When the Second World War ended in May 1945, Europe was full of people far from home. Millions of former forced labourers, concentration camp survivors, and prisoners of war had nowhere to go.
Historians call these people Displaced Persons, or DPs — Displaced Person. Estimates for 1945 range from about 7 to 11 million people across Allied-occupied Germany, Austria and Italy alone.
Why this is so hard to solve: DPs were not one group with one problem. Some wanted to go straight home. Others feared what waited for them there. A single policy could not fit everyone.
- Former forced labourers — millions of Poles, Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans taken to Germany to work in factories and farms under Nazi rule.
- Concentration camp survivors — Jewish survivors and other victims of Nazi persecution, many with no home or family left to return to.
- Prisoners of war — soldiers from many nations still held in camps as the war ended.
- Political refugees — people who fled fighting, or who feared the new Soviet-backed governments spreading across Eastern Europe.
The Allies housed DPs in DP camps — often reusing former military barracks or, painfully, former concentration camp sites. Life in the camps was hard: overcrowding, food shortages, and long waits for a decision about the future.
A source worked example: Imagine a 1945 photograph taken by a British army photographer showing smiling DPs receiving food parcels at a camp. Its content shows relief efforts working. But its purpose — likely to reassure the British public that occupation forces were coping — means a historian should ask what the photo leaves out, such as overcrowding just out of frame.
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The Allies' first plan was simple: send everyone home. This is called repatriation — repatriation. By late 1945, UNRRA and Allied armies had repatriated around 6 million DPs, mostly Western Europeans glad to return.
But over a million people refused to go home. Most were from Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states and other areas now under Soviet control.
Why some DPs went home
- Wanted to reunite with family
- Home country was not communist-controlled
- Trusted conditions had improved
- Had somewhere safe to return to
Why some DPs refused
- Feared arrest or exile under Soviet rule
- Seen (rightly or wrongly) as Nazi collaborators by their government
- Jewish survivors had no home or family left
- Rejected communism on principle
This split is the whole story: The gap between 'easy' repatriation and the harder cases of refusal is exactly why the international response had to change shape after 1945 — it drives everything in the next section.
For these refusing DPs, the only realistic path was emigration — emigration — to new countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia or Britain, which needed labour and were willing to take skilled or healthy migrants.
| Term | What it means | Who it applied to |
|---|---|---|
| Repatriation | Returning to home country | Most Western European DPs, 1945 |
| Resettlement / emigration | Permanent move to a new country | DPs refusing to return, especially Eastern Europeans |
| DP camp | Temporary Allied-run housing while a decision was made | Nearly all DPs, 1945 onward |
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Coordinating millions of displaced people needed international organisation, not just individual Allied armies acting alone.
1943 — UNRRA founded
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration is set up by the Allies before the war even ends, to plan relief for liberated Europe.
1945-47 — UNRRA runs the camps
UNRRA staff run DP camps, distribute food and medicine, and organise the mass repatriations of 1945-46. Its guiding aim is to send people home quickly.
1947 — UNRRA wound down
With over a million DPs still refusing repatriation, UNRRA's repatriation-first mandate can't finish the job, and Cold War tensions cut Allied cooperation. It closes.
1947-52 — IRO takes over
The International Refugee Organization is created specifically to organise resettlement abroad for the DPs who remain, working with receiving countries on emigration schemes.
UNRRA sent people home; when that stopped working, the IRO helped them start again somewhere new.
Governments were not the only actors. The International Red Cross, a neutral non-governmental organisation, ran a huge tracing service to reunite families separated by the war, delivered aid, and inspected camp conditions.
Governmental vs non-governmental: UNRRA and the IRO were United Nations bodies, funded and directed by Allied governments. The Red Cross was independent of any government — this affects what each could actually do, and how each source about them should be read.
Reading context — ask who made it and why: A UNRRA report was written to justify its own budget and mission, so it may overstate success. A Red Cross tracing-service letter was written to reunite one family, so it reveals the human scale, not the whole policy picture. Different origins, different uses.