This chapter examines the generalizability of the book’s main argument. It synthesizes the conclusions of other studies on the consequences of three similar episodes of forced migration in the twentieth century: the Greek-Turkish population exchange, the Partition of India, and the repatriation of Pied-Noirs to France. It then considers ways in which the argument can be extended to other cases of forced and voluntary migration.

This chapter introduces cases motivating the book and presents a three-step argument about the effects of forced migration on societal cooperation, state capacity, and economic development. It reviews evidence from post-WWII displacement in Poland and West Germany, discusses the applicability of the findings to other cases, and highlights the main contributions of the book.

This chapter provides the historical background necessary to understand the book’s empirical analysis. It discusses the political decisions that led to the displacement of Germans and Poles at the end of WWII and challenges the assumption that uprooted communities were internally homogeneous. It then zooms in on the process of uprooting and resettlement and introduces data on the size and heterogeneity of the migrant population in postwar Poland and West Germany.

Chapter 3 explores the social conditions and normative constraints that influence the achievements that can be obtained through partition. The chapter’s main argument is that although novel ideas for “homogenizing” territories may arise, a reasonable theory for peace must assume that forcible transfers of population in any form are prohibited, and consequently that demographically homogenous territories are unattainable. By looking at the social realities in the four cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Israel–Palestine, the chapter illustrates that in most actual cases of ethno-national conflict, partition does not offer a viable course of action, if the goal is the creation of ethnically homogenous territories that can become “defensible enclaves” or “true” nation-states. Even in those cases where territorial partition make sense – as in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, in postdivision Cyprus, or in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the ethnic cleansing – peace must be attained not on the basis of ethnically homogenous nation-states, but rather on the basis of ethnically heterogenous territories and states. Thus, the chapter concludes that while territorial partition may be considered as one tool for peacemaking in ethno-national conflicts, its limitations must be recognized, and attained with other policies for accommodating ethno-national diversity.

Many interwar connections among German communities, as well as many that were much older, persisted into the postwar era as well.These continued to influence and inform people’s actions and fates. If Europe saw the greatest forced migration in human history, Germans’ migrations were not limited to Europe and many postwar migrations followed older patterns.Moreover, while a great many German communities were shattered by the war and the subsequent population transfers, in many cases older relationships were rehabilitated and older networks and connections persisted.Moreover, many people’s postwar actions mirrored prewar patterns.There was, for example, even more mobility, even more mixing in the postwar German nation-states, and a great many immigrants and refugees arriving in these states were German plus other things. Postwar and post-unification German history, like the periods before it, are aggregate histories made by Germans whose multiple subject positions have been defined outside as much as inside of the German nation-state.