[11] Hungarian Germans refers to the descendants of Danube Swabians who immigrated to the Carpathian Basin and surrounding regions, and who are now minorities in those areas.

Many Hungarian Germans were expelled from the region between 1946 and 1948, and many now live in Germany or Austria, but also in Australia, Brazil, the United States, and Canada.

The first two waves of settlers arrived in the Kingdom of Hungary during the Middle Ages (more specifically during the High Middle Ages between the 11th and 13th centuries) and formed the core of the citizenry of a few towns in Upper Hungary (i.e. Zipser Germans, "Zipser Sachsen") and southern Transylvania (i.e. Transylvanian Saxons, "Siebenbürger Sachsen").

[12] The third, largest wave of German-speaking immigrants arrived in Hungary as the result of a deliberate settlement policy of the Habsburg government after the Ottoman Empire was driven from Hungarian territory.

Between 1711 and 1780, German-speaking settlers from Southern Germany, Austria, and Saxony emigrated to southwestern Hungary, including, Buda, Banat, and Szatmár County.

By 1918, at the end of World War I, almost two million Danube Swabians and other German-speaking peoples lived in what is now Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Slovakia, and the former Yugoslav republics.

Citing "security reasons", the advancing Red Army deported about 600,000 civilians and prisoners of war from Hungary, of whom 40,000–65,000 were Germans.

[12] A significant number of Germans, mostly members of Nazi organisations, avoiding or fearing deportation to Siberia, fled Hungary as well.

With World War II still raging in 1945, various factions competing for immediate and postwar Hungarian political power sought to decide how to treat ethnic Germans.

In May 1945, the Hungarian government announced that the problem was not a larger Swabian one but one of German fascists: it resolved to deport only former Waffen SS soldiers and confiscate the lands of Volksbund members.

This was far greater than the number of Volksbund members, reinforcing the theory that the goal was the elimination of an unwanted ethnic group rather than just that of German fascists.

The initiative for including the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Hungary at the August 1945 Potsdam "Big Three" conference came from the Soviet Union.

Together with the Hungarian Communist Party, the USSR used the argument of collective Swabian guilt to hide their true goal of radical land reform.

Cardinal József Mindszenty (of Swabian origin), head of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary and fierce anti-communist, repeatedly protested the confiscation of property and expulsion of ethnic Germans.

[14] Things began to improve for minority groups, including Hungarian Germans, under a program of economic liberalization called Goulash Communism.

This movement, led by the then-General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party János Kádár, guaranteed certain economic and cultural rights to minority groups.