|
In the Vienna negotiations from April 20 to 22,1941, the territorial division of Yugoslavia and the annexation of territories were determinated. Germany received part of northern Slovenia, Upper Carniola and the former Carinthian and Styrian areas of the Danube Monarchy, while Italy received not only Lower Carniola, some Dalmatian islands, but also part of the Croatian coast. Hungary included the Mur region and western Vojvodina. Bulgaria got Macedonia. Part of western Macedonia joined Italy in the personal union of Greater Albania. In Cetinje, on June 12, 1941, the "Constituent National Assembly" declared the independence of Montenegro, also closely connected with Italy. The rest of Serbia was under German military administration as a puppet-state. After the declaration of the Independent State of Croatia, it was confirmed in its historical borders, but without Sandžak and the Bay of Kotor. Some days later, at April 29th 1941 Sandžak was annexed by the Independent State of Croatia for nearly 6 months. This circumstance is often completely ignored, because it is always falsely said that Croatia was an installation of the German Reich.
Poglavnik Dr. Ante Pavelić, after taking office, immediately began negotiations with representatives of Croatian Germans on the status of German citizens. As the first sign of concession, Poglavnik Dr. Ante Pavelić appointed lawyer Dr. Jakob Elicker as the great prefect of almost all of Srijem includes Vuka county.
The first law of June 21, 1941 declared the German People's Group a person under public law and guaranteed all members equality with Croats in the field of public and private life, as well as "unlimited preservation of their German nationality and unhindered recognition of their National Socialist beliefs". In July 1941, the German National Group was allowed to establish a military formation, the so-called Einsatzstaffel, within the Ustaše, which was under the command of the Croatian General Staff.
The legal status of the leader of the German People's Group, Branimir Altgayer, was established on October 30, 1941, when he received the duties and powers of state director. In the internal affairs of the ethnic group, by decree of 30.10.1941. Altgayer issued a "law on regulation within the framework of the law" (Article 4), whereby the entire range of political, social and economic life of Croatian Germans was left to the legal order.
Linguistic regulation enabled the use of words and writing in public life; in administrative units with more than twenty percent of the German population, Croatian and German were considered equal official languages, and public notices, inscriptions, forms, etc. should be maintained in two languages. In districts with more than ten percent of the German population, Germans were allowed to use their own language in official traffic. In German settlements, German officials are used to the greatest extent possible, as required by the disposition of German civil servants (Article 5). Their applications for employment were subject to assessment by the leadership of the ethnic groups and the Ustasha headquarters; At the oath, they promised to "keep faith with the German people and the leader, as well as the state of Croatia and the Leader". Only in agreement with the leader of the ethnic group, they can be transferred, suspended, retired and fired.
The reorganization of the school system in the German National Group did not give the school complete autonomy, but placed it under its own department in the Ministry of Education of the Independent State of Croatia, where curricula and textbooks were prepared. At the suggestion of Altgayer, its leader became the former rector of the German grammar school in Zagreb, H. Kühn. Schools remain state institutions. The reception of the children took place without further formality on the basis of the ethnic identity card issued by the German National Group. In places where at least 20 school children lived within a radius of 8 km, a German primary school was to be established. If there were only 10 German children, then improvised schools would have to be established, with less than 10 German children, so-called "school bases" for German teachers.
In addition, the German National Group, in coordination with the Ministry of Education, was allowed to run schools and teachers "at their own expense", while otherwise they were paid as civil servants of the Croatian state. Until 1944, the German school system consisted of about 300 folk and improvised schools, a teacher training institute in Osijek, two high schools in Osijek and Ruma, a trade academy in Zemun, eight high schools and a private Protestant high school in Zagreb.
On May 8, 1941, Altgayer had already issued temporary organizational regulations based on the principle of "unconditional leader", in which various offices of the leadership of the German People's Group with headquarters in Osijek and liaison services with the Croatian government were established. The German settlement area was divided into "Kreisleiter" and "Ortsleiter", while so-called "bases" were established in villages with less than ten German families. In the "Landesbauernschaft" and the "Gemeinschaft der gewerblichen Wirtschaft" professional institutions were created in which membership was compulsory. Socio-political tasks were carried out by the "German working community" modeled after the "Arbeitsfront". As a result of the destruction of the Yugoslav state, the Croatian-German cooperative system, which has since then had its head in Osijek, was redirected into the "Union of German Peasant and Commercial Cooperatives in Croatia". This included about 300 cooperatives in the spring of 1942.
As an "organization for political selection", which was considered "the sole bearer of the political will of the German ethnic group", the "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Gefolgschaft in Kroatien (NSDGK)" was launched, to which all department heads of the ethnic group had to belong. Apart from the "Deutschen Mannschaft", a military organization composed of men between the ages of 18 and 45, the "Deutschen Frauenschaft" whose members were recruited from the "Allgemeinen Frauengemeinschaft" and the "Stamm-DJ", all associations were automatically included in the NSDGK. Children aged 4 to 10 are already grouped into "Kindergruppen" before entering the "Deutsche Jungvolk" and the "Jungmädelbund". "In view of the special situation of the German People's Group", Altgayer repeatedly demanded that the Nüremberg Laws be strictly applied.
The status of Croatian Germans could be compared with the status of Germans in Slovakia.
The armed conflict with the partisans and Chetniks was especially felt by the Germans, because Tito's partisans and Chetniks disguised as partisans from Serbia went straight to the territory of the Independent State of Croatia with a German population. The less threatened, more closed settlements in the Slavonic and Srijem regions could be better defended with the "Einsatzstaffel", which the Poglavnik legalized in July, and armed local protection, in which the entire male population of the village was united since the summer of 1942.
The "Einsatzstaffel" was under the disciplinary authority of Altgayer, who transmitted through Landesmannschaftsführer SS-Obersturmführer Lichtenberger, his orders and took over the protection of German settlements.
The headquarters was in Osijek, including "Stabswache", command battalion "Prinz Eugen" which was formed in October 1941 with six companies of a total of about 1500 men and three "Ludwig von Baden" readiness battalions. "General Laudon" and "Emanuel von Bayern" were formed by the end of August 1942, each with four companies, a total of about 1,800 soldiers, recruited from volunteers aged 17 to 22, and they were served Croatian military service. All units were in action against the partisans. They were supported from December 1941 by two battalions of German fighters and railway armored personnel carriers, which during 1942 were strengthened into three battalions.
All the members of those formations were transferred to the Waffen SS by the spring of 1943, and the older generations of the German People's Group had to fill those battalions. Therefore, the local protection was reorganized in February 1943 into the "Heimatwache der Deutschen Volksgruppe" for all men between the ages of 16 and 60.
Due to increasingly visible partisan attacks, Himmler got involved in the same year.
The German People's Group and Altgayer's staff were subordinated to Himmler's immediate subordinate "RFSS representative" to the "German Plenipotentiary General in Croatia", SS Brigadeführer Kammerhofer, who was appointed to that position in Zagreb, was to "ensure the final pacification" of the area of the "liberated from partisan units".
According to the data of the leadership of the German People's Group in October 1941, there were about 1,200 men in the Waffen-SS.
The internal agreements of the Waffen-SS initially assigned a share of ten percent of all recruited Croatian Germans, which, however, was by no means enough. Himmler's insistence on exploiting the national reserves of the people of Southeast Europe exclusively for the SS finally succeeded in May 1942 in achieving an OKW command in which "the recruitment and training of capable Volksdeutscher in the Southeast region" was the sole task of the Waffen-SS.
Without waiting for the entry into force of the agreement, the SS Recruit Commission already started its activity in Osijek on September 1, 1942, even though Altgayer's - also still premature - call for a convocation was only dated September 15, 1942. Before that, the resettlement of Germans (the so-called "Streudeutschtum") in the Bosnian part of the Independent State of Croatia had to be completed.
|
|
By mid-October, 15,000 men had been collected and transferred to the Waffen-SS and active SS police units in the Reich. The entire "Einsatzstaffel" and the German Home Guards were transferred to the SS division "Prinz Eugen", whereby the leadership of the German People's Group felt obliged for a new, decisive extension of the obligation of military service. On the other hand, the plan to establish a Croatian-German "SS brigade" failed due to Hitler's refusal, who did not want to have problems with Poglavnik Dr. Ante Pavelić. Recruits were assigned to various SS units, including the SS Division "Prinz Eugen" and the SS Gendarmerie.
At that time, there were 17,538 men in the Waffen-SS, 1,386 in the German Wehrmacht, 2,636 in the Croatian Home Guard, and 3,488 men in the military formations of the German People's Group. In addition to those 25,048 Croatian Germans, there were 410 Croatian Germans who were members of the Croatian State Labor Service, 2,200 members of the "Todt Organization" and about 4,500 workers. The material supply of family members of Waffen SS soldiers remained constant. The terrible monetary devaluation hit her hard, so that in January 1944 Himmler was forced to order that welfare funds be replaced by weekly food rations.
According to the "Yearbook of the German National Group in Croatia" from 1943, the number of German youth members in Croatia was more than 15,000. Like the Hitler Youth, it also had its own cavalry, motorsport units and glider units.
Volksdeutsche were also integrated into Croatian units, for example as in:
- German-speaking units in the Croatian State Labor Service
- German protective railway battalion
- German hunting battalion in Croatian Home Guards
|
