The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War

by Ben Shephard

At the end of World War II, long before an Allied victory was assured and before the scope of the atrocities orchestrated by Hitler would come into focus or even assume the name of the Holocaust, Allied forces had begun to prepare for its aftermath. Taking cues from the end of the First World War, planners had begun the futile task of preparing themselves for a civilian health crisis that, due in large part to advances in medical science, would never come. The problem that emerged was not widespread disease among Europe’s population, as anticipated, but massive displacement among those who had been uprooted from home and country during the war.

Displaced Persons, as the refugees would come to be known, were not comprised entirely of Jews. Millions of Latvians, Poles, Ukrainians, and Yugoslavs, in addition to several hundred thousand Germans, were situated in a limbo long overlooked by historians. While many were speedily repatriated, millions of refugees refused to return to countries that were forever changed by the war—a crisis that would take years to resolve and would become the defining legacy of World War II. Indeed many of the postwar questions that haunted the Allied planners still confront us How can humanitarian aid be made to work? What levels of immigration can our societies absorb? How can an occupying power restore prosperity to a defeated enemy?

Including new documentation in the form of journals, oral histories, and essays by actual DPs unearthed during his research for this illuminating and radical reassessment of history, Ben Shephard brings to light the extraordinary stories and myriad versions of the war experienced by the refugees and the new United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration that would undertake the responsibility of binding the wounds of an entire continent. Groundbreaking and remarkably relevant to conflicts that continue to plague peacekeeping efforts, The Long Road Home tells the epic story of how millions redefined the notion of home amid painstaking recovery.

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

490 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

Ben Shephard was an English historian, author and television producer. He was educated at Diocesan College, Cape Town and Westminster School. He graduated in history from Oxford University and he made many historical documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, including producer of The World at War and The Nuclear Age.

Reviews

[WarpDrive · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, well written and impressively researched, even though a bit too focused on the administrative issues facing the international organizations responsible for managing the so-called "displaced people"; very specific administrative issues, such as the relationship with the military authorities and the requisitioning of resources, are analyzed in unnecessary and excruciating detail, sometimes at the expenses of a proper treatment of the human tragedy factor behind the millions of Europeans displaced by the War.

This book focuses mostly on the Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish refugees, while the events related to the millions of Germans from the East, and of other nationalities who were refugees from the advance of the Red Army, are only given brief exposure (comparatively speaking). The other important impacts of the War, in terms of moral, social, healthcare and economic aspects, are all treated by the author, but the preponderant theme of the book is the management of the immense flow of refugees plaguing Europe as soon as the hostilities ceased.

Still a good book, recommended to anybody interested in the refugee issue that beset Europe in the immediate aftermath of the War. The author is also very good at highlighting how international politics, such as the advent of the Cold War, and even racial prejudice, did affect the different approaches by the individual governments towards the individual ethnic groups and nationalities the represented the makeup of this mass of refugees.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine millions of people torn up from their roots by history and evil and thrown hither and thither usually with just the clothes on their back. Then, imagine that many if not most of them are malnourished and traumatized by cruelty and loss—of loved ones and of everything they knew. Many have no place to go. Many do not wish to return to their original countries. Mix in some politics—the Russia wants its people back even if they don’t want to return, borders have been redrawn, countries that might be able to provide homes fear loss of jobs for their citizens, and, by the way, only want the “right kind” of immigrants.

The DPs (Displaced Peoples) are in camps that are often converted concentration camps. Winter is coming and many or most do not have proper clothing for the coming cold. They speak all different languages. Their religions and politics cause tensions and sometimes even violence among the DPs.

Now, you are put in charge of relief efforts—underfunded and understaffed. You try to get the DPs to work—cut fire wood for the winter, etc.—but many having been subjected to slave labor (or just being too dispirited) will not work. You have to try to weed out those who are pretending to be what they are not. Many in the occupied countries know that the DPs are better fed than they are and so try to falsify their own records. This sometimes includes those who have collaborated with the Nazis. And all the while, more and more DPs are showing up at the camps—sometimes escaping recent anti-Semitic violence in the countries to which they tried to return. Zionist organizations are smuggling Jews out of their countries and into occupied Germany in the hopes that countries overwhelmed with the logistics and expense will help them pressure Great Britain to open up Palestine to 100,000 Jews.

While millions were likely saved, there are some incidences over this time that does not speak well of humanity. The forced repatriation of DPs to the Soviet Union—many of them shot upon entry for supposed “collaboration” and the racism and anti-Semitism of the immigration policies established in response to the DP situation, for example. Children who had been stolen by the Nazis and adopted by German families were tracked down and in some horrific incidences were torn screaming from their adoptive parents’ arms and sent to orphanages in their “real” countries—their parents having died during the war.

A remarkable effort to bring to light the often tragic history of millions of displaced persons after World War II.

[Nicole Marble · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have studied history since I can remember, and there was always a gap in the texts –
the gap between the end of WWII (1945) and the beginning of the Marshall Plan (1948) that revived Europe. What happened? There were many millions of ‘displaced persons’, or DP’s, to sort out and get home. So who sorted them? How did they get home? DID they get home?
This is the book I have been waiting for; the book that explains in engrossing detail who those millions of people were, where they came from, where they went, and who helped them find their way. Brilliantly written, brilliantly researched, this is the book we all should read if we want to understand the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the establishment of Israel and the background of where we are today.
One of the best books I have ever read.

[cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read the other favorable reviews I have nothing to add except to reiterate how little I've read about the 3 or 4 years after WW2 and the devastation on every level in Europe. I mean I knew many cities in Germany were obliterated but not the over all picture of obliteration everywhere.

In the last few years I've read a few books on the British experience after the war and I hadn't known about their disastrous situation either.

However, the conditions in Europe were so much worse with millions of displaced persons (not including refugees ) in need of every kind of help imaginable. Suffering, sick, alone, psychologically shell-shocked people of ruined health and near death and those who were lost from everything they ever knew. Orphans by the hundreds of thousands, some healthy and some grossly ill, frequently so young they didn't know their names.

Did I mention this book is brilliant. Never has it been presented so clearly the mass chaos existing after the war. The Brits catch a lot lot of criticism here but to my mind they did an extraordinary job. They were broke. There people demanded an end to everything representing war times. Europe was broke. Germans and Germans soldiers ha no where to go. Citizens from every country wandered around . their homes and cities destroyed. Mostly what i thought about before reading this book was the jews and other sufferers from camps and hiding. The russians did little to help. It was primarily left to the American and Brits to care for th millions who were homeless.DP's...displaced persons, is what people became. There were countries which had ceased to exist. There was growing fear of ending up as part of Russia. There were political and bureaucratic nightmares to untangle. POW's and German soldiers could be put to work but they still had to be housed and fed. Waring elements formed within the DP camps...Poles. Communists, Zionists, Latvians, Estonians, and many many more.

It's a fascinating and well researched book, maybe a little dry but well worth it. There were some pages of statistics and numbers that boggle the mind but you don't have to read every page of those.

Wars take such toll on every country involved. Still true today as we watch, today, the miles of homeless families stretching across Africa and the Middle East and the Balkans, and Asia. I have a better appreciation now for the "horror".

[John Gaynard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book by Ben Shephard is an impressively researched account of the successes and failures of the UNRRA programs that were put in place by the allies (often hindered by the Soviet Union) to deal humanely with the millions of people displaced during and immediately after WWII. The human stories it covers range from the many nationalities brought into Germany to do war work, through how the Eastern Europeans were received in their new homes after the war in Britain, the US, Canada and Australia to the way members of the the Jewish "surviving remnant" were treated as political pawns in both Israel and the US. The 200.000 European Jews who arrived in Israel during the first two years of the State's existence received very little psychological help or sympathy for what they had been through.

In spite of the good intentions of the mainly American and British workers UNRRA was very badly organised in the first couple of years. Many of the displaced people felt humiliated by the way they were treated and continually moved around in the camps set up in Germany. After the traumas of the Soviet-German division of Europe, the atrocious sufferings during the war, the attempted genocide of the Jewish people and the mass killings of Poles, Russians and other "inferior peoples" the survivors found they were often considered as something less than human: DPs.

The book provides good information about the relationship between the DPs and the birth of the State of Israel and also explains how so many Nazi collaborators got into the US after the war.

[Bookmarks Magazine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most lauded aspect of Shephard’s book is his ability to put aside historical hindsight and to see postwar scenarios the way the Allies and others saw them. For example, in the 1940s, the world had not yet grasped the extent of the Holocaust—the word itself had not even come into common usage—so the Jews of Europe were considered part of the “displaced people” problem. Critics also valued the way Shephard tells the story of those refugees through extensive archival research. Overall, reviewers were impressed by Shephard’s work and were glad to see a historian cover this poorly understood aspect of the war. One criticism worth noting: several critics pointed out that the book should be subtitled “The Aftermath of the Second World War in Europe,” since the war’s considerable impact elsewhere is not considered in detail. This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shephard's detailed account of how the Allies coped with the problem of refugees and displaced persons following the Second World War makes for interesting reading, especially in the light of today's flood of refugees into Europe from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Eritrea, etc.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Occasionally one comes across a book that explains some things that one has always wondered about, and this is one of them. I've read several histories overing the period of the Second World War, and even did a History Honours paper on modern Germany, which covered that period. but there were some things that I never understood, and this book has helped to explain some of them.

The things that I find most interesting in history are transitions: from peace to war, or from war to peace; transitions such as revolutions, and other things that make big changes in people's lives. And I want to know how these changes affected people. This book deals with one such period: the end of the Second World War in Europe.

I knew, from reading other history books, that one of the problems facing the victorious Allies after the surrender of Nazi Germany was that of Displaced Persons, or DPs as they were known. But it was never really clear who these people were, or what were the problems they posed. Why couldn't they just go home once the fighting was over?

It was not until I read this book that I realised that there was a difference between DPs and refugees, and just what constituted the problem. I thought that Displaced Persons included anyone who was left far from home when the fighting ended, including refugees, prisoners of war, and people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the war started, like "enemy aliens".

But it appears that in the minds of the Allied administrators DPs were a particular class of persons, people who were brought to Germany during the war, voluntarily or forcibly, as labourers.

As the war expanded, with the successive German invasions of Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, France, the Balkans and the USSR, so more and more Germans were conscripted for miliary service, leaving labour shortages in the farms and factories in Germany. To alleviate this shortage, the Nazi government recruited or conscripted labourers from the occupied territories to keep production going. Apart from a few volunteers from places like France, most were in fact slave labourers.

In an ideal world, once the war ended the demobilised soldiers would go back to their old jobs and the labourers would go home. But the old jobs were sometimes no longer there, because the factories had been bombed, and the transport infrastructure likewise. Also, once the war ended the last thing most of the forced labourers wanted to do was to continue working for the Germans.

The Allies had foreseen some of this, and had set up the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration (UNRRA) to deal with it once the war ended, but bureaucratic bungling and ineffective leadership meant that took a long time to work effectively. UNRRA was also dependent on the miliary authorities in the four different occupation zones for such things as transport, and the miliary authorities had other priorities, so urgently needed food and medical supplies often took a long time to arrive.

Camps were set up for DPs, to provide food and shelter until they could be sent home, but they were of many different nationalities, and some of the more nationalistically-minded of them demanded to be housed in separate camps, and nationalities were disputed. For example, at the end of the war, Poland had moved westwards, and DPs who had been born in Poland before the war found that their homes were now part of the USSR, and the USSR claimed them as its citizens, and they did not want to return home.

Jews and Ukrainians demanded to be treated as separate nationalities, and to live in separate camps, though at that time there were no separate states for those nationalities. Zionists from Palestine visited the Jewish DP camps, and persuaded most of the inmates to demand that they be "repatriated" to Palestine, something which the British, in their zone, were reluctant to encourage, because since the First World War they had governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, and the Arab population there were opposed to more Jewish immigration.

Many of the DPs from Eastern Europe, which was now under Soviet control, had no desire to go back home, and many wanted to go to America, which had seen hardly any fighting in its own territory during the war. Because of the westward movement of Poland, many Germans were expelled from western Poland (which before the war had been eastern Germany), and this aggravated the problems. Immediately after the end of the war there were outbreaks of diseases like typhus in the DP camps, though newly-invented drugs and insecticides, like penicillin and DDT, helped to control them.

One of the biggest problems was feeding the population of the camps, and indeed the population generally, was the problem of feeding them. One of the things that had puzzled me in the past was why in Britain, there was no bread rationing during the war, such rationing was introduced in 1946, and food rationing in Britain was more severe immediately after the war than it was during the war. This book provides an explanation of that too.

The influx of yet more refugees placed an intolerable burden on the British Zone. Only 17 per cent of those who had entered the zone by 15 June 1946 were adult males, and only 60 per cent of those were fit for work. The arrival of 750,000 economically unproductive expellees aggravated the food, housing and public health situation. In late 1948 there would be 243 people per square kilometre in the zone, compared with 167 in the American and 131 in the French; it was estimated that, if you reckoned on one person per room, the British Zone was short of 6.5 million rooms. The situation was at its worst in Schleswig-Holstein, where 120,000 people were still living in camps.

To feed the extra mouths, the British authorities made desperate efforts to raise food production and make the zone more self-supporting. They had some 650,000 acres of grassland ploughed up -- top produce, it was hoped, a 10 per cent increase in the grain harvest and and a 75 per cent increase in potatoes. They tried to persuade farmers to slaughter their livestock hers, so as to provide meat and reduce the demand on arable pasture and on feedstuffs. They forbade the growing of luxury crops; cut the amount of grain allowed for brewing; encouraged the cultivation of vegetables in town gardens and allotments; did what they could to compel farmers to bring their produce to market.

But this policy was only partially successful. The farmers of northern Germany, who were by long tradition animal husbandmen and not cereal growers, resisted attempt to change their ways; there wasn't the staff to enforce the changes. Food production was further handicapped by shortages of seed, fertilisers and equipment. British policy fell between two stools, providing neither effective coercion nor effective incentives.

It was clear that clear that considerable imports would continue to be necessary for several years. The British would have to juggle the needs of the Germans against those of their own population -- whose bread was rationed in 1946 -- and other regions of the world, such as India (Shephard 2011:246)

Another interesting facet of the food problem lay far from Europe, in America:

On the face of it there should not have been a food problem at all after the war. More than enough was produced in the western hemisphere -- and in particular, in the United States -- to feed the starving Europeans, and probably the starving Asians as well. The war years had seen a second agricultural revolution in the United States, as a severe labour shortage led to the systematic application of mechanisation and fertilisers which transformed the productivity of the land. By 1946 American agriculture was producing a third more food and fibre than before the war, and with much less labour.

However, Americans now wanted to eat more meat, and it paid their farmers to feed their cereals to the livestock needed to produce that meat, rather than to human beings. For the first time in history, high meat consumption in one major country would distort agricultural output all over the world.

However, the roots of the problem went back further than that. The people who ran US agriculture were mindful of the huge surpluses in the 1930s, when overproduction had destroyed farm prices: their main objective was to avoid any repetition of that nightmare. At the end of 1944 the United States War Food Administration had decoded from a few shreds of doubtful evidence that Europe was not going to starve when the war ended. Accordingly -- and against the advice of Herbert Lehman -- it took steps to avoid overproduction, by reining in farm output, relaxing rationing controls so that American civilians could eat up existing food stocks and stopping all stockpiling for relief. The object of this "bare shelves" policy, says historian Allen J. Matusow, "was to come as close as possible to see that the last GI potato, the last GI pat of butter and last GI slice of bread was eaten just as the last shot was fired". Its potentially disastrous effects of European relief were soon apparent and by the spring of 1945 public figures such as Herbert Hoover were warning of the perils ahead. Yet it was almost a year before decisive action was taken, partly thanks to Lehman's ineffectiveness in Washington, and partly due to the different priorities of the Truman administration, and its Secretary of Agriculture, Clinton P. Anderson, who was determined to put the interests of the American consumer before those of relief.

Which is where meat comes in. If there is a villain in this story, it is the sheer hoggery of the American military, which insisted on annually requisitioning 430 pounds of meat per soldier, thus taking up a fair amount of the available livestock and diverting grain production away from human consumption. However, in wartime meat had been rationed for the American domestic consumer; with the coming of peace, and Americans now eating considerably better than in the 1930s, there was huge pressure on Washington to remove the rationing, while the incentive to American farmers to sell their cereals for animal rather than human consumption remained strong. In November 1945, the Truman administration removed all rationing from meat, oil and fats (Shephard 2011:251).

Reading about the problems faced by UNRRA, and especially the bureaucratic bunglings described in the first few chapters of the book, also helps me to understand some of the failures of transformation in South Africa. In both cases, the planners underestimated the hugeness of the task. And as in South Africa, where so much of the money earmarked for development is siphoned off into the bottomless pit of corruption, so in post-War Europe, much disappeared in a similar fashion, and also into the black market.

What I liked about this book was that it did not just describe things in terms of bald statistics and policies and minutes of meetings, but also tells the human story of the people in the camps, and what life was like for them, and it uses not only official sources, but diaries, letters and personal accounts written by military officers, UNRRA officials, and DPs themselves. This gives a fuller and more human picture.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read any history of World War 2 and it'll probably finish up in the summer of 1945, maybe with VE Day, perhaps with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There might be an epilogue chapter, a wrapping up that encompasses Nuremberg, the Marshall Plan, the Iron Curtain and the Cold War. But what is rarely addressed is what this book is entirely concerned with - the sheer staggering scale of the numbers of dislocated and dispossessed people, the refugees, the homeless and the stateless, some innocent, some not, some Jewish but most not.

Determined not to repeat the mistakes of the First World War, when disease and famine had stalked a devastated Europe and in many ways contributed to the chaos and disruption that gave rise to Hitler, the Allied powers tried to cooperate in strategies to stabilise conditions and repatriate the many millions living in camps across Europe. A civilian agency was created, UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency), to take over responsibility for the DPs (displaced persons) from the military and bring some humanity and compassion to the treatment of these shocked and traumatised masses.

But what to do with them was a logistical challenge for the Allies every bit as daunting as the war itself. Saving only America, most of the Allied powers had difficulty feeding their own populations, let alone the DPs and the starving Germans; indeed, it was in this period that for the first time bread began to be rationed in Britain. Many of the DPs were ethnic Germans expelled from newly-Soviet Poland and Czechoslovakia; many others were citizens of those latter countries who refused to return to homelands under the communist boot. The vast majority of the Jews wanted only to emigrate to Palestine, and this the British government would not permit. Many others wished to emigrate to an America that did not want any immigrants at all. Other countries would take only DPs who could work, stepping in to industries desperate for labour in the push to get economies moving again - and yet few DPs were in a physical condition to labour in fields, mines or forests.

It was a logistical, administrative nightmare, and it largely on the logistics and administration that Ben Shephard focuses. Whilst there are voices of the DPs themselves in these pages, it is very much more a tale told from the perspective of the helpers, not the helped. There was never enough money, never enough personnel, or trucks, or blankets, or shoes, or food, never ever enough food for people who have starved near enough to death. And UNRRA was subject to the inherent poor organisation, petty bureaucracies, infighting, racketeering and corruption that plagues any altruistically-minded body set up in a hurry and staffed by well-meaning but inexperienced volunteers.

UNRRA did its best, but it could have done more, had it been properly staffed, funded and organised. But alas, altruism on the scale we are talking here is very rarely without an element of self-interest on the part of the governments funding it, and even the very best of humanistic endeavours can be overturned in a heartbeat by politicians concerned first and foremost with their own constituencies and parochial concerns. American senators and congressmen were particularly guilty of this, until they began to see an anti-communist benefit to it.

This is an excellent book, a real eye-opener, that ably fills in the gaps between the end of WW2 and the opening of the Cold War. It's also gives a fascinating insight into the role that the camps and the DPs played in the creation of the state of Israel, and also the creation of the concept of 'the Holocaust', which as Shephard points out, was not considered by contemporaries and those who survived it, as we ourselves see it now. One definitely worth a read for anyone interested in what comes after the cataclysm of war...

[Rafal Jasinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Koniec wojny nie oznacza końca problemów i kresu gehenny dla wielu milionów ludzi, których dotknęła. Ben Shephard skupia się na problematyce"dipisów" (z angielskiego - displaced persons), ludzi którzy w wyniku emigracji, uchodźstwa, masowych wywozów do obozów koncentracyjnych i obozów pracy, znaleźli się poza granicami swoich miejsc zamieszkania, krajów i ziem ojczystych.

To dokument opisujący nie tylko ludzkie dramaty związane z niespotykanym wcześniej kryzysem humanitarnym tej skali, ale również - głównie z perspektywy osób zaangażowanych w tworzenie UNRRA - ukazujący (w wielu przypadkach) niewłaściwe podejście i nieumiejętność akceptacji różnic kulturowych oraz brak pełnego zrozumienia geopolitycznych, społecznych a nawet psychologicznych następstw wojny. W opisywanym okresie nie dysponowano również pełnymi informacjami związanymi z tragediami rozgrywającymi się w obozach zagłady, co prowadziło też do krzywdzącego a nawet brutalnego traktowania osób, które uprzednio przeszły piekło.

Z drugiej strony jest to też dokument boleśnie szczery, pokazujący ciemne strony życia w obozach przesiedleńczych, bezpardonowo ukazujący hańbiące, najmroczniejsze cechy charakterów i zachowania umieszczonych tam Bałtów, Polaków, Żydów i innych "dipisów". Smutne to, ale prawdziwe - choć sądzę, że wiele poruszonych tu kwestii może wydawać się dziś odwoływaniem do obrażających stereotypów czy wręcz rasistowskimi.

Książka zyskuje na aktualności - wiele opisanych tu zagadnień i problemów może okazać się (a nawet już okazuje) istotnymi i pouczającymi w kontekście trwającej wojny na Ukrainie. I choćby - choć oczywiście nie tylko - z tego powodu gorąco polecam jej lekturę.

[Gisela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the book I was hoping for: the depth at which this looks into this part of European history is spot on. I’m sure there are far more detailed works for those looking at degree and beyond. Yet, without doubt, this is not a brush with the past - it tells all and in a most engaging fashion.
I had no idea how difficult and damaging the post-war years were for those in Europe; and regardless of how much I had thought of the issues I would never have imagined what this book tells us.
It’s not an easy read, but it is by no means a slog.
The war did not end in 1945; death and destruction continued. I would suggest this as a must read for anyone looking to understand the war years.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this took me a while to get through. It was very thoroughly researched. But I found it a bit dry--I was hoping I guess for more stories and experiences of the refugees themselves, and what I got was a lot of bureaucratic wrangling and who didn't like whom in the refugee organizations that were formed.

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent summary of what happened to those people uprooted by the war in Europe. The repercussions of war are quite fascinating. In this case, as in most, the cleanup was sloppy at best. And nothing was said of the Pacific theater--another book, perhaps?

[Christoph Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic account of the chaos that was faced by displaced people in the aftermath of world war 2, very well written and informative. I needed this book as research for my own book and found it a very useful and trustworthy resource. Highly recommended.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another fascinating and heretofore underreported story from the post-war era.

[Daniel Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book dealing with a key, but often neglected, issue in post WWII reconstruction of Europe.

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is probably the grimmest, saddest non-fiction book I've ever read. It added an entirely new dimension to anything I thought I knew about WWII.

Focusing on the people who were imprisoned, enslaved, starved, forcibly removed, forced to work wherever Nazi Germany wanted or needed them, and held for extermination, Shephard's book covers an aspect of the worst human catastrophe in history that has till now escaped my attention. It focuses on the fate of the displaced persons ("DP's") during and after the close of the European war. A few things to mention:

The sheer number and geographical extent of DP's was immense. It seems that DP's were sent to- or forcibly taken from just about every European country.

DP's were not only Jews but people of many, many ethnic, religious and national affiliations.

One's understanding of "war" is expanded exponentially when one considers its effect on non-combatants.

The horror of war extends well past the moment of armistice, as tens of millions continue living the hell they find themselves in.

The practical, legal, diplomatic and logistical aspects of the DP situation is immense, perhaps impossible to fathom, or plan for, much less resolve, especially as the countries gasp for economic air.

After the war was over, the victorious countries and peoples were more likely to turn their backs on the immediate human suffering not to mention the future prospects of the DP's, than to eagerly and mercifully embrace them.

There were (and, it seems, are) a whole raft of historic animosities between countries that continued through and after the war, and these relationships only made DP resolution more difficult.

This book gave me a new appreciation of President Truman, his actions and attitudes in the face of deep political animosity toward DP's who were seeking safe haven.

The Soviet Union takes on a much larger role in complicating and endangering the lives of DP's regardless of their country of origin, ethnicity or religion. Russia correctly sees itself as maybe the country that gave most in life and treasure in stopping the Nazi machine. The record seems to show Russia as a difficult partner at best, in the realm of helping the DP's. There is certainly much evidence that, at war's end, people across Europe feared the Soviets more than anyone else [Walter Kempowski's 2006 novel 'All For Nothing' describes the fate of a family in East Prussia - now a part of Poland - as the Red Army makes its way to their part of their country as the war winds down. Its soldiers are described in the cruelest, most vengeful, most animalistic terms.]

Just about everything dealing with helping the DP's throughout Europe is complicated by the unique role of the Soviet Union. It is clear that many Europeans were expecting to be soon plunged into another world war between the West and the Soviets.

Americans read about the Marshall Plan, the economic lifeline in the immediate postwar years. Shephard's book briefly mentions it, but it is pretty much outside the scope of this book.

The movement to create the independent nation of Israel in 1948 is given much space. What could have received more attention (then and now) is the impact of this historic event upon the Palestinian people. Again, the book mentions this issue maybe one time, and then lets it go. Shephard does point out the historic revisionism in the decades since 1948 regarding the holocaust. His research shows that journalists didn't even start using such terms, much less focusing on the targeting of Jews by the Nazis, until the 1960's. [I recommend Susan Abulhawa's novel 'Mornings in Jenin' to get a sense of these issues from the standpoint of Palestinian people] As a grade school pupil in the early 1960's I happened upon a raft of black and white photos of death camp survivors and victims. Visuals say a thousand words.

There can be many take-aways from a book like this. At this moment for me it is the immense evil that Hitler and the Nazis wrought on human civilization, well beyond casualty statistics of military and civilian dead and wounded. The human suffering went well beyond these numbers. It continues after almost 80 years on.

[Sebastian Kotlarz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historia, która powinna być bliska szczególnie nam, potomkom repatriantów, którzy osiedli na tzw. Ziemiach Odzyskanych. United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA, Administracja Narodów Zjednoczonych do Spraw Pomocy i Odbudowy) powstała w 1943 r. Dwa lata później została włączona do Organizacji Narodów Zjednoczonych, a w latach 1947-1948 jej funkcje przejęły Międzynarodowa Organizacja Uchodźców i Plan Marshalla. W ciągu kilku lat UNRRA zdołała pomóc kilku milionom ludzi w powrocie do ojczyzny lub w odnalezieniu domu poza nią. Świat w owym czasie dopiero zaczynał zderzać się z prawdą o straszliwych zbrodniach dokonanych przez nazistów. Pracownicy UNRRY mieli do czynienia z byłymi więźniarkami i więźniami obozów koncentracyjnych, byłymi przymusowymi robotnicami i robotnikami oraz uchodźcami z różnych krajów Europy (najczęściej uciekającymi przed Armią Czerwoną Litwinami, Łotyszami, Estończykami i Niemcami). Napisać o nich, że przeżyli piekło to tak, jakby nie napisać nic. Ben Shephard porównał wojnę do ruchów tektonicznych, które wyzwalają potężną niszczycielską energię trudną do opanowania. Europa była zniszczona nie tylko pod względem materialnym, zło zatruło również ludzkie dusze. Grozą napawają opisy Ukraińców przegryzających sobie wzajemnie tętnice szyjne, aby tylko nie być deportowanym do Związku Socjalistycznych Republik Radzieckich. Szokują informacje dotyczące gwałtów dokonywanych na kobietach nie tylko przez Sowietów. Wojna zostawia po sobie pustkę, ból i zgliszcza. Tym bardziej podziwiam heroiczną pracę tych, którzy podejmują się dzieła odbudowy życia społecznego, gospodarki i kultury od podstaw. Sięgając po tą pozycję bałem się, że będzie ona zbiorem wielu nudnych tabel, ale przeżyłem bardzo pozytywne zaskoczenie. Ben Shephard wykonał kawał dobrej roboty oddają głos dipisom (przesiedleńcom) i pracownikom UNRRY. Wykazał się przy tym ogromną dozą empatii. Szacunek należy mu się również za ogromny wysiłek włożony w pracę badawczą. Książka napisana jest pięknym językiem. Jej lektura była niesamowitą przygodą.

[Harron68 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars is a little generous. It's dull in parts, but the story of post WWII Displaced Persons (D.Ps.) 1945- the early'50s covers a little known or reported upon era. European politics, borders, ethnic groups, food distribution, industry, all were either damaged or eliminated as people died, fled retribution after the war, fled communism, or fled guilt of war crimes.
Connected essentially throughout the book is the plight of the stateless Jews, most of whom in DP camps in Germany were holocaust survivors. Added to them were East European Jews fleeing persecution from Poland, Ukraine and the USSR. Whether to disperse them around or allow them into British-controlled Palestine was a hard decision, among Jews as much as anyone. Nations around the world struggled with how many persons to allow into their countries. In most nations there were labor shortages, but to allow foreigners in was too much to ask of locals. The U.S. did take in a good number, but against public opinion. President Truman helped push legislation. The book has so many potential roads it could take, but tries to give as accurate history as possible. By it's 2011 publishing date, many new facts were found and old news confirmed or found flawed. Tho I'm no history geek, I read it with some interest. it is good history, and is relevant in today's politics as the world, Europe, the U.S., Australia, etc face immigration issues.

[Michael Paquette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well told tale of the multitudes of European refugees, how they were brought together in camps, many individual stories involved and the myriad and labyrinthian process of repatriation. The story describes the ordeal vividly detailed and it is easy to see the similarities with the many immigration crises throughout the world today. The chaos and disease that caused so much death from typhyus and starvation is astonishingly detailed. Shephard charts the founding of Israel and its course which few would recognize now. The antisemitic sentiment that prevailed even as so many horrors are discovered and revealed and we gain a sense of how America, and much of the rest of the world, were apathetic to the shocking revelations of Nazi atrocities. This book details the histories of Poland and Ukraine and Lithuania and Latvia and the roles their nations played in the displaced persons stories. Questions surrounding British and American resolve to aid and rehabilitate the vast population of displaced persons are well disclosed, discussed, defined and yet still some questions remain as to how we could have better served this struggling mass of humanity.

[Karen Slora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very interested in this topic as my parents had lived through this difficult time. It is exceptionally well-researched and his use of primary sources is exactly what a historian should do. However, it is written in such a dry style that interesting facts are obscured by too many details. It focuses mainly on the formation of an organization designed to assist dps. The title is misleading and leads one to think it is a broader narrative. I found it boring after the first 100 pages due to its redundancy and minutiae. I rarely stop reading in the middle of a book but here I did. It might make for an appropriate history course a good textbook. I can not recommend it if you have only a general interest. I did give it 4 stars however because it is an incredibly well researched book.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, Ben Shephard provides a scholarly and extensively researched history of the many governments and international agencies that dealt with Displaced Persons (DPs). For me, the book was a bit disappointing -- perhaps in part because of its title. I would have liked to have learned more about the larger history of the what countries and people endured after WWII such as the return of POWs on both sides, the coming to grips by different countries with collaborators and the Berlin Airlift. For me, it's a bit dry to learn all the politics of the UNRRA and the American Congress. An excellent scholarly book but perhaps the title could be more in line with the subject of the book.

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deep and thorough read. Really engrossing, if also really hard.
Took me ages at least in part because reading the physical book? Its BIG in hardback. I've gotten so used to my Kindle!

Some interesting moments of "hmmm, how do we think that interplayed with the cultural norms of the 50's and 60's?".

I'd kind of love another follow up, looking at how the diaspora, and the deeply eugenic immigration policies that continued into the 1950's (and beyond in some places, including my own country) played out into how we now see the world...

[Ta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wspaniała lekcja historii. Opowieść o losach dipisów napisana w sposób taki, że nie sposób się oderwać. Do tego dystans i humor autora sprawiają, że z nadętych urzędników spuszczane jest powietrze i widzimy zwyczajnych ludzi z ich przywarami. Jednocześnie w kontekście wojny w Ukrainie i wzmacniania się ukraińskiej tożsamości, znajdziemy tu informacje, które choć dotyczą historii sprzed dekad, pozwalają zrozumieć to czym Ukraina jest dzisiaj.

[Paula Wing · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has in depth research, and is very informative. To be clear, it is only concerned with European displaced persons, and does not discuss those in Asia or the Americas. It suffers somewhat in the middle chapters from a lack of coherent narrative, with many similar facts being thrown together into chapters that could be better written. The last couple of chapters were quite good, so keep reading if you grow tired of "The Long Read". Overall, I am happy to have read this book.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book full of events of post WWII Europe that I have never heard or read about before. It reads like a true history book full of names, dates, governmental policies etc that are a little boring as you slog your way through to the interesting material (UNRAA camps, the displaced persons and how they came to be, and the creation of Israel) make it worthwhile.

[Covey Mcallister · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pertinent and poignant in every way for a Jew living in Germany with neighbors on both sides that represent the Volksdeutsche from Poland and Ukraine…this well researched work highlights the after effect of WW2 and the humanitarian stew that was left brewing in Germany for a decade after the war. I applaud the research, the book was readable and enjoyable!

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This "aftermath" uniquely concentrates on the work of UNRAA and IRO with the millions of DPs in Europe following the end of WWII. It also incidentally documents the rise of the Zionist state in Palestine, and the settlement of Jewish DPs there. It is well written and researched and complements other works on the same subject.

[Tina Panik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly researched and well-written history of Europe’s Displaced Persons after WWII. With millions of refugees, little food, and lots of bureaucracy, it’s a wonder anyone emigrated out of the camps at all!

[Jos Eijkelestam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written and very well researched, but a bit too dry in some sections for me to honor this with more stars. But this is obviously my opinion and others who prefer more 'research-minded' documentation might love this.