Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle

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Guard in front of the entrance to the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle in the Lodsch Task Force (1940),
picture of the German Foreign Institute

The main office Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (also Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle ; official abbreviation VoMi ) was an authority of the German Reich with the task of implementing the popular political goals of National Socialism with regard to the " Volksdeutsche ". The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle was responsible for the "Volksdeutsche" living outside the German Reich, especially for transport and accommodation when they were resettled from foreign areas to the annexed border areas in the east, which the VoMi organized under the slogan " Heim ins Reich ". In June 1941, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle became an SS main office that was directly subordinate to the Reichsführer SS .

prehistory

A forerunner of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle was the Volksdeutsche Rat , which had been set up in the autumn of 1933 by Rudolf Hess (appointed by Adolf Hitler to lead the politics of the people). It was formally under the direction of Karl Haushofer , and Hans Steinacher took over active management . Due to delimitation conflicts with the areas of competence of other Nazi institutions such as the NSDAP / AO , the Volksdeutsche Rat quickly fell behind and did not meet again in early 1935. In the autumn of 1935, the Volksdeutsche Rat was replaced by the Kursell office , which was located at the “Foreign Policy Office for Special Issues” (“ Ribbentrop Office ”) on Rudolf Hess's staff under Otto von Kursell .

Kursell was finally deposed at the turn of the year 1936/37 and expelled from the SS, the Kursell office was taken over by the SS and converted into a Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle.

Since February 1937, SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz, who was delegated by Heinrich Himmler , headed the center; His chief of staff was the SD man Hermann Behrends , who was also delegated by Himmler . By order of Hess, the Vomi was entrusted with sole competence in questions of ethnicity. Organizationally, it was located in the Hess staff and at Ribbentrop in his capacity as the NSDAP's representative for foreign policy issues.

As the central office, the Vomi took over the administration and distribution of all aid money for the national work. As early as 1938 it had a budget of 50 to 60 million Reichsmarks , which corresponded to the entire budget of the Foreign Office .

Between 1939 and 1940, the organization of the resettlement of German ethnic groups under the slogan Heim ins Reich ” was the main task. The VoMi had resettled around one million ethnic Germans by 1941. The focus was on the annexed areas of Poland, the Reichsgauen Wartheland (Posen) and Danzig-West Prussia (Danzig), in which around 350,000 German resettlers and around 370,000 Reich Germans were settled until the German-Soviet War .

Resettlement until 1941

Propaganda poster for resettlement
Trek of ethnic German resettlers from Cholm , Poland in 1940
NSV hands the resettlers in the Pinne camp pictures of Adolf Hitler for their apartments
German settlers in the Wartheland, settlement planning according to region of origin.

The resettlement of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle between 1939 and 1941 affected many groups of ethnic Germans under the slogan Heim ins Reich . They were resettled from their non-German homeland (which had often been inhabited for many generations) in south-east and north-east European countries. It was a chessboard-like shift of people from national ideologies on the initiative of the German Reich . The basis was bilateral treaties between the German Reich and another European state.

On September 5, 1940, the German Empire entered into an agreement with the Soviet Union because of the resettlement of the German-Balts . In October, treaties followed with the Baltic states of Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania , which had been incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. At the end of 1939, two agreements were concluded with Italy (October 21 and December 21) because of the resettlement of the South Tyroleans , the German population of South Tyrol, on Reich territory ( option in South Tyrol ). On October 22, 1939, another agreement was concluded with Romania , which concerned Bessarabian Germans , Dobrudschadeutsche and Bukowina Germans .

year Area of ​​origin Main settlement area number
1939 South-Tirol North Tyrol , Carinthia 100,000
1939 Eastern Poland Reichsgaue 28,000
1940 General Government Reichsgaue 30,000
1939/40 Estonia Reichsgaue 13,000
1939/40 Estonia Reichsgaue 49,000
1941 Latvia Reichsgaue 16,000
1941 Latvia Reichsgaue 50,000
1940 Bessarabia Reichsgaue, Styria 93,000
1940 North Bukovina Reichsgaue, Styria 42,000
1940 South Bukovina Reichsgaue 55,000
1940 North Dobruja Reichsgaue 14,000

Resettlement of German ethnic groups 1939–1940

Displaced Poles on their way to the train station, Schwarzenau near Gnesen, 1939

The resettlement actions have their origins in Adolf Hitler's speech in the Reichstag of October 6, 1939 on the collapse of the Polish state as a result of the German occupation. In it he stated that in the "age of the nationality principle and the idea of ​​race" a "new order of ethnographic conditions" was necessary. He referred not only to the area of ​​Poland, but also spoke of the wider east and south-east of Europe, which was filled with "untenable splinters of German nationality". On the one hand, he promised himself that minority conflicts in the nation states would be prevented. On the other hand, the human potential to be resettled should settle the Poland conquered by Germany and the Polish corridor . The Central Office for Migrants (formerly the Office for the Resettlement of Poles and Jews ) organized the expulsion of the non-Aryan population in the settlement areas. In the Warthegau alone, around 630,000 Polish and Jewish residents were affected between 1939 and 1944.

SS main office under the direction of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum

With the appointment of the Reichsführer SS as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum , the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle under its director Werner Lorenz became the SS Main Office from June 1941, which made it necessary to separate its tasks from the Staff Main Office. In addition to the order of the Reichsführer SS of November 28, 1941 on "the development of the NSDAP's work for the people and the delimitation of the responsibilities of the main offices of the SS", an agreement was reached on September 9, 1942 on the delimitation of tasks between the main office of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the main office by the heads of the two main offices. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle was now responsible for the management of the German ethnic group, for the so-called "evacuation" and for the transport and supply of the resettlers in camps. In addition, she had to look after groups III and IV of the German People's List . These were the groups of “German origin” who were only granted German citizenship upon revocation, or even only eligible for it. Accordingly, she had to do “folk work”.

Organizational scheme of the SS main office

The organization of the VoMi was divided into eleven offices from 1942:

  • Office I: Office of the head of the department , contained the offices of VoMi manager Werner Lorenz and his chief of staff Hermann Behrends .
  • Office II: Organization staff , management Konrad Radunski .
  • Office III: Finance, economic and asset management, Heinrich Lohl management . As long as the VoMi existed, this office was dependent on the NSDAP treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz .
  • Office IV: Press, reporting and association work (later renamed Information ), headed by Waldemar Rimann .
  • Office V: Education in German , headed by Willi Walter Puls (also known as Adolf Puls.)
  • Office VI: Securing German nationality in the Reich , headed by Heinz Brückner .
  • Office VII: Safeguarding German nationality in the new eastern regions , headed by Horst Hoffmeyer
  • Office VIII: Culture and Science ., Head Wilhelm Luig
  • Office IX: Political leadership of German ethnic groups , headed by Waldemar Rimann
  • Office X: Management of the economy in the German ethnic groups , headed by Lothar Heller .
  • Office XI: Resettlement , headed by Walter Ellermeier .

Branch offices and resettlement commands abroad

The branch offices in Krakow, Riga and Kiev were under the direction of Office VII, Securing German Volkstum in the New Eastern Territories

  • in Paris and Brussels there were also branch offices that were subordinate to the local HSSPF

During the resettlement campaigns abroad, there were further outposts ("resettlement commands") for a limited period. When the Red Army approached Hungary in 1944, a branch office was established in Budapest to take care of the evacuation of the Hungarian-German minority.

Role in racial selection, resettlement and mass murder

Most of the resettlers of German descent from northeast and southeastern Europe were settled in parts of Poland annexed by the German Empire , such as in the Warthegau and the Generalgouvernement . In addition, by 1944, over 2000 settlers of German origin were drafted into the SS Landwacht Zamosc , which played an important role in the expulsion of the Polish population in the Lublin district. On Himmler's orders, the Vomi received clothing, linen and blankets (so-called thieves' and stolen goods and hamster supplies ) from the extermination camps of the Holocaust to be distributed to ethnic Germans. The yellow star had to be removed beforehand to avoid misunderstandings.

In 1944/45, the resettlers got caught up in the process of flight and expulsion that encompassed all Germans living in Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe .

Prosecution

Werner Lorenz in Allied captivity

In the Nuremberg Trial of the Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS in 1948, in addition to several high-ranking employees of the Main Office of the SS, members of the Lebensborn and the VoMi were also indicted. The focus of the process was the National Socialist politics in the General Government and the annexed Polish areas. He addressed the connection between anti-Semitic and racially motivated displacement and extermination on the one hand, and resettlement and Germanization on the other. The head of VoMi Werner Lorenz received a prison sentence of 20 years for deportation , kidnapping children for Germanization, recruiting foreign civilians for Nazi forced labor or for service in the SS and Wehrmacht , but was released again after seven years.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Tammo Luther: Volkstumsppolitik des Deutschen Reiches 1933–1938: Germans abroad in the field of tension between traditionalists and National Socialists . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, p. 174f.
  2. ^ Norbert Spannenberger: The People's League of Germans in Hungary 1938–1944 under Horthy and Hitler , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56710-1 , p. 129.
  3. Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. The “West Research” of the ethnic-national sciences on the north-western European area (1919–1960) , Part II, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8309-1144-0 , p. 582.
  4. Martin Broszat, Norbert Frei (Ed.): The Third Reich at a Glance. Chronicle - Events - Connections , Munich 1992, ISBN 3-492-11091-6 , p. 258.
  5. Martin Broszat, Norbert Frei (Ed.): The Third Reich at a Glance. Chronicle - Events - Connections , Munich 1992, ISBN 3-492-11091-6 , pp. 257f.
  6. K. Kammer, E. Bartsch: National Socialism. Terms from the period of tyranny 1933–1945. Original edition, reworked Edition of the youth lexicon National Socialism , Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-499-16336-5 , p. 220.
  7. a b c d e f g h i j k l Valdis O. Lumans: Himmler's Auxiliaries . Chapel Hill 1993, pp. 142-145.
  8. ^ Andrej Angrick : Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. The Einsatzgruppe D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-930908-91-3 , p. 276.
  9. Christoph Diekmann, in: Bürokratien , Association A, 2001, ISBN 3-935936-01-X , p. 85.
  10. ^ Raul Hilberg : The Destruction of European Jews , Fischer Taschenbuch 1982, Volume 2, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , p. 1028 ff.

Web links

Commons : Resettlement of “Volksdeutsche”  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files