Europe and the world in general faced many problems in the postwar time period. The greatest question that faced world leaders was that of labor. Over 60 Million people were killed in the war, not only men of fighting age but also women, children and older men. The war not only devastated the physical cities and towns of Europe but also the men and women that lived there. With the death of a large number of its citizens the countries of Europe were left with a depleted work force when they needed it most, the European countries were in desperate need of laborers to rebuild their devastated cities and industries as well as to restart economies that had fallen to the wayside during German occupation in the case of France and constant bombing in the case of Great Britain. The question of where to find these laborers and how to use them was answered relatively easily in theory by Displaced Persons, but in practice the problem was less easily solved.
In the wake of the war millions of people are displaced from their pre-war homes and living in refugee camps across Europe. This massive displacement of people led to the creation of a United Nations agency, the International Refugee Organization, to address the problem. The IRO worked to place these refugees in permanent homes in new countries such as the United States. Eastern European countries under the control of the USSR lost huge amounts of its citizens to refugee camps in Western Europe while it was occupied by the Germans, and now that the war was over they demanded that their citizens be returned to their rightful countries. The problem with this idea was that many of these refugees had no desire to return to their place of origin due to the fact that many had no actual home or family to return to as well as well as many who had no desire to return to the soviet, socialist way of life in general. The organization’s “main task was to orchestrate migration movements according to the manpower needs or humanitarian proclivities of host countries.” (Cohen 105) this quote shows us that the IRO was not only looking out for the well being of refugees but also herding them to countries who needed their labor to revive their economies. The IRO “Advertised the DP’s as a reservoir of skillful and industrious workers” (Cohen 105) in order to make them seem desirable to countries in need of skilled industrial workers to fill out their depleted workforce and rebuild their industries.
In countries where there were specific campaigns to recruit refugees into the work force the governments were usually fairly clear that their efforts were not on a humanitarian basis but purely economical. The British specifically characterized their plan to lure refugees “Westward Ho!” as a “cold blooded recruited campaign.” (Cohen 106) While some of these schemes were relatively successful in recruiting young, strong men to their countries to work in industrial capacities or in the mines they were not the resettlement scheme that the IRO was originally intended for. The vast majority of Women and children were left in refugee camps while their men were sent to other countries to toil in labor for a country not their own with the hopes of one day being accepted as part of the their new community.
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I think it is interesting that you bring up that governments had purely economical interests in the refugees. It seems that in post-war society governments never have one humanitarian motive for helping people in need.
So, in reference to Britain, why would Britain begin a campaign to lure refugees into the country when the people were already having problems with immigrants from their colonies? In Britain, there was a very high intolerance of immigrants in general. I suppose they really needed people to reconstruct the country, but their need for people did not mean that they had to appreciate them.
I agree with Courtney about how the European governments looked at taking in refugees for economic interests. There were labor shortages in multiple countries and there was a surplus of people who needed somewhere to go and a job. By filling in the jobs, the countries would make more money again. Granted some of the jobs reserved for refugees were the hardest part of the job or had hazardous working conditions. The countries that were taking in the refugees looked at them as products, not as people. The countries’ interest were more concerning than the refugees interests.
I agree that looking back on these various labor programs where mainly for economic purposes. Countries that had been destroyed such as France, Britain, and Belgium needed some way to rebuild and what better way was there than to use the mass amounts of Displaced Persons. The facilitation of people through the IRO is an example of how even institutions that were meant to be for the people, like the UN, were okay with placing people in random countries and in very unsafe working conditions.
I like your comment because you show how those who came to the refugee camp were seen as nothing more than a number in the nations economy. I like how you point out how many from USSR nations left for refugee camps. Many of those refugees were probably expecting a better life style, one that the Marshal Plan was supposed to provide. As we discussed last week the Marshal Plan was to raise a sense of living standard as well as to provide a need for consumerism. I like how you mention how it was in a way a kind of ruse. They would lure the refugees to do work others would not want to do.
Its shocking to see that a time that was being reconstructed by what is supposedly the greatest generation was so ignorant to the well-beings of their fellow humankind. I like how you pointed out that countries only wanted laborers and did not care to bring in full families. I wonder how reconstruction would be handled in modern times after a similar devastation.
Even though it wasn’t fully humanitarian in practice but instead treating the DPs as nothing more than laborers at first, I think that the IRO was able to establish itself as a humanitarian organization by changing procedures and rules.
Also, you have a misquote. In Cohen’s article, Westward Ho’ was said to be “cool-blooded”, not “cold blooded” as you quoted.