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The end of the Second World War in Europe gave way to a gigantic refugee crisis. Thoroughly prepared by Allied military planners, the swift repatriation of millions of former forced laborers, concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war nearly brought this dramatic episode top a close. Yet in September 1945, the number of displaced persons placed under the guardianship of Allied armies and relief agencies in occupied Germany amounted to 1.5 million. A costly burden for the occupying powers, the Jewish, Polish, Ukrainian, Yugoslav and Baltic DPs unwilling to return to their countries of origin presented a complex international problem. Massed in refugee camps stretched from Northern Germany to Sicily, the DPs had become long-term asylum seekers.
Based on the records of the International Refugee Organization, this book describes how the European DP crisis impinged on the shape of the postwar order. The DP question directly affected the outbreak of the Cold War; the transformation of the "West" into a new geopolitical entity; the conduct of political purges and retribution; the ideology and methods of modern humanitarian interventions; the appearance of international agencies and non-governmental organizations; the emergence of an international human rights system; the organization of migration movements and the redistribution of "surplus populations"; the advent of Jewish nationhood; and postwar categorizations of political and humanitarian refugees.
Sommario
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Last Million
- Ch 1. The Battle of the Refugees: DPs and the Making of the Cold War West
- Ch 2. "Who is a Refugee?": From 'Victors' Justice' to Anticommunism
- Ch 3. Care and Maintenance: The New Face of International Humanitarianism
- Ch 4. Displaced Persons in the "Human Rights Revolution"
- Ch 5. Surplus Manpower, Surplus Population
- Ch 6. Extraterritorial Jews: Refugee Humanitarianism and the Advent of Jewish Statehood
- Epilogue: The Golden Age of European Refugees, 1945-1960
- Notes
- Sources and Further Reading
- Index
Info autore
Gerard Daniel Cohen is Associate Professor of History, Rice University
Riassunto
The end of the Second World War in Europe gave way to a gigantic refugee crisis. Thoroughly prepared by Allied military planners, the swift repatriation of millions of former forced laborers, concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war nearly brought this dramatic episode top a close. Yet in September 1945, the number of displaced persons placed under the guardianship of Allied armies and relief agencies in occupied Germany amounted to 1.5 million. A costly burden for the occupying powers, the Jewish, Polish, Ukrainian, Yugoslav and Baltic DPs unwilling to return to their countries of origin presented a complex international problem. Massed in refugee camps stretched from Northern Germany to Sicily, the DPs had become long-term asylum seekers.
Based on the records of the International Refugee Organization, this book describes how the European DP crisis impinged on the shape of the postwar order. The DP question directly affected the outbreak of the Cold War; the transformation of the "West" into a new geopolitical entity; the conduct of political purges and retribution; the ideology and methods of modern humanitarian interventions; the appearance of international agencies and non-governmental organizations; the emergence of an international human rights system; the organization of migration movements and the redistribution of "surplus populations"; the advent of Jewish nationhood; and postwar categorizations of political and humanitarian refugees.
Testo aggiuntivo
“In War's Wake is a cogent argument for the centrality of the 'refugee' in the legal, political, and moral construction of the postwar international order and its humanitarian mission….[It] engages and illuminates an impressive range of historiographies: on postwar reconstruction and the start of the Cold War, on migration and immigration, on international aid organizations and evolving modes of humanitarianism, on postwar American influence abroad, on the foundation of the state of Israel, and on legal conceptions of human rights. It deserves a wide readership.”-Heidi Fehrenbach, Central European History
