As far as I know, my friends’ family comes to from two different communities: One half (the paternal side) comes from a village where only ethnic Germans lived, the maternal side is from what used to be an ethnically mixed village. Therefore, for example, while the grandfather didn’t speak any Serbian, the grandmother did. The grandfather was very young during the war but considered it an honour to be allowed to fight for Germany (…never mind that Germany was a fascist, racist dictatorship and the wars it lead nothing but crimes. Sad but true). That particular young man ended up in Dresden towards the end of the war, where he had to help remove the remains of the notorious Allied bombing. He didn’t know his future wife - the one from the ethnically mixed village - until they met in a Bavarian refugee camp, as far as I know. (Apparently, the ethnic Germans from the homogenous villages didn’t really mix with ethnic Germans from mixed communities if they could help it. Notions of ethnic purity at work there, I suppose.)
I don’t know the exact circumstances of the two families’ removal from Yugoslavia, e.g. whether they left shortly before the Partisans took over or if any of them were in Yugoslav concentration camps before being forced to leave. All I know is that the grandfather once pointed out a tractor to me and his grandson, telling us he and his family had fled from the Partisans on one of them. The family from the mixed village buried their belongings in their garden before leaving, so it’s assumed that their Serb neighbours watched them doing that and subsequently thought, “Well, they won’t be coming back in a hurry, so let’s help ourselves to the stuff. Waste not, want not.” Can’t really blame them, can you? The Germans did never come back, after all. And the Germans, along with their Hungarian and Croatian allies, had caused a lot of suffering among Serbs and left pretty much all of Yugoslavia in a bad state.
Anyway, through all those stories, I’ve never heard any mention of Russian soldiers. It was usually the Partisans who were blamed, without going into whether these Partisans were Serbs or not. It certainly was alleged that their neighbours had taken part in their expulsion.
As for the historical points you’ve raised:
a) Everybody jumped on the Partisan bandwagon at the end of the war, including plenty of hitherto rightwing Serbs (četnici). The insinuation that the Partisans were a Serb-only movement before being infiltrated by non-Serb opportunists towards the end of the war doesn’t wash.
b) The “biggest target” at the end of the war was anybody who had opposed the Communists before and during the war or was likely to do so afterwards. That included anti-Communist Serbs but that doesn’t that they were the “biggest target”, as if the ethnic Germans or Croatian Ustaše were left alone after the war. In my opinion, the četnici are to blame for the internecine fighting between royalists/nationalists and Communists, not the Partisans. The četnici accused the Partisans of endangering the Serbian civilian population by leading an all-out war against the Nazi occupiers.
c) The way I read it, the Red Army and the Partisans marched into Belgrade more or less side by side. Funny that so much Yugoslav territory was already de-facto liberated by the end of the war but Serbia wasn’t and had to wait for the Russians. Are you saying the Serbs remained passive while the Germans and Russians fought it out? I thought only Croats trying to reverse the myth of “heroic antifascist Serbia” made that sort of claims…
d) I've never read any stories of German survivors who had problems with the Russians towards the end of the war in former Yugoslavia but I wouldn’t be surprised if that went on. The Germans had a lot to answer for, collectively, and the Russians had ample reasons to be asking the questions…
To add on to the latter comments...Yes Germans have a wonderful work ethic but face it the Marshall plan after WWII was a big help for boasting West Germany's economy. In regards to the other comments..I agree that there is alot of revisionism occurring here and the blatant facts are that yes there were Danauschwaben in Vojvodina, yes they were one largest per capita contigent in the Waffen SS, yes they were expelled as were Germans from Prussia, Pomerania, Sudatenland etc.. Most survived their ordeal but those who died at the hands of the Germans..well like they say "dead men can tell no tales". The crimes of the Germans and their collaborators are so great that it pales in comparison with the aftermath of WWII. PS interestingly, how many of these Germans would return to Serbia if given the opportunity. Most likely none. Ethnic Germans from all parts of eastern Europe would much rather live in germany and they can since citizenship is based still on bloodlines there,
Al, yours and Mikes stories, along with the Germans' stories from the articles are interesting. It would make a good book to have all the details from many survivors. However, your German friends said nothing specifically about "Serb" soldiers nor their neighbors expelling them. After their home was abandonned perhaps the Partisans sold off their things to the neighborhood, or the neighbors could have just helped themselves. But they would have recognized the neighbors if they were involved in the expulsions. And, as I said, the Partisans were literally swelled with so many non-Serbs at the end who jumped on the bandwagon. And you can't forget that their biggest target was the anti-Communist Serbs who they fought most during the war and murdered at the end of the war. Even former Ustasha camps were converted to hold Serb prisoners.
But if any of that family is still alive (you also don't mention any in that family getting killed or injured) maybe they'd recall the accents of the actual soldiers who expelled them. It also seems strange that they'd say nothing about the Russians, for it was only the Russians which finally expelled the Nazis from Belgrade and Serbia. There was fierce fighting and the Germans were blowing up bridges on their retreat. Some Serbs were collateral damage of the fighting between the Russians and the Germans.
And I've read other stories of German survivors who had problems with the Russians during the end of the war in former Yugoslavia.
The Partisans came to Belgrade and other parts after the Russians and they settled scores with Serb anti-communists along with carrying out the expulsions of the Germans. This was done all over Eastern Europe and it much greater numbers.
By the way, did the German family you know have members drafted in the German army or did they fight at all during the war - and on what side?
Thanks for the explanation. Yes the Germans received a lot of money just like the French. I am not specially fond of the Germans, I lived among them for 8 years. Sometime they could be very arrogant talking about non-Germans. Sure they worked very hard after WWII and they have excellent skills but yes I agree with you without the huge money infusion their economic miracle would have looked much less "wunderbar".
Read about Generalplan Ost, both parts, and you will see. The first part was quite successful, Poles that didn't sign the volksliste were ethnically cleansed from Silesia and Pomerania to regions under Hans Frank's administration that occupied Eastern Poland which the Soviets had invaded before. Serbs were expelled from Vojvodina by Germans and Hungarians, Czechs were driven out of the Sudetenland and parts of Bohemia, Eastern Slavs were driven out of their villages which were burned to the ground to work as slave labour in Germany, so yes, there was plenty of justification to ethnically cleanse the lands of Germans after the war. How it was done is another question, obviously it was quite brutal, but can you blame them, especially since most had lost someone dear to them thanks to Adolf's views?
The second part of Generalplan Ost would have meant that a portion of Poles, Czechs and Eastern Slavs would have been Germanized, a portion enslaved and the rest driven out to Siberia or killed.
Whether or not those Germans would have contributed to the economy is irrelevant, the fact of the matter is Germany received an enormous amount of money to fund the development of their ruined economy, we got an enormous amount of Lenin thanks to the Soviets. The reason why perhaps those areas are not how they were is not because the Germans knew how to run them better, it's simply because after the war, our economies were annihilated and we got very little money to rebuild and develop them.
ida, I also know a family of ethnic Germans from Backa. Their father also ended up in Dresden towards the end of the war. But this family never told me anything about any Russians, for them it always was the Partisans who expelled them. They went back to visit Vojvodina years later, also visiting their former Serbian neighbours, which appears to have been an altogether cordial event (if one doesn't count the moment when they spotted a bunch of their former belongings in the neighbours' house).
I just read a new article (under the link below) about an account from one of these Germans (who was 9-years-old at the time) who was cleansed - and she says it was the RUSSIANS who came and made the Germans prisoners in their own homes and brought more Germans to their village. Overcrowding and poor conditions causing some to die of illnesses. But the final straw pushing that family to leave was stories of how horrible the Russians were (rapes?) - so they went to Dresden.
This shows you that is WASN'T Serbs at all but the invading Russians (who were the ones who pushed out the Nazis too - not the Partisans or the Chetniks).
As I said previously there would have been attacks on German civilians before the Russian troops came and/or before Tito took control of an area if Serbs were intent on cleasing them.
Katherine Flotz and her family didn't even leave their home to suffer the gross indignity that was Communist rule under Marshal Josip Broz Tito. As ethnic Germans who lived in what was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before it became Yugoslavia, they were considered minorities, she said. So once the Russian soldiers made their way to Gakowa, they made the ethnic Germans prisoners in their own homes.
Her town was once a farm town, population 2,500. By the time all the ethnic Germans were brought to Gakowa, between 18,000 and 20,000 people were forced to live there.
Food was scarce and illness was rampant. Katherine Flotz and her mother contracted typhoid fever; Katherine survived, but her mother didn't. Her father was drafted into the German army and was never heard from again.
"That was a huge cross to bear for me," she said, holding back tears. "There was a lot of fighting in Budapest, and we'd heard he was there, but we don't know if he died there."
George Flotz, on the other hand, escaped from a town about 10 miles from Gakowa because his mother heard how horrible the Russian soldiers were. They ended up in Dresden, and it was beautiful and untouched -- that is, until Feb. 13, 1945.
"At about 9 p.m., 900 planes swept through and bombed the city," George Flotz said. "Then at 1 a.m., 800 planes came, but they didn't bomb; they dropped chemicals that burned the street.
People in bomb shelters suffocated, and others ran around burning. We survived because we were near the Elber River."
Let me elaborate a little more on Yugoslavia's Germans, particularly the Gottscheer.
After WWI, this small German enclave was situated in Yugoslavia, deep within Slovenia, near the Croatian border. There were serious efforts on behalf of the local Slovenian authorities to assimilate them into Slovenian culture by forcing them to speak Slovenian, and learn Slovenian history at the expense of their own identities. Many prominent Gottscheer Germans were expelled from positions of authority, particularly in schools and law enforcement. The idea was either to "Slovenianize" them, or expel them to Austria.
With the rise and spread of National Socialism, many Gottscheer saw Hitler as a potential savior from apparent Slovenian aggression. There were many who supported Hitler's idea of a Grossdeutschland, but when Yugoslavia was invaded, the southern half of Slovenia went to Italy, leaving these Germans once again on the wrong side of the border. Their first exprience of mass expulsion occurred actually on order of the Nazis to northern Slovenia where they would be given new homes and lands. Of course, these homes were forcibly taken from Slovenian farmers. Naturally, with Germany's loss, these Gottscheer were seen as both Nazi collaborators in general, and land grabbers in more specifics. Many were killed by the Partisans on suspicion of collaboration, or simply because they were German. Those that were able to escape, fled to Austria, where many still live.
While no Gottscheer openly desire to return to Slovenia, there has been official reconciliation between the Austrian and Slovenian governments. For a small group of people, their history has been well documented, and identities have survived even amid larger Austrian and American surroundings.
The historical facts regarding Volksdeutsche in general and Donauschwaben in particular are well known and well documented. There is no secret about it. Because of that
I am sick and tired of Albanian detractors on this site who take every opportunity to twist historical facts. Especially when this twisting has Nazi revisionist flavor.
It is true that there were 400 000 Volksdeutshche in Kingdom of Yugoslavia (maybe even more, it can be easily googled).
The evacuation of Germans with Nazi ties started in 1944 even before October and was organized through German apparatus -
Hitler hoped to have a Wunderwaffe (A-bomb) ready and dropped on Eastern front. Family members of Waffen SS Prinz Eugen were the first ones to evacuate. They knew that the end was near.
The Germans who remained, mainly in Banat and waited for Red Army onslaught, were not guilty of anything. Their minded their own business and helped Serb neighbors as much as they could. When the tide of war turned, their Serbian neighbors returned favor - first protected their womanfolk from Soviet mass rape and then after liberation, by geting them out from the labor camps. Serbs could not do more because they were also targetted by Communist terror as "kulaks".
Serb farmers usually came to labor camps and asked for farm workers, although they had no real job for them. They wanted to get them out, from poor food and disease killing them like flies. Many Germans were saved this way.
Serbs in Banat can look any German straight in the face.
Then, Tito got another idea, to complete Pavelic's expulsion of Serbs from Krajina and Lika. Under guise of providing arable land, the entire Serb villages were rooted out from Croatia and resetled in Banat, mostly on former Germnan homesteads. Serbs did it grudgingly, many complaining for having to take "Shvabo's house" instead of having their own in Croatia.
So, we have three distinct patterns:
-Evacuation of Nazi German families by The Third Reich authorities
-Communist terror towards innocent Germans
-Forcible ressetling of Serbs from Croatia to Banat.
Interestingly enough, Tito did not expell Albanian Waffen SS Skenderbeg and their families, did not expell illegal immigrants from Albania. He FORBADE Serbs to return to the ir homesteads and allowed free and uncontrolled immigration from Albania.
The same fate befel Italians in Istria.
Serbs, Germans and Italians were the victims of Tito's terrror. Albanians were benefactors, even members of Waffen SS.
And now, we have to endure Albanian Nazi revisionist drivel on this site.
Expressing opinion is one this, spreading of revisionist lies another.
I believe that B92 has the obligation to react when Nazi revisionism occurs. Otherwise, this board will resemble wall of a public toilet.
Where did the Germans carry out ethnic cleansing, expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Poles,Czechs and specially Russians? Where did they expule the Poles? Did they send them to China or perhabs Africa? Where do you get this justification for the expulsion of 10-12 million Germans from Poland?
There was just a small scale cleansing of Czechs. The Germans did not have the time for it. Had they won the war they would most likely pushed a lot of Poles and Czechs more to the East, most likely to Russia to create a bigger "Lebensraum".
I share Adrian's view. It was a big mistake from all those countries to expulse their Germans. For hundreds of years their economic and cultural contribution was immense. The countries having expulsed them lost and West-Germany integrating them gained: they contributed to the famous German Wirtschaftswunder or economic miracle.
Lazar, the vast majority of ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union before, during and after WW2 were NOT expelled from there. The ones who were expelled by the Soviet authorities were those living in the northern half of East Prussia (nowadays known as the Kaliningradskaya oblast), i.e. a newly conquered territory. The same was the case in Poland.
Czechoslovakia was different from Poland and the USSR and more like what happened in Yugoslavia. There the ethnic Germans who'd gone out in droves and supported the Nazi occupiers where not forced from areas that had been German till the end of the war but from their traditional minority strongholds.
As far as I know, the only ethnic Germans allowed to remain in Vojvodina were either bona-fide antifascists (i.e. supporters of the Partisans) or women married to ethnic Yugoslavs. Yugoslav/Serbian revenge against the ethnic Germans or "Volksdeutsche" (Nazi term) was quite tough but one must consider what the Germans had got up to during the Nazi occupation... I don't know whether complicity in Nazi crimes was the only reason Tito saw fit to get rid of them or if there were other political motives adding to the equation but as evil deeds surrounding WW2 go, this is decidedly at the bottom of my list...
that's why i say it, we didnt do such a thing and serbs did ethnic cleansing against albanians, and they dont accept it.
but who cares, we albanians are moving on.
In my opinion it was a big mistake to expell them. "Our" (rumunski banat) germans left the country at the beginning of the nineties. And the region has changed a lot. Former flourishing villages are now ruins, there were many well-educated people among them.
I doubt that so many Germans lived in Vojvodina - perhaps if they are including the occupation German soldiers. And Tito was not a Serb - he was a Croat/Slovene. If Serbs were intent on cleansing Germans there would have been Chetnik attacks on the German civilians - which there were not.
People forget the Partisians started taking in Slovenians, Macedonians, Bosnian Muslims and Croats (even former Ustasha) during the last several months of the war. Many switched sides when it appeared that the Germans were losing and Croats were known to switch their uniforms in the waning months of WWII so the could jump to the side of the winners.
It wasn't a Serb leader and the Partisians were people from all over the Yugoslavia who swelled the movement at the very end.
KS, the person (s) who exiled you from your home was Tito and his communists. Yes, it was a terrible thing to exile innocent people from their homes without trial or reason. Just as the Volksdeutscher who collaborated with the Nazis killed and forced Jews, gypsies and Serbs from their homes. I do not believe in collective guilt and I feel sorry that these things happened to the innocent but from reading many historical documents regarding this era it was no secret that Vojvodina was a hotbed for SS recruits who committed the most heinous crimes during WWII. Your statements to remind me of certain Germans after WWII complaining about what the allies did to Germany but carefully and conveniently omitting what they did to others. Face it if it wasn't for Hitler and his crimes, you would still be living here.
get serious people and don't embarrass yourselves, "natural consequence".. we're talking women and children here. my family too suffered from communists, and they're serbs. my heart goes out to all innocent victims everywhere. so i don't accept this logic, we had to expel german civilians because... any more than i accept it when albanians say, we have to torture serbs now because they tortured us in 99. and, yes, absolutely, rehabilitation for all innocent victims of communism everywhere.
Had the Germans not carried out ethnic cleansing, Germanization and expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Poles, Czechs and Russians during WWII, they would not have been treated like they were in the respective countries after the war.
KS, this 400,000 was just a natural consequence of the German aggression and support of genocide on the Serbs. The same has happened to Germans in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
Serbs blames us saying that we have comitted Genocides and tried to wipe out the Serbian people and culture but read this..." Some estimates say that around 400,000 local Germans were exiled from Vojvodina after the end of the Second World War.
They were stripped of their property, citizenship and all civil rights"
Who do you think exiled them? The Albanians? Bosnians? Croatians? --- Or the Serbs??
"Who do you think exiled them? The Albanians? Bosnians? Croatians? --- Or the Serbs??"
The Communists, KS. And more specifically the Partisans. Tito was adamant about expelling every German family from Yugoslavia. Many German and Serb families co-existed in Vojvodina. Trust me on this one.
It's not just Germans of Vojvodina, but also German enclaves in Slovenia. What was then Gottschee, is now Kočevje. My father's side of the family, along with the entire community that was living there for over 600 years, were all expelled after WWII for alleged Nazi collaboration.
I'm not looking for any land restoration, nor am I looking for any restitution. Nearly all Gottschee communities now currently live in the United States and have completely integrated into their new societies. We went back to Slovenia two years ago and found my father's village nearly overgrown by forestation. While the Germans of Vojvodina, or Donauschwab as we call them, have the right to their identity and history, I hope they will remember all German communities that used to live in the former Yugoslavia.
"Who do you think exiled them? The Albanians? Bosnians? Croatians? --- Or the Serbs??"
The Communists, KS. And more specifically the Partisans. Tito was adamant about expelling every German family from Yugoslavia. Many German and Serb families co-existed in Vojvodina. Trust me on this one.
Had the Germans not carried out ethnic cleansing, Germanization and expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Poles, Czechs and Russians during WWII, they would not have been treated like they were in the respective countries after the war.
It's not just Germans of Vojvodina, but also German enclaves in Slovenia. What was then Gottschee, is now Kočevje. My father's side of the family, along with the entire community that was living there for over 600 years, were all expelled after WWII for alleged Nazi collaboration.
I'm not looking for any land restoration, nor am I looking for any restitution. Nearly all Gottschee communities now currently live in the United States and have completely integrated into their new societies. We went back to Slovenia two years ago and found my father's village nearly overgrown by forestation. While the Germans of Vojvodina, or Donauschwab as we call them, have the right to their identity and history, I hope they will remember all German communities that used to live in the former Yugoslavia.
KS, this 400,000 was just a natural consequence of the German aggression and support of genocide on the Serbs. The same has happened to Germans in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
I doubt that so many Germans lived in Vojvodina - perhaps if they are including the occupation German soldiers. And Tito was not a Serb - he was a Croat/Slovene. If Serbs were intent on cleansing Germans there would have been Chetnik attacks on the German civilians - which there were not.
People forget the Partisians started taking in Slovenians, Macedonians, Bosnian Muslims and Croats (even former Ustasha) during the last several months of the war. Many switched sides when it appeared that the Germans were losing and Croats were known to switch their uniforms in the waning months of WWII so the could jump to the side of the winners.
It wasn't a Serb leader and the Partisians were people from all over the Yugoslavia who swelled the movement at the very end.
KS, the person (s) who exiled you from your home was Tito and his communists. Yes, it was a terrible thing to exile innocent people from their homes without trial or reason. Just as the Volksdeutscher who collaborated with the Nazis killed and forced Jews, gypsies and Serbs from their homes. I do not believe in collective guilt and I feel sorry that these things happened to the innocent but from reading many historical documents regarding this era it was no secret that Vojvodina was a hotbed for SS recruits who committed the most heinous crimes during WWII. Your statements to remind me of certain Germans after WWII complaining about what the allies did to Germany but carefully and conveniently omitting what they did to others. Face it if it wasn't for Hitler and his crimes, you would still be living here.
The historical facts regarding Volksdeutsche in general and Donauschwaben in particular are well known and well documented. There is no secret about it. Because of that
I am sick and tired of Albanian detractors on this site who take every opportunity to twist historical facts. Especially when this twisting has Nazi revisionist flavor.
It is true that there were 400 000 Volksdeutshche in Kingdom of Yugoslavia (maybe even more, it can be easily googled).
The evacuation of Germans with Nazi ties started in 1944 even before October and was organized through German apparatus -
Hitler hoped to have a Wunderwaffe (A-bomb) ready and dropped on Eastern front. Family members of Waffen SS Prinz Eugen were the first ones to evacuate. They knew that the end was near.
The Germans who remained, mainly in Banat and waited for Red Army onslaught, were not guilty of anything. Their minded their own business and helped Serb neighbors as much as they could. When the tide of war turned, their Serbian neighbors returned favor - first protected their womanfolk from Soviet mass rape and then after liberation, by geting them out from the labor camps. Serbs could not do more because they were also targetted by Communist terror as "kulaks".
Serb farmers usually came to labor camps and asked for farm workers, although they had no real job for them. They wanted to get them out, from poor food and disease killing them like flies. Many Germans were saved this way.
Serbs in Banat can look any German straight in the face.
Then, Tito got another idea, to complete Pavelic's expulsion of Serbs from Krajina and Lika. Under guise of providing arable land, the entire Serb villages were rooted out from Croatia and resetled in Banat, mostly on former Germnan homesteads. Serbs did it grudgingly, many complaining for having to take "Shvabo's house" instead of having their own in Croatia.
So, we have three distinct patterns:
-Evacuation of Nazi German families by The Third Reich authorities
-Communist terror towards innocent Germans
-Forcible ressetling of Serbs from Croatia to Banat.
Interestingly enough, Tito did not expell Albanian Waffen SS Skenderbeg and their families, did not expell illegal immigrants from Albania. He FORBADE Serbs to return to the ir homesteads and allowed free and uncontrolled immigration from Albania.
The same fate befel Italians in Istria.
Serbs, Germans and Italians were the victims of Tito's terrror. Albanians were benefactors, even members of Waffen SS.
And now, we have to endure Albanian Nazi revisionist drivel on this site.
Expressing opinion is one this, spreading of revisionist lies another.
I believe that B92 has the obligation to react when Nazi revisionism occurs. Otherwise, this board will resemble wall of a public toilet.
Serbs blames us saying that we have comitted Genocides and tried to wipe out the Serbian people and culture but read this..." Some estimates say that around 400,000 local Germans were exiled from Vojvodina after the end of the Second World War.
They were stripped of their property, citizenship and all civil rights"
Who do you think exiled them? The Albanians? Bosnians? Croatians? --- Or the Serbs??
get serious people and don't embarrass yourselves, "natural consequence".. we're talking women and children here. my family too suffered from communists, and they're serbs. my heart goes out to all innocent victims everywhere. so i don't accept this logic, we had to expel german civilians because... any more than i accept it when albanians say, we have to torture serbs now because they tortured us in 99. and, yes, absolutely, rehabilitation for all innocent victims of communism everywhere.
In my opinion it was a big mistake to expell them. "Our" (rumunski banat) germans left the country at the beginning of the nineties. And the region has changed a lot. Former flourishing villages are now ruins, there were many well-educated people among them.
that's why i say it, we didnt do such a thing and serbs did ethnic cleansing against albanians, and they dont accept it.
but who cares, we albanians are moving on.
Lazar, the vast majority of ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union before, during and after WW2 were NOT expelled from there. The ones who were expelled by the Soviet authorities were those living in the northern half of East Prussia (nowadays known as the Kaliningradskaya oblast), i.e. a newly conquered territory. The same was the case in Poland.
Czechoslovakia was different from Poland and the USSR and more like what happened in Yugoslavia. There the ethnic Germans who'd gone out in droves and supported the Nazi occupiers where not forced from areas that had been German till the end of the war but from their traditional minority strongholds.
As far as I know, the only ethnic Germans allowed to remain in Vojvodina were either bona-fide antifascists (i.e. supporters of the Partisans) or women married to ethnic Yugoslavs. Yugoslav/Serbian revenge against the ethnic Germans or "Volksdeutsche" (Nazi term) was quite tough but one must consider what the Germans had got up to during the Nazi occupation... I don't know whether complicity in Nazi crimes was the only reason Tito saw fit to get rid of them or if there were other political motives adding to the equation but as evil deeds surrounding WW2 go, this is decidedly at the bottom of my list...
Let me elaborate a little more on Yugoslavia's Germans, particularly the Gottscheer.
After WWI, this small German enclave was situated in Yugoslavia, deep within Slovenia, near the Croatian border. There were serious efforts on behalf of the local Slovenian authorities to assimilate them into Slovenian culture by forcing them to speak Slovenian, and learn Slovenian history at the expense of their own identities. Many prominent Gottscheer Germans were expelled from positions of authority, particularly in schools and law enforcement. The idea was either to "Slovenianize" them, or expel them to Austria.
With the rise and spread of National Socialism, many Gottscheer saw Hitler as a potential savior from apparent Slovenian aggression. There were many who supported Hitler's idea of a Grossdeutschland, but when Yugoslavia was invaded, the southern half of Slovenia went to Italy, leaving these Germans once again on the wrong side of the border. Their first exprience of mass expulsion occurred actually on order of the Nazis to northern Slovenia where they would be given new homes and lands. Of course, these homes were forcibly taken from Slovenian farmers. Naturally, with Germany's loss, these Gottscheer were seen as both Nazi collaborators in general, and land grabbers in more specifics. Many were killed by the Partisans on suspicion of collaboration, or simply because they were German. Those that were able to escape, fled to Austria, where many still live.
While no Gottscheer openly desire to return to Slovenia, there has been official reconciliation between the Austrian and Slovenian governments. For a small group of people, their history has been well documented, and identities have survived even amid larger Austrian and American surroundings.
Where did the Germans carry out ethnic cleansing, expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Poles,Czechs and specially Russians? Where did they expule the Poles? Did they send them to China or perhabs Africa? Where do you get this justification for the expulsion of 10-12 million Germans from Poland?
There was just a small scale cleansing of Czechs. The Germans did not have the time for it. Had they won the war they would most likely pushed a lot of Poles and Czechs more to the East, most likely to Russia to create a bigger "Lebensraum".
I share Adrian's view. It was a big mistake from all those countries to expulse their Germans. For hundreds of years their economic and cultural contribution was immense. The countries having expulsed them lost and West-Germany integrating them gained: they contributed to the famous German Wirtschaftswunder or economic miracle.
I just read a new article (under the link below) about an account from one of these Germans (who was 9-years-old at the time) who was cleansed - and she says it was the RUSSIANS who came and made the Germans prisoners in their own homes and brought more Germans to their village. Overcrowding and poor conditions causing some to die of illnesses. But the final straw pushing that family to leave was stories of how horrible the Russians were (rapes?) - so they went to Dresden.
This shows you that is WASN'T Serbs at all but the invading Russians (who were the ones who pushed out the Nazis too - not the Partisans or the Chetniks).
As I said previously there would have been attacks on German civilians before the Russian troops came and/or before Tito took control of an area if Serbs were intent on cleasing them.
Katherine Flotz and her family didn't even leave their home to suffer the gross indignity that was Communist rule under Marshal Josip Broz Tito. As ethnic Germans who lived in what was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before it became Yugoslavia, they were considered minorities, she said. So once the Russian soldiers made their way to Gakowa, they made the ethnic Germans prisoners in their own homes.
Her town was once a farm town, population 2,500. By the time all the ethnic Germans were brought to Gakowa, between 18,000 and 20,000 people were forced to live there.
Food was scarce and illness was rampant. Katherine Flotz and her mother contracted typhoid fever; Katherine survived, but her mother didn't. Her father was drafted into the German army and was never heard from again.
"That was a huge cross to bear for me," she said, holding back tears. "There was a lot of fighting in Budapest, and we'd heard he was there, but we don't know if he died there."
George Flotz, on the other hand, escaped from a town about 10 miles from Gakowa because his mother heard how horrible the Russian soldiers were. They ended up in Dresden, and it was beautiful and untouched -- that is, until Feb. 13, 1945.
"At about 9 p.m., 900 planes swept through and bombed the city," George Flotz said. "Then at 1 a.m., 800 planes came, but they didn't bomb; they dropped chemicals that burned the street.
People in bomb shelters suffocated, and others ran around burning. We survived because we were near the Elber River."
Read about Generalplan Ost, both parts, and you will see. The first part was quite successful, Poles that didn't sign the volksliste were ethnically cleansed from Silesia and Pomerania to regions under Hans Frank's administration that occupied Eastern Poland which the Soviets had invaded before. Serbs were expelled from Vojvodina by Germans and Hungarians, Czechs were driven out of the Sudetenland and parts of Bohemia, Eastern Slavs were driven out of their villages which were burned to the ground to work as slave labour in Germany, so yes, there was plenty of justification to ethnically cleanse the lands of Germans after the war. How it was done is another question, obviously it was quite brutal, but can you blame them, especially since most had lost someone dear to them thanks to Adolf's views?
The second part of Generalplan Ost would have meant that a portion of Poles, Czechs and Eastern Slavs would have been Germanized, a portion enslaved and the rest driven out to Siberia or killed.
Whether or not those Germans would have contributed to the economy is irrelevant, the fact of the matter is Germany received an enormous amount of money to fund the development of their ruined economy, we got an enormous amount of Lenin thanks to the Soviets. The reason why perhaps those areas are not how they were is not because the Germans knew how to run them better, it's simply because after the war, our economies were annihilated and we got very little money to rebuild and develop them.
Thanks for the explanation. Yes the Germans received a lot of money just like the French. I am not specially fond of the Germans, I lived among them for 8 years. Sometime they could be very arrogant talking about non-Germans. Sure they worked very hard after WWII and they have excellent skills but yes I agree with you without the huge money infusion their economic miracle would have looked much less "wunderbar".
To add on to the latter comments...Yes Germans have a wonderful work ethic but face it the Marshall plan after WWII was a big help for boasting West Germany's economy. In regards to the other comments..I agree that there is alot of revisionism occurring here and the blatant facts are that yes there were Danauschwaben in Vojvodina, yes they were one largest per capita contigent in the Waffen SS, yes they were expelled as were Germans from Prussia, Pomerania, Sudatenland etc.. Most survived their ordeal but those who died at the hands of the Germans..well like they say "dead men can tell no tales". The crimes of the Germans and their collaborators are so great that it pales in comparison with the aftermath of WWII. PS interestingly, how many of these Germans would return to Serbia if given the opportunity. Most likely none. Ethnic Germans from all parts of eastern Europe would much rather live in germany and they can since citizenship is based still on bloodlines there,
As far as I know, my friends’ family comes to from two different communities: One half (the paternal side) comes from a village where only ethnic Germans lived, the maternal side is from what used to be an ethnically mixed village. Therefore, for example, while the grandfather didn’t speak any Serbian, the grandmother did. The grandfather was very young during the war but considered it an honour to be allowed to fight for Germany (…never mind that Germany was a fascist, racist dictatorship and the wars it lead nothing but crimes. Sad but true). That particular young man ended up in Dresden towards the end of the war, where he had to help remove the remains of the notorious Allied bombing. He didn’t know his future wife - the one from the ethnically mixed village - until they met in a Bavarian refugee camp, as far as I know. (Apparently, the ethnic Germans from the homogenous villages didn’t really mix with ethnic Germans from mixed communities if they could help it. Notions of ethnic purity at work there, I suppose.)
I don’t know the exact circumstances of the two families’ removal from Yugoslavia, e.g. whether they left shortly before the Partisans took over or if any of them were in Yugoslav concentration camps before being forced to leave. All I know is that the grandfather once pointed out a tractor to me and his grandson, telling us he and his family had fled from the Partisans on one of them. The family from the mixed village buried their belongings in their garden before leaving, so it’s assumed that their Serb neighbours watched them doing that and subsequently thought, “Well, they won’t be coming back in a hurry, so let’s help ourselves to the stuff. Waste not, want not.” Can’t really blame them, can you? The Germans did never come back, after all. And the Germans, along with their Hungarian and Croatian allies, had caused a lot of suffering among Serbs and left pretty much all of Yugoslavia in a bad state.
Anyway, through all those stories, I’ve never heard any mention of Russian soldiers. It was usually the Partisans who were blamed, without going into whether these Partisans were Serbs or not. It certainly was alleged that their neighbours had taken part in their expulsion.
As for the historical points you’ve raised:
a) Everybody jumped on the Partisan bandwagon at the end of the war, including plenty of hitherto rightwing Serbs (četnici). The insinuation that the Partisans were a Serb-only movement before being infiltrated by non-Serb opportunists towards the end of the war doesn’t wash.
b) The “biggest target” at the end of the war was anybody who had opposed the Communists before and during the war or was likely to do so afterwards. That included anti-Communist Serbs but that doesn’t that they were the “biggest target”, as if the ethnic Germans or Croatian Ustaše were left alone after the war. In my opinion, the četnici are to blame for the internecine fighting between royalists/nationalists and Communists, not the Partisans. The četnici accused the Partisans of endangering the Serbian civilian population by leading an all-out war against the Nazi occupiers.
c) The way I read it, the Red Army and the Partisans marched into Belgrade more or less side by side. Funny that so much Yugoslav territory was already de-facto liberated by the end of the war but Serbia wasn’t and had to wait for the Russians. Are you saying the Serbs remained passive while the Germans and Russians fought it out? I thought only Croats trying to reverse the myth of “heroic antifascist Serbia” made that sort of claims…
d) I've never read any stories of German survivors who had problems with the Russians towards the end of the war in former Yugoslavia but I wouldn’t be surprised if that went on. The Germans had a lot to answer for, collectively, and the Russians had ample reasons to be asking the questions…
ida, I also know a family of ethnic Germans from Backa. Their father also ended up in Dresden towards the end of the war. But this family never told me anything about any Russians, for them it always was the Partisans who expelled them. They went back to visit Vojvodina years later, also visiting their former Serbian neighbours, which appears to have been an altogether cordial event (if one doesn't count the moment when they spotted a bunch of their former belongings in the neighbours' house).
Al, yours and Mikes stories, along with the Germans' stories from the articles are interesting. It would make a good book to have all the details from many survivors. However, your German friends said nothing specifically about "Serb" soldiers nor their neighbors expelling them. After their home was abandonned perhaps the Partisans sold off their things to the neighborhood, or the neighbors could have just helped themselves. But they would have recognized the neighbors if they were involved in the expulsions. And, as I said, the Partisans were literally swelled with so many non-Serbs at the end who jumped on the bandwagon. And you can't forget that their biggest target was the anti-Communist Serbs who they fought most during the war and murdered at the end of the war. Even former Ustasha camps were converted to hold Serb prisoners.
But if any of that family is still alive (you also don't mention any in that family getting killed or injured) maybe they'd recall the accents of the actual soldiers who expelled them. It also seems strange that they'd say nothing about the Russians, for it was only the Russians which finally expelled the Nazis from Belgrade and Serbia. There was fierce fighting and the Germans were blowing up bridges on their retreat. Some Serbs were collateral damage of the fighting between the Russians and the Germans.
And I've read other stories of German survivors who had problems with the Russians during the end of the war in former Yugoslavia.
The Partisans came to Belgrade and other parts after the Russians and they settled scores with Serb anti-communists along with carrying out the expulsions of the Germans. This was done all over Eastern Europe and it much greater numbers.
By the way, did the German family you know have members drafted in the German army or did they fight at all during the war - and on what side?
Serbs blames us saying that we have comitted Genocides and tried to wipe out the Serbian people and culture but read this..." Some estimates say that around 400,000 local Germans were exiled from Vojvodina after the end of the Second World War.
They were stripped of their property, citizenship and all civil rights"
Who do you think exiled them? The Albanians? Bosnians? Croatians? --- Or the Serbs??
that's why i say it, we didnt do such a thing and serbs did ethnic cleansing against albanians, and they dont accept it.
but who cares, we albanians are moving on.
It's not just Germans of Vojvodina, but also German enclaves in Slovenia. What was then Gottschee, is now Kočevje. My father's side of the family, along with the entire community that was living there for over 600 years, were all expelled after WWII for alleged Nazi collaboration.
I'm not looking for any land restoration, nor am I looking for any restitution. Nearly all Gottschee communities now currently live in the United States and have completely integrated into their new societies. We went back to Slovenia two years ago and found my father's village nearly overgrown by forestation. While the Germans of Vojvodina, or Donauschwab as we call them, have the right to their identity and history, I hope they will remember all German communities that used to live in the former Yugoslavia.
KS, this 400,000 was just a natural consequence of the German aggression and support of genocide on the Serbs. The same has happened to Germans in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
Thanks for the explanation. Yes the Germans received a lot of money just like the French. I am not specially fond of the Germans, I lived among them for 8 years. Sometime they could be very arrogant talking about non-Germans. Sure they worked very hard after WWII and they have excellent skills but yes I agree with you without the huge money infusion their economic miracle would have looked much less "wunderbar".
"Who do you think exiled them? The Albanians? Bosnians? Croatians? --- Or the Serbs??"
The Communists, KS. And more specifically the Partisans. Tito was adamant about expelling every German family from Yugoslavia. Many German and Serb families co-existed in Vojvodina. Trust me on this one.
KS, the person (s) who exiled you from your home was Tito and his communists. Yes, it was a terrible thing to exile innocent people from their homes without trial or reason. Just as the Volksdeutscher who collaborated with the Nazis killed and forced Jews, gypsies and Serbs from their homes. I do not believe in collective guilt and I feel sorry that these things happened to the innocent but from reading many historical documents regarding this era it was no secret that Vojvodina was a hotbed for SS recruits who committed the most heinous crimes during WWII. Your statements to remind me of certain Germans after WWII complaining about what the allies did to Germany but carefully and conveniently omitting what they did to others. Face it if it wasn't for Hitler and his crimes, you would still be living here.
Had the Germans not carried out ethnic cleansing, Germanization and expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Poles, Czechs and Russians during WWII, they would not have been treated like they were in the respective countries after the war.
get serious people and don't embarrass yourselves, "natural consequence".. we're talking women and children here. my family too suffered from communists, and they're serbs. my heart goes out to all innocent victims everywhere. so i don't accept this logic, we had to expel german civilians because... any more than i accept it when albanians say, we have to torture serbs now because they tortured us in 99. and, yes, absolutely, rehabilitation for all innocent victims of communism everywhere.
I doubt that so many Germans lived in Vojvodina - perhaps if they are including the occupation German soldiers. And Tito was not a Serb - he was a Croat/Slovene. If Serbs were intent on cleansing Germans there would have been Chetnik attacks on the German civilians - which there were not.
People forget the Partisians started taking in Slovenians, Macedonians, Bosnian Muslims and Croats (even former Ustasha) during the last several months of the war. Many switched sides when it appeared that the Germans were losing and Croats were known to switch their uniforms in the waning months of WWII so the could jump to the side of the winners.
It wasn't a Serb leader and the Partisians were people from all over the Yugoslavia who swelled the movement at the very end.
In my opinion it was a big mistake to expell them. "Our" (rumunski banat) germans left the country at the beginning of the nineties. And the region has changed a lot. Former flourishing villages are now ruins, there were many well-educated people among them.
Lazar, the vast majority of ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union before, during and after WW2 were NOT expelled from there. The ones who were expelled by the Soviet authorities were those living in the northern half of East Prussia (nowadays known as the Kaliningradskaya oblast), i.e. a newly conquered territory. The same was the case in Poland.
Czechoslovakia was different from Poland and the USSR and more like what happened in Yugoslavia. There the ethnic Germans who'd gone out in droves and supported the Nazi occupiers where not forced from areas that had been German till the end of the war but from their traditional minority strongholds.
As far as I know, the only ethnic Germans allowed to remain in Vojvodina were either bona-fide antifascists (i.e. supporters of the Partisans) or women married to ethnic Yugoslavs. Yugoslav/Serbian revenge against the ethnic Germans or "Volksdeutsche" (Nazi term) was quite tough but one must consider what the Germans had got up to during the Nazi occupation... I don't know whether complicity in Nazi crimes was the only reason Tito saw fit to get rid of them or if there were other political motives adding to the equation but as evil deeds surrounding WW2 go, this is decidedly at the bottom of my list...
Where did the Germans carry out ethnic cleansing, expulsion of ethnic Serbs, Poles,Czechs and specially Russians? Where did they expule the Poles? Did they send them to China or perhabs Africa? Where do you get this justification for the expulsion of 10-12 million Germans from Poland?
There was just a small scale cleansing of Czechs. The Germans did not have the time for it. Had they won the war they would most likely pushed a lot of Poles and Czechs more to the East, most likely to Russia to create a bigger "Lebensraum".
I share Adrian's view. It was a big mistake from all those countries to expulse their Germans. For hundreds of years their economic and cultural contribution was immense. The countries having expulsed them lost and West-Germany integrating them gained: they contributed to the famous German Wirtschaftswunder or economic miracle.
The historical facts regarding Volksdeutsche in general and Donauschwaben in particular are well known and well documented. There is no secret about it. Because of that
I am sick and tired of Albanian detractors on this site who take every opportunity to twist historical facts. Especially when this twisting has Nazi revisionist flavor.
It is true that there were 400 000 Volksdeutshche in Kingdom of Yugoslavia (maybe even more, it can be easily googled).
The evacuation of Germans with Nazi ties started in 1944 even before October and was organized through German apparatus -
Hitler hoped to have a Wunderwaffe (A-bomb) ready and dropped on Eastern front. Family members of Waffen SS Prinz Eugen were the first ones to evacuate. They knew that the end was near.
The Germans who remained, mainly in Banat and waited for Red Army onslaught, were not guilty of anything. Their minded their own business and helped Serb neighbors as much as they could. When the tide of war turned, their Serbian neighbors returned favor - first protected their womanfolk from Soviet mass rape and then after liberation, by geting them out from the labor camps. Serbs could not do more because they were also targetted by Communist terror as "kulaks".
Serb farmers usually came to labor camps and asked for farm workers, although they had no real job for them. They wanted to get them out, from poor food and disease killing them like flies. Many Germans were saved this way.
Serbs in Banat can look any German straight in the face.
Then, Tito got another idea, to complete Pavelic's expulsion of Serbs from Krajina and Lika. Under guise of providing arable land, the entire Serb villages were rooted out from Croatia and resetled in Banat, mostly on former Germnan homesteads. Serbs did it grudgingly, many complaining for having to take "Shvabo's house" instead of having their own in Croatia.
So, we have three distinct patterns:
-Evacuation of Nazi German families by The Third Reich authorities
-Communist terror towards innocent Germans
-Forcible ressetling of Serbs from Croatia to Banat.
Interestingly enough, Tito did not expell Albanian Waffen SS Skenderbeg and their families, did not expell illegal immigrants from Albania. He FORBADE Serbs to return to the ir homesteads and allowed free and uncontrolled immigration from Albania.
The same fate befel Italians in Istria.
Serbs, Germans and Italians were the victims of Tito's terrror. Albanians were benefactors, even members of Waffen SS.
And now, we have to endure Albanian Nazi revisionist drivel on this site.
Expressing opinion is one this, spreading of revisionist lies another.
I believe that B92 has the obligation to react when Nazi revisionism occurs. Otherwise, this board will resemble wall of a public toilet.
Let me elaborate a little more on Yugoslavia's Germans, particularly the Gottscheer.
After WWI, this small German enclave was situated in Yugoslavia, deep within Slovenia, near the Croatian border. There were serious efforts on behalf of the local Slovenian authorities to assimilate them into Slovenian culture by forcing them to speak Slovenian, and learn Slovenian history at the expense of their own identities. Many prominent Gottscheer Germans were expelled from positions of authority, particularly in schools and law enforcement. The idea was either to "Slovenianize" them, or expel them to Austria.
With the rise and spread of National Socialism, many Gottscheer saw Hitler as a potential savior from apparent Slovenian aggression. There were many who supported Hitler's idea of a Grossdeutschland, but when Yugoslavia was invaded, the southern half of Slovenia went to Italy, leaving these Germans once again on the wrong side of the border. Their first exprience of mass expulsion occurred actually on order of the Nazis to northern Slovenia where they would be given new homes and lands. Of course, these homes were forcibly taken from Slovenian farmers. Naturally, with Germany's loss, these Gottscheer were seen as both Nazi collaborators in general, and land grabbers in more specifics. Many were killed by the Partisans on suspicion of collaboration, or simply because they were German. Those that were able to escape, fled to Austria, where many still live.
While no Gottscheer openly desire to return to Slovenia, there has been official reconciliation between the Austrian and Slovenian governments. For a small group of people, their history has been well documented, and identities have survived even amid larger Austrian and American surroundings.
I just read a new article (under the link below) about an account from one of these Germans (who was 9-years-old at the time) who was cleansed - and she says it was the RUSSIANS who came and made the Germans prisoners in their own homes and brought more Germans to their village. Overcrowding and poor conditions causing some to die of illnesses. But the final straw pushing that family to leave was stories of how horrible the Russians were (rapes?) - so they went to Dresden.
This shows you that is WASN'T Serbs at all but the invading Russians (who were the ones who pushed out the Nazis too - not the Partisans or the Chetniks).
As I said previously there would have been attacks on German civilians before the Russian troops came and/or before Tito took control of an area if Serbs were intent on cleasing them.
Katherine Flotz and her family didn't even leave their home to suffer the gross indignity that was Communist rule under Marshal Josip Broz Tito. As ethnic Germans who lived in what was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before it became Yugoslavia, they were considered minorities, she said. So once the Russian soldiers made their way to Gakowa, they made the ethnic Germans prisoners in their own homes.
Her town was once a farm town, population 2,500. By the time all the ethnic Germans were brought to Gakowa, between 18,000 and 20,000 people were forced to live there.
Food was scarce and illness was rampant. Katherine Flotz and her mother contracted typhoid fever; Katherine survived, but her mother didn't. Her father was drafted into the German army and was never heard from again.
"That was a huge cross to bear for me," she said, holding back tears. "There was a lot of fighting in Budapest, and we'd heard he was there, but we don't know if he died there."
George Flotz, on the other hand, escaped from a town about 10 miles from Gakowa because his mother heard how horrible the Russian soldiers were. They ended up in Dresden, and it was beautiful and untouched -- that is, until Feb. 13, 1945.
"At about 9 p.m., 900 planes swept through and bombed the city," George Flotz said. "Then at 1 a.m., 800 planes came, but they didn't bomb; they dropped chemicals that burned the street.
People in bomb shelters suffocated, and others ran around burning. We survived because we were near the Elber River."
ida, I also know a family of ethnic Germans from Backa. Their father also ended up in Dresden towards the end of the war. But this family never told me anything about any Russians, for them it always was the Partisans who expelled them. They went back to visit Vojvodina years later, also visiting their former Serbian neighbours, which appears to have been an altogether cordial event (if one doesn't count the moment when they spotted a bunch of their former belongings in the neighbours' house).
Read about Generalplan Ost, both parts, and you will see. The first part was quite successful, Poles that didn't sign the volksliste were ethnically cleansed from Silesia and Pomerania to regions under Hans Frank's administration that occupied Eastern Poland which the Soviets had invaded before. Serbs were expelled from Vojvodina by Germans and Hungarians, Czechs were driven out of the Sudetenland and parts of Bohemia, Eastern Slavs were driven out of their villages which were burned to the ground to work as slave labour in Germany, so yes, there was plenty of justification to ethnically cleanse the lands of Germans after the war. How it was done is another question, obviously it was quite brutal, but can you blame them, especially since most had lost someone dear to them thanks to Adolf's views?
The second part of Generalplan Ost would have meant that a portion of Poles, Czechs and Eastern Slavs would have been Germanized, a portion enslaved and the rest driven out to Siberia or killed.
Whether or not those Germans would have contributed to the economy is irrelevant, the fact of the matter is Germany received an enormous amount of money to fund the development of their ruined economy, we got an enormous amount of Lenin thanks to the Soviets. The reason why perhaps those areas are not how they were is not because the Germans knew how to run them better, it's simply because after the war, our economies were annihilated and we got very little money to rebuild and develop them.
Al, yours and Mikes stories, along with the Germans' stories from the articles are interesting. It would make a good book to have all the details from many survivors. However, your German friends said nothing specifically about "Serb" soldiers nor their neighbors expelling them. After their home was abandonned perhaps the Partisans sold off their things to the neighborhood, or the neighbors could have just helped themselves. But they would have recognized the neighbors if they were involved in the expulsions. And, as I said, the Partisans were literally swelled with so many non-Serbs at the end who jumped on the bandwagon. And you can't forget that their biggest target was the anti-Communist Serbs who they fought most during the war and murdered at the end of the war. Even former Ustasha camps were converted to hold Serb prisoners.
But if any of that family is still alive (you also don't mention any in that family getting killed or injured) maybe they'd recall the accents of the actual soldiers who expelled them. It also seems strange that they'd say nothing about the Russians, for it was only the Russians which finally expelled the Nazis from Belgrade and Serbia. There was fierce fighting and the Germans were blowing up bridges on their retreat. Some Serbs were collateral damage of the fighting between the Russians and the Germans.
And I've read other stories of German survivors who had problems with the Russians during the end of the war in former Yugoslavia.
The Partisans came to Belgrade and other parts after the Russians and they settled scores with Serb anti-communists along with carrying out the expulsions of the Germans. This was done all over Eastern Europe and it much greater numbers.
By the way, did the German family you know have members drafted in the German army or did they fight at all during the war - and on what side?
To add on to the latter comments...Yes Germans have a wonderful work ethic but face it the Marshall plan after WWII was a big help for boasting West Germany's economy. In regards to the other comments..I agree that there is alot of revisionism occurring here and the blatant facts are that yes there were Danauschwaben in Vojvodina, yes they were one largest per capita contigent in the Waffen SS, yes they were expelled as were Germans from Prussia, Pomerania, Sudatenland etc.. Most survived their ordeal but those who died at the hands of the Germans..well like they say "dead men can tell no tales". The crimes of the Germans and their collaborators are so great that it pales in comparison with the aftermath of WWII. PS interestingly, how many of these Germans would return to Serbia if given the opportunity. Most likely none. Ethnic Germans from all parts of eastern Europe would much rather live in germany and they can since citizenship is based still on bloodlines there,
As far as I know, my friends’ family comes to from two different communities: One half (the paternal side) comes from a village where only ethnic Germans lived, the maternal side is from what used to be an ethnically mixed village. Therefore, for example, while the grandfather didn’t speak any Serbian, the grandmother did. The grandfather was very young during the war but considered it an honour to be allowed to fight for Germany (…never mind that Germany was a fascist, racist dictatorship and the wars it lead nothing but crimes. Sad but true). That particular young man ended up in Dresden towards the end of the war, where he had to help remove the remains of the notorious Allied bombing. He didn’t know his future wife - the one from the ethnically mixed village - until they met in a Bavarian refugee camp, as far as I know. (Apparently, the ethnic Germans from the homogenous villages didn’t really mix with ethnic Germans from mixed communities if they could help it. Notions of ethnic purity at work there, I suppose.)
I don’t know the exact circumstances of the two families’ removal from Yugoslavia, e.g. whether they left shortly before the Partisans took over or if any of them were in Yugoslav concentration camps before being forced to leave. All I know is that the grandfather once pointed out a tractor to me and his grandson, telling us he and his family had fled from the Partisans on one of them. The family from the mixed village buried their belongings in their garden before leaving, so it’s assumed that their Serb neighbours watched them doing that and subsequently thought, “Well, they won’t be coming back in a hurry, so let’s help ourselves to the stuff. Waste not, want not.” Can’t really blame them, can you? The Germans did never come back, after all. And the Germans, along with their Hungarian and Croatian allies, had caused a lot of suffering among Serbs and left pretty much all of Yugoslavia in a bad state.
Anyway, through all those stories, I’ve never heard any mention of Russian soldiers. It was usually the Partisans who were blamed, without going into whether these Partisans were Serbs or not. It certainly was alleged that their neighbours had taken part in their expulsion.
As for the historical points you’ve raised:
a) Everybody jumped on the Partisan bandwagon at the end of the war, including plenty of hitherto rightwing Serbs (četnici). The insinuation that the Partisans were a Serb-only movement before being infiltrated by non-Serb opportunists towards the end of the war doesn’t wash.
b) The “biggest target” at the end of the war was anybody who had opposed the Communists before and during the war or was likely to do so afterwards. That included anti-Communist Serbs but that doesn’t that they were the “biggest target”, as if the ethnic Germans or Croatian Ustaše were left alone after the war. In my opinion, the četnici are to blame for the internecine fighting between royalists/nationalists and Communists, not the Partisans. The četnici accused the Partisans of endangering the Serbian civilian population by leading an all-out war against the Nazi occupiers.
c) The way I read it, the Red Army and the Partisans marched into Belgrade more or less side by side. Funny that so much Yugoslav territory was already de-facto liberated by the end of the war but Serbia wasn’t and had to wait for the Russians. Are you saying the Serbs remained passive while the Germans and Russians fought it out? I thought only Croats trying to reverse the myth of “heroic antifascist Serbia” made that sort of claims…
d) I've never read any stories of German survivors who had problems with the Russians towards the end of the war in former Yugoslavia but I wouldn’t be surprised if that went on. The Germans had a lot to answer for, collectively, and the Russians had ample reasons to be asking the questions…
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