Expellee numbers grew by inheritance, expanding to nearly 9 million by 1961.

Evidence

By 1961 the number of expellees in the FRG had risen to almost 9 million (as opposed to roughly 8 million in 1950). Two factors accounted for the increase: continued immigration and the fact that the offspring of expellee parents also received expellee status. The electoral significance of the expellees was further enhanced by the fact that the parties often regarded them and the Soviet zone refugees, who by the beginning of the 1960s numbered roughly 3 million and constituted a further 6 percent of the population, as one electoral bloc with similar interests and characteristics. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 77

Categorization

• QUESTION: The inherited expellee status means the grievance community reproduced itself demographically even without new expulsions - relevant to how a threat-based identity sustains itself over time.

Related

• Expellees comprised 16-18 percent of West German population. (similarity 0.83)
• French repatriates were a small minority while German expellees were one in five Germans (similarity 0.79)