The expellee label framed Germans as Allied victims, not Nazi agents

Evidence

Yet because it was crucial to nationalizing millions of Germans, it would discourage the acceptance and integration of ‘others’. In essence the politics of citizenship expressed the myth of a common German ‘victimhood’ attributed not to National Socialism but to the Allies. Hence the term ‘expellee’ depicted passive recipients of the actions of others. It covered those whom National Socialism ‘resettled’, refugees from the Soviet advance, and Germans ousted by ‘wild’ or government-initiated expulsions. Like Reich Germans victimized by Allied bombing, ‘expellees’ also suffered simply by being German. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 184

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Saïd’s ‘imagined communities’ framing and to how expellee (Vertriebene) identity was politically constructed as a unifying category similar to Pieds-Noirs self-mythologization. — connects to: Expellees transposed acknowledged Nazi crimes onto their Polish persecutors to deny German guilt — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 698; German expulsions were Allied-sanctioned while Algerian exodus came from decolonization war — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 46
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how a shared ‘victimhood’ label built on erasing one’s own side’s responsibility sustains group solidarity more durably than a positive primordial identity.

Broader Connections

• Expellees transposed acknowledged Nazi crimes onto their Polish persecutors to deny German guilt #complicates (0.88) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 698
• German expulsions were Allied-sanctioned while Algerian exodus came from decolonization war #corroborates (0.75) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 46