Germans have lived in Azerbaijan since the 1810s, with a large concentration of them once found in the western part of the country. The community grew out of two original settlements founded by German settlers from Württemberg who settled here in 1819. During World War II, it virtually ceased to exist as the Soviet government, which ruled Azerbaijan at the time, grew wary of the ethnic Germans potentially sympathising with the advancing army of the Third Reich and deported them to Central Asia in 1942.