Abstract
Previous studies have shown how the Anglo-American management of displaced persons (DPs) in West Germany was a basic platform in the construction of the new ‘regime for refugees’ that took place after the Second World War.1 Building upon this body of research, I shall in the following pages attempt a first analysis of the documents produced by the British Element of the Control Commission on Germany (CCG-Be), the Office of the Military Government of the United States for Germany (OMGUS), the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organization (IRO) in order to investigate the development of labour policies towards DPs. Their overall direction may be summed up as the aim to turn the ‘slaves of the Nazi regime’ freed by the Allies, into ‘labourers suitable for democracies’ who later on could be resettled in Western countries.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
On the definition of a new regime for refugees in the aftermath of the Second World War, see Kim Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War. Toward a New International Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era, Lund: Lund University Press, 1991;
Anna Bramwell (ed.), Refugees in the Age of Total War, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988;
Liisa Mallki, ‘Refugees and Exile: From “Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things’, in Annual Review of Anthropology, n. 24, 1995, pp. 495–523.
In the first pages of her memoirs, UNRRA and IRO officer Kathryn Hulme depicts DPs as former slave labourers for whom the ‘Allies invented a new name, indicating their state of being rather than a generalised place of origin. They were named Displaced Persons’; Kathryn Hulme, The Wild Place, London: Frederick Muller, 1954, pp. 5–6.
See Wendy Carlin, ‘Economic Reconstruction in Western Germany, 1945–55. The Displacement of “Vegetative Control”’, in Ian Turner (ed.), Reconstruction in Post-War Germany. British Occupation Policy and the Western Zones 1945–55, Oxford: Berg, 1989, pp. 37–65. Quotations from the restricted proposal on Employment Program for Displaced Persons and for Persons Assimilated to them in Status of the United States Forces, European Theater (Usfet) dated July 1946; NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 Employment of DPs, box 156 RG 260.
The issue is recurrent in military government documents, in particular see NARA, OMGUS, Records of the CAD, PW & DP Branch, 230.14 Employment of DPs, box 156 RG 260 and TNA, FO 1052/20 Civilian Labour: vol. 1, July–November 1945. DP apathy and its consequences on morality are outlined also in Eduard Bakis, ‘D. P. Apathy’, in Flight and Resettlement, by H. B. M. Murphy, Lucerne: UNESCO 1955, pp. 80–91. On the construction of ‘DP-apathy’ as ‘une pathologie de personne déplacée’, see Daniel Cohen, ‘Naissance d’une nation: les personnes déplacées de l’après-guerre 1945–1951’, Genèses, 38, 2000, pp. 56–78.
Contribution to the UNRRA History: Vocational Training p. 3, S-1021–0082–20, UNRRA, Office of the Historian, Monographs, Documents and Publications 1942–1948, Vocational Training. See Louise W. Holborn, L’Organisation Internationale pour les Réfugiés. Agence spécialisée des Nations Unies 1946–1952, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955, pp. 364–96.
For the Control Commission on Germany (BE) and OMGUS, see respectively Ian Turner (ed.), Reconstruction in Post-War Germany. British Occupation Policy and the Western Zones, and Harold Zink, The United States in Germany 1944–1955, Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1957.
Between May 1945 and July 1946 the ration for DPs in the British zone was reduced from 2000 to 1550 calories; Malcom Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939–52. A Study in Forced Population Movement, London: Faber and Faber, 1956, pp. 251–4.
The crucial role played by the solution of the DP problem for the reconstruction of Europe was emphasised in much research published in the aftermath of war; see for example Preliminary Summary of Report on Refugees and Displaced Persons: An Urgent United Nations Problem, by Pierce Williams, Dept. of Social Work Adm., Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 15 October 1946 in which the author wrote ‘in countries so badly undermined by economic collapse and still so spiritually weakened by the nihilistic influences of Nazism and Fascism, failure to deal constructively with the problem of refugees and displaced persons might well prove fatal to the moral, political, and spiritual reconstruction of Europe’, p. 12. For a wider discussion of the construction of refugees as ‘disruptive’ to the political and social order, see Nevzat Soguk, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacement of Statecraft, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
On differences between the Americans and the British over the recognition of Jews as a separate group, and not members of nationalities, see Angelika Königseder and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001, pp. 31–41.
The disagreement between UNRRA and the British military government has been emphasised in Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum Heimatlosen Ausländer. Die Displaced Persons in Westdeutschland, 1945–1951, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Reprecht, 1985, pp. 159–61.
The controversy between the military authorities and UNRRA over the living conditions guaranteed to DPs has been highlighted by Jessica Reinisch, ‘Displaced Persons and Public Health in Occupied Germany, 1944–1947’, in Johannes-Dieter Steinert and Inge Weber-Newth, Beyond Camps and Forced Labour. Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution. 60 Years on, Husum: Matthiesen Verlag, 2008, pp. 43–53.
Overseas Reconstruction Committee. Displaced Persons — Germany and Austria. memorandum by the Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster, TNA, Prem 8/522 Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria, 1946–1947. Marvin Klemme, The Inside Story of UNRRA. An Experience in Internationalism. A First Hand Report on the Displaced People of Europe, New York: Lifetime Editions, 1949, p. 246.
The literature devoted to single national groups emphasises the role played by camp life in strengthening their political and cultural identity; see Milda Danys, DP Lithuanian Immigration to Canada after the Second World War, Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1986;
Marta Dyczok, The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees, NY: St Martin Press, 2000;
Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, The Exile Mission. The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish Americans, 1939–1956, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004;
Wsevolod W. Isajiw, Yury Boshyk and Roman Senkus (eds), The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War II, Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1992.
As Atina Grossmann has pointed out, historiography has presented the DP experience as part of the history of Zionism and emphasised the role of Holocaust survivors in the founding of Israel; Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies. Close Encounters in Occupied Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
An interesting analysis of different perceptions of refugees according to their ethno-national identity is Tony Kushner, Remembering Refugees. Then and Now, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
See in particular the resettlement scheme implemented by the UK and Canada; Linda McDowell, Hard Labour. The Forgotten Voices of Latvian Migrant Volunteer Workers, London: UCL Press, 2005;
Diana Kay and Robert Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers? European Volunteer Workers in Britain (1946–1951), London: Routledge, 1992;
Christiane Harzig, ‘McNamara’s DP Domestics: Immigration Policy Makers Negotiate Class, Race and Gender in the Aftermath of World War II’ in Social Politics, vol. 10 (2003), n. 1, pp. 23–48.
National and gender divides played a role in the resettlement programmes promoted by the US and Australia; see Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share. The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945–1952, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993
and Egon F. Kunz, Displaced Persons. Calwell’s New Australians, Sydney: Australian National University Press, 1988.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2011 Silvia Salvatici
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Salvatici, S. (2011). From Displaced Persons to Labourers: Allied Employment Policies in Post-War West Germany. In: Reinisch, J., White, E. (eds) The Disentanglement of Populations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297685_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297685_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30756-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-29768-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)