The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List) was a Nazi institution whose purpose was the classification of inhabitants of German occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria systematized by Heinrich Himmler. The institution was first established in occupied western Poland. Similar institutions were subsequently created in Occupied France and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) were people of German ancestry living outside Germany. Though Volksdeutsche did not hold German or Austrian citizenship, the strengthening and development of their communities throughout east-central Europe was an integral part of the Nazi vision for the creation of Greater Germany (Großdeutschland).
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In 1931, prior to its rise to power, the Nazi party established the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP (Foreign Organisation of the Nazi Party), whose task was to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the German minorities living outside Germany. In 1936, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic German Welfare Office), commonly known as VoMi, was set up under the purview of the Schutzstaffel (SS) as the liaison bureau for ethnic Germans and was headed by SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz.
According to the testimony of Kuno Wirsich:
The aim of the German People's List was that those people who were of German descent and of German ethnic descent were to be ascertained and were to be Germanized.[1]
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, they annexed the western part of the country (basically the Gaus of Danzig/West Prussia, the Wartheland, and Silesia), and placed the rest of the country under the administration of the General Government.
The plan for Poland, as set forth in Generalplan Ost, was to "purify" the newly annexed regions to create a Germanized buffer against Polish and Slavic influence. This entailed deporting Poles from these areas to those under General Government control, and bringing in ethnic Germans from various places along with Germans from Germany proper to settle the area.[2]
To further its objective of Germanization, Nazi Germany endeavoured to increase the number of Volksdeutsche in the conquered territories by a policy of Germanising certain classes of the conquered people, mainly those among the Czechs, Poles, and Slovenes who had German ancestors. Thus, the Nazis encouraged the Polish offspring of Germans, or Poles who had family connections with Germans, to join the Volksdeutsche, often applying pressure to compel registration. Those who joined enjoyed a privileged status and received special benefits. Registrants were given better food, apartments, farms, workshops, furniture, and clothing—much of it having been confiscated from Jews and Poles who were deported or sent to Nazi concentration camps.
Determining who was an ethnic German was not easy in regions that had Poles, ethnic Germans, and individuals of German ancestry who had been Polonised. There were many in western Poland who claimed German ancestry and resisted deportation to the General Government on the basis of it. Even Himmler was impressed by this and said that such resistance must be evidence of their Nordic qualities. Furthermore, Nazi officials in charge of the various annexed territories did not want to see too many economically valuable Poles sent eastwards, so they, too, desired some form of criteria that would allow them to avoid deporting any skilled Poles with German blood. Poles who were considered to be suitable for Germanization were sent to the Reich as labourers.
In 2006, German historian Götz Aly said the Nazi policy was based on French Republic selection criteria that was used after the First World War to expel ethnic Germans from Alsace.[3]
From the beginning of the German occupation of Poland, a number of categorization schemes were developed at the local level, leading to confusion. For example, in October 1939, the governor of the Warthegau, Gauleiter Arthur Greiser, established a central bureau for the registration of Volksdeutsche, the Deutsche Volksliste (DVL: German Peoples List), also known as the Volksliste. At the beginning of 1940, distinctions were introduced to divide those registered in the DVL into four categories: ethnic Germans active on behalf of the Third Reich, "other" ethnic Germans, Poles of German extraction (Poles with some German ancestry), and Poles who were related to Germans by marriage.
Himmler's solution to the confusing and competing categorization schemes was the Deutsche Volksliste (DVL), a uniform categorization scheme that could be applied universally. The Racial Office of the Nazi Party had produced a registry called the Deutsche Volksliste in 1939, but this was only one of the precursors of Himmler's final version.
The Deutsche Volksliste categorised Poles into one of four categories: [4],[5]
Those members of the population rated in the highest category were tapped for citizenship and concomitant compulsory military service in the German Armed Forces.[10] At first, only Category I were considered for membership in the SS.[4] Similarly, women recruited for labor in Germany as nannies were required to be classified as Category I or II, because of their close contact with German children and the possibility of sexual exploitation, and so of children; Himmler praised it as a chance to win back blood and benefit the women as well.[11]
German blood was regarded as so valuable that any "German" person would necessarily be of value to other country; therefore, all Germans not supporting the Reich were a danger to it.[4] Persons who had been assigned to one of these categories but who denied their ties to Germany were dealt with very harshly, and ordered to concentration camps.[4] Men who had "a particularly bad political record" -- had supported persecutions or boycotts of ethnic Germans—were to be sent to concentration camps immediately; their children were to be removed for Germanization, and their wives either sent to the camps as well, if they had also supported the actions, or removed for Germanization.[4]
Persons of categories III and IV were sent to Germany as labourers and subject to conscription into the Wehrmacht.
Himmler had the plan prepared and then ordered it to be administered by the Wilhelm Frick's Interior Ministry. The Deutsche Volksliste was mandated in March 1941 by decrees of the Minister of the Interior of the Reich (Frick) and of Heinrich Himmler in his function as Kommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums (Commissioner for the strengthening of Germanhood).[12] Thus, Himmler's plan was finally implemented a year and a half after the ad-hoc categorization processes had begun in Poland. On 3 April 1941 it was expanded to all western Polish areas (Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, Upper Silesia, and parts of East Prussia).
The nationality policy in Upper Silesia was different from the one applied in other Polish areas included into Reich. The motivation for the difference was the different local economic conditions and the necessity to keep qualified manpower essential to Silesian heavy industry. In some historical analyses, it has also been noticed, although less explicitly, that nationality policy of local German elites was also deliberately different. Apparently, Gauleiter Josef Wagner, as well as his successor, Fritz Bracht, saw the necessity to exclude Silesian people from qualification made only on the basis of race criteria which were emphasized by Heinrich Himmler when he was a Reich commissar for strengthening the Germanhood.
Fritz and Bracht used also political criteria, which made the situation similar to Pomerelia (former West Prussia, annexed to Danzig-West Prussia) and areas of Western Europe annexed by Germany (such as Alsace-Lorraine). This resulted in a comparatively low number of deportations and in the majority of Upper Silesians (both Silesian West-Slavs as well as ethnic Poles) being eligible for German citizenship, although their rights are alleged to have been limited compared to those of other German citizens.[13]
The German occupation authorities encouraged Poles to register with the Volksliste, and in many instances even compelled them to do so. In occupied Poland, the status of Volksdeutscher conferred many privileges, but one big disadvantage: Volksdeutsche were subject to conscription into the German military.
Polish response to the institution of the Deutsche Volksliste was mixed. Being accepted into Class III could mean keeping one's property, but it might also mean being sent to the Reich as a labourer or being conscripted into the Wehrmacht.
Polish citizens of German ancestry, who often identified themselves with the Polish nation, were confronted with the dilemma of whether to sign the Volksliste. This group included ethnic Germans whose families had lived in Poland proper for centuries, and Germans (who became citizens of Poland after 1920) from the part of Germany that had been transferred to Poland after World War I. Many such ethnic Germans had married Poles and remained defiant.[14] Often the choice was either to sign and be regarded as a traitor by the Polish, or not to sign and be treated by the German occupation as a traitor to the Germanic race. People who became Volksdeutsche were treated by Poles with special contempt, and the fact of them having signed the Volksliste constituted high treason according to the Polish underground law. Poles who preferred to stay with their friends and relatives sometimes resisted Nazi pressures to apply for the DVL, opting for deportation to the General Government over Germanization. Their children were often taken for Germanization while they were deported.[14]
Ethnic Poles from Silesia were also subject to pressure from Nazi authorities to sign category III or IV. In many cases people were imprisoned, tortured and their close ones threatened if they refused to sign; deportation to concentration camps was also common.
In some cases, individuals consulted with the Polish resistance first, before registering with the Volksliste. These Volksdeutsche played an important role in the intelligence activities of the Polish resistance, and were at times the primary source of information for the Allies. However, in the eyes of the postwar Communist government, having aided the non-Communist Polish resistance was not considered a mitigating factor; therefore, many of these double-agent Volksdeutsche were prosecuted after the war.
According to Robert Koehl, "By the introduction of the registration procedure known as the German National List (DVL) some 900,000 more 'Germans' were discovered, most of them semi-Polish minorities such as the Kassubians, the Masurians, and the local Upper Silesians whom the Germans called 'Wasserpolen'. A few thousand 're-Germanizeables' ...had also been shipped back to the Reich."[15]
The total number of registrants for the DVL are estimated to be approximately 2.7 million, with 1 million in classes I and II and the remaining 1.7 million in classes III and IV. In the General Government there were 120,000 Volksdeutsche.
| Annexed area | Deutsche Volksliste, early 1944 | |||
| Cat. I | Cat. II | Cat. III | Cat. IV | |
| Warthegau | 230,000 | 190,000 | 65,000 | 25,000 |
| Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia | 115,000 | 95,000 | 725,000 | 2,000 |
| East Upper Silesia | 130,000 | 210,000 | 875,000 | 55,000 |
| South East Prussia | 9,000 | 22,000 | 13,000 | 1,000 |
| Total | 484,000 | 517,000 | 1,678,000 | 83,000 |
| 2.75 million out of a total non-German population of 6.015 million | ||||
| Source: Wilhelm Deist, Bernhard R Kroener, Germany (Federal Republic). Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Germany and the Second World War, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 132,133, ISBN 0198208731, citing Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, p. 134 | ||||
After Germany occupied Yugoslavia, they introduced the Volksliste there; they also registered ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union. Many were resettled in the General Government or in parts of Poland occupied by the Germans, and many served in the German army.
At the end of the war, the files of the Deutsche Volksliste were generally found extant in the service registration departments of the respective local authorities. The bulk of these documents are today in Polish archives.
After the collapse of Nazi Germany, some Volksdeutsche were tried by the Polish authorities for high treason. Even now, in Poland the word Volksdeutsch is regarded as an insult, synonymous with traitor.