Expellees fixated on memory of home rather than the border propaganda war.

Evidence

In general, I i nd that expellees simply failed to care about the ongoing West German and Polish propaganda i ght about borders. Already in 1952, editors from the popular monthly magazine Revue observed that, although the i ght went “back and forth, for each expellee this is all only of interest on the margins. He wants to know how it looks in his community, on his street. The man that looks homewards closes his eyes. The louder the i ght around him becomes, the more i rmly he clings to the eternal, unchanging, always friendly image of the Heimat : to memory!” — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 114

Categorization

• XREF: Core to reader’s project: elite-driven manufactured-enemy propaganda (here the border fight) failed to displace a non-rational attachment below it — memory. Evidence that professed elite conviction and rank-and-file response diverge. — connects to: Expellees chose memory over resettlement despite open Cold War borders. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 110; Expellees’ apolitical memory work outweighed their leaders’ revanchist politics — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 201; Expellee political power eroded once generational change and border settlement removed grievances — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 403 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: Suggests a counterintuitive inversion of the threat-manufacture hypothesis: propaganda escalation can entrench a privatized, apolitical attachment rather than mobilize hostility — the louder the elite fight, the more constituents retreat into idyll.

Broader Connections

• Expellees’ apolitical memory work outweighed their leaders’ revanchist politics #expands (0.88) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 201
• Expellees chose memory over resettlement despite open Cold War borders. #corroborates (0.85) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 110
• Expellees’ curiosity about changed homelands clashed with and deepened their memory-based grief. #qualifies (0.80) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 183
• Expellee political power eroded once generational change and border settlement removed grievances #expands (0.75) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 403