Somewhat ironically, the most feared problem – a public health crisis – never occurred. It was largely avoided by a step that will shock today’s readers: refugees were liberally dusted with DDT, which proved to be an effective germ killer. Its impact on the long-term health of those treated is unknown but it can’t have been good.
There were plenty of unexpected problems. Food proved much scarcer than anticipated, a problem exacerbated by “the sheer hoggery of the American military.” To prevent the refugees from starving, the British government courageously imposed bread rationing on its civilians – something that had not been necessary during the war.
The biggest challenge however was that there were far more refuges than anticipated. Shephard estimates that roughly 15 million individuals needed to be resettled. They were a very diverse group – Poles, Latvians, Balts, Ukranians, Yugoslavs, Jewish concentration camp survivors, slave workers who had been forced to work in the Third Reich, and hundreds of thousands of Germans who had been expelled from conquered lands.
Another enormous problem was that many refugees, especially those from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, had no desire to be repatriated because they feared – often with good reason – the consequences once they arrived. And at least some of them preferred death to repatriation: “Americans,” notes Shephard, “found it incomprehensible when Soviet refugees targeted for extradition bit each other’s jugular veins rather than submit to repatriation.” Before long, “forced repatriation" was ended – something that exacerbated tensions between the Soviet Union (which wanted all its “citizens” returned immediately) and the West and prolonged the refugee crisis. As late as 1947, there were still more than a million people in the camps.