In the years following World War II, the allies occupied a shattered Germany. Britain held North-Western Germany for ten years, overseeing the rehabilitation of 'the biggest single forced population movement in modern history', as Germans from around Europe were expelled from the crumbling Third Reich. This was a humanitarian crisis with most hospitals, houses, transport networks and schools destroyed during the war, and the British and Americans running enormous and often inhumane refugee camps.
Francis Graham-Dixon assesses how the British squared their ethical focus on liberalism with their status as an occupying power, and examines the economic, military and political pressures of the period through the key turning points of the end of World War II - the bombing of Hamburg in 1943, the mismanagement of the refugee camp system and the fallout between occupiers and occupied after the Nuremberg trials of 1945/6. The first book to compare German and British sources from the period, this is an essential contribution to the literature on World War II, the Cold War and post-war Europe.
Contents
Maps and list of illustrations vii
List of abbreviations ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 3
1. Occupation Policy and German refugees:
The case for revision 15
Britain's 'moral leadership' 17
Minorities and human rights 32
2. 'Germanity and Humanity' 37
'The Trouble with Germans' 37
'Transfer of the German populations': a political expedient 42
'Victors justice: the background to Hamburg 1943
and its aftermath 52
Victors' justice: Nuremburg and its aftermath 67
3. Realities of the occupation 77
A predisposition for control 77
Economic constraints 97
The British churches and voluntary organisations:
political instruments 106
