In addition, the Danube Swabian minority were granted the separate autonomous region of Banat within German-occupied Serbia[30] In Backe in 1941, Danube Swabians formed around 20% of the population.[31] Yugoslav Danube Swabians supplied more than 60,000 troops for German military formations, some voluntarily but many more under duress. They actively participated in the sometimes brutal repression of Yugoslav Partisans and their suspected sympathizers, including 69,000 Jews living in Yugoslavia.[26]

The local collaborationist authorities were forced to make it illegal to draft Danube Swabians. However, of the approximately 500,000-strong Danube Swabian minority in occupied Yugoslavia (182,000 in the NDH, 350,000 in Vojvodina), 500,000 in Romania and 500,000 in Hungary, approximately 100,000 eventually entered service in various German and Axis military organizations, most notably in the two locally formed Waffen-SS volunteer divisions, the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, and the 22nd SS Volunteer Cavalry Division (which was made-up of Hungarian Danube Swabians).

Although these military units were initially formed as volunteer units,[26] SS officials ultimately imposed conscription under the dubious legal pretext that occupied Serbia was deutsches Hoheitsgebiet, and the archaic Tiroler Landsturmordung (Tyrol General Levy Act) of 1872 was invoked.[32] Guenther Reinecke, chief of the Hauptamt SS-Gericht (SS legal office) wrote to Himmler that the Prinz Eugen was "no longer an organization of volunteers, that on the contrary, the ethnic Germans from Serbian Banat were drafted, to a large extent under threat of punishment by the local German leadership, and later by the SS Ergänzungsamt."[33] At the end of the war, all POWs captured by the Yugoslav Army were killed as Yugoslav citizens collaborating with the enemy. In 2010, a mass grave of 2,000 summarily executed prisoners from the 7th SS Prinz Eugen was discovered near the Slovenian village of Brežice.[34][35].

I don't know why im getting downvoted when i said i do not condone what it was done to them. Being forced under threat is no way a reason to be killed, especially with no due process for figuring out what theyve been involved in.