The Cold War and Return Migration: The West German Response to Yugoslavia's Efforts to Influence its Workers Abroad

In early February 1973, the executive committees of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav state gathered in Belgrade for a joint meeting devoted to a pressing topic: ‘the problems and problematic of Yugoslav guest workers abroad’. Just days later the general assembly of the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia, a powerful mass organization with close ties to the League of Communists, held a meeting on the same subject. ¹ After a decade of state-sanctioned labour migration, Yugoslavia's leaders had grown increasingly concerned about the ‘threatening alienation’ of its citizens living abroad. Josip Vrhovec, chairman of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia, gave voice to these concerns when he warned that

We have completely failed to understand what our organized representation means there … If we have a million workers out there, including several hundred thousand in Germany, that means that part of our socialism, part of our social organism, is located somewhere outside of the borders of our state … It means that part of our system of social relations reproduces and constitutes itself on territories that are located completely outside of our social order. This reality could have extraordinarily negative repercussions. ²

When Yugoslav officials legalized labour migration in the early 1960s, they assumed that it would be a temporary phenomenon. Indeed, Yugoslavia's official designation for its citizens abroad, radnik na privremenom radu u inozemstvu (worker temporarily employed abroad), made explicit the expectation that Yugoslavs employed abroad would soon return to their homeland. ³ But by 1973 the massive scale of the migratory movement and the lengthy stays abroad by some migrants called into question the temporary nature of labour migration from Yugoslavia. ⁴ As Vrhovec's warning attests to, this was an alarming development for Yugoslav officials, for it meant that Yugoslav citizens were forming their own families and communities in the capitalist West, in societies whose socio-economic order and political systems stood at odds with Yugoslavia's distinctive brand of socialism. Worse yet, Yugoslavs abroad inhabited a world in which long-established, radical anti-Yugoslavia émigré groups could operate freely, broadcasting their nationalist and anti-communist ideologies to anyone who would listen. By the early 1960s, Yugoslav officials were aware, and deeply concerned, that émigrés, particularly in West Germany, were actively recruiting Yugoslav labour migrants for their nationalist organizations, which Yugoslav officials considered a serious threat to the state. ⁵

The two high-level meetings in early 1973 dedicated to ‘the problems and problematic of Yugoslav guest workers abroad’, together with Vrhovec's sounding of the alarm, make clear that Yugoslavia's leaders intended to take action to counter the ‘threatening alienation’ of its citizens abroad. But what options did they have? They could not force or even strongly encourage Yugoslav labour migrants to return home, because by the 1970s Yugoslavia's economy had become dependent on their remittances, which in 1974 accounted for 22 per cent of the state's hard currency earnings. Moreover, Yugoslavia's ever-increasing unemployment rate meant that there would have been few jobs for migrants even if had they wanted to return home. ⁶ Faced with this reality, Yugoslav officials embarked on an ambitious plan to extend key features of Yugoslavia's political and social system beyond the state's borders in an effort to reincorporate its citizens abroad into the state. If migrants could not be brought back to the state, the state would be brought to them.

In 1987, the political scientist William Zimmerman described Yugoslavia's quest to ‘govern the seventh republic’, that is, to treat Yugoslav labour migrants as if they were residents of an imagined ‘seventh republic’ that existed wherever Yugoslavs settled outside of the state's borders. ⁷ According to Zimmerman, starting in the early 1970s, ‘the Yugoslav government began to implement measures to govern the migrants—to control, inform, to socialize, etc.—while they were abroad’, a development that led to ‘an overlapping of the effective, as opposed to de jure, boundaries of Yugoslavia with those of other states, especially Europe’. ⁸ In recent years, historians of Yugoslavia have documented that state's efforts to influence its citizens living abroad. ⁹ This work on Yugoslavia's efforts to govern the seventh republic has been based overwhelmingly on sources from the former Yugoslavia; this article, drawing primarily on German archival sources, examines the West German reception of Yugoslavia's project. I build on this scholarship by examining not just Yugoslavia's policies, but also the shifting West German response to Yugoslavia's efforts to exert direct influence over Yugoslav guest workers during the 1960s and 1970s. I do so by focusing on the establishment, operation, and West German response to Yugo Clubs for Yugoslav labour migrants, institutions with which Yugoslav officials sought to bind their citizens more tightly to the Yugoslav state.

Every state that signed a labour-recruitment agreement with West Germany attempted, in various degrees and through a variety of methods, to exert influence upon its citizens who lived and worked in West Germany. This is perhaps most obvious in the realm of education, where states – by preparing their own teaching materials and curriculum and training and selecting teachers to work in Germany – sought to ensure that guest workers’ children would receive an education in the language, geography, culture, and history of their parents’ homeland while they were in West Germany. The goal for the sending states and West Germany, at least initially, was to bind children to their nominal homeland and prepare them for future integration into the country of origin upon their eventual return. ¹⁰

But because most of the states with which West Germany signed labour-recruitment agreements – with the exception of Italy – were ruled by dictators, such as Spain and Yugoslavia, or for a time by military juntas, as in Turkey and Greece, the efforts by sending states to influence their citizens abroad at times proved problematic for the democratic and gradually liberalizing West German state. ¹¹ Should the West German federal states, for example, continue to support supplemental instruction for Greek children when, as was the case after the military coup in Greece in 1967, it meant that students might be taught a nationalistic and anti-democratic curriculum that was at odds with West Germany's democratic values? ¹² Or should state and federal governments give in to sustained pressure from the Spanish government to censor the political reporting of Spanish radio announcers in West Germany who, in their programmes for Spanish guest workers, were critical of Franco's Spain? ¹³ West Germany faced many questions like this during the 1960s and 1970s, and they were not easy questions to answer. This was because they were about much more than West Germany's adherence to its democratic principles. West Germany had substantial economic connections with the southern European states they recruited guest workers from, and it also valued and wanted to maintain strong diplomatic relations with these states. ¹⁴ Indeed, West Germany repeatedly used labour-recruitment agreements as a means of forging diplomatic relations with the states of southern Europe. ¹⁵ West German officials did not want to jeopardize these economic and foreign-policy interests. Finally, questions about how much and what sort of influence foreign states should be allowed to exert over their citizens on West German soil were also questions about how West Germany viewed itself: had it become a country of immigration, or would it remain committed to the notion that guest workers and their children would eventually return to their country of origin?

West Germany's response to Yugoslavia's efforts to ‘govern the seventh republic’ – to exert a profound influence upon its citizens in West Germany – highlights similar issues. But it is in some ways a distinctive case, because Yugoslavia was the only communist state with which West Germany signed a labour-recruitment agreement. West German officials long worried that guest workers from Italy, Spain, Turkey, and Greece might import communism into West Germany or be seduced by communist propaganda from Eastern Europe, but they were on especially high alert when it came to labour migration from Yugoslavia. ¹⁶ The Yugoslav state, they feared, could marshal its resources to spread communist propaganda among Yugoslav labour migrants and perhaps others on German soil.

Shifts in the Cold War context, and especially the rise of détente and Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik during the late 1960s, are thus critical to understanding West Germany's response to Yugoslavia's efforts to influence its citizens abroad. During the 1960s, West German authorities were wary of opening the door to foreign communist cultural officials and social workers and so they resisted not just Yugoslav efforts to assert influence over Yugoslav labour migrants in West Germany, but also repeatedly delayed coming to terms with Yugoslavia on a labour-recruitment agreement. But after West Germany and Yugoslavia resumed diplomatic relations and then concluded a labour-recruitment agreement in 1968 – a development that Willy Brandt viewed as part of his efforts to improve relations with communist Eastern Europe – West German officials were still wary, but no longer as concerned about the possibility of communist infiltration. ¹⁷ In these changed political conditions, Yugoslavia's efforts to govern its seventh republic, and specifically its coordination of a network of Yugo Clubs, was tolerated and often supported by West German officials, even when some troubling features of the clubs came to light. This was because taking steps against the Yugo Clubs would have harmed West Germany's diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia, relations that were rooted, practically and symbolically, in the two states’ collaboration in the field of labour migration. Finally, some West German officials supported the Yugo Clubs because they believed the clubs would keep Yugoslav guest workers closely linked to their homeland, which would increase the likelihood that they would eventually return home. This belief, in turn, supported the West German fiction that it was not a land of immigration.

Struggling for Influence, c. 1960–1968

In the midst of its economic miracle, and facing the prospect of labour shortages, West Germany initiated its foreign labour recruitment programme in 1955, when it signed a recruitment treaty with Italy. In the ensuing years, West Germany signed similar agreements with Greece (1960), Spain (1960), Turkey (1961), and Portugal (1964). ¹⁸ During the mid-1950s, Yugoslav labour migrants began trickling into West Germany, where they were regarded as excellent workers and were in high demand by West German employers. But, for a number of reasons, West Germany and Yugoslavia did not conclude a labour-recruitment agreement until October 1968. First, until the early 1960s, Yugoslavia criminalized labour migration. Second, until the late 1960s, West German officials hesitated to sign a labour recruitment treaty with a communist-ruled state. Finally, when Yugoslavia extended diplomatic recognition to communist East Germany in 1957, West Germany broke off diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia, which were only resumed in early 1968. ¹⁹ Although West German officials did engage in labour-recruitment negotiations with Yugoslavia during this period, they feared that concluding an agreement with a state that recognized East Germany would encourage more states to establish diplomatic relations with East Germany. ²⁰ Despite the absence of a labour-recruitment agreement, Yugoslav labour migrants arrived in West Germany in significant numbers during the 1960s. By 1963, they already represented the fourth-largest group of migrants by country of origin; and by 1970, a year after the labour-recruitment agreement came into effect, Yugoslavs were for a short time the largest group of foreigners in West Germany. ²¹

Although modest when compared to their more far-reaching efforts beginning in the early 1970s, during the 1960s Yugoslav officials attempted to organize and protect their citizens in West Germany. Presaging future developments, Yugoslav officials called for the creation of social clubs abroad for Yugoslav workers; these institutions would be sites where they could provide cultural activities and support services for Yugoslav migrants. In a meeting in Zagreb in early 1964, for example, labour union officials, likely reflecting the concerns of the communist party, described the discrimination and disadvantages faced by Yugoslav workers in West Germany and called for the formation of clubs for Yugoslavs that would have the dual purpose of improving Yugoslav workers’ rights and protecting them from being taken advantage of by émigrés. ²² Unsettled by the acceleration of migration from Yugoslavia to West Germany, in 1965 labour union leaders again called for the establishment in West Germany of clubs that would be tasked with providing ‘cultural support’ for Yugoslav workers. ²³

But the absence of a labour-recruitment agreement until 1968 and of diplomatic relations between the two states from 1957 to 1968, combined with the West German mistrust of cultural activities organized by representatives of a communist state, meant that until the late 1960s, Yugoslav officials had a very limited ability to provide support for, or exert influence upon, Yugoslavs in West Germany. The few efforts in this direction were undertaken by Yugoslavia's consulate in Munich. According to German police reports, the consulate hosted weekly social gatherings for Yugoslavs. ²⁴ By 1966, it had established an outpost in Stuttgart, a city with a large Yugoslav population, and used the premises to open a restaurant and bar for Yugoslav workers. German observers reported that Yugoslavs from the surrounding area came to the bar in huge numbers to sing, dance, and drink. The consulate's outpost in Stuttgart also hosted a weekly gathering for members of the ‘Yugoslav Club’, a club for ‘loyal Yugoslavs’. ²⁵ The consulate further sought to keep tabs on Yugoslav guest workers by conducting passport actions and having German firms provide lists of Yugoslavs they employed, a practice which West German officials quickly put to an end to. ²⁶

These modest efforts by the Yugoslav consulate in Munich were a response to the general absence of social spaces for the growing number of Yugoslav guest workers in West Germany, but they were also an attempt to counter the influence of the well-established nationalist émigré communities that sought to gain adherents among newly arrived Yugoslav workers. Croatian émigrés, who sought the destruction of communist Yugoslavia and the recreation of an independent Croatian state, were radical, highly organized, and had support among West German conservatives and the Catholic Church. ²⁷ Because Yugoslav migration during this era was not regulated by a labour-recruitment agreement, Croatian émigrés were often able to insert themselves into the recruitment process, acting as middlemen between Yugoslav labour migrants and German employers. Offering jobs, housing, and the social and cultural support that the Yugoslav state could not, Croatian émigrés were in a position to exert a powerful influence over recently arrived Yugoslav guest workers. Émigrés’ support from the German Catholic Church and their control of the Catholic charity Caritas Croata also gave them a distinct advantage in the quest to gain support among Yugoslav labour migrants. ²⁸ Moreover, the West German chapter of Caritas enrolled Croatian and Slovenian émigré priests to provide support services for Yugoslav workers. ²⁹ Until the late 1960s, the émigrés’ work among Yugoslav guest workers was sanctioned and supported by the West German state, while attempts by Yugoslav officials to organize cultural events or provide support for Yugoslavs in the Federal Republic were consistently regarded with suspicion by West German officials. In this environment the Yugoslav state's efforts to govern its seventh republic were destined to fail.

Seeking to remedy these disadvantages, the Yugoslav government made clear its desire to secure an active presence among its citizens in West Germany in the intermittent bilateral discussions and negotiations over the conclusion of a social insurance and labour-recruitment agreement that took place between 1963 and 1968. In 1963, Yugoslav and West German officials for the first time engaged in high-level talks regarding Yugoslav migration to West Germany, and already the Yugoslav side identified the easing of restrictions on cultural events for Yugoslav workers as one of its major desiderata. ³⁰ If the exact meaning of this request was not clear in 1963, it was by the time negotiations on a labour-recruitment treaty had begun in earnest in 1964. In a draft treaty that Yugoslav officials presented to their German counterparts in July 1964, numerous articles attested to their desire to significantly expand their influence upon Yugoslav migrants by sending labour union officials and representatives of cultural organizations to work among Yugoslav migrants on a permanent basis. Their mission would include helping Yugoslavs adapt to life in West Germany and organizing cultural activities for them. ³¹ For various reasons, Yugoslavia and West Germany did not come to terms on a labour-recruitment treaty during the negotiations that took place in 1964 and 1965, but when negotiations finally resumed in 1968, Yugoslav negotiators were again adamant that they wanted to expand the Yugoslav state's presence on West German soil. ³² This time they sought the creation of a permanent social support service (Betreuungsdienst) for Yugoslav guest workers that would be staffed and operated by Yugoslavs and would presumably have centres throughout the Federal Republic. ³³ This proposal differed markedly from the usual West German practice of enrolling private German welfare organizations such as Caritas or Arbeiterwohlfahrt to provide assistance to labour migrants.

West German authorities, however, were consistently wary of allowing officials from a communist state to establish a major presence in the Federal Republic. West German officials’ stated reasons for rejecting Yugoslavia's proposed social support service for Yugoslavs in West Germany betrays just how much Cold War fears shaped West German policy on this question. In 1963, for example, a representative from the West German Interior Ministry expressed the fear that when Yugoslav authorities sought the right to organize cultural activities for their workers in the Federal Republic, they really wanted the right to spread ‘communist-steered propaganda’. ³⁴ When Yugoslavia made a similar request in its 1964 draft labour-recruitment treaty, an official in the Foreign Ministry understood it as a clear signal that Belgrade intended to ‘expand its propaganda activity to guest workers in the Federal Republic’. ³⁵ Unease with the thought of representatives of a communist regime operating freely on West German soil also played a part in the West German officials’ decision in early 1966 to put negotiations for a labour-recruitment treaty with Yugoslavia on hold. ³⁶

When negotiations were finally reopened in March 1968, an Interior Ministry official warned the Foreign Ministry that if West Germany allowed Yugoslavia to establish its own social support service it ‘would open the doors to communist influence of the workforce’, which the state would be unable to control. ³⁷ West German officials had hoped to conclude the recruitment agreement in March, but they refused to accede to Yugoslavia's proposal to create its own social support service for its citizens and that refusal contributed directly to the failure to conclude the labour-recruitment agreement. ³⁸ In the treaty that was eventually signed in October 1968, Yugoslav officials agreed to give up their plans to establish a social support service for their workers in the Federal Republic with the understanding that West Germany would allow Yugoslavia to expand its consular service to enable it to provide support to Yugoslav migrants. ³⁹ During the lengthy treaty negotiations, West German authorities conceded many points – they allowed the entry of unskilled workers, agreed to pay the German rate of child support to Yugoslav migrants’ children, and granted Yugoslavia much more control over the recruitment process than they had allowed in agreements with other states – but, motivated in part by the fear of communist agitation, they never abandoned their position that the Yugoslav state would not be given licence to maintain an active supervisory or support role for its citizens once they had migrated to West Germany. ⁴⁰ Although they would not have understood their position in these terms, West German officials had effectively denied Yugoslavia the right to govern its seventh republic in West Germany. Or at least they thought they had.

Creating Yugoslav Space in West Germany, c. 1968–1978

West German officials had held firm during the negotiation of a labour-recruitment treaty with Yugoslavia. With the exception of an expanded consular service, the Yugoslav state would not be allowed to maintain an active presence among Yugoslav guest workers in the Federal Republic. But subsequent developments would prove that what appeared to be a clear-cut triumph of West German priorities on this issue in reality marked an unexpected turning point. Beginning in 1968, and picking up pace in the early 1970s, Yugoslavia redoubled its efforts to govern its seventh republic in West Germany. Indeed, almost immediately after Yugoslavia and the Federal Republic re-established diplomatic relations in January 1968, West Germany's ambassador in Belgrade noticed that the Yugoslav government was intensifying its push to establish a presence among Yugoslavs in West Germany. In a note to the Foreign Ministry, he observed that

for many years in Yugoslavia, the press, the Socialist Alliance, and the trade unions have discussed how Yugoslav guest workers in the Federal Republic could be looked after. Now they apparently believe the time has come to switch over to concrete measures. We will have to assume that the intended Betreuung will not be limited to the realm of culture, but will also have a political dimension. ⁴¹

After the conclusion of the labour-recruitment treaty in late 1968, Yugoslav officials implemented their plan of establishing a network of Yugo Clubs throughout West Germany. The first club in Munich was founded in February 1969, the same month that the labour-recruitment agreement went into effect, and after that Yugo clubs were established at a rapid clip throughout West Germany wherever Yugoslavs settled. ⁴² Yugoslav directories of Yugo Clubs abroad listed 155 clubs in West Germany and West Berlin in 1978 and 343 by 1986. ⁴³ These clubs were founded, officially at least, by Yugoslav guest workers, but the impulse for the establishment of new clubs came, in many cases, directly from authorities in Yugoslavia. In February 1973, as part of a major rethinking of Yugoslav migration policy, the leaders of the League of Communists, the Yugoslav government, and the Socialist Alliance issued a detailed joint declaration on the ‘employment and condition of Yugoslav citizens abroad’ that identified problems associated with labour migration and proposed solutions. Two of the most significant issues were the need to deepen Yugoslav immigrants’ connection to the homeland and the aim of protecting them from negative influences during their time abroad. According to the joint declaration:

clubs, associations, sections, and other types of gatherings represent a favourable form for the organization of the social-political and cultural-entertainment life of our citizens who work abroad. They allow workers to maintain as tight a connection to the homeland as possible and to resist the various foreign influences as effectively as possible. ⁴⁴

The character of the clubs, however, would not be left to chance. The joint declaration made it clear that the Socialist Alliance would play a powerful role in both pushing for the establishment of new clubs and in ensuring that the clubs would be loyal institutions that served the Yugoslav state's interests. Reflecting the Yugoslav ideology of ‘brotherhood and unity’, the clubs were to be open to Yugoslavs from all the republics and were expected to ‘cultivate Yugoslav socialist patriotism’. ⁴⁵ The Socialist Alliance called for the coordination of all cultural, educational, and social clubs and associations abroad and also took responsibility for establishing a set of criteria for the culture and education programmes of Yugoslav clubs and associations, noting that it would ‘oppose all unacceptable content’. ⁴⁶ In 1974, a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Alliance informed West Germany's ambassador to Yugoslavia that Yugo Clubs were also viewed as a means of hindering Yugoslavs’ assimilation into German society and protecting them from the influence of terrorist émigré organizations. ⁴⁷

The Socialist Alliance was not able to work openly in West Germany, and so it relied on Yugoslavs stationed in the Federal Republic, primarily consular and labour union officials, to facilitate the expansion and coordination of the Yugo Clubs. It was the Yugoslav consuls, in particular, who spearheaded the drive to establish Yugo Clubs. And there were plenty of consular officials to assist this project: between 1969 and 1972, Yugoslavia established 10 new consulates in West Germany. ⁴⁸ Consuls regularly attended meetings in Yugo clubs and in some cases were named honorary members. ⁴⁹ In the mid-1970s, consuls pushed aggressively for the establishment of Yugo Clubs within German firms. ⁵⁰ At the same time, they created regional coordinating committees to link the clubs together, a development that followed the Socialist Alliance's desire to ‘coordinate’ and ‘synchronize’ the ‘social-political activities’ of all Yugoslav groups and organizations that were concerned with Yugoslav labour migrants. ⁵¹ Finally, according to West German intelligence agencies and the Yugoslav press, the consulates selected ‘activists’ from the clubs to participate in seminars in Yugoslavia and West Germany that were organized and led by leaders from the Socialist Alliance, the League of Communists, the Confederation of Trade Unions of Yugoslavia, and the League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia. In these seminars, dedicated to themes such as ‘The Revolutionary Path of Comrade Tito’, Yugoslav officials emphasized to activists the importance of organizing Yugoslav migrants into clubs and associations. ⁵²

The Confederation of Trade Unions of Yugoslavia (SSJ), which was subordinate to the League of Communists, also pushed for the establishment of Yugo Clubs. The SSJ had established a close relationship with the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) in the late 1960s, and in 1970 the DGB created a small Yugoslav Bureau that was staffed with Yugoslav labour representatives who were chosen by Yugoslav authorities but paid by the DGB. ⁵³ The Yugoslav Bureau sought to win DGB support for the creation of Yugo Clubs throughout West Germany, and the DGB was wary but generally willing to help. ⁵⁴

Not content with simply winning DGB support for Yugo Clubs, representatives in the Yugoslav Bureau argued that the DGB should only assist clubs that conformed exactly to the Socialist Alliance's vision. A key part of this vision was that they should be based on the notion of brotherhood and unity. Socialist Yugoslavia viewed ethnic nationalism among its constituent ethnic groups as a major threat to the integrity of the state. The concept of brotherhood and unity, rooted in the common Partisan struggle against fascism during World War II, disavowed nationalism and held that all Yugoslav ethnic groups were equal and that their cooperation was critical to the success of the Yugoslav state. ⁵⁵ Yugoslav officials were disturbed when some clubs seemed to stray from this principle. In 1973, for instance, officials in the Yugoslav Bureau alerted DGB officials to the problem of Croatian guest workers who, often with assistance from the Catholic charity Caritas, established clubs that were only open to Croats. Yugoslav Bureau officials informed the DGB that:

We are of the opinion that the founding of clubs for specific nationalities will give nationalistic and chauvinistic elements the ability to operate legally. Therefore, only Yugoslav clubs, in which the national composition of the members should play no role, should be founded and supported. In the other case [clubs for specific national groups], it would be impossible to draw a boundary between the nationalist clubs. It does not need to be emphasized that a battle must be waged against the nationalist clubs, because they work fundamentally against solidarity and integration. ⁵⁶

In other words, the Yugoslav Bureau wanted the DGB to only support clubs that were based on the principle of brotherhood and unity and to accept the view of Yugoslav authorities that Croatian clubs represented a nationalist threat. The Yugoslav Bureau vigorously opposed the formation of clubs along national lines, but it just as stridently rejected the DGB's founding of clubs that were open to guest workers from all of the lands of recruitment: from all of Yugoslavia, but also from Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, and Portugal. It contended that these clubs ‘would lead to a policy of assimilation that cannot be brought into line with the official policy that Germany is not a land of immigration’. ⁵⁷ The bigger issue, of course, and this was left unsaid, was that in clubs open to all guest workers, Yugoslav authorities would have little opportunity to exert influence over their citizens in West Germany.

For all of the talk from Yugoslav officials about their citizens abroad taking the initiative, in the spirit of ‘socialist self-organization’, to create social and cultural associations, the remarkable expansion of Yugo Clubs in West Germany during the 1970s was driven, for the most part, not by Yugoslav guest workers, but by Yugoslav officials who sought to exert influence upon Yugoslavs abroad. ⁵⁸ The Yugo Clubs can therefore be considered semi-official Yugoslav space on West German soil. Some of the clubs’ names reflected their loyalty and identification with the Yugoslav state: ‘Brotherhood and Unity’, ‘November 29th’ (Day of the Republic, Yugoslavia's most important national holiday), and numerous clubs named after prominent Yugoslav communists. ⁵⁹ The clubs also celebrated Yugoslavia's major socialist holidays and were decorated with the Yugoslav flag and large portraits of Tito. ⁶⁰ The clubs were part of a political program developed by Yugoslav officials, and while most of the clubs’ activities – which focused on sports, folklore events, and various programmes for maintaining a connection to the homeland – were not overtly political, the clubs were nonetheless a politicized space. ⁶¹

Yugo Clubs’ activities were for the most part completely unobjectionable. Chess tournaments, folklore festivals, and soccer matches, for example, were hardly threatening to Yugoslavs or their West German hosts. But some West German officials, especially from the embassy in Yugoslavia, the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and the DGB, were troubled by the clubs. They feared that the clubs provided a space in which Yugoslav officials would seek not just to influence Yugoslav guest workers, but also to control and surveil them. These fears, never fully fleshed out, at times recall an earlier era of the Cold War. During the 1950s and 1960s, West German authorities frequently expressed concerns that Yugoslav labour migrants might be communist spies who were carrying out surveillance missions in West Germany or who sought to spread communism among the West German working class. ⁶² Similar fears, detailed above, influenced West Germany's refusal during the 1960s to countenance the creation of a Yugoslav-run social support service for Yugoslav guest workers. Even in the 1970s, during an era when West Germany sought and maintained positive relations with Yugoslavia and communist Eastern Europe more generally, a sort of Cold War hangover seems to have coloured some West German officials’ views of the Yugoslav state's activities on West German soil. This is not to suggest that their concerns about Yugo Clubs and other Yugoslav efforts to influence and control their citizens in Germany should be dismissed; there is too much supporting evidence from Yugoslav sources to do so. ⁶³ Rather, West German discussions of Yugo Clubs must be treated critically, with the Cold War context in mind.

In 1978, an official in the West German embassy in Belgrade stated that he was concerned about indications that Yugoslav authorities were using the clubs to practise ‘controlling care’ (kontrollierenden Betreuung). ⁶⁴ According to this official, Yugoslav authorities attempted to use the clubs and other institutions in West Germany to exert a profound ideological influence upon their citizens abroad, including through the education of guest workers’ children, an influence that sometimes bordered on control. This official did not specify how, exactly, efforts to influence guest workers could become coercive and controlling. Nonetheless, given Yugoslav officials’ desire, dating back to the early 1960s, to establish their own social support service for Yugoslavs in West Germany, and their fears of Yugoslavs being both assimilated into German society and influenced by nationalist Croatian and Serbian émigré groups, it is hardly surprising that they would attempt to exert substantial influence upon Yugoslav guest workers in West Germany.

During negotiations for the labour-recruitment treaty in the 1960s, West German officials, as we have seen, stood firm in their refusal to allow Yugoslav authorities to create their own social support service in West Germany. But Yugoslav authorities were persistent. One of the earliest signs that Yugoslavia sought to establish a system to extend its influence over Yugoslavs in the Federal Republic was the Yugoslav Federal Labour Bureau's attempt, in 1973, to establish ‘Yugo-Service’ in West Germany. According to the West German officials who first learned of the plan, Yugo-Service, a commercial enterprise, was to be based in Augsburg and operated by an international insurance company, an attempt to get around West German objections to the establishment of a Yugoslav-run social support service in the Federal Republic. All Yugoslavs in West Germany would be required to join the enterprise and to pay the considerable sum of 30 DM per month for services rendered. ⁶⁵ The exact details of how Yugo-Service would function are not clear, primarily because when West German officials caught wind of the plan, they vigorously objected – in part because they considered it a ‘remotely-controlled’ social support service that may have also had a ‘surveillance mission’ – and the project never got off the ground. ⁶⁶ Few details are available on the proposed Yugo-Service, but it is clear that the Yugo-Service was an attempt by the Yugoslav state to remove Yugoslav labour migrants from the jurisdiction of West German social support services such as Arbeiterwohlfahrt and Caritas and force them to become paying members of an organization that would have allowed Yugoslav officials to gain more influence over them, as well as to extract more Deutschmarks from them.

The Yugo Clubs offered another space for Yugoslav authorities to exert influence upon Yugoslav labour migrants. But unlike the proposed Yugo-Service, membership in Yugo Clubs was voluntary, and therefore more palatable to the West German authorities. There are indications, however, that Yugoslav officials attempted to make them less voluntary. In 1976, the Yugoslav consulate in Freiburg informed Yugoslavs that on Saturdays it would only have consultation hours for Yugo Club members. ⁶⁷ Since most Yugoslavs worked on weekdays, Saturday would have been the most convenient day to meet with consular officials to discuss important matters such as passport renewal and the many legal and financial questions that came with working abroad. By only holding consultation hours on Saturdays for club members, the consul sought to give Yugo Clubs an official function and standing, undoubtedly hoping to convince more Yugoslavs to join the clubs.

In 1976, the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BLfV) also reported that the Yugoslav government was using the Yugo Clubs to exert influence over Yugoslav guest workers. In a government-organized seminar in Dubrovnik for Yugoslav ‘activists’ living abroad, high-ranking Yugoslav authorities informed the activists that they needed to promote membership in the Yugo Clubs not only because they helped migrants maintain a connection to the homeland, but also because they provided an opportunity to control Yugoslavs abroad. In the same seminar, speakers emphasized the dangers presented by radical émigré organizations in West Germany and asked the activists to repeatedly point out these dangers to Yugoslav labour migrants. The speakers also stated that Yugoslav guest workers could not have contact with the émigré community and that guest workers who were approached by émigrés had to immediately report the contact, presumably to consular officials. ⁶⁸

Another report in 1976 from the same office describes in more detail how Yugoslav consuls attempted to exert control over the Yugo Clubs. The investigation into the Yugo Clubs had its origin in a complaint to the Bavarian state chancellery by Yugoslavia's general consul in Munich, who alleged that Yugoslav émigrés had recently carried out violent attacks on Yugo Clubs. ⁶⁹ Given émigrés’ documented violence against the Yugo Clubs, the general consul may very well have had grounds for complaint. ⁷⁰ But the ensuing investigation turned up a different story. The report began by noting that the BLfV had for some time been aware of the increasing conflict and violent disputes within Yugo Clubs in Bavaria, but it laid the blame squarely on the general consulate, not political émigrés. It went on to describe the consulate's interference in the Yugo Clubs:

Since the end of 1975, the general consulate in Munich has to an increasing degree aimed to exert influence upon these clubs. This exercise of influence goes well beyond the typical mentoring and support that consulates abroad provide. The consulate is striving to extensively shape and control the clubs’ activity … if the consulate sees that it is not able influence the life of the club to the degree that it had expected, it tries to sow discord, puts the leadership of the club under pressure, and so on. If these measures also do not have the hoped for success, the consulate will help to found a second club, which it then promotes and supports. This leads to more or less violent disputes between the competing clubs and the atmosphere in the clubs becomes more and more poisoned. ⁷¹

The report noted that even clubs that were supportive of the Yugoslav state ran into trouble if they resisted the influence of the consulate, and sports clubs faced the same pressures. ⁷² In this climate, it was not uncommon for Yugo Clubs to be riven by internal conflict. ⁷³

Although it touches only tangentially on Yugo Clubs, a conflict between Yugoslav consuls in West Germany and some Yugoslav labour migrants over the issue of education for guest workers’ children provides some clues as to what sort of pressure Yugoslav authorities could place on their citizens working and living in West Germany. Yugoslav officials, as part of their plan to ‘govern the seventh republic’, sought to export their educational system, to the extent possible, to West Germany. They did this by sending teachers who were hand-picked by Yugoslav consuls, in part based on their political reliability. The teachers worked closely with the consuls in West Germany and enjoyed special benefits from this position. Although each West German state had different policies regarding education for the children of guest workers, in general, the children of Yugoslav guest workers had the opportunity to receive some type of additional instruction by Yugoslav teachers within German schools. Yugoslav officials wanted these children not just to develop their native language skills, but also to become good Yugoslav subjects, learning about Marxism, historical materialism, the accomplishments of Tito and the Partisans, the Yugoslav credo of brotherhood and unity, and more. Working closely with consuls and Yugo Clubs, teachers also organized celebrations on major Yugoslavian holidays and strongly encouraged parents to have their children join the Pioneers, the communist party's youth group. ⁷⁴ Yugoslav officials also sought to restrict religious instruction, considering it to be opposed to socialism. They did this by attempting to select only atheist teachers and by fighting to bar supplemental religious instruction in West German schools, instruction that could only be carried out by priests from Yugoslavia, many of whom were émigrés or opponents of the Yugoslav state. ⁷⁵

When some Yugoslav guest workers objected to what they saw as an overly politicized education that was hostile to religion, Yugoslav consuls and teachers threatened them with repercussions. The Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution described one such conflict surrounding the major celebrations that Yugoslav consuls and teachers in Regensburg planned for the Yugoslav national holiday – the Day of the Republic – in 1976. According to this report, a ‘fierce conflict’ erupted between Yugoslav consuls and teachers on one side and Yugoslav parents on the other side. The parents objected to the fact that their participation in these events, as well as having their children take part in ‘politically oriented’ supplemental instruction by Yugoslav teachers, was presented as mandatory by Yugoslav consuls and teachers. Some parents, objecting to what they saw as one-sided and falsified history instruction, as well as public celebrations full of ‘red flags, stars, scarves, and the “cult of the Partisans”,’ stated that neither they nor their children would take part in these activities. They were then threatened that if they stayed away, their children's schooling while in Germany would not be recognized upon their return to Yugoslavia. ⁷⁶

In a 1978 interview in a Catholic magazine, Branko Simovic, a Croatian priest in Bochum, detailed a similar form of pressure that Yugoslav consuls and teachers exerted on Yugoslav guest workers. According to him, Yugoslav teachers, whom he stated were often also heads of Yugo Clubs, placed immense ‘psychological pressure’ on parents to have their children removed from supplemental religious instruction within West German schools. He also described parents’ meetings within Yugo Clubs, with Yugoslav consuls in attendance, in which the major issue discussed was the fight against religious instruction. Simovic reported that some teachers asked parents who sent their children to religious instruction: ‘are you thinking of going back to Yugoslavia?’ This question was an implicit threat, as it suggested that those who did not pull their children out of religious instruction or take part in official Yugoslav activities might find themselves or their children disadvantaged in various ways upon their return to Yugoslavia. According to Simovic, Yugoslav authorities’ control of guest workers’ passports made many Yugoslav Catholics feel like they were under greater pressure from the regime in West Germany than when they were in Yugoslavia. ⁷⁷ Although it is not possible to state how often threats like this were made, or if guest workers actually did face repercussions upon their return to Yugoslavia for opposing the Yugoslav authorities’ wishes, these conflicts do at least suggest that Yugoslav officials had some levers they could pull to aid their efforts to influence and control their citizens on West German soil.

That Yugoslav authorities sought to exert some degree of influence and control over the Yugo Clubs, and by extension, Yugoslav guest workers, cannot be doubted. There is also reason to suspect that Yugoslav authorities used the clubs as a space where they could monitor and even spy on their citizens. According to the historian Nikola Baković, in the late 1960s the League of Communists of Yugoslavia began establishing clandestine communist party organizations in western companies that employed Yugoslav labour migrants; it also sent ‘special Party agitators … to politically educate non-members and keep them aware of the ever-watching Party eye’. He also notes that the party ‘often resorted to infiltrating secret service agents into workers’ clubs to spread the ideologically “positive” tendencies among the Gastarbeiter’. ⁷⁸ An article in the Swiss press in 1978 alluded to this surveillance activity within the Yugo Clubs in Switzerland. It stated that a number of cases had come to light in which Yugoslav labour migrants had spied on their fellow countrymen, apparently at the request of the Yugoslav security services. The article pointed to Yugo Clubs, closely bound to Yugoslav consulates, as a prominent space in which the Yugoslav state ‘carried out so-called “cultural” activities that sometimes come alarmingly close to scarcely legal surveillance’. ⁷⁹ Given all of this, it would hardly be surprising if surveillance activities were also carried out at Yugo Clubs in Germany. That would, moreover, be in accord with findings by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which reported in 1979 that Yugoslav intelligence officials operated out of the Yugoslav consulates in West Germany and that they recruited Yugoslavs and Germans to spy on Yugoslav labour migrants. ⁸⁰

German Support for Yugo Clubs

Some West German officials were aware of the Yugoslav authorities’ attempts to exert influence upon and even control Yugoslav guest workers. The West German ambassador to Yugoslavia was the first West German official to realize that the Yugo Clubs were a key institution in Yugoslavia's plan to govern its seventh republic. In 1970, he alerted the West German Foreign Ministry to the fact that Yugoslav authorities used the clubs to maintain an ideological influence over their citizens abroad. ⁸¹ The ambassador repeated his warning on multiple occasions in subsequent years. ⁸² Responding to these and other warnings, in August 1973 representatives from the major federal ministries met to discuss their concerns about Yugoslavia's attempts to influence its citizens abroad, which they suspected included surveillance, and they vowed to ‘use all means to put an end to these attempts’. ⁸³ Even leaders within the DGB, which worked closely with Yugoslav workers and supported Yugo Clubs, had developed serious concerns about the clubs. In 1976, Heinz Richter, who was secretary of the DGB's Federal Executive Board as well as leader of its advisory committee on foreign workers, expressed his concerns to the West German embassy in Belgrade:

For me it is still clear that the determination of the clubs’ political purposes lies not with the Confederation of Trade Unions of Yugoslavia, but with the Socialist Alliance. The political aims of the Socialist Alliance are political influence and control, the cultural aspect serves simply as a crutch and a pretext for the clubs. ⁸⁴

Despite these widespread concerns, the Yugo Clubs continued to find extensive material and financial support from both the West German government and the DGB. The support often came from state and municipal governments that were either not aware of or were not disturbed by the political nature of the Yugo Clubs. ⁸⁵ If they were not aware of the questionable character of the Yugo Clubs, it was because the many federal, state, and labour union officials who were acquainted with the clubs and who were disturbed by the Yugoslav plan to provide what one West German official called ‘controlling care’ had, despite their concerns, never made the clubs a major issue. Although fairly widespread, concerns about the clubs rarely simmered much higher than internal memos and ‘experts’ meetings’ within government and labour bureaucracies. Vows by German officials to crack down on Yugoslav authorities’ efforts to influence Yugoslav migrants were not followed up with actions. The DGB, as we have seen, worked closely with the Yugo Clubs and was deeply disturbed by the Socialist Alliance's efforts to ideologically influence the clubs and the workers who frequented them; and yet it continued to provide financial support for the establishment of new clubs. ⁸⁶

West German officials’ continued support for these clubs and their hesitation to do more than privately grumble about them, must be understood in the context of the Cold War, and specifically West Germany's changing relationship with Yugoslavia. As noted previously, West Germany severed diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia in 1957, after Yugoslavia extended diplomatic recognition to East Germany. But Willy Brandt, head of the Social Democratic Party and foreign minister in the Grand Coalition from 1966 to 1969, and then chancellor from 1969 to 1974, made improving relations with Yugoslavia a key part of his Ostpolitik, his drive to improve West Germany's relations with communist Eastern Europe. After an early success in January 1967, in which West Germany and Romania established diplomatic relations, the Warsaw Pact responded by blocking West Germany's efforts to reach out to its member states. In this situation, improving relations with non-aligned Yugoslavia appeared to be the obvious next step towards repairing West German relations with Eastern Europe more generally. ⁸⁷

The issue of labour migration was absolutely central to Brandt's plan to improve relations with Yugoslavia. While Tito sought to negotiate a war reparations agreement, Brandt, not yet ready to take that step, identified the negotiation of a labour-recruitment agreement as an area in which West Germany and Yugoslavia had a common interest, and he hoped that those negotiations would lead to a broader diplomatic breakthrough between the two states. ⁸⁸ When the West German labour minister, citing an economic downturn, objected to signing a labour-recruitment agreement with Yugoslavia in 1967, Brandt insisted that the negotiations should go forward, as he considered it part of his Ostpolitik. Side-lining economic concerns, he affirmed that ‘foreign policy concerns should take priority’. ⁸⁹ These negotiations did, in fact, lead to a diplomatic breakthrough. In January 1968, West Germany and Yugoslavia re-established diplomatic relations; the labour-recruitment agreement was concluded later that year, in October 1968. ⁹⁰

During Brandt's time as foreign minister and then chancellor, West Germany took a number of steps that signalled its desire to maintain good relations with Yugoslavia. These included West German support for Yugoslavia's desire to build a nuclear power plant, a crackdown on the nationalist Croatian émigré groups in West Germany that were a perennial concern for Tito and the Yugoslav authorities, and finally, in 1973, a generous settlement on the question of war reparations. ⁹¹ Despite all of this cooperation in multiple areas, Brandt continued to centre the two states’ restored relationship on the issue of labour migration, which he endowed with a special significance in the context of the Cold War. This is most obvious in a speech that Brandt gave in Belgrade in April 1973, when he became the first West German chancellor to make a state visit to Yugoslavia. Surveying the development of West German-Yugoslav relations since the resumption of diplomatic relations in early 1968, Brandt stated that:

Today no states with more different social orders have opened their borders more widely to each other than have our two countries. I believe that the most important result of our efforts is that, through the activity of half a million Yugoslavs in the Federal Republic of Germany and the travels of an enormous number of German tourists in Yugoslavia, our people have come closer together. In the process of getting to know each other the key requirements for successful cooperation – mutual respect and understanding – have developed. ⁹²

He went on to note that the cooperation and interpersonal exchange between Yugoslavia and West Germany could serve as a model for the rest of Europe. In other words, at least in his public rhetoric, Brandt described Yugoslav labour migration, and the ensuing interpersonal contact between West Germans and Yugoslavs, as part of his wider project to overcome the Cold War division of Europe. ⁹³ Even after Brandt left office in 1974, some West German officials and members of the media continued to frame the issue of labour migration from Yugoslavia in terms of its positive contribution to overcoming Europe's Cold War divide and the painful legacy of World War II. ⁹⁴ In this political context, taking steps against the Yugo Clubs or publicly raising an alarm about their activities would have meant targeting an area – labour migration – that West German officials had identified as being central to improving and maintaining relations with Yugoslavia. Any move against the clubs, therefore, would not just have alienated a Cold War ally, but would also have been at odds with West German foreign policy.

Cold War foreign policy concerns were not, however, the only reason that West German authorities continued to support the Yugo Clubs. At least some West German officials continued to support the clubs because they aligned with West Germany's vision of itself as ‘not a country of immigration’. West German leaders had initially conceived of the labour-recruitment programme as a guest worker programme in which foreign labourers would come to Germany, preferably without their families, work for a couple of years, return home, and then be replaced by newly recruited foreign workers. The goal of this rotation model was to prevent the permanent settlement of foreign populations on West German territory. But when West German employers and federal and local officials realized by the mid-1960s that many guest workers and their families had, in fact, begun to put down permanent roots in the country, the state declined to implement the rotation system that it had called for. ⁹⁵

By the early 1970s, there were nearly four million foreigners living in West Germany and it was clear that many were settling permanently. This process accelerated dramatically after West Germany halted the recruitment of guest workers in November, 1973, a policy that had the unintended consequence of spurring increased family migration. ⁹⁶ Despite this reality, West German officials, having given up on enforcing a rotation system for foreign labourers, nonetheless remained committed to the notion that West Germany was not a country of immigration. ⁹⁷ In a 1975 meeting, West German labour ministry officials explained this position to representatives from Yugoslavia's labour ministry. They stated that ‘foreign workers are to be assured of living conditions which make their stay in the Federal Republic of Germany comfortable in an appropriate manner, without, however, alienating them from their home country’. ‘The Federal Republic of Germany’, they continued, ‘still does not see itself as a country of immigration’. ⁹⁸ Guest workers, in short, were expected to return home.

Over the course of more than a decade, Yugoslav officials emphasized that Yugo Clubs were meant to bind Yugoslavs in West Germany to the homeland and to prepare them for an eventual return. ⁹⁹ This fitted perfectly with the West German insistence that guest workers would eventually return home. The DGB, in particular, was willing to put up with all of the clubs’ troubling aspects because of Yugoslav officials’ insistence that the clubs would help maintain Yugoslav labour migrants’ connection to the homeland. In 1974, Heinz Richter wrote a confidential memo in which he bemoaned, again, the Yugoslav state's interference with the Yugo Clubs that the DGB supported. But in the same memo, while still discussing Yugo Clubs, he stated that the whole point of the DGB's cooperation with the Confederation of Trade Unions of Yugoslavia (SSJ) was to build a bridge back to the homeland for Yugoslav labour migrants and to help prepare them for reintegration into Yugoslav society after they left West Germany. ¹⁰⁰ Similarly, in a 1979 report on cooperation between the DGB and the SSJ on Yugo Clubs and other recreational establishments for Yugoslav labour migrants, DGB officials affirmed that they supported these establishments and their associated cultural programming because they were certain that they ‘represent a useful connection to the homeland for Yugoslav workers’, and would help Yugoslavs ‘maintain their national identity’. ¹⁰¹ This, in turn, would increase the number of labour migrants returning permanently to their homeland, which was a policy priority for the DGB during this era. ¹⁰²

Following the same logic as the DGB, in 1973 the Federal Republic's ambassador to Yugoslavia supported Yugoslavia's plans to construct two cultural centres for its citizens in West Germany. The centres, he admitted, would in reality be institutions for the dissemination of Yugoslav state propaganda. West German officials, he maintained, would have to ensure that the centres ‘keep the propaganda activity within the usual limits for information centres and that it is not carried into our companies and our public’. Nonetheless, he approved of the centres, noting that ‘it has never been our goal to alienate guest workers from their native regime’. ¹⁰³ During the first two decades of the Cold War, before détente and Brandt's new Ostpolitik, West German officials would have firmly rejected the notion that communist cultural and social centres linked to a foreign authoritarian government should be given free rein to operate on West German soil. But now at least some labour union and government officials in the Federal Republic supported these Yugo Clubs and information centres because they believed they would encourage Yugoslav guest workers to maintain intense bonds with their homeland, which Germans hoped would facilitate their eventual return.

Conclusion

Beginning in the early 1960s, Yugoslav officials sought to find ways to gain influence over their citizens who lived and worked in West Germany, in part to stop them from falling into the hands of radical nationalist émigrés, mostly Croats, who sought the destruction of the Yugoslav state. Due to German opposition, these early efforts were largely unsuccessful. During the 1960s, West German officials, shaped by Cold War fears of communist infiltration, resisted Yugoslavia's efforts to exert influence over the substantial number of Yugoslav labour migrants who arrived in West Germany prior the conclusion of a labour-recruitment agreement between the two states. This fear of communism, and particularly concerns about the operation of communist officials from Yugoslavia on German soil, also contributed to West Germany's hesitancy to sign a labour-recruitment agreement with Yugoslavia. This reality, combined with the absence of diplomatic relations between the two states, severely limited Yugoslav officials’ ability to influence and monitor their citizens on West German soil.

The changing Cold War context, particularly the emergence of détente and Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik in the late 1960s, transformed both the Yugoslav state's ability to influence its citizens in West Germany and West German perceptions of those efforts. As foreign minister, Brandt pushed for the conclusion of a labour-recruitment agreement with Yugoslavia as a means of improving diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia and as part of his larger goal of normalizing relations with communist Eastern Europe. This led to the resumption of diplomatic relations in January 1968 and the conclusion of a labour-recruitment agreement in October 1968. As chancellor of the Federal Republic, Brandt repeatedly invoked cooperation in the area of migration as a central component of the West German-Yugoslav relationship and as a model for overcoming Europe's Cold War divide. The resumption of diplomatic relations, the conclusion of a labour-recruitment agreement, and the general re-evaluation of the threat posed by Yugoslav labour migration combined to give Yugoslav officials substantially more room to operate on West German soil.

In the early 1970s, Yugoslavia's leaders devised and implemented a plan to extend the state's reach to the hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav migrants living in West Germany with the goal of securing their loyalty, inculcating a sense of Yugoslav patriotism, and limiting their incorporation into West German society. They did this in part by hand-picking hundreds of their citizens and sending them to work within Yugoslav migrant communities in West Germany as schoolteachers, welfare workers, and labour union representatives. ¹⁰⁴ The establishment and coordination of a network of Yugo Clubs, nominally formed by Yugoslav guest workers, but in reality spearheaded by the Socialist Alliance and Yugoslav consular officials, was a key part of Yugoslavia's effort to govern the seventh republic.

West German concerns about the operation of Yugoslav officials in the Federal Republic did not disappear when the two states re-established diplomatic relations. Officials from the embassy in Belgrade, the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as well as the DGB, which worked closely with their Yugoslav labour union counterparts, expressed substantial reservations about the Yugo Clubs. They recognized that the Clubs were effectively an arm of the Yugoslav state, which used the clubs to exercise an ideological influence over Yugoslav guest workers. Moreover, they were concerned that Yugoslav authorities used the clubs as part of a wider effort to surveil and control their citizens living in West Germany. But the same officials who repeatedly raised these concerns over many years often continued to support the clubs. They did so for two reasons. First, to withdraw support for the clubs or to take steps against them would have upset the Yugoslav state, and therefore would have been at odds with West Germany's Cold War foreign policy goal of maintaining positive relations with communist Eastern Europe. Second, some officials continued to support the clubs because they believed they would help Yugoslavs resist assimilation and keep them oriented towards the homeland, preparing them for a future return. This aligned with West Germany's insistence, against all evidence to the contrary, that it was not a land of immigration and that guest workers and their families would eventually return home. Anti-communism had deep roots in West German culture and politics; it did not simply disappear as a result of the emergence of détente or the gradual liberalization of West German culture and society. But in this case, foreign policy concerns and the imperative to maintain that West Germany was not a country of immigration trumped all concerns about foreign communists operating in the Federal Republic and exercising undue influence upon guest workers and their families.