page_title: Volga Germans
section_title: Deportation of the Volga Germans
hierarchical_section_title: Volga Germans / 20th century / Deportation of the Volga Germans
caption_attribution_description: This is an map of the former Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Volga German ASSR) that existed from 1924 to 1941. It shows the location of major settlements, including the capital, Engels (Pokrovsk).
context_page_description: The Volga Germans are ethnic Germans who colonized and historically lived along the Volga River in the region of southeastern European Russia around Saratov and to the south. Recruited as immigrants to Russia in the 18th century, they were allowed to maintain their German culture, language, traditions and churches. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Volga Germans emigrated to Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, California, Washington and other states across the western United States, as well as to Canada and South America.
  After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 during World War II, the Soviet government considered the Volga Germans potential collaborators, and deported many of them eastward, where thousands died. After the war, the Soviet Union expelled a moderate number of ethnic Germans to the West. In the late 1980s and 1990s, many of the remaining ethnic Germans moved from the Soviet Union to Germany.
context_section_description: The Deportation of the Volga Germans was the Soviet forced transfer of the whole of the Volga German population of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to Siberia, and Kazakhstan on September 3, 1941, during World War II. Of all the ethnic German communities in the Soviet Union, the Volga Germans represented the single largest group expelled from their historical homeland. Shortly after the German invasion, on June 22, 1941, Stalin sent Beria and Molotov to the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to determine a course of action for its German inhabitants. On return, they recommended the deportation of the entire German population. Consequently, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a resolution on August 12, calling for the expulsion of the entire German population. With this authority, Beria on August 27 issued an order entitled "On Measures for Conducting the Operation of Resettling the Germans from the Volga German Republic, Saratov, and Stalingrad Oblasts," assigning the deputy head of the NKVD, (secret police) Ivan Serov, to command this operation. He also allocated NKVD and Red Army troops to carry out the transfer. The Germans were to be sent to various oblasts (provinces) in Siberia and Kazakhstan, beginning on September 3, and ending on September 20, 1941. On September 7, 1941, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was officially abolished, clearly showing that the Soviets considered the expulsion of the Germans final.
  On August 28, 1941, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved and published a decree, which was the only official decree ever published by the Soviet Union concerning the deportation and exile of the German Russian community. The Soviet regime stated that the evacuation was a preventive measure—so that the German population would not be misled into collaborating with the German Army—rather than a punitive measure. Stalin allegedly gave the following "secret" order to the NKVD, produced in Nazi controlled Latvia on September 20, 1941:
  
          	 "After the house search, tell everyone who is scheduled to be deported that, according to the government’s decision, they are being sent to other regions of the USSR. Transport the entire family in one car until the train station, but at the station, heads of families [read: men] must be loaded into a separate train car prepared especially for them....Their families are deported for special settlements in the far away regions of the Union. [Family members] must not know about the forthcoming separation from the head of the family."
  This above document may be a fabrication, as Latvia was under German occupation at that time. Nevertheless, the instructions were followed by the NKVD troops who directed the deportation.
  The reason for separating the men is that they were all destined for the forced labor camps, Trudarmii (labor army). The German exiles coined this phrase, whereas Soviet documents only referred to "labor obligations" or "labor regulations." Men between the ages of 15 and 55 and, later, women between the ages of 16 and 45 were forced to do labor in the forests and mines of Siberia and Central Asia under conditions similar to that prevalent in the Gulag forced-labor camps.
  The expulsion of the Volga Germans finished on schedule at the end of September 1941. The number sent to Siberia and Kazakhstan totaled approximately 438,000. Together with 27,000 expelled in the same ethnic cleansing action from the Stalingrad Oblast and 47,000 from the Saratov Oblast, the total number sent to forced internal exile was about 950,000 of which 30% died during deportation. The source of these figures is from the Soviet Union. It took 151 train convoys to accomplish the transfer of the Volga German population, an astounding figure when one considers that the Soviet Union was heavily engaged fighting the advancing German army, and all railway stock was required to bring soldiers to the front. This operation also involved 1,550 NKVD and 3,250 police agents assisted by 12,150 soldiers of the R
caption: Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 1924-1941
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