Established in 1935 as part of the process of ‘Gleichschaltung’ and the secret centralisation of ethnic policy under National Socialist auspices, the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle only came into its own with the SS’s entry into the political arena at the end of 1936. The organisation’s name drew on an ethnically defined group designation which had been coined shortly after the First World War by the völkisch right to refer to ‘those persons’ who, whilst ‘speaking German and being of German stock and blood, no longer belong to the German Reich but have put down roots abroad’.^[1] The reference to ‘ethnic Germans’ distinguished the VoMi’s core remit from that of the NSDAP’s Overseas Organisation (AO), which had been exclusively responsible for Reich citizens abroad since July 1935. Its self-description as an ‘intermediary body’ seemed to suggest a mediating role; however, the VoMi soon began to act as a command centre which, regardless of its never fully clarified position between the Party, the SS, the ministerial bureaucracy and the Führer’s immediate entourage, it claimed the status of a ‘Supreme Reich Authority’.^[2] The organisational structure, reporting lines, tasks and working methods of the VoMi did not follow any fixed guidelines, but changed in line with the prevailing political situation and the directives of the Nazi leadership. They can therefore only be meaningfully described in the context of individual phases of development.^[3]

The institutional precursor to the VoMi was the ‘Volksdeutscher Rat’ (Council of Ethnic Germans), formed at the end of 1933, which was established at the end of 1933 on the initiative of Rudolf Hess, the ‘deputy to the Führer’ (1894–1987) as a coordinating body for the reorganisation of ethnic policy. In the autumn of 1935, the comparatively open ‘Council’ was replaced by a covert ‘Ethnic German Party Office’, which was known as the ‘Kursell Office’ or the ‘Central Office’ after its head. Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946), who served as ‘Foreign Policy Commissioner’ and ‘Adviser on Ethnic German Issues’ on Hess’s staff, brought this little-known agency well within the sphere of influence of Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945), when Werner Lorenz (1891–1974), who had no expertise in the field, as head and Hermann Behrends (1907–1948), a confidant of Heydrich, as chief of staff, two high-ranking SS and SD officers took the helm.^[4] With the gradual placement under its authority of the ‘Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland’ (VDA) and the ‘Bund Deutscher Osten’ as umbrella organisations for ‘ethnic and border region work’, the ‘Deutsches Ausland-Institut’ and the ‘German Academy’ as leading cultural-policy institutions, as well as the ‘German Foundation’ and the ‘United Finance Offices’ as funding instruments, the VoMi was largely able to establish itself throughout the Reich in 1937–38 as the ‘supreme command centre for all ethnic German affairs’.^[5] In parallel, efforts were made to pacify and bring under control the leadership of ethnic groups abroad—which had been shaken by factional strife—and to ensure their strict alignment with Berlin’s foreign policy directives, which could range from renouncing any ‘ethnic struggle’ to the deliberate destabilisation of a ‘host state’. From March 1938, the VoMi leadership sought to consolidate the powers relating to ethnic affairs, which were scattered amongst the Reich ministries, into a ‘Reich Commissariat’ subordinate to Ribbentrop as the new Foreign Minister, with Lorenz to head it as State Secretary.^[6] However, after Hitler had rejected such a formal arrangement, it was a secret Führer decree of July 1938 that authorised the VoMi to ensure the “uniform coordination of all state and party bodies” and the “uniform deployment of the resources available in all bodies for ethnic and borderland issues”.^[7]

A completely new sphere of activity opened up for the VoMi when, in 1938–39, against the backdrop of the ‘South Tyrol question’, the ‘Sudeten crisis’ and the ‘Four-Year Plan’, the idea of an organised ‘repatriation’ of Germans living abroad began to take shape for the first time since the World War, and, with the occupation and partition of Poland, ultimately culminated in a large-scale programme of ‘ethnic land consolidation’.^[8] As is well known, one day after his Reichstag speech on 6 October 1939, in which he announced a reorganisation of the ‘ethnographic conditions’ in Eastern Europe, Hitler issued the Reichsführer-SS with a comprehensive mandate for the resettlement and relocation of ‘ethnic Germans’ and the removal of unpopular sections of the population.^[9] As ‘Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German National Character’ (RKF), Himmler established a command staff of the same name and otherwise made use of various old and new SS departments.^[10] To carry out the resettlements, he relied on the VoMi, which was now personally subordinate to him in this role. With the help of a paramilitary resettlement apparatus, a network of cooperating experts and thousands of staff and volunteers, the VoMi succeeded in ‘resettle’ around 500,000‘ethnic Germans’ from their historical homelands in Eastern Europe in the course of so-called ‘contract resettlements’ and direct them into the German sphere of influence. At times, it maintained more than 1,500 camps for this purpose, in which well over 100,000 resettlers were housed under often precarious conditions and subjected to a wide range of disciplinary and ideologically motivated harassment before they were finally settled or otherwise assigned to ‘labour force’.^[11] The link between ‘Heim-ins-Reich’ operations and mass expulsions, particularly of the Polish population, was fundamental to the RKF programme. However, connections to the extermination of the Jews were also evident in many instances, including within the VoMi’s sphere of responsibility.^[12] Nevertheless, the resettlements were portrayed as ‘the most massive state-directed migration of peoples of all time’ and staged as national media events.^[13]

After Hitler had transferred the ‘political’ powers to the Reichsführer-SS by verbal decree at the end of 1940, Ribbentrop and the Foreign Office found themselves compelled the following spring to reach an agreement limiting their say in matters of ethnicity to diplomatic issues. Consequently, in June 1941, the VoMi was finally fully incorporated into the SS empire and, as the ‘RKF Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle’, placed on an equal footing with the other SS offices.^[14] As Himmler had already been appointed by Hess in February, even within the NSDAP, as the ‘official responsible for all ethnic affairs’, he subsequently set about consolidating the specialist expertise of all the SS offices involved – the VoMi, RKF, the Race and Resettlement Office and the Reich Security Main Office – into a central coordinating body, which was sanctioned by Hitler in March 1942 as the party’s own ‘Main Office for Ethnic Affairs’.^[15] In this context, the VoMi had been responsible, from November 1941 at the latest, for “all ethnic work aimed at consolidating German identity”. This included not only the ongoing resettlement tasks but also – as a new area of activity – the lead role in the forced assimilation of people deemed ‘capable of Germanisation’ or ‘capable of re-Germanisation’. It remained responsible for the leadership of the German ‘ethnic groups’ abroad and, ultimately, for the registration, administration and care of the ‘ethnic Germans’ in the newly occupied territories.^[16] It was particularly in these latter areas that it took on important new responsibilities as the war progressed, especially in South-Eastern Europe and within the territory of the Soviet Union. Backed by an informal decision by Hitler, which extended the RKF’s remit to the entire occupied Soviet Union,^[17] a ‘Special Command R(ussia)’ of the VoMi had been operating there since autumn 1941, which directly and extensively involved Germans in the Black Sea region in the extermination of the Jews.^[18] Expanded into an inter-departmental ‘Volksdeutsche Command Centre’ of the SS, the unit turned its attention from the summer of 1942 to the implementation of selected settlement experiments in Ukraine – in anticipation of far more extensive projects, such as those envisaged by the notorious General Plan East.^[19] In view of the Red Army’s advance, the VoMi once again prioritised resettlements into the Reich and the annexed territories during the final two years of the war. Admittedly, these now took the form of organised mass exoduses, which, despite their improvised and at times chaotic nature, were referred to as ‘administrative resettlements’. After the ‘repatriation’ of around 300,000 ‘ethnic Germans’ from the occupied Soviet territories by the VoMi commandos there had already begun in 1943 and continued into 1944, Himmler and Lorenz initiated evacuation measures in the countries of south-eastern Europe in the late summer of that same year. In the course of numerous individual operations – all of which were launched belatedly and resulted in heavy losses – the VoMi had set a further 500,000 people in motion by the end of 1944, with a not inconsiderable proportion of the VoMi population either losing contact with the convoy en route or refusing to comply with the resettlement order from the outset.

When the VoMi headquarters in Berlin had to be evacuated in early 1945 following several bomb hits, in which a large proportion of its records were also lost, the once-powerful organisation fell apart within a matter of weeks. VoMi chief Lorenz was taken prisoner by the British following a brief stint with the Waffen-SS. In the eighth Nuremberg follow-up trial, he was charged, along with 14 other SS ‘Germanisation’ officials, including RKF Chief of Staff Ulrich Greifelt (1896–1949) and RuSHA Director Otto Hofmann (1896–1982), was charged with, amongst other things, crimes against humanity and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment in March 1948.^[20] Whilst Lorenz ultimately served only a third of his sentence, his deputy Behrends was sentenced to death by a Yugoslav court in 1948 and executed, though not for his role in the VoMi, but as a ‘Senior SS and Police Leader’ in Belgrade in 1944. By contrast, the preliminary investigations into members of the VoMi’s Special Commando R, which were opened in 1959 by the Ludwigsburg Central Office for the Prosecution of Nazi Crimes, did not result in any further charges, despite considerable effort.^[21] Commander Horst Hoffmeyer (1903–1944), who oversaw all major contractual resettlements between 1939 and 1941, committed suicide in 1944 to avoid capture by the Red Army.

• Marcus Leniger: Resettlements – The Ambitions and Failures of the SS’s Resettlement Policy. In: Jan Erik Schulte (ed.): The SS, Himmler and Wewelsburg. Paderborn 2009 (Publications of the Wewelsburg District Museum 7), pp. 274–295.
• Valdis O. Lumans: Himmler’s Auxiliaries. The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe 1933–1945. Chapel Hill/London 1993.

[1] As early as October 1919, von Reichenau, Chairman of the German Protection League, sought to introduce the term ‘Volksdeutsche’ into the official vocabulary of the Weimar migration policy using this definition; 2nd meeting of the ‘Working Group for German Migration’ on 15 October 1919, minutes by Friedrich Lindequist, Federal Archives Berlin R 8023/119.

[2] As stated in October 1939 by Rimann, Head of the Press, Information and Association Affairs Department at the VoMi, in a letter to the German Institute for Foreign Affairs. Federal Archives, Berlin, R 57neu/84. See also Hans Buchheim: ‘Legal Status and Organisation of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German National Character’. In: Expert Report of the Institute for Contemporary History. Munich 1958 (Publications of the Institute for Contemporary History 1), pp. 239–279, here pp. 259ff.

[3] Fundamental works: Hans-Adolf Jacobsen: National Socialist Foreign Policy 1933–1938. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin 1968, pp. 160–252; Lumans: *Auxiliaries*; Tammo Luther: *Ethnic Policy of the German Reich 1933–1938*. Germans Abroad Caught Between Traditionalists and National Socialists. Stuttgart 2004 (Historische Mitteilungen, Supplements 55).

[4] Valdis O. Lumans: Werner Lorenz – Head of the ‘Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle’. In: Ronald Smelser, Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the Death’s Head. Paderborn 2000, pp. 332–345. On Behrends, see Christian Ingrao: Hitler’s Elite. The Pioneers of Nazi Mass Murder. Berlin 2012, passim.

[5] Lorenz made this claim in a conversation with the management of the German Institute Abroad on 23 April 1937. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (ed.): Hans Steinacher. Federal Leader of the VDA 1933–1937. Memoirs and Documents. Boppard am Rhein 1970 (Publications of the Federal Archives 19), pp. 423–424.

[6] Karl Stuhlpfarrer: Resettlement in South Tyrol, 1939–1940. 2 vols. Vienna, Munich 1985, pp. 238–245.

[7] Quoted from Jacobsen: Foreign Policy (as in note 3), p. 243.

[8] On the popularity of the resettlement idea around 1938–39, see Conrad Franchot Latour: South Tyrol and the Berlin–Rome Axis, 1938–1945. Stuttgart 1962, pp. 22–42; Matthew Frank: *Expelling the Germans. British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context*. New York 2007 (Oxford Historical Monographs), pp. 29–38; Philipp Ther: *The Dark Side of Nation States. “Ethnic Cleansing” in Modern Europe*. Göttingen 2011, pp. 108–119. The ‘land consolidation’ metaphor for coercive population policies, introduced by the Pan-German League at the start of the First World War, was taken up by Hitler following the start of the Polish campaign.

[9] Michael Wildt: ‘A New Order of Ethnographic Relations’. Hitler’s Reichstag speech of 6 October 1939. In: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, online edition, 3/1 (2006), zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Wildt-1-2006 (accessed 5 January 2021).

[10] Robert L. Koehl: RKFDV. German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945. A History of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom. Cambridge 1957.

[11] See Marcus Leniger: National Socialist ‘Volkstumsarbeit’ and Resettlement Policy 1939–1945. From the Care of Minorities to the Selection of Settlers. Berlin 2006, pp. 91–147. With a focus on an organisation cooperating with the VoMi within the RKF programme: Isabel Heinemann: The SS Main Office for Race and Resettlement and the Racial Reorganisation of Europe. Göttingen 2003 (Modern Times. New Research on the Social and Cultural History of the 19th and 20th Centuries 2), pp. 187–415. An example of specialist literature on resettlement: Dirk Jachomowski: The Resettlement of the Germans of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Dobruja. From an Ethnic Group in Romania to a ‘Settlement Bridge’ on the Reich’s Border. Munich 1984 (Book Series of the South-East German Historical Commission 32).

[12] Cf. Götz Aly: ‘Judenumsiedlung’. Reflections on the political prehistory of the Holocaust. In: Ulrich Herbert (ed.): National Socialist Extermination Policy 1939–1945. New Research and Controversies. Frankfurt am Main 1998, pp. 67–97; Valdis O. Lumans: ‘A Reassessment of Volksdeutsche and Jews in the Volhynia-Galicia-Narew Resettlement’. In: Alan E. Steinweis, Daniel E. Rogers (eds.): The Impact of Nazism. New Perspectives on the Third Reich and Its Legacy. Lincoln, Nebraska 2003, pp. 81–100.

[13] Wilhelm Fielitz: The Stereotype of the Volhynian German Resettler. Popularisations between ‘Language Island’ Research and Nazi Propaganda. Marburg 2000 (Series of the Commission for German and East European Folklore within the German Society for Folklore e. V. 82); Gerhard Trimmel: The Nazi feature film ‘Heimkehr’. Strategies of Manipulation and Propaganda. Krems 2003. URL: silo.tips/download/gerald-trimmel-der-nationalsozialistische-spielfilm-heimkehr (accessed 5 January 2021). The quotation is taken from a speech by RKF Chief of Staff Greifelt in December 1939, reproduced in Leniger: Volkstumsarbeit (as in note 12), p. 225.

[14] Together with what is now known as the RKF Staff Headquarters under Ulrich Greifelt. Ingeborg Fleischhauer: Das Dritte Reich und die Germans in the Soviet Union. Munich 1983 (Series of the Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 46), p. 72. Martin Moll (ed.): “Führer Decrees” 1939–1945. An edition of all surviving directives issued in writing by Hitler during the Second World War in the fields of state, party, economy, occupation policy and military administration, which were not published in the Reich Law Gazette. Stuttgart 1997, p. 509. Lumans: *Auxiliaries*, pp. 207, 135–137.

[15] Buchheim: Legal Status (as in note 2), pp. 268ff; Czeslaw Madajczyk: The Main Office for Ethnic Affairs and the Germanic Coordination Centre. In: Ursula Büttner (ed.): The Regime of Injustice. International Research on National Socialism. Festschrift for Werner Jochmann on his 65th birthday. Vol. 1: Ideology – System of Rule – Impact in Europe. Hamburg 1986 (Hamburg Contributions to Social and Contemporary History 21), pp. 261–270.

[16] Fleischhauer: *Das Dritte Reich* (as in note 15), pp. 73–74.

[17] Buchheim: Legal Status (as in note 2), pp. 278; Christian Gerlach: Calculated Murders. German Economic and Extermination Policy in Belarus 1941–1944. Hamburg 1999, pp. 112ff.

[18] Fleischhauer: The Third Reich (as in note 15), pp. 118–150; Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. Einsatzgruppe D in the Southern Soviet Union 1941–1943. Hamburg 2003, pp. 254–294; Eric C. Steinhart: Creating Killers. The Nazification of the Black Sea Germans and the Holocaust in Southern Ukraine, 1941–1944. In: Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 50 (2012), pp. 57–74.

[19] For an overview of the settlement attempts: Wendy Lower: Hitler’s ‘Garden of Eden’ in the Ukraine. Nazi Colonialism, Volksdeutsche and the Holocaust 1941–1944. In: Jonathan Petropoulos, John K. Roth (eds.): Gray Zones. Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath. New York 2005 (War and Genocide 8), pp. 185–204. An introduction to the GPO: Isabel Heinemann et al.: Science, Planning, Expulsion. The Nazis’ General Plan East. An exhibition by the German Research Foundation. Bonn 2006. URL: www.dfg.de/pub/generalplan/downloads/dfg_wissenschaft_planung_vertreibung_katalog.pdf (accessed 5 January 2021).

[20] Isabel Heinemann: Race, Living Space, Genocide. The National Socialist Ethnic Policy in the Focus of Case VIII of the Nuremberg Follow-up Trials. In: Kim C. Priemel, Alexa Stiller (eds.): NMT. The Nuremberg Military Tribunals between History, Justice and the Creation of Law. Hamburg 2013, pp. 100–126.

[21] See the article on the reopening of investigations against members of the ‘Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz’ in the late 1990s: Shot down without mercy. Alfons Götzfrid, a Russian-German, is just one of many ‘late repatriates’ accused of Nazi crimes. Prosecutors are investigating more than 1,000 cases. In: Der Spiegel 52/12 (March 1998). URL: www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-7837812.html (accessed 5 January 2021).

Frank Görlich: Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi). In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32870 (accessed 5 January 2021).