‘Resettlement’ refers to a form of migration, usually directed and organised by the state, involving groups whose main centres of settlement are to be deliberately and permanently relocated. This geographical relocation often, though not always, takes place under duress.

The term ‘resettlement’ is used in politics as well as in the fields of history and migration studies. It refers to the organised geographical relocation of population groups, which takes place either for economic reasons (e.g. for opencast lignite mining) or to manage refugee and migration flows. One example of this is the distribution of refugees and displaced persons across the Federal Republic of Germany through state-run ‘federal resettlement programmes’ from 1949 to 1962. At that time, to relieve the pressure on the main host states of Bavaria, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, over a million displaced persons from the East were resettled on a voluntary basis to other Federal States.

In the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR, Germans who had been forced to flee or had been displaced from their areas of settlement at the end of and in the aftermath of the Second World War were referred to as‘resettlers’from 1945 to 1951, in accordance with the political terminology in force there. This term was used by the Soviet Military Administration to supplant the undesirable terms ‘refugees’ and ‘displaced persons’. In the Soviet political tradition, the term ‘resettlement’ had already been used in connection with the mass deportations of Volga Germans and other Russian Germans to the east.^[1] Later, as had already happened in the West, the term‘newcitizens’ became widespread in the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR.

A historical precedent for the resettlements of the 20th century was the Greek-Turkish ‘population exchange’ under the Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923. In this treaty, for the first time in European history, a comprehensive and forced resettlement of national minorities of different ethnic or religious affiliations was retrospectively sanctioned at international level. Around 1.3 million Greeks from Asia Minor and 400,000 Turks from northern Greece were affected by this resettlement.^[2] As a prototype for later resettlement projects, the Treaty of Lausanne was – and remains – controversial amongst contemporary politicians and historians: Whilst some viewed it as an unavoidable measure, as it served to reduce conflict, others condemned it as an ‘inhuman precedent’ and as a model for the forced migrations during and after the Second World War.

Both in historical research and in contemporary usage, the term ‘resettlement’ is used primarily in connection with Nazi population policy and the large-scale population transfers between 1939 and 1945. Here, it refers to the so-called ‘repatriation’ of German minority groups from their settlement areas in Southern, Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe to the territories of Eastern Europe then occupied by the German Reich. This campaign of ‘ethnic land consolidation’, directed by the Nazi resettlement bureaucracy, went hand in hand with the expulsion of other ethnic groups and racially motivated mass murder in the occupied territories, and was intended to mark the beginning of the Nazi regime’s long-term policy of settlement, expulsion, ‘ethnic replacement’ and extermination.

English: resettlement, relocation; French: déplacement; Polish: przesiedlenie; Czech: přesídlení; Slovak: presídlenie; Russian: pereselenie

The states which, following the First World War – following the collapse of the German Empire and the dissolution of the multinational empires of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Tsarist Empire – were newly established or re-established in East Central and South-Eastern Europe in 1918/19, some of them comprised sizeable national minorities. To protect these groups from discrimination and persecution, contractual safeguards were introduced in the Paris Suburban Treaties. Compliance with these was to be monitored by the League of Nations, whose powers of supervision and sanctions were, however, limited.

These national minorities also included more than ten million so-called‘Germans abroad’, primarily in the Baltic states, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia and Italy. During the Weimar Republic, providing cultural and political support for‘Germans abroad’ was regarded by all political factions as an important task of the Reich Government’s foreign policy. In addition, numerous private and semi-governmental institutions were established with the aim of improving the situation of German minority groups and encouraging them to remain in their homelands, not least with a view to securing a long-term revision of Germany’s eastern border.

With the National Socialists’ rise to power in 1933 and Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations on 19 October 1933, a reorientation of policy towards‘Germans abroad’ began. To this end, the work of associations, federations and institutes – such as the‘Association for German Culture Abroad’ (VDA) or the‘German Institute for Foreign Affairs’ (DAI) in Stuttgart – were, in some cases, forcibly ‘reorganised’ and placed under the control of the NSDAP. Rudolf Hess (1894–1987), the deputy to Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and ‘patron of the German diaspora’, established, at the urging of the geopolitician Karl Haushofer (1869–1946), established a ‘Council of Ethnic Germans’ as a coordinating body for the institutions and party organisations involved in ‘ethnic policy’. This was replaced in October 1935 by the so-called ‘Kursell Office’, which was taken over by SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz (1891–1974) in January 1937 and renamedthe ‘Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle’ (VoMi). In the years that followed, the VoMi became the leading authority for the NSDAP’s ‘ethnic culture work’. From July 1938, it reported directly to Hitler and had been granted general authority by him in ‘ethnic culture matters’. In October 1939, it was integrated into the apparatus of the ‘Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity’ (RKF) under the aegis of the ‘Reichsführer-SS’ Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945). From then on, as the ‘ ’, it was primarily responsible for carrying out the resettlement and ‘repatriation’ of German ‘ethnic groups’ from Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, as well as for providing the resettlement camps.

Among the series of resettlements carried out during the Nazi regime, the resettlement of the South Tyroleans stands as a prototypical example. It marks a departure from the ‘ethnic policy’ of the Weimar Republic, the aim of which was to preserve German minorities in their homelands rather than to resettle them. However, the Nazi leadership’s attitude towards Germans abroad was primarily and openly instrumental in nature. It regarded them as a resource to be utilised for its alliance policy and its expansionist settlement plans, particularly in Eastern Europe. In the case of South Tyrol, the interests of the approximately 250,000 inhabitants of German-Austrian origin were sacrificed to an alliance between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with the aim of securing Nazi Germany’s rise to power.

Italy, which had received the province of South Tyrol in 1919 as a reward for switching sides during the First World War in favour of the Entente, and which, since the Fascists’ seizure of power, had pursued a systematic, but largely unsuccessful policy of assimilation since the Fascists came to power, pressed for a definitive solution to the South Tyrol issue following the German annexation of Austria in March 1938, and for the resettlement of the German-speaking population, which accounted for around 80 per cent of the resident population. So as not to jeopardise his alliance with Italy, Hitler agreed to this demand. On 16 June 1939, he instructed Himmler to prepare for the ‘deportation’ of 30,000 South Tyroleans and to arrange employment for them in Germany. According to Himmler in a memorandum dated 30 May 1939, the ‘strategic ultimate goal’ was the resettlement of 200,000 South Tyroleans ‘in a process that may be historically unprecedented in its generosity’, which, however, was to be carried out in stages due to the lack of a suitable resettlement area. Germany was therefore to create ‘space in towns and villages’ ‘somewhere within its sphere of influence, e.g. in the East, [...] if possible in an area inhabited exclusively by people of foreign origin’, which would first have to be ‘cleared of all its inhabitants’.^[3] Until the “resettlement of the entire ethnic group in a single region” became possible, they were to be accommodated in Germany for the time being, in order to remedy the labour shortage in the armaments industry and in agriculture. Their future remained uncertain.

On 21 October 1939, Hitler and Mussolini signed the agreement on the resettlement of the German population. It suggested the ‘option’ of Germany to them; otherwise, they would have to accept their ‘Italianisation’. Responsibility for the organisation and implementation lay with the ‘Control Centre for Immigration and Repatriation’, which had been headed by SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Greifelt (1896–1949) since June 1939. It formed part of the personal staff of the ‘Reichsführer SS’ and was incorporated into the executive staff of the RKF (‘Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums’) in mid-October 1939. This institution coordinated further resettlement activities and – together with other departments of the RKF – formed the nerve centre of the Nazi resettlement apparatus.

In total, 86 per cent of South Tyrol’s German-speaking population voted in favour of resettlement to Germany. However, of the nearly 200,000 ‘optants’ who had voted in favour, only around 75,000 had actually been resettled by mid-1942, with the majority being accommodated in Austria, Bavaria and occupied Czechoslovakia.^[4] No designated resettlement area had been established by the end of the war.

The primary aim of the Nazi resettlement policy was initially, following the conquest of Poland, to ‘Germanise’ the western Polish territories incorporated intothe ‘Third Reich’– not, however, by ‘Germanising’ the Polish population,^[9] but by expelling them and settling Germans in their place, some of whom were resettlers, whilst others came from the Reich territory. The so-called‘Reichsgau Wartheland’in particular was intended to become a model Nazi region. Inthe ‘Warthegau’, as in the‘Gau Danzig-Westpreußen’, the majority of the resettlers were ‘stationed’ there from the East.

In his Reichstag speech on 6 October 1939, Hitler had justified the change of course in ethnic policy with the need for a ‘new order of ethnographic conditions’ in East Central and South-Eastern Europe, in the course of which ‘unsustainable fragments of German ethnicity’^[10] were to be ‘eliminated’ as a potential source of conflict. Just one day later, he entrusted the ‘Reichsführer SS’ Heinrich Himmler with the organisational leadership and overall responsibility for the resettlement and relocation of Germans from the territories now considered part of the Soviet sphere of influence, and for the ‘resettlement’ of Poles and Jews from the western Polish territories occupied or annexed by Germany. According to the ‘Secret Führer Decree’ of 7 October 1939, Himmler’s remit as ‘Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German National Character’ (RKF) was defined as follows:
“1. the repatriation of Reich Germans and ethnic Germans abroad who were eligible for permanent return to the Reich,
2. the elimination of the harmful influence of those sections of the population alien to the German people who posed a threat to the Reich and the German national community,
3. the establishment of new German settlement areas through resettlement, in particular by settling Reich Germans and ethnic Germans returning from abroad.”^[11]

The RKF’s area of responsibility rapidly developed into a major new special administrative body which, ‘with its tasks—including extensive population transfers, property transfers, resettlement planning, economic and financial resettlement aid, etc., intervened deeply in general politics and administration in the incorporated eastern territories”.^[12] Within the RKF, the Central Office for Ethnic Germans (VoMi) was responsible for the resettlement of the so-called ‘ethnic Germans and Germans from abroad ’. In the ‘incorporated territories’, offices of the ‘Higher SS and Police Leaders’ were set up, and corresponding ‘resettlement staffs’ and ‘work staffs’ were established in the individual districts to direct and supervise the resettlers. In addition, there were numerous other bodies responsible for the ‘care’ and supervision of the resettled families.

Following their resettlement from their regions of origin, the majority of resettlers were initially subjected to a ‘screening’ process in reception and ‘observation’ camps. In effect, this was a selection process based on predetermined racial classification levels, which were constructed according to physical appearance as well as ‘hereditary-biological’ or health-related categories. These ranged from Level I (“purely Nordic or Fälisch. Genetically healthy and first-class in terms of performance’) to Level IV (‘Completely unbalanced mixed-race individuals. Purely Eastern or Eastern Baltic. Persons with non-European features. Those of foreign blood. Genetically diseased. Persons whose appearance is unacceptable’.^[13] Political views, religious affiliation and potential for professional employment were also examined.

The outcome—and above all the ‘racial classification’—determined whether the resettlers were deemed worthy of being settled in the East as ‘O-cases’, or whether they were deported as ‘A-cases’ to the ‘Altreich’, where cheap labour was needed and they could be made available for military service more quickly (illnesses or physical disabilities could also contribute to classification as an ‘A-case’). Those assessed as ‘foreign-ethnic’ or ‘racially undesirable’ could, as ‘S-cases’, also be sent back to their regions of origin for ‘special treatment’ or deported to the General Government.

The Central Office for Immigration (EWZ), which carried out the racial assessment and naturalisation of resettlers, was subordinate within the RKF – as was the Central Office for Emigration (UWZ) responsible for the ‘resettlement’ of Poles and Jews – to theReich Security Main Office’ (RSHA). The deportation of Poles and Jews from their areas of residence tothe ‘General Government’was initially intended to be directly coordinated with the arrival and settlement of ‘ethnic German returnees’ in the ‘incorporated territories’. However, from 15 March 1941 onwards, the deportations were largely suspended due to increasing transport and supply problems. The ambitious goals of the Nazi settlement planners and the far-reaching war plans in the East increasingly stood in each other’s way. Under these circumstances, the intended ‘ethnic land consolidation’ and the ‘Germanisation’ of the two new ‘Reichsgaue’ were not feasible either within the envisaged timeframe or to the intended extent.

The expropriated Poles were now increasingly ‘displaced’ within the ‘incorporated territories’ or sent as labourers to the ‘Altreich’ and other occupied countries. Quite a few Poles were also forced to work as labourers on their own farms for resettlers. According to the ‘Central Office for Resettlement’, the total number of Poles ‘resettled’ (i.e. transferred tothe ‘General Government’ or other occupied territories) from the Warthegau since the beginning of December 1939 as part of the 1st to 3rd ‘Near-Term Plans’ amounted to 435,167 people by the end of December 1944, according to figures from the ‘Central Office for Resettlement’. During the same period, 46,178 families, or 194,428 people, were ‘displaced’ withinthe ‘Warthegau’ itself. Including further ‘transfers’ to the ‘Altreich’ and elsewhere, this results in a total of around 630,000 displaced Poles.^[14]

In fact, the entire resettlement process was characterised by the cynical and instrumental nature of Nazi settlement and population policy. Whilst it appeared to the affected ‘foreign German’ groups as a ‘rescue’ from Sovietisation, it in fact served the Nazi regime as a stepping stone to a long-term policy of settlement, expulsion and ‘ethnic replacement policy’, which factored in the extermination of entire population groups and found its planning basis, from 1941 onwards, inthe ‘General Plan East’and the ‘General Resettlement Plan’. For the National Socialist ‘population engineers’, the German resettlers were, in words, welcome ‘fellow countrymen’, but in reality they were human resources whom the regime could dispose of at will – as a labour force for the colonisation of the occupied territories. Moreover, the resettlement served as a model case and testing ground for the far more extensive Nazi project of a comprehensive register for the ‘racial-biological’ recording, ‘mapping’ and selection of the entire population, not only within the German sphere of influence but also within the German ‘Altreich’.

This large-scale population policy project of resettlement was not, as is often assumed, financed solely on the principle of ‘restitution in kind’, i.e. from the ‘value mass of the occupied settlement areas’, through plunder and expulsion. It also received substantial funding from the RKF’s extraordinary budget. Between October 1939 and April 1941, some 800 million Reichsmarks were allocated for this purpose. However, the drawing down and allocation of funds for this massive expulsion and resettlement programme took place without a budget plan and without a detailed statement of expenditure. The German Siedlungsbank contributed a further 225,000 Reichsmark towards the refurbishment of resettlement farms in the ‘incorporated eastern territories’.^[15]

The specific resettlement operations involving the various groups of ‘ethnic Germans and Germans living abroad’differed depending on the respective circumstances (origin, background, motives, the role of propaganda, political and social pressure, timeframe, transport, accommodation, etc.). What all resettlers had in common, however, was that – having barely arrived in the ‘incorporated’ Polish territories – they were evacuated further west in the wake of the German defeat or fled from the advancing Red Army.

In principle, the resettlements following the Hitler–Stalin Pact were an irreversible process. Relatives of German ethnic groups who had already been resettled were denied the right to return to their former homelands. An exception to this were the approximately 51,000 Lithuanians of German descent who were resettled from their homeland in the spring of 1941. Around half of them were resettled back to Lithuania in a systematic operation beginning in June 1942, because the capacity of the reception camps in occupied Poland had by then been completely exhausted due to the glaring failings in planning by the resettlement bureaucracy. Following the German occupation of Lithuania in the summer of 1941, the resettlement office in Kauen/Kaunas/Kowno began its work in February 1942.

The offer to return initially applied only to those among the 30,500 Lithuanian Germans who had been classified as ‘suitable for resettlement in the East’ during their ‘screening’ and who had not yet been resettled in occupied Poland. However, many of the nearly 20,000 ‘A-cases’ earmarked for transfer to the ‘Altreich’ also sought a review of their classification and permission to return to Lithuania.^[22] The total number of returnees ultimately amounted to between 20,000 and 25,000 people.^[23]

The return of Germans to Lithuania, which had been occupied by the German Wehrmacht since June 1941, was linked to the ‘displacement’ and expropriation of other people without compensation. The German Security Service (SD) and the Lithuanian police carried out evictions to allocate people to their former farms or to farms belonging to others. Often, those thus ‘displaced’ were forced to remain on the farms in question on a temporary basis and work as farmhands for the returnees. Others were sent to the West as forced labourers. By October 1943, the resettlement of the Lithuanian Germans had been completed. This unique operation went hand in hand with the simultaneous displacement of the Polish and Lithuanian populations and the extermination of the Jews. It can “regarded as a prime example of the Third Reich’s inhuman, colonialist population policy.”^[24] Just one year later, the Germans in Lithuania fled from the advancing Red Army.

• Götz Aly: ‘The Final Solution’. Ethnic Cleansing and the Murder of the European Jews. Frankfurt am Main, 1995.
• Lars Bosse: ‘From the Baltic States to the Reichsgau Wartheland’, in: Michael Garleff (ed.): ‘German Balts, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich’. Vol. 1. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2001 (The Baltic States in History and the Present 1/I), pp. 297–387.
• Stephan Döring: The Resettlement of the Volhynian Germans in the Years 1939 to 1940. Frankfurt am Main et al. 2001 (Military History Studies 3).
• Klaus Eisterer, Rolf Steininger (eds.): The Option. South Tyrol between Fascism and National Socialism. Innsbruck 1989.
• Maria Fiebrandt: Selection for the Settler Society. The Inclusion of Ethnic Germans in Nazi Hereditary Health Policy in the Context of the Resettlements 1939–1945. Göttingen 2014 (Publications of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research into Totalitarianism 55).
• Wilhelm Fielitz: The Stereotype of the Volhynian German Resettler. Popularisations between ‘Language Island’ Research and Nazi Propaganda. Marburg 2000 (Publications of the Commission for German and East European Folklore within the German Society for Folklore e. V. 82).
• Jürgen von Hehn: The Resettlement of the Baltic Germans. Marburg 1984 (Marburg Studies on Eastern Europe 40).
• Isabel Heinemann: ‘Race, Settlement, German Blood’. The SS Main Office for Race and Settlement and the Racial Reorganisation of Europe. Göttingen 2003 (Moderne Zeit 2).
• Dirk Jachomowski: The Resettlement of the Germans from Bessarabia, Bukovina and Dobruja. From an Ethnic Group in Romania to a ‘Settlement Bridge’ on the Reich’s Border. Munich 1984 (Publication Series of the South-East German Historical Commission 32).
• Robert Lewis Koehl: RKFDV. German resettlement and population policy 1939–1945. A history of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom. Cambridge 1957 (Harvard Historical Monographs 31).
• Ortfried Kotzian: The Resettlers. The Germans from Western Volhynia, Galicia, Bukovina, Bessarabia, Dobruja and the Carpathian Ukraine. Munich 2005 (Study Series of the East German Cultural Council Foundation 11).
• Markus Leniger: National Socialist ‘Volkstumsarbeit’ and Resettlement Policy 1939–1945. From the Care of Minorities to the Selection of Settlers. Berlin 2006 (Historical Studies 6).
• Valdis O. Lumans: Himmler’s Auxiliaries. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe 1933–1945. Chapel Hill, London 1993.
• Ute Schmidt: The Germans from Bessarabia. A Minority from South-Eastern Europe (1814 to the present day). Cologne, Weimar, Vienna, 3rd ed., 2006.
• Harry Stossun: The Resettlement of Germans from Lithuania during the Second World War. Studies on the Fate of a German Ethnic Group in the East. Marburg 1993 (Historical and Regional Studies on East Central Europe 12).
• Andreas Strippel: Nazi Ethnic Policy and the Reorganisation of Europe. Racial Selection by the Immigration Central Office of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (1939–1945). Paderborn 2011.

[1] Michael Schwartz: Resettlers (term used in the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR) in: Detlef Brandes, Holm Sundhaussen, Stefan Troebst (eds.): Encyclopaedia of Displacements. Deportation, Forced Resettlement and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th-Century Europe, Vienna/Cologne/Weimar 2010, p. 678.

[2] Sundhausen, Holm: Lausanne (Treaty of, 1923), in: Ibid. / Konrad Clewing (eds.): Encyclopaedia of the History of South-Eastern Europe, 2nd, expanded and updated edition, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2016, pp. 560–562, here p. 561.

[3] This and the following quotation are taken from the reprint in: Dietrich André Loeber (ed.): A Forced Choice. The Resettlement of the German Balts from Estonia and Latvia 1939–1941. Documentation. Neumünster ²1974, pp. 8–10.

[4] Rolf Steininger: South Tyroleans. In: Detlef Brandes, Holm Sundhausen, Stefan Troebst (eds.): Encyclopaedia of Expulsions, Deportations, Forced Resettlement and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th-Century Europe. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2010, pp. 629–631, here p. 631.

[5] Quoted from the reprint in: Erwin Oberländer: The Hitler–Stalin Pact of 1939. The End of East-Central Europe? Frankfurt am Main 1989, p. 136.

[6] This and the following figures are taken from the statistics of the Central Immigration Office (EWZ) dated 30 November 1944, as reprinted in Bosse: *From the Baltic States*, p. 307.

[7] See Kotzian: The Resettlers, p. 137; Martin Broszat: National Socialist Policy towards Poland 1939–1945, Stuttgart 1961, p. 100.

[8] As reprinted in Bosse: *Vom Baltikum*, p. 307. Despite some unclear details, these official statistics from the EWZ are the most accurate regarding the entire complex of Nazi resettlements. The total figure given at the end is not entirely correct; when all the individual items are added together, the total comes to 1,004,773. It is unclear what accounts for the difference of 25,505 people.

[9] According to the ‘Deutsche Volksliste’, from 1941 onwards, former Polish and Danzig citizens, as well as other so-called ‘Germanised’ Poles, were also able to apply for German citizenship (see OME Lexicon ‘Deutsche Volksliste’).

[10] Quoted from Max Domarus (ed.): Hitler. Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945, Vol. 2/1, Wiesbaden 1965, p. 1383.

[11] Quoted from Leniger: National Socialist ‘Volkstumsarbeit’, p. 62.

[12] Martin Broszat, National Socialist Policy towards Poland 1939–1945, Stuttgart 1961 (Series of the Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2), p. 63.

[13] Quoted from Schmidt, *The Germans from Bessarabia*, p. 183; Jachomowski, *Resettlement*, pp. 139ff.

[14] Czesław Łuczak: The Resettlement of the Polish Population in the So-called Territories Annexed to the Reich 1939–1945. Selected sources and commentary. Poznań 1969 (Documenta occupationis 8), pp. 118–121; cf. Heinemann: ‘Race, Settlement, German Blood’, pp. 230ff.

[15] Leniger, ‘NS “Volkstumsarbeit”’, p. 65 and note 218.

[16] Bosse: *On the Baltic States*, p. 314

[17] Bosse: *On the Baltic States*, p. 303.

[18] Quoted from Schmidt: The Germans from Bessarabia, p. 185.

[19] Ibid., p. 186.

[20] Ibid., p. 223.

[21] Ibid., pp. 252ff.; Jachomowski: The Resettlement, p. 196.

[22] Stossun, The Resettlements, p. 144.

[23] Ibid., p. 171.

[24] Ibid., p. 230.

Ute Schmidt: Resettlement. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2019. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32703 (accessed 24 August 2020).