Volksdeutsche

The term set Volksdeutsche apart from citizens of the Reich (Reichsdeutsche) and carried a racial meaning for the Nazis. The Third Reich treated the German minorities of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia as its political base; some of their members collaborated with the occupiers, and in Poland in the autumn of 1939 some killed as members of the Selbstschutz militia. Under the 'Heim ins Reich' programme, hundreds of thousands of Germans from the Baltic states and the USSR were settled in the Polish lands annexed to the Reich.

In the annexed territories the population was sorted into four categories of the German national list (Deutsche Volksliste); by the end of 1942 more than 3 million people had been entered, most of them in Silesia and Pomerania and often under compulsion. In the General Government registration was usually voluntary, and in Polish 'folksdojcz' became a byword for traitor. After the war those on the list faced sanctions, though most who had been registered under duress were rehabilitated.