From POW to Cold War DP: A Global Microhistory of Former Yugoslav Soldiers in Occupied Germany, 1946–48

Abstract

AbstractThere are still many historical blind spots in research on Europe's displaced persons (DPs) after the Second World War. In particular, there are relatively few studies that link microhistorical perspectives on repatriation and resettlement with global contexts. This essay addresses this gap, in empirical as well as methodological terms, by focusing on a group of DPs that hitherto has received little attention from scholars: former members of the Royal Yugoslav Army, whom the Nazis had taken to Germany as prisoners of war (POWs). Classified as DPs after 1945, they lived in camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organization (IRO). Under the circumstances, they continued to maintain military-like routines and fiercely refused repatriation. This was partly an expression of loyalty to the exiled Yugoslav king, Peter II. But it also mirrored the fears of DPs about—and resistance to the idea of—being returned to their homeland in the context of the early Cold War. Using the example of a DP camp in Bad Aibling (Upper Bavaria), this article connects Yugoslav DPs, Allied DP politics, and the interests of Tito's government, as well as the interventions of international relief agencies. It shows how some DPs adroitly subverted the international logic of DP self-governance as promoted by UNRRA. A global microhistory approach thus reveals how local actors and sites are shaped by, but also foundationally constitutive of, global regimes of migrational self-governance.