Historical Commission for Westphalia

Displaced Persons in the region and the town of Münster [Displaced Persons im Landkreis und in der Stadt Münster 1945-1951]. By Stefan Schröder.

Münster: Aschendorff-Verlag 2005. 464 S., Abb.
(Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Westfalen XXII: Geschichtliche Arbeiten zur westfälischen Landesforschung, Volume 22)
ISBN: 3-402-06784-6; price: 29,00 €

60 years after the end of World War II the Displaced Persons (DPs) still are not very familiar to the German culture of remembrance. The term “DPs” comprises forced labourers and prisoners of war of the German national socialist regime liberated by the Allied forces during the last months of the war and also non-German refugees from Eastern Europe. In May 1945, some 9.5 million DPs were located on the territory of the German Reich, 30.000 of them in the region described in this survey.

The archival sources are fragmentary and spread worldwide, in addition they not infrequently only show a small part of the subject. Taking as an example the city and the region (former “Landkreis”) of Münster/Westphalia, this study illustrates how the DPs got there, how they were accomodated and lived. Additionally, the relations of the DPs to their British and American liberators, to the international relief organizations, and to the German population are focused. Considering the DPs’ repatriation to their countries of orgin, their resettlement overseas and in Western Europe or their stay in Germany (as “Homeless Foreigners”), an international problem of population policy is examined from a micro-historical perspective.

By using a regional historical and local historical access, Stefan Schröder paradigmatically elaborates the context of DP-history in Northwest Germany and provides an insight into a cosmos of camps so far largely unknown. Besides typical examples of DPs in West Germany the major role of Münster for DP-history in North-Rhine Westphalia and for the British occupation zone is astonishing: by the regional importance for the repatriation of westbound DPs in 1945, by the special case of assigning DPs for the rubble clearance in 1946/47, by the regional and zonal processing for recruitment of DP labour to the UK in 1947/48 (“Operation Westward Ho!”), by the regional resettlement processing especially for Australia, initiated by the International Refugee Organization (IRO) in 1949/50, by implementing the “Zonal Clearing House” for problematic cases among the DPs of the British zone in 1949/50 and by the concentration of British (and German) DP-administration for North-Rhine Westphalia in Münster as of 1949.

Numerous charts, a map and photos round out this substantial study, being made accessible by a detailed index.

Reviews: Geschichte im Westen 20(2005)253-254 [Kurt Schilde] – H-Soz-u-Kult, 11.08.2006 URL: http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2006-3-104 [Tillmann Tegeler] – Jahrbuch des Kreises Warendorf 55(2006)S.433-434 [Jochen Rath]- Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte 24(2006)153-154 [Patrick Wagner] - Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 55(2007) H. 3 s. 467-468 [Roman P. Smolorz] - Landwirtschaftliches Wochenblatt (2005) H. 21 S. 96 [Gisbert Strootdrees] - Neue Politische Literatur 51(2006)160-161 [Holger Köhn] - Westfälische Nachrichten 23.6.2005 [Christian Steinhagen].