The state funded expellee politics to contain radicalization, not champion return

Evidence

With the failure of Weimar ever in mind, the new federal government had strong incentive to back the expellee political project as a means, it hoped, to contain and dissipate radicalization and unrest among these millions when they became politically enfranchised through the 1949 Basic Law. … It signaled a profound turning point when expellee political organizations, banned by the occupying Allied authorities before 1949, suddenly found signii cant legitimacy and support for their programs in the Bonn Republic’s legal apparatus. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 433

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in manufactured external enemies and how elites weaponize or co-opt a potential threat to state stability — parallels state co-optation of other aggrieved movements.