Volksdeutscher self-protection

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Polish teachers from Bydgoszcz are led by the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz for execution in the Death Valley, November 1, 1939
Ludolf von Alvensleben , leader of the “Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” in West Prussia, Bromberg 1939

The Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz was a paramilitary organization. It was formed in 1939 during the Second World War from members of ethnic Germans in various areas of Eastern Europe.

Initially, the self-protection units were subordinate to the SS and police leaders locally and were also used as auxiliary police to murder tens of thousands of Poles, for example at the Tannenberg company , the extraordinary pacification campaign and the murders of the sick. In particular, the self-protection units in the later Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia under the leadership of SS Oberführer Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben and in the Lublin district under SS and police leader Odilo Globocnik were used for mass executions and for guarding Jewish work columns.

In the winter of 1941/42, members of the Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz murdered thousands of Jews in Romanian-occupied Transnistria who had been deported there on the orders of Ion Antonescu .

The number of self-defense members in Poland is estimated at up to 100,000 at the beginning of the war. At the same time there were around 740,000 German citizens living in Poland. Thus, about every tenth German in Poland was a member of an organization that was hostile to the Polish state and involved in crimes against the Polish civilian population. If the male proportion of the population of military age is taken into account, this proportion increases accordingly. Among other things, this circumstance served the new communist rulers after the war as a justification for the expulsion of large parts of the German population.

See also

literature

  • Jochen Böhler : Prelude to the war of extermination. The Wehrmacht in Poland in 1939 (= Fischer 16307 The time of National Socialism ). Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-596-16307-2 (review by Armin Nolzen in: literaturkritik.de No. 3, March 2007).
  • Jerzy Kochanowski, Maike Sach (ed.): The "Volksdeutsche" in Poland, France, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Myth and Reality (= individual publications by the German Historical Institute Warsaw , Volume 12). fiber-Verlag, Osnabrück 2006, ISBN 3-929759-84-5 (collection of articles; sv Selbstschutz ).
  • Self protection . In: Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml , Hermann Weiß : Encyclopedia of National Socialism. Part II: Lexicon . 3rd, corrected edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-608-91805-1 , p. 343 f.
  • Christian Jansen , Arno Weckbecker: A militia in the "Weltanschauung" war. The “Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” in Poland in 1939/40. In: Wolfgang Michalka (Ed.): The Second World War. Analyzes, basic features, research results. Published on behalf of the Military History Research Office . Seehamer, Weyarn 1997, ISBN 3-932131-38-X , pp. 482-500 (collection of articles; licensed edition by Piper-Verlag, Munich).
  • Christian Jansen, Arno Weckbecker: The “Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” in Poland 1939/40 (= quarterly journals for contemporary history , volume 64). R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-486-64564-1 .

Web links

Commons : Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christopher Browning: The Origins Of The Final Solution . Random House, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4481-6586-5 , pp. 186 ff.
  2. ↑ Reviews (PDF; German).
  3. ↑ Populacja Polski pod wzüdem etnolingwistycznym i narodowym w 1931 oraz 1991 roku (English).