Prey men
“Beutegermane” is a term that has been used since the annexation of areas by the German Reich in 1938. Even after the Second World War , it was used up to the present day , not only by Germans .
External name
User: Germans in Germany
1938-1945
From 1938 onwards, large parts of the population in the German Reich named the “ Volksdeutsche ” as “booty Germans” (especially with derogatory intent). After the occupation of the Sudetenland and afterwards in World War II, they were called “Germans” or “as German useful ”had been classified, z. Sometimes with questionable methods (cf. Deutsche Volksliste # naturalization procedure and selection criteria ). The men among them had to do military service in the German armed forces. In the category of “booty Germans”, non-Germans who participated (partly voluntarily, partly compulsorily) as “ volunteers ” in war events on the German side were often classified (cf. e.g. the German occupation 1941–1945 and the Holocaust in Latvia or German-Latvian Relations # 1941–1945: Occupation by the Greater German Reich ).
For example, the recruits of the voluntary SS division Prinz Eugen , which were set up with voluntary ethnic Germans (Danube Swabians from Romania and Yugoslavia), were called “booty Germans” . The non-German units or soldiers of the Waffen-SS divisions were also given this name.
The 7th Army of the Wehrmacht, which was stationed in Normandy and was supposed to fend off the invasion of the Allies , consisted of force-recruited Poles and Soviet prisoners of war for a fifth of the soldiers. The latter were also considered to be “prey Germans” at the time of their deployment.
1945 until today
The foreign designation “Beutegermanen” remained for these people after they came to Germany from their settlement areas in the east (the Soviet Union , the Baltic States , Poland , the Sudetenland, Romania and Hungary ) (mostly with the retreating German Wehrmacht ). Like German nationals from the areas east of the Oder-Neisse border , locals in the immediate post-war period often accused the “booty Germans” of compelling them to share what was already scarce with them.
Adoption of the term by non-Germans
The term “booty man” was also used in Poland after the Second World War. There it is part of the thesis that there were no Germans among Polish citizens in 1939. Some of the Polish citizens of German origin who had long since become Polonized remembered their German ancestors for opportunistic reasons, and other Poles were forcibly Germanized.
Own name
Occasionally after 1945 the term “Beutegermane” was also used as a non-derogatory self-designation, for example in a letter written in 1951 by the well-known Jewish savior Oskar Schindler : “First I want to state that I am not an Old Reich German, but a Sudeten German, that is, Beutegermane, and belong today in the army of millions of expellees. (I remember the images of my flight and humiliation with all the bloody horror of the sadistic pack of Czechoslovakia just as vividly as the atrocities of German 'supermen' against defenseless Jews, Poles, women and children). "
Web links
- Werner Mork: draft for military service in autumn 1939 . Living Museum Online. German Historical Museum . July 2004
literature
- Winfried Welzer: The prey man. A trip into the past (2008). Self-Publishing, Engeldorfer Verlag. ISBN 3869011807
- Klaus-Peter Möller: The true E: a dictionary of the GDR soldier's language , p. 55 and p. 87 (reference) ISBN 3931836223
- Gustav Muthmann: Declining German Dictionary , p. 170, ISBN 3110920662
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Darmstadt-based Polish filmmaker Marian Czura shot the documentary Beutekameraden (2003) about the fate of young men from Poland who were forced into war .
- ↑ Boris Peter: June 6, 1944 . The daily mirror . May 30, 2010
- ↑ RMDouglas: Proper transfer "The expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. Retrieved on December 16, 2017 (German).
- ↑ Walther Mann: Memories of Odrau. Experiences in a small town in the Sudetenland before and after the Second World War . Volume II. 2002, p. 61
- ^ Theodor Bierschenk: The German ethnic group in Poland 1934-1939 . Kitzingen 1954
- ↑ Klaus Kukuk: Foreword to the book title: Jitka Gruntová: "The truth about Oskar Schindler - why there are legends >> about good Nazis <<" . Association for international politics and international law V. Berlin