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This article examines stories told after 1945 by ethnic German refugees from the Banat region of Yugoslavia about encounters they had with Partisans-fighters in Josip Broz Tito's army-who had become vampires. The essay situates these tales firmly within their place of origin and views them as an idiom through which Yugoslavian Germans described wartime acts of, encounters with, and anxieties about violence. This idiom had diverse cultural roots, and was inflected by memories of partisan warfare in World War I, as well as by gender, religious culture and local folklore surrounding blood. Through a contextualized reading of stories about blood-drinking Partisans, the essay offers a window onto a psychology of violence and its legacies in the wake of war and makes a plea for taking fantasy and the monstrous seriously as objects of historical analysis.
In the time of battle, the Partisans drink no water, no wine or schnapps, only blood!1
After World War II, ethnic-German former inhabitants of the Yugoslavian Banat region-often referred to as Danube Swabians, or Donauschwaben- recalled chilling encounters they had with "Tito Partisans" who had become vampires.2 When provoked in particular ways, or even for no reason at all, Swabians reported, Partisans-members of the multiethnic, communist-revolutionary and insurgent fighting force led by Josip Broz Tito during the war-would suddenly froth at the mouth and fall into terrifying, demonic and convulsive states, which could only be ameliorated by drinking blood-and Swabian blood (Schwabenblut) at that.
Tales of vampire Partisans were recorded in the late 1940s and early 1950s by a folklorist and former National Socialist and SS man named Alfred Karasek (1902-70). Today, they belong to one of the largest legend archives in Germany.3 Karasek gathered all sorts of stories and prophecies told after the war by expellees (Vertriebene), as ethnic-German refugees from eastern Europe came almost uniformly to be identified in West Germany. 4 These stories and prophecies often featured visions of retribution and redemption-describing upraised fists materializing in night skies stained the color of blood or apparitions of the Virgin Mary or Jesus.5 Equal parts oral reportage, folklore and fantasy, the tales in the Karasek archive narrate experiences and perceptions of violence in the chaotic last moments of the war and its immediate aftermath.
In Yugoslavia as in...