Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T06:56:35.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The German Minority in Inter-War Yugoslavia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Peter Mentzel
Peter Mentzel*
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes inherited a considerable number of Germans along with its ex-Habsburg territories when it was established in December 1918. The two most important German communities in inter-war Yugoslavia were the Germans of Slovenia and the Germans of the Vojvodina and Croatia-Slavonia, the so-called Donau Schwaben (Swabians). There were also scattered pockets of ethnic Germans in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Yugoslavian ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), like the other Yugoslavian non-Slav minorities, were objects of discrimination by the Yugoslavian government. The Slovenian German community responded to this hostility by developing a virulent German nationalism which, after 1933, rapidly turned into Nazism. The Swabian community, on the other hand, generally tried to cooperate with the central government in Belgrade. The Swabians remained rather ambivalent toward the rising Nazi movement until the tremendous successes of the Third Reich in 1938 made Nazism irresistibly attractive. In the face of the government's anti-German policies, why did each of these German communities manifest such different attitudes towards the Yugoslav state during the inter-war period? This article will show how several factors of history, demography, and geography combined to produce the different reactions of the two groups.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 21 , Issue 2: Special Issue - The Ex-Soviet Nationalities Without Gorbachev , Fall 1993 , pp. 129 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Ljubisa Stojkovic and Milos Martic, National Minorities in Yugoslavia (Beograd, 1952), pp. 29–30. The records of the “Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of Germandom” (RKFDV) (U.S. National Archives Microcopy T-74, Roll 3, frame 374,030) gives the population of Volksdeutsche in Yugoslavia as c. 700,000. Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars, 1918-1941 (Hamden, CT 1962), p. 284, gives the total ethnic German population as 506,000 in 1921. Of these, 328,000 lived in the Backa and Banat, 123,000 in Croatia, 40,000 in Slovenia and 15,000 in Bosnia.Google Scholar

2. Wuscht, Johann, Ursachen und Hintergrunde des Schiksals der Deutschen in Jugoslawien (Kehl, 1966), p. 15.Google Scholar

3. Hocevar, Toussaint, “Linguistic Minorities of Yugoslavia and Adjacent Areas during the Inter-War Period: An Economic Perspective,” Nationalities Papers, XII, No. 2 (1984), p. 218.Google Scholar

4. Suppan, Arnold, “Zur Lage der Deutschen in Slowenien zwischen 1918 und 1938” in Helmut Rumpler and Arnold Suppan, eds., Geschichte der Deutschen im Bereich des Heutigen Slowenien, 1848-1941 (Wien, 1988), p. 172. Helga Horiak Harriman, The German Minority in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945 (Ann Arbor, 1973), p. 10, gives 107,200 as the German population of the Slovene lands in 1910.Google Scholar

5. Harriman, , p. 39. Dusan Biber, “Socijalna Struktura Nemacka Nacionale Manjine u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji,” Jugoslovvenski Istorijski Casopis XVII (1978), p. 404, gives figures as 28,988 or 2.5% of the population.Google Scholar

6. Rothschild, Joseph, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, Vol. IX of P. F. Sugar and D. Treadgold, eds., A History of East Central Europe (Seattle, 1974), p. 203.Google Scholar

7. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Nationalitätenpolitik in Jugoslawien: Die deutsche Minderheit, 1918-1978 (Gottingen, 1980), p. 17.Google Scholar

8. Paikert, G. C., The Danube Swabians (The Hague, 1967), p. 268, footnote 2. See also Wuscht, p. 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Biber, , p. 405.Google Scholar

10. Paikert, , p. 265.Google Scholar

11. Biber, , p. 405.Google Scholar

12. Suppan, , p. 190.Google Scholar

13. Barker, Thomas M., The Slovene Minority in Carinthia (Boulder, CO, 1984), p 73.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 76. Harriman, pp. 11–12,30, comments on the strength of pan-Germanist feeling among the German population of the Slovene lands.Google Scholar

15. Barker, , pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

16. Harriman, , p. 24.Google Scholar

17. Ibid. Wehler, p. 26, similarly states: “Ohne ein politisch bewusstes nationales Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl fühlten sie sich als loyale Staatsburger dem ungarischen Staatverbunders…”Google Scholar

18. Wüscht, p. 18. Paikert, p. 265.Google Scholar

19. Paikert, , p. 265.Google Scholar

20. Komjathy, Anthony, German Minorities and the Third Reich (New York, 1980), pp. 128–129.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 129.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 138.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., p. 128. See also Johann Wuscht, Slowenen und Deutsche (Kehl, 1975), p. 17.Google Scholar

24. Paikert, , p. 266.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., pp. 50–53.Google Scholar

26. Komjathy, , p. 127.Google Scholar

27. RKFDV, Roll 3, 374305. See also Paikert, p. 267, note 2.Google Scholar

28. Paikert, , p. 266.Google Scholar

29. Harriman, , p. 50.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., p. 40.Google Scholar

31. Komjathy, , p. 126. Rothschild, pp. 221, 230.Google Scholar

32. Paikert, , p. 269.Google Scholar

33. RKFDV, Roll 3, 374035.Google Scholar

34. Komjathy, , pp. 126–127.Google Scholar

35. Palmer, Alan, The Lands Between (New York, 1970), p. 190. The fortunes of the PdD paralleled those of the Kulturbund. For example, the PdD, like the Bund, was closed in 1924 when its leaders “fell foul of Pasic” (Palmer's words). It reopened in 1927 after the fall of the Radicals.Google Scholar

36. Harriman, , p. 44. Rothschild, charts, pp. 219, 224, 229.Google Scholar

37. Gacesa, Nicola, “Nemci u Agrarnoj Reformi i Vlasnistvu Obrdivg Zemljista u Vojvodini, 1919-1941,” Zbornik za Istoriju, XIII (1976), pp. 75–77.Google Scholar

38. Wuscht, , Ursachen und Hintergrunde, p. 16.Google Scholar

39. Seton-Watson, p. 284. Perhaps the PdD also felt that the interests of the Volksdeutsche would be better served within a multinational Yugoslavia than in a Croat, Serb or Slovene nation-state.Google Scholar

40. Komjathy, , pp. 2–4, 12-14. Harriman, pp. 83–84.Google Scholar

41. Harriman, , p. 84.Google Scholar

42. Paikert, , p. 270.Google Scholar

43. Suppan, , p. 193. Harriman, p. 50.Google Scholar

44. RKFDV, Roll 3, 374053.Google Scholar

45. Suppan, , p. 193.Google Scholar

46. Harriman, , p. 49.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., pp. 41–42.Google Scholar

48. Komjathy, , p. 133.Google Scholar

49. Harriman, , p. 92.Google Scholar

50. Komjathy, , p. 136.Google Scholar

51. RKFDV, Roll 3, 374035.Google Scholar

52. Komjathy, , p. 133.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., p. 134. See also Harriman, pp. 42–43.Google Scholar

54. Seton-Watson, pp. 236, 285.Google Scholar

55. Komjathy, , p. 138.Google Scholar

56. Harriman, , pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

57. Komjathy, , p. 134.Google Scholar

58. Paikert, , p. 270.Google Scholar

59. Seton-Watson, p. 284.Google Scholar

60. Komjathy, , p. 136.Google Scholar

61. Paikert, , p. 270.Google Scholar

62. Komjathy, , p. 137.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., p. 138.Google Scholar

64. Ibid., p. 139.Google Scholar

65. Paikert, , p. 276.Google Scholar

66. Harriman, , pp. 93–94.Google Scholar

67. Ibid., pp. 100–101.Google Scholar

68. Preparations for this transfer began in the spring of 1941. The transfer involved 12,400 Germans from the Kocevje/Gottschee area, 1,500 from Ljubljana and about 500 others. Harriman, pp. 175–179.Google Scholar

69. Harriman, , pp. 163–164.Google Scholar

70. Ibid., p. 185.Google Scholar

71. Ibid., p. 188.Google Scholar

72. Wüscht, Ursachen und Hintergrunde, p. 15. Translation by this author.Google Scholar

73. See Paikert, pp. 40–60, for a good evaluation of this period.Google Scholar

74. Quoted in Paikert, p. 267, note 1.Google Scholar

75. An RKFDV report (Roll 3,374,034) mentions that due to extensive Magyarization prior to 1918, the Swabians had lost much of their German national consciousness. See also Paikert, p. 265.Google Scholar

76. Both Janko and Halwax were Swabians. Janko had been educated in Austria: Paikert, pp. 274, 276. Branimir Altgayer was born in Osijek, Slavonia: Seton-Watson, p. 284.Google Scholar

77. Schodl, Gunter, “Ideologische und aussenpolitische Vorgeschichte der NS Slowenenpolitik” in Rumpler and Suppan, p. 293.Google Scholar