Redemptive Recovery: The Ruhr, Reconstruction and Repatriation to Poland in the Early Post–Second World War Period

This article examines the early post–Second World War Polish state’s campaign to ‘repatriate’ German citizens of Polish descent from the Ruhr region and the consequent official and public contestations that erupted between Polish, British and German observers. Alternate interpretations of the Ruhr’s labour regime and its transformative ethno-social impact lay at the heart of these debates. For many Polish commentators, repatriating the Ruhrpolen from Germany’s industrial heartland was inextricably intertwined with Poland’s recent acquisition of the ‘Recovered Territories’ and modernising growth imperatives. By contrast, British and (especially) German observers depicted the Ruhr’s labour regime as a transformative forge of Germanisation, one that had elevated individuals of Polish descent into the region’s native working class and now depended on their presence to drive recovery efforts in Western Europe. Even after the late 1940s, repatriation – and frustrations therewith – continued to serve as a legitimising force for redemptive state-building projects in West Germany and Poland.