User:Gopp22/Germans of Serbia

Germans of Serbia (existing article): Germans of Serbia

This article is a start-class article and associated with two WikiProjects around Serbia (low-importance) and Germany (mid-importance) to increase the coverage of topics around those countries. My idea is to make edits in order to improve the article with more historical information and credible sources.

Early History
The history of Germans in the territory of present-day Serbia (in Serbian, the population is referred to as Podunavski Nemci/Švabe, in English as Danube Swabians, and in German as Donauschwaben) dates back to the turn of the seventeenth century and is connected with the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from Pannonia. At that time, the Habsburg state began establishing settlements in the areas abandoned by the Turks.

WWII Occupation
During the occupation in the Banat, the Backa, Baranja, and Croatia, after April 1941, the German authorities in control of the region recruited ethnic Germans for Waffen SS by way of conscription.

Post-WWII
In the latter half of the war and post war period (between 1945-1948), of the ethnic German civilians left in the Yugoslav region, approximately 51,000 men, women, and children died in camps where the conditions were maintained to cause death. Debate between different groups exists as to whether or not the violence that occurred against ethnic Germans in the Yugoslav region during this time was in fact genocide.

After the region was liberated by the Soviet Red Army in late 1944, some ethnic Germans fled the Banat region; approximately three-fifths stayed and subsequently suffered by way of disenfranchisement and incarceration due to their association with the Nazi regime.

Present Day
TBD