Most of all, the politicians realizethat the expellees are a problem whichGermany today cannot solve by itself,no matter how determined, intelligent,and unselfish the approach.
Elevenyears ago Adolf Hitler beganhis march to conquest under the bannerof lebensraum- living space for theGerman people. Little as the cry forlebensraum was justified then, eventhose bitterly hostile to Germany can-not deny that the remaining German territory is desperately overcrowdednow. Today forty- eight million peoplelive in an area where before the warthere were thirty- eight million, an areain which a third of the dwelling spacehas been demolished. The density ofthe population in Trizonia today hasbeen put at 512 persons per square mile-more than twice the population den-sity of France , and higher than that ofany nation in continental Europe ex-cept Belgium , the Netherlands , andMonaco .
French proposal, nor has any othersolution been offered. Day by day thesolution been offered. Day by day theinflux of refugees continues.
Dr. Wolfgang Jaenicke , State Secre-tary of Refugees in Bavaria , and him-self an exile from Silesia , told a re-porter recently," We know that it wasthe mad policies of Hitler which set inmotion the horror which led to thisenormous reshuffling of peoples. Yetwe cannot see how Germany alone canever cope with a mass of more thannine million people, evicted from theirhomes and deprived of their property." I suppose," and he smiled wryly,
Inevitably, lack of space and em-ployment will lead- when Germany 'svoice is heard again in the councils of ሲበthe world to a new irredentism. Thepowerful expellee minority, led by itsEgon Hermanns, will demand that theFatherland regain for them their lost.lands and lost homes.
The only healthy solution is one sug-gested, interestingly enough, by France .At the Foreign Ministers' conferencesheld in Moscow and London in 1947,Georges Bidault warned the otherpowers that these evicted millions mustbe dealt with carefully and sympa-thetically, if a peace treaty with Ger many was to have meaning.
His own proposal was for an inter-national agreement to sponsor large-scale German emigration- not of thekind by which Hitler infiltrated hisvictim countries, but of a sort thatwould make possible genuine assimila-tion of the Volksdeutsche in countriespopulated sparsely enough to absorbthem.
No action has been taken on the
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" you could call the Flüchtlinge ourGerman war surplus. We cannot con-vert them to peacetime use within theborders of our own shrunken country.And there is little demand for themelsewhere. The human markets of theworld are already glutted with refu-gees; people who have been drivenfrom many places, for many reasons."-ERNEST LEISER
( This article is an abridged version ofa chapter Mr. Leiser has contributed toThis Is Germany , which will be publishedby William Sloane Associates early nextyear.)
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robt, bruce
The Reporter, October 11, 1949
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