Introduction
When twenty-one-year-old Belgradian Milovan Karonovic passed through the Karawanks Tunnel in 1947, his nerves were shattered. Nervously, he smoked several cigarettes before the repatriation train crossed the border from Austria into Slovenia. Previously, the young man had lived in a camp for displaced persons (DPs) in Bad Aibling, Upper Bavaria, in the American zone of occupation in Germany. There he had been told by other camp residents that his decision to return to Yugoslavia could be fatal, and that the Yugoslav authorities might arrest him, confiscate his belongings, and then deport him to Siberia for forced labour.Footnote 2
Similarly, a radio broadcast of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA: the largest international aid organisation of the postwar period, responsible for the care of Europe's DPs and thus operating the DP camp in Bad Aibling) reported on the numerous rumours that were widespread among Yugoslav DPs at the time, such as “It is much too late to go home” or “Those who didn't return in the repatriation of 1945 will be considered traitors and sent to forced labour when they return.” Despite these horror stories, Milovan Karonovic had decided to return to his homeland. The fear of negative consequences, however, remained a constant companion until he arrived at the registration centre on the Yugoslav side of the border. Fortunately, the rumours from Bad Aibling would turn out to be unfounded in the case of Karonovic, whose return to Yugoslavia prompted no repercussions from the authorities.Footnote 3
That is not to say that his fear was unfounded. At the end of the Second World War, blatant acts of violence became increasingly prevalent in everyday life in formerly occupied Yugoslavia. Simmering conflict between the various ethnic and national groups (particularly the Serb-Croat dispute), as well as within the splintered resistance movement came to the surface as Tito triumphed over the German occupiers and his political rivals.Footnote 4 Particularly in border areas, mass killings occurred in the last months and weeks of the war, including those committed by Communist partisans against military units of the Independent State of Croatia, members of the Slovenian Home Guard, and Chetnik formations. Many civilians also fell victim to this violence. Of the first Yugoslav DPs who were forcibly repatriated in the first months after the war, some were robbed, maltreated, and captured. The brutality and arbitrariness with which these acts were committed had long-term consequences on the willingness of Yugoslav DPs throughout Europe to return to their home country. This did not change even when such instances of injustice subsequently ceased to occur.Footnote 5
Against this background, it is clear that real events, in addition to ideological aspects, had an impact on the expectations that DPs had for their future. The case of Karonovic is representative of the widespread uncertainties that many Yugoslav DPs felt after the end of the Second World War, not knowing where they should go. What is even more significant from a global perspective is how powerfully the attitude and behaviour of Yugoslav DPs illustrates the disintegrative impact of the intensifying Cold War on the everyday experiences of postwar DPs, who had become pawns in an unprecedented match of geopolitical confrontation.
From this point of view, the case of Yugoslav DPs in Allied-occupied Germany is of particular interest because it can be linked to two gaps in historiography on DPs after 1945. The first is of a more straightforward thematic nature: although research on the subject of DPs has produced a large body of academic literatureFootnote 6 since Wolfgang Jacobmeyer's pioneering 1985 study,Footnote 7 the specific situation of certain nationalities has so far hardly been analysed in detail. When compared to other groups, for example Jewish DPs, this observation certainly applies to DPs from the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Their fate has for the most part only been mentioned in general overviews (and even then, rather marginally).Footnote 8 The second gap refers to methodological aspects, given that a substantial proportion of historical research on DPs tends to fall into one of the two areas of either studies operating at the macro level, with overviews of the transnational dynamics of displacement and relief work after 1945,Footnote 9 or at the local and regional level, often documenting, in a mostly descriptive fashion, the history of individual DP campsFootnote 10 (without necessarily tying these in with broader narratives at the macro level).Footnote 11 But between these two altitudes of historiographical reconnaissance—they are somewhat disconnected spheres, one might add—lies an untapped potential to purposefully link the global dimension of the DP phenomenon with microhistorical questions.
Such an approach could be referred to as global microhistory, a term coined by historian Tonio Andrade in 2010.Footnote 12 The aim is to overcome the seemingly antithetical relationship between large-scale narratives and historiographical models on the one hand, and the study of small-scale objects, that is individual places, events, and people on the other, by highlighting how fruitfully these two areas of historiography can be combined.Footnote 13 As this article shows, historical dynamics of a global nature are often vividly reflected, on a much smaller scale, in developments that seem singular or even isolated at first glance, irrelevant to the bigger picture. But this could not be further from the truth. The history of an individual DP camp, if all its surrounding dots are connected, can tell us much about the impact of the overarching mechanisms steering the course of world history. A global microhistory approach might perceive local actors and sites as they are shaped by, but also foundationally constitutive of, global regimes of migrational self-governance.
I thus apply a lens of global microhistory to argue for a multi-scalar approach to postwar migration events. Such a lens reveals how transnational developments—especially Cold War geopolitics and the pitting of the Western bloc against the Communist bloc—dialectically interacted with the subaltern agency exerted by DPs as rebels against Communism, and ultimately out-manoeuvred efforts to repatriate them to Tito-ruled Communist Yugoslavia.
In this spirit, that is, in the attempt to make a pioneering contribution to the global microhistory of Yugoslav DPs in the postwar period, this article will perform a close analysis of the aforementioned Bad Aibling DP camp, where former soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army (most of whom had been deported to Germany as prisoners of war in 1941) stayed from 1946 to 1948. The history of the Bad Aibling DP camp is not only a manifestation of how everyday life unfolded in prolonged displacement, but also mirrors a number of global repercussions in the context of the early Cold War. These include the reorganisation of Yugoslavia after the Second World War, the growing antagonism between East and West, and the work of UNRRA as an international agency pursuing universal goals, but ultimately failing to fully succeed in the face of a new global reality.
The Bad Aibling Yugoslav DP Camp
In early May 1945, the U.S. Army occupied a German military airfield near the town of Bad Aibling, Upper Bavaria. The Americans subsequently converted it into an internment camp for German Wehrmacht and SS (Schutzstaffel) prisoners of war, using hastily constructed wooden barracks. In the late summer of 1946, the POW camp was closed.Footnote 14 After the barracks had undergone some provisional renovation work,Footnote 15 the U.S. Army transformed them into a camp for Yugoslav DPs, who moved into the camp in the autumn of 1946.Footnote 16 In November of that year, responsibility for the camp was transferred from the U.S. military to UNRRA.Footnote 17 From then on, it was administered by UNRRA Area Team 1069, which was initially based in Rosenheim, not far from Bad Aibling, and later in Traunstein, also in Upper Bavaria.Footnote 18
Until the end of 1946, half of the camp's population (about 2,500) consisted of civiliansFootnote 19 (including some families), the other half representing former soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army, with both officers and the rank and file among them. Technically, these men were civilians as well, since they no longer possessed military status following the disintegration of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Royal Yugoslav Army.Footnote 20 As a special category of DPs, they were also referred to by the Allies as ex-RAMPs (Ex-Recovered Allied Military Personnel).Footnote 21 A large proportion of the first group, the genuine civilians, was soon transferred to another DP camp (Landshut) in early 1947. At the same time, more Yugoslav ex-soldiers moved into the Bad Aibling camp. This brought about a demographic change in the camp: the majority of the DPs now accommodated in Bad Aibling, numbering at almost two thousand, were male and single.Footnote 22
UNRRA had already developed strategies to promote the repatriation of Yugoslavs before taking over the DP camp in Bad Aibling. The measures suggested included the use of educational films, the distribution of information brochures, addressing DPs through Yugoslav radio broadcasts, and assisting in writing letters to relatives and friends back home. The implementation of these points proved to be extremely difficult, however, as much of the material needed by UNRRA was simply not available. Hence, an effective repatriation programme was not really up and running, and instead depended on the support of the Yugoslav authorities.Footnote 23 The lack of adequate information material was a real problem for UNRRA in view of the time constraints resulting from the imminent end of UNRRA's operations in Europe in the summer of 1947. This threatened to destroy the success of all measures taken so far. In April 1947, DP camps in the U.S. zone of Germany that were occupied by Yugoslavs were still not sufficiently supplied with relevant informational brochures.Footnote 24
Repatriation: The DPs’ Perspective
The main constant in the history of the Bad Aibling DP camp was the negative attitude of its inhabitants towards the Allied goal of repatriation. In October 1946, Božidar S. Kostić, a former officer of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force and a leader within the ex-RAMP DP community, clearly stated this: “We are not able and also do not want to return to our country [. . .]. Any return means for us death.”Footnote 25 The fear in these drastic words was achingly reflected by the population statistics of the Bad Aibling DP camp, where repatriation figures remained extremely poor throughout its existence.Footnote 26
But what was the reason for the strong refusal of the DPs to return to Yugoslavia? As the following paragraphs will show, the strongly monarchist and anti-Communist community culture of the camp played an important role. The DPs’ perception of how the war years and, even more so, postwar events in the Balkans unfolded was also important. In addition, the highly autonomous self-administration of Yugoslav DPs in Bad Aibling turned out to be another decisive factor. And finally, in a way that almost seems ironic, the concrete measures taken by UNRRA to organise everyday life in Europe's postwar DP communities could unintentionally sabotage underlying Allied objectives of migration management.
According to American Harold Rosenblatt, who was the director of UNRRA Area Team 1069 until February 1947, many of the DPs living in Bad AiblingFootnote 27 feared that back in the now Communist-ruled homeland, they were likely to be listed as political opponents because of their former membership in the Royal Yugoslav forces.Footnote 28 Similarly, in May 1947, a New York Times article reported on a survey that had been conducted in the Bad Aibling DP camp, according to which only two or three of a total of almost 1,700 inhabitants would even consider the option of repatriation. The article firmly placed the Bad Aibling situation in the context of the Cold War by suggesting a sense of political unanimity among the DPs: “Keenly anti-Communist, the entire population of the royalist camp has resented the circulation of repatriation literature designed to persuade them to return home.”Footnote 29 As we shall see later, this simplistic view was not entirely accurate, since opinions among the DPs in Bad Aibling were in fact more varied. However, the reporting by the New York Times does illustrate how international media discussions were influenced by the dichotomies of global geopolitics.Footnote 30
Rumours that returning to Yugoslavia would have fatal consequences for repatriates were extremely persistent. Stories circulated about the confiscation of personal belongings, unlawful arrests, deportation, and even the death penalty for returning DPs.Footnote 31 The reluctance of the DPs to leave the safety of their camps in occupied Germany was thus connected to real fear and was very much emotionally charged. It is also significant that many affected by this at the time continued to adhere to this viewpoint, which was common among DPs, decades later, even more so since reflections of this kind intertwined with the more recent history and ultimate collapse of the postwar Yugoslavian state. One of the former DPs who lived in the Bad Aibling DP camp (name withheld), for example, drew the following conclusion in 2013: “I am still happy today that I did not return to my homeland, which is still divided and where reconciliation has not yet taken place, I would not have had a future there.”Footnote 32
A demographic survey carried out in the spring of 1947 by UNRRA staff member Franciszek Harazin provides a valuable, albeit ultimately superficial, glimpse into the biographical background of the DPs who were accommodated in Bad Aibling at the time. In his report, Harazin divided the DPs into three groups:
1. The majority of the inhabitants of the Bad Aibling DP camp, about fifteen hundred people, had been captured as prisoners of war by the Germans during the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941.Footnote 33 From UNRRA's point of view, scepticism towards repatriation within this group (which was linked to former membership in the Royal Yugoslav Army) only partly seemed to make sense from an ideological point of view. After all, these men had fought against the “Nazi steamroller” in 1941Footnote 34 and had not been involved in the conflict that emerged between various resistance groups in German-occupied Yugoslavia. Harazin's assessment of this first group thus read: “Obviously, present day Yugoslavia [. . .] would not consider these men as ‘undesirable.’”Footnote 35
2. The second group Harazin defined consisted of about one hundred Chetniks living in the Bad Aibling DP camp.Footnote 36 They were followers of the Serbian resistance leader Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, who initially enjoyed the support of both the exiled Yugoslavian king Peter II and the Allied powers.Footnote 37 The Chetniks residing in Bad Aibling had been captured and deported by the Germans in 1943. Their fear of repatriation was certainly linked to specific episodes of the war years in Yugoslavia—specifically, the rivalry and bloody conflicts that emerged between Chetniks on the one hand and Tito's Communist partisans on the other. Also, Chetnik units in occupied Yugoslavia committed various war crimes and massacres against parts of the civilian population (if, for example, they sympathised with the partisans). These developments ultimately resulted in a widespread loss of support for Chetnik resistance fighters and led to Mihailović being put on trial and sentenced to death in Yugoslavia after the end of the war.Footnote 38
3. Harazin considered a further 250 DPs, who had been taken to Germany as forced labourers and were now also living in the Bad Aibling DP camp, to constitute a third and thus separate group of DPs.Footnote 39
This broad classification did not, of course, do justice to the complexities of individual fates and stories of persecution. And undeniably, some of the Yugoslav DPs in Bad Aibling had justified fears of returning home. However, given the biographical diversity of the groups described by Harazin, one would expect to identify at least some differences in attitude towards the possibility of repatriation. For this reason, Harazin was surprised by how unified the attitude of the DPs was: “I contacted personally different Yugoslav groups [in the Bad Aibling DP camp]—peasants, students, officers and others [. . .], they did not show any interest at all.”Footnote 40
A closer look at the UNRRA records that have been preserved (some going beyond the immediate context of the Bad Aibling DP camp) reveals that in many cases, the persistent anti-Communist views of Yugoslav DPs were ultimately caused by the specific social dynamics of living in the DP camps. A decisive factor in this context was the role of the former Royal Yugoslav Army officers, who as leaders of the DPs filled central positions in the administration of the Bad Aibling DP camp and regulated almost every detail of everyday life in the camp.Footnote 41 Faithful to the Yugoslav Crown, the DP leaders boycotted Tito and the new political order he and his followers had installed in Yugoslavia. A former resident of the Bad Aibling DP camp reported in 2013 that in the immediate postwar years, the leadership among the DPs was counting on the collapse of the Communist regime and hoping for the restoration of the monarchy. They believed that only under those circumstances would they be able to continue their military careers in their homeland.Footnote 42
This would appear to be a reasonable interpretation, given that Ira Hirschmann, who in 1946 was reviewing the work of UNRRA in Europe,Footnote 43 at the time pointed to the existence of an unofficial “Royal Yugoslav Army in Bavaria.”Footnote 44 It had been formed across several DP camps, greatly influencing the political views of the DPs, as well as their attitude towards repatriation.Footnote 45 This was achieved, on the one hand, through the distribution of literature criticising Tito's new regime, and on the other hand through consistent indoctrination in everyday life in the DP camp. In doing so, the former officers relied on the mental and emotional exhaustion of many DPs, the latter being the result of many years of imprisonment and hardship.Footnote 46
In Harazin's aforementioned report, self-administration in the Bad Aibling DP camp was compared to the organisational structure of a military unit: “As these people were well disciplined soldiers, they keep together, are very well organised and obey orders given from their officers.”Footnote 47 Thus, optimal conditions for targeted propaganda against return to Yugoslavia existed, from the top-level ex-officers representing the leaders of the DPs down to the ranks of individual ex-soldiers.Footnote 48 With regard to the collective rejection of Communism and repatriation, UNRRA staff member Maurice Rosen aptly referred to a “political rationale which has little true relation to the basic problem.”Footnote 49 The influence of the ex-officers he therefore described as the “tragedy of the Bad Aibling camp.”Footnote 50
Just how tense everyday life in the Bad Aibling DP camp became as a result of the authoritarian leadership of ex-officers was ultimately illustrated by an incident that occurred on 3 May 1947. Three DPs had tried to secretly transport leaflets into the camp, which in fact advocated for a return to Yugoslavia.Footnote 51 The camp administration was also openly criticised:
After 4 years of imprisonment in Germany, behind barbed wire and after the 2 years of imprisonment which our leaders called by our selves [sic], [. . .] we made up our mind. We do not want to hunger and to suffer any more. We do not want to be threatened, to be told lies, and to be pushed around. [. . .] With this we call upon the inmates of Camp Bad Aibling so they go with us because this is the only right and good way to go far [sic] everybody who wishes to be free and happy.Footnote 52
Trying to smuggle the leaflets into the camp did not go unnoticed, however. A mob of angry DPs quickly gathered and attacked the three men who were behind the incident. They were seriously injured and as a result, required medical attention on the spot.Footnote 53 Later, they were transferred to a hospital in Rosenheim for further treatment, as well as for security reasons.Footnote 54 The violent behaviour of many of their fellow DPs reflected how tense the atmosphere was in the camp. In such acts of open conflict it had become achingly clear that freedom of expression was practically impossible for the individual inhabitant of the Bad Aibling DP camp. Individual wishes to return home were not tolerated by the collective, because they were perceived as a subversive threat to the solidarity of the entire camp community.Footnote 55
Hence, there clearly was a serious flip side to DP self-administration in Bad Aibling, at least from UNRRA's point of view. The fear of repatriation experienced by some of the DPs, and in particular their leaders, resulted in a crisis of governmentality: in an attempt to maintain freedom and autonomy, means that ironically embodied the very opposite (i.e., controlling the behaviours of individuals and intervention against acts considered a breach of unanimity) were applied.Footnote 56 Hence, the fragile DP community also reflected the antagonism and underlying tension of the Cold War setting, which at the same time provided DP leaders with a justification for monitoring and controlling the camp population.
Self-administration had proven useful as an organisational principle in other DP camps. It can also be seen as a global strategy that UNRRA as an international organisation followed in order to promote a universal sense of democracy among different groups of DPs. George Woodbridge, the official UNRRA historian, even described self-administration in DP camps as “the goal toward which all activities were pointed.”Footnote 57 However, the aforementioned crisis of governmentality, a result of the specifics of the Cold War that bypassed the UNRRA blueprint of democratisation at the camp level, ultimately hindered the overall goal of repatriation in Bad Aibling. The fact that the camp's self-administration was the ultimate cause of the ongoing halt in repatriation is certainly more vividly illustrated by the simmering conflict among the DPs than by the low repatriation figures alone.
Although it is important to focus on the political aspects with regard to the question of repatriation, it must not be overlooked that nonpolitical uncertainties also had an influence on the willingness of DPs to return home. For example, many inhabitants of the Bad Aibling DP camp were denied contact with friends or relatives at home due to the lack of postal connections between Germany and Yugoslavia. The distribution of Yugoslavian newspapers, the reading of which was supposed to encourage readiness to return home, revealed another problem: many DPs, during the years of captivity, had lost the ability to resume a regular civilian way of living. For them, confrontation with newspapers and other media could strengthen a feeling of not being up to the task of a new beginning.Footnote 58 In this respect, historian Wolfgang Jacobmeyer has also pointed to the tendency of some DPs towards an indefinite stay in the DP camps.Footnote 59
As the following section on the Yugoslav government's actions will show, additional factors also played a role. The influence of the camp administration in Bad Aibling was certainly the main, but not the sole cause of UNRRA's failure to achieve their repatriation goals in the case of Yugoslav ex-RAMPs.
Interests of the Yugoslav Government
When the war ended, Yugoslavia was not only politically and socially disrupted, but also economically ruined.Footnote 60 As part of a plan to rebuild the country in accordance with socialist principles,Footnote 61 the new regime under the leadership of Tito soon demanded the repatriation of Yugoslav DPs who were scattered throughout Europe, in part because they were urgently needed for the country's reconstruction,Footnote 62 a motivation that was, however, not unique to the Yugoslav case.Footnote 63 In addition to economic considerations, a second pillar of Yugoslav repatriation policy centred around the search for war criminals and collaborators who were to be brought to justice.
However, the Yugoslav government was aware that many DPs were reluctant to return to their homeland, and that in some cases, the Yugoslav government had made matters worse. On 8 February 1946, General Jaka Avšič, head of the Yugoslav military mission in postwar Germany, announced an ultimatum for the repatriation of former officers of the Royal Yugoslav Army by 16 April 1946, after which Yugoslav citizenship would be withdrawn.Footnote 64 Although this threat was ultimately not carried out,Footnote 65 it further intensified the apprehensions of an already unsettled DP population.Footnote 66
This example of a somewhat inconsistent attitude by the Yugoslav government is characteristic of the contradictory goals that it set in the midst of the postwar years. In addition to a policy of retaliation that was aimed at (alleged) opponents of the new regime, efforts were also made to establish a culture of amnesty, intended as an antidote to the disruption of society and to facilitate the creation of a federal Yugoslavia united under Tito.Footnote 67 In this contradiction, intentions for the future collided with the ideological desire to break with old structures.
Belgrade's change of course with regard to the status of former members of the Royal Yugoslav Army can also be explained by the fact that over time, repatriation measures were intended as a means of dividing royalist groups in the DP camps, thus reducing them as a potential danger. In the words of historian Ann J. Lane: “The inmates of these camps [. . .] attracted bitter complaints from Belgrade where it was felt that they were being maintained as a military formation with hostile intent.”Footnote 68 Former soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army who were indeed hostile to the new regime might not have been preferred candidates for repatriation from the point of view of the Yugoslav government, but their (controlled) repatriation might well have been considered a lesser evil. Indeed, it would appear that no long-term discrimination against Yugoslav repatriates took place (even though the immediate postwar crimes previously mentioned must not be trivialised or forgotten).
Ruth Feder, UNRRA's deputy head of public relations in the American zone of occupation in Germany, accompanied a group of Yugoslav DPs (including numerous ex-RAMPs) on their journey home for almost two weeks in 1947 and documented her experiences in the radio broadcast quoted in the introduction to this article. It clearly reflected UNRRA's point of view that repatriation was the best solution for DPs. Feder considered the widespread fear of political persecution and social ostracism among Yugoslav DPs to be unfounded. On the contrary, she even drew a positive picture of the Yugoslav registration centres for repatriates and emphasised, with regard to the arrival of the DPs in their respective home towns: “Everywhere I got the impression that people are too busy to worry about why or whether a man waited one day or six years to come home.”Footnote 69 These positive statements must of course be seen in the context of UNRRA's mandate, which was based on repatriation as the most important Allied objective with regard to the handling of DPs.
In view of the developments in the DP camps, the new rulers in Belgrade felt increasingly compelled to address the problem in a targeted manner. General Avšič assured the aforementioned Ira Hirschmann, for example, that those DPs “who had not played the Nazi game” would regain their citizenship in Yugoslavia.Footnote 70 In April 1947, Tito himself addressed the Yugoslav DPs in an official announcement. He spoke of “fallacious propaganda” in the DP camps and stressed that “it is not our interest to imprison those who are misled. We do not conduct any revengeful policy.”Footnote 71 Such vague promises, however, did not have the desired effect, as repatriation figures in Bad Aibling showed. Historian Ann J. Lane has contended that “Yugoslav methods for encouraging innocent refugees to return home were undeniably crude.”Footnote 72 Over time, the segregation of DPs into different camps (based on their willingness to repatriate) increasingly became the preferred, albeit radical option. Representatives of the Yugoslav government strongly emphasised the need for such measures to UNRRA.Footnote 73 This hardening of Yugoslav DP policy was decisive for further developments in Bad Aibling, since UNRRA felt that as an international organisation, it had an obligation towards Belgrade as a member state: “UNRRA administration should at all times protect the interests of its member nations.”Footnote 74
Activities of UNRRA
In the particular case of Bad Aibling, UNRRA had massive concerns about the feasibility of a repatriation programme. The agency rightly feared, above all, the resistance of former officers among the DPs. Significant in this context was the statement of the chief repatriation officer in the U.S. occupation zone, Ralph B. Price. In his opinion, with the establishment of the DP camp in Bad Aibling, UNRRA was now in “the weakest position [. . .] ever with regard to a repatriation program for Yugoslavs.”Footnote 75 However, the establishment of the Bad Aibling DP camp, with the grouping of ex-RAMPs from various other camps, had been decided upon by the responsible military authorities, in the context of efforts to consolidate and thus reduce the number of DP camps in occupied Germany, with more and more DPs being repatriated over time.Footnote 76 As a result, UNRRA was faced with a fait accompli and had to deal with the new challenges that arose from this development.
Although the problems associated with the demographic composition of the DPs in Bad Aibling were recognised from the outset, UNRRA was initially hesitant to take measures such as segregating those ex-RAMPs who were hostile to repatriation. In part, this was due to the fact that for practical reasons, the self-administration of DPs was considered a significant advantage in operating the camp, but it was also, more importantly, a reflection of UNRRA's policy to support autonomy among DPs instead of forcefully regulating them. This contradiction is illustrated, for example, by various comments of Area Team director Harold Rosenblatt, who on the one hand explicitly praised the discipline and self-organisation of the DPs in Bad Aibling,Footnote 77 but on the other hand, with regard to the all-decisive question of repatriation, nevertheless recommended segregating the DPs on the basis of their respective willingness to return to their home country.Footnote 78 Even after the aforementioned violent incident in May 1947, Jean Bloch, UNRRA's representative working in the Bad Aibling DP camp, still expressed administrative concerns about a possible transfer of ex-officers as leaders of the DPs to a camp other than Bad Aibling.Footnote 79
The price for the initially indecisive position taken by UNRRA was that almost all repatriation activities came to a halt in Bad Aibling. The fact that Rosenblatt considered the successful return of just eight camp inhabitants in January 1947 a noteworthy successFootnote 80 illustrates the dimensions of UNRRA's expectations and indeed its successes in this respect. Instead of taking radical measures, a repatriation programme that emphasised voluntary action was implemented, aiming to provide information about current conditions in Yugoslavia. However, in the winter of 1946–47 UNRRA was preoccupied with improving the camp's physical properties and securing much-needed goods. Therefore, UNRRA felt overwhelmed by the large number of ex-RAMPs hostile to repatriation, and greater efforts to convince them otherwise could not be realised at first.Footnote 81
As a result, a repatriation programme in Bad Aibling only slowly got underway in the spring of 1947.Footnote 82 Even at the beginning of May, when relevant information material was available from UNRRA's office in the camp, it was not handed out because UNRRA was concerned about how the DP leaders might react.Footnote 83 This illustrates the consequences of the DPs’ self-administration and their vehement rejection of repatriation: UNRRA had essentially surrendered to the will of the DP camp authorities. DPs were at least encouraged to write letters to friends and relatives in their home country, which UNRRA would then forward to Yugoslavia via its own communication channels.Footnote 84 The establishment of a reading room in the Bad Aibling DP camp, which was intended to facilitate access to relevant information material, was also considered.Footnote 85 An appeal by Myer Cohen, head of UNRRA's DP operations in Germany, was also publicly displayed in the camp: “Go home this spring, those of you who can. [. . .] There is work for all. There is livelihood for all. There is dignity for all. [. . .] Seize this opportunity—now. Your relatives, your friends, your country wait for you.”Footnote 86
During a visit to the camp by Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, a representative of UNRRA working in Yugoslavia, firsthand accounts of developments at home were to be given to the DPs. Although many DPs were interested in talking to Sinclair-Loutit, his work was, according to an official UNRRA report,Footnote 87 hampered by “noisy individuals.” In addition to this, the licence plate of Sinclair-Loutit's vehicle was damaged. Ultimately, Sinclair-Loutit came to the conclusion that all the steps envisaged in UNRRA's repatriation programme would have little potential if there was no spatial separation of DPs on the basis of their respective readiness to repatriate.Footnote 88
UNRRA too considered such action unavoidable at this point.Footnote 89 For this reason, a meeting of several members of Area Team 1069 took place on 30 April 1947, during which the decision was made to transfer the ex-officers representing the camp administration from Bad Aibling. For the safety of all involved, it was stressed that the preparation of the move was to be subjected to absolute secrecy. Assuming that the departure of the DPs in question—with the support of the U.S. military—would defuse the situation, UNRRA was optimistic about the further implementation of the repatriation programme in Bad Aibling.Footnote 90 The move finally took place at the end of May 1947.Footnote 91 The weekly statistics of the DP camp in Bad Aibling show that 207 Yugoslavs were transferred to a DP camp in Ingolstadt.Footnote 92 The New York Times reported on the event.Footnote 93 As a result, the remaining camp residents received the news of the transfer of their leaders with dismay: “From every barracks and from poles throughout the camp in Bad Aibling occupied by Yugoslav royalists, shabby black flags fluttered today, and an atmosphere of gloom permeated the whole contingent of 1,700 officers and men quartered there.”Footnote 94
Although some DPs had suffered under the command of the ex-officers in everyday life, the routine of camp life was, in the perception of many, probably one of the few constants in their exile existence, which was generally characterised by an element of uncertainty. Other DPs put together signs expressing support for the transfers of the DP leaders: “Long live the American nation, fighting for the freedom of every man” and “America is the symbol of liberty and democracy.”Footnote 95 This can be interpreted as a clear expression of gratitude from those DPs who welcomed the move in the context of the specific Bad Aibling situation. However, the pro-American slogans also constituted a clear alignment with the West, once again showing that the developments in the camp were not just the result of local events, but instead were heavily influenced, also in rhetoric, by the events of the Cold War, and in particular the necessity to join a political bloc in the new transnational world order.
However, in view of the imminent termination of its mission in Europe, UNRRA did not have much time to make use of the new situation to achieve its objectives in Bad Aibling. Even before the move took place, it was feared that a collapse of the internal camp administration would counteract the repatriation programme that was now to be implemented. Ralph Collins, head of UNRRA's field mission in the American zone of occupation, predicted a “very touchy situation” in this respect.Footnote 96 In fact, from UNRRA's point of view, the move had taken place too late. The general scepticism about repatriation was too deep, and the propagandistic efforts of the ex-officers had had a lasting effect on the majority of the Yugoslav DPs in Bad Aibling. In the summer of 1947, Joseph L. Zwischenberger, head of Area Team 1069, concluded with resignation that “[We] attempted a program in the camp which was held without success.” All UNRRA could do was hope that a repatriation program in Bad Aibling might be carried out successfully in the future.Footnote 97 In his account of the history of the Bad Aibling DP camp, Harold Rosenblatt had noted in 1947: “In spite of the ability of the people to make the best of a poor situation it is hoped they will not spend another winter at Bad Aibling.”Footnote 98 This hope was not to be fulfilled. Under the administration of the IRO (International Refugee Organization, the successor agency to UNRRA) there were still 1,415 DPs living in the camp in September 1947.Footnote 99 Few sources have been preserved from the subsequent IRO years. We do know that in November 1948, the Bad Aibling Yugoslav DP camp was dissolved, with almost a thousand individuals being transferred to another DP camp in MunichFootnote 100 because the IRO needed the Bad Aibling facilities to set up an international Children's Village for DP children.Footnote 101
Conclusion
While we do not know the details surrounding the further pathways of the Yugoslav DPs who lived in Bad Aibling, it is likely that many of them eventually emigrated overseas, predominantly to Canada, the United States, and Australia, where thousands of Yugoslav DPs became part of a predominantly Serbian diaspora in the years following the Second World War.Footnote 102 However, by the time the IRO ended its operations in postwar Germany at the end of 1951, a remaining 21,000 Yugoslavs also constituted the second largest group of DPs to permanently settle in Germany as so-called homeless foreigners, as former DPs were subsequently referred to in Germany.Footnote 103 In a way, through the resettlement in different Western countries across the globe, Yugoslav DP communities were separated and thus displaced even further, while still remaining within the geographical boundaries of the new world order created by the Cold War. The intention of certain commanding elements of the former Royal Yugoslav Army to form a unified oppositional diaspora that would eventually overthrow Tito and reestablish the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ultimately failed.
At the same time, through resettlement the story of Yugoslav DPs became even more global in nature, adding to the already transnational character that had defined the events in postwar Germany during which Yugoslav DPs became pawns of the early Cold War. Through a global microhistorical approach, the history of the Bad Aibling DP camp provides an interesting but ultimately limited insight into the fate of Yugoslav DPs, which was largely intertwined with the dynamics of world politics after 1945. It would therefore be worthwhile if historians were to devote more attention to global contexts in future research, following a methodological approach that also encompasses the trajectories of DPs who resettled in different countries. When combined, multiple global microhistories could contribute to a better and more nuanced narrative of postwar displacement and its transnational ramifications, and also serve as a blueprint for studies on other groups of DPs following a similar methodological approach.
