The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War

by David Nasaw

From bestselling author David Nasaw, a sweeping new history of the one million refugees left behind in Germany after WWII

In May 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of global military conflict did not cease with the German capitulation. Millions of lost and homeless concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators in flight from the Red Army overwhelmed Germany, a nation in ruins. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate refugees and attempted to repatriate them. But after exhaustive efforts, there remained more than a million displaced persons left behind in Germany: Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans who refused to go home or had no homes to return to. The Last Million would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps, temporary homelands in exile divided by nationality, with their own police forces, churches and synagogues, schools, newspapers, theaters, and infirmaries.

The international community could not agree on the fate of the Last Million, and after a year of debate and inaction, the International Refugee Organization was created to resettle them in lands suffering from postwar labor shortages. But no nations were willing to accept the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. In 1948, the United States, among the last countries to accept refugees for resettlement, finally passed a displaced persons bill. With Cold War fears supplanting memories of World War II atrocities, the bill granted the vast majority of visas to those who were reliably anti-Communist, including thousands of former Nazi collaborators and war criminals, while severely limiting the entry of Jews, who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers or agents because they had been recent residents of Soviet-dominated Poland. Only after the controversial partition of Palestine and Israel's declaration of independence were the remaining Jewish survivors able to leave their displaced persons camps in Germany.

A masterwork from acclaimed historian David Nasaw, The Last Million tells the gripping yet until now largely hidden story of postwar displacement and statelessness. By 1952, the Last Million were scattered around the world. As they crossed from their broken past into an unknowable future, they carried with them their wounds, their fears, their hope, and their secrets. Here for the first time, Nasaw illuminates their incredible history and, with profound contemporary resonance, shows us that it is our history as well.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Holocaust, War, Politics, European History

672 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2020

About the author

David Nasaw is an American author, biographer and historian who specializes in the cultural, social and business history of early 20th Century America. Nasaw is on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Professor of History.
In addition to writing numerous scholarly and popular books, he has written for publications such as the Columbia Journalism Review, American Historical Review, American Heritage, Dissent, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The London Review of Books, and Condé Nast Traveler.
Nasaw has appeared in several documentaries, including The American Experience, 1996, and two episodes of the History Channel's April 2006 miniseries 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America: "The Homestead Strike" and "The Assassination of President McKinley". He is cited extensively in the US and British media as an expert on the history of popular entertainment and the news media, and as a critic of American philanthropy.

Reviews

[Steven Z. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Today we find that immigration reform and related issues like DACA and a southern border wall are at the forefront of our election debate aside from Covid-19. Immigration has been a very controversial issue throughout American history and one of the most contentious involved what to do with the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons that were a result of Nazi racial policy and their conduct during World War II. By the end of 1945 roughly one million displaced persons remained in Germany: Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, among other groups who refused to return to their home countries or had no homes to return to. This group labeled the “Last Million” by author David Nasaw in his latest book, THE LAST MILLION: EUROPE’S DISPLACED PERSONS FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR follows these individuals from three to five years as they lived in displaced person’s camps and temporary homelands in exile divided by their nationalities. Nasaw’s effort is masterful as he offers a comprehensive study of this postwar displacement and statelessness. Nasaw, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for his monographs on Andrew Carnegie and William Randolph Hearst, and a superb biography of Joseph P. Kennedy might just win the Pulitzer with his current effort.

Nasaw’s narrative is accompanied by useful analysis concerning the plight, condition, and future hopes of the Displaced persons (DPs). He delves into a myriad of aspects concerning the “Last Million,” including life inside the refugee camps ranging from issues like cultural nationalism to medical care. Further, the politics and big power competition is on full display as are the domestic concerns of countries confronted with DPs issues. Nasaw does an exceptional job of integrating the views of numerous historical experts like Tim Snyder, Valdis O. Lumans, Ytzkak Arad, Christopher Dieckmann and numerous others, documentary materials, the experiences of survivors, memoirs and other writings of refugees. Nasaw also produces documentary excerpts to allow the reader to get a feel for what the DPs were experiencing. Nasaw’s use of personal histories of the DPs is an important contribution and forms an important background for the story he tells. The depth of Nasaw’s research is reflected in the voluminous footnotes and extensive bibliography that he mines to support his conclusions.

Nasaw pursues a chronological approach beginning with the end of World War II which one reporter described Germany as “history’s greatest hobo jungle” and another described the situation as “wars living wreckage – living, moving, pallid wreckage.” This was the environment that over a million people found themselves following the war after close to four million people returned home. For Nasaw his monograph is the story of these displaced Eastern Europeans who once the war ended refused to go home or had no homes to return to. “It is the story of their confinement in refugee camps for up to five years after the war ended.”

In describing the plight of these displaced persons Nasaw develops a number of important themes that are fully explored and analyzed. First, the “Last Million” saw their fate in the hands of the allies. The United States and England believed that Eastern Europeans whose lands had been annexed or occupied by the Soviet Union had the right to delay or refuse repatriation and the international community had the duty to care for them. This led to disagreements and confrontation with Moscow as Stalin wanted all displaced persons who originated from the Soviet Union and areas annexed before and during the war to be repatriated willingly or through force. When thousands refused repatriation, Stalin tried to create havoc.

Second, after a year of trying to get people to return to the country of origin and the obstinate refusal of the “Last Million” to return home, the Americans and the British decided that repatriation having failed, they would have to be resettled in new homes and homelands outside Germany. This would involve the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and its replacement the International Relief Organization (IRO) whose mandate would become resettlement, not repatriation. Many Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Ukrainians and almost all Jews refused to return home creating many issues; from dealing with the opposition of the Soviet Union, and the desire of Jews to go to Palestine despite England’s refusal to allow them to do so. This would result in numerous commissions to investigate the situation as well as domestic political machinations and pressure.

Third, IRO member nations accepted the resettlement of Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox Christians, but refused to do so for the 200-250,000 Jews who remained trapped in camps in the American zone while pressure was put on England to allow them to settle in Palestine. The British looked at the situation from a power politics lens seeking to mollify the Arabs, protect the oil, foil Soviet attempts to expand into the Middle East, and maintain as much of their empire as possible.

Fourth, President Harry Truman worked to pressure the British over Palestine and Congress to allow Jews and other refugees to enter the United States. He would lose the battle on both counts as the British were bent on kowtowing to the Arabs and midwestern Republicans refused to alter the 1924 Johnson Act as they argued that Jews were associated with communism and Soviet agents would be smuggled into the United States if “the gates were opened.” Truman would continue to push his agenda of allowing 100,000 Jews to enter Palestine, and eventually supported the partition of Palestine and the recognition of the state of Israel in May 1948 despite British pressure and caustic commentary.

Fifth, many refugees were former Nazis or collaborators, and it became difficult to separate them out from non-criminal elements. By 1946 it was becoming increasingly clear that 10-30% of the Volksdeutsche (people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship) in the camps were pro-Nazi and favored Germany over Russia. Many of the Baltic people and Western Ukrainians had committed war crimes and now they were trying to blend in. No matter who these people were, it was decided against forced repatriation. Two other aspects were also at play; first the United States was in a race to allow former Nazis who had skill sets needed in the developing Cold War visa vie the Soviet Union; second, in the end thousands of former Nazis and their collaborators were allowed into the United States, Australia, England, Brazil and Argentina in part to offset labor shortages.

Sixth, the role of the American military who were placed in charge of the refugee camps was exceedingly difficult. A prime issue was how to treat the Holocaust survivors -should they be housed and dealt with separately from other refugees like the Volksdeutche and others who were POWS and Germans returning home. This provoked a great deal of debate internationally as Washington, and London finally decided that the experience of the Jews was such that they needed special treatment after the US Army refused to do so.

Lastly, the concept of anti-Semitism was rampant even after the war which pervades the narrative. It was clear in US congressional debate over refugee legislation on the part of southern Democrats and northern senators like Republican Chapman Revercomb of West Virginia. On June 25, 1948 President Truman signed the Displaced Persons Act which mostly excluded Jews. It allowed thousands of Volksdeutsche into the United States, many of which were Nazi collaborators, ie; Waffen-SS members, Auxiliary Police that worked with the SS, etc. In Poland violence against Jews killed 2000, the most devastating occurred in during the Kielce pogrom. It can also be seen in the policies pursued by the US military and commentary by the likes of General George Patton, and some of the policies pursued by UNRRA, the IRO, and the British government.

Nasaw explores many important individuals, and issues, placing them in the correct historical context. He devotes a great deal of space to the Palestine impasse highlighting his narrative with a description of the Harrison Report, the work of the IRO, the voyage of the Exodus 1947 and other aspects of this difficult situation. Nasaw also spends a great deal of time explaining the goals of each country and ethnic group that is involved with the DPs. It seems that each country and nationality and/or ethnic group had their own agenda that often conflicted with another country or organization which the author hashes out and tries to explain the ramifications for decisions that were reached. The actions of the Soviet Union before the Nazis invaded is key for Nasaw as Moscow annexed the Baltic states which will become a major sticking point after the war.

Nasaw does not add much to the horrors that the Jews experienced during the war. Building upon the work of Nikolaus Wachsmann, Nasaw focuses on slave labor for the Nazi infrastructure. Even as the war was coming to an end the Nazis rounded up thousands of concentration camp survivors and POWS to build a Nazi infrastructure underground and in the mountains to prolong the war and allow the development of new weapons. This would result in working people to death through labor with the same result as extermination camps.

One of the strengths of Nasaw’s work is his ability to make sense out of this complex and bewildering moment. As Adina Hoffman points out in her review in the September 15, 2020 New York Times Nasaw “clarifies without oversimplifying” and his ability to “maneuver with skill between the nitty-grittiest of diplomatic (and congressional, military, personal) details and the so-called Big Picture.” The question remains how could such a situation evolve? The answer is complicated and Nasaw does a remarkable job summing up events and decision-making in a scrupulous manner. The book itself is one of the most important written on the topic and Nasaw’s flowing writing style makes it much easier for the reader to digest.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing history about what happened at the end of WW2, largely about the displaced persons left homeless at the end of fighting, but touching on other issues as well. Those include the establishment of the state of Israel, the Cold War, anti-communism and immigration policy in the US.
Given the numbers of people displaced, a heroic job awaited the Allies. But it was not just the numbers, but the fiendish complexity of sorting the DPs: the Jews, Poles, Baltic nationals, ethnic Germans expelled by the Soviets. Not all were victims of war and the holocaust. Many were collaborators, willing and unwilling, with the Nazis; others were military and POWs who shed their clothes and burned their documents to try to vanish in the crowds. Add to this that anti-semitism didn’t exactly vanish with the defeat of Hitler, that each of the Allied countries had their own cultural/political/economic pressures to appease, that in a seeming blink of an eye Russia became the enemy and the Cold War was off and running. It seems incredible that Nasaw was able to make this story as clear and as riveting as it is.

There is much that is infuriating in the aspects dealing with the partition of Palestine—immense pressure was applied to the British to relinquish the Mandate to make way for the establishment of an Israeli state. The British acknowledged—and warned about—the consequences of giving short shrift to Arab interests. And that’s hardly the half of it: just unbelievably complicated in every way.

Then there are the long-standing political forces arrayed against US immigration, which had me grinding my teeth. It’s a long history for a country « established » by immigrants.

This is a fascinating book from which I learned a tremendous amount. It is a reminder too that the past is prologue.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

So upsetting to read about the extent to which Allied nations discriminated against refugee Jews after WWII, trying to limit the number of survivors allowed into their countries, while at the same time letting in Nazi collaborators and sympathizers in.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

World War II did not end on V-E and V-J Days. Hostilities ceased on those days but the war churned up so many lives that it would take more than a decade to find new homes for the more than a million displaced persons in David Nasaw’s new book, The Last Million. Nasaw chronicles the struggles and political wrangling over what happened to people who, after the war, had no homes to go return to or couldn’t go home because of violent antisemitism or the growing strength of the Soviet Union in the Eastern Bloc or who would face prosecution for war crimes and collaboration in their nation of origin. This thoroughly researched book covers everything from just before the end of the war to when the last displaced persons camp in 1957...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

[Brian Eshleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the individual stories, as made The Warmth of Other Suns exceptional, would have improved this work of mass movement.

[John Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

From an American perspective, WWII ended, peace broke out, people kissed at celebrations, the economy turned to consumer goods, but that wasn’t the case for those who were in war-torn European nations. While some returned home soon after the war, many – Latvians, Estonians, Polish, Ukrainians, Lithuanians – because communists had control of their nations or Jews because of strong antisemitism. As the book says, “Their fate was in the hands of the Allies.” This book spells out, in great details, how these poor people finally found a new home through the start of the Cold War, missing documents, forged documents to hide their SS and Nazi involvement, the conflict with the Arabs, and the refusal of countries, including the United States, to let immigrants past their boarders.

Nasaw underlines how people were retaliating against populations to get even from the recent war. The Soviet government targeted their enemies – the clergy, large farmers, merchants, former government officials, professionals, and former members of the military leadership. Many countries had seized property from Jews and planned on keeping the goods. The Jewish communities that had existed in many countries was eliminated; 3/4rds of the Jews in Estonia were gone, leaving about 1,000 Jews; 90% of the Jews in Lithuania had been murdered.

The camps were separate and not equal. At first, there was not enough food or necessities. General Eisenhower, already turning to his political machine, brought a large grouping and filmed his tours. Conditions improved at the camp due to General Eisenhower’s self-serving work. But the Soviets and their Eastern European countries under their control wanted the camps to just be closed; they were hoping that Europeans would move to their countries, providing the workforce they needed. The Soviets wanted Ukrainians and others forced back home – under their control.

The author pointed out that the DP’s built a life within the camps. Residents enjoyed their own traditions and culture. The Poles celebrated Polish constitution day on May 3. Some, like the Latvians, expressed a desire to publish their own newspaper. Lithuanians wanted to set up own broadcasting service, which was also denied. Elections were held.

Much of the book speaks to allowing Jews to immigrate to Palestine, with Britain and the United States at logger heads, and then the push for independence. Throughout the book, there is the tension of the United States and Britain, England and Arabs, frustration of Jews in America at President Truman and the Democrats – including putting pressure on the political establishment at home for decisions abroad – and the stratification of the Displaced People; many people did not understand the extra loss that Jews suffered with even more of their families being slaughtered and the hatred of them in what had long been home. On top of that, Catholics and Protestant churches were pushing for immigrants who were congregants rather than Jews. Jewish organizations funded and organized a plan to bring in more immigrants into America, including many Jews, but they did it in a way that didn’t promote their own work. The coalition included the NAACP, the head of the AFL-CIO, Eleanor Roosevelt, and other unions but not many Jewish people. The author goes into great detail on what they achieved and how Roosevelt navigated the political landscape.

The last portion of the book highlights all the death camp guards, SS troops, and Nazis. Joseph Mengele, Ain-Ervin Mere, Boleslavs Maikovskis, Jakiw Palij, Feodor Fedorenko, Viorel Trifa, Karl Linnas, and Cleveland’s famous UAW worker and Nazi, John Demjanjuk were highlighted. In each case, the Nazis hid their past, often with the support of our own government, and lived freely in the United States usually until they died of natural causes at old ages. There were some exceptions, such as John Demjanjuk who was expelled to Israel to be on trial before being returned to the states or Feodor Fedorenko, who lived in the United States since immigrating here in 1949 but deported to the Soviet Union in 1984, tried, found guilty of treason and mass murder and executed by shooting in July 1987. After speaking about so many cases where people lived freely after committing horrific crimes during WWII, the author states: “Justice might not have been served, but history was.” The criminals were exposed due to those who worked so hard, especially during the 1960’s until the 1980’s, exposing these horrendous criminals.

This book exposed the reader to so much about the displaced people from the war, trying to make a good decision on where to live out the rest of their lives among many bad options that were difficult to navigate due to the Cold War, past murderous conflicts, self-serving nations, and little information. Many people were in tough situations and suffered greatly during the war, but the Jews had it the worse, losing entire families and communities, in worse health, and still suffered the hatred and loss of property even after the war. They were not part of the parades and often restricted from coming to the United States at all. Nasaw concentrated on legal issues, the conflict between nations and the split between the different ethnic groups rather than what the people went through who were living in camps for years – without knowing where they would later live out their lives. This book goes into too much detail for me, but that also is a reminder of what desperate people looking for the American Dream are subjected to when confronted often by unfair immigration laws and discrimination.

[Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most books about the second world war end in May or August of 1945 whereas we know that there was a huge aftermath left in its wake of survivors that were forever displaced because of historical circumstances. This book does an amazing job of answering the question of what happened to them and the trials and tribulations they faced in trying to recover and start new lives in most cases in other countries. It documents the shameful actions of the US in not allowing more immigration and details the events that led to the mass migration to Palestine for many of the refugees.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very gripping, not often told story, of aftermath of WW2. I've known about it since the 70's as I have friends who's families were part of these refugees. I have, in recent years, met others who's parents were part of these refugees, but never told their American born children their stories (they later learned through family friends of their parents, who told them of those days after their parents had passed.) WW2 was a disaster for everyone in Europe. It affected every single person. I don''t think most Americans can even begin to conceive of the hell Europe remained for many year AFTER the war ended. Refugees had to wait in camps until countries agreed to admit them as every country had quotas. I am glad these books are being written and their stories being told.
I received a Kindle arc from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Didn’t Realize

This is an account of the “last million” of refugees post WWII. After the war, many displaced persons had no where to go. The people who had no where to go were mainly Jews. They were the least accepted and wanted by other countries. In fact in two displaced persons bills in 1948 and 1950, were written to exclude Jews most of all. Catholics were also unwanted. People who weren’t Jewish were wanted a lot more and that included Nazis. The main obsession was communism and Jews were associated with communism in most American law makers minds Truman worked hard to allow more Jews to come but had to work hard to get around the 1923 immigration law that excluded almost everyone. Jews ended up moving to Palestine because they had nowhere else to go. I found this book very interesting and recommend it highly.

[Stuart]

Excellent overview of the messy, tragic, incompetent and ultimately more or less successful resettling of one million Eastern Europeans after WWII. My parents were two of those one million, so I was definitely more than casually interested in this book. Plus I'm writing a family-biographical novel about this time period, so I was interested in getting my facts down right. But it's also true that if you're interested in the worldwide refugee and immigration crisis today, you can learn a lot about why the problem of resettling refugees - now an order of magnitude greater today - is so damn difficult.

[James (JD) Dittes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wars are always followed by eras of mass migration. It is no surprise that the 20th Century's deadliest war would lead to the century's largest (and deadliest) migrations: displaced people stewed and churned throughout Europe as well as in South Asia and China in the years following.

Nasaw's book focuses on the last million of these, known at the time as "displaced persons" or DPs. Most people know that Jews were displaced by the war: survivors of the concentration camps and ghettos weren't about to return to the villages of their murderers. But Nasaw brings up other displaced groups: Volksdeutsche German settlers who had lived throughout Eastern Europe for generations, forced to flee the Soviet Army, nationist, anti-Soviet fighters in the Baltic nations who had supported German invasion to fend off Soviet claims on their countries, and "quislings," opportunists who prospered after German victory and played supporting roles for the occupiers.

Nasaw shows in this book that inhumanity and racism didn't end with the subjugation of National Socialism in Germany. As so many of its cities lay in ruins, many recent military bases there were quickly turned into camps for displaced persons, often separated by ethnicity: Estonian, Ukranian, Jewish, etc.

The newly minted United Nations set up an office for return of DPs to their countries of origin, and many were returned, but there were significant problems: Jewish refugees were originally classified as German, Polish, Ukranian, Hungarian, even as many in their home countries had happily assisted with their mass murder and deportation. In the cast of residents of Eastern European countries--especially for those DPs who had ties to the German occupation--their countries were quickly becoming Soviet satellites, and they had no interest in returning to Communist countries (which would likely have prosecuted them for their wartime actions).

The next option was to resettle the DPs outside of Germany, but that ran into problems. While Allied nations were innocent of the antisemitic atrocities of Nazi Germany, they were highly antisemitic in their own right. President Truman saw an easy solution in opening Palestine to Jewish migration, but this was something the British--who were dealing with local Jewish terrorism and trying to fulfill promises to the Arab population--were unwilling to open up. I hadn't read much about the founding of Israel, so this part was interesting for me. Allied dithering on the "Jewish question" (yes, the same way Hitler and his henchmen had termed it) showed how similar they were to the Nazis.

(I have to wonder this: had Hitler been given the option in 1938-39 of expelling all of Germany's Jews to a homeland in the Levant set up by the British, would have have taken the deal? This is basically what happened, after all.)

The most discouraging part of the book for this American reader is the final section which shows how America handled its own resettlement policies. By the late-1940s, with a new, cold war burgeoning, the horrors of the Holocaust began to pale in comparison with the menace of Communism. And as legislation wound its way through Congress that would eventually except 300,000 DPs from Europe, key antisemitic senators sought to limit Jewish migration.

It seemed that governments in America and throughout Europe were perfectly willing to resettle blonde, blue-eyed migrants from the Baltic States and Poland--these traits seemed to be of greater significance than the migrants' past associations with Nazis.

In the United States, group after group skipped ahead of Jews to be in line for migration rights--including former Waffen/SS members who claimed that they had been "drafted" or "coerced" into their diabolical jobs. Nasaw shows one scene where a Balt on the ship over was confronted by one of his Jewish concentration camp wards. Initially, he was not allowed into the United States, but after a 3-year-wait he gained legal entrance.

Later investigations from the 1960s through the 1980s unearthed dozens of war criminals admitted into the United States during this time. Only a handful were prosecuted for their crimes and/or deported.

One anecdote that I will never forget from this book is the story of one of the final Jews to migrate from Germany to the USA in 1957. When he left the camp, he had been interned for 17 years!

This book was a bit too long for me. I am also interested in the plight of the Volksdeutsche who are only marginally mentioned in this book. Overall, though, I learned a lot about this momentous time in history.

[Jo Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, a little more than halfway through, I abandoned this book. I rarely do so. I was so excited when I read about this book and read it daily, but found myself feeling as if I were reading the same chapters over and over. I know there is a way to write a scholarly book for non-scholars. (Anne Applebaum, Timothy Snyder and Jan Gross come to mind). I am fascinated by the history of WWII and its aftermath. I have visited all the places mentioned in this book. I have been to several concentration camps; some more than once. I have taken classes in history at the local university. So, I can, and do, read this type of book.

I was appalled at the way the Jewish people were, again, victimized by our country and others after the war. I wish the author had given individual stories more space. I know a lot about the way Poles treated the Jewish people who attempted to return after the war. Our country did nothing prior to WWII to assist the Jewish people who could have escaped, and we then doubled down and discriminated against them AGAIN despite knowing about what Hitler did.

But that story seemed to get lost in this book. Perhaps this was the failure of the editor.

It was also chilling to read the name “Jared Kushner” in this book. A man who worked for the most hateful and prejudiced person ever to be elected president has no place in a book like this.

[William Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

So we learned in school that World War II ended in the European theater on 8 May 1945? For over a million people who had lost homes, wives, husbands, children, jobs, furniture, clothing, keepsakes, and pretty much everything else one can imagine, the turmoil of war was not over. True, artillery ceased to fire, bombs no longer fell, and crematoria grew cold. The specter of brutal death no longer hovered above the concentration camps. However, the multitudes of homeless still remained behind wire encircling displaced person camps, food was still in short supply, and jobs were nonexistent.

Making conditions worse was the continued influx of helpless DPs, short for Displaced Persons, as these war victims were called, for months after the “end” of the war. Poles, Lithuanians, Romanians, and Estonians, especially, continued to appear at the DP camps in both American and British zones in Germany, fleeing not the Nazi armies now but the Red Army advancing from the USSR.

For the Jews particularly, there could be no return to their pre-war Baltic homes. Some tried, only to find that pogroms were not things of the past but could still be practiced by their former non-Jewish countrymen. The Allies were somewhat slow to learn these realities and initially stressed repatriating DPs to their native countries, naively believing that one's pre-war nationality was the sole criterion for repatriation.

Why not let the Jewish DPs emigrate to Palestine? After the first world war, Britain accepted a mandate from the United Nations to govern that region, Britain needed Arab oil, and Britain was not about to annoy the Arabs by liberalizing its rules severely limiting Jewish immigration into Palestine. How about letting them emigrate to the United States then? In the 1940s, just as in the 2020s, reactionary Republicans and Democrats from conservative states insisted on severe restrictions on immigration and on keeping out “European riffraff.”

Complicating matters was the growing paranoia in the U.S. over the expanding influence of the USSR. The unfounded belief that Jewish immigration was part of a Soviet plot to infiltrate communist sympathizers into the U.S. ran rampant amidst the conservative elements in Congress, and powerful Senators could block votes on more permissive immigration laws despite President Truman's support of such bills.

I do not mean to summarize David Nasaw's The Last Million, for such is not the purpose of a review, but to suggest the subject matter with which his book deals. Absent this book, I would never have realized that some civilian war victims had to remain in DP camps until December of 1951—fully six years after the “end” of the war! This history is an eye-opener for readers who are likely unaware of the long-lasting impacts of the war on its hapless civilian victims, Jews and non-Jews alike.

I have but two nits to pick with Nasaw's telling of this history. While neither is terribly severe, I did find both rather annoying. First is that a few explanatory footnotes here and there would help the reader's comprehension. For example, the author refers a number of times to “the British Mandate” concerning its refusal to allow increased Jewish immigration into Palestine. He obviously expects his readers to be familiar with that, which I was not. A Google search on the term, of course, enlightened me, but an explanatory footnote in the book would have been appreciated. Another example of this is Nasaw's repeated use of the term “quisling,” sometimes capitalized, sometimes not. Again, putting the book aside and searching for the meaning of the term provided enlightenment but also interrupted the reading.

The second nit is that several syntactical or perhaps typographical errors should have been caught by proofreaders but were not. Just a very few examples of this include such faux pas as: “There is and will also [rather than always] be controversy over....” “...[I]t was difficult, if not impossible, to assembly [rather than assemble] the necessary evidence....” “The last of the Last Million departed Föhrenwald, eleven years and a half years after it had been designated as a camp for Jewish displaced persons [erroneous comma and repetition of the word years].” Such errors are undoubtedly considered very minor by some, but their occurrence significantly weakens the professionalism of the writing.

My nits notwithstanding, I found Nasaw's book quite educational, informative and readable. As Nasaw writes in the introduction, “The violence of war did not end with the signing of ceasefires, truces, or peace treaties. War bled into postwar and millions of innocents who had never taken up arms continued to suffer long after the soldiers had gone home.” The Last Million is a worthy effort to tell us their stories.

[Melissa Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve wondered many times after reading books and seeing movies about World War II what happened to all of those people that survived the Holocaust? Where did they go? How did they get there? Most of them didn’t have homes anymore or families. They definitely didn’t have jobs or money or possessions. What could they possibly have done to start over with nothing? This book gives a very detailed account of how history played out for these displaced people, or “DP‘s” as they were referred to. I was saddened to hear that the United States was reluctant to take many in unless they had a sponsor with family that lived here. There was a fear that many of the refugees were from Russia, and neighboring countries and that they would bring their communist views with them. In retrospect, it seems the US were more afraid to take in communists than they were to take in former Nazi members and sympathizers. They were much more in support of helping the Jewish people migrate to Palestine and establishing their own country of Israel, which as we can see, has led to a very complicated and tumultuous relationship with the Palestinians. It was very interesting to read how so many Jewish people felt so passionately that they needed to get to Palestine and wouldn’t even get off the ship when it had embarked at another country. I also found it very interesting how many people lied about where they were from or who they were, including former Nazis that tried to hide their identity. Many of them lived long healthy lives under a false identity never facing justice for the war crimes they committed. This book is so well researched and thorough, the only reason why I gave it four instead of five stars is that I wish it had more personal stories and testimonies. They were the best part.

[Katie Eskridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an absolutely necessary scholarly work , covers a fascinating subject, and yet is completely devoid of any human interest. The fate of displaced persons after WW2 is a topic that has not been well-understood, and Nasaw has definitely done extensive research to show what happened to all of the displaced persons in Europe in the years after the war. Given that you have terrorized Jews being kept in the same place as their former captors, this should be a gripping story. However, personal narratives are few and far between, and instead Nasaw makes this a story about various Acronym agencies across the globe refusing to recognize the plight of the DPs and handing off responsibility for these people to the next agency. Incredibly dry, timelines are confusing- would recommend for only the most intrepid reader.

[Vadim Pulver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed and thorough account of what happened to all the people stranded in Europe after ww2, those who couldn't or wouldn't go home.
Jews that survived the concentration camps, polish and ukrainian force laborers, nazi colaborators from baltic nations and ukraine are all waiting together in Germany for their fate to be decided. And as you can guess they are all treated equally by west european nations, meaning that they are ready to accept orderly people who look like them and not all those other ones.
The book is more focused on US politics, but paints a picture of post war world and its influence on the displaced persons.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you ever wondered why great grandpa with the funny first name sounded like a bit of a fascist - this book explains it. While we think of post-WWII displaced persons as being concentration camp and slave labor survivors it turns out to be a bit more complicated than that.

As the author explains in detail, quite a few were escaping Communism, along with pasts that involved a lot of voluntary dirty work for the Nazis. Actually, in some cases they were Nazis, conveniently relocated to pleasant Western nations on the U.S. taxpayers' dime.

The book also explores the origins of Israel, the efforts to sneak Jews into Palestine, and how finding a home for one group of displaced persons led to the creation of another group of displaced persons.

Nasaw quotes from a number of original sources including aid workers who were dismayed to see how the western countries had little interest in the humanitarian aspect of offering visas, but rather sought only able-bodied DPs from what they considered to be the most pliable nationalities. The thinly-veiled racism of mid-century U.S. politicians is on full display here as well.

A very interesting book, especially for anyone with an interest in WWII and the Cold War.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meticulously researched tome of what happened to those who had no “home” to return to after the Second World war. I felt compelled to read this impressive treatise, although these painful histories were heartbreaking.

The juxtaposition of personal accounts of concentration camp survivors, forced laborers and other displaced persons, alongside the “big picture” maneuvers and strategies of the Allied nations and several international organizations demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt how the political affected, often in very negative ways, the lives of those who had already endured too much.

On a personal note, it reminded me once again of the lessons we can learn from history. It also made me apppreciate how fortunate I have been in many ways. How do you go on after what these people endured?


I listened to this as an audiobook, with Martin Hillgartnet narrating. It was powerful listening to hear these personal accounts spoken out loud.

[Burmajones · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you enjoy reading the Federal Register, legislative history, and committee minutes, you will love all this book has to offer. For others, you’ll want to slide through that stuff to follow an interesting narrative embedded with a few historical jaw-droppers like this: In July 1947 off the coast of Gaza, British destroyers — yes, those flying the flag of a country which had sacrificed so much to reach a victory that ultimately liberated Holocaust survivors — rammed, boarded, and violently commandeered the Exodus, a large ship recommissioned to transport thousands of death camp refugees en route to their one sanctuary of colonial Palestine, and force them back to those same camps in Germany, camps taken over by the Allies and repurposed to hold the displaced “last million” while their fate was decided. These last million included Jewish survivors, of course. But they also included a wide variety of others who believed (for good reason) that they would be targeted for collaboration with the Nazis if they returned to their pre-war countries — “collaboration” that ranged, on the one hand, from performing slave labor under threat of execution or merely being a POW captured by the Nazis (which for his own troops, Stalin declared a crime) to, on the other hand, voluntary and enthusiastic collaboration sadistically designed to curry favor with their Nazis occupiers. Many of the displaced fell on the spectrum between those two extremes and blurred the line between victim and war criminal. But most disturbing perhaps, Cold War America’s judgment of even those clear extremes became contorted and inverted, as the anti-communist credentials of pro-Nazi fascists (to some) became an asset and the baseless and anti-Semitic association of European Jews and communism (to some) became a liability. This perversion helps explain why the US eventually open its doors to many suspected war criminals (and those without anything remotely close to the skills of immediately-recruited Nazis like Wernher von Braun). With some aggressive editing, the Last Million would be a great read. As is, it requires effort, but effort this reader was happy to spend.

[Paul Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Estonian grandmother by birth, Vera, arrived at Ellis Island in 1951 w/ her very young daughter (my mother) as Displaced Persons in Germany. I was fortunate to meet her before she died - I’ll never forget how she told me “Reagan freed my people!”. The “Last Million” tells the mind-boggling story of people like her, the 1M Eastern Europeans who found themselves stranded in Germany when the war ended with nowhere to go. They included concentration camp survivors, Polish slave laborers, and people from the Baltic States who had fled the Soviets. Most stayed in the camps for 3-5 years as the world (primarily US and Britain) sorted out what to do with them. The Balts resisted being repatriated because they were waiting for the Allies to restore their national sovereignty; no nation wanted the Jews - many linked them to Communism (Polish Jews had fled the Nazis to the Soviet Union), Britain and the US State Department were opposed to the state of Israel, plus basic anti-Semitism. Eventually, a UN agency is established, a (strongly anti-Semitic) DP bill is passed in the US, and Truman emerges as a hero for Israel (largely b/c it provided a solution to the Jewish DPs). Aid organizations emerge in host nations to recruit them as a cheap solution to labor shortages. Preference was shown to the Balts as they were strongly anti-Communist (but also often Nazi collaborators). Vera was ’sponsored’ through a Lutheran group by a couple in Wisconsin on a 1-year contract to be a housekeeper. Tons to unpack here - the fog of the aftermath of war. A fascinating, very approachable read - will leave you with deep respect for the grit and courage it took for those folks to navigate and simply survive.

[Mme Forte · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one could be blamed for thinking that at the end of World War II, after the surrender of the Germans and the end of the fighting in Europe, everybody packed up their stuff and went home to live happily (mostly) ever after. That's because the typical high school history class ties up the war and hops directly into the Soviet Bloc years and Korea and the Cold War, with a stop for the sixties and Vietnam. And that's if the teacher even makes it that far.

The end of the shooting is just one aspect of the end of a war. Open hostilities may cease, but the effects of those hostile acts linger on for years -- even for generations -- as those profoundly affected by conflict try to pick up the pieces of their prewar lives and build new ones, often far from their homes and without families and friends to support them.

David Nasaw tells the story of the Last Million, those refugees from political conflict and whose nations became captives of the Soviets after liberation from German occupation, and the victims of Nazi atrocities in the many camps of the KZ system. He discusses in great detail the reasons for people's landing in the various areas of a partitioned Germany, and how the zone or even the specific DP (displaced persons) camp in which a refugee ended up might determine their future. He describes the many and varied organizations -- NGOs on the ground, successive UN agencies, and relief groups in destination countries -- that housed, fed, clothed, educated, and advocated for or sponsored the Last Million on their journey from devastation to their new homes. He tells us about politics -- the politics of the Middle East, where fears of unrest and of Soviet incursions complicated the birth of a new Jewish nation; the politics of post-war Europe, where the Yalta conference's aftermath played out in a Soviet puppet government in Poland, among other power and territory grabs; and the politics of immigration to the US, where elected officials in Congress and state legislatures and the White House tried to reconcile their need to solidify their voting blocs by appeasing ethnic and religious groups by admitting their sponsored "aliens" with the reluctance of many Americans to accept large groups of outsiders who might not be able or willing to assimilate. We see the floor fights and the negotiations that took place in Congress as lawmakers tried to hammer out legislation that would allow some of the Last Million to come to America but would keep out Communists and war criminals (spoiler: the latter part didn't always work). And we have glimpses of family stories as DPs tell their tales of loss, fear, and hope for the future.

This is mostly an uplifting story, as the vast majority of the DPs were eventually able to make their way in new homes in countries willing to welcome them. But it's often appalling, and not just when the author is talking of what happened to people during the war. The unwillingness of the US government to step up and do the right thing by flinging wide the gates for people in need is disgusting, when you realize that legislators do the will of their constituents and that their will in this case was mostly fear of the other and paying lip service to the Christian directive to help the poor and those in need. And they got to conceal the pill of bias against Jews in the candy of anti-Communism -- everybody knew that Jewish people were linked to Communism, so by excluding Jews from immigration to the US, they were doing the Lord's work of keeping Commie infiltrators out of the country at the same time! Antisemitism wasn't confined to Europe, folks; xenophobia is apparently an American value; and bigots hollering about how THESE PEOPLE WILL COME HERE AND MESS UP OUR COUNTRY are by no means new. Reading this book, you can clearly see how and why we got to the place we're in today. That's all I'm going to say about it because it's too depressing and enraging to keep on about.

The last bit about politics that I'll tack on concerns the admission of Nazi war criminals to the US, through negligence, insufficient immigration control resources, and the potential value of these people as anti-Communist influencers (that wasn't a thing back then, but it is now, so). If a person showed up in a DP camp from Eastern Europe, there was a good chance they had no papers -- either records had been destroyed in the fighting, or were inaccessible due to the devastation, or the person had discarded those papers because of what they said about how the person had spent the war. There were men who had been conscripted into the Waffen-SS, or had joined of their own volition. There were men and women who had worked as concentration camp or forced-labor facility personnel. There were people who had held positions in the German bureaucracy with varying degrees of influence over who lived and who died, who kept their property and who lost it, who got jobs in the occupied state and who didn't. They had every reason to lie about their provenance, and they lied with abandon. You really can't blame them. It wasn't even that hard. If someone's story sounded plausible, the DP camp folks went along with it. Had they told the truth, for example that they had willingly signed up for the German army, they wouldn't be eligible for support from the UN agencies that cared for refugees and Nazi victims or for assistance in resettlement outside Europe. Inevitably, a certain number of the liars were war criminals covering their tracks, and due to a shortage of people to do in-depth investigations of their stories and to the openness of, say, the CIA to allow them into the States and put them to work as anti-Communist loudspeakers, they disembarked in New York and elsewhere and off they went to remake their lives. It wasn't until the 1970s, when the Nazi hunting organizations of activists like Simon Wiesenthal got involved in tracking them down, that lawmakers and the courts got involved. By this time, many of them were old and/or in ill health, and as the process of denaturalization and deportation can take years to complete, they tended to die either in their homes in the States or in retirement in the countries that were willing to take them when they were deported, generally as free people. And that brings me to my wrap-up. As the author says, was justice served? Possibly, possibly not, but because the truth about the war criminals and their deceptions was finally brought into the light...history was served.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I highly anticipated reading this book being the grandson of European Displaced Persons (DP) on both sides of my family, however was disapointed at the very narrow, highly selective scope of this history chosen by the author.

The book almost solely focuses on Jewish and Baltic DP's, which while substantial, certainly do not constitute the whole of the nationalities housed in camps in Germany at the conclusion of hostilities in 1945.

For example, substantial numbers of Hungarian and Balkan DP's were housed in German DP camps into the 1950's but nary a word on them in this book, despite them well and truly being in the "last million."

The overwhelming Jewish / Baltic focus, while interesting, denies the reader the complete history of the "last million" by the omission of other nationalities who made up substantial numbers of the "last million" DP's.

This omission is troubling given how the author implores us not to forget the stories of the "last million" DP's, however almost erases a swathe of them by his omission.

An interesting read but sadly a sorely missed opportunity to write the history of, and give voice to, the memories of people typically less represented in historical literature and who made up a substantial portion of those involved in this history.

I am, as the author reminds us, a living memory by descent of some of the "last million", however ones not given a voice, or mention, in this book.

I hope reader's interested in this topic utilise more than just this book as their source of knowledge.

[Snidely · Rating 2 out of 5]

The more non fiction books I read, the more often I seem to see two patterns at the extremes of a scale. With some books for which the research or the unearthed information for the intended subject seems to have been too light and insufficient for a book of expected length, the "story" will take detours, digressions, and include supplements and other techniques for adding bulk so that when done, it's a commercial length. Not too short (as it would be if the coverage were restricted to the premise of the title) nor too long. At the other extreme, sometimes books are written with inadequate focus and inadequate editing, incorporating everything that was found for seemingly the only reason being that it was found. Not necessarily because everything that was found contributes to the substance and flow of the resulting work.

For me, this was a book of the second type. Everything including the kitchen sink that was found seems to have been thrown in and covered. Much of it contributed little or nothing to the flow or insights, but seemingly was included only because it was found.

This book would have been much better had more discretion been applied to choose what to include and what to exclude. It would have been shorter, more to the point, and more enjoyable. So overall, good premise, interesting topic, lackluster writing and organization.

[Regina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having finished THE LAST MILLION, a book on a topic with which I am very familiar, having been born in a displaced persons camp in Germany after World War 2, I can say that I was so excited that it had been written, that it is extensively and even exhaustively researched and organized, and that it generated emotions of pain, anger, and genuine heartbreak. The sheer mountain of documentation that is often almost too much to get through and the anecdotal references that support the documentation create a a momentum, a tidal wave that reveals the motives, politics, petty hatreds and hypocrisy of those who wanted the problem of the refugees to be solved in board rooms, committees, and private meetings; as well as the dedication, kindness, compassion and real humanity that existed among others who tried to stand up for the displaced survivors. I couldn't stop reading it. Highly recommended.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best historical works convey moral complexity. By capturing the texture of the times in which events occur, they temper binary notions of right and wrong even as they lead the reader to more sustainable if less definitive judgments.

David Nasaw’s The Last Million is probably the best book I’ve read this year. It recounts the stories of the million souls we have come to know as the “displaced persons” of the Second World War, and of the responses of the United States, United Kingdom, and other non-Communist countries to their plight. The book is well-researched, cogently argued, and skillfully constructed, blending high politics with stories of individual survivors.

I deliberately use plural nouns here—stories; responses—to reinforce Nasaw’s fundamental point: there was no single DP-type but rather ethnic streams arriving in Germany for different reasons, from different places, and at different points in time. Each by its wartime conduct stood in a different relationship to good and bad, to moral justice. And the resettlement policies of the United States and other nations featured a similarly complex relation to justice. Simply put, the more Nazi-adjacent the ethnic group, the more likely its members were to find a new home in the West.

But that’s the end of a long and fascinating story, The beginning lies in the bloody and rapidly shifting borders between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. If you were a Balt— Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian— the devil’s bargain between the two dictators extinguished your freedoms and your national independence. Life under Stalin’s thumb was brutal, and when Hitler turned on his Communist ally in December 1941, many signed on with the new occupiers. That could mean anything from passive cooperation to gleeful Jew killing. And when the Red Army returned in 1944, many Balts fled west, to Germany, where the war’s end saw them among the last million housed in the d.p. camps.

A similar but not identical dynamic played out among ethnic Ukrainians and Poles, except here many found themselves in wartime Germany performing forced labor. After the war, like the Balts, they shared a common goal: to free their homelands from Soviet domination (not going to happen for a half century) and to prevent the Allies from shipping them home to Communist persecution. This last point was complicated by the Anglo-Americans’ Yalta commitment to return DPs whose homes lie within the Soviet Union. As the Yalta Agreement awarded the Soviet Union a goodly chunk of eastern Poland (and compensated Poland with a similar slice of eastern Germany) some Poles were subject to forced relocation, others not.

The situation with the Jews was even more complicated. In 1945, the handful of concentration camp survivors were housed in the same DP camps as the other ethnic groups. In practice, this frequently meant with the very same Nazi collaborators who had oppressed them in Hitler’s death camps. Many Americans were non-plussed, or worse. In his 1945 broadcast from the camps, the sainted Edward R. Murrow interviewed Buchenwald survivors, “identifying Englishmen, Frenchmen, Czechoslovakians, German Communists, ‘professors from Poland, doctors from Vienna, men from all of Europe….’” Only one group missing. Not so for General Patton, who pronounced the Balts “the best of the Displaced persons… extremely clean in all respects.” The Jews, by contrast, “are lower than animals.”

Most European Jews who survived Hitler’s onslaught had fled east, to Russia. Some took Soviet citizenship. Stalin duly dispatched them westward as cannon fodder. Others he shipped to Siberia, or central Asia to work in war factories. After the war, Stalin permitted these Jews to return home, mostly to Poland. There they were greeted by old-school pogroms, most notably although not uniquely in Kielce, and at the doors of their former homes by new Polish residents who made it clear, at gunpoint, that their return was not welcome.

These Jews thus also fled west to the DP camps, but mostly arrived in 1946. This, argued some American policymakers, meant they weren’t displaced persons at all. The U.S. Department of State argued strenuously to close the border with Poland and halt the westward flow, but this position became untenable after the Kielce Pogrom became known in the West.

Nasaw is strong on life inside the DP camps, which emerged as societies of their own. Ultimately, though, the point was to resettle their residents elsewhere. Many nations faced labor shortages, but all proved choosy in just whom they would admit. Essentially, the Balts were considered most desirable and Jews the least, with the Ukrainians and Poles somewhere in the middle. Partly this was rank prejudice and partly the association of Jews with Bolshevism. (Plug here for Paul Hanebrink’s truly excellent A Spector Haunting Europe.)

One result was the years-long battle to shape the U.S. legislation permitting some DPs to resettle in America. With the Senate in particular determined to keep Jews out, the initial law fixed a December 1945 cutoff date for determining DP status, thus disqualifying 90% of the Jews in the camps. It also added a substantial quota for “agricultural workers.” One guess why.

The fate of the Jewish DPs would largely be determined elsewhere, by those waging Israel’s War of Independence. Here the same American diplomats who fought to keep Jews out of the DP camps then fought with even greater bitterness against partition and the establishment of Israel. Failing in that, the Department of State then tried—fun fact!—to inter male Jewish DPs of fighting age in what Nasaw likens to concentration camps, to prevent them from joining the fight in Palestine.

I am old enough, barely, to recall Apollo-era jokes about “Our Germans are better than their Germans.” This was a back-handed way of acknowledging, belatedly, that one consequence of America’s DP policy was the admission of flat out Nazis, Nazi collaborators, Nazi sympathizers, Iron Guard fascists and similar riff-raff to our shores. Emerging Cold War tension of course had much to do with this, but not all. U.S. intelligence needed the knowledge and skills it **thought** many of these anti-Communist emigres possessed. In truth most of them possessed neither, and the ones who did were more likely found among the Jews we hoped to keep out.

This account greatly simplifies the richness of a major historical work that is both authoritative and accessible to the general reader. 5 stars….

[Nate Hendrix · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was excellent, I'm sure the author spent years researching. My only problem is, for the subject matter, the length. The book is 672 pages long. That is a lot of misery to experience. Between Covid and the election chaos this was a long time to read about the mistreatment of people that should have been given all the help they need. My other problem with this book is the same problem that I had with Ron Chernow's biography of Grant, so many details. Chernow's book is 959 pages. No matter how well written the book or how interesting the subject matter there comes a point where one becomes overloaded with detail and need a break. As much a I enjoyed this book I had to put it down for a day or two and read something else before I could come back to it. This book has inspired me to find a good book on the foundation of Israel.

[John Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Last Million by David Nasaw; Penguin Press: New York; $35.00 hardback

Wretched, hungry, diseased, and abused wanderers in their millions swarmed along European roads. World War II was over, but the pain was not. Some six million displaced persons (DPs) were liberated from concentration camps, freed from forced slave labor, or driven from their homes by invading armies and revenge seeking vigilantes. David Nasaw, master historian, and Pulitzer Finalist with works such as Patriarch, Andrew Carnegie, and The Chief, gives us a chilling account of Europe's Displaced Persons from World War II to the Cold War. These benighted people came from every country of Europe, but particularly Nasaw tells of the last million, those who had no home to return to.
Europe was a conquered ruin. The Allies, primarily America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, originally agreed a joint post war resettlement would solve the issue of redrawn borders and prisoner liberation. This did not happen. While many millions returned, many remained in their now organized former detention centers. These were now humanely controlled by agencies of the Western Allies, or indeed the DPs themselves. Food, medical attention and even community became possible.
The last million, however, found return impossible. A Pole might have discovered his entire family was killed, or his home now a part of the Soviet Union. Many DPs found they were wanted criminals in their former country, by vengeful conquerors which considered many of them collaborators with Nazi crimes. Thousands feared repatriation to Communist Bloc and Soviet control because their political views differed. Others feared the broad brush accusation of traitor attached to anyone who'd surrendered to the Nazis and spent years in prison camps. In fact, many of those formerly loyal to the London-based Polish government were themselves wanted men by the new Communist government in their country.
Efforts at a common approach failed. Soviets found no middle ground for their desire to have revenge on the former residents of their country and those Baltic and East European lands they'd conquered. Allies would not force DPs back, as the results of the new Soviet tyranny became gradually known. Many Western non-governmental agencies intervened to advocate that repatriation stop, and help continue to be rendered. In the end, the role of the new United Nations Organization was central. Each side tried to manipulate the UNO's activities to their own national ends, thus causing more pain to those people bereft of a home.
The Jews were least among the last DPs. They but survived the Nazi Holocaust, were often not wanted at all. Stateless, some who'd returned to Poland were persecuted, even murdered in pogroms. Western countries, including the United States, refused them visas. Fear that these liberated concentration camp Jews could be Communists now resonated in an America fearing the new Soviet Cold War threat. All countries wanted to wash their hands of this dilemma, and hoped Palestine, under British Mandate, would accept these remaining quarter million Holocaust survivors. Britain demurred. President Truman finally found means to support some immigration despite intransigent reactionary opposition. When Israel was created, more went there, finally.
Nasaw gives us a tight, well written, masterfully researched, and eye opening study. Duplicity and prejudices, well documented, leave no Western or East Bloc government unstained. His thesis is marred only by lack of actual attention to specifics about East Bloc revenge. Many would not return for fear of this, which is implied, but its broad application not clarified.Nasaw has given a magnificent work by presenting a story which has needed telling for decades. We can now see that immigration issues were indeed in the forefront of nations' policies throughout that era.

[Scott Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Audiobook) This work attempts to look at the lives of those caught up in the chaos of the war and the immediate aftermath, where they were refugees in post-war Europe. It is a mix of many stories and nationalities. Primary focus is on the displaced Jews, particularly from Poland and Eastern Europe, at least those who somehow survived the Holocaust. Yet, it also covered the lives of others who were displaced/fled their homelands due to the war. For some, there was the ability to return home, but for many, that was not an option.

In this time, perhaps the biggest issue facing the refugees would be where would they go if not home? For the Jews, this proved especially problematic. Especially in places like Poland, many of the Jews had lost too much family and/or the people in those lands did not want them bad. It would boil down to the US or Palestine. For the US, much like today, there was no political will to bring in more refugees, a combination of anti-semitism, xenophobia and some racism. This led to the pressure to send more of the Jews to Palestine, as many wanted to go there. The work covered the various political discussions between Britain, the US, the Arab nations and those Jews already in Palestine, which would give rise to the nation of Israel.

This work also addresses those Germans and Eastern Europeans who fled the war, but were also trying to flee from justice, given their participation in the various war crimes of the Nazis. Sometimes they were caught, and sometimes they were not. Of, if they were caught, it was only long after the war, like decades.

This work was well-researched and a good balance of the big-picture political and the personal. It covers a part of World War II and the Cold War that does not get a lot of attention. The issues faced in the late 1940s/early 1950s are not that much different than the situation in the 2010s/2020s. Refugees are a major concern, but not a problem that is easy or quick to fix. Replace Europe with the Middle East and North Africa, and you have almost a similar story.

The reader was ok, but perhaps this is a better book to visually read vs. listen to like an audiobook. Still, worth the time to read at least one for insight into a key part of 20th century history.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading about the refugee crisis in Gaza, where some families have been living as refugees since 1948, I thought it opportune to learn how the world coped with a much larger flow of refugees, the displaced persons stranded in Germany in 1945.

David Nasaw does a good job of explaining how the Western powers (in particular the USA) dealt with the last million of the displaced persons, who were left in Germany after most of their counterparts had returned to their own countries. These remaining displaced persons could be classified into two major categories, i.e., refugees who did not wish to return to their countries of origin (non-Jewish citizens of the Soviet-occupied Baltic States, Ukraine, and Poland), and the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust from all countries, who felt they could not return to their homelands because they would be surrounded by people who had previously tried to exterminate them.

The book gives an insight into the founding of the State of Israel, over the objections of the British Palestinian Mandate authorities, who foresaw a never-ending conflict between the Jewish migrants from Europe and the Arab population in Palestine. We are still living with the consequences of these events today.

In the end, after strong resistance from the United States to the resettlement of the Last Million there, the US agreed on a messy compromise: most Jews went to Palestine, the remainder were resettled largely in the USA, and a large contingent of Balts, Ukrainians, and Poles migrated to the USA, Canada, Australia, and South America.

Nasaw also shows how many of the non-Jewish DPs (in particular the Balts) had actively collaborated with their Nazi occupiers, a situation to which the anti-Communist Western powers turned a blind eye.

This is an informative book, written in a workmanlike manner, which tells us a lot about the world we live in today. With the current debates in the US and western Europe about immigration, the book serves as a poignant reminder that desperate people will go to extraordinary lengths merely to enjoy the secure the safety and standard of living that we in rich countries take for granted.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally I would not read this kind of detailed history, but I was curious because one of my older brother's very good friends had immigrated to America with his family when Bill was very young. I remember my brother talking in rather secretive, hushed tones that they were "DPs." Everyone in the late 50s knew what that meant, though of course as a 10-year old, I didn't really. The "Displaced Persons" were all the several millions who were in Germany when Germany was finally defeated in 1945, but did not belong there. They included many who had worked in German factories either for pay or by forced slave labor, prisoners-of-war from several nations, survivors of death camps, and huge numbers who did not want to live under Soviet Communism. I'm not sure where Bill's family came from, but they were possibly ethnic Germans who had been pushed out of their historic homes in western Poland or parts of Czechoslovakia. As those who had homes and safe nations to return to soon departed Germany, the care for all the rest fell mainly to the British and American armies in their zones in Germany. The political wrangling over their fate went on for years. Controversy over Jewish emigration to Palestine strained U.S.-British relations. American bigotry, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism were barely hidden in legislative loophole language, especially from Republicans and Southern Democrats. Some of that prejudice allowed many from eastern Europe who had actually served with the Nazis to immigrate to countries that had been at war with them. Immigration and security checks turned blind eyes until some of those men were elderly and dying. General anti-immigration sentiment is still with us 75 years later. But Nasaw also tells many individuals' stories. And like Bill's family, who became very successful construction contractors, most found some measure of security and success--even though parents had to sacrifice for their children with menial jobs far different from professional lives they may have once known.