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Before the war III. Reich against the then-existing Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Germans threatened the Hungarians that if they did not participate in that war, the Volksdeutscher would declare a German state on the territory of Bačka, Banat and eastern Srijem all the way to Belgrade. That German state was supposed to be connected with a corridor that would go partly around the Danube to the territory of III. Reich, that is, to the Slovenian Prekomurje, which was then part of III. Reich.
There were several names planned for that German state : "Prinz-Eugen-Gau", "Reichsgau Banat", "Donauprotektorat", "Schwabenland", "Donaudeutschland" or "Autonomes Siebenbürgen".
The concept of the Reich Fortress in Belgrade was born in the "big secret memorandum" of the state secretary and SS leader Wilhelm Stuckart in 1941, which talks about "discussions between the SS and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Interior" about the reorganization of Southeastern Europe after the war against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This "big secret memorandum" talks about the "situation and future fate of Germans in the former Yugoslav national territory" after the war against Yugoslavia. Early plans for this were already drawn up in 1939 under the leadership of Werner Lorenz and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi).
Wilhelm Stuckart's memorandum talked about the idea of the military leader of the Habsburg monarchy, Eugen von Savoyen (Prince Eugene), who proposed that the Belgrade fortress be turned into a so-called "deutschen Reichsfestung" (fortress of the German Reich), which would then be in some kind of new military landscape of German III. Reich and which would be controlled by Volksdeutschers from Banat. That fortress, which should be called "Prinz-Eugen-Stadt" was supposed to secure III. Reich control of the Banat, Bačka and eastern Srijem. In the memorandum, they foresee that all Volksdeutschers from the territory of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia should move to that new country.
In order to tie down as few German Wehrmacht units in Serbia as possible, the Volksdeutscher (a term for "ethnic Germans") should take over the security of the area: "The idea of ?a "Reichsfestung Belgrade" can be realized all the more easily because the backland of Belgrade consists of communities in which Germans have an absolute or relative majority, and the entire hinterland is shaped exclusively by German cultural achievements. The Germans who settled there [about 300,000 Danubian Germans] were able to fulfill the conscription in the German garrison in Belgrade and thus form a permanent team of the Reichsfestung". In the summer of 1941, State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior Wilhelm Stuckart was in charge of creating the concept of the "Reichsfestung" in Belgrade.
The later "special representative for the Southeast" Hermann Neubacher proposed in 1941 that the area around Belgrade be included in the "area of the iron gates" ("Eisernes-Tor-Gebiet") with a planned power plant for energy supply and economic development of the Danube area, but these considerations were abandoned in 1942 and remained together with other considerations "in the field of utopian plans for the state-economic reorganization of the Balkans".
Along with the general enthusiasm of the "Volksdeutscher" in the region for the victories of German units, especially in the early days of World War II, many of them followed the development of leaked ideas from German agencies for such a "Schutzgebiet" ("protected area") with great interest, and various speculations immediately began on this topic.
We have already listed some names for this area and the planned German state above. The leader of the Germans in Serbia, Josef Janko, proposed that the Croatian eastern Srijem be included in this new state, but this plan was immediately rejected by the Third Reich.
Politicians from the neighboring states of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Kingdom of Romania accepted these speculations with suspicion.
Even on the eve of the German war against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Helmut Triska talked about the possibility of the entire Banat joining III. Reich "but that the final territorial division of the Balkans will only be possible after the war."
The German envoy in Zagreb, Siegfried Kasche, reported to Berlin that the Germans in the eastern part of the Independent State of Croatia learned about Josef Janko's plan to declare "Free Banat" at the end of April 1941 as the first step towards a German state, which the German envoy called "Donaudeutschland" ("Danube Germany"). Josef Janko planned a proclamation on April 20, 1941, and that proclamation was supposed to be a gift to Adolf Hitler, who had his birthday that day. The head of the German Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), Reinhard Heydrich, was informed about this planned act through the recruiter Gustav Halwax from the Waffen-SS. Heydrich immediately sent him a telegram: "At once try to stop it - arrest those involved if necessary."
Information about the attempt at independence of the Banat also reached the Hungarian government, which complained to Berlin. During Josef Janko's presence in the Führerhautquartier in mid-April 1941, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Third Reich, Ribbentrop, told him that the German ethnic group must accept the role of only receiving orders from the Reich and not being the initiators of political initiatives.
For the planned proclamation of "Prinz Eugen Gau" on Hitler's birthday, April 20, 1941, the German ethnic group issued a special overprint of "Prinz Eugen Gau" on three of the five Hungarian postage stamps issued on the occasion of the 500th birth of the Hungarian king Matthias Hunyadi the Corvid.
The stamps were never issued, so one part was divided among members of the German national group and the rest were destroyed.
No more than 20-30 sheets exist in the world.
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