Gottschee County (German: Grafschaft Gottschee, Slovene: Kočevsko) refers to the former German speaking region in the Duchy of Carniola (German: Herzogtum Krain), a crownland of the Habsburg Empire, located in modern day Slovenia. The traditional German dialect of the region is called Gottscheerish or Granish.
The German-speaking population, the Gottscheers, first colonized the area around 1330 and the area remained a German language island within the Slovene Lands until World War II, when the area came under Italian control in accordance with a secret pact between the Third Reich and Italy. In 1941, about 97 percent of the German population were resettled from the region after signing an agreement on relocation. That marked the end of Gottschee as a German language island. After the war, the area was partially resettled by Slovenians from various places, creating a mixed dialect area. Only a few hundred Gottscheers remained. Today their dialect is faced with extinction.
After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Yugoslavia initially remained neutral, but after a coup in 1941 adopted a staunch anti-Axis position. This led to a German and Italian invasion and occupation of the Kingdom. The Gottscheer were in the Italian occupation zone after Yugoslavia's surrender, which Hitler could not abide. Nazi racial policy dictated that these Germans had to be brought back into the Reich. The Nazis established a branch of the Resettlement Administration (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, or "VoMi") at Maribor for this purpose.
While some of the Gottscheer community leaders had embraced National Socialism and agitated for "assistance" and "repatriation" to the Reich before the German invasion in 1941, most Gottscheer had no interest in reuniting with Greater Germany or joining the Nazis. They had been integrated into society with their Slovene neighbours, often intermarrying among Slovenes and becoming bilingual while maintaining their Germanic language and customs since their arrival in the region in the late 14th century. However, propaganda and Nazi ideology prevailed, and the VoMi began planning the Gottschee "resettlement" (forced expulsion) from Kočevje which was in the Italian occupation zone to the "Ranner Dreieck" or Brežice Triangle, the region now known as the Lower Sava Valley, located between the confluences of the Krka, Sotla, and Sava rivers.
To achieve that goal, accommodation had to be made for the Gottschee "settlers" and some 46,000 Slovenians in the "Rann Triangle" region were forcibly deported to Eastern Germany for potential Germanization or forced labour beginning in November 1941. Shortly before that time, a largely transparent propaganda effort was aimed toward both the Gottscheer and the Slovenes, promising the latter equivalent farmland in Germany for the land relinquished in Lower Styria. The Gottscheer were given Reich passports and transportation to the Lower Sava Valley just after the forced departure of the Slovenes. Most Gottschee left their homes because of coercion and threats since the VoMi had a deadline of December 31, 1941 for the mass movement of both groups. Though many Gottscheer did receive farmland and households, these were of lesser quality as their own, and many were in disarray from the hasty forced expulsion of the Slovenians.
From the time of their arrival to the end of the war, Gottschee farmers were harassed and killed by Josip Broz Tito's Partisans. The attempt to resettle the Gottscheer was a costly failure for the Nazi regime, since extra manpower was required to protect the farmers from the partisans.
The deported Slovenes were taken to several camps in Saxony, where they were forced to work on German farms or in factories run by German industries from 1941-1945. The forced labourers were not always kept in formal concentration camps, but often just vacant buildings where they slept until the next day's labour took them outside these quarters. Toward the end of the war, these camps were liberated by American and Red Army troops, and repatriated refugees later returned to Yugoslavia.
The fate of the resettled Gottschee was not much better, and in some cases much worse. At the end of the war the Nazi regime in the region evaporated as soldiers and administrators fled. All Gottschee were killed by partisans. Large group of these refugees who had crossed the border into Austria were forcibly returned to Yugoslavia by British occupation troops and later executed by Yugoslav partisans as traitors. Both the Slovenians in the Lower Sava Valley and the Gottschee of Kočevje suffered greatly as a result of Yugoslav communism and left ideological policies.
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