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1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2023

Jan Plamper
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
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Summary

This is the first of two snapshots – of Germany in 1945, when it became the hub of the largest migration movement of modern European times. The short snapshots consist of direct quotations from representatives of the key transmigrant, migrant, and immigrant groups and set the tone for the chapters that follow. In 1945 these were nearly 3 million soldiers of the Allied armies (Britain, France, United States, USSR); demobilized Wehrmacht soldiers; millions of ethnic German expellees from Eastern Europe who fled the advancing Red Army; 10 million Displaced Persons, especially liberated Allied POWs and forced laborers, mainly from Eastern Europe or the USSR, as well as survivors of the Nazi extermination and concentration camps; and 9 million German civilian evacuees who returned from the countryside to the urban centers. The snapshot highlights the conflicts between these groups, which brought perpetrators and victims in close contact; the fight for limited resources like food and housing in a largely destroyed Germany; and the pervasive sense of a devastated continent on the move.

Type
Chapter
Information
We Are All Migrants
A History of Multicultural Germany
, pp. 31 - 127
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • 1945
  • Jan Plamper, University of Limerick
  • Book: We Are All Migrants
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
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  • 1945
  • Jan Plamper, University of Limerick
  • Book: We Are All Migrants
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • 1945
  • Jan Plamper, University of Limerick
  • Book: We Are All Migrants
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
Available formats
×