Volksdeutsche

[JumpBoot]

I spent the weekend watching WW2 films with an acquaintance. While watching Band of Brothers, we saw the scene with the American who was serving with the Wermacht as a Volksdeutsche . This got me to wondering, and perhaps some of you fine folks will know more about this than I do--because I don't know much. How were those people viewed at the time? Would a person from America, for example, be treated like any other German once they came to the Fatherland? Would they have had the same opportunities as a natural born German? I assume this may have changed once the USA entered the war, but I'm not sure.

I apologize if this seems like a stupid question, but it's a particular area of history I don't know much about. Any input would be appreciated.


Jump

 

[AmateisGal]

I spent the weekend watching WW2 films with an acquaintance. While watching Band of Brothers, we saw the scene with the American who was serving with the Wermacht as a Volksdeutsche . This got me to wondering, and perhaps some of you fine folks will know more about this than I do--because I don't know much. How were those people viewed at the time? Would a person from America, for example, be treated like any other German once they came to the Fatherland? Would they have had the same opportunities as a natural born German? I assume this may have changed once the USA entered the war, but I'm not sure.

I apologize if this seems like a stupid question, but it's a particular area of history I don't know much about. Any input would be appreciated.


Jump

I don't think it's a stupid question at all - I think it's a fascinating one. I would love to know more about this, too.

 

[Fastuni]

Volksdeutsche - as you surely know - where ethnic Germans (vaguely defined by language, cultural identification, non-jewishness and a positive attitude towards the German Reich) with citizenship other than that of the German Reich. It pertained mostly to ethnic Germans living in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
Not to be confused with "Auslandsdeutsche" (foreign Germans) who were German citizens living abroad.

Defacto it included also persons (for example in Poland) who could barely speak German, maybe had a German ancestor in the family tree or just had a pro-German attitude. On the other hand ethnic Germans who were deemed hostile to Germany or too much "culturally estranged" could be excluded from the Volksdeutsche designation.

The perception of Volksdeutsche amongst the Reichsdeutsche (German Reich citizens) was ambivalent and largely depending on the degree of "Germanness".
If one could speak fluent German, maybe had a higher education or were skilled tradesmen and/or the "expected attitude" one was generally accepted as an equal.

Then there were those like a large number of Volksdeutsche from the Balkans, Romania or the USSR who spoke broken German and were mostly of peasant background, who were disparagingly called "Beutegermanen" (booty/looted Germans). They had greater difficulties in fitting in with Reichdeutsche, but infact most were settled anyway in more or less closed settlements within conquered territories as sort of "pioneers".

Volksdeutsche had not the same rights as Reichdeutsche, but for a ambitioned, politically-conform Volksdeutsche there was little hurdles in terms of a career within the Nazi-apparatus.
The settlement projects in the East and various party organizations were especially aiming at Volksdeutsche.

Regarding military service, the Waffen-SS had since 1942 or 43 the prerogative to draft Volksdeutsche from age 17 (officially).
Thus in the latter half of the war, a large part of "German" Waffen-SS men were young Volksdeutsche from Eastern or South Eastern Europe who were drafted into service.

 

[JumpBoot]

Fastuni,

That's great information, thank you! I need to do some more reading, but I haven't had the time this week to research it. The reason I ask is that there was, apparently, some talk in my father's side of the family about going back to Germany during the late 30's and I got to wondering about how the kids (who were born in the USA) would be received there.

 

[filfoster]

Guy Sajer's famous biographical account The Forgotten Soldier' is a good word picture of how these folks were viewed. He was an Alsation, speaking German and so prime fodder for the Wehrmacht, finally serving in the Grossdeutchland Division of the army (no, it was not an SS division). He was treated relatively well but the 'regular' Germans and Austrians were very chauvanistic (hardly surpising, with the Third Reich's emphasis on all matters 'rasse'). Most volksdeutsche were welcomed as cannon fodder. They were more than 'useful idiots' and a few were lauded but it's unlikely they would have enjoyed equal status with native Germans in the 1000-year Reich at peace.

 

[Fastuni]

The "1000 year Reich" after a German victory would have been both considerably larger and much more racially defined.
The Nazi state would have been very much interested to reduce distinctions between former "Volks-" and "Reichsdeutsche" to create a "homogenous" race-based Germanic empire.

To populate the vastly enlarged Germany the "Volksdeutsche" were very much needed. Indeed already during wartime they were resettled into the newly added territories in the East, where they benefitted from lower taxes and other economic benefits.

Regarding Guy Sajer... he certainly isn't the best source.
I think you know the controversy regarding the accuracy and reliability of his book.
Also keep in mind his father was a Frenchman (citizen and ethnically) - so not most exemplary for a "Volksdeutsche".
Add to this the fact that Alsatians - with their volatile history of belonging to France or Germany - were often suspected (by both French and Germans) regarding their loyalty. Consider the case of the "malgré nous" (Alsatians drafted into the Wehrmacht), a number of whom got into Soviet capitivity and were released to join the Free French Forces.

 

[AmateisGal]

Is there any source material on how Americans of German descent were treated when they went back to Germany? I think that would be really interesting to research.

 

[Fastuni]

The anti-German hysteria in the context of WW1 and unemployment during the depression were important factors
for (mostly first or second generation) Germans to return to the Reich during the 1930's.

Books dealing with German-American returnees:

Arthur L. Smith: "The Deutschtum of Nazi Germany and the United States" (2012)

The following is a historical novel (I haven't read it) that weaves the similar fates of Americans who returned to Axis countries into a novel.
Might be an interesting perspective:

Thomas J. Morrow: "Nebraska Doppelganger" (2006)

“Nebraska Doppelganger” is based on the fact that several hundred American men and women found themselves on the wrong side of the fighting when the United States entered World War II in 1941. Many of these Americans were immigrants or sons and daughters of immigrants visiting relatives in their respective homelands of Japan, Italy, and Germany. One American G.I. recalled being taken prisoner in North Africa by an Italian major, who had been a New York City cab driver. He had a wife and kids back in Brooklyn and spoke “poi-fect” English. In the late 1930s, a number of German immigrants sent their American-born sons back to Germany to fight for the Fatherland. Little did they know that soon they would be facing their fellow Americans.
http://www.inkwellproductions.com/product/nebraska-doppelganger/

 

[AmateisGal]

The anti-German hysteria in the context of WW1 and unemployment during the depression were important factors
for (mostly first or second generation) Germans to return to the Reich during the 1930's.

Books dealing with German-American returnees:

Arthur L. Smith: "The Deutschtum of Nazi Germany and the United States" (2012)

The following is a historical novel (I haven't read it) that weaves the similar fates of Americans who returned to Axis countries into a novel.
Might be an interesting perspective:

Thomas J. Morrow: "Nebraska Doppelganger" (2006)

“Nebraska Doppelganger” is based on the fact that several hundred American men and women found themselves on the wrong side of the fighting when the United States entered World War II in 1941. Many of these Americans were immigrants or sons and daughters of immigrants visiting relatives in their respective homelands of Japan, Italy, and Germany. One American G.I. recalled being taken prisoner in North Africa by an Italian major, who had been a New York City cab driver. He had a wife and kids back in Brooklyn and spoke “poi-fect” English. In the late 1930s, a number of German immigrants sent their American-born sons back to Germany to fight for the Fatherland. Little did they know that soon they would be facing their fellow Americans.
http://www.inkwellproductions.com/product/nebraska-doppelganger/

This is great. Thanks so much! I did some research into the anti-German hysteria in the US during WW1 on a more local level - here in Nebraska - and it was quite unnerving to read a lot of the things that happened. People being tarred and feathered, made to kiss the American flag, etc., etc.

 

[newsman]

Is there any source material on how Americans of German descent were treated when they went back to Germany? I think that would be really interesting to research.

The return wasn't exactly what I think you're looking for but...Joseph D. Liebgott, Jr, 506 PIR, 101st Airborne (Band of Brothers) returned to Germany along with all of his friends. The book make several comments regarding his return to Germany as he was from a German family that immigrated.

I think something similar was also mentioned in Don Burgettt's series of books.

 

[AmateisGal]

The return wasn't exactly what I think you're looking for but...Joseph D. Liebgott, Jr, 506 PIR, 101st Airborne (Band of Brothers) returned to Germany along with all of his friends. The book make several comments regarding his return to Germany as he was from a German family that immigrated.

I think something similar was also mentioned in Don Burgettt's series of books.

I think the original poster is looking on info for those American Germans who went back to the Fatherland to serve Hitler. That's what I was going for, too, but perhaps poorly stated my point.

 

[filfoster]

The "1000 year Reich" after a German victory would have been both considerably larger and much more racially defined.
The Nazi state would have been very much interested to reduce distinctions between former "Volks-" and "Reichsdeutsche" to create a "homogenous" race-based Germanic empire.

To populate the vastly enlarged Germany the "Volksdeutsche" were very much needed. Indeed already during wartime they were resettled into the newly added territories in the East, where they benefitted from lower taxes and other economic benefits.

.

You make a good point about the need to populate the hoped for Eastern lands of the Greater German Reich.
I remain unconvinced that any citizens of that unrealized 1000 year Reich who were not native born in Germany or Austria would have been anything but 'poor country cousins' and not really held in the same status as native born 'Germans'. I recall even the East Germans after re-unification were viewed in this way.

 

[Big J]

Well, I think that this is an interesting topic since it shows how insane fascist ideology was; the obsessive placing of everyone, even other ethnic German's (which may be an oxymoron in itself- 'race' is a social construct) into some kind of vertical racial hierarchy.

I would say that any speculation on how this would have worked in a world of Axis victory is fraught with logical fallacies; in The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick, he actually devotes a couple of pages to explaining how nazi ideology just about hated everything, and would have led to self-annihilation as a logical end.

Interestingly, Prof. Shefthall has written a paper on the Japanese Imperial ideology as a death cult. Unlike Germany, where society was cleansed of nazi ideology, in Japan, imperial era fascist ideology survives. It is illogical. For example, 3rd and 4th generation Brazilian descendants of Japanese are considered fully 'Japanese' by way of blood, and exempt from visa requirements that apply to other foreigners (even 3rd or 4th generation Koreans born in Japan, who are 'not Japanese' by blood).

Additionally, Japanese ideology demands that someone recognized internationally as a success must be accepted as full Japanese; Abdul Brown has one Japanese parent, but since he won a gold medal in view of the world, he is Japanese.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/...-brown-dreaming-big-eye-catching-performance/

On the other hand, Japan's Miss Universe entrant this year, Arianna Miyamoto, despite having one Japanese parent, isn't 'Japanese enough';

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32957610

And then there's Shuji Nakamura, who left Japan's oppressive corporate servitude to research in the USA as a US citizen (renouncing his Japanese citizenship under Japanese law). He won a Nobel prize, and now the Japanese want him back and deny that he is an American[./U]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/10/07/national/three-japanese-win-nobel-prize-physics/

So really, Axis racial theory in practice can only show how illogical and distorted their world view was, and was doomed to fail utterly. Lucky for us.

 

[Fastuni]

@filfoster

Nazi notions of Germanness were founded on the idea of racial affiliation, not on the pre-war Reich borders, which were perceived by the Nazis to be too constricting, artificial and outdated. Hence the desire to expand the Reich to include „living space“ in the East.

In the post-victory Greater Germanic Reich, also those born outside the pre-war Reich borders, would have been „Reichsdeutsche“ citizens.

With the long-term expectations („1000 year“) of the ideology, those of the pre-war generation who would possibly cling to pre-war notions of „Germanness“ would have been ephemeral.

Already during the war there was the „Volksliste“-system of granting full citizenship to Volksdeutsche (and others deemed „Germanizable“) in the annexed eastern territories. A politically active "Volksdeutscher" was certainly more desirable to the Nazi system than the many luke-warm "Reichsdeutsche". The question whether one was born inside or outside the pre-war borders was not a primary matter.

The historical cold war context of partioned Germany is an totally different situation, that in my opinion cannot be compared to the situation of a Germany victorious in WW2. The attitudes towards race, nation and state would have been entirely different.
The looking-down-upon of some West-Germans towards those of the former GDR is a result of having two different political and economical systems that were confronting each other.

A feeling of superiority among city dwellers towards rural inhabitants was/is widespread also in Germany (as probably anywhere),
but one shouldn't overlook that Nazi ideology intensively propagated the peasant/rural life as morally and racially superior to decadent urban life.
The prospective post-victory expanded Germany would have had in large parts a rural/agrarian character on purpose.

 

[filfoster]

Fastuni's comments are all reasonable and supported. For myself, I just don't imagine that the Volksdeutsche colonizers of the Ost, except the native-born who would also have likely owned large tracts there, whether they lived there or not, would have 'felt the love' as much. The comparison of urbanites vs the rural folks comes as close as I intended, but the added burden of an 'Auslander' birthplace, within a culture that weighted 'auslandern' with as much baggage, would have magnified the social deficit.
Thank God all this is just academic prattling about something that did not materialize!
The comments about the Japanese notions of race and racial superiority are also very interesting.