The Driftwood of War: The US Army, Expellees, and West German Society, 1945-52.

This article examines the US Army's role in the post-war refugee crisis in American-occupied Germany. American policy placed all responsibility for ethnic German expellees in the hands of German authorities. However, as the example of the Bavarian city of Würzburg illustrates, the expellee issue played a prominent role in relations between Americans, Germans, and refugees during the post-war and early Cold War periods. By outlining the synergistic relationship between these groups, this article proposes to integrate the social history of West Germany within the specific context of the changing security situation in Europe and American Cold War planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]