Editing Volksdeutsche (section)

===Collaboration with the Nazis===
{{Main|Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz}}
[[File:Inspection of Selbstschutz unit in Bydgoszcz.jpg|thumb|left|290px|[[Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz]] in [[Bydgoszcz]] (Bromberg), 1939]]
Before and during [[World War II]], some ethnic Germans gathered around local Nazi organizations (sponsored financially by the [[Federal Foreign Office|German Foreign Office]]),<ref name="law.yale">{{cite web | url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/blbk52.asp | title=The British War Bluebook | publisher=2008 Lillian Goldman Law Library | date=August 24, 1939 | access-date=11 September 2014 | author= H. Kennard to Viscount Halifax}}</ref><ref name="Uruszczak">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C4OLAgAAQBAJ&q=%22Jungdeutsche+Partei%22 |title=Krakowskie Studia z Historii Państwa i Prawa Vol. 5 |publisher=Wydawnictwo UJ |author=Wacław Uruszczak |year=2012 |isbn=978-8323388685 |page=339}}</ref> actively supported the Nazis in countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. During the social and economic tensions of the [[Great Depression]], some had begun to feel aggrieved with their minority status. They participated in espionage, sabotage and other [[fifth column]] means in their countries of origin, trained and commanded by [[Abwehr]].<ref name="wo-inf">{{cite journal |url=http://socjocybernetyka.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/totalna-wojna-informacyjna.pdf |title=II Oddział Sztabu Głównego II RP (Chapter 3.3) |publisher=Wydział Zarządzania i Administracji Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej im. J. Kochanowskiego w Kielcach |journal=Totalna Wojna Informacyjna XX Wieku a II RP |location=Kielce |date=1997 |author=Józef Kossecki |page=102 |via=direct download, 808 KB}}</ref> In November 1938 Nazi Germany organized German paramilitary units made out German minority members in Polish Pomerania that were to engage in diversion, sabotage as well as political murder and ethnic cleansing upon German invasion of Poland.<ref>{{cite book |title=Stutthof: hitlerowski obóz koncentracyjny |author=Konrad Ciechanowski |publisher=Wydawnictwo Interpress |year=1988 |page=13}}</ref>

Reich intelligence actively recruited ethnic Germans, and the Nazi secret service "''[[Sicherheitsdienst|SicherheitsDienst]]''" (SD) formed them as early as October 1938 into armed unit that were to serve Nazi Germany.<ref>Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945 Valdis O. Lumans p. 98</ref>

Historian Matthias Fiedler typified ethnic German collaborationists as former "nobodies" whose major occupation was the expropriation of Jewish property.<ref>Wittmann, A.M., "Mutiny in the Balkans: Croat Volksdeutsche, the Waffen-SS and Motherhood", ''East European Quarterly'' XXXVI No. 3 (2002), p. 257</ref> [[Heinrich Himmler]] remarked that whatever objections ethnic Germans might have against serving in the Waffen-SS, they would be conscripted in any case.<ref>Wittmann, A.M., "Mutiny in the Balkans: Croat Volksdeutsche, the Waffen-SS and Motherhood", ''East European Quarterly'' XXXVI No. 3 (2002), p. 258</ref> According to head of recruitment for the Waffen SS, [[Gottlob Berger]], no one in Germany or elsewhere cared for what happened to the ethnic Germans anyway, which made recruitment easy forced upon ethnic German communities.<ref>Wittmann, A.M., "Mutiny in the Balkans: Croat Volksdeutsche, the Waffen-SS and Motherhood", ''East European Quarterly'' XXXVI No. 3 (2002), p. 259</ref>

Among the indigenous populations in the Nazi-occupied lands, {{Lang|de|Volksdeutsche}} became a term of ignominy.

During the early years of the Second World War, before the US entered the war, a small number of Americans of German origin returned to Germany; generally they were immigrants or children of immigrants, rather than descendants of migrations more distant in time. Some of these enlisted and fought in the German army. {{Citation needed|date=January 2024}}