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Yugoslavia had a substantial population of ethnic Germans. The Yugoslav population was primarily Slavic people. The country was known as the Kingdom of the Southern Slavs. 'Yug' mean south in Serbo-Croatian. The Yugoslav population was primarily Slavic peoples, including Serbs (40 percent), Croats (25 percent), Slovenes (10 percent), and Macedonians (5 percent). In addition there were non-Slavic minorities: Germans, Hungarians, Italians, and Jews. Yugoslavia inherited a considerable number of Germans along with its ex-Habsburg territories when it was created at the end of World War I (December 1918). There were two important ethnic German communities. One was Slovenia and the other was Vojvodina and Croatia-Slavonia commonly referred to as Donau Schwaben (Swabians). In addition to these two major communities were scattered pockets of ethnic Germans in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) as well as the other non-Slav minorities were discriminatedagainst by the Serbian documented Royal Yugoslavian government. The different German communities respnded differently to this descriination. The Slovenian Germans in the north on the Austrian border became virulently anti-Serbian, when Austro-Hungarian rule was replaced by a Serbiann natioanlist rule. With the rise of the xenophobic NAZI regimme (1933), Slovenes developed a virulently German nationalism outlook that embraced NAZIism. The Swabian community incentral Yugoslavia , on the other hand, generally tried to cooperate with the central government in Belgrade. The Swabians remained rather ambivalent toward the rising NAZI movement until the tremendous successes of the Third Reich in 1938 made Nazism irresistibly attractive. 【Mentzel】 The ethnic Germans would prove very useful to the NAZIs when the Germans invaded (April 1941). They spoke the various Yugoslavian languages, inclueg Slovenew and Serbo-Croatian. This was very useful in the imitial imvasion as well as administering occupied Yugoslavia. Thery were famiiar with loval conditions as well as people amd could point out people who were hostile to the Germans.
Mentzel, Peter. "The German minority in Inter-War Yugoslavia." published online by Cambridge University Press (November 20, 2018).
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