Postwar Labor and Displaced Peoples

World War II led to the greatest loss of human life of any war in history, with the death toll in the tens of millions. It can be said that the war also led to the greatest displacement of people across East and Western Europe. This summation of death and displacement contributed to great loses of population for countries such as France, Belgium, and Britain, as well as a lingering question of how these countries would replenish their workforce. In the postwar period numerous international organizations rose in order to foster cooperation between nations, and one organization which focused primarily on the redistribution of people was the International Refugee Organization (IRO). The IRO was the first organization of its kind which managed, and had a substantial amount of influence in, the redistribution of Displaced Peoples (DP) after World War II. The question of labor was approached by the IRO, and various European nations, with the the solution being the utilization of the millions of Displaced Persons. Even though the use of DPs seemed like an easy solution, the process did not come without its share of problems, namely discrimination from recipient countries.

In his book In War’s Wake, Gerard Cohen examines three countries which expressed initial interest in Displaced Persons resettlement. These countries are Belgium, Britain, and France. These countries all suffered high casualty rates during the war, and were seeking to replenish their respective labor forces. What these three countries sought were young, able-bodied men, who were skilled in some form of manual labor. One official stated that “countries actively seeking persons in order to diminish their labor shortages will find that refugees can be of tremendous value in aiding in the solution of manpower problems” [1]. In a survey conducted through the IRO camps, it was found the 83% of people were under the age of forty-five, and that 75% of sampled males were some form of skilled worker [2]. With this surplus of workers it would seem that the labor problems facing Belgium, Britain, and France could be resolved. Or could they?

Cohen lays out the amounts of workers each country retained through their migrant programs. Due to discriminatory selection processes and minimal incentives for immigrants, Belgium only secured 32,000 workers by 1949. Out of the 32,000 immigrants, 8,000 returned to Germany soon after their arrival due to unsatisfactory working conditions in mines and factories. Britain fared better in the retention of immigrants, keeping hold of 82,000 Poles, Ukrainians, and Latvians by 1948, but also practiced discriminatory acts in their selection process. They favored single males between the ages of 16 and 25 to work in coal mines and various factory environments. As one of the last countries to being importing a new labor force, France displayed some of the most discriminatory actions of the three. They held some of the most stringent health criteria, and had rejection rates as high as 50% at certain points. France was only able to attract 38,000 migrants to work for them, far from the numbers they needed to fully replenish their labor force [3].

These discriminatory actions by Belgium, Britain, and France led to an excess of people left on the European continent without work. These included disabled men and women, the elderly, children, intellectuals, and Jews. While the disabled, elderly, and children were not picked for manual labor jobs for, what these countries saw as, obvious reasons, the discrimination against intellectuals confuses me. Even though these countries wanted manual labor, they rejected somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 intellectual, but able-bodied men. In my opinion these people could have easily been trained in general labor jobs so they could be utilized in the reconstruction of Europe. These excess people were left on the European continent in IRO camps until the decision was made to ship them across the seas to the United States, Latin America, Australia, and Canada. An estimated 4.5 million excess people were left on the European continent in the early 1950s [4].

The actions of Belgium, Britain, and France makes me draw parallels to the kind of sorting German soldiers instituted in their forced-labor camps. The stringent health and marital criteria held back a large portion of potential workers for various countries. While their intentions were to spread the population of Displaced Persons across countries which needed the replenished workforce, they managed to exclude millions of people, leading to an “excess population”. Looking back on this event leaves me with a couple questions: If these countries were in desperate need of labor why would they set these overly strict restrictions, excluding some of the willing migrants? Why were intellectuals excluded when they could have easily been trained in general labor jobs? And, if you had willing groups of people to work and replenish your declined population, why not accept them?

[1] Gerard D. Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 111.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid, 105-107.

[4] Ibid, 122.