Malgré-nous
As Malgré-nous ( "resist our will" ) during the be World War II in the German Wehrmacht or Waffen SS forcibly retracted some 100,000 Alsatians and 30,000 Lorraine called. The corresponding expression for forcibly confiscated 11,160 Luxembourg soldiers called in Luxembourgish Zwangsrekrutéierten .
As a result of the German occupation of France and the subsequent de facto annexation of the former Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine in June 1940, the Alsatians and Lorrainers , who were considered ethnic Germans because of their German descent , were drawn into the maelstrom of forced recruitment by the Third Reich in violation of international law . Because of their forced deployment at the front in the service of the Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS, the survivors were in twilight after their return. The Alsatian and Lorraine incorporés de force were often mistaken for National Socialist collaborators in post-war France and viewed as traitors to the mère patrie who volunteered to wear the enemy's war uniform. Morally suffering under the pressure of justification of French society, the survivors of the forced recruits Alsace-Lorraine tried to counter the allegations of treason and to rid themselves of feelings of guilt. With her self-designation as Malgré-nous , her conscription into the German army was to be put into perspective. The self-titling was intended to express not only the aversion to the forced military service, but also the pro-French sentiments and the disgust for National Socialism .
Alsace-Lorraine 1940 to 1945
As the bone of contention in the political, cultural and military rivalry between France and Germany, the area of the former Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine experienced an eventful borderland fate under National Socialism. After winning for the Wehrmacht during the Western campaign and the occupation of northern France in 1940, the area came in the armistice of Compiègne under German administration, but remained de jure French. However, it was de facto incorporated into the German Empire. The Gauleiter of Baden , Robert Wagner , was appointed head of civil administration in Alsace. Strasbourg became the seat of the newly formed Reichsgau Baden-Alsace and Upper Rhine . The Lorraine area ( CdZ area Lorraine ) was annexed to the Gau Westmark . Most of the Alsatians and Lorrainers were hostile to the German Empire and felt that they were French, which de jure they were.
In May 1942, compulsory service for the Reich Labor Service was introduced in Alsace, and on August 23, 1942, compulsory military service for those born between 1907 and 1927 was introduced.
The recruitment of Alsatian Lorraine for the German armed forces was based on the "Ordinance on citizenship in Alsace, Lorraine and Luxembourg of August 23, 1942" ( RGBl. IS 533), which came into force in Alsace on August 24. In paragraph 1 of the regulation it was stated:
- "Those Alsatians, Lorraine and Luxembourgers of German descent acquire (German) citizenship by law who a) are or will be drafted into the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS or b) are recognized as proven Germans ...".
Previous calls to volunteer for military service had not received any significant response. Many conscripts tried to flee via the Vosges to France or Switzerland. More than 90% of the draftees were deployed on the Eastern Front. In total, more than 130,000 Alsatians and Lorrainers served in German uniforms, of which around 32,000 lost their lives and 10,500 were permanently missing. Most of those Alsatians who were taken prisoner by the Soviets were deported to the Tambow camp (approx. 400 km southeast of Moscow), where they had to endure the same conditions as other German Wehrmacht members. About 2000 to 3000 Alsatians and Lorraine people died there.
The few years of National Socialist rule achieved what France had not been able to do between 1919 and 1940: The Alsatians and German-Lorraine residents now turned more strongly than ever to France, and German culture and language finally fell on the defensive in Alsace-Lorraine.
Alsatian in Oradour-sur-Glane
On June 10, 1944, members of the SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" destroyed the French town of Oradour-sur-Glane and murdered 642 residents. Fourteen Alsatians were among the surviving and tangible soldiers after the war, thirteen of whom were conscripts and only one volunteer; all but three were minors . After the war, on February 12, 1953 , a French military tribunal in Bordeaux sentenced the Alsatian, who had volunteered, to death . Of the thirteen other Alsatians, nine were sentenced to between five and eleven years of forced labor and four to prison terms of between five and eight years. This judgment caused great unrest in Alsace, since in the opinion of most Alsatians these Malgré-nous had only followed the orders of their German superiors under duress. In Alsace and Lorraine one had the feeling that there was too little understanding for the situation of the Malgré-nous in France . On the other hand, the relatives of those murdered in Oradour-sur-Glane protested against the sentence, which they found too mild. Just a few days after the verdict was pronounced, an amnesty law was passed on February 19, 1953 by the French National Assembly .
After the war
After the end of the war, the mood in Alsace was ambivalent. On the one hand, they were happy to be among the winners, on the other hand, the Malgré-nous in particular saw themselves in a difficult situation and were often accused of collaboration . They were sharply attacked by the Communist Party for their realistic portrayal of the conditions in the Soviet prisoner-of-war camps .
In 1960 the Western European forced recruits from Alsace, Lorraine, Luxembourg and Belgium founded the "International Federation of Forced Recruits, Victims of Nazism" based in Luxembourg and in 1965 published the memorandum "La Grande Honte" (The Great Shame) to pressure for compensation from Germany. In 1972 the Foreign Office recognized the forced integration into the Wehrmacht as an elementary violation of human rights, but considered that compensation payments were only possible after a peace treaty had been signed. In the 1980s the German government paid 250 million DM as symbolic compensation into a fund, i.e. H. a little more than 3,000 DM per person to the approximately 80,000 affected people who are still alive.
On the French side, they were granted a pension. The then incumbent French President Nicolas Sarkozy rehabilitated the Malgré-nous during a visit to Colmar on May 8, 2010 to commemorate the end of the war: “The Malgré-nous were not traitors, on the contrary, they were victims of a war crime”.
Survivors of the Russian prisoner-of-war camp in Tambov founded a veterans' association : Pélerinage de Tambov (German pilgrimage to Tambov ). The names of the Alsatians buried in Tambov were only released by the Russian authorities after Mikhail Gorbachev took office to a delegation from the Alsace Regional Council headed by André-Paul Weber .
Celebrities Malgré-nous
literature
- Fernand Bernecker: The sacrificed generation , Lemberg 1987
- Michael Erbe (Ed.): The Alsace. Historical landscape through the ages. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-17-015771-X .
- Norbert Haase: Gerhard Paul (Ed.): The other soldiers. Destruction of military strength, refusal to obey and desertion in World War II. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 1995, ISBN 3-596-12769-6 .
- Norbert Haase: From “Ons Jongen”, “Malgré-nous” and others - The fate of foreign recruits in World War II , pdf, lecture at the University of Strasbourg, August 27, 2011
- Lothar Kettenacker: National Socialist Volkstumsppolitik in Alsace. Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-421-01621-6 .
- Klaus Kirchner, André Hugel: Stalin speaks to Alsatians in Russia. Soviet war leaflets for Alsatians who had to serve in the German Wehrmacht from 1942 to 1945. Colmar 2001
- Guy Mouminoux (as Guy Sajer): Because these days there was torment. Report of a forgotten soldier. Translated from Wolfgang Libal. Heyne, Munich 1967, several new editions, most recently in 1973
- Tomi Ungerer : “The thoughts are free!” My childhood in Alsace. Diogenes, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-257-23106-7 .
- Pierre Barral: La tragédie des “Malgré-nous”, in: Resists et collaborateurs. The French language in the années noires. Zs. L'Histoire 80, juillet / aout, Yvelines 1985
- Henri Leyder: The big end came after , pdf, Gemeng Ell history association on the history of the forcibly recruited Leo Graf, Luxembourg
- Damien Spieser: Alsatian in foreign uniform. An investigation into the forced recruitment of French-minded ethnic Germans in the Third Reich using the example of “Malgré-Nous” , licentiate thesis University of Bern 2009
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Bärbel Nückles: "We were French": badische-zeitung.de, July 28, 2012 (report on two people affected; August 8, 2012)
- ^ Lothar Kettenacker: National Socialist Volkstumsppolitik in Alsace . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1973. p. 223.
- ↑ Manfred Kittel: German-speaking minorities 1945: a European comparison , Oldenbourg Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-486-58002-7 , p. 451 ff.
- ↑ The long-awaited words for the Malgré-nous , evangelisch.de, accessed November 6, 2015.
- ↑ Three drawings by prisoners from the camp, two photos online
- ^ Weber, André-Paul: "Jêter un pont entre les hommes". Strasburg 2007, ISBN 978-2-914729-56-7 .
