The Organised persecution of ethnic Germans refers to systematic activity against groups of ethnic Germans based on their ethnicity. Historically, this has been due to two causes: the German population were considered, whether factually or not, linked with German nationalist regimes such as those of Imperial Germany or Nazi Germany. This was the case in the World War I era persecution of Germans in the United States, and also in Eastern and Central Europe following the end of World War II. While many victims of these persecutions did not, in fact, have any connection to those regimes, cooperation between German minority organisations and Nazi regime did occur, as the example of Selbstschutz shows, which is still used as a pretense of hostilities against those who did not take part in such