Territorial Claims of German Nationalists
By World War I, there were isolated groups of Germans or so-called Schwaben as far southeast as the Bosphorus (Turkey), Georgia, and Azerbaijan. After the war, Germany's and Austria-Hungary's loss of territory and the rise of communism in the Soviet Union meant that more Germans than ever constituted sizable minorities in various countries.
German nationalists used the existence of large German minorities in other countries as a basis for territorial claims. Many of the propaganda themes of the Nazi regime against Czechoslovakia and Poland claimed that the ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) in those territories were persecuted.
The Nazis negotiated a number of population transfers with Joseph Stalin and others with Benito Mussolini so that both Germany and the other country would increase their ethnic homogeneity. However, these population transfers were not sufficient to appease the demands of the Nazis. The "Heim ins Reich" (Home into the Empire) rhetoric of the Nazis over the continued disjoint status of exclaves such as Danzig was an agitating factor in the politics leading up to World War II, and is considered by many to be among the major causes of Nazi aggression and thus the war. Adolf Hitler used these issues as a pretext for waging aggressive wars against Czechoslovakia and Poland.
Read more about this topic: German Exodus From Central And Eastern Europe
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