Citizens in Name Only: The National Status of German Expellees, 1945–53

Demshuk, Andrew

doi:10.1080/17449050600911125

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The Allied administration viewed expellees as a potential reservoir of societal agitation and unrest (Connor, 2018, p. 177). General Lucius Clay, military governor of the U.S. zone, repeatedly cautioned German officials about the possibility of radicalization among disillusioned expellees (Demshuk, 2006, p. 390). Occasional violence in overcrowded expellee camps helped maintain such fears (Demshuk, 2006, p. 385).…”

Section: The Expellee Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…General Lucius Clay, military governor of the U.S. zone, repeatedly cautioned German officials about the possibility of radicalization among disillusioned expellees (Demshuk, 2006, p. 390). Occasional violence in overcrowded expellee camps helped maintain such fears (Demshuk, 2006, p. 385). Officials feared that collective political action by the expellee community would hinder efforts at expellee integration, increase tensions between the prewar local population and expellees, and transform them into focal points for forces interested in destabilizing the postwar order (Connor, 2018, p. 181).…”

Section: The Expellee Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Expellees, living amidst unfriendly neighbors, governed by an administration fearful of their organized potential, and prohibited from verbalizing their grievances, came to perceive themselves as second-class citizens (Demshuk, 2006, p. 384). The inability of natives to empathize with the plight of expellees led the latter to close ranks (Holler, 1963, p. 21).…”

Section: The Expellee Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

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The Political Legacy of Forced Migration: Evidence from Post-WWII Germany

Menon

2022

Comparative Political Studies

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Do refugees reshape long-term political behavior in receiving areas? I argue that forced migration can foster a strong group identity among refugees, which can mobilize them toward political parties that champion their identity-based grievances. To test this argument, I examine how one of the largest forced migrations in modern history, the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe into Germany after WWII, shaped their electoral behavior over time. Using an original database of district-level data from 32 elections spanning a century, I find that communities which received greater shares of expellees remain more supportive of the expellees’ political champions—the radical right—over time. This relationship is particularly manifested when identity-based grievances are unresolved and politically salient. Mechanism evidence, including novel data on expellee monuments and associations, suggests that a durable expellee identity helps account for these results. My analysis reveals an enduring behavioral legacy resulting from forced migration.

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Section: The Expellee Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Expellee Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Expellee Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Political Legacy of Forced Migration: Evidence from Post-WWII Germany

Menon

2022

Comparative Political Studies

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Homesick in the Heimat

Demshuk¹

2012

The Lost German East

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What was the “Right to theHeimat”? West German Expellees and the Many Meanings ofHeimkehr

Demshuk

2012

Cent Eur Hist

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Twenty years and a day after Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender, Hanover county administrator Helmut Janssen declared to an assembly of East Prussian expellee leaders that Germany was still destined to recover all of the territory it had possessed in 1937. One day, he claimed, the roughly twelve million ethnic Germans expelled from the lost eastern territories and eastern Europe in the wake of the war would return home. Although by 1965 this political goal seemed “further away than ever before,” he repeated an expellee declaration of March 1960, which pledged that all expellees “still want to return to the Heimat [homeland]—now, in the future, and forever.”

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Citizens in Name Only: The National Status of German Expellees, 1945–53

Cited by 4 publications

References 9 publications

The Political Legacy of Forced Migration: Evidence from Post-WWII Germany

The Political Legacy of Forced Migration: Evidence from Post-WWII Germany

Homesick in the Heimat

What was the “Right to theHeimat”? West German Expellees and the Many Meanings ofHeimkehr

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