Key
At the selected date, the colour of each place shows who held it. To learn its story, click or tap a country or marker.
Drag to move · scroll to zoom · click a country or marker
To move the map on a touch screen, drag it. Pinch to zoom, or double-tap to zoom in.
When a war ends, going home may still be impossible. After 1945, Europe’s borders moved west, and people were made to move with them. Germans were expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia, while Poles and Ukrainians were exchanged. Millions of former forced laborers and camp survivors waited in “displaced persons” camps. Later, a new flight began as people fled communist rule.
A second crisis followed communist victory in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos after 1975. Victory and revolutionary policies drove millions from their homes; more than three million people went abroad, traveling over land and by sea.
The twelve chapters follow people on the move and the decisions of governments and relief agencies. They ask what forced people from their homes after conflict and how states and the international system responded, from army relief and the 1951 Refugee Convention to the agreements reached at Geneva in 1979 and 1989.
On the maps, red arrows show flight and expulsion, blue arrows organized resettlement, and charcoal arrows return. A wider arrow represents a movement on a larger relative scale. Switch between the two maps, move through the timeline and open territories to examine the cases. The Field Exam asks you to use both maps.
Keys: ←→ chapters · space play time · +− zoom · ⌘K search · ? all keys.
You can return to the library of twenty-one atlases at any time: select the balloon at the top left.