Evacuation of the German ethnic group from the Banat in 1944

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After the royal coup in Romania in August 1944 , the coming military defeat of the German Reich in World War II was also visible in Romania . The change of front of the country came as a complete surprise for the ethnic group leaders and the Wehrmacht members in the Banat . Plans for evacuation of the German ethnic group in Banat encountered particularly with resistance from the SS -Führung in Serbian Belgrade .

With the Behrends company , German units advanced into Romania, with an SS police division still making it possible for around 12,000 Banat Swabians to flee . However, when the Red Army advanced quickly westward in early October 1944, the evacuation of the West Banat Swabians was only partially successful due to contradicting orders and a lack of organization. Also, many of the Danube Swabians did not want to leave their house or their farm.

Around half of the German-speaking population was evacuated from the Batschka , around 30,000 in the Romanian Banat, and only around 10 percent in the Serbian Banat . The question of guilt is controversial in the history of the Danube Swabians.

history

prehistory

Situation in the Romanian Banat

When the war encroached on the Kingdom of Romania as a result of the withdrawal of German troops from the Eastern Front , the country concluded an armistice with the Soviet Union on August 23, 1944 after the royal coup in Romania, on the condition that Romania was on the side of the Soviet Union against them former ally Germany continued the war. The situation in Bucharest had not yet been decided, however, at times it seemed as if the German troops in and around Bucharest under Lieutenant General Alfred Gerstenberg would succeed in suppressing the coup with the company Margarethe II . In addition, the German and Hungarian armed forces in the Serbian Banat and Hungary were expected to react. In Vršac ( Werschetz ) was part of the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen" , in Detta a battalion of the special unit "Brandenburg" .

However, the German front soon collapsed and the Red Army was in the Romanian Banat in early September. The Romanian occupation of the city of Timisoara ( German  Timisoara ) went through early September on the Soviet side. Romanian authorities were already controlling large parts of the region at the end of August. Sporadic attempts at a counter-offensive were made by German and Hungarian troops, which led to destruction in many villages. Staff leader Andreas Rührig ordered the evacuation of the Swabians living in the Romanian part of the Banat to Serbia on September 9, but the rapidly changing front prevented the planned complete evacuation of the German-speaking population, the majority of which had resisted this measure until the end . About 30,000 responded to this request.

Situation in the Serbian Banat

  • Distribution of the German minority in Vojvodina, 1910.

After the German occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the Balkan campaign (1941) , Josef Janko was appointed "ethnic group leader" of the German ethnic group in the Banat and Serbia . Some of the Serbian Germans living mainly in Vojvodina, the Serbian part of the Banat, took part in occupation tasks. About 22,000 were partly voluntarily, partly obliged to serve in the 1942 established 7. SS Volunteer Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen" and participated in the guerrilla war against the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army in part, with them for their brutal repression and illegal shootings of civilians were known .

At the end of September 1944, only moderately large treks were moving west on the Banat roads. Within the West Banat ethnic group leadership in Zrenjanin ( Groß-Betschkerek ) there was no clarity about the situation in the first days of September. There was an assurance that a German tank army was on the march, and insecure local delegations called for advice or demanded binding instructions. Many natives of the German minority had little ambition to leave their ancestral home. In view of the treks with “ ethnic Germans ” from the Romanian Banat now moving through Vojvodina, a mood spread among many Serbian Germans that favored staying. However, votes in the localities produced quite different results. In Nakovo ( Nakodorf ) 90 percent and in Zrenjanin 80 percent of the “ethnic German” respondents were in favor of staying, whereas in Mokrin only 60 percent voted against an evacuation.

Evacuation plan for the Serbian Banat

  • Josef Janko, ethnic group leader Banat and Serbia.

  • Jakob Awender, cooperative leader and creator of the evacuation plan.

Josef Janko had Jakob Awender work out an evacuation plan dated September 2, 1944, which was then ten days after Romania turned around. Elfried Kirschner was assigned to the "Prinz Eugen" SS division to organize the evacuation of the sick and infirm. Adam Maurus was responsible for the evacuation of the students and worked with the Kinderlandverschickung . SS-Sturmbannführer and head of the supplementary command of the Waffen-SS Johann Keks was entrusted with the organization of the defense with all the forces available to him, but he handed this task over to Karl Heim for health reasons. He ordered 50 men from the German team to defend their treks from attacks by the partisans. Pregnant women, women with young children and the elderly should first be evacuated by train. The rest of the German minority should follow in organized groups.

In accordance with the five districts of the Serbian Banat, five marching groups should be led by the responsible district leader. These groups were divided into 53 marching columns, each of which was to be led by a village, and local groups to join should join the columns. To improve mobility, the columns were broken up into groups of ten. Each of the columns should have a leader, escort, a doctor, a midwife, a youth warden, a woman warden, as well as a car with medical equipment, spare parts and tools, archives, the community book and coal and gasoline.

The plan indicated the evacuation route with the distance and the duration of the march, by which the columns could get to the bridges provided for them over the river Tisza . The first main destinations were the towns of Novi Bečej ( Neu-Betsche ), Aradac ( Aradatz ) and Titel , where the Tisza was to be crossed in order to get from there to the neighboring Batschka . At Titel there was a railway bridge, at Aradac Janko had a pontoon bridge built and at Novi Bečej a ferry was waiting. The bridge at Pančevo ( Pantschowa ) leading to Belgrade was not allowed to be used by civilians as it was reserved for use by the Wehrmacht for strategic reasons. Unlike the permanent resettlement Home to the Reich , such as in the Bessarabian Germans , Bukovina Germans , Dobrujan Germans or Galicia Germans at the conference organized by Janko evacuation no final leaving the country was planned, but an escape from the expected battle area to return to later.

"Secret Führer's Order" and "Particularly Urgent Order"

Secret Führer order of September 10, 1944

The Higher SS and Police Leader Hermann Behrends resided in Belgrade from 1943 and 1944 . Behrends forbade the ethnic group leadership of the Yugoslav Banat to initiate the evacuation. In a letter to Janko, he cited a "Secret Fuhrer Order" dated September 10, 1944:

“It is strict orders from the Fiihrer that the ethnic group stay in the Banat. You must act accordingly on your administrator immediately. [...] I expect the greatest possible support from you in smuggling the Germans through from Romania. Otherwise, the matter is to be treated as a secret Reich matter , ie in particular it must not appear to the individual that it is a question of a Führer order. Heil Hitler, your Behrends "

Behrends gave orders to the Reichsführer SS's security service in the Banat, as well as to the police and border guards, to prevent any evacuation and any crossing over the Tisza to Hungary.

On the instructions of Adolf Hitler , Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler issued a “particularly urgent order” on September 13, 1944 to bring the “ethnic Germans” to safety from the Red Army advancing rapidly through Romania towards the Banat. A maximum of 30,000 Germans were to be evacuated from the Romanian Banat and a maximum of 80,000 Germans from the Serbian Banat. When the commander of the 5th SS Volunteer Mountain Corps , SS-Obergruppenführer Artur Phleps , evacuated significantly more people in the Romanian Banat than allowed by Himmler, the latter ordered the evacuation to be stopped and a strict ban on evacuation from the Serbian Banat. Janko's request to the military commander in Serbia to relocate the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen” from the area around the Timok River to the Banat was rejected because the division was relocated to the city of Niš for military reasons . The general evacuation, however, was delayed again and again at the instigation of Behrend and his deputy, SS Brigade Leader Richard Fiedler , against whose orders Janko was unable to enforce.

"Company Behrends" and "Evacuation Command Fiedler"

  • Hermann Behrends, Higher SS and Police Leader.

  • Richard Fiedler, SS brigade leader.

Against resistance in the staff of the German military commander in the southeast , Behrends managed to penetrate the Romanian Banat to investigate. He had the ambitious plan to go down in history as the recapture of Timișoara. The literature describes the plan as "completely hopeless".

The Behrends company , which lasted from September 11 to 30, 1944 , had the poorly equipped 4th SS Police Panzer Grenadier Division at its disposal, which Behrends had to advance from Vršac to Timișoara with the task of clearing up the extent to which the Romanian Banat was deprived of the Soviets is occupied. Then he formed a "Kampfgruppe Behrends" consisting mainly of Waffen SS vacationers and men from the Banat available troops from the German team - against Janko's protest. This "available troop Michel Reiser" consisted of 10 companies of 120-150 men each from parts of the urban "German team", from older students and from the labor class. Janko had this protection force set up to protect the withdrawing population from the partisan attacks behind the front. 2 The combat group started their train on 13 September from Srpska Crnja ( Deutsch-Zerne ) in northern Banat to Timișoara. It reached the suburbs of Timisoara on September 20. Behrends then reported to Himmler that Timișoara had been conquered and was immediately awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . The combat group was forced out of the city with losses by the Romanian and Soviet troops and withdrew to the Yugoslav Banat.

The SS police division, which was advancing from Vršac, encountered strong resistance about 30 to 40 km from Timișoara and had to retreat towards Vršac under strong pressure from the superior Romanians. On October 2, 1944, their commander, Juergens, wrote to Himmler that the division had chosen from seven German communities Denta , Deta ( Detta ), Liebling , Voiteg ( Woiteg ), Biled ( Billed ), Șag ( Schag ) and Cărpiniș ( Gertianosch ) around 12,000 Swabians evacuated. They complained that after the defeat of Romania nobody from the ethnic group leadership took care of them. Hans Ewald Frauenhoffer , area leader of the Romanian Banat, explained this in his report by stating that shortly after the capitulation of Romania, the officials of the ethnic group leadership around Andreas Schmidt had been arrested. Frauenhoffer himself had hidden; the new and provisional ethnic group leadership in Jimbolia ( Hatzfeld ), which - like him - tried to do their best, but had little success. Biled was captured on September 22nd, Cărpiniș on September 26th.

With the retreating soldiers of the "Behrends Company", treks with Banat Swabians from the Romanian Banat began to emerge. Now Janko thought about smuggling his own people between the cars and letting them ride with them. When Behrends found out about these plans, he deployed the "Fiedler Evacuation Command" - named after Brigade Leader Fiedler - which had strict orders to prevent Serbian Banats from mingling with the treks from Romania.

Until the failure of the "Behrends company" around September 20th, crucial time was lost for a complete evacuation. On September 28, Behrends gave by telephone on request:

"Anyone who dares to initiate or favor an evacuation against my express prohibition will be brought to court martial by me and face the death penalty."

consequences

Advance of the Red Army between August 19 and December 31, 1944

The "Operation Behrends" had failed, but it mobilized the Russian forces on the Southwest Front , who were waiting for a major attack on Belgrade . The 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts under the Soviet Marshals Rodion Jakowlewitsch Malinowski and Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbuchin were just regrouping their troops. Provoked by "Operation Behrends", the Soviet troops broke into the Serbian Banat on September 30th at Jaša Tomić (Modosch) and Krajišnik (Stefansfeld) and reached Zrenjanin on October 1st. Only when the Red Army pushed north past Zrenjanin to the Tisza did Behrends approve the general evacuation of the Banat on the evening of the same day (5:00 p.m.). In this situation, however, the carefully worked out evacuation plan could no longer be implemented.

For a number of predominantly German-speaking towns there was still the possibility of setting out to flee immediately, but the necessary determination was lacking. In addition, the evacuation was severely hampered by heavy rain that lasted for a few days. But those who wanted to flee from Zrenjanin could withdraw with the military units over the defended bridge over the Tisza to the Batschka, which was to the east of Aradac (Aradatz), including Janko. The regionally different defensive battles in the West Banat area, which were mainly carried out by the Banat disposable troops, continued for a few days until the entire Banat was finally occupied by partisans and Soviet troops on October 6, 1944, without larger parts of the Banat Germans being evacuated would have been. On October 8th, Behrends telegraphed Himmler that no further treks from the Banat were possible. From the last treks from the area around Belgrade “the people could still be saved”, while the car and equipment had to be left behind.

According to the “Secret Monthly Reports of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle” for October and November 1944, only about 15,000 “Volksdeutsche” from Vojvodina and Serbia reached the territory of the German Reich; 160,000 of them stayed in Vojvodina after the Russian invasion.

On November 21, the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) revoked the civil rights of the German minority and confiscated their property. Of the Yugoslav Germans who were no longer able to escape or who had decided to stay, around 90 percent were interned by summer 1945 and experienced a period of heavy forced labor, rape, torture and arbitrary executions. In October 1945 Yugoslavia began to expel the “ethnic Germans”, but the occupation authorities in Austria and Germany only accepted a few transports at that time, so that the remaining Germans could not be deported until 1951.

In January 1945, a large part of the German-speaking population of working age between 17 and 45, with around 33,000 people affected, was deported from the Romanian Banat for mostly five years for forced labor in the Soviet Union . The decision to expropriate German farmers through the agricultural reform in March 1945 was supported by all political parties active at the time. All members of the German ethnic group in Romania were affected , excluding those who served in the Romanian army . 75 percent of the Romanian German population lived in rural areas, of which around 95 percent were expropriated. The Romanian Germans who remained in the country - as well as the refugees - lost their civil rights, but were given them back in 1948. In 1951, in the course of the deportation to the Bărăgan steppe, several thousand Banat families were brought to southeastern Romania and forced to build new villages there. The majority were allowed to return in 1955.

reception

The question of who is to blame for the unsuccessful evacuation is controversial in the literature.

Zoran Janjetović said that it was certainly the interplay of several factors that prevented the execution of the evacuation plan, so the Soviets advanced unexpectedly quickly; Hitler delayed his approval for political or ideological reasons; the Wehrmacht opposed out of concern that supply routes were blocked with refugees; Himmler, who was responsible for “ethnic German” questions, did not accept the high number of refugees moving to the “Reich”; Police chief Behrends hoped for glory and honor for the reconquest of Timișoara; There was widespread refusal among the local population to leave their homes, even as a temporary measure (at least that was what the propaganda said), and the German Foreign Office did not want to unsettle the region's only remaining allies - the Hungarians and Croats - with evacuations .

Josef Janko reported on a meeting between October 7th and 9th, 1944 between the "Volksgruppenführer" of the Hungarian Germans , Franz Anton Basch , Janko and SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz , head of the " Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle " at the headquarters of the "Batschka regional leadership" of the People's Union of Germans in Hungary (VDU) in Sombor . Here Lorenz Janko announced that Behrends had falsified the Fuehrer's order and that the actual Fuehrer's order was for permission to evacuate the Banate. Janko had urgently advised Basch to “not listen to anyone”, not even to any SS officers from the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle that were present, but to immediately give the order for the evacuation so that the “Batschka Swabians would not fare as well as the Banaters.” Basch soon gave up then the area leader of the Batschka People's League , Sepp Spreitzer, telephoned the instructions for the evacuation, which then took place on October 9, 1944, but also earlier in some places. Around 70,500 Batschka Swabians were able to avoid the military area of ​​operations before the Soviet forces and partisans crossed the Tisza on October 4, 1944. Janko said that Himmler was responsible for the evacuation ban.

The former chief of staff and deputy Jankos, Josef Beer , noted that by the end of the war it was no longer possible to clarify clearly whether Behrends had actually received instructions from Hitler or whether he had just exhausted his powers. Beer took the view that Behrends was responsible for the evacuation ban.

The former NS official Johann Wüscht stated that although Behrends had the ambition to become famous as the conqueror of Timișoara, Wüscht ultimately blames Hitler for the evacuation ban.

The documentation of the expulsion states: "The confusion of orders, the unclear distribution of powers and, to a certain extent, the failure of the representatives of the 'Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle' who were called in to organize, made a systematic evacuation in many villages impossible."

literature

Web links

  • Georg Wildmann: The failed evacuation of the West Banat Swabians. Part of the tragedy of the Danube Swabians. Pasching, Langholzfeld, November 29, 2003 Part 1 , 2 and 3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Mariana Hausleitner : From Fascism to Stalinism: German and Other Minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1941-1953. Institute for German Culture and History of Southeast Europe, 2008. ISBN 3-9811694-0-9 , p. 58.
  2. ^ Theodor Schieder , Werner Conze : The fate of the Germans in Romania. Volume 3 of the documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East-Central Europe. Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims , Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984. ISBN 3-423-03272-3 , p. 171 f.
  3. ↑ a b Stephan Olaf Schüller: For Faith, Leader, People, Father or Mother Country ?: the struggles for the German youth in the Romanian Banat (1918-1944). Volume 9 of Studies on the History, Culture and Society of Southeast Europe, LIT Verlag Münster, 2009, ISBN 3-8258-1910-8 , p. 448.
  4. ↑ a b Hans-Heinrich Rieser: The Romanian Banat: a multicultural region in upheaval: geographic transformation research using the example of the recent development of the cultural landscape in south-western Romania. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3-7995-2510-6 , p. 98
  5. ^ Johann Böhm : Hitler's vassals of the German ethnic group in Romania before and after 1945. Lang, 2006. ISBN 3-631-55767-1 , p. 184.
  6. ^ Johann Böhm: The German ethnic groups in the independent state of Croatia and in the Serbian Banat: their relationship to the Third Reich 1941–1944. Peter Lang, 2012. ISBN 3-631-63323-8 , p. 14.
  7. ↑ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS Division “Prinz Eugen”: The Banat Swabians and the National Socialist war crimes . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 . P. 196.
  8. ↑ Josef Beer : The suffering of the Germans in communist Yugoslavia. Volume I, Local Reports, Documentation Working Group, Munich / Sindelfingen 1991, p. 41.
  9. ↑ Josef Beer, p. 36.
  10. ↑ Josef Janko, p. 244.
  11. ↑ Gojko Malovi: Vojna uprava u Banatu 1944-45. Master's thesis, Belgrad 1979, p. 102. In: Zoran Janjetović : The conflicts between Serbs and Danube Swabians . ( Memento from December 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ^ Johann Böhm: The German ethnic groups in the independent state of Croatia and in the Serbian Banat. Your relationship to the Third Reich 1941–1944. Peter Lang, 2013. ISBN 978-3-631-63323-6 , pp. 14, 22.
  13. ^ Home book of the city of Weisskirchen in the Banat. Weisskirchner Ortsgemeinschaft, Salzburg 1980, p. 209.
  14. ↑ Documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East Central and Eastern Europe in the years 1945 to 1948. Volume III: The fate of the Germans in Romania. Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, 1957. P. 88E.
  15. ^ Josef Janko : The way and the end of the German ethnic group in Yugoslavia. Stocker, 1982. ISBN 3-7020-0415-7 , p. 240.
  16. ↑ Josef Janko, p. 241.
  17. ↑ a b Georg Wildmann : The failed evacuation of the West Banat Swabians. Part of the tragedy of the Danube Swabians. Part 1, Pasching, Langholzfeld, November 29, 2003
  18. ^ A b Johann Wüscht : Contribution to the history of the German in Yugoslavia 1934-1944: representation in files . 1966, p. 136.
  19. ↑ a b Josef Janko, p. 247.
  20. ^ Zoran Janjetović : Between Hitler and Tito: The Disappearance of the Vojvodina Germans. Self-published, 2000. ISBN 86-906811-0-8 , p. 113.
  21. ^ A b c Zoran Janjetović: The Disappearance of the Germans from Yugoslavia: Expulsion or Emigration? ( Memento from March 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Society for Serbian-German Cooperation, 1991. p. 6
  22. ↑ Josef Janko, p. 254.
  23. ↑ Johann Wüscht, p. 1285.
  24. ^ Arnold Suppan : Hitler - Beneš - Tito: Conflict, War and Genocide in East Central and Southeast Europe. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2014. ISBN 3-7001-7560-4 , p. 1456.
  25. ↑ Josef Janko, p. 260 ff.
  26. ^ A b Anton Scherer : Unknown SS secret reports about the evacuation of the Southeast Germans in October and November 1944 as well as about the political situation in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, in the Serbian Banat and in the "Independent State of Croatia". Scherer, 1990. p. 9.
  27. ↑ Johann Wüscht, p. 132.
  28. ↑ Johann Wüscht, pp. 129, 136.
  29. ↑ a b c Josef Beer, p. 116 f.
  30. ↑ Josef Beer, p. 125 f.
  31. ^ A b Zoran Janjetović: The conflicts between Serbs and Danube Swabians . ( Memento from December 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Influence of National Socialism on Minorities in Eastern Central and Southern Europe. Editors: Mariana Hausleitner , Harald Roth , IKS Verlag, Munich 2006
  32. ↑ Josef Beer, p. 122 f.
  33. ↑ Bruce Mitchell, Saša Kicošev: Geographical and Economic Influences on the Colonization of the Banat In: Geographica Pannonica, 2/1998, pp. 20-25.
  34. ↑ Josef Janko, pp. 249–288.
  35. ↑ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS-Division "Prinz Eugen": the Banat Swabians and the National Socialists war crimes. Campus Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-593-37234-7 , p. 293.
  36. ^ Arnold Suppan, p. 1457.
  37. ^ Michael Portmann , Arnold Suppan : Serbia and Montenegro in World War II. In: Austrian Institute for East and Southeast Europe: Serbia and Montenegro: Space and Population - History - Language and Literature - Culture - Politics - Society - Economy - Law. LIT Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9539-4 , p. 277 f.
  38. ↑ Michael Portmann, Arnold Suppan, pp. 274-275.
  39. ^ Zoran Janjetović: Between Hitler and Tito - The Disappearance of the Vojvodina Germans. In: Detlef Brandes : Flight and Expulsion (1938–1950). 2011, p. 24.
  40. ^ Heinrich Freihoffer : The Banat and the Banat Swabians. Volume 2: The ordeal of the Banat Swabians in the twentieth century. Country team of the Banat Swabians from Romania in Germany, Munich 1983.
  41. ^ Horst G. Klein, Katja Göring: Romanian country studies . Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-8233-4149-9 , p. 43.
  42. ^ Hans Fink : Letter to the Editor, Banater Post. July 10, 2009, p. 5.
  43. ↑ Christian-Erdmann Schott: Living in Limits - Overcoming Limits: On the Church History of the 20th Century in East Central Europe . LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-1265-2 , p. 61.
  44. ↑ Wilhelm Weber : And above us the endless blue sky - The deportation of the Banat Swabians to the Baragan steppe ( Memento from August 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  45. ^ Georg Wildmann: The failed evacuation of the West Banat Swabians. Part of the tragedy of the Danube Swabians. Pasching, Langholzfeld, November 29, 2003 Part 1 , 2 and 3
  46. ↑ Josef Janko, p. 287 f.
  47. ↑ Josef Beer, pp. 404-407, 367-618
  48. ^ A b c Georg Wildmann: The failed evacuation of the West Banat Swabians. Part of the tragedy of the Danube Swabians. Part 2, Pasching, Langholzfeld, November 29, 2003
  49. ^ A b Johann Böhm: The German ethnic group in Yugoslavia 1918-1941: Domestic and foreign policy as symptoms of the relationship between the German minority and the Yugoslav government. Peter Lang, 2009. ISBN 3-631-59557-3 , p. 24.
  50. ^ Johann Wüscht, p. 128.
  51. ↑ Documentation, p. 73E.

Remarks

  1. ↑ During the Margarethe II enterprise, Bucharest was also bombed by German forces. (cf. Narcis I. Gherghina: Bombardamentele germane asupra Bucureştiului: 23-26 August 1944. In: Dosarele Istoriei. No. 8 (97), 2004, pp. 35-38. In Romanian.)
  2. ↑ The editor of the “Banater Beobachter”, Georg Peierle, chose the heading for his article “We stay here. An open word on the situation. ”(Cf. Josef Beer, p. 114 f.) It is not clear whether Janko had the article previously read (cf. Johann Wüscht, p. 136; Josef Janko p. 247). This was not an official announcement. According to Peierle's ideas, “We stay here” should reassure the locals (cf. Josef Janko, p. 247). However, the headline motivated many who did not want to leave home, house and farm to stay at home. Jakob Awender called the mayor and local group leaders to a discussion of the evacuation plan for September 8th to Zrenjanin, as the Banat threatened to become a combat area and would therefore have to be evacuated temporarily (see Josef Beer, pp. 117, 124). Here, the intended purpose of the newspaper headline - the temporary evasion from the prospective battle area - was explained, however, copies of the article were now circulating and many only knew the slogan “We stay here!” But had not read the article themselves. (cf. Georg Wildmann : The failed evacuation of the West Banat Swabians. Part of the tragedy of the Danube Swabians. Part 2, Pasching, Langholzfeld, November 29, 2003)
  3. ↑ Johann Wüscht names Wilhelm Neuner as the elaborator of the plan (cf. Johann Wüscht, p. 136).
  4. ↑ Adam Maurus, however, did not have enough train wagons to completely evacuate the children (cf. Heimatbuch Weisskirchen, p. 209). The last transports left Kovin ( Kubin ), Pločica ( Ploschitz ), Omoljica Omlód ( Homolitz ) and Banatski Karlovac ( Karlsdorf ) on October 1, 1944 (see documentation, p. 88E).
  5. ↑ The armed escorts consisted mostly of old and young and were similar in their composition to the Volkssturm (see Josef Beer, p. 36). There was also a shortage of firearms (cf. Zoran Janjetović, Between Hitler and Tito , p. 115). ;
  6. ↑ The engineer Peter Kullmann was given the task of building a pontoon bridge over the Tisza near Aradac, as there was only a place suitable for crossing at Titel. The work was carried out by the technical department of the district executive (cf. Josef Janko, p. 240; Josef Beer, p. 32).
  7. ↑ In January 1946, the Yugoslav government applied to the Western Allies to expel the, according to Yugoslav information, about 110,000 Yugoslav Germans who had remained in the country to Germany. However, this was refused. (see Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1946 Vol.V , p. 135.)
  8. ↑ Of 40,320 people, 9,410 were of German ethnicity, the other ethnic groups concerned were predominantly Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians and Hungarians.
  9. ↑ Janko blames Behrends for the most part, but the “Führer order” came from Himmler. According to Janko, Hitler gave the order to bring the Germans of Transylvania and the two Banats to safety from the Red Army. The SS-General Artur Phleps charged with the evacuation of Transylvania evacuated more Germans from Transylvania than Himmler had allowed him. Himmler was annoyed at this and ordered an evacuation ban for the Serbian Banat on September 10, 1944. (cf. Josef Janko, p. 255.)
  10. ↑ Beer goes so far as to say that there was a real "Secret Führer's Order" which allowed evacuation, but which Behrends "falsified to prohibit evacuation". (cf. Josef Beer, pp. 113–124.)
  11. ↑ According to Johann Wüscht, the “Führer order”, which generally forbade evacuation, actually came from the Führer headquarters. In the Fuehrer's headquarters they were reluctant to issue evacuation orders. The German leadership did not want to give the impression that they had lost large parts of Hungary and Croatia militarily, as there was concern about the loss of the fighting morale of the Hungarians and Croatians. If the Danube Swabians were not evacuated, one risked the loss of “German blood”, which ran counter to the Nazi worldview. Wüscht believes that in August 1944, Hitler was increasingly ready to “sacrifice German blood”. (cf. Sebastian Haffner : Notes on Hitler. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000, p. 179.)