David Nasaw detailed account of the European refugees nightmare from 1945 to the early 50s is a clear and precise overview of the human & political difficulties of repatriation facing the allies especially in Central and Eastern Europe.
From the liberation of the concentration camps to the creation of the Berlin Wall that divided Europe politically for 40 years, almost 1 million displaced people had to be relocated. Nasaw painstakingly and precisely dissects the entire process established by the winners to fundamentally reshape the European emigration & immigration landscape despite the enormous hurdles they had to surmount. This is an important study on the aftermath of WII and its migration woes.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Press for the opportunity to read this wonderful book prior to its release date

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

This is a fascinating and heartrending look at the people displaced by WWII (including, among many others fleeing violence and persecution, Jewish concentration camp survivors, forced laborers, and Nazi collaborators). It focuses in depth on how country after country, namely the United States and Great Britain, were unwilling to accept Jewish displaced persons but happily sought out Ukrainian, Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian peoples, regardless of whether or not they were Nazi collaborators.

One potential flaw to note: as the NYT book review points out, "the author’s account of the facts on the ground in Palestine/Israel produces the book’s only slight wobble — an uncharacteristic loss of perspective." In other words, despite the book's focus on DPs, remarkably little attention is paid to the displaced Palestinian Arabs.

This is an important book about a period of history unknown to large swaths of the American population, and I sincerely hope it attracts a lot of attention. It's absolutely worth the time. Reading the political back-and-forth, as our US senate has days to reach agreement regarding another COVID-19 relief package and a budget deal for the 2021 year, is enlightening. Things are bad in so many ways now, and politicians have failed the people of the world for generations.

Very gripping, not often told story, of aftermath of WW2. I've known about it since the 70's as I have friends who's families were part of these refugees. I have, in recent years, met others who's parents were part of these refugees, but never told their American born children their stories (they later learned through family friends of their parents, who told them of those days after their parents had passed.) WW2 was a disaster for everyone in Europe. It affected every single person. I don''t think most Americans can even begin to conceive of the hell Europe remained for many year AFTER the war ended. Refugees had to wait in camps until countries agreed to admit them as every country had quotas. I am glad these books are being written and their stories being told.

The Last Million is an illuminating book on a period in history that is often overlooked. Nasaw bridges the gap between WWII and the Cold War as he details the painstakingly difficult post-war processes of repatriating and relocating people. From the Jews who survived the heinous conditions of the Holocaust to the forced laborers from Eastern Europe who sometimes willingly and other times unwillingly left their homeland to support Germany, The Last Million follows those left when the war was over, who they were, where they went, why they went there, and how it all happened.

World War II did not end on V-E and V-J Days. Hostilities ceased on those days but the war churned up so many lives that it would take more than a decade to find new homes for the more than a million displaced persons in David Nasaw’s new book, The Last Million. Nasaw chronicles the struggles and political wrangling over what happened to people who, after the war, had no homes to go return to or couldn’t go home because of violent antisemitism or the growing strength of the Soviet Union in the Eastern Bloc or who would face prosecution for war crimes and collaboration in their nation of origin. This thoroughly researched book covers everything from just before the end of the war to when the last displaced persons camp in 1957.

After the war, Germany saw waves of people coming in from concentration camps and from newly Communist countries stretching from Estonia to Ukraine. Among these displaced people were liberated Jews, people who couldn’t return because of the Soviet Union, expelled Volksdeutsche, and people running from allied justice. Nasaw bounced back and forth from each of these groups as the Allies wrangle over their fates. Nasaw’s account—fully documented with quotes from Allied personnel and politicians and DPs—reveals a series of almost insurmountable problems that kept DPs in the camps for far to long.

The biggest problem is widespread antisemitism. After the war, no one wanted to take in Jewish DPs. Although the Allies would house, feed, and treat the medical ailments of the displaced persons, none of the Allied leaders seemed willing to able to bring Jewish people into their countries. American President Truman knew that Congress wouldn’t change immigration laws to allow Jews or people from now Communist countries in. Prime Minister Attlee’s government was later willing to cherry-pick non-Jewish DPs to do jobs Britons didn’t want to do. Jewish people often couldn’t go back to their homes. Not only were their communities obliterated, but they faced new pogroms by people who were happy to have seen the Jews gone forever.

The next big problem faced by Jewish DPs was the question of Palestine. Attlee had to walk a tight rope between keeping peace with Arabs in Palestine by limiting Jewish immigration as much as possible and Allied pressure to send Jewish people there. Many (but not all) surviving Jewish people wanted to go to Palestine to create a Jewish state, but Palestine was already inhabited by people whose families had been there for generations.

Lastly, Volksdeutsche, former SS soldiers, former concentration camp guards, and others who had committed or been involved in war crimes destroyed their documents or lied about where they’d been during the war to hid under the cover of being a displaced person so that they wouldn’t face summary justice if they’d gone home. It infuriated me to see that so many of these people slipped through the screening process and have their visas approved for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and other countries.

Nasaw’s The Last Million contains so much more than what I’ve written here. My summary certainly doesn’t capture Nasaw’s gift with research and use of quotes to bring personalities to the page. I found myself shocked, saddened, cheered, and frustrated by the events recounted in The Last Million. I also feel like Nasaw gave me a graduate course in the history of displaced people. This book is among the best nonfiction I have ever read.