Return, Displacement and Revenge: Majorities and Minorities in Osnabrück at the End of the Second World War

Abstract

In recent years the study of migration in Germany has begun to move to the centre of historical study. While Ulrich Herbert has played a central role in this process,¹ the work of Klaus Bade proves a more useful starting point both because of his focus upon Lower Saxony² and even Osnabrück,³ but, more importantly, because his research has always recognised the importance of all migratory movements into and out of Germany including those of refugees and displaced people.⁴ Nevertheless, those Germans who migrated out of or returned to Germany at the end of the Second World War received immediate attention. As Robert Moeller has demonstrated, they became part of ‘the useable past’ of Germans, who wanted to distance themselves from the crimes of the Nazis.⁵ Historians and social scientists played a role in this process, above all Theodor Schieder.⁶ While post-war return and displacement in Germany may have received constant academic attention, it has recently experienced something of a revival. At the same time scholars writing in the English language, who had previously paid little attention to this issue, have now also begun to write about it.⁷