Wars have always been a cause of massive displacement among people, none more so than World War II. Europe had many people who were displaced due to repatriation efforts started by Germany during the war. This was a reason for the problem that followed the war with the repatriation efforts started by the US and the allies, which were requested by european states.
Displaced people in Germany following the end of the war.
Throughout the war Nazi Germany attempted to have kids repatriated to feel like they are Germans even though they were born elsewhere (Zahra, pg. 340). The germans would take children from villages outside of Germany and put them in Germanization camps during the war. These kids were taught how to be German at this time and what being German meant. This was a problem following the war, the areas that had the children taken remembered and wanted the children back.
The problem behind this was that the kids were to young to remember where they were from or the language that their native State uses. States like Czechoslovakia put out lists of missing children, sometimes these children would come back but most did not know their native language. Many other States that lost their people due to different reasons wanted to bring them back, thus beginning their own repatriation efforts. This was helped by the Western allies, the Soviet Union mainly focused on taking back ethnic Russians. The main problem from these repatriation efforts came from children not wanting to leave the families that they had grown up with and returning to places like Czechoslovakia (Zahra, pg. 346). The children had developed a strong sense of nationalism towards Germany and their German families, this caused many of the kids to resist the allies and being taken away by force (Zahra, pg. 346). There were cases of kids requesting to stay with their German families because they felt closer to them than their home nation, but the western allies refused such requests because of they did not want this nationalism to stay in Germany. This was a cause of strife throughout this period following the war which was not helped by the cold war politics that started during this period.
There were a couple of organizations created during this period to help with the displaced people and the repatriation efforts like the IRO. The problem with this is that they were caught up in the cold war politics that started at the time and were accused of being to westward leaning and anti-communist (Cohen, pg. 33). The communist states thought that they weren’t receiving people that they should be because the west didn’t want them to have a larger influence. the eastern bloc felt like they were not being given ethnically native people because they didn’t want to return and the west would allow this. This was another reason that the problem of displaced persons was so intense during this time, the cold war super powers were trying to install their politics into these areas. This contributed to the overall problem of countries that had people taken wanting them back and causing the problem of removing kids and other from the homes they had grown up in at the time.
Do you think that nationality is something that is inherent and ethnically based or something learned over time? So in that way is taking children that have grown up thinking of themselves as German and forcing them back into their own countries destroying culture as well? This was just something I thought about reading your blog.
I think its important to remember that the Western allies did not remove peoples from Germany simply to weaken Germany but also because the Soviet Union and other Eastern European states demanded their return. I liked the point that you made about some children not wanting to leave Germany because that was the only state and family that they knew.
I think it is interesting that you addressed the Soviet Union only wanting to accept ethnic Russians during the repatriation efforts following the war, this was something that I did not pick up on directly. I find this point especially interesting after reading the article and finding that many of those Russians did not want to return due to the miserable living and working conditions throughout the USSR. You also mention that the Allied powers did not want a strong sense of nationalism to come to the people in Germany. Why do you think there was such an effort to reduce the nationalism with Germany?
You talk about an interesting point of view of the readings. It really made me think to myself if nationalism is something you are born with or something you learn. You mention that children would sometimes go back to their native land and not know their own language. After reading this article, it has led me to believe that nationalism is something that can be learned.