What happened to the Germans living in the Soviet Union prior to and during World War II?
On August 12, 1939, Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact. As a result of this, Germans living in Bessarabia, Bukovina, Dobruja, Galicia and Polish Volhynia were repatriated to Germany. They were first settled in the western part of Poland, but as the German Army retreated, they moved farther westward into western Germany. Because of the earlier agreement and the fact that they had German citizenship, they were not forced back to the Soviet Union at the end of the war. Beginning with the Crimean Germans on August 20, 1941, Germans living in areas not overrun by the German Army were deported to Siberia and the Asiatic Republics. There they were sent to labor camps and kept under close supervision until 1956. These deported Germans were from the area east of the Dnieper River, the Volga Region (September 1941), the South Caucasus (October 1941), and Leningrad (now Petersburg, March 1942). Germans living in the cities were also deported to labor camps. The Germans living in the a
