Expulsion of Soviet Germans

Date: September 3, 1941 • Location: Berlin, Germany

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1941–1942.

The mass expulsion of Soviet Germans from the Volga German ASSR began.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union were subject to mass deportation starting from August 1941 by the NKVD on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. At least 846,340 Soviet Germans were deported in the first wave, while an additional 203,796 Germans forcibly repatriated from Germany and other parts of Eastern Europe were sent in the next wave to special settlements in the Soviet Union or gulags across Siberia and Kazakh SSR for forced labor. The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was abolished. The Soviet government feared that Soviet Germans would collaborate with Nazi Germany and endanger the war effort, so it had the local Germans deported further east, where many died. By one estimate, there were 228,800 fatalities among the deported Soviet Germans.