Despite historians’ rediscovery of the ‘DP story’ since the late 1980s, the French zone has remained understudied, for France was a second-rank occupying force, one whose zone and DP population was significantly smaller, and its wider political influence more limited than those of its Western Allies. And yet, the French zone offers an ideal site in which to trace how relief approaches and practices were coloured by domestic concerns, with France facing specific material constraints resulting in part from its experiences of Nazi occupation. Contributing to a recent expansion of scholarly literature that focuses on Allied administration of DPs, this book unearths how discussions about how best to serve the interests of DPs resonated with broader national debates about the immediate past and the fate of France after Vichy. It argues that humanitarian aid became a component of French efforts at restoring France’s international prestige against the backdrop of increasing anxieties about its international standing. It also reveals the fragmentation of visions for relief work within international organisations, beyond their claims to the embodiment of a ‘new humanitarianism’.

By examining the forgotten history of refugee relief in the French zone, this book reveals that ‘caring’ for DPs became a political and moral project, overseen by the French state, international organisations, and occupation authorities. It demonstrates that French practices towards DPs were deeply implicated in the mixed record of the French zone: DP camps were both sites of violent discipline, but also spaces of valuable educational opportunities and exchange across cultures. Not only were French occupation officials and relief workers concerned about the image of France circulating in DP camps, but they also drew a number of DP artists into the orbit of French cultural diplomacy in Germany. For French occupiers and relief workers, exhibiting French cultural richness and selling the ‘French way of life’ was considered as a tool to express and project French political power. Fundamentally, this book nuances the view that the Second World War was a radically ‘modernising’ and ‘internationalising’ moment in the history of humanitarianism. French approaches to relief work were underpinned by gendered assumptions, racial prejudices and the received wisdom of the superiority of certain ethnic groups over others.