![]() These groups were officially merged into one organization, the ethnic German Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (Self-Defense Force) of more than 100,000 men. During the Invasion of Poland of 1939, a number of similar units conducted sabotage actions directed by the emissaries trained in Nazi Germany. In 1938, a campaign was started by local Selbstschutz Sudetendeutsches Freikorps in the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland in order to subjugate the local Czechs prior to the Munich Conference. This Selbstschutz organization took on the character of the Nazi-era in which it was formulated and organized. The third incarnation operated in territories of Central and Eastern Europe before and after the beginning of World War II notably in Poland, the Free City of Danzig, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. In 1921, the units of Selbstschutz took part in the fights against the Polish Third Silesian Uprising. Another iteration of the Selbstschutz concept was established in Silesia and aimed at returning Polish-inhabited territories back to Germany following the rebirth of Poland. The purpose of these units was to protect local ethnic-German communities and, indirectly, to serve German security interests in southern Ukraine. The first incarnation of the Selbstschutz was a German paramilitary organisation formed after World War I for ethnic Germans who lived outside Germany in the territories occupied by Germany and Austria-Hungary following the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Selbstschutz (German for "self-protection") is the name given to different iterations of ethnic-German self-protection units formed both after the First World War and in the lead-up to the Second World War. It has been suggested that this article should be split into articles titled Selbstschutz (Mennonite), Selbstschutz Oberschlesien and Selbstschutz (World War II).
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