Folk politics

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Volkstumsppolitik is a purely German term that developed under the political slogan Heim ins Reich after the First World War and the cession of territories in the Versailles Treaty . It experienced its practical development during the time of National Socialism by the German Reich, first with the annexation of the Saar area in 1935, the annexation of Austria as " Enterprise Otto ", the incorporation of the Sudetenland in 1938, and then in the Second World War with the attack on Poland and the " Russian Campaign "as" Operation Barbarossa "parallel to Himmler's " Program Heinrich ".

Volkstumsppolitik included in the “ Greater German Reich ” the foreign policy, racist-imperialist extension of the Nuremberg laws from the “ Reich Party Congress of Freedom” on September 15, 1935, which, as a so-called blood protection law, defined the “purity of German blood ” and “related blood” initially before the “ Mixing ”with“ Jews ”,“ Negroes ”and“ Gypsies ”should preserve until with the planned expansion of the living space in the east or the“ Germanic ” people to the Urals as“ protection from foreigners ”their“ population change ”through gradual naturalization were added to the final stage of "Reich Citizenship" or fighting up to annihilation. So it is the central concept of rule of National Socialism .

background

The term "Volkstum"

Volkstum is a term introduced by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn in the German national discussion, already in the title of his book Deutsches Volksthum, which was first published in 1810 . The direct trigger of the book is the occupation of the small German states that took place with Napoleon , which led to the first national optimism in the " Wars of Liberation " from 1813 to 1815.

Jahn puts the word in the sequence: “Volk” → “Volksthum” → “Volkssthümlich” → “Volksthümlichkeit”. It stands on an equal footing with “Germanness” (cf. Deutschtum ) and is directed against all “foreigners”, especially those influenced by France. All formations derived from "national" are to him as "raised freaks". His more detailed definitions of "folk" are:

"It is what the people have in common, their indwelling nature, their rain and life, their power of reproduction, their ability to reproduce."

“Nothing is a state without a people , a soulless work of art; nothing is a people without a state, a disembodied, airy shadow like the fledgling gypsies and Jews. State and people in one only result in an empire , and its power of preservation remains folklore. "

This folk discourse initiated by Jahn aims at the establishment of a German Empire ( which did not come about until 1871). In the identity formation of future German nationals, it leads to an inflationary use of the adjective "teutsch" / "deutsch", which can be placed in front of all things taken for granted in life, up to and including nature with forest, trees (e.g. oak), meadow, mountain, valley, The river (for example the Rhine) and the lake become a "German".

Just as Pan-Slavism belongs to the late Eastern European nation - state discussion, Pan-German nationalism belongs to its western neighbors, which in turn, in overcoming German ' small states ', would like to do the same as Western Europeans who were already nationalized in their nationality.

"Volkstum" and "Lebensraum"

While the term “Volkstum” served to develop an identity delimited by the national language , which was linguistically traced back to the early Middle Ages, towards the end of the 19th century the settlement archeology represented by Gustaf Kossinna set itself the task of providing material evidence of the area of ​​origin of a people. The aim of this archeology was to trace the migration routes of early medieval peoples who had left their countries of origin and immigrated to the Roman world. For the Pan-German Association and the German Ostmarkenverein , this meant that they asserted national territorial claims up to the Bug against the Slavic peoples in the regions of origin of the East Germans (Burgundians, Goths, Lugians, Rugiers, Vandals) . Because "far beyond today's German eastern border (...) deep into Russian Poland", the archaeologists brought to light "a real Germanic character". From this perspective, the medieval eastern settlement, including the eastern expansion of the German knights, could be interpreted as a "return" to the "original home". Almost at the same time, Friedrich Ratzel developed his ideas of "geopolitical living spaces", so that the imperialist idea of ​​" living space in the east ", which in future " border colonization " would lead to the development of a "Greater Germanic Empire" that was already dreamed of by Friedrich List and that Paul de Lagarde propagated with great consequences would have had to be re-“ Germanized ” if the ground was prepared in terms of national policy. For the perception of the Slavs , the threat of the catchphrase "German urge to the east " resulted.

Weimar Republic

With the new borders drawn after the Peace Treaty of Versailles , especially in the east, the shrinking of the Reich territory and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary , 10 million people who considered themselves to be Germans lived outside the Reich borders. Still free from the “race” principle, the conservative-nationalist, partly incitement to the people “ Association for Germanness Abroad ” (VDA) took on all Germans living outside of the Reich's borders and their national interests. In the circle of the reactionary German-Völkisch movement with financial support from the Foreign Office , the VDA campaigned for the revision efforts of the 1920s and with all means for the struggle for the preservation of “foreign Germanism”. For example, in 1932 in Königsberg in a local group taken over by Hans Rothfels , he showed commitment to popular politics on the eastern border with Poland. The " Deutsche Ostmarkenverein ", founded in 1894, made drastic demands that were mainly motivated by Prussia . The “ Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ” (VFG) founded in 1931 had even more consequences . All of them were connected with one another at an early stage through people who belonged to at least one of the associations as members, Albert Brackmann being of the greatest importance.

"Third Reich"

In the “ Third Reich ”, national politics was initially a matter for the Führer deputy Rudolf Hess . In 1933 he provided a confidential order for the “summary of all work on German borders and abroad”. In 1935 further organizational centralization took place with the “Volksdeutsche Parteidienststelle”, until the associations, which had been brought into line through their own efforts , were further coordinated in the “ Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle ” (VOMI) founded in 1936 . The “ Bund Deutscher Osten ”, founded by Franz Lüdtke in 1933 and later led by Theodor Oberländer , played a leading role . When it was founded, the independence of many East German ethnic associations, above all the "Deutsche Ostmarkenverein", ceased to exist.

For Himmler, dimensions of the settlement policy he envisaged opened up for him at the beginning of 1939 with Hitler's order to relocate the German minority in South Tyrol . He saw this assignment as an opportunity to supplement the police powers of the SS and to expand its tasks in the area of ​​"living space policy". After Himmler had appointed himself “ Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum ” on October 7, 1939 on the basis of a secret decree from Hitler , in 1941 he incorporated the VOMI as a main office in the apparatus of the SS. It was already responsible for the repatriation and resettlement of German ethnic groups living fragmented in Eastern Europe, which in 1939-40 in the first “home-taking action of ethnic Germans ” led to the first large wave of expulsions in the “old German popular and cultural soil in the east” of Poland led. In line with the ethnoarchaeology developed by Kossinna, an essay signed by “GM” under the heading The Settler in the East is not a “Colonist” said: “ Anyone who settles in the East plows on holy ground! "

Germanization

In the annexed areas and the CdZ areas intended for later integration , a program of Germanization, centrally managed by the SS main offices, was carried out with the aim of destroying the national identity of the population in these areas. This program essentially consisted of three independent components: The first measure granted foreign citizens of these areas German citizenship , with graduated rights depending on their classification in the German People's List (DVL). Anyone who did not voluntarily join the DVL in spite of the corresponding racial classification was threatened with concentration camp detention. The second measure was the so-called re - Germanization procedure , which obliged those affected to do forced labor in the Reich. The third measure classified the " ethnic German " resettlers in so-called A, O and S cases. A cases were only allowed to live in the Altreich , O cases were intended for the new settlement areas in the east, S cases were special cases. These people should either be deported to the General Government or return to their country of origin.

Women from the “Altreich” and “Ostmark” (Austria) played an important role in educating and caring for the Germanization. Their task extended to specifically “female” areas of activity, in which the “ethnic German” or “German-born” resettlers were supposed to become capable members of the National Socialist national community so that German “culture” could be expanded or newly created.

General plan east

Main article: General Plan East

The aim of national politics was to integrate all territorial conquests up to the Urals after the envisaged “ final victory ” into the “Holy Germanic Empire of the German Nation”, not as colonies but as parts of this empire. Himmler called this the " Heinrich Program ". He estimated a period of 20 years for its realization, which corresponded to his life perspective. Himmler saw Odilo Globocnik , his “man in the east”, as suitable for the 'colonization' of the East that initially took place . In the “busiest time of our lives” following the victory, namely the “struggle to win peace”, “we still have to cultivate and colonize the settlement area in the East and open it up for European culture” (Himmler's speech on November 23, 1942 in the SS Junkerschule Bad Tölz.) According to Himmler's ideas, 400–500 million “Germanic” residents all over Europe should one day a definitive protective wall against “ Asia ” and its fantasized international storm waves from beyond the Huns , Magyars , Mongols and Tatars Urals form. In order to achieve the settlement goal, instead of the "racially and politically undesirable superfluous" population, SS people willing to settle, "Germanic" resettlers from all over Europe, overseas and "able to Germanize" from the conquered eastern regions should be recruited. Individual “ foreign nationals ” could be bureaucratically recorded via the “ German People's List ” and hope for German naturalization if they were not identified with “ Jewish Bolshevism ” or Russians as inferior Slavs and had to fear their annihilation. In the war between 1941 and 1945, 27 million Soviet citizens died.

Increase in the proportion of the Jewish population in the sphere of influence of "Greater Germany"

From 1938 onwards, with the " annexation of Austria " to the German Reich and above all in the Eastern European areas that came under German control at the beginning of the war, a problem of which the Nazi leaders were not immediately aware of of the Jewish Germans, of whom 550,000 lived in the Weimar Republic in 1925 , had steadily declined due to emigration since 1933, the Germans who were obsessed with “Germanization” and the conquest of “living space in the east” in 1939 and 1941, along with the Slavic population, had it all at once 3.2 million Polish and 2.7 million Soviet Jews do. For the German rulers, after the massive killing actions of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD during the war, this resulted in the “ final solution to the Jewish question ”, especially in the extermination camps under Globocnik's command as part of the “ Aktion Reinhardt ” as part of the Holocaust .

Legal processing of the national politics of the "Third Reich"

In the process of race and settlement main office of the SS in 1947/48 those responsible for the Berlin central offices, the three main SS offices, were indicted and convicted. The Moscow Declaration of 1943 stated that the perpetrators should generally be brought to justice in the countries in which they had committed their crimes. As a result, the Reich Governor and Gauleiter of the Wartheland, Arthur Greiser , and Danzig-West Prussia, Albert Forster , were tried in Poland . In France, the Reich Governor and Gauleiter of occupied Alsace , Robert Wagner , was convicted, in Yugoslavia the Gauleiter and Reich Governor of Carinthia and the occupied territories of Carinthia and Carniola , Friedrich Rainer . While the American military tribunal only pronounced imprisonment, the courts of the occupied countries sentenced the accused to death.

present

In Germany , “Volkstumsppolitik” is no longer a widespread or even accepted term. This is not least due to the “gymnastics father” Jahn himself when he speaks of “dirty nothing” next to the “noble peoples of the earth”, of the “most despicable rubbish of the human race” in relation to people. But he says of the Germans :

“Which folklore is the highest, has most approximated humanity? Nothing other than that which has taken up the sacred concept of humanity, with an external all-roundness, symbolically represents it in the small, like the Greeks at one time popularly , and up to now the Germans as cosmopolitan, people holy to humanity. "

It should not be overlooked, however, that what is basically meant by the term also persists, namely, embedded in the right of peoples to self-determination , to deserve minority protection within the framework of international law against a nation state that is perceived as alien or a besieging hostile power. This can be seen in contemporary Europe in the conflict between Flemings and Walloons in Belgium , although economic considerations of the Flemings are the main factor; in France by the Corsicans , Bretons and Basques ; in Spain by the Basques and Catalans ; in the Northern Ireland conflict and not to be forgotten in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars . The South Tyrolean parties Süd-Tiroler Freiheit , Die Freiheitlichen and the Union for South Tyrol demand the right to self-determination for South Tyrol.

In Germany it has been clarified since the 1990s which sciences and scientists willingly contributed to Nazi national politics. The total budget of national science since 1938 amounted to around 20 million RM . In the meantime, it has been shown that almost every branch of science can be seen as involved in supporting handouts for Himmler's “ Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Folklore ”. Particularly emphasized are z. As for agriculture , history , demography , ethnography and geography following personalities from the approximately 1000 people overall radius of the existing since 1931 VFG:

Hermann Aubin , Max Hildebert Boehm , Albert Brackmann , Werner Conze , Erich Keyser , Konrad Meyer , Emil Meynen , Theodor Oberländer , Otto Reche , Theodor Schieder , Peter-Heinz Seraphim , Ernst Zipfel .

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz et al. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Munich 1997.
  • Detlef Brandes : population change, resettlement, racial inventory. NS "Volkstumsppolitik" in the Bohemian countries . Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71242-1 .
  • Michael Burleigh : Germany Turns Eastwards. A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich . London 2002.
  • Michael Fahlbusch : Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” from 1931–1945 . Baden-Baden 1999.
  • Ingo Haar : Historian under National Socialism. German history and the “national struggle” in the east . Göttingen 2000.
  • Heinz Höhne : The order under the skull. The history of the SS . Weltbild, Augsburg 1995 (in it chapter 12: The politics of the people in the east ).
  • Peter Longerich : Heinrich Himmler. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88680-859-5 .
  • Tammo Luther : Volkstumsppolitik of the German Reich 1933–1938. The Germans abroad in the field of tension between traditionalists and National Socialists (= historical messages - supplements . Vol. 55). Steiner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-515-08535-1 .
  • Diemut Majer: "Aliens" in the Third Reich. A contribution to the National Socialist law-making and legal practice in administration and justice with special consideration of the incorporated Eastern Territories and the General Government . In: Writings of the Federal Archives . tape 28 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 978-3-486-41933-7 .
  • Winfried Schulze , Otto Gerhard Oexle (ed.): German historians in National Socialism . Frankfurt am Main 1999.
  • Oskar Stillich : Deutschvölkischer Katechismus . 3 volumes; Ernst Oldenburg, Leipzig / Berlin 1929–1932.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Deutsches Volksthum, Hildesheim-New York 1980 (reprint), pp. 7–9, 18.
  2. ↑ Hermann Glaser, philistine ideology. On the destruction of the German spirit in the 19th and 20th centuries and the rise of National Socialism, Frankfurt / M-Berlin-Vienna 1979; Hagen Schulze, State and Nation in European History, Munich 1999.
  3. ^ H. Merbach, Die Slawenkriege des Deutschen Volkes. A national house book, Leipzig 1914, p. 3.
  4. ↑ Patrick J. Geary, European Peoples in the Early Middle Ages. On the legend of the development of nations, Frankfurt a. M. 2002, p. 45 f.
  5. ↑ Oskar Stillich : Away with the VDA from schools! Lecture. With an accompanying word by Paul Oestreich . Publishing house for the German people, Breslau 1930.
  6. ^ Norbert Krekeler: Right to revision and secret Ostpolitik of the Weimar Republic. Subsidizing the German minority in Poland (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. No. 27). German Verl.-Anst., Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-421-01667-4 (At the same time: Bonn, University, dissertation, 1972: On the German policy of the Foreign Office in the areas ceded by the Versailles Treaty. ).
  7. ^ Ingo Haar, "Revisionist" Historians and Youth Movement: The Königsberg Example, p. 72 f. in: Peter Schöttler (Ed.), Historiography as Legitimation Science 1918–1945, Frankfurt / M. 1999, pp. 52-103.
  8. ↑ See I. Haar, p. 101.
  9. ↑ Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler. Biography , Siedler: München 2008, p. 429.
  10. ↑ See decree v. Oct 7, 1939
  11. ↑ Der Reichsführer SS, SS = main office = training office (ed.), SS = Leitheft - war edition, vol. 6, volume 2b, pp. 2–6; 6-10.
  12. ↑ Elizabeth Harvey: The East Needs You! Women and National Socialist Germanization Policy , Hamburg Edition: Hamburg 2010, ISBN 3-86854-218-3 . ( Review )
  13. ↑ Reprint and analysis of the speech in Himmler's and Hitler's symbolic politics with medieval rulers (PDF; 1.9 MB)
  14. ↑ Diemut Majer, 1993.
  15. ↑ cf. Environment of the "General Plan East"
  16. ↑ Peter Jahn, 27 million, in: Die Zeit from June 14, 2007, Zeitlaufte, p. 90.
  17. ↑ According to Enzo Traverso, around 400,000 Jews emigrated from Central Europe between 1933 and the outbreak of war (Enzo Traverso, A feu et à sang. De la guerre civile européenne 1914-1945, Paris 2007, p. 327).
  18. ^ Arno J. Mayer , The war as a crusade. The German Reich, Hitler's Wehrmacht and the "Final Solution", Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, pp. 99, 290.
  19. ↑ FL Jahn, pp. 21-27.
  20. ↑ Michael Fahlbusch: For people, leaders and empire! Volkstumforschung und Volkstumsppolitik 1931–1945 .