Expellee conservatism emerged only after SPD recognition of the Oder-Neisse line

Evidence

Second, the chapters demonstrate that a stronger affinity of the two groups (or at least of their recognizable representatives) for certain conservative or right-wing parties is a more recent phenomenon and the result of a complicated process of political integration. Bösch’s chapter thus challenges the conventional narrative that the Christian Democrats easily managed to integrate the expellees. While the SPD proved even more successful in recruiting expellee representatives in the beginning, Adenauer’s CDU finally managed to integrate some of the most prominent ones. The New Ostpolitik under the Social–Liberal government, including the recognition of the Oder–Neisse line in 1970, further estranged expellee activists from the SPD. Hence, only in the 1970s did the CDU/CSU become their favored political party. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 87

Categorization

• XREF: This realignment-on-issue is a direct parallel to threat-hardened grievance belief: when the SPD conceded the border, activists defected; correction/forsaking of their cause deepened rather than dissolved the attachment. — connects to: Expellee organizations sustained West German revanchism by reinforcing refusal to accept the postwar border — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 190; The expellees rejected the Oder-Neisse border as provisional pending a formal peace conference — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 31
• DEEPTHINKING: Directly relevant to the reader’s core question: policy concession (removing the grievance) did not dissolve expellee identity but drove it rightward — grievance persistence despite concession, a backfire dynamic worth sitting with.
• SEED: The SPD’s 1970 concession backfiring by driving expellee activists to the CDU is a clean empirical case that grievance-based solidarity outlives the grievance’s material removal.

Broader Connections

• Expellee organizations sustained West German revanchism by reinforcing refusal to accept the postwar border #expands (0.85) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 190
• The expellees rejected the Oder-Neisse border as provisional pending a formal peace conference #complicates (0.80) — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 31