After World War II, refugees and displaced persons (DPs) became a bigger problem than they had ever been before. The large number of Hitler’s and Stalin’s victims became stateless people, and the United States, along with other Western countries, took it upon themselves to help bring these people back to their original states. This involved organizations with Western centered ideologies, such as the International Refugee Organization (IRO). The different methods and ideologies of repatriating these people began the East/West rift that would eventually lead to what is known as the Cold War. The issues that arose were particularly between Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus against the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. (Cohen, p. 20) The displaced persons debates represented a larger issue, which was the emerging unavoidable clashes between eastern and western ideologies. All these issues showed how the repatriation of DPs became more of a political issue than a humanitarian one.
After World War II, Germany was split among the victors: a piece was given to France, the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union. The Western countries (France, the US, and the UK) all governed their sections under similar ideologies, in contrast to the Soviet Union’s communist governance. Despite the Soviet Union being victorious as well, they found that many of the organizations formed to help DPs, such as the International Refugee Organization (IRO), were “instruments of the West.” The IRO’s approach to DPs was to resettle these people back to their country of national origin. However, the rhetoric in their constitution and other official documents was very pro-West and alienated the East and their Communist ideology. (Cohen, p. 33) This alienation drove the USSR to withdraw from the IRO, thus creating an even stronger divide in the organization.
One of the most controversial issues with the DPs was determining what their actual nationality was in order to bring them back to their homeland. Many children had been born during the war to parents of different nationalities. This made repatriating these children a political issue more than a humanitarian issue. For example, the French government claimed many of these half-French children in order to boost their population and thus help them rebuild after the disastrous second World War. (Zahra, p. 338)
The DPs that arose after World War II was one of the worst refugee crises in history. Thousands of people who had been forced to leave their homelands during the war were now left in a difficult position. Many issues arose out of this, including how to handle the children born during this displacement and how to repatriate them and their families. Although organizations were created and many humanitarian efforts were conceived, the politics of the time often took precedence. Whether it was through the larger scale conflict between the US and the USSR and their ideologies or France trying to rebuild while hurting Germany further, political and selfish concerns of the countries ended up taking precedence over the true humanitarian roots of the DP problem.
You mention the efforts taken by the French following the war to have children brought to France but don’t mention how they decided who to bring in. One of the things that I remember from the readings was that the French were rather selective in who they choose. Also, was the IRO being thought of as a western organization the problem of the way it functioned or the way that the soviets perceived it? The soviets would have had a different view towards the IRO since it was mostly conceived by the western nations.
I like how you hit on the point of how the Displaced Person issue quickly went from a humanitarian issue to a political one between the allied and future communist movements. With both sides cherry picking who came back to their original countries by their political affiliation, I believe this also made it harder for people to believe in their old country anymore. Making matters worse was that some of these countries chose to evict people they did not like to countries that were basically destroyed. From the people’s point of view, this must have been terrifying as governments changed over night and know these people were enemies who could be marked for death just for their political ideas or even just for speaking the wrong language.
You mentioned the IRO but not the UN. I think the UN also helped but they were more influenced by the US and thus did not make the best choices for the children.