Resettlement, Evacuation and Displacement However, Nazi resettlement policies had already caused extensive population movements from 1939 onwards. The first step was the Heim ins Reich campaign (‘Back Home to the Reich’), whose implementation fell somewhere between voluntary relocation and forced resettlement. Resettlements under this initiative prefigured the demise of many German minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe. Heim ins Reich: the Nazi Resettlement Campaign The Nazis’ resettlement campaign Heim ins Reich had the main purpose of Germanising the annexed western Polish territories. In a secret protocol appended to the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of 28th September 1939 (the sequel to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 23rd August, both of which comprise the political framework of the Hitler-Stalin Pact), Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to relocate German minorities from the Soviet to the German spheres of influence. The resettlement and accommodation were organised and conducted by the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle or VoMi (Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans) and the Einwandererzentralstelle or EWZ (Central Office for Ethnic German Immigrants). Most resettlers were given housing in the Warthegau, Danzig-Western Prussia and Upper Silesia. The campaign started in 1939 with the resettlement of Baltic Germans from Estonia and, in 1940, from Latvia. The same year brought an influx of Germans from Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland (Galicia, the Narev region and Volhynia) and from Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia. Both these regions were also under Soviet occupation. An agreement between the German Reich and Romania resulted in the transfer of Germans from Southern Bukovina and Dobruja. Finally, Germans from Lithuania and Nachumsiedler (later resettlers) from Estonia and Latvia followed in early March 1941. By June 1941, about half a million Germans had been resettled in the territories of the Reich and the annexed territories on the basis of bilateral treaties. Most of those eligible for resettling were keen to do so since they feared political repression in, and expropriation by, the Soviet Union. Many simply believed they had little choice and were further swayed by a rather idealised notion of Germany. Nazi propaganda PROPAGANDA FOR CHILDREN: TIPP UND TAPP Berlin (German Reich), 1941 The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans), the authority responsible for the resettlement operation, also wanted to appeal to children and therefore commissioned one of the earliest German comics. It tells the story of a boy from Volhynia who sets out with his dachshund to ‘come home to the Reich’. ANDREA KAMP
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