Building on recent investigations into children as historical actors, this article examines the experiences of ethnic German (Donauschwaben) expellees from northern Yugoslavia’s Vojvodina region. Using original oral history interviews, the article embeds these individuals’ childhood experiences of World War ii and expulsion into their greater life stories, thereby highlighting children’s multifaceted wartime roles and opportunities for agency. Contrary to prevailing (German) historiographic and popular imagination—as encouraged particularly by postwar expellee organizations—young ethnic Germans were not the mere passive victims of war and expulsion. Rather, even during their expulsion, they actively participated in Nazi youth organizations, accompanied columns of Jewish camp evacuees, worked in Nazi munitions factories, and fought in the Third Reich’s final desperate military “storm.” At different occasions, children and youth thus became both witting and unwitting agents of wartime destruction. As the article concludes, a more concerted investigation into questions of childhood agency in war is central to the analysis of such contested topics as German victimhood and perpetration during World War ii, the Vertreibung (expulsion), and Germany’s transgenerational postwar reckoning with the crimes of its past.

基于最近对儿童作为历史演员的调查，本文考察了来自南斯拉夫北部伏伊伏丁那地区的德裔 ( Donauschwaben ) 被驱逐者的经历。采用独创的口述历史访谈，文章嵌入了这些人的二战童年经历II并被驱逐到他们更伟大的生活故事中，从而突出儿童在战时的多方面角色和代理机会。与盛行的（德国）史学和大众想象相反——尤其受到战后驱逐组织的鼓励——年轻的德国人不仅仅是战争和驱逐的被动受害者。相反，即使在被驱逐期间，他们也积极参与纳粹青年组织，陪同犹太难民营撤离人员，在纳粹军火工厂工作，并在第三帝国最后的绝望军事“风暴”中战斗。在不同的场合，儿童和青年因此成为战时破坏的有意或无意的代理人。正如文章总结的那样，ii、Vertreibung（驱逐）和德国在战后对过去罪行的跨代清算。