54
The wars and mass killing induced huge flows of refugees. World War II was
particularly productive of refugees because the Germans moved vast numbers of
people around Europe for their nefarious purposes. They moved people in order to
kill them using industrialized (assembly line) processes (Kogon 1950). They held
soldiers as long-term prisoners (many of whom died in captivity) (MacKensie
1994). And they sought to exploit the labor of millions of people, including people
marked for death or captured soldiers, but also people enslaved solely for their labor
(von Plato et al. 2010). The result at the end of the war was masses of what were
euphemistically termed “displaced persons” (Wyman 1998).
Other countries than Germany (particularly the USSR) contributed to the displacing of people at the end of World War II (Pohl 1999), but the Germans were the
largest contributor. There were at least 11,000,000 displaced persons in Germany
alone at the end of the war (Antons 2014), and millions more scattered across
Europe from the various German transports. Many from Central or Eastern Europe
preferred becoming stateless refugees to returning to their prewar homes, both
because those who survived in place had often collaborated in the displacement and
because the refugees were unwilling to return to, or pass under, Stalin’s rule (Bodor
1950).
2
The mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe
added millions more to the stateless “floating” population (Douglas 2013).
3
The upheavals of World War II were not the end of the wars and revolutions of
the twentieth century, many of which generated large numbers of refugees. Until the
twenty-first century, most of those conflicts produced flows of fleeing people who
sought refuge in Europe. These were other, generally smaller conflicts that produced local refugee situations but did not produce a global crisis largely because
such refugees often were able to find shelter in nearby countries that were culturally
and ethnically similar. The size and nature of the displacement from World War II,
however, called for and produced a global response, a response that largely remains
in place today.
3 The UN Refugee System
Realizing the scale of population displacement during World War II, the western
Allies set about to create an orderly and effective way of dealing with the refugees
as early as 1943. Although the United Nations did not yet exist formally, the
Americans and the British were using the term “United Nations” to denote their
joint efforts, so when they undertook to create a refugee system in 1943, they named
2 For example, in the heart of Olympiapark in Munich there is a small wooded enclosure where a
former prisoner of war now known only as Timofey chose to live as a hermit for 27 years after the
war rather than return to the USSR.
3 While the Japanese did not transport so many people around Asia during their war, the same patterns did play out there, including the expulsion of millions of ethnic Japanese from Korea and
Taiwan after the war.
J. W. Dellapenna
The wars and mass killing induced huge flows of refugees. World War II was
particularly productive of refugees because the Germans moved vast numbers of
people around Europe for their nefarious purposes. They moved people in order to
kill them using industrialized (assembly line) processes (Kogon 1950). They held
soldiers as long-term prisoners (many of whom died in captivity) (MacKensie
1994). And they sought to exploit the labor of millions of people, including people
marked for death or captured soldiers, but also people enslaved solely for their labor
(von Plato et al. 2010). The result at the end of the war was masses of what were
euphemistically termed “displaced persons” (Wyman 1998).
Other countries than Germany (particularly the USSR) contributed to the displacing of people at the end of World War II (Pohl 1999), but the Germans were the
largest contributor. There were at least 11,000,000 displaced persons in Germany
alone at the end of the war (Antons 2014), and millions more scattered across
Europe from the various German transports. Many from Central or Eastern Europe
preferred becoming stateless refugees to returning to their prewar homes, both
because those who survived in place had often collaborated in the displacement and
because the refugees were unwilling to return to, or pass under, Stalin’s rule (Bodor
1950).
2
The mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe
added millions more to the stateless “floating” population (Douglas 2013).
3
The upheavals of World War II were not the end of the wars and revolutions of
the twentieth century, many of which generated large numbers of refugees. Until the
twenty-first century, most of those conflicts produced flows of fleeing people who
sought refuge in Europe. These were other, generally smaller conflicts that produced local refugee situations but did not produce a global crisis largely because
such refugees often were able to find shelter in nearby countries that were culturally
and ethnically similar. The size and nature of the displacement from World War II,
however, called for and produced a global response, a response that largely remains
in place today.
3 The UN Refugee System
Realizing the scale of population displacement during World War II, the western
Allies set about to create an orderly and effective way of dealing with the refugees
as early as 1943. Although the United Nations did not yet exist formally, the
Americans and the British were using the term “United Nations” to denote their
joint efforts, so when they undertook to create a refugee system in 1943, they named
2 For example, in the heart of Olympiapark in Munich there is a small wooded enclosure where a
former prisoner of war now known only as Timofey chose to live as a hermit for 27 years after the
war rather than return to the USSR.
3 While the Japanese did not transport so many people around Asia during their war, the same patterns did play out there, including the expulsion of millions of ethnic Japanese from Korea and
Taiwan after the war.
J. W. Dellapenna