Contemporaries widely predicted expellees would radicalize politically

Evidence

In his grand narrative of the modern European tragedy, Mark Mazower claims that, when Germans looked backward to the world they had lost “in nostalgic photo albums of pre-war Silesia or East Prussia,” they were indulging in reactionary “dreams of empire.” 10 Michael M ü ller takes an even more extreme view: Because NATO supported West German territorial claims east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, the “silent majority” of West Germans, most notably expellees, stood behind the Western alliance; mindless adherence to the expellee leadership’s political platform allegedly fostered the strength of conservative West German politics. 11 This caricature of millions of expellees, quite common in scholarly and popular literature, cannot be sustained in light of how events actually unfolded. 12 In the aftermath of forced migration, church leaders were certain that expellees would radicalize politically. At a November 1945 meeting, a Catholic Caritas leader went so far as to recommend shipping expellees out of the country - an idea that was by no means uncommon. 13 In a 1946 proclamation, the Catholic bishops of the western zones warned that, unless the expellees were sent home, “seeds of hatred [will be] sown which will only cause more evil.” 14 In July 1950, American historian Franz Neumann feared that expellees would mass behind “Germany’s new demagogues” to overthrow stability in Central Europe. 15 None of these apprehensions proved justii ed. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 96

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing notes on manufactured enemies and primordial identity versus actual behavior: elites and observers projected threat-hardened radicalism onto expellees that never materialized. — connects to: Elites were drawn to totalitarian movements by radicalism for its own sake — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 799
• QUESTION: The central puzzle: professed conviction about radicalization (church leaders, Neumann) failed to predict actual expellee behavior — a conviction-vs-reality divergence case.

Broader Connections

• Elites were drawn to totalitarian movements by radicalism for its own sake #corroborates (0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 799