The end of the war in Europe was only the beginning of the suffering for millions of people left homeless by the fighting, released from captivity or expelled as an act of vengeance.
By Bernard Wasserstein
Last updated 2011-02-17
The end of the war in Europe was only the beginning of the suffering for millions of people left homeless by the fighting, released from captivity or expelled as an act of vengeance.
The end of World War Two brought in its wake the largest population movements in European history. Millions of Germans fled or were expelled from eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, survivors of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis, sought secure homes beyond their native lands. And other refugees from every country in eastern Europe rushed to escape from the newly installed Communist regimes.
The expulsions were ... conducted in a ruthless and often brutal manner.
At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, British, American and Russian leaders agreed to '... recognise that the transfer to Germany of German populations ... remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken.' They also specified that '... any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.' The expulsions were, in fact, conducted in a ruthless and often brutal manner.
Some of the people who left those eastern countries were recent arrivals, who had been settled in German-conquered territories by the Nazis as part of their long-term plan for German domination of eastern Europe. But most of those being expelled came of stock whose ancestors had been settled in the eastern lands for generations, and who knew no other place as home.
The Volksdeutsche, as the Nazis had called them were, however, for the most part, victims of a calamity of which they were themselves part-authors. Not all were Nazis, but a majority had become supporters of Hitler.
Even before the end of the war the greater part of the German population of East Prussia had fled westwards - although thousands drowned en route, in overloaded ships that sank in the Baltic Sea.
In the city of Königsberg, annexed by the USSR, the food supply broke down completely in 1945. People were reduced to eating offal, and human flesh was offered for sale as fried meatballs. Seven centuries of German civilisation, in the city that had nurtured philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried von Herder, thus ended in cannibalism. By 1949 nearly all the surviving Germans in the region had been driven out.
At the peak period ... 14,400 people a day were being dumped over the frontier.
In Poland, German-owned farms and houses were handed over to Poles. Germans were rounded up by Polish militias and put in camps, before being removed from the country. In Czechoslovakia, more than 2.2 million Germans were expelled, and their property was expropriated. At the peak period, in July 1946, 14,400 people a day were being dumped over the frontier. About three quarters went to the American occupation zone of Germany, and most of the remainder to the Soviet zone.
About 60,000 Germans had already fled from Hungary before the end of the war, some travelling by boat up the Danube. After the war the government ordered the German population to leave en bloc. As their trains left, some deportees tried to affirm their loyalty by waving Hungarian flags, singing Magyar folk songs, and chalking on the sides of the carriages slogans such as, 'We don't say goodbye, only au revoir!'
Most were sent to Germany, but from some villages the entire adult population was deported to labour camps in the Donets Basin of the Soviet Union. By the end of the expulsions only about 200,000 Germans remained in Hungary.
In Romania, from the autumn of 1944, tens of thousands of the Swabian Germans of the Banat, and more from the ancient Saxon communities of Transylvania - long-established outposts of German peasant and mercantile life - loaded their wagons and hitched their horses for the long trek to their ancestral homeland. By 1948 the pre-war German population of 780,000 had been reduced by more than half.
... Germans who were expelled or who departed voluntarily from eastern Europe ... mounted to 11.5 million ...
Virtually all the half million Germans in Yugoslavia fled, were expelled, or were sent to labour camps by the victorious Communist partisan forces. An estimated 27,000 were sent to camps in the Soviet Union. Violence against the Volksdeutsche here was probably more relentless than in any other country.
According to official West German accounts (perhaps exaggerated) at least 610,000 Germans were killed in the course of the expulsions. The total number of Germans who were expelled or who departed voluntarily from eastern Europe after the end of the war mounted to 11.5 million by 1950.
As the German presence in eastern Europe was thus abruptly terminated, the Germans' foremost victims were also turned into refugees. Surviving Jews from concentration camps who returned to their homes found that they were unwelcome. Their property had new occupants who were generally reluctant to vacate the premises.
Hundreds of thousands ... fled westwards ... most of them hoping to get to North America.
In Poland and Slovakia pogroms broke out, in which Jews were killed. Over 100,000 Jews infiltrated to the western powers' occupation zones in Germany and Austria. Most sought permission to enter Palestine - but the British mandatory government there denied entry to all save a handful. They therefore remained stuck for years in so-called displaced persons' camps.
Other wanderers were also on the move in the early months of the peace. Nearly two million Poles were compulsorily transferred from eastern areas of Poland that had been annexed by the USSR. They took the place of Germans expelled from the formerly German regions of Pomerania and Silesia, now transferred to Poland.
Half a million Ukrainians, Belorussians and others were deported from Poland to the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Croats, and others, fearful of reprisals for wartime collaboration, fled westwards from all over eastern Europe, most of them hoping to get to North America.
The integration of the millions of refugees in their countries of arrival was not easy. European states were, in the main, too preoccupied with the sufferings of their own citizens and with the tasks of reconstruction to have much compassion to spare. The millions of Germans from the east who suddenly found themselves in a fatherland that most of them had never seen before became for a while a dangerous element in politics, easy prey to nationalist demagogues spouting irredentist talk.
Over two million Soviet citizens were returned by the western Allies to areas under Soviet control.
The international response to the refugee crisis took both legal and organisational form. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 guaranteed a '... right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution', and forbade the arbitrary deprivation of nationality. The Geneva Convention on Refugees of 1951 defined refugees, accorded them specific rights, and prohibited their refoulement (or forcible return) from countries of refuge.
Meanwhile a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) had been created in 1943. UNRRA was succeeded by the International Refugee Organisation, established in 1946; and that in turn gave way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in 1950. All these bodies, however, were plagued by political conflict, in particular the outbreak of the Cold War.
UNRRA was limited under its Articles of Agreement to assisting in the 'repatriation or return' to their home countries of 'displaced persons'. It transported millions of former concentration-camp dwellers, forced labourers and other victims of the Nazis to countries such as France, Belgium, and Greece.
Over two million Soviet citizens were returned by the western Allies to areas under Soviet control. They were moved in batches, generally in return for equivalent numbers of citizens of western countries, an equivalence insisted upon by the Soviet authorities.
Many of the Soviets departed willingly. But others did not, and their forcible return conflicted with the 'non-refoulement' principle. Many citizens of east European states that were taken over by Communists also resisted repatriation. Most sought refuge in western Europe, the United States, Canada, or Australia.
Cold War considerations, combined with calculation of labour requirements in industries such as mining, led Britain, Australia and other countries to grant Poles and some others permanent settlement. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 finally provided a secure refuge for Jews who had been hounded from their homes in central and eastern Europe. But the buoyant United States economy held out the most tantalising hope to refugees.
American refugee policy in the post-war period was driven by conflicting tendencies towards isolationist restrictionism and Cold War internationalism. The former approach was staunchly advocated by powerful figures in Congress and important organs of public opinion, for example, the Chicago Tribune.
The deepening of east-west conflict in the early years of the Cold War provided the context for subsequent US legislation.
In 1948 the Displaced Persons Act, primarily inspired by anti-Communism, finally led to a relaxation of US immigration policy. The US Escapee Program was established in the same year, and offered sanctuary to a limited number of refugees from Communist countries.
The deepening of east-west conflict in the early years of the Cold War provided the context for subsequent US legislation. The Refugee Relief Act of 1953 provided for the admission over three years of 214,000 refugees - of these, it was laid down that 186,000 should be from Communist countries.
By 1959 some 900,000 European refugees had been absorbed by west European countries. In addition, 461,000 had been accepted by the USA, and a further 523,000 by other countries. But many 'hard-core' refugees still remained in camps. At that point the United Nations launched an ambitious effort to resolve the refugee problem once and for all.
World Refugee Year, in 1959-1960, was designed as a 'clear the camps' drive. It achieved some significant results - at any rate in Europe. By the end of 1960, for the first time since before World War Two, all the refugee camps of Europe were closed.
But the global refugee problem was far from solved. In Africa and Asia millions of fugitives from persecution, hunger, and natural disasters continued to scramble for secure homes. Europe, hitherto mainly an exporter of refugees, henceforth became a net importer. Today the United Nations estimates that over 17 million asylum seekers, refugees and stateless people are seeking homes worldwide.
Books
The Uninvited: Refugees at the Rich Man's Gate by Jeremy Harding (Profile Books, 2000)
The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A Study of Czech-German Relations 1933-1962 by Radomír Lula (Routledge, 1964)
The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century by Michael Marrus (OUP New York, 1985)
European Refugees: 1939-1952 by Malcolm J Proudfoot (Faber, 1957)
Bernard Wasserstein was born in London and educated at Oxford University. He is now professor of modern history at the University of Chicago. His books include Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (Clarendon Press, 1988), Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 (Harvard University Press, 1997) and Israel and Palestine (Profile Books/Yale University Press, 2004).
Bernard Wasserstein was born in London and educated at Oxford University. He is now professor of modern history at the University of Chicago. His books include Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (Clarendon Press, 1988), Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 (Harvard University Press, 1997) and Israel and Palestine (Profile Books/Yale University Press, 2004).
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