Danube-Swabians
| Donauschwaben | |
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| 230,509 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Hungary
|
186,596 |
 Romania
|
36,884 |
 Serbia
|
4,064 |
 Croatia
|
2,965 |
| Languages | |
| Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian, Croatian, German | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism, Lutheran | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Germans of Hungary, Germans of Romania, Germans of Serbia, Germans of Croatia, Banat Swabians, Satu Mare Swabians | |
The Danube Swabians (German: 
Donauschwaben ) is a collective term for the German-speaking population who lived in various countries of southeastern Europe, especially in the Danube River valley. Most were descended from 18th-century immigrants recruited as colonists to repopulate the area after the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire.
The Danube Swabians are the most recently formed distinct line of ethnic German people. They are made up of ethnic Germans from many former and present-day countries: Germans of Hungary; Satu Mare Swabians; the Banat Swabians; and the Vojvodina Germans in Serbia's Vojvodina, and Croatia's Slavonia (especially in the Osijek region). They called themselves Schwowe in a Germanized spelling or "Shwoveh" in an English spelling; in the singular first person, they identified as a Schwob or a Shwobe. The Carpathian Germans and Transylvanian Saxons are not included within the Danube Swabian group.
This group of people had particular challenges in World War II, when the Axis powers, including Nazi Germany, overran many of the nations where these ethnic Germans were long settled. They were first favored, yet moved from their homes, and as the war progressed and Nazi Germany in particular needed more soldiers, the men were conscripted. Many atrocities took place during and after the war, from the complicated allegiances and the brutality of the Nazis. In the long years since, German-speaking populations have re-established in the new nations formed in the early 1990s after the fall of the communist bloc.
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Wikipedia