Back فولكس دويتشه Arabic Folksdoyçe Azerbaijani Фольксдойчэ Byelorussian Фолксдойче Bulgarian Volksdeutsche Catalan Volksdeutsche Czech Volksdeutsche German Volksdeutsche Esperanto Volksdeutsche Spanish Volksdeutsche Basque
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 Volksdeutsche of Łódź greeting German cavalry in 1939 | |
 Volksdeutsche meeting in occupied Warsaw, 1940 |
In Nazi German terminology, Volksdeutsche (German pronunciation: [ˈfɔlksˌdɔʏtʃə] ) were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship."[1] The term is the nominalised plural of volksdeutsch, with Volksdeutsche denoting a singular female, and Volksdeutscher, a singular male. The words Volk and völkisch conveyed the meanings of "folk".[2]
Ethnic Germans living outside Germany shed their identity as Auslandsdeutsche (Germans abroad), and morphed into the Volksdeutsche in a process of self-radicalisation.[3] This process gave the Nazi regime the nucleus around which the new Volksgemeinschaft was established across the German borders.[3]
Volksdeutsche were further divided into "racial" groups—minorities within a state minority—based on special cultural, social, and historic criteria elaborated by the Nazis.[4]
- ^ Bergen, Doris (1994). "The Nazi Concept of 'Volksdeutsche' and the Exacerbation of Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1939-45". Journal of Contemporary History. 29 (4): 569–582. doi:10.1177/002200949402900402. S2CID 159788983 – via JSTOR.
- ^ As to older meanings of völkisch, see "Völkisch movement".
- ^ a b Wolf, Gerhard (2017). "Negotiating Germanness: National Socialist Germanization policy in the Wartheland'" (PDF). Journal of Genocide Research. 19 (2): 215. doi:10.1080/14623528.2017.1313519. S2CID 152244621.
- ^ Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945, 1993, p. 23.