Forced Migration, Staying Minorities, and New Societies: Evidence from Postwar Czechoslovakia
Journal: American Journal of Political Science
Year: 2023

Abstract Can staying minorities who evade ethnic cleansing affect political outcomes in resettled communities? After World War Two, three million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, but some were allowed to stay, many of them left‐leaning antifascists. We study quasi‐experimental local variation in expulsion policies, a result of the surprising presence of the U.S. Army, which indirectly helped antifascist Germans stay. We find a long‐lasting footprint: Communist part