Population Displacement, Integration, Political Narratives

The role of displaced Germans in the cultivation of postwar narratives is especially relevant in light of current efforts regarding integration of non-German migrant and displaced populations. At the end of WWII ethnic Germans forced out of countries further east were now displaced people in Germany. Germany was an exhausted warfront; entire cities lay in rubble and the victors dismantled the German state. Unlike migrants and displaced people in Germany today, in 1945 local Germans faced housing shortages, lack of basic infrastructure, and scarcity of food supplies. Many Germans were malnourished and embittered. Into this environment; the daily arrival of thousands of ethnic Germans exacerbated an already challenging situation.

Despite dire postwar conditions, ethnic Germans were integrating into each emerging occupation zone. I argue that by the mid-1950s the majority of ethnic Germans were already basically politically and economically integrated into their new societies. In East Germany, these ethnic Germans were urged to merge with other citizens of this New Germany and to forget past geographical and cultural allegiances and identities. They formed the foundation for the emerging government’s political Cold War narrative.

By 1990 these once displaced ethnic Germans were at home in eastern Germany. Their Heimat was established since their forceful arrival in 1945. They intended to keep their place and to protect it from German families returning to ancestral land in eastern Germany after their 45-year absence.