Authors: Lynn H. Nicholas
The human objects of this exercise in the Baltic states would not hear any official details of the evacuations for two more days. By then the American chargé d’affaires in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, startled at this dramatic reversal of Germany’s traditional policy of encouraging “these ancient eastern bastions of Germanism,”
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had already reported the presence of German transport vessels in the harbor.
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The arrival of other ships was soon noted in Riga and other Baltic ports. Rumors and questions streamed back and forth between the ethnic German organizations and Berlin. Those about to be moved were not the only group surprised by the massive and hasty nature of the evacuation.
Despite Hitler’s efforts at deception, it was clear to the non-Germans in the Baltic governments that their doom was sealed: the loss of the German minority meant that the Soviet Union would soon have total control. The Estonian Minister President burst into tears at the news, declaring that it was “the end of Estonia.” The Soviets, for their part, were upset by the speed of the German actions and told the German Ambassador that they
were “astonished” at the “panicky” promotion of emigration, which would expose their own nefarious motives to take over the Baltics and “compromise the action of the Soviet Government.”
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Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov also feared that the clearing of ethnic Germans from these states could be the prelude to a Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. Hitler soothed Molotov by saying rumors to this effect were American and English “propaganda,” and that the removal of the ethnic Germans would make clear Germany’s “political disinterestedness” in the Baltic countries.
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It is not hard to imagine the complex emotions that now faced the ethnic Germans in the Baltic states. The
Times
of London reported, “Almost every German family in Latvia appears to be divided and tormented.” There was little time for hesitation: the Baltic Germans were expected to leave within the week. “Groups to-day show deep distress, not knowing what to decide—not wishing to go to Germany, but afraid to remain … believing that Hitler has made some agreement whereby they may soon be abandoned.” Some were defiant. One perceptive young man stated that he did not wish to leave and become “Hitler’s cannon fodder.” On the Sunday after the announcement the churches were crowded and “during the service great numbers of worshippers were in tears.”
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The Nazi organizers had no such torments. Now the years of meticulous list making and planning were justified. Ethnic German leaders had secretly been summoned to Germany to confer with Himmler and other officials more than ten days before the announcement.
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Twelve thousand new ID cards had already been printed up, as had flyers with details of the evacuation. On October 9, notices appeared in the local Baltic German press announcing to potential evacuees that they could “look with pride upon their centuries-old work in this country” but that a new task had now been set for them: “Together we will resettle and rebuild the German Eastern areas won back by the Reich.”
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Meanwhile, behind the scenes Nazi operatives spread rumors of coming Bolshevik horrors. Processing offices opened the same day and produced reams of detailed instructions, interspersed with admonitions to remain calm, covering everything from hand baggage to the shipment of furniture and tools.
The scare propaganda worked only too well in some quarters. Within days, as banks and government agencies were overwhelmed with people closing accounts and trying to sell property, it was necessary to publish reassurances and warn people against wild rumors. Officials pled with evacuees to refrain from unannounced visits to the various agencies and discouraged panic selling of real estate, urging people instead to convey
title to a German Trustee Agency, which would liquidate it in consultation with the Baltic governments in order to spare the individual or the “entire folk economy” unnecessary losses.
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In Latvia individuals were directed to special “Option” offices, where before representatives of the Latvian and German governments they could simultaneously renounce their Latvian citizenship and receive one of the already printed “returnee” cards on which a departure date and ship would be specified. In Estonia, evacuees were instructed to leave the keys to their houses at the German legation before embarking. Everyone labored over endless inventories of their bonds, furniture, silver, and jewelry. Those who had doubts about this somewhat casual relinquishing of their entire net worth were scornfully asked if they doubted “the word of the Führer.”
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Notices went out that all archives and documents should be delivered to a central office. Trustees of foundations were ordered to fill out other forms, and all valuable art objects were to be reported to a central office. And not least, every applicant was exhorted not to forget the genealogical documents that would prove that he or she was an Aryan.
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Speed was of the essence in this operation. The longer people had to think about what they were doing, the more likely they were to change their minds about leaving or try to go to destinations other than Germany. Of course, there was resistance to the precipitate evacuation, which essentially required the complete surrender of self to the Reich government and transfer to a totally unknown destination. Hesitancy was countered by ever more strident and threatening notices in the German papers. At frequent intervals
Volksdeutsche
were urged to be part of the first groups to “undertake the new tasks on the borders of the Folkdom of the Greater German Reich,” and to think only of the future and not look back. It was pointed out that their children would have greater opportunities and that Hitler cared for them. As time went on, irritation with the laggards began to show.
Volksdeutsche
unwilling to leave their houses were described as “utterly stupid” and deserving of the “self-inflicted punishment” staying behind would cause.
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When this sort of pressure failed, Realpolitik came to the fore, and ethnic Germans who had been openly anti-Communist were visited at home and threatened with exposure to the future Soviet authorities.
Enthusiasm for resettlement generally followed generational lines.
Volksdeutsche
youth, having been indoctrinated for years in local Hitler Youth–type organizations, were more enthusiastic than their parents, and numbers of young people are believed to have left on their own. Despite all the glowing German reports, the exodus was terrible for many. Non
German wives refused to leave; there were divorces and suicides. But so great was fear of the coming Soviet takeover and so strong the pressure of the Nazi agencies that within a week of the initial notice of evacuation the first groups set sail into the unknown. The captains of the vessels were only told where to head once they had cleared the harbors. Embarkation procedures were efficient, even military in feeling. The travelers were first gathered into temporary quarters near the port, where they were welcomed with handouts containing strict instructions: no smoking, no drinking, no eating except in designated areas. Bunks were assigned. Each family had to bring its own bedding, crockery, and food. Lights out at 10:00 p.m., reveille at 7:00 a.m. Doctors and nurses would make rounds, and baby baths were available on application. Children under the age of seven slept in the women’s section. The need for discipline was emphasized. Only in the last paragraph was any human feeling revealed. The travelers were wished a “good night, a smooth transition, a good crossing and a happy reunion in your new home in the Third Reich.”
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The ships sent from Germany made multiple voyages, and by the end of the year had removed more than 10,000 Estonians and some 47,000 Latvians. By the spring of 1940 thousands more would follow. But to the chagrin of the Nazis, a good number of
Volksdeutsche
, especially those whose affairs had required complex arrangements to settle and who thus had time to reconsider, did not leave. Settlement of affairs was not the only reason. Before the last transport had left, coded letters were being received in the Baltic states indicating that conditions in the Glorious Reich were somewhat less than perfect. One early evacuee wrote home that his compatriots should not leave until “after Jan’s wedding.” A reasonable thought, except that the Jan in question was only two years old.
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The “bad Germans” who held back were excoriated in the local German press, which predicted that they would be “despised by their fellow citizens … there will be joy if they perish. Let them ponder the fate of their children who will have to be brought up among strangers in an alien atmosphere, who will be shunned by their school mates and who will never be able to find a place for themselves.”
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Prophetic words, which, in fact, would apply not to those who stayed, but to many of those who left, for the moment they set foot on the transports they became stateless persons and would remain so for the rest of their lives.
Those who stayed behind did immediately lose their former status of a protected minority. On December 21, 1939, the Latvian Ministry of the Interior declared that “Germanism in Latvia is dead forever.” German schools and churches were closed, German-language newspapers were no
longer published, and people were encouraged to “Latvianize” their names.
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After the predicted Soviet takeover of Latvia and Estonia in 1940, such measures and more would persuade 16,000 more of the remaining “Germans” to leave for Reich territory.
The Estonians and Latvians were only the first of the groups that would be moved to satisfy the arrangements agreed to by Hitler and Stalin. Even as their transports gingerly crossed the Baltic through the minefields laid down by the German Navy, an exchange of White Russians and Ukrainians in the German zones of Poland was being negotiated for ethnic Germans in the Soviet sectors. In the summer and fall of 1940 it would be the turn of Bessarabians, Bukovinians, Lithuanians, the leftover Estonians, and Latvians, plus the ethnic Germans in the Polish General Gouvernement, a total of some half million souls. In each case the methodology of persuasion and evacuation was essentially the same, even if the modes of transport—which included trains, Danube steamers, and long wagon trains accompanied by cattle—were often more colorful than the steamers coming from Riga and Tallinn.
By the spring of 1940 some 1,500 camps and holding centers had been set up to deal with this forced migration. There were reception camps where arrivees were deloused, washed, and quarantined before going on to “observation” camps. Along with food and lodging in these staging areas there were German lessons and political indoctrination classes for those who were a bit vague about National Socialism. Floating schools and Hitler Youth units were set up for children under the age of fourteen, and particular care was supposed to be given to health matters. This was not altruistic. Ahead of the unsuspecting resettlers lay the racial and political exams that would determine their fate, and Himmler wanted as many healthy new Germans as he could get.
Despite his quick action in the Baltic states, Himmler had been a bit late when it came to finding suitable places to settle the evacuees. His organization had to compete with other occupation administrators, opportunistic German businessmen who swarmed in to take over confiscated Eastern industries, Göring’s Four Year Plan operatives, and the Ministry of Agriculture, to name only a few. The situation was made even more difficult by the opposition of each newly installed local Nazi governor to settlers not of his own choosing.
Albert Forster, Gauleiter of Danzig and a friend of Hitler’s, considered the Balts troublesome foreigners who would need all sorts of services. He
did not want to deal with this mostly white-collar group, which included many useless old people and children. Forster thought it would be much easier to accommodate himself with the Poles and create a thriving industrial enclave with himself and his cronies in control. Faced with the fanatic land grabbing going on and Forster’s refusal to take more than a few thousand Balts in Gdynia, Himmler was forced to send some of their ships on to Stettin and other ports.
It is not clear what the passengers from the Baltic countries expected to find when they arrived. For young children the boat trip was exciting. Their older siblings were happy to be going to fabled Germany, where all the neighbors would speak German, where they wouldn’t have to take Latvian at school, and where they would be able to get the latest cool toys—the object of the moment being a sort of go-cart called a Hollander.
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Some adults were optimistic too: one former inmate of an Estonian mental hospital, blissfully unaware of the Nazi hereditary health laws, expressed the modest hope that he would be taken to an equally good institution in the Reich.
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But if the voyagers had imagined that they would immediately progress to Berlin or to the idyllic flower-covered villages full of dirndl-clad lasses so often shown in German propaganda magazines, they were disappointed. Andreas Meyer-Landruth, seven years old at the time, remembered that “upon disembarking we realized we had been tricked since we were not in Germany itself.” His mother, who had come ahead of her husband with the children, “cried from morning to night and we had absolutely no idea what would become of us.”
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Still, arrival ceremonies in Gdynia and other ports were quite colorful. Flags were flying and loudspeakers played cheery German songs. But many passengers were immediately repelled by the sheer numbers of arrogant and impersonal uniformed representatives of the Nazi youth, police, and welfare organizations who waited on the docks to conduct them to quarters in or around the ports or to trains that took them to temporary “quarantine” lodgings in Posen or in towns and villages scattered all over northeastern Germany and the newly annexed area of Poland.