The collapse of Nazi Germany was accompanied by a humanitarian disaster of staggering proportions. The newly-founded United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and its successor the International Refugee Organization (IRO) identified repairing the damage that the war had inflicted on Allied displaced populations as one of its foremost humanitarian obligations. These UN agencies cast themselves as pre-eminent agents of ‘rehabilitation’, facilitating a fast transition from war to peace through scientific methods of refugee management conducted along Rooseveltian lines. Departing from earlier relief efforts, their ambition was to provide more than a mere ‘soup kitchen’ charity, their aim being to ‘rehabilitate’ Displaced Persons (DPs). Their methods were, however, vigorously contested in the field by military and occupation authorities, by members of established voluntary societies, and by UNRRA/IRO’s own continental recruits. This thesis explores these confrontations through the lens of French DP administration. Although these UN agencies proclaimed a new era of internationalism, solutions to DP problems were often defined in nationalist terms. DPs were organised by ethnicity and strong ties attached relief workers to their own national groups. For French planners and humanitarian workers, the DP question was much more than a humanitarian problem, and was bound up with issues of domestic reconstruction, culture and identity as much as the provision of medical aid and relief. This thesis demonstrates that distinctive diplomatic constraints, economic requirements and cultural differences influenced the thought and practices of refugee humanitarianism, shaping alternate ways of arranging interim provision and ‘rehabilitating’ DPs in the French zone of occupation. Despite the fact that Allied responses to the DP problem mirrored divergent wartime experiences and differing national visions for the post-war future, this thesis argues that the history of UNRRA and the IRO in the French zone cannot be solely understood as a story of inter-Allied confrontation and clashes of political culture. Numerous transfers of expertise and the circulation of ideas and people between the zones belie such a view. New-Deal influenced methods penetrated the French zone and local UNRRA/IRO staff progressively embraced the organizations’ declared mission of ‘self-help’, albeit on terms that reflected their particular interpretation of DPs’ best interests. The real impact of UNRRA and the IRO lies in this grey area of subtle processes of imitation and re-interpretation.

Cette étude se penche sur les mentalités de la société allemande durant la phase de sortie de guerre dans la zone d'occupation française, entre 1945 et 1950. L'approche se fait à travers l'étude des discours portant sur la misère, appréhendée en fonction de ses deux aspects principaux: la nourriture et l'habitat. Il s'agit d'étudier la façon dont le sujet a été traité par les particuliers, dans un corpus de lettres adressées aux administrations allemandes, mais également dans la presse de la zone, et par les élites politiques. Cela permet de mettre en valeur les réseaux d'interactions de plusieurs discours dans la société allemande. Notre étude se propose d'interroger les enjeux de ces discours sur la misère, entre victimisation, blocage mémoriel, antagonisme franco-allemand, et mythe politique de l'année zéro. / This dissertation focuses on the mentalities of German society during the aftermath of the war within the aera under French responsability, from 1945 to 1950. The analysis of the literary terminology of misery will be apprehended through both the food- and housing-related complaints. We will study the way in which the subject is treated by private individuals in a body of letters addressed to German administrations, in the local newspapers as well as voiced by the political elites. This will enable us to cross several different perspectives and how they interact within German society. Our study will question the strategies that are at stakes in these writings: between victimization, memorial block, Franco-German antagonism and the political myth of the year zero.

Après la seconde guerre mondiale et suite à sa défaite, l'Allemagne fut divisée en quatre zones d'occupation par les forces alliées. Sous le contrôle général du CONL (Conseil de Contrôle Interallié), les Allemands durent alors obéir aux ordres des quatre occupants alliés qui, chacun dans leur zone respective, cherchèrent de mener à bien leurs propres projets d'occupation. Pour des raisons diplomatiques et géopolitiques, les autorités françaises de la ZFO (zone française d’occupation) maintinrent une position plus indépendante, afin de non seulement garantir la sécurité géopolitique de la France, mais aussi s’assurer de pouvoir se procurer les moyens nécessaires à la reconstruction de la France -- à travers la réparation économique que l’Allemagne s’était vue imposer --, et enfin de lui permettre la décentralisation de l'Allemagne. Ainsi, une série de décisions sur l'utilisation directe ou indirecte des ressources humaines allemandes locales seront prises par le GMF (Gouvernement Militaire Français) pour faciliter l'administration de la zone française et assurer les intérêts français en Allemagne. Dans ce modèle représentatif de l’utilisation française du personnel allemand, trois groupes particuliers d’employés allemands directs ou indirects du GMF existèrent et aidèrent ainsi les occupants français à réaliser efficacement les objectifs qu’ils s’étaient fixés concernant l'occupation de l’Allemagne : les employés allemands relevant directement du GMF, les fonctionnaires et enfin, les légionnaires allemands. En raison de différentes décisions interalliées du CONL, d’événements historiques cruciaux et de mouvements populaires en Allemagne dans l’immédiat après-guerre – tels que par exemple, la dénazification, la démocratisation, la rééducation et la démilitarisation --, tous ces groupes d’employés allemands du GMF connurent des destins différents pendant la période d’occupation. Leurs sorts furent le reflet direct et concret du changement d’attitude des Français envers le peuple allemand ainsi que l’évolution des principes français relatifs à l’occupation de l’Allemagne dans l’après-guerre. / After the Second World War, defeated Germany was divided into four zones occupied by allied force. Under the general control of ACC (Allied Control Council), Germans had to obey the rule of Allied occupants and the four allied powers sought to carry out their own plans of occupation in their zones. Due to the reasons diplomatic and geostrategic, the French authorities maintained a more independent position to pursue the geopolitical security of France, the economic reparation for the reconstruction and the decentralization of Germany. Hence, a series of decisions about the direct or indirect use of local German human resource were adopted by the FMG (French Military Government) to simplifier the administration of the zone and ensure the realization of French interests in Germany. In this typical model of the French employ of German personnel, three major special germen groups existed; they supported French occupants to achieve efficiently their objectives of occupation in Germany: the germen employees relevant directly to FMG, the functionaries and the legionnaires. With the allied decisions of ACC, the crucial events and the popular movements in Germany, such as denazification, democratization, reeducation, and demilitarization, these typical groups of the employees of FMG have experienced the different situations during the occupation period and their fates reflect directly and deeply the change of French attitude toward the Germen people and the evolution of French principles of occupation in Germany in the postwar period.