156, 157
Gion, Josef, 105
Glogau, 63, 115
Greece, 58, 82, 146
Grenzer, 198
Grossbetschkerek, 1, 31, 49, 55, 64,
72–74, 77, 84–85, 88, 91, 92, 100, 145,
151, 155, 157, 159, 165, 166–167,
169, 171, 180, 182, 187–188,
249–250, 261
“Grossdeutschland” (Wehrmacht infantry
regiment), 72, 76, 85, 166
Grosskikinda, 61, 91, 92, 108, 110, 117,
139, 142, 155, 165, 179
Habag-Haus, 67
Habsburg Empire, 12, 27–28, 30, 36, 128,
220, 230
Haideschütz, 74, 115
Halwax, Gustav, 47, 53, 77
Hammerstiel, Robert, 252–253
“Handschar” (Waffen-SS division),
230–231, 237
Heimat, 12, 190–194, 197
Heller, Lothar, 120–122
Herzegovina, 34, 66, 213, 230, 237, 260
Heufeld, 72
Heydrich, Reinhard, 77
Higher SS and Police Chief, 151, 217, 243
295
Himmler, Heinrich, 39, 45, 46, 60, 76, 102,
128, 149, 152, 183, 214–218, 218n34,
219–223, 225–226, 229–230, 233–245
Hitler Youth, 120
Hitler, Adolf, 39, 41, 43, 57–58, 60, 62, 65,
66, 99, 120, 128, 196–197, 218, 219,
229–230, 235, 238, 241, 247,
251–252, 254
Holocaust, 11, 161–162, 166–175, 183, 215
“Holocaust by bullets,” 11
Home Guards, 252
Horthy, Miklós, 65
Hungary, Hungarians, 12, 27–31, 34, 36,
45–47, 50, 54, 58, 62, 64–66, 69–70,
74–75, 77, 85–86, 91–92, 93, 93n44,
94, 106, 116, 119, 135–137, 142, 145,
164, 212, 216, 218, 220, 223, 234, 242
Independent State of Croatia. See Croatia,
Croats
Italy, Italians, 36, 51, 57, 58, 65, 66, 133,
146, 216, 232, 236–237, 244, 259
Janko, Josef “Sepp,” 40, 41–42, 45, 47, 50,
51–52, 54, 58–59, 62, 67–69, 76–78,
86–87, 93, 97–98, 102–103, 105, 108,
110, 120, 129, 130, 140, 149, 150,
181–182, 188–191, 195, 197–200,
207, 218, 220–226, 235, 246–247,
249–250, 257
Jews, 27, 33, 100, 156, 159–160, 162–165,
203, 205, 215, 228, 248, See anti-
Semitism; Aryanization; Holocaust
Joseph II, 28
Karađorđević, Aleksandar, 36, 38
Karađorđević, Petar I, 31
Karađorđević, Petar II, 57, 64
Karlowa, 155
Karlsdorf, 254
Kathreinfeld, 109
Keitel, Wilhelm, 215–216, 218
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. See
Yugoslavia, Kingdom of
Kosovo, 34
Kowatschitza, 91, 92
Kreischef. See Vizebanus
Kubin, 71, 91, 165, 249
Kudritz, 63, 183
Kula, 38
Kulturbund, 36–39, 40–42, 44, 47–51, 59,
86–87, 95, 97, 98, 101, 102, 147
Kumane, 155
Kumm, Otto, 237
Künzig, Johannes, 26
296 Index
labor service (non-German), 130–131,
132–133, 141, 154, See German Labor
Service
land redistribution, 34, 122–124, 134–135,
259, 260, See agriculture
language use, 28, 32, 35, 89, 92, 139, 164
Lapp, Sepp, 88–90, 104, 122, 123, 124,
132, 153, 156
Lebensraum, 3, 15, 205
Levente, 135, 136
Levntal, Zdenko, 170n35
List, Wilhelm, 82
Lorenz, Werner, 39, 157, 212, 220, 225
Luftwaffe, 48, 64, 67, 132, 250
Lutheranism, Lutherans, 28, 33, 38
Ljotić, Dimitrije, 82, 162
Macedonia, Macedonians, 34, 38, 48,
60, 65
Maria Theresa, 28
Mastort, 72
Maurus, Adam, 105
Melenz, 155, 180
Metzger, Fritz, 53–54
Meyszner, August, 151, 152, 217, 219, 220,
235, 243, 257
microhistory, 2
Mihailović, Dragoljub ‘Draža’, 206, 212
Military Border, 27, 195, 196
Military Commander in Serbia, 82, 83, 85,
88, 89, 168, 219
Milleker, Felix, 193n24
Modosch, 63, 71, 91, 106, 109
Mokrin, 155
Montenegro, Montenegrins, 34, 65, 146,
202, 206, 213, 229, 237, 243, 256, 260
monuments, destruction of, 139, 179–180
Müller-Guttenbrunn, Adam, 190
Mureş, 27
Mussolini, Benito, 58
Nakodorf, 126
national councils, 74, 76
national indifference, 12
National Socialism, Nazism, 3, 14–19, 83,
185, 189, 194, 197
nationalization, 12, 28–30, 33, 35, 41,
77, 107
Nazi Party, 44, 87, 105, 140
Nazification, 12, 39, 41, 48, 77, 95, 110,
115, 116, 119, 187–190
Nedić, Milan, 82
Neubacher, Hermann, 232, 243, 245, 251
Neu-Betsche, 91, 92, 159, 165, 171
Neuhausen, Franz, 83, 121, 123, 124, 125,
128, 133, 178, 180, 181, 184, 257
Neukanischa, 91, 165, 179
Neuner, Wilhelm, 88
“Nora” (radio transmitter), 50, 59, 63–64,
67, 70
Novi Sad, 36, 64, 67–70, 76–77, 85,
164, 244
Novi Vrbas, 48
Oberkamp, Karl von, 231
Obrenović, Aleksandar, 206
Oder-Neisse Line, 261
Operation Barbarossa, 81, 122, 195,
209, 248
Order Police, 151, 154
Organisation Todt, 235, 244
Osijek, 164
Ostrovačka Ada, 133, 159
Ottoman Empire, Ottomans, 27, 30
Pantschowa, 64, 68, 70, 91, 132, 137–139,
148, 159, 165, 171, 176, 178–179,
181, 188, 196, 250, 256
Partei der Deutschen in Jugoslawien, 36, 37
Partisans, 81, 91, 142, 147, 155–156, 157,
171, 200, 202–203, 206–207, 208,
213, 228, 229–232, 237–238,
244–245, 251–252, 254–257, 259–261
Pavelić, Ante, 257
Peierle, Georg, 192
Pelikan, Ernst, 151, 152, 157
people’s honor courts, 109–112
People’s Protection Section, 255, 257
Perlas, 71, 257
Petrovaradin, 68, 70
Phleps, Arthur, 223, 225, 228–229, 234,
235, 237, 257
Poland, Poles, 2, 12, 14, 41, 42, 45, 60,
100, 102, 141, 149, 151, 162, 163,
165, 166, 183, 212, 217, 241, 242, 246
Potsdam Conference, 242
Prahovo, 43
“Prinz Eugen” (Waffen-SS division), 108,
128, 141, 149, 158–159, 187,
197–201, 218–235, 237–238, 247,
251–252
propaganda, 38, 55, 59–61, 99, 130, 157,
185–208, 213–215, 228, 237
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. See
Czechoslovakia, Czech lands
“racial IDs,” 102
Radio Belgrade, 186, 189, 191
rape. See sexual violence
 Index 297

rationing, 115–116, 136–137, 154, 180 Slovakia, 54, 216, 220

Red Army, 238, 241, 245–246, 251, Slovenia, Slovenes, 31–34, 36, 48, 60, 62,
253–254 65, 101, 252
Reich Security Main Office, 77, 161 Službene novine, 95
Reith, Franz, 140, 151, 158, 202, 257 Smederevo, 85, 88, 148
Rentsch (Wehrmacht Captain), 85 social democracy, 30, 37
Reserve Police, 81 Sokol, 117, 138
resettlement, 14, 43–48, 75, 96, 102, Soltur, 28, 126
183, 236 South Tyrol, 39, 220
Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 39, 47, 53, 60, Southeast Europe, 2, 12, 14, 15, 39, 58, 74,
76–77, 218, 220, 227, 245 75, 82, 94, 176, 204–206, 212, 216,
Roma, 32, 132, 156, 158, 168, 171–172, 218, 227–230, 232–234, 242, 243,
174, 214 246, 251, 252
Romania, Romanians, 3, 12, 27, 30, 37, 45, Soviet Union, Soviets, 2, 14, 58, 101, 141,
46, 47, 54, 62, 66, 71–72, 74, 85, 86, 149, 163, 202, 208, 212–213, 215,
127, 134, 137, 145, 154, 165, 212, 217, 228–229, 237, 241, 242,
216, 220, 223, 241, 244–246 247–250, 253–258, 262
Rudolfsgnad, 259 Spiller, Juraj, 150–151, 156–158, 257
Russia, Russians, 12, 45, 247, See Soviet Srem, 63, 66, 245
Union, Soviets SS, 4, 14, 39, 46, 53, 75, 147n7, 151, 161,
Rustendorf, 249 167, 183, 194–195, 209, 211–212,
216–217, 219
Sajmište, 159, 171 Stalin, Joseph, 242
Sandžak, 243 Stalingrad, 198, 233
Sankt Hubert, 28, 63 Startschowa, 155
Sarajevo, 64, 164 State Commission for the Determining of
Sava, 43 Crimes Committed by Occupiers and
Schäfer, Emanuel, 151–152 Their Helpers, 257–258
Schieder, Theodor, 8n11 State Security Service. See People’s
Schmidt, Andreas, 75 Protection Section
Schmidt, Johannes L., 191–193, 204 statehood. See Banat Free State
Schröder, Ludwig von, 82 Stefansfeld, 106–107, 248
Schwäbisch-Deutscher Kulturbund. See Storm Troopers, 147n7
Kulturbund Stuckart, Wilhelm, 75, 93–95, 101, 236
SD, 106, 172 Subotica, 164
Second Vienna Award, 66 Sudetenland, 39, 242, 261
Security Police, 150 Svilara, 159
Senta, 165 Sword and Plow, 194
Serbia, Serbs, 3, 27, 30, 32, 34, 48, 60, 65,
85, 88, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 101, 115, Šibenik, 237
117, 118, 122–125, 126, 127,
128–129, 131, 136–143, 145–146, taxation, 117, 126–128
151, 154–158, 161, 162, 174, 179, Third Reich. See Germany, Reich Germans
180, 202, 204–206, 213–216, 217, Timişoara, 64, 74, 245, 247
226–231, 233, 238, 245, 247, 252, Timok Region, 137
256–257 Tisa, 27, 31, 86, 127, 171, 250
German occupation of, 81–84 Tito, Josip Broz, 213, 237, 239, 254
Serbian collaborationist government, 82, Topovske Šupe, 171
88–90, 92, 97, 116, 122, 134, 147, Transylvania, 27, 66
152, 162, 175, 178, 214, 236 Tripartite Pact, 41, 47, 50–51, 57, 59, 92,
Serbian State Guard, 152, 175 93, 115, 206, 232–233
sexual violence, 169, 253 Triska, Helmut, 74–75, 91
Simović, Dušan, 59, 67 Tschoka, 165
Skopje, 164 Turner, Harald, 82–83, 87–89, 91, 96, 146,
Slavonia, 31, 32, 43n53, 48, 260 213, 215, 219, 257
298 Index
Ukraine, Ukrainians, 14, 20n38, 120, 128,
162, 244
Ungarländisch-Deutsche Volkspartei, 30
United Nations War Crimes
Commission, 258
Unterreiner, Franz, 224, 234
Ustašas, 36, 38, 66, 213, 230, 232, 235,
237, 252
“Verordnung betreffend die Juden und
Zigeuner,” 168, 177
“Verordnung über die innere Verwaltung
des Banates,” 88
“Verordnung über die Rechtsstellung der
deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und
in Serbien,” 236
“Verordnung über die Rechtsstellung der
Deutschen Volksgruppe in
Serbien,” 95
“Verordnung über die Schulen der
Deutschen Volksgruppe im
Banat,” 116
“Verordnung über die Teilnahme der
Ungarn an der Verwaltung des
Banats,” 92
Verordnungsblatt der Volksgruppenführung der
deutschen Volksgruppe im Banat und
Serbien, 98, 109, 222
Vienna, 75, 214, 249
village militias, 148, 156
Vizebanus, 88, 90
Vojvodina, 31–35, 37, 48, 58, 63–64, 66,
68–69, 75, 94, 128, 164–165,
255–256, 259–261
Volk, 4, 12, 14, 17–18
Völkischer Beobachter, 187
Volksdeutsche. See ethnic Germans
(general)
Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. See VoMi
Volksdeutsche Stunde, 191
Volksgemeinschaft, 3, 17–18, 97, 99, 104,
110, 130, 187, 192, 197, 199,
201, 226
Volksgruppenführer, 4, 40, 77, 95
Volksgruppenführung. See Banat
administration; Janko, Josef “Sepp”
Volkstum, 75, 83, 93
“volunteer fields.” See land redistribution
VoMi, 3, 39, 40, 44–45, 52–53, 60, 62, 77,
91, 121, 129, 218, 244–245, 251
Waffen-SS (general), 45–47, 109, 149, 160,
183, 210–212, 216–218, 220, 223,
233, 235–236
Wehrmacht, 81, 85, 125, 131–132, 135,
145, 146, 148–149, 161, 167, 171,
174–175, 179, 205, 211, 214–219,
228, 230, 235, 237, 241, 244–246, 250
Weisskirchen, 91, 165
Werschetz, 30, 91, 118, 165, 171, 179,
193n24, 252
women, 105, 115–116, 129, 131–132, 157,
169, 171–173, 176, 207–208, 232,
253–254
Wüscht, Johann, 53–54
Yugoslav censuses, 32–33, 136,
164–165, 262
Yugoslavia
Kingdom of, 12, 30–31, 35, 39, 45–51,
54–55, 57, 59, 62
partitioning of, 65–66
postwar, 7–8, 254–256, 257–259,
260–261
Zagreb, 164
Zbor, 82
Zemun, 43, 244
Zrenjanin, Žarko, 157–158, 261
Zwirner, Sepp, 167